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Last Topic's Ratings:
Arcade Party Pak - GAA - 67% (3)
Big Bass Fishing - BAA - 33% (3)
Carton-Kun - GA - 75% (2)
Fox Hunt - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Gokujou Parodius Da Deluxe Pack - GGG - 100% (3)
Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit - AGGGG - 90% (5)
I was really surprised that NFS3 only got 5 votes, as I was expecting it to be one of the most rated racing games. Hopefully everyone was just busy with the N64 topic or something.
Games for this topic:
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Chess
F1 Championship Season 2000
NFL Blitz
Ninja Jajamaru-Kun: Onigiri Ninpouchou
WCW/nWo Thunder
Surprisingly, "Chess" is not part of the Simple 1500 series, it's the one published by A1 Games. We also have more NFL Blitz, which I feel like we've been doing a lot lately, but I suppose it helps keep the comparison between the different versions fresh in my mind. I'm also looking forward to Ninja Jajamaru-Kun, which looks like a nifty little platformer that I'd never heard of until now.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain - G
ReplyDeleteChess - A
F1 Championship Season 2000 - G
NFL Blitz - G
Ninja Jajamaru-Kun: Onigiri Ninpouchou - A
WCW/nWo Thunder - B
Blood Omen is a pretty cool game. In a lot of ways, it's pretty similar to the 2D Zelda games, perhaps moreso than some of the other zelda-like games on the system, as like in the actual Zelda games there are no RPG mechanics here, this is a pure adventure title where all upgrades have to be found by exploring. The world of Blood Omen is massive and filled with dungeons and secrets, and you'll constantly earn new powers and items throughout the adventure, which is cool, though it also brings us to the game's biggest issue, which is that there's a lot of load time. Every time you enter a new screen the game loads for a few seconds, and screens are small, this makes town exploration in particular somewhat tedious. Apparently the PC version loads a lot faster so that version might be preferred. If you can get past this, though, there's a lot to like here. The gameplay is a bit simple, most enemies can be kited easily and you can use your abundant spells for all the rest, and Kain's ability to steal health from defeated human enemies (he's a vampire) tends to make many parts of the game fairly easy. One cool feature is that you have a number of different forms to use, such as a wolf form that moves fast and can jump and a peasant form that can talk to people. This helps add variety to the game, but annoyingly using these forms drains your mana even though they are often needed to progress through the areas, so if you're low you have little choice but to sit around and wait for your mana to come back. One of my favourite parts of the game is the voice acting, Kain provides narration for many of the game's events, and this gives the game kind of a unique sense of style, without this I think the game would feel a bit more run of the mill. Overall, it does require a bit of patience due to the load time, but it's a pretty fun game overall and maybe the best Zelda-like game on the platform.
It's always hard to rate Chess. Obviously, Chess the board game is G. It's been enduringly popular for over a thousand years and it retains its winning combination of simplistic rules that offer almost infinite strategy and depth even today. As a result, any game that gets the basics of Chess right will be enjoyable on some level because the underlying game is so good. However, this also means that it's harder for chess games to stand out. The simply-named Chess on PS1 is certainly a serviceable version of the classic game, it controls well, the music and visuals are not bad, and there's a wide range of opponents to fight against. That being said, there's also nothing here we haven't seen before, and in particular, I think the SNES version of The Chessmaster gives this game some pretty strong competition. For my money, the standout new feature for this era is instruction. When we look at the way Sports games have changed compared to the 16-bit era, one of the biggest additions is commentary, as the increased storage space of the new systems allows for the programming complexity needed to give convincing context-sensitive commentary. Similarly, this power can be used to give some pretty good advice on how to play Chess, which is used to fantastic effect in Chessmaster 2. Compared to that game, where I felt like I was getting much better at Chess almost immediately, this game definitely feels a little lacking. It's definitely better than The Chessmaster 3D, but we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. Overall, it's a serviceable rendition of Chess but you can do better.
F1 Championship Season 2000 is a strange product in some ways. For starters, compared to some of the games we've reviewed recently, this is a much more sim-style F1 experience. Barring that in mind, the game really wants you to race at least 16 laps per race. Although you can choose 4 or 8, if you do the game disables some of the options, for example you can't have fuel at 8 laps and even tire wear is disabled at 4 laps. This is kind of annoying as I think it would have been fairly easy to tweak the rate at which you run out of fuel and wear your tires to work with the lower lap settings, but the game still feels like an F1 game even without pitting so I guess it's not a huge loss. Another annoyance is that the game lacks a track map, and considering that most of the game revolves around braking well in advance of the turns, this is kind of a big deal. The game features commentary, but it too is fairly lacking. The announcer will announce the starting grid and occasionally tell you that someone has spun out, but that's about it. Even when they do announce other things, sometimes they're not even right, for example I had them warn me "the car in front is pulling away!" when we were neck and neck, making me wonder what race they were watching, and when you do your qualifying lap, they always tell you "you're in provisional first place" which means nothing because you qualify before all the other drivers. The major addition since F1 2000, which is otherwise identical save for a slightly less impressive interface, is the Scenario mode, though this locks you into 16 lap races and I find it to be fairly dull. All of this probably sounds like A or even B, but there's one aspect of the game we haven't talked about yet and it's the most important one, which is the actual gameplay. Despite everything else, the game completely nails it here. The game's controls are fantastic, the handling feels nuanced yet highly responsive, braking works great, car collisions feel good, going off the track feels punishing but still fair, etc. The difficulty is also very well tuned, qualifying in a good position is actually possible (this is an issue with many F1 games), and it always feels like you have a chance if you race well. The game also looks pretty good and runs at a rock-solid framerate (apparently this is improved in Championship Edition but it seemed fine in the base game too). To me, this puts it a good bit ahead of a number of other F1 games that get most of the other stuff right, but don't play nearly as well. I guess it just goes to show that gameplay is king in the end.
DeleteI feel like we've spent a lot of time on NFL Blitz lately, but it turns out there's actually more nuance to the comparison between the different versions of the game than I would have ever imagined so I don't regret doing them close together. When we covered the original NFL Blitz on N64, I complained about a few things, most particularly that the defenders didn't block well, that offense felt somewhat less nuanced, and that there's no four-player support, all of which are addressed in NFL Blitz 2001 / SE to make that version a much better game. When playing the PS1 version, the first thing I noticed is that the blocking feels fine. I think the reason I had this issue on NFL Blitz on N64 was that I was mainly playing as Arizona, who is absolutely atrocious, so in that regard I may have judged the game a little too harshly, as I noticed that the original game actually mostly felt fine to play on PS1. After comparing with SE, there is no question that SE is still a lot better, and in particular, the balance on offense is definitely a lot better, both due to better balance between running and passing plays and also due to the fact that the AI is a fair bit smarter (which forces you to mix up your strategy more to overcome them). Compared to the N64 version, the PS1 version lacks music, but otherwise keeps pace well graphically, and it feels to me like it plays just a tiny bit better in a way that I can't completely place, but either way the versions are very comparable. What isn't comparable, though, is the PS1 version of NFL Blitz 2001, which is a butchering compared to the N64 version, featuring significantly worse controls, AI, graphics, and pretty much everything else, to the extent that I think the original NFL Blitz is superior on PS1. While 2001 / SE on N64 is definitely still a fair bit better than this game, I do think this is a very solid PS1 sports title and solidly earns the G here.
DeleteNinja Jajamaru-Kun is a quirky early 3D platformer. Like Crash Bandicoot, it's kind of a "hallway platformer" where there's very little exploration, though it manages to avoid some of the pitfalls of the game by focusing more on combat and less on platforming. The core gameplay isn't bad, the camera rotates automatically whenever you get to corners so you never have to fiddle with it, and throwing shuriken and using your katana is done with a single button so it's very simple to get into. One slightly weird mechanic is that almost every enemy in the game can be dispatched by a single slash or at most a couple shuriken, even the bosses, which makes pretty many of the enemies feel interchangeable even though a new one is introduced every level and the boss fights a cinch. The game also has a lot of load time for a platformer and the minecart stages are pretty lame, the game's draw distance just doesn't really work for them. Things are all right when you're doing the standard stages, but the game tends to get repetitive quickly. There's also a Saturn version of this game which is drastically different, with fewer but much more varied levels and some bonus stages where you play the original Famicom game, so that one might be better overall.
WCW/nWo Thunder is essentially the same game as WCW Nitro, which means that it's still atrocious. They've added more wrestlers and modes, but it's still the same awful engine from Nitro, which means it's not fun to play at all. Besides being way too fast and just generally feeling bad to play, I think how illogical this game's movelist is deserves special attention, as I had to look up a guide to even figure out how to do a basic grapple slam (it's right + circle, followed by square and then X, fairly fast but not together). With how good other wrestling games got this generation there's no room for a game that's this lousy.