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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Asterix - GG - 100% (2)
NBA In the Zone 98 - GGAB - 63% {4}
Novastorm - BB - 0% (2)
Otenki Kororin - GBA - 50% {3}
Resident Evil Director's Cut - GAAGGGGAGBGAA - 73% (13) (1 SR)
Supercross Circuit - AAGA - 63% (4)
As expected, Rez Evil brought out the big vote counts, though it wasn't as divisive as I thought it might be. Otenki Koroin and NBA In the Zone 98 both did get the squiggle bracket, though, which especially surprises me for the former since I didn't think anyone would ever have heard of it.
Games for this topic:
Advan Racing
DonPachi
Firo and Klawd
Final Fantasy 2
Sentient
XS Junior League Soccer
No, before you ask, I probably won't run the FF series completely in order, but since FF1 and FF2 are grouped together I thought it made sense to do this one next (also, for anyone who is confused, this is not the first SNES game, that's Final Fantasy 4). We also have a very well-known shmup here, I'm curious to see what people think about that one.
Advan Racing - G
ReplyDeleteDonpachi - A
Firo and Klawd - G
Final Fantasy 2 - A
Sentient - B
XS Junior League Soccer - A
Advan Racing is basically Atlus's take on Gran Turismo. The core setup of the game is extremely similar, including dividing the game into an arcade and career mode, one of which is for quick races while the other allows you to gradually build up money and buy better cars. The biggest different between the two comes in the format of the career mode, unlike GT where you simply choose each race and repeat it as many times as you like until you feel ready to go onto the next one, in Advan Racing there's a calendar of race events and you have to choose which ones you'd like to participate in. Sometimes events may be held on the same day, and you can only do one of them. There are also differing types of events, such as quick races, endurance races, and even drag races. The game also features pitting, as such both tire wear and fuel are factors you have to consider as well, which also helps it feel a bit unique, though pitting is only really relevant on long races and if you don't like those you can just skip them for the most part. The game is also pretty challenging, moreso than the original Gran Turismo, though luckily you can still get some prize money for setting a fast lap even if you don't win, so you should eventually be able to get some upgrades and start doing better. It's a pretty good game overall and the import barrier is low (all menus are in english), so if you're a fan of GT you should probably check it out.
Donpachi is a franchise that is synonymous with bullet hell shmups, so my first question going in was going to be how well PS1 would handle it, and the answer is actually quite well. The game looks good and lacks noticeable slowdown while filling the screen with unreasonable amounts of bullets and enemies. Free of porting concerns, we can now move on to discussing the actual game. Donpachi is one of the earliest bullet hell games, and while it gets a lot of the mechanics right, there are a few little issues that bring the game down a bit. The first is that there's a lot of cheap deaths in this game. Obviously these games are hard as balls, but it's one thing to be killed because you didn't navigate a bullet pattern properly, and another to be killed because a ship flew up from the bottom of the screen and fired instantly or killed you on contact, before you could possibly have had any time to react, which happens a lot in stages 4 and 5. Regular enemies often overlap their bullets in weird ways that feel impossible to dodge without using a bomb, which is compounded by the fact that your hitbox isn't as small as you'd expect, quite a few times I got clipped in areas where I was sure I had dodged cleanly. At first I thought I just had to "git gud", but immediately after I finished it I immediately booted up Dodonpachi, and even though resolution sacrifices had to be made to make it run on PS1, it is clearly a vastly better game that lacks these issues. While still hard, the sequel feels much more fair, bullet patterns move at more reasonable speeds to give you time to sight read them and cheap shots from the back of the screen are gone, also your hitbox is now a pixel as you'd expect it to be. The original is still decent but the sequel is so much better that I'm not sure why you'd play it. There's a reason the franchise is usually known as Dodonpachi even though that's the second game.
Call me crazy, but I kind of love Firo and Klawd. It's a gritty buddy cop action game starring hardnosed detective ape Firo and smooth-talking weaselly con-cat Klawd. Sure, the gameplay is maybe just serviceable and not great, it's an isometric shooter which largely revolves around ducking to avoid shots and quickly blasting people when it's safe, but the pacing is good, the voice acting is top notch and the cutscenes have to be seen to be believed. I defy anyone to play this game and not grin like an idiot the entire time. It's got co-op, too, so grab a pal, blast some bad guys, and spout cheesy one-liners like it's going out of style. Or accidentally blow each other up with explosives and get hit by cars. It's a good time either way.
DeleteWhen we reviewed Final Fantasy 1 last year, I mentioned that I expected to rate it A because there are other, better ways to play the game than the PS1 version, but I couldn't do it because the game is still too much fun for A. For FF2, I have no issue following through with my original plan, because FF2 simply isn't as good of a game as FF1. The biggest issue with FF2 has and always will be the way stats level up in a strange way based on usage (which generally has to be exploited in order to get good stats) rather than through experience. Simply put, this system sucks and feels bad. If you play normally, you'll often end up with gimped or lopsided stats, and I can't believe they haven't changed the game to use a traditional exp system in any of the remakes. The weapon and magic levelling could stay, but the stat system clearly brings the game down. Beyond this, the new presentation for PS1 looks sharp and the port is of fairly good quality, though much of the game's original appeal lay in its innovative approach to storytelling that was no longer in any way notable even at the time of release, let alone now. An okay game, but not a classic in the way that FF1 is.
Sentient is an extremely bizarre adventure game where almost nothing makes any sense, but it is fairly clear that the game is also extremely bad. The worst thing about Sentient is its UI. You can walk around in Sentient and examine things in first person, but virtually every aspect of the game is timed and your movement is incredibly slow. Interacting with objects or using items is also extremely slow and cumbersome and the dialogue system in the game is the worst ever created. The game's 3D models and especially cutscenes are also terrible and make it extremely difficult to take the game seriously. This is a good case of a game just being far too ambitious for the technology available.
XS Junior League Soccer is a very different take on the genre, rather than attempting to mimic the professional scene, it focuses instead of the kind of soccer you might play in gym class. For the most part, I feel like it does a decent job of capturing the feel of its subject material, the kids aren't well disciplined or trained, so you can't rely on them too much, they make a lot of mistakes, their positioning is frequently bad, the goalies are a complete crapshoot, etc. Of course, the kids are not all created equal, some of them are much better than others, and you have the typical "schoolyard" method of picking teams where each team picks one person at a time. As far as the actual gameplay, it's okay, but very simple. I do like how the game handles throw ins (though the kids should be waving their hands around and yelling "pass it here!" or some such), it adds some much needed nuance to an otherwise very simple game. One of the biggest issues with the game is the selection of modes, there's basically only exhibition and tournament, which is basically the same as exhibition. I feel like this game is practically begging for a feature where you create your own kid and you slowly improve your skills as you play games (maybe you could also do drills or whatever) until you become slightly competent, that would give the game a ton more replay value.