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Last Topic's Ratings:
Centre Court Tennis - BAAB - 25% (4)
Quest 64 - BBBABAABBBGG - 29% (12)
Roadsters - AAAAA - 50% (5)
Tarzan - AAAAAGAA - 56% (8)
Tetrisphere - AGGAGAGG - 81% (8)
Wonder Project J2 - BBGGGA - 58% (6) (1 SR)
Wow, I did not expect that reception to Quest 64, I always thought it was a game that people had some fondness for. Granted, it's nothing new for me to think certain games will carry a topic only to find out that they're either not well known or liked.
Games for this topic:
Mace: The Dark Age
Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr
Mario Kart 64
Rampage World Tour
Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
Something I noticed about this topic is that the 6 games only start with 3 different letters of the alphabet, which I don't think happens often. Oh, and of course we have Mario Kart 64 here, so I expect stellar turnout.
Mace: The Dark Age - A
ReplyDeleteMajor League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr - G
Mario Kart 64 - G
Rampage World Tour - A
Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt - A
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - A
Mace borrows quite a lot from Mortal Kombat, but is certainly leagues ahead of MK Trilogy. For starters, the graphics look a million times better, with actual 3D models that have animations with more than 2 frames, though there's still a pretty decent amount of characters despite this. It also controls much better, with proper chains, cancels, and no block button. Despite this, it's still a very simple game, with only 3 attack buttons and a few specials per character, though the sidestep mechanics and the varied arenas do give it a bit of extra variety. One other thing I appreciate about this game is that it's very dumb and it seems to know it, the announcer is very over the top and the pre-fight quotes are totally ridiculous, it gives it a little bit of that silly 90s charm that games enjoy milking today. Clearly not a terrible option, but not one that you'd rush out to buy either.
Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffy Jr is a very solid game. The best thing about it is the controls. The game employs a somewhat novel approach to hitting where you have to line up a target with the ball as it is pitched, though this is not as easy as it sounds because you have to press the analog stick just the right amount to get it in the proper position and the target can be moved as it approaches the plate. It feels satisfying to land a hit without being overly trivial and also feels novel compared to previous baseball games. Fielding controls are also very solid, with good camera work and fielder selection (it's surprising how many games get this wrong). Presentation is good too, with nice visuals and voice work. There's not really a lot more to say other than that it's clearly a good game.
Playing Mario Kart 64 today, some parts of it definitely feel a bit hard to go back to. The power sliding in particular feels a little off, and the controls feel a bit stiff in general, but there's still no denying that it's a classic. For starters, the presentation in this game was incredible for its time and still remains pretty great today. The tracks are huge and varied both visually and from a gameplay standpoint, the soundtrack is great, and the voice acting is still hilarious all these years later. It's also got a pretty solid volume of content, with a lot of tracks and a great battle mode. It's definitely been surpassed by later games in the series, but it set pretty much all of the conventions that later games would follow. This game spent a lot of time in pretty much everyone's N64 for good reason.
The N64 and PS1 versions of Rampage World Tour are very similar, and I have pretty much the same opinion on both. Rampage is a very simple arcade game that gets repetitive quickly but the chaos and destruction is kind of entertaining in a mindless sort of way. It's fun to play for a bit every now and then, but I doubt you'd ever want to sit down and play through the whole thing.
DeleteRugrats Scavenger Hunt is a weird game. It's a board game full of irregularly-shaped boards where you'll often need to choose which path to take, not unlike Mario Party, but there are no minigames here, instead the goal is to land of search squares and find hidden items of various descriptions, while avoiding various hazards and managing your energy and cookie meters. The resource management aspect of the game lends it a bit of depth (converting cookies into energy is often important, but costs a turn to do so, though stalling out a turn is sometimes useful to get enemy characters to move away), though the game nevertheless involves a significant degree of luck as well, as searching for items and getting good spinner rolls are crucial to success. One thing I appreciate is that the game has all of the original voice actors from the show and includes quite a lot of voice acting, so it at least feels faithful to the show in that sense. I kind of suspect this game might be too slow-paced or complex for its target audience, but it's still kind of serviceable nonetheless.
I had actually never played Turok before, because I wasn't a huge fan of either FPS games or dinosaurs at the time, but after finally trying it out I can see why it was highly regarded in its time. However, there is a huge issue with the game that significantly hindered my enjoyment that I can't believe no one has brought up yet, and that's that the controls are backwards and your options to change them are extremely limited. Unlike almost every other shooter in existence, Turok 1 forces you to use the analog stick as your aiming stick, and it also vertically inverts it, meaning you have to look down to aim up and vice versa. You do have the option of using either the DPad or the C-Buttons to move, so you could hold the controller with your left hand on the DPad and your right hand on the Analog stick to get controls that feel closer to correct (or, if using an emulator, you can simply make the right stick the analog stick and the left stick the C buttons), but there is no way to reverse the inverted look controls and they remain jarring throughout. The second game is better in terms of options (you can now use the stick to move and the c buttons to aim), and the third game FINALLY lets you fix the inverted look controls, but either way I was never able to totally adapt to it. It's unfortunate, because the underlying game here is actually pretty decent. Movement (once you learn how to control it) is fast and fluid and the weapons are pretty fun to use, plus the game has a bit of nonlinearity to it and some other cool mechanics like the climbing feature, which adds some verticality to the level design. There is a fairly significant degree of fog to the game, though luckily the developers are smart enough to force most enemies to come close enough that you can see them before they attack you, so it's not a huge deal from a gameplay perspective (compare Sarge's Heroes on PS1 for example, where enemies have far too much range and often attack from the fog). I wonder if anyone ever made a Gameshark code or something to fix the controls, I feel like it wouldn't be too difficult.