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McGoo [gDC]
Reviews
Power Stone 2 (2000)
Like the Original Crossed with Super Smash Bros.
The original Power Stone was one of the best videogames bar none. This sequel is like a pretender to the throne.
Also it has the same characters and roughly the same play mechanics one of the notable differences is the way it exchanges the kick for essentially another GRAB. Also poor trade-offs are the seven standard gems (fixable in the options but it's standard) easier-to-interrupt fusions, double fusions, lack of a second with-stone attack, lack of multiple sections of certain arenas, stupid polygon fighting team rejects in the last level, easy bosses on standard difficulty level, impossible bosses on hard, the way Sudden Death is truly Sudden Death, the weakness of Pete, the strength of Gourmand, the uselessness of Basic mode, and the incomprehensibility of Adventure mode.
Yet... if you get three friends together you couldn't possibly have more fun. If Power Stone 2 had been a multiplayer corollary to PS1 then it would have been perfect. If it had been on-line, it would have been heavenly. Great, but with lots of minor gripes. Recommendation to Capcom: PS3 should be more like PS1.
Metal Gear Solid (1998)
The Valley of Gameplay
Just as certain games signaled that mo-cap or rotoscoping were becoming over-used and hindering gameplay this game signified to me that cinematic videogames were starting to kill the fun in the games. Fifteen minutes of the kind of adventure game puzzle-solving that I could give or take were followed by about twenty minutes of cinema that COULD be skipped if you wanted to be utterly clueless about your next action. You could never tell when the game hints would come as they would be interspersed between Kojima's philosophy about nuclear proliferation anyway.
Some of the actual gameplay was pretty neat and some was terrible. The voice acting was great and particularly notable in my mind was the memorable and hillarious Revolver Ocelot's "Ah control the bullets, ah make them go where I want!" in addition to Psycho Mantis' totured "WHY!? Why can't I read your mind?"
Over all the VR missions were the best part of the game because they truly focused on the stealth. In the real game I got the title of "Elephant" but was it truly hindersome? Not really. Also, the repeated fights between Liquid Snake and Solid Snake and the end were ridiculous. One of them simply should have died after dying several times.
That's about all there is to this game. Let's hope that Square, Konami, and others realize their mistake and that movies don't kill the videogame star.