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Last Topic's Ratings:
1080 Snowboarding - GGGGGAGBAG - 80% (10)
ClayFighter: The Sculptor's Cut - ABBBBB - 8% (6)
Gex 64: Enter the Gecko - GBBBBBABAB - 20% (10)
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - BBABB - 10% (5)
Quake 64 - GGGGGGG - 100% (7)
Ridge Racer 64 - GGGGAGAG - 88% (8)
I was pretty surprised this topic didn't get any SRs, but I guess the SR competition here is pretty tight.
Games for this topic:
Banjo-Kazooie
Flying Dragon
Monster Truck Madness 64
Nagano Winter Olympics '98
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Uchhannanchan no Honoo no Challenger
This is another one of those topics that I think looks far too strong, but we'll see how the votes turn out. I also really want to play Uchhannanchan.
Banjo-Kazooie - G (SR)
ReplyDeleteFlying Dragon - G (SR)
Monster Truck Madness 64 - B
Nagano Winter Olympics '98 - B
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire - A
Uchhannanchan no Honoo no Challenger - B
Banjo-Kazooie is a great game. The presentation is fantastic, the controls are spot on, it's got great level design, and just generally exhibits all of that Rareware charm that we associate with the company's glory days. Comparisons to Mario 64 are inevitable, and for a long time I thought it came out ahead in that comparison, but recently I've reversed that opinion. I do agree with Aussie's comment that compared to Mario 64, the game has significantly less freedom, you generally have to tackle the stages pretty much in order, and for most Jiggies there's basically only one way to get them. Since the game doesn't boot you out between Jiggies like Mario 64 does, the gameplay instead tends to revolve around finding the most optimal path to get everything in a level as quickly as possible, speedrun style. Ultimately though I don't think this offers quite as much replay value, particularly because the game isn't particularly well-optimized for speedrunning (there's no way to restart a level's timer once you're started it, and the inability to skip cutscenes and dialogue is annoying). Nevertheless, it's still a fantastic game which can easily hold up through several playthroughs, and I think it might still be the second-best 3D Platformer of all time (I'd have to think long and hard between Sly 1 and BK for that title). What a shame that Stop n' Swop didn't pan out. Why didn't they just use the controller pak? It would have been so much easier!
Flying Dragon has some flaws, but it's still an incredibly fun game. It's a rare fusion of fighting game and RPG, which instantly gives it a ton of extra replay value, but what makes it even more fun is that you can earn many different types of items that alter the way the characters control, opening up tons of room to experiment with combos. The core fighting engine is maybe not quite the best (block is mapped to a button, crossups and combos from lows are very limited, and tick throws are absurd), but it's still super fun to mess around with. About the only issue you might take with this game is that it has a sequel which improves upon it in some ways (most notably, there's more characters and the frame rate is more stable), though I think you can make the case that the progression system is better in the original so it doesn't totally make this one redundant. The original also has the Virtual Hiryu mode, which is actually a completely separate game, but without the RPG mechanics it's not nearly as fun, though I suppose it's a decent diversion occasionally. I had to tear myself away from this one to review the other games in this set, even though I've already 100%ed it back on N64.
Monster Truck Madness 64 is easily one of the worst-controlling racers I've ever played. There's really not too much more to say about it, the awful control is obvious instantly, the trucks turn way too tightly so you have to give it just the lightest touch possible at all times, and the physics also suck, with the trucks rolling all over the place at the slightest provocation. The races also go on way too long (though they might just feel incredibly long because the game is so bad), and the presentation isn't particularly good either. This one is a definite skip.
DeleteI remember renting Nagano Winter Olympics '98 a long time ago and thinking it was decent, but clearly I was more generous back then because I don't really have the same opinion now. Obviously, it suffers from the same fundamental problem that almost all Olympic games do where each event only has one course, which severely limits the replay value even if the gameplay is decent. For example, Skiing is probably the highlight of the package, but with only one course, it won't stay interesting for more than a few runs. Worse, many of the events are fundamentally broken in one way or another. For example, I remember snowboarding being one of the better games in the package, but it's actually almost completely trivial, each trick you try to do gives you a series of button prompts, but it doesn't reject wrong button presses so by far the best way to play the game is just to mash all the buttons rather than actually reading the pattern first. Throw in the fact that too many of the events require button mashing and that the slalom events disqualify you instantly if you miss a single flag and you have a game that really just doesn't hold up for very long.
There's a fair number of cool things about Shadows of the Empire, but it also has some significant flaws. For starters, I really like the game's presentation. The text scrawl and cutscenes are pretty cool, the music is great, and in general, the entire thing feels quite cinematic for its time. I also sort of like that they tried to create an original story that nevertheless still fits within the Star Wars universe. The flying missions are also pretty good, especially the intro stage. While not quite on the level of Star Fox 64's All-Range missions, they're pretty good for such an early effort and are clearly a huge jump from previous gen games. The radar system in these missions is also surprisingly well-designed, making it easy to follow the action no matter how many enemies are present. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the on-foot segments. These are not wholly unplayable but are certainly a let-down compared to the flying levels. Probably the biggest problem is that enemies react to your presence way too quickly here, they generally always know where you're going to be coming from and shoot the second you poke around a corner, making damage virtually inevitable. Combined with the lack of health pickups and you just kind of annoyingly get worn down over time, which is not helped out by the fact that the levels are often quite labyrinthine. I actually think the combination of flying and on-foot missions is the right direction for the franchise (after all, this is also how the movies are structured), but they need a little more polish than this.
Uchhannanchan no Honoo no Challenger is not nearly as good as I hoped, it's basically just a beta for the PS1 game Irritating Stick. The core idea behind the game is fine, there's simply just not much to it, the N64 game only has 6 mazes and only two modes (single player and vs), which you can fully experience in an hour tops. I feel it would greatly benefit from a course editor, or at least a mode that creates random courses, both of which are included in the PS1 game, and it also has more than 10 times as many courses. The only real redeeming part of the N64 game is the VS mode, it is a somewhat fun multiplayer game, particularly because hitting walls doesn't instantly fail you, you instead just lose points, which is clearly how the game should work, even when using the stick that gives you 3 lives many of the levels can be pretty annoying. The game work vastly better when the time limit is the real challenge.