The Worst of PS2 Part 1: Eternal Quest and Daemon Summoner

A year or two back, I did a set of reviews called "The Worst Of Master System" highlighting lazy home computer ports and generally crappy games that made it onto the Master System. While there's crappy games on every console, I feel like the needs to be a special quality shared by a set of games to make them worth posting about in a set. The PS2 enjoyed huge popularity, selling over 155 million units and this meant a potentially huge audience for any games published on that system. Budget publishers like Midas, D3 Publisher, Davilex, 505 Gamestreet and Phoenix Games took the approach that they could make whatever they liked with a tiny budget, and put it onto shop shelves for £9.99 an they'd definitely make some money. Unfortunately the games that they put on the shop shelves have to be some of the worst PS2 games ever, if not some of the worst games ever, and this is what I'll be looking at in these posts.

Game: Eternal Quest
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Tamsoft
Release Date: 21st May 2003

Eternal Quest is a primitive Action RPG game published by Midas and part of the Simple Series by D3 Publisher. Players begin their quest at the top level of a 50 level dungeon, on a mission to beat the final boss on the lowest level. At the start of their quest they have only a basic sword and a bell that takes them back to the top level of the dungeon. There's only one attack that can be used with sword, and a simple defend command which is far too difficult to use, timing wise. Later on in the dungeon, throwing weapons can be acquired, which are limited in number but can be handy.

There's a few different enemies than can be encountered such as "Wing Bones", "Poison Bug" and "Magic User", all of which look like incredibly generic fantasy game enemies that could easily feature in another game and not look out of place. Players gain Exp for defeating enemies and can level up, though there's not a noticeable difference in power level. There's also quite a few items and weapon upgrades that can be collected by players to aid them in beating enemies. The real issue with the game is that none of the exp, items or weapons collected whilst exploring carry through with players for use in later runs through the dungeon.

This may sound fairly standard for some Action RPG games, but the enemies are fairly hard from the start, and actually causing any damage to them can be difficult with the game's controls and limited attacking options. If you're unlucky enough to be facing more than one enemy at once, not only will they all attack in sequence, essentially blocking your character from even attacking, but if you are lucky enough to attack, your character will only focus on and attack the last enemy that hit them, making it almost impossible to strategise.

The dungeon itself is a randomly generated series of halls and passageways with some warps and only one pathway to the lower level on each level. The textures and look of each level is slightly different, but only thanks to a randomised colour tint on each level, which when combined with the rave like electronic music that accompanies gameplay makes it seem more like a nightclub than a dungeon. Everything about the game is graphically unimpressive, and it's honestly difficult to see what you're doing at all times in the game.

I suppose this style of game is most easily compared to "The Binding Of Issac" in that players make their way through decending dungeons, attempting to beat enemies and collect items in order to power up, but there's really no motivation for players to continue; at any moment your progress could be erased by an unfair random generation of 3 enemies right next to you. The fighting mechanics hardly work and the storyline is about as uninteresting as they come. Added to the fact that the game sounds more like a 90s warehouse rave than an Action RPG, it's easy to see that there wasn't much effort put into this. This wouldn't even make a particularly good flash game.

Rating: 33/100
Grade: E

Game: Daemon Summoner
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Atomic Planet
Release Date: 31st March 2006

Set in what appears to be Victorian England, Daemon Summoner presents a gothic tale of vampires and monsters as a backdrop to its first person shooter style gameplay. Players attempt to unravel the mystery of a fairly boring and nonsensical story about a man's wife who was turned into a vampire. Much of the game is spent chasing her about directly, attempting to get rid of monsters who get in the way, but ultimately the game isn't interesting nor rewarding enough to consider continuing.

The gameplay itself is boring, forcing players to wander around maze like levels, killing easy to defeat monsters and attempting to fulfil level objectives that are vague and easily failed if players get the wrong idea. While the horror mood is good, there's nothing legitimately scary about the game as a whole, and nothing particularly fun about the gameplay.

Graphically the game is decidedly average at best for 2006's standards, and the environments are very wooden and 2 dimensional (sometimes literally as you can occasionally see through them). There's limited music and although sometimes the sound effects do a good job of creating a tense atmosphere, the voice acting lets the game down completely and makes it more comedic than anything else.

Overall Daemon Summoner is an attempt at a survival horror/first person shooter mix that suffers from a lack of imagination, graphical quality, voice acting talent and general story interest. There's tons of better horror games on the PS2, and tons of better shooters. While it's playable, there's really no appeal to any kind of gamer, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Rating: 40/100
Grade: D