This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Downhill Snow - GA - 75% (2)
Grand Theft Auto 2 - BAAAAAGAA - 50% (9)
Patriotic Pinball - GA - 75% (2)
Pikupiku Sentarou - AB - 25% (2)
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing - GAA - 67% (3)
Shura no Mon - BB - 0% (2)
GTA2 did end up rating a little bit better than the first game, but not by a lot.
Games for this topic:
Bob the Builder
Echo Night 2
MaxRacer
Rat Attack
Reel Fishing
Strikers 1945
People complained previously that there was no horror title for Halloween, so I made sure to include one for Christmas. I remember liking the first Echo Night and there's a translation for the second game so that'll be interesting to go through. We also have the first game in the Strikers 1945 series, which is the game that has that name in Japan, the game that is called Strikers 1945 in the US is actually Strikers 1945 2 (and we've rated it already).
Bob the Builder - A
ReplyDeleteEcho Night 2 - G
MaxRacer - B
Rat Attack - G
Reel Fishing - A
Strikers 1945 - G
Bob the Builder isn't terrible, its main flaw is you don't actually do enough building. It is essentially a minigame collection for kids, and there are a couple good things about it. For starters, the presentation is solid. It has the intro from the show, as well as a fair number of cutscenes and voice acting. As far as the games themselves, they're a mixed bag. I think the best games are the ones that involve Lofty, which are also the ones where you actually build stuff. For example, the game where you knock down the old bridge and put up the new bridge is solid. I also appreciate that for the game where you have to build a pipe, there are multiple possible pipe designs to give it some replay value. Many of the other games are action challenges instead. There's a racing game, which is competent I suppose, and two very similar challenges where you have to crush bubbles / scare away crows. The plumbing game is easily the most forgettable, and would likely be very dull without speedup, and the game where you have to find the cat is way too easy and shows up too many times. Overall, I like that the game has difficulty options and some of the games are decent, but I think it needs a couple more standout minigames for a G rating.
Echo Night 2 is pretty good. Much like the first game, it's a first-person horror game revolving around light. When it's dark, there are ghosts that can attack you, but they disappear when the lights are turned on. Unfortunately, you usually have to do something before you can turn the lights on in an area, so you'll have to avoid them from time to time. When you're not being chased by ghosts, you'll need to help friendly spirits pass on to the next world by viewing their memories and helping them solve whatever issue is preventing them from moving on. Visually, the game looks great, and the writing is pretty interesting too, with exploring the scenes from the past always being a particular highlight. My one complaint is the same one I had from the first game, which is that I wish it was a little scarier. It has its moments, but for the most part the ghosts tend to be very slow, they announce their presence in a room, and it generally isn't that hard to get the lights back on and banish them, meaning they're a fairly minor threat throughout the game. I think the idea of the light and dark mechanic is interesting, I wish there were more situations where you were forced to play in the dark to up the tension a bit. Even when you do have a section where you're forced to solve a puzzle in the dark, the ghosts will usually be banned from the rooms that contain the puzzles, which both gives you an unintended clue that you have to do something important there as well as taking most of the tension away. Still, even if you view this as more of an adventure / puzzle game than a horror game, it's still pretty cool and well worth checking out, as is the first game. A very solid and underrated franchise to be sure.
MaxRacer is not great. It's a futuristic racer comparable to Wipeout and F-Zero, but it's not nearly as good as either of them. For starters, it's another one of those racing games with only 3 tracks and no progression, which is bad because both of its main competitors have far more tracks and modes. Secondly, the controls simply aren't up to the job. This game does have a decent sense of speed when using the boost, but the game lacks the "lean turn" from F-Zero and Wipeout, forcing you to rely on the brake to powerslide instead, and it's simply not up to the job with how fast you're generally going to be travelling. I'm also not convinced that this game's framerate is all that steady, particularly when you bonk into walls, which you'll be doing a lot. Overall, this feels like it could have been a decent demo for a game, but as it is it feels very unfinished and lacking.
DeleteRat Attack feels like it's a little bit better than it was on N64. It's mostly the same game as before, the gist of it is that you play as a cat and you have to catch rats. You do this by stretching out a little net as you move in a fashion similar to Qix, with the goal being to trap the rats inside it. You then drop them off at a pad to get rid of them, but if you catch a bunch before dropping them you get a bonus, but this is risky because you drop them all if you get hit. While you're trying to catch the rats, they're also trying to tear the house down, destroying various objects in the scenery, and you get a bonus if you prevent their destruction. It's a decent arcade-style setup for the most part and the game feels decent to play. On N64, I felt it felt a little too simple, but a couple new things have been added for the PS1 version, most notably EXTRA rats, which have a rotating letter icon above their heads. When you catch them, the letter is fixed, and if you can spell out EXTRA you get an extra life. This sounds minor, but it adds an interesting dimension of risk and reward to the game. Do you want to try to hold the trap out just a little longer to wait for the letter to cycle to the one you want, despite the fact that the rats could escape / hit you while you're doing it? It's just the right amount of additional chaos to help the game feel more engaging. The boss battles are still kind of lame, but at least they're not very common and don't take very long.
The moment I saw the Natsume logo pop up in Reel Fishing I knew it was going to be decent, and indeed, this is another fishing game by River King creator Pack-In Soft. Of all the games they made this gen, this one is in many ways the closest to the gameboy River King games. It has literally the exact same fishing engine, where you'll cast your line at little fish shadows, then lure the fish by moving the lure up and down, then finally reel them in with 1 button controls from a side view perspective when they're not running. It's identical to the GB games but with better visuals. In terms of progression, it bares more resemblance to Murakoshi Masami no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou. It's divided into stages, each of which tasks you with catching a certain number of fish. There's no RPG elements here, you just catch a bunch of fish, then move on, and catch a bunch more fish, and that's the game's biggest issue. The fishing action in the River King games was decent, but it was the RPG mechanics that really tied those games together, when stripped of the RPG elements it quickly starts to feel repetitive. It also doesn't help that if you want a game that plays like this, there are already 4 River Kings on Gameboy that play like this game but better, and if you want a 3D version of it, there's Nushi Tsuri 64, which adds a ton of new stuff. Even if you want an arcade-style game with no RPG mechanics, Murakoshi Masami no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou is drastically better than this game, featuring much better visuals, charm, and having better pacing. It's still kind of impressive that even Pack-In-Soft's most phoned-in effort is still significantly better than many other fishing games from this gen, this is in no way a B-level game, it's just not one that there's much reason to play when the same developer released so many games that are better.
DeleteStrikers 1945 went through a strange mixup where I intended to cover it in a very early topic, but due to an ambiguity in naming we ended up covering its sequel instead, so we're only just now getting to the original game. "Aha", you're probably thinking, will the fact that we already covered the sequel, as well as numerous other great shmups like Sonic Wings Special and Gunbird end up changing my opinion on the game? Nope, the game still rocks. The game actually isn't too different from its sequel, other than maybe having slightly worse visuals (for example, the charge shot isn't indicated in as visually obvious of a way), but it still looks great, and the gameplay still holds up perfectly. It's actually very similar to Sonic Wings Special in a lot of ways, it also has the random stage progression and the belief that absolutely anything can be a transforming mecha (I actually wondered whether or not the games had the same developer, but they don't). I actually think we could come back to this game 30 years from now and I'd still say the same things about it. I feel like this kind of game will never really age, its combination of incredibly tight gameplay plus fantastic 2D visuals makes it essentially timeless.