Zombie Virus PS2 [REVIEW] | Ambulance VS Zombies

Yeah, October is far, far away, but extreme times call for extreme measures, and even more extreme unaccounted issues call for improvisation, so we’re unearth a real piece of shit game from the bargain bin dimension of the PS2, with this rewrite for Zombie Virus..

The generic title does bely a more interesting idea that the original title, The Zombie VS The Ambulance, which might give away to more expert gamers that, yes, this is more trash coming from D3 Publisher budget line of releases, the Simple 2000 Series for the PS2, developed by an obscure studio, Vingt-Et-Un Systems, that mainly did work on these budget Simple Series title…. and to my total surprise is far from defunct, as in the last decade has worked for Capcom titles such as the RE 3 Remake, Ghost N Goblins Resurrection, and the Capcom Arcade Stadium collections.

Not to be confused with another budget title from the very same collection/line, Zombie Attack, which is an action game by Tamsoft, so eventually i’ll have to feature it here in some way.

This one is about the age old tale of zombies and their natural enemy, a sentient ambulance, or so i would say, but the game actually has a plot, because there has to be, not that it amounts to much and it’s hard to care about it since it’s a budget release through and through, with dialogues after important story beats but no voice acting, and most of the story told by silent walls of text.

Again, the usual fare for a budget release of this era sporting the various labels D3 published these things outside of Japan (as in, mostly in European territories), pretty much to be expected.

In short, everything was fine and dandy in the utopia known as Sunlight City, until an eartquake happened, literal dark clouds start spreading about, and presto, not even 1 minute into the intro cutscene and a good 90 % of people turned into zombies.

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Demolition Girl PS2 [REVIEW] | Attack Of The 50 Foot Dutch Wife

Tamsoft today might be working on big licenses like the Captain Tsubasa game they did for Namco Bandai, or the upcoming new Bleach fighting game, but i will never forget that they cut their teeth and for most of their career they were hacking out a lot of budget games for D3 Publisher, eventually making franchises with Oneechanbara, curating various hack n slash spin-offs of series like Neptunia (also, the cancelled Hinomaruko project, i remember) and working on pretty much all Senran Kagura titles in some fashion, even the later spin-offs.

But today we’re reminiscing (this is a rewrite, FIY) about one of their absolute worst titles ever, with Demolition Girl, one of the many titles they cranked out for PS2 in D3’s Simple 2000 Series, some already reviewed in these pages like Shogun’s Blade, others that might be worst revisiting and talking about again, as with the horrendous Deep Water (AKA The Daikaiju) and Zombie Attack, or freshly feature here, stuff like “Taxi Rider” or “Pink Pong”, i feel like i should clarify yes, they were brought over in NA and-or PAL territories with those titles for real, i’m not altering them for a lark.

As to why this one over so many shitty games from that era of the company… you’ll soon see.

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[EXPRESSO] Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024) | Chaos Control(led)

Time for Shadow to enter the fray, in the third live action Sonic The Hedgehog film.

The plot sees Sonic and his friends Tails and Knuckles summoned to fight a new menace, Shadow, a nother powerful alien hedgehog that was sealed away for the last 50 years in a remote prison, until someone freed him, framing the defeated and basically retired Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik as the culprit, so the trio has to team up with the “Eggster” to find what is going on..

The first one was ok, the second i liked more and felt was a step up from the previous one, and once again this is an improvement, upping the stakes, introducing new characters , managing to pick up the right/good elements from the videogame series (Sonic Adventure 2 in this case) and use them well in this new narrative, committing to its 90s ‘tude even more by having Jim Carrey go full Dumb And Dumber as he plays two characters, both “Eggman” and his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, doubling the slapstick ham and sillyness, for better or worse.

Honestly, i do enjoy Carrey doing some of his old schtick, even if it’s a bit too much at times.

Also, the effects and CG for Sonic and friends are top notch, arguably the best they’vee ever been, seamlessly blended, he action delivers some fun corny “DBZ but even more for kids” fights, and it does manage to be silly and referential but without being grating, even for adults.

While i find it to be a quite decent kids film, honestly it’s about as good as a Sonic live action filn could have been, in both spirit and form, and while the post ending credits scenes tease of more, it is the cap of a trilogy, providing some closure indeed.

Turron

Still waiting on that ENA Dream BBQ in 2025.

Regardless, happy new year!

[EXPRESSO] Awaria STEAM | Ghostsmoochers Inc.

After taking the internet by storm with “Johnny Bravo goes to hell for a demon girl harem” AKA Helltaker, vanripper is back with a new game on Steam, Awaria, sporting a new original soundtrack by Mittsies, and being more of a bullet hell- action puzzle game thing “about working in a haunted maintance tunnel”, which yes, means ghost girls to talk, interact and sometimes kiss, though, the Steam page content warning makes it clear by saying “it’s all tame”. It is. Pretty cute designs, still.

It also has the same business model as Helltaker, as in it’s free, but to support the developer you can buy the optional DLC as a “thank you”, which also nets you a digital artbook and a Babezki (a kind of Polish muffin) recipe, but again, you can also unlock the same content in the in-game gallery.

Gameplay is pretty frantic, and has you move your character about to collect items, activate item printers and interact with broken generators, requiring certain items to be fixed in a limited time, while avoiding the ghost girls attacking you, as you die in one hit, a drone will take a hit for you and respawn every 10 seconds, which are lot more than they sound given you’ll need to be constantly zipping around the level.

It’s a 2 hours affair, a bit more if you want to finish the game on Hard difficulty and unlock everything, but it’s quite intense, the gameplay is easy to learn but actually challenging and rewarding, the final boss levels this time around are better designed (as is the game overall compared to Helltaker), Mittsies soundtrack is another banger, pity for the sometimes laggy performance, but it maybe be my old rig.

Once again, i highly recommend playing it and supporting everyone involved.

Ye Old Remaster Wsihslsti (for Saint Nick)

A bonus round, meant for the previous “draught”, but it still isn’t Christmas, as Mr. Wright would point out, so enjoy!

Since the industry is experiencing the inevitable resource creep and is eventually forced right now to reap what they sow, as the new consoles “have no games” because mainstream big budget videogames have pigeonholed themselves into a situation where is too expensive and takes too long to even make one of these (emulating the big budget cinema industry they wanted so much to be to a tee), remasters have been the way too go.

Old crap with new paint or fixes to the rope itself takes still less than making a new game from scratch, is easy as you can cater to the evergrowing nostalgia market (due to the gaming populace aging because natural entropy is a thing and your flesh will fail you, eventually) longing for ages long gone, be it the Atari early days or the mascote platformer craze of the 90s, you can safely bet on an already established name, and the market is big enough that even obscure shit like Felix The Cat videogames of yore and Bubsy can get a collection with improvements, quality of feature, and shady publishers like Piko Interactive can publish in 2022 (on Steam at the moment, with console releases coming) a somehow buggier, worse looking version of Glover than when it launched on Nintendo 64. In 1998.

Be it collections of enhanced ports or remasters that just update the graphical side of things, the public craves and buys these for a variety of reasons, publishers are more than happy as it cheaper all together, so in the spirit of the time i will be dotting down my own wishlist of remasters/ports/re-releases that i would like to see.

Order is casual, btw.

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[EXPRESSO] Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom (2024) | Lichdom: Battlemage

After the 4^th season of the anime, we got a Overlord film, depicting the Sacred/Holy Kingdom Arc that was discussed/teased but not shown during Season 4 itself.

For reference, the series is about a regular guy that get stuck in a VR MMORPG when the servers close, as its character, Momonga, an elder lich, with previous NPCs start acting on their own, including the servants/characters made by his fellow guild members basically electing him as supreme leader, and he’s basically forced to live up to their expectations while plotting schemes for world domination as the Overlord.

The plot here sees Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, finally having established its territory and himself as the “Sorcerer King” getting into an alliance with the Sacred Kingdom, needing help to slay the Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth that’s attacking them with his hordes of humanoid monsters..

Again, this is as about as good a synopsis as it gets without doing huge spoilers, and while it strikes a good compromise between being watchable on its own, since the story here presented (picking up the previously established but basically ignored “Jaldabaoth” storyline) has mostly original characters, provides enough closure, and you can guess/deduce some things… having context for the characters and situations definitely benefits the experience (since it doesn’t recap shit, just giving a very brief text explanation of the premise), which does deliver on both the spectacle, violence and some honestly fun, enjoyable “anime isekai non-sense”, including fantasy politics.

I was worried the animation might had the “CG-isms” seen in later Season 3 and Season 4… not as much, the animation isn’t notably better but you can tell there’s a bump in quality and direction to take advantage of it being a film, more battles to show the animation off, etc.

Quite satisfied with it, i must say.

Dynasty Warriors Origins [DEMO] [HANDS-ON] STEAM

I didn’t promise a hands-on first impressions on the demo of the newest Dynasty Warriors game, Dynasty Warriors Origins, because i don’t have a next gen console, and usually i play my musou games like that, but i figured out, there’s a Steam demo as well, maybe my relatively ancient rig can run it fine… and it did, actually surprised me that it’s good enough to run it decently.

So here it my opinions on the demo of Dynasty Warriors Origins, which lets you play one of the classic bouts of the series, The Battle Of Sishui Gate, where the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalitation attacks united and you also get to meet the demon in red, the mightiest among men, the one you do not pursue: Lu Bu.

So, in case you didn’t follow or knew of this new Dynasty Warriors game, the gist is that you play as a lone Wanderer, a skilled yet aimless martial artist that gets involved into the turbolent battles and political machinations of the characters from Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, so you can basically decide around a bit, and interact and fight alongside the many characters fans of the novel and Koei series have learned to know, love and hate.

It’s not quite an OC or a CAW character similar to how you had a self-insert protagonist in the Samurai Warriors Chronicles games, as the Wanderer is a precisely designed character and so you can’t change much about his looks (nor you can choose for a female option, as far as i remember), not that it matters for the portion of game given by the demo.

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[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Awakening iOS/PC | Heavy Gaching Gun

Finally someone decided to show its face globally, with a Metal Slug game that’s actually a run-n-gun shooter and not some tower defense or strategy-lite card thingie, Metal Slug Awakening (previously announced as Metal Slug Code J and available for years in SEA markets), aka the closest thing to a new, proper mainline Metal Slug title we’re gonna get with the new SNK.

In an unsurprising yet fitting fashion, it’s very similar to Contra Returns – also on mobile smartphones – not too surprising since it’s from the same developer, Timi (which also worked on Mega Man Dive X), it has an original storyline about a pharaoh and 4 gems, nothing worth committing to memory, as is the kinda rubbish and arguably random english voice acting.

I think they did a decent job at translating the art style to 3D models, though the new character designs really reek of “chinese gacha shit”, they do.

That aside, gameplay is traditional Metal Slug, with actually quite decent touch controls and some controller support (more for the Steam version), some concessions to modernity and a LOT of concessions to mobile gacha freemium design, from exps books and materials for upgrades, multiple tiers of rarity for everything, mini and normal bosses being more spongy so to incentivate using a weapon/character that inflicts more damage or status effects to certain types of enemies.

It’s not bad and the levels are new, but both level designs and foes dip heavily in nostalgia, so expected to see A LOT of old faces from the series’ long history.

Shame the F2P bullshit add various layers of faux complexity to deal with, and can make the difficulty fluctuate heavily.

It’s worth a try, but you actually wanted a proper Metal Slug 8, this ain’t, nor was ever gonna be.

[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Attack Reloaded STEAM | Freemium Free

So, yeah, this was unexpected, not unprecedented, but definitely unexpected, especially due to how quickly modern SNK put out and closed these free-to-play Metal Slug spin-offs.

But yeah, now the second tower defense Metal Slug title (Metal Slug Defense was a bit too old and kinda left unsopported for years, so it made sense to bring this one out of the freezer) is back as a 10 bucks single purchase, no microtransactions, timers or limited energy to play, none of that.

I’ve actually played quite a bit of the game when it was free-to-play on iOS, so it’s both kinda cool and weird to see it back as an actual game, you know, the ones you pay once and are actually meant to be played without the serpent of Eden asking for your credit card info.

I find it’s actually playable now, as the original release was notable worse in fighting anyone that didn’t wanna pay up, incredibly aggressive, a lot worse than Metal Slug Defense was, too.

Still, it’s a fairly mindless tower defense title, somewhat enjoyable despite very little strategy and little depth to it (which was also true of Metal Slug Defense, btw).

That said, it’s not a remake and it serves as a testament that nothing is actually free in free-to-play, because the design is untouched, meaning that the game is still unbalanced, heavy on difficulty spikes and grinding, holdovers that make littles sense without the F2P monetization, like the gacha to recruit units for which you’re given a fuckton of what was the “premium currency”.

Kinda odd as they also kept in the PvP online battles, but i guess why not, it’s not like they were gonna even try to balance this thing, it would have required pretty much making a new game from scratch.

P.S.: This review was made after playing the game a little after launch, pointing this out because this review has been (coincidentally) posted just before SNK announced in late November a vague free update coming in the future.