Good Playstation Games?

[DrRock]

sorry in advance if there are any duplicate mentions in this post that have already been suggested earlier

 

1Extreme

Very early PSX title that is similar to titles such as Skitchin' or Road Rash on the Megadrive/Genesis. A combat racing game, in other words. Good pick-up and play action that has held up quite well.

 

Aquanaut's Holiday

Slow paced and relaxing underwater exploration game.

 

Arkanoid R-2000

Yet another installment in the famous brick destroying franchise. If you like the other ones then this one will be right up your alley. This PSX version has a ton more levels than the original arcade version.

 

Castlevania Chronicles

Somewhat lesser known Castlevania game. Basically a port of a semi-remake of the original NES title for the Sharp X68000. Comes with an arrange mode that tweaks the game a fair bit and an original mode that is more true to the computer version.

 

Colony Wars: Vengeance

Very decent sci-fi dogfighting action with quite a bit of story strewn about in between missions. The game progression even forks at certain points depending on what you do in certain missions, IIRC. No idea if the first and third games are any good or if the first game should be played first for story reasons.

 

Gradius Gaiden

Perhaps the best Gradius installment. Unfortunately it didn't get a release in either PAL or NTSC regions. Everything good about the previous games has been cranked up to eleven here.

 

Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James

A fairly fun lightgun shooter that is rather unknown due to it's late release year(2001!). Recommended to fans of the genre.

 

Harmful Park

Yet another JP-only horizonal shoot'em up. This time with a more light-hearted theme park theme. Expect lots of craziness.

 

Intelligent Qube / I.Q. Final

A pair of action puzzle games in which players must erase approaching blocks. Notable for having really nice soundtracks.

 

Kula World

Collect all the necessary collectibles and reach the exit in each of this game's numerous levels. Your rubber ball can rotate almost freely around the blocks and can interact with all sorts of objects and fall prey to various obstacles. Just a really pleasant game with nice visuals and music. Later levels get ball-bustingly hard though, so be warned.

 

Pandemonium!

A two-dimensional platforming game in a sort-of 3D space, wild camera angles included. The platforming here is rather basic but there are enough gimmicks throughout the game to keep things fresh and the various worlds are lovingly made. Also available dirt cheap on Steam. The sequel is worth checking out too.

 

Pepsiman

A game that is often times unfairly written off for it's sheer ridiculousness. If you don't mind very linear platforming action sort of like the early Crash games then you really can't go wrong with this title. The numerous set pieces and obstacles give the game lots of personality. Plus there are FMV cutscenes featuring some random out of shape guy getting his grub on. What's not to love about that?

 

Sorcerer's Maze

Fantasy-themed Breakout style game that boasts absolutely ridiculous power-ups. Plus other good stuff like a combo'ing system and boss encounters.

 

YoYo's Puzzle Park

Part of a game series that had releases on numerous consoles, but wildly different gameplay to this part of the series. This is a game in style of single screen elimination games such as Bubble Bobble or Qwak.

 

Zanac X Zanac

A heavily souped up version of the classic Zanac formula with it's enemy generating AI and varied special weapons. Something to sink your teeth into if you are into score challenges.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by DrRock : fucked up screenshot format, duplicate deletion etc.

[Rudolph]

2 hours ago, DrRock said:

1Extreme

Oooh, that game! I remember playing it at a relative's house decades ago, but I had no idea what it was called.

 

Thanks for bringing back memories! :D

[Wyrmwood]

On 9/28/2022 at 2:58 PM, DrRock said:

Intelligent Qube / I.Q. Final

 

I was wracking my brain for this one a few weeks back, couldn't remember the title and they still look unfamiliar but from the screen shots it's definitely what I remember.

 

Puzzle games never felt so intense, watching those cube's rolling towards you was kinda scary. Also remember a good soundtrack, not sure which one I actually played though.

[ericdaly]

On 9/17/2022 at 4:22 AM, hybridial said:

 

Play it anyway, I really doubt you'll see that as an issue if you actually tried it, it's something the series makes work. Suikoden 2 has one of the best stories in one of these types of games, in fact it has a lot to do with changing my attitude about JRPGs early on because I played FFVII, back when it was newish, and I liked it, sure. And I guess I wouldn't be as harsh to say it is a bad game or anything like that but... it doesn't have a particularly good story. And the FF series in general doesn't for almost the same reasons every game, messy world building and lack of focus I feel.

 

Suikoden II made me realise that by presenting a very tight and well constructed fantasy war story where I was never questioning things feeling they made no sense... a problem with a lot of JRPGs I played back in the day frankly; that or they were just quite light, Suikoden II had a dark streak to it I appreciated. 

 

Suikoden V on the PlayStation Portable ROMs might be even better, would be great to see that get remastered because it absolutely went underappreciated and was my second favourite JRPG on the PS2 after Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. 

Current PS2 games can be played on emulators or downloaded at ROMs sites.

[LadyMistDragon]

Alundra, Suikoden II, Growlanser, Syphon Filter, Tomba, Oddworld, etc...

[Rudolph]

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is amazing in terms of visuals, music, sound design and writing, but I have no idea how anyone could beat this fucking game without cheating, as the difficulty is beyond unforgiving and some parts are downright Dragon's Lair-impossible.

[mrthejoshmon]

36 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is amazing in terms of visuals, music, sound design and writing, but I have no idea how anyone could beat this fucking game without cheating, as the difficulty is beyond unforgiving and some parts are downright Dragon's Lair-impossible.

I have 100%'d every Oddworld game up to Stranger's Wrath, they are at the core more puzzle games than they are platformers, every encounter is a rhythm that you must learn to proceed further. This is why death in those games carries very little consequence.

[Rudolph]

43 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I have 100%'d every Oddworld game up to Stranger's Wrath, they are at the core more puzzle games than they are platformers, every encounter is a rhythm that you must learn to proceed further. This is why death in those games carries very little consequence.

Well, you still have to reload the last checkpoint, which oftentimes means having to redo an entire sequence and that feels rather penalizing.

 

I know Exoddus added a proper quicksave function, but I do not find the game as interesting as the first one (except for the Good Ending, which I think is funnier and more satisfying), and the New 'N Tasty remake looks like a massive downgrade. Oh, well...

[Devalaous]

The price for quiksave was all the secret mudokun puzzles etc getting MUCH harder and utter bullshit level. I recently went through Abes Oddysey on Duckstation, with achievements enabled, and I got all 99 saved without much difficulty. Without quiksave cheese you had to do all those puzzles in one perfect go and it felt way more rewarding when you finally got it.

 

I have to play the game again and kill something like 75 of them for the last two achievements, should be a fun catharsis.

 

New N Tasty is perfectly fine btw, my main issue was the controls werent 1 to 1 with the original. Soulstorm, the reimagining of Exoddus, is where things went screy. We will never have the Oddworld Quintology, the artist types behind Oddworld are just way too picky.

[Rudolph]

9 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

New N Tasty is perfectly fine btw

On its own, probably, but I do not like most of the changes they made to the original game.

 

I tend to agree with Matthewmathosis' review in that regard:

 

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Rudolph

[Wyrmwood]

On 11/17/2022 at 5:37 PM, Rudolph said:

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is amazing in terms of visuals, music, sound design and writing, but I have no idea how anyone could beat this fucking game without cheating, as the difficulty is beyond unforgiving and some parts are downright Dragon's Lair-impossible.

 

Not played since release but I loved these games because of their similarly to classic Prince of Persia, Another World and Flashback. They actually seemed quite easy compared with those. Do you mean arcade Dragon's Lair by the way, not even sure I consider that a game, if you mean the SNES one then it's nowhere near as hard as that!