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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Area 51 - GAGGB - 70% {5}
Atlantis: The Lost Tales - AA - 50% (2)
DragonHeart: Fire & Steel - BABBB - 10% (5)
Madden NFL 99 - GGGAA - 80% (5)
Psychic Force - AAB - 33% (3)
Re-Volt - GBG - 67% (3)
Not too much to say about this one I guess, other than that I'm glad that even some of the more obscure games are still getting at least a few votes.
Games for this topic:
Ayrton Senna Kart Duel 2
Gekisou Tomarunner
Land Before Time: Return to the Great Valley
Medal of Honor
Tall Twins Tower
V-Tennis
I'm curious about what Gekisou Tomarunner is, it's another relatively unknown game from Sony Japan, and generally their games have been pretty good (and nuts). Also, we have another long box game here in V-Tennis, I wonder how many of them are still left?
Ayrton Senna Kart Duel 2 - B
ReplyDeleteGekisou Tomarunner - A
Land Before Time: Return to the Great Valley - A
Medal of Honor - G
Tall Twins Tower - A
V-Tennis - A
I gave the original Ayrton Senna Kart Duel a bad rating because it controlled like butt, had terrible collisions, looked and sounded very generic, and in no way felt like a kart racer... and all of that is still the case with the sequel. Compared to the first game, this one is a little bit more playable, but it's still really poor in pretty much every way. Something that stood out to me was how awful the AI racers look when they're ahead of you, the game probably uses the same technique that Spyro does of switching to a lower-poly model for distant objects, but it looks absolutely atrocious here. Your cart looks pretty lousy too, it's basically just a box with wheels, though it does control accurately to how it looks. Maybe the series should have been called Aryton Senna Wheelbox Duel instead. Even if you do put up with its lousy gameplay there's not much game here, for example there's no concept of kart upgrades or new karts or anything like that, you just do a bunch of individual races to unlock more races and that's it. There's so many better racers this gen.
Gekisou TomaRunner is somehow even more crazy than I thought it might be. It's a foot racing game, somewhat similar to Battle Athletess: Daiundoukai GTO, except that the courses are 3D and it's far more insane (note that Battle Athletess was already insane). Although you can steer manually, your ability to turn is quite limited, so much of the game involves grabbing onto poles or bouncing off mats to do 90 degree turns, which is done by sticking out your hands with L1 and R1 to hit or grab them. There are many other things you can grab onto, like vaulting horses and suspended poles, and these can often be used to take alternate routes if done correctly. You can also jump and use a dash move, which are also frequently key to taking shortcuts. Your dash energy can alternatively be used to fire one of a few types of weapons, and there are also various pickups located throughout the tracks, such as exp jewels, consumable powerups, and random item boxes that cause assorted chaos. This is really only scratching the surface of everything that's going on in this game, and I think one of its biggest issues is actually that it just has slightly too many mechanics and thus feels a bit unfocused. In particular, I greatly dislike the weapons, they stun players for an absurdly long time and are functionally impossible to defend against. Worse yet, you can be hit by another weapon while you're recovering on the ground, which is completely unavoidable, and you can be stunlocked in this way for ages. Of course, you can abuse this too, but either way it feels extremely cheap. The random item boxes also potentially feature immensely powerful effects, but you can also get a bomb that makes you lose a lot of time (and you can then be stunlocked with weapons while you're down), which makes it feel very heavily RNG-based. The controls are also not quite as good as I'd like, often I'll be reaching for a pole or mat that I'm sure I've lined up perfectly and I'll just barely miss it and smash into a wall, and using the suspended poles in particular feels very inconsistent, with almost nothing seeming to determine whether you make the jump or not. The game is also just very visually busy, which often makes it hard to follow the course, which almost necessitates memorization, though this is hard because various parts of the course look very similar to each other. Overall, it's certainly a very zany game, in fact I think they went to every effort to make it as bonkers as possible, but I didn't actually enjoy playing it as much as I expected. I think part of the problem is that between the controls and the RNG you never really feel like you're totally in control of the game, which is still key to creating an engaging experience no matter how crazy it is.
It's time for another installment in Tero beats the whole game, this time for The Land Before Time: Return to the Great Valley. It's an extremely simple 3D Platformer that's clearly made for kids. The game has no actual combat, the gameplay consists entirely of solving very simple puzzles and basic platforming. Something that's a bit notable is that there's 4 playable characters, each who have their own levels, but they all play exactly the same and the game does not acknowledge it when you beat the game with all 4 characters (this is why I finished it, I was curious if there was something else at the end). I guess it's not totally terrible for its target audience, you can die easily but lives are very abundant, and the pterodactyl will follow you around and let you know what you need to do constantly (hilariously, the only function of the difficulty selection is to reduce how often he gives you advice). The biggest issue with the game is that the controls are somewhat slippery, and the pick up move has extremely limited range, but because of how easy the game is this doesn't matter too much. It's also very short, I finished all 4 characters in about an hour, though I didn't completely hate the experience. At least the music is pretty decent.
DeleteMedal of Honor is basically PS1's Goldeneye, almost every aspect of the game feels similar to N64's flagship title. The first thing I have to comment on is the controls. They're great! The default setup feels almost exactly like Goldeneye, but it has an advantage here due to the fact that the PS1 has a proper second analog instead of C-buttons. There are many other control schemes available too in case you prefer the setup of any of the other FPS games of the era. Top marks here for sure. The gameplay feels very solid too, with good general movement and aiming mechanics, reasonable draw distance and a solid framerate. Enemies feature decent AI, often attempting to take cover or dodge out of the way when it is available, though sometimes they will attempt to shoot at you through walls (pointlessly), suggesting their pathfinding may not be the best. Graphics are also pretty decent for PS1, and I like the ambient sound that you hear throughout the game, I think it does a good job capturing the feeling of unease of being behind enemy lines. The mission structure of the game is a lot like Goldeneye, where each mission will have various objectives that you need to complete before finishing the stage, though by comparison, the level designs tend to be a bit more simplistic and linear when compared with Goldeneye's level design. Also similarly to Goldeneye, there are cheats you can earn by playing well, though this is not tied to being fast, but rather to being accurate and not taking too much damage, which IMO probably feels more "natural" but is less challenging. As for multiplayer, this is where the game is the biggest downgrade from Goldeneye, the multiplayer mode consists solely of a 2P deathmatch mode that is fairly forgettable and there are no bots or anything. Multitap support would have been greatly appreciated here. Overall, this game is just really good. I think you can make the argument that Goldeneye is a little better in every respect except maybe for controls, but it's close enough that it's still head and shoulders above most FPS games of the era.
Tall Twins Tower is actually a direct sequel to Tall Infinity, which we covered previously. Compared to that game, it really only has one new mechanic, which is that there's now two playable characters, each of whom has a special ability that lets them affect the blocks in the tower in various ways. This is almost a huge increase in overall playability, except for one fatal flaw, which is that the game does not allow matches made with the character power to count, only matches made using the traditional block rolling method can be cleared. Assuming you aren't restricted in any way, simply rolling the matched blocks away and then together again will clear them, though there are many blocks that you can only roll in one direction and other factors that often prevent you from doing this, and even when it is possible it feels needlessly slow for a high-paced game like this. As such, the impact of the character power is essential limited to being used as the move before a match, which feels lame and IMO makes the cat boy's power almost completely worthless. Beyond this, the game is mostly the same as the first time, it still has the same modes and still doesn't allow you to play the vs mode against the AI. Overall, I think the game is still just ok. If the character powers could actually make matches I think the game might be G, but without it it feels like it's just a slight tweak to the previous game.
DeleteHoly crap, V-Tennis has correct controls. I think this may be the first Tennis game ever to get the controls right, if you're returning a serve from the back left corner, and you hold left, you hit it up the line, instead of hitting it out. After a decade of complaining about every game before Mario Tennis getting this wrong it's great to finally have a game that gets it right. Unfortunately, besides this, there's little to say about V-Tennis. It's an extremely barebones game with only an exhibition and a basic tournament mode. There are no unlockable characters or anything, and you can't even play doubles. Still, the gameplay mostly works, though netplay is too strong because the lob shot is too slow, and there's an annoying mechanic where if you hold the stick all the way to the side when hitting the ball from the net, you often hit it out, you have to hold the stick like 90% of the way to the side instead, which is very annoying. Still, this was probably the best Tennis game available in 96, it was still 4 years until Mario Tennis. If there had been just a little more here it might have been G.