Virtua Cop: Elite Edition review

First of all, sorry for not posting much in the last weeks, but I've been really busy and it's all going to get worse from now on, so don't expect much from me.

Anyway, let's get to the point! I have a question for you all. What happens when you put this:

and this:

together?

Lots of fun, that's what!

After many year's playing light-gun shooters with a regular controller, which sucks hard, I've finally acquired this beauty called G-Con 2, and to make up for the fact that my first light-gun ever wasn't for a SEGA console, the first game I played with it was Virtua Cop: Elite Edition!

Unfortunately I can't really make a comparative between this and the original Saturn games, like Father K wanted to do, for I've never played them before. Ok, I played the VC2 port that came on Sega Smash Pack for the Dreamcast, but that wasn't the Saturn version, so...

Anyway, for all of you that don't know exactly what is this VC:EE, this is basically just a compilation of both Virtua Cop 1 and 2, with a couple of extras.


Wait, what's that, you don't know what Virtua Cop is? Fear not, for NebachadnezzaR is here! Journey with me through the annals of history (what? ANALS?) to the distant year of 1994, when a game called Virtua Cop took light-gun shooters to the next level!

Like Virtua Fighter or Virtua Racing, VC was the first of it's genre to feature fully 3D graphics, and with that came a lot of other features, like the localized shots or the improved interaction with the environments.


So, what can we expect from the PS2 versions of both this great game and it's even greater sequel? Well, the graphics for instance are obviously better. The resolution is way higher, the textures are more detailed and overall both games just look better (I suppose, since, as I said earlier, I never played the Saturn versions). VC2 looks even better than the DC version, especially when the cars explode (the fire and smoke just looks awesome).

But never forget that in their core, they're still Saturn games, so don't expect anything near as good as other PS2 shooters.


Moving on to the extras, there's not much here. There's the training mode, where you can train your skills by shooting at cardboard targets alone or against the console, and there's the gallery, where you can gaze at various artwork that you have to unlock first, by shooting those coward bastards that runaway instead of facing you like a man or the various objects in the scenery.

When I beat VC1 I also unlocked a "random mode", which I can activate in the options menu, but I have absolutely no idea what that is, since my game came with no manual. Do you anything about this, Father?


By the way, since I already talked about the options menu, there's something here for everyone. If you plain suck at this kind of games you can select infinite continues, and if you're a gun maniac like me you can activate the "select weapon" option. Now you just have to pause the game and shoot off-screen to select your weapon from a wide variety of fine armament!

So, overall, is this a good purchase? Well, yes and no. If you've never played any of these games before and prefer to have just one disc with nicer versions of both games, instead of having to track down the 2 Saturn versions, this is indeed a pretty cool compilation. On the other hand, if you already have this games for the Saturn, there's really not much of a point in having this game, since there's almost nothing new here.


Anyway, this is a good way to pass time while we wait for the Wii version of Ghost Squad, a shooter very similar to VC judging from what I've heard about it. And if that game turns out to be a success, who knows, maybe SEGA will convert Virtua Cop 3 too. It should be an easy task, since both games run in the same arcade hardware.


Now, in an unrelated matter, I'm trying to build a decent light-gun collection for my PS2 and right now I'm after Vampire Night, among others. Since that game was produced by SEGA maybe I'll post something about it in the near future.


And in an even more unrelated matter, I can't finish this post without telling you about my latest PS2 acquisition: Gungrave! It's a fucking awesome action game, the brainless kind of action games, and it's really short, which is great! So, here's my advice: if you're like me and you're looking for short, brainless, immediate fun for the PS2, this is the game to get. NOW!


As always, good bye and good games ;)