This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Arc the Lad 2 - GGGGGGG - 100% (7)
Clock Tower: The First Fear - AAGAAGGA - 69% (8)
Doraemon: Nobita to Fukkatsu no Hoshi - B - 0% (1)
My Disney Kitchen - ABA - 33% (3)
NFL Full Contact - BB - 0% (2)
Rollcage - AAAGA - 60% (5)
I think Doraemon is the first game in quite a long time where I was the only person to rate it, but I'm not burnt up over this one since no one was really missing much.
Games for this topic:
Animal Snap
Explosive Racing
NBA Basketball 2000
Pandemonium
Perfect Weapon
WWF War Zone
I hope you didn't think that you were safe from Wrestling games in the PS1 topic, because wrestling games are everywhere in the 5th generation. Also, don't bother hoping that Animal Snap is like Pokemon Snap but with regular animals, it's not (though if you do want that, the PS3 game Afrika is kind of close).
Animal Snap - B
ReplyDeleteExplosive Racing - B
NBA Basketball 2000 - G
Pandemonium - A
Perfect Weapon - B
WWF War Zone - G
Animal Snap is a pretty terrible Shanghai-style game. It's not that it's a Shanghai game that makes it bad, I actually think Shanghai can be fun, but this game is lousy and poorly made in a bunch of ways. For starters, the viewing angle is too flat, which makes it hard to judge the height of tiles, particularly when stacks of differing heights are beside each other. Secondly, when you spell the word "Bonus", you can play a bonus game, which is similar to Arkanoid, but as far as I can tell the game simply doesn't work, you can't hit the ball back with the paddle, it just goes through. Finally, I don't think this game contains a sanity check to make sure the puzzles are possible. Almost every time I did a puzzle, there were multiple instances of 2-tile stacks of the same tile on top of each other. If these tiles need to be cleared to free another piece, this can easily result in a puzzle that's unwinnable. I tried state-saving after a while to see if I could prove these puzzles couldn't be beaten, and while I wasn't able to find one that was truly impossible after I started doing it, I did find several that could only be solved via random chance (ie, there are 3 copies of a symbol on the top level, one of which has a copy of itself underneath), and I highly suspect that you can get some that are outright impossible. The game is pretty terrible in any case and you shouldn't even put as much time into it as I did.
Explosive Racing looks very pretty, but it controls terribly and isn't fun to play. There's not really much more to say than that, every vehicle in the game does these wide, fishtail-y turns that makes it impossible to take tight turns without hitting walls. The lack of nuance to the driving control basically removes any play value from the game, which is unfortunate because the game has some pretty cool visual effects, like varying weather and track conditions. There's also a super annoying flashing effect at the top of the screen when you're winning a race, but it's super rubber-banded so at least this won't be an issue very often.
NBA Basketball 2000 is a fantastic game. We've already seen some pretty good Basketball games this gen, but I think this one actually outdoes them all in several ways. For starters, this game has very good commentary. It's akin to what you'd expect in a more modern game, with two commentators going back and forth, they have a lot of things to say, including unique statements about both some of the teams and players and contextual comments based on how the game is going. It's very well done overall and makes the game feel even sharper compared to its competitors. The play control is also very good. One big difference I noticed right away is that compared to many other 5-on-5 basketball games, there are way more dunks in this game. The game generally seems better at recognizing when you're going up to do a dunk compared to some other games of this age, and it also feels more "open" in terms of movement so it's easier to perform them (the dedicated crossover button helps with this too). You could maybe argue that defense is slightly weak in this game as it's hard to block players, but blocking shots still works well and general shooting percentages seem realistic. Finally, the graphics are also pretty great. It is still PS1, so the character models aren't amazing, though at least they are unique for each player, and there's also some pretty nice visual effects for things like dunks, including a replay where the screen is split so you can see where the key pass came from that set up the play. Overall, this game just feels really impressive for a PS1 title. This would probably be SR quality on a system that didn't have thousands of games.
I remember seeing Pandemonium on TV one time and wanting to play it, but for some reason I never did until now. I probably shouldn't have waited, because it's a 2.5D platformer whose main appeal are its graphics, which still look quite nice but probably aren't as mindblowing as they would have been at the time. Compared to say, Kirikou or even Tarzan, I feel the 2.5D mechanic isn't used as cleverly in terms of level design, with the levels almost always basically just being wholly 2D stages that turn occasionally, but it is well-utilized for eye-candy, with levels having many visually distinct set pieces and effects that still look quite good. Unfortunately, the same can't really be said for the controls. Everything in the game just generally feels a bit loose, which can be a bit of a problem when your primary attack is to jump on enemies. This can be remedied a bit by playing as Nikki, whose double jump gives you a lot more leeway in tackling the stages, though she definitely makes Fargus feel redundant, as his roll attack also suffers from poor collision detection. Overall, it feels okay, the good graphics help keep it moving, but I tend to play through the stages pretty fast rather than taking my time to get secrets and treasures because I don't want to fiddle around with the platforming controls more than I have to.
DeleteAs was noted already, Perfect Weapon sucks. For some reason, despite being a beat-em-up, it uses prerendered camera angles, which really accomplishes nothing other than to ensure most fights are viewed from terrible angles that make it impossible to see what you're doing. Even when this isn't an issue, the fighting controls are also terrible, it's very hard to orient yourself during combat (you have full 360 degree movement, but this isn't a good thing), and crouch attacks are extremely slow and unwieldy. Between awful fights, there's also some awful exploration and awful semi-platforming. The only good thing about this game is the premise and voice acting, but they definitely can't carry the game. It's really saying something about how bad this game is that it would actually be much better if it was just a generic 2D beat-em-up where you just fight the same 5 enemies over and over.
The two versions of WWF War Zone are very similar. Compared to the N64 version, the PS1 version lacks the Royal Rumble and Gauntlet modes, and the N64 version also looks a bit smoother, though the PS1 version is brighter and it has some FMVs. Load times are also not bad on PS1, so you can basically get it for either system with no issues. I spoke a lot about the gameplay when we talked about the N64 version, so I'll just give the short version here, it's very fun and I really like the idea of the stun bar, it gives matches a nice feeling of back and forth that I feel simulates wrestling quite well, and the commentary and sound effects are great. On both systems this is one of my top picks as far as wrestling games are concerned, though I do think the N64 version is a hair better overall.