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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands - GGGAAG - 83% (6)
Gangway Monsters - AG - 75% (2)
Motor Toon Grand Prix (JP) - ABBB - 13% (4)
PGA Tour 96 - AAB - 33% (3)
Tetris Plus - AAA - 50% (3)
VS - ABB - 17% (3)
I was a bit surprised that there were so few votes this time, probably because I thought Tetris Plus was a lot more well known than it actually appears to be. Or maybe N64 just stole this topic's thunder. Either way, we've got tons more PS1 action left to go!
Games for this topic:
Diver's Dream
Goofy's Fun House
Monster Rancher
Ochan no Oekaki Logic
Ridge Racer Revolution
Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol
A new Monster Rancher (or a port of the first game?) was announced recently, so it seems like a good time to cover the first entry in the series. We also have the second Ridge Racer game (I always thought Rage Racer was the second game, but apparently it's the third) and the first title in the Spec Ops series.
Diver's Dream - G
ReplyDeleteGoofy's Fun House - A
Monster Rancher - G
Ochan no Oekaki Logic - A
Ridge Racer Revolution - B
Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol - B
Diver's Dream is a pretty interesting game. At first I sort of suspected it'd be something like Aquanaut's Holiday, but it's really not, it's much closer to being a traditional action adventure game, just with all of the action taking place underwater. The main gameplay loop involves taking missions, usually either in caves or shipwrecks, where you'll gather salvage and either look for treasures or battle sea creatures, which you can then sell when you get back on dry land to purchase better gear and weapons. The game's presentation and story is also pretty decent, with some decent voice acting in cutscenes to help move the plot along, and the game feels very unique in general. A quick tip, though, the moment they become available, buy a lot of spears for the harpoon gun, you really don't want to run out mid-mission. There's also a part on mission 3 that stumped me for a while where you have to shoot a blockage with a few spears to open it up, so hopefully that'll help anyone else who's struggling with it.
Goofy's Fun House is an interesting concept. On the surface, it's kind of a hybrid of an adventure game and a minigame collection, there are various minigames in the paintings scattered throughout the house, but many of them require you to do things throughout the house to unlock them. For example, to unlock the blue ribbon game, you first have to turn on the furnace in the basement, then get the ham out of the refrigerator. It's rarely anything tremendously complex, it was presumably made for kids. However, the real appeal of the package is that by completing the minigames, you can watch some classic Goofy cartoons, which are presented in their entirety and in good quality, so really, this game functions more as a showcase or collection for some of the old Goofy shorts. Your enjoyment of the game will almost certainly depend on how much you enjoy Goofy as a character, as the ability to watch the shorts is the main appeal. I feel like the game surrounding the shorts is somewhat superflous, but it's still a decent package anyway.
I'm much more familiar with Monster Rancher 2 compared to the first game, so I went back to put some time into the first one to see how they differ and if the first game holds up in light of the second, and the verdict is that the first game does generally still hold up pretty well even if the second game is better in almost every way. First and foremost, the presentation in the sequel is obviously better. I do actually like the little 2D cartoons that show your monster training or resting, but there's no question that the monster models and animations look vastly better in the sequel. The core mechanics of the game remain mostly intact, though there are a couple little issues that make the core game loop work slightly less well IMO, for example I don't like that you earn money by training, this makes battling feel somewhat redundant, especially because of its associated lifespan hits and the fact that it doesn't award statgains here, and just generally allows you to be somewhat too wealthy in the early stages of the game (in MR2, you kind of have to acquire wealth over the span of multiple monsters). Battles thankfully still work well, they're still famously RNG-heavy but all of the main mechanics from the later games are still present. I guess the real question would be "should you play the first game or just skip to the second", and I would probably recommend the latter, even though this game is still solid they're similar enough that you're not missing a lot and the second game has almost infinite replay value anyway, I'd say the first game is really only for diehard fans who want to see how things started. Still a solid first effort but the sequel is the legendary one.
DeleteOchan no Oekaki Logic is another Oekaki Logic (aka Picross) type game, this time starring Ochan from Hebereke. There's not really a ton to say about it, besides some cute factor it's pretty much the same as all Picross-style games, the core rules are the same across all of them, you have to use the hints to figure out which boxes have to be filled in and which ones can't be, and when you solve it, it makes a picture. The core idea behind Picross is fun, though I feel like the pictures often look weirdly bad in this version, partially due to poor colour choices. It also doesn't really seem to do much with the Hebereke license, maybe eventually some pictures might be based on the games but I hadn't seen any in what I played. On the plus side, there is the ability to create your own puzzle, but in general this seems to be a pretty routine affair.
It's not hard to see why I keep forgetting Ridge Racer Revolution exists, it's simply not a significant evolution for the franchise to any degree. It's basically just a track pack for the first game, where almost everything remains the same, there's just some new courses to race. By now, having only 3 courses feels like way too little, and they've somehow also managed to mess with the handling in a way where the drifts now just feel "off", the cars seem to snap back to grip at weird times, often causing me to plow into walls in situations where I didn't in the original. Overall, I don't feel that this is as good as the original and it also doesn't really have that classic status, it's probably best to just skip it and move on to the rest of the series.
DeleteSomehow, I think Spec Ops is actually worse than Rainbow Six. The core idea is the same, you'll craft a team of mercenaries to take down a certain objective, but instead of being a kind of clunky FPS, it's a very clunky TPS. It has the same problem as Sarge's Heroes, where the draw distance is far too short and enemies can shoot you before you see them (your only hope to know where the shots are coming from is your radar), except that at least in that game you could dodge, here everything is hitscan so damage is inevitable. Switching between characters is also a bit slow and the other character is left extremely vulnerable while you switch, and there's also permadeath and you have very little health. Oh, and this should go without saying, but there's no stealth in the game, enemies can see you a mile away and killing everyone is your only option. Just not any fun in the slightest, PS1 has much better shooters than this.