This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
All-Japan Pro Wrestling Featuring Virtua - GGGA - 88% (4)
Courier Crisis - GGAAB - 60% {5}
Eiyuu Shigan: Gal Act Heroism - AA - 50% (2)
Heisei Tensai Bakabon: Susume! Bakabons - BA - 25% (2)
Junclassic CC & Rope Club - BA - 25% (2)
Tactics Formula - BB - 0% (2)
Compared to the PS1 topic, there was almost no agreement here, though it wasn't unexpected with Courier Crisis.
Games for this topic:
Creature Shock: Special Edition
Galaxy Fight
Guardian Heroes
Lost Vikings 2
NHL All-Star Hockey 98
Steam Hearts
Kind of an interesting set here. I know I've heard of Galaxy Fight from somewhere.
Creature Shock: Special Edition - B
ReplyDeleteGalaxy Fight - B
Guardian Heroes - A
Lost Vikings 2 - A
NHL All-Star Hockey 98 - B
Steam Hearts - A
The Saturn version of Creature Shock has some "upgrades" over the PS1 version, though it's still extremely bad. The big new addition are the ship stages, which play like an incredibly bad version of Starfox. These are still easily the best part of the game, but that's not saying much. The first boss is effectively impossible, it has far too much health and it's pretty much impossible to avoid being shot, so I had to eventually use a code to get to the second level. Compared to the PS1 version, the FMV areas seem to run a bit smoother, but they're still extremely tedious and not fun at all, with most enemies having extremely small hit areas and the load time between attacks making aiming a complete pain. It's not really any surprise that they don't make games like this anymore, even a simplistic action game would have been a lot more fun.
Galaxy Fight is a pretty bad fighting game. There's not much to say about this game other than that it basically doesn't do anything well. It looks decent I guess, but it's pretty bottom of the barrel gameplay-wise. It's a 3-button fighter, but don't expect any kind of chain combo system here or anything, the game actually doesn't even feature cancelling of any kind, the only combos are links, which feels absurdly primitive for its time. There are also no supers or no meter or any sort, and all of the stages scroll infinitely with no corners. All of these mechanics combine to create a game that has very little depth, not helped by the fact that like many other bad fighting games, it also has completely nonsensical frame data, with many normals being unsafe on hit (remember, there's no cancelling), while many spammable special moves are instead totally safe. About the only good thing you can say about it is that forward dashes work well, but it's nowhere near enough to carry the game.
Guardian Heroes is a very unique and innovative game. At its core, it's a beat-em-up with light RPG elements. Enemies have HP bars and you can level up, allowing you to improve your statistics between stages. It also features a somewhat detailed combat system where you can block and have access to motion-activated special moves, and it also has multiple characters. The game is also fairly story-heavy as well, with many branching paths determined by your choices at the end of each stage. It sounds like the setup for an amazing game, and it is, eventually, but this release is missing just enough to hold it back from greatness. One of the game's biggest issues is that it just pushes the Saturn a bit too hard. The game frequently puts 5+ fighters onscreen at a time, with tons of special effects as well, and while Saturn does an admirable job of keeping up with the action, there's still a lot of slowdown in bigger battles. The game also lacks any form of combo breaker or even a proper air recovery, and when there's a lot of enemies present being infinitely stunlocked to death is a constant concern, and these two issues kill most of the game's depth. In most boss fights you basically just try to pin the boss between two characters or spam fast attacks over and over before they can do the same to you, and it never feels particularly strategic or interesting. The game does have rare moments where it comes together and feels great, but unfortunately these moments are fleeting and the game generally feels unpolished a lot of the time. If this had been the only game in the series I might have been a little bit more generous with it, but it's not. A remake of this game was released on XBLA many years later that drastically improves it, not only does it improve the graphics and translation and eliminate slowdown, but it also adds new movement options like airdashes that improve the combo game, as well as adding a burst move that you can use to escape stunlock situations. It was also followed-up by a pseudo-sequel in Code of Princess, which features the same gameplay but with drastically more characters, content, and polish, and both of these games are vastly more playable. It's still a great foundation, but if you want to play it these days you should really seek out the XBLA version, which really polishes this game into a gem.
DeleteI expected Lost Vikings 2 would be a straight port of the SNES game, but to Blizzard's credit they've somewhat attempted to remake the game for the 32-bit consoles. The game's visuals and audio have been completely redone, with new prerendered graphics and full voice acting, as well as some occasional cutscenes. The new coat of paint does help the game feel slightly more fresh, though unfortunately, they also come with some downgrades. For starters, the control has also been redone and it's clearly worse. The game feels much stiffer and slower on Saturn, for example compare Baelog's grapple arm between the two consoles, it comes out and moves much quicker on SNES, which makes combat (especially when Baelog is forced to fight alone) feel a lot worse. This lack of responsiveness seems to apply to most actions in the game. The new graphics also sometimes obscure things, an example would be when you have to rescue Fang on the 6th level or so. You have to grab a key through a hole with Baelog's arm, but with the new visuals it's basically impossible to see the wall / hole there, which will probably cause a number of players to get stuck. These are somewhat minor issues and the game is still fun, but this is clearly not the best version of it and I don't feel that even the SNES version is as good as Lost Vikings 1. It's too bad they didn't actually remake both games for the 32-bit consoles, if they had included the first game too it might have bumped the package up to G even with its shortcomings.
NHL All-Star Hockey 98 is probably the weakest of the Sega Sports titles. Its biggest flaw is actually one we very rarely see with sports games, which is its frame rate. This game has a ton of trouble holding its framerate, you can expect to see frames dropped on nearly every play, and in a game where precise movement and timing is as crucial as it is in Hockey, this is extremely detrimental to gameplay. Even if you could get past this, there's simply not much reason to. While the game does look pretty good, nothing else about it stands out. Gameplay-wise, this is another typical mediocre hockey game where the goalies are too good, which makes the game mostly about luck. Even when you have a clear-cut breakaway or a 2-on-1, you can reliably expect the goalie to rob you 90% of the time, which means that your positioning doesn't really matter. Checking also feels wonky and there's also no commentary of any sort, which makes the games feel very dry, particularly considering how rare it is for anyone to score. Both of the modes in Actua Hockey are much better than this.
DeleteSteam Hearts is an okay shmup. In terms of mechanics, it's fairly basic. It plays fairly similar to something like Raiden, with its only really notable feature being that you can pick up and store 3 sub-weapons, which also basically act as bombs, you can detonate your current subweapon for a specific effect that depends on which weapon it is. The game floods you with these things, so typically you'll just find one that you want to keep and then detonate the others as soon as you get them. Compared to many shmups of the era, your hitbox in this game seems quite big, the bullet patterns can often overlap, and your shots can sometimes overlap enemy bullets, which hides but does not eliminate them, so they've taken the "lazy" way out by giving you a health bar. It's still at least generally functional and is infinitely better than something like X2, but it's clearly behind most of the good shmups of the era. Of course, we can't talk about this game without talking about the hentai scenes, which are obviously the thing that sets this game apart from other shmups. There's one after each stage, and to be honest, they're not too great. They consist of around 4 still images and a crapton of voiced dialogue. At best, they feature exceedingly mild toplessness and generally aren't worth sitting around for 5 minutes for. Apparently the Saturn version of this game is actually slightly censored compared to the PC-98 release, so you might want to track down that version of the game instead if that's what you're here for.