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Last Topic's Ratings:
Glover - BAGB - 38% {4}
Lego Racers - AAA - 50% (3)
Little Big Adventure - BG - 50% (2)
Macross Digital Mission VF-X - BBA - 17% (3)
Rushdown - AAA - 50% (3)
Uno - AG - 75% (2)
Nothing too much to see here, so I'll take the time to inform you of a fun new feature I've added to the GAB website. If you go to the master rating list, you can now click on any game to go to the topic where it was rated, so if you want to see what we said about a particular game you can do that now.
Games for this topic:
Beast Wars
Blaze and Blade: Eternal Quest
Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling
Peak Performance
Spider-Man
Uchuu Seibutsu Flopon-kun P
I've been enjoying Option Tuning Car Battle 2, so I'm curious to see how Peak Performance is, being the first entry in another Japanese-exclusive PS1 Racing franchise (in this case, the Touge Max series). We also have Spider-Man, which we talked about a fair bit when we covered it for N64.
Beast Wars - B
ReplyDeleteBlaze and Blade: Eternal Quest - A
Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling - A
Peak Performance - B
Spider-Man - G
Uchuu Seibutsu Flopon-kun P - A
I thought Beast Wars was going to be the fighting game, but this is a totally separate third person shooter. For starters, this game has nothing to do with Beast Wars. Sure, it has the characters, but the gameplay has nothing to do with the franchise. Each character just has a generic gun, they don't have any of their abilities from the show, and the settings and enemies are completely made up as well. The ability to change into Beast Mode is present, but it's almost completely worthless as the beast form cannot attack, it's used solely to move fast and to recharge the energon meter. The core shooting mechanics are actually tolerable, the game controls decently for the most part and has autoaim, but the level design is so atrocious that it brings the game down to B. The levels are huge and extremely labyrinthine, with switches that frequently activate things halfway across the level, forcing you to backtrack for multiple minutes to even reach whatever changed. They also make heavy use of elevation, but the game has fall damage, with most falls instantly being fatal, but it's never clear whether the game will allow you to survive a fall or not, so sometimes you actually do have to fall and this is extremely confusing. There are also ways to break the levels and get stuck and there are no checkpoints, so generally the entire thing just feels terrible to play.
Blaze and Blade is a very basic action RPG. There's character creation, which is neat, and you can also play co-op, but the core gameplay is extremely simplistic. Enemies appear occasionally, and you bash them with your basic attack, then pick up the items they drop and repeat endlessly. The game world is absolutely massive, and even once you get fast travel it doesn't help that much as the portals are spread very far apart. One of the biggest issues with the game is there's almost no story whatsoever, which, when combined with the very simplistic combat and generally low level of difficulty causes it to get repetitive quickly. It's playable, but it's one of the weaker choices out there as co-op ARPGs are concerned (I wouldn't put it on par with Secret of Mana or SD3, let alone the Tales games), and there'd be almost no reason to touch it solo.
Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling is a completely fine Bowling game. The core mechanics are solid and it controls well. The only real issue is that it doesn't have a lot of flair and it's a bit on the easy side, which tends to limit its replay value. I feel like Bowling is one of those games where much of the appeal of the sport is the physical act of throwing the ball, so to really translate it over to game form you have to jazz it up a bit. Compared to one of its biggest competitors, the King of Bowling series, I feel the latter has much more personality, which helps keep the action from getting stale. Still, this is a perfectly acceptable choice for bowling and it's a lot better than Ten Pin Alley, it just doesn't really stand out.
Peak Performance is wack. It's hard to even describe this game, basically it borrows a lot from Ridge Racer. Like Ridge Racer, there are only a few tracks, not much progression, and it has a weird kind of auto-drift to compensate for the fact that you go way too fast, but it's not nearly as polished as Ridge Racer. The courses don't generally feel very memorable, the presentation isn't as good, and the handling is a huge downgrade. It's playable, but with no real progression there's simply not much reason to put much time into it when there are so many better racers available. I'm curious to see what they do with this series though, as it does have 2 more games and this game came out super early in the system's lifetime.
DeleteWhen we covered the N64 version of Spider-Man, I said it was okay but a massive downgrade from the PS1 version of the game. Well, this time we have the genuine article, and it rocks. In many ways, Spiderman set the standard for modern 3D action games, having so many upgrades over previous games and being so well polished for its time that it still feels remarkable that it's a PS1 game. For starters, the game's presentation is fantastic. There are cutscenes, sure, but what really stands out is the way the presentation is implemented into the gameplay. Spider-man and his allies have a ton to say, and the levels themselves are very interesting and varied, filled with memorable set pieces and events that I still remember to this day. The controls are also very well done, Spider Man is a difficult character to do well because of his web swinging and climbing abilities, but it feels perfectly natural here, I think one of the things that stood out most was how when playing this game, you really felt like you were Spider Man. Pretty much every part of the game is super slick, for example, the game doesn't feature a conventional tutorial, instead it just sort of advises you on what to do as you play, usually by ally characters or Spidey himself giving some tips through voice acting. I like the way the game informs you of what to do without being too heavy handed about it, for example on the bank stage, there are parts where you need to go up to the roof. You could look up at the roof, but there are also fallen grates on the ground that let you know exactly where you should use the vertical zip, these sorts of visual cues have become commonplace now but they definitely weren't in the early days of 3D Action games. The game also has a great sense of style, I love how each stage is introduced with a little comic book cover showing the current adventure and even the music is quite well done. Overall, this is just a fantastic game, probably PS1's best answer to something like Ocarina of Time, and one that's still worth playing even today.
Uchuu Seibutsu Flopon-kun P is an extremely weird game. It's a puzzle game that plays a little bit similarly to Puyo Puyo, with the same "connect 4 pieces and they clear" rule, but making Puyo Puyo style chains does absolutely nothing in this game. Instead, the goal is to create 2x2 blocks of a solid character, which creates a character. You then "detonate" these characters by making a standard match of the same colour. Each character has a different effect, Yellow and Pink are defensive, while Teal and Blue are attacks, and Green actually drops blocks on yourself. There is some weird strategy to the game, for example, some of the attacks drop Green characters on the opponent, which then makes them not want to clear green blocks (since this will cause them to attack themselves), but if they don't clear green blocks their screen might fill up. There are also bomb blocks, which you can blow up at any time to clear the row and column that they're in, but they can't blow up characters. After a while I did start to learn the game and it is playable, and I guess one can't say it's not unique, though I'm not really convinced it has a lot of depth. The game is also kind of short on modes, only Vs Com and a 2P Vs mode, so even if you enjoy its strangeness you probably wouldn't play it a lot.
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