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Last Topic's Ratings:
Point Blank 2 - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8)
Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue - BBBAB - 10% (5)
Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels - ABBAA - 30% (5)
Superbike 2000 - BBB - 0% (3)
Tsuri Baka Nisshi - AAA - 50% (3)
Yellow Brick Road - BAG - 50% {3}
I was a bit surprised by the universal acclaim for Point Blank 2, after the original was more contentious. It's probably the case that it just wasn't the same people rating it due to the time gap. A quick reminder, it's been possible for a year or so to click on the names of the games in the GAB ratings list to jump to the topics where we rated them, if you're ever curious to see how a game was rated.
Games for this topic:
Downhill Snow
Grand Theft Auto 2
Patriotic Pinball
Pikupiku Sentarou
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing
Shura no Mon
A couple big names here with GTA2 and SF Rush Extreme Racing, but how do these versions stack up to other versions of the games? I'm also curious to know what's going on with Pikupiku Sentarou.
Downhill Snow - G
ReplyDeleteGrand Theft Auto 2 - A
Patriotic Pinball - G
Pikupiku Sentarou - A
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing - G
Shura no Mon - B
Downhill Snow is better than I expected. It's a pretty well fleshed-out game, with a lot of skiers, gear, and a mixture of racing and trick events. Racing is fairly straightforward and controls decently well, by default triangle is carve and you mash circle to go fast from a stop (though this requires that you not hold any other direction on the dpad or stick). The main nuance here is jumps, you can't steer during jumps so you have to make sure you're lined up before jumping or you'll likely hit a wall or obstacle and wipe out. The trick events are much harder, so I'd probably better explain the trick system. You do tricks with a direction + L1 / R1 or both, and the directions must be pressed, not held. The tricks I've found are left + L1, right + R1, down + L1 and R1, and L1 and R1 by themselves. The key to getting a lot of points is trick chains, which requires you to input the tricks in quick succession (the rider's callout will let you know if you've done this correctly). You get extra points for adding multiple tricks into the sequence. The down trick is the one I have the hardest time performing, so for the high jump, I use down trick, left trick, right trick, neutral neutral neutral, which is more than enough to win, assuming you can pull it off. The game has both a full story mode and a tournament mode that skips the story. The production values are generally pretty solid (the music in particular is pretty good) and overall this feels like one of the better skiing / snowboarding games of its time, I just wish the tricks were a little easier to pull off.
Grand Theft Auto 2 is very similar to GTA1, which is basically its biggest problem. Compared to the original GTA, it looks and plays almost the exact same. The major addition is the faction system, each area now has 3 gangs who hate each other, and doing missions for one of them will make the other ones dislike you and eventually become hostile. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of this system as it feels like it limits your mission options a lot, you basically just choose one gang and do their missions and that's about it. In terms of issues with the original, basically none of them have been addressed. Navigation is still really difficult as the simple arrow doesn't really do a very good job of leading you where you need to go, and driving controls still kind of suck, leading me to do many missions on foot unless you're specifically required not to. The biggest issue though is that other games were making huge steps forward and GTA wasn't. The core game is still playable, but if you look at games like Driver and Urban Chaos, you can catch a pretty good glimpse of what GTA3 will become, and both of those games came out in the same year as GTA2. Of course, we all know how the story ends, GTA3 completely revolutionizes games of this type and GTA becomes pretty much the biggest series of all time, but there's a reason that the series didn't get super popular until the third game.
Patriotic Pinball is kinda borderline. Everything about this title is very similar to the Pro Pinball series. Just like that game, it's a collection of modern Pinball tables with LCD screens and events. It uses a fairly similar 3/4s presentation angle and has generally similar production values. Compared to Pro Pinball, the biggest loss is that this game has very limited options. There's no options for changing the viewing angle or even remapping your buttons, you're stuck using the shoulders for the flippers, though at least this works decently. However, it does have a couple things Pro Pinball doesn't. Each of the two tables has a little introduction menu that shows some background on the table and gives hints, which is a nice touch. Also, in a rarity for games of this type, this game also has difficulty selection, which affects things like how generous the game is with re-launches and kickbacks, which is a pretty nice feature for those who aren't as skilled at these games. My gut kinda says that Pro Pinball is a bit better, but it's still pretty solid. I guess I can't really complain too much, Pinball games really made some big strides this gen.
DeleteI started up Pikupiku Sentarou after Shura no Mon and my reaction upon seeing it has the same developer was "oh no", but thankfully it's not nearly as bad. The basic gist of the game is it's kind of a strange action-puzzle game where you play on the outside of a ring and throw blocks in towards the middle. As you connect blocks of your type, they become bigger blocks, and in the process can destroy enemy blocks, turning them into spike balls that shoot out towards the outside of the ring. If you get hit by a spike ball, you lose a health point, lose three and you're out. Making big blocks can erase more enemy blocks at once and thus send more spike balls, but also send more spike balls your way when they themselves are destroyed, though with the potential to also spawn hearts, which can give you one of your hits back, or inflict an unavoidable hit on an enemy when your health is full. It doesn't really feel like it has a lot of nuance, you mostly just toss and toss and try not to get hit, but it's cute and inoffensive and I don't hate it. It features a "story mode" which is really just a sequence of battles against the other characters, but there's a nice CG illustration before every battle which is unique to each pair of characters, so it helps give the game some charm. It's a very simple game to be sure, but it's certainly a lot better than Shura no Mon.
I wasn't expecting much going into the PS1 version of San Francisco Rush, and initially this would appear to have been a correct assumption. The game is very heavily downgraded on PS1 in almost every way, the menus are extremely basic and have been stripped of all of their personality, there's only 4 racers in each race instead of 8 on N64, there's only 4 tracks instead of 7, and the visuals and draw distance are noticeably worse. However, none of this matters as the game has seen a MASSIVE upgrade to the only part of the game that really matters, the control. The control on the N64 game could generously be called "garbage", it has an annoying system where no matter how much you tilt the stick, you can only angle the car by like 15%, forcing you to make very wide turns and just generally making the game feel bad to play. On Playstation, this is completely fixed, you have completely revamped turning control that makes the game play properly. It also feels like the game runs at a better framerate than on N64, which helps enhance the sense of speed, though it remains controllable due to the upgraded controls. It's interesting, in a certain sense, the game has lost most of what made it special. When it first came out, much was made of the hidden secrets in the levels, which are completely absent on PS1. Instead, we just have a version of the game with less bells and whistles that plays competently. I think it's clear that this version of the game is better, though the question is if it's better enough for G. This is kind of a barebones game without the secrets, but at the same time, it actually does play pretty well. I think this is actually one of your better options on PS1 for a game like this, if compared to, say, Burning Road, this game clearly plays way better and has far more interesting track design. It's certainly not on par with PS1's best racers, but those tend to be more sim-style, so perhaps there's room for a decent arcade port here.
DeleteShura no Mon completely sucks, it might actually be the worst fighting game of the generation. It's a 3D fighting game with absolutely nothing going for it. For starters, this game has no motions, all moves are done with a button plus a direction, and there are only 3 buttons. This means most characters have somewhere around 10 moves total. As you might imagine, this makes offense absurdly limited and allows for no creativity whatsoever. The main character for example has exactly one three-move combo, triangle, forward triangle, circle. There are also no jumps, and pretty much every move in the game is incredibly unsafe, so there's basically no footsies, as you can punish almost any poke with a full combo. This makes crouch blocking absurdly strong (by the way, you block with a button in this game), as if the opponent uses almost any move and you crouch block, you can punish with a combo. The only two options that don't immediately lose to this strategy are overhead and throw, and overheads are fairly telegraphed (so you can just stand block on reaction, then punish), and throws are easily escaped and are also weak. Even if you do get knocked down there's also no wakeup pressure since there's no jumps and most moves hit the enemy too far away to even do a meaty attack. I haven't even gotten to the game's presentation, which is as basic as it gets, with no voice acting and very limited animation. I can't believe this game wasn't a budget release because it certainly feels like one.