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Last Topic's Ratings:
Crash Bash - AAGAABABG - 50% {9}
Fox Sports Soccer 99 - BBB - 0% (3)
Kamen Rider - GG - 100% (2)
Murakoshi Masami no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou - GG - 100% (2)
SCARS - BAB - 17% (3)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear - GAA - 67% (3)
Colour me not surprised that Crash Bash got the squiggle bracket. The Japanese games from this topic were a pleasant surprise, though.
Games for this topic:
Beatmania (EU)
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX
Discworld 2
Lilo and Stitch
Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012
WWF Attitude
As with Dance Dance Revolution, the localized version of the Beatmania differs somewhat from the Japanese original. If you've played the Japanese version you probably mostly know what to expect, but note that later games on the system have a different engine that adds some new features, so you should only rate this one if you've played one of the "first generation" of Beatmania games. As far as the other games, Rogue Trip looks like an interesting title, I'm curious to see how it plays.
Beatmania - A
ReplyDeleteDave Mirra Freestyle BMX - G
Discworld 2 - A
Lilo and Stitch - G
Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 - G
WWF Attitude - A
Like with DDR, there are a million versions of Beatmania for PS1, but they roughly divide into three groups. This review is for the first group, which comprises everything before 4th Mix, including the European version. For the uninitiated, Beatmania is a Rhythm game with a very unique button set-up. Beatmania has 5 standard buttons and a scratch button, essentially making it a 6-button game, and you have to be able to hit pretty much any combination of these buttons at the same time. This is the source of one of the franchise's greatest problems (and the only one it will never solve), which is that it simply doesn't map very gracefully to a standard controller. While DDR is clearly best played with its unique dance mat, it's still perfectly playable using a controller, in fact, the problem is that this makes the game somewhat too easy, but playing Beatmania without its unique controller is very challenging. Thankfully, the game allows full key mapping and I was eventually able to come up with a workable setup (left, down, right / Square, X, Circle for the white keys, shoulders for the black keys, Up / Triangle for scratch), but it never feels as natural to play as pretty much every other rhythm game. The franchise's second major problem is that even beyond the controls, it's also hard as hell. In the original version of the game, every song in the game has only a single chart available, so if you like the song but don't like its one chart, you're SOL. These games also suffer from a severe lack of easy songs, making the game immensely tough to learn. This gets somewhat better with later releases as they start including multiple charts per song, but even the songs that Beatmania considers "easy" would be "expert" on DDR. The original versions of the game also makes it hard to just play the songs you want. Songs are divided into stages, with only a handful of songs available on each stage, and you can't even see the titles of the songs until you select them. All of this gets cleaned up later, and from 4th Mix onwards it becomes a much better game, it's just a massive shame that the European release is based on the original Beatmania rather than 4th Mix, as I think it has one of the best soundtracks in the series.
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX is extremely similar to Tony Hawk, so much so that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Neversoft made this game, but they didn't, that's Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX. Just like in Tony Hawk, you'll ride (on a bike this time) through various environments, pulling tricks to earn points and doing various jumps and other things to complete objectives. The objectives often aren't too complex, but just like in Tony Hawk, the real fun is trying to complete multiple (or all) of the objectives in one go, which is just as satisfying to pull off here. One area where this game differs a little from Tony Hawk is that each stage now has 3 sets of objectives, which unlock as you complete the previous ones. I think this is actually a decent innovation because it adds more to do in the earlier parks. In terms of core mechanics, it remains very similar to Tony Hawk, you've got all the standard grabs, regular tricks, grinds, wall rides, lip tricks, manuals (wheelies in this game), and they all control exactly the same as in Neversoft's series. A new mechanic is that you can now combine tricks (which differs from performing them in sequence), by doing a square trick and then a triangle trick while still holding it, for example a no hands tabletop is Up + Square + downright + Circle. While a little hard to pull off, this does give the game a ton of trick variety and is key to getting a lot of points. There are also some interesting wall plant moves you can do, which help the game feel a little different from its inspiration. Compared to Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX, it feels more different from Tony Hawk (Mat Hoffman literally just feels like Tony Hawk with a different player model), but it's also a little jankier. On some occasions I was able to fall through the stage or go out of bounds (it just resets you onto the level), and jumping across halfpipes is not nearly as consistent here. There are also some issues with the framerate in some of the bigger levels. Still, it's a pretty fun game with a good soundtrack (something I like that I've talked about before is that each park has a unique default music track. You can change it, but it helps give the stages more personality). You might be wondering if there's a reason to play this compared to the Maximum Remix version, but there is, that version is not just the same but more, it's also vastly harder and has some other changes, but there'll be more on that when we come to it.
DeleteI like Discworld 2's intro, which gives a kind of tongue-in-cheek summary of the issues with the first game (namely, that the puzzles made no sense whatsoever), and indeed, some progress has been made there. The original Discworld was probably one of the most incomprehensible adventure games ever made, but thankfully they've tightened things up quite a bit for the sequel. Your objectives are generally more clear, and the game does a better job about giving you hints. One useful innovation is that if you try to use an object on something, Rincewind will usually make a reply that gives you a bit of a clue of what you need to do. For example, there's a group of people playing Croquet in the university's gardens. If you try to use an item on the one holding the mallet, Rincewind will say "I don't think he'll swap the mallet for that", which gives you some idea that you need to find something to trade for the mallet. The conversation system has been improved a bit too, Rincewind now has a new "insight" option when talking to someone, which often gives you a bit of a hint as to what you need to get out of them. You shouldn't assume this makes it an easy game by any means, it's still about as challenging as any of the classic Lucasarts games, but it no longer feels like you have to try absolutely everything until you stumble upon the solution by sheer dumb luck. Like the original, the game is also nicely animated and has a dry british wit to it that I appreciate, though I feel like it's a touch less funny than the original. Unfortunately, there is one big problem, which is that the game runs like absolute butt on PS1. I don't know what it is about the sequel, but the game's framerate frequently tanks to single digits, and stutters during movement are constant. The game also loads conversations very slowly, with subtitles turned on I can usually read everything before the characters even begin to speak, usually causing me to skip the spoken dialogue, which makes the game feel much more dry. I suspect this is probably a G-level game on PC, it's a shame it wasn't ported to PS1 a little more competently.
DeleteLilo and Stitch is basically just Crash Bandicoot, Disney version. Pretty much everything about the game is lifted wholesale from Naughty Dog's series, the controls, the camera, the level design, the powerups, the obstacles, etc, are all basically ripped straight out of Crash. About the only difference is that it's a bit easier and it has a "normal" save system, unlike the slightly strange save system from Crash 1. That said, this is not really a bad thing, if you can't be original, you might as well at least copy a good game, and this game retains most of what makes Crash fun. One somewhat unique mechanic is that it has two playable characters, though of the two, Stitch is the one you want. He's basically a carbon copy of Crash Bandicoot, complete with identical spin attack. He has a super move that's powered by coffee where he spins into a ball and becomes invincible, but for the most part this is classic Crash gameplay. Lilo instead has the ability to pick up exploding barrels, which is of limited use as she cannot throw them, she can only just put them down again, which is of dubious use as an attack, and her primary attack is worse than Stitch's as it has less range and no invincibility. There are some brief moments of clever design, for example the first boss is a tricycle race against a mean girl. She's faster than you, but you can deliberately trigger exploding barrels as you run past to stun her, which is fun. Beyond this, I need to point out how gorgeous this game looks, it actually one-ups Crash here, featuring significantly more variety in the visual presentation of the levels, it really does a pretty good job capturing the look of the film. Overall, if you like Crash and you want more of it, check this one out.
I didn't intend it, but there's a running theme with this topic where a lot of the games are basically knockoffs of very popular PS1 games. In Rogue Trip's case, it's a knockoff of Twisted Metal, albeit one that makes an interesting twist on the formula. Like Twisted Metal, your ultimate goal is to blow up all the other racers, but there's an additional subgoal running through each stage. The playable characters are essentially insane taxi drivers, and on each stage there will be a tourist who you can pick up and drive around to various photo spots. This earns you money, and money buys weapons and heals, so you definitely want to be the one with the tourist, but of course, whomever has the tourist is public enemy number one for all the other players, and there's a weapon that knocks the tourist out of you, causing them to slowly float back down while everyone gets into a mad dogfight to get them in the car. It's an interesting system which adds a little more nuance to the game and I feel it also makes it feel substantially more fair than Twisted Metal usually does, if you can monopolize the tourist, you can get the lion's share of the money and thus have a very good chance of being the last one standing. It also helps that the game's core mechanics are pretty good. The controls are pretty solid (throttle is locked to right stick, but this actually works pretty well for pulling donuts and all the other crazy maneuvers you need to do in games like this), and the game's performance is rock solid, running at locked 60fps at all times. Couple that with a pretty solid selection of weapons and drivers (just like in Twisted Metal, every driver has their own special weapon) and you've got a very solid game that can give Twisted Metal a decent run for its money. It's not too surprising to hear that this was made by some of the developers behind TM2.
DeleteWWF Attitude continues the trend of the PS1 version being a downgrade from N64 and being a downgrade from WWF War Zone in general. Attitude and War Zone are generally similar, but Attitude is generally flashier but plays worse. Attitude has more modes, wrestlers, and wrestler entrances, but loses War Zone's unique stun mechanic and has fewer moves available, which makes matches feel slower and more repetitive. The new ring entrances also incur additional load time on PS1, and the graphics look a lot worse, which essentially eliminates any advantage this game had over its predecessor. It's probably still barely good enough for A, but I feel this is very close to falling into B range and I'd never play it over many of the better options on this system.