This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Beatmania (EU) - AAB - 33% (3)
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX - BGG - 67% (3)
Discworld 2 - AAA - 50% (3)
Lilo and Stitch - GG - 100% (2)
Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 - GAGGGGG - 93% (7)
WWF Attitude - AAAAAA - 50% (6)
It's always funny when my expectation of what will happen with a topic ends up being the total opposite from the results. Not only had barely anyone played Beatmania, the reception to it certainly wasn't great, while Rogue Trip turned out to be a very popular title. Learn something new every day.
Games for this topic:
All Star Racing 2
CodeName: Tenka
Fisherman's Bait: A Bass Challenge
Loaded
Tsun Tsun Kumi: Suuji de Puni Puni
Vagrant Story
For this one I feel confident in saying that Vagrant Story will probably be popular (where do I find the courage?). Still, I'm interested to take a look at some of the other games in this topic, particularly Tsun Tsun Kumi, which is part of a trio of highly-obscure looking games and the box art gives very little away.
All Star Racing 2 - B
ReplyDeleteCodeName: Tenka - G
Fisherman's Bait: A Bass Challenge - B
Loaded - B
Tsun Tsun Kumi: Suuji de Puni Puni - G
Vagrant Story - A
All Star Racing 2 is definitely an improvement over the absolute atrocity that was the first game, but it's still not great. It bills itself as a collection of 4 racing games, but it's really more like one racing game that has 4 different vehicle types, as the core structure of the game is identical between each. Of the four vehicle types, bikes control like crap (they're way too twitchy), but karts, F1, and Trucks are fine. It is perhaps somewhat impressive that this game has 20 tracks, since each vehicle has 5 tracks, but there's almost nothing to the game beyond this. There's only one vehicle per vehicle type (you only choose the colour), and there's also no progression whatsoever. If a little more meat was added to the package (say, 3 vehicles with slightly different stats per vehicle class and some kind of basic tournament mode that runs all 20 tracks) you might be able to make the case for A, but there's so little here that it just can't stay interesting for more than a few minutes.
Codename Tenka is great. For starters, this game has one of the best intros of all time. "My brain... hurts! There are... THINGS here! I want to destroy this place! To stop them from creating more things!". This is right up there with the "what is a man" speech in terms of best game intros, and it perfectly sets the stage for the wacky fever dream that is Codename Tenka. It's an FPS, though a fairly basic one. The one unusual mechanic is there's a targeting box, and the targeting box decides whether or not you hit, not the laser sight on your gun. This sometimes allows you to shoot through walls, and can make clearly good shots miss, but for the most part it's fairly easy to adapt to it. The core game isn't really too hard, but it's very trippy, the game is full of truly bizarre enemy designs and psychadelic passages, though thankfully it never gets too hard to know where to go thanks to the relative linearity of the game and the coloured key system. As you collect green cubes from defeated enemies, you gradually get upgrades to your gun, but it hardly matters, the core "strafe and shoot" action remains central throughout. But as we've seen with games like Alien Trilogy (on Saturn), simple mechanics done well can make a good game, and having some wacky presentation to keep things interesting certainly doesn't hurt.
Fisherman's Bait is very similar to Big Bass Fishing, like that game it's an extremely arcade-style fishing game where you have only a couple minutes to catch as many fish as possible, though fish bite and are caught very fast. This is not a bad core concept and I like some of the things the game does, like how it explains how to use each lure and shows some onscreen hints on how to play. Unfortunately, one atrociously bad decision pretty much ruins the game, which is that reel is mapped to spinning the right stick, which you will be doing almost every second you play the game. This is totally obnoxious and gameruining in a way that reminds me of some of the worst Wii games that made you waggle constantly because they thought it was immersive. Fish fighting is absolutely trivial, too, you just have to reel at the right speed and press L and R when the tension bar gets high, so the game involves no skill beyond just hoping that Bass bite. If you want to play a game like this, Big Bass Fishing did it way better, but there are sequels to this game so maybe they improve the concept.
DeleteLoaded sucks. It's a top-down shooter with some similarities to Alien Syndrome, but it has the absolute worst engine ever. Any time anything is happening on screen, the game experiences major slowdown, and when there's a lot of enemies and bullets it can drop to about 1FPS, making it completely impossible to see anything. This removes pretty much anything resembling nuance from the game since you can't actually dodge enemy bullets or anything, you just spray and pray and hope everything dies before you take too much damage. The levels are preposterously long and monotonous as well, so the game gets repetitive super fast, even in the brief moments where it feels remotely playable. The fact that this game was apparently popular is mind-boggling to me.
I had no clue what to expect from it, but Tsun Tsun Kumi is actually pretty good. It is essentially "Puyo Puyo + Math". The basic gist of the game is that you're given a number, and there will be one of 3 numbers that you can choose to combine it with at the top, which causes the two numbers to be added together to make the piece that you have to place. For example, you might have 2, and have the option of 1, 3, or 0, allowing for a 3, 5, or 2 piece. When you make 3 matches of the same number, they disappear, and you can make chains that power various attacks that you can use to screw over the opponent in a way that reminds me of Tetris Battle Gaiden. The core idea of the game seems super simple, and it is, until it gets hectic, at which point it becomes easy to screw up the basic math that's needed to play the game well. There's some strategy to what numbers you use, as well, it's easiest to make 3 to 5, higher and lower numbers are rare to be able to make, for example 8 can only be made with 4 + 4, so accidentally making one of those can be a pain to clear. I'm actually not sure if this game is intended to be educational, but either way it's still an interesting twist on the basic Puyo Puyo concept.
Vagrant Story is a really strange and experimental game that's hard to rate. In many ways, it's very similar to Parasite Eve, having a vaguely similar action battle system, a weapon crafting system, and being a more linear, streamlined RPG, but at the same time, it's almost the opposite of Parasite Eve. Parasite Eve had very cool atmosphere and presentation, but was let down by overly simplistic combat and customization mechanics and its very short length. Vagrant Story is a much longer and mechanically deeper game, but it trades away all of its presentation and atmosphere in the process. Vagrant Story's battle system in some ways feels like an upgraded version of the one from Parasite Eve. Once again, you can move in all directions during battle, and when you initiate an attack, it pauses time, allowing you to select your target from within a circle. Many enemies have multiple targetable parts, and sometimes one part might have less defense but be harder to hit, which might also require you to position yourself around the enemy to attack it (for example, to hit a large Monster's tail, you'd have to be behind it). When attacking, you have access to Legend of Dragoon-style action commands, but the system is more fleshed out here. You can learn many potential follow-up attacks that have different properties, like simply doing extra damage, to inflicting status or even healing you, and choosing which ones to use gives the game some strategy, assuming your timing is good enough. A big difference from Parasite Eve is that enemies use a similar system to attack you, they no longer fire attacks in real time that you can dodge, instead you can once again use action commands to defend yourself. However, you can't just swing away all day, the more you attack, the more the risk gauge builds up, which causes you to deal less damage and miss more, so you should disengage and run around occasionally. Speaking of, another big difference is that unlike Parasite Eve, the environments are 3D and you can jump, which adds an interesting dimension to battles, as you can take advantage of verticality to land easy hits, but this comes at the expense of the visual design of the areas, as they are all basically made out of basic cubes and are extremely visually generic and boring. There's also a much more complicated weapon building system compared to Parasite Eve that lets you disassemble weapons into parts and combine them to make new weapons, and the storage system is somewhat better (it can hold a lot more, at least), but it does little to hold my interest in the game. In general, I feel like while Vagrant Story is competent, it never feels particularly fun to play. While Parasite Eve was able to grab me immediately with its cool set pieces, like the attack on the Opera House and the battle in Central Park, Vagrant Story's almost nonexistent storyline and boring visuals and music do little to pull you into the game, and its gameplay, while decent, isn't quite good enough to carry the game on its own. I've seen some people compare this game to Diablo, but Diablo has fantastic presentation and atmosphere, while also being a more briskly-paced game. Vagrant Story is just kind of missing that hook that pulls you into the game, and without it its combat and simplistic block puzzles quickly start to feel repetitive.
Delete