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Last Topic's Ratings:
Afro Dog - G - 100% (1)
Grand Tour Racing '98 - GAA - 67% (3)
Jersey Devil - AAAAAAA - 50% (7)
Judge Dredd - BBAAA - 30% (5)
MTV Sports: Snowboarding - AG - 75% (2)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - BBBABBB - 7% (7)
I can't believe no one else played Afro Dog. Insane Japanese games is what the PS1 is all about! Hopefully people will come back to some of these games later.
Games for this topic:
Blood Lines
Destruction Derby
Fighting Force
NHL Breakaway 98
Rox
X-Men: Mutant Academy
With the recent announcement of the games list for the PS1 Classic, I figured we'd cover one of the games from that list. Probably not the one you were hoping for, but watching the trailer made me realize I remembered basically nothing about Destruction Derby (and it seems like not many other people do, either), so I thought it'd be a good time to revisit it and see if it deserves its place on that list.
Blood Lines - A
ReplyDeleteDestruction Derby - A
Fighting Force - A
NHL Breakaway 98 - A
Rox - B
X-Men: Mutant Academy - G
Blood Lines is an interesting game. It's a multiplayer action / sports game that reminds me a little bit of Blast Chamber, though without any stage rotating shenanigans. The goal here is to take control of various checkpoints throughout the stage, though only one person has the ability to activate them at a time, if it's not you just must tackle the person who has it. Characters have special abilities and there are also items and shots to use to assist in this. It's pretty fast-paced and can be intense, though I feel like the balance has some issues, for example the character who has the magnet power is absurdly good because it's almost impossible to avoid being tackled by him (and he can also push you away so you can't tackle him back), and I feel like in general, you probably get powers a little too often (though perhaps this is necessary because rounds can also be extremely short). An interesting idea, though I think it could use a little more refinement.
Destruction Derby is a pretty unique "racing" game. First of all, the game's controls are garbage. This would normally be an instant B for any other game, but it's clear that here it's actually intentional, as if you had perfect control and could just easily front-run the game the "destruction" part would be lost. You're driving old clunkers and it definitely feels like it, they steer badly to begin with and it only gets worse as the race goes on. There is a fair degree of strategy to the game, which is appreciated, as you not only earn points for placing well but also for damaging opponent cars, and you need to carefully balance the two to be successful. The biggest issue is that there isn't too much content in the game, there's only 6 tracks and they're all pretty simple. It does have some replay value from the chaotic nature of the races but after a while it does start to get repetitive.
Fighting Force is okay. I agree with everyone else in that I like the environmental destructibility a lot, the ability to not only jump kick down a security monitor but then throw it at someone is pretty awesome, but I feel that the core fighting is fairly mediocre. The biggest problem is that it's very repetitive, even by beat-em up standards. The enemies in the game are almost all the same, and your options for defeating them are equally limited. You have buttons for punch, kick, and throw, which you cannot combine together to any degree (if you think you're doing punch punch kick or punch punch throw, forget it), you can jump (though you can only jump kick if you jump straight up), and you can run (though your running moves are bad) and that's about it, it's actually less move variety than many 8 and 16-bit beat-em-ups. It also seems like the four characters are almost identical, save that the men are a little stronger and the women are a little faster, which is too bad because some unique moves would have helped replay value. As it is, this has moments of fun, usually involving using weapons and breaking stuff, but I couldn't see myself playing it more than once. Even though this gen isn't really known for beat-em ups, I feel like there's enough good ones like Dynamite Deka and Panzer Bandit to keep this out of G territory.
NHL Breakaway 98 is about as average as it gets. In a number of ways, it forces comparisons to NHL '94 - it's very fast and arcadey and the goalies only barely exist. However, there's really not a lot more to the game than that description. The commentary is extremely limited, so most of the time it feels like you might as well be playing a 16-bit game, the controls are generally good, but not quite as polished as NHL '94 (the biggest issue is player swapping, the game never seems to choose who I think it will when I switch players), and just in general it doesn't seem to do much to stand out.
When I saw Rox, I was curious to know if it had anything to do with the SNES puzzle game Jammes, which is also based on dice. There are actually a couple similarities, but Rox is a much simpler game overall. The rule for Rox is that blocks clear when two dice with the same number are matched in a line, with N dice between them, where N is the number of the die. So for a match with twos, you'd need 2 X X 2, where the Xs can be anything, whereas a 5 match is 5 X X X X X 5. Obviously, falling dice can also create combos. Ultimately though, I find this to be a fairly uninteresting game due to the condition that the dice in the middle "can be anything", it tends to result in you simply dumping most of your dice to fill space until you drop the matching die on the end, and setting up chains isn't very interesting either. The game does try to mix things up a bit by adding blocks of different colours, but honestly, it's a pretty dull affair, and the lack of modes doesn't help either. I don't think it's any real surprise that this one has been forgotten.
DeleteWhen I was younger, I was a huge fan of the X-Men animated series. I taped every episode on VHS and my friends and I would often quote funny lines from the show at school. As such, it should come as no surprise that when X-Men Mutant Academy came out, I was all over it, but unfortunately, my friends were all into Marvel vs Capcom so I never got to play it all that much. Well, screw you guys, this game is still awesome. First of all, it's very authentic to the show / movie, with each character being faithfully represented in terms of moves (well, maybe except Mystique, since when does she use a rifle?), voice acting, and it even has some nice cutscenes when you beat the game. It also plays pretty well, generally feeling kind of akin to the older street fighter games, particularly EX since they're both 3D. It does have some unique touches that I appreciate, though. For starters, each character has 3 supers, and each has their own meter that builds in a different way. The ultimate super requires you to mash X after the meter is full to prep it, which only lasts a while before it has to be prepped again, which is an interesting mechanic because it lets the opponent know you're going for it (and also leaves you open unless you sneakily mash the Xs during the animation of another move). You also have a counter move that counters absolutely anything, but can only be used 3 times per match, so you have to think strategically about when to use it, and you also have recoverable life, which sometimes makes it advantageous to slow down the match. They're little things, but they give the game a unique feel to it which I think helps set it aside from similar fighters. The only real downside to this game might be that some will consider the sequel a straight upgrade, in many ways it's quite similar but there are more characters. However, there is one big different between the two. Mutant Academy 2 is much more like Marvel, normals now chain combo into anything and virtually every normal is cancellable. This definitely results in much flashier combos, but honestly I'm not a huge fan of it, I feel that it diminishes the relevance of the unique mechanics of the first game (also, the concept of mashing X to prep ultimate is straight up gone), and it also kind of homogenizes the cast since everyone can do a huge combo into super from any button. The first game definitely feels a lot more nuanced and strategic IMO, but more on that when we actually get to Mutant Academy 2.