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Last Topic's Ratings:
Command and Conquer - GGGAA - 80% (5)
Nightmare Creatures - AGABAAABBB - 45% (10)
Nushi Tsuri 64: Shiokaze Ni Notte - AG - 75% (2)
Pokemon Puzzle League - ABGGGGGA - 75% (8) (1 SR)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - BAAAA - 40% (5)
Xena: Warrior Princess - The Talisman of Fate - BBABB - 10% (5)
A pretty high-rated topic overall, with a good number of votes. It's always nice to see even slightly more obscure games getting 5+ votes.
Games for this topic:
Fighting Force 64
Madden Football 64
Mega Man 64
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth
Stunt Racer 64
Tigger's Honey Hunt
I'm not quite sure how we got this far without doing the original Madden on N64 yet, but here it finally is. There's also quite a few PS1 ports here and the recently high-profile Stunt Racer 64.
Fighting Force 64 - A
ReplyDeleteMadden Football 64 - A
Mega Man 64 - A
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth - B
Stunt Racer 64 - A
Tigger's Honey Hunt - A
Fighting Force 64 is very similar to the PS1 version. The two biggest improvements are that graphically it looks crisper, and that the loading times have been eliminated, both of which definitely increase the experience to some degree, so this is the version to get if you're going to pick it up, but it still suffers from most of the same issues with repetition and limited movesets. I'm particularly bummed out that this version doesn't offer 4-player support, considering that there's 4 playable characters and the increased power of the N64 would probably allow it to handle it, I think if this had been included I might have considered G, but as it stands even though I like the move to the third dimension there's not really enough here for me to want to play it for a long time.
Madden NFL 64 is a bit of an oddball among football games. Pretty much all sports games benefitted significantly from the move to 3D graphics and that is also the case here, the move to 3D makes it much easier to read plays and the new gameplay engine makes grabbing an interception on a poor pass easier than ever. However, both of these improvements strongly favour defense, and the game does not appear to have been properly balanced around this, as this game also features probably the worst blocking of any football game I've ever played, which makes offense far too weak. Running plays are almost completely valueless, as the HB will almost always get tackled the instant he touches the ball, and you have almost no time to pick a receiver on passing plays before you get sacked, which basically turns the game into a series of hail mary passes until someone finally gets close enough to try to kick a field goal. It still controls well and it's satisfying when you finally do pull off a good drive, but this is almost certainly the most defensively-favouring football game I've ever played. It might have been okay for its time or if you really want a very nuanced defensive game, but later Madden games generally strike a somewhat better balance between offense and defense and will probably be preferred by most.
Mega Man 64 is pretty much the same as Mega Man Legends, which has its ups and downs. For starters, this is a pretty big game on PS1 with a lot of voice acting and it has mostly made the transition to cartridge intact, save for a bit more compression on voice clips, which is kind of impressive. At the same time, none of the game's issues (mainly with controls and the general pace of gameplay) have been addressed to any degree and it is still a little bit better on Playstation. I talked quite extensively about my opinion of the game on PS1 so I won't repeat that all here, but generally it's an interesting idea with a great setting and characters but it simply doesn't really retain the fast-paced action that makes Megaman what it is. The fact that locking on to an enemy stops you in your tracks is particularly regrettable, because this is something you have to do quite often, and it completely eliminates any feeling of run and gun gameplay. There's still a bit to like here but I really wish they would have stolen Z-Targeting from Ocarina of Time for this version.
Many genres benefitted significantly from the move to 3D graphics, but shmups definitely weren't one of them. The genre is extremely reliant upon extremely clean, precise graphics that allow you to easily pick out exactly what is going on on screen, and most early attempts to move the genre to 3D totally lost this. Another example of this is found in Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth. The game is an extremely simplistic 3D vertical shmup, but it has so many problems that it's almost unplayable. For starters, everything on the screen is much too big, and with the game being a vertical shmup, there's also less screen real estate to deal with. This results in enemies frequently firing shots at you from the middle of the screen that you essentially have no time to see coming, and even when you do see shots coming at you the game's control feels slippery and imprecise and you have a massive hitbox so you'll probably get hit anyway. Your only real defense is that you have Starfox 64's barrel roll move, which makes you completely invincible on a short cooldown, which should obviously be spammed incessantly as it doesn't even stop you from attacking, though in some cases (particularly against bosses) you must conserve it as they have attacks that are totally unavoidable without using it. Beyond these poor mechanics, there's really just not much else to the game. There are 3 ships to choose from, but they're simply the 3 weapons you'd find in most shmups, so this actually reduces the depth of the game compared to something like Raiden where knowing when to switch weapon types is part of the skill of playing the game. There's also a combo system where you can get bonus points for shooting a lot of enemies, but these points don't do much and there's frequently gaps in the enemy patterns where losing your combo is unavoidable. Overall, it's just a poor effort, and not one I would recommend even to shmup fans.
DeleteStunt Racer 64 has some interesting ideas, but ultimately they are held back by somewhat middling execution to create a game that's only average overall. The biggest issue with the game is that the driving engine simply isn't very complex and doesn't leave a lot of room for skill. Cars are fairly slow and cornering is extremely loose, though tracks are generally fairly simple and full of wide, banked turns, so it's not too demanding. The unfortunate thing though is that the game wants to place a lot of focus on its stunts system, as it is one of the primary ways you earn money to upgrade your car, but stunts can cause you wipe out, which loses a massive amount of time, and due to the lack of nuance in the racing system there's almost no way to make up time on your rivals by racing well, so the game actually encourages you to race consistently and avoid stunts in many cases. This might lead to an interesting dynamic if there was a limited number of races, which would make you want to pick up as much money as possible, but you can repeat leagues to grind money so the best strategy is generally to just race really consistently in all leagues except the first one and redo the first league if you ever need money. The game does have some upsides though, for starters it has tons of personality. It reminds me a bit of Eliminator Boat Duel on NES how there's a bunch of colourful rivals who like to trash talk you before you leave them in the dust, and the rival profiles for all of the opponents are a nice touch. The leagues are also divided into a somewhat interesting heat system where you can watch to see which heats rivals join to either beat or avoid strong competitors, but joining late causes you to get a weaker starting position. I just wish the core racing engine was a little bit better, in particular this game would have massively benefitted from some kind of powerslide mechanic.
Tigger's Honey Hunt is a very basic 2.5D platformer. Despite its simplicity, it controls well and there's nothing really especially wrong with it, and it actually looks quite good. There's also a surprisingly large amount of collectables and challenges for a kid's game. Each level features a certain number of honey pots to collect, ala the spots in Cool Spot, and a certain number are needed to beat the level, but getting all of them unlocks some bonus content, and each level also has a time trial to beat as well, which also unlocks some further collectables to find, so it's actually not an inordinately short game to 100%. The biggest issue with the N64 version is that compared to the PS1 version the voice acting has been axed, which is actually a pretty big deal considering you encounter Pooh's friends constantly, and these scenes simply don't have the same appeal with subtitles. There's not really too much else to say, it's a decent game for its target audience and I think you could maybe even make the case that the PS1 version is G, but the loss of the voice acting in this version keeps it in A range in my opinion.
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