This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Big Strike Bowling - BBB - 0% (3)
D - GGGGB - 80% (5)
Megaman X4 - GGAGAGGGGGGG - 92% (12) (2 SR)
Meisha Retsuden: Greatest 70's - AB - 25% (2)
South Park - BBBBBAB - 7% (7)
Unholy War, The - GAA - 67% (3)
I feel like there's not too much to say about this one besides the fact that I'm surprised South Park rated quite that badly. I'll be interested to see what happens with the N64 version.
Games for this topic:
Choro Q
Intelligent Qube
International Karate +
Spyro the Dragon
Strike Force Hydra
Wild Boater
In contrast to the N64 topic, this one is basically a Christmas present to myself. Choro Q is one of my favourites, and we also have Wild Boater, which I've wanted to play for a while for some reason.
Choro Q - G
ReplyDeleteIntelligent Qube - A
International Karate+ - A
Spyro the Dragon - A
Strike Force Hydra - B
Wild Boater - A
As I alluded to earlier, Choro Q is one of my favourite franchises, and while there are a few games in the series that aren't winners, the series starts off very strong on PS1. Of all the Choro Q games, the first PS1 game is probably the most traditional one. It's a fairly straightforward racing game with good controls, a stable framerate, lots of tracks, and an awesome soundtrack. As with most Choro Q games, it also features an upgrading system where throughout the game you can earn new parts to increase the performance of your car, and I feel it has the perfect balance of detail and complexity where there's lots of parts to earn but what they do still remains immediately obvious, even if playing in Japanese. The only strike against this game is that Choro Q2 exists, which raises the bar in pretty much every way possible, but the original is still a great game in its own right.
Unlike most of the other voters in this topic, I feel Intelligent Qube is just okay. The basic gist of the game is that blocks will roll towards you, and you have to get rid of all the ones that aren't black. You can only eliminate one block each time the blocks roll over, so in order to eliminate all the blocks you have to use the green blocks efficiently, which, when cleared, leave a mark that can be activated later to clear all surrounding blocks. However, you can't choose which green marks to activate if there's more than one in place and you certainly don't want to use them to clear black blocks. Figuring out which green blocks to clear and when is basically the entire game. It's fun for a little while, but I simply don't feel there's a lot to it, the game probably could have used a couple of additional block types to mix things up more (even having another coloured block that does the same thing as the green block but is activated with a different button would add a ton of depth to the game). It's also always very annoying when you get a block pattern where many of the green blocks are simply useless (you can identify these because the par score is very high), as these ones just involve a lot of waiting, and clearing blocks one at a time isn't very interesting. The game has some high score potential but the early stages are quite easy and long and IMO this hurts the replay value. Oh, I also have to talk about this game's soundtrack, which I find to be quite hilarious, it's very epic and dramatic, which really doesn't suit the game, but does give it a bit of charm in a weird kind of way.
International Karate+ is obviously a remake of the original, which was one of the first fighting games ever made. The main addition to the remake version is that there's now 3 players in every match, which does add an interesting dimension to the gameplay, though IMO it also makes the game somewhat more mashy since the winner is the first player to score 6 hits, regardless of how many times they get hit themselves. Strangely, the game is played entirely with the DPad, though this does work well enough, apart from executing the turnaround motion with diagonal up inputs, which feels a bit weird. The game also lacks 3 player support, which is a shame, considering that even without a multitap it would easily be possible for two players to use the same controller. Overall, the game is okay, it actually hasn't aged as badly as you'd think, but it could have used some more options for the remake, like the option to play one-on-one or a little bit more expansion to the core formula.
DeleteThe original Spyro the Dragon is a technical marvel for PS1. It features large, impressively detailed worlds, with no sign of slowdown or fog anywhere. There's also tons of voice acting and not much load time either. Beyond this, it also has pretty good controls and physics and a decent sense of style, for example I like the way Spyro flies through the gates to reach new worlds, this is much cooler than how Mario does it. Unfortunately, that's almost all there is to the game. The gameplay is merely serviceable, with most levels being absurdly short and easy (if you don't get all the gems, you can finish most stages in 2 minutes tops, and getting all the gems is mainly an exercise of figuring out which wall you didn't look behind). In general, it feels like the series hasn't quite hit its stride yet, in particular, the oft-imitated "Spyro Formula", where you meet a character at the beginning of each stage, they tell you about some problem, then you go through a level and meet them again at the exit is completely absent here. It's a decent tech demo, but you won't be missing much if you just skip ahead to the far-better sequel.
Strike Force Hydra is probably PS1's worst shmup. Everything about it is terrible, the graphics, the sound, the music, and the gameplay. It's an extremely basic game, with no real powerups beyond laser upgrades, and enemies take way too many hits to go down, even your missile doesn't one-shot many enemies. You have a health bar, but your hitbox is also enormous and there's little mercy invincibility so it can be depleted in a flash. The bosses are also very lame and have few attacks. I feel like it would still be debatable if this game was a low A even on NES, let alone on a system that also has stuff like Dodonpachi.
Wild Boater is an interesting concept, but unfortunately it's not very fleshed out. I like the idea behind it and the gameplay is not bad, it manages to feel both relaxing and intense depending on the water conditions (which I would imagine captures the feeling of actual boating fairly well), but there's simply not much gameplay here, with only 3 tracks and no progression system of any kind. Furthermore, the game's time limit is far too tight, many segments can only be completed with a few seconds left even if you play perfectly, largely because the checkpoint time for each segment is simply a fixed number, it doesn't add what time you have left to the total. Despite this, it's still kind of fun and I enjoy its silly intro, I just wish they had done a bit more with the concept.