Omega Boost (Playstation, 1999)

North American cover art

Release: 1999
Developer: Polyphony Digital
Publisher: SCEA
Genres: Rail shooter, Shoot em up, Sci-fi, Mecha

Welcome back, it's time for another review. It's yet another Playstation game we're looking at today. Let's start off with an introduction; Can you think of a time where a developer that typically makes games under a specific genre, but on a rare occasion they go outside that limit and make something completely different? And that new product turns out to be pretty good? Something like Squaresoft's Einhander may come to mind. A company known primarily for making RPG's but did a 180 turn and output a great title in the process. This is the same case with Polyphony Digital's Omega Boost. Known primarily for the Gran Turismo racing simulations, they are regarded for being able to push the limits in physics and graphical capabilities in video games. The first GT amazed gamers and critics back in 1998 and went on to become the best-selling PS1 game (a feat I still find hard to believe, considering my disinterest in racing sims). Though, later on in the system's lifetime, they worked on another game. This is where OB comes in. After doing some research, Polyphony has worked on racing titles such as Motortoon Grandprix, Gran Turismo, and more recently the Tourist Trophy series. All of them are racing games, whether kart racers or simulations. With this data, Omega Boost is in fact, the only non-racing game that the studio has ever worked on. And, surprisingly, it's good. Damn good. What lies in store is another rare case of a developer being able to go outside they're comfort zone and excel with their new idea. Let's take a look...

Omega Boost is a 3d on-rails shooter, released in 1999 by Sony Computer Entertainment America. You control a mech named after the title of the game, the story involving Omega being launched by a space facility to hunt down and destroy an imposing AI, named Alpha Core, who threatens humanity in the distant future. However the story should be the least of your concerns when playing the game. The game opens with a kickass FMV introduction blasting licensed music, and it actually looks really cool. You can fly around in open environments with 360 degree freedom, as enemies attack in waves. Occasionally there are some on-rails segments, ala Vanark. There is only one weapon at your disposal; a massive laser-machine gun sort of weapon. It can be used in two different methods; simply shooting in spurts or by locking on to enemies. You hold the attack button and hover the crosshairs over enemies and release the button to launch them. This will be the most the most effective way to deal damage. At the beginning you can only lock onto a couple of enemies at a time, but this number increases as you progress through out the game. Navigating in the worlds is a thrill as you can spin, rotate and fly around in all directions. It can become a bit disorienting due to this, but the controls work well enough so that you can always re-adjust your position. As you destroy more enemies, a meter builds for the special move, called the Viper Boost. When the meter builds up enough, you can press the L2 button to do a devestating attack on all enemies, and it looks really cool to watch OB annilhate everything. This attack should be reserved for only the toughest bosses, as some have huge health bars and the meter can take quite a while to fully charge. You can also use a boost at any time by pressing O, which is very helpful for dodging enemy projectiles.

With how the game plays in it's lock-on combat, it's time for another quick tidbit. During development, Polyphony called on outside assistance. They ended up calling in Yusi Yasuhara, who had originally been the lead designer and programmer for Sega's Panzer Dragoon Zwei, an on-rails shooter for the Sega Saturn. Hence the reason why OB turned out similar to Panzer Dragoon, but in a good way. This also marks one of the few times Polyphony has worked with external developers.

Oh, and a pretty interesting fact ; Shoji Kawamori, a mecha designer most well known for his Macross, and Eureka Seven work, designed the mechas for this game! Pretty cool to say the least. 

Levels are structured as "zones" and each zone has waves of enemies to fight, as well as a mid-boss and end boss. The zones set in space tend to be a little more disorienting because there is no true "ground" to calibrate to. Though the controls may be funny at first, after about 10 minutes you should have it down. 

There's one thing that has to be stated about the visuals; they look absolutely stunning. All the textures look good, though a little dark, but the game is just a treat to view. I will say it's possibly the best looking game I've ever seen on the Playstation. Seriously, it looks that good. Character and enemy models look great, as well as having particle effects and transparencies that stand out. The levels themselves are a bit lacking though, they usually just take place over basic voids of space or somewhere on a planet high in the sky with not much to look at. This doesn't detract from the game, because you're not going to play this just for backgrounds. A majority of the game also runs at 60 FPS, something rarely seen on the platform. The frame rate only enhances it even more, without slowdown or stuttering to be found anywhere. It's silky smooth in action. 

I really need to start capturing my own footage/screenshots. 

The music is... interesting to say the least. It's a mix of techno, metal music with a bit of tribal thrown in. There's also two licensed tracks featured, from Loudmouth and Static-X respectively, both bands I'm not fond of, but there music sounds okay. It fits the mood of the game, going for a tough, gritty kind of feel. The music is nothing that you'll want to download to your iPod, but it works fine.

Your presented a decent challenge here, as there are 9 stages in total. The game can be beaten rather quickly because of this, and that's the biggest criticism I have. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact it makes for a great title if you're looking for something easy to get into that isn't too long. A perfect pick up and play game. Like the Gran Turismo games, there is a replay feature in the main menu if you wish to watch yourself play through levels. Not really important for this type of game, but it's there. 

Due to poor marketing and under-performing sales, Omega Boost quietly faded away, becoming a sleeper hit. The game must have been somewhat popular enough, though: The official soundtrack was released on CD in limited quantities, which have since become incredibly rare, and even action figures were released by Blue Box Toys. They only released figures of Omega Boost and Beta Boost, and a third one of Herbacher was planned, but never ended up being released. Just like the soundtrack, they too are incredibly rare and incredibly expensive, which is too bad, I would love to have one of these.

As for the game itself, it's uncommon, but can be had for around $20-$30. Or just emulate it, burn an iso, however you play your games. It's certainly the best mecha game on Playstation, and deserves to be tried out if you call yourself a fan of shooters or mecha at all. It would have been cool to see this on the upcoming Playstation Classic Console, but because of the licensed music, it's general obscurity, and on top of the fact Sony is generally stupid and cheap, there's no way this will be on there. One can dream I guess.

Vanark (Playstation) Review

North American cover art

For my first review, I've decided to pick a little known, obscure game, called Vanark. Whether you're a collector or just enjoy playing retro games, there's a very good chance that you've never heard of this one, and it's part of a sub-genre that is quite few and far between when it comes to the amount of games available. Enjoy.

Vanark is an on-rails shooter developed by Bit Town Inc. and originally published in Japan by Asmik Ace Entertainment in 1999 for the Playstation, where it was titled Astro Trooper Vanark. Later on it was released by Jaleco to North America in 2000, as Vanark. Even with the slight name change, it still says "Astro Trooper" at the title screen. It plays similar in fashion to other rail shooters like Sega's Space Harrier and Nintendo's own Starfox series. To start, I would go as far to say it's the Playstation's equivalent of Starfox 64 (which, by the way, is one of my all time favourite games). But this isn't a bad thing at all. It may come off as a late release budget title, (which in some respects it is) but it gives a quick, fantastic shooting experience. You play as aspiring pilot named Shun as he and his crew members must protect Mars against a rising biological alien army, a pretty cliche story, but in this tale the plot takes backseat. 

As in any traditional space shooter, you control a spaceship that can move in all directions on the screen, as you shoot up enemies and dodge any environmental objects. Your ship can equip 2 different weapons, a simple laser shot and a selection of missiles, which are able to lock-on to a certain amount of enemies, depending on how many upgrades you've gained. Both of these are selected before beginning a mission. Also, you choose a different crew member before each stage, each can help you out during battle, such as giving you weak points during boss fights or show you alternate routes to take during levels. The ship can slow down, and boost to speed up, like Starfox, however barrel roll maneuvers can't be performed (Peppy would be so sad). The game begins with a quick training stage, however the mechanics don't require much learning, it's basic and easy to pick up. The controls are silky smooth and there's never an issue maneuvering throughout a stage. 

SPOILER ALERT: First mini-boss.

Let's get to the gameplay, this is where Vanark truly shines. It is fast paced, loaded with enemies and there is always something to keep you on your toes. A lot of the boss fights are intense, and each is unique with their own attacks and patterns, which are fun to learn. The level designs are nothing that special; your typical water, lava, space, and desert themes, but I can let that pass, regardless they all look great, and I don't mind seeing this in shooters - in fact, this is something I almost expect. Some of the levels do have different paths to take as mentioned earlier, so that can add a bit of replay value. The challenge is a little high but never too frustrating, it's just right. There are no health pick-ups in game, and three difficulty levels to choose from. You're given 5 continues and then it's game over.

Graphically, the game looks amazing for a late, low-profile release on the aging Playstation. Bit Town knew what they were doing when developing this and certainly knew their way around the system's architecture to produce great aesthetics. The textures look good, with little amounts of noticeable pixels and jagged lines, a trait the PS1 is notorious for. The game runs at a very smooth frame rate without any slowdown or hiccups to add on. The lighting effects are also well done and add a great touch, especially in stage 2 where you are transitioned underwater and sunlight shines through the water surface down to the ocean floor. It adds a great sense of realism to these alien worlds as you destroy everything in your path. All of the enemies and environments look great, with each stage having it's own sort of theme.

The audio is decent for the most part. The music is fast and upbeat. It's nothing very memorable, but it gets the job done. The sound effects are solid. Lasers, explosions, and crashes are loud and intense. It's always satisfying to hear a huge explosion after destroying a tough enemy. However, an annoying sound plays whenever your laser hits a target, it's like a weird metallic-y pipe sound. Another noise, what sounds like a loud humming noise, plays whenever your laser hits anything that isn't a target, such as the environment. After a while these sounds only get slightly annoying, but that's really my only complaint with any of the audio.

Vanark plays as good as it looks.

One thing that should be noted about this game is what happens in between flying stages. After completing a stage, you are brought back to your crew's mothership for briefings, watch some story scenes, and even explore the ship. This is done in a Resident Evil fashion, by controlling polygon characters in front of pre-rendered backgrounds. It's pretty bizarre to see this in a shooter game. Hell, you could see this style used in almost any other genre but shooters. These sections do ruin the pacing of the game, because after sifting through dialog you're left to wander the ship, where you will walk around in frustration just trying to advance to the next stage. Luckily the ship isn't very big so you shouldn't get lost easily. The pre-rendered backgrounds look good, with nice touches in the lighting and details. The characters themselves look kind of bad, especially when compared to the flight stages. They don't have much detail, and are rendered with a low polygon count, additionally Shun's movements seem stiff and kind of jerky. There's even a minigame to play, where you have to disable a bomb on board the ship, by guiding a very small dot through a maze. And trust me, this is much, much more difficult than it sounds. If the dot touches any of the walls, the bomb goes off and it blows up your ship and you lose! Actually, it just takes away all weapon upgrades you had gained up to that point. The dialog between characters is kind of boring and uninteresting, however it does have some bad Engrish sprinkled throughout. The text translation overall comes off as poor. Just be glad there's no voice acting, because that probably would have turned out just as choppy as the text translation.

Earthworms become mutated in the future. Wait, would
they be earthworms if they're not on Earth?

Unfortunately, Vanark doesn't stay it's welcome for very long. There is only 6 stages, and the game can be completed in under an hour, with little reason to go back. However there is some variety; such as the choice of weapons, your crew is customizable, as well as branching paths during levels, so those can add some replay value. You even pilot a speeder-bike vehicle in stage 3 for a change-up. The Resident Evil style segments should have been scrapped entirely as all they do is slow down the pace of the game, and feel like they were added in at the last minute to artificially increase the length of the game. It would have been better to add another flying stage or two instead.

To sum it up, Vanark is very decent. It excels in delivering an action-packed shooter while pleasing to the eye. I think if it was a little bit longer I would like it much more. It's the perfect game to pull down from the shelf and play once in a while. However due to it's late release on the system, (Playstation 2 was just around the corner by the time this released), as well as low sales, it quickly faded into obscurity but should be remembered as an interesting take on the shooter genre. It's very, very uncommon and I would even say it's rare, considering copies of the game almost never show up in ebay auctions; a huge indicator of a truly rare game. (As of this review, the most recent ebay auctions for a complete copy have ended at over $80 CAD) So if you see this for cheap, go for it. You'll get to enjoy one of the finest hidden gems the Playstation has to offer.

Later days.

CGCC Game Swap this Sunday November 15

So this is happening November 15 and I plan on going. It's taking place in Cambridge and it's open 1-4pm. I'll be bringing a lot of stuff to trade so hopefully I can use that without spending a lot of cash. Never been to this swap before so it should be a good time. 

Welcome to Declaritive's blog

Hello there, my name is Mike Decleir (aka declaritive) and welcome to my blog that I have made. I'm your average Canadian twenty-something working his way through college to go into architecture, and in my spare time one of my favourite things to is play modern and (mostly) retro video games. I love to both play and collect video games ranging from Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Xbox, PC and even Atari as I've been recently delving into that. I've been a gamer since I was only 7 when I received a Game Boy Advance for my birthday. Still have it to this day. I love collecting games and seeing my collection grow, trying out new games on other systems or catching up on other games I missed out on is a great way for me build a collection. However, I identify as a gamer first, and a collector second. I don't go for complete sets, such as building a full NES collection or the like, it's not my style, I'd rather own a handful of really great games instead of owning hundreds of potential crap. Though, I will admit, I have considered going for a full set of Playstation 1 games, but I made a choice for the better as there's only about 1400 more games I would need to reach that feat.

Now, you're probably wondering, what do I plan to do with this blog? Well for one, I plan on doing written reviews and articles of video games that have got less attention. The whole "youtube gamer" or "angry reviewer" persona has become extremely cliche in this day and age, but I would like to just do in-depth articles, and I hope to improve my writing and critique, which may not be the greatest when starting, but it's something I really want to work on. All constructive criticism is welcome, this is the internet, right? As far as games and subjects go, I plan to discuss lesser known, more obscures games that get less coverage, not the typical, "Durr hey guys today I'm going to be reviewing this underrated hidden gem called 'Legend of Zelda'. Anyone ever heard of this nostalgic gem?!" At this point in time on the internet I think it's better to discuss more overlooked games instead of games that have been talked to death already. In fact, I already have in mind some Playstation 1 titles that I plan to talk about, and their ones that don't seem to get much attention. I plan to post a review or two in the near future. 

Now let's look at the collecting side. I haven't actually done a total tally of games I own, but I'm going to say I own about 400 games spanning over a dozen different consoles and handhelds. Like I said, rough estimate. At the moment, I really like collecting for Genesis, Playstation 1, 2, and 3, Gameboy, and even some Nintendo stuff in there. Over the past year I've slowly moved away from NES, SNES, and N64 for two big reasons:

1: Ever since retro games took off in popularity around the early 2010's (I'd say 2012 is when it really hit) retro games have been at all time high prices on the second market. The most popular it's ever been. Of all this, Nintendo has increased the most. It's no surprise, though. It's arguably the most nostalgic type of classic thrill for millions of gamers, and whenever you think of retro video games, Nintendo is almost always the first brand to come to mind. Because of this, prices have skyrocketed. Furthermore, I have mostly got away from Nintendo collecting, as one great piece of advice for collecting I like to remember is, "when everyone goes right, go left." Essentially, as hipster-ish this may sound, when something else is really popular and pricey, go for something else that not many people are paying attention to. It's going to be cheaper and possibly easier to find. This is why I've moved to stuff like Genesis and Playstation. Sure, they're already rising in value (especially Genesis, Playstation's starting to) but compared to Nintendo there's many affordable titles for the systems. Also because of this, I've already acquired some of the more rare/sought after games for the systems, like El Viento, Grind Stormer, and Mega Turrican on Genesis, and Einhander, Mega Man Legends 2, and Tomba for the PS1 as examples. It's gotten to the point with Nintendo that people on Kijiji (good place to find games, not always) hoard dozens of copies of popular games for all systems. Every Zelda. Every freaking Mario Kart. I live in the Burlington area of Ontario and I would say our neighbour Hamilton is the worst for this. Sure, you can say, "it's capitalism" or "it's a free market". Those are both valid and I can't deny it, but when it gets to a point that people are hoarding tons of copies and asking insane amounts of money is when it's going too far.  Basically, Nintendo stuff in general is getting ridiculously expensive and I've moved to other systems. 

2. I have mostly every game I want for NES, SNES, and N64. I can safely say I'm done with N64. Unless I can find a complete copy of Quake, for like, $10. There's still a couple of NES and SNES games that I'm after, such as Link to the Past (which I used to own, but traded for a SSB Brawl, yeah I know not a great move) or Metal Storm on NES (pricey game, cart only goes for ~$100). And even then those are games that I could live without. If I had an oppurtunity to trade them or buy them for a good deal, maybe, but I'm fine without them. I don't even own anything exceedingly rare or valuable, maybe my Metroid Yellow Label cart, or my complete copy of Super Metroid, (I don't think I've mentioned yet how much I like Metroid) but that's about it. 

...Wow. That was long. Okay then. To add more, I'd like to upload pictures of my collection to show what it looks like. I've finally organized most of it and looks great. I look forward to having an output to just share this somewhere. I'll also probably do pick-ups or cool finds, I know, a little cliche, but I'll mostly share games or systems that I find in thrift stores, pawn shops or Kijiji deals. I'm not going to share every game I buy, but mostly interesting ones or the ones that have an interesting story to their finds. I'm also going to give any opinions on gaming/collecting news, as well as some of my own collecting tips, for any of you aspiring collectors and gamers. I hope to try and have something new up once a week. A little slow perhaps, but I think it's a reasonable goal to start off with.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and stay tuned. There's more on the horizon. Later days.