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Last Topic's Ratings:
Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum - GG - 100% (2)>
Hybrid Heaven - GBGAAAGAAGG - 68% (11)>
NBA Courtside 2 Featuring Kobe Bryant - BAAAG - 50% {5}>
New Tetris, The - AABAA - 40% (5)>
Snowboard Kids 2 - AAGGGG - 83% (6) (1 SR)
Taz Express - AB - 25% (2)
I was actually surprised to see quite that much turnout for Hybrid Heaven, I always thought it was a fairly niche game. It's good to see that these topics can still pull down the big numbers even as we approach the end.
Games for this topic:
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
Extreme G 2
International Superstar Soccer 2000
SD Hiryu no Ken Densetsu
Wheel of Fortune
World is Not Enough, The
It occurs to me just now that almost every game in this topic is a sequel, except for Wheel of Fortune. I guess it's going to be a topic of comparing games to their predecessors.
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness - G
ReplyDeleteExtreme G 2 - B
International Superstar Soccer 2000 - G
SD Hiryu no Ken Densetsu - G
Wheel of Fortune - G
World is Not Enough, The - G
Castlevania Legacy of Darkness is sort of like a Game of the Year version of Castlevania 64. It's still mostly the same game (and the original game is pretty much included as post-game content), but it's got some new stuff and some polish updates that generally make it a slightly better purchase. The most obvious change is the addition of two new playable characters, Cornell and Herny, but it's really the more subtle changes to the game's engine that have a greater overall impact. For starters, the frame rate has been greatly improved. The original game has quite a lot of slowdown, not only when fighting groups of enemies but often at seemingly random times (possibly due to lighting or other environmental effects?) and that has been almost totally eliminated here. The lock-on system is also generally improved a bit, making for a generally smoother play experience. There are still some issues, for sure, the camera still isn't great (in fact, you might be able to make the argument that it's actually worse than the original, at least in some areas), and I still feel like your movement is a little too slippery, but I feel you can better appreciate the game's ambition now. Even though it can be a bit of a pain at times, I still find it to be pretty impressive that a game like this was released in this generation, it feels pretty ahead of its time in a lot of ways.
When we went back to it, I found that Extreme-G wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it, but somehow I wonder if it was actually Extreme-G 2 I was remembering (maybe I rented it?) because it is absolutely that bad. The game is overall a big downgrade from the first, none of the problems have been addressed and it also manages to lose almost everything there was to like about the original. For starters, the game is vastly slower. The original game moves at a breakneck pace the entire time, and while it may not be perfect, it at least has that going for it. The sequel is a significantly slower game in general, and they've also changed the track design to focus more on verticality, which is a detriment to the game in general because the game's jump physics are really wonky. There's also a much higher focus on weapons, which is really bad because the weapons almost always cause frame drops when fired, the frame rate wasn't perfect in the original but it's far worse here, with it chugging constantly unless you're way out in front. One of the biggest annoyances in the original game was its silly progression system, where each cup required you to race the tracks of the cup before it as well as the new one. That is retained here, in addition to an equally silly new difficulty selection system where the difficulty you choose also changes which courses you race (somewhat, there's a lot of overlap). I guess one thing you could argue has been addressed is the AI is less aggressive, which makes the game a little easier overall, but with it feeling so lame to play this isn't really a positive. Probably a bottom 3 racing game on the system IMO.
International Superstar Soccer 2000 is so similar to International Superstar Soccer 64 that I almost feel that it's pointless to talk about it, but at the same time at least they had the sense to not mess with a winning formula, because ISS64 is easily one of the best soccer games ever made. ISS2000 retains everything that made ISS64 great, it still has the same fantastic mix of accessibility and depth, great controls, polish, the fun scenario mode, the player performance indicators, and really, virtually everything else, except there are some decent upgrades to the ingame visuals and sound. In particular, the players look a fair bit better and commentary is improved by the addition of a colour commentator. Gameplay remains essentially identical (which is a good thing), except I feel like the AI may be slightly improved, in general I'm very impressed by the degree to which the ally players will attempt to get open to make plays, in many other soccer games you may have a great rush only to find out that no one is in position to take the cross or something, but that is effectively never the case here. In general, pretty much everything in the game feels super polished, it really makes you wonder why Konami didn't stay in the sports market because obviously they had a really good handle on this one.
DeleteFlying Dragon has long been one of my favourite games on N64, so I was super excited to figure out it had a Japan-only sequel, and for the most part it doesn't disappoint. The biggest change is that there's more characters compared to the first game. The box advertises that there's a lot more characters, but actually most of them are clones, but still, the roster has been expanded by a decent amount. The game also has some technical improvements, most particularly to the frame rate (this seems to be a theme in this topic), though the combo system is actually a little less flexible this time around (you need an item to cancel attacks into busters and busters can never cancel into secret busters), which is a bit of a bummer. There's also a new story mode and the progression system has been drastically revamped, generally it's somewhat more complicated now. Overall, I would say the changes are a bit of a mixed bag, while I definitely appreciate the new characters the new item system is pretty cryptic (I wrote a guide for this game, but even then it's still pretty difficult to figure everything out) and I do think the simplicity of the first game is a point in its favour. Still, it offers a decent amount of new stuff compared to the first game and the two are still very unique among fighting games, so I'd still definitely recommend it for fans of the first title.
I've mentioned before that I feel that of all the game shows, Wheel of Fortune tends to convert to game form the best, largely because you don't have to submit a verbal response (as in Jeopardy), you simply guess letters, so you don't have to worry about typing things in or having the computer players give sensible responses or anything like that. Baring that in mind, this is another capable conversion of the game show but also nothing drastically different from what we've seen before. Compared to previous versions, there's some 3D graphics which look decent, particularly for the pans of the studio, and some digitized player models, which look horrible. There's also some voice acting, which is okay, but I would have been much more impressed if they actually recorded them calling out the puzzle solutions (I guess this would take a lot of memory). Speaking of the puzzles, I feel like there's some strange ones in here, one that sticks out in my mind was "Fistfight" for the category "Event", which definitely isn't the kind of event I had in mind. Also, the game has a weird quirk where when guessing a letter or buying a vowel you can give an invalid input (a letter that has already been guessed or a non-vowel), which instantly counts as a wrong answer, which is annoying as it makes misclicks costly. Minor issues aside, though, the core game remains fun. Going on long streaks of correct guesses is always a good time, and it's hilarious when someone loses a turn or goes bankrupt as long as it's not you. I do kind of wish they had done something a little fancier with the bonus round (considering this game does not save your winnings, so getting extra money is kind of pointless), but it's still a very accurate conversion of the "classic" version of the show (things like the toss-up questions didn't exist yet as of when the game came out). They even included the christmas version of the studio as a little easter egg.
DeleteEven though it wasn't made by the same developer, there's no question that The World Is Not Enough is trying to pass itself off as a sequel to Goldeneye. Obviously, that's a pretty high bar to live up to, but even though I think few would disagree that it's not quite on par with the original game, it still gets enough right that it doesn't feel unworthy of the comparison. Thankfully, the general setup of the missions in the game has been kept completely intact, the objective-based gameplay remains fun and helps levels feel distinct and memorable, and the gunplay still feels like Goldeneye, though the fact that C-Up and C-Down no longer look up and down but instead Jump and Crouch respectively is probably my biggest complaint with the game as it forces you to rely on auto-aim a lot more. They've even copied some of the smaller aspects of the game, like how higher difficulty levels add more objectives and beating the stages fast enough unlocks extras (though this time, they're all tied to the multiplayer mode, more on that in a moment). There are some upgrades compared to Goldeneye here, most particularly that it looks better, cutscenes have voice acting, and the frame rate is much more stable. The multiplayer mode also can now accommodate bots, which is definitely welcome, though their AI is pretty bad and the multiplayer mode in general isn't on par with Perfect Dark. The biggest downgrade from Goldeneye is probably to music, Goldeneye actually secretly has an amazing soundtrack, but TWINE's soundtrack is merely adequate, I barely notice the music most of the time. Still, when your biggest complaint about an FPS game is music, you know you're looking at a game that's at least pretty decent, and I definitely do think this one is worth picking up for Goldeneye fans. I'm actually surprised that this game gets as little attention as it does, considering how Goldeneye is one of the most popular speedrun games of all time you'd think this game would at least see a bit more interest.