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Last Topic's Ratings:
Contender 2 - BB - 0% (2)
Detective Barbie - AG - 75% (2)
Future Cop: LAPD - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8) (2 SR)
Kyoutei Wars Mark 6 - BB - 0% (2)
V-Ball: Beach Volley Heroes - GG - 100% (2)
Virus: The Battle Field - GG - 100% (2)
Wow, this was a super-highly rated topic. I don't know the last time we had 3 100 games in a topic. Even Detective Barbie made the high range.
Games for this topic:
ISS Pro Evolution
Kamen Rider V3
Legend of Mana
Phix: The Adventure
Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo
XS Moto
Legend of Mana is something I've wanted to play for a long time, but I never had anyone to play it in co-op with. I guess I'm finally going to be checking it out solo. Also, we have another game in the Kamen Rider series, which I hope is as good as the previous one.
ISS Pro Evolution - G
ReplyDeleteKamen Rider V3 - G (SR)
Legend of Mana - A
Phix: The Adventure - B
Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo - G
XS Moto - A
The ISS games are some of the best soccer games of the generation and ISS Pro Evolution is no exception. Something I noticed immediately about ISS Pro Evolution is how smooth and fluid it is. The game has excellent physics when it comes to movement and ball control, for example player stumble over each other realistically if they collide while running in a way that few other games can match. Control is also really good, in the same nuanced but accessible way we've come to expect from the series. For example, this game makes hitting headers relatively easy due to the way it shows a little X where the ball is going to land. Nothing about this is really revolutionary, and it's easy to take this kind of excellent technical execution for granted, but given the huge amount of mediocre soccer games we've played this gen it bares mentioning when a game nails all the fundamentals. Presentation is also decent, though you could probably argue the commentary has a little less energy compared to some of its competitors, but it's still fine in any case. Definitely another very competent effort from Konami, who are rapidly proving themselves to be the masters of the genre.
Kamen Rider V3 rocks. It's a lot like the original Kamen Rider, but even bigger and better in both ways. Like the original, this is an extreme love letter to the TV series, filled with incredibly well-animated cutscenes, lots of characters, and a boatload of bonuses and extras. The first thing I have to talk about is the story mode, which is incredible. It was already good in the previous game, but it's been improved even further here. It's now less formulaic in terms of structure, and the cutscenes are even better. These are actually some of the best cutscenes I've ever seen in any game, I love how they perfectly replicate the cheesy overacting of the actual show. It's hard to explain without simply watching it yourself, but the way the characters move is a dead ringer for the kind of exaggerated movements that are the cornerstone of tokusatsu productions, even though with this being a video game it would have been easy to use more "traditional" animation. These scenes are just a delight to watch, and there's also an absolute ton of them as the game's story mode is surprisingly long. In terms of the core gameplay, it's actually seen a fair number of changes from the original game. For starters, the game is now fully 3D. You can no longer jump, but you have free sidestepping, which helps when fighting multiple opponents at once in story mode. Move lists have also been simplified, there are no longer motions, all moves are performed with a direction plus a button (special moves have their own button, like in Flying Dragon), which also means that blocking is now mapped to a button, but given how simple the gameplay is this is fine. There's also been a big change to the way transforming is done. In the first game, transforming is automatic, you fight certain battles untransformed and you transform during cutscenes, but it's now part of gameplay! Almost every character now has an untransformed state, during which they are weaker and slower and have no special moves. During this time, you can press the special button to transform, which you want to do because besides making you a better character and giving you all your moves it also restores a little health, but the transformation is slow and vulnerable and you can be hit out of it, so you generally need to score a knockdown first to get time to pull it off. There's also been changes to throws, they now use a sort of rock-paper-scissors system which sort of resembles a wrestling game, and you now have a parry move with back + throw. Overall, it's a pretty solid setup. It probably doesn't have a ton of depth, but character movesets are decently extensive and it fits the game well. There's a ton of other cool stuff about this game that I don't have enough time to talk about, like how you can win fights without transforming in story mode for a different cutscene, how the arcade mode has a dedicated final boss with a scene for every character, and how everything you do unlocks medals that you can use to unlock trading cards and other cool stuff, but I'm running out of space. Suffice it to say that this is easily one of the coolest franchises that we've come across through Playstation GAB and it's great that they kept the same developer for this franchise rather than farming it out to someone cheap.
DeletePhix sucks. The basic gist behind it is that it's a 3D platformer with a unique polarity mechanic. Phix can swap between north and south polarity, like a magnet, which affects many things. There are various little magnetic spots in the game, and if you have the same polarity, they repel you, and if you have opposite polarity, they attract you. Enemies too are polarized, and you can only hurt enemies of the opposite polarity from you (they can hurt you just fine regardless of your polarity, unfortunately). It's a setup that has the potential to be interesting, but thanks to bad execution it doesn't work out that well. Let's start with the basics. Compared to many other 3D platformers, your jumps are very non-floaty in this game. Phix has barely any hangtime to his jump, which gives you absolutely no leeway to correct mistakes. Did you try to go for a jump and notice at the last second that a magnet is pushing you the other way at the end? You could hold square to become neutral and pass by it if you could react in time, but with how fast you fall you're almost certainly just dead. Making any small mistake in terms of polarity switching near magnets will similarly almost always fling you off a cliff to your doom before you can react. Worse yet are the enemies. Enemies must be hit by the opposite polarity to be killed, which is fine when you can see them coming. However, rather than having the enemies all be spawned on the stage from the start, they instead spawn constantly, and often only a few inches away from you, which gives you no time to react to them. You might be able to just mash the attack button in time, but of course if they're the wrong element you'll just power them up instead, and you can take very few hits, so the correct option is clearly to simply run from everything. In fact, generally the best way to play the game is to refuse to interact with its mechanics as much as possible. Use neutral polarity to avoid magnets as often as possible, and run past all the enemies you can. There are gems you can pick up, but they are worthless, as it takes far too many to get an extra life and the game has no checkpoints and infinite continues anyway, so lives are worthless. The camera is really lousy too, generally being much too zoomed in for you to anticipate obstacles properly ahead of time. Then there's the bosses, which take like a million hits, have attacks that aren't properly telegraphed, and just generally feel extremely janky. I tried to give this one a chance, but it's just too unpolished to be fun.
DeleteBokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo makes an interesting contrast with Kamen Rider V3 because this is also a pretty fanservice-heavy game. The gist of this game is that you play as fan-favourite villain Doronjo in a shmup style game and have to go up against all of the various Yattermans from throughout the Time Bokan series. It's an interesting concept, I particularly find it enjoyable to see this kind of game from the perspective of the villains, but it kind of makes sense with how much bullcrap the Yatterman characters have access to, Doronjo and her gang definitely feel like the underdogs here. In terms of the gameplay, it's fairly basic shmup stuff. About the only thing that sets the game apart from every other shmup is that you have a choice of 6 mecha to use, which you can choose before each stage, but you cannot use the same one for two stages in a row because it has to be repaired. Each mecha basically just has a different weapon, as well as different speed and shield stats (you're allowed to take a couple hits). All of them have access to infinite bombs, because of course the Doronbo gang would never run out of bombs, you just have to load them first, which takes a moment, but they make a satisfyingly huge explosion. I also love how if your mecha is destroyed, you get a last chance hitpoint of the Doronbo gang on their stupid tandem bicycle that they use for their "Team Rocket's blasting off again!" moments from the original show, though of course it's very weak. One of the game's only major downsides is the music, which loops too often, and not gracefully either, but at least the sounds and voice acting are great. Overall, it might not be the most technically sophisticated shmup ever, but it's wacky and fun, and is pretty solid for an early title on the system.
DeleteXS Moto is just okay. It starts off quite poorly, by locking your ability to select your steering assist options behind a license test mode. I think this is kind of inherently absurd, control settings should never be an unlockable feature, but luckily the license test is short and competent so it's not that big of a deal. It's very reminiscent of Gran Turismo, though, and this game really doesn't want to invite that comparison because GT is way better. In terms of control, the game is all right. One thing I've noted about many previous bike racing games is that they feel like they might as well just be car racing games with a different vehicle model, but that is thankfully not the case here. Controlling the lean of your bike during turns works well and it feels appreciably different from controlling a car and this is probably the best thing about the game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really have a ton going for it besides this. I mentioned earlier that the comparison to Gran Turismo is unfavourable, and a lot of this is due to how lackluster the game's main single player mode is. There's a number of tournaments you can compete in, but there's absolutely no progression, there's only a single bike and you can't even tune its settings. The game's presentation is also extremely dry, visuals are decent and there's some lighting effects, but there's no in-race music, no announcer, and generally no flair of any kind. Overall, it's a functional game, and not the worst bike racer we've played, but it's clearly quite far away from the top games in the genre.