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Last Topic's Ratings:
Fighting Force 64 - GGGAABAB - 56% {8}
Madden Football 64 - ABAA - 38% (4)
Mega Man 64 - GGBBAGAGA - 61% {10}
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth - GBAAB - 40% {5}
Stunt Racer 64 - AA - 50% (2)
Tigger's Honey Hunt - GAAAA - 60% (5)
This must have been the most divisive topic of all time, with 3 games getting the squiggle bracket. Almost every game ended up in the middle range, and the one that didn't only missed it by a hair.
Games for this topic:
Bakuretsu Muteki Bangai O
CyberTiger
Hydro Thunder
Resident Evil 2
Top Gear Hyper-Bike
Virtual Pro Wrestling 2: Oudou Keishou
I had actually planned to cover CyberTiger several topics ago, but delayed it due to Tiger Woods' accident. We've also almost run out of wrestling games on N64 after all this time.
Bakuretsu Muteki Bangai O - A
ReplyDeleteCyberTiger - A
Hydro Thunder - G
Resident Evil 2 - G
Top Gear Hyper Bike - G
Virtual Pro Wrestling 2: Oudou Keishou - G
Bangai O is just okay in my opinion. It's a very weird game in many ways, at its core it's a twin-stick shooter, but it's a very unusual one. Levels are extremely short and generally don't have too many enemies, instead much of the game focuses on destroying collectable objects for points, and every level has a boss, but there aren't nearly as many bosses as there are levels so you fight the same bosses over and over. You have access to two pilots, who are basically just weapons. The boy's shots home in, which almost completely trivializes the game, he's easily the better character to use 99% of the time. The girl fires shots that don't home but bounce off walls instead, which feels more nuanced, but she does less damage and is generally so much worse than the boy that you're clearly handicapping yourself if you choose to use her except in very specific situations where you need to hit enemies around corners. Overall, to me the game just generally kind of feels unfocused. For example, there's a huge focus on scoring a lot of points in each stage, complete with a hidden combo mechanic if you blow up a lot of objects at once and increasing bonus points for collecting fruit without getting hit, but the points don't actually do anything whatsoever. Some kind of medal system where you could earn a medal for getting a certain point target on each stage would have done wonders for the game's replayability. It's not a terrible time to play, but it doesn't grab me very much.
CyberTiger really cheeses me off. CyberTiger is, essentially, a poor man's Mario Golf. Many aspects of it are similar to Mario Golf, like the camera controls, the general graphics, the putting, the ability to use powerups, etc, except that absolutely everything about it is slightly worse in one way or another. The game's biggest "innovation" is its swing system, where you hold down to build up power, then press up to swing, which is complete garbage. It makes taking weaker shots nearly impossible and just generally feels terrible to use, and it makes putting in particular feel especially annoying, which is bad because this game is extremely picky about putting. Probably the best thing about the game are the powerups, you earn them by getting birdies and you can use them whenever you want to do things like shoot a shot that bounces off water or shoot from a tee even when you landed in the rough. This is legitimately cool and adds some strategy to the game, though due to the fact that I feel like the game generally has less nuance compared to Mario Golf I feel like it doesn't feel as significant as it ought to (for example, hitting from the rough in this game barely matters so that tee powerup isn't as big of a deal as it would be in Mario Golf). Something that needs to be pointed out is that this game's music totally sucks, there are very few tracks and they repeat ad nauseum, this is a huge downgrade from Mario Golf. Anyway, I mentioned that this game annoyed me a lot, and the main reason is because of its rating. Even though Mario Golf is clearly a much better game, the fact that this game even comes somewhat close to being like Mario Golf means it's almost certainly a G simply because Mario Golf is so drastically far ahead of every other Golf game this generation. That being said, I don't think I had enough fun playing it to justify give it a G rating. Maybe the fact that the comparison to Mario Golf is so easy to make made the game's flaws stand out more, but in the end, I can't see any reason why you'd ever play this when Mario Golf exists. It might be a G on PS1 since Mario Golf isn't present there, but on N64, just stick to Nintendo's game. It has so much replay value that you'll really never need anything else.
Hydro Thunder is another solid racing title from Midway. Though this is an aquatic racing game, you won't be swerving around buoys or anything like that here. Gates do exist, but you're free to go around them, or even straight through them, Midway isn't big on rules. In fact, I would say this is almost a nuance-free game, pretty much the only thing that matters is to use turbo as often as possible, which requires you to collect as many of the turbo icons on the track as you can. The one trick to master is that there's a hidden jump move which can be performed by breaking for a second, then using turbo, which is sometimes necessary to collect boost icons, but for the most part you just race fast and crush anyone who gets in your way. Compared to other Midway games, this game features a somewhat more basic progression system. Gone are the lengthy race series from the Cruis'n games, here you just have to place well on each set of races to unlock the next ones. This is quite hard, though, you'll need to run each race pretty much perfectly to win. Your mileage may vary on this, but I'm not quite as much of a fan of this as I am of Cruis'n USA's system, as I feel there's less variety and replay value here. On the plus side, the tracks look very nice. It reminds me a lot of California Speed in that each track has its own distinct theme with all kinds of unique visuals. Overall, this isn't one of Midway's best efforts, but it's still fairly fun, probably somewhere on the low end of G rank.
DeleteI feel like it's almost unnecessary to talk much about the quality of Resident Evil 2 as a game. Although I personally slightly prefer the original, it's still a great take on the same classic formula, which does an awesome job expanding the original's lore and setting. What we instead need to talk about is the quality of this port. Probably about two dozen times already I've posted something along the lines of "the PS1 version is better because the N64 version has all the cutscenes and voice acting removed". Then we have Resident Evil 2 and... the cutscenes and voice acting are all still there! I still find it legitimately awe-inspiring to boot this game up, walk into Kendo's, and hear the conversation between Leon and Kendo, which hasn't even lost much in terms of audio quality. What would N64 have been like if other developers had been as skilled as the ones who ported Resident Evil 2? Would we have FF7 on N64? Better versions of games like the Army Men games? We can only speculate. The simple fact that the game keeps the presentation from the PS1 intact would be enough for G on its own, but the developers really went the extra mile with this port, adding in extra options that aren't even in the PS1 release. The most notable of these is the massively ahead-of-its-time randomizer mode. It's not nearly as advanced as the kinds of things we have now, in particular it doesn't randomize the positions of key items, but it still goes to show just how much effort went into this conversion. It's really too bad they didn't also do Rez Evil 1 and 3.
Another recurring theme in this generation's GAB is that we've reviewed many motocross games, and each time I keep alluding to a much better motocross game we haven't covered yet. By now, it's probably obvious that that game is Excitebike 64. However, we have one more biking game to cover first, and we've saved the second-best for second-last. Compared to all the other biking games we've looked at so far, Top Gear Hyper Bike is vastly more competent. The controls and physics feel right, bikes have a decent speed to them and control well, getting air feels good, controlling the angle of your bike in the air feels good, it's got all the basics down pat. There's also a basic but decent progression system where you work your way through various tournaments, unlocking new courses and bikes as you go. The game also has pretty solid presentation, with much better music than Top Gear Overdrive and pretty nice-looking visuals, though I wish the announcer had a bit more to say. The main thing that sets the game apart from Excitebike 64 is that the tracks are a bit more open. There are checkpoints, but inbetween them you're free to do whatever you want, and combined with the fact that the game has a dedicated jump button this can lead to some pretty interesting routes and trick opportunities. The game has a pretty well fleshed-out trick system, too, and the trick competitions are pretty fun, but unfortunately doing tricks has no value during standard races, which make up the majority of the game. If doing tricks rewarded you with nitro, there might be a serious discussion to be had here about which is better between this game and Excitebike 64 (as Excitebike 64 also has this issue), but as it stands I think it's fairly clear that Excitebike just has more content and polish, and it also has a much better track editor. This game is still an easy G though.
DeleteUnlike Virtual Pro Wrestling 1, which is just a reskin of WCW / nWo World Tour, Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 is much more of its own thing, which is appreciated. While the style is still very similar to Aki's later wrestling games, this one has much more of its own identity compared to its predecessor. One of the biggest changes is that there's more of a focus on shoot wrestling, which is a more strike oriented style that many of the wrestlers use, and that there's a bit more voice acting compared to the WWE games, though it's still very limited. This game retains the create a wrestler feature and it's very detailed, featuring an almost absurd amount of moves (most of the moves from the WWE games are also available) as well as many attires and such to unlock. My main issue with this game is the same as all the Aki games, I feel the massive roster of wrestlers leads to some of them feeling somewhat interchangeable, but it's a bit better than it was in the past due to the increased number of moves. I can definitely see how this one would be a favourite for those who are more familiar with Japanese wrestling, even if I personally prefer No Mercy of the two.