The Top Shelf: Case Files 126-135: "Bards, Bands, Balls"

Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done, ten games at a time. Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!

Case File 126: Stormfront's Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

• Original Release (NA): 14/09/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox and PC)

We're back with Stormfront Studios, the venerable RPG developer whose name has aged really badly since the 1980s when they were founded. If you recall, the last game we visited of theirs was the second LOTR movie tie-in game, which incorporated the entirety of The Two Towers and the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring. The gameplay model they created for that game was a mix of action RPG and something akin to a character action game, where you'd be fighting orcs in their hundreds (though not quite in the Omega Force/Musou sense) and solving environmental puzzles to progress. It was a loose, fast-paced sort of RPG that focused less on menus and inventory micromanagement and more on the minute-to-minute action and frantic crowd control, like a modern 3D gaming equivalent of the Gauntlet arcade games (which, of course, also have a few 3D incarnations of their own). Demon Stone was Stormfront's attempt at transplanting the same model to the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign setting, which was something of a comfort zone for them: their earliest hits included the original Neverwinter Nights, an online RPG played through AOL that was based on that campaign setting, and a number of Forgotten Realms Gold Box RPGs. Demon Stone has a lot going for it, presentation-wise: they brought in Bob Salvatore, the author of endless Drizzt Do'Urden novels, to pen an original story for the game, and it features the voice acting talents of Patrick Stewart as Waterdeep's protector Khelben Blackstaff (between his similarly sonorous fantasy leader roles for Lands of Lore and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion) and the sadly departed Michael Clarke Duncan as the growlier of the game's two antagonists.

I like Demon Stone quite a bit, though I have to wonder how well it's aged. Another concern is whether or not I prefer it to the similar The Two Towers. That's not quite the invocation of the sequel clause, since the games are from different licenses, but they share enough DNA that I'm not sure I need both of them on the shelf. I'll mark this down as a "maybe" for now. After all, there is something to be said - even today - for a breezy and brisk RPG that doesn't overstay its welcome. Considered.

Case File 127: Sucker Punch's Sly 2: Band of Thieves

• Original Release (NA): 14/09/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (remastered for PS3 and PSVita)

To properly elucidate on why, precisely, Sly 2: Band of Thieves is the best platformer for the PlayStation 2, we need to look at how it evolved from the first Sly Cooper game. The first game was a perfectly satisfactory linear 3D platformer that nevertheless had yet to figure out how to build a game around the idea of a master thief and his partners in crime. It had the stealth, it had Sly's intrinsic acrobatic agility, it easily established the slick noir charm of an anthropomorphic universe of quippy one-liners and Bruce Timm-esque angles and shadows, as well as making clear the importance of family for Sly - as the basis of where he came from in a long line of professional purloiners, and the brothers he met while growing up in the orphanage. It's not completely unlike the Fast and the Furious (furryous?) movies in that respect. However, it would take the complete design renovation seen in this sequel to fully capitalize on the potential of this series: instead of linearity, the player has a big map to explore for each of its stages with the potential for many mini-heists and other surreptitious secrets. Instead of working one's way over to where the boss was sitting, you'd be putting into place the various stages of a big heist to procure what was taken from you (in the first game it was pages from the Thievus Raccoonus, in the second mechanical parts taken from the series antagonist Clockwerk). By creating a series of incredibly imaginative and varied bite-size missions to establish a stage's big heist finale, and funding upgrades and tools via the theft of smaller targets, Sucker Punch could create something far more layered and made-to-measure for its novel premise. It's not uncommon when a sequel greatly exceeds its predecessor, taking on the lessons learned and putting out something mechanically similar that addresses the shortcomings and expands on the core concept; it's a lot more rare when a developer returns to the drawing board, throws almost everything out and starts over with a fresh take, which not only improves the game but gives it the unique voice that was tantalizingly eluding it. Game design revelations like these are few and far between, and should be as cherished as the incredible games they help to create.

At any rate, you might've gathered from the effusive rundown above that this is one of my all time favorite games for the system, definitely out of the ones that aren't JRPGs. I've been meaning to return to this series for a while with that remastered trilogy for PS3, but the third game (and the fourth game, for that matter) don't quite come close to replicating the breath of fresh air that was Sly 2. Approved.

Case File 128: Taito's Graffiti Kingdom

• Original Release (JP): 22/09/2004
• PS2 Exclusive!

I've always liked the idea of art-as-gameplay games like Graffiti Kingdom, the follow-up to Magic Pengel and another case of Europe getting the sequel to a game we never saw. You're prompted several times to draw a creature that might serve you well in combat, or for some other purpose, attaching various limbs or wheels or appendages as is necessary. Frankly, however, beyond this one central distinctive feature there's not a whole lot to Graffiti Kingdom. It's too broad with its character development to be an effective RPG, and the combat and platforming are similarly threadbare. It reminds me of the first Scribblenauts, before that series found its footing, where it seemed every puzzle set-up involved transporting an item via a vehicle and a rope - the kernel of an idea was there, but the execution was lacking. The idea of a game directly tapping into the player's boundless creativity is a solid one - as Minecraft's developers would no doubt attest - but it needs an outlet that can reward that level of creativity in turn. Simply presenting the same problem with very minor alterations isn't all that creative on the game's side of the table, leaving nothing to push the player to come up with ever more imaginative solutions.

Can't fault for a game for trying something different, even if it is a sequel. I can fault it for having the barest whisper of gameplay and story, instead relying far too heavily on its monster creation feature to prop everything else up. Eliminated.

Case File 129: Artificial Mind and Movement's Scaler

• Original Release (EU): 01/10/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox and GameCube)

I've remarked on my old purchasing process before, but in those hazy days before I had a regular video game website to haunt, my standard system for whether or not I was going to buy a game basically boiled down to checking out the box art and figuring out which genre it belonged to. With very few exceptions, I snapped up any new RPG or platformer game as soon as they dropped to a reasonable price. The continuing expansion of the industry and my dwindling amount of free time has forced me to be a little more selective in this day and age, but for a while I'd regularly walk away from video game stores or Amazon with a game from one of my preferred genres with zero expectations. Scaler's not awful, if I'm being honest, but it is the very definition of a PS2 3D platformer also-ran: the game clearly borrowed from Ratchet & Clank for its level design, adopting the same branched approach that has you following linear paths across an open 3D world to some reward at the end, usually a needed collectible or some useful upgrade items, as well as intermittent sections where you're riding an electric rail and must leap and switch lanes to avoid obstacles in the path. Scaler himself is your archetypal flippant anthropomorph platformer hero - a young boy turned blue chameleon who finds himself trapped in an alternate dimension, hunting around for lizard eggs and a way back home. There's also some shapeshifting mechanics, allowing you to turn into other creatures with specific abilities should you destroy enough of them, but while the game makes an effort to keep its gameplay varied it all feels like a greatest hits compilation of the 3D platformer genre thus far. Not bad, but not remarkable either. As far as chameleon platformers go, I'd say it sits between Yooka-Laylee and Chameleon Twist.

It occurs to me that if I want any 3D platformers on the shelf besides the first Jak & Daxter, Ape Escape 2, Sly 2: Band of Thieves and whichever Ratchet game I end up selecting, I'm going to have to stop eliminating all these lesser examples. That said, beyond those big franchises, I've never felt like the PlayStation 2 was the home of great 3D platformers; especially as they slowly fell out of fashion in favor of more varied "action-adventure" games like the later Jaks, God of War or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. For now, I'm giving Scaler a chance to be another representative of my second favorite genre up on that shelf, if only to ensure it won't all be JRPGs in the final tally. Considered.

Case File 130: Backbone's Midway Arcade Treasures 2

• Original Release (NA): 11/10/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox, GameCube and PC. And Arcade, I suppose)

These arcade compilations are usually fairly minor, giving you a selection of games from the early 80s that haven't aged particularly well, but to former Drew Scanlon employer Backbone Entertainment's credit they bring out Midway's big guns for this particular nostalgia bundle. You'll find near-perfect (aside from some framey-ness) arcade renditions of Mortal Kombats 2 and 3 (but not MK1 or UMK3, oddly), Primal Rage (which... well, it's neat to own the arcade version, I guess), NARC (dang is the original version violent), APB, Pit Fighter, Total Carnage ("All we are making is baby milk!"), Xybots, Rampage World Tour, Gauntlet II and about ten others. They also get the history lesson treatment with rundowns and interviews though not quite to the same extent as something like the Mega Man Legacy Collection. It's a mix of the ancient and the relatively contemporary, good and bad, and for the really low price I bought it for it seemed like a great deal. Sometimes you look at an old games compilation and wonder when you'd ever play even half the content in there, but I'd happy booting up any number of these again. Well, except I'd probably prefer a version that gave out achievements at this point. It'd give me something to aim towards.

I don't think this goes on the shelf. I suspect we'll get an even better handled compilation of this type one of these days, as Midway's Arcade back-catalogue means too much to too many people in this hemisphere to let it vanish into inaccessible obscurity. Maybe a new compilation for modern systems that fixes all the minor emulation issues and combines all three Midway Arcade Treasures into one package. A guy can dream, anyway. Eliminated.

Case File 131: InXile Entertainment's The Bard's Tale

• Original Release (NA): 26/10/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox, GameCube, PC, iOS and Android)

While I patiently await the release of InXile's new The Bard's Tale reboot, I'm reminded that it probably won't be the meta spoof that this game is. Adopting a streamlined action-RPG approach that actually has a few great ideas of its own, such as instantly transforming vendor trash and lesser equipment into their equivalent gold values and summoning creatures with various talents to help with the dungeoneering, it feels more like a vessel to tell a lot of jokes about hoary RPG tropes and the nature of "heroes" and "chosen ones" in a sardonic universe that is quick to mock and trample the less shrewd. The Bard, who is essentially forced into being a hero when all he really wants is to get laid, get drunk and get rich in any order, is a wonderful anti-hero who maintains a moral equilibrium by balancing acts of inadvertent heroism with those of selfish, dickish malevolence. Stealing from graves, tricking people into setting off traps for him, accidentally releasing demons onto the world and running away, that sort of thing. Throughout all this, a condescending omnipotent narrator conveys all this to his invisible audience, regularly laying into the Bard whenever he does something nefarious or invokes a ridiculous RPG cliché: an early instance involves the Bard killing a random wolf to find a king's ransom of dropped loot, with the narrator calling out its ridiculousness and preventing it from happening again ("What? That's my main source of income!" whines the Bard). The voice acting of Cary Elwes and his unrecognizable Scottish accent and the disdainful tones of Tony Jay really help make this relationship between storyteller and subject work, and becomes the centerpiece of the game's humor. I realize a video game making meta jokes about being a video game is a "little goes a long way" sort of affair for many, but the game can be really funny with that material, to a similar extent as The Book of Unwritten Tales or Simon the Sorcerer series. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Anyway, I have a soft spot for this game, and was part of the reason why I backed the new Bard's Tale Kickstarter (even if I doubt it'll be quite as humorous). As well as being pretty funny, with some earwormy musical numbers, it's actually a decent RPG too. Not a particularly complex one, but breezy enough to be fun Diablo clone with some level of Zelda-like puzzle-solving. It's not quite an instant "Approved", but it's on the shortlist of potential space-fillers until something better comes along. Considered.

Case File 132: Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

• Original Release (NA): 26/10/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox and PC, and remastered for PS3 and 360)

Ah, San Andreas. For me, this was when Grand Theft Auto found its peak, expertly combining the diverse gameplay of the series with the story of a young hood returning to his barely recognizable home after some time on the opposite coast, getting embroiled with a gang battle for supremacy while trying to uncover the murder behind one of his remaining family members. It goes some places, as GTA games inevitably do, with the hero CJ bouncing between various eccentric mission providers, working for friends, gangsters, civilians, mobsters, at least one federal agent and villains that he eventually must turn on and gun down. While San Andreas is a treat for those entrenched in the 1990s West Coast hip hop scene, with characters clearly based on the likes of Eazy-E and other legends of that time and place, it's also an impressively huge game with three cities to explore and a lot of terrain in between. The game's boundaries expand in other contexts too, as the player is able to shape CJ into any form they wish, building his muscles with regular trips to the gym or pigging out on fast food until he becomes an easily-winded endomorph. While I've yet to play Vice City and can remark on how it evolved the series, San Andreas is when GTA started feeling less like a simple action game and more like a living world, with so much to do and so many mechanical systems in place that you'll often be distracted from whatever mission needs completing next to just explore and see what there is to find and do. The game rewards this procrastinating open-world approach with its marvellous radio stations, each packed with an incredible amount of licensed music for whatever musical category you might be into. Vitally, I feel like San Andreas is where we see our big split in open world crime games: we'd continue to see GTA games on one side, as they get ever more maudlin and somber with their dramas (despite being juxtaposed with GTA's frequently ribald puns for store names and the like), and on the other side a stronger focus on the controlled chaotic fun of absurd cars, weapons and NPCs in Volition's Saints Row series. While I'll always take the latter over the former, I recognize that it was games like San Andreas (and possibly Vice City) that paved the way.

San Andreas is way too important, for me and for the burgeoning open-world genre, to exclude from my shelf. However, I can't in good conscience automatically approve the game without testing Vice City first. Maybe the advancements made to San Andreas is enough to offset the Miami Vice style charms of Vice City and its painfully 80s soundtrack. Between 80s pastel-shirted cop shows and 90s hiphop, I know which era I'd prefer to spend my time in. For now, this will have to be a mighty East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry for the second round to resolve. Considered.

Case File 133: Atlus's Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity

• Original Release (JP): 28/10/2004
• PS2 Exclusive!

I wish I'd given Stella Deus more of a chance. It's a strategy RPG from Atlus and Pinegrow that presents a gothic fantasy world that is reminiscent of the grim apocalyptic themes found in Atlus's major francise, Shin Megami Tensei, and takes Final Fantasy Tactics as its major inspiration. That means a lot of micromanaging your crew of versatile warriors from their classes and abilities down to their equipment, turn orders based on speed stats and the last performed action (there's quicker turnaround for faster attacks, for instance) and a whole lot of tactical benefits to be found from being in the right place at the right time. Shooting arrows from higher up makes them hit harder, back attacks are less likely to be blocked, covered positions are trickier to hit, and so on. It's everything I could want from a strategy RPG, but for whatever reason I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I'm not sure if it was an issue of extreme challenge or of burning out or what, but I'd like to revisit the game to see if I determine the cause, if maybe not progress past where I stopped and complete it.

From reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, it has a God of Destruction called "Dies Irae"? As in, that piece of classical music that plays over bombastic movie trailers? I might need to know what that's about. Bless these Euro-centric Japanese RPGs and their naming conventions. Considered.

Case File 134: Insomniac Games's Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

• Original Release (NA): 03/11/2004
• Not PS2 Exclusive (remastered for PS3 and PSVita)

I wasn't kidding about this week being heavy on the platformers. We saw the best Sly Cooper game this time, as well as the slightly less good Scaler and Graffiti Kingdom, and here's debatably the best Ratchet and Clank game to accompany it. Up Your Arsenal's big change is the inclusion of real-time strategic combat sections, where you're guiding your allies around a battlefield for the best tactical advantage. It also introduces the series' first recurring villain Dr. Nefarious (weird that I'm playing a game right now featuring a "Mr. Nefarious"), his butler robot (Botler?) and the transparent parody Courtney Gears, who hits you with a catchy "kill all humans" pop song that reminds me of Futurama at its best. Here's the difficult choice: I think I prefer the story of Arsenal, but the alternate gameplay mode of Going Commando. The spaceship combat of that game wasn't particularly in-depth, but I generally find I like most genres more than real-time strategy. I just don't have the multitasking wherewithal to find it compelling.

Beyond that, though, the two games are so similar that I'd be flipping a coin to choose one at this stage. We'll need to get deeper into the science if we're going to determine which one is my personal favorite of the PS2 trilogy (even if, on reflection, I'd probably choose the PS3's Crack in Time as the overall victor). Considered.

Case File 135: Dimps's Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3

• Original Release (NA): 16/11/2004
• PS2 Exclusive!

I'm not even sure what to say about this one. It fell into my collection through no actions of my own, like so many others, and I have zero attachment to Akira Toriyama's universe of Journey to the West knock-offs spending hours powering up their qi until some alien's Google Glass freaks out about their power levels. I was mildly partial to the original Dragon Ball run, as goofy as it could be, but am entirely cold on the Z expanded universe. The Budokai series might well be excellent fighter games for fans of the license, but I couldn't tell you how or why. I'm being as diplomatic as possible here. I don't hate DBZ (though I certainly didn't appreciate it seemingly representing all of anime for the longest time), and I don't think these games are bad. It's not easy creating licensed games that not only don't suck, but are also able to tap into the appeal of the licensed properties they pertain to, and this property means enough to so many that I'm sure it found developers to treat the material with the right amount of respect, or at least ensure enough of a base level of quality to avoid prompting a horde of disgruntled Vegeta cosplayers to stand outside their studio, registering their disappointment by posing in a combat stance and yelling for ten minutes straight.

All right, so maybe I'm not being all that diplomatic, but my point is that I hold no ill will towards Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. I just have so little interest in either fighter games or the DBZ universe to want to check it out. Eliminated.

Results

All right, let's check out the damage. We have six more Considereds this week: two for the list of reserves, two that'll face sequels/predecessors for a battle of supremacy, and two that I'll need to revisit before passing judgement. There's also three eliminations and one new Approved game in the form of Sly 2: Band of Thieves, easily the gem of this week's assortment (though I'll also accept San Andreas as this edition's King of the Heap choice). I do think that Midway arcade collection is a great one, but it'd be super weird putting it on a list of best PS2 games.

Before we move onto the updated stats, let's talk about another honorable mention: Naughty Dog's Jak 3, completing the big PS2 platformer trifecta. For whatever reason, I don't own this one - I suspect it was a rental - but it maintains an equilibrium of the previous two games, expanding the open-world exploration element while minimizing the amount of times you need to drive across a city to complete missions on your hoverbike. The post-apocalyptic wasteland setting of the later Jak games doesn't lend itself well to a lot of varied and colorful regions to explore, but the narrative evolution of this series has always been a strange one. How many cute, colorful platformers pull the rug away to reveal a grim, harsh world of ruins and ruthless mechanical aliens? It also still plays well, which is probably obvious enough considering its the third game in a platformer franchise that hit the ground running (and jumping). It sounds like the PS4 will be getting the Jak games - including the racing-focused Jak X but curiously not the underpromoted Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier or Daxter's PSP solo debut - so maybe I'll finally have my own copy of this game before too long. At any rate, there's nothing to put up on the shelf... and I'd probably still prefer the first game regardless.

This week's magnanimity brings us past the 50 games milestone, with 54 out of 135 games for the second round to scrutinize further. I'm going to be pretty busy this Summer with PS2 games, so I hope this dilapidated old console can keep up (and all the memory card space I'll need to free up! I'd almost forgotten that was even a thing). We also inaugurate a new member of the "shelf-assured" with Sly 2, bringing that total to twelve. (Why didn't I call those games shelf-assured to begin with? Damn staircase wit. If it's not killing sexy psychiatrists, it's making me way too late on a killer pun.) Next week has... oh boy, is that a weird selection. This is my PS2 library at its most eclectic, folks, so I expect there'll something for everyone next time on The Top Shelf. See you then.

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