I’ve played Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, which uses the same engine and shares some of the characters, but not the original, probably because PSX version wasn’t officially translated. Luckily the PSP version is.
I decided to compare both versions, and it’s interesting that in order to accomodate PSP wider screen they distanced the camera a little. No 4:3 black borders, but the character sprites look a bit muddier, because the scale is not as precise.
Since Zero playthrough went so well, I decided to give X a try, although I always found him more difficult. Maybe I was wrong. What you do need, though, is to remap your controls: I put dash on left bumper, regular attack on right trigge and special attack on right bumper. Because you need them all at the same time. How people play with default mapping is beyond me.
X’s regular attack is basically a peashooter, but his fully charged attack is quite good. And since his attacks are ranged, the bosses I struggled with as Zero, such as Spider and Stringray, are much more manageable. You still need to master the evade for the Spider, though.
The playthrough this time was Dragon, because always start with Dragon, then Walrus, as he’s still vulnerable to fire, unlike Peacock, then Spider, then Stingray, which is easy with Walrus’ weapon.
Colonel is still vulnerable to Ice, for some reason, just like with Zero.
Then both Mushroom is vulnerable to Spider’s web, and Lion to Stingrays. And Owl fight with Peacock’s weapon is laughable.
Overall, I feel like X gameplay is much easier than Zero, because his weapons realy exploit their weaknesses. During the General fight, which I found to be thoughtest with Zero, I literally took no damage with X.
First two phases of Sigma are also easy. Third one is just… long. Unlike the first two phases, this one doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses. So you just go through the annoying phases over and over until it dies.
It is more than 5 minutes of real time. I know, because I recorded only last 5 minutes of it.
I had to pause the game to give my fingers a rest at one point.
But now, I can say I’ve done it. Finished Mega Man X4, 28 years later 😆
Completed Mega Man X4 with Zero, fulfilling my childhood dream, one might say.
While Colonel is manageable, Zero against the General is another story. His only vulnerable part is the head, but touching it, or any other part of the body hurts Zero. I had to backtrack to get the second energy tank, and refill it in the Walrus stage, and beat Iris again just to be ready for this fight.
Then you need to beat the 8 animal bosses again. This sounds terrifying, but there are a few caveats to that challenge. You do get to replenish some life between the fights, and if you die, you don’t need to repeat the gauntlet all over, the killed bosses stay dead.
The final boss is all-in-all not that hard. First phase is extremely predictable. Second phase requires some well timed wall jumps, but still doable. The only challenge is to have enough life for the third phase. And the third phase is total random. I got lucky with the “alien” shooting above Zero’s head over and over.
I always had a special relationship with Mega Man X4. It was the first Mega Man game I’ve seen, because for a strange reason, it was ported to PC. But also, many years later, while trying Mega Man X3 and Mega Man X5 I understood that it hit the sweet spot of looking amazing, unlike X3 which still had SNES era visuals, but still having solid core gameplay, unlike X5.
What I didn’t understand as a kid is that Dragoon literally screams “hadouken” and “shouryuken”, because his moveset is basically Ryu/Ken from Street Fighter.
For some strange reason, Mega Man X Legacy Collection on Switch doesn’t have save states. I rarely use them nowadays, but Mega Man without them is still brutal.
My path is Dragon, which can be beaten with exosuit, and I think that’s the easy choice. Then Peacock, turned out to be easy as well with the fire sword. Then Walrus, for obvious reasons.
Then Lion, you just need to dodge the stomps. And Stingray, despite being weak to the Walrus weapon, can also be taked out with a saber, you can jump safely underneath.
The most trouble, I had with the spider. You need to dash-jump to avoid the homing webs, and even then, I feel that sometimes it’s very hard to do, as his position is quite random.
With Spider weapon, Mushroom is easy. And I left Owl for the last, although with Peacock’s weapon, I could have done it much sooner.
Impressed that the upgrades actually alter the car looks a bit:
It’s nice that until the final tournament, you don’t have to grind money at all. It’s just all natural progression. For the final tournament that requires 500K cars though, you will have to grind a bit. Here’s the funny part, though. You can either do the Grand Touring Competition tournament for a 100K prize, or the International Supercar Series tournament for a 175K prize. But, the second tournament is much, much harder: the cars like Lamborghini Diablo SV and Ferrari F50 are very prone to losing control, and quite a few tracks have rain conditions, which only worsens the situation. This tournament is not fun. At all. Instead, you can literally cruise through the first tournament on the Ferrari 550, and get what you want with less effort, and less real-time.
The last tournament takes place on a completely new set of tracks. And although McLaren F1 GTR is a beauty to behold, PSX aesthetics aside, and a pleasure to drive, I feel like this tournament requires to much planning for me to care.
PSX version of High Stakes misses quite a lot compared to PC version. There’s no cockpit view. The weather effects are almost non existing. Just 4 leagues and no modes besides Tournament. So, it’s a High Stakes without the “High Stakes”.
But it has a few advantages as well. First, lighting is surprisingly better than on PC. Especially lens flares. And upgrades actually make a difference in this version, making it more playable that the brutal PC version.
I fondly remember Need for Speed 4 from my childhood. I had a friend who was really good at this game, unlocked all the cars, while I always was terrible at racing games, so I didn’t even manage to complete the first tournament race.
So, I decided to revisit it. And it is still brutal. You need to pay entrance fee for most tournaments. You car gets damaged and needs repairs. To compete in eponymous “High Stakes” race, where you stake your car against opponents, you need an extra car.
At first I thought that upgrades, tucked away in one of the menus, will help. But it’s quite pointless, since opponent cars are upgraded as well.
Some of the tracks are extrucicating. With 8 laps, they take 15 minutes of real time. And this is before modern racing features such as time rewind and guidelines.
Gaming as a kid in the ’90s was a very confusing experience. Most of the information I’ve got was from game magazines, featuring a game on the cover, that would be hopefully reviewed or at least previewed in the issue.
One of the magazines I proudly owned had Re-Loaded on its cover. But I never actually played the game, and a few seconds of gameplay I’ve seen many years later gave me an impression it’s trash. Now, I can finally confirm my suspicion.
First of all, it turns out to be a sequel of another game I’ve never seen called Loaded. The gameplay is Chaos Engine like, with multiple characters to pick from, each with a regular and a special attack. The characters and enemies are prerendered, but the levels are 3D, with multiple levels of elevations.
One of the main issues with gameplay is that enemies movement is not discreet, but weapons are. Meaning enemies would run at you at an angle you can’t hit them at all.
The only feature of note is that some enemies will try to roll rocks at you from above. Adding insult to injury, from the 3rd level onward, most of the enemies shoot at you, turning the game into bullet hell.
This is all topped with what was considered in the 90’s as “edgy humor”. One of the characters is a cannibal, another is a crossdresser, the planet is named Kee-Butt (such laughs), and so on.
