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Last Topic's Ratings:
Akuji the Heartless - GGGG - 100% (4)
Asteroids - BAAAB - 30% (5)
Dance Dance Dance - AB - 25% (2)
Hard Boiled - BAB - 17% (3)
Planet Laika - GAAA - 63% (4)
SeaBass Fishing 2 - AA - 50% (2)
Well, Akuji certainly blew the doors off the rest of the games in this topic. I guess every holiday needs a little voodoo magic.
Games for this topic:
Assault Rigs
Bottom of the 9th
Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi
Legend of Heroes 1 and 2
Tom and Jerry in House Trap
Tsumu Light
Iblard looks like a pretty interesting game, there's a fan translation available for it as well. I'm also curious to see how the Legend of Heroes series started.
Assault Rigs - G
ReplyDeleteBottom of the 9th - A
Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi - G
Legend of Heroes 1 and 2 - B
Tom and Jerry in House Trap - G
Tsumu Light - B
Assault Rigs is mostly the same as the Saturn version but with one very crucial difference, which is that the game runs at a vastly better framerate. On Saturn, it probably usually runs around 20fps, but dips to 5-10fps on the really big levels, but on PS1 it runs at 30fps almost all the time, with very minor dips to like 25fps on rare occasions. Obviously, this allows the game to remain vastly more playable as the levels get more complex, and the added framerate also helps the controls feel snappier. The PS1 version of the game also seems to be slightly harder, enemies respawn faster and take more hits to defeat, but this does help the special weapons feel more useful (they also respawn quicker as well). Overall, this version of the game feels a lot better and as an early title this might have been relatively decent.
The moment I started up Bottom of the 9th it felt incredibly familiar, especially the batting system, which confused me as I couldn't find the game I felt was similar to it on PS1 in the GAB archives. It turns out this is because the game I was thinking of was actually Bottom of the 9th on N64 (remember N64?). That game is actually Bottom of the 9th 99, but they're very similar. To go over it again, the most notable feature about this game is the batting system. Unlike older baseball games, here you have to line up a box with the pitch as it's being thrown to contact the ball. This does add some more nuance to batting, but it also has the effect of making pitches almost trivially simple to read, as an indicator is shown of where the ball is going as it's thrown and you can only subtly adjust it mid flight. This becomes even easier if you look at the back view of the catcher as he aligns his mitt, which gives you even more time to adjust to the pitch and makes contacting it every time (unless it's a ball) fairly trivial. However, as with the N64 game, fielding here is pretty strong, even if you do hit the ball almost every time actually getting on base is fairly hard, though not quite as hard as in the N64 game (the fielders have been beefed up even more in that game), so you might be able to argue that this one feels a little more balanced offensively. Of course, there are a couple other differences compared to 99. The biggest one is obviously that the game looks way worse, and it also lacks the scenario mode (which won't be introduced until 97). It's still a pretty solid title for its time and you could probably make the argument for G, but Baseball games advanced fast this gen so that advantage doesn't hold up long.
Iblard is a pretty interesting game. In many ways, it kind of reminds me of Myst, you're transported to a strange fantasy world which you explore in first person to solve puzzles and try to piece together what's going on, though I find it to be vastly better than Myst. For starters, unlike Myst, this is a fully 3D game, which means you explore the world on foot and I feel this instantly makes it vastly more immersive. The puzzles are also not nearly as cryptic, but I still think they're pretty well-done anyway, in particular I like that in each area you get a map and it's filled with some subtle clues about how to solve the puzzles. The game also has great presentation, you might think Myst would be a much better-looking game since it uses prerendered backgrounds but Iblard is also a pretty fantastic looking game, in particular it makes excellent use of colour and lighting to make each area feel thematically unique and interesting to explore. The game also involves some action elements. It's certainly not an action game by any stretch, but there are enemies and you do have health. You can take a boatload of hits and health is abundant, the enemies typically exist more to block your path than to be a huge threat, but it does help contribute to the game's overall atmosphere. If there is a low point to the game it's probably using the boomerang, which fires slow and is a bit difficult to aim (it's L2 + X / Triangle to aim down / up), but it also comprises a fairly small portion of the game so it's not a big issue. Overall, it's a pretty interesting game and easily my favourite of these sorts of first person adventure games we've played so far this gen.
DeleteThe Legend of Heroes 1 and 2 are not totally unplayable the way Legend of Heroes 3 is, but they're still incredibly dated and absolutely no effort has been made to spruce up this collection, resulting in it being easily among the weakest RPGs on the platform. For starters, these are very early Japanese PC RPGs. Gameplay-wise, they play like Dragon Quest 2, with a similarly minimal story and gameplay, and the visuals also definitely aren't much better (arguably the spritework is slightly improved but the scrolling is much jerkier). These games did receive upgraded ports to the 16-bit consoles which feature enhanced visuals and even some voice acting, but those versions are not used here. The only enhancement is that the game has a new soundtrack, which is actually not bad, but it often poorly fits the game, for example the theme for being thrown in the dungeon in Legend of Heroes 1 is an upbeat castle theme which is completely at odds with the tone of the scene, but this is because it's also reused in Legend of Heroes 2 for that same castle, which is now under ally control. Speaking of, The Legend of Heroes 2 is almost the same game as Legend of Heroes 1, reusing most of the same map and all of the same mechanics, so it probably makes sense to consider these two halves of the same game rather than two separate games. About the only mechanical difference (and maybe the only notable thing about the games period) is the way they handle random encounters. Legend of Heroes has somewhat standard random battles on the world map (dungeon encounters are static encounters instead), with the somewhat odd quirk that random battles can occur even when you stand still. In Legend of Heroes 2, all battles are instead visible and "random" encounters are instead sprites that move across the map, though the map is so cramped that avoiding them is often nearly impossible so it doesn't change a lot, you're certainly going to be doing a ton of battles in both games and the battle system is incredibly dull. While it is kind of interesting to see how the Legend of Heroes series started, these weren't even great games in their time and the series really doesn't become worth caring about until Trails in the Sky.
Tom and Jerry is actually a lot better than I expected. The game somewhat plays like a much better version of Spy vs Spy, the basic gist of the game is that Tom and Jerry are running around the house trying to beat the hell out of each other as per usual. To do so, you need to run around the various parts of the house collecting weapons to deplete the other player's health bar. There are also traps you can activate in various locations (by pressing attack when not having a weapon out), which will trigger if anyone gets close to it and either do a lot of damage or immobilize them for a long time (during which time they can be hit). Like Spy vs Spy, the game is splitscreen at all times, so you can always tell where the other player is, which you'd think would make the traps pointless, but with how much is going on it's easy to forget which ones were activated, and I've bumbled into my own traps a shocking number of times. The game is divided into 15 stages, though they all take place inside the house, just with different rooms and different weapons being available, which can cause some of them to feel a little similar. Every 5th level, though, the gameplay changes out to become an objective-based game instead of one based on health bars. There will be some objective on the stage, which involves finding some item and then delivering it to some location. For example, the first one involves some baby ducklings that got lost. Tom wants to cook them, so he has to bring them to the stove, while Jerry wants to rescue them, so he has to bring them to the duck pond. If one player grabs a duck, the other player can hit them to make them drop it, which tends to cause a lot of scrambly situations. The fact that each player has a different goal is interesting, as for example, in this stage Tom's goal is easier to reach but the Kitchen also has way more traps than the Backyard, so Jerry can freely trap the kitchen to try to ambush Tom and steal the duck (though one time the AI had already trapped the kitchen so when I tried to do it I got frozen instead). It's a surprisingly satisfying game to play, every time I trick the AI into getting hit by the fridge and then whack him with a bowling ball I cackle like a maniac while sprinting off to get more weapons. I do wish there were more of the objective-based levels (there's only 3) or some levels taking place in other locations, but this is still a pretty fun game that would probably be a hoot to play in multiplayer.
DeleteI figured Tsumu Light might be like an easier version of Tsumu, but I think the idea is that it's a budget version of Tsumu instead, as it plays pretty much identically to the first game but has less stuff. As before, this is a ludicrously complex puzzle game where even just moving across the stage is a brain bender in itself, due to the fact that Tsumu's forklift cannot hang over the edges of the stage. I actually think the idea of making a version of Tsumu that was a little bit more simplistic could actually have been pretty good product, like for example they could have allowed you to hang over the edges or at least turn in place while not carrying a box, as it stands after the first 5 levels or so it's unlikely you'll want to keep playing, and buying another game just to get 5 more somewhat playable levels definitely doesn't feel worth it.