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Last Topic's Ratings:
ATV Racers - BB - 0% (2)
Dora the Explorer: Barnyard Buddies - A - 50% (1)
Guardian of Darkness, The - BB - 0% (2)
King of Fighters 95, The - BAA - 33% (3)
MLB 98 - GAA - 67% (3)
Soviet Strike - GGAGGGG - 93% (7)
Wow, it's a good thing we had Soviet Strike in there, or this topic really wouldn't have been pretty. I think this might have been our lowest rated topic so far.
Games for this topic:
Afro Dog
Grand Tour Racing '98
Jersey Devil
Judge Dredd
MTV Sports: Snowboarding
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
A fun fact: Grand Tour Racing 98's Japanese name is similar to that of Gekisou Sentai Carranger, which we're doing in the SNES topic this week (though the games are totally unrelated). Speaking of Japanese games, I wanted to do a game called Digicro for this topic, but a quick precheck shows it's totally unplayable without substantial Japanese knowledge, which is too bad, it seems like a neat concept. Oh well, we get Afro Dog instead, which I think is pretty self-explanatory.
Afro Dog - G
ReplyDeleteGrand Tour Racing '98 - A
Jersey Devil - A
Judge Dredd - A
MTV Sports: Snowboarding - G
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - B
I spent an unreasonable amount of time playing Afro Dog for this topic. Mechanically, it's a pretty simple puzzle game (line up 4 tufts of the same colour and smack them with the face button to clear them, create combos to get points, smack statues to get powerups, clear target scores to go onto the next stage, don't drown Afro Dog or let him get blown up), but it's super wacky and upbeat and it's just a lot of fun. After every stage in the stage clear mode, you get to watch a new cutscene starring Afro Dog, which are all completely insane but they had me smiling the whole time. The game also has a strange but kind of addictive replay value mechanic where by earning items on stages, you can exchange them for tickets which you can use to make more Afro Dogs, by combining an afro type plus a theme, of which there are hundreds of possibilities. There's even a bunch of different modes and a 2P-VS mode as well. As much time as I already spent on this, I still want to go back and play more. A hidden gem for sure.
In terms of UI, Grand Tour Racing '98 reminds me a lot of NFS 1, but it's a vastly better game in every way. The most notable thing about this game is that it has a ton of tracks, even by modern standards. There are well over 30 tracks in the game, in a time where many racing games had 3-10. The game looks quite good for its time, too, with notable track landmarks and even some fairly decent visual effects. The production values are strong here for sure. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the controls. The whole game just feels somewhat loose, and brakes also function a bit strangely. Most cars can brake to 0mph in an unusually short distance, and sports cars (which otherwise control the best) have a very strange drift mechanic that just doesn't feel natural. Collisions between cars also feel weird and are often extremely costly to the player, though at least you can restart courses instantly with no loading. This game definitely has a fair bit going for it, though I couldn't see myself playing through it all.
Jersey Devil is very much a mixed bag. For starters, probably the game's most unique mechanic is that if you walk of an edge, you automatically jump. Ostensibly, this solves the age old "pixel perfect jump" problem, by allowing you to jump at the last possible second every time. On the other hand, it also trivializes most platforming segments to simply being "hold X and walk towards the goal". You also have Spyro's glide move, but it's quite stiff here. The game has moments where it feels inspired, such as when you're solving puzzles and rescuing hostages in interesting locales and making use of your different abilities, but it also has many moments that feel lame, like when you're walking around an empty room killing repetitive bad guys for tokens (this game's combat is easily one of its weakest points) or crossing boring platforms over an empty black void. I guess one thing you can't fault this game on is variety, but I feel the overall experience feels fairly mediocre. It's not bad, but I'd much rather just play something like Spyro.
Judge Dredd is a fairly straightforward light gun game that plays very similarly to Area 51. Like most such games, it was designed for the arcades and is unreasonably hard, there are millions of enemies shooting at you and taking them all out isn't really reasonable, so expect to have to memorize enemy placements and go through a lot of credits. The visuals are decent and the Dredd license gives the game some charm (I actually don't see too much of a problem with the cutscenes, they're certainly not Time Crisis level bad), so if you like these types of games you'll probably have fun, but it doesn't do too much to stand out.
DeleteMTV Snowboarding is solid. In a lot of ways, it feels like an early version of Shaun White Road Trip, which Wii board veterans will know is one of my favourite games of all time. It has good controls, solid variety, good music, looks pretty good for PS1, and is just an all-around good game. I like how open the mountains are, there are many branching paths you can take, or you can make your own path (you can trick anywhere you can get enough speed and air), which gives it solid replay value. Racing isn't quite as solid (you basically just hold up and try not to hit trees, this is something Shaun White does much better), but the variety is appreciated nonetheless.
Rainbow Six has some interesting concepts, as mentioned before, like the ability to kit out different team members for different purposes and swap between them on the fly, but the controls are just so hideous that the game is virtually unplayable on PS1. For starters, the vertical aiming is inverted, and as far as I can see, there's no option to change it, which is a huge first strike against the game. Many actions are controller by unintuitive button commands, and the movement also has issues, with you frequently getting stuck on geometry even though the game barely has any geometry. Making matters a thousand times worse, the game demands extreme precision, as a few shots can down a teammate permanently, and the controls just don't come close to offering it. You could restart each mission a thousand times and abuse the AI until you come out on top, or just play a better FPS, as even PS1 has tons.