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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Area 51 - AABGGB - 50% {6}
Gussun Oyoyo S - AGG - 83% (3)
King of Fighters 96 - GGGGAG - 92% (6)
Lunacy - GAAA - 63% (4)
Scud: The Disposable Assassin - AAAGBAB - 42% (7)
Valora Valley Golf - AB - 25% (2)
I was very surprised by the reception to Area 51, which got 70% for PS1. I'm curious to check later where or not this represents a general trend of light gun games scoring worse on Saturn or if it's just a blip caused by the small sample size.
Games for this topic:
Bubble Symphony
Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon
Grand Slam
Monster Slider
Shockwave Assault
Skull Fang
After knowing of its existence for a long time, I'm kind of looking forward to trying Bubble Symphony. Monster Slider also looks like an interesting title.
Bubble Symphony - G
ReplyDeleteGoiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon - A
Grand Slam - B
Monster Slider - A
Shockwave Assault - G
Skull Fang - B
Bubble Symphony is a decent follow-up to the original game, in large part because it sticks quite close to the original formula. Despite the upgraded graphics and sound, this is still clearly Bubble Bobble, the gameplay and mechanics will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played the first game, which is good because the original is a masterpiece. There are some new changes and additions of course. One small new feature is that there are now hidden music notes on stages that can be used to open doors to bonus rooms. They're usually not too well hidden and sometimes the game even shows you where the are, but it adds a little bit more to do in stages. The other, bigger addition is you now have a charge shot, though this is arguably the game's weakest feature. The problem is that there are 4 playable characters, and they all have different charge shots, but Bub's charge shot is so transparently the best that if you play this in co-op the other players are significantly gimped. The powerup system is also not quite as interesting as it was in the original, as you get powerups much less frequently and there don't seem to be as many of them. At least there's a ton of new levels, some of which are themed based on other Taito games, which is kind of cool. It's still a fun time, though I don't think it comes close to dethroning the original.
Goiken Muyou is a decent 3D fighter. In terms of its overall setup, it's pretty standard, but well-polished. For starters, there's a lot of characters and modes. The game features a pretty well-made training mode with a command list that can easily help you learn the game. The game is generally pretty fast and fluid, there are no floaty jumps here (in fact, there are no jumps at all), and characters have quite a lot of moves. Blocking is done with a button, which is kind of lame, but since the game only uses 2 main buttons it's still workable, even if back blocking would have been better. This all forms a solid core that reminds me of Flying Dragon in many ways, albeit without the RPG mode from that game, but there are a couple problems. For starters, most moves have very little hitstun, which means the vast majority of strings don't actually combo properly. This results in the game's combo system feeling unnecessarily limited outside of juggles, and hits don't feel as rewarding as they ought to. This can also lead to some extremely frustrating moments as the game has a system whereby only certain hits can score knockouts, and the first hit of strings are almost never among them, so you could land a hit, only to have the opponent mash out a DP in the middle of the string and win the round for it. Speaking of DPs, the game's motion detection is also among the worst of any game I've ever played, with motion moves coming out maybe half the time at best. The game does look and sound pretty good and it's fun when it works, and I considered G, but when compared to Twin Goddesses, even though that game has less characters and doesn't look as good I think it's clearly much more fun, simply because its core systems are a lot tighter.
I felt Grand Slam felt a little familiar, but I didn't remember that we had rated it on PS1 until after I finished playing it for Saturn and looked it up. In many ways, it's a game that has a lot of promise. The presentation is pretty good, and something it does that I really like is it shows a little profile for the batters as they come up to the plate showing what they're good at. Unfortunately, the game also has some really lame mechanics that you can't disable that significantly hurt the experience. The first is pitching. When you pitch, you have to line up a two-tap meter, similar to swinging in a golf game, if you don't do it perfectly you will throw a ball. I gradually got fairly decent at this, but even if you can use it well it makes the game feel very slow, adding an extra few seconds to every pitch really adds up, and it makes the pitches too easy to read for the other player since you have to spend so much of your energy on just lining up the meter. Batting doesn't fare much better. You have to do something similar involving lining up a bar with the ball, which is a system that can work, but the camera angle is far too flat and this makes pitches very hard to read. A baseball game where it isn't very fun to pitch or to bat is going to be pretty poor regardless of how well it does everything else, which is too bad because fielding is solid and the presentation is good. This really goes to show the importance of options, if they let you disable the batting and swinging systems the game would be G.
DeleteMonster Slider is okay but not great. The basic gist of it is that it's Puyo Puyo on an angle. The playfield is tilted, and when you drop pieces, if they're not nestled in they slide across until they fit somewhere. You can also change the orientation of your board (flipping the direction of the tilt) at any time, even after making a match, which can create extended chains. The basic concept is not too bad, but it doesn't feel like it has a lot of depth for a number of reasons. For starters, the number of pieces to make a match is only 3, and there aren't that many colours, so accidental matches are extremely common. Rather than spending your time figuring out chain setups, it's much more efficient to simply make a lot of 2 matches, then clear something and flip your board a bunch of times. The game also has different characters who have various special powers, but as in all games that attempt this these are in no way created equal, for example the fish monster's power is that he pushes your playfield up by like 3 rows, which almost always results in an instant kill unless your playfield is nearly empty. While I appreciate puzzle games that make you think in different ways this one just doesn't feel fun or interesting enough to really work.
I knew Shockwave Assault felt familiar when I picked it for this topic, but like with Grand Slam I didn't remember that we had rated the PS1 version, I thought I had just seen a video of it before, so I had to go back to the PS1 version to compare. As before, it's a cinematic linear space dogfighting game. Movement in the game is in full 3D, unlike games like Starfox, but the missions essentially take place along narrow corridors, so you're limited in how much you can fly around. It still gets the job done though, and dogfighting with enemy units is fun and fast-paced. The game features quite good production values with a full story acted out by real actors and constant radio chatter. Surprisingly, the Saturn and PS1 versions have more differences than you'd think. For starters, movement on Saturn is much snappier. The craft is more agile, able to turn more quickly and precisely than on PS1, which makes swerving around to hit targets a breeze. It's a good thing, too, because the Saturn version is also harder, enemy units have much better accuracy and are more aggressive. I would imagine this was done to help alleviate concerns that the previous version could get boring, as the fights are now generally more intense and you tend to spend more time damaged and low on weapons, which makes the trek to the next refuelling station more intense. The Saturn version also has slightly upgraded visuals, for example, on the first mission the Pyramids do not initially appear flush with the terrain on PS1, and in some cases are clearly floating above the ground, but on Saturn this has been fixed. It's not all good, though, the Saturn version also clearly runs at a somewhat slower frame rate compared to PS1 and some of the effects (particularly explosions) have less detail, though I think it's a worthy tradeoff and I would generally say the Saturn version feels better to play. On either system, though, I think this is a fairly cool game, I kind of miss the days when they would get a full film crew to do the acting for these games, I feel like this completely disappeared after this gen.
DeleteSkull Fang is a pretty poor shmup. Everything about this game just feels slightly off. Enemy ships take too many hits to die, your craft's hitbox is enormous, maybe even bigger than the visual (there were a bunch of times where I couldn't even figure out what the game thought had hit me), many of the weapons feel bad to use and you can't carry more than one or swap between them, and there's a surprisingly large amount of slowdown for a game that doesn't even look that great. Probably the worst thing of all is that the game is also on a time limit, including bosses, and if you don't kill the boss in time you just die instantly. If you get to the boss with a weapon that does little damage, you can literally just be screwed because you won't be able to kill it in time. Overall, it's probably the weakest shmup I've covered this generation, and with the myriad of great shmups on Saturn there's very little reason to bother with it.