Okay, so what the hell is this all about? Well, this is PS2 Cents, but where I talk about games in a shorter quantity. Basically, shorter, more condensed reviews but you get five games reviewed. This is basically for games I had very little to talk about, did not finish due to reasons, or didn’t want to finish because the game was hot garbage. I dunno. This helps get reviews out faster and allows me to focus on the bigger reviews. We’ll start in alphabetical order and work our way from there. Starting with…

Airblade



Okay, so let me start out by saying this. This game is already infinitely better than Yanya Caballista, even if the visuals make me wanna throw up. Developed by British studio, Criterion Games, Airblade is the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast game TrickStyle, a game that wasn’t Tony Hawk, so I didn’t give a shit. You play as Ethan, a young skater whose friend gets the ever living shit kicked out of him by police because he’s created a Hoverboard. With his Hoverboard in your possession, you must ride around the city and stick it to the man to save him. I was genuinely confused about this. Was this in the future? Is this just some science nerd who created some high tech gear? The story just starts with police brutality, which I’m sure is normal for a skater kid in the 2000s, but some context would be nice. But let’s talk about the gameplay itself. It’s a basic skating game. You do goals throughout the level and try to finish them all in one setting and reach the end. Think of goals in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The only difference is that time is very short and the goals can be hard to witness. This game does not fuck around. If you mess around for even a moment, you’re screwed. It’s brutal for newcomers and makes it a game that demands you master it. And I will say, looking at videos trying to check out where the levels go, it’s pretty intense. I think the fun for this game comes from trying to beat the level as fast as possible, using air tricks and grinds to speed your character up and beat the level as quickly as possible. But man, before you can sore, you gotta fall and fall and fall. The games are pretty short though, so you won’t be punished for long, but it will mess you up. But when you master the level and beat it in record time, it’s definitely something satisfying. The controls are tight and pulling off a successful trick is satisfying, but let me tell you, this ain’t no Pro Skater 3. You better be dedicated to beating this game, boy. All in all, a decent skating game. Hard as fuck, but I’ll give it a pass.
Award: Hurts So Good. Expect to get beaten a lot. But mastering it will be the most satisfying thing ever.

Evil Prophecy



Okay, I’m gonna spoil it for you right now. This is the worst game on this list. A game from the mind of the biggest edgelord in comics himself, Todd McFarlane and developed by Konomi, Evil Prophecy takes place in the 1900s, where monsters are attacking Europe and causing all sorts of mischief, monsters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Voodoo Queen. Yes, the classic monster, The Voodoo Queen. I remember that film. Anyway, you play as four characters. Jaeger the doctor, Logan the pirate, Delphine the gunslinger, and Sundano the black one. And the game does support four player co-op, but… yeah, I wasn’t gonna make people suffer through this with me. I’m playing McFarlane’s Evil Prophecy, you really think I have fucking friends. I can’t tell you anything about this game that I liked. Even with some bad games like Marc Ecko’s Getting Up or The Bouncer, there was something I enjoyed. But Evil Prophecy is just a boring game all around. Every step you take in this game, a horde of enemies comes out. It’s been described to be like a Dynasty Warriors game, but Dynasty Warriors at least makes the enemies weak and you feel like a badass. But these enemies have so much health and so much of them just pop up in hoards. It’s like a beat em up except multiply the enemy numbers by like 4x. The levels are really boring too. There’s always an exit, but the game tells you, “Sorry, you gotta go do stuff” like collect a card for a guy or kill all enemies in the area, otherwise the guys won’t let you through. Like fuck off, I’m trying to finish the level. I can barely tell you the difference between the characters. Sure, they all have their own special moves, but their attacks that you’ll mostly be doing are the same three button combos. There’s also this loyalty system. Help an ally out from being grabbed by a monster and they’ll like you, but if you don’t help them while fighting off the big mess of enemies, then they hate you. And that’s really about it. That’s all she wrote. I couldn’t even be fucked to get to the first boss because it was all just walking forward until you fight more enemies in a dark cave and have to find some way to open the exit because there’s a roadblock. Rinse and repeat. No thanks, I have other, better games to play.
Award: Bottom of the Bin. Easily the worst game I’ve played thus far on here. The other two bad games were frustrating or annoying, but this game is just boring. And I will always say that being boring is the worst thing you can be.

Thrillville



Hey, remember when LucasArts made games? Yeah, me neither. Well, they published Thrillville. The actual developers were Frontier Software. In Thrillville, you play as the nephew of Doc Brown- Uncle Mortimer, who runs the popular amusement park Thrillville. He tasks you, a child, with running the park through finances, deciding how to market and who to hire. Yeah, it’s a bit of a mess. The game is very simple. I actually played this game once before on the original Xbox and remember loving it as a kid, even beating it. But playing it now as an adult, well… Yeah, it’s definitely a fun game for a kid, no doubt about that, but I feel like there’s stuff lacking here. The game let’s you build the park however you want. No need to worry about going bankrupt or anything like that. You just do what you want to do and have fun. If you wanna create a giant mess of a roller coaster or create an entire section of the park that just sells hats, go for it. That being said, the lack of challenge kinda makes the game a little uninteresting for adults. I mean, for a kid who wants to create their own amusement park, this game is amazing. I loved it so much as a kid. But Roller Coaster Tycoon I feel offers more bang for your buck. I mean come on, you can’t even kill people in this game. What’s the point of making an amusement park if you can’t create glorified death traps? That’s just absurd. The game does have some mini-games when you put down arcades, and those are pretty fun and in depth, from golding to shooters to racing. But it does make me wonder why this is all here in a game about managing an amusement park. But, it’s a reasonably fine game for kids. It’s nothing too hard, it’s fine. And it was apparently a huge success, as Thrillville would get a sequel, Thrillville: Off the Rails, and a spiritual successor from Frontier Software in 2016’s Planet Coaster, a more interesting game. Now we can finally murder our customers. Nice.
Award: Dumb Fun. It probably won’t entertain an adult much, but it’s decent fun for children and I certainly did have fun as a kid. If you want a more chilled imaginative theme park simulator, then this is for you.

TimeSplitters 2



Okay, now let’s get back to some really fun games. Timesplitters 2 is considered perfection as far as shooters go. Developed by the late Free Radical Studios, Timesplitters 2 follows our hero, not Vin Diesel, but Sergeant Cortez, as he goes through different time periods as other characters to collect the time crystals and stop the attack of the alien race known as the Timesplitters. For a PS2 game, the cutscenes are pretty well animated. The characters are very expressive, there’s a lot of fluent movement, and all of them have this sort of saturday morning aesthetic about them. It looks nice. Again, for a PS2 game. It’s no high end graphics, but it’s decent. The gameplay is a first person shooter similar to that of Goldeneye 007 on Nintendo 64 minus the not holding up at all. You have a weapon collection usually consisting of three and a few explosives, and the game doesn’t really have an aiming reticle, but the gun slowly auto locks to enemies. It doesn’t feel too clunky and it works well (Except on sniper rifles, but I never use those anyway). The concept is a lot of fun too, allowing you to travel to different time periods as different characters. The first level has you in 1980s Siberia fighting off zombies in a lab. After that, you’re fighting the mafia in 1930 Chicago. And then there’s Neo-Tokyo in the futuristic year of 2019… Kinda off there, but eh, this game was released in 2002. The main campaign is fun. Not the deepest first person experience. This isn’t exactly Doom: Eternal, but it’s alright. Now multiplayer, that’s where the game really kicks off. There is so much variety with the multiplayer, with tons of characters to select from and crazy weapons to use, as well as being able to play with up to 16 players (Well, before the servers were shut down), but it’s still fun with four players. I feel like TimeSplitters 2 perfected the multiplayer whereas it’s next entry, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect was more for the single player campaign. But it’s a decent game all around. I can see why people have fond memories of it and I can see why everyone is mad at Deep Silver for still not putting out that TimeSplitters 4! Where is it, Deep Silver?!
Award: Hidden Gem. You don’t need me to tell you that TimeSplitters 2 is a good FPS game. You know it, I know it, even the kids playing Fortnite know it. TimeSplitters 2 is just good

The Urbz: Sims in the City



You know, I don’t really like using memes in these reviews because I feel like those will date these articles and make them stale in the future, but… I feel like The Urbz is Boomer revenge to make fun of kids that grew up in the 2000s. The Sims having weird spin-offs was nothing new, but this one really takes the cake, being so 2000s, man. But it’s the special Black Eyed Peas Edition! Download the code on the back to get a never-before heard Black Eyed Peas song! Hell yeah, boy! Though, I don’t think the code works anymore. Also, you read the cover right. The Urbz’s biggest selling point was having music by the Black Eyed Peas sung in Simlish. I don’t listen to the Black Eyed Peas at all, but I’ve heard them described as that band you look at when you want to see why nobody likes the 2000s. Anyway, this game feels really limited for a console release. Character creation feels as bland as can be, with a few hair and body types, and giving you not much else from there. You can only get clothes depending on which click you join. Yes, much like Dragon Age: Origins, you must pick your class between skaters, punks, rappers, and more. And boy, does this game just ooze the worst of the 2000s. Look, nobody likes the 2000s, I get that, but holy shit, for a game promoting the best trends of that era, this game did to the 2000s what Song of the South did to the blacks… too much? It also feels really stiff, honestly. I didn’t think it was possible to screw with the concept of just living your life in the city, but oh boy is this rough. It’s also a Sims game that comes with missions. Much like Saints Row, you must take out all the click leaders with the help of celebrities- Wow, it’s a lot more like Saints Row than I intended. But boy, is it so janky and weird and kinda not fun that I didn’t even want to get through it. Honestly, The Urbz exists as more of a time capsule. This is a game that we can look back on and laugh at for how dumb our trends were at the time and nothing more. When you have so much better Sims games out there, I think The Urbz is better left forgotten. Also, this game takes 1000 KB of memory. That may sound laughable nowadays without 4TB PS4 memory, but on a 144MB memory card in the 2000s despite having less freedom than the first Sims game… Yeah, go fuck yourself.
Award: Bargain Bin Bazaar. Expect to see this as the kind of game you can buy from a flea market for like two dollars. It’s forgotten for reasons seen here and it will probably stay that way

Well, that’s five games for you. Some good, a few mehs and a trash fire. Don’t worry, this will not replace my usual reviews. This is just to save time for other, bigger reviews. Get ready for that full length Ed Edd n Eddy video game review babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.