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Last Topic's Ratings:
Action Bass - AB - 25% (2)
Cosmic Race - BBBB - 0% (4)
Crossroad Crisis - AA - 50% (2)
Earthworm Jim 2 - GGGGG - 100% (5)
Paradise Casino - B - 0% (1)
Theme Park - GB - 50% (2)
I was a bit surprised at the limited turnout for Theme Park, maybe not many people played the PS1 version. This week we shouldn't have any turnout problems, though.
Games for this topic:
Asterix
NBA In the Zone 98
Novastorm
Otenki Kororin
Resident Evil Director's Cut
Supercross Circuit
This week we have the original Resident Evil. There are 3 versions of the game on PS1 (original, Director's Cut, Dualshock edition), and we're only going to rate this one, but they're all similar enough that you've played any of them that's good enough. Of course, you shouldn't rate if you've only played the GC version, which is quite different. We also have the second game in the super confusingly title Supercross series, look up the names of the game in this series sometime if you want a laugh. The game that's just called "Supercross" is the fourth game!
Asterix - G
ReplyDeleteNBA In the Zone 98 - A
Novastorm - B
Otenki Kororin - B
Resident Evil Director's Cut - G
Supercross Circuit - A
Asterix is certainly an interesting departure from previous games in the series. Unlike the other games, which were generally basic platformers, Asterix is a hybrid Action / Strategy game. The main game plays almost exactly like Risk, where you move troops across a board to conquer enemy territories, and you have to choose where to reinforce so you don't get taken over. Certain key regions contain potion ingredients, which increase the number of troops you get per turn, so obviously those are important to capture. However, these are not conquered in the standard way, but instead when you go to one of these you play an action stage where you control Asterix or Obelix and have to punch and platform your way through various enemies until you find the ingredient (the more troops you take into the stage, the more health you have). The core game is fun because Risk is fun, but the action stages are nothing special, with some being rather annoying (especially those with bottomless pits). To make matters worse, if the enemy ever reconquers an area with an action stage, you have to beat the action stage again, which can quickly become annoying. I still think it's interesting enough for G but I wish the action stages were a little better done.
While it's often said that sports games don't change much from year to year, that definitely can't be said of NBA In the Zone, as In the Zone 98 has almost nothing in common with the original game. While the original was a super-fast paced arcade style game that used a "facing basket" perspective, this one is a more straight up sim-style affair. By far the biggest change compared to the original is that being near a defender slows your movement to near zero, so passing constantly when near the basket is necessary to get close, though this has the unfortunate side effect of making it nearly impossible to dunk, you'll see a couple dunks per game at best and only if someone really messes up defensively. There's also a new player stamina and substitution system that I like a lot, it adds some extra strategy to the game but it still feels quick and intuitive to make substitutions to your lineup. Compared to the previous game (In the Zone 2, which we probably should have rated but it's inferior to this one in every way), the UI has improved and there's now a turbo mechanic, though it doesn't have major impact on the game since you still can't really blow past defenders with it. It's a solid title overall, but I think I slightly prefer the original, for one thing it had a lot more "style" to it, this one is a little dry, but I do want to see if they make further improvements to the series because it seems like a solid foundation.
Novastorm is absolutely terrible, probably one of the worst games I've ever played. It's a "depth shmup", similar to Starfox or Panaroma Cotton, but it has no actual depth, as the game is not actually 3D, it's just sprites layered on top of a prerendered background, and it completely fails at creating any kind of convincing illusion of depth, which makes the game almost impossible to play. Are those ships far enough back that you can move in front of them to shoot them, or will you crash into them and take damage? Good luck trying to figure that out. Ditto for the terrain, which usually doesn't matter but sometimes you crash into it and take damage. Enemy shots also come out from far too close to the screen to be practically avoided in almost all cases. It's shocking how even 16-bit games managed to pull this off far better than this game does.
Otenki Kororin is a very dumb puzzle game. It is basically a much worse version of Tetris Attack where the goal is to match 4 blocks in any direction (ie, puyo puyo rules) and you rotate entire rows at a time. The game is ludicrously fast-paced, to the point that it's almost completely pointless to try to play it with any kind of skill, you just want to make matches as fast as humanly possible because combos and such don't really matter, you just have to clear out enough blocks in the shortest time to win. It feels almost completely mindless, which might appeal to kids or something, but it gets old very quickly.
DeleteI think pretty much everyone knows the basics of Resident Evil by now, so I'm not going to spend much time describing the game. Obviously, the question here is how well the original stands up, especially in light of the very popular REmake, and I was surprised to find out that it actually holds up quite well. Even though the character models are awful (backgrounds still look surprisingly good though) and there's a couple weird annoyances in the original game like having to press a button to climb staircases and the map not being displayed on the inventory screen by default, Capcom still got pretty much everything right the first time and the original game still feels great to play. Plus, the Director's Cut has the option of an alternate campaign for each character (called "arrange mode"), that the remake doesn't include, and the remake changes enough that playing through the original game still feels like a unique experience. Beyond this, though, I'd just like to call attention to some of the brilliant little gameplay details that contribute heavily to the overall atmosphere of the game. Obviously, the idea to hide load time behind the door opening screens was a stroke of genius, and having limited saves also does a good job of making you want to push yourself further before saving, which makes the game feel more tense. I also think it's clever how when zombies die, they don't just explode or fade away or anything, they actually fall forward, the beginning of which looks very similar to their grab animation, so you often want to shoot another bullet just to make sure, but of course bullets are precious, so maybe you that makes you try to check before shooting and then you get grabbed. Even the tank controls make the game feel more claustrophobic because you can't turn on a dime. Overall, I'm very impressed at how well they nailed the mechanics on their first try. Sure, a little was borrowed from Sweet Home, but they basically had to invent a whole new genre here and they did a hell of a job.
I basically agree with CyanRouge that Supercross Circuit is close to being a cool game but doesn't quite make it. I think the rooot of the problem is that the core racing gameplay just isn't very fun. Compared to Jeremy McGrath Supercross 98 (yes, this is the sequel to that game), this is a far more complete and functional game, the physics work properly now and there's way more tracks, so that's a plus, but I feel like having the game play properly now makes its flaws somewhat more evident. Specifically, the racing in this game is actually absurdly simple. You hold gas all the time. When going over a ramp, you hold up to line yourself up with the ground. You hold Square when taking any hard turn. That's basically the entire game. You could probably argue that most racing games are very simple, the real problem is likely that the brake turn is so powerful that turning has no nuance and then the subtle art of managing your speed through turns that makes other racing games fun to play is lost. Maybe if you had some kind of turbo meter or something that would give it enough depth to be interesting, but as it stands it just isn't very fun to play, which is a shame because the game otherwise has a ton of content.