Back To The Noughties
Nick’s fantastical journey propels him to December 2002.
For the first time in a good few years, gaming was experiencing a true Christmas battle, as multiple viable formats fought for your cash with top exclusive games.
The big winner of the season was the Playstation 2, which could exclusively show off Rockstar’s latest game. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, an Eighties-themed sequel to 2001’s Grand Theft Auto III, drew critical acclaim and became a sales success. Tommy Vercetti’s adventure offered “a more structured narrative” and “feels like a more complete, larger experience”, according to a 9/10 review in games™. In the Official Playstation 2 Magazine’s 10/10 review, Mark Wyatt claimed that “it doesn’t just blur the boundaries between videogames and popular culture, it completely decimates them”. Edge had complaints – “crash bugs, NPCS walk through each other during cutscenes, buddy AI can be execrable” – but felt that these showed that the game was “a victim of its own ambition” and awarded it 8/10.
On the Xbox, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell aimed to outdo stealth rival Metal
Gear Solid 2. In an 8/10 review, games™ claimed it was “nearly Game Of The Year but it lacks a little polish”. Praise was heaped upon the “astounding lighting and shadow-casting techniques”, as well as the wealth of gadgets that “really sets it apart from its rivals”. The reviewer speculated that the game had been rushed out for Christmas, noting “occasional problems with collision detection”, but still felt that it was “the most advanced stealth-based adventure title to date”. Edge was less impressed, awarding the game a 7/10 score. While the reviewer liked that Ubisoft had presented a “compelling and creative attempt to push the genre in new directions”, it criticised the game for “extremely poor” enemy AI, “linear and predetermined” level structures and a control scheme “inadequate to the demands of fast movement and targeting of multiple attackers”.
Nintendo was relying on its final release from Microsoft-bound Rare to carry the holiday season. Unfortunately, Star Fox Adventures didn’t live up to the British developer’s stellar reputation. NGC’S Martin Kitts felt that the
Zelda-esque action adventure was “so bland and flavourless as to make us wonder exactly what the developers have been doing with it for the past three-and-a-half years”, and awarded it 72%. Edge gave the game 6/10, praising the game’s “tremendous looks” but complaining that there was “no sense of exploration or discovery”, while games™ scored it 7/10 noting the game’s “overly linear structure”, and that “it’s almost as if the game’s been dumbed down on purpose”.
Outside of those flagship releases, platform exclusives were pretty disappointing. On the PS2, side-scrolling throwback Contra: Shattered Soldier earned 5/10 from games™ and 6/10 from Edge, with the latter commenting that the game was “unnecessarily harsh”. First-person shooter sequel
Red Faction II scored 6/10 in Edge and 5/10 in games™, with the latter calling it a “glorified pyrotechnic display” that was “far too short-lived”. On Xbox, you could go for Blinx: The Time Sweeper, a time-twisting platformer from Sonic character designer Naoto
Ohshima. Edge gave it 5/10, regarding it only as “a platform game with clever power-ups”, while the 6/10 review in games™ hailed it as “a flawed work of genius”. Gamecube owners could buy cutesy social simulator Animal Crossing, which scored 90% in NGC and 8/10 in both Edge and games™ – but only on import. PAL players were stuck with the frustrating and divisive FPS Die Hard Vendetta (80% NGC, 4/10 games™ ).
Thankfully, multiplatform release Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 was worthwhile. Edge scored it 7/10, noting that there was “lots of joy to be had” but questioning if Activision was “doing enough to dispel the fear that the brand is becoming sterile”. For games™, the “absolutely huge” stages coupled with a “more open and relaxed game structure” earned it 8/10. James Bond 007: Nightfire received an interesting mix of scores – 72% from NGC, 7/10 from Official Playstation 2 Magazine, 6/10 from games™ and 4/10 from Edge. NGC felt it offered “flashes of real excitement” but was “just a spit and polish of Agent Under Fire” while Edge criticised cuts to the PC version and opined the N64’s Goldeneye “capably embarrasses this next-gen game”.
Handheld gamers didn’t get much in the way of new experiences, but they did receive some fantastic conversions of established classics. Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island brought the SNES favourite to Game Boy Advance, and received 92% from NGC. Edge awarded it 8/10 and used it to defend retro ports, noting that it “will introduce a new generation of players to platform creativity, and in an industry that uncompromisingly rejects archival works like MAME, it shows how important history really is”. Street Fighter Alpha 3 also earned 8/10 from Edge, as well as 91% from NGC and 8/10 from games™, which felt that “those who said it couldn’t be done are being handed a chunky slice of humble pie”.
Well, that was a year. Join us again for 2003 – or as Nokia would have it, “the year of the N-gage”.