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Last Topic's Ratings:
3Xtreme - AAAGAB - 50% (6)
Critical Depth - BGAAG - 60% {5}
Dance Dance Revolution Konamix - GA - 75% (2)
ISS Pro Evolution 2 - GBB - 33% (2)
Saber Marionette J: Battle Sabers - BB - 0% (2)
San Goku Shi: Eiketsuden - BB - 0% (2)
A fairly low-rated topic, but I guess good for 3Xtreme being the only game in the series to escape the low range?
Games for this topic:
Grind Session
Kowloon Jou
Persona 2: Innocent Sin
Power Move Pro Wrestling
Pro Pinball: Timeshock
Votoms: Woodo Kummen
There's a game called Kowloon's Gate that I've been looking forward to playing for a long time. This isn't it, though I frequently get the two mixed up. Also, we have the first part of Persona 2 here. This wasn't localized until PSP, but there's a fan translation for the PS1 version. I'm curious to see how the two versions compare as the PSP version of Persona 1 had a lot of changes.
Grind Session - G
ReplyDeleteKowloon Jou - G
Persona 2: Innocent Sin - A
Power Move Pro Wrestling - G
Pro Pinball: Timeshock - B
Votoms: Woodo Kummen - B
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Grind Session, but it's actually pretty good. For starters, this game is quite similar to Tony Hawk, but amazingly it doesn't really lose out in that comparison. If you've played THPS, you'll be right at home with the controls (except for the fact that you have to hold triangle to grind and tapping X makes you ollie in this state, this gets me every time), though compared to THPS it's probably a little more "realistic" and it tends to be focused more on good single tricks than absurdly long combos. The setup is very similar to THPS, you'll have various skateparks where you need to earn points, though unlike THPS's goals system these challenges are instead incremental, for example the first stage has boomboxes you can destroy and you get partial points even if you don't get them all. Probably this game's standout feature are the technical lines. These essentially take the place of gaps from the THPS series, but completing them gains additional time, which is a cool mechanic, I'm actually surprised THPS never stole this. You can also hold a button to see where they are, which is nice, no guesswork (or realistically, using a guide) as in THPS. The game's presentation is also quite impressive, the skateparks are huge and the visuals are pretty good for their time, and the game also runs excellently, restarts are instant and there's very little if any slowdown or other technical issues. THPS2 is maybe a little better than this game, though it certainly gives it a run for its money, and it actually came out between THPS1 and 2 and has a clear edge over THPS1. A good testament to how solid this game was is that Activision immediately offered this developer the opportunity to help out with THPS3, and they also made some of the later THPS games. Certainly a very solid effort that still holds up pretty well even after I spent a ton of time playing THPS 1+2 on Switch recently.
Well, despite not being quite the game I was looking for Kowloon Jou is not bad. It's a fairly simple puzzle game where the objective is to collect all the glowing spheres, but the tiles you stand on fall after you step on them once so you can't retrace your steps. There are a handful of special pieces that add extra nuance to this, like warps, pieces that don't fall (but are impassable once you have all spheres) and pieces that you can only pass once you have all spheres, which help to mix up the gameplay. Even on the later stages the game remains relatively simple though, and you can solve many puzzles first try with a simple visual inspection of the stage, but after suffering through something like Lazlos's leap where you can never figure out the answer until you try everything this is kind of a welcome change. There's not really too much else to say about it. It has 90 levels, which is a decent amount, but with the somewhat low level of difficulty it won't take that long to clear, but it's a relatively fun game while it lasts. It's probably not G by much but it's at least a relatively unique game.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin is a game that makes some significant strides forward for the franchise, but also a few missteps along the way. The first thing I want to note is that from a technical perspective, this is quite a step up. The visuals are very substantially improved from the previous game, and moving about the game world also now feels much smoother now that it's no longer tile-based and the area maps are no longer in first-person. The increased visuals significantly contribute to the storytelling, which is one of the strongest aspects of the game. There's a ton of story sequences (pretty much any room you enter has a boatload of dialogue from all the party members plus various NPCs) and the overall plot of the game is quite interesting, IMO the high point for the series. There have also been a number of efforts to streamline the gameplay, but not entirely for the better. Battles are no longer strictly divided into turns, and the formation mechanic is gone, you now simply specify your desired commands and autobattle takes over until you press the button to issue new commands. Levelling personas is faster than ever and pretty much any persona can become powerful in a short time, and you can use persona spells very liberally since MP regenerates fast. Even demon conversation is somewhat simplified, as the results are now consistent and it's easy to tell if they like what you're saying or not. When compared with games like Soul Hackers and its obnoxious demon loyalty mechanic, undeniably this game is much more accessible and less tedious, which is a definite step in the right direction for the series, but they took it a little too far. This is by far the easiest Shin Megami Tensei game, you can simply autobattle your way through the vast majority of the game, at best you might occasionally have to give the command to heal against bosses but you're unlikely to really be taxed at any point. A very common way to play the game is to never fuse any personas at all, as the starting personas are powerful enough to last until the game hands you better ones, which obviously trivializes pretty much everything related to the velvet room and persona fusion. It's not difficult to make new personas if you feel like doing that, arguably getting personas is easier than ever since you simply collect cards and then choose from a list, but the fact that it never really feels like your choices matter robs SMT of one of the main aspects that's compelling about it. It's unfortunate, because pretty much everything else about this game is actually really good, with the addition of a hard difficulty option this would be one of the best SMT games. We should also probably talk about the PSP version. Persona 1 got an amazing PSP port that improved it in a lot of ways, but for Persona 2:IS, it's actually the reverse, the PSP version is much worse than the PS1 version. For starters, it's censored, but the real problem is that rather than making the game harder, they actually made it EVEN EASIER, so it's almost impossible to take damage in the PSP version. They also messed up the autobattle so the PSP version also plays much slower, which combined with the complete lack of challenge makes that version a total bore. The PS1 version is at least still decently playable, I just wish someone would make a mod that like, multiplied all enemy stats by 1.5x or something, because I feel like that's all it would take for this game to be G.
DeleteWhen I first booted up Power Move Pro Wrestling I was pretty surprised at how solid it was for being a no-name title. Though the wrestlers are all made-up and look pretty similar to each other, they actually play pretty differently and the game has a very solid engine. Wrestlers actually stay on the mat fairly long here, so downed moves are pretty decent, but after getting beat up for a while the crowd will cheer for you, which lets you get up faster and break moves earlier and gives you a chance to come back. Despite the generic look of the wrestlers, the animations for the moves are very good, everything is totally recognizable and hits in the game generally feel satisfying. After I looked it up, this all made sense, this game is made by Yukes, who went on to develop the Smackdown games, using an upgraded version of the same engine. Undeniably, this game is not as good as the Smackdown series, but it did come out way earlier, being one of the earliest PS1 Wrestling games, and it still holds up gameplay-wise against most of the better ones even if its feature set is comparatively more limited. There are also some little touches that I like, like the fact that the crowd cheers the names of the wrestlers, that you don't have to break a hold when the ref tells you to (though if you hold it to a 5 count you get disqualified), and easily my favourite, the fact that you can continue to hit the opponent after the match is over. There's probably not a ton of reason to play this anymore when you could be playing Smackdown, but honestly this is probably too much fun to be A, especially for being such an early title when so many other games hadn't quite figured it out yet.
DeletePro Pinball: Timeshock is easily the weakest of the Pro Pinball games. As a pinball game with only one table, obviously it lives and dies based on the strength of that table, and this is just an inordinately dull and bad pinball table. The biggest issue here is how empty it is, this table is basically just a big empty space with a bunch of orbits at the top and that's it. You just hit the ball towards the top and it typically goes into an orbit and get spit out right at the middle, resulting in a ton of cheap lost balls. Probably because they were aware of this problem, this table features an option where you can have infinite balls for 2 minutes, but no balls after that, which they call "novice mode", which is also fairly essential to get anything out of this table, but even with this feature turned on this table just feels boring. I wanted to make sure I wasn't just in an anti-pinball mood so I immediately booted up Pro Pinball the Web and the difference in quality with that table is night and day. I even feel like the little LCD events in this version are the weakest, in particular the animations are really unclear and you have to strain to make them out. There's not really too much else to say about this one other than that it's a bad board. Most pinball games feature a weak table or two, but they have four or more tables so they can tolerate a weak one, but when you're buying the disks individually this one is just a clear skip.
Votoms: Woodo Kummen is absolutely atrocious. Votoms: Blue Knight Beserga was a decent foundation that just needed more work, but Woodo Kummen has absolutely nothing in common with it. Instead of being a mech fighter with a really detailed customization system, this is instead a super basic and clunky 3rd person shooter with pretty much nothing going for it. The game involves piloting a mech, but it's the most terrible and clunky mech of all time, movement is incredibly slow and stiff and your only weapon of any use is a machinegun that you have to aim manually, and its aiming is so finicky that you'll never get anything useful done while dashing. The enemies have pretty much perfect aim and can also start firing before you can even see them (of course, the draw distance also sucks), so there's really not much you can do beyond take as much armor as possible and try to outgun them, which is exactly as boring as it sounds. The game does have some mission variety, for example the first stage is a terrible deathmatch while the second is a terrible action stage, but since everything sucks so much it really doesn't matter. About the only good thing you can say about this game is they put a lot of work into the story (it's apparently based on an anime) but if you want that the Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden games on Saturn do this way better.
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