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Eighteen Wheeler (DC)
by Tosk
18 Wheeler was a great arcade machine back in the day. A steering wheel cabinet, and the joy of laughing at your friends crashing into buildings with an articulated lorry, meant lots of fun and wasted money. Nowadays the fun is still there, however the game suffers from limited replayability and a slightly higher price than normal. ...
The premise is simple, get your heavy load past the finish line (into another town) before the time runs out. The tricky part to this is the slow and wide turning circle of a 18 wheel truck, which without practice throws off the player that is used to fast driving games and more often than not makes them crash into nearby buildings, signposts, trees etc. This is the most entertaining aspect of the game, laughing at people's inability to drive a huge articulated lorry. This makes it the perfect game for parties, drunken evenings in, or generally laughing with mates.
The replayability of the game is minimal. After you've failed to complete the 3rd or 4th race you will find yourself get bored with the concept very quickly. They've tried to keep things interesting by adding parking challenges between stages, and an evil enemy trucker that you're required to beat and will do anything to ram you off the road. But these both do very little to keep your interest.
The game is available second hand from Amazon or eBay. However it carries the rather alarming second-hand value of between £10-£15. While most games of this era for the PS2 are sold for a few pounds and reduced to bargain bin status, the Dreamcast is considered "vintage" and as such the game for some reason carries an extra premium. eBay costs fared slightly cheaper, but still hovered around the £10 mark. Which makes this game a slightly more expensive jolly.
But this game does continue to make people laugh at incompetent driving, and is great fun if not taken seriously. Don't expect long-term hardcore gaming. Expect a great laugh with a game that would still hold its own if it were in arcades today.
So next time you and your mates have had a few too many pints down the pub, grab yourself a doner kebab, go home and plonk this in the machine. Then laugh and watch as towns get demolished by your mates. The only acceptable form of drink driving!
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Resident Evil 2 (DC)
by FairyFailure
I'll start with this, Resident Evil was good when it had zombies, this is something it lacks nowadays, with the most recent spree of Resident Evil games, 4, 5 and 6 where massive let downs in my eyes and the live action movies make me sick, but, this isn't any of those, this is Resident Evil 2, game of my childhood and my ... life.
Resident Evil 2 is the first Resident Evil game to take place within Raccoon City, set 2 months after the events of the original Resident Evil this game is nothing short of a masterpiece. Now with voice acting that isn't quite as scary as the zombies (cough cough Resident Evil 1 cough cough) the game presents you with two playable characters, Leon Scott Kennedy, on his first day on the job as a member of the Raccoon Police Department (RPD) and fan favourite amongst gamers and Claire Redfield, sister of Chris Redfield from the first Resident Evil, after meeting under less-than-desirable circumstances, the characters are separated where the both undergo slightly different stories, both follow the same back story though (obviously) basically, there has been a T-Virus outbreak in Raccoon City, this virus as you may of guessed turns people into zombies, a new strain of the virus 'G-Virus' has been developed by William Burkin (the games antagonist) which turns people into insanely strong hard to defeat bosses.
The graphics aren't monumental for it's time but there is one cutscene which is an absolute doozer and I would imagine blew any 1998 audience off their feet, they have been slightly improved by importing the game onto Dreamcast but nothing too noticeable, but where this game really shines is its gameplay.
The gameplay in Resident Evil 2 is absolutely stunning, Resident Evil set standards for survival horror with there early games and this is no exception, supplies are limited, you aren't given much direction and you're going to have to rely a lot on patience, or a walkthrough to complete it, but it's totally worth it, as long as you can keep your interest, this game will keep you hooked from beginning to end, the fact that you need a very wide span of interest isn't a downfall as such either, as this is the same with any survival horror really, plus before you come off, you may want to think twice, you have a limited amount of saves.
All in all Resident Evil 2 always has been, and still is one of my favourite video game titles, and definitely my favourite in the survival horror genre, it's a must buy for any classic gamer or fans of the series, it also has a killer ending ;)
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Sonic Adventure 2 (DC)
by Seven17
This game was never going to win a game of the year award, nor was it ever going to go down in history for groundbreaking graphics or unequivocal gameplay features. However, one thing noted by Sega (quite recently in fact) was that this game was an important milestone in the Sonic story, and the history of Sega Gaming. The storyline of ... this game certainly is a game changer for the series and after the introduction of shadow the hedgehog, he quickly dies in this same game.
This was only for "Shadow the Hedgehog" to be released on xbox exactly 1 year later with the classic, cheesy "no he didn't die" an then some excuse about the Master Emeralds which play a huge role in the storyline of this game. There are several things i didn't like about the storyline, chief among which is the misleading characters are dying, characters have gone missing etc etc because about 3 of the main characters, Sonic, Shadow and Tails presumably die in the same storyline when in fact, 2 missions later, they're fine.
The graphics are somewhat questionable when it comes to attention to detail but the actual intractable features like chao, enemies and breakable objects like boxes, are all very well made and designed. There are no horrible textures or any dodgey, bodged or ugly bits on these items, which i suppose is the main thing. The road signs however, are barely readable.
The sound is once again, not good but for an early 00's game actually isn't bad. It's not the actual quality as such but more the contents of the audio itself. A little confusing, so i'll clarify. In mission cutscenes characters sound quiet while others sound loud and they drown each other out. Other times the characters talk over each other at some length and they mis time their mouth movements making them speak out of turn and it just looks messy. The voice actors in this game are good, the only one i'm not too sure about is Tails who seems to be a 6 year old kid, with an incredibly squeaky voice, sometimes to the point where i just want to skip the cutscene but oh no, you can't do that.
Physics are an important part of a sonic game particularly at high speed, and its things like the auto focus on enemies when performing summersault attacks that makes me think, actually, this is playable and i could live with the game at this speed. Certain things like cars in the game though are disastrous and they seems to flail about wildly and uncontrollably... even though, you aren't driving them, you're racing around them, or crashing into them.
So in summary its not a perfect game nor is it even a groundbreaking revolution in gaming but i think that guy at Sega was right, it is an important milestone, and was a masterpiece in the sonic series, which took the story a bit further, and introduced something new to the 3D world of sonic.
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