Aiight, lemme tell you about Chrono Cross.  It’s a sequel to one of the most beloved RPGs from Squaresoft which deviates from its predecessor in every form.  Chrono Cross is a 3D game that utilizes prerendered backgrounds with polygonal characters getting into battles.  These battles are sweeping vistas with three of your characters engaging enemies in turn based combat.  The catch is that each element you use adds to a bar on the top right.  Depending on how many of the bars of the same color it will enhance the power of elements of the same color.  Rinse and repeat.  Outside of battles, you’re exploring a vibrant world and meeting a TON of unique characters all with very hard to understand dialog.

Visuals:

I’m arguing with myself over here because 16 year old me was all about this game.  I loved how different it is from the Final Fantasy games and how it was just charming.  Me, now, can kind of take it or leave it.  The characters are super over done and there are just so many characters that I really lose track of everyone.  The characters also get mixed up with the backgrounds because of everything being super colorful and they just blend together.  Looking at the battles with a new lens I really get annoyed with the transitions.  The sweeping camera angles and overall presentation is just overdone.  Sometimes you can go simple but this game doesn’t do it.

Audio:

Likewise the audio is a mixed bag with me.  I loved the music when I was a teenager and still jam to it but, now, I feel it is just too much.  Hearing the callbacks to Chrono Trigger is always nice to hear but it really makes the juxtaposition between the two games so readily apparent.  You can just hear the difference between two styles and it just makes you miss the first game.  That said, the opening intro music is still a fucking banger.

Completion:

I’m working on this game and feel it’s going to be a bit of a slog.  I have a save from my first playthrough and it would be quite an undertaking trying to figure out just where I was or what I was doing.  On my new playthrough I just met Lynx and Kid got messed up.  I’ve probably played for a few hours so my quest has just begun.  I’m trying to move through it but, even then, I’m thinking this is going to be a few dozen hours until I complete it.  I’ll keep you up to date!  I’m kind of enjoying it but I really want to beat it just so I can take it off my list finally after decades!

Update: 04/19/2026

I FINISHED THIS GAME! After 25 years or so I finally sat down and played through it to completion. I felt that the opening 2/3rd of the game was kind of middling with extreme amount of setup and lore building while the last 1/3rd or, heck, maybe even the last 1/10th of the game really being amazing. The story finally all clicked together and the environments were amazing. I don’t want to say that it had to ride on Chrono Trigger’s coattails to be amazing, but once the two games started to intermingle is when it started being coherent. The emotional parts hit and the revelations were well deserved. I’m happy that I’m done with this juggernaut of a game and I was happy with the time I had with it!

The post Chrono Cross appeared first on Shattered Pen.

What do you get when you got an okay game concept for a main character to go through caves and old tombs, fighting animals, dinosaurs, and crazy people, with some pretty decent music and a horrible control style?  You get a middle of the road game that is kind of forgettable.  Now what if you make the main character a sexy English big breasted female, what do you get?  You get a franchise that has lasted three decades and transcended all forms of media.  That’s what the original Tomb Raider is.  It’s a game where you guide Lara Croft through some treacherous levels as she discovers artifacts, braves traps, and fights a swarm of enemies all the time.  Did I mention she also has big knockers?

Visuals:

Tomb Raider encompasses the look of what you think of when you hear someone say “PlayStation 1 graphics.”  Everything has a hard chunky look to them.  The textures are super pixelated and they wobble all over the place.  Lara herself really has no detail.  But it all works.  I love the way this game looks.  I loved the way it looked even when it first came out.  Even though I said that mess about the textures, the sharpness of them makes the world look super clean and my mind fills in the rest of the details.  The worlds are also nice looking even with their shortcomings.  I could talk about the rudimentary CGI that was prevalent at this time period for CD based consoles, but that’s irrelevant.

Audio:

There really isn’t much audio in this game.  You’ll get Lara spouting some stuff every now and then with bad acting.  The sound effects are also kinda dull with her footsteps and gun shooting taking up the most of it.  When the music kicks in that’s where the game really shines.  It makes a rather mundane portion of the level seem like some shit is going to happen and, when it does, it gets your heart racing as you try to survive.

Completion:

I’ve never beat this game.  I always play a few levels and then just stop.  This go around was no different as I beat a few of the cave levels and solved traps.  I get my fill of the game pretty quickly because it’s just such a nightmare to play.  It is all based on a grip so tapping up on the d-pad will move Lara one grid space.  This is the same for all movements so make sure you have that in mind.  Regardless, I think I will keep playing more and more to try to beat it eventually.  It is a delightful game and still looks amazing, in my opinion.

The post Tomb Raider appeared first on Shattered Pen.

You like big robots who skate around and are on missions to take out other robots?  Well then have I got a game for you.  The first in the Armored Core franchise, Armored Core is as simple as it gets.  You take control of your robot [Armored Core] who you can customize with parts you find throughout the missions.  The possibilities seem kind of endless with it really depending on how you want to play.  You are given a selection of missions to choose from to help you progress through the story.  In hindsight, the series hasn’t really changed much in the 25 years from 1 to 6.

Visuals:

I gotta say, I’m kind of impressed with how the game looks.  Granted it’s pretty rudimentary and the black fog of war is always present, though not claustrophobic.  The character models look sharp with the enemies having enough variety to give you the ability to change your playstyle depending on what you’re up against.  The environments change enough and are pretty open which force you to go looking for trouble in every nook and cranny.  The weakpoint, if anything, is the out of mission UI which just gives you a little wheel to answer emails, accept contracts, or change your AC.  The amount of customization for your AC is pretty impressive in so much that you can kind of create whatever you want.  Pretty neat!

Audio:

This is such a mood swing in this department.  The sound effects are all kind of par for the course with the usual explosions and gunfire being ho hum.  Where it really kicks off is the soundtrack.  It hits that late 1990s early 2000s techno sound that everything was wanting to emulate.  Mind you this was 2 years before the release of the Matrix so it wasn’t super saturated yet but I do love hearing it.  

Completion:

I didn’t play much of this game because I know the amount of customization you can put into these games and I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole.  I became a Raven by passing the test, so yay me!  I then completed my first mission of eliminating some squatters from a blocky open world with some severe black fog.  The game controlled well and I dig how it looks.  The only thing I didn’t really like was how it controlled with it being kind of a slog to turn and look up or down.  These would be fixed in the later entries, but we work with what we got!

The post Armored Core appeared first on Shattered Pen.

You had to have been there in the 90s to understand how big this game was when it was released.  It put Nintendo and Mario on notice that there was a new mascot in town and that the Sony PlayStation was the only place to play it.  I believed the hype and was kind of bummed I couldn’t play it.  Luckily I did get to finally give it a shot some 30 years later.  You play as Crash as you travel forward, backwards, or side to side in levels.  You’ll have to cross massive chasms, break boxes to find powerups, or even run from a string of boulders trying to take you out.  This was a new take on a platformer!

Visuals:

I don’t know how to feel about how this game looks.  I feel I should be impressed with what Naughty Dog was able to do with the system in making the world look lush and vibrant but I don’t feel that way.  The main character, Crash, just looks kinda ugly with his disproportioned body but at least he looks different than Mario but not so much Sonic.  Going back to the environments, some of the levels do look good but the fact you’re limited to either an X or a Y axis takes away some of the luster.

Audio:

I played this game yesterday and I’m already drawing a blank when it comes to everything related to the audio of this game.  I remember the floating mask making his mumbling noise when I got him.  I also remember the sound I make when I die.  As for the music and everything else, a complete blank.

Completion:

I beat a few levels here and everything was going alright.  I thought it was an OK platformer and could see how some people would like it but then I got to that fucking boulder level.  Talk about a level that’s just trial and error over and over again until you get that run where you beat it.  This type of level has really become a staple of Naughty Dog games as it seems to pop up in all of them they’ve produced over the decades.  After completing this level I didn’t want to play anymore so I stopped it right there.

The post Crash Bandicoot appeared first on Shattered Pen.

Based on the hit movie that was all the rage back in the mid 90s, the game allows you to try to save the Earth [and its cities] from the dastardly aliens looking to exterminate us.  You take control of a number of plans going from city to city doing little missions.  You also get a nice dose of FMV to put you in the Independence Day spirit.

Visuals:

These visuals are fucking awful.  Ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic.  They’re not bad…they’re just bland.  There isn’t really anything to wow you.  The ground is just a flat texture with some cube buildings [or in the case of the Washington D.C. map, there is a Pentagon] and the upper portion of the screen is the 20 mile in diameter space ship.  So, get used to seeing these same things over and over again.

Audio:

There really isn’t anything to speak of here.  You hear “You got tone” over and over again as the little ships go in and out of your view.  I didn’t have any background music playing as all I heard was the tone.  And it’s so shrill you’ll just wish you could play with no sounds whatsoever.

Completion:

Backstory time!  I was a big Independence Day movie fan.  I couldn’t wait to see it in the theaters or get it at home.  I was so flabbergasted there wasn’t a video game for it as I thought it would make a perfect game adaptation.  Then I saw a Next Generation magazine article about how the Sega Saturn was getting it. I so wished I could get one so I could play, what I assumed, would be the best game over.  Then I saw the screenshots and read the review and my hopes were dashed.  Fast forward to almost 30 years later and I finally played it.  Everything those reviews and screenshots were true.  As I said to my girlfriend, “What a sad little game.”  I played two missions and was done with it.  I guess I can mark this off my regret lists because I finally got closure on it.

The post Independence Day appeared first on Shattered Pen.

You play as Tomba, a pink haired caveman looking guy who loves eating meat and hates pigs.  This is a side scrolling 2D/3D game where you jump on pigs and other baddies and throw them into obstacles, or other baddies, to take them out.  Along the way you uncover all sorts of quests from people throughout the land looking for help.  You also get a multitude of weapons and power ups to help you finish your quests.

Visuals:

This is just such a charming game.  Everything about the world is just so inviting from the main character, Tomba, to even the enemy pigs.  They’re all so adorable.  The world itself is even lively with some pretty nice parallax scrolling for the 2D elements.  The 3D elements leave a little bit to be desired but what can you expect from a PlayStation game.

Audio:

Like the visuals, the audio to this game is so adorable.  The way characters talk to the background music.  Everything just wants you to be happy while you’re traversing the world.  Our main character, Tomba, doesn’t talk except for the occasional yelps of pain but, if you’re good, those should be few and far in between.

Completion:

I really wanted to like this game.  I’ve been playing the first level of this game since I received my Pizza Hut Demo Disc back in the 90s but I have to say that this game really isn’t for me.  It may have been the controls or just that the charm wore off on me after a while.  But really, I think, it’s just the demo was the best part of the game because it gives an impression it’s going to be a pretty cool side scrolling game.  After the first level, the world opens up and becomes an RPG, sort of, with an inventory, quests, upgrades, etc.  I just wanted something simple.

The post Tomba! appeared first on Shattered Pen.

Dinosaurs, or SOMETHING LIKE THEM, are running amok on an island and it’s up to you and a band of mercenaries to get to the core of it. You’re also looking for a scientist for some reason but I couldn’t be bothered to care because DINOSAURS!

Visuals:

Man, I don’t know how to feel about this game. On the one hand good on CAPCOM for making one of these type of games being completely 3D and not static backgrounds, but everything just looks so bland and boring. All of the atmosphere has just been replaced by metallic or concrete walls with the zones being relegated to the size of a room before you load again. It just wasn’t doing it for me.

Audio:

Same this with the audio in this game. The voice acting is that specific time era cheesy with everyone giving it their all and the music trying to be creepy but action as well. It just wasn’t effective. It just felt very bland and, since I’ve been on a survival game as of late, it was just tired and outdone by better games. You know what did make cool noises, though?

Completion:

I had to stop this game. It was just too boring and everything was nonsense. I was all for a survival horror game with dinosaurs but this is anything but. It’s more like a campy Sci-Fi channel movie from the late 90’s trying to be amazing but falls completely short. I played a few hours of it but just had to stop. I read more of what happens in the latter parts and, yeah, stopping was the best move I made.

The post Dino Crisis appeared first on Shattered Pen.

The part you see up above is how far I ever got in Silent Hill when it first released. I had played Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 and thought I was hot shit until I played Silent Hill for about 20 minutes. When this scene happened, I turned off the PlayStation and never touched it again…until now.

Overview:

Silent Hill is a survival horror game where you take the role of Harry looking for his daughter in the town of Silent Hill after they experienced a car crash. You will meet some disturbing characters and uncover the truth of the town as well the meaning of the never ending fog plaguing this small rural location.

Visuals:

The game really does look good for being on the PS1 in 1999. The atmosphere is oozing with dread and horror. The images are grotesque as well as the town. The open world is there, albeit with obstacles preventing you from progressing. The fog does obstruct your view of the town but it gives to the menace chasing you. The locales are equally disturbing with seemingly innocent areas like a peaceful lake or elementary school making you panicking to go around a corner.

Audio:

Like the visuals, the audio in this game is spectacular. Gone are the moody somber tones you’ll find in other horror games only to be replaced with high pitched industrial sounds. A major mechanic is the radio you receive at the beginning of the game. It emits static every time an enemy is near and it is going on constantly so be prepared to fight when it happens. The voice active leaves a little to be desired but, again, this was 1999.

Completion:

I FINISHED THIS GAME! Like I said in the beginning, I only played about 30 minutes back in ’99. It scared me that much. Demon little kids killing you in a back alley in the dark just isn’t my thang. But that’s supposed to happen. Going through the rest of the game was a super treat as I feel, now, this is above and beyond much better than anything Resident Evil was doing back in the 90’s and early 00’s. I wish I had stuck it out back then because I feel I would have been a Silent Hill fanboy through and through.

The post Silent Hill appeared first on Shattered Pen.

Our hero, PaRappa, is trying to woo the girl he likes when her and their friends get accosted by some toughs. PaRappa then decides to get the help from Master Onion so he can win the girl and become the best rapper of them all! It’s a rhythm game with the teachers giving you a set of instructions for you to press the correct buttons in time with the music. The songs are also dynamic in which they end or keep going depending on how good you’re doing in the song.

Visuals:

This game is probably the precursor to Paper Mario in how it’s style is presented. All the characters are paper thin and highly animated. It’s very striking for being an early PlayStation 1 game and I think its style is still pretty amazing in this day in age.

Audio:

Our little dog is just rapping along with the music the entire time. The songs are catchy as well as the voice acting being pretty good for the time. The characters are all unique and memorable but, really, the point of this game is the music and it’s a banger.

Completion:

Fuck this game! It’s so fucking hard because the timing is so precise. I was playing it on my modern TV and was just failing horribly. I then tried a direct connection and still fucking failed. I just don’t have the rhythm, I guess, so I’ll never be able to woo the girl. I couldn’t even pass the fourth verse of the first song. I’m terrible. I did so terrible 5 fucking times I didn’t even get a chance to take screenshots of my playthrough. So, as a consolation, here is a picture taken from Wikipedia.

The post PaRappa the Rapper appeared first on Shattered Pen.

A Japanese RPG from 1997 which has unique combat, for the time, as well as a unique, for the time, setting of New York City. On Christmas, the main character, Bya [in my playthrough], attends an opera which turns into a massacre as the main singer causes everyone to spontaneously combust. It is then a cat and mouse chase as you go through many famous NYC locales trying to find this fiend and prevent Eve from destroying all of humanity with some pretty grotesque monster creations. It’s like a combination of The Thing and The Relic.

Visuals:

You can tell when Square made this it was trying to figure out how to make the characters of FF8 look more realistic. What I mean by this is that all the characters look like normal humans, albeit with anime features. They’re tall and slender instead of looking like Popeye characters. The backgrounds are static images which allow the characters to stand out. The main draw are the creature designs. All of them just look so gross and amazing.

Audio:

All of the sounds in this game are pretty top notch. The opera scene is very well done [although the singing is midi] and all the other music through many of the locations is pretty evocative for what’s going on. When the creatures come out you have some pretty disgusting noises going on with all of them sounding like racoons.

Completion:

I FINISHED THIS GAME! It took me quite a while and many sit throughs but, after almost 30 years, I finished it. I used to never really get that much further than the opera scene but this time I hunkered down and did it. The combat just gets better and better while the story goes in some pretty depressing places. The animatics are wonderful and everything gets wrapped up pretty nice. There is also a kind of new game plus thing in an EX mode so enjoy that too! Also, on the last fight, I had a game over and had to do about 30 minutes all over again cause I forgot to save.

The post Parasite Eve appeared first on Shattered Pen.