#hunting ground ps2

[smol-nemesis]

Calling all Hunting Ground stans! What ship name should we give Fiona x Daniella?

[joonie-berry]

Twisted Wonderland Au

Rule of Wonderland/Twisted Grounds

So I made this Au like 6 months ago and had no one to speak about it to. If you remember games of the old horror genre then you might have heard about Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose. Two games of the early 2000s that were female protag centered. Well I made and Au kinda centering both games with Twst ~~mainly Haunting Ground~~ called Twisted Grounds/ Rule of Wonderland.

It’s not gonna fully follow the events of those games, but more on their mechanics. Like the panic system of Haunting Grounds, and the companion system of both games using Grim.

It’s more like a what if Twisted Wonderland was like those old early ps2 games. Without further ado here’s the info of each dorm summarized basically

The Crimson Tyrant and Rose Maze

Riddle Rosehearts: Ruler of The Rose Maze. Nullify

Trey Clover: 3rd highest/ strongest Admin of the Rose Maze. Baker. Ruler’s Caretaker

Cater Diamond: 2nd highest/strongest admin of the Rose Maze. Caretaker of the roses, social media influencer

Ace Trappola: Rookie, sleight of hand, illusionist

Deuce Spade: Rookie, ex delinquent

Charm: Rose Headband

Usurper of Wilds and the Lion's Den

Summary

Leona Kingscholar: King of the Lion's Den. Drought

Ruggie Bucchi: second in command. Caretaker of the Lion's Den albeit not officially

Jack Howl: Rookie, scout

Charm: Leona's choker

Witch of the Sea and The Lakehouse

Summary

Azul Ashengrotto: Watcher of the Lakehouse, Dealmaker

Jade Leech: Second in command, Caretaker

Floyd Leech: Torturer, sadistic scout

Charm: Seashell Necklace

Sorcerer of Sands and The Desert Manor

Summary

Kalim Al Aism: Heir of the Desert Manor

Jamil Viper: Second in command, Caretaker, Actual boss. Hypnotist

Charm: Gold Bracelet

Fairest Queen and Poison Palace

Summary

Vil Schoenheit: Queen of the Poison Palace; Fairest Poison

Rook Hunt: Second in command, Caretaker, Hunter

Epel Felmier: Rookie, Farmer

Charm: Poison apple earrings

Guard of the Underworld and Death's Mansion.

Idia Shroud: Leader of the underworld, Set Match

Ortho Shroud: Scout, Caretaker

Charm: Idia’s Keychain

King of Thorns and the Dragon Castle.

Malleus Draconia: King of the Dragon castle

Lilia Vanrouge: SiC, Caretaker

Silver Vanrouge: Head Guard

Sebek Zigvolt: Rookie, Guard in training

Charm: Dragon’s ring

Charms are items Yuu gets if they wish to travel back to the previous location without being attacked. It symbolizes their connection to the head of each location.

[foibles-fables]

What's that? Random asks? Don't mind if I do!

How did you hear about Horizon that made you want to play it, and how was that first time?

Howdy hello and HECK YES! I love this question.

So--summer 2020. I'd just come back from a decade-long hiatus from fandom in general, and was starting to learn the new ropes and spaces (this former livejournal clown breaking into discord and twitter, etc.). One night, I was scrolling through my twitter timeline and happened to stumble upon the freshly-posted E3 announcement trailer for HFW. And even though I hadn't really played a narrative video game since the PS2 era, I decided to watch it. And, huh! I remember saying, "Badass freckly redheaded archer...seems relevant to my interests." The graphics were absolutely gorgeous and what little hints of the story were present in that trailer (especially for someone who knew nothing of the narrative background presented so far) were compelling.

So I looked up some info and found out that it was a sequel to a 2017 game. Cool. Filed that away for later, deciding to get a PS5 when they released later that year.

Jump-cut to late December. I managed to get my hands on a PS5, and it was delivered a couple days before Christmas. Which was awesome, because life was not going super well and I needed a heavy-duty distraction. At this point I had kind of pushed Horizon to the backburner and was instead excited to play AC Valhalla as my first game! But when I booted up, I learned that my mother had bought me the disc version as a Christmas gift. I was left with a couple of days to try other stuff out before I could dive in to ACV.

So, I shrugged and downloaded HZD instead. And the rest is kind of history.

Went into it kind of ambivalent and really hoping I would like it. I had tried to play BotW and was completely overwhelmed by the open-world aspects, and not in a pleasant way, and I hoped that wouldn't be the case here. I'd also never really been into a ton of action games before, as most of my old faves were turn-based. The gameplay itself wouldn't be the clincher for me--that would be the story.

WELL, good news is, I was hooked from the prologue. I would equate playing HZD to not just watching a narrative masterwork unfold, but being in the driver's seat of one. Each discovery Aloy and I made was enthralling and exhilarating, and I legitimately could not stop playing. Could not stop exploring. Every side quest, every collectible, every corner of the map (besides the hunting grounds after earning my Suns at the Nora one, SORRY TALANAH). The entirety of "Deep Secrets of the Earth" had me staring into the darkness of my gaming room in a mix of existential horror and pure amazement. I wept at the ending. The HZD cast left an indelible mark on my heart, and it really reminded me of just how powerful game stories can be. Still trapped in hyperfixation hell (affectionate) over it.

The fun didn't stop there, though. By the time I finished the game (I took my time!), it was early February 2021. I feel very lucky to have sauntered in when I did, because it really seems like it was the perfect time to join the fandom. Folks were coming out of hibernation from both 2017 and the 2020 PC release, hyped with excitement and theories for HFW. Within those first months I met some of the most fabulous and now-lifelong friends (and more <3) I've ever had.

Bottom line: after playing HZD, Horizon and the fandom pulled me through a very very very difficult time in my life. I'm eternally grateful to this series and the meaning I derive from it. Especially from the first game--its vibrant narrative, and its absolutely fantastic characters. Lightning in a bottle, man.

And no, I still haven't finished AC Valhalla. lmao.

[mnkiss]

The Sims 2 Castaway on PS2

It was and is the best sims game ever. Why?

3rd person control (as well as the point and click if you wanted to use that but I never did)

3 + 1 islands worth of exploration

Beautiful scenery and lots of interactable elements in the world

Teleport system which costs time

(Telling the time was done by using the sun's and the moon's position on the sky btw how cool is that)

Swimming in the sea and collecting shells from underwater rocks

Recipes!

Hunting, gathering, fishing, gardening and even fire making were a must (you had to do them to not starve to death)

You could upgrade your tools, make clothes and dye, craft furniture, process materials or make pictures via a working bench

Clothes were able to get torn and you could either repair them or make a new one (and there were lots of options too! from accessories to whole sets, the sheer amount of craftable clothes...)

Hairgrowth

Bottle messages and the creepy garden gnome (+ the scuba diving set gave me nightmares)

Ruins (from the aztec [?] inspired llama tribe), ships ashore, ritual grounds, hot springs and a fucking VOLCANO

Monkey friends

The chicken coop <3

You literally had to build your house and rain could destroy it so you had to work on them again

No lag issue

UFOs and a pirate treasure

YOU COULD PLAY MUSIC TOGETHER WITH YOUR TRIBE. And they did it autonomusly too!!!

[un-father]

Hyperfixating on PS2 era horror games.

Find me watching an independent analysis of Hunting Grounds.

New horror games just don't hit the same.

[button-mash]

What I played last week #7

Wild Hearts [PC]

Monster Hunter was always one of those series where I liked the idea of them and always thought they looked great when I watched other people's gameplay, but playing them myself always just felt a bit clunky and overwhelming. I don't think there is anything wrong necessarily with games aiming themselves at people who are already fans of a series, but trying to play Monster Hunter always felt like some videogame version of gym impostor syndrome, where you convince yourself everybody there already seems to know exactly what to do and it just adds to the feeling of the game feeling a little impenetrable. It always contributed to feeling like I was never playing the games 'properly', and always held back the experience for me.

Enter Wild Hearts, which I'd never really heard anything about until the week it launched, which seems to be a go at making as close to a Monster Hunter game as possible without infringing any copyright - that said, I am sure to the layman they're wildly different games, but at its core you're hunting down huge oversized fantasy monsters and looting their bodies to feed into the loop of building better/different gear to fight better monsters. Something about this game just felt immediately more accessible to me - the game has a Feudal Japan/Samurai theme running alongside the monster one which feels a little incongruous, but I am such a sucker for giant katanas and I famously live by the Bushido code myself, so it immediately appealed to me. The combat is actually very cool and felt immediately more visually interesting and mechanically accessible to me, and whilst it still had a bunch of complex systems that probably aren't too dissimilar from Monster Hunter, it somehow just felt a lot easier to understand. However, any enjoyment I might have gotten from this was totally marred by horrible performance - despite having a powerful PC, the game suffered from all kinds of crashes, freezes and performance hitches which combined to really undermine the experience, so this one never got too far off the ground for me. It's a testament to the game's potential to be fun because I still battled through a bunch of restarts and performance issues despite it being an unfamiliar genre I had no attachment too, where as normally Id have just sacked it off completely - unfortunately, an imminent performance patch didn't really improve things, and I feel like by the time this one becomes more playable, I'll have already long moved on. Cool game with interesting combat, but too many flaws to take on and properly enjoy at the moment

Wanted: Dead [PC] This one is a real enigma - on paper it looked like one of those ultra niche games trying to recreate an ultra specific experience warts and all, and you were either going to like it or hate it. Specifically it was trying to evoke the style and feeling of that mental 00's era of PS2/Xbox bonkers action games like God Hand, Blood Will Tell and Samurai Western, which I was completely down for. Then I started to play it and at first it felt like they unfortunately hadn't even managed that - even going in and having the exact right expectations, it just wasn't landing for me...

Then I played on and I'm glad I did because I ended up having an absolutely amazing, dumb time with this. It really was EXACTLY what I expected

On the surface, the game wants to be a mixture of melee and shooting combat, but what threw me at first is that the shooting is absolutely dreadful, literally almost unplayably bad outside of specific sections, and other than your pistol (which is really to be used as a combo starter/parry rather than a real weapon), the shooting just feels mechanically horrible. However, once I just started to play the game as a melee game with situational shooting parts, the whole thing just starts to make way more sense, and there are a few key unlocks on the skill tree that really make the parry and dodge mechanics a lot more enjoyable and viable. I quickly got the sense that the shooting is really only there as a mechanic to make sure you don't stand still, and you actually get hit very little and take very little damage as long as you're constantly moving around. This is reinforced even more as the levels go on, as firearm based enemies tend to dwindle and a lot of the toughest enemies are actually all melee based, and progressing becomes all about timing counters and parries. The whole game and it's aesthetic is so odd and funny, they've just totally nailed that early '00s insane character design you'd see in games like Time Crisis, this is the final boss for example

Nonsense.

The thing that truly saves the game is the finishers mechanic - for such a janky game they've come up with this execution system with something stupid like 150 different situational finishers that so seamlessly blend together, they genuinely never stop being cool. Like the whole game is New Jank City and then out of nowhere they have these best in class finishing moves with unprecedented variation - I was still seeing new ones right up until the very end, and chaning them together ends up making the game feel like some sort of John Wick moments simulator.

Among it all it just undeniably evokes the feeling of playing a very specific type of game from a very specific time - good and bad. Its strange because the framework for a much much better game is there, but if they'd actually turned it into that, I think it would suddenly be something completely different and lose a lot of makes it so...itself, and as crazy as it sounds, I am not sure if a better version of this game would have hooked me quite as much.

Look, this is an almost objectively bad game that I really loved playing. Its a mechanically janky, artificially difficult experience that has huge camera issues and so many of your deaths in the punishing gauntlets it throws at you are down to shitty game design or jank getting in your way rather than you genuinely failng. There are obtuse difficulty spikes and constant moments of a punishing lack of checkpointing where it has you fighting waves enemies that can essentially one hit kill you if you mess up. It's shooting is terrible to the point of being worth actively avoiding as much as you can, and the upgrades and stuff for the guns are almost pointless. The bosses are weirdly the easiest bit of the whole game, and the game itself doesnt even really become all that playable or enjoyable until you unlock half of the melee skill tree midway through the game. It mostly looks like shit outside of it's excellent finishing animations, and it has some of the worst minigames ever.  I have had an absolutely fucking amazing time with it and have completed it 5 times in the past week or so. 12/10

[launchpadmcquack84]

The best Predator game of all time! They really need to either remake it or give it a next gen sequel. Or they could just give us a new Predator game altogether. Preferably one that is open world and free roam with unlimited customizations.

[hauntinggroundconfessions]

"I have a deep fear or Haunting Ground becoming lost media. The game is more than 10 years old, the PS2 is no longer produced and AAA companies hunt fan remasters (or any fan work for that matter) like wolves. This game is so good, a piece in many people's memories and honestly a work of art to be studied."

[samporterbridge]

[taldigi]

How is sheppard's crossing different from harvest moon/story of seasons? I looked it up after you mentioned it and at first glance it looks exactly the same to me. I really love farming sims and I like the idea of actually getting to use the animals for meat though, so maybe I'll actually try to buy it or something.

Oh it's like.. nothing like Harvest Moon even though it kinda looks it.

So you get a plot of land in this village and you're directed to start raising animals. Your end goal is to trade up to get sheep, I think! The town's main export is wool so most of the villiage tends to eye it as ideal... the neat thing tho, is that everyone so far seems really friendly: they kinda do things to support themselves and each other. the economy is all trade, no money- so you gotta plan accordingly. But that means that stuff like farm expansions are free because of that philosophy.

So for example: You cut down grass and get a cut grass item: you can trade that grass for PASTURE seeds OR cut those grass chunks into two to trade for grass seeds OR feed those chunks it to your animals!

Each branch of that trade tree has it's benefits: pasture seeds grow pasture grass which can be dried into hay- and the hay is more valuable- so you can trade it for more valued things or feed it to your animals!!

I'm only on chapter 2, and Just got rabbits. You can trade in rabbits for rabbit meat and that rabbit meat unlocks more seeds to plant. Or you can grow cabbages to turn your rabbits into fur rabbits: the rabbit fur is almost as valuable as the rabbits themselves, but it takes a while to regrow- or you can spend time growing MORE cabbages and have it grow back sooner.

Meat comes into play where some animals need meat to grow. Dogs, for example. So raise some marmots or rabbits for dog food! Or... you can trade it!

There's no crop watering, and you just drop seeds on the ground and let time and luck do it's thing. There's a weird like.. tradition thing that explains the mechanic where the townsfolk are like: let nature do it's thing! But the focus is very much on raising animals: the animals can breed and have to stay near mom to grow up!

A good benefit to it all is that it DOES focus on time passing a lot, the "next day" button is even bound to L1- so you're expected to not spend too much time doing tons of chores each day. but if you have a particularly intense day, it's not going to punish you with a time limit for the day either.

It's genuinely a really cool set of mechanics that are hard to find elsewhere. Harvest Moon is good! and fun! But that style of farm sim is really popular and pervasive- look at stuff like Stardew and... I think My time in portia? Shepard's Crossing is very different, and thats kinda refreshing.. well, as refreshing as a ps2 game from 2003 can be.

Some gripes? he fence placement mechanic is weird and frustrating, and the inventory system is... hard to get used to. im still trying to figure out what the.. duck companions do... (I can't get them to actually work??? and there's like, NO info online!) But still! I've gotten used to it and muscle memory covers most the bases.

But i've seen that there are bee boxes, dogs to raise and breed, and even hunting! So i'm having a good time overall.

[tanakavox]

Zwei's Christmas hunt part 1

Yang and Rosemary were putting up last minute Christmas decorations as Xing and Citrine were being watched by Rosemary's younger sister Daisy outside. Citrine was being her normal energetic self, running around and laughing as her Auntie Daisy chased after her with a smile on her face.

"Imma get you Citrine," Daisy called out, purposely slowing down and letting Citrine get ahead of her. Citrine ran away from her aunt, giggling the whole time while her cousin Xing watched quietly from afar. While Daisy continued keeping the children entertained, Yang and Rosemary began to put up Christmas lights on the tree, while exchanging small talk with one another in regards to their current occupations. As they were finishing up the last touches for their christmas decorations, Yang got a contemplative look on her face when realized that a certain little brother of hers has been missing the entire time

"Hey Rosie, where’s Zwei at? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him all day.”

Rosemary didn’t even bother to look away from her task at hand before giving her a one word answer.

“Vale.”

Yang raised a brow at the rather vague answer, her curiosity piqued.

“Vale? What’s he doing all the way out in Vale?”

"He said that the gift he wanted to get Xing isn't here on patch, so he went to Vale to get it," Rosemary clarified as she continued her task. Yang went from simply being curious, to being full on confused. 

"And this gift is… what exactly?” Yang asked. 

“Well…”

-Vale-

"GET BACK HERE, YOU SACK OF SHIT," Zwei roared, as the corgi Fanus gave chase to a human man who was trying his best to outrun the outraged huntsmen.

"LEAVE ME ALONE,” The human screamed back fearfully, holding onto a bag he had tucked away under his arm with a near death grip. The bag in question contained a video game console that Zwei was looking at in a pawn shop, before the would be thief smashed the glass containing it, nabbed it(And several other devices), and hightailed out of there.

Zwei gritted his teeth in annoyance at the moronic audacity of the thief in question. It’s bad enough that said thief thought it would be a great idea to rob a store with a Huntsman in it(Him), but to steal the console he’d been looking for all day as well? 

That just pushed him over the edge.

Zwei’s body began glowing blue as he began channeling aura into his legs. He briefly activated his semblance and shot forward before tackling the man to the ground in a heap. If Zwei hadn’t thought the thief an idiot before, he certainly did now as he tried to desperately keep the bag away from Zwei instead of just giving the stolen device up and cutting his losses. One bloodied nose later, and the man got point before giving up the bag to Zwei.

"This isn’t fair man, it’s my PS5,” the man weakly cried out.

"It isn’t “YOUR,” PS5 if you stole it dipshit! And it's about to be “MY,” PS5 when I take it back and purchase it,” Zwei stated in triumph, while slowly taking the console in question out of the bag in almost near reverence.

"I’ve been looking for one of you bad boys all day, but at long last I finally have a Playstation Fi-." 

Zwei’s could only blankly start at the box he held in his hand, the feeling of triumph dying away instantly before being replaced by a boiling sense of rage. He slowly turns towards the thief, who was trying to sneak away before being petrified in fear at the cold look Zwei was giving him. 

"This… is a PS2.”

The man tried to get out something, before he found his face meeting the bottom of Zwei’s boots as he began angrily stomping his face in.

“IT’S A PS2 YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!”

The man’s face was bloodied and bruised by the time Zwei finished doling out his punishment, before he finished the thief off by punting him into a nearby dumpster, before the lids fell close with a satisfying “THUMP,” and trapped the thief inside.

“Garbage belongs with garbage,” Zwei muttered to himself, before letting out an exasperated sigh. He picked up the stolen console and began making his way back to the pawn store to return the stolen device, before he went back to his current journey. Because come hell or high water, he was going to get a Playstation Five for his nephew Xing, even if he has to flip all of vale upside down to find one.

“It’s going to be a long day today…”

[smol-nemesis]

Me going back in time to make Hunting Ground a success so it can get re-released to death like Resident Evil 4

[skellebonez]

One day both Hunting Ground and Kuon will be mine and on that day I will own every single rare PS2 survival horror game.

But today is not that day and that day may never come because apparently Kuon had a price hike again and is over $600 now.

My bank account weeps for the future where in 2065 I finally buy it because the price dropped thanks for the ps7 being backwards compatible with every game and them just releasing them digitally.

[robo-dino-puppy]

There are so many story moments that are seared into my brain, as well as the first time I heard a Tallneck's footsteps, but there's another moment that particularly stands out for me. Since I connect with this game so much through photomode, I can not only tell you but recreate for you what that moment was!

First, lemme set the scene: it's late 2019/early 2020 and I'd just gotten a PS4 for Christmas. It was the first gaming system I'd owned since my PS2, and I hadn't played games in probably a decade. The PS4 came bundled with HZD, but I didn't know anything about it. I'd seen the cover art, and remember someone somewhere saying something positive about it once, but otherwise I went in completely blind.

The Moment was early in the game - I was still in Nora lands - at a time when I was almost positive this was postapocalyptic Earth (as opposed to another planet or something), but hadn't run across anything to confirm that 100%. I was exploring the area behind the Valleymeet Hunting Grounds. There's a hill, and I was running up it:

and I see a rusty wind turbine in the distance. I get a chill down my spine, because this has to be Earth, right? I get closer, and pause next to the turbine where I see a broken tree, which seemed ominous:

but then at the crest of the hill you can see a whole forest of decaying turbines:

I can't really describe the feeling it gave me. There's a feeling of desolation here, of loneliness, but it's beautiful. I could see for miles! I was already gripped by the need to find out what happened in the story, but at this moment I knew I'd be spending hours and hours crawling over every inch of this map.

I continued on down the hill until I saw something moving in the distance. I zoomed in with concentration, and:

approximation of my inner dialogue at that moment: WHAT. That thing is HUGE. That's the thing from the cover. I have to fight that at some point! There's a Watcher next to it and it's TINY! It's stomping around knocking down trees! Oh my god it's actually knocking down trees that is so COOL no wait NO IT'S NOT. IT IS NOT COOL! THAT THING IS SCARY!!!

And then I said aw HELLLLL no and hightailed it out of there back to whatever quest I was on.

So that was The Moment for me. I so appreciate all the work everyone at Guerrilla did for HZD - it was my reintroduction to games after a long hiatus, and I don't think anything has topped it yet. I'm not sure anything can.

Today is the seventh anniversary of Horizon Zero Dawn!

After a heartbreaking day yesterday for Guerrilla—in celebration of the game and in boundless thanks to the incredible folks whose passion and care brought it to life for us—reply or reblog with your favorite moment of, or memory of playing, HZD! 🏹🏹🏹

For me, it was my first time traversing the Bitter Climb. With the environment, the music, and the weight of the story, I felt so in tune with Aloy and the world that the experience was nearly out-of-body. It takes a special, powerful entity of creation to invoke that feeling.

[radramblog]

Star Wars Battlefront II (the good one)

My nonfunctional internet is preventing me not only from finishing off my essay, not only from watching the lecture that I would have shown up for were it not for mediary COVID restrictions, but it’s also stopping me from writing anything here that would require any sort of research or confirming details. That leaves me with less options that I would have thought.

Browsing through my Steam collection for ideas on what to talk about, and something jumped out at me pretty quickly.

Star Wars Battlefront II (the 2005 game, not Star Wars Battlefront 2, the sequel to the EA remake much maligned for malicious microtransactions) is a first/third person shooter that, while showing its age, remains one of the best games the franchise has ever put out. This is, of course, an opinion coming from someone who has yet to play Knights of the Old Republic, but it feels like Star Wars as a franchise has more misses than hits. So what makes this one land?

While I’m woefully unfamiliar with the early 00s shooters that Battlefront II was competing with (aside from Counter-Strike Source, but I’d argue that’s a different target market), I am extremely familiar with this one. I think part of why Battlefront II is so fondly remembered is on account of it being almost a gateway game for people getting into shooters in general- I for one played it extensively on my mate’s PS2 in primary school, and later on someone else’s PSP, and I doubt I would later have clicked so strongly with Halo if I hadn’t.

But what Battlefront II has more than anything else I feel is ambition. After the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, Star Wars’s universe was big, and the developers seemed interested in representing about as much of what we see of it’s style of warfare as they possibly could. As a result, the maps are a glorious smattering of worlds and terrains, loving and detailed recreations of places from the various films as well as a few that are probably new (I might just not remember them), each drizzled with vehicles and turrets and resources. Each of the game’s four factions share the basic units with very few differences (except for the Super Battle Droid), making them easy to understand and grasp for newer/younger players, with the complexity of each’s unique units paying off those willing to grapple with their weakness and play to their strengths. Some are definitely better than others, but that isn’t especially obvious at first. The basic classes reflect tropes seen in other games and while again some falter it’s not by enough that picking them in the wrong situation is a guaranteed blunder.

There are, of course, the heroes, major characters from the series granted to a player who’s doing pretty well, and I feel like this is another pretty well handled mechanic, even if a little awkward. There are enough of them, and they’re distributed enough between maps and factions, that they don’t tend to feel stale, and it’s pretty obvious that while they can absolutely ruin a team it’s also pretty easy to mishandle them. Unfortunately, heroes are related to one of my biggest complaints about the game, but we’ll get to that later.

One of the biggest selling points in my eyes are the dogfight levels. Now, I’ve never played X-Wing or the like, in fact my experiences with dogfighting games is extremely limited. But this part of the game fucks so hard. The design ideas begun with the class selection continue with the (admittedly small) range of starfighters you can pilot, with specialised interceptors, bombers, and landing craft to go alongside the effective all-rounders. The mode offers a variety of playstyles, between hunting down opponent’s fighters to bombing their flagships to boarding said flagships and destroying their systems from the inside. There is also the option of manually controlling the turrets, as well as acting as a gunner for someone else’s bomber/lander, but these positions are unfortunately underpowered and underexplored- they’re also, ultimately, less fun. But the dogfighting just feels right. I can’t really explain it, but moving in that 3-dimensional space feels not only satisfying but accurate to the source material in a way I don’t think any future Star Wars game has yet replicated.

I suppose the various game modes are worth discussing. Skirmishing on whatever map you want is the standard, at least in multiplayer, but there are a few unique offerings you won’t see in other modes- Hunt, where it’s a faction versus some of the series’s wildlife in a mode that always feels imbalanced towards one side or the other. There’s obviously Assault- the standard name for the space dogfights but on one ground map (Mos Eisley) it is of course the ever-popular heroes free-for-all, a chaotic mess but one where you can test out each one and figure out what their abilities actually do. But in the broader strokes, you’ve got the story, and the Galactic Conquest, as the two main other modes.

(oof, they really didnt build this with this resolution in mind huh)

That’s right, this game has a story, and it’s…okay? Ultimately it’s just a series of missions with the 501st, as they fight in the clone wars, turn on the Jedi, and ultimately become the Empire’s tool of oppression, separated by exposition. You get to run through some scenes from the movies, including the boarding at the start of the first movie and the Battle of Hoth, though some of the missions feel harder than intended- no matter how good the player is, the AI is not going to fare well in the tougher missions and you have a solid chance of ending up on your own.

Galactic Conquest is the game’s more unique selling point, being something like a basic version of Risk but with the dice-rolling battles replaced with Star Wars Battlefront II. You earn credits over time and through victory that you can spend unlocking types of units, getting new fleets to improve how many fronts you can wage war on, and unlock powerups for use in the actual battles. It’s largely fine, feeling like a bit more controlled and strategic version of just playing randoms in Instant Action, but it suffers the most from the biggest problem this game has.

The game’s truest flaw is its AI. They are dumb as a sack of potatoes, and the main thing holding the game back from perfection. And it was the early 00s so imperfect AI was to be expected, but it’s a bit more than imperfect here, I guess. Robits standing still while shooting you (or just at all, while you’re sniping them), extremely questionable vehicle and turret usage, and literally crashing starships into you, your flagship, or their own flagship. Bumping their difficulty up doesn’t really help, either. Even more egregious is the AI’s usage of heroes- or rather, that they don’t. If you’re playing single player, the game will always give earned heroes to you rather than your robot teammates, will not let one of them take if it if you decline to use the character, and you will never see one on the opposite side. This would imply that there wasn’t code for the Ais to use them, except there clearly is because Assault Mos Eisley exists- and they’re arguably much better there than in any other mode! It’s a real shame, because the low quality of the AI combined with the nature of the games means that victory is extremely polarised based on the player’s skill- if you bad all the way up to pretty decent at the game, your input basically doesn’t affect the outcome, whether you win or lose. If you’re good at the game, you will never lose at singleplayer, possible exception again being Assault Mos Eisley. It’s a little absurd, honestly. Also, I’m not even sure they go for the flag in CTF in space.

I am, however, willing to look past these flaws. The game is far from perfect, but it’s just incredibly fun. It’s a type of gameplay that they’ve tried to replicate, but never quite recaptured- and I think part of the reason for that is because the awkwardness is part of the charm. It’s nostalgic- both for those who played it when they were younger and just those in my generation who grew up on the Prequels. It’s also way more expensive on steam (bruh 14.5 AUD for real?) than I expected, but it goes on hard sales pretty often (I think I paid like a buck fifty for it), so it’ll be within budget at some point. I don’t know if I can recommend it for those who aren’t nostalgic, though, solely on account of those awkward features you likely wouldn’t be able to ignore like I do. And that’s a shame, because it’s not like they’ve made a better version of this game.

Fuck EA, basically.

[big-meows]

heya! do you have any games you love a ton but they're old/niche/"bad" enough that people generally don't know it?

Okage: Shadow King! People who already love it absolutely still adore it, but if you never got in on the ground level in like, 2002, I dont know that you would find anything worthwhile in it. Its very dated! For a while it was a sort of grail to have a copy that would actually run on your PS2 after a certain date, because it was one of the old blue back discs and after a certain point they just sort of...gave up, but you can get it on the PlayStation network now. Probably for pretty cheap! Its DEEPLY "quirky japanese" from a time when that wasnt really a thing we were getting a lot of over here (I didnt know what an Idol was in 2002, I just fucking went with it) and the UI is an...experience lol. Its fun though.

The .hack// stuff was....honestly wild! A single player mock-MMO on your PS2, complete with an in-game browser to check the news, read forum posts, and exchange emails with other (fake)players/characters. It was a real media monolith in the early aughts, with four games in the main series, an anime, OVAs, some novels and more, and there was so much lore crossing over between all of it, and clues for in game secrets you could find in the OVAs and magazine ads and stuff. It was sooooo cool. Visually, it has also aged like room temperature milk, and as cool as all that stuff sounds, and definitely was to college aged me, it sounds like a slog in my old age. FOUR GAMES? No thanks. Time moves too fast in ones 30s. The dungeons also were repetitive and ugly, so like....I will probably never revisit these games. (The G.U. games were better looking, but also didnt really stick with me much. Check them out if you loooooove to hear Yuri Lowenthal scream a lot.)

Baten Kaitos/Baten Kaitos Origins for the Gamecube. Obscure, card based RPGs. They have their issues (the first one feels so similar to Final Fantasy X in some ways it seems like it cant be a coincidence) but they both pulled absolutely BIZARRE plot twists that I still think about to this day. Also the card system IS pretty cool and some of the music is soooo good, I used to leave the game on to sleep to lol

oh shit I almost forgot FRAGILE DREAMS: FAREWELL RUINS OF THE MOON, a melancholy RPG for the WII that sort of plays like a survival horror about death at the end of the world. Its tragic and beautiful and a little spooky and the environments are gorgeous. I think this game is still excellent, but I know like only two people who have ever played it, and one of them was because I bought it for them.

I'm a currently poking at a MUSHROOM HUNTING SIM, yes you read that correctly, called Morels: The Hunt. This is not a joke. Want to stumble around in lovingly rendered forests from several different American ecosystems, getting poison ivy and ticks, snapping photos of birds, squirrels, deer, and maybe even bigfoot? While also trying to find morels, I guess? Have I got the game for you. I unironically love it. (I'm also playing this game while experimenting with recording gameplay vids for YouTube, because if not me, then who??)