Tom Clark Writes:
" Some time ago, I was taking my daily walk and I saw a boy hitting something with a hammer or axe. I wasn't exactly sure what he was doing but I didn't care - I felt compelled to have a go too, just because he was smashing stuff. Is my desire to simply smash things aimlessly what gaming has made me become? Well, if it has then this new action RPG from Sting (not the rock musician) should quench my lust. However, it still takes more than repetitively hitting things to excite me, so can Baroque suffice with these extra requirements? Despite appearances of greatness, it just can't make the grade.
The first glimmer of grandeur coming from Baroque is the intriguing story, being all about a cataclysmic event that completely reshapes the land every day, and a kind of plague of the mind called Baroque. Granted, this possibly excellent story is not very original but it was enough to get me pretty excited. However, my enthusiasm soon dwindled when began to play; the story is mostly invisible and really has no impact on the proceedings, which is a real shame. This missed opportunity is even more aggravating than most, because the character you control has no memory, which seems like an obvious introduction for some narrational trickery. Instead of any intellectually pleasing mind-games though, you are simply given a worryingly slab-like gun (with very limited ammo), ordered into the randomly generated Neuro Tower dungeons and told to kill the very weird Meta-Beings that include flying fishes, wheel-like things and small insects with purple blood."
Digitally Downloaded writes: "So for this week’s Friday Ten we’re going to look at ten of the more obscure titles that were released on the PlayStation 2 that we believe deserve a second run. Because the PlayStation 2’s library is just so massive, this list isn’t every classic niche game, of course!"
You console gamers are hypocrites. Who cares about resolution? It's all about the gameplay, amrite.
Bow down before the master race.
Maybe they just want to play PS2 games on PS4 with trophies...or maybe it's a game they couldn't get their hands on.
Considering the internet generally represents the vocal minority of gamers with loud opinions, you're probably talking about them.
Ever wonder how remasters sell so well?
I'm buying games I never played or had before for ps2 and many can be expensive while I can now on ps4 enhanced and with additional features like trophies, shareplay etc where I can play local 2 player games with a friend online.
Salty PC nerdy race
You know, I bought a launch model fat PS3 with the backwards compatibility with the intention of doing just that as I never owned a PS2, but I think I only ever bought maybe 3 physical PS2 games for it and 1 or 2 digital and spent more time on PS3 games.
So truth be told I can kind of see why they left b/c out of the PS4, but having the option there is always nice.
I care about resolution...therefore I play PS2 games on PC since years :-)
Master Race FTW
Why not just allow us to insert PS2 discs Sony? You have a working emulator in the firmware just as Xbox One yet they allow disc. Upscaling.....what a cash grab.
Except the PS2 games have added trophies and are up scaled and have been QA'd which all costs money. Xbox is just basic emulation with no QA and that is why a lot of the games run horribly.
The PS2 games you can download from PSN do have trophies and I have noticed that here in Australia they are around AU$11 (US8.41) per game which IMHO is pretty good value.
My PS3 does a pretty good job of up-scaling and smoothing however I do have PS2 games that only have an aspect ratio of 4:3 (ie. Standard Definition) and even with some smart scaling on my TV you are still going to have vertical bars on your display. Even getting a PS2 game from PSN which was made for Standard Definition displays you are still going to get letter-boxing on a standard 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV.
Since my PS3 is a PAL version (ie. a mixture of hardware and software emulation) not all PS2 games run flawlessly. The game King's Field IV has some issues although you can complete the game by working around them. I do have three PS2 games that do work for a while then fail and you cannot work around them. All my other PS2 games do work flawlessly.
Note: For anyone reading this I suggest you look up "aspect ratio" if you don't know what that is. In simple terms it is the ratio of the width of the display to the height of the display.
I personally think they should have allowed a combination: they should have had general emulation, and also put games up on the PS Store like they are doing right now (a lot of people won't have their copy of Vice City anymore, for example, so Sony would still make loads of money anyway). But maybe that wouldn't actually work, and they simply need a little bit of optimization and QA for each individual game, within the emulation software. I don't know.
It just saddens me because the PS2 is my favorite console of all time (a very common sentiment), and it has such a large great library. A lot games that are niche, or have licensing issues, or were made by studies that are shut down (e.g. THQ), are inevitably never going to be put up (and may get lost with time). [Sigh]. That being said, I just bought the GTA Trilogy, and I'm going to have a ridiculous amount of fun with it. After that, I think I'll buy, Twisted Metal, Dark Cloud, and Bully.
Personally I don't mind paying for a game that I don't have (I do have Dark Cloud and sixty other titles) and in Australia I have noticed that the PS2 games on PSN are around AU$11 (US$8.41) which is IMHo pretty good.
It would be nice if I could play my old PS2 games on my PS4 via emulation but my BC PS3 still works and I can play them on that.
Still I do have allot of PS3 games and some PS4 games which I am currently playing so PS2 games hardly get a look in unless I get a nostalgia kick which maybe happens about two to four weeks of the year.
I sort of agree with you on this. I do have sixty PS2 games and three of them (Drakengard, Kimg's Field IV and BoF - Dragons Quarter) I still have and can play on my BC PS3.
I think there may be legal issues with a PS2 emulator on the PS4 that can play PS2 DVD disks. Basically there are few ways of doing this 1) Play the game via emulator off the DVD or 2) RIP the DVD to the hard disk and play off that but requiring the DVD to be inserted for authentication.
I desperately want all of the Tony Hawk, Burnout and SSX games. I would also love Destroy All Humans 1 & 2, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man 2, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Mashed: Fully Loaded and Downhill: Domination!!!
I hope Sony is actually able to do this kind of stuff, because if not, I'm honestly going to be very disappointed. And if they can't really tackle niche games that a lot of people loved, then what's the point? I was very happy they put up Bully and Manhunt last week though. Lets hope they can keep it going!
Also, I live in Ireland and they really need a category with all of the PS2 games in it. It's a bit messy.
I'm not sure about the Tony Hawk games but I've always been disappointed that the Burnout and SSX games didn't come to PC. The exception is Burnout Paradise of course, which actually did come to PC and was a fantastic port, but they left the excellent Big Surf Island expansion as console-only and although I thought EA would have brought SSX (2012) over to PC to help bolster their Origin lineup, they never did.
I'll be glad once PS3/360 emulation is fleshed-out more and better optimized so I can get these up and running on my PC. Thankfully it's already making great strides so even if certain games never come to PC officially, they always make their way eventually via emulation. I'll be glad when the day finally arrives where I can revisit Bloodborne and actually play the game at a stable framerate, unless Sony patches it for their PS4K console, anyways.
I don't generally like playing on PC tbh (just personal preference). I'm willing to give it another chance in the future, but I'm a college student, and I don't have the money to invest in a satisfactory PC right now anyway (I'm not bothered with the complexity of a PC, unless I'm getting a much better experience). Additionally, few of my friends play on PC besides an RTS junkie, and a lot of PC players I know seem a bit too occupied with talking about graphical options, and I find it *VERY* frustrating. It takes a bit of effort to get them to actually talk about mechanics, stories and the fun of games, and there way too negative about things I'd personally find insignificant (you or others may be an exception, but I hang around a lot of different types of gamers because I'm doing a video-game development course, and you notice patterns). I did play a little bit of Ultimate Spider-Man on PC a few years ago (I used motionjoy to get the PS3 controller working).
I just want to buy them as part of the ecosystem I spend most of my time and money with, get trophies, play split-screen for hours, etc. The Spider-Man 2 PC version isn't even the same game, for example, so I really want these games emulated. I think I'll probably become more interested in playing games on PC as I get older though.
@LucasRuinedChildhood
You make a good point about wanting to stick with the ecosystem that you spend most of your time and money with, but that's actually the reason I've started to move back towards PC.
Everyone is different of course but I've been a PlayStation fan since the original and I was used to every console coming with backwards compatibility (I bought the BC-capable PS3 a little while after launch) and basically knowing that my library of games would always be valid. I figured that with the PS3 being such a digital-centric console as well, that my PSN purchases of digital games would be safe and carry over to the PS4 since BC is something we could always count on Sony for.
Anyways, with the middle finger they gave loyal fans like myself with a lack of BC and a ridiculously-priced PSNow streaming service and obsession with rereleasing "remastered" games, I don't feel part of the Sony ecosystem any more and it's pushed me back towards PC where I can still play games from fifteen years ago without a hitch, and not have to pay any extra fees for turning the graphics options up higher or the privilege of playing online. Given how common broken games are on consoles now and the heavy reliance on patches, it doesn't even offer any real advantage over PC gaming in that regard, either.
Different strokes for different folks and all, but I feel that with the release of the PS4 the whole notion of any kind of ecosystem with Sony products was completely destroyed, because it's apparent that purchases don't count for much at all and we're expected to keep buying the same games over and over again if we want to revisit them. On the other hand, I'm confident I'll still be able to play all my PC games 50 years into the future if I want to regardless of what hardware I'm running.
@Crimzon
I see where you're coming from. Personally I like, for example, having all of my trophies/achievements being stored and displayed all together in one place, rather than being divided among different services (e.g. Uplay). But, I see the problems.
I've allowed the PS4 (in the short term anyway) to basically be a reset after the architecture of the PS3 and its price made everything awkward. The PS4 is the first PS successor that launched with no backwards comparability, and that is disappointing to me. I mean, phones are able to play PS1 games, so where are they? I do think they should have allowed emulation for all PS2 games, but also put them up on the store so people could buy them there (a lot of people aren't going to have their game copies anymore, so they would have made tons of money anyway). It would have been a lot better. I can forgive them on the PS3 front for now, as long as the PS5 onward has a fairly implemented emulator.
I think that the PS5 should be able to play all PS1, PS2, PS3, PS3, PSP, and PS Vita games (the Vita might be awkward, but you then just give us the PS TV version of the store). If it doesn't play PS4 games, well, they have no excuse.
Btw, since I am interested in PC, I may as well educate myself on a few things. Is PS2 emulation on PC actually good, and can you play splitscreen on them? And I assume there is games that are too old to be on Steam, so do you just have to hunt down old copies or is there a store that has some old games?
About PS2 emulation on PC being good
1. I am able to play almost all ps2 games with better graphics on a 5 years old pc with a graphic card I bought 3 years ago for 100 bucks.
The best way to know if a specific game runs is to either lookup the pscx2 compatibility list or if there are videos of the game played via emu on youtube. I know that Burnout 3 and 4 as example work superb and look greato with the resolution rised up and added some more effects
Some games like Kingdom Hearts look still better on the emulator than in the remastered version on PS3.
Well, that's great to know. Are you playing via a PS2 disc, downloading them or a combination? I did quickly do a bit of research, and split-screen is possible, since it is just emulation, which is a big deal to me. Awesome. I've heard people put achievements into an emulator for Sega Genesis games, and I would love if people could put achievements/trophies into emulators like pscx2 and dolphin.
I would like to show support and buy the games on PSN though, so this would be more of a last resort.
I bought a ton..really a ton of PS2 games in the past but when emulation of them became better I dumped the games with isobuster to bin or .iso files and stored them on a couple of external hdds, you can also run the games with the original discs though. In my case I sold the original discs through ebay in the last years and play the games via the iso files.
Take a look on PSN and see what the price of those games are if of course they are available. You will either have to look alphabetically or do a search. In Australia we can get PS2 games from PSN for AU$11 (IEP 5.79).
It would be great if Sony allowed their emulator on the PS4 to read/rip DVD disk based PS2 games, using the disk as authentication like they do with PS4 media games. Still this may or may not happen in the future. In the interim we do have the option of buying from PSN but it is annoying if you still have the game.
Of course if you don't have a particular PS2 game and you would like to play it then obviously you would expect to pay for it, unless you are one of those people who maintains a large green parrot. 😉
Digitally Downloaded writes: "hat device that so many "hardcore" gamers claim is incapable of playing serious games has developed a massive library of incredible experiences, both new and retro. And this week we're going to list ten games that demonstrate why any RPG fan owes it to themselves to pick up one."
Digitally Downloaded writes "Baroque is one of the least well known games that keeps getting remade, I'll wager. This exact title which is now an iOS download was originally a Sega Saturn and PlayStation 2 game, and then ported to the Nintendo Wii. "
