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Last Topic's Ratings:
ISS Pro Evolution - GGG - 100% (3)
Kamen Rider V3 - AG - 75% (2) (1 SR)
Legend of Mana - BGGGGAA - 71% (7) (1 SR)
Phix: The Adventure - BBB - 0% (3)
Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo - GG - 100% (2)
XS Moto - AAB - 33% (3)
There were an absolute ton of SRs given out last week between this topic and the Saturn one. I guess it must have been an unexpectedly good week, because SRs tend to be a little rare these days.
Games for this topic:
Hugo: The Quest for the Sunstones
Monster Racer
RC Stunt Copter
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6: Awakening of the Dragon
Space Jam
Umihara Kawase Shun
I've wanted to cover Space Jam for a long time, but I kept putting it off because I felt like it was too close to other arcade Basketball titles. Well, it's finally time to come on and slam! Also, Monster Racer has no relation to the RPG "Monster Race", it's a pure racing game this time.
Hugo: The Quest for the Sunstones - A
ReplyDeleteMonster Racer - B
RC Stunt Copter - A
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6: Awakening of the Dragon - A
Space Jam - G
Umihara Kawase Shun - G
Hugo 4 is a pretty mediocre Crash Bandicoot copy. It's a fairly standard linear 3D platformer that bares a ton of resemblance to Crash, but with none of the variety or cleverness of that game. By far the best thing about the game is its presentation, in particular the cutscenes are quite good for their time, but it's obvious this took most of the game's budget, as the levels are all very similar and there's only 8 of them, resulting in an absurdly short runtime for a game of its type. There's pretty much no variety to the levels and there aren't any boss fights either, resulting in a pretty ho-hum experience. It's a functional game, which is a lot more than can be said for the first two Hugo titles, but I think The Evil Mirror was a superior game overall.
Monster Racer is easily one of the worst racing games of the era. It's essentially a kart racer, but one of the worst ones ever. For starters, you race as monsters, not carts, which means there's no drifting, instantly removing most of the nuance from a game of this type. Items still exist, but these too are terrible. Although there are some standards like an unguided and homing missile, there are also some "passive" powers that are used automatically when obtained. While some of these are good, like the shield and the all-important boost refill, many of them are bad, like ones that reverse your controls or blind you, which essentially guarantee that you'll fall off the map and lose time. Speaking of boost, you have access to a boost bar which lasts an absurdly long time that you'll want to spam at every opportunity, as you have a chance to get full boost meter from item boxes, though even when using boost the game still feels fairly slow and dull. It also doesn't help that tracks have 5 laps, which only adds to the tedium. The game's presentation is also quite bad, it has very poor, constantly looping music, the visuals are at best serviceable, and it doesn't consistently hold 30fps. Even Muppet Racemania is a lot better than this.
RC Stunt Copter is very reminiscent of Pilotwings. Like Pilotwings, the goal is to complete a variety of simple flight challenges, where your accuracy and speed determine your score, though compared to Pilotwings it's also drastically more complex in terms of control. The game uses both sticks fully to control the copter in a method that's almost too complex to describe, but thankfully there's a very indepth tutorial to try to learn how to control it. Even then, I feel like control is the game's biggest weakness. When auto-level is turned on, it feels playable, but with no auto-level it feels almost uncontrollable, perhaps because the game focuses too much on very delicate stick motions that the PS1 controller doesn't handle well. In terms of the missions themselves, there's a decent variety, from flying through targets, to landing on specific pads, to shooting things, and many other varieties, so it doesn't get too repetitive, and there's also a very chatty announcer who, while occasionally annoying, does help to give the game some personality. Compared to Pilotwings 64, I definitely think this game is a little better, it helps that the levels are shorter but more engaging compared to the Pilotwings levels, which frequently drag on way too long, so retrying levels to get a high score actually feels like something you might consider here. Still, it's not one of my favourite flying games from the era by any stretch.
DeleteRotK6 makes some strides forward but remains caught in the past in other ways. For starters, the game has one major new feature: there's now a story! At the start and end of each scenario, you can view a little story sequence explaining the characters and their role in the events. For example, the first scenario is based on the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, which also forms the basis for the NES game Destiny of an Emperor, and the dialogue at the beginning in many ways mirrors the opening of that game. These are very cool, and when playing the full scenarios, they have introductions and endings for any of the characters you can choose, which helps give the game a lot more replay value. The only problem is that these scenes in many ways feel like they belong in a better game, as the core gameplay doesn't really live up to them. ROTK has most of the same problems it's always had, the interface still feels slow and cumbersome, but it's also kind of been dumbed down in various ways that now make it feel like it has little nuance. One of the biggest changes is to the combat system, which tends to change with every ROTK game. The big new mechanic is simultaneous decision-making, both sides give their orders and then the battle plays out based on the orders that were given. This is a potentially cool idea, but far too much time elapses between orders, making it impossible to plan out any kind of coherent strategy. Instead, you pretty much have to rely upon setting general goals (like pursuing a specific unit) and let the AI make the decisions themselves, which results in battles feeling very hands off for the most part. Combined with the economic side of the game being simplified and involving little strategy, it tends to make the core gameplay loop fairly dull. I wish they would have just leaned harder into the strategy RPG side of things, similar to Dragon Force, as the presentation feels like it's moving in that direction, but it still remains pretty dry in terms of gameplay.
Space Jam is an interesting one for sure. In a lot of ways it plays like a Looney Tunes-branded version of NBA Jam, but there are also more differences than I expected. Rather unsurprisingly, the game primarily focuses on the basketball match between the Looney Tunes and the Monsters from the movie. You can choose to play as either side, and there's a ton of characters to choose (yes, of course including Michael Jordan) who are all quite nicely animated. However, the differences immediately become apparent, because if you're playing as the toons you're immediately thrown into a minigame to try to collect Michael's stuff, which makes him more powerful. Once this is over, you get into the regular match, which is very standard NBA Jam. In particular, this does not have a number of the bells and whistles from later games, like there's no alley-oops or anything like that, even being on fire doesn't exist, but the core mechanics are intact and remain fairly fun. Between quarters you can play more minigames for powerups, some of which are pretty cool, these are probably the highlight of the package. I do sort of feel like the basketball action itself feels a little underwhelming at times, without the fire mechanic it can feel pretty dry and if you leave the quarter length at default the games can feel like they drag on a bit, but this is still a pretty solid title overall and I don't think you could have asked for much more from a game based on the movie.
DeleteUmihara Kawase Shun is so similar to the original SNES title I had to immediately go back to that one to determine what if anything had changed. Like the original, this is an odd platformer that hinges around the "rubbery fishing pole", a gadget that functions a fair bit like Rad Spencer's bionic arm from Bionic Commando, albeit with much wackier physics. Figuring out how to do all kinds of tricks using the game's physics engine is most of the fun, though it's a bit more subdued here as the game is somewhat slower and less crazy compared to the SNES version. Pretty much everything else remains the same, the graphics have seen a bit of a facelift but the style is very similar, and the game's progression is completely unchanged. Playing both back to back, I feel like the SNES game is definitely superior in almost every way, the only edge I'd give to the PS1 version is the music, but the PS1 version is still fun even if the reduced speed of the game is clearly a bit of a downgrade.