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Last Topic's Ratings:
ECW Hardcore Revolution - AAA - 50% (3)
ET Interplanetary Mission - BBB - 0% (3)
Muppet Racemania - GBBA - 38% {4} (1 SR)
Puyo Puyo Tsuu Ketteiban - GA - 75% (2)
SeaBass Fishing - BB - 0% (2)
Tiny Tank - GAB - 50% {3}
Another mixed bag here, with 2 more squiggle bracket games. I wonder if this is going to become a trend? Having lower vote totals does make the squiggle bracket more common.
Games for this topic:
Afraid Gear
Klonoa
Formula Circus
NBA Hoopz
Strike Point
Suiko Enbu
I'm looking forward to talking about Suiko Enbu again, which we already covered on Saturn as Dark Legend and is maybe my favourite game we've covered for that system so far. We also have a generally interesting looking set of games here, as well as Klonoa, which just recently saw a re-release.
Afraid Gear - A
ReplyDeleteKlonoa - G
Formula Circus - B
NBA Hoopz - A
Strike Point - B
Suiko Enbu - G
Afraid Gear is a weird game. It's a mech battling game, where two mechs fight in a small arena. This might remind you of Custom Robo, but actually, it has far more in common with Monster Rancher. Like in Monster Rancher, the game is divided into weeks, and each week you choose what you want to do, such as improving your mech or registering for battles to make money. You don't control the mech directly during battle, instead, you just give general strategic advice, such as which weapons to use and which enemy parts to target, and the game does the rest. As such, battles are mainly won and lost based on the set up of your mech rather than your piloting ability. Mechs in Afraid Gear are not the well-oiled machines of franchises like Front Mission, they're ungainly contraptions that barely work at all, frequently overheating and malfunctioning during battle unless your parts are the absolute best of the best, which they won't be for a long time. Tuning and customization is quite complex, and a beginner will likely struggle to put together even a basic mech. Luckily, the game provides a lengthy tutorial mode that doubles as its story mode (called "Beginner" on the title screen). Here, the game guides you through the mech creation process and forces you to participate in specific battles. Each week, it will instruct you on how to do some basic operations, such as buying parts, weapons, tuning, repairing, and so on. This is actually very helpful, and the story mode is also full of animated cutscenes as well, which help spice up what can otherwise be a somewhat dry experience. There's some fun to be had here, but I wish you had a bit more control over battles, as it feels like there's a ton of luck involved. Early on, you can even win a lot of battles by simply setting your power consumption to the minimum and hoping the enemy runs out of power before they can take you out, as if one robot runs out of fuel they instantly lose, even if their opponent is a smoking wreck that can barely move. This game does have a sequel that seems to be better known so we'll see if it refines the experience a bit more.
It's a common trend in GAB that we'll come to games that I've played previously and remember quite well, so I'll have an idea of what I'm going to say about them beforehand. However, I always replay the games for each topic as a matter of principle, and this often causes me to change what I wanted to say, to my mild frustration. What I wanted to say about Klonoa was that it's an all right game but the series doesn't quite find its footing until the GBA games, as the early games focus too heavily on platforming and action mechanics, despite the franchise's mechanics being far better suited towards puzzle-solving. This statement is still correct. Going back and playing Klonoa 1 and Klonoa GBA, Klonoa GBA is clearly the better game. The pacing of the game feels way better, the puzzles are a lot more satisfying, and the controls feel tighter too. As such, clearly Klonoa PSX should just get an A rating and we're done with it. Every part of the logic is sound, except that Klonoa 1 is too enjoyable to play to be A. It is true that the action in Klonoa is kind of mediocre. It's an absurdly easy game, which makes combat feel largely inconsequential, with the only real risk involving falling to your doom from the game's somewhat slippery controls. This also makes collecting the jewels largely pointless, which is bad because most of the game's puzzles simply reward you with jewels. On GBA you get a reward for getting all the jewels on each stage, but that's not a mechanic yet in the Playstation version. But still, the game retains a certain charm to it. I think one thing that's worth noting is that the visuals are actually quite exceptional for PS1. This is a very nice looking game, and it blends the third dimension into the gameplay much more seamlessly than most other games (compare say, Tomba, where the plane switching always feels a little forced). There's a number of aspects of clever level design where you can cross over tracks and move laterally, which makes the third dimension feel like it's more than just a gimmick. I do think it's probably the case that this game is A on Wii, by which time the novelty has worn off and the graphics are far less impressive, but it was a decent 2D platformer in its own right when it came out.
DeleteThough I enjoyed some of the previous games in the series, Formula Circus is bad. For starters, this is one of the most barebones racing games of all time. Despite being an F1 game, there's no wear, damage, or pit stops, and even qualifying laps aren't in the game, with your starting position simply being determined randomly. The controls are also really bad, it's a very arcade style game but the controls are very stiff and just don't feel good to use, and the game doesn't even have any form of camera control, with you being stuck with the first person cam at all times. There's also virtually no progression to the game either, it's another one of those games that only has a very barebones grand prix mode and that's it. It was a very early title, but it's a huge step back from the 16-bit entries in the series.
NBA Hoopz is another 3D take on NBA Jam, similar to NBA Showtime. The big difference here is that they've added a third player to make it 3-on-3, which you might think could address some of the defensive issues in the game, or at least mix up the formula to some degree, but it doesn't really work out all that well. NBA Jam has never been known for nuanced defensive play, and adding a third player actually makes defense even weaker because it gives you another passing target, and passes in NBA Hoopz are functionally impossible to intercept. 3-pointers also seem really strong, even when you've got someone covering the shooter, and having 3 players also means you get access to some much turbo that running out is pretty much impossible, so nuance in the gameplay feels like it's at an all-time low for the series. Create-A-Player mode has been axed, but in its place is a new "create a team" mode, where you can take a team of generally lousy players and try to run them through the championship, while gradually increasing their attributes. This is actually kind of a neat idea and is definitely the highlight of the game, but the general lack of nuance to the gameplay means that their attributes don't really feel like they matter. Part of the issue might have been that this port of the game was clearly not a priority, the Dreamcast version of the game has significantly upgraded visuals and some new minigames to help it feel like a more meaningfully distinct product, whereas this version basically just feels like a downgrade from Showtime.
DeleteStrike Point is a very strange game. Everything about the game, including its name, suggests that it's intended to be part of the Strike series (Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, etc). Just like in those games, you fly a helicopter with limited shields and ammunition and have to eliminate various types of targets to clear each mission. The game feels so similar to the Strike series that I sort of wonder if it was intended to be a Strike game but they dropped the support for it at the last moment or something, as the quality of the game is definitely not up to the standard of the series. By far the biggest issue is the lack of map. The map has been a key feature in all of the Strike games and is essentially what makes them playable, and indeed, you can see here how poorly the game would play without it. There's a ton of flying around aimlessly looking for your targets, inevitably causing you to take hits, and you have very few to give in this game, unlike in the Strike series. The presentation is also super barebones, which doesn't help, the levels look super generic and have pretty much no landmarks, ensuring you'll get lost within the first few seconds, and the music is also totally unremarkable. As the PS1 already has several Strike games, which are far better than this, you'd be hard-pressed for a reason to bother with this one.
Suiko Enbu is a slight downgrade from the Saturn version of the game, but it's still a great game. The biggest issue is that the Playstation version has some slowdown, particularly when the puppet character is onscreen. Besides that this is still the same great game it was on Saturn, and I continue to be a huge fan of its combo system and soundtrack. The Saturn version is preferred if you have the option, but this is still a fine way to play the game if you don't.