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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
All-Star Baseball 97 Featuring Frank Thomas - AA - 50% (2)
Animorphs: Shattered Reality - AAA - 50% (3)
Doom - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8)
Family Card Games Fun Pack - AGA - 67% (3)
Growlanser - GGG - 100% (3)
J's Racin' - GG - 100% (2)
By contrast to the N64 topic, this was a really high rated week. I was a bit surprised that Doom didn't get any SRs, though.
Games for this topic:
Bust-A-Move 2
Dukes of Hazzard, The: Racing for Home
Metal Slug
Pet Pet Pet
Super Football Champ
Welcome House
I had the Gameboy Color version of Dukes of Hazzard, but for some reason I never played the PS1 version. Also, I hope Welcome House is at least somewhat playable with light Japanese knowledge. There is a guide for it available on GF in any case.
Bust-A-Move 2 - G
ReplyDeleteDukes of Hazzard, The: Racing for Home - G
Metal Slug - G
Pet Pet Pet - G
Super Football Champ - B
Welcome House - B
Bust a Move 2 is very similar to the N64 version, which is of course one of the best puzzle games of all time. It's extremely unique among puzzle games (save for other games that just blatantly copy it), and its mixture of quick thinking and skill-based aiming make for an addictive combination. Of course, it's also immensely frustrating when you lose because you don't get that one color you need for like 20 balls in a row (unlike Tetris, this is a game that could probably benefit from a "bag algorithm" to ensure you never get too screwed over by bad RNG), but it always keeps you wanting to keep trying again anyway. There are only 2 differences compared to the N64 version that I've been able to find. The first is the expected one, there are very small load times between stages, but they don't matter much. The second is more regrettable, which is that the game lacks proper Dualshock support. In the N64 version, the stick, the Dpad, and L and R all move the needle at different speeds, which grants you a great deal of precision if mastered. On PS1, the analog and dpad move at the same speed (because the analog isn't really supported), which does cost you a bit of control compared to N64. As such, the N64 version is still definitive, but this is still a fine option if the N64 version isn't available.
The Dukes of Hazzard is an extremely stupid game. Everything about the game is very goofy, from the absurd intro and cutscenes featuring some of the worst 3D rendered character models of all time, to the equally insane driving physics that cause the cars to bounce and flip all over the road while Luke constantly complains about your driving. The game is divided into various missions involving typical Duke Boys' antics like evading the cops, jumping over rivers, ramming other cars, and occasionally racing. None of these are especially groundbreaking and the story is clearly just an excuse for the Duke Boys to drive fast, much like in the show itself. Something that I find a bit funny is that when you finish (or fail) a mission, you don't get any scenes or even a finishing animation, it just cuts to a menu immediately and you either retry or go on to the next stage. The entire game feels a bit cheaply made and kind of campy, which is probably exactly how it should feel considering that that also describes the show pretty well. If this game was a slickly-polished NFS-style affair it wouldn't feel authentic to the source material. Speaking of, something I appreciate is that they got most of the original voice actors to come back for the game, including the narrator, which really helps nail the feel of the show. The game isn't very hard and there's not much replay value, so you'll probably finish it in about 90 minutes and not look back, but it's good for a few laughs while it lasts. Not a high G by any means but I feel it's about what you'd want out of a Dukes of Hazzard game.
Pet Pet Pet isn't at all what I was expecting. I figured it was probably another virtual pet game, like Nyan to Wonderful, but it's actually a strategy game about running a pet shop. This is much more interesting, though it's also much more difficult to play without a guide. I actually put quite a lot of time into this one and I think I've mostly figured it out, though the localization barrier is somewhat high. The basic gist of the game is that you start off by buying animals from breeders, and there's a fairly impressive variety of animals available. Not only are there many breeds of cats and dogs, including some of the rarer ones, but there are also a variety of other pets like hedgehogs, ferrets, and bunnies, and even some exotic ones like squirrel monkeys and fennecs. After you have some animals, people will come in looking for pets. They'll start off by telling you a bit about what they want, then you need to show them a pet that they might like and tell them something about it to convince them to buy it. This is obviously a bit difficult if you can't read Japanese. I have noticed that there's a little keyword at the bottom of their picture, like cool, gentle, tough, etc. that gives you a clue about what kind of pets they like, though the top window matters too. Your shop can also stock pet accessories like food, treats, beds, and toys, though you have to order these in advance. There are three sellers, who each deal with certain quantities of items, if you buy more at a time you pay less per item. These are not as lucrative as pets, but they provide some degree of stable income, which is particularly useful when many of the people in town already have animals and sales of pets slow down. Speaking of, after you sell a pet, you can visit it to play with it, and you can see its new owner walking it around town. I'm not sure if visiting the pet has any benefit, but it seems like part of the goal is to make the people around town happy by connecting them with pets that they like. Speaking of which, the entire experience feels very cute and wholesome. There's a mood heart that shows how excited an owner is about a pet, and it's always charming if you can give them something that's exactly what they're looking for so they're very happy. It's very cute when the animal is happy to be adopted, too, especially when it's an older animal (but, by the same token, it's super sad if the person decides they don't want the animal, which makes it sad). There's also a few other features where you can upgrade some of the products you sell or take part in a pet show when you've got lots of money, though overall I don't think the game is too complex mechanically. Still, I had quite a bit of fun trying to figure it out, I really wish this game had been translated because I'm sure I would have played it a lot.
DeleteIn their infinite wisdom, Konami decided in the PS1 era that what people really wanted was for Contra to become a lousy 3D action game, so it fell to SNK to take over as the premier creator of run and gun titles with Metal Slug. Gameplay-wise, Metal Slug feels quite similar to Contra, with maybe a touch of Gunstar Heroes tossed in and much better pixel art and animation than we ever saw out of 16-bit games. It's very fast-paced, challenging, and crazy, and it's made the transition to PS1 mostly intact, save for the addition of some short but nevertheless annoying mid-stage load times. Thankfully these typically appear after beating a mini-boss or in some other situation where you're likely to be pretty safe, but it still feels lame. Thankfully, everything else about the game is pretty great, something I appreciate for example is that enemy bullets and projectiles flash, which makes it easy to pick them apart from the backgrounds no matter the what environment you're in. I also quite like the grenades in this game, somehow they just feel satisfying to use and like a good compliment to the main weapon, and there are many situations where they're helpful or necessary to use. Really, this is just a very solid game overall. These days, you'd probably be better served by getting the Metal Slug Anthology on one of the platforms it released on, but for its time this wouldn't have been a bad option.
DeleteSuper Football Champ has some of the worst presentation I've seen on the system. The players are extremely blocky, the announcer has maybe 10 different voice clips (and the ones where he subs in a team name sound especially terrible), and the animations are almost nonexistent. The gameplay is functional, though very basic, the only interesting thing about the game is that you can choose one player on the team to be the team's ace, who gets boosted stats, though the game is so simple that this doesn't really create much strategy. Pretty much every other soccer game on the system is better than this.
It's kind of funny that I was worried that Welcome House might be hard to play in Japanese because it's so simple that the language barrier barely matters. It's an extremely basic adventure game with little to no plot. Keaton is locked in his uncle's house and needs to find a way out. It's not a horror game or anything, you can't die and the entire thing is very lighthearted, instead it sort of plays like an escape room game or something like that. In any case, the puzzles in the game are all fairly nonsensical, you have to check absolutely every object in the game for items you might be able to pick up, as there's absolutely no logic to the location of items and you can't see items before picking them up (for example, if there's a key on a table, don't expect them to actually render that key, you just have to check the table and be told that it's there). The complete lack of story plus the absurd trial and error nature of the gameplay wear thin very quickly, about the only thing you can do is just follow the steps in a guide and there's nothing interesting about it.