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Last Topic's Ratings:
A Train - GAGBA - 60% {5}
Burning Road - AAABB - 30% (5)
Jet Ace - BBB - 0% (3)
Prince of Tennis, The - AA - 50% (2)
Sorcerer's Maze - AAGA - 63% (4)
Street Fighter Alpha 2 - GGGAGGAAAGG - 81% (11)
Kind of a middling topic, I was a bit surprised to see Alpha 2 at only 81%. I'll be curious to see how Alpha 3 does when we finally get there.
Games for this topic:
All Star Slammin D Ball
Book of Watermarks, The
CT Special Forces: Back to Hell
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns
Speed Racer
X-Com: UFO Defense
Surprisingly, I've never played the original X-Com. I remember hearing people talk about it a bunch back in high school, but I wasn't a big PC gamer at the time and I didn't even realize there was a PS1 version. It'll be interesting to finally check it out.
All Star Slammin D Ball - A
ReplyDeleteBook of Watermarks, The - B
CT Special Forces: Back to Hell - G
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns - G
Speed Racer - B
X-COM: UFO Defense - G
As you probably wouldn't be surprised to find out, All Star Slammin D Ball is essentially just Super Dodge Ball. Mechanically, it's pretty solid, with decent graphics, controls, and animations, but unfortunately there's very little game here. You can do a single match against the AI or another person or the tournament mode and that's it. The teams are essentially all the same besides looks, there are no special mechanics to any of the fields, and no method to improve or swap out your players. Even adding one of the modes from Battle Dodgeball on SNES would have helped tremendously with the game's playability, because there is a solid foundation here, and I actually like the way the game handles power shots (unlike in Battle Dodgeball, they simply have special effects but you can catch them and send them back just like with any other type of shot), but there's not enough game here for anything more than A.
The Book of Watermarks is very similar to Myst, but significantly worse in pretty much every way. Like Myst, this is one of those adventure games where you can merely turn, no rotating the camera allowed here like in Atlantis. Easily the thing that stands out the most about it is that it's an extremely small game. The total game area here is almost absurdly limited, I kept figuring that as you completed the acts (which are themselves also very short, each consisting of only a single puzzle) it would take me to a totally new area, but the game world always remains extremely small. In a certain sense this might help keep you on track, but it also makes for an extremely short game where you don't really do a lot other than wait for lengthy scenes when you walk from one place to another (no doubt, this is how this extremely minimal game manages to use up 2 discs). The game's plot is also extremely forgettable, not really offering any intrigue like in Juggernaut or even Myst. Overall, it's hard not to see this as the weakest of the lot of these types of games on PS1.
My hopes for CT Special Forces 2 weren't super high based on the extremely poor first game, but it's actually a massive improvement in virtually every way imaginable. Besides significantly patching up the main gameplay to feel vastly less stiff compared to the original game, they've also significantly upped the presentation, with much nicer spritework (it now really looks like Metal Slug) and some actual music compared to the first game. What I particularly didn't expect though is there's also been a significant effort to add variety to the game. In addition to the Metal Slug-esque main gameplay, there's also now some shmup stages and other mini challenges, like Parachuting and Sniping, and the levels generally feel much less generic and repetitive than before. Overall, it's a vastly more playable game than the first title and a respectable action game now. You could probably make the argument that what's here still isn't especially amazing and it might not be enough for G, but I respect how much they were able to improve the game compared to the first title.
Unlike the N64 game, Lode Runner: The Legend Return sticks very close to the original formula, and is better for it. This game is extremely similar to the original in concept, you need to get all the gold while not being caught by enemies, using only your ability to destroy bricks to defend you, but there's a kind of timeless appeal to this simple concept and it remains engaging here. There's really not much to say about this game from a presentation standpoint, it's super simple, but the graphics are clear and easy to follow and you can always see the entire stage on screen at a time. I also kind of like the game's "music", which is usually ambience but sometimes dips into little ditties of music, it feels like it fits the game well. The game contains 150 levels and a level editor, so there's a lot to do, and even though the game contains lives (which I've decried many times), you get tons of them and you can also save the game at any point so it's not really a big deal. There's not really too much else to say about this one other than that it's a good puzzle game.
DeleteSpeed Racer is pretty similar to All Star Slammin D Ball in that it's also a huge missed opportunity, but it's not as solid mechanically so it's even less worth playing. Like D Ball, there's barely any game here, with only 3 races and almost no progression (there are a couple hidden cars to unlock but that's about it). The only thing separating this game from a bog standard racer is that you can use some of the special gadgets on your car, but the tracks don't really take advantage of them so they feel superflous 99% of the time, leaving it as just a basic racer with little content and not great course design. I sometimes wonder why some of these games had so little effort put into them because sometimes the core of a good game is there, it just needs a lot more work.
X-COM is a very complex game. At its core, the game is a turn-based strategy game. There are a number of similarities to games like Jagged Alliance, you control a team of soldiers who you can outfit with various types of gear, and engage enemies in turn-based battles. Like in Jagged Alliance, each unit has a certain amount of action points per turn, which they can spend doing various things, moving, attacking, opening doors, etc. They can also reserve some of their action points to use defensively during the opponent's turn, should they happen to see an opponent moving. The terrain is quite varied and using cover is virtually essential, and the maps are somewhat randomly generated, which gives the game a lot of variety. However, the strategy battle portion represents only a small portion of the game, there is also an RTS-like aspect to the game as well, where you manage and upgrade bases, research enemy technologies, and dispatch ships as well. Before you can engage in battle, you must locate and pursue enemy UFOs, which is not inordinately complicated, you will be notified when your radar detects a UFO, and then can dispatch fighters (to shoot it out of the air, should it attempt to flee) and transports to engage ground forces after the UFO lands or is shot down. After missions, you can analyze reclaimed artifacts, improve your bases, buy new weapons, hire more personel, and a ton of other things. This barely even scratches the surface of what you do in the game, but suffice it to say there's a lot going on. As you might expect from a western game of this vintage, there's no tutorial or explanations given of any kind of any of the systems in the game, and not much has been done to optimize the interface for PS1. The game's default button controls are a complete atrocity and make the game nearly unplayable. Besides the illogical nature of the button mappings (select is menu in the RTS section, but in battle, start is menu instead), there's also some bizarre glitches where the game will either execute random commands upon pressing start or select (often having your soldiers turn or move slightly in a given direction) and sometimes it just ignores your button presses entirely. Thankfully, the option for a mouse cursor-based scheme is also present, though this is somewhat awkward as well. The screen scroll with this setting is super fast and when combined with the somewhat low framerate the game runs at it can feel hard to control, but at least the weird phantom inputs problem from the button mode are gone. I really wish they had combined the two, though, while using the mouse and keyboard system like 90% of the controller is unused, some hotkeys would have gone a long way towards increasing playability. Nevertheless, this is still a pretty cool game and with the mouse controls it plays just tolerably enough not to ruin the experience, but playing it on PC is probably preferred if you have the option.
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