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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Bust-A-Move 2 - AGBAGAGG - 69% (9)
Dukes of Hazzard, The: Racing for Home - BBAG - 38% {4}
Metal Slug - GGGGGG - 100% (6)
Pet Pet Pet - AG - 75% (2)
Super Football Champ - AB - 25% (2)
Welcome House - GB - 50% (2)
Bit of a quiet topic last time, I guess 3 JP imports will do that (I didn't know Metal Slug was JP-only when I made the topic).
Games for this topic:
Bakusou Kyoudai: Let's and Go!!: WGP Hyper Heat
Bowling
Bug's Life, A
Contra: Legacy of War
Lucifer Ring
Samurai Shodown: Warrior's Rage
Having talked about Contra in the last topic about Metal Slug, I felt it made sense to cover it here. I'm also curious to try out Lucifer Ring, which seems to have had a US release through PSN only.
Bakusou Kyoudai: Let's & Go!!: WGP Hyper Heat - B
ReplyDeleteBowling - B
Bug's Life, A - A
Contra: Legacy of War - B
Lucifer Ring - B
Samurai Shodown: Warrior's Rage - G
Bakusou Kyoudai WPG Hyper Heat is one of the weirdest racing games ever created. It's a great setup for a game, there's an extensive campaign mode where you can earn new parts to upgrade your car and there's also a lot of pretty competent CG scenes, except for one fatal flaw. WGP Hyper Heat is a racing game in name only, you do not ever actually race in this game - you simply choose the parts for your car before the race, then the AI handles all the steering, and there's no option to give yourself control. The two things you do control are when to use your boost move and the timing of the start of the race, the latter of which is the main thing that determines victory apart from part selection. Obviously, this is not very engaging. I tried playing this game while watching TV to see if it was functional as a low-energy game and it kind of is, certainly once you start the race you don't have to do anything other than mash the boost button (or you can even let the AI activate it), as there's really no bad time to use the boost since the AI holds the corners like glue, but it's still just not very fun. The presentation of the actual races is not very good either, in particular, the game seems to have one of the worst physics engines of all time (I wonder if this is why they made the decision not to give the player control), when two cars hit each other they fly apart in a way that can only be described as insane, in close races expect to the results of one of these crazy collisions decide the victor. Even then, I still think I'd rather have had control, at the very least it might have been good enough for A, but as it is I feel you might as well not bother. If you'd like to play a game like this where you actually do steer the car yourself, just play the other game in this series, Bakusou Kyoudai Eternal Wings, which is a vastly better game in every way.
In case you couldn't tell from the title, Bowling is another one of the titles in the Simple 1500 series. Unfortunately, it's not one of their better efforts. Bowling is an extremely barebones affair, even moreso than most other Bowling games, with among the driest presentation you'll find anywhere. The shot meter is okay, but the physics are extremely strange, the ball kind of zig-zags down the lane as you throw it in a way that would never happen in real life and it's far too easy to hit strikes. The mode where there's 45 pins is interesting, but the physics feel off here, the ball kind of just cleaves through the pins rather than affecting them realistically. This one is one to skip for sure.
A Bug's Life is basically just a straight upgrade from the N64 version. The biggest difference is that instead of the lame stills from the N64 version, the PS1 version has actual scenes from the movie, which help convey the plot much more effectively. It also uses a different, more zoomed-in camera, which makes it a bit harder to see, but does help show off the better texture work of this version. You can get the old camera back by holding a button down, but it's a bit annoying that it has to be held constantly to pull the camera back. The level design is the same, and the seed system is still the best part of the game, lending it some degree of puzzle solving. It's still not really a standout title, but the improved presentation is probably enough to drag it into low A territory.
Contra: Legacy of War sucks. I don't actually think the idea of a 3D Contra is inherently a terrible one, but this game gets pretty much everything wrong. The problems crop up almost instantly. The basic movement controls are fine, and the ability to lock in your shooting direction with a trigger button is helpful, but the game lacks any way to shoot upwards, so for any airborne or tall enemies, you have to jump repeatedly to hit them, which feels awful as this takes away most of your control, and it's especially lousy vs bosses who can only be hit this way, which is a distressingly large number of them. If you could just hold down a trigger button to aim on a 45 degree angle upwards it would have fixed this problem instantly. The game is also much too zoomed in and enemies take up too much of the screen. It's frequently the case that you'll have less than a third of the screen area to move around, which obviously gives you almost no ability to react to and avoid bullets, and it gets even worse with 2 players. This generally makes it so that avoiding combat whenever possible is the best strategy to preserve lives, which feels stupid. Speaking of, when you continue, you only get 3 lives instead of the starting 9, which feels like unreasonably few for this game. I do like how there are multiple characters to choose from and they have different weapons, like in Hard Corps, but why do they all have the Flamethrower? In any case, this game simply isn't fun to play on any level. Thank goodness for Metal Slug.
DeleteLucifer Ring is also completely terrible, unfortunately. It's a 3D beat-em-up, but somehow it manages to feel even more primative than many of the earliest examples of the genre. The entire game feels extremely stiff, your movement is very slow and attacks lock you in place for a long time. You have only 2 attacks, a fast combo attack and a slower attack, which is only useful against enemies that mostly stand still. Running attacks exist, but running is very clunky and unresponsive, and you have an HP-draining attack that you can use for free after dealing enough damage, and that's about it. Enemies and bosses have extremely simplistic movesets with only one or two attacks, and the game has no additional mechanics besides the ones listed before. I'm not sure if this was a launch title for the system, but even if it was I don't think it would have been good enough even at the time.
I'm very surprised by the generally very low reception to Samurai Shodown: Warrior's Rage. When I saw that it was a 3D interpretation of the franchise, I expected the worst, but actually, the series has made the transition totally intact, likely due to the fact that the gameplay is still entirely 2D despite the 3D visuals. The gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect from the series, in fact I was surprised at how many mechanics that are in the new game are also present here, like the time-stopping Rage Explosion and Issen attack, and the devastating Weapon Flip (though apparently, most of these are introduced in Samurai Shodown 4). I guess one thing that people might take issue with is that this game pulls a Soul Calibur 5 and takes place in the future, and thus features an almost entirely new cast (Haohmaru returns, as an old man). Still, for a game featuring a new cast and completely new models and animations, there's a lot of characters with pretty diverse fighting styles and they feel reasonably distinct from each other. There's also a new system whereby the game isn't really divided into traditional rounds, rather when you run out of health, it comes back, but with one third of the bar missing, with your ultimate only being available when you're down to your last third, which I think puts an interesting twist on things also it also resets the situation to neutral when a player's bar refills, allowing for more "opening gambit" moments. The game also features a decent selection of modes, with a surprisingly fleshed-out story mode and a training mode with a command list. I guess one thing that you might take issue with is that the game is quite picky with motions, often requiring them to be exact (you'll definitely want to bind a button for rage explosion), but the series is generally more about footsies and counters anyway. Overall, I think this is a pretty cool game and I'm very surprised no one ever talks about it. Maybe it was hated at the time for being different but these days I appreciate the uniqueness of it.
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