This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Invasion - GG - 100% (2)
Jimmy Johnson VR Football '98 - BBGA - 38% {4}
Simpsons Wrestling - BBBBABA - 14% (7)
Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein - Dare to Scare - BBB - 0% (3)
Twisted Metal 2 - GAGGGGGGGGG - 95% (11) (1 SR)
Wangan Trial - GGG - 100% (3)
This was a real all-or-nothing topic. I'm actually a bit surprised Twisted Metal only got 11 votes, I would have expected it to be one of the most-played games on the console.
Games for this topic:
Boxing
Digimon World 2
Mary-Kate and Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall
Reboot
Street Racer
Zoku Gussun Oyoyo
I'm actually quite scared to try the Reboot game, as I was a big fan of the show in my youth (along with Beast Wars, which we've already seen didn't fare too well when it came to video games). Strangely, I feel somewhat more optimistic about the Mary-Kate and Ashley game, I have a hunch that it might be decent.
Boxing - A
ReplyDeleteDigimon World 2 - G
Mary-Kate and Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall - A
Reboot - A
Street Racer - B
Zoku Gussun Oyoyo - G
As if the one-word name didn't tip you off, Boxing is another game in the Simple 1500 series. Something I appreciate about these games is that although they are budget titles, they always try to inject a little bit of personality into them, and that is also the case here. Although Boxing is quite simple (there's only one punch button, for starters), they did try to give it a decent amount of personality with the character designs and animations, almost looking like something you'd expect to see out of Punch-Out or what not. Each boxer has a unique super punch, though some of these are very overpowered, for example with Puma you basically just need to hit one of these and you instantly win, but the variety is appreciated. Something else I appreciate is that there's a little training mode of sorts that shows each boxer's story, gives a couple tips, and lets you try out their moves. Unfortunately, the AI is not great, each boxer tends to have a certain type of punch that they fail to guard against and other punches that they effectively block / dodge every time, so most matches come down to spamming that punch over and over (at least, until you get Puma), which causes it to get repetitive fairly quickly. That's particularly unfortunate because there's otherwise a somewhat decent amount of content here, progress is tracked independently for each boxer and there's a somewhat fleshed-out tournament mode to play through. Overall, it's not a completely terrible game but it could have used a little bit more polish.
As will become a standard for the series, Digimon World 2 is such a radical departure from the previous game that it can barely even be called a sequel. While the previous game was an open-world strategy / monster raising game, it has now become a Mystery Dungeon-style dungeon crawler with a Pokemon-esque battle system. While I don't find this game to be nearly as innovative or interesting as the first game, it still has a handful of good ideas. Probably the most interesting one is that you explore the dungeons in a tank called a Digi-Beetle, which you can upgrade to allow you to explore longer, hold more items and digimon, use different types of items in battle, and so on. It's not tremendously fleshed out, but it adds an interesting sense of progression to dungeon exploration. Of course, your Digimon themselves progress as well, levelling up and attaining new attacks and evolutions as per series standard. Like in Digimon World, attacks continue to use MP, which is crucial to manage well since if you run out and don't have any MP restores you literally can't attack at all. Something I like is that you can use an item and attack on the same turn, which helps speed battles up a little, which is great because battles can be very long. Easily the biggest issue with the game is it can be quite slow. Battles are frequent and are preceeded by lengthy load times, and every attack is accompanied by a fairly lengthy animation. At least the battle music and voice acting are pretty good, but I did use speedup fairly often in battles. Another thing I wasn't a huge fan of is the way you get new Digimon, you have to carry gifts with you to try to recruit someone, which use up precious item space and aren't very reliable, it took me like 10 tries to recruit my second party member. Still, you can easily save scum and once you have a handful of Digimon you won't really need too many more since you can just keep evolving them. Besides exploring dungeons, there's also a more traditionally Pokemon-like arena you can participate in, and there's a fairly forgettable storyline as well. Overall, there is a decent amount of content here and I feel it's decently fun, even though I don't think it's quite as clever or unique as the first game.
Well, the Mary-Kate and Ashley game isn't a total atrocity, but it's not that great either. Essentially the game is a minigame collection with 5 games. The first game is a food serving game. There's not a lot to this one, people make orders, you grab the food and give it to them. It's functional and gets somewhat nuanced in the last couple rounds but isn't anything to really write home about. The second game is a fashion game where you have to choose outfits and then take runway pictures. You can choose various camera angles and you're graded based on how well the photos are taken (the exact details aren't clear, but I think they prefer them to be centered, the girls to be posing, and to be facing the camera). This game is all right. The third game is a surprisingly well-fleshed out Snowboarding game. You can choose from various boards and opponents and there's 3 tracks. It's not as good as any dedicated snowboarding game or something but it's easily the most content-rich game in the package. The fourth game is another photo game, here the goal is to have Mary-Kate and Ashley photo-bomb two dudes who want nothing to do with them. This is hilarious and is easily the highlight of the collection, they will constantly try to walk away from you or hide in various positions and you have to catch them looking vaguely like they appreciate your company to score good points. The 5th game is a total writeoff where you make a music video, I was hoping this would be similar to DDR but instead you just pick various random dance steps, then mash special effects and camera pans as it records the video to win, there's no nuance to it. There are also some extras you can unlock for the various minigames like extra powerups and stuff through a slot machine. Overall, it's tolerable, but it's very short, I beat the whole thing in under an hour and I doubt anyone would ever come back to it. Still, A for that photography game, which is very memorable and unique.
DeleteStreet Racer is a hard game to rate. It's essentially a mode-7 style racer in a time when absolutely everyone else had already moved on to 3D racers, and as I've said previously, racing is one of those genres where once we had real 3D it became impossible to go back to the ones that tried to simulate it. An even bigger concern is that it's not even an especially good Mode 7 racer. The controls are kind of crummy, which the game sort of tries to mask by having constant chaos due to the number of pickups on the track, you'll constantly be picking up turbos and bombs (that you have to get rid of by hitting someone else) while you fight with the game's controls. There are a couple interesting ideas here, like the fact that you get point bonuses after each race based on various actions, like hitting rivals or collecting the most stars, but they're not really enough to make up for the fact that the game feels mediocre at the best of times. Overall, I feel like this game might have been A in the SNES era, but in this gen Racers have just taken such a leap forward that it can't compete anymore,
Thankfully, Reboot is not nearly as bad as I'd feared. It's a somewhat unusual action game that bares some resemblance to Tony Hawk or the more modern Hover. The goal of each stage is to mend 3 tears, then find the key(s) and exit, all the while avoiding taking too much damage from enemies or having the time limit run out when a tear is around. The most unique thing about the game is that Bob is on a hoverboard, which is where the Tony Hawk comparison comes in. Many reviews complained incessantly about the controls, though IMO they're actually completely fine, the board controls fairly well for the most part, if you've ever played Tony Hawk or anything similar you should be fine. The bigger issue probably has to do with the gunplay, most enemies have a ton of health and your subweapons, while more powerful, are very limited. The worst part of the game by far is actually mending the tears. When one appears, you're shown a cutscene of where it is and it appears on the radar, so finding them isn't the problem, but actually fixing them requires you to lock onto them with your mend beam, which can only be done from very close, and they also kind of suck you in and deal damage when you get close to them, forcing you to hold back the second they start to pull you in. Sometimes there are enemies around as well, and trying to patch them up always feels lame. Luckily, once they are dealt with you have infinite time to explore the rest of your level and find the keys to open the exit at your leisure, and these are also helpfully marked on the map so finding them isn't too arduous. Between levels there are cinematics, most of which are just pulled straight from the show, but a couple are made for the game (and feature drastically lower resolution assets), which thankfully do retain the original voice actors. Overall, it's not terrible, I wouldn't say it necessarily enhances the experience to be a fan of the show or anything, but it also doesn't hideously blemish the show's legacy either, which is about all I was hoping for.
DeleteZoku Gussun Oyoyo doesn't deviate a lot from the previous games in the series, but it doesn't really have to. If you're not familiar with it by now, the concept behind Gussun Oyoyo is that it's kind of like Lemmings and Tetris put together. Your goal is to guide Gussun to the goal in each stage, but he can only walk forward and climb up a single block, so to get him to the goal you have to drop Tetris pieces that he can walk and climb on. Complicating your goal are various enemies and hazards that have to be squished or avoided, and a gradually rising tide that will drown you if you move too slow. It's a pretty unique concept and the game is generally fun to play. Compared to the second SNES title, not a lot has changed beyond the presentation, which has gotten a nice bump. I find the new music in this version to be particularly catchy, which is nice because you'll be hearing it a lot. Besides the standard main game and puzzle modes, they've also now added a survival mode where your goal is just to keep building higher and higher. I enjoy the idea behind that mode, but it feels a little bit too easy compared to the rest of the game. It's a good way to practice I guess. Overall, it's a fun concept and this is probably the best title in the series so far.