This topic is now closed
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Last Topic's Ratings:
Block Kuzushi, The - GA - 75% (2)
Boxer's Road - BB - 0% (2)
Clock Tower (US) - GGGGAAAA - 75% (8)
Destruction Derby 2 - GGBAGAB - 57% {7}
Dragon Valor - GGGG - 100% (4)
Team Buddies - ABAG - 50% {4}
A rare instance of a topic turning out better than I expected, both in terms of the number of votes and the ratings.
Games for this topic:
Army Men: Green Rogue
Jeopardy
King of Bowling 2
Meta-Ph-List: Gamma X 2097
Over Drivin' Skyline Memorial
Urban Chaos
Over Drivin' Skyline Memorial is a Japanese variant of NFS1, which I wasn't sure was different enough from NFS1 to be rated separately, but after testing it out I think it is. We also have the second game in the King of Bowling series, which I've referred to quite a few times when rating bowling games.
Army Men: Green Rogue - B
ReplyDeleteJeopardy - A
King of Bowling 2 - A
Meta-Ph-List: Gamma X 2097 - A
Over Drivin' Skyline Memorial - A
Urban Chaos - G
Army Men: Green Rogue is pretty bad. It's essentially an Army Men-flavoured take on a top down shooter like Mercs, but it's not nearly as good as that game. The biggest issue with the game is that it has no personality whatsoever and it's extremely repetitive. You'll find the same handful of enemies hundreds of times per stage in pretty much the exact same configurations, and the title character is as dull as they come. Gameplay-wise, it's ok, probably the best thing about it is you get infinite grenades, but the game is so repetitive the appeal of this quickly wears thin. Compared to something like Sarge's Heroes, it both plays worse and has way less charm.
If you've been following GAB for a while, you'll notice that I pretty much always have the same complaint about every game in the Jeopardy series, which is that when the computer doesn't know the answer to a question, they put in guess like "what is XXXXXXX?" because the game doesn't actually have wrong guesses saved for the questions. This is finally fixed! When the computer doesn't know the answer in this game, they'll answer with a plausible but wrong guess, which greatly helps with immersion. The game also now has voice acting, which is a nice plus, though the visuals are otherwise very basic. The game is pretty light on options as well, in particular the ability to choose the difficulty of the questions would have been nice, as they are super hard compared to pretty much every other trivia game on the market (the difficulty is mostly in line with the actual show), so if you're not a trivia genius you're probably going to let the time elapse on most of the questions. Not a bad product by any means, but I feel this has been eclipsed by Who Wants to be a Millionaire and especially You Don't Know Jack.
I've talked about King of Bowling 2 quite a lot in our GAB reviews, ever since I tried it out for comparison when we did one of the first bowling games it's been one of my go-to comparisons, but upon going back to it I found it wasn't quite as good as I remembered it. It's a fairly standard Bowling game mechanically, it uses the standard rules with no gimmicks and it has a simple accuracy meter that functions very much like what you'd see in most golf games. Much of the appeal comes from the presentation side, one of the neat things about this game is that you choose from one of a handful of bowlers and they have various things to say after different shots, though there's actually not as much variety here as I remembered. The game's music and effects are also pretty solid. The biggest issue is that even though the game's physics are decent, its swing meter is super picky, if you're even a frame off you'll end up throwing the ball way off to the side. It's fairly easy to throw strikes as long as you land the meter perfectly, so most of the challenge feels like you're just battling the meter. Even making extremely simple shots, like cleaning up a single pin for a spare can be extremely hard in this game, leaving little room for the finer points of bowling like trying to capitalize on splits and such. I also feel that although the game's character-driven presentation is interesting, it is far surpassed in this regard by The Star Bowling, which has far more personality to it. It's still a decent game, it's just not quite as strong as I first thought.
Meta Ph List is an incredibly weird game. It starts with a completely bizarre intro where a robot gives a radio style countdown of the week's top games in surprisingly clean english with a bunch of strange adult humour that seems totally out of place. This also has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, which a vertical shmup, though it's also very weird. The basic gist of the game is that it simulates an intersteller war. You begin the game by choosing a planet to attack, where you then fight enemies for a while, before unceremoniously leaving the stage. At this point, the mission is judged as a success or failure based on the percentage of enemies you shot down. Winning and losing battles affects which levels you can select, with you gradually being forced to do easier planets if you keep losing, and gaining access to harder planets by winning. Your ship also levels, making your weapons and shields stronger, so there's a bit of an RPG feel to the game, and as you progress through the stages on each planet you eventually come across boss battles and the like. The core idea isn't bad I suppose, and the gameplay itself is mostly decent, you have access to a 360 degree turret that you use in combat, you can rotate it with L and R, and you also have access to 3 different weapons, a regular shot, a piercing laser, and a missile (which is also the only way to hit ground targets). You can take an absurd number of hits, but both you and the enemies can fill the screen with plasma to an almost absurd degree, which can make it very hard to make out enemy attacks at times, and since the goal is really to blow up as many enemies as possible rather than just avoiding damage, it helps to be able to soak up a few hits every now and then. Overall, it's not that bad I suppose, I just wish I had more of an idea what's going on with the game because there's almost no information about it anywhere.
DeleteI wasn't sure if covering Skyline Memorial would be worth it, as it's essentially just an upgraded NFS1, but a single key change makes it a drastically better game. One of the first things that stands out about the original version of NFS1 is that the control is absolutely atrocious, it feels like the turning control barely does anything when you're going fast, making the game feel like complete garbage to play. This was fixed with the Saturn version of the game, and the fix is carried over here, making this version play drastically better than the original PS1 version. This version also makes the hidden Las Vegas track available from the start rather than forcing you to unlock it through the tournament, which is nice as this is probably the best track in the game. Otherwise, this is still the same NFS1 and it sadly lacks the bonus tracks from the PC version, but having fixed controls makes this version of the game drastically more playable.
Urban Chaos is an interesting title. Like Driver, this is another early precursor to GTA 3. This time, besides driving around an open-world city, there's also a substantial focus on combat on foot, with you being able to seamlessly enter and exit vehicles mid-mission. The combat system is simple but pretty solid, it focuses pretty heavily on takedowns, which I think is actually kind of interesting since it mirrors real hand to hand combat more closely than most similar games. You have basic punch and kick combos, but generally the slide kick and the throw down to the ground tend to be most preferred, allowing you to either perform strong downed attacks on your opponents when they can't retaliate or cuff them for an instant defeat, depending on your character. Speaking of, an interesting mechanic in this game is that there are three playable characters who have different abilities and operate on different sides of the law, which helps give the missions a decent amount of variety. It's not universally positive, though, there's a fair bit of jank, it's hard to break out of combat once the game activates its auto-lock on, the camera can sometimes be a problem, and there's a bit of jank with missions (they have a ton of side objectives but they don't really do anything for you). The game also starts off with a bunch of tutorial missions, somewhat akin to Driver, but thankfully they're not anywhere near as hard. Overall, it's a pretty decent title and I'm pretty impressed that they were able to get something like this running on PS1.
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