Retro Spectives

Resident Evil changed everything.  When originally released in 1996, what was once a niche genre for enthusiasts was now a blockbuster staple in every second home.  All of a sudden people were craving zombies, horrifying monsters and disturbing themes.  It was so popular that Square, far more known for its more traditional JRPGs, decided to throw its hat in the ring and make Parasite Eve.

On the surface, the game appeared to be textbook survival horror.  But dig a little deeper and you could see that Square was unable to escape its roots.  Turn based mode happened in a sphere similar to Vagrant Story, upgrades were plentiful and incremental, and the storytelling had more cutscenes than gameplay at least in the early stages.  Thematically this was still horrifying…but under the hood was a different story.

Was this blend of genres ultimately successful, giving survival horror a fresh new perspective?  Or is it impossible to reconcile grim resources management with the power fantasy that RPGS almost always offer?

On this episode, we discuss:

Story

How does Parasite Eve use real world science to lend an air of credibility to the horrific changes that are happening all over Manhattan?  Does it execute the smaller details well even if the larger picture is a bit silly at times?

Combat

How enjoyable is the moment to moment real time combat of Parasite Eve?  The game requires you to dodge attacks, and pick the best moment to strike.  Is this too simplistic or does it work well?

Progression

How do the weapon and armour upgrades work in Parasite Eve?  Does it provide the player with a satisfying sense of progression, or is it all just a confusing mess?

We answer these questions and many more on the 132nd episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Parasite Eve OST: Yoko Shinomura

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What crazy weapon upgrade paths do you like to use?  Is the NG+ mode worth playing?  How is Parasite Eve 2 different from the original?  Come let us know what you think on our discord server!

Come let us know what you think or recommend us a new game on our community discord server!

If you would like to support the show monetarily, you can buy us a coffee here!

Director Fumeto Ueda has been hailed by many as somewhat of an auteur of the gaming landscape. A creative whose style embraces minimalist desolation. Known best for his work on Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda's directorial debut took place in 2001 with Ico, a boy-meets-girl action-adventure released for the PlayStation 2. Born with horns in a small village, Ico was seen as a great misfortune and was locked away in an eerie castle across the sea. Just as Ico settled in to his stony tomb, an earthquake strikes, freeing him and beginning the long journey to freedom. Along the way Ico meets Yorda, the daughter of the evil shadowy queen who rules over the land and the two work together to escape. 

While the premise was simple the game was considered by many to be a success, and has been cited by many prominent directors as an influence in their games. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Uncharted, Dark Souls, The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid 3, you name it, Ico as certainly left its mark on the world. 

But is it still fun to play today?
On this episode, we discuss:

Puzzle Solving.

Ico often presents the player with simple diagetic puzzles that make use of the environment.
Unlike many other games, it makes almost no attempt to guide the player.
Is this too harsh, or is the lack of handholding refreshing in the moden era?

Combat.

Despite its claim to fame, Ico's combat has very little going for it.
What exactly makes it so unsatisfying and could it be improved?

Yorda.

An enscort quest that lasts an entire game would surely raise eyebrows if released today.
Did the team at Sony Computer Entertainment manage to bring Yorda to life?
Or is she simply a frustrating Key for the player to drag about the gameworld?
 

We answer these questions and many more on the 131st episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Ico OST: Michiru Oshima

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Is Ico worth playing in the year 2025 and beyond? Are escort quests inherently unfun design? Does Patrick just hate fun or is James too easily impressed ? Come let us know on our community discord server!

You can support us monetarily on our Buy me a Coffee page

Third person cover based shooters were all the rage in the late 2000s.  Unveiled in 2003 in Killswitch  and later popularised with Gears of War, they became an essential part of most third person action games.  Coming in 2010, Vanquish sought to revolutionise this paradigm by giving the player an omnidirectional slide boost to move around the battlefield in an attempt to energise its plodding pacing.

And, broadly speaking, it was a resounding success.  People loved the faster pace, the bullet time, the enemy design and the more action orientated dodging of enemies.  And even though it didn’t sell as well as many other similar games, it developed a huge cult following of people who are still wildly holding on for a sequel to this day.

But is Vanquish still as refreshing and innovative as it was back in 2010?  Are bullet time and moving around quickly really all that impressive.  Can this fast and furious take on third person shooters truly break out of the straitjacket that the genre insists upon?

On this episode, we discuss:

Weapons

• Vanquish provides you a wide range of weapons to murder robots, from the more conventional shotguns and sniper rifles to grav cannons and lock on lasers.  How fun are these to use, and how well does the weapon upgrade system work in balancing your arsenal?

Enemy Design

• Vanquish enemies are mostly robots of different varieties.  Do these serve as compelling foes, from the lowliest grunt to the huge mech-like Argus?  Or are they boring to fight against, an endless wave of repetitive drones?

Cover

• Vanquish is, at its heart, a third person shooter.  Does it do enough to incentivise you to play into the throbbing heart of intense action and brinkmanship, or do you end up ducking behind cover and taking potshots at enemies as you slowly whittle them away?

We answer these questions and many more on the 130th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Vanquish OST: Erina Niwa, Masafumi Takada 

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How aggressively did you play Vanquish?  What is god hard mode, and does it drastically change the experience?  How would you rank Vanquish compared to other Platinum Games titles?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

You can support us monetarily on our Buy me a Coffee page

Video games usually place you in the role of the plucky adventurer.  You are the wizard, the warrior, or the rogue, and it's your duty (and often destiny) to save the world.  On your journey, one of the most important things to do is to acquire more powerful gear to make your character stronger.  But who exactly are you buying that gear from?

Enter: Recettear.  First released in 2007 (and later 2010 in a global english localisation), Reccetear places you in the role of an 8 year old girl tasked with running an adventurer’s item shop in order to pay back a very suspicious loan.  You hire adventurers to go on dungeon runs, and you strive to buy low and sell high in an attempt to pay back ever increasing debts.

On release this concept was entirely novel, and that novelty turned it into a smash success.  But how does this game really work under the hood?  Is Reccetear only a good game thanks to its charming presentation and unique concept, or is this actually an enjoyable and engaging video game?

On this episode, we discuss:

Shopkeeping

Recettear’s item stocking and selling revolves around multiple mechanics, some of which are very deviously hidden from the player.  Combo selling chains and customer loyalty has to be balanced against extracting the maximum possible profit from your customers.  How well explained are these mechanics?  Are they balanced?  Does the balancing act become too much to handle as the game progresses?

Dungeoneering

Ask anyone - the dungeon arpg gameplay in Recettear is almost universally despised.  No review is complete without bemoaning this part of the experience.  But are they really that bad?  We dive deep and explore what doesn’t work about these dungeons, and more surprisingly, what does.

Presentation

Reccetear’s presentation is simple.  Items get snapped onto predetermined locations, selling items is a series of fast menus popping off in succession, and moving around town is as simple as selecting a location.  Does this simplicity of UI navigation lead to a crisp and clean experience, or is it ultimately too restrictive and limiting for the player?

We answer these questions and many more on the 129th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Reccetear OST: sarumotto, Araibear, ni_ya, m_box

Are the mechanics behind Reccetear really as exploitable as we described?  Are the dungeons worse than we thought?  What other games in the shopkeeper genre would you recommend?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

If you’d like to support the show, please check out our Buy Me a Coffee page!

In 1998 Bioware changed the gaming landscape with Baldur’s Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure.  Taking cues from second edition D&D and the many stories written about it, Bioware wrote a low level adventure that jammed everything they could find inside it.  They attempted to copy mage spells directly from the manual, and even added in famous characters like Drizzt. 

It was exactly what the fans had been waiting for.  Not only were they able to see everything come to life, the game used the radical real time with pause system, allowing combat to flow far more freely than other turn- based games before it.  Fights were fast and frequently deadly, adding a thrill to RPG combat, even if it came at the cost of precision and control.

But CRPGs are now a dime a dozen.  Not only are there later games in the series, Baldur’s Gate now has to compete against Pathfinder, Warhammer and Divinity, to name a few.  With all the advancements in tech, in UIs, in skill systems, can the original Baldur’s Gate really compete?  Has it stood the test of time, or has it been made obsolete by the wave of modern RPGS that came in its wake?

On this episode, we discuss:

Exploration

• Much of the early-mid game of Baldur’s Gate 1 is spent exploring the environment around the towns and keeps that are dotted around the Sword’s Coast.  Is this exploration enjoyable to engage with intrinsically, and does it provide enough extrinsic rewards to motivate you to continue?

Combat

• Baldur’s Gate’s combat is scrappy, disorganised and messy.  There is a high level of vulnerability on both sides, spells have unclear areas of effect, and high rolls can produce instant-death in many circumstances.  Does this combat system lead to  dynamic and novel encounters that allow for tactical depth, or does it just encourage reloading until you get the outcome that you want?

Character Customisation

• Baldur’s Gate is a very complex game under the hood, but those calculations, and level up decisions are mostly hidden from the player.  Does the game give sufficient options to the player to customise their character with skill choices and gear, or is it all predetermined the moment you first select your character?
   

We answer these questions and many more on the 128th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast?

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Baldurs Gate OST - Michael Hoenig

Are you meant to eventually multiclass everyone to a mage in DND?  Is Sanctuary really as overpowered as it seems?  When will you play Baldur’s Gate 2, you pair of sniveling cowards?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

You can support the show monetarily on our Buy me a Coffee Page!

The Ace Attorney games were an insane success, far beyond what Capcom could have predicted.  After 4 mainline games in the series though, it was time for something new, and creator Shu Takumi refused to do anything normal.  With a desire to explore characters in a far deeper way than was possible with Ace Attorney, he decided the only way to go about this was to have the main character be a ghost.  

Whether that made sense or not, in 2010 we finally saw the release of Ghost Trick, a game that is so wrapped up in mystery that it's almost impossible to spoil all of its revelations.  The quirky characters, pacing and comedy of Ace Attorney was preserved, but it was replaced with entirely new gameplay mechanics with you manipulating the environment in subtle ways to change the outcome of deadly events.  It was an undeniably unique and beautiful game, and one that had even better critical acclaim than even Ace Attorney.

But with the Indie revolution churning out puzzle games like crazy, does Ghost Trick still stand out as an amazing game today?  Do its characters still thrill and excite?  Or is this style of storytelling and gameplay bloated and obsolete?

On this episode, we discuss:

Presentation

• How does the music, characters and animation come together to create the feeling and atmosphere of Ghost Trick?  Is this just another Ace Attorney game, or is it something fundamentally different?

Story

• Ghost Trick goes to great lengths to ensure the player is following the story, with reiteration and flashbacks being core parts of its narrative.  Is this too much, or is the story so complex that it needs this to keep people engaged?  Is Ghost Trick meant to be played chapter by chapter, or binged for longer sessions?

Gameplay

• Ghost Trick’s objects are all manipulated and affected in unique ways, instead of being reused and acting consistently.  How does this affect the puzzle design?  Is is better to have unique objects that need to be understood, or repeated objects to better understand a broader puzzle solution?

We answer these questions and many more on the 127th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Ghost Trick OST: Masakazu Sugimori

Is Ghost Trick just another Ace Attorney Game?  Is it just another Hitman game?  Or is it truly unique?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

You can support the show monetarily on our Buy Me A Coffee Page!

Space Sims used to be a vibrant and well populated genre.  Back in the 90s they command shelf real estate, right next to the latest and greatest RTS and Point and Click Adventure games.  Coming at the tail end of this era was Tachyon: The Fringe, released in 2000 by Novalogic games, well known for their regular flight sims and the Delta Force series. 

You play as Jake Logan, a freelancing mercenary, who quickly gets caught up in the midst of a fight for independence.  A megacorporation has been given the legal rights to mine on the Fringe, and you have to decide whether to help them invade and conquer this space for profits, or defend the native population.  And you do this all by flying your spaceship round and blowing shit up, as freelancers tend to do.  

Do its gameplay and story combine into a compelling experience?  Has Tachyon the Fringe stood the test of time, and is it worth strapping in to play a space sim?  Or did this genre die for a reason?

On this episode, we discuss:

Story

• The initial presentation of the corporation Galspan and the defending natives, the Bora, seems to lack any kind of nuance.  Galspan is fairly obviously evil and the natives are fighting the good fight.  Does the dual split narrative reveal a deeper and more compelling story where both sides have a point, or is this a simple tale of good versus evil?

Level Design

• The level design of Tachyon is a series of arenas connected by fast travel portals, not a big empty space.  This allows you to quickly get to where you need to go, but is there a cost for giving the player such rapid convenience?  How immersive does space feel if you barely move through it?

Combat

• Tachyon spices up the usual space arcade fighter by adding a strafe/slide function and giving you the ability to shift energy around between your systems.  Is this enough to elevate the action combat to brilliant fun, or is it just an endless series of repetitive battles?
   

We answer these questions and many more on the 126th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Tachyon: The Fringe OST: Tom Hays 

How well did Tachyon: The Fringe’s multiplayer work back in its heyday?  Does Freelancer really do what Tachyon was trying to do but better? Are there any other space sims that you think are genuinely better than both?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

You can support the show monetarily on our Buy Me a Coffee Page.

With another year done and dusted, Pat and James crack open another batch of listener questions. 
After curveballs like Killer 7 and Deadly Premonition, these should be a breeze.
Right..? 

On this episode, we discuss:

What are the best - and worst - smelling video game levels?

Can you tell us the story of how y’all met and decided to start this podcast? 

Was the fear of Baldur’s Gate 2 something you both developed as children? 
Or did you just become cowards as grown men?

We answer these questions and many more on Mailbag 6 of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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A huge shoutout to everyone who submitted questions this year, this episode wouldn’t have been possible without you. 

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Annihilation - The Alien: Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow

Cosmo Dreamer - Stage 8: DOVA-SYNDROME

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Think we were completely off the mark with some of our questions? 

Or do you have an even better answer of your own?

Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

If you would like to support the show monetarily, you can buy us a coffee here!

But can it run Crysis?  This was the motto that surrounded every single PC build for literal years after the release of the game in 2007.  Crytek were not satisfied with what they had achieved with Far Cry in 2004, and decided to push graphical hardware to its absolute limits with their brand new and shiny game.  And boy, did they succeed, with a poorly optimised but breathtakingly gorgeous game.  Even better, there was an entire video game attached to this graphical showcase, promising open ended tactical engagements over massive levels, far removed from corridor brawling.

You have cool suit powers that switch between modes, on the fly weapon modification, and a wide array of guns (and vehicles) to wreak havoc on those pesky North Koreans.  And if there are aliens, well, the United States of kick ass will just have to murder them as well.  It seems like an incredible game on paper, even today when we have more open world games than you can shake a stick at.

But for all that Crysis is vaunted for its massive leap forward in graphical technology, just how good a game is it to actually play?  Are the suit powers really that interesting in the face of the many RPG systems that tend to overlap FPS games today?  And is fighting those aliens all its cracked up to be?  Is Crysis worth your time to play today, or is it better remembered?

On this episode, we discuss:

The Suit.

Crysis’s key feature is a powerful exoskeleton that lets you switch between 4 modes - Strength, Armor, Speed and Stealth.  Just how well does the game push these suit modes in terms of engaging gameplay?  Are they balanced, and more importantly, are they fun to use?

The Guns.

How fun is the gunplay in Crysis?  The game features a fairly typical roster of assault rifles, submachine guns and shotguns, but has weapon modification on the fly with a simple menu.  Does this do enough to spice up the gunplay and keep things interesting?

The level design.

Crysis features (mostly) semi-open world level design, with bespoke objectives.  Does this give you the freedom to approach them in the way you want, and does it maintain this philosophy for the entire run time of the game?

We answer these questions and many more on the 124th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!
 

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Crysis OST: Inon Zur

The original version of the game, available on GOG, will fail to start on modern operating systems (Windows 10+). 

This can be fixed using the below link, which James used for this 

https://github.com/ccomrade/c1-launcher

Do you know what the gameplay differences are between Crysis 1 and the remastered version?  Do you think that Crysis is better than the Far Cry games that came afterwards?  When are we going to play Far Cry 2?  

Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

If you would like to support the show monetarily, you can buy us a coffee here!

After their magnum opus that was Resident Evil 1, Capcom were not going to sit on their heels.  Coming out just two years after the first in 1998, Resident Evil 2 sought to have everything the original had and much, much more.  It connected its two character’s stories in far more meaningful ways, increased the size of each player's inventory (and their respectives arsenals) and had more cinematic and explosive moments to show the player.

And boy did it do well!  It received universal critical acclaim, with everything from its graphical fidelity to its voice acting considered above and beyond the original.  Many players consider this to be the best Resident Evil game to this day.

But in the wake of the 2019 remake, and a longform view of what eventually became of the franchise - is Resident Evil 2 really all that its cracked up to be?  Do more zombies and more action automatically equal a better game?  Does more inventory slots, disappearing corpses and a more linear cinematic progression bode well from a gameplay sense?  How does Resident Evil 2 compare to its other offerings, and is it worth playing today?

On this episode we discuss:

Story

Resident Evil 2 presents its story in a very interesting way - two overlapping but distinct perspectives in Leon and Claire.  Does this experimental storytelling work, and how invested were we in its fundamentally B grade plot?

Level Design

Resident Evil 2s police station brings back most of what made the mansion so incredible, with its distinct spaces and looping level design. How does it compare to the original, and how enjoyable is it when you move away from the Police Station

Survival

Resident Evil 2 takes away the need to burn corpses, gives you more ammo and gives you more inventory slots.  What impact does this have on the tension of survival, and how different is the focus on tactical exploration?

We answer these questions and many more on the 123rd episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Resident Evil 2 OST: Masami Ueda, Shusaku Uchiyama, Syun Nishigaki

Which Resident Evil game is truly the best?  What were your experiences like playing the original games back in the day?  Are there any other survival horror games that come close to this franchise?  Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

You can support the show monetarily on our Buy Me a Coffee Page.