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Last Topic's Ratings:
Grand Theft Auto - AABAGABA - 44% (8)
International Track and Field - GGBAB - 50% {5}
NickToons Racing - GA - 75% (2)
Nyan to Wonderful - ABA - 33% (3)
Space Griffon VF-9 - AGG - 83% (3)
Wing Commander 3 - GGGAGG - 92% (6)
This was a pretty divisive topic. My favourite moment, which I intended to comment on at the time but apparently never got around to, is that both myself and KFHEWUI rated all 6 games, but we did not give the same rating to any game. I was also happy to see that people tried out Nyan to Wonderful, I was pretty sure that game would only get 1 vote.
Games for this topic:
Army Men: Air Attack
Batman and Robin
Bust A Groove
Gunpey
Ultimate Fighting Championship
VR Sports Powerboat Racing
Bust A Groove is another one of those games I remember being fond of back in the day but haven't played in forever, so I'm curious to see how it holds up. Also, I kind of want to play Ultimate Fighting Championship, as what I can only assume is a misprint on the jewel case implies that you also fight monsters and there's an exploration element to the game, but it'd certainly be interesting if that was really in the game.
Army Men: Air Attack - G
ReplyDeleteBatman and Robin - B
Bust A Groove - G
Gunpey - A
Ultimate Fighting Championship - B
VR Sports Powerboat Racing - B
Army Men is a franchise I didn't expect a lot from, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised by it. While the first game was a pretty ambitious third-person shooter with a lot of charm that was held back by some technical issues, Air Attack plays more like a more streamlined version of the Strike series. The basic idea of flying a helicopter through an overhead map to find mission objectives, while picking up powerups and shooting missiles remains, but it's far faster and more streamlined. For starters, compared to Strike, you're vastly faster and more maneuverable here, which allows you to kind of strafe in and out as you fight (and there's also some auto-aim on your machine guns that helps with this), which generally makes the game feel faster and more engaging compared to Strike. I also like that there are some troops who are on your side in this game, which makes it feel a bit more like a war. You aren't usually required to protect them and they often don't help a lot, but the thought is appreciated. The missions are also vastly shorter, which is a bit of a mixed bag. It does allow them to be a fair bit more varied, but they're generally not especially taxing and they're often over in a minute or two, which, when combined with the fact that there's only 16 missions, doesn't result in a very long game. I also feel like the game has a bit less charm compared to the Sarge's Heroes, though it still has a neat aesthetic for the most part and thankfully, there are no draw distance or frame rate problems here. A pretty solid game overall and I think I prefer it to Strike, though I wish there was a bit more of it. We'll see what they do with the sequel.
Batman and Robin is very ambitious in terms of its setup, but its execution leaves so much to be desired that I can't recommend it. The setup is interesting, it's a pseudo-open world game where you'll explore Gotham to look for clues to Mr. Freeze's next crime, you can drive around in the batmobile, interact with objects, fight grunts, explore crime scenes, and enter missions to foil Mr. Freeze. The problem is the controls and the camera are both a complete disaster. The controls are some of the most unintuitive you'll find anywhere, Batman has two "modes", and he also has a speed setting controlling how fast he moves, both of which are activated with shoulder buttons. When in combat mode, all 4 face buttons are various punches and kicks, whereas in detective mode, they are used to jump, interact, and so on. Obviously, this is extremely superflous, the combat system in this game is incredibly simple, allowing just one button for a basic melee combo would have been plenty, as it stands the fact that you cannot jump while in combat mode is super annoying and feels very clunky. Speaking of clunky, the camera is totally uncontrollable and almost always frames the action from the worst possible angle, switch between static camera angles and chase cameras seemingly at random. Oh, and of course there's tank controls. When you compare this to something like Spider-Man, the difference in quality and polish is staggering, even though this game has occasional moments of brilliance it spends far too much time being a clunky mess for me to recommend it.
It took me a while to get back into Bust a Groove, but when I did I had a lot of fun. It's a deceptively simple game, you mainly just hit X or O on every fourth beat, plus you have an attack you can use with triangle to interrupt the opponent's combo (though they can dodge with square). As you do combos you have to input arrows at some point before you hit the X or O, which is where the complexity comes in. Even though you're not required to hit them on the beat, they can easily throw you off your timing, especially when attacks are going off, though if you dodge an attack in the middle of the combo and don't drop the combo immediately afterwards you'll feel like a genius. One thing that could possibly be considered a criticism of the game is it doesn't give you much visual indicator to follow the beat. The meter flashes, but you can't really rely on this, you pretty much have to count out "1, 2, 3, 4" in your head to do well (or even out loud in some cases), which differs a lot from more modern games where the visual cues are a much heavier focus. That being said, I do feel like this captures the essence of music pretty well, to play music or dance you have to have a rock-solid rhythm in your head and this game pushes you to develop that. As for the music and visuals, they're both pretty decent. Despite their age, the dancing animations still look pretty good, and the songs are generally very good (except Heat's, his song is trash). Even though it took me ages to beat the final boss it was a fun experience the whole way through.
DeleteGunpey is just okay. The idea behind the game is that you flip panels vertically to create lines, which then clear those panel pieces. While a line is clearing, you can clear additional lines to create a combo. You can only move blocks vertically, which means you have absolutely no ability to get blocks into a column that has none, you're instead intended to try to set up your lines to use more or less blocks from columns to keep them even, but generally I feel like this is the game's biggest flaw as it create a lot of downtime where you're just waiting for the game to give you a piece in a column so you can do something. The game also progressively moves your pieces up and if they reach the top, you die (though you can swap them back down with empty space, there's no gravity). It works okay, but I feel like the concept isn't quite tuned as well as it could be. For example, when playing VS mode, all attacks (which are made by clearing a ton of panels at once) are totally ineffectual, merely shuffling the opponent's panels around rather than doing something threatening like speeding up their timer or creating some kind of garbage block that you'd have to work around. In the early parts of a match, the screen scrolls so insanely slow that there's absolutely no way anyone could ever die, you have like 20 seconds to make a line before it moves up so there's no threat whatsoever. Eventually it starts moving up about once per second and here's where all strategy goes out the window, it's far too fast for you to possibly make any kind of combos or anything, you just have to make as many lines as you can to stall the timer and hope the opponent gets screwed over by not having blocks in a column first, and this is the only way matches ever end, which isn't very satisfying. The other modes, like line clear and the puzzle mode are a bit better, but overall the game doesn't really do a lot to stand out. A bit of a low A but the included modes are enough to save it from B territory.
As I suspected, Ultimate Fighting Championship does not involve fighting monsters or roaming through a large open world (actually, this sounds like a description of Batman and Robin!). In fact, there's really not much to the game at all, there's precisely one match type and the characters are all very similar. The basic gist of the game is that you have basic strikes and a grapple move, not entirely dissimilar to a wrestling game. Once someone successfully grapples, they push the other player to the mat, at which point they can either punch them or attempt a submission move. If the submission move is successful, they instantly win the match, however the other player can attempt to perform a reversal which will either break up the move or even put them on top in the grapple. I'm not actually sure how you're intended to perform reversals, but simply pressing all 4 face buttons at the same time reversed every submission move the AI ever tried on me, and they always reversed my moves as well, so submission moves quickly became a non-factor and I settled for punching people to death. Even this does not have a lot of nuance as you spend a lot of time on top of people punching them as they try to punch back or block (though the AI is fairly passive and often just lets you punch them for a while). I get that they were probably trying to go for realism here, but whatever control scheme they're using isn't cutting it, obviously just hitting all 4 face buttons whenever the AI has the advantage isn't interesting gameplay, it probably would have been better to have reversals decided by timing challenges that progressively get harder as your health gets lower. There's also create a character, but it's the most limited create a character ever, there's virtually no visual customization, so all you do is assign statpoints that barely matter. I feel like there's some potential to this idea but it needs more seasoning.
DeleteVR Sports Powerboat Racing sucks. For starters, the controls are trash. The Joystick is way too sensitive, so you have to use the pad, but even it doesn't control particularly well. Beyond this, the game is also super basic. It offers none of the nuance you'd get from a game like Wave Race 64, where you have to navigate the buoys while contending with waves and other racers and also somehow trying to be fast, here you just fight the controls on turns and hold down when you go over jumps and that's about it. The waves have almost no effect on your boat so you might as well be racing on land, and the weather pretty much never changes either. Races seem to last forever (they're not actually very long, they're just super dull), and the game even manages to sound like garbage, having one of the worst title themes I've ever heard (you can not get off these menus fast enough) and the engine sounds and choppy water noises in the races get old super fast. Play literally any other aquatic racer instead of this one.