RJ's Review Center (READ NOW VILE HUMANS!!!)

Hiya, and welcome, and thanks to the increasing popularity of this site, holycrapbatman.com is now my home for reviews! Anyhoo, I will post my reviews here and of course if you have any requests PM me.

Now lets go through this. I rate on an 800 point system (graphics, sound, control, accesability, art, music, playability, and lasting value) w/ a one word description and overall letter grade at the end (and proceeds as follows and depending on where in the spectrum):

700-800, Masterfull, A+,A++,A+++

550-699, Great, A, A-, B+

500-549, Good, B, B-

400-499, Decent, C-, C, C+

300-399, Mediocre, D+, D

150-299, Bad, D-, F+

0-149, Abysmal, F, F-

Thank you and proceed to the reviews =D.

edit: Plz if you have a request TELL ME!!! Im glad to take them as it helps me see what games people are intrested in as well as help me find games i may not have ever thought of picking up.

Doom -Sega Genesis 32x

To give you a backround, i have played every version of Doom and it is one of my favorite games of all time. Now I went into this game with very low expectations. Over the Internet i found numerous bashings of this version and as such I was very unenthusiastic about plopping this in. Appearantly the music was bad, pixalation was everywhere, and it wasnt fun to play. Now I ask them, WTF is wrong with them. This is a very solid port of doom, you get the first two episodes complete, and though the sound may sound bad, its using the standard Genesis chip to output it so it doesnt sound all as bad as people like to think it is. Now my only complaint is, why doesnt this have a fully customizable conrol scheme, it is compatable with the 6 button controller, why cant i map it to strafe left and right w/ a seperate button than the use button. Overall pixalation is pretty bad for far away objects, but they are still recognizable, and doesnt have a negative impact on gameplay. Now the lighting isnt all that great, they took out alot of the original lighting in the game. It runs at a smooth 26-30 fps and only dips in large areas. With the final verdict i am going to put a little more emphasis on the graphics because thats what you almost always look at in a port of doom; also my graphics and sound are largely based on technical achievment over my opinion, if you want my opinion take a look at the art direction and music direction scores.

Graphics: 70/100
Sound: 50/100
Control: 90/100
Accessability: 70/100
Art: 90/100
Music: 100/100
Playability: 70/100
Lasting Value: 80/100

Overall: 620/800, A-, Great

Silpheed -Sega CD

Now I love my Sega CD, I feel it had a rightful place in history, though it is often considered a devilish abombination. Silpheed is one of those games that I can say, if they had more games like that, the Sega CD would have dominated. Silpheed is a top-down shooter that is 2 parts Galaxian/Galaga, and 1 part Star Fox. The graphics in this game are breath taking, it really shows the power of the Sega CD. It features polygon graphics that are more detailed than Star Fox, but arent detailed enough to slow down gameplay or be distracting. In fact the only thing I found all that distracting was the laser that fired into the large shuttle and caused a very bright, yellow ring to appear. The control is spot on and if it wasnt, it would be a near impossible game, speaking of which i must add that this game is challenging. It may take you once or twice to finish the first couple levels until you get used to the difficulty. The sound in this game isnt all that great, the voices sound more like a digitized voice on a SNES cartridge than a CD quality recording, but the music is some of the best ive heard in a game in a long time. You eventually earn an assortmant of weapons including Left and Right Spread Guns, Lasers, and an assortment of Optional Smart bombs and other special weapons. This game is definately worth owning the sega cd for, the game itself is awesome and the best part, almost no load times .

Graphics: 100/100
Sound: 40/100
Control: 90/100
Accesability: 50/100
Art: 50/100
Music: 100/100
Playability: 70/100
Lasting Value: 40/100

Overall: 540/800, Good, B

Road Rash 3 -Sega Genesis

Road Rash 3 came out in 1994 but I ask you... WHAT HAPPENED. Sure the game is great but they runed alot in the process of making it more realistic. First off lets go to gameplay. Its the exact same thing as in the other Road Rash games, you race to the finish while whiping, punching, and hitting your oponents off there motorbike with various weapons, but with a little extra bit of deepness that wasnt there before. You now can upgrade your bike and the control and speed is far more realistic. Now getting into graphics, the Genesis wasnt made to do scaling or "Mode 7"esk graphics, there for, this game, and any game that pulls that off, gets aplause by me. In previous titles, EA would use beautiful hand drawn landscapes and backrounds. This game however went into the digitized approach, not that im against digitization or anything but they actually made it worse in doing so. The digitized objects are soooo pixilated, you could mistake that car for a house and vice-versa, and screw up your timing. Also, these horrible looking digitized objects actually push the Genesis even more, making the frame-rate SLOWER. Ok, since the previous games were so fun and fast paced that you forgot about the frame-rate, this game makes the game seem slow and I actually had to turn it off at one point. I gather your saying, well the music has to be awesome, with all those awesome rifts and stuff. Well sorry, all you get here is fast paced easy-listening, which I enjoyed, but I found it to be out of place. The control is spot on but i felt some delay in turning, which was probably caused by the horrible frame rate. Also there is no save feature, but there is a password system, which luckily is short so you dont have to write down all that much. Overall this game is fantastic, but if your a newcomer to the series, try the 3DO version or Road Rash II on the Genesis.

Graphics: 80/100
Sound: 70/100
Control: 90/100
Accessability: 60/100
Art: 70/100
Music: 70/100
Playability: 60/100
Lasting Value: 50/100

Overall: 550/800, Great, B+

Sonic Jam -Sega Saturn

So, I dont have the Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games. But thats cause I have something better. Sonic Jam was released in 1997 for the Sega Saturn. Now you may ask, what was the point of releasing this? Well after they realized there was no possibility for a new sonic game to be released in time. Sega threw together all of its previous offerings with new content to try and hold over the sonic fan-boy community. Well just like Sonic R and Sonic 3D, this just made their mouths water more. Now getting into the game you get all the Sonic games in the original quadrilogy: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic and Knuckles. These are all emulated perfectly but there is more. The game now gives you the option to have the Spin Dash in Sonic the Hedgehog, and have Knuckles in it too! You also get the "Sonic World" option. This is a 3D world with TONS of virtual Sonic merchendise. You get commercials, posters, the whole bit on that single CD. Whats more is you get a whole bunch of mini-missions to complete in Sonic World. Now a quik note is that if you play this then Sonic Adventure, you are going to notice the EXACT same feeling of control in Sonic World. This is because it was infact the prototype build of Sonic Adventure. Now getting to the rest of the game you get the exact same graphics, sound, and control of all previous offerings, no more, no less. If your a Sonic diehard or just dont feel like buying the games for the Genesis, this is a really good deal, though it does go for a decent price on ebay if your looking for CIB, its fairly easy to find in plain, disk format.

(I divided the games into equal parts over the 800 points)
Sonic the Hedgehog: 100/133
Sonic 2: 90/133
Sonic 3: 120/133
Sonic and Knuckles: 110/133
Sonic 3 and Knuckles: 133/133
Sonic World: 120/133

Overall: 673/800, Great, A

Sonic R -Sega Saturn

Onwards to more Saturn games, Sonic R was the only "real" Sonic experience on the Saturn. But even then it wasnt really a true Sonic game. Sure in all previous games you raced to the end as fast as you could but this game is all about racing. If I remember correct this concept was first introduced in Sonic 2 in 2 player mode on the Genesis, and was also present in Sonic 3. Well getting back to the game, its a very solid racing title, not phenominal, but solid. The graphics in this game I would say land somewhere inbetween the PS1 and N64. It has solid 3D models and the enviroments are decently detailed. You may think, "how is that possible on a SATURN?", well the game uses a draw in system called the DirectDraw3D. This alows the enviroment to draw in and out at a certain distance at 12 shades, eleminating the pop in that plauges many Saturn games. The sound is impressive, the sound effects, the music, they are all CD quality. On that note I should warn you on the music, you will A)Love it or B) It will make your ears bleed. Im one of the few that found the music enjoyable, but it really is pretty cheasy; so you may want to turn the vocals off for a more tradition sound. This game is easy, but the control is horrible unless you have the 3D pad. There is a WORLD of difference between the 2!!! On that note you press up to move forward which for an adventure game is fine but for racing its horrible (EDIT: u can also use the B button which I found out soon after writing this so sorry about that ). There are only 5 tracks, but its ok considering that this game has decent replayability. There are hiddin characters, most of which you wont find in ANY other sonic game. Most notable is MechaKnuckles, who happens to be my favorite character. Each character has there own strengths and weeknesses but it hardly makes a difference. Overall this game is OKAY, not great, not bad, but just pretty mediocre. Its a must buy for Sonic die-hards and racing fans; but to others its not really all that worth it unless you find it cheap.

Graphics: 90/100
Sound: 60/100
Control: 50/100
Accessability: 90/100
Art: 50/100
Music: 40/100
Playability: 70/100
Lasting Value: 50/100

Overall: 500/800, Good, B-

Metal Gear Solid 4 - Sony Playstation 3

Perfection... hardly... masterful... definately. This game is what I see as the pinacle of this generation. So much is done near-perfectly it will leave even the hardest of the hardcore in awe. I have never owned a Metal Gear game, and have only played the first when I was at age 7. But this cinematic experience is so complete and discriptive, even newbies can jump right in. The control is dead on and easy to get used to. The presentation is amazing. The cutscenes are long but real you in and encourage you to keep your hands on the controller by instructing you to press button commands to view different angles etc. The game will take you about 20 hours first playthrough, then their are easter eggs, MGO, and awards to rack up. Speaking of which MGO... is like Counterstrike on numerous steroids. Excellent squad based matches, customizable characters, and overall is a mass amount of fun. The graphics are the best ive seen, the cutscenes make you think of cgi but its the actual in game engine, running at a wonderful 60fps. The sound is just as good, with holywood level voice acters and great sound samples. Even for the non-metalgearist this is a game that ABSOLUTLY MUST BE IN YOUR COllECTION. Regarding the story I almost cant say anything or it will spoil it, frankly, i had more to say so PM me if you really,really, REALLY need to know. And to all the other people out there who dont want it spoiled, go and buy the game... DO IT!!!

Graphics: 100/100
Sound: 100/100
Control: 100/100
Accesability: 90/100
Art: 99/100
Music: 90/100
Playability: 99/100
Lasting Value: 100/100

Overall: 778/800, Masterful, A+++

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars -Sony Playstation Portable

What to say about this game... Well, you get Crazy Taxi 1 and 2, both ported beautifully w/ only hitches in draw distance due to the limitations of the handheld. If you are not familiar w/ the Crazy Taxi concept, its this, you pick a cab driver, a city, pick up passengers and get them to their location in time by any means necessary, encluding taking jumps, shortcuts, or even a trip into the ocean. This game, as you can tell, is an arcade game. Little to no depth, skyrocketed, score punching fun. Their is a "Crazy Box" however, that gives you several challenges and minigames, to do aside from the main game, such as knocking over bowling pins or jumping into golf balls, its bundles of fun. The sound is exactly the same, (offspring music) minus some music tracks, and the rest of the game is unchanged other than licensing w/ was just cheap advertisment anyway. Overall, this is the exact same game it was on many other consoles, but now on the go, which when you think about it is pretty nice since most play sessions are short (unless you are in fact the crazy god, my record is 40 minutes). Anyway this is a good buy for any PSP owner.

Graphics: 80/100
Sound: 70/100
Control: 80/100
Accessability: 70/100
Art: 90/100
Music: 80/100
Playability: 100/100
Lasting Value: 90/100

Overall: 660/800, Great, A

Medal of Honor: Heroes -Sony Playstation Portable

As suprising as it is, it has taken quite a while to find a good first person shooter for the PSP, which looking at the specs, is completely possible even w/ the required Dreamcast-esque control scheme due to the lack of a second analog "nub". Well it looks like PSP owners finally have a shooter that holds its own w/ the DS's lineup of shooters w/ Medal of Honor: Heroes. The game has you fallowing Lt. Jimmy Patterson, Sgt. John Baker, and Lt. William Holt in a variety of objective based missions all over Nazi controlled Europe including Beligium, Italy, and of course Germany. The missions are a pretty standard affair, capture this point, collect this book, blow up this tank etc. and each mission takes about 5-15 minutes to complete. Normally I would have a gripe w/ this system, but it works fine considering its a portable system and you probably wont have 45 minutes to complete a mission before you can save anyway unless you are on a huge roadtrip of some sort. Speaking of which this game is short, I easily beat it in 4 hours, but their is a generous amount of replayability to this game, as you can go back into the campaign mode to unlock suits and clothes for use in the online and skirmish modes. Skirmish mode is just your average bot deathmatch, choose your location, your frag limit, your time, and you are off to go. The online mode is a bit meatier, w/ up to 32 players modes such as capture the flag, deathmatch, team deathmatch and territories. The online mode is good and I never was able to see lag of any kind. The graphics are good and are best described as an early PS2 game. The frame-rate stays at a stable 30fps, model detail isnt all that spectacular but the enviroments are excellent w/ good draw distance and high-resolution textures. Sound is what you would expect from a MoH game w/ audio bits sampled from that actual weapons. The controls feel good but they feel much better turned to southpaw, which is the way most Dreamcast shooters are set up. One of the few problems I had with this game was how slow you moved. Its fine because of how small each area is, but on the few larger ones running across to the next objective seems to take forever. So if your looking for an excellent fps for your PSP, look no further than Medal of Honor: Heroes.

Graphics: 70/100
Control: 80/100
Sound: 90/100
Accessability: 80/100
Art: 70/100
Music: 70/100
Playability: 80/100
Lasting Value: 80/100

Overall: 620/800, Great, A-

Ape Escape: On The Loose! -Sony Playstation Portable

I have always been a fan of the Ape Escape series ever since it first came out on the original Playstation around 1998. Welp, as if to bring that experience to a newer generation; SCEA decided to remake it for the PSP w/ new multiplayer modes and enhanced visuals. If you are unfammiliar w/ the Ape Escape theme, its mokeys try to take over world, you go around and catch them (and the AI in this game is very good as always). This first edition however, has you going back in time threw various eras. The first thing you will notice during gameplay if you are an Ape Escape advid is the control scheme, they managed to keep a game that essentially needs 2 analog sticks, controls work brilliantly on the single analog nub. Like the original, you use the square, circle, and triangle buttons to change your item, but w/ the lack of a 2nd analog stick, you now use the corrisponding button to also use items and select them, which actually works quite well and actually makes the game a bit easier considering you dont have to make the trip down to the analog stick to use your equiped items. Speaking of which this is the first game that i've felt bennefitted from the analog nub and makes good use of it, allowing you to tiptow behind your opponents w/ relative ease. The graphics look like the original PSone game only w/ boosted antialiasing, higher resolution textures, and reformated to the widescreen on the PSP. The game is relativly long, taking about 10-12 hours to complete, but each mission takes about 5-10 minutes to finish making it excellent for on the go players. The original mini-games are all here but now you can also play multiplayer via ad-hoc on some of the more popular ones such as skiing, boxing, and table tennis. The sound is also extracted from the original game, which while decent via the PSP's own speakers, is very hollow on an outside source (such as if you are playing on the TV w/ a sound system connected). Overall, this game is great and made it to the PSP Greatist Hits collection making it a wonderful $10 deal.

Graphics: 80/100
Control: 100/100
Sound: 65/100
Accessability: 80/100
Art: 85/100
Music: 60/100 (i should mention that the techno-inspired songs are pretty decent, just not my cup of tea)
Playability: 80/100
Lasting Value: 60/100 (the minigames will last you awhile as well as the story but after that there isnt much to do)

Overall: 610/800, Great, A-

Ridge Racer - Sony Playstation Portable

Well Ive been a fan of Ridge Racer most of my gaming life. I first recieved it in 1997 and have had a fondness for the series, even if its just nastolgia talking. Anyway, this is more or less a very good remake of the original, unlike that mediocre DS version which was EXACTLY THE SAME!!! Anyway back to the PSP version, the game has a brand new interface, some new tracks, and beautiful graphics. When IGN.com first reviewed this, I was sceptical when they said it looks like GT4 on a portable... well they were right, this game is still one of the most beautiful PSP games to date, looking an awful like GT4 except the car models are pretty bland, otherwise beautiful. The control, is well, Ridge Racer, its pretty much spot on, but its nothing to brag about. Load times are short which is a plus, even though this game isnt all that suited for a gamer on the go due to the long nature of the tracks as well as having to finish first in most races. Speaking of which their are 24 tracks + reverse + alternate routes making it total at around 50 or so tracks. Their are 54 cars but only 5 classes making most of them unneeded. Speeking of which you wont find that depth thats in 7 with this, you will find however, absolutly no debth, no customization, nothing, but then again it is an arcade experience as of such you shouldnt expect much in the first place as far as depth. The music is what you would expect, tons of techno-japanese affair that keeps you going for those longer races. As far as fun its a blast, but dont go overboard thinking this will be your game of the yeark, but to all the fans of the series, its quite alot of fun.

Graphics: 95/100
Control: 90/100
Sound: 90/100 (i didnt touch on this much but it is quite good, working the PSP's advantages well w/ great stereo and treble work)
Accessability: 60/100 ( i didnt touch at this either, this is for hard core gamers, not an easy game, or mabe i just suck)
Art: 70/100
Music: 80/100 (i personally love the soundtrack many people will beg to differ)
Playability: 80/100 (its ridge racer, easy to play, hard to master, or beat for that matter)
Lasting Value 70/00 (its an arcade experience at heart but it will lose its welcome after a couple playthroughs)

Overall: 725/800, Masterful, A+

ahhh heres my first review i ever did, frankly, ive got a WHOLE lot more but only a few in the new scoring format which requires me to re-inspect the game! anyhoo here you go, nothing was changed but the scores at the bottom.

Jurrasic Park -Genesis

Ok going into this I would like to point out that I absolutely hate movie based games... usually, then one or 2 come across my eyes that are awesome in every regard, this is one of them. Ok let me point out that this game has almost no story collaberation w/ the movie. It has its own story line, linked together by text and a map of the island and a flashing red dot at your location. You can pick two characters to play as, one being Dr. Alan Grant, and the other being a raptor. Grants levels are generally harder but more intrigueing (he also has a variety of weapons), but the raptor is alot more fast-paced and fun to play as in my personal opinion. The sound is excellent, near SNES standards with deep tones and a large amount of bass jungle music that is odd to here coming from a system that is known for its whiny style of music and sound. The graphics are good, but not excellent, there is some contrast issue's where its hard to see where that black platform is invisable and there is a decent amount of slowdown (most notably on Dr. Grants levels). The game is fairly short (about 2 hours w/ Grant and 30 minutes with the Raptor) but there are a decent amount of secrets to find, the game doesnt support a save file but does have a password system. Overall, this game did give me a shock as to how good a movie based game can be.

Graphics: 80/100
Control: 70/100
Sound: 100/100 (theres also some clear voice sampling for Dr. Grants screaming deaths, nice =D)
Accessability: 70/100 (raptors easy to get into, cant be said for Dr. Grant)
Art: 90/100 (WHO CAN NOT LIKE THE JURASSIC PARK STYLE)
Music: 90/100 (amazing deep tones set the perfect mood)
Playability: 80/100
Lasting Value: 50/100 (after the secrets and 6 hours of gameplay its just boring)

Overall: 630/800 ,Great, A-

SoliDSnakE wrote:Doom -Sega Genesis 32x

To give you a backround, i have played every version of Doom and it is one of my favorite games of all time. Now I went into this game with very low expectations. Over the Internet i found numerous bashings of this version and as such I was very unenthusiastic about plopping this in. Appearantly the music was bad, pixalation was everywhere, and it wasnt fun to play. Now I ask them, WTF is wrong with them. This is a very solid port of doom, you get the first two episodes complete, and though the sound may sound bad, its using the standard Genesis chip to output it so it doesnt sound all as bad as people like to think it is. Now my only complaint is, why doesnt this have a fully customizable conrol scheme, it is compatable with the 6 button controller, why cant i map it to strafe left and right w/ a seperate button than the use button. Overall pixalation is pretty bad for far away objects, but they are still recognizable, and doesnt have a negative impact on gameplay. Now the lighting isnt all that great, they took out alot of the original lighting in the game. It runs at a smooth 26-30 fps and only dips in large areas. With the final verdict i am going to put a little more emphasis on the graphics because thats what you almost always look at in a port of doom; also my graphics and sound are largely based on technical achievment over my opinion, if you want my opinion take a look at the art direction and music direction scores.

Graphics: 70/100
Sound: 50/100
Control: 90/100
Accessability: 70/100
Art: 90/100
Music: 100/100
Playability: 70/100
Lasting Value: 80/100

Overall: 620/800, A-, Great

you would understand why it's bad if you play the atari jaguar version, it blows this game out of the water(also with wolfenstien 3d,as the jaguar got the best versions of these two)

tolstoydreamcastfan wrote:
you would understand why it's bad if you play the atari jaguar version, it blows this game out of the water(also with wolfenstien 3d,as the jaguar got the best versions of these two)

uh its not bad ive owned every version of this game at one point or another and beetin the original trilogy on nightmare countless times. u dont like my opinion thats fine but dont try to think for me.

you have a jaguar???

tolstoydreamcastfan wrote:you have a jaguar???

used to untill about a year ago i found an even better version of missle command for the playstation! as such i sold it.