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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Dangan - B - 0% (1)
Descent - AGGG - 92% (6)
Fox Sports Golf '99 - BB - 0% (2)
Jet Moto - GGABB - 50% {5}
Super Bubble Pop - GBA - 50% {3}
Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat - ABB - 17% (3)
This was a pretty divisive topic, we had two games getting the squiggle bracket this time (for those who don't remember, it means that each of the 3 ratings comprises at least 20% of the vote). Still, it'll be interesting to see which titles end up being the most hotly contested when all is said and done.
Games for this topic:
Bombing Islands, The
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Ling Rise
Sim Theme Park
Time Crisis
VMX Racing
Note that Sim Theme Park is not the same game as "Theme Park". I hope Ling Rise is playable without extensive Japanese knowledge, there's not a lot of information out there about it.
Bombing Islands, The - G
ReplyDeleteFIFA: Road to World Cup 98 - G
Ling Rise - G
Sim Theme Park - G
Time Crisis - B
VMX Racing - B
The Bombing Islands is an extremely barebones package. Not only can you not revisit past levels to see your best scores or solve them again, as far as I can tell, it doesn't even have memory card support, only passwords. However, if you can get past its lackluster presentation, the game itself is actually pretty fun. It's somewhat similar to Kablooey / Bombuzal, but with a few elements from games like Sokoban as well. It constantly mixes in new elements to create puzzles that force you to think creatively without becoming off-puttingly complex the way Kablooey and some other similar games quickly can. Even though I was leaning A all throughout my playthrough I kept thinking "well, I'll just beat a few more stages to see if it stays interesting", and even now after getting pretty far I kind of want to keep playing rather than move onto the next game, which is the mark of a good puzzler. Better than I expected for sure.
Maybe people are getting a bit tired of soccer by now (since we just had another soccer game in the SNES topic), but I wanted to see how this game stacked up to the SNES title. And I do have to say that EA has done a very solid job maintaining what worked well about the earlier games while also adapting the game for 3D and stepping the presentation up in big ways. One of the first things I have to comment on is the feel of the game, which is very good. It's very fast-paced, but it still controls very well, the only issue I had at first was not being able to see where all my players were from some camera angles, but there's a radar you can turn on that solves this. Also, this is something I've talked about for a lot of games, but something this game really nails is the level of goalkeeper competency. Nothing makes for a boring experience more than having a game where no matter what you do, the goalies just block a flat 95% of shots and it's basically just a dice roll to see if you score on any given play. Like in NHL '94, the goalies in Fifa 98 were clearly picked out of the stands before the game, being easily beaten by most good shots, which puts the focus of the game on your control the ball and your defense with your players, where it belongs. I was also quite surprised by the quality of the commentary here, it's not quite on par with modern games but it's still decently close and stands far above many other sports games from the same timeframe. Very solid title overall.
If you read my post about Ling Rise you should know what to expect from the gameplay, so I won't cover that in great detail here. The platforming is fairly similar to Crash Bandicoot, it uses that same style of "corridor 3D" for the most part, though there are some more conventionally 3D areas. The first thing that has to be said is that the camera is really bad. It's completely uncontrollable, always taking fixed angles based on your position, and except when running straight forward it usually picks terrible locations that prevent you from seeing very far. Luckily, the game is not very hard, falling into pits is not instant death and you can take a lot of hits from enemies, and even if you do die there are infinite continues, but there are a few moments like during boss fights where it's impossible to overlook how inadequate the camera work is. That gripe aside, the game is otherwise pretty fun. The control is solid, and the mechanic of finding money to power up your little critters and keep them happy does a good job of making you want to fight enemies and smash everything in sight, which some other games have trouble with. The presentation is also nice, it's very cute and bouncy in a similar sense to games like Jumping Flash and Chameleon Twist, and that kind of joyful atmosphere is one of the major things I like about platformers from this era. The third dimension opened up a world of new possibilities in terms of the kind of games that could be made, and I feel like the happy aesthetic synergizes well with the feeling of wonder and discovery. These early 3d platformers may have some polish issues, but they have a certain unique charm that makes them fun to explore anyway.
DeleteI can't believe I didn't know there was a sequel to Theme Park until now. It keeps the elegant simplicity of the original, but adds a boatload of new content, generally managing to be a straight upgrade to the original. One thing I particularly like is the progression system. Sim games have often had difficulty figuring out how to implement progression, but I feel like this is a very elegant solution. Accomplish certain goals, earn tickets, unlock new parts and other special goodies. There's not actually a ton to unlock, but it does a good job making you want to achieve everything at the various parks. Speaking of which, the different parks each having their own set of themed rides is also really cool. The only beef I had with the game is that the framerate can get fairly bad when your park gets large, though there's no action elements to the game so it doesn't impede playability much. There's also the existence of the PS2 version, which looks much nicer and has a much better framerate, though I don't like its UI nearly as much and the games are otherwise very similar so the two versions are generally pretty comparable.
Honestly, I don't find Time Crisis to be fun at all. Its most notable feature is the cover system, but I really don't care for it, since enemies never move towards you and there are no grenades or anything it doesn't serve the same purpose as it does in a normal shooter, it just serves to make the game feel really slow and "static" since the scenes and enemies have very little movement . It's also really lame the way only a handful of the bullets fired by enemies actually "matter" and you can't tell which ones in most cases since it makes the gameplay feel arbitrary and cheap, a simple health bar where every shot takes off a little would be a much better system. The cheesy story scenes are kind of hilarious, but gameplay-wise I feel this game gets tiresome and repetitive long before you exhaust its short duration, I'd much rather play something like Area 51 where at least the cinematicness of the game helps keep you interested to some degree (though something like Point Blank is far better than both).
DeleteVMX Racing is fast, but that's all it has going for it. For starters, this game actually has no progression whatsoever, you can't save or unlock anything, in fact if you quit a race it actually resets the entire game, kicking you back to the intro cutscene. The physics are also garbage, the bikes accelerate and decelerate absurdly fast, so it feels like they have no weight to them, if you ever controlled that vehicle in Kirby's Air Ride that could stick a pole in the ground to stop instantly and then shoot off again, this game basically plays like that. You also wipe out if you touch the edge of the track at all on most tracks (what, you thought these were grass bikes?). I think this game actually manages to be worse than that Jeremy McGrath game we looked at.
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