I am currently playing through the original Zelda 1 on the Nintendo entertainment system. An adventure game named after Zelda Fitzgerald a novelist from the 1920s who also has a charming little bio-mini-series about her life that you should check out on amazon prime - if you are into that service. As you may know I am into a tonne of retro stuff because new stuff fades away before you even finish paying for it. Anyway so I started playing Zelda, not sure what prompted it initially must be not being able to play BOTW or my own general idleness.
Its a great game so far. I am surprised how many things in the Zelda series of games originated from this initial game. Zelda: link to the Past is one of the first games that I ever completed and loved. I have played many of the other 3d Zelda games over the years but failed to get into Zelda 1 because it has a rough start. It throws you into a open world, weak and no apparent direction. I currently have 9 hearts and I am at the sixth dungeon and I still do not know which direction is up but everything is awesome.
I have tried playing this game before but never got into it because it starts out really slow and the player is very weak. Luckily this time I pushed through it to find a lovely little game under the surface. I could only dream of coming up with a game so simple yet so deep in this day an age of cover shooters and movie games. Once I got over the initial emptiness the game opens up to the point where some sections feel almost as if they are procedurally generated.
As of this writing I have been playing it for 3 weeks or so. I am slowly making my way through the game 1 boss at a time - savoring every moment because I know these old games are not very long.
I also have God of war 1, Persona4 and Metal Gear Solid 3 waiting on me but I am not in a rush to get back into those games at the moment. Maybe that was the reason I took up this game at this point in time - I may never know. GOW1 is a boring trek through pointless set pieces, Persona4 is interesting but very long and MGS3 is a movie with bad controls. I will dust off the playstation 2 as soon as I finish with zelda.
I finally finished the last license test in GT4 on the playstation 2. It only took me 4 years of on-and-off playing to get it done. It was truly a dawning task most likely because I am not very good at the game. There is alot to do in the game. Driving the Nuremberg Ring in a sub 7 minute run without running off the road at all is a test of patience and memorization.
Gran Turismo 4 was released in 2004 and I am just now finishing it in 2017 but at least I don't have to deal with loot boxes and updates like the games that are being released nowadays.
I mostly play the GT games for the license tests because collecting cars is pretty pointless. A lot of the cars are filler/padding for a boring racing game. The license tests give me a confined goal in a reasonable time unlike games that want you to sit and mindlessly play forever as if you have nothing else to do with your life.
Next I am moving on to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake eater. This is my first metal gear game and it seems like the guy wanted to make movies but instead got stuck with making video games. 3 hours into the game and I watched about 2 hours and 30 minutes of video. I am not sure how long I am going to be able to stick with this madness. I still have to get back to Persona 4 (a much better game so far).
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona3 was one of the first games I acquired with the PS2 I bought in 2010 (with 10 other games). I had never really heard of it before but reviews said it was an excellent RPG game. Five years later I can finally say that the reviews are correct.
I have many hobbies and video games are just one of them which is why it took me 5 years and over a hundred hours of gameplay time to reach to the end boss. And since I have multiple games playing at the same time I have to do a juggling act into order to experince as much of each of as I can before I die. Persona3 is a long game and different from the Final Fantasy games of which I am accustomed (FF3, FF8, FF9, FF10), it is more of time management game than a grind fest with a story.
While there is some grinding the game more revolves around the school life of the protagonist, making friends and forming relationships rather than finding the next bad boss to topple.
At the end of the day I give Persona3 very high ratings. The last boss is very difficult but the game is a very nice experiences for people who like JRPGs.
The good thing with playing old games is that you have money left over just buy other stuff; I finally get to dig into Persona4 which bought last year even before finishing Persona3.
When all is said and done NMS is the only new game released this year. People have already started making lists of games that you should try out if you did not like NMS. Hype aside all these lists are bullshit.
If someone came up to me and said "Street Fighter's story sucks here is a game called Mass Effect which totally does it better and has some fighting in it too!". I would laugh in her face. "What nonsense talk!?". These games are not even in the same genre! You want to compare NMS to a turn-based top down strategy game? And recommend people play it after they have experienced the wonder that is NMS? Lol. No one will ever be the same.
This type of thinking is nonsensical. NMS is not just about its story or its pointless collect-a-ton game play or its lore or post effects. No Mans Sky is the sum of its parts - it is about bringing these odd/tedious game play mechanics together in a way which has never been done before. Of course your mileage may vary but no one lives forever and no game appeals to every player. Some are gonna be left crying for multiplayer - poor lonely souls.
To die in a place that does not know your name. God knows you lonely souls
NMS has literally changed how we look at game art. It may not be obvious now but at some point in the future all games will have procedural art or procedural assets. Variety is the spice of life. No longer will we be plagued with NPC clones in every town or predictable sidequests.
Of course Mass Effect's story is better than the story in Street fighter but the people playing street fighter are not totally invested in the story - they would "like" to have story - but in the end all they want to do is throw fire balls and dragon punchs all day long! Sitting down and making dialog choices is not what fighting games are about.
Another person said that Uncharted 4 should be game of the year but seriously its the 4th game in a series of almost identical games. If I were to choose one I would say the collecter's editions are a better game than any one title in the series. Each game has been done, updated and redone - it is time we can try something new now.
What NMS brings to the table is a new take on the old rinse and repeat games that have been released over the years - the constant polishing and up-rez-ing of tired genres of open-world games with skill trees that have been stale since Grand Theft Auto: Sandreas. NMS sky is a big experiment in bridging the gap between hardcore space sims and reading sci-fi novels. It brings enough dumb stuff together and bakes a little pie that might not full your belly but you certainly will remember eating it.
And thats why NMS should be game of the year - It is the sum of these little dumb things that makes it great.
A new final fantasy might be released soon and we all know what it is going to be, we all know that its going to be an RPG with healing potions and pheonix downs. Nothing is a suprise anymore. We will look at the gaint monsters like we were seeing Shadow of the Collossi for the first time and be in awe of its 30fps glowry. A new Call of duty is going to drop and its probably going to have better space combat than NMS and even better gun play and online multiplayer but who cares? Team death match - capture the flag. Its all the same stuff with more polygons. Give us new stuff. Sci-book covers!
I bought a component cable (6 plug Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr) for my PS2 slim today at Royal PC (after watching a video about it online ) for the price of a movie ticket. It makes a world of a difference on the current HDTVs which are much cheaper now than when the PS2 originally came out in 2000. Make sure you use the composite cable to setup the ps2 colour mode before you attach the new cables because I spent almost an hour trying to figure out why they weren't working on my television and was wondering if I had bought defective cables. Leave the PS2 disk cover open and then go into the settings with the old A/V cables. Thank god for the internet, I found this review that helped me figure out that the setting was the problem.
I can finally enjoy Gran Turismo 4 in crisp 1080p HD. I still have the super license tests to complete. I think the license tests may actually be the only reason to play GT games. GT does get daunting at times but it has the best graphics of all the games I own and is probably the easiest to jump back into after I have been on a long hiatus. There is not much to playing a racing game, just takes lots of practice, fortitude and failed driving tests.
A setup like this would have probably cost 2000 USD back in the day (2002). I might be able to finally tackle my PS2 backlog of games I had been hording for a couple years now. I still have Persona 3 to finish and also to find a copy of Persona 4. Even with though Persona 4: Golden was released on the PS Vita I would much rather drop the money on the original version than invest in the abomination that is the PS Vita. Fcuk a remake/reboot/re-release!
The new cables do not do much to improve Hitman: Blood Money but I had already finished all 3 hitman games so not much of a loss there. Blood money is by far the best Hitman game. Tekken 5 benefits from the cables a little but that was already a pretty nice looking game. Newer PS2 games that were made after the year 2004 seem to benefit the most from the cables. Make sure you check the display settings in-game to see what can be changed. The mini-map and timer in GTA: San Andreas and basically all the text in games are crisper.
I think I am lost somewhere in Silent Hill 2. Doubt I will ever restart that game. Some games seem to be impossible to get back into once your have reached a point and stopped playing. Its like I forgot what exactly I was doing or where I was going. Almost the same problem with God Of War. God Of war got boring really fast like a gigantic pizza that you want to eat but cannot because you are full. GOW even has "progressive scan" on the back of the box but no other game seems to have that label. I have God of war 2 as well but if I never finish the first one, I will not be able to start the second - I live by rules.
My black label copy of ICO showed up as "Invalid Formate" on my tv, I'm not sure why. Shadow of Colossi worked fine. ICO was released in 2001 while SOC was a 2005 game so it proves my earlier point of newer games working better. Final Fantasy 10 works fine as awful a game as it is - doubt I will be getting back into that mess of a game.
The colours are more vibrant in We Heart Katamari. This Game in particular seems to benefit the most from the component cables. Everything is less washed out and less blurry with less jaggies. You can certainly tell the difference in both the 2d and the 3d scenes.
Conclusion
If you are going to be kicking it old school on the PS2 (or the Wii). And you have a new Flat Screen HD TV then you definately should spend the extra money to get the 5 plug component cables. The only problem you will have is figuring out what system you are gonna connect to the back of the tv next.
