Tag: Playstation 2

Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming, Review

Silent Hill 4: Room Service

Spoiler Warning: Contains Unmarked Spoilers about Silent Hill 4

Chalk up another one for ‘games that have an interesting concept, but flawed execution’. And, despite regular readers knowing that this type of thing is firmly situated on, or near, my avenue, even I found this one a struggle by the time the credits rolled.

I’ve got history with Silent Hill 4: The Room. First picking it up for PS2 around the time it was current; I’m going to say I found it in the 2nd hand basket of an Electronic’s Boutique. This time however, I had to pay a fairly premium 2nd hand eBay price for a PS2 copy to add to my collection having had my eyes open for a while and being repeatedly beaten to the auction finish line. Even then, I ended up with a copy missing its manual and suffering from a few (luckily non-showstopping) disk read errors around the mid-game point. Much to my current-self’s regret, I’d traded my original copy in years ago, having never made it to the end of the game. With my recent-ish exploration of the Silent Hill offerings, finally seeing the resolution of the 4th, and final (at time of writing), numbered entry into the mainline series was the next logical step.

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Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming, Review

Home Strike: I Played all the Ten-Pin Bowling Games on PS2

… around about the time I was unwrapping the fourth packet from eBay to reveal yet another ten-pin bowling game, my wife rolled her eyes proclaiming that sometimes I was pretty weird... I object to the ‘sometimes’…

The problem is that I can get an idea in my head and can’t let it go without seeing it through; the latest idea was ten-pin bowling. Fun Hundstrasse fact, many years ago I played regularly in a bowling league. It was in a strange period of my life where I found myself in a town that I didn’t want to be in with lots of free evenings on my hands. A casual conversation later and I was turning up weekly to a company league night having been recruited by a short-handed family team who… despite not remembering any of their names… I’m always kind of grateful for adopting me into their loosely related ranks of brothers, uncles, cousins and nieces. For those of you reading in the U.S. this may not seem out of the ordinary, but here in the UK bowling tends to be the domain of families with kids and bored teenagers on a Saturday afternoon with actual leagues and competitive play being more obscure. The point is, whilst not being anything special at actually playing it, I’ve always enjoyed bowling and the strange specific vibe of a bowling alley.

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Gaming, Retro Gaming, Review

Silent Hill 3: Shopping Maul

Spoiler Warning: This article contains plot spoilers for Silent Hill 3 and the original Silent Hill

Some weeks ago I made the long train journey to London to check out the London Gaming Market. It’s something that I originally wanted to do waaay back in 2020, but we all know what scuppered those particular plans, so I finally decided to face my crowd-apprehension and check it out.

… luckily for me I didn’t have to face the crowds alone as I’d arranged to meet up with Kim, Pete, and Co. from LaterLevels at the gaming market. I had a fantastic day picking through the stalls and boxes at all the different sellers and enjoying some great catching up and long overdue gamerery chat. Really hoping that we’ll be able to do it again soon.

Despite pawing over many many titles, I finally decided to splash out and pick up a copy of Silent Hill 3 (PS2). The second in the series is one of my favourite games on the system, but I haven’t really explored the other outings to that small town too much. Weirdly enough I recently replayed the PS1 original (Heck, maybe that’s what finally convinced me to pick up no. 3), but despite owning it for many years, I think I may have only played that game fully twice. I also used to own Silent Hill 4 back when it was a ‘current’ game, but sadly I traded it in due to gameplay frustrations before ever making it to the finish line. My investment in 3 goes way above the normal amount that I’d outlay for a retrogame, but it’s also one that I’ve lost many eBay auctions for, so seeing a good looking copy right there was too much of a temptation.

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Gaming, Jurassic Park, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming, Review

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis – I Don’t Know Why It’s Called That…

Long time readers will know that I’m on a quest… one of the slowest burning quests in history maybe, but a quest none-the-less… to play all the Jurassic Park* games out there. So far I have played ‘some of them‘, But hey, who’s keeping track? I’ve sampled a good variety, including PnC, platform, FPS, and, whatever the heck you classify the DOS one as, but I’ve yet to try a park builder, which is where Operation Genesis comes in.

I’d been keeping my eyes vaguely open for a copy of JP:OG for a while now, but with my recent retro-gaming kick I happened to spot a copy of the PlayStation 2 version going at the same little online shop where I picked up a GameCube so I decided to give it a shot.

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