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Last Topic's Ratings:
Burstrick Wake Boarding - GG - 100% (2)
Critical Blow - GG - 100% (2)
Nyan to Wonderful 2 - AA - 50% (2)
Race Drivin a Go Go - BBB - 0% (3)
Vanark - AAA - 50% (3)
Whizz - AAA - 50% (3)
A rare "total consensus" topic, where every game got the same rating from everyone who rated it. It doesn't get much more definitive than that.
Games for this topic:
Advanced VG2
BreakThru
Hogs of War
Peter Jacobsen's Golden Tee Golf
Popolocrois
Warm Up
I've wanted to take a look at the PS1 version of Popolocrois for some time, after playing the PSP version and having a somewhat middling impression of it (I understand they have quite a lot of differences). There's a fan translation available for it, too. Hogs of War also looks like an interesting game.
Advanced VG2 - G
ReplyDeleteBreakThru - B
Hogs of War - G
Peter Jacobsen's Golden Tee Golf - A
Popolocrois - G
Warm Up - G
I'm actually not completely sure how I feel about Advanced VG2. Compared to Advanced VG, this is effectively a completely different game, I feel like there's actually rarely been any instances throughout history where a fighting game has changed this much inbetween installments. The first game somewhat resembled older SNK games like Art of Fighting, but it has now become Darkstalkers. This means both the addition of Darkstalkers-style chain combos as well as a super meter which allows for both EX specials and true super moves (which take 1 / 2 bars respectively). There's even an alpha counter-like mechanic that costs half a bar, and the game also just moves way faster than the original. Really, apart from the fact that the characters are the same (minus a few new ones) you almost wouldn't know the two games were related. Probably the most significant impact of the change is that damage is way higher. Not only does the game allow you to do magic series into special moves, you can actually even cancel specials into EX / Super, which allows most characters to take off at least 35% from any touch, generally 50% if they're willing to spend 2 bars. As with many similar games, this tends to homogenize the cast somewhat, a shoto like Yuka can still absolutely destroy you off any touch, which makes it feel like there's not a lot of reason to pick the more combo-centric or heavier hitters, especially because she has better neutral. I suppose for its time, it's fairly well-polished, and I like that you can do EX moves with either a double motion or a double button input (ie, you can do Yuka's EX fireball as either QCF + 2P or QCF, QCF + P). It's definitely a step up from the PS1 version of the original game, though I think I prefer the Saturn version of the original. It is still one of the better early games to feature this style of gameplay though.
I mentioned the last time we looked at Breakthru that I never remember anything about it after playing it, but this time it was recent enough that I kind of remember the gist of it. It's a very dull puzzle game about clearing out groups of blocks with an extremely short time limit. The entire game revolves around clearing from the top down and trying not to leave orphans on the side, but the time limit is so short that you pretty much can't play it strategically to any degree unless you raise the time limit to 5 minutes. However, on PS1, you are randomly restricted from playing the Easy mode with the 5 minute time limit, you have to either play on normal (which adds an obnoxious number of special blocks) or child, which is trivially simple. The Saturn version allows you to do this just fine, and is by far the best way to play the game (though that's not saying much), which makes this version strictly inferior for basically no reason. It's still just not really a fun game in any case. I wonder if anyone in the world is actually a fan of this game, you certainly never hear about it.
I'm glad we covered Worms somewhat recently, because it turns out Hogs of War is extremely similar to it. Hogs of War is basically Worms but in 3D, many aspects of the game are extremely similar to Team 17's game, but it also makes a number of smart innovations as well. The basics will be familiar to anyone who has played Worms. You have a team of a certain number of pigs, of which you control one at a time in a cycle. You get a bit of time to move around before you have to take a shot, at which point you will activate one of many weapons, optionally specify the amount of power or aim it with the crosshairs, then attempt to do damage to the enemy pigs. Virtually everything about this setup is copied verbatim from Worms, right down to many aspects of the presentation, for example your pigs have many similar one-liners for turn start, taking a shot, dying, etc. One thing that's kind of undeniable is that the move to 3D makes aiming way easier. Obviously, aiming a gun with the crosshairs is pretty trivial (it's trivial in Worms as well), but it's now much easier to aim grenades and the bazooka, especially because you can press a button to blow up your grenade rather than having to set a fuse timer. Additionally, the default value for the turn timer is super long, allowing you to effectively walk to any position on the map before taking your shot, though in multiplayer you can change it to be shorter. The game does make some interesting additions to the Worms formula, though. For starters, it has a real campaign, unlike Worms 1. What's interesting about this is that there is some degree of carry-over between missions. Doing well in missions earns medals that you can use to promote your pigs into different classes, which have stat bonuses and carry different weapons. You can choose which pigs to bring into each battle, which helps give it a fair bit more strategy and customization than it might otherwise have. These classes are also available in multiplayer, and making good use of their various abilities is key to success. Water also acts somewhat differently. Being hit into water is not instant death this time around, but it does hurt the pigs as they'll have to swim out of it, gradually losing health in the process, so being knocked into the water is still bad, just not as instantly game-ending as it can be in Worms. Similarly, weapons feel a bit more balanced, while Worms trends more towards sheer wackiness, here there has been some effort to balance the weapons available to each class so you don't just get instantly deleted every turn, which does help enhance the strategic side of the game, there's definitely some tradeoffs between taking an easy shot and potentially exposing yourself to being hit into the water or getting two pigs hit by an AOE. Overall, it's a pretty interesting variation on the formula, and while it's not totally perfect, it does a pretty good job of translating the concept into 3D.
DeletePeter Jacobson's Golden Tee Golf is a hard game to rate. This is another one of those retro-style golf games where you don't have a proper 3D camera, but it plays vastly better than all of the others. This is mainly because the game is super streamlined. There's no swing meter, you just press X to start the swing meter and then triangle to hit when it gets to the amount of power you want (it goes really slow so hitting the exact power is trivial), and you don't really have to putt either, in particular it's impossible to overshoot the hole so you just adjust for the green slope (which is shown numerically) and hit the ball. The simplicity results in the game actually being quite playable and it also has a decent selection of modes and 6 courses. You could definitely make the case for G, but there are two big arguments against it. The first thing is that this game came out super late. It was originally released in 1997, but the PS1 port wasn't released until 2000, more than a year after Mario Golf, which is a million times better than it in every way. The second issue is that it doesn't really fix any of the issues that these sorts of games usually have, it basically just outright removes them. For example, it doesn't have a good swing meter or a good putting system, it just doesn't really have those mechanics at all, which results in it being a pretty shallow game. It's still miles ahead of any other game that plays comparably to it, but all of those games are B (and they're towards the low end of B as well), so it being a good A makes sense.
DeletePopolocrois is a pretty cool game that feels ahead of its time. It's a cutesy fairytale RPG with a strategy battle system that has a lot in common with Rhapsody, but it's better in basically every way. Like Rhapsody, this game features great spritework and animations, which are honestly some of the best on PS1. It's kind of impressive how many frames of animation various characters have, which really helps the game's charm, there's a mixture of both funny and serious scenes and good writing and animation ensures both are pulled off well. The strategy aspect of the game also definitely works a fair bit better compared to Rhapsody, largely due to better balance, as the game is significantly more challenging. An interesting mechanic is that the battles take place right on the field maps, and whatever geometry they have becomes the moveable area. This was clearly taken into account when designing the areas as there are all kinds of tight corridors, winding passages, forks, and other strange features that make for interesting battles if they occur there, which is one of the main ways the game tries to keep battles fresh. Of course, it's completely possible for a battle to occur in a location where one or more characters may not even be able to reach some of the enemies, but luckily most characters have ranged attacks and worst case you can always run away. You might be thinking this would be a fairly short game, especially if you've played the PSP version, but it's actually not quite as short as you'd think, as the PSP remake actually cuts out about half the game. This significantly hampers the storytelling and pacing of the game and generally loses a lot of the charm, and the difficulty is also significantly reduced, so if you want to play the game this is almost certainly the better way to experience it. About the only real issue with the game is that like many old RPGs, the encounter rate is somewhat high, but at least MP is fairly abundant so you can afford to nuke otherwise lengthy battles with powerful spells every now and then. In any case, it's a pretty solid game and it's worth trying out for RPG fans now that the fan translation is available.
Warm Up is a fairly simplistic but competent F1 game. By far the most impressive thing about this game is the courses, it has 19 and they're all pretty varied, which is a ton. It also runs fairly well, there is some very minor slowdown on occasion but the draw distance is excellent and the game also looks pretty good. It also controls fairly well, particularly in the game's arcade mode, it's one of the few games that supports analog steering but does not force you to use analog throttle (it is an option, but you can also accelerate with a button). As mentioned previously, the game has both an arcade and a simulation mode. The arcade mode is very arcadey, there aren't even positions, you just need to overtake a certain number of cars before the race finishes (you can continue to overtake even more cars for extra points), whereas simulation mode is more traditional. Something I like about Simulation mode is that if you skip the qualifying lap altogether, it has you start relatively high up the pack instead of dead last, which saves time because qualifying is tedious (I wonder if anyone really loves that aspect of F1 games?). There's not too much more to say about it than this, but it's a fairly competent game that plays well and has a lot of content.
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