An A-Z of great PlayStation games - Part 8: W, X, Y, and Z

And so we reach the end. A bittersweet day as this is the final part of this series. Which today, obviously, means I'm looking at W, X, Y, and Z.

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 on with the latest, and final, batch. 

Three big franchises in 'W', with multiple entries from Worms, WWF/E, and Wipeout. But it didn't take much deliberation to settle on Wipeout 2097. 

It could be convincingly argued that the 5th generation was when the games industry got really hooked on sequels. I'm not saying that they didn't exist previously, but there weren't a huge number of series achieving trilogy status before this time, let alone stretching on into having more instalments than you can count on one hand. To this end, unlike today, it was usually worth being excited when your favourite game got a sequel because, as with WipeOut, they were usually genuine improvements over the original. 

Developers knew that they could never make the same impact as they had with their first game, so they compensated by improving as many aspects of the game as possible, starting, or at least it seems to me, with the gameplay as the core factor.

WipeOut 2097 fits this ethos beautifully. I doubt I need to explain anything about this weapon enhanced, techno infused, future racer to anyone reading this. But if you inexplicably stopped after the original you should know that 2097 offers everything that was great about the first outing, with none of the nostalgia of disappointment that hangs around the later games in the series, all while bringing a little bit 'more' to the table besides. 

It feels faster, looks prettier, and sounds louder. It has more racers, more tracks, more weapons, and is, to put it bluntly, just plain more fun to play.

I'm not going to deny that there were slim pickings for the letter 'X'. Nor will I deny that my eventual choice, X-Men vs Street Fighter, is far from the best version of this classic game. However, and this is often something that is lost in the noise that surrounds the hobby of retro gaming, just because something isn't the best version, that doesn't necessarily make it bad. 

It's absolutely true that X-Men vs Street Fighter on the PlayStation isn't as good as the arcade or Saturn versions, but playing these iconic comic characters against these iconic fighting game characters is still hugely entertaining, and should not be missed if the yation is your only option.

So, do you remember the letter 'Q'? No? I don't blame you. There was some embarrassing goings on about Quake II, a game I've never played. But at least I wouldn't let that happen again... right?

I've played a good amount of You Don't Know Jack... on the Wii...  a series all about the style of question and where the irreverent host really does make the whole quiz-game standard more entertaining than it has any right to be. But, fess up time, I've never played this game, which you'd have to assume started the whole 'Jack Box' franchise way back in 1999. I guess, given the age of the pop-culture questions this game (probably) contains it would make a fun diversion at a retro themed party.

Anyway. Next time I do an A-Z (Spoiler: I've already started) I'm just skipping the letters where I don't have a good option.

I went on at length about the raft of quality, but short lived, 3D fighters that emerged in the PlayStation era last time out (in reference to the sublime Tobal No. 1), and Zero Divide, with two entries on Sony's machine and a further one for it's Sega rival, is another example of this.

With a style that falls somewhere between the visuals of Fighting Vipers and the moves of the Virtua Fighter series, Zero Divide 2 (the first game is but a shadow cast by it's successor) features an entourage of android combatants in a variety of guises.

One more cynical than I may suggest that, so varied and often animalistic are many of these characters, that the only reason they're androids at all is to keep the polygon count down - but there's no denying the clean look this approach provides. An additional bonus is that the game runs at a silky 60 frames a second and, while usually this kind of thing doesn't excite me, in fighting games it makes a genuine difference to the play.

There are some nice additional features in the mix too. For example it (let's say) 'borrows' from Fighting Vipers with an armour damage system and walled arenas, and there's a neat replay save system that shows off that smooth frame-rate wonderfully.

Zero Divide 2 arrived late in the PlayStations lifecycle, something evident from the palpable fighter-burnout you'll read in most reviews of the game. Re-visit it now, however, and it's hard to see what this game does wrong, had it been earlier to the party, it might be another series that was still around today.

 

And that's it for this miniseries!

I may have made a rod for my own back on occasion but it was to great to rediscover some games I've not thought about for a long time.

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing.

The next series is underway and will be looking at the obscure library of DSiWare - I've only just started researching it and it been fascinating already. 

It will be up next Thursday, hope to see you then!