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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Herc's Adventures - BGGAA - 60% {5}
Langrisser 1&2 - GGG - 100% (3)
Lost World: Jurassic Park - BBBB - 0% (4)
Michelin Rally Masters: Race of Champions - AB - 25% (2)
Nippon Golf Kyoukai Kanshuu: Double Eagle - GB - 50% (2)
Soukaigi - GAB - 50% {3}
This topic had 3 games we had previously covered for Saturn, and the ratings were almost the exact same (Herc's Adventures scored slightly higher). I do think these 3 games are pretty comparable between both platforms, so it's good to see that we're consistent.
Games for this topic:
Koudelka
Perfect Performer: The Yellow Monkey
Powerslave
Project GaiaRay
Ronaldo V-Football
Stock Car Racer
I'm interested to try Koudelka since one of my friends played it recently and had some strong opinions about it. I also thought the name "The Yellow Monkey" sounded familiar, this is because it turns out they recently did the theme to a ludicrous anime called Nyaight of the Living Cat, which you can look up on youtube if you want to kill a few brain cells.
Koudelka - G
ReplyDeletePerfect Performer: The Yellow Monkey - G
Powerslave - G
Project GaiaRay - A
Ronaldo V-Football - G
Stock Car Racer - B
I wasn't sure what to expect from Koudelka but I was actually very impressed by it. It's basically a mix between Resident Evil and an RPG, and it pretty much nails every aspect of that combination. I could probably just say "review over" at this point because Resident Evil is so obviously a good game that any game that manages to capture the same spirit will obviously be good, but I'll go into a little more detail for the sake of those who might be skeptical. One of the first things that jumps out to me about this game is how great it looks. I've seen some people complain about the graphics, which to me is insanity, the atmosphere in this game is fantastic and the pre-rendered backgrounds look great. In a lot of ways, the setting of this game reminds me a ton of the Spencer Mansion, which is obviously fantastic as it is by far the best Resident Evil setting, it's just got that creepy building vibe down pat. The similarities aren't just limited to prerendered backgrounds though, the game also controls like Resident Evil and you'll be exploring rooms for various hidden items to pick up, as items and your inventory are both somewhat limited. The big difference obviously is the battle system, as this game is an RPG, rather than shooting zombies you'll instead have periodic random encounters. The game has a strategy battle system where you can also move, but for the most part it plays kinda like standard Final Fantasy, you have HP / MP and a standard attack / magic / item interface. A common complaint is that battle animations are apparently somewhat long, but to be honest I do not notice this being inordinately the case for its time, most non-boss battles tend to be over pretty fast and the encounter rate is not inordinately high. It's also probably worth noting that weapons can eventually break and guns can run out of ammo, but ammo and weapons are fairly common so it's unlikely you'll run out. Weapons and spells also have proficiency levels, which are important, and you can customize each character's parameters when levelling up. Perhaps one of the reasons some people didn't like this game is that they customized their characters poorly, you definitely want to focus on either magic or physical attacks for each character and not both. I guess the last thing you might note about this game is that it's somewhat short, though to be honest I don't find that to be a bad thing, I feel a lot of RPGs from this generation are somewhat overly drawn out and I appreciate this game's brisk pacing. Overall, I think this is easily the best game that attempts this genre combination, I'd put this far above Parasite Eve or Vagrant Story. This might even be an SR candidate on a system with a lesser library.
Speaking of games where I didn't expect a lot, Perfect Performer is also really good. This game is somewhat similar to Pacapaca Passion, but drastically better in pretty much every way. The core concept is the same, it's a music game where you can choose between Vocals, Guitar, Bass, and Drums, and each has their own chart for each song. The actual gameplay of the game is super simple. The game has a simple music line and the notes you need to hit just come in from the right and you press them as they cross the line. If you've ever played Taiko Drum Master the setup is identical, but if not you'll get the hang of it in 2 seconds anyway. Unlike most other music games, there's no concept of good / great / perfect here, if you're even close to the timing that's all that matters, and to be honest I don't miss it, just getting all the notes on the harder patterns is hard enough. One thing the game does really well is that the charts are all dead on to the actual song, which is critical because the game has a variable mix where if you miss a note your part of the performance will cut out, which is always neat to see executed well. If you're doing really well instead, your instrument becomes somewhat louder and more prominent, and the background visuals shift to give more close-ups of your character, which is really cool. About the only thing you might maybe complain about is the track list, as there are only 7 songs, but I feel like the songs here are actually pretty good, and with each song having 4 instruments with 3 difficulty levels it doesn't feel low on content. Oh, and of course, since there are 4 instruments, you can also play with four players, which makes for a cool party game. Honestly, this entire package is just pretty solid and it has a lot of style, it's surprising that they only made one of these since it feels like it was probably the intention to do this for several bands.
DeleteAs I noted when we covered Powerslave on Saturn, this is an excellent game. It's a great FPS that also has some adventure elements, and although the PS1 and Saturn version are quite different they're both good. Compared to the Saturn version, the PS1 version has double the resolution but half the framerate. This makes it easier to see what you're doing on the PS1 version but it's not quite as smooth, but it's still at least 25fps so although the framerate is noticeably worse it is still completely playable and I think this version is generally a little better overall. There are also slight level design differences and the PS1 version is also slightly harder, having fewer pickups and more enemies. Saturn does have one big advantage though, which is that it contains the hidden bonus game Death Tank while the PS1 version doesn't, which is actually kind of a big loss as Death Tank is awesome (it's essentially the classic PC game Tank Wars, but with real-time combat instead of being turn-based). The differences between the versions actually lead to a situation where I might actually recommend playing both versions, so you can get both the slightly better main campaign and still have Death Tank, though that would set you back a fortune as the game is expensive. Still, definitely try to play it on at least one platform if you're a fan of Doom-style retro FPS games as this is one of the best ones.
Project Gaiaray is basically just a carbon copy of Virtual On, virtually everything about the game looks and plays near-identically to Sega's game. In case you don't know the basics, it's a one-on-one mech battler in 3D arenas with a unique third-person perspective. This perspective means that maintaining a lock on the opponent takes some doing (though you can also just jump to re-acquire it) and your weapons have some delay after firing them so you have to pick your spots to attack well. The biggest difference compared to Virtual On is that each mech here carries only 2 weapons, with your third attack instead being a super attack that requires you to build up a power meter to use. This is obviously not an inherently bad concept, but the way you build it up is stupid, it's done by holding L + R for a second or so. The problem is it charges way too fast, so on maps with any kind of cover obtaining full charge is completely trivial. The super attacks are not inordinately hard to avoid in most cases, but it makes the entire system of building the super feel unnecessary because it's too easy to get, a more traditional super meter or a cooldown-based system would almost certainly have been more interesting. Beyond this, the same issues as Virtual On persist, namely poor balance and the general weakness of ranged combat since most long-range weapons are too easily avoidable. It's definitely a little worse than Virtual On, which I think is only barely G, Custom Robo is definitely drastically better than both these games because they realized that the key to making these games interesting was letting you overlay your various weapons on top of each other to trap the opponent.
DeleteRonaldo V-Football is a pretty solid soccer game. The best thing about this game is its control, pretty much everything in the game has a nice natural feel to it, which makes both offense and defense feel good to play. For example, on defense, something I particularly want to highlight is how you steal the ball. In many games, there's a dedicated button for this, but in this game, you just have your player run into the ball and it becomes yours, which just feels intuitive (I would liken it to hockey games where you check by just running into the other player with speed). On offense, shooting and crossing also feel good, the game uses a pretty intuitive "charge kick" action for this, and I like that the game does a good job of picking the correct player to attempt the cross, so actually hitting your bicycle kick / header is not nearly as hard as it is in other soccer games where this action is sometimes a crapshoot. Due to the way stealing works, sprinting on offense is risky, but dekes feel quite good to perform (you basically just change direction sharply while moving slow) so working your way around defenders is still doable. The only thing I don't totally love is passing, the game sometimes seems confused about whom I want to pass to, often choosing longer pass targets than I intended, and it can be a little aggressive about auto-player swaps on defense, but otherwise mechanically it's very solid. When it comes to the presentation, the player models aren't too great, but the commentary and crowd noise is pretty good, and the game is zoomed out enough that the individual animations on the players aren't too critical. This probably isn't quite as good as some of the absolute top soccer games of the era but it's still pretty decent, and a significant cut above many of the other titles we've looked at.
Stock Car Racer is another one of the games from the same developer as All-Star Racing, which I knew was the case the second I booted it up and heard the menu music (which is reused between all of the games). Many of these games are kinda playable if extremely basic because they have a competent racing engine, but this one doesn't, the controls have seemingly been made tighter to try to make it feel more like NASCAR, but this results in the cars lacking the ability to handle the corners on any except the oval track so the game generally controls like crap and isn't fun. This is the perfect game for comparison if you want to see how the nuanced control of NASCAR 2000 takes driving simple courses and makes it fun, though I suppose the control here is so bad that there aren't any courses that would feel good to race.
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