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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Last Bronx - GGGGGGAAG - 89% (9)
Magic Carpet - BBBBG - 20% (5)
Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden Volume 1 - GGGA - 88% (4)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4 - AA - 50% (2)
Sega Ages Volume 1 - GGBAA - 60% {5}
World Cup '98 France: Road to Win - AG - 75% (2)
I was pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout for Last Bronx, which I thought might have been something of an unknown title.
Games for this topic:
NHL Powerplay 96
Sakura Wars
Tryrush Deppy
Virtual Kyoutei
Welcome House
X-Men: Children of the Atom
Not to be outdone by the PS1 topic, for the holidays here on Saturn we have Sakura Wars, which has a full english translation patch available. We also have Tryrush Deppy, which looks interesting but very weird, as well as the also very weird Welcome House. And finally, there's the Saturn version of X-Men COTA, which is hopefully a better port than the PS1 version.
NHL Powerplay 96 - A
ReplyDeleteSakura Wars - G (SR)
Tryrush Deppy - G
Virtual Kyoutei - B
Welcome House - B
X-Men: Children of the Atom - A
NHL Powerplay 96 is fine but nothing about it stands out. The basic mechanics work well enough and it looks decent for its time, but it's painfully generic in almost every way. For starters, there's no commentary, the only voice acting is for goals and penalties, and there's no in-game music either, which leaves the game's audio presentation feeling fairly dry. There's not much to write home about in terms of gameplay either, it's a very simple hockey game with pretty much no unique mechanics. Like many mediocre Hockey games, the goalies are a bit too good here, almost always bailing out the defense even on clear-cut breakaway and other terrible defensive plays, which makes it feel like the games are mostly luck as most will end 1-0 or 2-1. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it came out very early, but it compares poorly against pretty much all other Hockey games of the era, and also other early but good sports games like Worldwide Soccer and Slam n' Jam 96.
In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't looking super forward to trying out Sakura Wars. Not because of the concept of the game or anything like that, I've played the Wii game and it was really good, but rather because I've been busy and I know that it's a complex game that will take a long time to rate. Despite my misgivings, though, this is such a high quality game that it draws you in immediately, and even though I did end up spending a long time on it I didn't really notice it. I'm actually kind of amazed by the production values for this game, I can't believe how many cutscenes and voice clips are jammed into this game, and the art and animation is of very high quality too. In case you're not aware, the idea behind Sakura Wars is that it's a combination of a dating sim and a Strategy RPG. Making the girls happy makes them perform better in battle, which is an interesting gimmick, though the battles tend not to be that hard so even if you're a total shmuck you'll probably find a way through it anyway. I've mentioned before when we covered Star Bowling that I think combining Dating Sim elements with another form of gameplay is a strong concept, though actually, in this case, I find the battles almost feel superflous. The real appeal here is the excellent writing and the amount of freedom you have during the free time sections. The game poses questions to you constantly, and you can also always let the timer run out and refuse to answer, and the branching dialogue system is executed fantastically to make you want to see everything. Compared to the Wii version, there doesn't seem to be quite as much going on, but in a certain sense this actually isn't too much of a problem because it always felt like you had to miss a lot in that game. In any case, the story and characters are very charming and often funny, and I think the core cast has a nice balance to it. As for the strategy battles, they're not bad, though they are pretty simple. Your units don't level and there isn't really any preparation to be done before they occur, your actions can give the girls a stat boost but that's about it, causing them to feel a bit more like complicated puzzles than you would usually expect from the genre. They are also the source of my only complaint about the game, which is that as the game goes on the battles can get quite long, and I often just want to get them over with so I can get back to the story, though this is probably more of a statement of how good the story sections are moreso than any particular problem with the gameplay. Overall, this game is clearly a masterpiece and easily one of the best games of the era. One can only wonder what insanity compelled Sega not to localize this series until the 5th game, but the fan translation is so well done that you won't really realize it's unofficial.
Tryrush Deppy is an incredibly weird game. For starters, it's a game about anthropomorphic cars in a cross country race, but rather than being a racing game, it's a Sonic-style platformer. Deppy, who is a taxi that walks on his back wheels, can run, jump, and do a ramming attack that bares some resemblance to Sonic's spindash. Of course, as a car, gas is your health, which constantly drains, sort of acting like a time limit, though you lose much more gas by being hit. Stages often have high and low paths, like in Sonic, and there's quite a lot of hidden things in them, from star-shaped bonus rooms to NPCs to help out, and even hidden sub levels. There are also bosses, which are surprisingly complex, given that the rest of the game can otherwise be fairly easy. The entire game looks gorgeous, with excellent spritework and animation, and the wacky character designs give it an extremely unique feel. If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was a Treasure game, in particular it reminds me a lot of Dynamite Headdy, though it's by a different developer. Overall, it's a pretty unique and cute platformer and I could definitely see this being a cult classic, though apparently it's incredibly hard to get your hands on a legitimate copy of it.
DeleteVirtual Kyoutei isn't very fun, but at least I learned a bit playing it. For those like me who know nothing about Kyoutei, it's a type of Japanese boat race that somewhat resembles Horse Racing. Races take place around an oval track, and have a unique starting condition. All participants round the first buoy once, then a countdown appears, and the goal is to pass the start just as the clock reaches the top, which typically involves waiting for a bit, then gunning it at the right time. This is kind of an interesting mechanic and it's satisfying when you nail it, but there's really not much more to races beyond this. The course is simply a box with a buoy in the middle at both ends. As you reach the buoy, you perform a power turn to the left to go around it, then race back to the other side and do it again for 3 laps. Actually, the power turn mechanic feels pretty good to use, and the general racing mechanics are so simple, but the concept is so basic that it can't stay fresh for long. Once you complete the tutorial segment, which consists of 3 practice races and a short quiz (luckily, you aren't penalized for wrong answers), you get into the real game, which has you earn money to earn better boat parts and thus make your boat faster. Actually, I'm very much not a fan of this approach, as it muddies what little skill the game actually involves, by making it so that whomever does the start and executes the turns faster is largely irrelevant compared to whose boat is better. Vehicle upgrading can add nuance to a racing game, but only when racing skill is also a major factor, when it's essentially the only factor that determines if you win or lose, the game quickly becomes uninteresting. I feel like it's sort of obvious that what you'd need to do to make the game more interesting is to add more complicated courses with tons of turns in both directions, essentially making it somewhat similar to Wave Race. The game actually already even has an engine that would support this pretty well, but unfortunately it's just that same simple course over and over and it just isn't enough.
In the last few topics, we've seen a few games that basically try to be "Resident Evil without Horror", first with TRAG and now Welcome House. While TRAG copies Resident Evil's gameplay, Welcome House instead copies the setting, with the player attempting to explore an abandoned mansion to find keys and solve puzzles. This is where the similarities to Resident Evil end, though, this game has no combat, being focused purely on puzzle solving, which it doesn't even do very well. Pretty much the entire game revolves around finding objects to interact with, which requires you to search every object in the game because they don't bother to actually render the objects in the scene. If this game had copied the little shiny flash that Rez Evil puts when there's an object you can interact with, it would improve the experience enormously. Another big issue is that when deprived of the horror setting, nothing about this experience feels compelling. In Rez Evil 1, much of the experience is carried by the tense atmosphere, which helps prevent you from noticing that the combat is kind of clunky and the puzzles frequently make no sense. With the more laid-back atmosphere and pacing of Welcome House, the experience simply becomes dull almost immediately. Compared to the PS1 version, it's pretty much the same game, but it's not particularly worthwhile on either platform.
DeleteX-Men: Children of the Atom is a better port than the PS1 version, but it still pales significantly to later games in the franchise. For starters, compared to the atrocity that was the PS1 version, this is a much more competent port. There's no slowdown and the overall production values feel much better, but it's still missing a lot of frames compared to the arcade, many moves only get 1 or 2 frames of animation, making the game look very choppy. There's also just the fact that Children of the Atom isn't nearly as good as later games in the series, the characters have few moves and supers and generally tend to feel a bit dull to use, even when compared to Marvel Super Heroes it feels much more primative. I guess as a very early title it would have been all right, but there's a reason this game has been mostly forgotten while the other entries in the series are still loved even today.