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Last Topic's Ratings:
Ark of Time - AA - 50% (2)
Cool Boarders 2 - AAAABG - 50% (6)
Dune 2000 - GGAAG - 80% (5)
Hugo - BBB - 0% (3)
Sports Car GT - AAAA - 50% (2)
Tobal No 1 - BABABB - 17% (6)
A pretty average topic this time, I certainly thought Tobal No 1 would be more popular. It just goes to show that just because you've heard of something a lot doesn't mean people like it.
Games for this topic:
Actua Ice Hockey
Bug Riders
Creatures
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
Kyoro-chan no Purikura Daisakusen
Vandal Hearts
Every time I type "Actua Ice Hockey", I misspell it as "Actual". My fingers just complete the word automatically and I have to go back and delete the L. There's actually a full series of games in the Actua Sports series, and I'm sure I'm going to get one of them wrong at some point.
Actua Ice Hockey - A
ReplyDeleteBug Riders - A
Creatures - B
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors - A
Kyoro-chan no Purikura Daisakusen - A
Vandal Hearts - G
Well, one thing you have to say for Actua Ice Hockey, it is actually ice hockey. Gameplay-wise, it's fairly decent, it plays a lot like the NHL series, except unlike NHL 99 (which we covered recently for N64), the passing does work right here. What is much less impressive though is the hitting, as this game has maybe the least satisfying hitting ever, you just kind of bounce off each other and occasionally someone falls down. It does its job from a gameplay perspective, but definitely doesn't feel as satisfying as layout someone out does in the later NHL games. The rest of the gameplay is mostly standard fare, there are a pretty decent amount of options and I like the fact that the goalies aren't too great (this is secretly key to making a good hockey game), but the presentation is only serviceable. Commentary is okay, but they don't say the player names, and the camera likes taking some weird angles after a goal (make sure to turn goal replays on). It's certainly not terrible, but it's not something I'd go back to.
Bug Riders is certainly an ambitious and unique game, but not one without flaws. The basic premise of the game is very unique, it's a kind of a flying racer, but it also has elements of horse racing and all sorts of other things. The basic gameplay revolves around using your riding crop to spur your bug forward, but the key to moving fast is to crop your bug just enough so that the crop bar is nearly full without going over (which causes you to lose speed). The steering in the game is definitely a little weird, the game is sort of on rails, but being on the inside of turns is generally faster. You also have to fly through rings to get more time and powerups, which is one of the problems with the game, as the on rails nature of the game often makes it unclear where you have to fly to get through the rings, and the powerups are kind of obnoxious, because the AI can also use them against you, and there's not really much you can do to avoid them as many of them home in. The game has a somewhat unique qualifier system where you do a number of races before the "final", and your performance in them determines your seeding for future rounds, which take place on variants of the same track so it actually has a decent amount of variety, but your starting position is irrelevant as the AI always zooms past you at the start anyway. The biggest problem is that most races require a fairly high finishing position and getting there involves a fairly significant degree of luck, the only way you're ever going to win a race is for everything to go absolutely perfectly, if you take any weapon hits you usually can't win, and too many will put you out of contention entirely (to say nothing of the fact that you can actually die by taking too many hits). You get limited continues, though you can save after every race so you can easily save scum your way to victory, but it doesn't feel like it involves quite as much skill as it ought to. It's still very unique in any case and probably worth a look, it's just not quite polished enough for me to give it a G.
Creatures is an extremely weird game. It's advertised as being a virtual pet, but it's really not, the interactions you have with the creatures are so simple that it can hardly be considered a virtual pet, it's really more of a tedious puzzle game where you have to do a lot of actual busywork before you can solve puzzles. The game is divided into worlds, and in each world your objective is to get a breeding pair to the transport gate, which involves getting them to use various objects in a certain order, and often switching between many creatures until they do so. However, you also have to keep them fed and out of trouble, as well as getting them to go or stay where you want, which they often won't do properly, so you have to spend a while teaching them the basics before you can attempt to solve the puzzle. Because the teaching process is so obvious (eating food is good, playing with toys is good, coming with called is good, not doing any of these things is bad), it really just feels more like busywork than anything else, an annoying barrier between you and actually playing the game itself. To some extent it reminds me a little of Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures or Wonder Project J, but minus any of the charm that made those games enjoyable. I definitely don't recommend this one in any capacity.
DeleteDarkstalkers is an interesting title. When it first came out, its presentation was incredible, and the gameplay felt very smooth compared to games like Street Fighter 2 as well. However, it didn't take long for other games to catch up and surpass it. Gameplay-wise, it's kind of similar to the VS series, but somewhat more basic. The general controls and speed of the game feel similar, and it has a kind of super bar that fills up as you attack and allows you to do a stronger version of your special moves, and there's also air blocking, but only against airborne attacks and projectiles. The biggest issue with the PS1 port is that it came out quite late, and it also has a fair bit of slowdown (as well as cutting out a truly absurd amount of frames if you play on the highest speed). Overall, this kind of makes the game feel lackluster compared to a lot of the other fighters on PS1, of which there are tons. It's a historically important game for sure, but I doubt it would have been anyone's go-to fighter on PS1 even at the time of its release.
Kyoro-chan is an extremely weird game. It's a platformer which bares some resemblance to Yoshi's Island both in terms of control and aesthetics, though there's also some kind of weird subquest involving getting your picture taken that I don't completely understand. It's okay I suppose, though your movement when you're not running is intolerably slow (and it's very easy to stop running). Apparently this character is a mascot for some kind of Japanese chocolate candy, which explains why you collect chocolates for health.
Vandal Hearts is a fairly simple SRPG that plays similarly to Fire Emblem. There's almost no customization to the game, but the pacing is apreciably brisk and the storyline is also fairly decent. Compared to Fire Emblem, I like the fact that battles typically involve relatively small numbers of units, though I suppose one could complain that this makes the strategy of the game even more simplistic. It doesn't really feel like a game that does anything especially noteworthy, but it feels fairly well-polished and I had fun playing it nonetheless. Sometimes games don't have to be too complicated, I suppose.