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Last Topic's Ratings:
Battle Arena Toshinden - BABAAGAA - 44% (8)
NBA Jam TE - GGGGGG - 100% (6)
Nekketsu Oyako - GGAG - 88% (4)
Raiden Project, The - GGGGGGGGG - 100% (9)
Rayman - AGGGAAAAAGA - 68% (11)
Wipeout - AAAAAAAAAA - 50% (10)
The turnout for the first topic was excellent, I hope we can keep this up. By the way, compared to the topics from the previous systems, I've decided to start showing the exact vote breakdown here (it won't be in the master list due to clutter), this should make it easier to figure it out if I make a mistake with the tallying.
Games for this topic:
Arc the Lad
Extreme Power
Missland
NBA Fastbreak '98
Need For Speed
X-Men: Children of the Atom
We've got the first game in a couple of very well-known franchises this time. Also, by chance, I appear to have picked a couple of the most obscure import titles for the system, I'm curious to see if anyone will have experience with these games or will try them out.
Arc the Lad - B
ReplyDeleteExtreme Power - G
Missland - G
NBA Fastbreak '98 - A
Need For Speed - B
X-Men: Children of the Atom - A
Arc the Lad is a tough one to rate. For starters, this is the most basic SRPG of all time. There's no equipment, there's no money, you can't customize your characters at all beyond accessories, which you can't buy, enemies just sometimes drop them. You just regular attack, level up, sometimes use spells or items, and that's about it. The story and progression are comparably basic. The game is extremely linear, you're generally restricted to only a handful of places to go at once, and if you go to a place that isn't your destination you usually just get a quick reminder of where the game wants you to go. Despite this, the game's brisk pacing is somewhat refreshing, and there are some things I like about the game, for example the animations are nice, I like how every character and enemy has a unique attack and dodge animation, and the voice work is appreciated too. However, as I played further I started to encounter more things that pushed me towards B. One thing is that the game's writing and tone is very inconsistent and the translation generally feels amateurish. It reminds me of DeJP's translation of Tales of Phantasia where they famously had fun with the source material, but besides weird meta jokes being thrown in at odd places, the general voice of the characters also feels inconsistent, for example Arc can't seem to decide if he speaks formal "old-style" english or modern english. The battle system also feels a bit amateurish in ways as well, for example certain attacks deal damage to an area, but you can't ground target, so if you want to hit multiple targets one of them must be in the center of the attack. Your characters also can't walk past each other and the maps are often narrow, even though jumping over each other is possible this only works if there is an open space in front, you can't move diagonally. Overall, I didn't hate my time with the game, in fact I could even see myself finishing it (it's also extremely short), but I feel like if this game is A, every game would be A. I hear there are a number of improvements to the sequel so hopefully that one is more solidly in the A range.
Extreme Power is almost the reverse situation of Arc the Lad, where at first I wasn't terribly impressed, but the more I figured out about the game the more I was enjoying it. It's a first person shooter (you can play third-person, but you shouldn't, it's hard to aim that way) where you control a mech and the goal is to take over all of the bases on the world map. Each level consists of some simple goal (like kill 30 enemies or destroy all of the marked targets), followed by a boss battle, which are often against enemy mechs. The bosses are often very challenging, so good use of your secondary weapons and the dodge move will be required to survive. What elevates the game beyond just being a simple shooter is that it's got some light strategy mechanics to it. Similar to Starfox 2, the game takes place in real time, and the enemy will attack your bases and potentially recapture them as time passes. You can also buy upgrades to your mech with money earned by destroying enemies in the stages, but if you take too much damage, it takes longer to repair your mech and thus you may lose bases (and also there's an energy mechanic where you just eventually die if you take too long, but the limit is quite long). It's an interesting balance that lends a bit of extra depth to this otherwise arcadey shooter. Graphically it's not super impressive, but the enemies and shots are easy to see and the framerate is also pretty stable (it can dip occasionally if there's like 20+ enemies onscreen but it's not common), so it serves well enough. Also, the game is completely in english despite being a Japanese import, so you shouldn't have any issues there if you wanted to try it out.
It's funny that even though we have 2 JP-only games in this topic, both of them require no Japanese knowledge to play. Missland is basically a "Spot the Differences" game, with the gimmick being that rather than still images, you're looking for differences in 3D objects or scenes. It's a very simple game, but it's cute and fairly unique. I think what sells this game to me the most is that the scenes are not the same every time. The game would quickly become boring if the solution was always the same, so the scenes permute themselves randomly and the differences can be in different places each time. You can also play with 2 players, which I was initially concerned about, since rotating the object to find the differences is so key, but it's handled in a fairly smart way. Each player gets a bit of time to rotate (denoted by a worm at the bottom), and when it's not your turn to rotate, you have free cursor movement, so your friend can't screw you over by rotating the image away from a change or something. It actually works pretty well and I can see it being a fairly unique multiplayer experience.
DeleteI just realized that this is our second basketball game in 2 topics. It's even also made by Midway! Geez, I suck. The two games are very different in any case, with this being a much more traditional sim-style basketball game. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the NBA Live titles on Genesis, which is not a bad thing as those games were very solid, just now it's fully 3D. Still, I feel like comparing only against basketball games from the previous gen is not good enough, so I also popped in a couple other PS1 basketball games to compare. Compared to most other basketball titles on PS1, NBA Fastbreak is ironically quite a bit slower paced, for example In the Zone has a mechanic where you can drive to the net, blowing past defenders, and NBA Live on PS1 has Turbo and a host of other options, that generally make Fastbreak seem more simple by comparison. Still, simplicity isn't always a bad thing, for example I really appreciate Fastbreak's camera angle, while most games show a more dynamic side court angle, in Fastbreak the action is viewed from the back, which makes it far easier to read player positions. The announcer commentary in Midway games is also always solid and I like the little stats that show up throughout the game. Overall, this was probably solid for its time, but later games of the era definitely seem to have a pretty significant edge in both graphics and options, which I think leaves it fairly solidly in A territory.
DeleteGoing back to the original Need for Speed is a surreal experience. My cousin had the PC version of this game, and playing it again was so shocking I had to look up footage of the PC version to confirm that yes, it really was like this. First thing's first, this game looks hideous. This isn't just forgetting what early 3D graphics look like, if you compare games like Ridge Racer or whatever the car models here are just disgustingly bad, they're basically just slightly textured wedges that look nothing like the cars in question. The track graphics are a little better I guess and at least the framerate is tolerable but this is not a nice-looking game. Worse yet, the control is also way off. Turning in this game just feels bad, it's very stiff, and if you start to skid, your car just "kicks" to the side in a weird way that I can't describe but the moment you try it you'll know what I'm talking about. To make sure all of my pre-6th gen memories of NFS weren't totally off, I immediately popped in NFS2 and it feels "right". Sort of like with Wipeout XL, the moment you play that game it's like "okay, this is NFS", the controls feel properly responsive, it's much faster, the graphics are a lot better, etc. I have no idea what this first game is supposed to be, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. At least the car videos are cool I guess, you can watch them and imagine what driving those cars might be like, because you won't find any simulation of that here.
Children of the Atom is not nearly as bad a first start to the VS series as NFS, but it still feels a bit weird in a number of ways, for example there's no screen freeze on supers and you can cancel any button into superjump, which sort of lets you do air combos but they're not quite as formalized yet as they will be and standard juggles are often just as good. Also, there's sort of proto-EX moves in this game, some moves take only a bit of the bar, it just generally feels a bit weird. Still, the graphics and general production values are great for their time and you can still see the groundwork of the series here, I would just probably tend to stick to the later entries.
I really like your take on the issue. I now have a clear idea on what this matter is all about.. Buy 1cP-LSD
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