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Last Topic's Ratings:
Center Ring Boxing - GA - 75% (2)
Enemy Zero - GGGGAGA - 86% (7) (2 SR)
Pinball Graffiti - AB - 25% (2)
Twinkle Star Sprites - GGGGGGG - 100% (7)
Virtua Fighter Kids - AAAGBBBG - 44% {8}
Wara Wara Wars - GA - 75% (2)
Virtua Fighter Kids becomes an incredibly rare game to have over 5 votes and get the squiggle bracket. This topic was pretty divisive in general.
Games for this topic:
Astra Superstars
Die Hard Arcade
Incredible Hulk, The: The Pantheon Saga
Revolution X
Shadows of the Tusk
Shingata Kururin Pa
When I first saw it, I thought Shadows of the Tusk was a gritty SRPG take on Adventure Island, which would be super cool, but it looks like it's actually its actually an original property despite being developed by Hudson and having kind of a similar art style. It seems like an interesting game in any case. We'll also get to see if Kururin Pa made any significant improvements from the first game.
Astra Superstars - A
ReplyDeleteDie Hard Arcade - A
Incredible Hulk, The: The Pantheon Saga - B
Revolution X - B
Shadows of the Tusk - G
Shingata Kururin Pa - B
Astra Superstars is a super weird game. It's a fighting game only in the loosest possible sense of the word. The characters fly, movesets are extremely basic (there are no motions whatsoever, each character just has a certain attack string for each button and supers are done with 2 buttons), blocking almost doesn't exist (more on that in a moment), and in general it feels more like a party game than a serious competitive title. One of the most insane things about the game is that you almost can't block, blocking a simple AAA string causes a guard break, after which the opponent can use their heavy attack to pinball you into a super for massive damage, and most supers also guard break you if you try to block them (though this is usually better than eating the damage). You can cancel your guard into a power mode (this is similar to how it was in Waku Waku 7), and you can even burst out of combos using bar, but for the most part it feels like you just build bar and then cash it out for damage, and it's really more about getting the best value out of your meter in order to win. There's a bunch of other shenanigans too, for example many moves hit you into the wall, but you can perform a counterattack after being hit into the wall, so most matches basically just turn into a slugfest. Still, the chaos is kind of entertaining in a way and it looks good and runs well, it's just not a serious fighting game by any stretch of the imagination. This could be a good title for your friends who hate fighting games, it's so bananas that it never really feels frustrating even when you lose.
Die Hard Arcade is an interesting game but I'm not quite as in love with it as some people. It's a 3D beat-em-up, though it still plays mostly like a 2D game save for the visuals. Probably the most notable thing about this game is that you have a surprisingly elaborate moveset. There's only 3 buttons (punch, kick, and jump), but there are many different attack strings involving directional inputs and different combinations of the buttons. Beyond these, you also have a fairly elaborate assortment of running and jumping attacks (including the super satisfying elbow drop that you can do on downed enemies), and you can also grab and throw enemies as well. Your unarmed moveset is actually so good that it significantly outshines the game's weapons, which is a significant problem as weapons are everywhere and you pick them up (complete with very lengthy pickup animation) by simply pressing punch when you're standing near it. While there are a few weapons you'll want to grab (assuming you're in a safe spot to do so) like the rocket launcher and anti-tank rifle, I greatly wish the game had a fourth button for pickup / throw weapon rather than using punch for it, especially because weapons can't be discarded once obtained without depleting their ammo or being knocked down. This sort of jank actually extends to a lot of the game, animations in the game are generally pretty long and can't ever be cancelled in any way, leading the game to feel somewhat stiff even by the standards of the day, for example games like Golden Axe and King of Dragons definitely feel like they control better. There are still definitely some cool parts, in particular I love the silly intermission scenes where you press a button to punch or kick a guy in the hallway, but I think it's just a good A rather than G.
I expected the Hulk game would be bad, but I didn't think it would be THIS bad. It's a super basic 3D action game with extremely choppy animation and stiff controls that also somehow has like no draw distance. You spend most of your time doing typical Hulk stuff like exploring, pushing switches and avoiding traps, just like in the comics. HULK PULL LEVER! HULK BE CAREFUL AROUND TRAPPED FLOOR! Actually, this explanation makes it sound significantly more fun than it actually is. Hulk is super fragile and health pickups barely restore anything so you have to play extremely meticulously, and the game is unfathomably dull and bland in pretty much every way imaginable. I know Hulk is a character who is difficult to capture in game form, but even if this wasn't a Hulk game it would still be bad.
DeleteI wasn't expecting much from Revolution X, but this version is somehow even way worse than I expected. Compared to every other version of the game, this version has been massively padded out, but in the worst way imaginable. Basically every section of the game loops like 20 times, with absolutely no variation whatsoever. You'll shoot the same two guys over and over and over and over until the game decides to move onto the next segment, where it will loop over and over again. This absolutely destroys the game's pacing and turns it into a total chore to play. About the only thing you can say about it is that since this version is CD-based the audio quality is a little higher, but the SNES version actually has extremely high-quality audio for a SNES game so the difference isn't really that huge. In any case, the atrocious gameplay makes this a version you definitely want to avoid.
Shadows of the Tusk is a pretty cool game. It's a strategy game that plays somewhat like a cross between two other good Saturn-exclusive strategy games, Funky Fantasy and Kumitate Battle. The gist of the game is that it's a battle between two armies in SRPG-style on a 5x5 board, though it's not an RPG, there's no equipment or items or anything and your units do not level. Instead, like in Funky Fantasy, the game revolves around gathering mana by having units stand on specific squares on the board. Mana can be used to activate special abilities for some units, and can also be used by your leader unit to summon new units to the battlefield. However, like in Kumitate Battle, setting up your team before each battle is crucial. As you win battles, you gain additional units you can use, and you can form your team out of any of them that you wish as long as you don't exceed the maximum cost, including using any unit to be the leader, and you can also set some additional ones to be used as mid-battle summons. This opens up a lot of interesting strategic options as many units have active and passive abilities that can support other units in interesting ways, for example a fairly easy one to use is Rebecca, who has the passive of gaining +1 attack every time she attacks, and she also gains +1 attack if Rachel is also on your side of the field. Obviously pairing her up with Rachel is good, but that ramping attack bonus is also very powerful if she is supported by heals or buffs. You can even summon multiple Rebeccas and have them supported by one Rachel, or vice versa. Surprisingly, the AI in this game is also very competent, even though they play fair (at least for as far as I've gotten, they don't have any advantages like boosted mana or units), the game still remains challenging, in fact you'll likely need to grind some skirmish battles to gain more units to keep up with them. The game also has support for multiplayer (via multiple save files) or even online if you had the Saturn modem, which is impressive for its time. Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the best part yet, which is that despite being a Japanese-only game, all the menus are in English, including all ability names, only the descriptions are in Japanese, so it's quite import-friendly as well. It's definitely worth a look for strategy fans.
Shingata Kururin Pa looks a fair bit better than the first game, but it hasn't really improved much gameplay-wise. When we reviewed the first game, one of the things I complained about was "you can never set flames anywhere where they don't immediately detonate, so there are no combos". This has actually been fixed. You can now set flames on top of wick blocks that they don't match, and they'll stay there and not activate until they get dropped, but this doesn't fix the game's problems, if anything it somewhat compounds them. See, the biggest issue with the game is that it's far too easy to clear your entire screen, owing mostly to the super overpowered bomb piece, which always sets off all wicks on all sides of it, even if they don't line up with the bomb. This makes it so easy to clear everything that there's absolutely no incentive to build your board strategically, instead the strategy is just to drop pieces as fast as possible, since the more pieces you have, the more you can send to the opponent. The game tends to devolve into sending screen wipes back and forth to each other, but since there's offsetting this results in nothing really happening, and matches still take forever (there's now a displayed margin time of 3 minutes after which attacks hit harder, you will basically never end a match before this elapses). I do give them credit for adding combos, but I think the real change the game needed was to nerf the bomb piece and they didn't do that, in any case it's pretty much still totally mindless and not fun to play.
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