Comment on Dusting off the old PS2
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
R&C UYA is definitely a fun game. I can remember that I was at my best friends house and I don’t remember why, but he showed off that game and I was immediately hooked.
Eventually got my own copy. And eventually all the other PS2 titles in the series over the years. Love them all. Definitely a fun series. Cannot speak too much about the later titles since I’ve barely gotten anywhere in Rift Apart, but those early games definitely have a fair amount of that classic PS2 charm, IMO.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think 2, 3, and Deadlocked/Gladiator were the best ones. Deadlocked was really the best, but it’s so short that I have a hard time putting it over Going Commando, and I’d put UYA as a distant 3rd place.
The first game was always rough- the controls and camera are clunky, and the bolt economy is rough. Plus if I remember there were no nanotech upgrades or armor- you just needed to git gud.
Size Matters was remarkably similar to the first game. Secret Agent Clank is in the conversation for bottom-10 worst videogames of all time and should be avoided.
Tools of Destruction and Crack in Time were both pretty forgettable. They felt like mediocre licensed shovelware- they were still from Insomniac, but a lot of the people who worked on the PS2 games left by then and it just didn’t have the same feel. If I remember correctly, they opened up a new office in North Carolina and gave R&C to that team and had their California studio focus on Resistance, but even in California a lot of the people who worked on Spyro and the PS2 games left. Quest for Booty is basically just a 2hr DLC that they sold standalone for… Reasons.
All4One was… Fine, but a very niche experience. It’s like a 4 player party game, but it’s 10 levels that are about an hour each, and it’s hard to get 4 people together to play through a 10 hour campaign. I only ever played it alone, and it was fine, but clearly designed for at least 2 players.
Full Frontal Assault I remember liking a lot, but not the specifics of it. Wasn’t a fan of the art style, but I remember the tower defense being cool and really suiting R&C.
Into the Nexus was great, maybe better than UYA even. Best story of any R&C game IMO, and the gameplay was okay. Only 6 hours long for a first playthrough though, way shorter even than Deadlocked and not as much replayability.
R&C 2016 was… Fine. They fixed the gameplay issues, but I didn’t like the weapon upgrade system. It felt like they were trying to copy online multiplayer looter-shooter systems in an offline single-player game. I wasn’t a fan of the updated story, art style, or tone either- felt like they were trying to do a less mature version of Fallout 4. I’d say better than the original, but still mid-tier overall.
Rift Apart was… Fine. Gorgeous. The whole thing about using the PS5’s fancy SSD to do rifts was complete BS (the game released on PC later) and didn’t affect the gameplay as much as the marketing suggested. A lot of the weapons were useless, and once again I didn’t like the upgrade system.
Also, Sony seems to re-use a lot of stuff between their AAA releases starting on the PS4. R&C, Horizon, God of War, and Spiderman all have very similar UI’s. I’m pretty sure there is a lot of music shared between the R&C and Spiderman games. The looter-shooter/gacha still item systems plague all of those series too. I haven’t played the newer Uncharted or TLOU games yet but I suspect they will be similar. Heck, out of all of their games recently Knack was the series that felt the most refreshing to me.
On a slightly related note, I would recommend Sunset Overdrive too. It feels like a very clear midway point between Ratchet & Clank and Spiderman.
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
It may have been pretty long since I played Into The Nexus, basically the only PS3 title I’ve played besides Quest for Booty, but I definitely remember the length of Nexus being too short for me to love it. Your comment jogged my memory on it by name alone, after a quick search to make sure I wasn’t mistaking it with another game.
Can’t remember much about Quest for Booty, which I’m pretty sure I got through a code that came with Nexus, so that should tell you something about how memorable I thought it was.