Ultimate Frustration

On 01/25/2018 at 11:03 PM by KnightDriver

Today I tried to do maintenance on my PS2 Slim, play Back to the Future: The Video Game and Patapon Remastered, and watch Tom Baker era Doctor Who. Three of those ended in complete frustration.

My PS2 slim just wouldn't play PS2 games. I got a disc read error every time. But it played my DVD of Doctor Who episodes with no problem whatsoever. Strange. So I took it apart using a guide on ifixit.com and cleaned the laser with rubbing alcohol. No effect. Mark bid on a PS2 on Amazon for me, but he'll probably get outbid because I'm not willing to spend more that $25 on the thing. Most are going for around $50, which is outlandish. One day, though, I'll get another one. For now, I'm downsizing my PS2 game collection and basically mothballing everything PS2 for a while until I have more expendable income. This was my first frustration of the day.

Then I dove back into Back to the Future: The Game and finished chapter 3. I nearly finished chapter 4 before I got seriously fed up with the randomness of the puzzle solutions. I come across this in every single point-and-click style adventure game and it makes me super angry. I don't like being thwarted by puzzles that basically require you to do random things with items in your inventory. Things have to have some logical, meaningful path. This is why I'm avoiding this type of game now. That was my second frustration.

Then I was fooling around with my PS4 to see if any of the Sega arcade games I now can't play on my PS2 were on PSN. There were a bunch of interesting games but none I was looking for. But, while I was there, I remembered how much I wanted Patapon Remastered and bought it with funds I had sitting in my wallet. Patapon's visual design and music are so great. I absolutely love it. But I had some difficulty getting control of the combos once they passed 9. You get a special boost after the 9th combo and there seems to be a slight change in the ryhthm when you get there that throws me off every single time. I had the same issue playing the PSP version years ago. I tried over and over and couldn't get control of that transition. It is the key to beating the levels further on. I got my third and final frustration of the day.

I popped in my Doctor Who episode, Armageddon Factor, with Tom Baker on my PS2, determined to get some use out of the system. Mark and I watched most of the 6 episodes before the day was over. It's the last of the Key to Time series, so it's extra long. It's really good though. I think that might have made up for the day's load of frustration.

Cary Woodham

01/26/2018 at 12:27 AM

Yeah I hate it when electronics don't work. Frustrates me to no end.

You know, when I first played Patapon, I liked the demo, but not the full game.

Now the game I REALLY liked on PSP was Loco Roco. I think you can download that on PS4 now as well. I hope you really consider trying that one sometime. If you want a good idea what goes on in my head 24/7, play that game. :)

Right now I'm reviewing a point and click adventure that has no logic whatsoever. Luckily it has an extensive hint system. Have you tried upping the frequency of hints in the TellTale game? I think that's how they handled hints in those.

OK I'm off to post a BIG blog!

KnightDriver

01/26/2018 at 10:27 PM

I played the demo for Loco Roco on my PSP way back. I vividly remember being a passenger in a car, a rare thing in itself, and playing it and nearly getting sick to my stomach. I think it is the only game that's made me nauseous. I loved the game though. The PS4 was suggesting I buy it after Patapon.

I used the hint system in Back to the Future but I tried to avoid it. That last time I looked at the hints I was outraged by what it told me. Something so obvious yet also kind of random. It seemed to be mocking me. I couldn't take it anymore.

Super Step Contributing Writer

01/26/2018 at 12:52 PM

I am still tempted to buy one of those backward compatible PS3s, but I don't because I know something like that would happen, where it wouldn't play the games I wanted it to.

I got annoyed with the random inventory puzzles in Broken Age, myself. I usually like the stories in point-and-clicks enough to keep going, but those puzzles really annoy me as well. The only point-and-click adventure whose puzzles I really enjoyed was Tormentum: Dark Sorrow. Those puzzles actually did have a logical flow to them.

I usually suck terribly at rythm games at first, but I got to a point in Elite Beat Agents where I could beat everything on S-rank. For me, it's a matter of finding exactly where in the beat the game wants me to push buttons, because it seems to change based on difficulty level. I should really break out Rocksmith again soon.

I've never really watched Doctor WHo. I watched part of an episode on Netflix once and I just don't know if it's for me.

01/26/2018 at 10:13 PM

I really love stories and art style of many adventure games but those puzzles get me every time. They just seem so unfair a lot of the time.

I couldn't figure out exactly where at this one moment. I would get it one time and then not another, and I felt I had done the same exact thing. Maybe I'll get it next time I play it.

I've only watched the Tom Baker Dr. Who. I haven't been interested in the recent stuff but I'm going to try Paul Davidson and Colin Baker soon. They were the doctor in the 80s.

daftman

01/27/2018 at 12:49 AM

That's so bizarre that your PS2 will play DVDs and not games...which are printed on DVDs o_O I know you won't have a shortage of games to play but it is frustrating to have something like that unavailable to you.

01/27/2018 at 07:11 PM

I'm doing this retro project right now and I need access to these old arcade games that are sometimes only on collections for PS2. I guess I could go PC with this stuff and be fine, but I don't really have the cash to build another tower. One day though.

The guy at Jay Str. told me that game DVDs have more layers, or deeper layers, than movie DVDs. I'm sure I heard that somewhere else too, so I don't doubt it. I popped in a game that was a CD and it worked. There are few of those however.

I figure the laser is just weak and can't reach the deeper layers. Or maybe it needs calibration. I might try and fix that, although it seems difficult to do on the slim model I have.

goaztecs

01/30/2018 at 01:40 PM

BttF drove me nuts. I think I have the series on the PS3 but I couldn't get passed on section and I was done.

Who knew PS2's were still going for $50. I would like to get another fat one because of the option to install and HDD with the Network Adaptor. I have the Final Fantasy drive in my PS2 and i use it as a giant memory card and all my game saves currently live on it.

01/30/2018 at 10:17 PM

My local video game shop (not gamestop) sells a fat PS2 for $70 and a slim for $80. I have like $50 saved from trades but I'm trying hard to find other systems to play the games I want right now so I can put it off. It just seems like a lot for an old system that might fail a year or two down the road. I need a reason to bail on the PS2 alltogether but I went through my games collection and there are too many good ones I don't want to part with. Maybe I'll get lucky sometime and find a PS2 for like $20. $30 even, but not more that $50. That seems wrong to me.

02/01/2018 at 11:56 AM

PS2 had one hell of a library. It seemed like there were "must have" games for everyone and every genre.

02/01/2018 at 11:11 PM

A surprising amount of exclusives worth having on the PS2. I played all the cross console games on Xbox.

PixlBit