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Last Topic's Ratings:
Airboarder 64 - AA - 50% (2)
Dark Rift - BBBBBA - 8% (6)
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - GGGGGGGAGAGBGG - 86% (14) (3 SR)
Penny Racers - GGG - 100% (3) (1 SR)
Premier Manager 64 - BBB - 0% (3)
Rat Attack - AAA - 50% (3)
I feel like Airboarder 64 50% is going to go down in the history books as a "how did that happen?" kind of thing. I'm also a bit surprised at the lack of votes for Penny Racers, it actually got less votes than Choro Q1 on PS1, which has no US release. Has all of my shilling of the Choro Q franchise been for nothing?
Games for this topic:
Doubutsu no Mori
ECW Hardcore Revolution
Mike Piazza's Strike Zone
Roadsters
Superman: The New Superman Adventures
Tetris 64
It had to happen sometime. At least we know there will never be another Superman 64. Also, with New Horizons taking over all the sales charts I figured we might as well take a look at the original Animal Crossing.
Doubutsu no Mori - G
ReplyDeleteECW Hardcore Revolution - A
Mike Piazza's Strike Zone - B
Roadsters - A
Superman: The New Superman Adventures - B
Tetris 64 - A
It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of Animal Crossing as a franchise. I've criticized the franchise repeatedly for not significantly evolving on the original formula (admitted, they finally did change things somewhat with New Horizons) and I also fundamentally dislike the idea that the game progresses in real time and punishes you in various ways for not playing often enough. Furthermore, I feel that many of the activities you do in the game are fundamentally not very fun and that the game is, to some extent, just an addictive chore simulator that uses abusive tactics to get people hooked and keep them playing, similar to the route many mobile games use to monetize. However, we're not talking about the entire series here, just the first game. Until now, I had only played the Gamecube version, but it's shocking to see just how similar the N64 version is. For starters, visually it looks almost exactly the same, it's not a significant downgrade from the GC game in any way. While I feel the GC game looks decent (it helps that it has kind of a charming art style), I think it looks especially good here, it has a kind of "clean" look to it that you don't often see on N64 and I'm a bit impressed by the level of detail in the surroundings. Most of the content from the GC version is here too, though there are a couple of significant additions on GC, like the Museum and Tailor, though shockingly, the NES games are still present here, which I was almost positive would have been a GC addition. Speaking of which, I've long said that I feel the first Animal Crossing is actually the best one due to the presence of the N64 games, which act as a decent reward mechanic and feel as though they give purpose to the game, though I think it would be better if they were handed out for specific achievements (ie, paying off your house, filling the museum, etc) rather than mostly being given out at random. Of course, since Nintendo has now decided they'd rather sell you those games the idea of giving them away in-game is obviously never coming back, but they didn't replace them with anything that serves a similar purpose and I think this is a detriment to the series. Ranting aside, despite any personal gripes I have with the series, this is clearly quite an impressive first effort that laid the groundwork for the rest of the series (perhaps too much so, as they effectively just kept releasing the same game with few significant additions over and over for a decade) and it doesn't really feel right to give it anything other than a G, though there's really no reason to play the N64 version anymore as the GC version is purely superior.
ECW Hardcore Revolution is, for all intents and purposes, a copy of WWF Attitude that has different wrestlers. As when we discussed WWF Attitude, I still find the game to be somewhat of a downgrade from WWF War Zone, particularly in terms of the new way the health bar is implemented, which feels far more generic. The selection of wrestlers is impressively large, and there aren't many games based on ECW, so that might give it some appeal to hardcore Wrestling fans, though I personally don't find the wrestlers here especially memorable and I also feel the commentary has lost a lot of energy compared to Attitude. Just like Attitude, there's a ton of modes and content here, and it's certainly not a bad game, but there's a ton of competition for Wrestling games on N64 and this wouldn't be one of my top picks.
Mike Piazza's Strikezone is a pretty typical bad baseball game. I feel one of the best indicators of whether a baseball game is good or not is fielding. After the ball is hit, how gracefully it transitions to the fielding screen, how quickly you can figure out which fielder you're controlling (and whether or not it usually gives you the right one), and so on, and this game basically fails on all counts. The batting is similarly bad, the batting animation is too slow for how fast the pitches arrive, making reading the pitches nearly impossible (though they are also colour-coded as they seem to realize this is a problem). Even pitching is pretty lame, there seems to be a very limited selection of pitches available and it never feels like you have a lot of control. We haven't even gotten to the game's presentation yet, which is terrible, the players look extremely blocky and even the commentary is very repetitive. Definitely stick to other baseball games this gen.
DeleteI have pretty much the same thoughts on Roadsters as I did when we reviewed it on PS1. It's a decently ambitious NFS clone that is held back by poor controls that always feel overly stiff. You could maybe try to make the case that the game fares a little better on N64 where it doesn't have to go up against NFS or many other traditional street racers, though I still don't think this is enough for it to approach G, it's a thoroughly middling game regardless of platform.
Superman 64 isn't really quite what I expected from a game that many call the worst of all time. It's (in)famous for its ring flying segments, which are often stated to have atrocious controls and to be impossibly hard, but really, neither is really true. I actually found that the controls here are actually pretty good, the control is tight and responsive without being overly twitchy and the speed and placement of the rings is reasonable, I was usually clearing the ring stages on my first try with 30 or more seconds remaining. Instead, it's the controls for pretty much everything else that are lousy, especially the combat controls. This is sometimes problematic in the little missions you get after the ring stages, like the one to blow away the tornadoes for example, the time limit is way too short and the range on the super breath is much shorter than it appears to be, making this one very frustrating, but it's especially bad on the indoor levels, which should probably be the highlight of the game, but are plagued by bad combat controls and framerate issues. Still, even those are somewhat tolerable, not really worst of all time material. I think what makes the game so infamous is just that it feels like such a waste of potential. The outdoor areas take place in a massive city that feels like it could be a great setting for a neat open world game, but all you get to do is fly through rings over and over in what feels like a tutorial for a game they never got around to making. The presentation for the game is even not too bad, the city is huge and loads seamlessly, Superman and the other characters look decent, and it even has some of the voice actors from the show (albeit with very few voice clips). This feels like it could actually have been a pretty good game but either developer inexperience or tight timelines (or probably both) eventually made it into what it is. I still don't think this is even anywhere near the worst game on N64, but it's a shame nonetheless.
DeleteTetris 64 is a fairly basic rendition of Tetris. In terms of the basic gameplay, it's quite old-school, don't expect any modern features like T-Spins or back to backs here, in fact it doesn't even have the hold feature. Still, I have long stated my disdain for the "bag algorithm" that is used by modern Tetris games, which I feel takes most of the depth out of the game, so I don't mind the back to basics approach. I don't have access to the bio sensor, so I can't really comment on the bio tetris mode, but it also includes Giga Tetris, which is an interesting idea. Extra large pieces are interspersed with the regular pieces, which, when cleared as part of a line, can fall and create combos. It reminds me a bit of the PuyoTet mode from Puyo Puyo Tetris and helps add some variety to the package. As for the presentation of the game, it's very basic, the graphics have not really advanced at all from SNES and the music is also all very basic midi music, though I do find the "Warmer" theme to be quite catchy. Overall, it's a solid version of the game for old-school fans, but there's a million other versions of Tetris out there to choose from and it doesn't do all that much to stand out.