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Last Topic's Ratings:
Big Mountain 2000 - GA - 75% (2)
Carmageddon 64 - BBBBABB - 7% (7)
Indy Racing 2000 - GAB - 50% {3}
Rocket: Robot on Wheels - GAGGGGG - 93% (7) (1 SR)
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion - GGGGA - 90% (5) (2 SR)
Zool: Majuu Tsukai Densetsu - BB - 0% (2)
I was surprised that Turok 3 didn't get nearly as many votes as its predecessors. I'm not sure if these topics have kind of fallen off in popularity, or if the series did that instead.
Games for this topic:
AeroGauge
Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs
Bust-A-Move 99
Doreamon 3
NHL Breakaway 99
Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber
I figured this was a good time for Ogre Battle, since many people might be taking some time off and it's a long one. Also, I really hope Doreamon 3 is a good game, the series always seemed to me to have a lot of potential but to struggle to quite reach it.
AeroGauge - A
ReplyDeleteBattlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs - A
Bust-A-Move '99 - G
Doreamon 3 - A
NHL Breakaway 99 - A
Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber - G
AeroGauge is basically discount F-Zero. Everything about the game feels very much like F-Zero, from the vehicle and course design and general aesthetics to the music, but it's simply not as exciting. The game's most notable feature is the fact that you can also move vertically, making it feel a little bit like a flight racer, which is a bit cool, though I don't find it quite as interesting as I thought I would (actually, a long time ago, I had the idea that this would be an interesting feature to add to the F-Zero series, but only for short segments on certain tracks). The biggest issue is that they forgot to copy the most important aspect of F-Zero X, the boost mechanic, without it the game simply doesn't feel fast or exciting enough. It's still all right, but wouldn't be anywhere near the list of my top racers on the system.
Battlezone is an interesting title but is held back by lackluster execution. Obviously the game is based on the classic tank shooter Battlezone, but it massively iterates upon the formula, adding not only multiple tanks and weapons but even a strategy mode where you can build units and structures. There's a ton of content here, with 3 full campaign modes, complete with varied mission objectives and voice acting. The problem is that it seems the core gameplay was somewhat overlooked while they were designing all of the other features. The tanks control fine, they're fast and manueverable, but aiming is quite poor, vehicles and projectiles seem to have overly small hitboxes and the game features very aggressive auto-aim that prevents you from leading moving targets, which combine to make it almost impossible to hit anything unless you're either right on top of it or it isn't moving. The base building seems to suffer from a similar lack of polish in that the controls are unintuitive and sometimes the context menu doesn't seem to select the right thing. I feel like the developers probably realized that many parts of the game were somewhat lackluster, as the game gives you several play options, you can play the campaign with the building parts automated for you, or you can even play a campaign mode which dispenses with the mission objectives entirely and just has you shoot stuff. Overall, there's a bit to like here, but it could have used a lot more polish.
Bust-A-Move 99 is very similar to Bust-A-Move 2 in most ways, but the core formula is still so solid that I can't fault it for this. The main thing that has changed this time is that characters in the game now have varying drop patterns, similar to Puzzle Fighter and other puzzle games. IMO, while I appreciate that they tried to make it different, I just don't think this is really a good fit for the franchise. Some of the patterns feel a lot more powerful than others, and I think the game plays best when both players are using a very traditional pattern. Beyond this, there are also slight changes to the puzzle mode. Pieces are now connected to anchors, which disappear once no more pieces are connected to them, potentially allowing for huge drops. It's a small change, but it allows for a bit more variety in stage creation and helps this mode flow a little better. There are also some enemy stages in the puzzle mode where you're basically trying to clear one massive stage, it's a bit hard to explain how these work but the variety is appreciated nonetheless. Speaking of puzzle creation, there's also a mode where you can make your own puzzles, which is surprisingly quick and easy to do, so that's a nice feature, and there's also a collection mode featuring literally a thousand such puzzles made by others. Overall, it's a very solid package that feels just distinct enough from its predecessor that it's probably worth owning both if you're a fan, or if you have only a passing interest in the franchise, either one is a good choice.
DeleteDoreamon 3 is indeed somewhat of a return to form for the series but it's still not quite as good as the SNES games. For starters, compared to the other games, this is by far the most polished in terms of controls and physics. In general, the game reminds me a lot of Bomberman Hero, it features generally similar kinds of camera angles and stage design, though with more of an adventure focus. Like in other Doreamon games, you'll need to use Doreamon's many wacky gadgets to solve puzzles, but there's a bit of a strange twist this time. In other Doreamon games, you acquire more gadgets as you progress though the game, in a typical adventure game kind of way, but here, you actually have all of the gadgets right from the get-go, you just have to repair them. Almost everything in your inventory has been slimed at the start of the game, so you have to collect gas cans to clean them up, but these are infinite and drop from enemies, so you could basically de-slime everything at any point in the game. This makes solving the puzzles a fair bit harder as you don't have to figure out what to do with the latest gadget you picked up, you have to choose from 30+ gadgets to overcome any issue. Honestly, I'm not a fan of this change, it makes the progression feel a bit wonky. Solving puzzles often rewards health items rather than key items as you might expect, which means you could probably actually skip quite a substantial portion of the game (health pickups also drop from enemies and are generally very abundant). The aforementioned health items also remove pretty much all challenge from what is already a pretty easy game, which is too bad because it does have some fairly cool boss fights. Overall, it's a step in the right direction and there are parts of it I kind of like, but they still haven't quite nailed it yet. I feel like if they basically combined the first and third N64 games they'd have a really solid title on their hands, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that will ever come to pass.
NHL Breakaway 99 is a very average Hockey game. Like most hockey games that aren't NHL 94, it has the typical problem that the goalies are too good in general and when they let shots in feels too random. Whether you're on an amazing breakaway or pull off a sick one-timer they will still almost always block, only to let in a real softie later on that in no way feels earned. I guess it's realistic, but it doesn't feel great to play. Beyond this, the game also just has the slowest, lamest wrist shots of all time, it's pretty much slapshots or nothing here. General skating feels all right and the game does have a lot of big hits, but the lack of commentary during gameplay makes the action feel a bit dry nonetheless. It's tolerable, but I'd probably stick with Wayne Gretsky's 3D Hockey on N64.
DeleteIt took me 3 tries to write a review for Ogre Battle 64 and I'm still not convinced my opinion won't change again if I play more. At its core, Ogre Battle 64 is a strategy RPG, though it's quite different from most others in that it takes place in real time instead of being turn based. As such, there's no grid of squares like you'd find in most Final Fantasy Tactics-inspired games, instead there is a 2D map dotted with various landmarks that units can freely explore. When two units collide, they enter a battle. Like in Bahamut Lagoon, units are composed of multiple members who fight in a generally turn-based fashion, though in Ogre Battle you have very limited control over the battles. Each character has access to only a single attack, which depends on their position in the unit (which is represented as a 3x3 grid), and the only thing you can do is set the targetting priority for characters whose attack range covers multiple enemies. In general, the real-time nature of the battles feels fairly unique and is probably one of the strong points of the game, but the AI is very simplistic, pretty much only ever going for a direct attack or retreat, so the strategy doesn't really vary much between battles, it's mostly just a check to see if your forces are powerful enough. Thankfully, the RPG side of things is quite deep. For starters, as classes level up, they gain access to many different classes, which have different attacks and ranges depending on their location in the unit. For example, if you put an Amazon in the back left corner, she gets two shots and can hit the left and middle columns of the enemy formation, but if you put her in the front middle, she gets only one shot, but can target any enemy. If you promoted her to a Valkyrie, she would instead get two swings from the front middle, but can only target the front-most enemy in each column. There's a ton of depth and strategy to choosing your classes and positioning characters within units, and this is generally the most interesting part of the game.
However, there is one other immensely important mechanic to cover, which is the alignment mechanic. Every character has an alignment, ranging from chaotic to lawful, which is crucial to the process of taking enemy towns in missions. Each town on the map also has its own alignment, and if the alignment of the unit matches the alignment of the town, it is liberated, otherwise it is captured. Capturing towns is generally bad as it lowers an overall reptutation system called Chaos Frame, which generally leads to characters refusing to join you and ultimately the bad ending if not managed well. Manipulating your character's alignment is fairly simple, but requires constant effort from the player. Basically, your alignment shifts when you defeat enemies of the opposite alignment. If you defeat knights, you'll become more chaotic, while defeating wizards makes you more lawful. If you pay no attention to this, you'll quickly end up with all of your units being neutral alignment and unable to liberate towns. You also don't want to mix characters of very different alignments together because they will shift each other towards neutral, which is a bit annoying because it restricts your ability to move characters between units. This basically means that you have to plan out which units will fight which enemy units, and sometimes even which characters within each enemy unit. This can feel somewhat tedious, but in a certain sense it is also kind of necessary as the game feels overly simplistic and easy otherwise. How much you enjoy the game will probably depend on how patient you're willing to be with this mechanic.
DeleteThis also brings us to my other big complaint about the game, which is that it can be somewhat slow. Units move around the map pretty slowly, battle animations are long (though you can turn them off and I recommend it), and even the story takes a while to get going. If you're busily micromanaging your alignment down to the finest detail, that may provide enough to do during battles that you don't get bored, though the post-battle map explorations are a total slog. As for the story, it's all right, but I don't find it to be a real standout. It's very similar to pretty much every other medievil war game, and although the game likes to imply that you have a choice in how matters play out, you really don't, for every dialogue choice there is a clear right answer and choosing the wrong one leads you down the exact same path anyway, just with a few less optional characters in your army. I would have greatly appreciated a true second path where you could choose the other side of the game's main conflict, as the game paints the two sides as somewhat morally complicated but you're still forced into joining a specific side. As for the rest of the game's presentation, it's pretty good here, the visuals look very nice, the game would definitely feel perfectly at home on PS1 with its spritework and prerendered backgrounds, and the music is also nice, though there's very little by way of voice acting or sound effects.
The first time I tried playing this game, I didn't care for it especially much and was definitely leaning towards A. The game does little to explain many of its mechanics and you can end up in a pretty bad state after even a couple missions. It wasn't until I restarted the game, armed with a better knowledge of its mechanics that I started to enjoy it. I think you can still easily make the case that it's needlessly obtuse about many things and needlessly restrictive about others, but at the same time, if you want a PS1-style RPG on N64, this is literally your only choice. I don't think this game is quite as good as any of FFT, Growlanser, Der Langrisser, or Front Mission 3, but it benefits from the fact that no other franchises have really attempted to duplicate its gameplay, so it still feels unique enough to be worth a look even if it is somewhat flawed. I really wish they'd come out with a more modern take on this formula as with modern innovations there's a lot that could be improved here, but until that time I guess this is the best we've got.
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