Back again for my 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. Not a huge amount going on away from gaming these week, or at least not much that will be of any interest here – sorting out our son who’s heading over for pre-season training with his new football team in Kentucky next week, and all the US-entry shenanigans that entails, and getting his latest misadventure with his car fixed, that kind of thing! I think we’ll just get straight into what I’ve been playing instead, and excitingly, it’s mainly a bunch of stuff that’s all new to me this time…

This cost me a bit more than I’d have normally paid if I wasn’t a fan of the subject matter, but I’ve finally got hold of Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation. I’ve loved the films since they were video nasties but money was tight when this came out, and in my mind I was already moving on to PS2 by then, and I just had other priorities anyway. That said, I can safely now say I wasn’t missing much! Released in 2000 as a sort of unofficial follow‑up to the Army of Darkness movie, it tries to shove the Resident Evil formula down the series’ throat, with fixed camera angles, pre‑rendered backgrounds, tank controls, limited ammo, the lot! Unfortunately, none of its polish, atmosphere or tension though! You play as Ash, returning to the cabin to face the Deadites once more, but if the story isn’t exactly Hollywood, then the voice acting definitely isn’t. And the controls are truly terrible! So stiff and unresponsive, while the camera makes even simple navigation from one side of a room to the other a chore, and then there’s the inventory system and the constantly respawning enemies… It’s a shame too because sometimes it gets the setting and the tone exactly right, but it’s just so clunky and frustrating that it’s very unlikely you’ll be surviving its horrors for very long today. Oh dear! 

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Ace Combat series and its melodramatic flight-combat spectacle, but real-world spin-off Ace Combat: Assault Horizon on PlayStation 3 seemed like a bit of a black sheep to me when it came out, so I’d left it alone until I recently came across a very cheap copy and thought I’d finally give it a chance! It was first released in 2011, when everything had to be grittier, louder, more cinematic and generally more Call of Duty! Bandai Namco properly went for it too, and none more so than in its outrageous “DFM” or Dogfight Mode, where you’re hurled through these mega‑scripted, up‑close chases that are equal parts explosive, exhilarating and exhausting, and nothing like the more free‑form aerial dance an Ace Combat game generally thrives on. Some overly long missions aside, I can’t be too down on anything this excessive though! The camera shakes itself stupid, and there’s non-stop alarms going off, and missiles streaking past everywhere, and then there’s a skyscraper scraping your wingtip, and the soundtrack is just pounding away like a heroic lunatic on top! It’s spectacular and chaotic and nothing like the far more elegant PS2 games I remember most fondly, or any of the other ones that followed. It’s like Maverick got kicked out of Top Gun and was replaced by John Rambo, and you really can’t hate on that! 

I’d have have no doubt enjoyed it at the time, but Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy on PlayStation 2 inevitably passed me by when it came out in 2006. The prequels never offended me but a Lego game based on them wasn’t my thing, so I’d already skipped the first instalment, then realistically there were other games way ahead of this in the queue, not to mention having a baby on the way! Fast‑forward twenty years and Retro Gamer magazine ran a cover feature on it, and given that it now literally costs less than a coffee, I suddenly liked the sound of it! Amazing how timeless these things can end up looking too, with the PS2’s slightly soft and hazy presentation actually working in its favour, like playing on Lego dioramas rather than a dated video game format. Admittedly, there are a couple of gameplay elements that are less timeless, but overall the subject matter gives the whole thing an inherent swagger, and it’s all so polished and authentic on both sides of the license, whether the swoosh of a lightsaber or the clatter of bricks, the slapstick reverence for the plot(s), or how the animation seems to burst straight out of your big cardboard box of loose bricks in 1984! There so much here too – characters to unlock, Free Play areas to rediscover, and secrets everywhere. And it’s all so uncomplicated and just good‑natured and fun. The only problem now is that my potential player two who was on the way the first time around is now far too old to be interested anymore!

Not sure why, but I am still trudging through The Hobbit on Nintendo GameCube too. I covered it here a couple of weeks ago but the 3D platforming has got really miserable now I’m in the late game, and I’ll be amazed if I’m telling you I’ve either finished it or am still playing it this time next week! And I still can’t leave Baseball Stars 2 alone, which I’m currently playing on the NEOGEO Arcade 4 collection on Evercade, and also reviewed here a few weeks ago. That’s about all I’ve got for you otherwise, but do look in again next Wednesday, when it’s time for our regular journey back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: August 1986 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Hopefully see you then!

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