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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Elemental Pinball - AAB - 33% (3)
Hyper Crazy Climber - BB - 0% (2)
NBA In The Zone 2000 - AAG - 67% (3)
Roadsters - BB - 0% (2)
Total Eclipse Turbo - GAAAB - 50% {5}
Ungra Walker - AB - 25% (2)
Probably one of the lower rated ones in a while, with not a single game in the high range.
Games for this topic:
Exector
Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic
Interplay Sports Baseball 2000
Rung Rung
Speed Punks
Yetisports Deluxe
Rung Rung looks really interesting, I'm curious to play it. Apparently it was actually released on the US PSN, but not translated, which caused some mild outrage. I'm also kind of morbidly curious about Yetisports.
Exector - A
ReplyDeleteHermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic - G
Interplay Sports Baseball 2000 - G
Rung Rung - G
Speed Punks - G
Yetisports Deluxe - B
Exector is a weird game. It's a fairly basic top down action game where you pilot a mech through various bases. There are tons of other mechs to shoot and powerups to collect, but the real challenge is simply to find the end of each stage, as the levels are very labyrinthine and you'll have to search everywhere to find the keycards. The game's combat is really nothing to write home about. Everything in the game (yourself included) spams high power projectiles constantly, and you cannot strafe, so basically you just have to shoot constantly to make sure you kill things before they kill you. Health powerups are extremely abundant, so as long as you don't get stuck backtracking to an area where you've already collected them all, running out of health isn't a serious concern, but if you can't find the keycards you'll be in trouble. There are boss battles periodically, but they're also very simple, like most of the rest of the game. Honestly this is very borderline for B but at least it did come out very early in the console's lifetime.
Hermie Hopperhead is an interesting title. It's a 2D Platformer that bares a lot of resemblance to Super Mario World, though it has some unique mechanics too. The similarities to Super Mario World are apparently immediately, most particularly through its map screen. Just like SMW, this is a fairly long game, with around 70 levels, and many levels have multiple exits, leading to alternate sets of stages. Hermie is a bit more limited in terms of abilities compared to Mario, he can only run and jump, like Mario's base form, instead he has to rely on his animal helpers for more advanced moves. Throughout the levels, Hermie can find all kinds of coloured eggs, and he can take three of them with him at a time. By spending the stars that are gained in levels, he can hatch the eggs into various animal friends, who are cruicial to the game's gameplay. Normally, the friends simply follow Hermie, but you can press a button to make them split up from him. At this point, they take various actions, depending on which one they are. One of the most interesting is the turtle, who simply becomes a shell that you can kick around to defeat enemies, but each has a different effect. You can then press the button again to make them stop moving, and you can then touch them to re-gather them and have them follow you again. Using the abilities of the friends is frequently vital, as enemies in this game are very abundant and some of them cannot be defeated by Hermie at all, such as enemies with spiked tops. The wrinkle here is that the friends also act as your hit point, if you have the friends with you and you take a hit, they go into scatter mode, but if they're already in scatter mode it kills you, so you have to be careful with it. There are also signs which turn your friends temporarily into platforms, allowing you to reach new areas, but this also leaves you vulnerable until they regroup. The core concepts are pretty decent and the game generally makes fairly good use of them. I was somewhat unsure between A and G for this game for a while, as it does have a few flaws. Compared to Super Mario World, the game's physics are clearly not quite as tight, nor is the level design as strong, even the map lacks the personality of Nintendo's game. However, this is kind of unavoidable when you invite the comparison to what is probably the best 2D platformer ever made, of course almost every other game looks not as good by comparison, but it's still a pretty solid game with a ton of content that also looks pretty nice. It's not quite the masterpiece that SMW is, but it might be Playstation's best 2D platformer anyway.
Interplay Sports Baseball 2000 is a very solid classic-style baseball game. Pretty much everything about this game is done pretty well. It looks good, it sounds good, and it has very good controls, so much so that there's really not too much to say about it. Something I like is the way it handles base running. If you have a runner on first and third, to make the runner on third go for home, you press L1. To make the runner on first go for second as well, you press L1 again, so two taps if you want them both to run. To have them go back, you press R1. You can also use this to make them take a larger leadoff when batting (at the risk of possibly getting picked off) or press it twice to steal. It feels intuitive and a little faster than the "hold the direction of the base and press a button" system. The game also plays decently fast and feels like it has a good balance between hitting and batting, with pitches feeling decently readable but not trivial, and a sensible percentage of hits getting through. This is not quite as flashy as MLB Pennant Race, but it's still a strong title.
DeleteRung Rung is a very interesting title that I wish had been localized. There's a ton going on here, so I'll try to explain it as best I can. Rung Rung is a top-down adventure game that primarily revolves around finding and using various items. Dorothy (it's based on the Wizard of Oz) can search for items with Triangle, which sends out a ping and gives you a kind of "hot-cold" indication if there are items nearby, which you can pick up with Circle when you get close enough. The items you find will typically tend to be fairly basic things like leaves and mushrooms that are not useful on their own, but you can combine them together using a magic pot to create various tools that you need to solve puzzles. As you progress through the game, you'll meet NPCs who can help you with this, though you'll have to help them a little in return first. NPCs will typically ask you to find or make some items for them, and in return, they'll tell you more recipes or even give you some new items. Dorothy usually doesn't know what items do when you first find them, so one of the options is you can ask NPCs if they know anything about any of the items you have, and as you do more requests for them you can also ask for new recipes and also trade items with them. This sounds like a ton to keep track of, and it is, but thankfully the game has a good interface that helps you keep track of it all. There's an illustrated book with pictures that keeps track of what items do and how to make each combination, and the magic pot will show you which item you have and which you don't. The game also has a ton of tutorials whenever new mechanics are introduced, which google translate handled pretty well, so I didn't have much trouble following it all. There's more to the game than this, though. At first, the environments are pretty safe. Dorothy spends 1 hitpoint each time she searches for items, but you can't kill yourself doing this and just have to go back and rest when you get too tired, but later on there are enemies and other hazards that can hurt you, so you'll have to be more cautious in your item hunting. Toto can also sometimes find items for you, and Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man can help you in various ways too. Beyond the gameplay, it's also quite a nice looking game, with very colourful and varied surroundings and characters with a ton of voice acting. It's a pretty lengthy game with quite a bit of substance to it, so if you're looking for a Japanese take on the Wizard of Oz with more meat to it than Yellow Brick Road, this one could be worth a look.
Speed Punks is also a super solid title, so much so that I was very surprised I hadn't already heard of it. It's a kart racer that plays a lot like Crash Team Racing, except without the adventure mode, instead it has the more simplistic cup-based progression system from Mario Kart. It's immediately obvious that this game has quite good production values, the visual design of the game generally has a ton of energy, the menus are all pretty cool, and the sound design is also very good. The control is also pretty spot on as well, which is obviously essential for a racing game. This game features a chargeable turbo boost that you can use at any time, similar to the modern Nickolodeon Kart Racers games, which helps it stand out a bit from the pack. Powersliding is available and is super controllable, you can easily snake, but powerslides themselves do not grant speed boosts, instead doing long powerslides charges your boost bar, which kind of acts like a minor anti-snaking mecahnic. Speaking of the boost bar, an interesting wrinkle is that if you wait for the boost bar to be totally full before using it, you get a stronger boost for a short while. You can use only a tiny bit of boost, then recharge it, then do it again to keep getting the powerful boost, but of course, there may be times when you need to use more boost, like when recovering from a weapon hit. I appreciate the little bit of extra nuance this gives to what might otherwise be a simple experience. Probably the only criticism you might have is there isn't quite as much stuff here as in some comparable games. There's only 12 tracks, though they are quite varied and well-designed, and only 3 real unlockables. For each of the game's 3 circuits, if you win every race, you then face a boss, and if you beat the boss you can race as them. Thankfully, if you lose,
Deleteyou don't have to redo the entire series again, the boss challenge remains unlocked, but it's a bit
annoying to win 3 of the 4 races and lose the 4th. Still, it's a very solid game overall. It might be the 5th best kart racer of the gen behind Mario Kart 64, CTR, DKR, and Mickey's Speedway USA, but it's still quite a good game, it's surprising just how good this genre was this gen.
I had no idea what to expect from Yetisports, but apparently the answer is "not much at all", as it is one of the most content-light games of the era. It is basically a collection of two flash games, the first, Pingu Throw, involves hitting penguins that drop from above with a bat to launch them as far as possible, reminscent of Track and Field's Javelin toss or what not. The second is Pingu Slap, which is a darts based game where you have to throw a snowball to hit the penguins into the dartboard. And that's essentially the whole game. There are two other games that are minor variants of the above, but the entire package probably has about 20 minutes worth of content. The games themselves aren't actually that bad, the animations are kind of funny and there is a little fun to be had, but even at $10 this would feel overpriced. It does have a sequel that adds way more games though, so perhaps that one will be worth a look.