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Last Topic's Ratings:
Barbie: Race and Ride - BBA - 17% (3)
Choukousoku Grandoll - AG - 75% (2)
Juggernaut - GGA - 83% (3) (1 SR)
Legend of Legaia - GGGGAA - 83% (6)
NCAA Final Four 2001 - AAG - 67% (3)
Toko Toko Trouble - BA - 25% (2)
I was kind of hoping for a few more votes this week, but I'm always happy when no games get only 1 vote.
Games for this topic:
Blade
NASCAR Racing
Pro Backgammon
Putter Golf
Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Tomb Raider 2
In the past, I always thought Backgammon was really complicated, but after playing Clubhouse Games on Switch I now realize that it's actually quite simple. I can tell I'll be referencing that game a ton more times as GAB goes on. I'm also looking forward to going back to Nascar Racing, which I played a ton when I was younger.
Blade - G
ReplyDeleteNASCAR Racing - A
Pro Backgammon - A
Putter Golf - A
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace - A
Tomb Raider 2 - A
I kind of wish we had done Blade in the last topic because it makes an interesting comparison with Winback. Both are third-person shooters, but while Blade is a much less technically sophisticated game (there's no cover system here and aiming is all auto-aim), I find it much more fun, which mainly boils down to better enemy AI and environment design. Compared to Winback, enemies in Blade are vastly more aggressive, almost too much so, as they will often begin firing or attacking the second they're onscreen, and damage output is quite high, making it difficult to avoid taking at least some damage in most encounters, and you can die very quickly if you get surprised, which happens often as enemies love breaking out from behind walls or doors to get the drop on you. Luckily, healing items and checkpoints are fairly common, but you'll need to be on your toes at all times. As far as actual combat, you have an assortment of guns and can also use melee combat, and some enemies are quite resistant to gunfire so you'll need to mix it up. There's also a somewhat interesting critical hit system where you can do much more damage to an enemy by firing when the gauge in the top right shows a certain symbol, though this is mainly useful against enemies who fight in close range (as against long-range opponents, you'll get shot while trying to line it up). The combat is generally pretty fast and frantic either way and does a good job of keeping the game interesting. There's also a decent mixture of environments to traverse, and Blade can also jump, adding some verticality to the level design, but thankfully it controls fairly well and I was getting pretty adept with it even before the end of the first level. Voice acting and music are also pretty solid, though cutscenes are fairly infrequent and short. Overall, it's a pretty solid game, with its only potential downside being the high level of difficulty, but I had fun playing it.
I had to go back to the PC version to compare with the PS1 port of Nascar Racing because it turns out that many of the features I thought were in the PC version were actually introduced in its sequel, Nascar Racing 2. Either way, the game makes the conversion to PS1 mostly intact, minus a small handful of options, but sadly PS1 does not have a port of the sequel, which makes many improvements and additions. As far as the core gameplay is concerned, Nascar Racing's standout feature is its physics engine, which is thankfully totally intact on PS1. Besides controlling well, Nascar Racing has among the most detailed and accurate collision physics that you'll find in any racing game this era. While many other racers feature kind of janky collisions where vehicles will just kind of bounce away or slow down unrealistically or what not, collisions feel very accurate here, cars will spin out and bounce in a way that feels vastly more realistic compared to pretty much anything else on the market and this is a pretty key feature for a game like this. I feel that this game is actually a better destruction derby game than Destruction Derby simply due to having such good crash mechanics, you can turn off car damage and drive backwards to cause unimaginable amounts of havoc if you're so inclined. As far as the actual racing is concerned, it's not bad, there's tons of options for things like race length and car damage, and there's a decent amount of courses, including some where you have to turn right as well(!). The controls are also pretty solid and overtaking rivals (or tapping them in the rear bumper to make them spin out) feels satisfying, but the complete lack of any race commentary makes this experience feel a bit dry at times. Overall, it's fairly solid, but I feel that due to the lack of the sequel being ported it is eventually surpassed by EA's Nascar series, even though its collision mechanics remain supreme.
As I mentioned earlier, Backgammon is actually a pretty simple game, all things considered, though if you don't know the rules of the game, Pro Backgammon does helpfully provide a tutorial that explains the rules. Beyond this, there's not a ton to the game, there is a championship mode of sorts, but due to the simplicity of the game I wouldn't say the opponents really display any noticeable variation in play styles, so it's basically just a bunch of matches in a row. You can also play single matches or play against another player. As far as the game itself, it's fine, though I dislike the fact that the pieces have no animation when moving as this can make it hard to follow the opponent's moves at times. There's not really too much else to say about this one, it's serviceable but there's not a lot here. I really feel that this type of game does better as part of a compilation like Clubhouse games, as it's probably not the kind of game that's going to stay interesting for that long, though there is a bit of strategy to how you line up your checkers and how aggressively you play, most of the game really just comes down to the luck of the dice rolls.
DeleteI didn't realize that Putter Golf was part of the Simple 1500 series until I saw the title screen. In any case, as its name implies, it's essentially mini golf, you have only a putter and two different levels of putting strength to tackle the various courses. The putting controls are actually decent, being highly reminiscent of Mario Golf, so there's some fun to be had here, the biggest issue is that there's very little content to the game. There's only 2 course of 9 holes each, a sort of "straight up" course and a "trick" course that includes some typical mini-golf style gimmicks, and that's it. It's sort of weird to me that they created actually a pretty decent golf engine and didn't create a few more courses for it, with 4 or 6 courses total this might have been a G rating, but as it stands it has limited play value. I also kind of wish you could play stroke play without the AI, as watching them take their shots basically just makes this mode play longer. In general, a fairly average game for the Simple 1500 series, not terrible, but not one of their best efforts either.
Star Wars Episode 1 is a fairly ambitious adaptation of the movie, but for all it gets right it also spends equal amounts of time being tedious or repetitive so the end result is more of a mixed bag. For starters, the presentation is quite nice. The plot of the game is quite accurate to the movie and there's a lot of voice acting, which is decently impressive for PS1. Less impressive is the gameplay, which mainly wandering through mazelike stages, occasionally pushing buttons, and killing hundreds and hundreds of droids. Combat is fairly mindless, reflecting projectiles with the saber is inconsistent so you'll want to just force push for most encounters, though it has a bit of a cooldown so aiming it well is important, then you can just hack away and hope you find a health refill before you gradually get whittled down. There are a couple different characters to play as, but they're all pretty similar apart from what weapons they use, but the lightsaber / force push is by far the best and most fun to use overall, with most other weapons feeling fairly sluggish. The camera is a bit annoying, it always frames the action from a kind of starngely overhead angle that I never feel lets me see far enough ahead to be able to properly react to enemies before they start shooting, which increases the somewhat mindless feeling of combat. There's also no adaptation of either the space battles or the podracing, which is a bit lame. In a number of ways, the general gameplay kind of reminds me of the Lego Star Wars games in terms of its level of depth, though it isn't nearly as well polished as they are and doesn't have the same charm either. This was probably a bit impressive in its time in terms of presentation, but these days I don't think there's much reason to go back to it.
DeleteI might be alone in this but I think Tomb Raider 2 is quite a step back from the first game. Sure, exploring ancient ruins full of traps and figuring out how to adapt the moves you have to natural surroundings is still cool (I should have mentioned this the first time but I like how the game teaches you concepts in an artificial environment, then makes you figure out how to apply them to much more natural environments, it reminds me of Portal), the problem is you spend very little time actually doing this. Tomb Raider 2 probably should have been called "Rooftop Raider" instead, because the focus has mostly shifted away from exploring ancient tombs to galivanting around various urban locations and shooting people. The first level is pretty cool, but after that the game takes a long diversion to deal with a gang and doesn't return to these more natural environments until the very end. As you might imagine, this comes with a greatly increased focus on combat, which I feel is easily one of the weakest points of the original, and it hasn't improved at all here, and the greater focus on high-speed action exposes more issues with the game's controls. A particular issue exists with picking up and using items, which is illogically slow and precise, not only does Lara need to be positioned exactly perfectly to grab an item, she also bends down while doing so and the game continues moving during this, which can be maddening when you have only an instant to grab an item and get away from a trap safely. Using items is similarly cumbersome, Lara must be positioned exactly to use a key or switch, which you'll be doing a ton and it just generally feels unpolished. It's also very regrettable that the mini expansion "The Golden Mask" is not included here, as those levels are much more of a return to form for the series. Overall, the game is not completely without merit but I definitely think it's the wrong direction for the franchise.