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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Banjo-Tooie - GGGAAGGBGGGGGGAGG - 85% (17) (3 SR)
Cruis'n Exotica - GGAAAGG - 79% (7)
Custom Robo V2 - GG - 100% (2) (1 SR)
Fighter Destiny 2 - AGAGGG - 83% (6) (1 SR)
Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding - BBABABA - 21% (7)
Worms Armageddon - AGGAGGG - 86% (7) (1 SR)
Tons of SRs given out in this topic, though except for darthcorpse, no one actually gave enough to use them all up. Make sure to give out your remaining SRs everybody, and check the link below if you don't know how many you have.
Games for this topic:
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Duke Nukem: Zero Hour
Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest
Mario Party 3
San Francisco Rush 2049
Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense
Except for Batman Beyond, every game in this topic is a sequel. That's how you can tell we're getting near the end, I guess.
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker - B
ReplyDeleteDuke Nukem: Zero Hour - G
Ken Griffey Jr's Slugfest - A
Mario Party 3 - G
San Francisco Rush 2049 - A
Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense - G
Batman Beyond has good presentation, but that's really about all it's got going for it. I like the still shots that tell the story (the show has quite a nice artstyle) and even the enemy banter between rooms isn't bad, but the gameplay leaves so much to be desired that there's still little reason to play it even for hardcore fans. It's a 2D beat-em-up, but it's such a ludicrously simple one that there's barely any gameplay. There are no "combos" in this game, Terry only has a handful of standard attacks, and the entire game typically revolves around getting in your enemy's face and mashing your strongest one until they're dead (which usually only take like 3-5 hits). Even bosses go down just as easily. You have the ability to switch suits on the fly and the main suit has access to gadgets, but the gadgets are too slow and unwieldy to be worth using compared to standard punches and kicks. The game's framerate is also very inconsistent (in an emulator, all slowdown is removed and the game runs vastly too fast), varying a lot when enemies are present even though they usually don't really do anything complicated. About the only good thing you could say about it is that it's short and easy so if you do just want to experience the story it won't be a pain to do so.
I'm not exactly sure what motivated the change from FPS to TPS for Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, but it makes the transition well enough. One of the best things about the game is the presentation, there's a bit more of a cinematic focus this time compared to Duke Nukem 3D, with occasional cutscenes before and during levels. Duke retains his original voice actor and is always hilarious so these scenes are fun, as are Duke's quips throughout the levels. Speaking of, the levels are pretty big and have a decent number of secrets, and the overall level design feels fine even if I feel it's maybe not quite as memorable as 3D. The controls work well enough, I do find some of the choices to be a bit weird (for example, you can't manual aim unless using a weapon like the sniper rifle), and the jumping is a bit clunky, though this is the case in pretty much every shooter. Overall, the game generally feels pretty decent, though in most ways it isn't quite as well-polished as Duke Nukem 3D. For example, I pretty much always just use the dual blaster except in situations that specifically force me to switch (like enemies that can't be damaged by it), whereas I feel like the weapons in Duke 3D generally have more of a defined purpose. Movement also feels a little slower compared to Duke 3D and the levels have a little less detail, though not drastically so. Overall, it's a decent follow-up to Duke 3D, somewhat similar to TWINE, but it's not quite the classic that the original game is.
It feels weird to be giving Ken Griffy Jr's Slugfest an A because many aspects of the game have improved compared to its predecessor, but overall I feel it's not as good for reasons I'll get to soon. For starters, let's review the basics. Like many other baseball games of this era, the Ken Griffey games implement a targetting-based batting system, where you have to line up the bat with the ball as the pitch is thrown. I actually feel that this system has improved compared to the previous game, the batting icon is now more of a wedge instead of a simple circle, and hitting different parts of the wedge affects the ball's trajectory. I actually feel like the batting system feels well balanced, in many games it's either way too hard or way too easy to hit the ball, but here it feels about the right level of challenge, so that it feels fair to both the pitcher and the batter. The presentation of the game is great as well, a solid improvement from the previous game. Players and animations look good and the stadiums in particular look really nice. Commentary remains limited, as with most N64 games, but the stadium and crowd noises are fine. So why do I rate this one lower than the previous game? Oddly, it's because fielding controls have also been improved. The camera switches to fielders really well and the fielding controls are fantastic, which has the unfortunate side-effect of making it far too easy to catch fly balls and intercept line drives, shifting the balance of the game much too far towards the fielders. It feels odd to complain about the fact that the fielding controls work too well, but the fact that it's so easy to rob the players when they actually land a hit trivializes many aspects of the game. Playing the batting game well doesn't really matter when you almost always get caught out anyway. Similarly, throwing good pitches doesn't really matter because even if you give them simple fastballs to the middle they'll almost always just get caught out anyway. Without home runs, it's almost impossible to score, which also trivializes the skills of base running and such. This feels like a very minor thing, but when you go back to the first game it's night and day, some many more hits are able to get through the defense and it makes the game feel much more balanced overall. It's sort of an interesting example of how subtle changes can have a drastic impact on the gameplay experience.
DeleteThere's room to debate which is better between Mario Party 2 and 3, though I feel it's clear that they're very close in quality and are obviously the two best games in the franchise. Compared to Mario Party 2, Mario Party 3 has a more significant focus on single player content, with the addition of a story mode, though gameplay-wise it's almost the same thing as previous games, consisting solely of a bunch of regular matches against AI opponents. They've also added two new characters, Waluigi and Daisy, which is appreciated, though sadly the board-specific costumes from Mario Party 2 have been axed. Of course, the real appeal of the game is the minigames, and once again they don't disappoint, offering an excellent selection with no obnoxious stick-rotation games, similar to Mario Party 2. There's not really too much more to say about it, it's still a great party game, and Mario Party 2 and 3 are certainly both well-worth owning. It strikes me as kind of funny that at the time, Mario Party 3 was criticized to some extent for being too samey as the other games, but now the fact that it gets the formula "right" seems like a huge plus, after they spent years screwing up the series with dumb gimmicks and casualizing the rules. Sometimes you just have to stick with what works. The real problem was likely that they just released too many games in the series in too little time.
Rush 2049 is a solid improvement over the rather dismal Rush 2, but it's still got a ways to go to be good. Compared to Rush 2, which felt very lazy in most ways, there's at least vastly more going on with Rush 2049. The progression system has been improved quite a bit this time around, which was one of the areas that was most lacking in previous games. There are now two ways to unlock content in the game, both by finding coins that are hidden in the level and by racing enough to earn miles on the odomoter. This is still not what I'd consider ideal as I think it makes much more sense to have unlockables in a racing game tied to actually winning races, but it at least gives the game more replay value. Another new addition to the game is that addition of the glider controls, by pressing a button you can extend some wings from your car to extend your air time or manuever in the air, and while this is sometimes cool, it is also somewhat hamstrung by the physics engine, which is also the biggest issue with the game. Simply put, the core Rush engine was never good and it's showing its problems most severely in this game. This game contains to feature the bizarre SF Rush handling engine, where cars are only allowed to turn about half as much as they would be in any other racing game, making the game feel extremely stiff. You often can't take even simple curves without slowing down simply because the game doesn't allow you to turn hard enough to make the turn, which feels bizarre and extremely poorly optimized for analog controls (it almost feels like this game was made for digital steering control, though there are many PS1 racers that use digital controls better than this). There is a powerslide move, but it simply sucks, usually just causing you to kind of flail out of control helplessly, while also losing a lot of speed even if controlled well, so you kind of just have to slow down to hug the inside of turns, which feels very out of place for a game like this. The controls when using the glider are similarly bad, don't expect to be doing fancy air manuevers, if you try to do anything other than glide straight you'll usually just flip over and crash. It's a shame, because there is a lot of content here and the game has its moments of being fun (usually when you're driving in a mostly straight line) but I don't think there's any way a racing game that doesn't have good controls can be G.
DeleteVigilante 8: 2nd Offense is pretty similar to the first game, but with a couple additions. For starters, the game still plays mostly the same, it's a vehicular combat game that is much more accessible than Twisted Metal, largely owing to greatly reduced numbers of enemies on each stage and the fact that you can retry stages if you fail them. The biggest change from the first game is to the story mode, which now has additional objectives on each stage beyond kill all enemies, there's now some items to find and some stuff to protect from getting blown up. I'm not really a big fan of this because it distracts from the action of the main game. Missions automatically end if you blow everyone up, so you have to leave at least one opponent alive while you get the items. Finding them is usually not too bad, as they're either shown on the radar or hidden inside things that are always in the same spot, but it's significantly more annoying when there's an enemy on your tail shooting you the whole time, and they enemy AI has been made significantly more aggressive since the first game. Worse yet, when you do pick up the mission item, it wastes one of your weapon slots, which significantly hampers your offensive capabilities for the rest of the stage, and of course the enemies could decide to blow up the defense objective at any time, which can also screw you over. On the plus side, the other new change gives you a bit more of a chance against them, which is that when you total an enemy vehicle, they drop some salvage points that can be used to permanently upgrade your vehicle. Beyond this, there's also the new stages, which are generally a bit bigger than in the first game and tend to have more interactables, though there's a strange focus on water in many of the stages. You can cross the water with the skis powerup, but without it you simply fall into the water and respawn near the beginning of the map. You'd expect this to deal damage, but it doesn't, so it can be abused for an easy escape from a pursuer, and the enemy also uses it this way (they start to flee from you when very low on health), which makes finishing off low health opponents a bit annoying at times. Still, despite the fact that it can occasionally be frustrating, this is still a pretty fun game with a lot of content and I would generally recommend playing it, just make sure to take some breaks sometimes.
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