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Last Topic's Ratings:
Animaniacs Ten Pin Alley - BBBB - 0% (4)
Bushido Blade - AGGGGAA - 79% (7)
NASCAR 98 - AAB - 33% (3)
NHL Rock the Rink - AGG - 83% (3)
Robocod: James Pond 2 - AGG - 83% (3)
Tsumu - AA - 50% (2)
Though I don't usually get too invested in the scores of various games, it does make me a bit happy to see James Pond coming out on top of a topic. Ironically, when I received the game as a gift a long, long time ago, I thought it was lame, until I played it at least.
Games for this topic:
Crash Bandicoot 2
Expert
Felony 11-79
Freestyle Boardin' 99
Nectaris: Military Madness
Yacht Racing Game 1999
I think this looks like a pretty interesting set of games. Obviously Crash Bandicoot 2 is the big draw, but I'm actually looking forward to trying out some of the lesser-known games here, especially the boat racing game, which is a very underrepresented genre.
Crash Bandicoot 2 - G
ReplyDeleteExpert - G
Felony 11-79 - G
Freestyle Boardin' 99 - B
Nectaris: Military Madness - G
Yacht Racing Game 1999 - G
Crash Bandicoot 2 is basically the Donkey Kong Country 2 of the Crash Bandicoot series. Conceptually, it's very close to the original, but it has a lot of little upgrades that add up to make it a better game. The first and biggest upgrade is that getting the gems by breaking all boxes on the level no longer has to be done on one life as it does in Crash 1, even the boxes from the bonus levels are safe if you die after completing the bonus level but before getting to the next checkpoint. This is such a reduction to the overall tedium of the game that I think this change alone would be enough for G rank. There are other upgrades besides this though. Levels generally exhibit better variety, with less repetition of level themes, and the game also looks and sounds a bit better compared to the first game as well. About the only thing that hasn't really been fixed is that any time you're forced to run towards the screen still sucks, the camera really needs to pull back farther during these segments as there's a lot of trial and error. Still, compared to the first game this one is much easier to enjoy these days.
Expert is a very simple game, but I like it. It's a very basic FPS, comparable to Doom or even Wolfenstein 3D since there's no verticality to it. It doesn't have a lot of weapons or armor, but it's got a nice fast pace to it that I appreciate. Something that I think it does better than many early FPS games is that the levels are actually decently detailed and aren't overly labyrinthine, which makes navigation a lot easier. In many old FPS games I often get lost and have to consult the map, but I found that almost never happened here, even once areas started to get a little more complicated. You could probably argue that the gameplay doesn't have a ton of depth, most enemies open fire the moment they spot you, but basic enemies do very little damage and health pickups are abundant so as long as you shoot them fairly quickly this barely matters. There are some more dangerous enemies who can do quite a bit of damage, but you have some time to fire or run from their attacks, and you can always backtrack to pick up powerups if you get into a bad spot. Something else I liked is that you have to choose your main weapon before each level, but you unlock more to choose from as you progress through the game. The stages have a decent amount of variety to them as well. Overall, there's nothing too fancy here, but it's a decently fun game to play and probably one of the better early PS1 titles.
Felony 11-79 is a crazy racing / action game that's very similar to Buckle Up, but more more polished. Whereas the stages in Buckle Up were often overly convoluted, requiring a ton of exploration or extremely precise driving, Felony 11-79 wisely keeps most of the gameplay to standard racing, with only some fairly simple objectives to accomplish besides going fast and the timer being the main obstacle. This makes it a far better game to pick up and play and it just generally feels more fun and exciting in general. Besides the basic premise, the game also feels decently well=polished, the controls work pretty well, the graphics are actually not too bad for their time, with pretty large and detailed environments, and the music is actually also surprisingly good. A nice little touch I liked is that when you crash into stuff (which happens a lot), the game switches to a crash cam, but you can still pull away during this time rather than having to wait. Overall, this is just a pretty solid game that's quite a bit of fun, feels like a hidden gem for sure.
DeleteFreestyle Boardin' 99 feels a lot like a slightly upgraded version of Cool Boarders 1. Like that game, it's another very early snowboarding game with very restricted tricks, mediocre graphics, and generally bad controls. The controls in this game deserve special mention for how bad they are. This game has a very strange control scheme where you have 4 different jump buttons, and two buttons to do a sharp turn. Notably, this omits the typical "tuck" button, and using the sharp turn button kills almost all of your speed, which makes the game feel quite slow, races in particular have very little intensity. Despite this, turning still feels lousy, the slalom events feel awful to play, and even with 4 jump buttons tricks feel very unreliable and bad as well. The one upgrade it has over Cool Boarders 1 is its upgrade system, as you complete events in the circuit you earn points which can be used to upgrade your boarder, which is kind of cool, but can't really salvage this game's mechanical issues. I could see this being the lowest of low As if you were feeling generous, but it's drastically inferior to MTV Sports Snowboarding and Big Mountain 2000, among others.
Nectaris is pretty cool game that I'm surprised I didn't know much about before. In most ways, it's very similar to Nintendo's Advance Wars series, albeit with a hex grid instead of a square one. Virtually everything about how to move and attack units is identical to Advance Wars so veterans of that series will be able to jump into this game immediately. There are some key differences though. By far the biggest difference is that this game has no concept of money and thus you cannot build new units, on each map you have to make use of only the units you're supplied with at the beginning. Initially I thought this would be a big deal, but upon playing the game more I actually don't mind it. Advance Wars forces you to keep most of your units alive anyway if you want good rankings, and this does help matches go by a lot faster (one of my biggest beefs with Advance Wars is that later maps can really drag on. You can sort of get new units by capturing factories, but they're more like troop storehouses which also have pre-existing units when the map starts. Most notably, they can heal units to full health in one turn, but if they are captured (by infantry) with units inside them, those units instantly switch sides, so they need to be defended. There are a couple other mechanical changes, chief among them is the fact that hostile units block movement in this game, which is key to defending objectives. Is there an infantry within range of your base that you can't kill in time? Just position a unit in his way and he won't be able to walk past it. Related to this, there are also support fire and flanking bonuses which are related to the positioning of nearby units when you attack, and both are critical to success. These mechanics help make the game feel strategically different enough from Advance Wars despite their many similarities. Something else I think is very commendable is the number of maps in the game. Besides the main 32 mission campaign, they also included the campaign from the original game and some bonus maps. And then after this, there's even a map editor. Overall, this is just a really solid title that I think comes pretty close to actually beating Advance Wars at its own game.
DeleteI'm pretty torn on Yacht Racing Game 1999. It's kind of a game of opposites in some ways. It's an extremely unique game, though in a certain sence it's also very simple. There's a lot of content and depth to the game, but races sometimes feel like they drag on a little too long. I guess I'll start by explaining the basics of the game. It's an aquatic racer, but unlike Wave Race, Hydro Thunder, and Choro Q Boat, it's based on sailing, so the entire game revolves around managing the wind. This is simple enough when you're sailing downwind (the wind is behind you), you just press X to open the big sail, press O to align the sail to it, and off you go. It gets vastly more complicated when you have to race upwind. First, you have to drop your sail with X again, which takes time, so you need to do this a little ahead of when you need to turn into the upwind, but the more complex issue is that you can't simply race into the wind, you literally won't move at all. Instead, you need to zigzag towards your destination, moving nearly perpendicular to it and using your momentum to gradually move you towards your goal. Though this can feel a little repetitive and makes races take fairly long, it is quite satisfying when you successfully block the opponent's path and they're forced to turn and lose momentum (or hit the side of your boat, which is just as bad, since it will stop them but barely affect you). This is however the source of one of the game's biggest problems, which is that when you're sailing perpendicular to your goal, you obviously can't really see exactly where you're trying to get to, so the map is essential. The map works well enough when it's zoomed out, but it frequently zooms in to show a close up of the boats which is almost never useful. There's also a dynamic camera that activates in these moments that makes the game nearly impossible to play, but thankfully you can turn that off, but I've found no way to turn off the map zoom. Outside of races, there's also a lot going on in terms of the setup of your boat. The game has a Choro Q-like parts system, and you can also control the crew of your boat, where you can hire different sailors or level up the ones you already have. There's some nuance to getting new parts as well, you have to earn them by sailing through targets during races, but the more valuable targets are placed on the outside of turns, usually forcing you to give up some positioning to get them, unless you're on a very good zigzag line. This aspect of the game is fairly cool and definitely helps give the game more replay value, though grinding for parts can take a while since races can be pretty long. The game's presentation is decent but nothing to really write home about, the general graphics look decent and there's some good weather effects, but the frame rate isn't too great and the game could probably use some more music tracks. Overall, it's certainly an interesting title, and I could see the argument for both A and G, neither of which really feels like it fits to me. I guess due to its uniqueness I'm more inclined to err on the high side, but it's pretty borderline overall.
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