- Like the screenshots say, this play-through was only a Basic/Pro/EX Tour run. I did not go for completions of the MAX tours.
- A little background (someone please write in and correct me if this is wrong): While this game is called Ridge Racer 2, it is not a sequel. It is the 2004 âRidge Racerâ game for PSP, but with some new content added. If you have played this, you have also played all of the 2004 Ridge Racer.
- I have sorta bounced off various Ridge Racer games over the years, but this one was appealing because it seemed like a way to experience most of the stuff (or the best stuff?) from most earlier games all at once; would recommend as anyoneâs first Ridge Racer game, it doesnât have any prerequisites and isnât hard to pick up and play
- As importantly, it has tons of the great MUSIC from several RR installments. This is THE thing Ridge Racer is famous for, do not miss out on it when playing.
- RR Races are sorted by Class, where the lower the class number the slower the cars are. I really like how this is NOT structured like e.g. Mario Kart, where slower == easier. There are lower-class circuits all the way up through the EX tour, and some of them are the hardest ones. As the philosopher-king James May loves to point out, all cars are at their most fun when they are at the ragged edge, and slower cars are at the ragged edge more of the time, so they are the most fun.
- This installment also changed the game mechanics slightly as far as the drift system and how to build up boost. It does not match Ridge Racer 1-5 (this system may even be the one still used today? Not exactly sure on that). In any case, it feels great. Lots of people who work on these games also worked on Initial D simulators such as actual licensed games or Segaâs racing cabinets, and it really shows. If you want to imagine the feeling of what it could be like to play a video game version of Initial D, Ridge Racer is your answer.
- Overall this is a âstill holds up todayâ rec. Obviously itâs on a fairly-current console compared to everything else on this site; I donât think moderns will have any issue with it
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Ridge Racer 2
(Completed on 17 May 2026)
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Mega Man Battle Network
(Completed on 12 May 2026)
- Like the MMBN2 review, this is only a 1-star completion; it doesnât have any of the postgame stuff like the Bass fight
- That being said, the main game sure does have some PROBLEMS.
- The overworld is small and boring and full of empty space
- The internet-world all looks the exact same and is not fun to explore at all, there is no payoff for curiosity. Itâs just a big pointless maze.
- Playing as Lan and finding hidden places to jack-in is probably the coolest part, because you never know what object in the overworld has a jack-in port. When you go insid they all look distinctive and provide the opportunity to collect chips that you may not have got elsewhere
- In my MMBN2 review, I complained about this game being too simplistic, even though I hadnât ever finished it before. Now I have finished it and that opinion has not changed at all. It never ramps up and becomes more complicated.
- The simplicity cuts both ways even: the enemies have very little variety, and as a result your own chips have very little variety. Seriously you can cruise through pretty much the entire game once you can stack your folder with DynaWave3
- In RPG terms, this game does have âdungeons,â with boss fights at the end, but said dungeons could have used a lot more work. There are very few puzzles which are rewarding and make you feel smart, theyâre pretty much all tedious and make you feel like youâve wasted a bunch of time. The power plant / battery puzzles are notorious for this and while itâs true they are the worst in the game, the other dungeons arenât THAT much better. What in the hell kind of puzzle is âguess a number between 0 and 99â??
- However, for all the problems Iâm complaining about here, let us not forget that gameplay conquers all. Truly excellent gameplay can paper over SO many problems, that is the entire point of a video game. And you can tell (and I think Capcom could tell) that they had a real diamond on their hands in terms of gameplay design.
- The battle system is incredible; there is nothing really like it, and it is a complete solution to the usual JRPG âpress A to winâ problem. Yes you can grind to a degree, but thereâs not that much of a reward for it; the game never stops asking you to have some skill when it comes to combat. Yeah the enemies are simplistic but that can be fixed, which they did in later installments. The thing that cannot be fixed is bad systems. The game has good bones, you could see it from this very first installment, Capcom knew it, and refined it and wrung all they could out of it over years of making new games in the series.
- For that reason, this game is sort of âworth itâ to play as a reference point for all that came after. Even the parts that will make you mad are not necessarily THAT onerous because the game isnât very long. My 22hr time was a fairly slow pace even.
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Internet Search Tips - Gwern →
A pretty old article which is now more important than ever, being as every major search engine has decided to ruin their product over the past vew years
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Resident Evil 2
(Completed on 8 Apr 2026)
- Like the ending screens say, I played âLEON Aâ and âCLAIRE Bâ so thatâs what this is a review of
- While Claireâs scenario B is IMO easier than Leon A, as you can see, I accidentally left Claireâs game running overnight once, so the Total Time is way off. Really wish there was something I could do about this; I donât care too much about the rank but I would like to know what my actual time was
- Anyway, none of that stuff really changes the gameplay, and the gameplay is still excellent. I continue to think that the âoriginalâ version of any Resident Evil is the best. Some of the remakes sorta have their place, but the pure gameplay is never as fun as it is in the authentic original, with the tank controls.
- If you enjoy any of RE1-3, or Dino Crisis, or the million other games Capcom made that run on this engine, you will enjoy this one. It has nothing groundbreaking, just another big satisfying puzzle box to crack open. Itâs a police station this time instead of a mansion
- Compared to the first one, I think the puzzles are a little too easy and the location isnât as interesting. There are way too many times when the complete solution to a puzzle is all in 1 room, or contains pieces in rooms that are right next to each other
- I did, however, appreciate the increased enemy variety. RE2 has much more opportunity than RE1 to strategize about what enemies to kill vs which ones to run around, what to spend ammo on, etc. Planning how to route your run is so, so much fun
- This is also not relevant to the gameplay but since itâs the very first appearance of Leon, I can see how he became the fan favorite. What a great character.
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007: Everything or Nothing
(Completed on 25 Mar 2026)
- Reviews on this site are only meant to cover gameplay, but if you donât know the story of how this game came to be, you have got to look it up. Itâs completely insane. I say this because if you know how itâs made, thereâs no chance in hell youâd ever believe it could work. It sounds like it can only be a train wreck
- And yet, it may be one of the greatest arcade style shooters of all time
- Itâs disguised as a sort of adventure game with this big important story and all these cutscenes, and you can play it that way if you want, but thatâs not really what it is
- No cutscene is ever unskippable except for the first time you see it. You can always go straight to the gameplay. There are 29 individual missions, and none of them are made to take more than 10ish mins to complete. A lot of them are in the 7-8 minute time frame. Because this loop is so quick, the main thing you are doing is playing for SCORE. You are meant to get a score of âGoldâ by playing the mission over and over again until youâve routed it perfectly
- I say ârouteâ in the literal sense: you are meant to discover and memorize the best path between enemies, weapon pickups, health pickups, cover etc. Especially the way health pickups are scattered around, it is very obvious that 00 Agent is the intended way to play the game. It flows incredibly well
- If I had to name a low point of the game, I guess Iâd say the vehicle missions, but none of them are really that bad. For a game that isnât a car game, the car missions feel pretty good. Itâs just that they distract from the gameplay loop of the ârealâ Bond missions
- Speaking of real Bond missions, of all the 007 games I have played over the years, this one has by far the best and most memorable Bond Moments. It really feels like you are being rewarded for thinking like Bond.
- It also has a targeting and aiming system that is not like anything else Iâve seen. You have to play it to understand it, it isnât possible to describe it in writing. But the reason it is so good is that it lets you play fast and REWARDS SKILL without feeling like a twitchy zoomer shooter.
- Overall this is a HUGE recommend, itâs not even âgood for a licensed game,â it stands all on its own. The James Bond âskinâ over this gameplay loop was not even necessary but they did it anyway and itâs awesome. Filed under âabsolutely does still hold up todayâ
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Final Fantasy III
(Completed on 28 Jan 2026)
- This is an English-patched version of the Famicom original. The patch I used was the Alex W. Jackson, Neill Corlett, SoM2Freak one from 1999
- I did not try enough different english patches to have an opinion on which one is âbest,â but every guide you find for this game is written based on this one. Also, lots of item names and job titles are translated more literally rather than using Square-Enix terminology.
- In this era, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy seemed to be locked into this war with each other, sorta like Mercedes and BMW used to be, where they keep copying each others features and trying to outdo each other in certain ways. The big gimmick on this one is getting 40% of the way through the game, and finding out the world is much MUCH bigger than you thought (which DW also did at one point, not sure if it was before or after)
- All that being said, I think squenix was running out of steam by the time this release came together. The job system is fine, but you run into a flavor of that Suikoden problem where they want to make it so any party is viable, which drops the challenge level by a lot.
- This is especially grating by the end of the game, where actually it turns out there are 2 ultra awesome jobs that are purposely a head and shoulders above all else (1 magic job and 1 weapons job). The whole first 99% of the game is âhave whatever party you want, you can do anythingâ then the last 1% is âlol kidding only 1 party worksâ
- Obviously you can change all that if you just grind levels but clearly thereâs a âright wayâ youâre intended to play the game
- One of the knock-on effects of this is you never ever get that feeling of tension when you fight your way deep into a dungeon, beat the boss, get something awesome, then have to fight your way back out and have every step and every random encounter be dangerous. I and II could make you feel on the edge of your seat that way. III never does this, itâs a very chill and relaxing run. 0 stress until the final dungeon of the game.
- For all my complaining, I canât honestly sit and say the game is âbad.â There is a floor of quality youâre getting with FF games, and itâs not like III is even close to the worst. You know youâre getting awesome music, you know youâre getting a really cool world to go explore, and you know exactly what game mechanics youâre getting and whether you like it.
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Dino Crisis
(Completed on 7 Jan 2026)
- As a Resident Evil game, Dino Crisis is better than a lot of Resident Evils that have come along over the years.
- The setting and the enemies are not quite as varied and dynamic as even RE1, but most of the rest of the game is nothing but improvements on the formula
- On Normal mode, Dino Crisis is also way WAY easier than RE, so maybe a good option for getting into this kind of game.
- It would have been nice if there was some kind of mode or system where you can dial back some of the baby stuff. The massive inventory and unlimited save slots really do blunt a lot of moments that otherwise would have been suspenseful and nerve-wracking
- There are also some great new âreal-ass horrorâ moments, which I will not spoil, but they are for sure classics on the level of the dogs jumping through the window in RE1.
- FWIW, those 5 âContinuesâ I blew were all on the same T-Rex encounter and if youâve played this game you know exactly which one Iâm talking about. That is a great little âpuzzle fight.â
- The pacing and puzzle density is the standout feature of Dino Crisis; there is very little backtracking, very little wondering where to go (you just have to survive the trip there! itâs still asking you to execute!), and you can essentially hold the entire map in your head
- Overall, highly recommend this, especially if you picked up a RE game and thought it was too hard. It might even be better to play this first, then do the classic REâs.
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