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Last Topic's Ratings:
Autobahn Racer 2 - AB - 25% (2)
Crash Bandicoot - GAGGAGBAAGAGAGA - 70% (15)
Dracula: The Resurrection - BBGGG - 60% (5)
NFL Quarterback Club 97 - A - 50% (1)
Viper - ABA - 33% (3)
Wheel of Fortune - BBGGG - 60% (5)
Interesting to see the abrupt turnaround on both Dracula and Wheel of Fortune in the last topic. These games technically don't qualify for the squiggle bracket (the rule is that they have to get at least 20% of all 3 votes), but they were certainly still divisive.
Games for this topic:
Contender
Disney's Dinosaur
Frogger
Kotobuki Grand Prix
Missile Command
Puyo Puyo Sun
An issue that often comes up when I'm selecting games for a topic is that I'll generate a list of games that I think seems good because the games look interesting, only to find that it has no games anyone has ever heard of. Then I'll try to add a well-known game, but since the list has many good-looking games already, I don't want to use a very good game, but I also don't want to put a lousy game because then people will be feel that the topic sucks. I guess what I'm saying is we need more very average games that everyone played for some reason.
Contender - A
ReplyDeleteDisney's Dinosaur - B
Frogger - A
Kotobuki Grand Prix - A
Missile Command - A
Puyo Puyo Sun - G
I agree with pretty much everything CyanRouge said about Contender, but I still kind of like it. For starters, 3D has greatly helped the boxing genre. Moving around the ring feels so much more fluid here than it does in any 16-bit game, and the punches are much easier to read too, so blocking finally feels reasonable. It's a huge step up in core playability. Unfortunately, many of the game mechanics here are a little half-baked. As noted, the health regen is absurdly fast. I do like that you can step back and play defense when you're hurt to try to recover, but it's simply a little too quick, if it regenerated at maybe half the speed it would work well. There also isn't a great variety of punches to throw, you have jabs (highs), body blows (lows), and a special punch, and that's it. I kind of feel like at least one more punch type is needed. Speaking of which, the boxers are different in terms of more than just speed, each class of boxer (the fourth thing listed on the profile) has a different special punch, though they do serve somewhat the same purpose. That being said, I still had fun playing it. It has a bit of quirky charm, from the goofy boxers to the pre-match announcements and the paper that shows up after the match. I feel that this is at least a sign of good things to come for the boxing genre, even if it's not quite there yet.
Dinosaur, on the other hand, has almost no redeeming features. It's a basic action game where you control 3 characters with different abilities, which sounds like a decent setup for a puzzle adventure of some sort, but there's actually almost no puzzle elements in the game, after the initial introduction you spend most of your time in team up mode (where the entire team fights as one unit), mindlessly slaughtering enemy dinosaurs. This might be tolerable, but the combat controls and hit detection are both pretty awful, and many enemies have an absurd amount of health, taking dozens of hits to go down (while killing you in one or two hits). There are also no checkpoints and you have to restart levels from scratch if anyone dies. There are also many mission objectives that involve things like feeding recovery items to specific characters or what not and if you use these incorrectly you make the mission impossible to complete, the design of the game is just atrocious all around.
I had the PC version of Frogger back when it first came out, and my recollection was that I liked it, but it was obnoxiously tough. I was curious to see if the game would seem easier now that I'm more skilled, but nope, it is still an obnoxiously difficult game. Most of the difficulty comes from Frogger's hurtbox. Frogger does not simply move from place to place, he hops, and his hop has no invincibility whatsoever. It takes Frogger a little while after you hop to leave his current square, during which time you can still be hit (which is maddening), and you can also be hit if you clip something that's moving out of the way on the way down. As if this wasn't enough, there's also a time limit on each stage, which is often obnoxiously short, and many of the levels require exploration to find the minifrogs, which will usually result in you losing lives to the time limit until you know exactly where all the frogs are. Despite this, it's not all bad. I do like the level designs for the most part and I think they did a good job expanding on the formula while still feeling faithful to the original, you just might want to enter the infinite lives code if you don't have saint-like patience.
Unfortunately, Kotobuki Grand Prix is not quite as good as I'd hoped. In many ways, it's very similar to Snowboard Kids Plus, but of much lower quality. The core gameplay is much like Mario Kart, complete with the SNES-style hop turn and power slide, and it steals Snowboard Kids' story mode and powerups, and it has a cute anime style that gives it some charm, but the game just isn't put together all that well. By far the biggest issue is how the game handles collisions, when you collide with anything, you just kind of bounce backwards and lose speed, there's not even a noise, which makes the game feel very cheaply made. With some practice you can generally avoid most walls, which gives the game a decent sense of speed (and unlike Snowboard Kids Plus, it can maintain its framerate), and the game does have one interesting mechanic in that you can hold up to 5 items and you can even save them for later tracks, so it's not all bad, but it never really rises above its status as a budget kart racer.
DeleteThough I didn't intend it, the Frogger / Missile Command comparison is interesting. Compared to Frogger, Missile Command sticks much closer to the original. Even though it contains both a retro mode and a modern mode, they are quite similar (contrast how Frogger's non-retro levels deviate significantly from the original design), with the main difference being that in modern mode you can pan the camera and occasionally buy upgrades for your missile ships. Also, there are boss battles in the modern mode, but they are fairly lame and detract from the core experience. Interestingly, I feel that this game is actually best in classic mode, which is generally faster-paced and more exciting (building combos is really what this game is all about, which works better in classic mode) while the best part of Frogger is the new levels. The one significant problem this game does have is the controls, controlling the pointer doesn't ever quite feel accurate enough with the playstation controller, this is the kind of game you want to control with a mouse. It's still decent, but of the two, I feel that Frogger has much more lasting appeal, the less ambitious design of Missile Command causes repetition to set in much faster.
I was originally going to post something about how Sun is one the most forgettable Puyo rulesets and that it was generally a redundant followup to Tsuu since that game nailed the formula, but I can't do it, Puyo Puyo Sun is still too much fun. The stuff about Sun's ruleset being forgettable is still true, the gist of it is when you offset or all clear, you get some sun puyos, which are identical to garbage puyos except you get a small attack bonus when you clear them, and you can sometimes use them to stall an incoming attack, though there's a delay so don't expect to indefinitely stall attacks using 1-chains like you can in Fever. These mechanics generally carry little weight and as a result it plays almost exactly like Puyo Puyo Tsuu, though perhaps that's actually its strength, since the gameplay hasn't changed too much it still retains the mechanics that made Puyo Puyo Tsuu such a great game. Besides this, where this game has made great strides over Puyo Puyo Tsuu is in the presentation. Each character now has fully voiced attack lines and animations, which greatly enhances the experience, and the between-match cutscenes in story mode are fantastic, possibly the high point for the series. Between great mechanics and oodles of charm I just can't give this game anything but G.