Club Retro 2020: October - Horror & N64

Looks like the Wii version of Shattered Memories is the one to go for after all. Mainly because of graphical reasons. This Reddit post explains it all well:

"Wii version is definitely the best because it is the only version that isn't a port. The game was developed from the ground up for it. It's pretty obvious that the controls were designed for the Wiimote. It's not so much waggle-based, but you do basically everything with the IR pointer. It also makes some pretty clever use of the Wiimote's built-in speaker. However, what really, definitively makes it the best version is the graphics. They've been severely downgraded in the PlayStation ports. Performance is worse, shadows are lower resolution and some are missing entirely, but it's the ice effects that affect the presentation the most. Ice transparency is out, and when people freeze over there's no actual ice texture, they just turn blue. Reflections are also out, and mirrors are now just flat textures. The problem is, these changes don't just make the game slightly less pretty. Since the game was built from the ground up for the Wii, it was made under the assumption that those effects would be present, and not having reflections or transparency can sometimes really mess up the feel of a scene. See this video to see what I mean. The lack of transparency at 2:18 in particular is very noticeable. Note that the video does contain some spoilery scenes, for those who haven't finished the game."

Yeah. Replace that Clancer with a Wii Remote, and you've got what most Wii developers considered "motion control".

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Didn't do any video gaming last night. Instead I played Horrified with my wife, then I binged old episodes of The Dead Files until 3:00AM. I plan to get back to Harry Mason's small town frozen adventures tonight though.

I'm not sure I ever played Blue Storm myself, but I owned and loved the original N64 game. I don't think I cleared Expert, I recall it definitely got tough. Haven't touched this game in over a decade but whenever I stumble upon some videos of it again or whatnot, I'm still really impressed by how well it holds up visually.

I know what you mean about water racers being different. While they weren't my preference, I was a big fan of this one and Hydro Thunder for sure. Was cool seeing Hydro Thunder arcade machines out in the wild too.

Chaos Break [2000] for the PS1

Chaos Break is a RE-clone, but it isn't just any RE-clone. It's also a spin-off of Taito's 1998 arcade game Chaos Heat, so it should come as no surprise that the combat here doesn't follow the lock n' shoot mechanics from RE, but it's faster and more arcade-y. Just facing the general direction of your target and pressing the fire button does the trick. Likewise, the game doesn't feature tank controls and cinematic camera angles. This mixing of arcade elements with the RE formula reminded me of Blue Stinger, but I liked Chaos Break better - mostly because the camera isn't as awful.

Chaos Break is also a fully 3D game rendered in real time. The downside to that are the environments - some nondescript labs where monsters are running amok - look way too basic, don't feel lived in and it's easy to get lost since all areas look similar. However, the character and monster models are quite good - the two playable character sporting a highly stylized anime style and the monster design also being quite decent - the scientists now turned into zombies and Thing-like abominations reminding me of Half-Life. Same thing with a giant tentacle monster that appears as a recurrent boss encounter throughout the game. Although the actual final boss is a Tyrant-clone - predictably so.

Playing through the game with both characters shouldn't take longer than 4-5 hours at most. However, playing as the girl - Mituki - or as the guy - Rick - doesn't really make that much of a difference. Almost everything is the same. The voice acting is pretty subpar, Mituki being particularly weak as she constantly sounds like a sleepy librarian. The characters only have one firearm, but it can be upgraded. As a secondary fire mode, their rifles can also launch missiles and grenades, but it's better to only use these against bosses. Both characters also have a decent melee attack which is useful to quickly dispatch weaker enemies and save ammo.

There are a handful of puzzles - one of them is a 6x6 sudoku. First time I played the game I had no idea what a sudoku looked like, so that was the end of my playthrough, but Sarge  pointed me in the right direction. Other 'puzzles' include dissecting a facehugger-like creature, which was interesting while not exactly entertaining. The game also features different endings that are largely dependent on whether you manage to rescue a couple of surviving scientists. Scientists with terrible path-finding as you'll find out soon enough once you get tasked to escort them to safety.

Overall, Chaos Break is a passable RE-clone with a few gameplay quirks of its own. It's not terrible, but it's definitely not good either.

2/4



Here's Chaos Heat:



They changed Mituki's design a bit, I preferred the original hairstyle: