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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Black Dawn - BAA - 33% (3)
Fist - BB - 0% (2)
Impact Racing - BAB - 17% (3)
Sesame Street Sports - BBB - 0% (3)
Stuart Little 2 - GGAAA - 70% (5)
Tales of Phantasia - GGG - 100% (3) (1 SR)
I can't believe so few people have played Tales of Phantasia, I expected that to get a lot of ratings. Put that on your to-do list, people!
Games for this topic:
Activision Classics
Geom Cube
Image Fight & X-Multiply
RC de Go
Tomb Raider 3
Xtreme Roller
Kind of an interesting set this time, both Geom Cube and RC de Go also look like interesting titles.
Activision Classics - A
ReplyDeleteGeom Cube - A
Image Fight & X-Multiply - A
RC de Go - G
Tomb Raider 3 - G
Xtreme Roller - G
Well, you certainly can't fault Activision Classics in terms of quantity, with 30 games here, they've got a fair bit of the 2600 library covered, including some key titles like River Raid and Pitfall. Undeniably, these games are somewhat dated, but there are a few interesting games in the package, like Hero, and the presentation of the collection is decent too, though I wish there was some behind the scenes stuff here. The biggest issue is Activision released an improved version of this collection in the following generation which includes about twice as many games, so you might as well get that one instead.
Geom Cube is basically just Tetris but in 3 dimensions. Instead of creating lines, you instead create squares, where filling up an entire "slice" of the cube clears it, beyond that it plays exactly like Tetris. The biggest issue is since the game has 3 dimensions, you can rotate the blocks in 3 ways, and no matter how I map the controls it never feels natural. The other issue is that positioning the blocks as they fall is difficult, I think it would have helped if they showed an outline of the block's exact position or something, because sometimes it doesn't feel obvious. The game is also a little short on modes, basically only having endless and VS Com, and I also wish it had a hold feature. It's okay, but I feel like it could have used more polish.
Image Fight & X-Multiply is pretty much identical to the Saturn version. Image Fight is a very old vertical shmup that I feel isn't especially great, you're really here for X-Multiply, which is a very solid horizontal shmup with a neat "wiggly arms" mechanic that I pretty much never get tired of. Though I feel X-Multiply is clearly a G-Level game, it is also a last-gen game, and with only 2 games in the collections and no extras it's a bit of a hard sell. Irem apparently hasn't learned their lesson, either, as they're going to be re-releasing this yet again on Switch, though at least the collection will include Image Fight 2 this time! Too bad there was never an X-Multiply 2.
Xtreme Roller is an interesting game with a lot of upsides but also a number of issues. It is effectively a racing game mixed with Tony Hawk. You race through courses on rollerskates, but you can also grind on stuff and do tricks to get turbo boosts. The levels are full of alternate paths and cool trick opportunities, but there's a number of issues too. First, as you'll probably find out the 10th time you fail the first level, the game is hard as balls. Every stage is divided into 3 parts, a time trial, a trick race, and a normal race. These are listed in descending order of difficulty, but the game makes you do them in the order specified. The time trials are absurdly tough, they work like the ones from Crash Team Racing where there are clocks scattered throughout the course that give extra time. There are 3 laps, and the clocks don't respawn, which forces you to take different routes on each lap, but you're going to have to be near perfect because the margins are razor thin. The Trick Race and Race are both easy, on the Trick Race you have to beat someone while getting at least a certain score, but the time and the score thresholds are both generous, and the final race is similar but with two rivals and no score threshold. You'll be such a master of the course by the time you finish the time trial that these with both be a cinch, and you'll probably be able to pull off some sick moves since you won't have to be killing yourself to get the clocks all the time. The other issue is the controls. Actually, they work fairly well for the most part, X accelerates, Circle is boost, Square is jump, and Triangle is trick, but the fact that you have to hold down X at almost all times makes doing some things harder than it should be, and there's also a tiny bit of jank to the physics where sometimes you'll bail trying to do things you think should work, and given how slim the margins are this can be pretty frustrating. Generally speaking, you want to start almost all trick chains with a grind, even when on a half pipe, you want to go up to the lip, grind on it, then jump and do a trick at the end, doing a trick into a grind is generally pretty finnicky and I wouldn't recommend risking it most of the time. Winning stages gets you money to buy upgrades, and there's actually a practice stage you can grind to gain money (albeit at a pretty slow rate), so if you get stuck you could try grinding some upgrades, but it's never going to be easy. The time trial on the school stage in particular took me at least 40 tries (and then I beat it with 20 seconds left). That said, when the game comes together it actually feels pretty great. Activating a speed boost, landing on a rail for a grind, jumping off for a trick, then landing and doing another speed boost feels sick as hell, and the game will force you to become that good. Even though I had to restart most of these stages a ton of times, it never got THAT frustrating because the core gameplay is fun, you're just going to have to be pretty stubborn to get far in this one.
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