This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Bakuretsu Muteki Bangai O - GGGAGA - 83% (6) (1 SR)
CyberTiger - AAAA - 50% (4)
Hydro Thunder - GAGGGGGGGG - 95% (10)
Resident Evil 2 - GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG - 100% (15) (1 SR)
Top Gear Hyper-Bike - AAGG - 75% (4)
Virtual Pro Wrestling 2: Oudou Keishou - GGGGG - 100% (5)
This topic was the polar opposite of the PS1 topic, even Cybertiger rated as well or better than most of the games there. I guess folks just used up their weekly allocation of Gs here and had none left for PS1.
Games for this topic:
Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum
Hybrid Heaven
NBA Courtside 2 Featuring Kobe Bryant
New Tetris, The
Snowboard Kids 2
Taz Express
I've heard about Hybrid Heaven for a long time but never actually played it, so I'm kind of curious to try that out. Also, I can't believe there's actually a DDR title on N64.
Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum - G
ReplyDeleteHybrid Heaven - G
NBA Courtside 2 Featuring Kobe Bryant - A
New Tetris, The - B
Snowboard Kids 2 - G
Taz Express - B
I was actually really impressed by DDR: Disney Dancing Museum. Presumably, everyone knows the basics of DDR by now, but an N64 version of DDR raises an obvious question, how will they handle the music in a cartridge based format? And the answer is shockingly well, actually. I imagine the songs are probably midi with an vocal track overlaid on top, but it works well, and the songlist is actually pretty great, with many memorable tracks. Para Para Venus in particular is total fire, who knew Daisy Duck rocked so hard? Speaking of, the game's visual presentation is quite strong as well, every stage has a unique dancer, including some rather obscure picks like Horace and Clarabelle Cow, as well as some pretty decent background work. Mechanically, it's very basic DDR, probably the game's biggest issue is that the step charts are fairly easy, even the hardest difficulty would only be about comparable to the second or third-hardest on most other DDR games, though there is a unique mechanic in session mode where there's a percussion track and you have to hit any button other than the arrows to trigger those, which is actually kind of hard to get used to, particularly when they come on off-beats. Another strange issue is the game actually doesn't save, instead it uses passwords to track your unlocks. There is a simple password to unlock all the songs, but you'll just have to keep your best scores in your head. In any case, it's a remarkably good conversion of the DDR concept to N64 and I'm a pretty big fan of the songlist as well. This would almost be SR-quality if I had any way to free one up, it's probably top 20 on the system.
With all the talk about how Hybrid Heaven was N64's one true RPG I've heard over the years I expected it to be quite basic and dated, but surprisingly it's still a fairly interesting game all this time later. The game combines two styles of gameplay, a fairly standard action style where you run around, jump, and shoot robots, and a strange martial-arts system where you do combat with humanoid enemies. The action gameplay is merely serviceable, the environments are all very generic, the puzzles are very samey, and the gunplay is lame (you have to stand still to shoot), but most of the enemies you encounter in this mode are not very threatening and you can simply run past the majority of them. The martial arts system is far more interesting. You can move freely around the environment, building up power, which you can use to launch various types of attacks, such as punches and kicks of varying types. Different enemies have different strategies and weaknesses that they will use against you, some will go for grabs, some will try to close in on you relentlessly, some will use projectiles, etc. Once you know which particular attack works well on an opponent, you can usually beat them fairly easily, but there's some interesting gameplay involved in figuring them out, especially once you get the ability to use multiple moves in a row. You can, for example, bodyslam an opponent to the ground, then kick them in the back as they recover, or even perform a neck lock on them for further damage before they can stand up (of course, the enemy can do all of these things to you as well). As you perform various techniques, you get stronger in associated ways, for example if you do a lot of kicks your legs will get stronger, which generally feels pretty cool and makes you want to fight these battles whenever you can. As for the game's presentation, it looks all right, but the story isn't too fantastic, you go through pretty long stretches without much dialogue and the characters aren't particularly interesting. Overall, it would definitely be A if the martial arts system wasn't as fun as it is, most of the other parts of the game drag it down to some degree, but it is still fairly fun to play for the most part.
DeleteNBA Courtside 2 is a weird game because on paper it looks like it should be an upgrade over the original but I feel in practice it plays significantly worse. I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly what's wrong, but the original game feels fast and great to play and this one just doesn't. One thing which definitely stands out to me is that driving the lane feels far worse this time, dunks feel oddly slow and very rarely succeed, which is doubly problematic because if you run, then stop, then try to take a shot, the game often thinks you want to dunk, rather than shooting a jumper (I've never had this problem in the original). Pretty much everything on offense just feels kind of sluggish. I do think there have been some defensive improvements, the indicator for rebounds is helpful and I like the way the game handles free throws, but overall it just doesn't feel nearly as much fun to play as the first title.
It's ironic that The New Tetris is called that, as compared to Tetrisphere, it's actually the old Tetris. There are a surprisingly large amount of regular Tetris games on N64 given the size of its library, and there's nothing notable about this one. It has extremely few modes compared to most versions of Tetris, the music is terrible (I'm not surprised to learn it has the same composer as Tetrisphere), and there's an annoying quirk with the quickdrop mechanic that allows you to aftertouch even after a quickdrop which constantly screws me up because I expect after quickdropping I should be on to the next piece. The only good thing about it is it's a Tetris game that lacks the bag algorithm, but there are many others from this gen alone and all of them are better.
The original Snowboard Kids was an awesome game, with its only real flaw being that it was somewhat short. Snowboard Kids 2 attempts to address this by fleshing out the game a little more, but unfortunately in the process it loses a few of the things that made the original game so good, and IMO the result is worse than the original game, though it's still fairly fun. The biggest issue with Snowboard Kids 2 is that it's clearly been dumbed down compared to the original, which was already not a terribly complex game. Special tricks are gone, replaced by a not nearly as much fun chain spin move that is the same for everyone, and they've also removed the boost jump (hold jump for about 2 seconds, then let go), which I find very regrettable because using that well was one of the main hallmarks of skillful play in the original. On the plus side, story mode has been fleshed out a little more compared to the first game, though still not quite as much as in Snowboard Kids Plus on PS1. There are now cutscenes before and after every stage, a few minigames, and some boss fights, though there's still only a core 9 stages and it doesn't take that long to beat them all. I really wished they had carried over the character-specific progression from Snowboard Kids Plus because that would have helped a lot, particularly now that the characters are somewhat more balanced (Nancy and Tommy are both nearly unusable in the original). At least they did carry over the ability to fire the bomb weapon backwards from Snowboard Kids Plus, which makes weapon shops not nearly as useless when you're in first. Presentation-wise, the game still looks and runs great, maybe even a slight step up from its predecessor, and the music still rocks. It's still a good time, but of the 3 Snowboard Kids games from this generation, I think this is the weakest one overall.
DeleteTaz Express is a bizarre concept for a game, when I think of the Tazmanian Devil the first thing I think of isn't "delivery puzzle game", but that's basically what this is. Your goal (most of the time) is to safely get a delivery crate from one end of the stage to the other without it being destroyed. Taz himself is unstoppable, but the crate is very fragile, so much of the game is spent trying to keep the crate safe from harm or hide it somewhere where you clear out the rest of the stage and come back for it. This concept actually could have some potential, though the game is hamstrung by absolutely awful controls, Taz is very slippery and to use his spin attack, he has to get to a certain running speed, which is very finnicky and just generally feels bad to use. The game almost controls better when you have the crate, in that you cannot spin attack or jump, but you are of course forced to ditch it frequently to do these things. The game fares a bit better in the moments where it ditches the crate concept (for example, one level has you controlling a giant Taz in a city to reclaim the stolen crate) though even these concepts feel mediocre. The one thing I do appreciate is that Taz complains about the process of carrying the crate constantly, clearly he doesn't want to be here any more than you do. Poor Taz. Taz-Mania was a much better game.