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Last Topic's Ratings:
Army Men World War: Land, Sea, Air - ABBB - 13% (4)
Gundam: Battle Assault - GGGAG - 90% (5)
Motorhead - GGGG - 100% (4)
Olympic Soccer: Atlanta 1996 - GAA - 67% (3)
Shanghai Banri no Choujou - GGA - 83% (3)
Stray Sheep: The Adventure of Poe and Merry - AA - 50% (2)
It's actually kind of hilarious how many Army Men games there are in the low recommendation range. Will they ever escape?
Games for this topic:
Detective Mouse
Let's Go Flyfishing
Monster Complete World
Rescue Copter
Smurf Racer
SpongeBob SquarePants: Supersponge
I actually cannot believe Spongebob is old enough to have a game on PS1. Apparently it first aired in 1999, so it actually made the cutoff for PS1 fairly comfortably (PS1 was still getting games well into 2003). Monster Complete World is also one I've wanted to look at for a while.
Detective Mouse - B
ReplyDeleteLet's Go Flyfishing - A
Monster Complete World - G
Rescue Copter - B
Smurf Racer - A
SpongeBob SquarePants: Supersponge - B
Detective Mouse is very similar to Anastasia, being from the same studio and having the same overall presentation, the main difference is that it has a different movie. This time I would say the movie is of somewhat higher quality overall, there's at least a smattering of action and comedy to be had here, though the overall package remains pretty bad and the scenes chosen for the puzzle and coloring book are pretty poor (also, couldn't there be more than 6 of each?). It's still an interesting curiousity and it's more enjoyable than some other B-range games (it's definitely less painful to watch a bad movie than to play a bad game) but I don't think there's really any way this could be A.
Let's Go Flyfishing is okay. It's sort of a weird game in some ways, a big portion of the game involves running around a mountain in full 3D, looking for points of interest. You can't just cast your line wherever like in more modern games, there's instead dedicated fishing spots that you have to walk to, though they are invisible and there's not much indication where they are other than the screen transitioning to the fishing interface when you get close. There are also minigames you can find (they look like little diamonds) and you can play these to earn feathers that you can make into lures at the cabin. The minigames are tolerable, I've certainly played worse, but it's probably not what you're playing a game like this for. In terms of the core fishing action, it's very easy. It plays a lot like River King, it's a one button fishing game where all you have to do is not reel when the fish is pulling, but it's ludicrously easy even compared to River King, fish will almost never break on their own and the fishing areas are so small that you barely have to reel them at all to catch the fish. There's also not much point to fishing, it doesn't seem like you actually keep the fish in any way, the game tracks the biggest fish you've caught of each type, but there's very little real progression. At a certain point on the map there's a log that blocks your path, it's clear that it needs to be knocked down to make a bridge but I wasn't able to figure out how to do that, it might be triggered by just catching enough fish and reading enough emails at the PC (I do like the 1996-esque geocities website, though I guess it wasn't ironic at the time). In any case though you can catch quite a few fish before that point so I don't think there's a ton more to see on the other side. Overall, it's not terrible by any means, it's just really simple and it doesn't quite feel like it all comes together. For example, the lures you can make with the feathers you find simply don't really feel necessary, the fish aren't picky and the lures you start with are generally good enough. There's the foundation for a good game here but it needs more refinement.
Monster Complete World is a pretty neat game which thankfully isn't too hard to get into even if you can't read much Japanese. In most ways it's quite similar to Dragon Quest Monsters, it's also a dungeon crawler / creature battler hybrid, and many of the concepts are quite similar to Enix's game. For example, to catch new monsters, you'll choose to befriend them in battle, which gives you the option to either try to ply them with food or convince them by force, which feels quite similar to DQM, though unlike in DQM there are multiple types of food here and giving a monster a type of food that it likes significantly increases the odds it will join, like in Yokai Watch. The dungeon crawling gameplay also feels a lot like DQM, right down to smashing pots to get items, though there are also traps and monsters only move when you do, somewhat more like Mystery Dungeon. Coming into contact with a monster initiates a battle, and these are somewhat unique. Three monsters fight at once, but they fight in a triangle formation and only the one in front can be hit by the enemy, while the two in the back provide support. Each monster has a different support effect, for example your starter raises the defense of the monster in front, while one of the first monsters you're likely to get (Coro the caterpillar) heals a little hp every turn. You aren't limited to only attacking with the monster in the front, if you choose to attack with one of the two in the back, they'll swap with the front monster, which can also be used to protect that monster if its health gets low, but switches are not instant so you'll need to be careful. Every attack uses a certain amount of energy (represented by little balls) and a more expensive attack takes longer to prepare, potentially allowing the opponent to hit you first. Many attacks have secondary effects, for example Coro's main attack is weak, but it lowers enemy strength, so he's good for softening up bosses before you put the DPS monsters in. You can also use items and swap your active monsters for the ones in the back (you can bring 6 total). It's nothing super complicated, but it works well enough. Another interesting mechanic is that as you progress through the dungeons, your monsters can get hungry, sick, or unhappy, which requires you to interact with them. The sickness and unhappiness games involve playing a little minigame that kind of reminds me of Pokemon Amie, but if they're hungry you need to give them one of the same food items that you use to befriend the monsters, and whether or not they like that food is relevant here too. On the plus side, giving them the right one does heal them, and if you let them go hungry the only downside is they don't heal health inbetween floors. Like in DQM, there are also arena battles, though thankfully you're not forced to let the AI control your team here, the only change to the standard battle mechanics are that you can't use items. There's quite a lot to the game, and it's quite lengthy (there's over 120 monsters), but something else it does well is explain how to play the game, throughout the first few dungeons you'll find NPCs who gradually explain the game's mechanics, and every facility has an explanation available too, which feels surprisingly modern for a game of this age. About the only complaint you might have is that the game is pretty grindy, levels definitely matter a lot to how well you do in battle, but it doesn't take too long to level up and the game is pretty fun, so it's not a big issue. This is something I might consider writing a guide for if I wasn't so busy.
DeleteRescue Copter basically plays like a bad version of Pilotwings 64, and I already don't think Pilotwings 64 is very good, so that should give you a good idea of what I think about this game. The basic gist of the game is very similar to Pilotwings, you have to fly a variety of different missions, doing various non-combat tasks like flying through rings, spraying pesticide on fields, following a target, picking up cargo, etc. The mission variety is okay, but the gameplay is generally what suffers. For starters, the biggest problem with the game is the camera. To fly forward, the helicopter has to pitch down, and when you do so, the camera also angles itself down by 45 degrees. This one decision basically ruins the game, it ensures that 95% of the time you can't really see where you're going and makes properly judging your height nearly impossible. Considering this is a third-person camera game and the camera position is just fine when you're not moving forwards, there was no excuse for not just keeping the camera level. Even if you could overcome this, the missions aren't very fun either, almost all of them feel like they go on overly long and many are super tedious, like the aforementioned pesticide mission that requires you to spray the pesticide on extremely precise points for a decent amount of time, forcing you to go super slow. It's just generally not a fun time.
DeleteSmurf Racer is all right. It's a super basic kart racer, far moreso than most other games of this generation, but what's there is solid enough. Pretty much every aspect of this game is severely dumbed down compared to other kart racers - there's no powerslide, there's only 2 weapons, everyone seems to have the same stats, the championship mode just requires you to win every race once to move on, etc. Actually, the game gives everyone a visually unique defense weapon, but they all do the same thing, which is a shame, if everyone had one unique weapon that would actually be kind of an interesting concept and might have helped give the game more replay value. The highlight of the game is easily the tracks, while there are only 10 they visually look pretty good and have decent variety, and the game's intro is also very solidly animated (I wonder if it's lifted directly from an episode of the TV show). Overall, it's playable, but it's definitely outclassed by a lot of other games.
Like Pinobee, Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge is another GBA to PS1 port, but this time it's of a much weaker game. Supersponge is a 2D platformer with a few interesting ideas but marred by very poor execution. For starters, like many mascot platformers, Supersponge is way too zoomed in. The game actually does look pretty decent, but Spongebob takes up far too much of the screen for how fast you move, making even small jumps risky and allowing enemies to pop up on you from out of nowhere. This might not be especially bad if not for the way the game's health system works. It's basically Sonic, you collect Spatulas and when you get hit they shoot out of you, which might be fine if not for the fact that these spatulas are also the game's primary collectable, and you will never get them all back when you take a hit, meaning that in order to fully complete a stage you must not only gather them all (which is frequently an obnoxious task in itself) but also not take a single hit for the entire stage. This is absolutely in no way worth doing and I can't imagine any child having the patience for it, but it's just another lame aspect to the game. The game does have a few cool ideas. Spongebob's primary attack on most stages is his net, which he uses to catch and fire jellyfish. The jellyfish kind of float around in most areas, so catching them isn't completely trivial, but it sort of feels like an interesting combat system that fits the character pretty well. There are also stages that take place out of the water where you have a kind of "water meter" that functions like a standard air meter (complete with Sonic-like countdown when it gets low) and you have to refill it by finding water sources to get yourself wet again. Unfortunately, besides the issue with the game being too zoomed in the physics aren't particularly great and the game just generally doesn't feel very fun, which prevents these ideas from every going anywhere. Spongebob will eventually star in some pretty decent games, but we're definitely not quite there yet.
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