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Last Topic's Ratings:
Actua Tennis - BG - 50% (2)
Cyber Org - GA - 75% (2)
Rollcage Stage 2 - AGGGGG - 92% (6)
Sentinel Returns - GBBB - 25% (4)
Slap Happy Rhythm Busters - BA - 25% (2)
T: Kara Hajimaru Monogatari - GB - 50% (2)
I was pretty surprised by the lack of votes for Slap Happy Rhythm Busters, maybe it was more obscure than I thought.
Games for this topic:
Aconcagua
Fisherman's Bait 2
Guntu: Western Front June 1944
M&M's Shell Shocked
Pocket Fighter
TOCA 2: Touring Car Challenge
An interesting set of games this time. I'm kind of morbidly curious to try the M&M game, and Guntu also looks kind of interesting. We also have Pocket Fighter, which is one of my old favourites, and Aconcagua, a Sony-first party game I'd never heard of (though apparently there's a translation available for it).
Aconcagua - G
ReplyDeleteFisherman's Bait 2 - A
Guntu: Western Front June 1944 - B
M&M's Shell Shocked - A
Pocket Fighter - G
TOCA 2: Touring Car Challenge - G
Aconcagua is pretty cool. It's primarily a point and click adventure game, where a bunch of passengers on a plane get mixed up in a dangerous situation. What separates this from most other games of this type is that you control a party of survivors rather than a single character, and each of them have unique skills, so figuring out which person needs to deal with each situation is crucial. It's also often useful (and occasionally necessary) to have the characters talk to each other, as the characters can often give you a good hint about what you need to do next, or one character might not be able to do what they need to do to solve a puzzle without information from another character. Generally speaking, the puzzles aren't too hard, I never got stuck to the point where I needed to use a guide (though there is one available). The story is also kind of interesting, it's tense at least, though I don't think the characters are especially strong, probably due to the somewhat low amount of dialogue in the game compared to many other adventure games. Still, the presentation is quite good and it feels unique, and with it having a translation now there's not much reason not to check it out, I ended up playing pretty far for this review and didn't really get tired of it.
Fisherman's Bait 2 continues to kind of be a tragedy. If you don't remember the first game, it's a very arcadey-style fishing game that does show promise but is marred by a terrible design decision regarding reeling, which requires you to constantly spin the right stick. This is tragically still not fixed. I realized while playing it that this game DOES have another control scheme, you can attach a non-dualshock controller to play without the right stick and this does let you use a button to reel! Unfortunately, rather than just holding the button this forces you to mash. I think this control scheme might be better but they both still suck and I really wish you could just hold down a button like in every other sensible fishing game. In most ways, the game is extremely similar to the first game, even reusing most parts of the interface, except for one significant improvement, which is the addition of a lure cam in the top left when trying to lure a fish. This change might initially seem small, the first game did sort of have this but it didn't actually show anything underwater and you just got a "biting" message when it was time to hook, but the value of this extends significantly beyond just the improved sense of immersion. In the first game, you could never tell when you needed to hook, you just had to try to either react to the message, or, more likely, just mash down constantly so you would insta-hook whenever anything bit the line. However, now that you can see the fish approach, this is no longer an issue at all. Even more importantly, a common problem with many Bass-focused games is that only Bass count and you can't know if you're going to hook a Bass, but since you can now see the fish before it bites, you can just not hook the fish if it's not a Bass and save time, which is super critical in this game since the entire thing is a time attack. This even adds a little bit more nuance to lure selection. The Popper, for example, is easy to use an lures lots of fish, but since the fish bite it from below it's very hard to determine whether or not it's the right fish in time and I often get fooled by similar-looking fish like the Snakehead. A lure like the Vibration is harder to use, but due to the angle you can get a much better look at the fish as it approaches, making it far easier to identify a Bass. This actually adds an appreciable amount of extra depth to the game, and combined with the tension meter being somewhat tweaked so that jerking the rod matters more it actually now feels pretty good to play except for the fact that my right thumb quickly gets sore from the constant reeling / mashing. I feel like with a better control scheme this game would probably be G as I do generally like the way the game is set up, I just hope they've finally added a sensible control scheme for the third game.
DeleteGuntu has exactly one feature that I like but other than that I find it to be fairly bad. It's a light-gun game with pre-rendered graphics, similar to things like Time Crisis, though it's clear that this one was designed for consoles and not arcades. Probably one of the weakest things about the game is that you have a machine gun and enemies in the game have HP. While this is not so bad in an FPS or something, it works quite poorly for a lightgun game, even though the weapon thankfully has autofire, because it means the screen flashes near constantly. Most enemies also have too much hp for your gun to really do anything to them, so you're very reliant on your secondary weapon, which is a rocket launcher. Rocket launchering big targets is satisfying but its cooldown also feels very arbitrary and it's annoying when you need it but it's not available. The one interesting idea the game has is the way it handles its health system. The game is timed, and every time you get hit, you simply lose some time, but you gain time back for killing enemies. I actually think this system works pretty well for the most part, though the gameplay is definitely let down by the boss battles, which are extremely tedious due to the bosses having a ludicrous amount of health, often requiring 20+ rocket launcher shots to put down, which just takes forever. I'd love to see this kind of system in a game like Area 51, but this game just isn't really interesting enough for it to shine.
DeleteThere are a lot of shameless Crash Bandicoot ripoffs this gen, but M&M's Shell Shocked might be the most blatant of the lot. There's very little to say about this game other than every aspect of it copies Crash to the letter, not only do you have the spin attack and crate bouncing mechanic but they even have the TNT and Nitro Crates with the exact same colours. It's not nearly as well polished as Crash either, the physics are often kinda wonky and there's a ton of kill floors that in no way look like they'd kill you. About the only good thing you can say for it is that the cutscenes are kinda funny and they do have the original voice actors, but is anyone really that passionate about the M&M characters? It's not completely terrible, but there's very little that stands out about it.
I was sort of wondering how well Pocket Fighter would hold up because it's kind of a gimmicky game in some ways, but I needn't have worried. One of the first things everyone thinks about when it comes to Pocket Fighter is the Flash Combo system, which lets you do some autocombos by pressing Punch, followed by a sequence of more punches and kicks, which all result in different strings of attacks. These sometimes incorporate lows, overheads, grabs, or guard breaks depending on the character, but generally they're not that great. None of them are "true combos", the punch one hits until the last hit, which is safe, but you can super through it, and generally just holding back tends to escape most of the pressure save maybe for high low, but the truth is that these combos are a relatively small part of the game and even if you rarely use them the game still plays fine. The other major system in Pocket Fighter is a much more interesting one, which is the gem system. As you fight, gems get knocked out and you can collect them to power up your special moves to three different levels, which gives them better properties. This has all kinds of interesting applications for the game's neutral and combo system, for example, Ryu cannot combo low kick into Tatsumaki at level 1 (he has to use Hadoken instead), but it does work at level 2+ and becomes a preferred option. Similarly, his fireball gets more hits as it levels, becoming a better pressure tool and performing better in fireball wars. These gems also help add nuance to the game as certain actions spawn certain types of gems, with flash combos and supers generally spawning a lot, which gives more reason to use them, which I think is an interesting strategic touch that pretty much no other game has. Mechanically, the game is quite simple, with only one punch and one kick, though characters actually have quite a lot of moves, even beyond their standard 3 specials every character also has at least 3 supers and most have at least one other special move that isn't part of the standard list. The game is also generally very fun and colourful, it's packed with references to other Capcom games and just generally feels like it has a lot of heart. This is a feel-good fighting game if ever there was one.
DeleteTOCA 2 is a solid improvement on the first game. When we reviewed TOCA 1 I said it was a solid GT type game but it just didn't have a lot to it, which caused it to pale in comparison to GT's robust campaign. Thankfully, this has somewhat been addressed in TOCA 2 by the addition of new modes, particularly the Support Car Championship, which challenges you to race and win tournaments as various cars to unlock new cars to use in a manner somewhat similar to Ford Racing or Indy Racing 2000 on N64. This mode is fun and helps give the game a lot more replay value. The game has also seen a bit of a boost in the visuals department, the original game had very basic and dry menus that have been spruced up considerably, and in-game visuals have also seen a decent bump, making this easily one of the best-looking racers on the system. Races with rain look particularly fantastic with great lighting effects. There's not really too much else to say about it. GT is definitely still a little better, but it no longer feels lacking in any way as a game, and is a very solid option if you're looking for something else similar to GT.