Back again for our regular Sunday roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both…

I’ve had a bit of a PlayStation Portable shopping list on the go for a while now – nothing too extra extravagant, just fifteen or twenty games I’ve always fancied but never got around to. And as this week’s Spring Pickups recap can attest to, I’ve been making pretty good progress, which continues with Sega Rally… Or Sega Rally Revo (for revolution) as it was also known, which originally arrived on PS3, Xbox, PC and PSP in 2007. It was officially the fourth in the series, but I think is actually based on the Sega Rally 3 arcade game, which it was developed alongside, albeit by BugBear for this version, rather than Sega Racing Studio themselves. It’s the classic fast and loose Sega Rally arcade formula all the same, with you racing through fifteen different tracks set in jungles, snowy mountains, frozen tundras, rocky canyons and tropical beaches. As you’d expect, there are a bunch of modes too, with quick races, time attacks and various multiplayer events, although as usual with PSP games nowadays, good luck just getting online for any of those, let alone finding anyone to play with! The headline Championship mode is going to keep you busy for ages though, where you start out in the Premier Championship, but achieving certain criteria will unlock Modified and Masters classes, and they all consist of Amateur, Progressional and Expert leagues to progress through, which will unlock all sorts of other goodies as you go. These include loads of cars, with 2WD, 4WD and some Sega classics, and they’ve all got various customisations to apply if you want, but it’s no Colin McRae in any respect, so just jumping into the action is just fine, and there’s plenty of that on offer too! Races are against five other cars, and occasionally questionable AI aside, are a proper high-speed thrill ride once you’ve got a feel for the analog nub, with really nice “rally” handling across the different terrains, which I almost forget to mention can deform as you go around and take lumps out of them, although it’s more gimmick than game-changer. There’s tons of mud and dust and snow and debris flying about too, and things to break, and lovely little touches like occasional camera flashes as you pass groups of spectators or public transport passing by, and everything generally looks absolutely gorgeous and full of colour and life, as your easy-going co-driver provides directions, the engine roars, and some fine but generic music plays along in the background. I’m not sure anything will ever come close to the original Sega Rally for me but this is as good as you could ever have hoped for on the PSP!

I’m always on the lookout for a decent new homebrew, but you don’t have to look far on the Atari 2600 where Mirsad Sarajlic is concerned! I covered his excellent Jutland Skies from a couple of years ago here last week, but Galactic Intrusion is the newest addition to an already impressive library for the system, which is clearly one that he now just gets. It’s a deceptively simple corridor-based vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up, where you play an elite pilot from the Galactic Recon Corps, trying to rid an abandoned space city called Nexus of an occupying alien force spread over five levels, culminating in a boss fight with their commander before looping again. Simple doesn’t mean easy though, and this game is a wonderfully old-school cruel beast! It plays a bit like the tunnel section near the end of Scramble (spun around ninety-degrees), with you avoiding walls, fireballs and enemy spacecraft, which you can also attempt to take down for the big points with your impressively upgradable weapon. Impressive use of the 2600’s two difficulty switches too, should you feel the need! It looks and sounds great, with plenty of personality and loads of colour, and it controls as well as it moves, precise but loose enough to keep you on your toes, and you’ll need to be because what it lacks in frantic it more than makes up for in classic arcade challenge and a super-addictive high score chase! Absolutely superb stuff. 

I said last week that I’d started playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain but had yet to properly form my thoughts on it, although in reality there was a fair bit of intimidation about trying to do so too! Well, that’s still the case having now finished it, and then spent way too long mopping-up never-ending side-missions, killing hundreds to get at cassettes containing the soundtrack to my teenage years, and grinding away to unlock a proper uniform for my buxom assassin friend so she’s not the default embarrassingly naked anymore! That’s all just the tip of the iceberg too, and why I’ve struggled with forming a definitive opinion because while it’s not the end of my Metal Gear Solid (plus spin-offs) journey I was expecting – and nowhere near my favourite in the series either – it is the most fun I’ve had with any game for ages, and was genuinely all I wanted to do at every opportunity over the course of dozens and dozens of hours, until I forced myself to go cold turkey a couple of days ago! I’ve been playing a physical Xbox One version on Series X, which first came out in 2015, and finds “Venom Snake” fresh out of a nine year coma following the events of Peace Walker on PSP (and the Ground Zeroes prequelette to this), trying to rebuild his private military force, and out for revenge against the wild cast of baddies who took down his previous one, and also put him in the hospital that will be very familiar by the time you’re done here. As usual, that’s also just the tip of another (totally bonkers!) iceberg with one of these, as you travel between vast open-world Afghanistan and Angola-Zaire sandboxes, carrying out remarkably freeform missions while also managing your new base, recruiting soldiers, hijacking everything, developing weapons, vehicles and your very own Metal Gear, and setting them all loose on the world. 

All of this is connected by huge-scale boss fights, blockbuster cutscenes, wildlife spotting, flower collecting, dressing things up and all sorts of Kojima’s special brand of madness, although I did find the admittedly fragmented (and possibly unfinished) narrative a little more focussed and less, er, philosophical than in previous titles regardless; all the regular objectionable stuff though! Was nice to see all the online stuff still active too, which is a first as I’ve discovered the series for the first time over the past year! What I suppose is the core “stealth-action” gameplay itself is only a part of the immersive, compulsive thrill that makes up this game (which I’d say ends up closer to something like Destiny than the series’ roots), but it’s mostly just great, controlling totally intuitively (at least when you’re not crawling), growing with you as you play, and affording you almost limitless creativity to approach missions how you want, where enemies will react accordingly, and dynamic weather can throw a spanner in the works for everyone! It’s as good-looking as that generation ever got as well, with Kojima’s trademark attention to detail on display like never before, and while Kiefer Sutherland’s Snake might not be to everyone’s tastes, you can’t fault the big-budget voice cast, and on top of eighties heaven, the soundtrack is all you want from an MGS too. And speaking of not to everyone’s tastes, there is a lot of busy-work, repetition and general bloat, especially towards the end, but I just loved pretty much all of it, and while it might not be the work of art that I’d consider the first Metal Gear Solid to be, it’s an utterly brilliant video game all the same… Just no idea where that’s all going to shake out once I’m done with the original Metal Gears next, then inevitably decide to do a top ten Metal Gear countdown! 

I have actually started the first one too, originally on the MSX and playable on my PlayStation 3 HD Collection, but I reckon we’ve had more than enough Snake and the gang for this week, so we’ll call it a day there! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, do check out the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Spring 2025 Recap I mentioned earlier, my seasonal feature covering all the retro games and related stuff I shouldn’t have been spending all my money on over the past three months! And then next Wednesday, we’ve got another regular feature to look forward to, when we’re going to be heading back exactly forty years for the very latest in video gaming in Retro Rewind: June 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Hopefully see you then! 

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