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Last Topic's Ratings:
Gekitou Crush Gear Turbo - BB - 0% (2)
Hashiriya: Ookami Tachi no Densetsu - AA - 50% (2)
Money Idol Exchanger - AB - 25% (2)
Toy Story 2 - GGGGG - 100% (5)
WCW Mayhem - AGGG - 88% (4)
World Cup Golf: Professional Edition - BBB - 0% (3)
Not too much to say this time, though I thought more people might have played Money Idol Exchanger.
Games for this topic:
Actua Tennis
Cyber Org
Rollcage Stage 2
Sentinel Returns
Slap Happy Rhythm Busters
T: Kara Hajimaru Monogatari
This looks like an interesting set. I've heard of Slap Happy Rhythm Busters a bunch of times, though I'd be hard pressed to say what I've actually heard of it, it's probably just the name that stuck in my mind. T Kara Hajimaru Monogatari also piques my interest.
Actua Tennis - G
ReplyDeleteCyber Org - A
Rollcage Stage 2 - G
Sentinel Returns - B
Slap Happy Rhythm Busters - A
T: Kara Hajimaru Monogatari - B
Holy crap, Actua Tennis actually works. This is the first non-Mario Tennis game to nail all the fundamentals of Tennis. There are two things that are crucial to Tennis games feeling playable. The first is that holding a direction on the stick hits the ball to that side of the court, rather than in that direction relative to the player, so if you are in the bottom left and want to hit it up the line, you hold left. This game gets that right, which very few games prior to the next generation do. The second is that when you press the button to hit the ball, you need to hit the ball right away, rather than having to wait for a long swing animation that only contacts the ball at the end. This game also gets that right as well, albeit in a very janky way. When you press the button to hit the ball, your player does a swing animation, but it's irrelevant. The second you begin swinging, your entire body (and even some invisible space around you) becomes a hitbox and reflects the ball. This can easily lead to you swinging your racket to your right but hitting the ball back from the left side of your body (are you hitting it with your back?), which looks super silly, but who cares, it plays the way it ought to. As a result of having proper controls, you can actually play proper tennis in this game in a way that you can't in most bad Tennis games, for example, using a drop shot to force the opponent to rush the net and then immediately hitting it on a strong angle is a solid way to score points, much as it is in Mario Tennis. The balance of the game definitely isn't quite as good as that game, in particular all players are very fast so rallies tend to go on a long time, with many ending only when one player hits the ball into the net or hits it out, though trying to make a quick call as to whether or not a shot will go out actually still feels decently rewarding so I don't hate that aspect of it. The bigger issue is that the game is also a bit light on overall content. There's a tournament mode, but it's very basic and there's nothing to unlock, or you can play single matches and that's about it. Still, as pretty much the only Tennis game that isn't Mario Tennis to feel decently playable, this has a huge edge on the vast majority of its competition.
Cyber Org is a weird game. It's kind of a hybrid beat-em-up / RPG that reminds me a little bit of Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story. Like Vagrant Story, this is a fully 3D game, there are no prerendered scenes here, which also means the level geometry tends to be extremely basic and boring, and like both of those games, it also has a needlessly convoluted item system that interferes with the game's pacing. The game's combat engine is not bad, it's decently fast and fluid and there's a lock-on system that works well, though combat is very basic, with you having access to only a few basic attacks. As I alluded to before, one of the game's biggest issues is its item system. You get an absolute boatload of items in this game, from weapon and armor upgrades, to medicines that boost your stats, consumable attack items, healing items, boxes to merge or mix items, and everything in between, but have only a paltry 20 item slots, which fills up near-instantly, so you'll spend a ton of time throwing stuff away to try to make space for all the stuff that you get. This exacerbates the game's already significant pacing issues, as areas are fairly large and repetitive and the combat has little variety. The game's story starts off all right, with a lengthy cutscene which is narrated in English, but story sequences afterwards become extremely sparse so it basically just grinds to a halt once the game begins. There's 3 playable characters, which helps give some variety, though you can't switch between them whenever you want, if you're playing as one character and then you switch, the other character will be wherever they were before, you have to progressively unlock relay stations to allow them to come to where you currently are, which feels like an unnecessary mechanic considering this game is completely linear and there's no reason to ever backtrack. Overall, it's playable and gameplay-wise I think it's better than either Parasite Eve or Vagrant Story, but the pacing is quite weak and I think it's more towards the low end of A.
DeleteRollcage Stage 2 is a typical good sequel that basically takes everything that was good about the original game and makes it bigger and better. Obviously, this means more cars, tracks, leagues, and things to unlock, but there are a fair number of improvements to the mechanics as well. For starters, the controls have been polished up a bit. In the first game, if you flip the car, it also often turns you around, which loses a lot of time, so you typically try not to do it, but it works much better here. You can still get flipped around, but while doing corkscrew-type maneuvers it's essentially nonexistent, so you can drive much more aggressively now. There's also been a change to the weapon system where weapons can now be powered up by collecting them again. This adds some interesting nuance to the game, for example the powered up version of the side lightning weapon is a turbo boost, which turns that weapon from a relatively weak one to a great one, but how long are you willing to hold it in the hopes that you find another one to upgrade? The other really substantial upgrade is to the progression, there's an actually crazy amount of cars to unlock here (every race you win earns one), and I like the you can change out your car mid-circuit. About my only criticism is that between the extreme speed of the game and the weapons flying everywhere things can sometimes get a little too nuts and it sometimes feels like luck is just as important as skill, but it's still a solid game.
Sentinel is a weird game but I don't think it has what it needs to be fun. It's a very strange game so I'm going to have to start just by explaining it. The game is played in first-person. It takes place in a mountainous region. You start every stage near the bottom, while the Sentinel starts every stage near the top. Your goal is to kill him, which requires you to climb the mountain. In this game, no one is able to move directly, instead, to move you have to to create towers. When you can see a floor, you can place blocks on it. After creating a tower, you can put a robot on it, then warp yourself to the new robot. Creating towers requires energy, but you can absorb your old towers to get energy back. Absorbing is very important in this game, since your goal is to absorb the Sentinel. The rule when it comes to absorption is you can only absorb something that's at the same or lower elevation than you are. So the goal is to progressively tower your way around the landscape, getting higher and higher, until you can absorb the Sentinel. Then you take over his perch and press R2 and go onto the next stage. There's a catch though. If the Sentinel sees you, he'll try to absorb you, which quickly drains your energy. If the Sentinel can only partially see you, he'll instead create an enemy that will teleport you when it finds you, which is just as bad. You can attempt to quickly warp somewhere else when the Sentinel sees you, but since your energy is being drained, attempting to create a tower usually gets you killed. As such, most of the game involves trying to avoid the Sentinel's gaze. The problem is, there's absolutely no way to tell where the Sentinel is looking right now, so it mostly feels like luck. Generally, if the Sentinel sees you, the best option is just to restart and try again, and hope he doesn't see you next time. You can generally win levels quite fast as long as you don't get spotted, as once you get out of your initial ravine there's usually a lot of little trees you can absorb to quickly make a big tower and take the Sentinel out (and once you're above him, if he sees you it doesn't matter anymore since he can't touch you anymore). I feel like if the Sentinel's vision was represented as a giant searchlight or something, the game would be vastly better. The levels are also all pretty much the same, so even though there's hundreds of them it gets repetitive really fast. I doubt many would have the patience to play this for more than 10 levels or so, by which time it feels like you've seen everything.
DeleteSlap Happy Rhythm Busters isn't quite what I expected. It's sort of advertised as a cross between a fighting game and a rhythm game, but it's really a pure fighting game with an unimportant rhythm minigame tacked on to it. As a fighting game, it's extremely beginner friendly. Every character has marvel-style chain combos (albeit, with only 2 punches and 2 kicks, making it even easier) and the timing on combos tends to be very lenient. Shoryukens also use a down down input here, which makes them even easier to do, and supers are just a basic motion + both attacks, so even a beginner should be able to perform some BnB combos with a very small amount of practice. The AI is also really easy to beat so it's generally a good time for beginner players. That said, there are some issues to be found. For starters, this game uses 3D character models, and suffers from a problem that many 3D games do where some attacks are ridiculously stubby, which can sometimes cause your combos not to link properly. This is generally fairly easy to avoid by just not using those buttons, but it can be an annoyance sometimes. This game also has forward dashes but they are uncancellable, and thus performing one virtually always gets you hit, and I sometimes get them unintentionally when trying to do supers (the buffering window for the forward foward motion may be very long). There's also a crazy amount of degeneracy in this game. For example, Mia's air heavy punch is an orb that hits 5 times that can be performed from a short hop and she can combo out of it. This would be obnoxious enough on its own because it hits high and you can use it like an instant overhead, but in this game, blocking the first hit of a chain of attacks doesn't automatically make you block the rest! What this means is that if she crosses you up with it, you have to reverse your block at exactly the right time or you get hit! I was able to perfect the final boss by just abusing the heck out of this (even the AI can't block it), and after you land the hit you just chain into a hard knockdown and do it again, Akuma wishes his vortex was this terrifying. The vast majority of the supers in the game have near-instant startup and are safe, too. Overall, it's not a bad game to play to learn the ropes but you probably shouldn't take it too seriously.
DeleteT: Kara Hajimaru Monogatari is really weird, but I don't think any part of it is really fun. It's an action adventure game which actually sort of reminds me of Adventure of the Tokyo Disney Sea on PS2, though it's not nearly as good as that game (and even then that game isn't that great). The gist of the game is that it's a romp through a fantasy world populated by strange characters, but it's a very dull romp. For starters, the game is extremely easy. You can take a gazillion hits, and the gameplay is also very stiff so it's not especially fun either. One (good?) thing about the game is you have a little helper character who shows you exactly where to go at all times, which prevents you from getting lost, but it also highlights that this is an extremely linear game and not many portions of it are very interesting. Dungeons tend to be very short and are similarly easy, and the bosses just highlight how lousy the game's combat mechanics are. It's playable but I don't think any part of it was ever particularly engaging.