Dreamcast RUSH 2049

Years ago, games on particularly older systems would either be a one-shot gimmick with the focus being upon the main engine of the game. Or the game would be a mishmash of multiple game types with each game type being played drastically differently. One moment you'd be throwing darts in a pub and the next, abseiling down a canyon while avoiding the sides but going too quickly makes you fall and going too quickly gets you set on fire.  Sometimes the games would be hugely different in their game play from one even to another and today would be considered to be just a series of mini-games. Other games took the main engine of the game and adjusted it to similar game types but different ways of playing it. This game is the latter of that type of multigame.

This game is effectively 3 games in one based around cars.

Game Makers and Gamers have often wanted more and bigger and better thrills in race. Top down view wasn't enough so let us have first person views on race tracks. That not enough? Ok let's have other cars on the track we can race against, on top of that let’s have multiple players playing. Sprites not enough, let's upgrade to polygons. Racing not enough? Let's throw in weapons and guns. That not enough, let's have furiously quick game play, huge jumps and leaps, traps, tricks and explosions. That still not enough? How about WINGS!

Ok... now we're talking San Francisco Rush 2049.

The Rush series of games have built up on racing around cityscapes, using shortcuts triggered by buttons in out-of-the-way places and having some crazy jumps and leaps. This game goes beyond that with the fun side of things by allowing the cars to sprout planes while airborne to help stabilise, balance and trick out some mad moves by spinning, endo-ing and flipping here there and everywhere.

As said at the start, there are essentially 3 games here. However your profile/car can be modified with tyres, frames, engines etc to change the performance of the vehicles. All of these unlocked by winning races and circuit sets, travelling distances in miles/kilometres and collecting coins. Yep even this game has a collecting session. Each level/track has 8 silver and 8 gold coins. The silvers tend to be easier to collect while the golds are often awarded for finding the most hidden, out of the way places, or performing the largest leaps at very specific speeds and angles and usually requires the most powerful engines and lightest frames to reach them.

The main game is racing. Multiple tracks set in and around a futuristic San Francisco scene with booster tracks, short cuts under mountains, through construction yards, loop the loops, corkscrews and death defying leaps of amazing views. You start with 5 other vehicles and once you're racing, how you get to the finish line is up to you. Race the usual track and try to beat the other racers or take the short cuts to get ahead and secure more points and positions, which becomes essential when the other cars out class you. The downside to the shortcuts is that if you fail to beat the shortcut you'll end up crashing and being put back on the track with a slower speed and usually a fair bit behind where you'd be normally. Quite a drawback when the shortcut usually isn't much of a boost, save for the rare one or two that take big chunks off the tracks. Others are substantially difficult to judge as they have loops that take you back before taking you forwards.

The second main game mode is a stunt track. Several levels (with 8 gold and 8 silver coins each) designed with lots of jumps and leaps, boosts and such to get the players into the air quickly and for long durations to perform tricks. The more variation of a trick in a jump, the bigger the multiplier. You can either play solo to try and gain score or go head to head with multiplayer mode to see who gets the highest scores. Cumulative scores unlock further maps and levels in the game. The more awkward players will cause accidents with other players to stop them scoring, fail to land the trick and explode and you get nothing for your launch attempt. Games tend to be 5minutes in length aside from changing the settings.

The final mode is the weapons battle where it's multiplayer only (or solo if you want to learn the level) where there's a selection of weapons for players to collect and use against each other. Each player has a pistol instead of wings while weapon upgrades include sonic blasters, grenades, lasers, machineguns, rockets and battering rams. With people getting either first to x kills or most within a time limit. No coins in these tracks, just flatter areas for people to battle more steadily within the confines of the level. Other power ups include shields, repairs and stealth/cloaking (but the missile will still find you).

There's a lot of variety to keep a lot of players enjoying the game for a long time, particularly the "must collect everything" players with the coins and cars, engine parts, tyres, transmissions (auto, manual, sport, pro) and even levels to unlock, and the ultimate challenge, The Gauntlet, you've got a few minutes to get through some of the toughest tricks and traps in the game before landing on a picture of the team, sadly you can't burn it up with some wheel spins.

Driving is a simple enough affair with tracks laid out usually quite comprehensively. Though some tracks you'll learn quickly that following the main road will lead you into a dead end, thanks a bunch. While some traps trigger hammers and walls that will quickly move in the way and kill the person who triggered it with a big fat smiling face upon the wall as a delightful little "fuck you, with love" from the game designers. Lovely.

Some of the shortcuts are insanely hard and not something you'd even consider at times, such as landing on a moving boat and driving back off again to get to an area that houses a coin. The coin being the ONLY reason you'd even attempt that. Which means to get the coins you'll be playing a lot of practise mode as racing isn't an option if you're taking such detours, several coins on one track are hidden in an area you have to glitch through or drive through on your side and NOT explode, and THEN to travel around a high speed ramp and jump area to get the few silvers and one gold coin contained.

But completionists... are a funny bunch.

The game and maps are designed in such a way that racing around the cityscapes feels like a while knuckle race through madness with every slight twitch and twist being the difference between death and the next position upwards in the rankings. Though you rarely do explode from coming into contact with the walls, often scraping them and still racing on, the involvement of other hazards like Tram Cars tend to make you blow up faster than a Pinto kicked in the arse. Usually the tracks are fair to the racers and only one or two traps encroach upon the main track leaving the risky stuff to those willing to take the risks.

The music is a rather inspired but esoteric selection of tracks with a few tracks that will really pay dividend to the ambience of the race tracks and further enhance the nitro fuelled race feeling, I tend to just leave it with the track Garage and go from there. While there's one or two good tracks, the rest are too laid back or too generic to really be noticeable.

And for the hardcore, there's harder modes with wind speeds affecting the play, fog, backwards tracks and mirror tracks (with their own shortcuts too) and even more challenging, Death Mode where crashing once will take you out for the race, but this includes AI racers and once all 5 of them are down, you've a quiet ride to the end (just don't crash into any wrecks, you'll be furious at that point as the player is always last if they crash).

As an avid gamer, I like this game for the variety, the lack of common sense in the levels and the wings. Serious petrol heads would be advised to steer clear (heh...) as it lacks the tuning focus of more serious racing games while kart racers may find too much of a focus on actual racing than the jolliness of using comical weapons. It fits itself into a niche rather suitably and has a little for everyone in the game.

And Wings.

Now I'm heading off to rev an engine, shout ""Rush" with an echo then taking my 8.0 litre V10 Pick Up truck to ramp off a few jumps at around 280mph.

Then I'm going to play this game again.

Dreamcast: Power Stone 2

The realm for the 4 way fighting game up has had some interesting attempts over the years to either define it, or participate in the genre. Your usual standard of fighting game effectively borrows from martial arts and boxing matches, one vs. one in a clearly defined physical arena. Though thankfully, video games like to spruce things up quite a bit.

The majority of fighting games were your Mortal Kombat and street fighter affair, 2 opponents kicking punching and battering each other silly in a 2D arena until one hit the other enough times to cause them to fall over and not get back up without more money or pressing continue. Sometimes games would take a 2D fighter and put it in a 3D arena, going back as far as Battle Arena Toshinden, other games following such as Soul Blade, Dead or Alive, Bloody Roar but very few took the game fully into 3D and with more than one other opponent. Ergheiz managed it with a full 3D arena involving interactive elements and a key focus on the combat itself but remained with just one vs one combat.

The problem with 4 player combat was that it could get hectic, fast. Street Fighter Alpha 3 on some of its various console ports had a 3way fight mode, 2 vs. 2 if both players were on the same team. Thrill Kill/Wu Tang: Taste the Pain managed 4 way combat in an arena in a focused battle environment though the arena was just a barrier to prevent further movement.  While Super Smash Brothers took the 4 player into 2D combat in large open 3D but moving on 2D planes. Power Stone however took the game fully 3D, and Power Stone 2 took it into four players and went mad.

The premise is simple enough, put 2-4 combatants in a fully 3D arena, combat is based on attacks, jumps, picking things up and grabbing items, you attack towards the nearest character automatically unless you’re manually aiming things and picking up 3 of the 7 available power stones allows you to free base PCP and become a super powered THING (some of the transformations are odd... Dinosaur, Dragonball Z ripoff, a walking carosel) where upon you get a short time limit to do huge damage with power moves to your opponent(s) before you transform back and the Power Stones are gone.

The first game brought about a mechanic of being able to use the background and scenary to aid in attacking characters. Pressing grab while pushing into various objects could pick it up, slide it along the floor at them, run you up a wall and bounce off them, pick up something and hit them if you’re the ‘heavy’ type or perform some mad acrobatic feat for attack. The second game has moving levels which invariably involve a chase of some sort before landing in a final arena for the last of the fight. Taking an example, starting on a flying airship where a few gun turrets could be used and throwing opponents into the giant rotary fans is highly recommended. Leading to the ship falling apart and everyone freefalling for a short while players try to grab umbrellas to slow their fall or cakes and food items to heal up. At most, 2 players will land safely on the floating castle while the other 2 take damage before the rest of the fight involves a midair river, tanks turning up to be jumped into and shooting the other players and catapults on the high walls to hurl rocks at your enemies.

That’s just one fight. Sadly, of five. With a bit of victory and fortune you can however unlock bonus areas in which to fight but these are stationary arenas with none of the dynamics of the main levels, particularly not when you’re comparing Temples a la Indiana Jones with giant boulders chasing you mid-fight, Space Elevators with huge alien monsters at the top waiting to fight you, alternating submergences of submarines arriving towards a giant glacier and a burning pagoda with a temple at the top containing secrets and a giant bell. There is a lot going on in them, lots to be done but you’re left wishing there was a little more choice in the number of levels.

Throw in 2 boss fights against giant sized enemies in the single and 2 player modes and you’ve a lot of fun to be had taking pot shots against giant 4 legged sphinx walkers or huge zombified looking tea-drinkers that pukes bees at you.  The game doesn’t take itself seriously at all and despite this (and it being Capcom probably helps) there is a solid combat system here made all the more complex by the item system.

Oh boy, the items.

Power Stone 2 boasts a whopping 128 bonus items to be found and used within the game. During a fight large chests (heh) turn up containing a random item. Initially there will be the basic Bazooka, Shotgun, Sword, Axe, a few basic food items and so on. However, while playing the game, any item you pick up, you keep in your bank of items to mix up in the shop after the game. There’s also many cards to be found that add elements or change outcomes of the mixtures. So a Sword mixed with a flame thrower could produce a flaming sword (new item, more to collect and play with) or a sword with another sword with a flame card, could also produce a flaming sword (or a mess that’s worth Sweet F. A.). After enough planning and mixing, and there’s several ways to make most items, 128 items can be obtained and dear god you’ll want to use them all.

3 Way shotguns? Sod that, give me a homing laser rocket. Fire sword? Give me the Dragon Slayer from Berserk, or the Legend Sword that heals when I swing it. Grenades? No thanks, I’ll take the fire cracker, or meteor shower, or the lance that rains fire on enemies. Skateboard? Could do but there’s also rollerblades, motor-scooters or instead of mantraps give me a beehive, portable warp holes, kittens that attack, dragons that breath fire, tigers that attack harder. Fire dragon no good? Give me the two headed lightning one. Light Sabre too showy? Ok take the frozen tuna instead and batter them to death with piscine icicle. Megaphones, gatling guns, morning stars, umbrellas, rods, bamboo seeds, wedding cakes, medusa shields, typhoons and a magazine of the game itself, can all be used to assault your enemies. With the addition of a profile on a memory card, you can set up a bonus five items to be loaded into the game JUST for your character to open (not collect though).

Though it can be too much of a lottery waiting for the right item, missing it, dropping it to fade away faster so the next chest spawns again and some items are far too unbalanced in the game where they can slaughter an opponent in one or two hits. The homing laser can launch people skywards where the next 6-7 shots can each hit too before they land and in the higher damage settings, you’ve won half the fight.

Further unbalance comes from the 14 characters and their stats. Some can double jump, some can’t. Which means any holes or pitfalls will claim them 9 times out of 10 while the weaker but faster characters will avoid most attacks and steadily wear down their enemies. A few of the specials are rather one-sided with one character launching some 30 homing missiles, while another fires a few easily dodged swords. Another launches a giant fireball a la Dragonball Z and while hitting him will cancel him out of the move, his alternative attack is almost instant and pretty much guarantee’s full damage (incidentally this char is almost entirely ineffective against the final boss’s heart where the Ball attack hits the head and damages and redundant damage point, and the combo move only works on enemies that can be launched upwards and here the heart stays still). Another char’s special rains rocks down around himself but not the whole level AND he’s slow moving.  The balance either wasn’t tested or just not checked thoroughly enough that there’s a clear and obvious tier issue.

The game is very short for a single player experience. However it’s an incredibly good multiplayer game and one I feel should be remade for the next, or this, generation of consoles or ported just for the online aspects. Ensure the online latency issues won’t be a problem and the random number generates the same string of numbers for each player, it could easily work if Capcom allow it. But this doesn’t draw away from the fact that there’s only five main levels and you’ll play three of them on each run through the game. Once you’ve beaten the game, there’s only the items really left to get, unlock the 2 secret chars and the 3 secret levels and that’s it. No career mode, no huge adventure with stipulated limits like “use only dairy products” or “Level 1 weapons only” i.e. the weak stuff. I can understand this given the arcade origins of the game but take Soul Calibur 2 from arcade and give it the Weapon Master Mode for home consoles, why not do the same for Power Stone 2 and add some longevity to it for all?

A good, fun, off the wall (sometimes literally) crazy game that falls apart on its brevity and dependence on multiplayer to make the most of it.