Neurotech - the weblog of Luke Reeves

Not reindeer games. I and the rest of my family got a ton of Playstation 2 games collectively, and I’ll give my thoughts on them.

Final Fantasy X-2

Awesome, totally cool and I and my cousin Maureen are massively addicted to this game. I started playing this a long time ago but using the Japanese edition; this version is much better, since I don’t have to constantly translate everything. It’s extremely girly but who cares? Fun is fun.

True Crime

I got this for my brother, another cool game. Basically it’s Grand Theft Auto, only you’re given some motivation for a being a good cop. I’ve played it a little bit and may pick it up for myself. There’s some funky graphics glitches in it though where you see large patches of textures missing, and then displayed depending on the player’s angle.

Prince of Persia

Wicked game, way more fun than the original (which just made me wish I was dead). It really oozes style. There’s a little bit of lameness - like killing stupid little beetles and stuff - but it’s still one of the best games I’ve played in a long time.

Need for Speed: Underground

Another game I picked up for my brother, but I’ve played it way more than him. It’s awesome - think street racing like Fast and the Furious. The career or “Underground” mode suffers from some gayness like not being able to do over races that you’ve won to collect more cash. I’ll definitely be getting this one.

Tony Hawk’s Underground

Another underground game. I guess the word underground is this years “Extreme” or something. Anyways, this is a decent Tony Hawk game but it’s nowhere near THPS 3 as far as I’m concerned. This whole pseudo-open endedness of THPS 4 and Underground just doesn’t really appeal to me. The best part about the older skate games was trying to find the best lines in the levels to get a disgustingly high score in two minutes. That’s all gone now though.

Add in the fact that this game is a huge fucking advertisement and it becomes less appealing. Now advertising for skate companies made sense, and was excusable. But there’s product placement everywhere for stuff like Nokia and McDonald’s. Lame. And the biggest ad is that the final unlockable video is a KISS video and the unlockable character is Gene Simmons. WTF?? That really bothers me.

They also added a whole bunch of horrible vehicle missions in the game that just plain don’t fit. Like you’ll finish a goal where you have to score 50000 points in a pipe, and then you have to fly a stupid little blimp. It really takes you out of the game.

Oh, and you can get off your board and walk around, adding another lame feature that probably one jerk in a message board wanted sometime way back.

I still like it, just not as much. I admit though I got pissed with it after and threw THPS3 back in.

Amplitude

This wasn’t a gift for anyone; in fact, I’ve owned this game for a long, long time. But it deserves special mention because pretty much everyone in the family (not to mention a few friends here) have played shitloads of this game. My parents even play this game. It’s awesome. Anyone who doesn’t own this game should. Even if you don’t like it, the majority of people that you know will like it, and therefore it’ll make you cooler and more popular. Yeah.