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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Discworld - AGAGAAG - 71% (7)
Formula Karts Special Edition - BB - 0% (2)
Magical Drop - GA - 75% (2)
Power Shovel - GG - 100% (2)
Sampras Extreme Tennis - BB - 0% (2)
Twisted Metal - AAAGAAABBA - 45% (10)
I was a bit surprised by the high turnout for Discworld, considering I'd never heard of it before the last topic, though it's a fairly common occurrence that gamse I think are well-known actually aren't and vice-versa.
Games for this topic:
Cyberwar
Independence Day
NHL Powerplay 96
Rampage World Tour
Road Rage
Street Fighter Alpha
Some interesting-looking imports this time. Road Rage looks vaguely wipeout-esque, and I have no idea what to expect from Cyberwar, though I hope it's playable without Japanese knowledge. Also, Street Fighter Alpha and Rampage, which people are probably more familiar with.
Cyberwar - B
ReplyDeleteIndependence Day - G
NHL Powerplay 96 - A
Rampage World Tour - A
Road Rage - A
Street Fighter Alpha - A
Well, my concerns that Cyberwar would require a lot of Japanese knowledge were unfounded, actually, it's completely in English. However, it's also completely terrible. Cyberwar is actually a kind of FMV game, similar to something like Dragon's Lair, where 99% of the game is FMV and you press buttons and various times to make things happen. It's also apparently a sequel to The Lawnmower Man, which you might recall I gave a middling review to on the 16-bit consoles, largely for being too hard but for having some interesting visual flair, particularly in the tunnel segments. This game is more of a minigame compilation, with you taking on a series of short challenges of different types, but the main problem is that they all have very limited interactivity due to the overreliance on FMVs. You would think that a game based entirely on FMVs would at least have great visuals, but it doesn't, it all looks extremely generic and bland, the interesting cyberscapes of the 16-bit games are totally absent here. Games like Dragon's Lair were tolerable solely due to great animations and humour, both of which are totally absent here, leaving a game with virtually no redeeming features. This is easily one of the worst games I've ever played for GAB.
Independence Day is actually a surprisingly competent game. As a flight game, it's somewhat basic (you don't really have any fancy moves beyond speed up / slow down and shoot missiles), but it looks decent and the framerate is very good. The main thing that stands out about this game is that it's hard as hell. It's basically just your one plane (technically you have a wingman but he doesn't do much) vs a basically unlimited supply of enemy fighters, turrets, ground targets that fire shots that mess with you, and all sort of other nasty stuff. There's also mission objectives that you have to find and take out and every mission is on a time limit before the city gets blown up. You can't possibly hope to shoot down all your enemies, they're too fast, too numerous, and you have limited missiles and time, instead you just shoot what you can and try to elude the rest while taking out the mission objectives, and keep yourself alive through strategic use of powerups. While it's quite tense and stressful to play, I feel like this is actually pretty authentic to the film. The aliens have vastly superior firepower so you have to be sneaky, darting in and out until you can get a clear shot at the saucer's weakpoint. Each mission will probably take quite a number of tries but it's very satisfying once you finally blow the thing up.
NHL Powerplay 96 is decent in terms of gameplay, but it doesn't really do much with the hardware. It basically just feels exactly like NHL 95. The camera angle is the same, commentary is nonexistent (except for when penalties occur), and it also has the same problem as NHL 95 where the goalies are far too competent, making the game feel mostly luck-based. Other than that it generally plays well and I like the idea to have the player select screen show the locker rooms, but there's really not much separating this game from its 16-bit predecessors.
This takes me back. About 20 years ago, I had an angelfire website where I posted short reviews of various N64 games (my first foray into the world of game rating), and for whatever reason, the only one I remember rating was Rampage World Tour. I think my impression of the game is pretty much the same now as it was then: it's a very simple game where you don't really have that much control over what happens, but it's very fast-paced and the chaos is kind of entertaining in its own way. In particular, I definitely disagree that this isn't an improvement over the original, it's so much quicker now and the controls are a lot better, plus the better graphics help make the carnage that much more satisfying. It's fun to play for a little while and the co-op helps, but it's probably not a game you'd spend a ton of time on.
DeleteI was wrong about Road Rage being wipeout-ish, it's clearly Konami's take on F-Zero. It controls pretty well and there's a decent sense of speed, but the biggest issue with the game is that there just aren't many tracks, with only 4 standard and one unlockable. It does make fairly good use of its tracks, offering quite a surprising amount of unlockables for getting high scores in single race, time trial, and beating the CPU battles (though these are very hard), though ultimately it clearly pales to the real F-Zero X in pretty much every way.
In some ways I feel like the original Street Fighter Alpha is kind of a forgotten game. It was enormously important to the development of Street Fighter and fighting games as a whole, introducing many key concepts like super meters that carry over between rounds and also being a massive step forward in terms of presentation, but because Alpha 2 and 3 came out so quickly and refine the formula even further the original rarely gets a lot of attention, even back in the day I remember it being largely glossed over. In any case, it's still a pretty fun game to play and the PS1 port is very solid, it just can't escape the shadow of its sequels.