Saints Row 2022 (PS5) - The Turd

It's astounding how tone deaf and out of touch some AAA Game Publishers are. When you think of Saints Row, I'm really hoping you think of Saints Row II or Saints Row the Third. Whatever your thoughts on these titles, it's usual, even recommended that these titles be your introduction to the series. Despite their faults, they're not the 2022, and now that is something to be thankful for. When you build your gang up like a bunch of thugs who are loyal but violent, the last thing you want to see is a bunch of wusses take over their gang name. These people take over the gang without the slightest idea of how a gang is run in order to pay their student loans.... because relateable I guess? 

The voice acting, the jokes and the story are all the weakest part of this game. It has its random charms here and there, and we'll cover those, but then you look at these cut scenes and try to find what makes these... "jokes" funny. There's some running gag about nachos, random stupidity from the characters, and there's some guy in the gang who is a whore to men and women and likes waffles. These are the surface level things we find throughout all of these characters. They keep talking one liners and order wimpy things from the bars in order to make it a funny gag that they're a bunch of light weights. What it does is insult the titles that came before it. 

You can't have a good story if you don't like the characters, that's a universal truth. When you want a cool gang character with a hard life but a great sense of morals, then you've got something interesting. When they're a bunch of hipsters who take selfies and post on social media like a bunch of preteens, it's really hard to like them because you run into people like that wherever you go. 

Once you get past the outer layers of the story and go into the... "bad guy"... the plot only gets worse. I'm going to spoil the "twist" for you right now. Some criminal guy wants to take over the Saints because he wants to take the main character's friends for himself. No, not a good gang or an essential set of cold-blooded street thugs, he wants friends to stay with him in some forced sitcom setting. I wish I was joking, but it's true. He betrays the main character, stabbing them, and then tries to take their friends even though he was getting to be friends with them anyway. It does not make any logical sense on any front. 

Then there's the gameplay. It goes without saying that it's worse than the main original series. It may beat Gat out of Hell or it's around the same overall. You go up against "super" enemies that have these tedious shields that last forever and just soak up your bullets. Or they have indestructible time sensitive shields that blatantly waste your patience. The combat is stilted, but it isn't the worst. There's still a little bit of fun to have shooting from cars.

Cars, let's talk about those for a moment. They handle like absolute crap. Turning feels like it's lacking a steering belt or any fluid. The controls on a vehicle are so bad, it's almost jarring to play one of the older titles because once you beat Saints 2022, you've played so long that you need to get used to driving cars that aren't GARBAGE. 

The police are another point of horrific lacking in mechanics. Usually, in a Saints title, the more police you kill, the harder they get and bring in armored vehicles and/or tanks. However, after you kill the police in 2022, then kill anyone making calls, your police stars disappear and no one goes after you anymore. It is so easy to lose infamy from both police and enemy gangsters, it's comical! 

The game mechanics, many of them, are there to waste your time and send you on wild goose chases. Playing through the entire game is a serious chore because these side missions and unlocking new storyline missions requires you play the mini games. You know, the worst part of Saints Row the Third and Saints Row 4? They bring it into this full force and it is just as annoying, if not more. 

As much as I've heard about the Insurance Fraud games, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they must have fixed the glitch, at least for the PS5 port. Many complained that, once starting the minigame, all of the vehicles suddenly disappear off the streets.   This time, there were plenty of cars and it was pretty easy to ragdoll across several at once while having explosions blow you straight into the air. As said before, this game has some charm. There's some pretty interesting vehicle combat that can entertain you for a little while. Since the police are a joke, you can sit there and destroy anyone and everyone with special proximity mines and explosive human beings. Well, you drop a grenade in their trousers and throw them at someone. 

There is not a lot to like about this title. After some ups and downs of an overall solid series, this game is an insult. The characters are unlikeable with absolute cringeworthy dialogue, the missions are dull and the enemies are bullet sponges that waste your time to a malicious extent. The graphics aren't bad and it seems that they fixed many of the glitches for this port, though there were several to be seen. If you stand on a car for too long, sometimes you just glitch inside of it, kicking out the former passenger(s). If you drive over a broken fire hydrant, you will float upward like a weightless feather on the spewing water. Sometimes, when you shoot people, they disappear and quite often in scenes, someone will be talking to you while you're invisible. 

Just skip this title, get a PS4 version of GTA V if you don't have it, or just try another Saints Row main title game. This sandbox game was rushed through production hell thanks to changing the game in the middle of development several times. Was it worth the effort? Absolutely not. Was it decent for a laugh? Yeah, it kind of was, but that does not dignify it for a purchase. The only reason I played it was so I could review it and it only cost me 5 Virtua Bucks. Virtua GIVE ME IT BACK! 

Transformers (PS2) - Starting to Prefer GoBots

Transformers was created for one single purpose: To make toys and profits. Since its inception in the 1980's, the TV show was created in order for Hasbro to make transforming robots en masse and make sure that kids have the option to buy all of the accessories. Much like Ninja Turtles and GI Joe, this came as a gigantic victory, as the franchise not only sold many toys, but grew a fanbase around the lore of Transformers. This would prove to be one of their major downfalls. Once the first generation of characters had run their course, the studio heads came up with the terrible idea to kill off many of the original roster to make way for a new cast of characters. While the original animated movie was met with good critical reception, the mass killings of main characters, including Optimus Prime, was seen as a tasteless bid for a cash grab. 

This sent Transformers into a downward spiral that it honestly never recovered from. Michael Bay, however, was finally able to bring the franchise to the box office. These movies made a lot of money, and while the first movie is seen as a decent entry, the sequels were seen as mediocre. They drew too much from their human characters and seemed to make the situation worse for Prime for arbitrary reasons. Once the Last Knight hit the theaters, the crowd was large but not very supportive. 

The better received first entry in the Michael Bay series was a victim of an all too familiar symptom: The Tie-in Game. Like many before it, this title boasted decent graphics, but absolutely abysmal gameplay. Rather than playing to its strengths, the game seemed to want to limit the player and make them a puppet playing to the movie's shallow plot. There are sessions where you race the badguys to a target, and thanks to the janky driving controls, these missions are a slog to get through with how many times you fail. This idea of wasting time is accentuated through cut scenes that are skippable, but also loading screens that plague much of the game.

The combat is another very hard point against this game. Not only are the controls not great, but you are counted against for the destruction of the city around you. So, fighting the Decepticons as an Autobot basically tied an arm behind your back because you couldn't destroy anything around the city. While this was a morally correct decision for the character, it was a jarring addition to the game mechanics and only served to make the game feel more like a chore. The later battles in this game get rid of the destruction game mechanic, so the Optimus Prime sessions can be seen as a slight improvement.

Learning the game's play style is another chore. Being able to train yourself to transform into vehicle and robot should just add to the difficulty, but the game isn't fun enough for it to work very well. Trying to keep up with the enemies as a vehicle is hard enough, attempting to target them with the weapons as such is just plain BONKERS! Not only is the targeting system a grating experience, but you often need to keep track of two enemies and stop them from doing their mission. After just a bit of this gameplay, it becomes exhausting. 

This game is not more than meets the eye, it's potential that was pissed on John Tutturo in a character assassination that was played for cheap laughs. This game tries to play along with the movie, and that is only one of its flaws on a mountain of others. It lacks charm and it is so boring, you'll wish you were watching Transformers 4 instead. Yes, that is a bad thing. It's very strange to note that Transformers has very few noteworthy titles in the gaming scene. For a franchise meant to sell stuff to kids, you'd think they'd at least get that right. Well, games didn't pan out so well, and that's odd, given the source material.  Now take the form of a glass and get some water!

Iron Man The Animated Series (1994) - Iron Garbage

 There are few things that live up to our childhood experiences. When you watch an old cartoon that you perceived as your favorite or high entertainment of its age, very few times does it replicate the same experience. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1987 is still beloved to this day because of how nonsensical but fun the show was, even when it was at its lowest in logic. The same cannot be said for Iron Man, a series that was created 7 years later. 

This show has a lot wrong with it beyond its illogic. This show suffers from absolute stupidity as well as some of the worst performances. This is coupled with the absolutely terrible exposition it feels that it needs to tell. When you had the turtles, you had Donatello to deliver some science mumbo jumbo and get it out quick. Iron Man is constantly talking out this stupid science BS as well as the plot, telling us the storyline over and over again. Sometimes, the fighting is just too fast, as the Avengers West Coast just beat maybe one of them and then the rest of them immediately leave. 

This is coupled with a cast of cardboard characters with some of the worst melodramatic dialogue and Deus Ex Machinas that are just so contrived, it makes the TMNT Donny inventions look like subtle plot genius. The Mandarin is a terribly overdramatic moron that comes up with some of the worst hairbrained schemes every single week. The real insult to the audience is that it always works exactly how he wants it to. Like when War Machine comments that they are destroying Stark property and "breaking their bank", the Mandarin immediately catches onto this and starts just doing things that try to make Tony Stark go bankrupt. Nowhere else in this entire series is this ever referenced again, because it's pretty obvious that he has unlimited funds. 

Somehow, almost every single episode, Iron Man is always the one to solve all of the problems because Spider Woman and all of the other team are only useful for one thing or less. Sometimes, they're just in the background watching the scene play out, wishing Tony Stark luck. The voice acting is just so stilted, and you can tell when the writers are running out of time, because they just explain a problem away and beat the badguy quickly. The epilogue ends with some of the most cliche "Oh, now everything's alright!" This gives the Mandarin the queue to give his defeated line like "You've won this round, Iron Man!" Or even the old chestnut "I'll be back!" It's just sad that this is the best version of the Mandarin I've ever seen. And no, I've never seen the Shang Chi movie. I'm merely pointing out the MCU's gross misuse of Ben Kingsley. 

Some of the worst scenes in the show are when they switch to a very jarring and ugly scene of Iron Man transforming. They felt the need to make it into an Iron Man action figure with how bad the CGI effects are. Seriously, if you can't beat Sega Saturn technology, you shouldn't be putting that into your show. Even the Spider-man CGI show was better looking, even with its own probems. That can be considered outdated for its time as well, but the story and the characters are very likeable. In Iron Man, they rely on idiotic comedy between Mandarin and MODOK. Tony barely ever cracks a joke, he just blurts out one-liners like "It's time to get things ironed out.".... Get it?!?!

It's clear that they did not have as much budget as they wanted, and what little money they did have was used on effects that were already dated in 94. Now, is there a "So bad it's good" quality to this? Yes, actually, the cheesy dialogue is ironically golden. Every single time the badguys make a stupid decision or just give up immediately is honestly hysterical when you don't take it too seriously. If you're in the mood for cheap, campy 90's animated goofups, this series delivers in a big way. Don't expect high storylines or quality characterization, just expect everyone to make all of the wrong decisions until it's conveniant to clear the plot. Jim Cummings can be a little funny with MODOK on occasion, and sometimes they give some decent gags and jokes, but they are rare. 

Iron Man has its moments on occasion. Sometimes it makes you laugh, sometimes you cringe, but it's never to be looked at with any sort of expectations. The only thing you should expect is pure 90's Cheese Whizz. That's what this show is good at. If you want to finish all of Iron Man's franchise in movies and TV shows, then I wish you luck. The Marvel properties were treated with grace and stupidity all across the spectrum.You can expect some gems, but don't expect a short dig through some trash. 

Podcast Episode #3 - Mortal Kombat Tournament on the Face of Virtua Planet!

Mortal Kombat with Virtua Panzer and Virtua Neptune!

Check out the episode when our topic goes to the Nether Realm and takes on some of Mortal Kombat's most prominent titles, as well as a bit of our own experiences when it all started!

Fantastic Four (PS2) - Fantastic Failure

The Fantastic Four is one of the original super hero teams in Marvel, even before the X-men and the Avengers. If you're a fan of the Fantastic Four, you probably have your favorite on the team. Mine is definitely the Human Torch because he's awesome. Now, when it comes to the Fantastic Four movies, this is quite a different story. The original movie, which was never released but leaked to the public through comic cons, was an absolute atrocity. It was made with some heart, but not a lot of money nor talent behind the camera. It made all of the characters parodies of themselves, especially Doctor Doom. 

Then there are the Fantastic Four movies from the 2000's, which is where our game today is from. These movies were not horrific, but they certainly weren't gems on the franchise's face. They were kind of lame, the CGI was dated even for the time, and the stories were all over the place. Chris Evans does great as Human Torch, Michael Chiklis was good as the Thing and the cast were decent overall. Sometimes, they did their homework well, but the movies still missed the mark in several ways. While they did Silver Surfer justice in both Laurence Fishburne as the voice and Doug Jones as the CGIed body, they crapped the bed with Galactus being a galactic fart ball. They were divisive and not especially endearing. Still, they had their own charm and had some good parts along with a bit of feeling.

The same cannot be said about the 2015 movie, nor the subject of today's article, the Fantastic Four for the Playstation 2. If you want a good Fantastic Four video game, I'm sorry to say that you should keep dreaming, because there has never been even a decent attempt at such. This game kind of fell in my lap to play, because I forgot they were still doing movie tie-ins in the early 2000's. Besides this game and the Rise of the Silver Surfer game, there is literally no other mention of another Fantastic Four game. 

This title is said to be an action adventure beat'em up. Sure, why not? Either way, it's so boring that I've gone three whole paragraphs into this review and I've barely even talked about the actual game itself! It's so by the numbers! You play all four characters of the team, they have different powers and ways of playing, but it's still so mundane. You run through levels, fight robots and weird creatures, that's basically it. There are stealth sections and collectathons but it does very little to add to the title. There's hardly any impact, no real engaging storyline and you'll be begging for the Simpsons or X-men arcade games. 

All of this would be more forgiveable if there wasn't so much potential lost. The fact is that you have fire powers, strong man powers, invisibility and stretchy powers; none of it has any real substance at all. The graphics are horrendous, even for the Playstation 2, though you can argue that even the movie didn't have that great of CGI either. At this point, we can at least forgive it for that, as it has become clear that movie tie-in games were given ridiculously terrible deadlines in order to release around the time of the movie it represented. We can sit around talking about how much this game is garbage and throw it off as a wasted effort, but really, what were we expecting? 

I wasn't expecting much when I came into this game. I couldn't finish it for obvious reasons, but it wasn't unplayable and there were some fun little mechanics when it came to their unique fighting powers. Beyond that, though, it tried to follow the movie and add random robots and monsters to make up for the fact that the movie itself was sadly devoid of action of any sort. It's a decent attempt with what they were given and the obvious deadlines they needed to reach, but that still makes it fall into the extremely long list of duds of the movie tie-in era. Thankfully, movie tie-in games are extremely rare, almost to the point of being null and void. Until then, just read the old comics and drink water.  

Top 160+ Favorite Games of all time! (Pt 2)

 

Carrying on with the top 160 some odd games of all time, we're going to be getting into a lot of the same genres as the first segment of the list. It's apparent that a lot of these franchises have been haunting me for my entire life, and you'll be seeing the games getting older and older as the list goes on. It's fairly obvious that Wolfenstein and Dragon Ball Z will be constant themes throughout. I did not include a lot of the titles in the genres for one reason or another, it's just that sometimes the first one didn't encapsulate me as much as the second or third in a series. Sometimes, it takes the transition to 3D for me to get interested in a series, that's not very common, but it happens to us all. Either way, as a great man once said, on with the count down!

#139 Wolfenstein (2009)

For some reason, many labeled this title as a bland first person shooter. It wasn't quite as good as other titles in the series, but this is still has more identity than a lot of slop that has been coming out recently. It mixes firearms and alien-like tech with supernatural powers coming from a talisman. This allows you to run faster, shoot more powerful bullets and shield yourself from enemy fire. Sometimes, the talisman is required to overcome obstacles or defeat enemies. It's not a stellar title, sometimes the enemies are pretty hard to see in the backgrounds while the boss battles are hit and miss. Still, if you're a fan of the FPS genre, this is not a bad title to end up with.

#138 Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2

Dragon Ball has always had room for a game where you can customize your character and see them go through the world of which it was created for. This title, sadly, is not quite as great as the first Xenoverse. Some of the story involves parts of the series that really weren't all that interesting, and Slug is far from one of the better badguys to get involved, don't even get me started on Turlus. Still, it is a lot of fun to be able to go Super Saiyan 3 now, even though the powers aren't quite as a awesome as they were in Xenoverse. Here, you're stronger and your attacks do more damage, but in the last game, you had infinite ki meter along with a limited Super Saiyan time limit. That is thoroughly absent from the sequel. It's hit and miss, but it is definitely awesome enough to be a followup to its predecessor.

#137 Persona 4

The Persona series has been an oddity for me throughout my gaming life. I started with Persona 4 on the PS2, but it has thankfully come out on Steam as well. This game follows a very strange story, much like the rest of the series, where a guy is going to school and starts to make friends. They find themselves in another dimension, fighting strange creatures under the instruction of a strange old man and a supernatural cat man. The roleplaying elements are well implemented and I can't help but love a lot of the characters you meet along the way, including the cat man. It's got a lot of laughs and there is a lot of fun to be had, even if the real world segments tend to drag here and there. It's slow to get going, but it goes once it builds up a good head of steam. At least you don't shoot yourself in this version.

#136 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

While the storymode in this game is good and has good sense of action, though not the greatest pacing, it's the Endless Mode that has me going with this game. Much like other versions of Call of Duty, it's not so much the main game, as it is the bonus games you get along with it that drew me into this title. The juggernauts, the helicoptors and the ever present suicide bombers are all on full display. There are also these huge super juggernauts that basically require a tactical airstrike to take down with any sense of speed. It's a fun game, though not the best source of substance. This is more mindless bang bang noise for when you feel like picking up the chain fed machine gun and having a ball.

#135 The House of the Dead: Overkill

Probably one of the funniest horror games I've ever played, and that's saying something. It's a fun little trip into the world of old grimy horror films of the 70's and 80's where they'd have a double feature of action and zombie flicks. There are movie mistakes and cheesy cop one-liners seen everywhere, as well as the charming duo of misfit cops trying to take down a mad scientist. It's a fun little railshooter, but it's also extremely easy. For another healthy dose of difficulty, you can get the Typing of the Dead version of this game, and it's also quite entertaining. Just hope your gaming and typist skills are up to the task.

#134 Grand Theft Auto V

A great followup to a great series, which seemed to have a tiny misstep with the fourth entry. While it does have its fanbase, it was also the most condensed and restrictive version. Five came out and gave you back everything and much more. Not only are there three main characters in the story mode, there are also countless mini games for you to cut your teeth on. The city is huge and very well detailed, and all of the great mechanics we know and love are here. You even get your own house. I mean, you get your own cars too, but that's not especially surprising.

#133 Counter-Strike

Another star of the LAN party scene back in the day. In the 2000's Counter-Strike was in its hayday and you had people quoting "Fire in the hole!" Something so simple as Counter Terrorists vs Terrorists shouldn't be so fun, but with a fairly interesting artillary that you can choose from, it has a good edge of personalization. This wasn't nearly as common as it is today. Today, you can customize your own loadout every time in several games, but back then, choosing your own guns and what works best for you while you fight opponents time and time again, that was quite the oddity. 

#132 Left 4 Dead

Another off-shoot from Half-life, along with Counter-Strike. This one, however, introduced another use of the engine. With random zombie numbers showing up, along with several different types of special zombies, they came up with a different type of zombie horde game. Instead of staying in one place, you and three companions, which can be A.I. or multiplayer, explore the city. You find safe places while you head to a point where you can be rescued or escape the city in one way or another. This is another game that was overcome by its own sequel for several reasons. So, there will be more on this later in the list.

#131 Bloodborne 

Souls games are one of the big industry genres that never got me all that interested. Bloodborne is the exception. While it is not a big love of mine, this game was a lot of fun to explore while creating my own character. It's just fun to hunt in the night and these old dark fantasy towns. It's a long game, mostly because it's also pretty difficult. It has an entire barrage of awesome weapons and cool looking outfits to change into as you go throughout the game. It takes some getting used to, but after some trial and error, this game can get very engrossing.

#130 Street Fighter IV

A ridiculously graceful, if late, change to 3D. It went full three dimensions, but it stuck with the left and right fighting arenas. It stuck to the Street Fighter origins, where Mortal Kombat went full three dimensional Virtua Fighter style arenas for a very long time. Well MK learned from Street Fighter IV that you can look damn good while sticking to your roots. The fourth installment, strangely enough was canonically won by Juri. This is especially strange because she's my favorite character to play. Her kicks are awesome and her style is very dynamic. There are other characters that are fun to play, while also being very strange in many areas. You know, strange like a scarlet red man pouring oil all over himself for the slide effect SERIOUSLY THAT IS WEIRD!!!

#129 Contra

A very long and complicated path came for this series, along with the complicated path Konami took in general. Contra was part of their humble beginnings, where platformers jumping and shooting was quite awesome along with powerups. The concept is so basic, but so brilliantly pulled off with superior controls and dynamic gameplay styles. While the gameplay does change and it is very difficult, it is not impossible and all you really need to do is dodge and shoot the bullets as much as you can. Health pickups and awesome powerups can be quite rare, but the deeper you get into the levels, the more alien the designs look, giving you a feel of some horror elements. Do not pass up the opportunity to try this game, if you want a good challenge.

#128 Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project

Rarely does a game survive diverging from its original genre. Then you stop an realize that this was, in fact, the original genre for Duke Nukem. While many mistake Duke Nukem 3D as the first game in the series, he actually was a 2D platformer game from Apogee. This game takes this idea and puts it into a more 2.5D game and it does so to great results. Duke is back and he's kicking alien scum out of Manhattan in an effort to save the babes once again. This game is challenging without being downright overly frustrating, while also bringing about the great Duke Nukem flavor as you gun down your foes and college nuclear power cells. It still takes precision and puzzle solving while having you wield an awesome Golden Desert Eagle along the way. Fantastic title.

#127 X-men vs Street Fighter

While not sporting the most extensive roster, this title brought two of our favorite intellectual properties together to amazing effect. Now, we can see Ryu fight against Wolverine and Cyclops against M. Bison. This was a 2D fighter released in arcades and the Sega Saturn to amazing effect. It is also the title that proved the Saturn could do things better than the PS1, so it holds a very special place here on Planet Virtua. The animation, pixels and controls are iconic while also being a great amount of fun. Even when it's up against Marvel vs Capcom, it can hold its own and you can find yourself in two worlds of awesome and awesome!

#126 Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes

Many consider this the true follow-up to X-men vs Street Figther. Not only is the roster beyond amazing with so many to choose from, but the backgrounds, music and controls set this apart from a lot of fighting games. You can choose from Doctor Doom, Juggernaut, Mega Man and Akuma, putting three of them on a team and fighting through an entire entourage of similar trios. This game still stands as a golden standard for other games in the genre, even when it came out in the year 2000! They've ported this recently and you would behoove yourselves by trying it out.

#125 Star Fox: Assault 

This is a more controversial selection on this list. Because it's not as good as Star Fox 64, a lot of people sleep on this title. It's still a lot of fun and a good flight game for the Gamecube. To me, it's a good followup to its N64 predecessor and it's still got the split screen fighting mechanics that we knew and loved. It's still high flying adventures with our favorite characters in the franchise. This is something we should all learn to appreciate because the subsequent titles were not so great. Both Star Fox Adventure and the WiiU title were not nearly as good. If you were not a fan of Assault, that's up to you, but I very much enjoyed it.

#124 Silent Hill 2

This is a game that truly gave me the chills with its horror antics. It made you fear going into the next room and it didn't just jumpscare you, calling it horror. This was truly scary. The creatures you encounter are so uncanny and sometimes they move so slowly, it's the same as facing a giant spider and not knowing what to do. Sometimes, you stand and fight, but sometimes it's just better to run. You need to put clues together and figure out problems to get your way through this creepy silent town. This is an iconic game in the survival horror genre and you should do yourself a favor and play it in any of its iterations.

#123 Virtua Fighter 5

It's rare that so many games in a franchise are upheld to such high standards. Virtua Fighter did not dip below a certain point in any of its titles and many of them are still among the favorites in old school gaming. The fifth title is still awesome. The fighting mechanics are still there and you have a lot of the old characters to choose from. While I wasn't as taken by the new characters, it doesn't take away from the game as a whole. The single player game is fun to get through and earn the ranks as you go, but it's even more fun to play against a player 2. The graphics are improved and you still get the great controls and fighting styles you are accustomed to with this whole franchise. 

#122 Spawn: In the Demon's Hand

At first, I did not like this title. To me, it looked like a cheap knockoff arena fighter that did nothing but fanny about. Then, once I accepted it for what it was, I started to truly enjoy fannying about and fighting people aimlessly in an arena fighter. You'll see that each character has their own endearing way of fighting from Klown's chainsaw to Spawn's machine gun. The game is an underrated Capcom classic that is just pure fun. You don't need to give it much thought, but I suggest you give it some.  

#121 Wario Land

This is a perfect example of a spinoff being done right. This is one of the capital titles in the original Gameboy handheld that came out as a result of Super Mario World. It reintroduced a character that is still popular to this day and it did so with its own mechanics that are distinctive to it alone. Instead of jumping onto enemies, it encourages you to charge into them to beat them. You are encouraged to explore levels so you can find secrets and coins that give you bonuses and allow you to keep going. It's a way to play a villain that is taking on a worse villain and sometimes, that's just a lot of fun. This is a spinoff of the Mario franchise that is most certainly worth a look.

#120 DUSK

The Quake style first person shooter was once a landmark in the genre. It took a moment for the industry to catch on, but now we have a title from 2018 that seems to understand it to the very minute detail. It tells its own story of a very powerful man being forced into a fight with a cult that are trying to bring about their god to fight the powers that be. It's a little vague as to the actual story, but we know that Dusk Guy lost his family and now he's going to fight through the cultists and their horrific beasts. This takes inspiration from not only Quake, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You feel like you're in rural areas going into industrial zones filled with enemies trying to kill you. Using your arsenal against their magic and evil powers, you blast them into the next world to meet their god in pieces. This game does the FPS genre right and the retro feel is captured to a wonderful degree. 

Virtuamehameha #3 - When Should Dragon Ball have Ended?

Dragon Ball has been going on since the manga was released in 1984, and it has garnered a fanbase that is still alive today. Whether it is alive and well or not is up to interpretation. The thing is, Dragon Ball ruled the internet for a brief period in the later 90's and early 2000's. Despite a luke warm reception at first, where Dragon Ball was cancelled in the United States, Dragon Ball Z was much better received. Once it came onto Cartoon Network's new Toonami time slot, it exploded into a mainstream phenomenon. Dragon Ball Z merchantdise became a staple to so many children and so many of them needed to run home from school to make sure their VCR recorded the episode at the proper time. 

Since its hayday, and once the Dragon Ball community found itself all over the information super highway, something happened to the fans. There came a period of Dragon Ball Z where a lot of fans began to splinter into smaller groups. Once the dust actually settled and the hype died down, there came a clear segregation of fans and what they considered true Dragon Ball lore. This was not helped at all by the revival of the series as Dragon Ball Super. Many considered it far better than GT, some considered it worse. Some people even considered it Z, even when it was so clearly derivative of it. 

Dragon Ball was, sadly, not made with a complete creative freedom of its creator, the late great Akira Toriyama. Many fans did not see it as it was happening, but soon we began to notice the cracks in the preverbial mirror. When it was initially created, Akira Toriyama was not going to go nearly as far with the series. After the Cell Games, he was planning to end the series, but once the studio caught wind of this, they told him no, the show must go on. 

Enter Buu. Many will cite Cell as the greatest villain and highest peak of the series, and Buu is often seen as a very low point. There are many, many reasons for this. For one thing, the Buu Saga is entirely too long, Buu is entirely too powerful and the storyline for the entire Saga sees the death of major characters, the Earth itself, and Buu himself is just flat as a character. This was only the beginning, though, as Dragon Ball GT was flat out of decanonized by fans.

After GT ended, the series went radio silent, so of course, after nearly 20 years of nothing but a couple specials, the fans were more than ready! Of course it was going to be better than GT, how could it possibly be any worse? Was it worse? Yes and no. The real problem with Dragon Ball Super was that it borrowed so heavily from Dragon Ball/Z that it may as well have been wearing its skin. Not only did it keep stealing scenes and ideas, but it kept making more and more transformations for Goku to reach so he could defeat enemies. It kept reaching milestones like the first female Super Saiyan, Vegeta reaching forms he never had before and on and on. There was even an episode that teased bringing Kaiosama back to life, which never happened that I'm aware. 

Meta jokes, bringing in characters from Dr. Slump, it really seemed like nothing was off the table for Super. It descended into the same problems of late Dragon Ball Z and GT, too many ideas while feeling the need to bring back old ideas. Much like Hollywood, it really seems like the studio has no intentions of letting this cash cow die. It has grown to ridiculous levels and what was once Dragon Ball lore has become confused and lopsided. 

A huge example of the lore becoming muddled and convoluted is the Black Goku Saga bouncing back and forth between the Trunks future and the present. In the name of making a horribly contrived arc in this new show, they destroyed everything that they fixed in the Cell Saga. Everything that Future Trunks did was undone and the future continued to be garbage. 

With continued repeated arcs, like tournaments, new gods descending on Earth to destroy it for more and more contrived reasons, someone should really start to look at the forest for the trees to see how far we've fallen off the rails. Son Goku was once a child prodigy fighter who travelled across the world to search for the Dragon Balls and do good in the world along the way. It was comedic, it delved into themes like friends, family, loyalty and learning to be part of new worlds. It became more popular with the fighting, but it never lost its comedic element, though it was not seen as often in Dragon Ball Z. 

Now, it doesn't seem like the show knows anything about where it's going and if it does, it doesn't seem to know how to execute these ideas. Bringing back Freeza, making Freeza an ally, bringing back Captain Ginyu only to kill him off almost immediately after, nothing really seems to be off the table anymore and that sort of chaos is not very good for a show while the real brains is no longer at the helm. Toriyama had very little to do with Dragon Ball Super, other than a consultant. 

The answer to this question is fairly clear. Dragon Ball Z stopped being fun and imaginative when Akira Toriyama started to lose his gusto for the series. He was very happy with how popular it became, but he was still a mangaka with other ideas. When he was forced to make the Buu Saga, he did his best, but it was clear that he was lacking focus or any good ideas for things to do. 

Now with the passing of the master himself, Dragon Ball should be laid to rest as well. It's obvious that whoever they have holding the reigns or the people at the writing table just can't come up with anything real or concrete. The show is nowhere near as popular as it was during its hayday and that has to do with many things, but the quality has to be one of them. Dragon Ball Super may be better than GT, but only just so. Toriyama didn't have all of the best ideas, but he obviously had better things planned for his characters than dragging them through endless amounts of mud and making them get higher power levels with new forms. They're not going to end it officially anytime soon, but I really hope they at least give it another long rest at some point.

Now, ending this on a high note, I will say that Dragon Ball Daima looks pretty good. It at least looks like a fresher start than Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball GT combined. I'll more than likely give it a look at some point and present my findings in the future. Until then, keep classic Dragon Ball alive and keep drinking water.   

Virtua Neptune's Least Favorite N64 Games

To be honest, this list was rather hard to make, because even these titles have their own small charm. Well, the former titles do, the latter titles are rather smelly as games go. One game you may see missing is Dai Katana for the 64, but that game review is going for the PC port, as it is the original and I've never played it for the console. Still, there were enough titles to give this list that accent of terribleness and guilty pleasures. That's right, some of these come with a somewhat ironic recommendation. They still have that old N64 nostalgic charm and some of them you more than likely played in your childhood. It's a real statement for the system that it was so difficult to gather up this small scrap of games to criticize. Still, there is some rather filthy quality here.

  

South Park

You know, sometimes, when I shoot turkeys, I'd like to see what I'm shooting at. There's Silent Hill levels of fog, then there's South Park on Nintendo 64. I understand that there were some serious limitations to this game and it did have some charm to it. Multiplayer games and cheat codes were actually pretty fun experiences. It's the single player games that really killed this title because of the pacing and the long, drawn out quality of these levels. There are very few people who can get past the second level because this game is soooo horrifically boring without a party of friends to go four player mode.

Quest 64

The limitations of the system obviously had something to do with how Dragon Warrior came out. It was a marvel of its time because of how it revolutionized the RPG industry in the ways of video games and the series became very successful with all of the leaps and bounds it made afterward. Quest 64 didn't really learn much, other than put it in 3D. This story and characters have very little charm, unless you've got some kind of nostalgia. Sometimes, simple is good, but not this simple.   

Mace: The Dark Age

A game that is fun for maybe the first run-through, then you start to realize that the fighting controls and the characters are rather bland. It is entirely too easy, because the enemies last for the blink of an eye. You can spam some overpowered attack and the opponent is powerless to stop you. True to the Mortal Kombat Klone genre, it's a fighting game with Fatalities that they call Executions, and they are all so bland. There may be an entertaining one here and there, but for the most part, you just fall apart the moment they take a swing. As MK Klones go, it's not terrible, and the 3D is nice, but the game is too boring to recommend to anyone.

Carmageddon 64

The racing game where making sense or having a point was a bit of an after thought. This is supposed to be a game where you can wreck your car into other cars and run over zombies. The original game for the PC had you running over people, but this version was censored, so now they're zombies. These racing maps were just mindless mishmashes of buildings and roads. You can't navigate them to save your life. The camera is so terrible, it literally makes the controls worse. They should have crashed this game rather than releasing it! 

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

Hey, were you looking for a terrible, repetitive beat'em up that had no impact and looked like one of your favorite heroes from the 90's made into a pixelated stick figure? No? Well it happened and this game is a testament to how bad a game can go. This is like if Spider-man for the Dreamcast was drained of vitality and given the most generic combat. It features people from the show, but there is no reason for it to be so boring. The cut scenes are just flash cards and depict a terrible rendition of the Batman Beyond movie. Top it off with long, boring dialogue scenes before another run upon run of smashing up things over and over again. Just give this a pass... a bat pass... 

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero

There was some potential in creating a Mortal Kombat platformer featuring Sub-Zero. This game used none of it and gave us a tedious run of the MK world through 2.5D. The jumps and the tricks you need to do are beyond impossible to get right twice. You will die so many times and the traps will kill you so many times that you will more than likely find that this game is not worth the time. With a fighting game mentality shoved into a level based platformer, you can't even use your ice powers right away. Why in the hell would they leave out the ice powers, which the character is known for, and hide them behind a level system in a game that has no other roleplaying game elements? It gives me BRAIN FREEZE!

Superman

This character will never get a good game at this rate. We haven't even talked about the PS2/Xbox game that slithered under the radar for so long. Superman for the Nintendo 64 basically claimed the very top of the mountain on this system and if there are worse games for this sytem, maybe it's a good idea I've either forgotten about them or have not played them. Flying through rings, clumsy, HORRIBLE controls, horrific graphics and settings have all made this game infamous for how utterly unplayable it is. It is a force of will to get through the fourth level, let alone beat this horrific game. You make one mistake on these numerous rings, or you miss them by a molecule, and you have already gotten to the point where you can't beat the level and you start over again. There is a reason Titus has become one of the beacons of crappy games throughout the years. They not only made Superman, they made Carmageddon 64 and they also made one of the worst Robocop games as well. They're real heroes of the terrible 64 games industry. 

There are other games that fit into he worst N64 games, but they will be brought under consideration later on, if ever. The Nintendo 64 had a rather small library and the number of terrible games on it is actually quite limited. Even some of their worst games, like WCW/NWO titles have some charm in a crude way. It's a very tightly knit console, but if there are any more under performers we get into, you'll be the first to know. Let's get back to the real meaty games. Just remember to take them down with some water.