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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Miracle Space Race - BBA - 17% (3)
Monopoly - BAAAA - 40% (5)
Power Serve 3D Tennis - BBB - 0% (3)
Shaolin - AA - 50% (2)
Tokimeki Memorial: Taisen Puzzle-Dama - GGA - 83% (3)
ThunderStrike 2 - BAA - 33% (3)
It's kind of humorous that the game I had previously indicated that I wasn't a huge fan of was also the game I gave the highest rating to in that topic (it was also the only game to get any Gs at all).
Games for this topic:
Asuka 120% Excellent Burning Fest
Championship Bass
Hyper Rally
Tenchi wo Kurau 2
Twisted Metal 3
VIP
We've made it up to the middle of the 5 Twisted Metal games on PS1, so that must mean that we're approaching the midpoint of this GAB. The number of games for PS1 is truly mind-blowing.
Asuka 120% Excellent Burning Fest - A
ReplyDeleteChampionship Bass - G
Hyper Rally - B
Tenchi wo Kurau 2 - B
Twisted Metal 3 - A
VIP - B
Asuka 120% Excellent Burning Fest is almost the same as the Special Version, having the same characters (with one addition), the same movesets, and mostly the same general gameplay. The biggest change here is to the story mode, which now plays drastically differently. Instead of the standard arcade mode from the previous title, it is now a kind of build-up mode similar to the ones you see in boxing games. It takes place in a school festival, and you can decide where to go and what actions to perform at each location. These actions affect your stats, and after every 30 points worth of actions you have to do a battle. This mode is generally kind of lame. For starters, it makes it take much too long between battles, and the changes to the stats mess with the game's balance. You might think that perhaps it just feels pretty bad to play if you can't read Japanese, but even translating it isn't really any better, because it's never clear what anything does. I can read that it says that I can watch a gymnastics performance, but it doesn't make it clear how any action you take will affect your stats, you have to check your stats, do the action, then check again to see the change, which is obnoxious. You can choose to play the "VS Mode" to skip this, but battles against the com here are just 1 on 1s, there's no standard arcade version available. I also feel that something about this version feels worse to play compared to Special. I went back and forth between them like 10 times trying to figure out exactly what the change is, but I'm fairly certain the Excellent version is somewhat slower, in particular it feels like jumps and horizontal movement have been slowed down, whatever it is this version feels more stiff compared to the previous one, which I'd generally recommend sticking with.
I've never been too impressed with Bass fishing games, which I would also consider to be the "standard" type of fishing games. They typically suffer from some kind of major problem, either you have no control over whether or not you actually catch a bass, or hooking or fighting fish doesn't work well, or something like that, but Championship Bass is probably the first game that gets everything right. For starters, this is a gorgeous game, maybe one of the best looking on PS1. The Water has water physics and real-time reflections, the lakes are big and have great scenery, and the underwater cam works really well too. It does feel like the game runs a bit slow as it's probably pushing the PS1 pretty hard, but it's not enough to be an issue. The detailed visuals help significantly with the gameplay as well, as the underwater cam is crucial for spotting fish to catch, and solves the typical problem of not knowing whether or not you're hooking the right kind of fish. In this game, it's trivially simple to simply not hook a catfish if one decides to come after your line, but you'll probably be able to spot it in the water and simply not cast there long before it gets to that point. Once you find a suitable bass and get close enough, it's simple enough to attract and hook it (hooking is Triangle in this game), and the fish fighting is also competent, generally relying on rod movements to tire out the fish (the game gives you some verbal advice about how to move the rod). The biggest challenge is finding a big bass, finding any bass is not too difficult if you know the general tips about where they like to hang out (generally near various kinds of underwater structures like trees and other foliage) but although it's easy to find bass, many of them will be small, finding a big one is kind of like finding a needle in the haystack, but I suppose that's just the nature of the sport. I also have to compliment the game's music, which is excellent, it's a kind of mellow country ost that suits the game really well. A very solid title overall.
Hyper Rally is easily one of the worst racing games of all time. To start, we have to talk about the visuals, as they're among the worst I've ever seen in any game. It's hard to describe quite how bad this game looks, but basically the track is basically just a line floating freely in space. There are buildings and other details in the background, but the floors around those areas are untextured and you can just see through them, which simply looks atrocious. A few tracks look better than others but in general it's a terrible-looking game. I suppose at least it runs at a decent frame rate, but the controls are also terrible, this is another one of those games where you car snaps back to neutral when you let go of the control and it feels extremely janky, and the powersliding is especially terrible. It doesn't really matter though because you simply bounce off walls and the car is quite resistant to damage, so you can feel free to go pedal to the medal most of the time. About the only good thing you can say about it is there's a lot of tracks, but when the game looks and plays so poorly it's not worth too much.
DeleteTenchi Wo Kurau 2 is also pretty bad. It's a very basic, old-style Capcom beat-em-up, very similar to the original Final Fight (it came out a little before Final Fight 2), but this release came super late and has no extras, making it feel incredibly dated. Even putting aside how dated it feels, it's also clear it wasn't that great for its time, for example this game is drastically bettered by Golden Axe or King of Dragons, it's a generally stiff and repetitive game with very little going for it. Probably the most notable thing about the game is you can ride a horse, which gives you good reach, but it's also very slow and not generally very fun, poking endless amount of enemies at long range isn't typically what people like about these games, it's the combo attacks and such, which are also pretty lame here. In most ways, it just feels like "worse, ROTK-themed Final Fight 1", in an era where we've grown accustomed to expecting much better. It's not unplayable, but it's still kind of a waste of your time.
Twisted Metal 3 is generally considered the black sheep of the series, and while it has some issues, I don't think it's completely terrible. Compared to Twisted Metal 2, there are a ton of changes, some for the better, and some not. For starters, let's talk about the most positive change. The game now runs at 60fps. This is a big improvement over TM2 and going back to TM2's 30fps at best is a bit tough after playing this. The motion activated specials also work much better in this game. In TM2, I typically find they work like 40%-50% of the time, whereas they work flawlessly every time here, in fact the detection works so well that accidentally activating specials while just trying to drive around is sometimes a problem. This brings us to the first problem, which is that the driving controls aren't that great. I don't find them to be as atrocious as some people do but they're clearly a downgrade from previous games, and they compound some of the game's other issues. For one thing, Freeze is super OP in this game, largely because people are slower and it homes much better, which basically means it never misses. Freeze-locking people is almost the whole game, particularly as health pickups now respawn and the enemies can get them, which is a terrible change, as the game now largely revolves around stalling to get health pickups and regenerate energy, then spamming freeze combos against people to burst them down while they can't do anything, which is exactly as enjoyable as you'd think when you're on the receiving end of it. Despite this, some of the fun of the series is still present and the presentation is still pretty good, there's just a few more gameplay kinks to iron out.
DeleteVIP is just as bad as you'd expect. It spends the vast majority of its time being a terrible beat-em-up, where you attack enemies by pressing combos of buttons that appear on the screen, like left right circle, then see your character do a little animation and repeat ad nauseum. Sometimes it becomes a gallery shooter for a little while, which is a little better, though it's an extremely easy and basic one. There are also some tiny little minigames from time to time that are also bad. I imagine the point of this game was intended to be the fanservice, as you play you can unlock various pictures of the gang, but both the pictures and the cutscenes are of fairly low quality (it's not a good sign that the real actresses couldn't be convinced to participate in this project), so it fails at that part too. It's technically more playable than something like Hyper Rally, but it's extremely dull. Somehow, I feel like I've played this before, but we definitely haven't rated it already so I have no idea where I might have seen it.