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Last Topic's Ratings:
Captain Commando - AAGGA - 70% (5)
MLB Pennant Race - GA - 75% (2)
NGEN Racing - GGG - 100% (3) (1 SR)
Parappa the Rapper - AAGBGBAGGGA - 64% (11) (1 SR)
Pro Pinball: Big Race USA - BBAGA - 40% {5}
Spider: The Video Game - AGAAGG - 75% (6)
If you had told me that Parappa would be the 5th-highest scoring game during its review week I certainly wouldn't have believed it. Just barely missed the squiggle bracket too. Granted, I don't think this week really had a weak game in the list.
Games for this topic:
Battle Athletess: Daiundoukai GTO
Hi-Octane
K-1 The Arena Fighters
R-Types
Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha
VR Soccer '96
We finally get to fix my mixup with the K-1 Series, having the first game this time. Also, I pre-checked Battle Athletess to make sure it wasn't overly impossible to play without knowing Japanese (there's virtually no information about the game on GF), but it's actually an action game with a fairly low localization barrier so we're good to go.
Battle Athletess: Daiundoukai GTO - G
ReplyDeleteHi-Octane - B
K-1 The Arena Fighters - B
R-Types - G
Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha - G
Battle Athletess: Daiundoukai GTO is a pretty unique game. It actually bares quite a bit of resemblance to "3D Runner" mobile game, like Subway Surfers and Minion Rush, where the goal of the game is to run along a track while avoiding obstacles, though there are many differences from those games. First and foremost, in this game, you're racing against another character, and the goal is to reach the finish line first, so simply hitting a single obstacle doesn't result in failure, just a loss of time. Apart from avoiding getting hit too many times, you also have to make good use of your stamina meter, which drains while holding up to run fast but recovers when running at normal pace. You can also attack the rival to slow them down if you're very close, which is very cathartic even though it isn't especially powerful. The game camera nicely pans back to show more of the stage as one racer pulls ahead, but like in Micro Machines, when you get near the edge of the screen, you can't see as far ahead and thus have less time to react to obstacles, which helps out the person who's trailing behind. Should you manage to get to the very front of the camera, your character will pause and taunt the opponent for a moment, allowing them to catch up a bit. You do regain stamina quickly while doing this, but the taunt takes quite a while, letting the opponent get closer than I'd like, but I guess it's designed to keep races close. The game also generally looks nice and is actually pretty funny, thanks to funny voice clips and animations when you screw up, which happens often. There's also a (somewhat hidden) 2-player mode that can be accessed by pressing start on a second controller during the character select in normal mode, so you can enjoy the chaos with a friend. There are a couple of downsides though. For starters, the game is pretty short, with only 7 unique tracks (one for each character, who also have subtle differences from each other), and a similarly short story mode. It also doesn't seem as though the difficulty of the AI ever really changes, so while I found it very hard at first, as I got better at the game I started to win every time. There's an argument to be made between A and G here, but I'm inclined to lean towards G because it's very unique and I think it would be a funny multiplayer game.
Hi-Octane is pretty bad. It's a futuristic racing game with weapons somewhat similar to something like Wipeout, but minus any of the things that make that game good, or really, any good points whatsoever. For starters, the game has the worst draw distance of all time. Although the tracks have laugably simple geometry that would not tax out even the Super FX Chip, you can only see about half a second ahead of you, with the track constantly materializing into view as you drive. Luckily, the track designs are mostly simple, but it makes taking good racing lines effectively impossible until you've completely memorized every track. Worse yet is the combat. You have exactly two weapons, a missile and a minigun, of which the only difference is that the missile has limited ammo and does more damage. Both can be spammed to obliterate anything in front of you, there are no weapons or no defenses against anything behind you (nor any real way to even see what's behind you, an F-Zero style Check arrow would even have been an improvement, so the game feels almost completely skilless. There are a bunch of powerups on the track and pit sections that can refill health and weapons, and using those is about the only measure of skill to the game. Everything about this game just screams "terrible PC port", except that I doubt the original is that great anyway.
Compared to K-1 Grand Prix, K-1 The Arena Fighters is drastically worse, to such an extent that I'm shocked at how much the series improved in just 2 years. Everything that K-1 Grand Prix does right that other boxing games do wrong, is done wrong here. Animations are far too fast to react to, movement is too quick, the stamina meter is meaningless, there's no indication when someone will be downed, there's almost no attack variety, etc. It also looks lousy, has only a couple fighters, and somehow the camera work also sucks, showing the action from far too low of an angle. As you might expect, the build up mode from K-1 Grand Prix is also not in the series yet. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it will eventually become an excellent game, though I don't even feel that it really laid the groundwork for it - it seems more like they just completely reinvented the game later and completely nailed it that time. There's no reason to play this one in any case.
DeleteSimilar to Gradius Deluxe Pack, R-Types is a collection of the first two R-Type games. As console ports of these games were not too widely available, this is probably one of the easiest ways for most people to play them. The games still hold up pretty well, too, thanks to the nuanced gameplay the Force provides, I'm actually shocked that both of these games predate 1990. I also have a previously mentioned fondness for shmups with a charge shot mechanic so this series is very much to my tastes. About the only aspect of the game that is really showing its age are the sound effects and music, which are both very tinny, a remastered soundtrack would have been nice, but I guess they wanted to be as close to the original as possible. It also would have been great to see Super R-Type or R-Type 3 The Third Lightning, but what's here is solid and does a nice job of setting up for R-Type Delta.
Street Fighter EX was always one of my favourite fighting games on the system, I spent a lot of time playing this with a friend back in high school. I feel like the EX series really has its own sense of identity, with its unique visual style and music, flashy super cancel combos, and unique and fun characters. It's not surprising that it remains kind of a cult classic to this day and many people were excited for Fighting EX Layer. Beyond the obvious things, I also appreciate some of the modern touches in this game, like the ability to view the command list at any time. The training mode also definitely deserves some mention, with this being one of the first games to implement the idea of combo trials, and they're even tied to some unlockables, which is a nice touch. Of course, with this being a somewhat older game, buffering is effectively nonexistent so there's a ton of very tight links in here, but luckily they don't expect you to complete them all to get the unlockables, and it is still kind of satisfying to finally nail one of the harder combos. Overall, it's just a pretty solid game. True, the sequel does improve on it in most ways, but I think this one does enough right that I can't really justify giving it an A.
It turns out that VR Soccer 96 is actually just the US release of Actua Soccer and they are identical, minus some minor branding changes, so I won't be covering it again here.