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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Contender - BBBAB - 10% (5)
Disney's Dinosaur - BB - 0% (2)
Frogger - BBBAAAAA - 31% (8)
Kotobuki Grand Prix - A - 50% (1)
Missile Command - AABA - 38% (4)
Puyo Puyo Sun - G - 100% (1)
This is probably our lowest rated topic yet, with 4 games in the low range, which is especially ironic because I said I originally thought the topic looked too good. What I find most strange, though, is that no one else had played Puyo Puyo Sun, because the franchise generally tends to draw a decent number of votes. I mean, it's true, the PS1 era entries are usually considered to be forgettable, but it's still a well-known franchise.
Games for this topic:
Barbie Explorer
CT Special Forces
Dakar '97
Digimon World
Madden NFL 97
Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey
I've wanted to put CT Special Forces in one of these topics for a while now, but I keep removing it because either there's too many other imports or too many 2D games or what not. Well, this time I'm starting with it. Granted, I'm sure most people are probably here for Digimon World.
Barbie Explorer - A
ReplyDeleteCT Special Forces - B
Dakar '97 - B
Digimon World - G
Madden NFL 97 - A
Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey - A
I like the core idea behind Barbie Explorer, which basically boils down to "what if Barbie was Lara Croft?". In many ways, it makes sense, after all, Barbie was setting an unreasonable standard of female attractiveness long before Lara made it cool, and it gives Mattel an excuse to design another dozen different outfits for Barbie. In terms of gameplay, though, you won't actually be doing any tomb raiding here, the game really plays more akin to Crash Bandicoot with Lara Croft's jumping controls. Barbie is also significantly more of a wimp than Lara, not only can she not attack but she also dies in one hit to absolutely anything, and while you do have a lot of lives, you can go through them quite quickly, especially in some sections where there are many tricky jumps in a row and no checkpoint until you clear them all, so it can be frustrating at times. That being said, it's a decent looking game with a good variety of surroundings and it is decently fun, though I think it would probably be a fair bit too hard and unforgiving for its target audience.
CT Special Forces is WAY worse than I was expecting. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of those lousy PC platformers from the mid 90s where they seemed to know what the games were supposed to look like but had no idea how they actually played. In this case, they're trying to ape Contra or Metal Slug, and while the game looks the part, it fails in every other way. The most immediately appalling thing are the jumping physics, which just feel stiff and bad in the way that PC platformers of that age often were. Worse yet, you are not able to aim while jumping, which means you can almost never hit anything while airborne, rendering crouch shots your only viable means of combat for like 95% of the game. Try to imagine playing Contra or Metal Slug without being able to aim up or down (technically you can aim up in this game but only on one, crappy fixed angle, and only while on the ground) and you can quickly see how unplayable it would be. Now imagine the jump physics are also way worse than those games and you have CT Special Forces. What a trainwreck.
Dakar '97 is a pretty terrible racing game. By far this game's biggest problem is its draw distance, which is completely atrocious, among the worst on PS1. Track obstacles and even course boundaries are completely invisible until you get close, and even though the game does call out the turns, it makes the courses extremely hard to read, particularly whenever the course opens up. It also has the same mushy collisions that other bad racers on PS1 have where you just kind of bounce backwards and lose speed, but somehow it's even worse here because the camera also kind of doesn't know what to do with it. The one good thing is that it actually does kind of capture the feel of rally racing in terms of its course design but the technical issues are too severe for this to be recommended to any degree.
DeleteDigimon World is a very unique game. In some sense, it's kind of like a more RPG-focused version of Monster Rancher, like in that game your monsters have a limited lifespan and certain needs (like eating, sleeping, and using the bathroom), so you need to be careful about how you raise them so they can reach their full potential. However, where Monster Rancher is largely menu-driven outside battles, in Digimon World you walk around the world and get into battles like in a more traditional RPG. Despite this different interface, the progression is still fairly similar, as you play you'll accumulate more money and gain access to new and better facilities that will allow later monsters to become more powerful than earlier ones. For the most part, your goal is to explore the Digimon World (which is quite large) to find new Digimon to recruit to your town, all of whom provide some kind of benefit or service, like selling items, running facilities, opening shortcuts on the world map, and many other such things. Of course, in order to recruit them, you'll not only have to pass lots of hostile digimon to reach them, but also usually beat them in a battle, so you need to keep making your digimon more and more powerful. Like in Monster Rancher, it's a solid formula that is both addictive and satisfying, and it can keep you playing for a long time. The one major area where this game functions very differently from Monster Rancher however is in battle. Battles in Monster Rancher take place in an arena where you control your monsters directly, moving in and out of attack zones to launch specific attacks (and hoping they don't miss). In Digimon World, battle is largely automated, your Digimon moves and attacks on its own, with you merely giving suggestions and using battle items. This was probably an essential choice for the sake of the game's pacing, though it does sometimes feel a little too hands off, particularly because you need a very high brain stat to even be able to tell your Digimon which moves to use, I feel like giving you a little more control right off the bat would have been nice. There's also an MP meter that determines which moves your Digimon can use and it runs out fast, so you'll need lots of money for MP heals if you plan to do a lot of battling, which I still have slightly mixed feels on. Still, minor quibbles about battle aside, this is still an expansive and unique RPG that's well worth a look, especially for Monster Rancher fans.
I've mentioned Madden previously when we've done Football games, though the game I had experience with was actually Madden 99, not 97, so I figured we might as well start at the beginning. Compared to the 16-bit Madden titles, the main things this new generation has brought us are 3D graphics, which obviously improve field and player visibility, and an overhaul to the running gameplay, with the addition of new moves like spins and stiff arms. As I mentioned the previous time we talked about it, I'm kind of lukewarm on this change, I feel like these sort of mechanics really belong more in Arcade-style games like Blitz, but they're not too intrusive and help the game feel different from its predecessors. The one thing that isn't really here yet is commentary, there's a little bit of voice work, but not nearly as much as in later games on the system and it makes the game feel a bit more dry. There's also obviously fewer options compared to later games and the graphics are a bit worse. It's still a good first attempt and I'm sure for Football fans it was a must-have when it first came out, though these days I couldn't see much reason to play it over the next few titles, which add a lot more polish and pizazz to the experience.
DeletePro Pinball Fantastic Journey is a bit of a tough game to rate. For starters, it's very similar in a lot of ways to True Pinball, with the two games offering very similar options and general gameplay, though whereas True Pinball contains 4 tables, Pro Pinball only contains 1 (per release). Apparently Pro Pinball was a super budget title that retailed for around $10 a game, so if you bought the four titles separately it'd probably work out to about the same price, so I guess it's mostly a wash though the convenience of only needing one disc and being able to switch tables from the menu is nice. There are a couple differences between the two games that push me towards True Pinball, though. For starters, True Pinball is the only one to offer a true overhead view option. There is a very shallow viewing angle for Pro Pinball, but it's still not quite the same. Secondly, and more annoying, the LCD screen in Pro Pinball always overlaps the pinball table, while True Pinball has smartly relegated it to the top and shrunk the pool table display to make room. You can shove the display towards the top in Pro Pinball, but it will always cut off some of the table, particularly when it's set to be opaque, which I find much easier to view than the semitransparent option. It's still a decent game and is fun to play for a while, but I definitely think True Pinball's presentation is a cut above.