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xyzzysqrlThis story has two parts.
Part 1: I could not play my legal copy of Kao Round 2. The installer had a 50/50 chance of crashing hard or demanding I put the disc I was running it from back in the drive. When I managed to bypass the installer, it tried to authenticate against the JoWood servers. JoWood has been out of business since 2011.
I pirated a Gamecube copy and emulated it. It ran at a perfect solid 60fps with vsynch and antialiasing and probably looked way better than the actual Gamecube version did. I prefer not to resort to piracy unless I can help it because I actually OWN enough damn games for a lifetime (although I love resorting to emulation, it's fun) but I feel it was justified in this case.
Part 2: I was once a review drone for Worthplaying, a job that gave me a breakdown and aggravated my severe depression. That job taught me that reviewing games ISN'T a blast all day every day, that my energy reserves were finite, that everything is less fun on a deadline, and that stamping out reviews from a review template is what you should do when you have no creativity left.
One of the games I reviewed was Kao the Kangaroo Round 2, and I gave it a 5.5 out of 10 and sneered at it a lot. I feel ashamed of a lot of the writing in this review, but after playing through the entire game in one sitting, I think I can stand by it. This is a Perfectly Average Platformer. But that doesn't mean it isn't FUN, and when I look at myself talking about how it's OBVIOUSLY a children's game, I wonder if I would recognize the Me eleven years later that sits up until 3 in the morning to finish a children's platformer. And has trouble with it. (The bird-riding sections, oh my god, who told them that was okay?)
Then the credits roll and I see there were two programmers, four level designers, and three animators. Okay, I'm willing to cut a lot more slack for that.
Secret Bonus Part 3: Kao the Kangaroo 3 was never released in the US, but it was in Poland. I have a file I work on sometimes, a file with a google/babelfished translation of all the text in Kao 3. I'm rewriting it, punching it up a bit. Trying to give it some soul, some energy.
It may never see light outside my PC. But y'know, one day... I want to play through the Kao 3 I've been rewriting. Not as a reviewer, not even as a "games writer" (which I'm not), just... to play it.
I like playing video games. I don't know if anyone's noticed.
Part 1: I could not play my legal copy of Kao Round 2. The installer had a 50/50 chance of crashing hard or demanding I put the disc I was running it from back in the drive. When I managed to bypass the installer, it tried to authenticate against the JoWood servers. JoWood has been out of business since 2011.
I pirated a Gamecube copy and emulated it. It ran at a perfect solid 60fps with vsynch and antialiasing and probably looked way better than the actual Gamecube version did. I prefer not to resort to piracy unless I can help it because I actually OWN enough damn games for a lifetime (although I love resorting to emulation, it's fun) but I feel it was justified in this case.
Part 2: I was once a review drone for Worthplaying, a job that gave me a breakdown and aggravated my severe depression. That job taught me that reviewing games ISN'T a blast all day every day, that my energy reserves were finite, that everything is less fun on a deadline, and that stamping out reviews from a review template is what you should do when you have no creativity left.
One of the games I reviewed was Kao the Kangaroo Round 2, and I gave it a 5.5 out of 10 and sneered at it a lot. I feel ashamed of a lot of the writing in this review, but after playing through the entire game in one sitting, I think I can stand by it. This is a Perfectly Average Platformer. But that doesn't mean it isn't FUN, and when I look at myself talking about how it's OBVIOUSLY a children's game, I wonder if I would recognize the Me eleven years later that sits up until 3 in the morning to finish a children's platformer. And has trouble with it. (The bird-riding sections, oh my god, who told them that was okay?)
Then the credits roll and I see there were two programmers, four level designers, and three animators. Okay, I'm willing to cut a lot more slack for that.
Secret Bonus Part 3: Kao the Kangaroo 3 was never released in the US, but it was in Poland. I have a file I work on sometimes, a file with a google/babelfished translation of all the text in Kao 3. I'm rewriting it, punching it up a bit. Trying to give it some soul, some energy.
It may never see light outside my PC. But y'know, one day... I want to play through the Kao 3 I've been rewriting. Not as a reviewer, not even as a "games writer" (which I'm not), just... to play it.
I like playing video games. I don't know if anyone's noticed.
