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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Bug's Life, A - BBABBBBBAB - 10% (10)
Deadly Arts - BBBBBB - 0% (6)
Doom 64 - GAGGGGGGGGGG - 96% (12) (1 SR)
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - GGAGGGGGGGGGGGGGBGGGAGGGGG - 94% (26) (8 SR)
Top Gear Rally - AAGAGAA - 64% (7)
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey - GAAGAGAGAAAAAG - 68% (14) (1 SR)
It's interesting to me that OoT and Super Mario 64 got effectively the same score. Also, Top Gear Rally is the first N64 game to get 64%, which has got to be worth something.
Games for this topic:
Bass Hunter 64
Doreamon 2
GoldenEye 007
Milo's Astro Lanes
Wipeout 64
WWF Attitude
I know it feels like we do a Wrestling game almost every week, but there's a ridiculous number of them in N64's relatively small library. Also, obviously, we have Goldeneye here this week, so dust off your license to kill... or paint, if you prefer.
Bass Hunter 64 - B
ReplyDeleteDoreamon 2 - B
GoldenEye 007 - G
Milo's Astro Lanes - A
Wipeout 64 - A
WWF Attitude - A
Bass Hunter 64 is another one of those transitional titles where they're slowly starting to figure out the basics of making a good fishing game but aren't quite there yet. Here, the general set up of the game is good, you don't have to waste time looking around in a boat for good places to fish, there's a decent number of fish in the water and it's not hard to get their attention. The problem is that in this game the actual fishing mechanics suck. For starters, hooking a fish is weirdly hard, sometimes even when they nibble they just randomly slip off even if you set the hook immediately, and the actual fishing is terrible, once you have a fish on the line you basically just hold A, even if you refuse to let go when the fish tries to run it barely matters, you just have to hope they don't randomly slip off the line, which they seem to do with no pattern or warning. In other fishing games, you lose the fish if your line tension gets too high or what not, here the lures just seem to randomly fall off sometimes. The entire fishing gameplay feels kind of mushy and non-impactful, and obviously that's a killer for this type of game. If they could combine this game's gameplay setup and progression with the fishing mechanics of a few of its contemporaries we'd be getting somewhere, though.
Doraemon 2 is a really weird game. The first game was a generally decent first effort at bringing the formula of the SNES games to 3D, it just needed a bit more refinement in terms of its 3D gameplay, which I was hopeful the sequels would provide, but the second game is instead drastically different. This entry can actually barely be called a platformer at all, it's actually much closer to something like Zelda, albeit a very poor rendition of it. There are no longer really platforming stages, instead most of the action takes place in dungeons, though it takes at least 45 minutes of obnoxious dialogue triggers and such to get to the first one, and the dungeon gameplay is quite weak, being focused largely around shooting gameplay but having terrible camera controls (you won't find any Z-targetting here). I'm really hoping they get back to the original formula with the third game but my hopes for the series are starting to wear thin.
I don't really have too much to say about Goldeneye. Obviously it's a good game. I wasn't a fan of FPS games at the time and yet I still liked it quite a lot. I've always loved the way this game handles mission objectives, it gives the campaign a lot more personality compared to some earlier FPS games where the levels can kind of run together, and it helps the game feel authentic to the license. The difficulty levels and the unlockable cheats also give the campaign tons of replay value, I still think it's one of the best campaigns in any shooter. The presentation is also great, this game has much larger draw distance compared to many other early FPS games, and I'd also like to draw attention to its soundtrack, which is very underrated. Pretty much the only things you might take issue with are the framerate and the lack of bots in multiplayer, the latter of which is fixed in Perfect Dark. In general, I think you can make the case that Perfect Dark is somewhat better as a multiplayer game, particularly due to the addition of the challenges mode, which is very fun, but I think Goldeneye is much better for single player.
I like some of the ideas in Milo's Astro Lanes, most particularly the ability to use powerups to mess with your rivals, but I feel the bowling is a little too simple for it to reach its full potential. Since there's not even any meters to line up, it's so easy to throw perfect shots that the beneficial powerups feel somewhat trivial, and there's not a lot of counterplay to your opponent's offensive powerups either. There's definitely some charm here and I like the idea to try to spice up the sport of bowling, I think it just needed a little bit more.
DeleteWhile it still kind of surprises me that Wipeout 64 exists, it doesn't really do too much to warrant notice IMO. The best thing about it is its technical performance, it runs well and feels fast on N64, but that's about the only good thing about it. The level of content in the game is quite limited, with only a few courses and vehicles, and it also has an almost nonexistent progression system. The games sole method of progression is its challenge mode, which are a tiny handful of challenges across the game's tracks. Annoyingly, these do not even let you select your preferred vehicle, you're forced into whichever one they give you on each course, and the difficulty level is also far too high, even the first challenges will require mastery of the game to even get bronze. As for the mechanics themselves, they're decent but not everything is there yet. You can't yet absorb powerups, which removes a lot of the nuance from using weapons, and barrel rolls are also absent at this point. It's an okay game, but not yet a serious competitor to the F-Zero franchise.
WWF Attitude is generally very similar to its predecessor, WWF War Zone. The biggest change is to the health bars, the stun system from the previous game is gone, now you just have one long health bar, which I actually find to be a fair bit of a downgrade since the stun meter worked well and gave the game a unique feel. The other big change is that wrestlers now have fewer moves, probably because there's more of them, though I feel the first game generally had pretty much everyone you could want anyway so I don't find this to be a big draw. The biggest improvement to the sequel is that there's now more elaborate intros, complete with the wrestlers talking to each other, which is pretty hilarious due to the lack of any animation for it. Generally though, while this game preserves much of the energy that makes the first game great, I don't think it's quite as good overall. You can probably argue that it might still be G but I'd much rather play the original.