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Last Topic's Ratings:
All-Star Baseball 2001 - GAGGG - 90% (5)
Neon Genesis Evangelion - BAAAA - 40% (5)
Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers - BAA - 33% (3)
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack - AAGA - 63% (4)
Super Smash Bros - AGAGGGAGAGGGAAGAAGGGG - 81% (21) (2 SR)
Top Gear Overdrive - GAAG - 75% (4)
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:
Bomberman 64: The Second Attack
Dezaemon 3D
Diddy Kong Racing
International Track & Field 2000
NFL Blitz
Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction
In retrospect, I probably should have chosen Diddy Kong Racing as the holiday game instead, I've always kind of associated it with Christmas due to the Walrus Cove track. It was also hard to know what to do with NFL Blitz. There are 4 Blitz games on N64, but they're all extremely similar. I often lean towards doing the first and the last version of a game, so perhaps that's what we'll do here.
Bomberman 64: The Second Attack - A
ReplyDeleteDezaemon 3D - A
Diddy Kong Racing - G
International Track & Field 2000 - B
NFL Blitz - A
Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction - B
Bomberman 64: The Second Attack is a strange sequel in that it's actually far less ambitious than its predecessor. While Bomberman 64 was filled with wild new ideas and hugely divergent stage designs from the reset of the series, The Second Attack sticks much closer to the series formula for a game that probably plays better but in many ways feels much less notable. The biggest change has been to the nature of the level design. Bomberman 64 featured large, multi-levelled layers of hugely varying shapes and designs, whereas in The Second Attack, the game has been broken down into small rooms connected by doors, almost never being more than a couple screens wide. You would think this would result in vastly better performance at least, but somehow the game still frequently chugs when enemies are onscreen. Speaking of, there are a ton of enemies around, and they're a bit more complicated than in past games, frequently having more health and more complex patterns, probably to make use of the new elemental bomb feature which is central to the game, as you defeat bosses you earn new bombs, which explode in different ways and can be used to solve puzzles. This is kind of cool, though a few of them are so strong that they essentially trivialize combat against most enemies. The other new feature is Pommy, Bomberman's new sidekick. He can't really do too much, mostly just walk around and smack things to stun them unless you spend a ton of time upgrading him, and the AI for him is also pretty bad, but it allows for a co-op mode of sorts if you enable the option for a second-player to control him. Due to how powerful Bomberman quickly becomes he generally feels kind of irrelevant, but at least he has some funny lines. Battle mode has also seen a revamp, it now somewhat more closely resembles the mode from the original, though it still controls like Bomberman 64 so it feels kind of slow and awkward and not nearly as much fun as the battle modes in the proper Bomberman games. The progression that they added into this mode is appreciated (you can play challenges against the AI to unlock stuff) and the custom bomberman feature from 64 returns, but it's still kind of a throwaway mode in the end. Overall, the game is all right, but none of it feels especially memorable. Bomberman Generation is clearly better in every possible way, featuring a vastly better battle mode and a more ambitious main campaign, and I think you can also pretty easily make the argument that it's the weakest of the 3 US-released Bomberman games for N64, or at least the most forgettable.
The original Dezaemon was the game I came closest to excluding from GAB due to its complexity and how difficult it is to play without understanding Japanese, though thankfully Dezaemon 3D is a little better in this regard. To recap, Dezaemon is a utility that allows the user to create shmup games. It is immensely powerful in many ways, giving the user a tremendous degree of control over both the visuals and the mechanics of the game. In terms of changes from the original, besides the addition of 3D graphics and gameplay, by far the biggest improvement is the addition of a bunch of tutorials, which, despite being in Japanese, also include some video segments so even if you don't read Japanese they are helpful. Still, I feel like this highlights the biggest problem with the software, which is that the UI is cumbersome and it is far too complicated. Going through all the tutorials is absolutely mandatory because even doing extremely simple things like positioning a few enemies in a stage and having them shoot at the player is far more complicated than it should be, involving dozens of steps and complicated button shortcuts. The game also includes extremely detailed graphic editing tools, but IMO these are kind of inherently worthless due to the difficulty of drawing any graphics using a controller. Thankfully, there are some premade graphics you can use, but they're pretty generic-looking and don't have much variety. The game does include 2 built-in games, which are not bad, but would be fairly bottom of the barrel as far as shmups go, which highlights one of the biggest issues with the game, even if you do spend your entire life creating a game with this tool, it's still probably not going to be especially impressive. I think when you look at tools like this, clearly a game like Mario Maker had the right idea, where the tool is extremely easy to use, at the expense of some degree of power, because creativity generally arises from rapid experimentation and iteration. With Dezaemon, you have to have an extremely clear idea in mind from the get go and it will take a long time before you can even begin to see if that idea works well, which is especially non-ideal for a console product. Even if this was a PC game, I think I could actually code a shmup from scratch in Unity faster than I could use this tool and it would also probably be much better. That's not to say some aspects of the software aren't impressive for their time, but I think it's generally a misguided effort. I'm interested to see what they did with Dezaemon Kids on PS1 because it sounds like it's a step in the right direction.
DeleteDiddy Kong Racing is a rare example of a game being somewhat better than I remembered it. As pretty much everyone knows, it's a kart racer with a significantly higher focus on progression compared to something like Mario Kart, featuring a full adventure mode which contains not just races but boss fights and other challenges. Perhaps even more notable is that the game allows you to race as three different vehicles, and most of its tracks can be raced with at least two different vehicles, which is a very cool though somewhat underutilized feature. Also, as a Rare game, it also looks and sounds great, in particular the soundtrack is really rockin', as I alluded to in my opening post about how I used to play Walrus Cove just for the music. This all sounds like easy G material, and it almost certainly is, but my memory on this game had somewhat soured over the years. It was mostly restored upon playing it again, at least after I readjusted to its drifting mechanic, which is a lot tighter than many modern games. One of the parts I remembered least fondly was the Silver Coin Challenge, a mode that unlocks after finishing a world where you have to do the races again while collecting 8 coins that are scattered across the track. I remembered this being extremely obnoxious, with coins often placed in locations that are very far off the beaten path, but I was most likely remembering Adventure 2's coin placements (which differ) because in the original Adventure mode the placements are generally sensible. My memories were also probably somewhat sullied by the not particularly good DS port of the game, which adds dumb touch screen gimmicks and also wrecks the item balance, even though that version has more tracks and racers this is still the definitive version. That said, I still don't think this game is clearly better than Mario Kart 64, in particular I think that game's item system is much better and it also plays much better in battle mode, and Crash Team Racing is probably a slight upgrade to this game in almost every respect except the soundtrack, but it's still a surprisingly solid game that holds up pretty well after all this time.
DeleteTrack and Field is pretty much the same as on PS1, which was pretty much the same as on NES. I feel like the button mashing gameplay is clearly really dated by now, and even though they've slightly expanded the roster of sports, they feature almost exactly the same gameplay. It would have been nice to see swimming at least involve some kind of timing rather than just mash. It's kind of embarrassing that Gold Medal Challenge '92 on NES is still leagues better than this game. The main difference from PS1 is that the controls feel somewhat more awkward on the N64 controller and after Mario Party I really don't want to do stick rotation games on the N64 controller. Though I gave this an A on PS1, if I was to go back and rate it again I would probably give it a B.
DeleteWell, one thing's for sure, I don't regret my decision to do NFL Blitz and NFL Blitz 2001 separately, as the two games actually have a few more subtle differences than I expected. I suspect most people know the basics, but NFL Blitz is a very arcadey football game, though thanks to tight controls and mechanics it actually still has quite a lot of depth. Despite the crazy antics that go on on the field, victory generally comes down to good play calling, clock management, and defensive play. Despite many changes to streamline the experience (I particularly like how the point after touchdown is literally just a free point that you don't even have to watch), I actually think this is a very compelling game with a ton of depth and replay value. If you make bad passes you can easily throw an interception, and the ability to knock down the receiver before they catch the ball, while not allowed in the real sport, makes reading the opponent's passing plays feel more rewarding. Overall, it's a very solid take on the sport and I think it actually might be Midway's best sports title. At least, that's what I'd be saying about 2001 / SE, because there are some important differences with the first game. The most obvious one besides graphics is that the original Blitz lacks 4-player support, which is somewhat of a big deal, as this also means that cooperative play is not available. Still, perhaps the more important issues have to do with game tuning and AI. Something I noticed right away is that the AI feels quite different here compared to Special Edition, in particular, they're extremely good at defending against passing plays but terrible at defending against running plays, which removes a lot of the nuance between deciding when to run and when to pass. On a somewhat related note, defensive play in general is somewhat weaker here compared to Special Edition. I'm not able to completely put my finger on it, but tackles seem to "snap" to the target slightly less well here, which sometimes causes my tackle attempts to miss even when I read a play correctly, which again makes the game feel a little less nuanced compared to later versions. I was still winning reliably in this version, but it was mainly coming down to managing the clock well (still an important skill in any good football game) rather than because I felt like I was running especially effective offense or defense. It's still not a bad title by any means, but it's not quite the masterpiece that 2001 and SE are. This leaves me in a situation that's kind of similar to the one with NBA Showtime, where when taken on its own the game is still pretty good and is far better than most titles that would get A, but it's also a straight downgrade from a significant better game so I wouldn't ever recommend playing this version. I guess this is a weird quirk of GAB's limited rating system, but either way I'd recommend picking up 2001 or the Special Edition instead.
Powerpuff Girls is, indeed, an unspeakably crappy game. It's kind of like a much worse version of Tom and Jerry Fists of Furry, you battle in 3D environments and can toss things at each other, but everything controls like complete garbage and there's far too much hitstun on everything. Actually picking something up and throwing at an opponent is almost impossible between the clunky controls, the fact that throwing an item is slow, and that any hit makes you drop it, but this doesn't matter because the dive kick move is crazily overpowered, you just need to jump into the air, get on top of someone, then mash the attack button and you instantly win. Every aspect of this game's presentation also feels cheap and bad, for example it's another fighting game with no real defeat animations, and the same music track is recycled for pretty much the whole game. Easily one of the worst games on the system, I think I'd even rather play Superman 64 than this.
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