Jamendo Metal

I’ve begun rating the metal collection of Jamendo. This is a project that will last indefinitely – until I run out of steam or patience. So far the results have been amiable. See this list for my chronicling work thus far. Any suggestions for interesting metal you know is situated on Jamendo?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (PS2)

Out of the blue I got this game. Simplistic license-game fun with atrocious platforming sections and great graphics and music (though those are largely influenced if not directly taken from the movie, so…)

Extremely monotonous in a way. The game is basically nothing but a fight after another, with a door to the next area opening only after required enemies are defeated, with a small “puzzle” or a platforming section every once in a while. The controls are blocky and not necessarily easily manageable, and the camera rigidly moving, if at all! Another pet peeve with the camera I had was its default position, which is too low for you to see any but the closest enemies. While you can change it, it reverts back to the sucky default each time you change rooms, where usually a fight awaits and you suddenly got something a lot more important to think about than messing with the camera. A bad move…

Enemies’ A.I. is tragically flawed. To win a boss fight in an area with an insta-death chasm, you need to do nothing but time a glide into the chasm. The boss jumps in after you and dies just before you do, which is enough… Also, the enemies are blind to you if you’re hanging from somewhere or laying on the ground after getting your ass kicked. Towards the end of the game it seems to get better, though, and it might also with the harder difficulty, haven’t tried it yet.

Nonetheless, I also got to think what it would be like to speedrun this game. For starters, you can get your character to run at diabolically high speeds, extremely fun to watch if done properly. Secondly, you can abuse all chasms in the game pretty neatly. Unfortunately I think a full run would be sadly monotonous with all the fighting but in the future you might see me trying to do speedruns of a few chapters of the game! I think it’s worth a shot. (if my patience can handle the stupid platforming…)

It was a moderately addictive yet unnecessarily flawed playing experience. I would give it about 5/10, in any case well worth the 5E I paid to purchase it.

(this was not a full-fledged review… just casual ranting and speculation.)