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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Air Combat - AAAAGGA - 64% (7)
Choujin Gakuen Gowcaizer - BA - 25% (2)
Hugo: The Evil Mirror - A - 50% (1)
Puzznic - ABG - 50% {3}
Tomb Raider - BBABAGGBGGGABGABGAG - 55% {19} (1 SR)
Worms - AGAGGGAA - 75% (8)
This topic sees the debut of the new squiggle bracket, which indicates a game's ratings were divisive. Specifically, a game gets the squiggle bracket if each of the 3 ratings made up at least 20% of the game's total rating. So although Air Combat and Tomb Raider had similar scores, you can see that there was a general consensus that Air Combat was a mostly average game whereas there was no consensus about Tomb Raider. Though the one thing we can agree upon was that the turnout for the last topic was excellent. Lara Croft can still bring em in, apparently.
Games for this topic:
Apocalypse
Cool Boarders
Formula 1
G Darius
Gun Shooting, The
Ore no Ryouri
I'll be curious to see what the turnout looks like this time. I'm very familiar with Formula 1, because my friend had it, but maybe it's a completely unknown game or something. As for the Japanese games in this topic, The Gun Shooting involves virtually no text, and Ore no Ryouri is also a fairly simple game that relies mainly on visuals, there's also a guide to it on Gamefaqs that might help.
Apocalypse - G
ReplyDeleteCool Boarders - B
Formula 1 - A
G Darius - A
Gun Shooting, The - A
Ore no Ryouri - G (SR)
When I first saw "Apocalypse: Starring Bruce Willis", my reaction was "well, here we go", but I was pleasantly surprised by the game at pretty much every turn. I expected some kind of crummy first person shooter, but it's actually a pretty competent twin stick action game. The shooting action is generally quite competent, it controls well and there's a fair number of weapons to use, the levels are pretty varied (though some do go on a little long), and it has surprisingly competent camera work, which switches angles dynamically at many points to make the action feel more cinematic. It's not terribly deep, but this is a pretty competent action game that I'm surprised doesn't get talked about more.
I'm a bit surprised by all the low ratings for Cool Boarders. On the surface it's not terrible, it gives a decent sense of speed and the music is quite good. I was leaning A for a long time, but a couple things slowly started pushing me towards B. The biggest thing is the trick system. The game has predefined trick "zones" and only tricks pulled off there count, you can do any tricks you want off other jumps and they're worth no points at all. This is really dumb and goes against the general spirit of the genre, where finding little spots to pull tricks is much of the challenge. The controls are also a little on the stiff side and the way you sort of bounce off obstacles like a pinball feels a little cheap. There's also not really all that much content, considering there's only 5 tracks and no AI racers or multiplayer. It's not a terrible first effort, but I feel like the genre comes so far so fast that it's hard to recommend the first game.
Upon review, I think it was actually Formula 1 Championship Edition that I had played before. Either way, this game is okay. The best thing about this game is that there's a ton of options available. Besides having every driver and course from the real F1 season, there's also a ton of gameplay settings you can tweak. Obviously, things like the number of laps and track conditions are present, but you can also toggle on and off tire wear, fuel usage, or even play in arcade mode for significantly more lenient driving physics. There's also driving assist available, and I think this may have been one of the first games to feature it, though it's super aggressive so unless you want the game to play itself you'll probably want to turn if ott. The game isn't without its faults, though. The most obvious one is there's no car collisions. If you hit another car, you just kind of slow down and they don't budge, which just feels weird. There's also no cockpit cam, which means you can't see how much fuel you have until the game warns you about it, and I would really have appreciated a track map, considering how costly it is to go off the track. Still, this is a decent early racing effort and it blows the doors off the original NFS.
I'm not quite as enthralled with G Darius as some people. I feel that it has a lot of good elements but doesn't quite come together due to a few flaws. Although they call it the "Gradius Equilibrium" when a game is super easy as long as you don't die because dying makes you lose your powerups, it's far more true of Darius than Gradius. When you have a lot of powerups you're almost invincible, as you can even get powerups that allow you to take hits, but the second you die, you're basically finished, as you will lose all of your offensive and defensive power instantly. In Darius, you might as well not even have lives, you generally either clear the game with zero deaths or you lose all your lives and continues instantly once you die the first time. This works okay in some of the Darius games, but the problem with G Darius is that its newfangled 3D backgrounds are very visually busy, you'll fly past mountains that cause the background colours to change rapidly, often obscuring ships and bullets, which can cause you to take crucial hits that can easily end your run, particularly because the colours of the foreground objects are often very similar to the backgrounds. If there was an option to play with a solid black background I'd take it in an instant just for the sake of being able to see better. There's also a new capture ball system, but I feel like it's kind of a silly gimmick, the main use for it is firing the huge laser which can wipe out most enemies easily and allows you to do a ton of damage to bosses, who are otherwise almost impossible if the laser trick is not used to kill them. It's an okay game overall but I feel that it causes more frustration than it should and it's not a real surprise that almost no future shmups ever used 3D graphics.
DeleteI love the Simple 1500 series. Besides their hilarious names, I also think it's a good concept, the relatively cheap manufacturing costs of CDs allowed games to be sold at lower prices than ever before, so it makes sense to put out some smaller games at lower prices for gamers on a budget or those just looking to expand their selection. The Gun Shooting is nothing hugely groundbreaking, it's basically just a fairly simple 3D light gun game in the same vein as Time Crisis or Area 51, but it's a fairly competent game for the price. One thing I like is the the difficulty level feels more balance than many similar games, all incoming enemy bullets can be shot down and you can take more hits compared to many comparable games. It also has some fairly decent boss fights, and you can play 2 players, including using the gamepad if you only have one light gun.
Ore no Ryouri reminds me of Parappa the Rapper in a lot of ways. It's got a similar visual style and equally wacky character designs, the gameplay is very unique and often funny, and the whole thing just oozes charm and personality. Like Parappa, there are also some balancing issues, in particular the cook-offs involve a lot of luck in general and the second one is way harder than most of the others, but the game is fun enough that I generally didn't get frustrated even if I had to retry levels 5+ times to beat them. Compared to Parappa, it's not quite as hilarious to play (I've long felt that Parappa is secretly a good party game because it's just as fun to watch as to play), but it is much better fleshed out as a game, with a wealth of modes and even some multiplayer content to keep you coming back. I really miss the old, crazy Sony that used to publish games like this.