Lack of Lock-On Not Lost On Gerstmann
Jeff Gerstmann, the deposed ex-Gamespotter, has put his honest two cents in on the recent release of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection.
The veteran gamer and current head of GiantBomb.com gave SUGC three stars out of 5–that’s a 6 on the “out of 10″ scale. That sounds worse than it actually is, as Gerstmann was rather pleased with the compilation’s content:
ith individual emulations of old arcade and console games being served up on a somewhat regular basis via the digital distribution networks of each console, you might think that the collections and compilations that we saw during the last console generation would be obsolete. Why sell a pack of 30 or 40 games for $29.99 when you can sell one game for five bucks? On that note, it’s kind of cool to see a big collection of 16-bit Sega games, with a handful of other arcade versions and interviews thrown in for good measure. If you’re way into old Genesis games and don’t currently have any other way to play them, this “ultimate” collection is a pretty solid choice.
[....] For me, Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection had me at Fatal Labyrinth. This sort-of-crappy dungeon crawler was one of my favorites back when it was new, and for whatever reason, I still enjoy it today. Chances are, if you played a lot of Genesis games, there’s at least one game in this collection that you feel this way about, and at least one missing game that will seem like a horrible, glaring omission.
Gerstmann, however, was not oblivious to the lack of lock-on capability between Sonic and Knuckles and other games. It was noted in his review, but he didn’t appear phased by the omission. He was, however, perturbed by the claim of HD graphics:
If you’re the type of dope who likes to stretch things out, you can easily ruin the way the games look by making them take up the entire screen. You can also ugly things up with a smoothing filter that is also off by default. With these few, bad options available and the main focus of the collection being its ability to emulate games from 1989-1996, the back-of-box copy that states it has “ENHANCED HD GRAPHICS” is completely stupid and absolutely misleading.
Gerstmann’s score has dropped the collection’s Metacritic ranking down to the low 80s.
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he likes it…so it gets a low score….
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There are a lot of flaws with it. “3″ isn’t a low score either. It’s average. Middle of the road.
Come back to complain when you see a “2″ or “1.”
It’s the so-called HD graphics and lack of lock on that got it the 3/5, OK?
Read the fine print.
He liked fatal labyrinth? That’s possibly one of the worst games in a collection.
It’s so hard to rate collections, especially one such as this because it has 49 games. Since you aren’t going to review every game, you should only review it on content. But I agree, unnecessary filter sucks.
I’d give it a 3/5. Maybe 4/5 if it was $10 less.
@Ethan: Fine print? Do tell.