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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
All Star Soccer - ABBB - 13% (4)
Battle Stations - BAB - 17% (3)
Extreme 500 - BB - 0% (2)
Forsaken - GGGGGAAA - 81% (8)
Poy Poy - GABAG - 60% {5}
Warhawk - BBBGGG - 50% (6)
What a crazy topic this one was. So divisive! Warhawk in particular was a wild ride, the very definition of a "love it or hate it" game.
Games for this topic:
Finger Flashing
GT Kai
Johnny Bazookatone
Q-Bert
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Yakiniku Bugyou
As opposed to last topic, here we have probably one of the least divisive PS1 games out there in THPS2. Personally though, I'm more excited for Yakiniku Bugyou, which looks really quirky and interesting, and I have a secret love for games that involve cooking.
Finger Flashing - B
ReplyDeleteGT Kai - B
Johnny Bazookatone - A
Q-Bert - B
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - G
Yakiniku Bugyou - G
Finger Flashing is barely a game. It's basically akin to those colour matching games from Bishi Bashi, where there are three colours and the only challenge is to press the button on the controller that corresponds with them. There's a little more you can do to the game, for example you have a time stop move and there's a basic combo system, but it definitely doesn't feel like it should be anywhere close to being a retail release.
GT Kai is a pretty bad racer. The most unique thing about it is that it's an isometric racer, which are not common on PS1, but this is also its biggest downfall. The game features a somewhat more realistic handling engine compared to most isometric racing games, and it also features a dynamic camera that zooms in and out, and these simply do not mesh well at all with the game's perspective. Sometimes the camera zooms out for turns, which helps, but other times it will instead zoom in and you can't read the turn at all and slam right into a wall, not helped by the fact that the game's slow handling. Beyond the fairly poor racing, there's not much content to the game either, it has only four tracks and there's also no car upgrading. If there was an option to turn off the dynamic camera and just have it display as zoomed out as possible at all times it might be A, but I've fiddled with all of the options and I don't think this is possible.
Johnny Bazookatone is quite a mixed bag. It's a 2D platformer featuring prerendered graphics and run and gun style gameplay. Johnny wields a weapon that's a strange mix between a guitar and a machinegun, and besides using it to shoot enemies, you can also fire it downwards to extend jumps, which is kind of cool. The core gameplay works all right, but the game has many issues with level design and enemy placement. Enemies are almost always placed in inconvenient locations where you can't shoot them properly, like at the top of staircases, and it's very unclear a lot of the time what you can and can't walk on, both of which lead to a lot of cheap hits or deaths. Luckily, health pickups are usually somewhat abundant, but it still feels unpolished. It can also be extremely cryptic at times too, for example towards the end of the first stage there's a section where you have to open some locked doors. At first I couldn't figure out how to open them at all (the first key is hidden behind a semitransparent wall), and even once you realize where the keys are, there's no indication which key opens which door, so you just have to use trial and error. Later comes a section where you have to pay Charon to cross a river, but it's not obvious where you get the coins, it turns out they drop from fish enemies who jump out of the water, though it's not obvious that you can kill them because they take 3 shots and don't react to being shot until they die (many enemies are totally immune to the machinegun, so you can't really tell when you're doing any useful damage). I had to look up a walkthrough online to solve both of those parts, and there's also no checkpoints anywhere, so you're going to need a ton of patience to get anywhere in the game. The game does have one major saving grace though, which is that the soundtrack is absolute fire. It's a super cool mix of jazz and funk that perfectly suits the game and really does help make the experience worth putting up to to some degree, I just wish they had done a little bit more to polish up the gameplay.
Q-Bert is pretty lame. This is almost the exact opposite of Johnny Bazookatone where the gameplay is somewhat functional but the presentation is incredibly boring. The game plays mostly the way Q-Bert always does, you hop on blocks to change their colour and avoid getting hit by enemies. One huge annoyance is that compared to previous Q-Bert games, the hit detection is far less forgiving to the player. In most implementations of the game, the moment Q-Bert begins jumping, he can no longer be hit, but here, you're vulnerable for at least half of your jump, which feels really lame. Each stage is made up of multiple sub-levels, and you get your lives back after each stage, which is nice, but the presentation is incredibly drab and boring and when combined with the somewhat uninspiring gameplay it sucks most of the fun out of it. Q-Bert 3 on the SNES plays, sounds, and looks a thousand times better than this game, and it wasn't even considered an especially great game by most. I could see the justification for a low A based on the slight increase in playability this version brings but it's so dull I can't ever see myself wanting to spend time with it.
DeleteFinally, we get to a game that nails both the presentation and the gameplay. I feel like I barely even have to say anything about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, it's rather obviously one of the best PS1 games and probably the best game in the series. After THPS1, which was highly experimental but didn't always nail it with its level design, THPS2 perfects the formula to become the classic we all know and love. This is such a good game that it even has enough replay value to be worth beating it multiple times with different skaters, a fun challenge is to see how few runs you can do to get all of the goals in a level. It looks great, it plays great, the levels are super memorable, you can play as Spider-Man, there's pretty much nothing not to like here. A masterpiece for sure.
Yakiniku Bugyou is an interesting contrast with Finger Flashing. It's also an extremely simple game, the concept here is that you need to grill food. Your grill has 12 spaces, and you place various food items on the grill to cook them. After a little while, you need to flip them, to ensure they cook evenly, then serve them to one of your three guests. Each type of food cooks at a different rate, the middle of the grill cooks faster, and each guest has a type of food they like and don't like, and if you serve a bunch of good food in a short time, you get a bonus. That's basically all you do in the game, throw food on the grill, try your best to cook it evenly, then quickly serve it out and try not to give it to the wrong people. It's super simple, but there's also just enough to keep track of that it feels fast-paced and hectic. A common yet funny situation is that you'll have burnt something, and you really don't want to let it turn to charcoal (this annoys all of your guests), so you need to figure out who to poison so the food doesn't burn any worse. Most ideally, it would be someone who likes that food, as they'll complain less about it, but alternatively, you can pick someone who you know isn't too picky, because at least they'll lose less happiness from it. It results in a lot of hilarious situations in the endless mode in particular, where you're trying frantically to get rid of one of the pickiest guests and have to repeatedly poison some poor little girl to ensure that the food critic stays happy, but then she starts threatening to leave and you accidentally feed the wrong food to the critic and all hell breaks loose. In terms of modes, there aren't a lot, there's a sort of basic challenge mode where you go through various stages of guests, then and endless mode where the guests come and go as they get satisfied. There's also a two player mode where you compete to make the customers happy using the same grill, which is kind of hilarious. Overall, I feel like the game is fun, but I wish it had a bit more content. I think there's actually just barely enough here to secure the G, but some kind of campaign mode where you can earn money and upgrades or something would have been appreciated.
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