10 Video games any 90’s kid should have played

8.Drakengard 1, II but not III

Drakengard? What’s that you ask, oh so noble of readers? Drakengard is the mutt’s nuts my friends. Literally the dog’s danglies.  Back in the days of the PS2 there wasn’t very much in the way of how games were played. There was either sandbox or those damned mapped out levels you couldn’t stray from. The game series is another one of my favourites because it offered a surprising amount of variety. The long and short of it is, hero teams up with dragon to save his sister and in doing so inadvertently saves the world too, aside from one of the seven endings this game had where the dragon screws you over, but that there is a retrograded spoiler kiddies and I want you to play these games. But before I go onto talk about the game play I should mention that the game series was developed by Square Soft (now Square Enix). Yes, that’s right random fanboy and girl, they did more than Final Fantasy! Seeing as the games were originally for the ps2 the graphics are what you would expect from Square Enix, so pretty damned glorious at the time time. Even the cutscenes shame a lot of the newer bigger titles graphics wise. Just eye candy, eye candy galore! Okay, game play. Three level types: One, the mapped out level, can’t deviate from the path the game wants you to take, but that’s okay there is at least a hundred enemies for you to hack and slash your way through in any one of these. Two, the sand box. So we have a set perimeter but anything goes in these more wide open levels and with the tap of a button you’re on dragon back burning soldiers like it’s ‘Nam. Three: aerial combat, oh yes, I did mention the dragon was playable! So when you aren’t butchering your way through an enemy or burning it from on high like a vengeful god, you’re decimating an air force with some flight SIM style shenanigans, oh yes. God, I must play this again. Anyway, the second game holds true to the first, multiple different endings if not as many, the ally systems been changed making allies actually useful instead of timed summons who bugger off as soon as they’ve unleashed their biggest attack, nope in the second instalment allies are playable characters so, id you don’t like the main dude very much you can play as some on else, until you need your dragon to burn the defiant. Sadly the third game, while having some cool features and working on the unreal engine, was just terrible. It pandered to fan service, not the good kind. Eventually it got to the point I was playing it just to say I had stuck with the franchise, which is never any reason to play a game. That being said, it did receive all the attention and loving detail that you can expect from Japan. Had they just kept it even roughly the same as the first two incarnations it would have rocked! I loved the white dragon, Zero scared the hell out of me and if I met a girl cosplaying her well I’d submit and lick her boots faster than you can even judge me for this comment. But just removing the way the game had played to what it is now, nope, sorry, shame on you developers.