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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time - GGGA - 88% (4) (1 SR)
Fighting Eyes - BB - 0% (2)
Hot Shots Golf - GAGGG - 90% (5)
Paris-Marseille Racing - AA - 50% (2)
Virus: It Is Aware - BBBB - 0% (4)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - AG - 75% (2)
In contrast to the N64 topic, this was a bit of a quiet week. I was surprised that Hot Shots Golf didn't draw more of a crowd, but perhaps many people started playing with the second game in the series.
Games for this topic:
Abalaburn
Dino Crisis
NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC
Roll Away
Shadow Madness
Sports Superbike
I've been wanting to try out Roll Away for quite some time, though I just found out that it wasn't a launch title as I thought, that was actually Tama. Abalaburn also looks pretty neat, and I definitely at least like Shadow Madness's title. And of course, we also have Dino Crisis for more Capcom Survival Horror goodness.
Abalaburn - A
ReplyDeleteDino Crisis - G
NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC - G
Roll Away - A
Shadow Madness - A
Sports Superbike - A
Abalaburn is basically a slightly more fleshed out version of Tobal No. 1. Like that game, it's a 3D fighting game that also has a story mode where you traverse 3D stages and fight enemies, though its story mode is vastly better than Tobal's, with far less generic arenas and generally better controls and mechanics. At the end of each stage, you'll fight one of the other playable characters in a boss fight, using the game's "standard" fighting engine, which is actually quite terrible. The game has no cancelling, motion detection is bad and basically all attacks are completely safe, so the game's arcade mode is a complete joke, but the story mode is somewhat interesting at least, and also has decent production values, including a decent number of voice-acted cutscenes. I kind of miss the days when games were very experimental like this, I feel like a game of this type with better fighting mechanics could be pretty cool.
Dino Crisis has many similarities to Resident Evil, but being a later release it also comes with a whole host of upgrades. The core gameplay is very familiar, complete with tank controls, a similar item system, and (mostly) static camera angles, but the visuals have seen a decent upgrade. The entire game is actually 3D now, and the benefits of this are frequently used for rooms that pan or scroll, which often helps heighten the sense of tension. Despite its age, the 3D graphics actually look quite good, at the very beginning I didn't even realize they had made the switch to full 3D until a bit later in the game when they started using fancier pan effects. Of course, another big change is the enemies, gone are the plodding zombies of Rez Evil, instead we have dinosaurs, who are generally a bit quicker and can sometimes chase you from room to room. That said, I feel like the game is actually a little bit less scary than Rez Evil, because the dinosaurs seem to appear in somewhat smaller numbers and are often easily avoided, perhaps to make up for the fact that when you do decide to kill one, it takes a ton of shots. The plot of the game is also pretty good, the voice acting has gotten a lot better since Resident Evil 1, and although there's only one playable character this time, there are a few plot branches to mix things up a bit. Overall, this is clearly just more classic Capcom Survival Horror goodness, and an easy pickup for fans of their classic horror games.
I wasn't aware that NBA Showtime was actually a follow-up to NBA Hangtime until I booted it up, but it's obvious immediately upon playing the game, almost every aspect of the game is identical to Hangtime. Obviously, since NBA Hangtime is a great game, this brings a lot of good things, including Hangtime's fantastic Create-A-Player mode. The big difference between the two is that NBA Showtime has a new graphics engine, featuring fully 3D player models and more dynamic camera work. It looks decent and the series signature over-the-top animations make the jump to full 3D well, though I feel that Hangtime feels a bit more stylish overall, particular in terms of its music and sound. There are also some minor gameplay changes, the court is slightly larger and players move faster, which generally makes offense harder to stop, which I'm not a fan of as offense was already very powerful in Hangtime. A better improvement is the new fouls system. Every time you push someone who has the ball, it causes a foul, and when you get enough fouls, they get to take a free throw. This is a pretty good way to balance out the push move, which is otherwise very strong (if one compares, say, the way NBA Playgrounds attempts to nerf the push, I feel this idea is better), though the fact that the quarters are short and the foul counter resets between quarters somewhat limits its impact on gameplay. Overall, I feel like Hangtime is a little better in most ways, but this is still close and apparently the PS1 port of Hangtime is bad, so I guess you might want to play this instead.
DeleteRoll Away is not what I expected, but it's an okay game nonetheless. For starters, this game is in no way similar to Monkey Ball or Kororinpa. Although you are still controlling a ball through various mazes, it's grid-based, so there's no real element of precision, instead the game largely revolves around figuring out how to get all the collectables on each level and get to the exit. This is not as easy as it sounds, because you can travel around edges to traverse the other sides of the maze. My biggest beef is that the rules about when you are allowed to go around edges feel unclear. I think the rule is "if you're approaching the end of a line of blocks, you can go over the end", though in some cases it seems to break from this formula, occasionally making puzzle solutions feel arbitrary. Another thing that's a bit of a problem is that you can't really rotate the camera much, and the puzzle solutions often rely on knowing the exact structure of the stage in 3D space, so you may have to wander around a bit trying to catch a glimpse of other parts of the stage. This wouldn't be so bad if stages weren't also timed. In any case, though, it's generally a pretty chill game with a decent number of hidden secrets, it just doesn't grab me to quite the same degree that games like Monkey Ball do.
Shadow Madness is an extremely strange game, so much so that I think they must have deliberately tried to make it as weird as possible. For starters, the game is clearly heavily inspired by FF7. The visuals are a dead ringer for it, and even the way the main characters attack and enemies fade to red upon death look super similar. However, don't expect anywhere near the polish or customization here. Character customization is nearly nonexistent and field maps are often unclear, constantly having things that seem to be paths but aren't and often making it difficult to determine what parts of the screen lead to new areas. The game does have a few interesting ideas, mainly tied to the battle system. Positioning on the battlefield matters in a manner somewhat similar to Lunar, in order to attack characters must first approach the enemy, and the same goes for the enemy, and you can also choose to move away to try to avoid damage or use long-ranged attacks. There are also timed hits, like in Mario RPG, and a system whereby you can avoid encounters entirely by pressing L2R2 when you hear a roar before battle (though I often mistake that sound for part of the background ambience until it's too late). Many other elements of the game are strange and poorly polished, possibly on purpose? The battle menu is very clunky and the game features extremely aggressive ATB, so navigating through the menus will cause you to take a lot of hits, though this barely matters because the game is super easy, even if you raise the difficulty level. You also have limited inventory space and are collecting items constantly (funny enough, the items look like materia), every screen usually has 5 or more items lying on the ground to pick up. Many of the items you find are literally valueless, restoring only a couple HP or having no purpose other than to be sold, but you can't stop picking them up because sometimes you find good weapons or armor in random locations, so you just have to keep chucking stuff. Also, sometimes you play a lockpicking minigame which is kind of cool but also sort of feels out of place. The game's writing also shifts wildly in tone, from being dark and serious to wacky and comedic with almost every sentence, and the game's soundtrack is very varied, with battle themes changing constantly for no real reason. I will say, all of this put together does give the game a strange and somewhat unnerving quality that does at least feel unique. I would never describe it as being "good", but it does a decent job of selling the "madness" concept. I'll probably need to take a break before continuing on with this GAB because I think I feel slightly unhinged after playing this.
DeleteSports Superbike is a decent racer at its core, but there's simply not a lot to it. The game's visuals and controls are both pretty good, there's driving assist available so obviously you'll want to turn that off immediately (I assume someone must like this feature), and collision physics and damage also work decently, you can even fall off your bike if you mess up badly enough. The main issue with the game is that there's just not a lot here, there's only 4 tracks, no bike selection, no tournament mode, basically nothing beyond single race. It's a solid engine, and the game does have a sequel, so that one might actually be pretty good, as it stands this kind of feels like a really good demo rather than a full game.