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(Friday's comprehensive PAL and key NTSC release list.) Disgaea! GT4 Prologue! Hyper Street Fighter II! Syberia 2! Thief: Deadly Shadows! Spare exclamation marks available on request!

Feature by Tom Bramwell Former Editor-in-Chief

Published on 28 May 2004

20 comments

If Gran Turismo 4 Prologue is an Advanced Skills School for GT nuts, then perhaps this column ought to re-brand itself. How about Shopping Machismo Tour Prologue? You like that? Really? Jesus. To be honest, we'd probably prefer something more akin to Hyper Street Fighter II. After all, HSFII is an amalgamation of Street Fightery bits and bobs from the past 15 years, and this... this is an amalgamation of screaming down the telephone at incomprehensibly idiotic retailers sampled from the past 15 minutes. High-Street Fighter Tour Prologue. Sorted.

In fact, what with TrackMania: Power Up! (the original, excellent game and some freebie add-ons re-released at a lower price) and Activision's PC version of True Crime out this week (the original, above-average game and some boring-sounding multiplayer stuff released on a different format), we could feasibly turn this increasingly desperate intro into some sort of cunningly cohesive train of thought. But it really isn't. We just write crap and hope it goes somewhere.

Besides, we'd far rather talk about games. Two games in particular, this week: Disgaea - The Hour of Darkness, and Gran Turismo 4 Prologue. In the latter's case, we've already said we like it, so today gives us a useful opportunity to defend the game from a bit of backlash.

We're pro-shrubbery actually

Some of the complaints we've seen centre on the fact that Project Gotham Racing 2's recent £2.99 premium content splurge was met with criticism from people angry about paying for the new tracks and cars. This is flawed on several levels. Firstly, very few people complained, in fact most people (including us) hailed it for delivering so much for such a reasonable amount of money.

Second, comparing PGR2 add-on content and GT4 Prologue is silly - the former is a bundle of specific extras bolted on to an existing title, probably developed to a certain extent prior to the game's release anyway (as evidenced by the accompanying soundtrack having been pre-loaded onto the game disc and unlocked when the premium content was released), whereas the latter is at the very least a technical evolution of an existing engine and arguably a completely new game. It may consist of fewer tracks, but PGR2's offerings are all based on the same city layout, whereas Prologue's are a disparate and thoroughly beautiful bunch. What's more, Prologue features something like 64 vehicles, a host of tutorials and even limited racing options. PGR2 doesn't let you race the downloadable tracks against the AI in Kudos Challenge or anything else.

Don't get us wrong - we thought the PGR2 offering was an excellent way to spend £2.99 and wholly endorse it. But to use it as an example of how GT4 Prologue is some sort of rip-off is very wrong and mad. In fact, given that a "rip-off" is defined as an act of exploitation, this is absolutely not that - Sony makes it very clear what's on offer. Heck, Kazunori Yamauchi writes it on the front of the box. If you want to argue that it doesn't represent value for money then go right ahead (we think it does to the extent discussed in the review), but please don't whinge about double standards over Xbox Live premium content and call it a rip-off. And don't claim Nintendo never does things like this either - Zelda bonus discs, Stars Catalogue, Pac-Man Vs., etc, etc, etc.

Storm in a stolen teacup

Moving on, the other game we're excited about is Disgaea - The Hour of Darkness (which lasts longer than you might expect). Unfortunately, a mounting workload (and one of our number's disgusting decision to go on holiday for the next week) means that we haven't been able to review it to date, but that will happen, and from what we've seen of the American version we'll be saying things that are very positive.

It sounds like just the sort of vicious kick to the turn-based nads we've wanted for ages. It doesn't take itself too seriously, with a healthy sense of humour about things like mid-level bosses and other generic quirks, and it seems to have endless possibilities to keep you hooked; letting you travel inside weapons and battle to increase that weapon's power, replay the game's 13 episodes with your completed kit, unlock loads of hidden classes and endings, and generally delivers turn-based strategy RPG mechanics in such a way that they rarely tire. KOEI deserves kudos for publishing it here.

Not quite in the same category (and not on the same continent either), but probably worthy of mention in the same breath this week is Ion Storm's Thief: Deadly Shadows. It's due out here on June 11th, but we care not for silly transatlantic delays. From what we understand, the boys in Austin have done a sterling job with a difficult franchise. Perhaps not a sensational one, but the reviews argue that Thief fans won't feel as betrayed as Deus Ex fans did with Invisible War, which is encouraging - even if the seemingly gorgeous graphics are apparently some sort of mixed bag.

Pottering off

Elsewhere this week, we'd be amiss if we didn't mention Syberia 2, although in the absence of a copy we're kind of at a loss for what to say about it. Oh well: it's picked up scores averaging around 8/10 (good start), and it's been described as "a bit of a letdown compared to the superlative first game" by GameSpot in amongst them. It still sounds very good though, and most online stores here in the UK are only charging around £20 for it if you fancy a punt.

Anyway, that's pretty much your lot. Notable slippages this week include Karaoke Stage, but we don't care about that any more since SingStar turned up, which is Konami's loss really; and Red Dead Revolver from Rockstar, which has picked up all manner of crazy and illogically diverse scores from mags and online press, and now should be out on June 11th. Which gives us a couple of weeks to figure out some enterprising innuendo to put in this section.

Oh, and we understand that the new Harry Potter title (including EyeToy PS2 support) is due out over the weekend ahead of the film's release next week. Is it any good? Well, to quote one of our heroes: "I'm not going to lie to you Marge."

[Exits whistling.]