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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Bust-A-Move 2 - AGGGA - 80% (5)
Doom - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Gotha - BB - 0% (2)
Mortal Kombat 2 - ABABAB - 25% (6)
Sonic Wings Special - GA - 75% (2)
Willy Wombat - GAG - 83% (3)
While the pretty decent reception to Willy Wombat is notable, I think the real story here is Doom. Yikes! The PS1 version got 100% from 8 votes! I wonder if this is the biggest discrepancy between two versions of the same game in GAB's history. Speaking of, if you want to see how we rated previous games, you can now click on the game titles in the ratings list to see the topics where we rated them.
Games for this topic:
Bottom of the 9th
High Velocity: Mountain Racing Challenge
Rabbit
Rampage World Tour
Rox
Valhollian
It's another new system, so we get to rate another version of Rampage World Tour. You might be thinking that this is the last one, but just like the mutants themselves I'm sure it'll be back. We also have Valhollian, which is an interesting-looking title with a fan translation available.
Bottom of the 9th - B
ReplyDeleteHigh Velocity: Mountain Racing Challenge - G
Rabbit - G
Rampage World Tour - A
Rox - B
Valhollian - G
Bottom of the 9th is pretty bad. It's another classic example of a Baseball game where the balance between offense and defense is totally out of wack. It's another baseball game to use the system where you have to line up a batting icon with a mark to hit the ball, but it's very easy in this game as the marker is visible very early and the pitcher has almost no control over it, making it easy to get a hit almost every time (there's also no marker at all for balls, making them trivially simple to avoid swinging at). On the flip side, fielding control is completely terrible. There's no icon or even a shadow for fly balls, making them practically impossible to catch, and the fields are huge and the player are slow so line drives virtually always get through. Even getting through a single inning takes forever as it's a miracle when a batter actually gets out. It feels like this one just wasn't playtested enough.
It turns out that High Velocity and Peak Performance actually have the same developer, and despite High Velocity being older it's a much better game. For starters, the game's handling system is much better. It's still not perfect, in particular the drifting feels a little weird, but there's no question that it feels vastly more polished and controllable compared to Peak Performance. There's also significantly more progression. Each of the game's tracks has a variety of heats, which are actually just single races against various opponents, but it gives you vastly more to do and helps tie the game together. Even the music and visuals are much better. It's still clearly an early 3D racer, there aren't too many tracks and the controls aren't perfect yet, this is definitely not yet a match for something like Option Tuning Car Battle 2, but it's at least a good start, and among other early racers it's probably one of the better ones. Hopefully the future games in the Playstation series take some cues from this one.
Rabbit is another decent SNK-style fighter. It has an interesting suite of features, though many of them feel similar to the King of Fighters series. Each character in the game has an animal spirit, which they can activate for one bar, which then causes a meter to tick down, similar to Max Mode from King of Fighters. While in this state, they gain access to a new special move, which varies by character, and can also perform their super. Using either takes a chunk off the meter, and when it ends the animal disappears. Beyond this, the game feels reasonably modern in terms of features. There's also a King of Fighters style short hop for offensive pressure, and many characters have target combos, which were a rarity in these days. There's also a Street Fighter 3-style Parry, which is the one mechanic I'm not a huge fan of, as I don't think the game really needs it. The timing is super tight and it mainly exists to discourage otherwise safe block strings, which is kind of lame. Another interesting wrinkle to the game is that in Arcade Mode, when you beat an opponent, you can steal their spirit, granting you access to their super. This is cool, as it allows you to do supers outside of spirit mode by pressing forward + ABC, potentially greatly increasing your combo damage, though obviously this can't be used in VS battles. Overall, it's a pretty solid game, but the last boss is one of the cheesiest I've fought in a long time. Ever wanted to know what an SNK-style last boss would be like with access to a 1-frame parry? Well, now you know. Thank god jump-ins can't be parried, you just have to confirm into super off short hops.
DeleteRampage World Tour on Saturn is pretty much the same as the PS1 version, by which it's a minor downgrade from the N64 version. Something I noticed with the Saturn version is the sound seems somewhat downgraded, I booted up the N64 version to compare and the demolition sounds definitely have a lot more oomph to them in that version. Saturn version also seems to have the most load time, though it's still not that long, and like the PS1 version your control options are somewhat limited and there's not a scheme that feels quite as good as the N64 version. I still think it's kind of a decent game, but you probably only need one version of it and the N64 version of the sequel would be my pick.
Rox is a super basic puzzle game. It's a falling block game, with the blocks being dice faces of different colours. To make matches, you have to position two matching numbers with the indicated amount of other blocks inbetween them. For example, to match 2s, you'd need to create 2xx2, where the xs can be anything. If the 2s are the same colour, all the blocks will clear, otherwise only the 2s will clear. That's pretty much the whole game. Besides the fact that the core concept isn't too interesting, the game is also super light on modes, with only an endless mode for one player and a 2P Versus mode. If they had at least added a VS Com mode maybe you'd be able to make the case for A, but it feels like even the developer got bored of working on this one.
DeleteValholian is an interesting game. It's essentially a Saturn version of Fire Emblem, borrowing most of the concepts from that series. Like Fire Emblem, it's a fantasy SRPG with nothing between battles beyond some talking and shopping. Unlike Fire Emblem, there's no breakable weapons, instead characters have a regular attack and special attacks, which use AP, of which you have a limited amount per battle. There's also no permadeath, though if a character falls they're out for the next battle, which essentially forces you to restart anyway. Something that really stands out is how hard the game is. Most enemies will kill your characters in 2-3 hits, and there's really not that much healing to go around, so you simply have to get somewhat lucky with enemy misses to survive. Probably the game's most unique feature is its team attack system, by positioning one unit within range, you can have them wait, then have another unit attack to perform a team attack. Besides doing more damage and making you less likely to get hit by a counter-attack, this also raises the affinity between the units, leading to some Fire Emblem-style support conversations, which is cool, though I wish there were more of them (all units can gain affinity with everyone, but only very specific ranks have conversations). Battles are also very long, though thankfully you can do mid-battle saves whenever you want, which feels like a necessity given the game's difficulty, some degree of save scumming feels pretty much essential, particularly because the game lacks the pre-attack damage display from Fire Emblem, making it very hard to know if you'll finish an enemy off and thus be safe from a counter or not. The game's presentation is generally quite good, with nice 3D animations for attacks and team attacks. You'll probably end up turning them off eventually to save time, but the quality is high for the era, and the game's story is pretty decent too. Overall, I feel like it's kind of a borderline title between A and G. It's very comparable to the GBA Fire Emblem games, which are equal parts fun and tedious. There's a solid game here for those with the patience to get through it, but it won't be for everyone.