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Last Topic's Ratings:
Assault Suit Leynos 2 - GGA - 83% (3)
Double Switch - BB - 0% (2)
F1 Challenge - BAB - 17% (3)
Gebockers - AB - 25% (2)
Princess Crown - GGA - 83% (3)
Riven: The Sequel to Myst - BG - 50% (2)
Maybe someday we'll finally get an english version of Princess Crown, I'm actually really surprised it hasn't been done yet.
Games for this topic:
Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 1
Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition
J-Swat
Solar Eclipse
Solo Crisis
VR Soccer
For Daytona USA CCE, we won't be rating Circuit Edition separately even though they have very minor changes, so feel free to include your thoughts on that version here if you have experience with it.
Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 1 - A
ReplyDeleteDaytona USA Championship Circuit Edition - G
J-Swat - A
Solar Eclipse - G
Solo Crisis - A
VR Soccer - B
The Atari Collection is pretty much the same as on PS1, and I have basically the same thoughts on it here. The documentary is very cool, but the games themselves are a bit dated. Tempest is clearly the standout here, but Saturn also has access to the far superior Tempest 2000, so I wouldn't recommend buying this just for Tempest. I really wish they had included a few more games, particularly as Saturn never got the second volume of this collection.
Despite what it's name would suggest, Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition is such a drastic change to the original that it could almost be considered a sequel or remake rather than a simple upgrade. For starters, all of the visuals have been completely redone. The car models are totally changed and the tracks have significantly changed texture work. This gives the game a "cleaner" look, with a significantly higher polygon count to the original, but I do feel it loses a little bit of the charm of the original, and in particular when you crash it doesn't deform your car to nearly the same degree. However, the new visual engine comes with some significant perks, the game now runs at a consistent 30fps and the draw distance is also much better, which is a definite upgrade. The controls have also been redone, and again I would say they feel a bit more smooth, though powersliding is IMO a bit harder to control now. You can tweak the control between three settings and also now use the 3D Control Pad, though I kind of wonder why they changed it because this seems to be the one issue people have with this version. In the US version only, they've also changed the music, and it's also a fairly common consensus that the new music is worse, though in the Japanese version you can play either the new or original music on every track as you prefer. Finally, there's also two new tracks, bumping the total up to 5, though there's still not really much progression to the game. While I do think you can argue that this version does lose a little bit of the "arcade magic" of the original, I definitely think the increased performance and extra tracks makes this version preferable overall. It's also worth mentioning that there's yet another version of this game available on Dreamcast, and this version is an even more substantial remake, with totally redone graphics (yet again) and 3 more new courses, bringing the total up to 8. This version also has actual unlockables and a real championship mode, and the control is closer to the arcade original, though visually it looks nothing like it. If progression is a big deal for you you might want that version, though I think there is something to be said for having this game on Saturn since it was an iconic title for the platform and the Circuit Edition is still pretty solid.
When playing Solar Eclipse, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had played it already, even though we have not covered the PS1 version, and I think that's because I actually did previously look at this game as Titan Wars before discovering it to be the sequel to Total Eclipse, which we then covered instead. In any case, compared to Total Eclipse this game is drastically better in every way imaginable. For starters, the prerendered cutscenes have been replaced with movie sequences with real actors, and they're quite well done. I actually enjoy pretty much every game from this era that did this, I wonder why it completely fell out of existence after this generation. In any case, like Total Eclipse this game still plays a lot like Starfox, but it's now a far more nuanced game. In Total Eclipse, your health constantly drains but you gain health by killing stuff, which generally means you kinda don't care about getting hit as long as you're shooting things and it gives the game relatively little nuance. Solar Eclipse completely axes this for a more traditional health bar setup, where to refill the health bar you have to drop pickups that are rarely dropped by enemies. This still accomplishes the goal of making you want to shoot things, but the game is significantly harder now as having to fly into the powerup while being shot from all directions can be a tall order at times and you take pretty significant damage from enemy attacks in this game. The added complexity is welcome, though, and they've also significantly increased the enemy and boss variety compared to the first game. The game also has great presentation, besides the cutscenes there's also constant ally chatter during missions (again, much like Starfox) and the 3D visuals for the missions look quite good. I was particularly impressed that the whole screen rotates if you roll the ship, even though this has little use most of the time, it's an impressive effect. Despite this it still runs flawlessly with no slowdown and decent draw distance. Compared to the PS1 version, I think this version has a slight edge, the PS1 version feels like it runs slightly too fast, even the audio pitching sounds slightly off, which is odd because a poorly converted PAL game should run slower, not faster, but maybe they tried to compensate for the changed framerate and didn't do it quite accurately or something. It's still a solid game on PS1, but I'd get this version if you have the option.
DeleteSolo Crisis is a weird game that kind of feels like a turn-based version of Populous. Like in Populous, you play as a god who can use various miracles to affect the world, but miracles require energy that has to be gathered by workers. To gather energy, your workers need to build homes, which generate a little energy each turn, and also heal any workers standing beside them. Each worker can only move so far each turn, and this is severely restricted by the terrain, but being a god, you can alter the terrain to suit your needs. For example, you can flatten out a big hill, create a path over a river, obliterate a forest with lightning, dry out a swamp so you can cross it more easily, or create a river to stall or drown your foes. Like in Populous, you play against an opposing god who has the same powers, but a unique idea is that you each have half the map where you can use your own powers, you play on the top side of the map, while the opponent plays on the underside of the map, and things that happen on one side affect the other side. For example, if you raise the terrain on one side, it lowers the terrain on the other side, so you can create a mountain or extend a river on the opponent's side if you have a worker near the location you want to raise or lower on your own side (you need a nearby worker to cast a miracle). This also affects homes. Besides providing health regeneration to adjacent tiles, they also provide it to the tile immediately opposite them, and they also hurt enemy units standing on this tile, acting kind of like a trap, which also prevents the enemy from building homes there as well. Ultimately, the goal is to get to the opponent's side of the map and wipe him out, though things get much slower at that point since you can no longer use your own powers directly but the enemy can. It's an interesting setup, but the biggest issue is the speed of the game. Both sides get lots of units, movement ranges are not high even when on favourable terrain, and the game slows down a lot once you get to the other side of the map, so even a relatively basic map can take an hour or more to clear. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's definitely one that requires a lot of patience.
DeleteWhenever we have two games in the same genre across both systems, I always think that there might be an interesting contrast between them, but it's almost always the case that one is better than the other in virtually every way, and that's once again the case here, as Viva Soccer is just way better than VR Soccer. Actually, in many ways the two games are very similar, just that every issue Viva Soccer has is way worse in VR Soccer. For starters, the default camera in VR Soccer is completely worthless, it shows the play super close to the field and you can't see anything, but you can change it, and the far camera is usable, though still not great. The most notable thing about the game is that it's very slow and stiff. Like Viva Soccer, passes and slide tackles feel inordinately slow to execute here, though unlike Viva Soccer here the sprint move also sucks and the entire game feels really sluggish. While Viva Soccer's setup tends to lead to a lot of offense since there's not much passing, here you still have to pass, the pass just sucks, so there's a ton of turnovers and this results in almost no offense. The game also has some strange issue with eating your inputs, particularly right after a player swap, which makes defense feel especially bad to play as often your slide tackles simply won't come out, and even when you do aim a slide tackle properly there's a random chance the player will just hop over it, which is kind of key to offense since passing is so poor. The one advantage it has over Viva Soccer is that this game does have some commentary, which is actually kind of impressive for a game from 96, though Viva Soccer is still easily a better game, even though neither even comes close to something like This is Football in terms of quality.