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Last Topic's Ratings:
All Star Slammin D Ball - BA - 25% (2)
Book of Watermarks, The - GB - 50% (2)
CT Special Forces: Back to Hell - BG - 50% (2)
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns - GGGA - 88% (4)
Speed Racer - ABB - 17% (3)
X-Com: UFO Defense - GAGG - 88% (4)
Not a lot of votes this time, though I thought it was interesting that KFHEWUI and I had totally opposite ratings considering that we're usually fairly similar.
Games for this topic:
Invasion
Jimmy Johnson VR Football '98
Simpsons Wrestling
Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein - Dare to Scare
Twisted Metal 2
Wangan Trial
The game called "Invasion" is not "Invasion From Beyond" / "B-Movie", it is a Europe-only flying game published by Microids. Also, we have the long-awaited Simpsons Wrestling in this topic, which I'm looking forward to going back to because I remember I kind of liked it even though I know it was widely criticized.
Invasion - G
ReplyDeleteJimmy Johnson VR Football 98 - G
Simpsons Wrestling - A
Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein - Dare to Scare - B
Twisted Metal 2 - G
Wangan Trial - G
Invasion is very clearly a budget title, but it's actually pretty fun. It's a flight game, somewhat similar to Ace Combat or other games of that nature, where you'll take a bunch of missions with varied objectives. The core gameplay of the game is actually very solid, the game controls well and the minimap and HUD are both very well designed, making it easy to track your objectives even if you don't pay attention to the pre-mission briefing. One thing I like about the game is the simplicity of controlling certain actions, you have speed mapped to R1 and brake on R2, the combination of which makes controlling the craft very easy, and your lasers and weapons have a good punch to them as well, it really makes you wonder how so many other games of this type struggled with the basics like this. The missions are pretty decent too, all of them have multiple objectives and there's some good variety. For example, the third mission is a defense mission where you have to activate a shield within a time limit, then cut off the enemy flagship before it reaches the core of your base, which is a fairly large departure from the assault missions of maps 1 and 2, then for mission 4 you have to capture a train. The game does have a couple issues though. The first is that the production values are fairly poor. There are cutscenes between each level with voice acting, but they're very basic and are reused over and over. When you die, it shows a cutscene of you being shot down, or if you fail a mission by failing an objective you don't even get that, you just go straight to the mission failed screen. Still, this is mostly just window dressing and doesn't affect the core gameplay too much. The other issue is that the game is really hard. There are tons of enemies on each stage and they're very aggressive, so even though you have a fair amount of health and can pick up powerups you're going to be taking damage near constantly, which is not helped by the fact that there's some kind of rival gunship that flies a similar plane to yours who hounds you relentlessly, even if you shoot him down he comes back 30 seconds later or so. You have a ton of special weapons and using them well is absolutely critical to survival, especially the almighty vampire, which leaches precious health from enemies, but escape is the preferred solution in many cases as well as your ship is faster than any of your enemies. It does make the game feel fairly strategic and exciting, but if your tolerance for frustration is low you might not have a good time unless you abuse save states. "You're still alive Elroy, what a miracle" indeed.
I'm a bit surprised by the reception to VR Football 98 because I found it to be a pretty solid game. It's certainly not as fancy as something like Madden in terms of presentation, in particular the game has no commentary during matches, but I like the game's accessibility and fast pacing quite a lot. The game features a couple of neat innovations that make running plays feel very intuitive. The first is that the buttons are shown underneath the possible pass targets at all times and a pass is thrown with a single button, which feels very intuitive. Something that is (as far as I know) unique to this game is that when a pass is thrown, the pass's trajectory is shown with an outline, similar to what you might see in a golf game, which makes it very simple to run your player to the pass's target, though of course the opponent can tell right where it's going as well. Another interesting facet of the game is that most plays can be either a run or a passing play, there is always a halfback behind the quarterback who you can choose to do a handoff to by pressing triangle to turn the play into a running play, or you can just go for the pass instead, depending on the opposing team's defensive formation. This might seem like it gives a lot of power to the offense, but each play starts quite far behind the line of scrimmage and interceptions and fumbles can occur easily if you make poor passing choices, so it still feels balanced, and the ability to see the potential pass targets on defense too makes it easy to know who to cover. Overall, even though it's not quite up there presentation-wise with games like Madden and I don't like the gameplay quite as much as NFL Blitz, it's still a pretty solid title and I had fun playing it.
DeleteAfter playing Simpsons Wrestling again, it's not hard to see why it gets hate. It's an absurdly simple game that can barely even be called Wrestling, it's really more like a very simple fighting game. Each character has an energy bar which gradually fills up, and there are square, triangle, and circle icons overtop of it that represent moves. Pressing the appropriate button executes the move and drains the energy bar. There are different moves for standing, running off the ropes, jumping, and grabs, and that's essentially the entire game. You hit the opponent with enough moves until they get low on health, then knock them down and press grab to pin. It's almost absurdly basic and the characters don't have a ton of variety, everyone's square move is a basic combo and the triangle move is a projectile, only the circle move really differentiates the characters. Despite this, I still kind of enjoy it, even though it's clearly not a good game. One thing it does do well is make very good use of the voice actors from the show, there are many voice clips from the playable characters, the announcer (Kent Brockman) and various members of the crowd (Dr Nick, Ralph, Nelson, etc), and in a certain sense I feel like the absurdly stupid and simplistic gameplay kind of enhances the comedy value of the game. It's not something you'd want to play for a long time but I can see fans of the show getting at least some enjoyment out of it. If nothing else, it's a nostalgic reminder of when The Simpsons used to be the best show on TV.
Toonenstien in a bizarre non-game that I almost don't know how to describe, though it clearly sucks. It is a game only in the loosest possible sense of the word, as it features effectively no gameplay. You wander through the game's environments and interact with switches, that cause obnoxiously long animations. After each switch is pressed, one of a few things happens, nothing, you get a piece of the code, Elmyra shows up, or bombats. When bombats appear, you can't press any more switches until you play a super simple minigame to shoot them. You have to press all the switches on each floor until you have the entire code, at which point you go to the basement and win the game. And that's the entire game. The graphics are decent and so is the voice acting, but there's essentially nothing here and it's not fun to play at all. What a bizarre idea this one was.
DeleteTwisted Metal 1 is a weird and unpolished game that never quite comes together, but Twisted Metal 2 is the point where the series becomes Twisted Metal. Everything about the game is vastly improved compared to the original, it controls way better, it looks way better, there's a lot more content, the gameplay is a lot more fun, etc. There are still a couple issues with the game, most prominently with the AI. The AI in this game is actually kind of nonexistent. Most of the rival cars will actually just drive in predefined patterns and thus never make any real effort to hunt you down or engage the other drivers unless you're actively attacking them. Of course, you can exploit this to help tilt the odds in your favour (which is necessary because the game is effectively a 5 or 6-vs-1 at all times), though the fact that the drivers rarely attack each other feels a bit lame. I also feel like there are a bit fewer weapon pickups on the stages than I'd like, you have to use all of your weapons very judiciously because running out is a serious concern at all times, and I feel a couple of the maps are still too big or have too many hiding places (Paris is a notable example). The game's progression is also a bit limited, there's really only a simple arcade mode with no real unlocks (in fact, the game doesn't even allow you to save), though it is nice that they included co-op. Overall, while there is still more room for improvement, this is still quite a fun game. I do feel it pales somewhat to later games in the series and other later games like Vigilante 8, but it was still pretty impressive for its time.
Wangan Trial is an interesting game. Despite being a racing game, the entire focus of this game is on its story mode, which features extremely elaborate fully acted cutscenes, which basically look like they were ripped straight out of a movie. There are 5 different paths to take, each featuring a different female protagonist to be the main character's girlfriend, all of whom have some connection to street racing. The first has her brother injured in a street racing accident, the second is a mechanic, etc. I wish I understood Japanese a little better because the story is quite extensive, with each character's story having two main chapters and a number of intermediate cutscenes as well. Of course, inbetween cutscenes you have to do races, and thankfully the racing engine works well enough. It's not super detailed and there also aren't that many courses, but the control is pretty responsive and the game runs quite smoothly. The only real issue is that the difficulty of the game is way overtuned. The first chapter in each story is broken into 3 races, between which your position carries over, and you must be in first by the end of the final race. There's virtually no room for error, and the final course is especially tough as the final racer is very far ahead, requiring a near perfect run to win. However, that pales in comparison to chapter 2, which is a 3 lap race on a circuit course. The course is not that tough, but you require a nearly perfect run in order to win, I was only able to do it by making very heavy use of savestates. Beyond this, there's also a single race mode where you can unlock some bonus cars, compared to the story mode this is a little easier but nothing from here carries over (in particular, you can not use the bonus cars in story mode). Overall, while there's arguably not a ton of gameplay content to this game, it's an interesting change of pace from many similar racing games and I appreciate the ambition to basically record a full movie for the game. It was pretty satisfying when I finally won the circuit race and got to see the ending of the story, even though I only understood bits of what was going on.
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