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Site created 12/15/97.
review added: 11/15/00
Sony PlayStation 2
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I have been nothing but faithful to John Madden over the last six years. Starting with Madden NFL 95, I have bought EA Sports' NFL football game every year, and each year it gets better little bit by bit. But playing Madden football on the PSX, then switching to the PS2 version is like going from VHS to DVD. There's nothing like using a big cornerback to slam Keyshawn Johnson into the ground and stuff his big mouth full of turf. It's even better when it looks so realistic. The computerized players actually have personalities. They blink, grimace, talk with teammates, and react to the outcome of plays by either throwing their hands up in disgust, or performing their own personal end-zone dance. Between downs, you get to see players pull themselves up, fix their helmets, and high-five teammates. Gameplay action contains silky-smooth, fluid body motion without clunkiness or awkward slowdowns. The depth of the detail is unlike anything you've ever seen in a console football game. The helmets accurately reflect stadium lighting, players' muscles and skin are well textured, coaches lurk on the sideline getting involved in the game, uniforms get progressively dirtier as the game goes on and bits of turf get stuck in helmets after punishing tackles. Gameplay is not too tricky to become comfortable with, since there are several varying difficulty settings and a defeat-able computerized play assistant. The audio is, unfortunately, the real weak link in this otherwise monumental game. The commentary by Madden is repetitive and boring, and it really pains me to say that since I respect the guy so much. Hey, EA... how about retiring Madden and Summerall and hiring Al Michaels for play-by-play and including a vast library of Dennis Miller quips? Next year I want Miller NFL 2002! Anyhow, Madden's comments and the crowd chants are so generic that it hardly seems worth the effort. There are no team-specific fight songs (anyone want to join me in a rendition of Hail to the Redskins?) and player trash-talking and the coaches' complaints are barely audible. Despite the aural shortcomings of Madden NFL 2001, this is THE launch title to have. For die-hard football video gamers, EA Sports' PS2 NFL title is the Holy Grail, and for those who don't appreciate the finer points of the sport, the sheer level of detail and graphics power will blow you away. Highly recommended. |
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Trigger-happy gamers, who live and breathe first-person-shooters (FPS), will want to make Time Splitters a major priority. Why? Two reasons: GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. These games are widely considered to be two of the best FPS that have ever been written. And the core of the Rare Ware team that created those classic titles split from the company and formed Free Radical Design. Time Splitters is their gift to new PS2 owners, and this adventure feels and plays like its siblings. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, Time Splitters lacks the engrossing story that both of its siblings have, but there are enough game modes, adjustments and customization options to keep you busy for a long time. There is a Story mode that will have you completing nine missions (with three difficulty levels) - by completing these missions you unlock new players, enemies and levels that can be used in arcade modes such as Deathmatch. After completing the Story mode, a Challenge mode is unlocked that lets the player compete in numerous mini-games that will then unlock other secrets when completed. 2-4 people can play at once, either cooperatively or against each other, and there is even a map editor included that allows you to build your own customized boards (up to eight levels high), and scatter enemies and weapons throughout. Surface textures and lighting effects can also be fully customized in the map editor, and your maps can be saved on the 8MB PS2 memory card - a cool touch. Since the story takes place between the years 1935 and 2035, characters and weapons reflect the appropriate time period, and there are dozens of playable characters and usable killing machines from blunderbusses to laser guns. Graphics and detail are unbelievable - razor sharp and highly palpable. Pinpoint lighting and shadow effects give a three-dimensional look to the texture of the presentation. Never have I seen so much fine detail and subtle visuals on a console FPS as I do with Time Splitters. Shell casings eject from weapons, stray bullets cause sparks and smoke and can ricochet and hit enemies (or you). Enemies react differently when hit and will take cover if they fear danger. The game plays incredibly smoothly (at 60 frames per second) without a hint of slowdown no matter how many characters are on-screen at once. The audio portion of the game is first-rate. Different weapons have their own distinguishing muzzle reports, and the music is absolutely awesome. Each time period is represented by a fitting theme portraying that era, further enhanced with a funky over-score. The music is almost as much fun as the gameplay. Game control is very difficult to master, as the three preset control layouts aren't very intuitive. However, you're able to fully customize the button assignments on your control pad, so spend some time finding the best fit for you. Time Splitters is a game that, visually and aurally, will leave you screaming for more. Thankfully, Free Radical included many different play modes, and a simple map editor so you can create your own levels. Make sure this title is on your list of PS2 games to get, because it will mercilessly chuck you into the action and never let go. |
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Driving games - especially those in which you can be as reckless as possible - are more popular than ever. Hmm... maybe it's that whole road rage thing. Rockstar Games has filled this niche on the PS2 with two drive anywhere, do anything racers - Smuggler's Run (see the review below) and the superior Midnight Club Street Racing. Midnight Club plays very similarly to last year's smash PSX hit Driver, except Midnight Club is a traditional racer without Driver's involving story line. As an upstart racer-wannabe, your job is to challenge members of the Midnight Club - a band of lawless drivers who compete against each other on the crowded streets of New York and London. As you claim victories, you win the vehicles of your opponents until the final challenge, when you go head-to-head with the world champion. Midnight Club is loads of fun for driving enthusiasts, as you get to tear through busy streets and, if you're not careful, collide with cars, busses, FedEx trucks, pedestrians, mailboxes, light poles - almost anything in the environment. And, adding to the excitement, you have to elude cops who are hell-bent on taking you down. The races can be quite challenging, but that's all part of the fun. If you get bored challenging the pro drivers in Career mode, Midnight Club offers other types of gameplay, including Head-2-Head, Capture the Flag or you can simply cruise the cities with no particular objective to complete. These gameplay options can also be enjoyed with a friend in multi-player mode. Graphics and gameplay are first-rate. The cars exhibit spectacular lighting and reflection effects that lend a real sense of dimension to the vehicles. Headlights on the cars can only be described as photo-realistic, collision effects are acceptable and the vehicles take convincing amounts of damage the more you abuse them. The big city environments of New York and London are very realistic, containing many real life locations and details (but no Ed Sullivan Theater… I was hoping to see a Late Show With David Letterman marquee). The only gripe about Midnight Club's graphics is that, as good as the cities look, they appear almost too clean and pretty without that griminess or grittiness that parts of big cities have. The audio in this game is a lot of fun. Your opponents taunt you, while pedestrians scream at your terrible driving. The sounds of vehicle engines are also well represented. Midnight Club's soundtrack contains mostly repetitive and sterile "industrial" dance music. I guess this is a matter of taste. Typically I can't stand this music, while a good deal of my brother's CD collection contains this genre - he thinks Midnight Club's soundtrack is cool. After all is said and done, Midnight Club Street Racing is THE driving game to have for the PS2 - right now. As good as this title is, I can't wait to see what other developers do with the driving genre, or even what Rockstar has up their sleeve for the sequel. Midnight Club is challenging, yet gobs of fun. |
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Wildly popular to PC gamers across the globe, Unreal Tournament is basically a direct port of the PC version to the PS2 (save for a few new PS2-specific levels). Unreal Tournament is a lightning-quick, first-person-shooter, full of blood and gore. For the uninitiated, think of Unreal Tournament as the ever-popular Doom hopped-up on crack-cocaine. There's neither a story nor a plot. Unreal Tournament is all about graphically mutilating opponents in approximately 50 Deathmatch arenas, and gameplay is ultra-fast and ultra-furious. Play against your friends, or play against the CPU to see who can score the most kills first. And if you get bored with the Deathmatch, try out a game of Domination or Capture the Flag. You have access to a large arsenal of out-of-this-world weaponry, including bio-sludge guns, rocket launchers, flack cannons, Gatling guns and more. Did I mention this game is bloody? After several kills have been notched in an arena, you'll see pools of blood on the floor and spattering on the walls. A couple of the weapons will even explode opponents into a bouncing mess of what the game designers call "gibs". Sweet! Gameplay is similar to Time Splitters, and will take some time to get used to. The frame rate is not as fast, nor is the action as smooth and the graphics fall a very obvious notch below its PS2 competitor as well. That said though, Unreal Tournament contains the most realistic water effects I have ever seen in a video game, and when rockets are zooming to their target, they leave an amazing smoke trail. Make sure you have the volume cranked, because game audio is very en-"grossing" (get it?). The sounds of weapons are pulse pounding and hearing an opponent explode is almost as gruesome as seeing it happen. If you have the extra dough, check out Unreal Tournament. But if funds are limited, get Time Splitters first. Unreal Tournament offers plenty of furious FPS action, but its graphics and style fall a bit short of the best PS2 games. |
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With a name like Smuggler's Run, I was hoping for a new Star Wars-based game starring Han Solo. Oh, well. What you do get is a decent driving game, with a bit of a twist. Instead of simply racing opponents, you must pick up and deliver a variety of smuggled goods from point A to point B, all the while avoiding the police, the CIA and border patrol agents that will try to smash you into submission. Here's the twist: You drive in three huge environments including mountainous, desert and "snow-covered". The operative word here is "huge", as each environment is approximately five miles by five miles, and you can drive anywhere and interact with almost anything. Sounds cool, huh? Well it is, except the missions are all basically the same and the game quickly becomes quite monotonous. You get to helm a dune buggy, SUV, pick-up truck, rally car or a military vehicle, all with different levels of strength, handling and speed. Feel free to plow down pedestrians, animals (PETA must LOVE this game), vegetation, signs, fences, other cars and more. There's that road rage again. Graphically, Smuggler's Run is a nice looking PS2 title. Detail and smoothness or animation are all impressive, but the automobile physics are more impressive than the graphics, and provide plenty of adrenaline boosts when you bounce over sand dunes, or catch some serious air over the landscape. Vehicles can take serious damage, losing body panels and spare tires along the mission. Shadow and smoke effects are nice and worth mentioning. As you approach the horizon, landmarks subtly become closer and closer until you find yourself zooming by them. Gameplay is easy to master and each vehicle feels entirely different than the others. Game audio is atrocious, not because fidelity is bad, but because the music and voice-overs are more grating than a room full of jackhammers and barking dogs - especially the voice-overs. The police will yell laughable, idiotic, cheese-ball phrases at you and the woman you're partnered with, who's supposed to be coaching you over the radio, is the epitome of annoyance. She is annoyance personified. She calls you "baby" about 10,000 times a mission, and will spout out relatively stupid and obvious phrases at you (i.e., "This ain't pizza delivery, you know!"). While playing this game, I wanted nothing more than to find this woman and repeatedly drive over her. Fortunately, you can turn her off in the audio menu. Smuggler's Run is a fun game for a short period of time. If you rent this game for a few days, that's probably all you'll need... and you'll be saving yourself about $46. So those are the games I picked up with my PS2. It's time to rest our thumbs for a while. Since the game manuals suggest a 10-minute break for every hour of play, this is the perfect time to see how the PS2 handles music CDs. Cue the Music (or, Listening to CDs on PS2) Rounding out the ability to play a plethora of different optical disc formats, the PlayStation 2 can also perform duty as a compact disc player. Excited to run the PS2's digital-to-analog converter through the paces, I decided to spin one of the most beautiful, mesmerizing and ingeniously engineered albums of the last decade, Roger Water's Amused to Death. Recorded with the often-overlooked Q-Sound enhancement, 1992's Amused to Death is full of rich texturing and spellbinding sonic imagery that begs for nothing but the most exacting and transparent presentation possible. The point is, if you don't have very precise digital-to-analog conversion, there is quite a bit you will be missing from this CD. That's what it's my choice for testing the cojónes of compact disc players. The first thing I noticed is that the output level from the PS2's analog audio out is lower than normal. I had to increase the stereo system volume higher than usual in order to achieve the normal output level from my speakers. Once the overall volume had been adjusted, it was time to see if the PS2 could cut the mustard with complex material. Compared with most mainstream, budget-priced CD players on the market, the PS2 portrays great clarity and imaging. But directly compared with a higher-end Sony ES player, imaging and clarity seem to break down somewhat, and there's a modicum of graininess to the sound that's absent from the ES playback. The many subtle nuances and directional sounds contained in Amused don't seem to be as strongly rendered with the PS2. Sound effects and vocals are not as effectively anchored in their place with the PS2 as they are with the ES. The PS2's sonic shortcomings in this respect lend a feel of crumbling or poor structure to the soundscape, which should be solid and exact, as sound placement is important to the artistic vision of the album. Low-end representation with the PS2 was good, but notably softer and not as tight as with the ES. But all this is to be expected. The bottom line is the PS2 makes a decent CD player for casual music listeners. Couple this with the all-in-one-box convenience of the PS2, and that might help sell it as a primary CD player for most people. If you consider yourself an audiophile, and continually strive for impressive aural experiences, I would suggest looking somewhere else for a CD player. Conclusion Any self-respecting video game nut should be plotting and scheming to find a PlayStation 2 of their own. Graphics, texture detail, gameplay and fluidity of action are all superior to any game console today. Those more frugal than I will want to remember that next year Microsoft will be releasing their X-Box console, and Nintendo will be brushing aside the N64 with the GameCube. The PS2's price might be reduced about this time next year, since both of these new for 2001 consoles will have technical specs that beat the Sony. But keep in mind that it remains to be seen what kind of software support Nintendo and especially Microsoft will have. Since Sony owns approximately 60% of the video game market, software support for the PS2 should be healthy and strong for a long time to come. For those of you waiting for the right time to buy a DVD player, your time has come. Aside from two incredibly minor picture anomalies, and a couple of ergonomic flaws, the PS2 doubles as a nice DVD player. However, audiophiles will want to think twice before making the PS2 their primary CD player as the unit suffers from mediocre digital-to-analog conversion. For serious gamers, $299 never looked better. Casual gamers will probably have a harder time spending that kind of money right now, and are likely to turn to the Sega Dreamcast. However, these folks should remember the versatility of the PS2 (think DVD player and broadband Internet connectivity). While I have your attention, don't forget to pick up these accessories: an 8MB memory card for those customizable games, Madden NFL 2001 (a must for any PS2 library), an extra controller for your buddy and, for Heaven's sake, S-Video or component video connections. Now I'm off to defeat the Dallas Cowboys (with my beloved Washington Redskins, of course), and then tear-ass through New York and win a race against that pesky Emilio. Perhaps I'll cap off the evening by taking in American Beauty on DVD, or relaxing to the sweet sound of Eric Clapton's blues guitar riffs on the From the Cradle CD. Did I mention that I'll be doing it all on one box? Sony's PlayStation 2 was definitely worth the wait. Greg Suarez gregsuarez@thedigitalbits.com |
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