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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Cyber Tiger - AAAG - 63% (4)
Final Fantasy 5 - GGGGG - 100% (5)
Grid Runner - GAAA - 63% (4)
Lone Soldier - BB - 0% (2)
Truck Racing - BA - 25% (2)
U.P.P. - AB - 25% (2)
This was a pretty quiet one, but with 3 games in the low B range it's maybe not hard to see why. Still, interesting to see the reception to FF5 when compared to FF4, considering I would say their general popularity is the opposite.
Games for this topic:
Boombots
Crusader: No Remorse
Gallop Racer
Mille Miglia
Tai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger
You Don't Know Jack
Of all the games here, I'm actually most looking forward to trying out Gallop Racer. Horse Racing games are huge in Japan, but virtually none of them ever get localized, so it'll be interesting to see what the genre's all about.
Boombots - B
ReplyDeleteCrusader: No Remorse - G
Gallop Racer - A
Mille Miglia - A
Tai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger - A
You Don't Know Jack - G (SR)
Boombots has great production values, but unfortunately it also completely sucks. It's a fighting game, but rather than playing like a more conventional fighter it plays like an extremely bad version of Custom Robo. Like in that game, you can move around 3D arenas, fire your gun, shoot two types of bombs, and do melee attacks, except that generally everything feels terrible and it isn't fun. The arenas have little cover, your missiles are slow and useless, gun shots do no damage, and the melee attack is fast and spammable and can reflect everything. Pretty much the entire game comes down to spamming melee attacks and grabs because everything is so poorly tuned. Between matches, you get some funny dialogue and some fairly well-made cutscenes (Dreamworks was involved), but it unfortunately barely matters because the core game isn't fun at all. I feel like this sort of thing just goes to show how important a good developer is to making a fun game because even though this game has good production values, without a solid understanding of game mechanics you just can't make a good game.
Crusader: No Remorse is a very cool game with one major flaw. At its core, the game is an isometric action adventure game, where you'll travel through various indoor environments, shoot all kinds of people, blow tons of stuff up, and collect a ton of weapons and gear along the way. The game offers quite a bit of freedom on how to tackle obstacles. Environments are very destructible and this can often be used against your enemies, and stealth can be an option as well. All of this is accompanied by some pretty kickass music and good voice acting. So what's the catch? The game's controls completely suck. You have your choice of either tank controls or camera-relative controls for movement, though both feel bad, shooting has some degree of autoaim, but it's unreliable, and the game's interface is very cumbersome. Interacting with objects, which you'll be doing constantly, is mapped to L1 + Triangle, and god help you if you need to use something from your inventory. For example, to use a spiderbomb, you have to first select it with R2, then activate it with triangle + Dpad Up, then guide it with tank controls, and the camera doesn't even follow them bomb while you're doing this. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe this is a case of a bad console port and the PC version controls much better (for example, if this was a KB+M game and the mouse aimed and shot, that might be a lot better), but actually the PC version controls is just as bad if not worse in the control department and this is actually a very good port overall. Despite the control issues, I think the core game is actually so cool that the game is probably still G, and I'm glad this got a console port because it's easier than getting the PC version running.
Well, one thing I can say about Gallop Racer, it successfully convinced me that there is a lot of potential in horse racing, even if it does not itself fully capitalize on it. The game is made by Tecmo, who also created Monster Rancher, and some similarities are immediately evident. Like in that game, you need to plan what you want to do each week, you'll need to take your horses to races to increase their rank and make money, but horses also need to rest between races. You can also breed two horses to create a new horse to raise that shares some of their characteristics. The management gameplay is vastly simpler than Monster Rancher, you won't be deciding what to feed them or having events at your stable or anything like that, so when a horse is resting, you'll usually just be racing a different horse, but some of the appeal is still there. The game's biggest issue is that it's very complex in a lot of ways and nothing is explained to you to any degree. Monster Rancher has this issue to some degree as well, but it's far worse here, with absolutely no explanations or help menus for anything. From what I was eventually able to gather, each horse has a preferred spot in the pack in which to race. Your horse's current condition, which is dependent on both its position and how fast it is running, is represented by a coloured triangle, which you ideally want to be green or blue, because this causes them to burn through their stamina a little slower, giving you a slightly better chance on the home stretch. As you can probably tell by that description, the effect of running the race well appears to be extremely minor, contributing maybe a quarter bar of additional stamina with a perfect race that barely matters to the finish, which is easily the most disappointing thing in the game, it feels like your actions have very little effect on the race's outcome. If running the race well meant you'd have almost all of your stamina left at the end I feel like this would be a lot better, since at least then you'd know if you're playing the game properly or not (speaking of, I still have no idea how or when you should whip the horse and whether or not which side you whip matters to any degree). Overall it's an interesting concept and I can kind of see the appeal but it needs a lot more work on the localization standpoint for westerners to be able to enjoy it.
DeleteMille Miglia is a mixed bag. For a racing game no one's ever heard of it's decently ambitious, with pretty good visuals, quite a lot of tracks and cars, and a decent progression structure. The game also has a decent sense of style, featuring extremely retro cars to race (though they don't really control any differently, more on this in a moment) and an extremely eclectic orchestral soundtrack that I actually kind of like. Unfortunately, the game has issues with its controls and difficulty level. For starters, its controls are a little too twitchy. They would not be too much of an issue by themselves, but the game is also extremely punishing. The courses are thin and twisty and collisions with either the track or other races are very costly, which makes it extremely hard to actually pass anyone. Thankfully, the AI does "play fair" and it's not really any easier for them to pass you if you do manage to pull ahead, but the difficulty unquestionably feels overtuned and the controls aren't quite up to the task of such a difficult game, which is a shame because it's otherwise fairly decent. It's not a complete mess, but you'd better have a lot of patience and be a master of similar games to make any progress in this one.
Tai Fu is another game that Dreamworks was involved with, and like Boombots it also has substantially better presentation than gameplay, but it's not quite as bad. It's a combination of a beat-em-up and platformer, you'll traverse through 3D levels, defeating the same enemies dozens of times using the same combo, and collecting a few goodies along the way. Once again, the game's presentation is pretty good, particularly the voice acting, which is quite well done, but the gameplay is ultra-repetitive even for a beat-em-up. Unlike almost every other beat-em-up in existence, this game has only one attack button, and thus only one real combo, square square square triangle. Every handful of stages, you'll get a new move or two, for example the first one is a special attack that can wipe out nearby enemies but has to recharge by getting kills, but it does little to help the monotonous nature of the gameplay. What does help a little is the level design, the game has some platformer elements and these are competently executed, so it's not quite as dull as a standard beat-em-up that takes place entirely on a flat plane would be with this control scheme, but it's still a fairly ho-hum affair for most of the game.
DeleteYou Don't Know Jack rocks. I feel this is almost unquestionably the best trivia game of all time. For starters, it's very accessible. A lot of trivia games are focused around subjects like history and science that very few people are likely to know, but YDJK is mostly based around pop culture or other things that might be considered common knowledge. There are certainly some tricky ones in there, but much of the challenge is focused around speed, such as in the Dis or Dat or Jack Attack challenges, which drastically broadens the title's accessibility and thus its viability as a party game. Secondly, this game's production values are off the charts. Every single question is voiced, the announcer has something unique to say about every right answer (and a lot of the wrong answers too), and there are 1400 different questions across the two discs, which is absolutely nutty. Even the loading screens and tutorials are just dripping with charm and personality, which works together to ensure that the game never feels repetitive. And of course, it's also hilarious. The ideas for many of the questions are very creative, and the announcer has tons of funny quips, so even if you suck it's hard to feel too bad about it. It all comes together to make a game that feels almost endlessly replayable and fun. The PS1 port is fantastic, too, it is pretty much exactly accurate to the PC version, but also has a ton of questions that are unique to it and they even went the extra mile to give you a whole second disc so they could fit even more questions into it. A masterpiece.