Tomb Raider Anniversary - PlayStation 2 & 3

I figured I would talk about both Tomb Raider Anniversary for PlayStation 2 and for the PlayStation 3 as it's apart of the same game.

When I first bought Tomb Raider Anniversary I was expecting the game play to play just like Legend but with a few added stuff that Legend didn't have. Though I think they did remove the running at a high speed cause there was no need for Lara to run really fast on Anniversary.

If you played the game on your PC, original PlayStation or even Sega Saturn you would know that the graphics aren't up to par with today's standards since everyone has drenched themselves in the HD experience and some with the whole 3D gaming which to me is a huge waste of money.

Then you would find the first Tomb Raider to be horrible! But who would of thought they would remake the first Tomb Raider game and making Lara look sexy and hot and not ugly and with those horrible triangle boobs lol The music has changed but it still sounds the same but updated. Voice actress has changed but it's still the same chick who did Legend which is a plus cause I hate when they constantly change voices for Lara.

The PS2 version was ok, they did made one for the 360 which was better in graphics with HD and 5.1 surround sound but PS2 lacked a lot of those features so it was scaled down to SD but if you had your PS2 hooked up to a Progressive Scan TV then you could play the game with a bit more clarity. Wasn't much difference in detail and the Widescreen feature was lacking a bit.

The storyline is also the same but in the original game I thought there was Larson and the three dudes then Natlia but in the remake there are only two dudes and Larson. So where did her Magnum guns go? You get your weapons from the Skater dude, the big scary dude and Larson but the magnums are no where to be seen I kind of shook my head in confusion with that. Oh yeah if you care to watch a video of me playing Tomb Raider Anniversary for an hour then feel free to check it out below. I managed to upload videos from my Justin.tv broadcast so expect future updated entries of game play footage from me playing on Justin.tv. :)




I really did enjoy it on PS2 but then when I seen that recently they came out with a PS3 version of it along with trophies, HD and Legend and Underworld I was set so I bought Tomb Raider Trilogy. Sadly people complained that you didn't get the Anniversary DLC that came with the 360 version people felt cheated. Well PS3 users did get a extra bonus since it was ONLY for PS3 and not 360.

The graphics for the PS3 look really good especially in 1080p, the sound is also Dolby Digital 5.1, only complaint I had with it was that the sound was WAY too loud it almost seemed like it was sound boosting and I barely had my receiver up all the way. I think Sony should continue releasing classic PS2 games but I think they only do it for trilogies like Tomb Raider, but then they also do like games that were popular on the PS2 but they try to change textures and make it widescreen. I think it's just another excuse for people to buy the same games with nothing new unless you care for getting easy trophies since the PS2 never had trophies.

The Tomb Raider games will always be a favorite just wish that they would remake a few Resident Evil games for the PS3 and 360.

Classic Gaming - D2 - Sega Dreamcast

This game was a real big time favorite on the Dreamcast, so many people NEVER played the original D so when they played this game they were like "OH MY GOD the original D sucks compared to this game" indeed it was true. D2 was light years more improved and different than it's original on the PlayStation, Saturn and PC.

Since this was ONLY released on the Sega Dreamcast nobody really had the chance to play it except for those who owned a Dreamcast, sadly the system didn't last for very long and copies of this game were VERY limited in the U.S.

I got my hands on a copy from a person off Amazon used. It was like $17.99 for what the person was offering, hardly any scratches on the game I've had it for so long and decided to play it and record some game footage. 22 minutes worth of game footage :) But it's mostly just the opening movie and some of the opening parts of the game. I haven't played it in so long I totally forgot how to play it lol

I will tell you the reason why some people would prefer this game over the first D game. It's because the first D game was done with almost 96% FMV, and the only things that you had to do was push directional buttons, open doors, turn cranks and that was pretty much it. There was no save feature for D, you had to pretty much play the game ALL the way through and without a guide on how to beat the game you might eventually be playing this for quite some time. I do have a small guide for the turning room which was a bitch if you didn't know how many times to turn the room.



D2 was so many miles ahead of D. The only FMV cut scenes you would see are during the beginning and ending. Most of it was all in game stuff, also it gave you the chance of going in first person and third person mode. I never was able to finish the game I guess it was busy I just got tired of playing it and the monsters kicked my ass majorly, playing a lot of PlayStation 3 and then degrading to Dreamcast is just weird for my hands especially when handling the Dreamcast controller.

We never did see a D3 come out, though during the process of D2 there was a totally different type of game but they later scraped it, I believe it was suppose to come out for 3DO but it never was released it looked scary too.

PlayStation should totally release D and D2 on PSN Store cause it would benefit so many people, but at the same time you're probably looking at almost 4GB download for D2 cause it was spread on almost 4 discs which was insane cause D2 was on 3 discs for the PlayStation.

I still can't manage to find D Original Soundtrack, would of been nice to find it if people still have their copy of D Director's Cut and the mini CD that came with it. I was thinking of making a D Complete Soundtrack and adding in one or two bonus tracks from D2. Yet that's a project that will take a long time, same thing when I did Silent Hill 3 & Silent Hill 4 Complete Soundtracks, most people weren't even happy with the outcome. How sad, can't please everyone it seems. :(

Yakuza 3 - PlayStation 3

This game was on sale at Gamestop for like $16.99, thank god for that Game Saver card thingy. But I kept hearing this was a really good game. I took the chance, but hey it was a good investment I kept hearing it had elements similar to Shenmue which was an amazing game as well for the Sega Dreamcast. Sega can still make good games but it's system will live on!

So when I play the game I decided to get a fresh recap of what the previous two games were about, the best part is that I'm able to check out the storyline for the previous two games so I can be caught up. But you have to basically read a shit load of text to understand what's going on followed by cut scenes from the game.

After learning about the storyline you are left off just watching more cut scenes then you're finally in the game. I walked around the small area and I played some arcade games but sadly I couldn't play Virtua Fighter what gives? I would of loved to play it, maybe I need to beat the game or something?

From what the box says it's indeed ONLY on PlayStation 3 which is probably why you could fit a ton of shit on a Blu-Ray, 360 would probably compress the fuck out of it or put it on 4 DVD discs lol

Anyways the game is pretty fun, I like the storyline especially with the orphans you are taking care of, you get a chance to see the problems they face including one of the kids who is being bullied in school, not that the child is gay but it indeed happens to everyone including kids in Japan.

When you go into town you seem to find dickheads wanting to fight you, I think it was a total of 20 minutes and I ran into about 10 different gang members wanting to kick my ass it was like what the fuck? One of them says "blah blah blah I want to release my anger can we kick your ass?" Really if that's how it is in Japan I would need to bring a walking stick so I can beat the shit out of people walking up to me lol

After beating like a ton of people you are left with fighting bosses which you get a trophy for each boss you defeat which is now, but then there are like 40 other trophies that seem kind of hard as fuck to accomplish and I have yet to do it, the hard ones like the black jack and card games will be a bitch to get.

I've seen a few chubby looking guys on here as well, even older chubby guys, I wouldn't consider them bears but I am sure some would find them to be kind of bearish if you just add a beard or something instead of a mustache.

I'm actually quite hooked on the storyline and I'm hoping that there is still more story cause I think I played about 8 hours of the game so far, plus there are side stories and there is this cool thing where if you take pictures he will learn new moves and he posts it up on a blog I think it's calling revelations or some shit. It's quite cool, but then you have to press the correct buttons in order to take the picture, also need to learn the correct choice or else he'll send it and nothing happens.

The entire game is in Japanese, subtitles and all the other stuff the words are in English, but if you are going to look at a store or any of the signs in the town I hope you know Japanese cause I can't understand what is what.

Classic Gaming - Mortal Kombat Trilogy - PlayStation

At the time this game coming out I was excited to see what characters were in the game, from what I read you could play with characters from Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 even old characters like from Raiden and Kano from Mortal Kombat 1.

It even had stages from the older Mortal Kombat games. When I popped it in the character list was unlocked, I didn't know by pressing Select over Raiden or Kano you could switch from MK2 Raiden and MK1 Raiden and MK3 Kano and MK1 Kano.

You could even play Tournaments, and MK Two on Two Kombat which was only for two players but it was cool.

The bosses were also unlocked to and playable. Even had an easy way of unlocking cheats but there was not a whole lot of cheats out there. Mortal Kombat Trilogy lasted for a while until it was no longer a PS1 Exclusive it ended up coming out for Nintendo 64 and later on PC. The Nintendo 64 version didn't have the CD audio music but it gave people a new character. The graphics were also a bit dumbed down for Nintendo 64 as well which was normal since those N64 cartridges couldn't hold a large amount of data.

Seems that Mortal Kombat Trilogy was the last good Mortal Kombat game, then when they released Mortal Kombat 4 it all went down hill, not many people enjoyed the 3D aspect of Mortal Kombat but later people pulled out modded programs MUGEN which used Mortal Kombat's old engine which was fun since you could make new levels, create new fatalities and added your own music. Also add characters from other games to the mix as well. I wish a there were a few things they could of added to Mortal Kombat Trilogy but you can't do much when you are working with a CD with only a certain amount of information on it.

The audio on some of the levels were completely wrong this was probably due to not being able to fit more audio tracks into the disc so levels used MKII's or MK3's music especially the MK levels which went through a make over by taking out the old Shang Tsung sitting on his throne in the courtyard and putting Shao Kahn sitting there. I am sure if they were to release it again on the Next Gen consoles they would keep it all HD and make it look way better than the stuff on PlayStation One. Release it on both PS3 and 360, would get a lot of people buying it.

Classic Gaming - Mortal Kombat 3 - PlayStation

When my brother got himself a PlayStation back in the mid 90's I was excited when I went to Blockbuster and saw this in the PlayStation section since there were only a few games released for it. I rented it took it to my brother's apartment popped it in. I was shocked to see it was just like the arcade, even had the music MK3 on the SNES never looked like this.

The game even had still pictures and the storyline which tells you about what you missed between MKII and MK3. It even opens up with that classic Raiden picture. I dug into the game and it felt so like the arcade even having that Cemetery level which was not on the SNES version. I always wondered why they never included it.

During the 90's load times were a regular thing for disc based games like PlayStation and Saturn it would take around 10 to 15 seconds to load even longer if the disc was damaged or scratched. Also depending on how old your PlayStation is the game would probably even load during fatalities just so it can process the data.

The arcade version never had this problem since it was just a single ROM being played but the music was compressed a bit and so it didn't sound as clear as the PS1's version of MK3.

The game does tend to get harder when you're fighting some of the bigger guys like the bosses. I can never be able to beat them without cheating. I guess when it comes to it the games are arcade like feel but the computer still cheats like a son of a bitch