26th May 2012, 10:54 PM
It's an unusual trend. Most of these games aren't having any favors done with higher resolution graphics. Notably, Daxter 1's low poly nature is just brought into sharper relief. That said, a few really shine at high res like Silent Hill 2 and the various God of War games (and also Ico/Colossus).
I'll note that they did well in making sure to keep the openings of each individual game intact. Especially with Ico/Colossus, those openings really set a certain mood. Nintendo's Wii collection of the Prime series messed that up with one very generic title screen replacing all 3 really nicely done openings in the original games. That said, a number of these games are missing modes. Metal Gear Solid's collection in particular is missing the online modes as well as the Snake vs Monkey mode in MGS3 and the skateboarding mini-game from MGS2. Fortunately, they all do seem to be using the latest version so it's Substance and Subsistence for those two games.
The enhancements are all over the board though, as well as which games get the honor of being included in each collection. The Jak collection has a bare bones addition of high res with nothing else touched, but it does include all 3 games. However, the Silent Hill collection, while also improving lighting and fog and even including brand new voice acting (very well done in fact, with Silent Hill 2 allowing an option to use the old voice acting, but Silent Hill 3 oddly only allowing the new) is missing Silent Hill 4. There's no clear reason they skipped on it, they just skipped out on it. (I consider SH4 underrated. Sure the main character's not very well fleshed out, but the main character always seemed more of a player avatar in a game focusing more on telling the story of the villain, and it does that job very well.) Oh, the logo that comes up when turning on Silent Hill is a little... off. Konami then... well I can't remember the name of the other company but it's some sort of happy silly fun slide name and logo that really doesn't fit "Silent Hill".
Personally, the HD collections I'm most looking forward to are for Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. In both cases they'd see the first ever state-side release of the Final Mix/International Editions of those series. I'd say the Final Fantasy one should be FFX and FFXII minimum, and maybe if they wanted to add in FFX-2 and Dirge of Cerberus, and all International versions where available. Kingdom Hearts collection would be KH1, KH2, RE: Chain of Memories and maybe Birth by Sleep (they did port over HD remixes of the two PSP God of War games so there's precedent). Again, Final Mix of all of those.
All in all, I've seen no reason to pick up any of these collections, except Silent Hill because I want to get some other people I know to play numba 2 and it'll be easier if it's a modern game. Plus, that game actually does look pretty nice in HD. As I said, the new voice acting is really nice. Though, I gotta say the first Silent Hill needed it more. Too bad these collections seem to be ignoring the PS1 generation. It's for the best I suppose. Those games really wouldn't benefit from HD resolution at all, and in fact kinda depend on a low resolution display to blur edges in textures and such. The only "must buy" would have to be my hypothetical FF and KH collections. Still, it's good for them to be out there since the only PS2 games I see on shelves any more are EA sports games. Seriously, is there an audience out there for NFL 2012 PS2 edition? I mean, the only audience I see that game appealing to is very poor people/people uninterested in buying new technology who really like EA Sports games. How big could that particular group be?
I'll note that they did well in making sure to keep the openings of each individual game intact. Especially with Ico/Colossus, those openings really set a certain mood. Nintendo's Wii collection of the Prime series messed that up with one very generic title screen replacing all 3 really nicely done openings in the original games. That said, a number of these games are missing modes. Metal Gear Solid's collection in particular is missing the online modes as well as the Snake vs Monkey mode in MGS3 and the skateboarding mini-game from MGS2. Fortunately, they all do seem to be using the latest version so it's Substance and Subsistence for those two games.
The enhancements are all over the board though, as well as which games get the honor of being included in each collection. The Jak collection has a bare bones addition of high res with nothing else touched, but it does include all 3 games. However, the Silent Hill collection, while also improving lighting and fog and even including brand new voice acting (very well done in fact, with Silent Hill 2 allowing an option to use the old voice acting, but Silent Hill 3 oddly only allowing the new) is missing Silent Hill 4. There's no clear reason they skipped on it, they just skipped out on it. (I consider SH4 underrated. Sure the main character's not very well fleshed out, but the main character always seemed more of a player avatar in a game focusing more on telling the story of the villain, and it does that job very well.) Oh, the logo that comes up when turning on Silent Hill is a little... off. Konami then... well I can't remember the name of the other company but it's some sort of happy silly fun slide name and logo that really doesn't fit "Silent Hill".
Personally, the HD collections I'm most looking forward to are for Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. In both cases they'd see the first ever state-side release of the Final Mix/International Editions of those series. I'd say the Final Fantasy one should be FFX and FFXII minimum, and maybe if they wanted to add in FFX-2 and Dirge of Cerberus, and all International versions where available. Kingdom Hearts collection would be KH1, KH2, RE: Chain of Memories and maybe Birth by Sleep (they did port over HD remixes of the two PSP God of War games so there's precedent). Again, Final Mix of all of those.
All in all, I've seen no reason to pick up any of these collections, except Silent Hill because I want to get some other people I know to play numba 2 and it'll be easier if it's a modern game. Plus, that game actually does look pretty nice in HD. As I said, the new voice acting is really nice. Though, I gotta say the first Silent Hill needed it more. Too bad these collections seem to be ignoring the PS1 generation. It's for the best I suppose. Those games really wouldn't benefit from HD resolution at all, and in fact kinda depend on a low resolution display to blur edges in textures and such. The only "must buy" would have to be my hypothetical FF and KH collections. Still, it's good for them to be out there since the only PS2 games I see on shelves any more are EA sports games. Seriously, is there an audience out there for NFL 2012 PS2 edition? I mean, the only audience I see that game appealing to is very poor people/people uninterested in buying new technology who really like EA Sports games. How big could that particular group be?