This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 - AAABG - 50% {5}
F1 World Grand Prix - BAG - 50 {3}
Game no Tetsujin: The Shanghai - AB - 25% (2)
Nagano Winter Olympics 98 - BB - 0% (2)
Ningyo no Rakuin - AAA - 50% (3)
Strider 2 - GGGGAGGG - 94% (8) (1 SR)
I meant to mention this last topic, but I accidentally closed it first, but I really enjoyed CyanRouge's detailed writeup on Ningyo no Rakuin. I sort of wish it had been for a slightly better game, but one of my goals with the PS1 GAB was to explore the mysteries of PS1's Japanese library, which has been very interesting even if the need for translation tools makes it take somewhat longer.
Games for this topic:
Air Race Championship
Lucky Luke: Western Fever
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter
Neorude 2
Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001
Yetisports World Tour
I feel like this is an unusually eclectic mix of games even by GAB standards. Cowboys, mechs, superheroes, yetis, fantasy heroes, and biplanes, all in one topic. Playstation is such an absurdly diverse console.
Air Race Championship - G
ReplyDeleteLucky Luke: Western Fever - A
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter - G
Neorude 2 - B
Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 - G
Yetisports World Tour - A
Air Race Championship is a solid game with a single but significant flaw. It's sort of a cute plane racing game that reminds me of the Choro Q series in a lot of ways. Like in those games, you can grind money by winning races that you can use to upgrade your plane, and it also has sort of vaguely similar visuals, with the vehicles being relatively small on the screen as you fly through all sorts of varied 3D environments, and the music is also fairly good. The racing gameplay is relatively basic, you can accelerate, brake, you have a power turn, and you get 3 boosts to use per race, and that's pretty much it, but it controls well and it does everything it needs to. Though the first two courses are easy, they quickly rise in complexity, with the third course being a huge jump in difficulty from the first two that will require total mastery of the controls and knowledge of when to let off the gas, as hitting walls is very costly. A feature I like is that there's a smoke trail that shows the recommended path through the course, which makes the track easy to follow regardless of what's going on from a visual perspective, though there are still shortcuts and corner cuts that the smoke trail doesn't point out. Anyway, the general mechanics are solid, so what is the major flaw? The framerate. It's notably unstable, the game probably targets 30fps but it frequently dips to around 20 or so when other planes are onscreen, which is a fairly significant problem given how much precision this game requires. Luckily it doesn't affect the controls too much and the smoke trails do help, but it would be so much better if it was 30fps locked, and the game really isn't visually complex enough that PS1 should struggle. I guess you could also complain about the game being somewhat grindy, as if you don't have enough speed you literally cannot place in certain races at all even with perfectly clean racing. Despite that I think it is still generally fun enough for G, even if it's probably somewhat of a low G.
Lucky Luke: Western Fever is all right. It plays totally differently from the previous Lucky Luke game, instead being a 3D action game of sorts. It has tank controls, so your first thought is probably that it's going to play somewhat like Resident Evil, but it actually doesn't play like that at all, the main 3D sections actually have little gameplay. Occasionally you need to avoid some simple obstacles, but for the most part the action in the game happens when you reach certain areas and get into a shootout. The shootouts play kind of like a light gun game, but with a controller and only fixed spots where you can aim, you can press X to hide behind cover and Square to shoot bandits as they pop out of their cover. At first, I thought these fights were extremely dull, since the bandits always appear in the same spot and each takes 3 hits, I was just shooting them once, waiting for them to pop back up, then shoot them again until they go down, but what I didn't realize until later is that the bandits actually have no invincibility in their "being hit" animation, so you can actually shoot them all 3 times in a row if you've got the time / bullets to do so, which makes these segments tremendously more playable. They're still quite simple, but as you get farther they start to throw in a few simple wrinkles like targets you aren't supposed to shoot and targets you need to hit via some kind of trick shot to damage. Still, the gameplay is undeniably kind of one-note and is definitely the game's weakest link. On the plus side, the presentation of the game is actually quite good, the visuals are nice, it's well-animated, and there's also full voice acting, even the music and sound effects are pretty solid. If you're a fan of the IP this would probably be an all right time, even if it's probably not going to be super memorable.
I want to give MSH vs SF an A, but I just can't bring myself to do it. As I mentioned when we covered the Saturn version, MSH vs SF is easily the weakest game in the VS series. They specifically tried to make it "less crazy" compared to XMen vs SF, and it results in a vastly less interesting game. You lose almost all of the cool characters from the previous game like Storm, Rogue, Magneto, and Sabertooth in exchange for significantly more basic characters like Captain America and Omega Red. Just like X-Men vs Street Fighter, the tag mechanic is gone, unless playing in the mode where your partner is always the opponent's character, in its place is the same super cancel mechanic that will later become DHCs, however, in addition to variable counter you now have variable assist. Assists are complete trash in this game, as your character has to do their full taunt animation to call them, thus they cannot be used to extend combos or even really for neutral pressure, so this doesn't change the game much. What does change the game a lot is that just like in Marvel vs Capcom PS1, variable counter is now meterless. This is extremely busted, as you can effectively variable counter any blocked hit to steal turns or even punish buttons pretty much anything that's not a jab. Between the somewhat broken mechanics, the boring roster, and the lack of tag mode, this should be an easy A, but the game is simply just too much fun for it despite all of these issues. It still plays really well, movement feels great, characters have a ton of moves, and combos are really fun to perform. The game also looks and sounds fantastic, the OST here is actually kind of underrated and I love the way the announcer yells out the name of the super when you win with one. Even at its worst, the VS series is still better than most fighting games from this era or any other. I guess it's not such a big surprise why it became so popular. XMen vs Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom are still easily better though.
DeleteNeorude 2 is very similar to the first game, just a fair bit larger in scope. As before, this is a sort of strange puzzle / RPG hybrid with a weird interface. It's entirely controlled with a pointer, as though it was intended to be a PC game, even though it was only ever released on PS1. You control a 3-character party (the same 3 from the first game, which this game is a direct continuation to), and you can instruct them to interact with various things, to which each will have a different reaction, which is often necessary to solve puzzles. There are also battles, which play out in real-time, but largely just involve abusing stunlock. I had hoped the battle system would have seen improvements from the first game, but it appears to be totally identical (even many of the enemy models are reused), which is disappointing. Instead, the big upgrade here is that the game is much larger in scope. The first game was a linear series of dungeon adventures, while the second game now consists of a town and a number of nearby areas that you can explore in a somewhat nonlinear way. One big change here is this means EXP is no longer finite, as enemies respawn if you leave an area and come back. It also generally slows the game's pacing quite a bit, as the first game was pretty much all action, whereas there's a lot more time wandering around in town and talking to people now, which to be honest doesn't really improve the experience, especially as the interface remains very cumbersome. Even something as simple as talking to an NPC is awkward, as when you click on them, they will often move before your character runs to them, causing nothing to happen, and sometimes you'll get stuck on a wall or something trying to path to them as the game's pathing is very poor. It took me forever to figure out how to leave the first town until I realized you could simply click outside the town map to go to the world map, but I feel like the dungeons are also somewhat less exciting than the first game as they feel bigger and emptier compared to the more set-piece heavy ones from the first game. Ultimately, it just doesn't feel very fun. The first game had its moments, but its interface and battle system clearly needed work and this game instead essentially doubled down on those issues rather than addressing them. This game would almost certainly be a lot better if it was just a generic RPG where you walked around normally and it just had a traditional turn-based battle system, and if an RPG is less fun than the generic experience it's definitely going to be B.
DeleteI didn't initially recognize Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 as something we had played on Saturn from its title, but I remembered it the second I got into gameplay, which is probably a good sign. It's basically identical to the Saturn version from what I can tell, it's a fairly unique shmup where you play as a mech. Unlike many shmups, jumping is a core mechanic, as you spend much of the game on the ground, though the game still scrolls automatically. An interesting system is that you can assemble the mech out of various parts at the start of the game, but as I mentioned on Saturn I feel like this has limited impact, as you don't choose your main weapon, just your bomb, melee, and legs, and they all kinda serve the same purpose, just with some being a little better than others. I really wish that the parts you selected instead affected your weapons or options or something as this would have given it more replay value, similar to Gradius with its different loadouts in later games. Still, it's a good port, the gameplay is pretty solid and it feels unique to play, so you can't complain too much.
DeleteYetisports World Tour is largely the same as Yetisports Deluxe in concept, being a collection of what were presumably flash games originally, except now there's 5 games instead of 2. The 2 games from the original game are included, as well as 3 more games. Seal Bounce involves throwing the Penguins up and trying to bounce them on various things for height, pinball style. The alternate version of this game resembles breakout and is probably the best title in the package. Albatross Overload involves launching a penguin into a bird and then controlling the bird to fly it as far as possible. Super Flamingo Drive is a funny game that resembles golf where you have to hit the penguin as far as possible with 5 shots, but there's a ton of hazards. Having extra games definitely helps round out the package and I feel like this has somewhat tolerable play value now, obviously this is intended to be a party game that you would probably only play if you were really drunk or something, but most of the games are entertaining for a few rounds in a very dumb sort of way. It's certainly not something I'd recommend, but I can see people having some fun with this.