This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
AeroGauge - AABAGA - 50% (6)
Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs - AA - 50% (2)
Bust-A-Move 99 - AGAAGGG - 79% (7)
Doreamon 3 - AA - 50% (2)
NHL Breakaway 99 - AA - 50% (2)
Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber - GGGGGGG - 100% (7) (2 SR)
This was a very 50% heavy topic. Not that I'm complaining, I like the ratings where I don't have to use a calculator.
Games for this topic:
All-Star Baseball 2001
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack
Super Smash Bros
Top Gear Overdrive
For the holiday topic, we have an interesting assortment. Obviously, there's Smash Bros, but there's also a trio of licensed games whose franchises vary to about the highest degree possible, and Top Gear Overdrive, which I've wanted to cover for some time because I 100%ed it back in the day and literally remember nothing about the experience. Regardless of what suits your fancy, here's wishing everyone a happy holidays from GAB About Games.
All-Star Baseball 2001 - G
ReplyDeleteNeon Genesis Evangelion - A
Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers - A
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack - G
Super Smash Bros - A
Top Gear Overdrive - A
All-Star Baseball 2001 is kind of borderline. I feel like there's generally quite a lot of parity between baseball games this gen, many of them have a pretty similar slate of features and similar overall gameplay. Like many others All-Star Baseball 2000 features the option for a more nuanced batting control, where you have to line-up a little box with the pitch to hit the ball. In this case, though, I think I like the classic style where you just hit one button to hit better, because I think one of this game's biggest strengths is in terms of pitch readability. Unlike many older baseball games, reading pitches feels pretty fair here and I think there's a decent amount of nuance to it, which is somewhat lost with the batting box approach as you only read the pitching icon when you play that mode. Graphics are generally quite nice, the players are well-animated, and commentary is serviceable but not nearly as fleshed-out as it is in most PS1 games. Overall, this is another pretty decent game but it seems to be pretty hard to stand out as a baseball title this gen.
Neon Genesis Evangelion looks pretty nice, but it doesn't really play very well. The attention to detail in the game is generally impressive, with a number of cinema scenes featuring either direct footage from the anime or 3D recreations of it, and during the battles there are also many key moments from the show that can occur. The visuals themselves also look pretty nice, the models for the EVAs and angels are huge, with good detail and animation, and the backgrounds are pretty solid as well. The gameplay itself isn't great though. The main gameplay is kind of like a fighting game, albeit a very simple one. A does a basic attack, C Down does a shield, and B is an all purpose block / dodge button that should be pressed whenever the enemy moves to any degree. You can grab with A + B, which is generally the only way anyone ever does any significant damage. The core gameplay is actually pretty lame, it feels very stiff and isn't generally very fun, the only good thing about it is that sometimes key scenes from the show will play out. For example, if you lose the first battle in a specific way, Shinji will go berserk and gain a massive amount of power, letting you overwhelm the boss easily (however, you can also win without doing this, so the gameplay isn't totally scripted). Beyond the robot fights, there are a handful of other segments that would probably best be described as minigames, such as ones where you have to line up a target and shoot enemies with a gun. As far as sound is concerned, the music is good and there's a lot of voice acting. Shinji's constant screaming during battle is very annoying, though this is probably intentional, actually, I think you could argue that most of the game's flaws are probably somewhat deliberate. Neon Genesis Evangelion was intended to be a deconstruction of the giant robot anime genre, so if this was just a kickass robot fighting game it probably wouldn't feel authentic to the show. The fact that your moveset kind of sucks a lot of the time (there's a sync mechanic, and you're only strong when it's very high, which sometimes requires you to get beat up a little) is also a decent fit for the way battles in these sorts of shows also tend to work out. Overall, I think this game could be decent for people who are big fans of the source material, though for those who aren't it probably won't do much for them.
Scooby-Doo is also a decent take on the franchise formula. Like many Scooby-Doo games, it's kind of a cross between an action game and a graphic adventure game. This one skews pretty heavily towards action, though, most of the items you'll pick up exist solely to be given to Fred and Daphne so they can use them in a plan, actual puzzle solving for Shaggy and Scooby is pretty minimal, but perhaps this makes sense considering that they're idiots. Speaking of, the main gameplay involves running through 3D environments and avoiding various things that scare Shaggy, while sometimes being chased by hostile characters. The basic setup is fine, but the controls are quite problematic, the game uses fixed camera angles like in Resident Evil, and while it does give you the option for tank controls or camera relative controls, neither is really up to the task. The tank controls, while more reliable, are often too slow for chase sequences, while the camera relative controls quickly become annoying due to the frequent perspective changes. Like in some games, the controls remain "locked" as long as you don't let go of the stick, but it feels very awkward. Still, the game looks and sounds pretty good and in many ways it does feel like a Scooby-Doo style mystery, so if you're willing to put up with the controls it's not an overly bad time. As long as you save a lot you'll probably make it through okay.
DeleteI actually think Chef's Luv Shack is pretty fun. It's a quiz style game with minigames that in many ways reminds me of NES Double Dare (which I also always liked). The questions are often really hard, but the voice acting helps a lot, it's hard to get too mad over getting the question wrong when your character immediately exclaims their frustration and the game points out how much of a dumbass you are. There are also a bunch of minigames that are surprisingly competent. Many of them are based on various old arcade games, like Galaga, Super Sprint, Paperboy, Donkey Kong, and Asteroids, albeit given a South Park coat of paint. These are actually pretty solid and there's quite a lot of them, which gives the game some pretty decent replay value. I also played this for quite some time and didn't see any duplicate questions, even though I did pick the same categories pretty often. Over all, this isn't an especially ambitious title, but it's still pretty fun.
Though I intended Smash Bros to be kind of a freebie for Christmas time, it's actually pretty hard to know what to do with it ratings-wise. In virtually every way, the game is tremendously dated, almost to the point of being unplayable. Let's start with the controls and general gameplay, both are incredibly stiff. Hitstun lasts a million years, there's no DI, you can't turn tap jump off, landing lag is huge (unless you use Z cancelling, which in itself a stupid mechanic), and there's no airdodge, which makes recovering or escaping disadvantage state nearly impossible for most characters. The game's content is also very lacking. In multiplayer mode, there's really only one good stage, Dreamland, because the game's 2 best stages, Battlefield and Final Destination, cannot be chosen at all. Even Meta Crystal, which would be one of the best stages in the game, cannot be selected either, leaving only Dreamland and a ton of other highly janky stages. The combination of bad stages and lousy mechanics generally makes the game feel like victory goes not to the most skilled or strategic player but to the one who can work around the stiff controls the best. I often feel like I know exactly what I want to do but it's not nearly as reliable to pull it off as in later games. This description so far probably almost sounds like B, and if the game was only multiplayer, it would almost certainly be B, but single-player is the game's saving grace. Of all the Smash Bros games, this game has by far the best single-player mode. There's a good mixture of different match types, fun bonus games, an interesting scoring system, and Master Hand feels well-suited to this game's particular gameplay mechanics. It's kind of shocking that with how much work they've put into adding alternate modes in later games, this is still easily the best single-player mode they've ever achieved. Still though, even this has its limits, it's unlikely you'd want to go through it more than a few times today without getting really tired of it. I think this game makes an interesting contrast with, say, PS1 X-Men vs Street Fighter, which I found instantly engaging and wanted to play over and over, whereas with this game the single player was kind of fun but playing the game still generally felt tedious. I guess it's just another example of how I've previously said that a game that is simply "good for its time" is no better than A, whereas a G-level game is always good no matter how much time passes.
DeleteI'm actually shocked how little I remember about Top Gear Overdrive considering I beat it, but upon playing it again, it's just a very average racing game. Its handling engine is a little odd, car handling is very twitchy, but grip is very high, which almost makes it feel a little bit like the Choro Q series, though it's not nearly as good as those games. The main game progression has you take on progressively more challenging racing circuits. You can earn money by placing well and picking it up off the tracks that allows you to buy better cars and upgrade the ones you already have, though this too is very simplistic. The track design is decent, tracks are a reasonable length and have shortcuts, although in many cases the shortcuts are so powerful that you basically doom yourself if you don't take them. One thing about the game which might be considered to stand out is its soundtrack, as this is a rare N64 title that features licensed music, but IMO it's not very good. All of the tracks are from the same band, and even if you're a fan of their generic style of 90's metal the entire OST sounds very similar. Overall, this is just kind of an average game that wouldn't make too much of an impression on anyone, which is probably why I completely forgot about it.