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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Fear Effect - GGAAGA - 75% (6)
Hugo 2 - BBB - 0% (3)
Jet Moto 2 - BGGAGA - 67% (6)
Keeper - BA - 25% (2)
Men in Black: The Game - BB - 0% (2)
WCW Nitro - BBBABB - 8% (6)
I was a bit surprised to see Jet Moto 2 wind up this low, though it did do better than the first game.
Games for this topic:
All-Star Baseball 97 Featuring Frank Thomas
Animorphs: Shattered Reality
Doom
Family Card Games Fun Pack
Growlanser
J's Racin'
Growlanser is a game that I would normally have considered to have too high of a localization barrier for GAB, but there's an excellent translation guide on this site that makes it fairly easy to play through. Also, I like the fact that Doom showed up in topic 66, even though it wasn't intended.
All-Star Baseball 97 - A
ReplyDeleteAnimorphs: Shattered Reality - A
Doom - G
Family Card Games Fun Pack - G
Growlanser - G
J's Racin' - G
There's really not much to say about All-Star Baseball 97. It's basically just a classic 16-bit style baseball game in pretty much every regard. The digitized players are a bit higher resolution compared to the previous consoles and there's a voiced announcer, but pretty much everything else is the same. Controls are solid and the pace of the game is good, so there's not much to complain about, it just clearly isn't nearly as advanced as later baseball games on the system. Something I find a bit funny is that the AI seems to decide whether or not to swing before the pitch is thrown so they will often swing at pitches that are a mile outside, though this does make pich selection feel somewhat inconsequential.
Despite the series' reputation, Animorphs: Shattered Reality is a mostly competent 3D platformer whose biggest flaw is simply being somewhat dull. Funny enough, the titular "animorph" feature is probably the worst part of the game, since the kids morph into animals to fight, the combat and platforming sections of the game are completely separate from each other. The platforming sections are all right, but the fact that the only danger is from obstacles or falling causes them to feel a bit underwhelming. The combat sections are awful, being far too simplistic and featuring lousy hit detection, but thankfully they are short. There's also a third type of gameplay where you travel through tubes as an animal morph which is functional but not too impressive. I guess the presentation of the game was probably decent for its time, the graphics are fairly varied and the kids have a fair number of voice clips. The music choices are often extremely bizarre, which is probably one of the main reasons to play the game. Overall, it's not a terrible game to play but it's also not nearly as interesting as the GBC game mechanically.
If we were feeling generous, we could maybe call the SNES port of Doom "serviceable", but the PS1 port is the real deal. It runs full screen, at a very solid framerate, and it even includes Doom 2 as well! Unlike some other early FPS efforts on console that had control issues, the simplicity of Doom as a game (it lacks verticality in aiming) means it converts to the PS1 controller like a dream, and it generally feels great to play on the console. Something I was surprised by when playing it was just how well the game holds up, the maps are designed well and the fact that most enemies use projectile weapons makes it feel skillful to play. Oh, and of course, there's tons of secrets to hunt for. My only beef is that some areas are overly dark, though thankfully they're not all that common and you can try to use the map feature after killing the enemies. Oh, and the lack of memory card support is a bit baffling, but at least the passwords aren't too long. A great conversion in any case, and still a classic.
DeleteLame name aside, Family Card Games Fun Pack is actually a pretty decent collection of games. It has a lot more games than you'd expect for a budget title, though some of them are under names you might not recognize (for example, Splash is Uno and Rich Man is President). In a lot of ways, this collection actually kind of reminds me of Clubhouse Games on Switch, as most of these games are also in Clubhouse games, though obviously there are no non-card based titles here. Still, the rules are a bit more complex here than in some of the associated games in Clubhouse, for example, in President, you gain points based on your position after every round, rather than just having the winner be whomever is president at the end, and most games allow you to set some game rules as well. Honestly, there aren't really too many things to complain about here, except maybe for Poker, which is a single-player video poker game rather than a more traditional rendition of the game, though even then it's still serviceable.
I wavered a bit on Growlanser's rating before settling on G. It's made by the same team that made Langrisser, but doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to it, instead being a mostly typical JRPG with a few light strategy elements during battle, somewhat akin to Lunar or Grandia. Like those games, it also boasts pretty nice spritework and music, and a fair amount of voice acting. Something I like is that you can choose what skills your party members learn when levelling up, giving you some degree of customization over how your party turns out (though the skills available to each character are preset). The story is also pretty decent (and this is what eventually pushed me towards G), with some decent intrigue centered around the main character that makes it feel a bit unique. One major thing I dislike is that the game starts off quite slow, with an annoying evaluation process that occurs in the main town before you can get into any battles, and it's quite essential to determining the main character's stats so you can't really skip it. I feel like more modern RPGs have kind of realized that trapping you in the first town for too long before you can get to gameplay isn't a great idea (Grandia was also very guilty of this), but at least the adventure does pick up pretty quickly from there on out. Overall, I kind of feel like the game doesn't especially stand out among PS1's many good JRPGs, but at the same time it's still a solid adventure with a fair bit of that retro-JRPG charm. It also has a lot of ties into Growlanser 2, so if you want to play that game it might be worth trying this one first.
DeleteJ's Racing is a bit of a weird game. Do you like Ridge Racer, but dislike its drifting mechanic? That's basically what J's Racing is, it's a slightly more traditional take on Ridge Racer. The game is so similar to Ridge Racer in every way that I was sure it must have been an official spin-off made by Namco, but it seems like they had nothing to do with it even though everything in the game is a dead ringer for Namco's franchise. Still, the fact that the game can ape Ridge Racer isn't exactly a bad thing, as it is a very well-polished game, and indeed, there's quite a bit to like here. For starters, the game has car tuning, and helpfully, it shows all of the car's stats to show how every little tweak you make will affect them. Every game needs this! The presentation and music is also pretty solid, if extremely derivative. I like how the race minimap shows the locations of the cars in front and behind you, and how your qualifying lap starts with a running start (thus making it unnecessary to do two laps). The controls are also pretty great, which is what made it clear to me that the game is G, as this is key to the core gameplay being fun. My only beef is the camera angle, it's very shallow and you can't adjust it (other than to use first-person cam), but I adjusted fairly fast. By the way, the localization barrier in this game is almost nonexistent as there's a lot of english in menus, so if you wanted to try it out it's very easy to pick up.