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Last Topic's Ratings:
Asuka 120% Excellent Burning Fest - GAA - 67% (3)
Championship Bass - GA - 75% (2)
Hyper Rally - BB - 0% (2)
Tenchi wo Kurau 2 - BA - 25% (2)
Twisted Metal 3 - BBBGAAA - 36% (7)
VIP - BBBB - 0% (4)
I find it kind of interesting that the second Asuka game got the exact same score as the first one. There's also a third game, so I wonder how it will rate.
Games for this topic:
Archer Maclean's 3D Pool
Dragstars
Moorhen 3: Chicken Chase
Pacapaca Passion Special
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure
Zera-Chan Puzzle: Pitatto Pair
You can tell it's a topic full of short names when Rhapsody gets its full name in the topic title. Moorhen 3 ended up being just a little late for Thanksgiving, but I guess that would be turkey and not chicken anyway.
Archer Maclean's 3D Pool - B
ReplyDeleteDragstars - A
Moorhen 3: Chicken Chase - A
Pacapaca Passion Special - A
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure - G
Zera-Chan Puzzle: Pitatto Pair - G
Archer Maclean's 3D Pool is so bad I actually can't believe it came out in this generation. I almost can't describe how bad it is. For starters, it looks like absolute crap. The 3D is the most primitive you'll see anywhere, and the game also runs horribly, probably at around 10FPS or so. It feels very reminiscent of Hard Drivin in terms of visuals, except with much less visual complexity, this game easily could have run on Genesis or SNES. Awful visuals aside, the game's interface also hasn't been adapted to console in any way, you control a mouse pointer and have to select the options from a menu in order to do things like set the impact point and take a shot, which is totally noninteractive as you have to set the power beforehand. The visuals and effects for the balls actually being hit are also as barebones as possible and it feels extremely unsatisfying to play. It turns out this is actually a port of a 1992 PC game, though I don't think it would have been decent even then. The fact that they chose to port this to PS1 in 2003 is actual insanity.
Dragstars is pretty different from what I expected, but it's not too bad. My thinking was that the key to this type of game would be the car tuning, but actually this game's tuning is the simplest ever. You go to a garage, have a quick chat with the mechanic, and they present you a list of parts that you can accept or go somewhere else. The racing is also pretty simple, but it works. Unlike many drag racing games you actually do have to steer here to some degree, the car does gradually get off-course and you have to correct it, though it's still quite simple. Probably the main thing this game has going for it is its pacing, which is very fast. It only takes a minute or so to get your new parts and get into a race. There is a story but it's very basic, and the game is also extremely short, it can be beaten in 30 minutes or so, but it's a decent 30 minutes, which is more than can be said for many similar games. You can unlock new cars to play as, but I feel like due to the simplicity of the game it doesn't have a ton of replay value. While it's not a bad take on the concept, in some sense I wish this had just been a standard racing game as the physics engine feels like it would have been good enough to pull it off.
Moorhen 3 is kind of similar to Dragstars in that what's here isn't bad, there's just not much of it. As before, this is a lightgun game where you shoot chickens and other objects for points. The game's standout feature is that you can shoot little dandelion seeds to trigger various events, though they're hard to hit. There's also certain things you're not supposed to shoot, like the sickly-looking chickens or the hot air balloons. That's basically the gist of the game. It's kind of a funny game, the animations for shooting some of the targets (particularly the rabbit) are pretty humourous, but there's simply not a lot here. The game only lasts 2 minutes and there's only one stage, so all you can do is try to get a high score and that's it. If there were, say, multiple stages to unlock based on your score or something, it might be a pretty fun game, but this console release feels very barebones.
DeletePacapaca Passion Special is effectively unchanged since the original version of the game save for having a different songlist and slightly changed visuals. All of the problems of the original game are still present, long strings of 16th notes are still basically impossible to hit with any accuracy and the computer opponents are far too strong after the second stage or so, so none of that has been addressed. The only major change is to the visuals, which is a downgrade, the background visuals for each stage are now just lame 3D images of the characters dancing rather than the prerendered videos of the previous game, which is definitely a downgrade, though it doesn't matter all that much. Hopefully they're able to tune the difficulty of the game a bit more for the sequel. I feel like a good change would be to introduce some "hold" notes rather than just trying to make you mash for whenever the song goes fast, because there's simply a limit to how fast you can reasonably hit the button with anything resembling timing.
Rhapsody is an interesting title. I had previously played the DS version, and wasn't super impressed by it, but the DS version is also a very different game. Similar to Lunar Legend, the original version of Rhapsody has a strategy battle system, but the handheld version axes it for a more traditional turn-based system instead. In both cases this is usually considered to be a downgrade, but I can also kinda see why they did it. While it has an interesting premise, Rhapsody's combat never quite lives up to its potential, largely because even on the hardest difficulty, the game is still really easy and most enemies die in one hit. It also has a very high encounter rate, so you fight a ton of battles (good thing they're fast) and the dungeon design is really dull, with them typically repeating the same screens over and over. You're really here for the story and dialogue, which is quite good. The game has a ton of charm to it, the artwork in the game is great, the story is cute, and it's full of funny dialogue, which is probably some of the best from this era. As for the aforementioned musical numbers, I feel they're kind of hit or miss, but you have the option of Japanese vocals if you find the English ones hard to take. In any case, it's likely that the intention behind changing the battle system on the DS version was to accelerate the game's pacing, so you could get from one story sequence to the next quicker, which is kind of understandable, but I also feel it's sort of a lazy way to fix the problem, when they simply could have adjusted the game's balancing to make the battles themselves more interesting instead. Either way, I think the issues with the battle system are a bit more forgivable in the original, and the strategy aspect helps the battles stay a little bit more interesting even though they are still really easy. Too bad they never re-tuned the original because I think there's actually a fair bit of untapped potential with the game's battle system, but it simply isn't challenging enough for it to really matter.
Zera-Chan Puzzle: Pitatto Pair is another one of those games where I'm going to have to spend most of my time describing it, because it's totally unlike anything else out there. As the name of the game implies, the goal is to make pairs of things (Sushi by default) by moving pieces around in various ways. There are actually 3 totally distinct game modes in the game that affect the way you're allowed to move pieces, but we'll start with the basic one. Here, you can move pieces around freely. If you move a piece into another piece, it pushes it, and anything else in that row or column, as long as there's space to do so. You can move pieces around as much as you want as long as you don't create any pairs, but if you create a pair, any pairs clear at once and that becomes your combo. The goal is to create many pairs at the same time, which requires you to grab a single piece and use that to make many pairs. A very simple way to make a fair number of pairs is to make two rows of pieces that are off by 1 space (ie, the top row being _ABCD and the bottom row being ABCD), but there's a limit to how many pairs you can make this way because the size of the playing field is limited. You can also make more pairs by pushing other blocks around before you push this row over, so you could basically set up two such rows and use the starting block of one to push the other. You'll have to come up with gradually more complex setups to make pairs as the number of pairs the game wants from you rises, and it's also timed so you have to be fast. If you somehow feel this isn't mentally taxing enough you can play in a mode where some of the spaces on the grid are blocked out or other various hard modes if you want. The second mode is quite different, it's more of an action-puzzle game where you can skill chain, but you're more limited in how you can move the blocks, they can only be pushed in a direction where they have a clear line to the wall. This mode is generally a bit easier but I don't find it to be quite as interesting, but it's nice to have the option. The third mode is a puzzle mode where you have to figure out how to clear all the pieces with a limited number of moves, subject to the additional restriction that all of your moves must push something. You can also play the first mode in multiplayer, which is also pretty solid, you have to clear a certain number of boards to win, but can also interfere with the opponent by making combos, which kind of reminds me of Pieces on SNES. There's also tutorials for every game mode and the game's general presentation is pretty good. Overall, it's very clearly a G-level games and a must-look for puzzle fans looking for something different. I wish some of the other interesting Puzzle games from this gen had received this level of attention.
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