Back To The Noughties
It’s November 2003, and Nick is once again exploring gaming history
The pressure was on as the battle for Christmas sales began anew, and console manufacturers tweaked their hardware offerings accordingly. Sony brought the official price of the PS2 down from £169.99 to £139.99, bringing it considerably closer to the price of the Xbox, which Microsoft had cut to £129.99 six months prior. Sony also launched a silver edition of the PS2 for £149.99. Nintendo, already struggling to compete, realised that price parity would do it no good and swiftly cut the Gamecube to £79.99. This earned the goodwill of Argos, which decided to carry the console again after clearing its own inventory of the console at the same price earlier in the year. The only problem for Nintendo was that the decision came too late for the console to be included in the catalogue, potentially hurting consumer awareness of the console and its new price.
For PS2 owners, the big game of the month was undoubtedly Jak II: Renegade, the sequel to Naughty Dog’s popular platformer Jak & Daxter. This new entry in the series retained some platform elements, but added plenty of Gta-style elements, such as gunplay and vehicles, and some new, darker storytelling to match.
Play ’s Ryan King loved it, assessing it as “not simply a case of bigger and better” as it “plays suitably differently to the original”, in a 92% review.
Less impressed, games™ awarded the game 7/10, claiming that the genre blending “just doesn’t gel” and that “without lock-on systems or first-person aiming, fighting the good fight can often be trickier than it really should”. Edge also awarded the game 7/10, praising it as “an awesome achievement, a marvel of programming and an object lesson in being as pleasant as possible to the person playing it”, but concluded that it wasn’t actually any more fun than its competition.
Of course, for every big first-party hope over the holidays, you’ll usually find a few big multiplatform licensed games, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds was better received than most. While praising the game’s graphics, sound and combat, NGC occasionally got “so stuck we came dangerously close to turning the
’Cube off in disgust”, and awarded it 70%. The game scored 8/10 in XBM, though the review cautioned
against playing it “if you’re someone who prefers technical perfection to gameplay”. On the other end of the scale, games™ wasn’t keen on the “primitive platforming” and “functional combat”, awarding 4/10 to a game that “manages to frustrate and disappoint more than it inspires or impresses”. Less favourably received was the movie tie-in Finding Nemo (65%
NGC, 55% Play, 4/10 XBM), which Play felt was “only made entertaining by the use of the Pixar characters.”
But if Finding Nemo was a predictable disappointment, Alter Echo on Xbox and PS2 was a real downer. “After all the acclaim it received at E3, we were hoping for a truly gratifying arcade adventure, instead we’ve been given a woefully dull game that has few redeeming features,” lamented games™, which gave the game 3/10. Edge felt that “true control of the environment could prove entertaining”, but that “Alter Echo’s terraforming is even more facile than Red Faction’s,” and scored it 4/10. Play felt it to be a “linear exercise in gameplay so familiar it’s almost banal,” giving it 46%.
Elsewhere on the PS2, you could find Namco’s arcade lightgun conversion Time Crisis 3 reviewed exclusively in Play. “These games should be about accuracy. That’s the point,” grumbled the reviewer. “Shotguns are not accurate. Grenades are not accurate.” But while the addition of new weapons wasn’t welcome, the addition of the new Rescue Mission mode and overall quality of the conversion earned it 90%.
On the PC, Polish developer Techland was making its first big move into the international gaming market with Chrome – but it probably wouldn’t be sufficient to secure the developer’s legacy. The first-person shooter earned 5/10 from Edge, which noted that “beautiful and organic levels” were accompanied by “pitiable” enemy AI and “unwelcome and badly implemented” boss battles. The biggest problem noted was with the Implant system, which it felt “players will be happier to ignore than exploit” due to the short duration and long recovery time of the boosts granted. The response from games™ was slightly more favourable, with a 6/10 review noting that “virtually every aspect of the game seems to lack that final third of polish”.
With the Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire RPGS already printing money for Nintendo as usual, the Christmas coffers would have to rely on
Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire for a boost. Edge declared that it was “not a conventional pinball game with well-designed skillshots and a challenging layout”, but appreciated the “countless secrets and hidden bonus areas to discover”, scoring the game 7/10. In games™ the sentiment was similar – while there were concerns that it was too easy (“probably for the benefit of younger fans”), it was considered to be “frustratingly addictive” and awarded 8/10.
Join us again next month, when we’ll inevitably struggle to fit the hoard of Christmas blockbusters into the space we have!