The Top Shelf: Case Files 156-165: "Colossalvania: Soulthroney of the Fahrennight"

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Mento

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Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done, ten games at a time. Be sure to check out the Case File Repositoryfor more details and a full list of games/links!

Case File 156: Nautilus's Shadow Hearts: From the New World

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  • Original Release (JP): 28/07/2005
  • PS2 Exclusive!

I found it very peculiar that I wasn't able to get too far into From the New World, considering how much I loved Shadow Hearts Covenant. Most of the same elements are still there: the judgement ring-enhanced combat, the sense of humor (if anything, From the New World's even more out-there), the gothic Lovecraftian horror edge, the early 20th century setting, and a long and convoluted story that goes some places both figuratively and literally (the series has always been a globe-hopping one). Something about the assembled package didn't quite stack up the right way, though, like two Jenga towers made from an identical number of pieces but configured in a way where one is far more stable than the other. I can't really point to any one individual element where the game collapses, though. As the name suggests, the majority of the game is set in the United States, with its characters drawn from early 20th century American history. There's the enigmatic hero Johnny Garland, a blond teenager because it's a JRPG; a couple of Native American characters, one of whom uses gun kata for his attacks; there's Mao, a martial artist and talking cat who is a close associate of Al Capone; an American ninja called Frank who trained under Mao; yet another vampire from the Valentine clan, this time a woman who can drastically change her body type for various benefits; and a flamenco performer who uses his El Mariachi-style modified guitar/rocket launcher/flamethrower to enact vengeance. So, pretty much a traditional cast as far as Shadow Hearts goes. I might have to play it again to figure out where and why I decided to drop out. I know it must've been something truly game-halting, like an incredibly tough boss, because there's little this series could throw at me that would deter me for long.

Alas, because I know I'll never like this game more than Covenant, there's no real point in revisiting it for this specific feature with that pesky sequel clause I've been hanging onto. I hold out hope that Marvelous - the Japanese conglomerate that absorbed Nautilus by way of feelplus and AQ Interactive, as well as absorbing the likes of Cavia, Artoon, G-mode and NA/EU localization publishers XSEED - finally get around to some kind of remastered Shadow Hearts trilogy bundle for the PS4 so I can have an excuse to play through them all again. For now, I'm not going to toss another huge JRPG into the second round if it stands little chance of getting anywhere. Eliminated.

Case File 157: Radical Entertainment's The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

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  • Original Release (NA): 23/08/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox and GameCube)

Ultimate Destruction was one of the first games I'm aware of to make good on the idea of the open-world superhero game - the type where a big city is your playground to run and jump and blow things up, rather than driving around in the streets obeying the laws of physics like some mortal schmuck. I'm sure there must've been earlier examples involving Spider-Man, but my distaste for that character has always put me off from webslinging around a New York facsimile. With Hulk, the game can loosen a lot of the limitations of a human character, giving him not only the means to punch anything and have it collapse into rubble, but an impressive climbing speed, huge horizontal jumps and a sprint that can outpace a car. There's something amazing about having those shackles taken off and going from a standard crime open-world game to one where you're whizzing around the place, leaping over buildings and punting tanks into the sun. It's been hard to return to standard open-world games since then - besides Saints Row 3, which straddled the line between the possible and the impossible (and Saints Row 4, which suplexed that line into oblivion), the only other open-world game I've enjoyed lately that didn't give you superpowers (or something close to it, a la Batman's gadgets) is Sleeping Dogs. It's like they always say: once you've gone superhuman, everything else leaves you fumin'. That's a very real expression.

As for Ultimate Destruction's shelf status, well, it's a precursor for what would eventually become a common sight in the PS3 era and beyond. I have trouble thinking of Ultimate Destruction as a "PS2 era" game as a result; not so much a game of its time but a game before its time. That's a cop-out reason for not including an otherwise fine superhero licensed game, but then beyond those exhilarating opening missions where you're learning to control the Hulk I also recall there being a lot of filler as you run around looking for machine parts. Along with Spider-Man 2, it set the stage for the likes of Crackdown, InFamous, Prototype, Batman Arkham Asylum (to a lesser extent, given those games have more in common with Metroid Prime) and a weaker 2008 Hulk game set in Manhattan that I almost confused for this one. Its legacy is assured elsewhere, so it doesn't need to be here. Eliminated.

Case File 158: Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit

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  • Original Release (EU): 16/09/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox and PC, later remastered)

Oh boy. Quantic Dream might as well be Quantum Dream because it exists in this perpetual paradoxical state of being critically beloved and critically reviled. For every article I've read or LP I've seen that's called out Heavy Rain for its creepy misogyny, pointlessly elaborate QTE controls or bathetic, mawkish scenes with bereaved father Ethan, there's an equal and opposite piece somewhere else honoring the game's incredible mastery over storytelling and the way player agency creates this malleable, living narrative that changes based on how the game is played. With Fahrenheit (a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy), the first Quantic Dream game to really lean hard on player choice as the determining factor for where the story goes, you can see the "good developer/bad developer" dichotomy play out in real-time as the game begins as a highly innovative spin on a supernatural murder mystery adventure game with two sympathetic protagonists who - due to circumstances - are directly opposed to one another. It then becomes an increasingly ludicrous mess as the story continues, turning some characters into Matrix-like wire fu superhumans and drags in an incomprehensible side-plot about sapient AIs trying to take over the world through an ingenue chosen one who is fated to speak the words of power at the end of blah blah blah it hurts just to recall any of it.

Look, even if you were to make the argument that the fantastic opening chapters more than exonerate the complete collapse of reason towards the end, and that's not an argument I'm interested in hearing again, the fact remains that there's a remastered version of this game floating around out there. There's no good reason to put the PS2 version of Fahrenheit in a venerated position with so many better updates (well, better looking updates) to choose from. Eliminated.

Case File 159: Nihilistic Software's Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

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  • Original Release (NA): 20/09/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox, GameCube, PSP and DS)

Getting back to the subject of superheroes, if there's one genre more crowded by the superpowered than open-world games, it's fighter games. Currently the FGC is celebrating the recent release of Injustice 2 and devouring any news they can get on the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, but it wasn't too long ago where superhero fighter games were treated with some amount of skepticism. Rise of the Imperfects, based on a short-lived co-operative project between Marvel and EA, attempted to bring their two media formats together with a comic book line and this fighter game featuring many popular Marvel characters and a bunch of villainous OCs that were quickly forgotten by everyone. Oddly, the comic books and video game share almost zero story details, suggesting that they were handed off to separate B-teams who didn't talk to each other. "It sounds great so far," I hear you say, "but what about the actual game?" Well, I've never played it. Like all the fighter games in my PS2 collection, it wasn't a purchase I made but part of a larger bundle I inherited that was full of games that wouldn't normally strike my fancy. Since I never hear anyone talk about it, I can't imagine it's all that great. I suppose it's unfair to make assumptions, but I've been burned by a few Marvel fighter games in the past: X-Men: Next Dimension comes to mind as a semi-recent example. Not terrible, but the added Marvel factor can't get past the fact that they're fairly rote as far as fighter games go.

If I was going to send a PS2 fighter game to the shelf, and I'll admit it's unlikely, it won't be this one. There are more than a handful of better regarded examples out there. I do look forward to seeing the science applied to it one day, though. Eliminated.

Case File 160: Konami's Suikoden Tactics

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  • Original Release (JP): 22/09/2005
  • PS2 Exclusive!

Suikoden IV may have left me cold (and slightly damp, because of all the boats and ocean and such) but the Tactics spin-off based on its story is a whole different barrel of fish. Is what I'd like to say, but in truth Suikoden Tactics has just as many problems: the washed-out setting's not quite the vibrant and colorful Mediterranean archipelago it could be, the forgettable characters fade into the already faded background, the plot of the game with its rune cannons and mutated fishmen makes little sense in retrospect, and the tactical aspect isn't quite as layered as you'd hope. Set before and after the events of Suikoden IV, it follows various dangling threads from the game including what happened to the central Rune of Punishment before and after it was fatefully linked to Suikoden IV's hero Lazlo and the ultimate fate of the deadly "rune cannon" weapons, the destruction of which became a major plot element towards the end of IV. They weren't all destroyed, it turns out, and the threat they pose overshadows most of Tactics's run-time as well. The game does a satisfactory job of translating the gameplay elements of IV into the new tactical grid-based format, with elemental affinities and terrain playing a large part as do the series trademark runes, that characters can attach to themselves for a finite number of spell charges. Weapon runes, too, have finite charges of special attacks. Other runes can provide a passive affect, or character-unique abilities that are effective out of combat: Viki's teleportation rune, for example, allows for instantaneous fast travel. The game, like other Suikoden spin-offs such as Tierkreis, doesn't have enough room for the full 108 Stars of Destiny, but still boasts a cast list on par with a Fire Emblem: that generally means you'll need to do some trial runs and careful vetting to determine who should stay in your small active party. My favorite thing about this game? Lazlo can come back as an optional character if you have a Suikoden IV clear save, and with his now-tamed Rune of Punishment is absolutely brutal in combat.

There are many RPG series that have tried their hand at a strategy RPG spin-off, with either more or less success than Suikoden here. Suikoden Tactics fits somewhere in the middle, between the superlative paragon that is Final Fantasy Tactics and lesser ones like Onimusha Tactics or Ys Strategy. If you're a fan of the series it might be worth trying out if you've exhausted all the core entries (including IV, since the plot of Tactics draws heavily from the events of that game), but beyond that it's largely inessential. This also marks the third PS2 Suikoden game of four I've eliminated, so I wonder which one could possibly be making it to the shelf? Eliminated.

Case File 161: Sucker Punch's Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

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  • Original Release (NA): 26/09/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (remastered for PS3 and PSV as part of The Sly Collection)

There was no way Sucker Punch was going to surpass Sly 2. That sounds like I'm not giving them enough credit, but the reality is that Sly 2 was a perfect execution of the premise and gameplay possibilities of an elevator pitch concerning master criminals pulling off heists in a world that operated on cartoon logic. Sly 3 instead tries to raise the stakes and expand the cast to give the player a greater range of mission types and playstyles, tying back into the mythology established by the previous two games: previous antagonists Panda King and Dimitri Lousteau, the (literal) Lounge Lizard, make a return as playable characters, as the party's explosives expert and underwater infiltration agent respectively. That's what we're doing with Honor Among Thieves: in order to mount an offensive on a genius former associate of Sly's deceased father, who is trying to crack open the Cooper family vault for what he feels he is owed, Sly decides he needs to expand his team beyond the brainy Bentley and the brawny Murray and starts courting new team members from all corners of the globe to cover every angle of the ultimate heist. It has the same wonderful international approach that Sly 2 does, but that also means much of its thrills - the inventive missions, its open-world stages, the dramatic final act heist that closes each of the said stages - were recycled from Sly 2 also. It is in essence the Super Mario Galaxy 2 of the series, as its few new inclusions can't quite replicate the magic or the innovations of its predecessor.

You'd better believe that Sly 3 is still one of the best platformers on the PlayStation 2. If you've never played it before, you should (after 2, naturally). The whole Sly franchise is operating on levels very few can approach, even if it's fallen out of grace in recent years. With the sequel clause in effect, however, there's no second place trophies to hand out here. Eliminated.

Case File 162: Team Ico's Shadow of the Colossus

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  • Original Release (NA): 18/10/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (remastered for PS3)

This week's The Top Shelf has been on a little on the negative side so far with this chain of eliminations, but I'm not going to be anything but effusive when talking about Shadow of the Colossus: Fumito Ueda's follow-up to the ethereal action-adventure game ICO. Shadow is a game of few words and little narrative prep work: the rebellious Wander is so stricken with grief at the death of his girlfriend Mono that he drags her and his horse Agro to an area forbidden by his society's oppressive theocracy because of rumors that he can wish her back to life. To do that, an ominous shadow named Dormin claims, he must first defeat the sixteen enormous creatures that inhabit the forbidden land and draw their divine energy from their fallen forms, empowering Dormin enough to grant Wander's wish. The game then drops you into this eerily barren world, with only a glowing sword to show the way to each of the game's monumental showdowns. The masterstroke of the game is how it turns each colossus into an environmental puzzle as well as a protracted boss fight, with most of the battle spent figuring out how to access the gigantic foe's vulnerable weak point(s). Sometimes that's as easy as briefly toppling a foe, or distracting them long enough to sneak up behind them, or letting them charge off a precipice. Others, like those that can fly or swim, require a bit more daring and timing. Each boss is its own self-contained adventure, and each is breathtaking in its execution. The way the music ominously swells when the creatures lumber into view, and how it switches to a rousing refrain once Wander is finally in a position to do some damage, to the somber requiem that accompanies each giant's final breath. There's a lot to be said for how a game's presentation can greatly magnify the emotional affect it has on its player, and few presentations can match Shadow of the Colossus. It's so well animated too, the way Wander swings around while clinging onto the colossus for dear life, sometimes tumbling as he runs across a colossus's back. At times, it feels like playing a melancholy and violent Studio Ghibli movie.

It's one of those games where reductively boiling down its gameplay - "you kill sixteen bosses in a row, with some long horseback riding in-between" - does the game absolutely no favors, nor does it properly convey the impact the game will have on those who have never seen or played it before. When we talk about "must play" games, we often means those of a general superlative quality but I think it could specifically refer to cases where you can't really understand the game's appeal without experiencing it for yourself first-hand. Shadow of the Colossus is easily one of the most impressive PS2 games I own from both an artistic and mechanical standpoint, and I can't see how any in-depth retrospective on the console could exclude it. Approved.

Case File 163: Namco's Soulcalibur III

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  • Original Release (NA): 25/10/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (later released for arcades)

All right, so I lied earlier. There was one PS2 fighter game that I wilfully went out and purchased, and it was the third Soulcalibur. I'd bought the second game for GameCube because I wanted to try a fighter game with Link in it, and before that I'd picked up a huge Dreamcast bundle from eBay that included the original Soulcalibur, and before that I was introduced to Soul Edge (or Soul Blade) by a friend of mine who owned it (and owned me at it). I haven't cared for many fighter games in the past - largely because I play them solo - but the Soulcalibur games have always had enough of a story mode built-in that it accommodated lonely weirdos like myself. I wouldn't say I could play one to the level of a Vinny Caravella (GBEast's best Soulcalibur player, as evinced by video footage on the site), but I got by. Soulcalibur III's about the point where the series started to wane, in my view at least, with a few new characters that did nothing for me: Tira, the 16th century's answer to Harley Quinn; Zasalamel, an enigmatic towering figure whose few notable characteristics include "has a scythe"; and "Owlboy" Olcadan, a legendary martial artist awoken from a centuries-long slumber only to find that the pursuit of wealth was more to his liking (all right, so I like Olcadan quite a bit, but still. Dude's got an owl head. We know what kind of perverts they can be). However, it did go all out on its single-player content, with both the Tales of Souls story mode and a more open-ended Chronicles of the Sword mode that attempted to forge a legacy for the player's created character, similar to the story modes attached to many modern sports games.

You know, Soulcalibur III does have some saving graces, but I might suggest that either of the two previous games are preferable. Even as a mute whose opening quip is literally just a "Yaaah!", I found playing as Link with a butterfly net to be endlessly more entertaining than anything Soulcalibur III had to offer, and Dan Ryckert - GBEast's runner-up Soulcalibur champion - will be quick to tell you that there's no beating the original. I'll give this to Soulcalibur III: it might be my favorite PS2 fighter game I own. If only I liked fighter games, then we'd be talking. Eliminated.

Case File 164: Konami's Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

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  • Original Release (NA): 01/11/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox)

It's odd to think that this is the last true 3D Castlevania game, because it feels like they were getting closer and closer to figuring it out. I'd bet a proper PS3 or PS4 3D Castlevania could've really knocked it out of the park with the added power. Metroid, which is in some ways Castlevania's closest genetic sibling, made the jump to 3D spectacularly with the Metroid Prime series due to how those games perfectly managed to translate a lot of that franchise's mainstays - exploring tight spaces in the Morph Ball form, Samus's various visors, the feeling of freedom conferred by the Space Jump, the Gravity Suit and the Screw Attack - into that new format. Lament of Innocence was a noble attempt at readjusting the Castlevania model for 3D - far better than the awkward N64 games - but suffered from problems unique to its reshuffling, in particular an over-reliance on dull, unfurnished rooms full of enemy waves. It's hard to make something in 3D as intricate as the luxuriously detailed pixel-based environments depicted in the GBA and DS Castlevanias, but Curse of Darkness got a little closer with how it opted to expand the game outside of the eponymous devil castle to cover its natural surroundings for a bit of variation. The story of a couple of rival occult alchemists is a little rote - it feels like the developers kept trying to reinvent new versions of Alucard or Soma Cruz; sympathetic characters with a streak of darkness in them that the game mechanics could exploit, rather than just another incorruptible Belmont and his magical whip - and in many ways Curse of Darkness didn't entirely address all the pacing and content-deficiency issues that Lament suffered from. I might still suggest that it is the superior of the two, even without Lament's "I'll kill you and the night!" banger of a one-liner, but it was still an indication that the 3D games had a ways to go to fully master the Castlevania paradigm the same way the 2D ones had long ago.

It's the only PS2 Castlevania game I own, so I'm inclined to send it ahead either way. Even if I'd take any of the GBA or DS games over it, or Symphony for that matter, this series means enough to me that I wouldn't be dismayed to find it on my shelf. For the time being, though, it'll have to compete with the rest of my reserves list. Considered.

Case File 165: Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

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  • Original Release (NA): 01/12/2005
  • Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox, GameCube, PC, Wii and PSP and remastered for PS3)

I'm not sure what it is about the third game in Ubisoft's wildly successful - and wildly influential - Prince of Persia reboot. The first game had the innovations, the second game had the personality (for better or worse), but the third game seems entirely too safe in comparison. It does brings back a concept from the 1993 Prince of Persia: The Shadow and the Flame, the first sequel to Jordan Mechner's classic original, by reintroducing the Prince to his shadowy clone. Rather than being two separate entities (like Dark Samus of the Metro... wait, is this really the third time this week I've referenced Metroid Prime?) the two Princes occupy the same body, with the darker version popping out occasionally to take over. These "Dark Prince" sections shift the rules of the game in some significant ways, giving the Prince better traversal skills with the detriment that the Dark Prince cannot let water touch him. As it becomes this game-wide struggle for dominance over the Prince's body, the Dark Prince tends to appear at inopportune times, conveniently whenever the doorway to the next part of the game has a waterfall over it and the Dark Prince is forced to take the long way around. It's more than a little goofy at times, but beyond that I couldn't really tell you a whole lot about how the game is different from its two forebears. It brings back the Dagger of Time and Farah and the Vizier, it quickly ties up the loose plot threads from Warrior Within with the speed and gracelessness of someone trying to delete an offensive tweet, and hurries towards a definitive resolution to the trilogy that feels a little unsatisfying.

What's more prevalent with video games sequels than sequels from other media is that they're almost universally better: game design is an iterative process, and with every completed game comes a lot of confidence and hard lessons learned. Thus, when it comes time for a sequel (provided the same team is behind it), the new game is that much more stable and functional, and builds from the model its predecessor left behind to expand its ideas and scope even further. The issue boils down to the diminishing returns those sequels provide, especially if they happen to retread a lot of the same territory. I'm not sure how to objectively rate The Two Thrones compared to the Sands of Time, but I know that I have a lot more affection for the latter than the former. Eliminated.

Results

At eight eliminations this week, this might be the most "not messing around" edition of The Top Shelf since the very first one (the only time I eliminated every game up for scrutiny). The latter years of a console is often when it produces its best work - my recent SNES wiki activities have taught me that much - but I just wasn't feeling it with this collection, most of which were either games I have no strong opinions on or were weaker sequels to games I've already approved for the shelf. Rest assured, however, that the final two "Round One rundowns" feature some of the best PS2 games I've ever played.

Before we get into all that, another "honorable mention" shout-out. Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission: Las Vegum (Etranges Libellules/Atari SA, October 2005) sounds like the most European-ass budget game imaginable, but you'll find France takes the Indomitable Gaul very seriously. Well, seriously in the sense in that they're willing to put some effort into his licensed games, not that Asterix is a comic book that necessarily takes itself too seriously. Mission: Las Vegum sees the two moustached warriors take on Caesar's new Vegas-themed amusement park after the village druid Getafix mysteriously defects to the Romans. The park is absolutely jam-packed with video game pastiches and parodies, allowing the comics' satirical eye to go wild over this guest medium. While a lot of these references are obvious enough, with overt nods to Lara Croft, Sam Fisher, Pac-Man, Sonic, Mario and Tetris, many more are cleverly hidden Easter eggs in the backgrounds of stages. The game itself is a linear 3D brawler with platforming sequences that's not too bad, but it wasn't what motivated me to see it through to the end. I doubt it would've made the shelf but it was one of my more surprisingly entertaining rentals for sure.

With only one Considered and one Approved this week, that brings our totals to 61 of 165 games to enter the second round and sixteen games confirmed for the shelf, respectively. Next week is our last but one for this inaugural round, and sees us finally breach 2006. The reign of the PS2 had very much ended by that point, but that's not to say it doesn't still have a few swansongs for us to acknowledge. Look forward to the introduction of a very important PlayStation-exclusive series as well as some noteworthy sequels next week.

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