It’s around 10 pm. I’m trawling the YouTubes. All of a sudden, I come across this:
I don’t even know what to say, really.
You know those games that just come along, out of the blue, and just seem tailor-made for you? Xenon Racer is one of those games.
PERFECT 10s is a series I’m starting that shines a spotlight on Arcade Racing games that are, in my opinion, among the best the genre has to offer. I will not be judging these games in comparison to others in the genre – they come in far too many varieties.
Some of the greats have only a handful of cars and tracks, whilst others are heavier on the content. A flaw or two aside, the games featured in PERFECT 10s are games of astounding quality that you can safely tuck into, knowing you’re in for an absolute treat. Expect some anecdotes, plenty of screenshots and my preferred method of playing these games in 2018.
I’m not the usual retro-gamer. I love, love LOVE my original hardware, and in most cases that’s where I go to play the games in my collection. Some systems though? I’ve gotta be honest – I prefer to emulate them.
The PSP is one such system.
This one has been a long time coming.
I found Horizon Chase enjoyable enough on my Android phone, I really did. But the minute there was news of this coming to PC and Consoles, I stopped playing. I tried getting my controller to work with the Android version, but never had much luck. And I really didn’t want to use the touch-screen to play. It was fine, honestly, but my memories of the raster-racers Horizon Chase was paying homage to was with a controller in my hand, not tap-tap-tapping on a touch-screen.
So I made a deal with myself.
As much as I wanted to dive in, I was going to wait it out.
I’ll get to the Tutorial in a second, but I’ve really got to go into what inspired this post in the first place.
So, I finally sat down and went through DeviantArt ICON (ha!) POOTERMAN’s gallery. I’ve been meaning to download all of the icons he’s made to replace my own for a while now, and being laid up with a bad back today was the perfect excuse to get cracking and just do it.
I really didn’t think I’d be sitting at my desk – in 2018, no less – writing about how fantastic a game Hot Wheels Velocity X: Maximum Justice is, yet here we are.
Licensed games of the 90s/00s could be hit or miss. OK, they were mostly misses, as with startling regularity, hot properties of the day were shoehorned into genres they had no place being in. Home Improvement SNES, anybody?
Every now and then, a game comes along that takes your breath away. I picked up Ninja Theory’s ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West on launch day, and my first run through the game was on the Xbox 360. I played it from beginning to end, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It’s a shame more people didn’t do the same, as the game sold rather poorly, and the only follow-up we got came in the form of DLC – a side-story that I’ll admit I haven’t played too much of yet. This is a review of the main Enslaved portion. I’ll be reviewing the ‘Pigsy’s Perfect 10’ DLC at a later date – watch this space. This is a review of the PC port that followed a few years later. I saw it sitting there in my Steam Library a couple of days ago, so I decided that a re-play was well overdue.
Shovelware!
If your platform is selling gang-busters, then expect the shovelware to start flooding the system in no time at all! The Playstation 2 definitely did well – and there is a veritable RUBBISH TIP worth of the stuff on the system.
So, I found a box of PS2 games in my wardrobe the other day, and I was immediately drawn to the cheap cover art that some of the games exhibited. When did I buy all this trash? I cannot for the life of me remember.
So I dug out the old PS2 Slim, set-up my XRGB-Mini, and proceeded to make my way through them, game by game, taking video and snapping screenshots along the way.
And lucky you, yes you right there! You get to suffer through them with me!
Bring a sick bag!
Low-Pressure games. Chill-out games. Comfort games.
I’ve never been one for multi-player gaming. I put this squarely down to the fact that, barring the occasional couch co-op session, I don’t have a competitive bone in my body. So that’s out.
So what about JRPGs? Generally, they don’t do it for me either, although I really wish they did. With the odd exception or two, I can never find it within myself to take the stories they have to tell seriously, and my eyes roll at every bit of exposition-heavy dialogue. Scratch that off the list.
So when it comes down to games I play for the sake of playing games, yeah, you definitely won’t see me running to a multi-player FPS, or jumping into a Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy game to while away the hours.
If there’s one racing sub-genre that is sorely under-represented these days, it’s the water-based arcade racer. When done right, it’s all blue-skies, even bluer water and wave-hopping fun. There’s just something about the aesthetics of these games that I love. It’s all in the colours, the undulating clear waters, the music and the ride. A good water racer will offer stunning visuals, great physics and a one-of-a-kind of racing experience that’ll stick with you a long time.
