Back To The Noughties
Nick continues to cross the time streams to present you with gaming’s rich past
It’s pretty common to see the games market slump a bit during the summer, but 2001’s mid-year lull was unusually brutal. With the Playstation 2 still finding its feet, the Xbox and Gamecube still yet to arrive and the Playstation, Dreamcast and N64 getting ready to retire, developers didn’t have any great options. As a result, magazines turned to imports and re-releases to help fill their pages. Play had the big scoop – an import review of the hotly anticipated Gran Turismo 3: A-spec. Reviewer Mark Crawley awarded the game 91%, stating that “for most intents and purposes (especially high-thrills racing) it is superb” and that it “serves to show Sony’s black box as the powerhouse we were originally promised”. However, he reserved criticism for the wide reuse of Gran Turismo 2’s content, noting that racing the lower ranked races in Gran Turismo mode was a “depressingly tedious prospect” for series veterans, and that, “Those hoping for a distinct title could come away a touch disappointed by what is really Gran Turismo 2 plus.”
Other notable Playstation 2 releases for the month were largely reheated Dreamcast leftovers. Crazy Taxi (7/10 Edge, 79% Play) was praised for its high-speed thrills and close conversion work, but scorned for being light on content and arriving after the announcement of a Dreamcast sequel. Fur Fighters (8/10 Edge) received a lick of cel-shading paint and a new level for its move to Sony’s console, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (85% Play) got some extra cutscenes. Winning Eleven 5 received 9/10 from Edge, but wasn’t yet available outside of Japan. The only original game worth looking at in the UK was Formula One 2001, which received 93% from Play’s Phil King due to its “groundbreaking realism, intelligent opponents and top playability.”
But while PS2 owners might have been starved of originality in the present, the preview pages at least showed some promise of a brighter future. Silent Hill 2 was a sequel, but one with plenty of dark promise – Edge’s experience was that it was “terrifying, and at times it’s uncomfortable to play.” Ka would soon offer players the chance to take control of a mosquito and terrorise a Japanese family, and Revolution’s Good Cop,
Bad Cop saw the studio making a bold move into more action-focused territory. Then there was Red Faction, a first-person shooter with a key selling point of environmental destruction – one which Play felt “works with more impact visually, aesthetically and aurally than we could have hoped”.
Of course, players on other formats hardly had it any better. N64 Magazine reviewed two UK releases – the first being Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage, a frustrating but deep RPG that scored 60% with the warning that, “Most of us should steer well clear, but if you simply must have an RPG no matter what we say, you could do a lot worse.” The other was Indiana Jones And
The Infernal Machine, which scored a much better 81% and promptly never actually came out over here in the
UK. And with the magazine noting that the Gamecube had pinched previously N64-bound games including Resident Evil Zero, Eternal Darkness and Dinosaur Planet (now rumoured to feature the Star Fox cast), the situation wasn’t going to improve.
Over on the Dreamcast, players were treated to a conversion of Unreal Tournament, which got 6/10 from
Edge on the grounds that “it’s hard to get enthusiastic about a game which was done much better on the PC 18 months ago”. Confidential Mission’s spy-themed lightgun action offered a different shooting experience – “highly enjoyable” but “not the longest, even by genre standards” according to
Edge, which gave it 6/10. Dreamcast Magazine’s Martin Mathers was rather more enthusiastic, asserting that there was “plenty more besides the arcade mode to keep you busy” and giving the game 89%. Importers could try out the survival horror game Illbleed (Edge 6/10), in which you wandered around a malevolent theme park trying to rescue your friends. Still, this was more than the Playstation had to offer – the most notable game was an import-only revival of Taito’s old game Puzznic (Play 72%).
With the consoles in a slump, could the PC tempt gamers for a summer fling? In short, no. The month’s most high-profile release was Emperor: Battle For Dune, a real-time strategy game from genre pioneer Westwood. Edge was surprised at “just how firmly the game sits within the established limits of the RTS formula” and took it as proof that “the RTS genre is essentially moribund,” settling on a 5/10 score. PC Zone broadly agreed, writing the game off as “more new levels for Tiberian Sun and a few more units to boot” in a 76% review. PC Zone’s best game of the month was Tribes 2 at 87%, a team-based first-person shooter which the magazine felt to be “a vat of undiluted fun for team players” but “too focused on team tactics”.
Perhaps all of this was a conspiracy to make players go outside, enjoy the sun and play the newly-launched Game Boy Advance. Then again, probably not…