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Last Topic's Ratings:
Activision Classics - AAAB - 38% (4)
Geom Cube - AAA - 50% (3)
Image Fight & X-Multiply - AAA - 50% (3)
RC de Go - GA - 75% (2)
Tomb Raider 3 - AGGAG - 80% (5)
Xtreme Roller - GA - 75% (2)
I was very surprised to find that Tomb Raider 3 was the first game in the series to reach the high range, though I would have been even more surprised if none of them made it.
Games for this topic:
Elemental Pinball
Hyper Crazy Climber
NBA In The Zone 2000
Roadsters
Total Eclipse Turbo
Ungra Walker
I could have sworn we had already done the PS1 version of Roadsters, but we haven't. It's probably because we rated the N64 version a ton of times because I kept forgetting that I'd played it before. Most of the other games in this topic look neat as well, there's quite a few I want to try out.
Elemental Pinball - A
ReplyDeleteHyper Crazy Climber - B
NBA In The Zone 2000 - A
Roadsters - B
Total Eclipse Turbo - A
Ungra Walker - A
Elemental Pinball is a bit more basic than I was hoping for. The much touted Elemental mechanic barely matters, these are basically just a series of powerups that you can randomly earn through a roulette, the core gameplay is very similar to pretty much all other pinball games. The biggest issue here is that this game has only one table, although there are different skins available for it the layout is identical. Thankfully, it is at least a pretty good table, in particular I feel like it's one of the more skill-based pinball tables out there. One of the things I really like about it is the way it handles the gutters, your "gutter relaunch" is tied to a series of lights that you can move around, ostensibly allowing you to save the ball from the gutter every time with good reactions, which I'm a fan of because I always feel that gutter deaths are kinda lame. The game is also very generous with extra lives, if this was a real machine it would clearly not make much money, but since it isn't I guess they can be a little more forgiving. I really wish the three skins had at least minorly different layouts, but I guess you could look into this one if you're a big proponent of quality over quantity.
Hyper Crazy Climber is a super weird game but it's very clearly bad. For starters, it is virtually unplayable on its default control setting, immediately set the controls to type 1 in the options. Even then, the game still has tons of issues. The goal of the game is to climb to the top of a structure while getting constantly pelted from above, similar to some of the stages in NES Ultimate Stuntman, but way worse. For starters, one mechanic which is completely vital to know is that a fair number of the obstacles in the game can't hurt you if you're standing still. There's no way to know which ones this works on without simply trying it out, and later on far more that you cannot block this way start to appear, which creates ton of situations where you basically just have to be lucky. The most obnoxious mechanic is that from stage 2 onwards, many of the handholds will progressively close, and if you're holding them when they close you instantly die. This is way too much to deal with with all of the other bullcrap that's constantly occurring, and the game desperately needed an easy mode that let you turn this mechanic off. You can sometimes collect powerups, which range from the completely useless single dynamite (I've never managed to hit anything with this) to the godly Time Stop, which makes the game feel playable for a little while. Even if you did somehow manage to put up with this game through an absurd amount of save scumming it isn't even very long, but there's also no reason to bother.
I have to give Konami credit for the degree to which NBA in the Zone changes with each release. This is the third game in the series that we've covered now and they all play very differently. Compared to In the Zone 98, the big change here is that the mechanic where being near a defender makes you move slow is gone, which in turn makes the Turbo much more useful and dunks far more of a threat. To offset this, stealing is now way more effective, a single steal attempt will often result in a pickoff, so there are more turnovers. This makes the game feel more fast-paced and arcadey compared to 98, but not to quite the same degree as the original, so I guess this game is kind of a middle ground between those two extremes. As you might expect, it also looks and sounds a lot better than 98, it's actually kind of surprising how much the visuals were improved in those 2 years. Of the three games, I kinda feel like this one is the weakest, because the other two have a strong identity, while this one plays somewhat more generically, but I suppose it's still a decent option if you want a good-looking basketball game that doesn't skew too far to the extremes.
DeleteEvery time we play Roadsters, I always think we've done it already, because it's so forgettable you can easily mistake it for any other generic racing game. Even though we covered the N64 version twice, I still had to go back to it for the sake of comparison for this one, and this is a comparison where PS1 loses badly. Virtually everything about the PS1 version is drastically downgraded compared to N64, it looks and sounds much worse and the controls have also taken a huge hit. The PS1 version also feels vastly harder, though this is probably at least in part because the controls are a lot worse. Thankfully, this game has no Saturn version so this should be the last time we have to cover it.
Total Eclipse Turbo is a very basic depth shooter, ala Starfox, though it also has a lot in common with Off-World Interceptor Extreme. The game's most notable mechanic is that whenever you kill enemies, you regain health, though your shield also constantly drains in some areas. While this certainly has the effect of forcing you to be aggressive, the health refill is so generous that it trivializes almost all enemies as taking enemy shots literally doesn't matter. Colliding with the ground is a more significant threat, particularly in tunnels, as the craft is very large and doesn't handle especially well. The game does put out a rather impressive amount of plasma without significant slowdown, but it's such a nuance-free game that I feel it doesn't stay interesting too long. It's not terrible, but there are certainly better options.
DeleteUngra Walker is a fairly basic 3D Dungeon Crawler. It plays a lot like the Mystery Dungeon series, with randomized dungeon floors full of enemies and items. Like in Mystery Dungeon, some items you find will be unidentified, and there's also a hunger mechanic, but generally this game is fairly generous and easy compared to MD. Healing items are extremely common, and you don't get hungry very often. The game is also action-based, feeling somewhat similar to Terranigma, but it's pretty simplistic overall, with most enemies only having 1 or 2 attacks. A few bosses exist, and reaching certain floors in the dungeon allows you to open up a warp that you can use when returning to town, but for the most part it's a pretty simple game and its biggest issue is that it gets repetitive after a while, as the rooms and enemies tend to be very samey and it's not very challenging. There's a couple different characters you can play as, but I'm not sure this really works to the game's advantage as they're very limited in terms of what they can do, for example each class is locked into very specific equipment, so a fair amount of the stuff you find won't even be useful for you. I feel like this game would have benefitted a lot from having co-op or at least being tuned to be a little bit more challenging, because it has some things going for it but it doesn't quite feel like enough. Certainly, it pales very significantly to games like Baroque or Sorvice.