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Last Topic's Ratings:
Dragon Master Silk - GGG - 100% (3)
Minami no Shima ni Buta ga Ita - GA - 75% (2)
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Zenpen) - GAB - 50% {3}
Pachinko Hall Shinso Daikaiten - GA - 75% (2)
Pretty Fighter X - BBAA - 25% (2)
Wing Arms - BGA - 50% {3}
I really enjoy topics where I can work out all the scores without using a calculator.
Games for this topic:
3D Baseball
Chibi Maruko-Chan no Taisen Puzzle-Dama
Defcon 5
Godzilla
Hang-On GP
Hissatsu
A pretty interesting looking set of games here, quite a few of these games look very unique. It was hard to figure out what to choose for the topic title.
3D Baseball - G
ReplyDeleteChibi Maruko-Chan no Taisen Puzzle-Dama - G
Defcon 5 - A
Godzilla - A
Hang-On GP - G
Hissatsu - G (SR)
As I mentioned when we covered it on PS1, 3D Baseball is very solid. There's nothing fancy about it from a gameplay perspective, but it nails all the fundamentals and it's one of the best looking baseball games of the era, despite how early it came out. Unlike many games we've looked at recently, this is a perfect port to Saturn, making it a very strong contender for best baseball title on the system.
Taisen Puzzle-Dama is a series with a very peculiar problem. The first console game, Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinesai Taisen Puzzle-Dama is fantastic. It's a great variant of Puyo Puyo with tons of content and charm. The problem is, for some reason, Konami put way more effort into Tsuyoshi compared to all of the other games in the series, resulting in them feeling redundant when put next to it. This trend continues with Chibi Maruko-Chan no Taisen Puzzle Dama, but of all the others, this one is maybe the smallest downgrade compared to Tsuyoshi. Make no mistake, Tsuyoshi is purely superior. The gameplay between the two is identical, but Tsuyoshi has more modes and characters and you can't play as the boss character in Chibi Maruko-Chan. On the plus side, the games that come after this one have even more significant flaws, like visually noisy backgrounds that impair gameplay and special pieces that detract from the gameplay formula, so Chibi Maruko-Chan clearly stands above the rest, and and least it does have character-specific endings to give it some replay value. You should still probably stick with the SNES game, but this version is at least still pretty fun.
Defcon 5 is an extremely ambitious game that won't be for everyone, but is kind of interesting nonetheless. The premise of this game is that you are a programmer, sent to install defense software on an isolated mining colony. Your day quickly turns bad as the defense colony comes under alien attack, forcing you to utilize the newly installed defense systems to fight back. Your main defense are the turrets around the station, which are automated, though you can take control of them yourself to improve their efficiency. They will come under attack and also need to be reloaded, which you can do through the software. Enemies will also directly invade the station, which you can either destroy personally (you can wander around the station in full 3D and you have a gun that you can use), or you can deploy combat droids or use the door control system to lock off parts of the station and trap them. While all of this is going on, you also need to track down some items throughout the station, some of which are positioned randomly each time you play the game, and also try to escape the station, which involves salvaging downed ships using droids. You can probably tell from that description that there's an absolute ton going on here, and none of it is particularly simplistic or straightforward. Even the very first task in the game, which involves locating the control room to install the software is surprisingly difficult due to the massive size of the base and the total lack of instruction, I was forced to look up a walkthrough to figure out how to even get there, and things only get more complicated when you have to balance exploring the station to find the components you need to win with fiddling with the defense software. There's no question that it is a very unique idea, and it does actually kind of work, despite being somewhat cumbersome. Parts of the game are very cool, like the intro and parts of the design of the base, for example I like the attention to detail that using the automated shuttle system displays a different prerendered sequence depending on where you start and where you end up, but there's also quite a bit of jank, and moving around the station itself is particularly clunky. This feels like one that's a prime target for a remake because with more modern controls and some streamlining this could make for a pretty interesting title.
DeleteGodzilla is a pretty basic strategy game where you play as the Japanese army against a host of giant monsters from the Godzilla franchise. On pretty much every map, there will be a handful of giant monsters, and your goal is to eliminate them all, but you don't have nearly enough power to do so (you start with only a handful of troops and cannot create more), the strategy is instead to try to bait the kaiju into attacking each other, then help out the weaker of the monsters so no matter how the fight turns out, the victor is severely beat up and you can just clean up the rest. To its credit, the game follows the movies very well, that is pretty much the strategy they did tend to use, and the battles are taken straight from the films, but it's undeniably a very basic game. There is a little nuance to positioning your units as you can sometimes use cover, and you also have some healers that can make your units last a little better if kept protected, but the missions do tend to blend together pretty quickly.
Hang On GP is a very solid game with one very significant flaw. This is another early 5th gen racing game that somewhat resembles Ridge Racer, but it's better than most. Unlike most similar games, it has 6 tracks and a decent amount of stuff to unlock. It also runs silky smooth on Saturn and looks quite good too. So what is the one problem? A game that runs this fast REALLY needs Analog control, and it's not available for this title. The dpad controls kinda work, but they're very twitchy (by necessity) and it just never feels quite right. It really goes to show how significantly both Sony and Sega guessed wrong on Analog control (with neither featuring it in the first iteration of their controller), that was pretty much the one area where Nintendo got it right. Despite that, I think this game is still just barely G, mainly because it does everything else well. This would still be one of the games you would have wanted at launch for Saturn, it's just too bad the system didn't launch with the analog controller.
DeleteI had high hopes for Hissatsu, but it's actually even more badass than I expected. The first thing that I have to note about this game is that it is unreasonably cool. You play as a team of four vigilantes who hunt down corrupt lords in feudal Japan. Between each level are some very well-drawn vignettes that generally just showcase the team being badass, watching their prey from the shadows, discussing their plan under the full moon, and then bam! Out of the dark a single slash and it's all over. All that remains is a mysterious gift of food for the innocent. The constant use of dark colours and shadow reminds me a lot of Batman, and it remains effective here. But the coolness is not limited to cutscenes, the same attention has been given to the gameplay, the characters are very well-animated and the game has a great soundtrack as well. In terms of the gameplay, it's a somewhat basic action game, but it controls well and has a couple interesting little twists. For starters, there are 4 characters, and for each stage, you can choose 2, whom you can swap between at any time. This is very useful as the four characters are all very different, and each also has their own health bar. Besides their normal attack, each character also has a special attack that uses energy, which recharges over time, including when swapped out. It's nothing too complicated, but it works well and helps give the game some variety. The stage design is also generally not really anything to write home about, visually the stages look fantastic, but the actual design tends to be fairly simple. The third stage for example is a maze, though it's nothing too arduous and there's a bunch of health you can pick up along the way. It's kind of interesting to compare this to something like Dragonheart, not only does the game have a million times more style, but it also plays a lot better.