Part two of this mini-series of blogs brings us to the letters D, E, and F.
My PlayStation collection has grown slowly over years to well over 120 games and while I do, and in fact just did, call it a ‘collection’, every one of my games was bought to be played and kept because it was enjoyed.
With this in mind I'm allowing myself the caveat of honourable mentions - something I’ve always resisted before.
I’m splitting these up into bite-sized chunks of three or four at a time, so here's the latest batch.
It's probably a good time to reiterate that I don't play RPGs, too. So as to mitigate disappointment when we get to 'F'...
Driver is the best game I’ve never finished, and with very good reason.
Imagine you’re eating an amazing meal, a meal that takes elements from other meals you love and combines them in a new and exciting way. This is an exceptional meal. But, as you pick the last morsel from the plate you find that, beneath it, is mouldy human toe.
That mouldy human toe is Drivers last level. A mission that takes all the speed, freedom and excitement from the levels leading up to it and replaces it with anger, frustration and a complete lack of fairness.
Where once you were pulling J-turns in Miami alleyways you now crawl nervously to every junction. Where previously you sailed over San Francisco hill tops, the finale has you creeping through the workaday streets of New York.
I was good at Driver. I know it’s pretty weird to say you excel at what is essentially a story based game, but the handling of the cars in Driver, particularly the one given to you in the first set of levels in Miami, felt extremely natural to me.
They were designed that way of course, it’s part of the game’s appeal, but I really felt at one with the cars, and would spend hours in the free play mode taunting and evading the game’s police, and then hours more in the movie mode editing it into my own personal highlight reel.
I read fairly often, when this game is mentioned , that people found the parking garage level at the very start of the game almost unplayably difficult - and that performing the list of moves required in the 60 seconds of in-game time was impossible.
I played that level so often, and with such a fastidious desire for precision, that I was able to complete it in less than half that time. I still have the video, recorded ‘off-screen’ using an old phone, uploaded to Youtube.
And so, to have endured the drudgery and frustration of the last level of Driver was to risk sullying the experience I’d loved to that point. So I choose not to. And when I replay the game I simply don’t bother playing it at all.
When I finally got around to buying a region modded PS1 a couple of years ago, Einhander was the first game I imported from Japan to play on it. Until this point I had always enjoyed the game when I’d tried it via emulation. The explainable alchemy of a physical disc and a CRT TV, however, has never been stronger for me than it was with this fantastic horizontally scrolling shooter from Square.
Much of the game’s appeal comes from the audio visual design, with it’s industrial techno soundtrack perfectly accompanying the polygonal depiction of post-apocalyptic cityscapes.
But it’s the game’s ‘claw’ mechanic that really sets it apart, as it allows you to collect weapons dropped by defeated foes and add them to your arsenal and, adding a further level of depth, they fire differently depending on whether they are positioned above or below your craft.
Wielding, selecting, and positioning up to three weapons at a time is a genuine thrill, especially when it comes to ensuring you have the most effective load-out to defeat the game’s creative and enormous bosses.
For my money, Einhander is one of the very best horizontal shooters ever made. It’s a little shorter, and a little easier than many of its peers. But, honestly, I think that’s in its favour.
Despite a name that couldn’t be more bland, and box art that’s not much better, Future Cop is a fantastic mission based mech game that was originally conceived as part of the ‘Strike’ series and has a structure that never strays too far from that winning formula.
What is a nice diversion, though, is a secondary mode that can best be described as an arcade RTS. Precinct Assault pits you against a friend or AI as you send waves of tanks and helicopters at your enemy. The pace is much quicker than most games of its ilk, and to ensure things never get too cerebral, each player has a mech to directly control inside the walls of their own precinct.
So it’s two great games in one really, and they are so different from one another that it really does feel like you’re getting a double bang for your buck. On that note, actually, it’s worth noting that the game has recovered from an artificially inflated price from a few years ago and is now usually available for a reasonable amount, considering it’s quality.
See you next time for G, H. and I!
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