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Last Topic's Ratings:
Battle Garegga - GGGGAG - 92% (6) (2 SR)
Cyber Doll - GGGG - 100% (4)
Gekiretsu Pachinkazu - BA - 25% (2)
Groove On Fight: Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3 - GGGG - 100% (4)
Tomb Raider - GAGGGG - 92% (6) (1 SR)
Quarterback Attack - BBB - 0% (3)
An interesting "dueling games" topic, where both Cyber Doll / Groove on Fight and Battle Garegga / Tomb Raider had similar scores. Gekiretsu Pachinkazu wasn't able to match Quarterback Attack for the coveted 0%, though.
Games for this topic:
Area 51
Gussun Oyoyo S
King of Fighters 96
Lunacy
Scud: The Disposable Assassin
Valora Valley Golf
Besides the headliners for this week, I think Lunacy looks really interesting, I'm curious to take a look at that one.
Area 51 - G
ReplyDeleteGussun Oyoyo S - G
King of Fighters 96 - A
Lunacy - A
Scud: The Disposable Assassin - B
Valora Valley Golf - B
Area 51 remains very solid on Saturn. Compared to the PS1 version, the only real change is that the Saturn version does not run full screen, instead it runs inside a window, with the game occupying about 90% of the screen. This would sound like a point in PS1's favour, but actually I prefer it, because the game's HUD is placed outside the game window. On PS1, enemies can shoot at you from behind your ammo display, which cannot happen on Saturn because it's outside the play area, and I think it feels better this way. It's a very minor point and the game is good on both platforms but I do slightly prefer this version. On to the game itself, it's still good. It might be a bit surprising to come back to such an influential title like this and find that it still plays really well, one would probably be tempted to assume that it would have aged poorly, but thanks to smart overall game design it's still very playable. I talked about the health system when we did the PS1 version (unlike most games, enemies don't immediately damage you when they spawn, giving you some actual time to react), but something else I'd like to mention is that although using a light gun is obviously preferred, the controller controls are also very solid, the movement speed of the cursor is just right for the game and it feels completely fine to play this way. Overall, this is just a surprisingly solid title that has stood the test of time.
Gussun Oyoyo S is a port of the SNES title Super Gussun Oyoyo to Saturn. Like all of the games in the series, the goal is to drop Tetris Pieces to guide a hapless explorer to the exit, while avoiding various obstacles along the way. It's a well-tested formula that has retained its appeal through numerous titles, and even though this is a port of one of the first games you won't find that much is missing here. My only complaint is pretty much the same one I always have, that since the piece drops are random some stages can involve a fair bit of RNG. This can be quite frustrating on SNES, where you have limited lives, but the experience is smoothed out significantly on Saturn since you now have infinite continues (puzzle games should never have limited lives). Beyond this, the game has also received a slight boost to its presentation, though it's fairly minor, and strangely you can choose to play with the original graphics and sound if you want, though I don't see why you would. In any case, it's the definitive version of the first title in the series and a solid option on Saturn.
King of Fighters 96 is a pretty big upgrade over KOF 95, except that the issue of the load time between rounds is not fixed (and will not be this generation). As I noted on PS1, the KOF games are available for almost every system imaginable, so there's not a lot of reason to play a version of the game that is a lot worse than most of the others. There's a few peculiarities to 96 as well that make me generally prefer 97, you're stuck with the charge bar for supers, and taunts can be used to drain it absurdly effectively in this game, making supers a near non-factor in matches. It's probably best to just stick to KOF 97 if you really want to play a KOF on Saturn.
DeleteLunacy is first-person graphic adventure game in the same general vein as Myst. The first thing I have to note about this game is its excellent technical performance. One issue that plagues many games that play similarly to Myst is that they incur some load time whenever you move from one place to another, but Lunacy is buttery smooth and this really helps sell the game's locations as being believable 3D areas. The game also features nice rotation transitions when you change direction and such good cutscene to gameplay transitions that I actually sat at the first screen of the game for 20 seconds or so waiting for the cutscene to end even though it was already over. The game also boasts some pretty decent art direction, its settings generally look good and have a good sense of atmosphere. It's not all positive though. Gameplay-wise, this is one of the most simplistic games of its type, having almost no interactivity or puzzle solving. The vast majority of the game consists of simply exploring various locales to find the next story scene. Occasionally there are very mild puzzles but the answers are heavily hinted if not outright told to you. For example, at one point, you come across a grave, and the character immediately notes that it has no flowers on it, rather than letting you figure this out by examining the nearby graves that do have flowers. The other low point is the game's dialogue. This game has a lot of voice acting, but it's quite poorly done. Not so much in terms of the actual voice work, which is tolerable, but the script is extremely stiff and awkward, as though it was poorly translated from Japanese, it's strange that none of the voice actors clued the writers into the fact that no one actually speaks this way. It's too bad, too, because with the gameplay being so simple the story is the main appeal of the game and the stilted dialogue robs it of most of its gravitas. It's still a playable game with some interesting settings, but it's not as good as it could be.
Scud has a good sense of style, but unfortunately that's all it has going for it. It's a game that tries to be a hybrid of a platformer and a light gun game, which is an interesting concept, but both sections of the game are so repetitive and monotonous that it just doesn't work. The platforming is the worse of the two sections, with some of the worst level design of all time if you can even call it that. The stages in the game are almost totally flat and repeat over and over as you fight the same enemies again and again. Actually, the enemies just spawn endlessly, if you stand in one place the same couple groups will come at you again and again, so really, there's essentially no "level design" at all to this game, just a long corridor where enemies keep coming. The light gun sections are marginally better but they too have far too little variety and repeat too often. If you can make it past the second stage it does get a little better but it's never really fun. If you compare Mr Bones or even Johnny Bazookatone those are both games with great style that play way better than this game, and considering that most people hated Bazookatone that should give you some idea of what to expect.
DeleteValora Valley Golf is another typical bad golf game. Actually, I guess I shouldn't quite say "typical", this game attempts to stand out by having a "Devil's Course" theme where the course is unusually brutal in terms of its design, but it has all of the same issues as most other old golf games so it feels much the same. As with many other golf games, this game isn't properly 3D, you have almost no camera control, and this makes reading the course next to impossible. This is super obnoxious because the game actually IS modelled in 3D, there are power shots you can do and when you do so the game switches to a 3D camera to show the shot, so there was nothing stopping them from giving you proper camera control besides the fact that they didn't feel like it I guess. Speaking of, the power shots barely do anything, even though there's several different ones, and you have to nail the max power exactly to pull them off, which is a pain given the game's swing meter. It becomes especially terrible when you need to hit any shot for less than max power, as the percentages on the meter are almost impossible to determine, and the fact that you have no access to an "approach shot" means that if you get within 30 yards or so of the green you're basically screwed. Of course, putting is similarly terrible, with you being unable to pull up the green lines again once you dismiss them the first time. I'm starting to sound like a broken record at this point but it's absurd how much of a step forward Mario Golf was for this genre, the games that predate it just aren't in the same universe in terms of playability.