The result? A mess of a game that's better to read about than to play for yourself. Coming at the very end of the PlayStation's lifespan, Parasite Eve 2 represents the last gasps of some especially painful design ideas smashed up against the contemporary notion of accessibility (though in a nascent form).

With the gift of hindsight, it can be interesting to look at a mess of mechanics and pick apart the ones that felt dated then, the ones in vogue at the time, and the ones that would eventually be refined into something much more modern.

For one, bad games tend to rip off elements of successful games from their respective eras, so something like Parasite Eve 2 acts as a strange 32-bit sampler. Ten hours of Parasite Eve 2 later, and I have more specifics than I'll ever need.īoy howdy, Square sure loved that phony opera synth.Īdmittedly, making fun of bad video games is kind of old hat on the Internet, (and I'll keep doing it as long as it brings in the mini-bucks) but playing flops of the past can often be educational to classic gaming dorks like me. Based on me simply being aware of the game back in 2000, I knew it had a mediocre reputation, but not really the specifics. (I'm guessing some nearsighted grandmas must have picked this up for little Billy in lieu of the similar-sounding Resident Evil 2.) To be fair, this purchase had a little inspiration behind it I recently burned through the first Parasite Eve for the sake of a forthcoming Joystiq article, so asking 'What's up with that sequel?' seemed perfectly reasonable and not at all a sign of significant brain damage. I can't seem to figure it out, but nothing gives me a craving for bad games more than being sick and couchbound - which may explain why this past weekend I consciously paid six whole dollars for the PSN version of Parasite Eve 2, a game most people don't even remember, and an unlucky few try to forget.

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