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Loaded (PS)
by AverageJoseph
The front cover is packed with 7 eccentric looking psychopaths, the title is in sprayed blood and theres a guy pointing a gun in your direction. Its an 11 year olds dream game. Loaded, a rated 15+ game, developed by Gremlin Interactive in 1996, is one of the goriest games outside of the Resident Evil franchise, to go platinum on the ... Playstation. Whilst the premise seems innocent enough, the actual circumstances are far from it. The back says that when 6 of the most twisted characters imaginable are 'wrongly imprisoned', its time for revenge. Considering the types of people they are, imprisonment can never be wrong. Regardless, you alone or with a friend, can take up arms and destroy every living thing in your path, whilst you attempt to escape the giant maze like prison. Expect other lunatics, explosions, fiendish creatures and a hell of a lot of blood on the floor. To start, you're welcomed by the beginnings of 'R.S.V.P' - a song from British alternative rock band Pop Will Eat Itself's album 'Dos Dedos Mis Amigos'. You choose from either 1 or 2 player games, options for lives, continues, difficulty and standard graphical and audio effects. There is also the 'Load Game' option to continue where you left off (which takes up just one memory block).
Characters
Butch - Dubbed 'THE' most dangerous cross dresser in the galaxy. He dons a purple dress and sports a deadly flamethrower to douse his enemies with, adequately named 'The Flaming Queen'. His special power is the Explosive Ring, casting a circle of flames to wave out across the screen. Fast with Medium armour.
Vox - A lady amongst beasts, in a tight tank top with a sharp tongue. Known as 'The Siren' because of her devastatingly good looks and brutal attitude. She uses a machine gun called the 'Hail Fail' and uses a sonic boom to damage multiple enemies via a microphone and visor. Fast with Light armour.
Fwank - s a psychotic criminal who wears a bank loot bag over his head with clown make up on it (similar to the Jokers appearance). He has the mental age of 'a lobotomised 6 year old' and cares only for his teddy bear. His emotions are described by the colour of his balloon. He fires neutron spheres and sends out homing teddies to tear apart enemies. Slow with Good armour.
Cap 'N' Hands - is a cyborg who's only original 'fitting' is his head, rotten to the core. He wears his skeleton on the outside and decorates his bones to make him look more menacing. He uses flintlocks to gun down his opponents and has a vortex bomb, spreading darkness across the screen, dismembering all caught within it. Moderate speed and Average armour.
Mamma! - Goes by his tag because its the only word he can stipulate. Abandoned at birth, lacking in education and manners, Mamma! still wears a diaper and baby cap despite growing a beard and being an intimidating, hulking figure. He uses a plasma gun and ripple bomb to dispatch evil. Slow with Good armour.
Bounca - A thick bald, 'thicko' whose favourite pass time is 'Slappin' some innocent geezer about a bit'. Experienced travelling the world but ignorant as he takes nothing in. Fires missiles and Frag missiles to detonate with a huge blast radius. Moderate speed and Medium armour.
Gameplay & Controls
Its a fairly basic shooter, set from a birds eye view, in a high security prison, with the objective to find all the card keys to escape to the next zone, defeat the man responsible for their false imprisonment and cause utter carnage along the way. There isn't really a story or any dialogue to follow, so its pretty dumbed down and focused on gameplay among all else (although the manual has a couple of pages worth of 'plot' to satisfy any curiosity you may have). The controls can be changed to suit your playing style but default settings are simple enough, X as shoot, Circle as special move , Square to sprint, Triangle for the map and the R & L bumpers to alter the camera distance. The display shows you your health, lives and ammunition for both gun and specials. Throughout levels there are 8 power ups to keep it fresh - weapon powerup, ammunition, health, smart bombs, extra lives, slow motion, invincibility and invisibility. The stronger your weapon via powerups, the bigger the area of effect and the faster the ammo depletion. As you scour through every cell to find such goodies, you come across hundreds of inmates - thieves, murderers, rapists, lunatics in straight jackets - even prison guards and staff combining efforts to stop you. A few shots from your weapon dispatches them - all over the floor - and they can drop gold which bares no significance other than points accumulation. Battles can get chaotic, on either mode as with a second player, the number of enemies is practically doubled, as is their strength. It requires a lot of circling around the fairly large maps to find the coloured security cards to open more doors and exits. The levels increasingly difficult along the way as enemies become stronger, faster and vast in number, making powerups beacons of hope.
Music & Sound Effects
There are 2 songs from Pop Will Eat Itself (R.S.V.P & Kick To Kill) and 27 other instrumental level tracks that can be played on your cd player should you want to hear them again. Only 9 tracks go over 3 minutes long and the rest are around a minute, so that gives you some idea of their repetitiveness, although they aren't exactly annoying or harsh sounding, in fact some are good at creating atmosphere (try track 06), whether its dark and brooding or all out party righteousness, most of which is either synthesized guitars and bass, drum loops, piano or spaced out keys and notes. The sound effects however are just as gruesome as you'd imagine. There must be over 10 different noises which a bullet ridden, charred corpse can make when hitting the ground. Squelchy, crispy or marred with the undistinguishable persons death howl.
The best thing about Loaded though, is not the over the top violence but the sheer blase' attitude. Take for example the difficulty descriptions - "Players are boring - Members of choirs and people who still go shopping with their mums.', 'Players are brutal - You're a hard bastard and your friends and family regularly tell you so.' and 'Players are loaded - Tyson, Naseem, Van Damme, Manson and Rollins - pussies.' Not just this though, the end of level summaries are a laugh to look back on too with results for greed factor, accuracy, body count and of course career prospects. Expect all kinds of insults and adjectives to describe your performances - grasping, tightfisted, assassin, hitman, slaughter, mass murder, killer, butcher, social worker and genocidal maniac. Its this lack of seriousness and plain sprint and shoot gameplay that makes it slightly addictive, easy to grasp and menacing fun.
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Crash Bandicoot 2 - Platinum (PS)
by doriee
After completing the first crash bandicoot just last week me and my friends decided that we wanted to play all of these so we decided to buy them from the ps3 play station network we bought number 2 and 3. Again like number 1 you still have to beat Neo Cortex and his army of enemies by working your way through the levels by moving crash ... to defeat his turtles and penguins collect all the apples, crates and all the crystals and gems along the way. The first game was extremely hard to complete while getting all the achievements as well and I've noticed pattern that the crash games on DS are really easy so I thought this one would be, but it turns out it's so much harder than the first one.
You start off in what looks like to me the sewers, you have a brick wall and this is a save/load wall, you just go to this when you need to use any of those options like loading your already saved file. You then have circular entrances with the level name about them and a number to say which level it is. The first level you have to do is called Turtle woods, sounds nice and easy to complete but I can tell you it is far from easy and nice. This set up is similar to those in the first island on crash bandicoot one. Only in this level you have lots of turtles with spikes around then and with leaf blades on their backs which makes them harder to kill,you also have to go through thick mud patches, weird shaped holes in the floor and the floor is really uneven with lots of holes, this makes a massive difference because if your not careful you could run over the hill and straight down a hole. On each level there are 3 things for you to collect achievement wise, one is a purple crystal to say you have completed the game, one is a coloured gem and another is a silver gem. The colour gem is hidden and you have to find it and the silver gem you get if you complete the level without dying and collect all the boxes.
There is more variation in this game unlike the first one, there are water levels where you have to ride jet skies and avoid poolwhirls and sea mines and all sorts of crazy items and other levels and in snowy mountains ice skating over ice patches and running through the snow. There are side scrolling levels as well where you have to be careful not to run too far to the edge and much more. On each level there can be hidden passages which you go down and complete below the flood and there are trap doors with green question marks on them, these are bonus levels which you fall into which are filled with apples and lives.
The controls have changed slightly which I don't like, x is still jump but now square is spin, after you're used to using circle to spin it is a little confusing and hard to get used to. If you press circle now it's a slide move so you can slide under metal boxes and get what ever is underneath. If you press x and then circle straight after this a jump and face plant the floor move, this will help you break crates with metal bars around them and kill enemies more effectively. I have found all the levels so far really hard to complete without dying 10 times or more one each and when you finish the first set of levels, you stand in the middle and a floating stone will move you upwards and you have another level full of levels and this happens 3 times or more.
The music is just as cheerful on this one as the first one but a little more funkier and the graphics have improved slightly, you no longer get stuck on nothing but you cans till see your face through walls, fall down nothing and look like your stood on something but you're actually just floating there. I love this game still but it's very frustrating to complete and the more annoyed you get the faster you try to do it and die even more which makes me even angrier so if you are anything like me you might not want to play this in front of people sot hey don't see you act like a little boy like I do. The levels are certainly challenging and the new controls are annoying and hard to get use to, There are lots of boxes and apples on the levels more than the original game but bouncing on this is considerably slower for some reason and the gems are hard to get because you always die, this is a brilliant and challenging game and one I don't regret buying.
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Crash Bandicoot - Platinum (PS)
by doriee
Crash Bandicoot was one of the first games that came out when the play station 1 was first introduced back in the 90's I don't think anyone anticipated just how big Crash bandicoot would be, several games were released on the play station one such as 2 and 3, crash team racing and more along with a few games on game boy advance and also ... on the Nintendo DS and Crash is still a loveable character and game. The whole Crash bandicoot games revolve around beating Neo Cortex and his army of crazy enemies. Crash bandicoot has the classic side scrolling levels as well as 3D levels in both you are and control crash in order to defeat Neo Cortex you must use crash to move around the 3 islands finishing all levels which include defeating enemies, bosses, collecting crates and boxes and solve the puzzle that is the island.
You first begin the game on N.sanity beach on the first island and of course this is the easiest level of the full game, here you will mainly get the gist of what you have to do and the controls, You hardly use any controls to do anything X is jump and O is spin and you use the D-pad to move around and these are all you need to use, the triangle button will show a drop down menu at the top of how many apples and lives you have and if you have collected any boxes so you can do a bonus level. You begin this level by having to smash crates and then defeating your first enemy which is a moving crab, you of course can jump on this or use spin but if you go into any enemies they will knock you out and you lose a life. Then through the level you have to jump over holes, defeat crabs and turtles, collect all boxes and apples available to you and go into the swirly orange light which is the end of the level. If you complete this level with perfection ( not dying at all and collecting everything available) then you will receive a gem at the end of the level and these are the achievements for the game.
There are 3 islands in total, which is 32 levels which include 4 bosses. the first level is designed to be like a jungle with boulders fortresses and creeks. The second island is building ruins like you would find in the jungles and deserted places and the last island is mechanical and a lot of machinery. You can collect 26 colour gems and 2 keys, so on every level you complete perfect except for the boss levels you should receive either a coloured gem or a key, but here's the catch you can only unlock 3 gems on the first island until you have unlocked the coloured gems on the second island this is because on the first island there are what ps call "separate gem paths" included in each level to create an alternate ending and you cannot fully complete that level and get all the gems unless you manage to unlock the secret pathway, you know where they are and what colour gem you need to unlock it because you can see it floating where the pathway is but it's just a hollow gram you can't actually get up there yet. As the levels go on you have bigger problems, harder enemies to beat and more hidden boxes you must find to complete the level in full, there are moving floors, no sides, fires, arrows, guns, enemies, moving platforms and much more which makes if difficult to complete the levels without dying. There is a bonus level on almost every level, you must complete and collect all the boxes on these as well to complete the level with perfection.
You can play this game if you have an original copy on a PS 1,2 and 3 which I never knew, this is really handy because it saves you either digging out a ps1 or having to go and buy one I set up an old ps1 in my room though and I'm now working my way through our massive box of old games which is keeping me busy these days. despite being able to play on a ps3 the graphics don't change at all, the graphics are brilliant for it's time but are very poor compared to today's standards, unfortunately graphics are a big deal when it comes to games because although there is a lot of artwork and effort gone into this there is a lot of glitching that goes on, you can get stuck on nothing and have to restart or you get flattened and die when something hasn't even hit you, you can land on the platform but still manage to fall down holes, you can jump to platforms but still all and die but then there are a lot of flukes as well, even if you didn't manage to get through something or fall down a hole, sometimes for no apparent reason you still survive. As for the music, it's bearable and funky, a tune that will be tuck in your head and has always been associated with crash bandicoot still today. There are sound effects of you collecting apples, smashing things and the sound of things rolling and when you're on the first island there is a lot of jungle noises because that's how it is set up.
You can play this game over and over and over and it will never get boring, it's always just as fun as the first time you ever played this game. I am an absolute pro at the first island because what I do when I get to the second island is go back to the easy levels to collect lives ready for the harder levels so I don't have to start again. This game can be very frustrating when you're sat with 3 other people and you're all taking it in turns to do the same level because you keep dying and no one can do it, this is by far the most challenging crash bandicoot ever made, the latest one are really easy and I can complete them in an hour, last night me and 3 friends completed this game with only 3/28 achievements and it took us almost 5 hours it is that hard. We managed to save the game so we have unlocked all the levels and done all the bosses but we refuse to accept that we don't have all the achievements and haven't seen the hidden gem paths yet despite completing this game many times over. This is one of the most entertaining games I have ever played on which you can do alone or in a group of people taking turns and seeing how long it can take you.
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