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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
ATV: Quad Power Racing - AAA - 50% (3)
Big League Slugger Baseball - BB - 0% (2)
Brave Prove - AA - 50% (2)
Gokuu Densetsu: Magic Beast Warriors - BB - 0% (2)
Project Overkill - AGBG - 63% {5}
Ultimate Brain Games - AA - 50% (2)
PS1 continues to have kind of a slump, though I was surprised to see Project Overkill get the squiggle bracket.
Games for this topic:
Burstrick Wake Boarding
Critical Blow
Nyan to Wonderful 2
Race Drivin a Go Go
Vanark
Whizz
Unless I'm mistaken, this is the last time we'll ever have to talk about Race Drivin. I can't believe how many ports that game received.
It turns out I was originally mixing up Nyan to Wonderful 1 with Mainichi Neko Youbi when writing this review, because Nyan to Wonderful 2 actually has a lot more in common with it than the first game. In any case, this is yet another pet simulator, but compared to Mainichi and Nyan to Wonderful 1 there's a lot more to do this time around. For starters, despite what the title would suggest, you can have either a cat or a dog, and there are actually some gameplay differences between them, most particularly that you can walk your dog, but the cat just goes outside and does its own thing, and cats aren't nearly as trainable as dogs. This probably suggests that dogs are the better pet to choose, but obviously cats are way cuter. Regardless of which pet you choose, you'll have to do various things each day to take care of it, like feed it, brush it, train it, play with it, and take it outside. You can also praise it when it does well and scold it when it misbehaves, similar to Mainichi, and unlike the first game there are actual stats to raise and maintain here, so there's a lot more nuance compared to Nyan to Wonderful 1. One thing that's kind of a highlight is training the pet, you can train them on various tricks (you get way more options for dogs), which involves playing a simple minigame, but this does help give you a little bit more to do with them. Ultimately though, though the pets are fairly cute and have decent animations, it's still kinda dull. I feel like this is just inherently a concept that's hard to do well, as much of the appeal of actually owning a pet isn't really something that can be replicated by a game. I actually think Mainichi Neko Youbi has the right idea, where the game is sort of half virtual pet and half training tool on how to actually care for a pet, where it could be a good game for kids to learn how to take care of animals, Nyan to Wonderful 2 tries to do a little bit of this as well but it's not as thorough. Actually, in most ways Mainichi is still the better game, for example it feels a bit more streamlined and playing with the cat works better, but this is still a reasonable option if you prefer dogs.
ReplyDeleteLike the Saturn version of Race Drivin, Race Drivin a Go Go has some improvements over the original, and it also still completely sucks. Like the Saturn version, this version of the game runs at 60fps, so that's a big improvement over the previous generation versions that ran at like 5fps, but this is in no way enough to compensate how awful every other aspect of this game is. This version of the game actually seems to feature slightly tweaked controls and you can now sort of powerslide, but the controls are still terrible and still render the game almost totally unplayable. Compared to the Saturn version, this version also has 3 more tracks, because someone looked at this dumpster fire and decided we needed more of it, but they're all basically unplayable due to the controls as they're far more complex than the original tracks. The original tracks actually kind of work on this version, but it's still easily one of the worst racing games of all time and I can't fathom why you'd subject yourself to it. Thank god we'll never have to talk about this one again.
Vanark is essentially a PS1 version of Starfox, though it's not nearly as good. Gameplay-wise it's very similar and it's actually sort of impressive to see it pulled off as well on PS1 as it is, it runs pretty well and the environments look decent enough. However, gameplay-wise it's simply not comparable. For starters, the entire contept of the lock on is eliminated, which is key to giving Starfox 64 depth. Vanark does have a standard laser and a lock on missile, but without any limits to the amount of missiles that you have or trying to line up combo attacks, you'll just spam both at all times (originally I thought you had to mash, but mercifully you can just hold both buttons down). It's certainly not all bad, movement and difficulty feels about right and there are branching paths occasionally, and the boss battles are a highlight, they have multiple parts which are often destructible as well as a decent variety of attacks and weak points. Between missions you'll wander around the ship and talk to people about your next mission, which was driving me crazy because I knew we had played another game that did that and for the life of me I couldn't recall which game it was (it turns out to have been Star Ixiom, which has no relation to this game whatsoever). The game offers a little bit of customization for missions, you can pick a wingman, main weapon, and sub weapon, but these really don't change much, the wingman will say different things throughout the mission, which gives it a little replay value, but they aren't too interesting and there's no voice acting for their comments (it turns out the Japanese version does have voice acting for the story scenes on the ship, which is cut out of the US version, but the wingmen remain unvoiced). Actually, I think the lack of voice acting is the thing that drags the game down to A, it just feels very dry, if you compare, say, Solar Eclipse, which we did a few topics ago, that game has so much more energy to it due to its improved presentation, so even if you might be able to argue that this game has slightly better gameplay (though that's kind of debatable) it's not nearly as fun to play.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of 16-bit games that are also available on Saturn and this is the last time we'll ever have to play them we also have Whizz. It's certainly a way better game than Race Drivin, in fact it doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as that garbage (almost nothing does), it is a tolerable isometric platformer marred by a couple questionable decisions. Compared to the Saturn version this version is very similar, it just has a little bit more colour and gives you one more life, both of which slightly enhance the experience. When we reviewed this on Saturn, I noted that the game's biggest flaws were its somewhat stiff controls, lack of mercy invincibility, and the timer being way too short. It turns out you can fix the last of those problems by setting the game to "easy" in the options, which as far as I can tell only affects the timer (hopefully it doesn't doom you to a bad ending or something like that). In any case, this makes the game somewhat more playable, though the other issues remain minor annoyances.