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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Blast Radius - AAB - 33% (3)
Cybernetic Empire - AA - 50% (2)
Ducati World Racing Challenge - GG - 100% (2)
Hard Blow - BB - 0% (2)
Rival Schools - GGGGGAG - 93% (7) (1 SR)
Wonder 3 - AGA - 67% (3)
The ratings between the two topics last week were oddly similar, with many games getting the same or very comparable scores. The battle between Rival Schools and Virtual On was interesting to see.
Games for this topic:
Ayrton Senna Kart Duel Special
Blockids
Lagnacure
Odo Odo Oddity
Soul of the Samurai
Ultimate 8 Ball
This is an eclectic topic, but it looks like an interesting one. If you've been noticing that there's more Japanese RPGs lately, it's because I recently went back through the list of JRPGs for PS1 and added some more that I hadn't allowed the first time, as with the improvements in automatic translation it's getting easier to play them.
Ayrton Senna Kart Duel Special - B
ReplyDeleteBlockids - B
Lagnacure - A
Odo Odo Oddity - B
Soul of the Samurai - B
Ultimate 8 Ball - G
Covering Ayrton Senna Kart Duel Special forced me to go back over the entire series to see how it compared to the other games and it wasn't a pleasant experience. For starters, Special is virtually identical to Kart Duel 2, it has the same tracks and general UI, but the controls have been revamped. Compared to 2, the karts have significantly more grip, which feels good for the first track in the game, but for every other track it's a huge problem because you can't turn tightly enough to navigate most turns. The game desperately needs a powerslide mechanic, but there isn't one, so all you can do is slow to a near stop on the curves, which feels atrocious and just generally makes the game feel bad to play. By far the best game in the series is the first one, which DOES have a proper powerslide mechanic and thus you can take sharp turns with speed, though it's still not great. I have no idea how this series sold well enough to get 3 games, but on the plus side, we'll never have to care about it again.
Blockids is another brickout clone, but it's easily one of the weakest on the system. To its credit, this game does try to include some unique mechanics. For starters, the stages are 3D, with some bricks being stacked on top of others, which will fall as the blocks below them are removed. This seems like a neat idea, but unfortunately the main effect this has is it makes stages take way too long. Think how long it takes to clear a standard brickout level with many full rows of regular bricks, now imagine how much longer it would take with many additional rows stacked on top. The one interesting mechanic is that you can press a button to bounce the ball into the air, which you can sometimes use to get it behind or on top of bricks, which is a totally essential mechanic to have stages not take like 10 minutes, but it means you spend a lot of time just watching the ball bounce back and forth in a spot where it can't possibly come back to you, which increases the degree to which the game just feels slow. There are also different characters you can choose and they have different special powers that they can gradually build up, though despite the fact that there are 6 characters there are only 3 different powers: big paddle, catch, and powerball, of which the latter is by far the best because it speeds up the game to some degree. Speaking of speed, by far the game's biggest issue is that your paddle doesn't have enough of it and generally doesn't feel very responsive, so it's frequently the case that you'll quickly react to the angle of the ball and yet still not be able to hit it back because your paddle doesn't move fast enough. Overall, it's simply not very fun and you'd be better served by almost any other game of this type.
Lagnacure is a fairly basic RPG. By far the most notable thing about it is that it is 3D, and I feel like every aspect of the game was designed to show this off. The game world has an absurd degree of verticality to it that actually often makes it somewhat hard to see where you're going without rotating the camera constantly, but it's fairly clear that they wanted to make the game visually interesting and show off what could be done with 3D area maps. The battle system also makes heavy use of 3D visuals. It has a real time battle system where you can issue commands to the characters and they have to move around the battlefield to attack. What's most interesting about this is that many abilities have the potential to hit multiple targets if they're grouped appropriately, for example the second character you get has a throw attack, where they'll grab an enemy and throw it backwards, and if this hits another enemy that enemy will also take damage. That said, the enemies can do this to you as well, and you can't take many hits, so you'll have to be careful with how you assign your commands. A strange quirk of the game is that you're healed to full after every battle, so it doesn't really matter how much damage you take as long as you win, even if allies die they just lose out on some exp but come back good as new as soon as the fight is over. This also means you can completely cut loose with your spells in every fight, though cast times are long so you won't want front liners doing this. This system has some pros and cons. Obviously, it means attrition isn't a factor, which kinda makes random encounters feel a bit pointless except for grinding purposes. At the same time, the fact that you can win a battle by the skin of your teeth and be perfectly fine means that the game can make regular battles significantly more challenging compared to most games, it's very possible to get wiped on standard encounters if you take an unlucky hit or something, which does help keep these battles from getting too boring. When it comes to the story, it's also quite basic. There's a fair number of characters and it seems like there's often situations where you have to choose between different characters to join your party, but it also doesn't feel like they vary tremendously much so your choices probably aren't that vital. The combat interface is also definitely somewhat cumbersome, the characters other than the main character will act on their own but often do so slowly or make poor choices, so you'd want to command them manually, but time does not stop while issuing commands and they'll just sit there while you tell them what to do, and it's super annoying if you select the wrong character because then they'll just stop what they were doing. It's not bad, but not something I'd necessarily be running out to play, but it'll be interesting to see what they do with the sequel.
DeleteOdo Odo Odyssey is a nice looking game, but it's not particularly fun to play. It's a depth shooter, similar to Panorama Cotton, though way worse in pretty much every way. The biggest issue with this game is its control. You play as a character riding on balloons, and you constantly sway back and forth, moving your hitbox around erratically, which is obviously awful for a shmup. Movement is also not particularly responsive, you often have to press several times in order to move with any speed, and it just generally feels poor to control. Your attacks have limited ammo, and to get more you have to pick up floating powerups, but due to the aforementioned control issues these are also a pain to get, and your attack has very little range and it's generally unclear where it will hit. Some of the levels do look very nice, especially the sumi-e styled second level, but the game plays so poorly it's never fun.
When I booted up Soul of the Samurai and saw the Konami logo I initially thought "great, it's a Konami game, it can't be that bad", but to be honest it is still pretty bad. Soul of the Samurai bravely asks the question "what if Resident Evil was a terrible beat-em-up?" and unsurprisingly the answer is that it would suck. For starters, this is beat-em-up that has fixed camera angles and tank controls. That should already tell you pretty much everything you need to know about it, but suffice it to say that the combat has absolutely no sense of fluidity to it. You have a ranged attack, but there's no autoaim so it's basically worthless, but it doesn't really matter because all you need to do is block, then counterattack with a combo and it will kill pretty much any enemy that's not a boss. You might occasionally get hit back if there's multiple enemies, but heals are abundant, you get a free heal after every chapter, and you have a super strong desperation attack so the game is not hard. The game tries to go the Resident Evil route of giving you limited consumables and such, but because your main weapon is an unlimited use melee weapon it doesn't work at all. The secret to Rez Evil's success is that you have limited bullets so you have to choose who to kill and who not to, but when you can fight an unlimited number of enemies with no issues there's no strategy to it. The game is also completely linear and there's no puzzles or exploration of any kind, so don't expect anything more than just slashing the same handful of enemies to death over and over again. I feel like if you couldn't block this would be somewhat more interesting, as before I learned about the block I was using some somewhat more interesting strategies of trying to get the opponents to whiff attacks and such, but the block is so OP that it basically trivializes the game. I could see the argument for the lowest of low As, but it's such a drab and dull experience that I can't see why anyone would want to play it.
DeleteYou know we're in trouble when it's up to a pool game to save the topic, but surprisingly Ultimate 8 Ball is up to the task. On the surface this game looks fairly similar to most other decent pool games, but it has a bit more polish and style in virtually every area. For starters, there's the controls. Something I like about this game is that everything related to control is simple and intuitive. Want to put English on the ball? You just hold a button and move the cursor to set the impact point. Moving the ball after someone gets a scratch? Also just hold a button and move wherever you need to. The camera controls are similarly simple and effective to use, and generally pretty much everything feels snappy. As with many pool games, there's a ton of rule sets available, and there's also a simple campaign mode where you can challenge a bunch of opponents on a grid, with each win unlocking the ability to challenge the players adjacent to them, as well as unlocking the pool table and character for use in VS mode. Something that's nice is you can play this mode with any ruleset you want, so it's very customizable, and there's a surprisingly large amount of different pool tables to play on, with each one having its own unique pool hall and music to go with it. The visuals for some of these are quite nice, for example I quite like Neon City's translucent table and cheesy 80s lighting. It's also nice that the AI isn't inordinately impossible to beat, even the hardest opponents still miss shots sometimes, so even if you're not a pool god you should be able to make progress. Overall, it's a surprisingly well-polished game and I feel like it offers pretty much everything you could want from a pool game this gen.