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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Clockwerx - BB - 0% (2)
Legend of Heroes 3 - BA - 25% (2)
Nessa no Hoshi - AG - 75% (2)
R-Type Delta - GGGGGGGGAG - 95% (10)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - ABB - 17% (3)
Tank Racer - AA - 50% (2)
I was actually just talking with someone about GAB and they were asking "how many people vote?" and I said "typically about 5-7 for more well-known games". I'm happy to see that I low-balled it here with R-Type Delta, which I wouldn't have even thought was all that well-known.
Games for this topic:
Darkstalkers 3
Fox Junction
Gegege no Kitarou: Gyakushuu! Youma Daichisen
Motocross Mania 2
Mushi Tarou
NBA Hoopz
Mushi Tarou has been a game I've wanted to look at for a while, as it looks pretty unique. Fox Junction looks like a pretty interesting game too.
Darkstalkers 3 - G
ReplyDeleteFox Junction - A
Gegege no Kitarou: Gyakushuu! Youma Daichisen - G
Motocross Mania 2 - A
Mushi Tarou - B
NBA Hoopz - A
Time to cement my status as having bad takes on Capcom games, but IMO, Darkstalkers 3 on PS1 is significantly better than the Saturn version. Sure, the Saturn version runs a little better, but it's extremely barebones, not even featuring a training mode. By contrast, Capcom added a ton of extra stuff to the PS1 version, including one massive upgrade that significantly enhances the game that we'll come to in a moment. In any case, before we jump into the changes from the Saturn version we should probably briefly talk about the game itself. Darkstalkers is sort of a prototype for Capcom's VS series, featuring similar visuals and gameplay, notably introducing the chain combos that are key to that series, but lacking air combos and tag mechanics. Many of the game's mechanics sort of feel like a less polished version of the VS series, such as supers / EXes generally not being as visually impressive, and chain combos not being cancellable into specials making for very bland offense. Pushblocking is a new feature in Darkstalkers 3, but it's very annoying, requiring you to mash buttons to pushblock rather than pressing 3P like in the VS series. In any case, the big addition on PS1 is the new character buildup mode. Like similar modes in other games, this allows you to pick a character, make your own custom colour for them (the editor for this is surprisingly indepth) and then throw them through gauntlets of successively tougher enemies to level up and get better stats. This is not just for fun though, this mode is also the source of all of the game's unlockables, of which there are surprisingly quite a few. You can unlock the EX menu that allows you to view character endings (this is also unlockable on Saturn via a different method), as well as a bunch of pages of character art from the game. The real prize though is the DX menu, which allows you to gain access to the critical DX Cancel option. Once enabled, this does away with the limitation that you can't cancel chain combos into special moves and massively opens up the game's offense. Sure, maybe it's not super balanced, but it makes the game so much more fun that it's hard to imagine playing without it (though you will have to because you have to grind a lot to get it). Strangely, this feature never returned in any other version of the game, so I'd probably prefer playing this version to any of the ports.
Fox Junction is a complex game so it's time for another round of Tero explains the game. Fox Junction is essentially a 3D Dungeon crawler, somewhat similar to Baroque, but played from a third-person perspective. The game takes place on a large sector map which is made up of square arenas, in each arena you can find the teleporter to move in any of the four cardinal directions to the next sector. Your overarching goal is to find the tower, but initially you have no idea where it is (and its location is random every time), so to make progress you have to scavenge for "drums", which are messages that you can listen to on the pause menu. Some of these contain hints about how to play the game, some are story info, and some provide information about the location of the tower, like providing a little snippet of the map around it or giving some vague directions. Combat occurs in real time against various mechanical enemies. Combat is somewhat awkward, you have to hold L1 / R1 to enter combat stance, then attack with Square, but even though your weapon is a gun its range is quite bad, so you'll take a fair number of hits. Of course, you can heal with items, though heals are a bit hard to come by. The preferred method of fighting is to make your own mech, which is called a Palmata, and then use that to fight, as it's easier to repair the Palmata than yourself, but you have to build it first. To build a Palmata, you must first scavenge body parts and weapon parts from defeated enemies, every enemy in the game can drop both their body and their weapon. To make a Palmata, you need to combine two specific body parts, which again the information drums can give you the combination, then equip it with any weapon. These parts drops are initially extremely uncommon, but one of the drums includes a great secret about getting them, which is that if you strafe around an enemy until they run out of energy from attacking, their parts drop rate is drastically increased, using this I was able to get a mech up in a relatively short amount of time. The mech doesn't fight autonomously, instead it replaces you when you enter combat mode, with its attack being determined by the equipped weapon. It's an interesting general setup, but it has a number of issues. By far the biggest one is that the combat is quite clunky. Entering combat mode is slow and your range sucks, often causing you to take a lot of hits. I feel it would have been much more fun if you could just fire without entering combat mode at all, more akin to a standard third person shooter, and if you could simply board the mech with the shoulder buttons rather than it only appearing when you go to combat mode. Of course, the enemies would need to be faster and have better weapons to account for this but it would be a much more intense and satisfying experience. The other issue is that traps are super abundant and you usually can't see them until you run into them, which is quite annoying. Technically you can walk and sometimes they won't trigger but walking is super slow so you'll usually just have to put up with them. In any case, it's decently playable once you get the hang of it but it's not one of the top games of this type.
DeleteGegege no Kitarou is a relatively standard 2D platformer, which is kind of noteworthy because PS1 doesn't have a lot of them. This game was made by Konami, so it's no surprise that it's a mechanically competent game, though gameplay-wise it probably has the most in common with Mega Man rather than any Konami franchises. Kitarou has access to a standard horizontal shot which is limited to 3 onscreen at a time and a charge shot, much like everyone's favourite blue bomber, though he also has a melee attack that can reflect projectiles and he has 3 different charge attacks instead of just one (one is a bouncing shot that homes, one is a spread shot that does a fair bit of damage, and the other is a powerful but short-ranged shield he can put around himself). An interesting limitation is that the charge shot is somewhat limited, there's a little orb in the bottom left that changes colour from blue to yellow to red every time it's used, and the closer it is to red the longer it takes to charge, to encourage using some of your other abilities from time to time while it recharges. Beyond this, probably the game's most notable feature are its boss fights, which besides being lavishly animated are also fairly mechanically complex, which different bosses having different things you need to do to hit them, generally forcing you to use large parts of Kitarou's arsenal (in fact, the first boss is basically just a tutorial where they teach you all your moves). Visually the game looks quite good, the backgrounds and enemies have lots of detail, and there's also voice acting, though it's obviously not pushing the hardware and I feel like this almost could have been done on SNES, particularly as it's also a fairly short game, clocking in at only around 2 and a half hours or so. It's a pretty fun time, but I do wish they had extended it a bit more as the core formula is definitely solid enough to have gone on longer.
DeleteMotocross Mania 2 is certainly much improved from the first game, but I feel like it could still use a little bit more work. Compared to the first game, this is vastly more solid from a technical perspective, with the game now running at a locked 30fps and the camerawork being completely fine. However, I would say the game is still only okay from a gameplay perspective and not great. Handling is noticeably kinda twitchy, and you have to use the brake turn very liberally to handle the courses, which also feels a little weird to use. These can be adapted to, but the bigger problem is the turbo. This game uses a turbo system where you can do tricks get turbo, which is solid, and tricks work well, but the actual turbo itself completely sucks. It's almost assuredly the wimpiest turbo of all time, I would guess it increases your top speed by maybe 10% tops, it's so unnoticeable that I frequently wondered if it was even activating at all, without the sound cue you'd never know it was in use. It does have some slight value for getting back to top speed after a brake turn, but generally it feels very unsatisfying to use and it makes the game feel slow. You can't really blast past the other racers with turbo, instead this is a game of inches and good racing lines where the turbo barely matters, which is serviceable but not nearly as fun as it could be. This is also another one of those games with limited progression so even though there are a decent number of tracks it may not hold your interest all that long.
Mushi Tarou is a really weird game but I don't think it's particularly good. It's essentially a minigame collection themed around bug catching, which is not an inherently bad idea, the problem is the minigames generally involve very little skill and aren't fun. Many of the minigames follow a very similar structure, where you have to jump and net / grab various bugs that are on trees. This involves holding the button to charge your jump, then releasing to grab the bug, with the key being charging it for the exact right amount of time. The problem is, you can't actually see how high the bug is before you charge, and if you're off, you'll scare the bug away and have to chase it down again. A simple function to look up using up dpad to gauge the height would make this far more playable, but even then I don't think it would be terribly fun. There are a few other types of games, like one where you have to lure a dragonfly by holding the button and then letting go the moment it grabs your bait, and one where you have to splash bugs and catch them in a cup, but none of them are really that interesting. It's a shame the gameplay portion isn't better thought out because I feel like this idea could be interesting with better minigames.
DeleteNBA Jam is definitely another one of those franchise that suffers from the "got it right the first time, now what?" syndrome. NBA Hoopz is yet another entry in the franchise, and like NBA Showtime it's still very similar to Hangtime. The biggest addition here is that it's now a 3 on 3 game instead of 2 on 2. In theory, this actually seems like a good move, as NBA Showtime's biggest issue was that the court felt too open and thus offense was too strong, but if anything this actually improves offense even more as you now have more pass targets and defenders are easier to blow through than ever with the improved crossover move, plus pushing and stealing feel weaker than normal here. The game also retains create a player, but in an IMO slightly less fun way, here you instead have a team of pre-created players that you can modify and level up instead. While the ability to go through a season with these initially underpowered guys seems like an interesting idea, I feel like the gameplay feels a bit too basic for the stats to really even matter so this doesn't have as much appeal as you'd think. The presentation also remains mostly fine, but it's still noticeably weaker than Hangtime, one noticeable loss is that there's no in-game music and even the commentary feels a little more muted than normal even though it's still Tim Kitzrow. Overall, it's still totally fine and the PS1 port is solid, but there's not a lot of reason to play this if you've already played Hangtime. At this point you might as well just wait for the superior NBA Jam Wii / PS3 or NBA Playgrounds games.