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Last Topic's Ratings:
Detective Mouse - BBBB - 0% (4)
Let's Go Flyfishing - AA - 50% (2)
Monster Complete World - GG - 100% (2)
Rescue Copter - BB - 0% (2)
Smurf Racer - AAB - 33% (3)
SpongeBob SquarePants: Supersponge - ABBA - 25% (4)
It's kind of simultaneously hilarious and awful that Detective Mouse got the most votes of any game this week across both topics. If you have to choose between playing Detective Mouse and Princess Crown, I'd probably recommend the latter.
Games for this topic:
Eliminator
Kuru Kuru Panic
Resident Evil 2
Sports Superbike 2
Viva Soccer
Zero Divide 2
It's a topic for sequels, apparently. I'm hoping Rez Evil 2 draws in a lot of votes, it's got to be one of the most well-known PS1 games.
Eliminator - A
ReplyDeleteKuru Kuru Panic - A
Resident Evil 2 - G
Sports Superbike 2 - A
Viva Soccer - A
Zero Divide 2 - G
Eliminator is a huge case of wasted potential. It's a vehicular combat game, and it actually controls really well! You control a kind of hovercar, and it has a lot of momentum, but it can also turn on a dime. What this means is that you can drive past a target, then swivel around 90 degrees and fire on it while still moving forward. This actually solves one of the biggest problems that most games of this type have, which is that your movement is too stiff to take proper strafing runs at enemies, thus rendering most battles into snoozefests where you both just do donuts and try to eventually clip the other person's tailpipe. You can also strafe, which can be mixed in with your forward momentum for some really tricky movement that feels great to pull off correctly. This sounds like a setup for an easy G, but unfortunately the game completely squanders this potential. For starters, you would think this game would somewhat resemble something like Vigilante 8, where many similar vehicles go at it in a small arena and you'd fight to be the last man standing, but it doesn't play like that at all, instead you fight through tedious stages full of long corridors and small square rooms filled with enemies. These levels are almost never open enough for you to be able to make any reasonable use of your movement capabilities, and worse yet they're often filled with mines and other traps that punish you for going fast, even though the game is also timed and the time limits are short. Taking damage in these small rooms usually feels almost unavoidable, particularly when dealing with flying enemies (you have to aim up to hit them and it's very unreliable), so the health pickups are super important, but it feels very random when you actually get one, which makes the difficulty feel uneven, and there are also checkpoints that are spread pretty far apart, potentially causing the loss of a lot of progress if you die. To make matters worse, these levels just go on forever, I would guess the first level probably takes around 20 minutes, which is at least 15 minutes too long. There are also some truly awful puzzle segments here, like one part that has a crusher wall closing in on you and 8 targets that you have to hit in order, with no clues as to the order other than that they turn off if you're wrong. Should you manage to survive the first stage, there are actually two other mission types, first there's a kind of racing mission where you have to pick up extra time to reach the end, then there are also boss fights, both of these are decent, it's just that you spend only like 3% of the game doing these things. There's also a two-player deathmatch mode, and this does play how you'd expect and is decent, but it's only for 2 players and there's no bots. If only the main game had just played like this! Psygnosis is so bizarrely inconsistent as a company.
Kuru Kuru Panic is almost the opposite of Eliminator, where it's a game with a potentially decent concept marred by poor visuals and controls. The basic idea of the game is it's a puyo-like game where you have to match 3 of the same colour to clear. Unlike Puyo, the board here is a circle, so it has more columns total and the columns that would be the "ends" are connected to each other, which is an interesting idea that might open up new combos. However, that's where the good points end. One of the biggest issues is the way the circles are drawn. They're viewed from above, which means the outside spaces are much bigger than the inside ones, and the two player's circles overlap each other, so there's about 25% of the circle you can't see at any given time. In addition to this, the drops fall into the circle extremely fast, and often multiple at a time, and once they start falling into a column, they're locked into it. This essentially has the effect of making the game generally feel imprecise, setting up even small combos is very difficult and it often feels like just trying to make matches and survive is the optimal strategy, particularly since each character has a special power that will be activated after making about 6 matches, even if they're singles. I imagine the reason this was done was to try to limit the skill ceiling of the game and make it more accessible, but it doesn't really feel fun to play, it just feels sloppy. If you want a more accessible Puyo variant, Yakyuu Puzzle Stadium does it way better.
DeleteResident Evil 2 is so obviously a great game I feel like there's not even much I can say about it. The controls are great, it looks and sounds fantastic, there's tons of content and replay value, and it even runs really well. As such, I'm going to spend my time on a subject I find more interesting, which is "which is better between RE1 and RE2?". One of the biggest changes between the two games is that RE2 adds a bit more action. Compared to RE1, there are significantly more enemies, which is made obvious immediately in the opening section in Raccoon City, where most screens contain 4 or more enemies, which was almost nonexistent in RE1. This really helps it feel more like a zombie apocalypse as opposed to the "haunted mansion" vibe from the original. This also ties into one of the biggest mechanical improvements between the games, which is how the game handles it when a zombie bites you. In RE1, you just kind of weakly nudge them back when you get bit, which can result in chain bite scenarios if multiple zombies are close by, though because of the lower zombie counts this is fairly rare. This would happen all the time in RE2 though, so you now give the zombie a big shove when you push them off, which can also knock nearby zombies down. This fits well with the fact that you're now intended to try to avoid quite a few zombies rather than just shooting them, and overall it tends to give the game a more fast-paced feel. You needn't worry that this will result in the game losing the sense of exploration and freedom that was key to the first game, though, because as soon as you're through the streets section you get to the RPD, which functions as an exploration hub in much the same way that the Mansion does in RE1. Pretty much everything about the RPD is fantastic, it's filled with a decent number of interesting puzzles and it's fun to explore, and the lickers are a fantastic new enemy, in fact, I would say that everything up until you leave the RPD is an absolute masterpiece, easily SR quality. Unfortunately, this is only about 50-60% of the way through the game and it's all downhill from there, with the Sewers and Nests not being nearly as interesting to play, in particular Nests feels like a huge missed opportunity from a gameplay perspective. RE1 generally does this better, as although the Dormitory and Lab are a bit of a step down from the Mansion, it's not as drastic and the quality level is generally maintained a little better throughout the game, and I particularly like that after the Dormitory you have a section where you come back to the Mansion and can explore some areas you couldn't before, complete with new enemies. RE2 also has more focus on boss fights, though I don't really think this helps the game, the movement options are too limited for these fights to be really interesting, they basically just act as ammo and healing sinks, and the number of them you encounter in the late game is part of what drags those segments down. The presentation of the game continues to be amazing, though I do probably prefer the characters in RE1 just a tad, as much fun as Kendo and Marvin are it's hard to beat Barry and Wesker. One big edge RE2 does have is in post-game content, as when you finish one character's scenario, you can play a slightly different, harder version of the other character's scenario, which is a great addition. Overall, I think I still prefer RE1 by a little bit for its higher consistent level of quality, but you really can't go wrong with either game, this is undeniably peak Capcom and I was amazed by how fun these games still are when I went back to then for these reviews.
DeleteSports Superbike 2 makes some key improvements from the first game but fumbles in other areas. When we reviewed the first game, my biggest complaint was the lack of content, with the original game having only a single race mode and 4 tracks. This has been completely addressed, as the game now has a proper tournament mode, complete with multiple cups, and 15 total tracks. So, review over, right? Well, not quite, there's a couple of new issues as well. For starters, you can no longer simply disable steering assist and turn on vehicle damage, you now have to unlock these features through a license test mode, and you can never race with steering assist and damage both off. I imagine the reason they did this is because the physics feel somewhat more unforgiving, in particular it's much easier to fall off your bike now, which I'm not a fan of, nor am I fan of the fact that you have to manually shift up to get out of neutral at the start of each race or any time you fall off your bike. However, by far the biggest problem is the frame rate. It's totally fine when you're racing alone, but when there's other racers onscreen it really tanks, and considering races involve 24 racers there's going to be multiple racers onscreen a lot. I feel like there's a decent game engine under here, but it's still not quite ready yet.
DeleteI had written an absolutely scathing review of Viva Football, as the game runs at a completely atrocious framerate and is virtually unplayable, but as I was looking into it I realized I was playing the PAL version and the game does have a US release, so I figured I had better test that one too, and lo and behold, the US version fixes the framerate, forcing me to entirely re-review the game. Certainly, with the game running at a consistent 30fps the game is far more playable than the 15-ish fps the PAL version runs at (incidentally, this does not seem to be an emulator issue, I tested the PAL version on multiple emulators and it's always very choppy). In any case, the gist of Viva Soccer is that it's focused on the World Cup, but the thing that makes it stand out is that you can play any world cup going back to 1958 with the teams from that era. This is kind of a cool feature, though the game is fairly simple and I'm not convinced the stats on the players really vary that much, plus there's no commentary, so basically it just changes the names of the players, unless you play really far back, in which case the match also becomes sepia-coloured, which is actually terrible since it makes it really hard to tell which players are on which teams. In any case, the basic gameplay is okay but has a few issues, the biggest one is that it feels slighty stiff. Pretty much every animation in the game feels like it goes on for a few frames longer than it ought to, which is particularly noticeable with passing and slide tackling. Passes are especially unreliable, they frequently don't go to their intended target, and even when they do, the passes are so slow that it's easy to get stolen when kicking or receiving a pass, when combined with the somewhat weak slide tackle and overly safe sprint, this creates a game where running the ball is virtually always the best option. Arguably this does result in somewhat more offense since you spend last time passing and it tends to result in more shots, though I feel like it's really not how the game is played and when combined with the overly simple gameplay it does feel like the game doesn't really have a lot of nuance. It's certainly still playable (as long as you don't have the PAL version) and history buffs might appreciate it, but there's a ton of soccer games this gen and it can't really compete with the best ones.
I spent quite a lot of time playing Zero Divide 1 and 2 for this topic, because I didn't remember the original much despite rating it as G, and it turns out the two games are actually very different, so I played quite a bit of both to solidify my thoughts on the series. The gist of the comparison is that Zero Divide 2 is a better game in many respects, but compared to the first game it's also significantly slower and floatier. This is very weird, because almost all 3D fighters did the opposite, their early games were slow and floaty, and they progressively got faster and tighter with each game (compare Tekken 1 to Tekken 3 for example). I do think the faster speed of Zero Divide 1 is better for the game, so I would say this is a downgrade, and I also like that every stage in the first game allows for ringouts, as these are kind of key to the way the game works, but you can only ringout on some stages in the sequel. However, the first game is also not without its problems, mainly just that there's a fair amount of jank. One issue with the original is that many strings don't combo properly, for example IO's PPKK string not only doesn't combo (the fourth hit can be blocked even if the first 3 hits land), it's also unsafe on block. This basically just means you can't use this string at all, and there aren't that many strings in the first game compared to the sequel, which basically doubles the size of every character's moveset. Throws are also much too good in the original, you can counter most blocked strings with a throw for big damage + positioning, but they've been toned down in the sequel to a more reasonable level. Zero Divide 2 also runs at 60fps to the original's 30fps, which is nice, and has some other upgrades as well. One of the biggest ones is to the armor system. One of the game's signature features is that if you get hit in the same spot too many times, parts of your body can get damaged, but in the first game they regenerate and any damage is lost between rounds. In the sequel any damage carries over, which makes this mechanic feel much more impactful. The sequel also lets you view your fighter's command list at any time, which is always a great feature, and input detection is generally better across the board. Overall, I think the sequel has a slight edge, though I do miss the speed and frequent ringouts of the first game, and I think the original was still good for its time (keep in mind it came out around the same time as Tekken 1). This series does have a third game, so I wonder if it will be able to bring back some of the speed from the first game.
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