Fear not my followers, I have been a tad quiet of late, due to various reasons, but I am still fully active in this blogging quest. This is just a quick one to acknowlegde i’m still here and to show what some of the new reviews could be of, whilst I finish work on my Pokemon Colosseum review (Finally!), and the PSP console one. With many more games in the queue already.
Gamecube, PS2 and PSP games added to my ever expanding library of goodness.
Whilst I continue my work behind the scenes, with the first part already completed by partnering up wth Geekshorde.com. I hope to bring you more good news coming up to the Christmas holidays.
These are my latest acquisitons that came through the post today, as I want my reviews on games here to be highly varied in that it’ll contain lesser known games, random potentially dog shit games and games I now have an excuse to pay ludicrous amounts for just to play.
Gran Turismo has long been Sony’s console flagship racing game, comparable to Microsoft’s Forza series. Gran Turismo first graced us back in 1997 on the PlayStation 1 and became the best selling PS1 game of all time. Skip to GT 4 on the PS2 then you move on to this handheld version of the franchise.
This game keeps faithful to the formula of the previous games, with a large selection of cars, over 830 to be exact. Which even by todays games car rosters is mightily impressive. This gives you the option of driving a complete shitbox Peugeot 206 around the Nurburgring or a high end super car like the Ferrari Enzo. The car list is vast but isn’t as varied as you’d hope it mainly just various Mazdas from what i can tell.
There are 35 different tracks to choice from, some are dirt and snow tracks which stop certain cars you purchase from being any use on them. Most tracks don’t come with the usual variations of them, only a couple have the short and long versions. This splits into the three different types of race you can do in game. You have basic laps, drift challenge and time trial. There is no single player campaign to be found which is interesting as many other racers on the PSP do. And arguably GT is the biggest racing name on the handheld system. The only different mode you can partake in is the driving school challenges that come it every GT game, but there’s little incentive in doing them outside of the credits you win as you don’t win a new car at the end of the tiered stages as usual.
I am fairly impressed by the graphics of this game, for the time they would’ve been pretty impressive for what it was. Even by today standards they aren’t horrendous. The car outlines are smooth, they seem to have a fair amount of detail, obviously nothing to high res. But a distinct improvement over many of the other racing games I have tested out or played recently on the PSP.
The amount of credits you win in this game is fairly giving as you can do up to 99 laps of the circuit you choose and every couple laps the amount increases, which makes buying cars slightly easier this time round. For all the cars you can buy the shop system in the game is kinda stupid. The game clocks in game days which go up on every time you complete a race. This gives you a daily deal of 4 different manufacturers to buy from. There’s no search function so you are always limited to what you can buy or just have to hope the car brand you want pops up the day you’ve got the credits for it.
Whilst the driving isn’t the best its also not too shabby, the handling is fairly decent overall. Each car does have a slight different feel to it and a decent sense of speed on the faster cars. I remapped the buttons so the left and right triggers are acceleration and braking respectively, and I prefer the D-pad on most courses, tough on some of the sharper turns and that the analogue tends to have it beat. The simulation aspect is near enough gone in the driving as well, you don’t need to worry about tire wear or pit stops for refuelling. But for an on the go, quick play sort of game it makes more sense even if you want to do one of the few courses that take like 6 minutes each on 99 laps.
One of the biggest downfalls of this game is the distinct lack of car upgrading. You only get the choice of a different colour on purchase and that’s the sum total of the customisation you can do. There is nothing else that can be done, which really does suck major ass. It gets rid of the fun of making any car you purchase truly your own. There is also no option to improve or upgrade your car, so it stays at the factory stats you purchase it as. Which makes the max 3 opponents you can race against slightly boring, especially if you select on the race options to race only against the same car as yours, it just becomes an never ending battle of first and second place with you always gaining the lead in the same corner.
7/10 Certified Positively Tasty.
A good selection of cars and tracks, with a good prize pool which allows for a sizeable easy to get car collection, only hampered by its lack of customisation and no single player campaign.
Where to start with this one, Need For Speed Undercover on the PSP, I had this game many, many years ago and unfortunately it isn’t as good as I remember. It’s still a fun little game, but comparatively to other games of the time it’s still lacking even for a handheld game.
The graphics aren’t the best but that’s to be expected, the jaggedy edges of the cars do stick out, however this could be more to do with the how far graphics have come, back in the day I imagine it was less noticeable especially as I came straight from the DS version which admittedly did just look like ass.
When it comes to the controls and physics it doesn’t get much better there either. The driving is janky at best, the turn capability of the cars ain’t great even with performance upgrades. The A.I is all over the place either your opponents are too hard to catch up to or miles behind. Not to mention when you ram the side of one of them or go into the random traffic it sticks to your car like a fly to fresh, hot sticky shit, ultimately fucking your entire race.
You’d be better to use the D-pad over the joy stick even if the driving is still as stiff as a corpse in a morgue. You will be constantly just slamming into the side of the map which doesn’t do any damage to your car, just slows you down a little. Sometimes even helping you around harder corners by proxy of the ricochet. The cops which are sprinkled throughout the game normally pose next to no threat to you, just a mild inconvenience.
There is some good points to be had though. Overall the game is pretty simple as a standard racer. There is no real open map, it has three sections which break up into mini stages which you need to complete a variety of different races. You have; the classic lapped circuit, sprint, knockout, out run, cop takeout, cost to state and highway battle. It makes the game more fun when everything is juggled into different bite size races, keeps it fresh with out clogging it down with the same three types.
By my count there is 45 cars to be had either through purchase or unlocked at various points which isn’t too shabby really. It’s not the most in depth but you can customise your cars as well, even with those sick mega low res rims, that just pop out in the menu. You can upgrade as well, it’s fairly simple, you have 5 options; engine,handling,chassis,turbo and nitrous. Once you’ve got nitrous you can use it as much as you want as long as you refill it during your race by doing dangerous things like collisions or driving into oncoming traffic. I’d say the last thing to one would be the feature of pressing circle, temporarily slowing down time for more accurate driving. No idea when you unlock this though, I must’ve missed the little tutorial for it as I did it by accident, making for a moment of pure joy as I drifted round a nasty little bend between the gaps on the pumps of a petrol station, like the pro driver I am.
I’d give the game 5/10. Certified Barely Tasty.
Even with the low score, at basic it is a fun little racer if you just treat it as buy a car, upgrade, race a little more, rinse, repeat. But it should be taken into account it is a 13 years old game, even at the time of release it was trying to compete with it’s full console hardwared brothers and sisters.
Is there anything better than a zoo builder? Yes. A dinosaur zoo builder. With the recent release of Jurassic World Evolution 2, a game I’m very much looking forward to getting as soon as I am not in the clutches of light poverty. I thought I’d go back to a game that defined my childhood. Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis for the mighty PlayStation 2. There’s nothing more a child of 8 years old needs than to create a park full of dinosaurs, using those easy to find cheat codes to avoid any of the actual business strategy involved of course. Tame those dinosaurs with a PlayStation 2 controller and you’ve got hours of wasted time before your dad turns off the electricity. Going back to it now, it actually holds up quite well. The graphics are obviously nothing compared to the new generation, but there’s something about a considerably well designed T-rex spurting out square drops of blood over the almost faceless block-headed guests. The dinosaur’s had clearly been given the budget in the design department, and rightly so, but the other aspects are laking. Overall though I’d say graphics were pretty decent, as were the build mechanics. Aside from everything working on 90° angles only, it all worked well, buildings did what they were supposed to and guests interacted as well as they do with modern games, so essentially they’d complain they hadn’t seen any dinosaurs just after seeing a Spinosaurs go to town on an unsuspecting Parasoroluphus and devour his corpse. Food and drink gave guests a choice of 3 meals that they always complained about and left them running for the restrooms, and obviously you charge them extortionate amounts to use because, well, fuck em. We’re here for dinosaurs not people, people suck. The game has mission modes that were fun yet challenging, the main building mode – operation genesis, scenario modes where you get to recreate the original Jurassic park in one of them and lastly site B, a free for all. All of these were great modes to play, scenarios were always my jam, though I don’t think I ever finished them all without cheats. There was, however, one thing I always thought could be improved. Only giving me access to 3 dig sites meant that I could never get all those big boy Dino’s in one park which always left me wishing they’d make a new one with every possible Dino in. I spent many hours of my youth on this game and even replaying it now, it really holds up. The graphics are hit and miss, the Dino’s are still pretty great, mainly though it’s just pure tasty gaming. 9/10 from me, for that nostalgia gives it a bonus point.
Always with new activity at the Tasty HQ (It’s just my house, it’s pretty depressing really.) I managed to bag myself this bargain for an undisclosed fee.
The mighty Sony PSP.
A good little haul, right? Even if I did lose three potentially better bids before winning this one, fucking ebay bots. It does contain some gaff games in the stack but similarly some absolute bangers. As a start to a new collection and a whole fuck ton of reviews waiting to be done I can’t complain all that much, in fact I’m pretty chuffed.
With this as well, comes the slow and expensive conversion of my spare room to a gaming office. So that I may bring even more good news, and tidings coming up to the festive season, like the jolly fat man in red I too will empty my big gaming sack in the name of spreading joy to you all.
Keep your eyes peeled for new and exciting shit that I will be posting at my leasure and for your reading pleasure, guarenteed to be riveting. Enjoy the rest of your day, my loyal ones.
Here at TRGaming I am always looking to improve, and hopefully I have some very good news coming soon, as I am highly busy behind the scenes as we speak. The best place to follow all of my tasty goodness is by following my official pages on FB and twitter with the relevant links at the top of my HomePage. And as to you my loyal readers stay Tasty.
This may not be the Pokemon Colosseum Review that I had promised nor is it even retro but fear not that shall still arrive in due course my loyal ones. This Review merely came about as it happens to be the game I am currently playing and I have obtained a capture card and wanted to mess about with it to see how it worked.
So without further ado, Monster Hunter Rise is the latest in CAPCOM’s monster hunting series. It continues to deviate from the old school handheld games of yesteryear and takes the same approach of Monster Hunter World. In most aspects, many things of this game are great improvements even over it’s big console counterpart. The graphics aren’t as good as World, but by no means are they bad either. For a Switch exclusive the RE engine it uses is highly optimised putting out one of the best looking games on this system.
The game itself comes with a plethora of quality of life upgrades, some rolling over from world. Some very welcomed ones like, the whetstone being a permanent carry item with unlimited uses. Not needing to carry pick axes, fishing lines and bug nets. Just run around the maps find the points and harvest away, even adding multiple items at once, and auto combination, meaning restocking potions on the go. No longer just at your inventory trunk. Getting rid of hot/cold drinks for certain environments, this just makes it a smidge easier as you aren’t worrying about losing stamina in the cold whilst getting violated by a giant flying wyvern.
The utter ‘bastard’ that is the Tigrex, still haunts me from the Freedom Unite days. Still nice to cut it up with it’s fallen breathren though. Dishing out that sweet, sweet revenge.
The wirebug allowing for a much more varied movement set than previously allowed, also coming with distinct attacks for all 14 types of weapons, and one of the coolest additons, monster riding. Not to mention the extra traversal around the seemless map areas, which once required a loading screen for each little area.
It still comes with all the many different types of armours and weapons, that is signature of this game, with the spruced up weapon tree from World and the easier upgrades for armours. With the additional help of optional quests this time round which act as sub quest whilst you are out hunting.
These range from hunting large,small monsters. Capturing or even just gathering.
Each one rewarding you with village points as well as a specific item reward.
If these aren’t up to your fancy you could just grind out the new rampage quests which is basically just an interactive tower defense game. Allowing you to farm certain items usually of the returning APEX monsters.
I could go on for many, many more paragraphs about the MH franchise but I won’t. As it ultimately it boils down to you take a quest, go to the specific area and kill some shit. Which I like to do to some really heavy deathcore or death metal adding to the ambience of the total annihilation of my foes. I may have some issues but that is for another time.
I could also go on about the nice new areas, the online hub, the intricacies of the weapons, decorations,talismans, different type of monsters, blah blah blah. The overall experience and that boring shit but I don’t wanna really. The game is good, it’s really good and if you’re new to the series or thinking about playing, it couldn’t be a better time to jump in, it’s by far the most accessible for new players. Which is also it’s biggest draw back. Now I don’t know if it’s due to re-jigging the health,hit boxes, and damage outputs of both you and the monsters, but it just feels far easier then the older stuff. All the old monsters that returned in this that used to give me mad grief just don’t seem too anymore. Now this could be a good thing, but it takes away a little bit of the edge of the older games, the 40 minute arduous battles and having to grind them out 4/5 times for specific materials. On the flip side however it could be a sign of how far the gaming industry and this particular franchise has come. The main quest poses nearly no challenge and it isn’t until the high rank hub quests around the 6 star stuff it really start’s to feel like the old games again, so it hasn’t completely disapeared.
Me looking fresh in my mid HR armour and Tigrex dual blades.
The new big bad for the game the Magnamalo, a Tiger that I can only assume peered into the aetheral void and came out a purple flame using roid addict.
A very strong 8/10, Certified highly tasty. A great frachise made better with good quality of life upgrades, nice graphics and a great range of monsters. That for me is only held back by it’s lack of difficulty, where I’m sure many would disagree. However with the Sunbreak DLC out next summer, this has every chance to return and only make a brilliant game even better.
There is nothing better than sorting some old junk out and finding a hidden gem, well I found three in this case, these beauties.
Breath of Fire 1 and 2! And Duke Nukem Advance.
The biggest downside in my youthful stupidity I rammed them at the bottom of a storage box and now they are all fucky. The cartridges themselves are in good condition, but the boxes lack any form of a strong constitution in the sense I’ve seen healthier looking roadkill. From a collectors point of view they are far from mint condition and would shave off a good chunk of money from their value. Luckily for me though I won’t be selling any time soon, and it’s nice to have the orginal box even if it is shot to shit as most of my other GBA games cases are long gone, but nevertheless a happy find is a happy find.
I have now officially got Twitter and Facebook pages up and running. The relevant links are at the top of my home page for you all, so you can keep nice and upto date with all the tasty news and probably some other random shit. Feel free to like and share, spreading the tasty gospel so that I may provide joyous reads to all the new potential disciples across this moist, rock ridden planet.
The Gameboy player is an attachable peripheral directly developed by Nintendo for the Gamecube. With it situated at the bottom of the console where it would connect via a high speed port. Allowing players to play any; Gameboy,colour or advance game directly through their console on to the TV. With control functionality going to the gamepad, and menu select allowing for games to be swapped in and out. Most games and features would work perfectly fine minus some exceptions and rumble/vibration features such as Pokemon pinball.
Ignore the dogshit quality photo’s i’m still starting out, it’ll get better I Promise.
Instead of going down the route of using an emulator to work, the player is booted up by a disc, which without renders it useless, not the best of designs. However this allowed for the internal components of the unit base basically being a Gameboy advance handheld system itself. A significant upgrade over it’s predecessors. Also being able to play all previous handheld generations of games boosted the Gamecubes library by hundreds of other games by proxy. Giving the option to play some games you may not have properly before or some you just didn’t want to play on the smaller screen.
This wasn’t Nintendo’s first attempt at this, the N64 had the wide boy, which was initially conceived as a way for gaming journalist and the like to be able to take better quality snapshots of Gameboy games. Having two variants released one for GBC and GBA games, making the aspect for nowadays a hard collecting endeavour as neither are particularly cheap and having to obtain two for one system is a tad annoying.
Even before this there was the Super Game boy, allowing Gameboy games to be played through the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. So this was really always coming in some form or another to the Gamecube. Which I can’t complain about as I now get the option to play some of the best Pokemon games in the series on my TV, way before the likes of Let’s Go or Sword and Shield.
The Magnum Opus of the Gba Pokemon Era, with Rayquaza in all their glory on the big boy screen.
Overall it comes with two big pluses even for the time it was a cool concept, and even now I think it’s impressive. The first being been able to play any of your childhood GB games on your TV and the second adding the inadvertent functionality of not losing charge as it’s powered through the Gamecube instead. A big flaw about it, especially some 18 years after its conception and release, its utterly useless without the boot up disc, which is also region blocked but oddly the unit itself isn’t. So getting paired with the wrong disc is just as much of an annoyance as not having it. The biggest drawback which for all I do really like this little bit of tech and rather not have to think is that even on release it was kinda never needed, just a gimmick to boost sales numbers at best.
A Solid 8/10, Certified highly Tasty. A cool expansion to an already underrated console, adding just a little bit more to the legacy of Nintendo and it’s push for handheld gaming.
TastyRetroGaming 