also has many impressive game works, including San Andreas in the GTA series, Sin City, the classic real racing series GT 3 and 4, as well as "King of Kingdoms" and "As a Dragon", and its influence can even be extended to this day. Undoubtedly, the super-strong game lineup of PS 2 generation left a deep impression and beautiful memories on players, but also brought an extremely cruel competitive environment to the game industry at that time.
One success will be achieved. Under the fierce competition, many series of works that are still remarkable today unfortunately suffered underestimation from the market back then. Because of this, most of these series of works can only watch those old opponents gradually become "super IPs", while they go to the second-tier, niche, and even disappear from the players' vision. Mi Youjun has compiled five games that were underrated in the PS 2 years. Some of these games have been recognized after players' archaeology, but some may not leave too many traces in people's impression even today. Of course, even so, as an important part of the PS 2 shining brightly back then, they are also worth talking about and should not be forgotten by the history of the game.
Note: In order to control the space to give readers a better reading experience, the previous article will introduce two games, "Rez" and " Hand of God ", and the next article will introduce the other three "failed" games of that year.
Rez
I believe that for most players, Rez is a strange name. In fact, this game now has a not-so-low status in the gaming field, especially in the field of "music games". In 2011, the Rolling Stone website selected the top 20 music games in history, and Rez was among them. However, from a commercial perspective, Rez is indeed a typical "failed work" in the PS 2 generation that year.
Rez is a music game developed by the well-known game producer Takashi Mizuguchi and was first published in 2001. The game format was very innovative back then, a bit like a combination of music games and road shooting games. Players play a hacker in the game that penetrates into AI programs and follow music to continuously eliminate viruses and infected security programs.
It is reported that Takashi Mizuko was also inspired to make this game because of his energy to watch a music festival in Zurich in 1998. The European disco music on stage perfectly merged with the reactions of the audience below, which also strengthened his determination to make music games. What you need to know is that Takashi Mizukoshi was also famous for making racing games such as Sega Rally before.
After producing the female-oriented game production task assigned by SEGA and finally creating the female-oriented music game "Space Channel 5", Takashi Mizuguchi also owns his own studio UGA within Sega, and concentrates on producing the European disco music style and a new form of game work he has always wanted to do, "Rez". If Space Channel 5 is a game work with clear target groups and obvious commercial purposes, then "Rez" is more like an independent game work that was injected into Tetsuya Mizuguchi's own, and his personal style was too strong and his style was too innovative, which eventually led to "Rez" almost inevitably encountering commercial failure.
According to statistics, the sales volume of "Rez" in Japan was only 37,500, which is in sharp contrast to the 50,000 sales volume of "Space Channel 5 Part 2" in the first week.
For the public, the style of "Space Channel 5" is obviously more pleasing
Just as Sega withdraws from the host market, Sega reorganized its internal studio in 2003 due to financial problems, and the already-proposed sequel to "Rez" was also cut off. In the end, Tetsuya Mizuguchi also decided to leave and start a business. Thankfully, the story of "Rez" does not end, and in 2008, Mizuko's new company launched "Rez HD" and began to gain attention.
"Rez Infinity" was launched in 2016. This audio game equipped with Unreal 4 engine and supports VR experience has become one of the most successful games in VR in the early days. The well-known magazine edge commented that it was "the best VR game of 2016". M Station gave it a media evaluation score of 89/100, which was its highest-rated VR game that year.So far, there are only 3 VR games with Metacritics scores of more than 89: "Space Robot: Rescue Mission" (2019, 90), "Half-Life: Alex" (2020, 92), and " Rhythm Space " PC version (2019, 93).
"Rez Infinite"
"Hand of God"
"Hand of God" is an action fighting game produced by the former Capcom's semi-home studio "Santhesia Studio". The game debuted in 2006, but the sales volume was poor, and eventually became the best singer of "Santhesia Studio". In fact, this game has been made today, both its creativity and its production team member lineup are worthy of praise. When later generations review this product, it is also called the "magical work" of that year, but when people really understand it, it is too late.
"Hand of God" is a game work that combines Western drama style and Japanese comedy style. Players play the role of Gene, a fighter who has lost one-arm, by chance, and he gained a brand new super prosthetic limb and headed to the path of saving the world and attacking all kinds of Western villains and demons. The game has a combat system that seemed extremely complicated at the time in
, which also made hardcore fans exclaim "quite" but also discouraged most players. If it were put today, this work with smooth plot and designed battles by Shinji Mikami would undoubtedly be sought after by many "hardcore" players, but at that time it encountered unexpected commercial failures.
The Clover Studio, which produced "Hand of God", may not be very well-known for players who have only tried the console in recent years, but if you call it the predecessor of " Platinum Studio ", you may have a more straightforward understanding of it. The original name of Clover Studio is Clover Studio. Clover is also the abbreviation of Creative LOVER, which is destined to be gone on the road of "creative". The Japanese syllables of Clover Mi (Mis) and BA (Ba) come from the core characters of the studio, Shinji Mikami and Atsushi Inaba. Of course, they later became the core characters of Platinum Studio.
Before "Hand of God", Clover Studio had created the popular "Red Hero Joey" series with limited funds. Then, their commercial performance began to decline, and in 2006 they released two works that were considered commercial failures, which eventually led to the departure of core personnel and the dissolution of the studio. These two were "Hand of God" and "God", which broke the Guinness World Record twice: the lowest commercial achievement in the year (2006), and the most praised game with animals as the protagonist (2018).
These two works show the pursuit of Sanye Crocodile in the "game art"
. Both works were released in 2016, targeting the European and American markets ("Hand of God") and the Japanese markets ("God's God"), but both suffered sales Waterloo. The two products have been launched in other markets next year, but the situation has not improved.
In Wikipedia, "Hand of God" is summarized as a "Cult Classic", a typical niche work. People who like it will hold it to the altar, but there are even more people who cannot accept it. But it is undeniable that the niche style of the past is now increasingly recognized by players and media. In 2010, "Hand of God" was included in the book "1,001 games that must be played in your lifetime".
The book was compiled by Tony Mott, editor of Edge magazine, and recorded the 1,001 most worthy games 13 years ago
Capcom's "Wrath of Asura" launched in 2012 was also well received for its replica of the style and setting of "Hand of God" and was successful. CyberConnect2, a developer of "Wrath of Asura", said in an interview that they believe "Wrath of Asura" can satisfy fans who are looking forward to the sequel of "Hand of God", and are glad that fans can see the elements of the game that pay tribute to "Hand of God".
Capcom's 2012 game "Asura's Wrath"
Of course, the almost crazy fighting style displayed in "Hand of God" has also been continued. After the disbandment of Clover, the original team members formed a platinum studio, and a number of works such as "Crazy World", "Angel Hunting Witch", "Rise of Metal Equipment: Revenge", "Neil: Age of Mechanical Age" have also become the best "spiritual sequel" of "Hand of God".
does not affect the reading experience because the article is not too long. The following three games will be introduced in the next article. These three games have also had a rough fate. They were controversial at the beginning of the release and all ended in failure, but this often doesn't mean they are really "bad", maybe it's just that they are too advanced.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-