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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Chronicles of the Sword - BBBB - 0% (4)
Goiken Muyou 2 - BGA - 50% {3}
Harukaze Sentai V-Force - GG - 100% (2)
Murakoshi Seikai no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou 2 - BB - 0% (2)
Toy Story Racer - AGB - 50% {3}
Tsun Tsun Kumi 2 - AA - 50% (2)
This was a surprisingly divisive topic given the number of ratings, it's unusual to see two squiggle bracket games in the same topic.
Games for this topic:
Cool Boarders 4
Gekisha Boy
Italian Job, The
Omise de Tensyu
Rising Zan: The Samurai Gunman
Sound Qube
I'm actually really looking forward to trying out Gekisha Boy, it looks interesting. Omise de Tensyu actually looks pretty cool too. I love how off the wall many of the ideas in Gen 5 were.
Cool Boarders 4 - A
ReplyDeleteGekisha Boy - G
Italian Job, The - G
Omise de Tensyu - G
Rising Zan: The Samurai Gunman - G
Sound Qube - G
Cool Boarders 4 makes some improvements over 3 but I feel like there's still enough jank in the game that it prevents me from enjoying it enough for G. First thing's first, a small correction for Cool Boarders 3. I said at the time that the game had no tuck mechanic, but it actually does, it's just mapped to the extremely illogical button choice of down dpad. Knowing this does make races more playable, and the race courses in CB4 are somewhat better designed as well. One of my other major criticisms with CB3 was that you had to pick your board before the game told you what event was coming next, and this is fixed in CB4, so this aspect at least plays better. Grinds are also somewhat more functional this time around, jump to grind to jump chains are now actually possible. This all sounds decent, but there's still some problems. One of the biggest ones is jumping. Jumps in this game are charged, like almost every other snowboarding game, but they also time out if you charge them too long, which feels atrocious. So many times you'll be coming up to a jump and start charging, only to run out of charge just before you get to the jump. This forces you to unlearn your muscle memory from almost every snowboarding game ever made and generally feels horrid. Landing tricks also feels bad, I greatly dislike having spins mapped to a button (it should just be Dpad) and the game feels somewhat overly picky about landings, with tricks often failing for basically no reason whatsoever. Perhaps the devs were aware of this and thus the target scores for trick events are generally not hard, but it doesn't feel nearly as smooth as most better snowboarding games. Overall, you could probably praise the fact that it has a lot of events and modes and the stages seem relatively well-designed this time around, but it's still noticeably far enough below most better snowboarding games that I still don't find it that fun to play. Maybe this would have been G if it released early in the system's life, but by this time SSX was almost out and it blows this game out of the water.
Gekisha Boy is not quite what I expected, but it's still pretty cool. This is a sort of weird cross between a photography game and a platformer, where you control a cameraman trying to get shots for his boss. As you walk through each stage, various things happen in the background and you can snap a picture of them for points. You have limited film, but getting good shots often rewards bonus film or other powerups. Many of the photographable objects onscreen will do something interesting at a certain time (for example, in the first stage there's a girl standing over a grate, at one point air will blow out of it and lift her skirt, if photographed at that moment you get significantly more points). A fair number of things will also be affected if you photograph them, potentially leading to an opportunity for a second, more lucrative photo, for example a juggler will drop the object he's juggling on his head if you take his picture, and getting a picture of it hitting him in the head is worth additional points. You're not totally free just to snap pictures all day though, there are also hazards that appear, and if they hit you you lose film and get stunned for a moment, possibly missing a great shot. You can either jump over, dodge, or snap a picture of the hazards to deal with them, but it adds to the overall chaos. Your goal on every stage is to beat a given target score, and I appreciate that the game scores your best score because there is some replay value to be had here. The gameplay is certainly pretty interesting and unique. It must be noted that visually, this game is quite dated, it was originally a TG16 game and its visuals wouldn't have felt out of place on Master System, but it still controls and plays pretty well and it's so unique that it doesn't really bother me. Plus, this was a budget title, and I think it's cool to see this game again, this was clearly something of a hidden gem on TG16.
DeleteThe Italian Job is a slightly lesser version of Driver based no the 1969 movie of the same name. Everything about the game is pretty much a dead ringer for Driver, so much so that I thought they might even have had the same developer, but they don't. In any case, you know the basics, drive through a mostly open city to a given location, while trying not to crash too much, take too long, or get caught by the cops. The production values in the game are generally pretty good, it's got tons of voice acting (which I suspect is taken from the original film), and the visuals are pretty solid too. The cars generally feel pretty good to drive, though there is a little more jank compared to Driver, for example a few times I got stuck on nothingness and had to restart a mission (luckily they're short), though it's nothing compared to Driver's atrocious driving test mission which is thankfully absent here. About the only thing I'd call a significant detraction to this game are the cops, who are annoyingly too persistent, on any level if they ever get on you it's a huge pain because you have to lose them before you can complete any objective and it just takes way too long for them to give up. That aside, there's not much to complain about here beyond the fact that the game is somewhat short. I feel like this game might have been a bit borderline between A and G on its own, but for a game based on a movie this is pretty solid, and it also follows the plot of the movie very closely too. This was clearly a pretty good choice for a movie to be adapted this way, given the high amount of focus on cars in the original film.
Omise de Tensyu is a very unique and interesting game. It's an RPG where you're a merchant, you travel the world peddling your wares to various random NPCs, with the ultimate goal of opening up your own shop. You can sell your goods to literally any NPC in the game, but different types of people like to buy different types of items, so depending on what you have to sell you'll want to seek out specific types of people. For example, the very first job is the pharmacist, who sells potions. Potions are liked by middle-aged women and the elderly, so you want to find those types of NPCs, then mark them with the little icon by bumping into them with square and then initiate a shop battle with square. Hilariously, these battles play out in traditional RPG style, with your attacks being things like "explain the product" and "make conversation" while they ask questions or haggle with you to attack back. You can also use items to make the npcs more susceptible to buying your goods or to heal. If you win the fight, you unload your products and make money, and it also makes that NPC like you more, if you make them like you enough they'll give you a present, usually some consumable stuff but occasionally equipment (I suspect some may also have key items but I've not yet found any). Once you get good enough at selling stuff, you can open up a shop, at which point your current character is gone forever and you start over as a new one, though your existing character will give all of their equipment and money to the old character, so you don't really lose anything. Afterwards, the original character becomes an NPC shopkeeper that you can buy stuff from. A major part of progression is finding new jobs, which require you to find job cards, which are generally gained through quests, though the adventurer card is just in a treasure chest inside a cave. Figuring out where to find new job cards can be kind of hard, the traditional RPG advice of "just talk to everyone" applies here, but as you're looking for potential victims to sell your products to I guess you'll be doing this anyway. There are also random battles in dangerous areas against thieves and wild animals and the like, which you'll essentially just have to run from at the start, but once you get the adventurer you can start fighting them. The game has a ludicrous number of professions (there's 40!) and the map is also huge, so there's clearly quite a lot going on here, and it's got a good sense of style too. Overall, this is clearly a game that's got a lot going for it and it's very unique and fun, this is something I might try to write a guide for eventually.
DeleteRising Zan: The Samurai Gunman is a pretty funny game. It's essentially what you'd get if you took a typical funny kusoge (crap game) but the gameplay was actually somewhat decent. For starters, I have to summarize the game's ridiculous premise. Johnny is a young gunslinger in the wild west who dreams of being a hero. One day, while investigating some mysterious disappearances, he is attacked by ninjas! Left for dead, he is rescued by an old asian swordmaster who teaches him to become a samurai. Abandoning his old name, he becomes Zan, the samurai gunman, and returns to seek revenge. This story is told to you by way of the game's awesome intro song, which is extremely cheesy but also catchy at the same time. The game is fully aware of how dumb it is and does not take itself seriously to any degree. For example, many people in the game recognize Johnny, but whenever they address him, he's always like "who's Johnny, I am the amazing wandering hero Zan!", to which they reply "don't be stupid Johnny, we've got trouble!". The villains in the game are all completely ludicrous, and so is Johnny himself, so there's never any shortage of laughs. When it comes to the gameplay, the game is essentially a lesser version of Devil May Cry. You have sword and gun attacks which you can string together in combos, you can lock onto enemies, you can dodge, you have motion activated special moves, and you can fill a meter that lets you go into a super mode where you're very fast and have more range. It's not a bad setup, it's just not quite as well polished as it could be. Attacks definitely are more stiff compared to DMC and the camera work feels notably poor even for a 5th gen game, but it still works most of the time. There's also pretty decent variety in stage design, the game mixes up your objectives pretty often and throws a number of fairly creative set pieces at you, even if many of them are just "lock onto something and shoot it with the gun while dodging some kind of obstacle". The game itself is fairly short, but it has 2 extra unlockable hard modes and a bonus character, and stages are also rated, so there's actually decent replay value here. It's not going to win any awards for its gameplay, but the combination of funny story plus serviceable enough gameplay is enough to make it worth a playthrough.
DeleteSound Qube is pretty much the same as the Saturn version, though strangely it has different levels. Neither version is harder or easier than the other, but I guess if you beat one and you want more puzzles you can play the other one. I also realized that my description of the original game contained one mistake, which is when I was explaining how to get the bonus points for removing the blocks that aren't the core cube, I neglected to explain that you have to mark all blocks of a given colour at a time and try to remove them. Ie, you could mark all blue blocks, which are the blocks that respond to the blue cursor but not the red cursor, then press the remove button to get a bunch of bonus points. If you remove all blocks except for the core blocks before finishing the stage, you get a lot of bonus points. It's a simple concept, but it's unique and it works fairly well.