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. Away from gaming, I’ve been glued to the MLB post-season all week, which isn’t easy given the time differences involved, although with my son now playing football (soccer) out of Seattle, it’s become almost normal from watching his games! Think we’re more or less sorted to see him play live in a few weeks though, and I can’t think of many places I’d rather do it! Not much else going on so back to the games we’re here for, and last weekend I was a naughty boy on eBay, so rather than tell you about my second playthrough of Silent Hill f and more Wipeout Fusion, I’ll go with my first impressions of the three titles I’ve just bought myself instead! 

I’ve recently made my way through all the original Battlestar Galacticas for the first time since they were originally on TV, but couldn’t really remember any games associated with the show, so I did some digging, and although there aren’t many, I did come up with Sierra’s Battlestar Galactica from 2003, a 3D space combat prequel to the 1978 series for the PlayStation 2. It’s set forty years earlier, in the midst of the First Cylon War, and has you playing a young fighter pilot called Adama, long before he became Lorne Greene’s iconic white-haired commander of the titular space battleship-carrier thing! That’s still in it though, as are other familiar nods (not least voice-acting by the original cast), but authentic as it remains throughout, it’s generally its own thing in its own unique timeline. And that’s about all that stands out, so unless you’re a fan, I’m not sure there’s much here for you – it’s very stylish but ultimately shallow arcade dogfighting from a third-person viewpoint, set over a bunch of ranked missions (supported by some functional cutscenes) that are pretty linear but hide a few decent unlocks and are certainly not short of spectacle, making another go at being awarded a better medal worthwhile. Maybe! It’s perfectly fun though, and it’s perfectly immersive too, with a big orchestral score and loads of special effects and cool-looking cosmic backdrops for a cool-looking array of ships to explode against! I’m not quite done with it yet but – like its source material – as much as I did like it, it’s probably not something I’ll be coming back to that often once I am.

Unlike Cosmic Ark on the Atari 2600, which has been a favourite of mine for years, and even made my Top Ten Favourite Multidirectional Shoot ‘Em Ups countdown, but I’d still never owned my own copy, having never owned the console itself until I got the modernised Atari 2600+ last Christmas. I do now though, and all that emulation guilt has simply melted away! Seriously, I’m thrilled to have picked it up at a decent price because although I did go a bit mad creating an instant collection of original cartridges during the first half of this year, this was one I really wanted from the outset. It’s Imagic’s 1982 follow-up to Atlantis on the 2600, with you in control of the ship you see flying off with what’s left of its population at the end of that, which is now crossing the galaxy and rescuing locals from other doomed planets. This takes place on two separate screens, with the shooting happening on the first, where you’re fending off meteors coming from all sides, after which you head down to the surface in your little shuttle to try and grab a couple of survivors with its tractor beam while avoiding any screen-spanning laser defences in place. This is all against the clock and you need to be back in your mothership before the meteors return for another pummelling, and then you’re off to do it all over again! As primitive as it might seem now, the variety on offer would have been pretty special when it first came out, and so was the beast of a ship you’re in control of in that first stage, taking up most of the screen in front of this shimmering starfield that started out as a glitch but soon became a closely-guarded hardware trick! Gameplay itself begins fast-paced and demanding fast reflexes from the outset, then becomes more of a tense but urgent game of cat and mouse when you’re down over the planet, and that screen is a looker for the time too. Also love the shrill sci-fi sounds, and as simple as it might all be by modern standards, that’s exactly why it still stands up today!

We’re going to finish back on the PS2 with a game I’ve had on my eBay wishlist for so long that I’m not entirely why it was there anymore! It’s Devil Kings (aka Sengoku Basara) by Capcom in 2005, and is apparently the first in a long series of games that’s been popular in Japan pretty much to this day, together with spin-off movies, TV shows and even a stage play! Not so popular here though, which seems to be mostly down to its localisation. It not only featured a completely different “Western-friendly” dark fantasy storyline but also had significantly different gameplay, with playable characters removed, modifications to the combat, and was made way more difficult too! What we’re left with is no longer anything to do with Japan’s Sengoku period, and all the cool Samurai warriors and ninjas and stuff that generally entails, but a hack and slasher involving “Devil Kings” fighting to become the top Devil King or some such nonsense! It’s effectively Dynasty Warriors meets a watered-down Devil May Cry, which is no coincidence as it’s from the very same devs as the latter. But despite all of that, I still reckon it’s really cool! You’ve still got a bunch of uniquely skilled characters to choose from (and unlock), each with their own unique storyline, cutscenes and sets of stages too, which are typically a selection of five or six from a total of twelve battlefields, and they’re all varied and atmospheric in a very PS2 way. The combat is simple but with nice combo-charging mechanics for some spectacular violence as you encounter big groups of enemies and rival warlords, and there are a few RPG-like elements and more weapons and stuff to find, which is probably going to take a few runs through each level, so plenty to keep you going. It all moves well too, and the characters look good, and there’s a big, bombastic soundtrack to get the blood pumping (and flowing), and the voice-acting is just as hammy as you’re probably imagining! I might not be sure why I bought it but it turned out to be well worth what I paid for it all the same!

As said earlier, I did also start a New Game Plus on Silent Hill f to see if I can find another of its endings, but I won’t get into it again as we covered it plenty here a couple of weeks back, and without spoiling too much, I’m pretty sure we’ll be back again when Game of the Year time comes  along in a couple of months! And as also said, I’m still really enjoying Wipeout Fusion on PS2, and even more so now I’m getting vaguely competent at chucking my anti-grav racer around again, but you can read more about that as well in last week’s feature (here). Sounds like a good place to call it a day for this week’s feature too, but do check back again on Wednesday, when I’m going to be counting down my Top Ten Favourite Single-Screen Platforming Games, which turned out to be a lot more involved than originally anticipated! Hopefully see you then!

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