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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Kuru Kuru Cube - ABA - 33% (3)
Mickey's Wild Adventure - AGAG - 75% (4)
Pro 18: World Tour Golf - BB - 0% (2)
Spec Ops: Ranger Elite - AAAGB - 50% {5}
TOCA: Championship Racing - GGAAA - 70% (5)
WWF Smackdown - AGGAGA - 75% (6)
I was a bit worried based on the relatively low level of activity in this topic, but it looks like there was pretty decent coverage of the games anyway.
Games for this topic:
Aironauts
Final Fantasy 7
Formula 1 Championship Edition
Jingle Cats: Love Para Daisakusen no Maki
Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings
Micheal Owens WLS 99
For the holidays this year, we have one of the most highly requested games for the PS1 GAB, Jingle Cats. And also a little known game called Final Fantasy 7. Rounding out the list we have Lemmings and Formula 1 Championship Edition, which I'm hoping is different enough from its predecessor that I don't look foolish for including both.
Aironauts - G
ReplyDeleteFinal Fantasy 7 - G (SR)
Formula 1 Championship Edition - G
Jingle Cats: Love Para Daisakusen no Maki - A
Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings - G
Micheal Owens WLS 99 - A
Aironauts really surprised me, if I had known how cool this game was I would have given it top billing for sure. It's a bit of a hard game to describe, I'm tempted to call it "Pilotwings: Good Version", but that doesn't really do it justice. The basic gist of the game is that it's a flying game broken into a bunch of short (1-2 minute) missions. Missions vary quite a bit, from destroying various types of targets to flying through rings to racing and even dogfighting. Controls are solid throughout and the small stages and fast-paced action mix well with the varied mission objectives to create an engaging experience that never feels tedious. Between rounds, you can use currency gained from the missions to upgrade your character, and there are also quite a few to choose from, which also gives the game some replay value. The presentation is also generally quite good, the UI is well-designed and unobtrusive, and the radar and targeting arrow help a lot to ensure you don't get lost. The game also just generally has a kind of manic energy that I enjoy, it features peppy music and a very energetic game-show announcer whose delivery is quite well done. Overall, this is a really cool game and as I was playing it I was bouncing around between whether or not it was just good or if it was actually REALLY good, but either way it's an easy G. A shame we didn't get this one in North America.
Final Fantasy 7 as a game seems to have an endless capacity to spark debate. Perhaps due to its popularity and wide recognition, it's a very common measuring stick for other games, and perhaps because of this, it's become somewhat more divisive in recent years, with many people claiming it to be overrated. As someone who has called many highly popular games overrated, including Ocarina of Time, to which FF7 is frequently compared, one might wonder if I also feel that FF7 is overrated, but actually, I've always thought that it deserves most of its praise. One of the major reasons I'm often tough on some games compared to others is that I don't give a lot of leeway to games that pioneered new ideas (an example of this can be seen in the sister topic with Super Smash Bros). In my opinion, throughout history there have been enough games that were very innovative and yet got things right the first time that I don't feel simply being innovative excuses flawed or lacking mechanics. However, the secret truth about Final Fantasy 7 is that it actually isn't really that innovative. Certainly, it is an ambitious game with great production values, but when compared to something like Ocarina of Time, it's not nearly as groundbreaking. In terms of gameplay, FF7 isn't a huge departure from the gameplay of 16-bit RPGs, instead it acts as more of an expansion or refinement of them. This can be easily illustrated by comparing it to it's immediate predecessor, FF6. FF7's customization mechanic, the materia system, bares a number of similarities to the Esper system from Final Fantasy 6, just improved in almost every way. You gain access to it earlier, its scope extends beyond magic, and it also forces the player to make more complex decisions, since you can't have every materia equipped at once (while you can learn every spell from every esper, given enough time). It's basically just a classic case of iterative refinement between games, where they identified the limitations of the previous game and improved upon them. Similarly, the limit breaks are basically just a more accessible and useful version of Final Fantasy 6's desperation attacks, and there are many more similarities between the games beyond these.
Of course, if all the game did was make a few mechanical improvements over Final Fantasy 6, that wouldn't necessarily mean it wasn't overrated. I've always said that I don't find FF6 to be one of the absolute best JRPGs of the era, in particular I think Chrono Trigger is clearly better and it faces stiff competition from a dozen or so of other top games of the era. What really makes FF7 stand out is the massive leap it makes over 16-bit RPGs in terms of its presentation. While FF6 is certainly a decent-looking game, many of its areas inherently feel repetitive. Multiple buildings in the same area will often feature the same or similar layouts, and may even look very similar to buildings in other towns. All floors of a cave or dungeon will look mostly the same, areas rarely have any kind of distinct visual identity or theme. Of course, all 16-bit RPGs suffer from these sorts of issues, it's simply a limitation of tileset-based graphics engines. What really set FF7 apart is that instead of using tiles to generate its areas, each area in the game instead has its own unique background, which differ enormously from scene to scene. Of course, prerendered backgrounds are everywhere on PS1, but it's worth taking a little bit of time to appreciate how meticulously detailed the scenes in Final Fantasy 7 are. I often enjoy just going into any random building in a city and just taking note of all the little details. For example, in the Seventh Heaven bar, some of the bar stools are actually just boxes, there's a giant industrial fan in the back and a bunch of exposed metal pipes, the floor boards are damaged and patched up in some places, the fridge is old and rusty, and stuff is piled almost to the ceiling in every corner (including the TV, which is just shoved into the corner of the bar). The second you walk in here, you instantly get a feel for this place. It's very run-down, but there's still a kind of warmth to it anyway. Pretty much every scene in the game exhibits a similarly fanatical level of attention to detail. The degree to which the game can convey the atmosphere of its setting is night and day different compared to 16-bit games, and I feel that even though the 3D battle graphics seem quite dated now, the environment graphics haven't really aged and can still be appreciated in almost the exact same way today. Midgar is, IMO, one of the most impressively realized and memorable settings in any game.
DeleteThere is, of course, some room to debate whether or not the writing and character development of the game is especially great, though I think you can do this with almost all RPGs (do any of the characters from Chrono Trigger really have any significant development except maybe for Magus?), and at the very least the story and characters are certainly memorable. The game also has a fantastic soundtrack that also goes a long way to help establish its settings, and it's also just a massive game in general, featuring a very lengthy main story as well as a ton of optional side content, most of which is actually pretty fun (we'll be discussing this again if we ever make it to Final Fantasy 10). It's really no surprise that this game brought RPGs to the mainstream, it wasn't particularly because it was something that no one had ever seen before, but rather it represented a formula being perfected to such a degree that people really had no choice but to take notice. Similarly to Chrono Trigger, when playing it again today, it still feels instantly engaging in much the same way it originally did and I don't think it's really lost much since it was first released (as with CT, it's also a pretty well-paced game as well). I still don't think the Final Fantasy series has ever topped this game, which provides an interesting contrast with OoT, which, IMO, was significantly improved upon by every game that followed it. This game was basically just the culmination of everything RPGs had been building to until this point and well deserves its place in history.
Formula 1 Championship Edition is a solid upgrade from the original Formula 1 in most ways, pushing away my concerns that the game might be a simple upgraded re-release, it instead feels like a true sequel. The biggest change since the first game is that Arcade Mode is now totally distinct from the main game mode. In the first game, it was just a sort of relaxed driving mode, whereas here it's almost a totally different game with completely different mechanics. As you might expect, it features absurdly exaggerated driving mechanics, giving Indy Racing 2000 a run for its money in terms of the "NFS with Indy Cars" idea. On the flip side of the coin, the Grand Prix mode feels much more realistic, although not unapproachably so, there are still a lot of options in terms of race length and driving assist and so on, and I like that you can go straight from qualifying to the actual race without additional load time. Graphics are subtly but appreciably increased from the original game as well, with tracks sporting more detail, and the menu system has been greatly streamlined, which I appreciate. My only complaint might be that there's not much progression here, which I've complained about in other racers, though the solid gameplay and the amount of variety in the tracks and two totally different game modes is still likely enough for G. I don't know if this is necessarily one of the top racing games for PS1 (it's a crowded field), but it's certainly one of the better F1 games I've played.
DeleteAs you might imagine, Jingle Cats is a very strange game. The basic gist of the game is to take two cats and make them like each other. You don't control the cats directly, instead you interact with the environment in a manner similar to Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, while the cats do their own thing. Generally speaking, the key to making the cats like each other is to have them play together, though you also have to make sure to take care of them because if they're unhappy, they won't want to play or fall in love. The four meters on the status screen are basically the only thing you have to understand to play the game, which are, from top to bottom, how much they like you, how happy they are right now, how hungry they are, and how clean they are. If you can get all of these meters to be fairly high and the cats to like each other a lot, you can choose the little heart icon and they'll kiss, which is extremely cute. Then you'll get to hear the jingle cats sing a song, which is much less cute and you can't skip it, but I guess it wouldn't be Jingle Cats without awful singing. Inbetween levels, the game adds more cats, which makes things a bit harder. If the cats you're trying to pair up spend their time having fun with other cats instead of each other, their relationship will decay, but you can't just abuse the other cats either or they'll deliberately ruin your romantic efforts, you have to just subtly manipulate them, like by distracting the other cats or having your cats play while they sleep. It's a very strange and cute game, though once you get the hang of it it starts to be quite simple to win, just separate your cats with the teaser, drop them a toy or two, give them a bath, and then that's about it, and it also gets a bit repetitive after a while, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
Lemmings on PS1 is an okay port of a good game. I feel like it's not really necessary to explain the formula of Lemmings by now, it's a very classic and recognizable puzzle game. People might not be as familiar with Oh No More Lemmings, but it's basically just more levels, there aren't any significantly new mechanics here. One might think that the addition of the 100 extra levels from Oh No More Lemmings would make this easily the definitive version of the game, but IMO it kind of doesn't, the biggest issue is that the levels from the original Lemmings sufficiently explored the original formula, leaving additional levels just playing like more of the same (this is why it was necessary for them to somewhat change up the formula with Lemmings 2: The Tribes). On a certain level, every level in Lemmings has the same solution, trap all the lemmings but one, complete the level with that one lemming, then release the lemmings. Only a handful of levels throughout the franchise force you to deviate from this core strategy, and that remains the case here. Plus, the new levels aren't really integrated that well. Oh No was originally a standalone game, so its first levels are extremely easy, not becoming challenging again until dozens of levels in, and if you've just finished the original Lemmings, it'll be a long haul before it becomes challenging again. I feel like it would have been better to mix in the new levels throughout rather than keeping them separate. The UI for the game also isn't great, for some reason 3 of the face buttons go unused, the lack of the lock-on feature from SNES is sorely missed, you can't change powers while paused, and it would have been nice to have a dedicated speedup button. At least the new CD Audio version of the soundtrack is nice, Lemmings actually has a very good soundtrack in general. I think this is still G simply because the underlying game is, but it's not one of my favourite ways to play it.
DeleteMicheal Owens WLS 99 has some strong points but ultimately I think it's only A. The game's biggest issue is that it kind of has a lack of identity. Presentation is pretty basic, the commentary is all right, but the player models and animations feel very primitive for the console. Gameplay is similarly simple, with a fairly decent 4 button control scheme, and something it does well is that the goalies are awful, which I've mentioned repeatedly is secretly the key to making a good sports game, but it contains a couple weird gameplay choices that feel like they don't fit the game. The first one is minor, which is that the game actually has 2 more buttons, there's a run button which is rarely advisable on offense but mandatory on defense, and a button to kick harder, which is needed to do a centering pass (it took me forever to figure this out). I feel like the game probably would have been better if Square simply centered (it's R1 + square instead, but I see no use for the regular square pass), and if the running move wasn't present. The bigger issue that I have though is that compared to many other soccer games, the ball doesn't really magnetize to the player, causing the action to feel imprecise. For example, when attempting to kick a centering pass or head a high ball, the ball will often just barely miss you, forcing you to effectively guess where you need to be (there's no indicator to show where the ball will go or anything like that). It also kind of bugs me that you can't manually switch players, the game generally does a decent job of making you the right player, but sometimes it doesn't choose the right one and that can be annoying. Overall, it's a mix of good and bad, there are times where I quite enjoyed the experience, but enough other times where it felt mediocre that I think A is the right grade. There's certainly some potential here but it doesn't feel quite as refined as some other soccer games of the era.