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Last Topic's Ratings:
Arthur: Ready to Race - GG - 100% (2)
College Slam - AAA - 50% (3)
Ganbare Goemon: Oedo Daikaiten - AGG - 83% (3)
Puzzle Mania - GA - 75% (2)
Shachou Eiyuuden - GBB - 33% (3)
Ubik - BBB - 0% (3)
Bit of a quiet week last week, especially compared to Saturn, but there were still a few solid titles in there.
Games for this topic:
Blast Radius
Cybernetic Empire
Ducati World Racing Challenge
Hard Blow
Rival Schools
Wonder 3
I remember Rival Schools being a game I thought was incredibly cool back when it was new, but I haven't been back to it for a long time, and I'm now much more familiar with Project Justice, so I wonder how it will hold up.
Blast Radius - A
ReplyDeleteCybernetic Empire - A
Ducati World Racing Challenge - G
Hard Blow - B
Rival Schools - G
Wonder 3 - G
Blast Radius is a very standard space dogfighter. On the surface, the game is fairly competent, it looks all right, runs very well, and controls pretty decently too, but there's not really a lot to it. The missions are very simple, generally just "blow up everything that moves" (a couple times you have to defend an allied ship by destroying all hostile ships), and you only get a couple weapons, which is made worse by the fact that your subweapons generally suck, so you'll be using your primary laser 99% of the time. There are weapon and armor upgrades you can earn with points, but there's little to buy and you'll generally have enough to buy everything, so this also lacks nuance. Probably the game's biggest issue is that your craft is quite slow, you actually can adjust your speed, but even the maximum speed is unimpressive and there's no boost, so you'll typically just use maximum speed all the time. In exchange for your lack of maneuverability you are instead quite tanky, but this also contributes to the general feeling that the game doesn't have a lot of depth. It still plays all right, and it might have been a decent rental back in the day, it's just not something that you're likely going to want to come back to.
Cybernetic Empire is a 3rd person shooter that bears some resemblance to Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil, though it's not as good as either of those games. The presentation of the game is actually pretty solid, in particular I want to call attention to its JPop opening, which is of pretty high quality, and the ingame visuals are pretty good too. The game generally feels sort of like you'd expect Resident Evil to feel like if it didn't have prerendered backgrounds, it has tank controls, you press a button to pull out your gun, it has autoaim, etc. Kind of a weird mechanic is that your standard gun cannot kill most enemies, it simply downs them for a moment, allowing you to run past them, though this also feels like something you'd expect out of Rez Evil. You can kill enemies using more powerful weapons like grenades, but these are more limited and thus must be used somewhat judiciously, so stealth is generally preferred if you have the option. One other mechanic is that you can also jump, and there's a fair bit of platforming, though the platforming is all right, the biggest issue is the grappling hook mechanic. Early in the game you get a grappling hook and this thing honestly just sucks. You have to manual aim it with R2, you can't aim down, it has very little range to attach to anything, and the physics for pulling yourself to it are a complete crapshoot that has a good chance to just fling you off in a random direction. And the worst thing is, you have to use it CONSTANTLY. Like usually 2 or more times in every room once you get it. It doesn't completely ruin the game but it definitely would have been better without it. Even then, it probably would have been a low G at best, it's a pretty linear game and I feel like there's nothing super exciting about it, it looks nice but I feel like there's not really a lot of substance behind it.
Ducati World Racing Challenge is essentially a lesser Gran Turismo with bikes. Comparisons to GT are unavoidable, the game is set up in exactly the same way and apes just about everything about Sony's franchise. From license tests and buying used bikes to running multi race events that have certain conditions about what kinds of bikes you can use, this will all seem very familiar. However, obviously GT is a good game so it's a decent place to take inspiration from, and the game's controls and physics are solid enough that it doesn't look too bad when put up against Sony's title, even though GT is clearly superior in a number of ways. Probably the game's biggest issue is that it doesn't keep track of which events you've won. There's a ton of them and many have unique conditions, so clearly the game's main challenge is to win them all, but you'll have to track this yourself, which is dumb. Other than that though I don't have many complaints, so I was pretty surprised that this game is near-universally hated for some reason. There don't seem to be many solid reasons why other than "Gran Turismo is better", which it is, though that's a fairly minor criticism as GT is better than almost all other racing games this gen and at least this game does play differently from it due to the different mechanics for the bikes. I also checked out the Dreamcast version, which is very similar, but arguably somewhat worse than PS1, as although it is smoother it has significant pop-in and the higher resolution makes the poor texture work much more apparent. It also uses shoulders for acceleration and has no remapping, so I'd probably stick to the PS1 version. Overall, while not perfect, I feel like it's still one of the best bike racing games of the era and probably somewhere in low G territory.
DeleteHard Blow is pretty much a classic bad boxing game. Pretty much anything bad you can say about any boxing game applies, punches are unreactable and combo punches barely work, turning it into a brainless button masher, the build-up mode is slow and boring, and the game doesn't even display any kind of status bars during matches. It also looks almost comically terrible, featuring some of the worst animations and character models I've ever seen. Obviously, never play this game, but it's good to know that boxing as a genre has improved enough this gen that this kind of game is no longer the norm.
The original Rival Schools is still fun, but it's way more janky than I remembered. For those new to the series, Rival Schools is a 3D Fighting game from Capcom, but unlike Street Fighter EX's more traditional style, this game plays more like Marvel, with chain combos and supers flying everywhere. It has some of its own unique mechanics, one of the more notable ones is that each team picks 2 characters, though there are no assists or tagouts, the second character is only there to potentially swap to between rounds and for your team-up attack, though most team up attacks are broadly similar and this mechanic feels somewhat underutilized. Another important mechanic is the tardy counter, which functions somewhat like an alpha counter, where you can input a move (or even launcher) during blockstun and you'll immediately execute that attack, though you also instantly lose the protection of blocking and become vulnerable. As mentioned previously, there are also launchers for Marvel-style air combos, and you also have a standard assortment of specials and supers as you'd expect from any other Capcom game. However, in many ways the game still feels kind of strange and unpolished, especially by Capcom standards. One of the main things that stands out to me is that this game has some of the most bizarre frame data of any game I've ever played. Generally speaking, pretty much all moves in this game recover way faster than you'd think and thus almost nothing is actually punishable. You will frequently block a slow-looking super to find out that it's actually completely safe on block, even against tardy counter. Fireballs are preposterously fast in this game, you can jump a fireball and not only can you not hit them with a jump in, they can probably DP before you can even stick out a button. Even if you do get a clean jump over on some extremely slow special, if you try to do something like fierce punch into super to punish, it will probably whiff because characters have bizarre back turn hurtboxes where you moves will often just go through them. About the only thing in the game you can punish consistently is launcher, you can always tardy counter with your own launcher, so hitconfirming your launcher properly is very important, but air combos are bizarrely inconsistent in this game so it's generally best to just stick to ground combos. In general though the game feels kind of scrubby and every time you lose you'll probably feel like "wow that was BS", but if you're ever in trouble just start spamming fireballs and everything will be fine because there's almost no way to effectively deal with them. I think some of the problem is that the game kind of has Marvel's speed and general safety of attacks without Marvel's movement options, so you don't have the speed to exploit the very limited punish opportunities or navigate through zoning tools. That said, the game does have very strong presentation, a ton of characters, and there's a lot of content here for a console release of a fighting game (though it's regrettable that the build-up mode from the evolution disc was cut from the US release). Compared to its sequel, Project Justice, the latter is definitely way better (pretty much all of the aforementioned issues are ironed out in that game and the addition of things like mini launchers adds a lot more depth), but this is still a pretty fun game if you don't take it too seriously. It definitely doesn't make my top 10 fighters for the era and I think Street Fighter EX is better overall, but it's still one of the era's better 3D fighters and it's easily too much fun for the A range.
DeleteWonder 3 is pretty much the same as when we covered it on Saturn. As before, this is an arcade game which is actually 3 games in one, with you being able to choose which one to play when you put in your coin. This was a nifty idea in the Arcade, though when it comes to the home release it basically just plays like a 3-game compilation, which is fine because they're all fairly decent. The only difference I can see between the versions is that the top and bottom 20 pixels or so are cut off on Saturn, but not on PS1, so that version is slightly letterboxed. This has no effect on gameplay and you probably wouldn't be able to see it on a standard CRT anyway, but I suppose it makes this version slightly superior. Still, it's an interesting product on both systems and it's cool to see where Lou from Marvel vs Capcom originally came from.
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