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Last Topic's Ratings:
Addidas Power Soccer 98 - AA - 50% (2)
Bloody Roar - GAGGAGGG - 88% (8)
Hooters Road Trip - BBBB - 0% (4)
Marby Baby Story - A - 50% (1)
Shake Kids - A - 50% (1)
Tenchu - GGGAGBAGG - 78% (9)
Nice to see the big turnout for Bloody Roar and Tenchu, I hope moderate visibility games like this continue to see similar numbers. Also, I think Tenchu is the first game to get all 3 ratings that didn't qualify for the squiggle bracket.
Games for this topic:
Autobahn Racer 2
Crash Bandicoot
Dracula: The Resurrection
NFL Quarterback Club 97
Viper
Wheel of Fortune
GAB for PS1 has now been in operation for one year! We've already rated 150 games, but there are lots more to go. To celebrate, here's a classic game that many probably think should have been in the first topic, Wheel of Fortune. I mean, Crash Bandicoot. As for Autobahn Racer 2, it's sometimes known as A2 Racer 2 or Autobahn Raser 2. Incidentally, I didn't skip the first one by mistake, it's only on PC.
Autobahn Racer 2 - A
ReplyDeleteCrash Bandicoot - A
Dracula: The Resurrection - G
NFL Quarterback Club 97 - A
Viper - B
Wheel of Fortune - G
Apparently Autobahn Racer 2 is part of the same series as London Racer, the two share the same engine and have very similar presentation, but Autobahn Racer 2 is marginally better in a number of ways that makes it a much better experience overall. The control is better, the camera is better, the draw distance and visuals are a bit better, you don't take as much damage from crashes and there's now a Quick Service station that you can drive through to repair your car mid-race. There are also more tracks and they're better designed, having fewer invisible barriers (and at least the ones that do exist are now usually marked by road signs). There are still some problems though, track surfaces still barely matter and the AI is weird, often stopping dead right in front of you (don't tailgate, kids), and it's sometimes not exactly clear where you have to drive through to get your car fixed, but still, I didn't actually expect this level of improvement after playing the first game. Maybe Autobahn Racer 3 / London Racer 2 will actually be good?
I actually finished a 100% playthrough of Crash Bandicoot recently so it's still pretty fresh in my mind. Unlike most people, I actually had no issue with the save system, I generally got the bonus stage on pretty much every level (and the bonus stages aren't hard to beat), and then later when you're trying to get the gems for perfecting each stage, it will save every time you get one, so it's not really too bad. For me, the big deal was that a number of stages were just really frustrating due to various design issues. Obviously, everyone knows about the godawful bridge stages, which are so bad that attempting to run on the bridge railing often seems like a preferable option, but there's also a number of stages inside temples and the like where you have to jump across floating platforms suspended in a black abyss and it's literally impossible to judge their exact position. Luckily, in most cases platforms will always be separated by exactly the distance Crash jumps, but in some cases of platforms that rotate or move up and down they may not be. This is made doubly frustrating by the fact that getting the gems requires you to beat every level without dying, so if you miss a jump, you're starting over. Overall, it's a decent game with some good ideas but it definitely needed further refinement and I think many people would find it too frustrating to play these days.
Dracula: The Resurrection is a point and click game similar to Myst, but it contains a number of improvements over that game. First, and most obviously, you can actually rotate the camera to look around each scene, which massively improves virtually every aspect of the game. Not only does it make the game faster to play (no more loading every time you want to turn!) it also helps you be much more immersed in your surroundings. Speaking of, I find the atmosphere in this game to also be substantially better. Myst has a feeling of general emptiness and a lack of urgency to the game, whereas this game's horror theme makes the entire experience feel a little bit more tense and unsettling. There's no question though that the scariest part of this game are the humans, especially during the dialogue segments, which are legitimately horrifying. I don't think this was actually the intention, but it fits the theme of the game well enough. The only beef I have is I wish they had gone a little bit farther with the horror theme. You can't actually die and there's not really any enemies or other creepy things, which sort of compromises the experience a little. There's many places in this game that would be just perfect for a jump scare (I was often anticipating it), though they never occur. Still, among games of this type, this is probably as good as it's getting for now.
NFL Quarterback Club 97 might be one of the driest football games ever made. For starters, there's no announcer whatsoever, and they can't even be bothered with voice clips for most things, with the only time you hear anything being on a touchdown or a fumble, if someone throws an interception or misses a field goal, it's just text. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's actually shocking how much this affects the experience, it just feels so much lower energy compared to games like Madden and Blitz. Luckily, the gameplay is decent, running and passing both feel solid, it's got a bit of an arcade feel to it, not quite to the level of Blitz but it's still quite easy to pick up and play and the action feels fast, and it's still satisfying to make the big catch, but it would be nice if the game seemed excited about it too.
DeleteWell, Viper certainly isn't what I expected. GF has it erroneously labelled as a shmup, but it's actually a rail shooter like Starfox, which is an interesting coincidence since we have SNES Starfox this week. Unlike SNES Starfox, this one at least holds its framerate just fine, but is even more dull than that game. The helicopter in Viper isn't terribly agile and many enemies fire homing shots that are nearly impossible to avoid, but you are extremely tanky and health pickups are abundant so it barely matters if you get hit, you can just focus on shooting everything you come across and you'll come out largely unscathed. The presentation is also fairly dull, don't expect any comm chatter here, just a lot of blasting of various nondescript aliens and uninteresting bosses to uninteresting music that doesn't loop properly. The levels also vary wildly in length, with some being super short and others seeming to drag on forever. It's playable, but it's so simple it almost feels like it plays itself, and it has drastically less longevity and fun factor than even SNES Starfox, let alone the N64 game.
After a couple games with very basic presentation, I can really appreciate Wheel of Fortune. The players talk (they even say the puzzle solution out loud when they solve!), it's got the right announcers, it starts with the intro from the show, etc. My only beef is that when you get a letter, it doesn't "spin" to unveil the letter, but I can live with that. Gameplay-wise, it's classic Wheel of Fortune. I've always said that Wheel of Fortune converts well to game form due to the nature of its gameplay, so that could be one strike against it, there are plenty of other decent conversions of Wheel of Fortune, but this one certainly feels more like the TV show than its predecessors. I actually think the AI is pretty good, usually they tend to figure out the puzzle at around the same time that I do, and when they're picking letters you can always tell if they know the answer ("come on lose a turn!"). My one beef is that the game doesn't save your combined winnings, only your individual high scores, so no wracking up a real fortune here, but it's still a pretty fun experience for a game or two every now and then.