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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
End Sector - GG - 100% (2) (1 SR)
Killing Zone - BBBB - 0% (4)
Magical Drop 3 - GAGA - 75% (4)
Porsche Challenge - AAAAA - 50% (5)
Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001 - GG - 100% (2)
Slamscape - BBBBB - 0% (5)
I really wish more people had the ability to try End Sector. If I can ever get some free time maybe I'll end up writing a guide for it. Also, we were very in sync in this topic, only Magical Drop 3 didn't get the same rating across the board.
Games for this topic:
A2 Racer 3
Descent Maximum
Dragonseeds
Kururin Pa
Makeruna Makendou 2
Sitting Ducks
I remember a very long time ago, someone asked if we were going to cover the sequel to Descent. And we are, only 7 years after the original! I wonder if whomever posted that is still here, because I couldn't find the original post. Speaking of sequels, we also have Makeruna Makendou 2, which you probably don't recognize because the original game was called Kendo Rage in the US. I also think Dragonseeds looks like an interesting game.
A2 Racer 3 - A
ReplyDeleteDescent Maximum - G
Dragonseeds - B
Kururin Pa - B
Makeruna Makendou 2 - G
Sitting Ducks - A
A3 Racer 3 is yet another game in the London Racer / Autobahn Racer series, of which we've covered quite a few now. The games are extremely similar to each other, notably reusing the same UI with minimal changes. The big change this time, and it is actually somewhat big, is that there are two routes you can take, which you choose on the first stage, travelling to either the UK or Germany, which changes out some of the courses. On the gameplay side, there are also minor changes. Car damage is high again, and there are now cop cars, who can arrest you (this does not instantly end the race, it's just a minor time loss) but more importantly they can ram your car to deal damage. The engine is also slightly upgraded in various ways, most particularly the AI issues from Autobahn Racer 2 where they would sometimes just randomly come to a dead stop are mostly gone now and the AI generally races sensibly, plus the visuals are also slightly improved. Track design is also definitely better compared to some of the earlier games. That said, this still feels quite similar to a game we've covered a bunch of times and the amount of improvement is low for a game with this many entries. I feel like this particular game is probably a low A due to the increased content and the fact that it generally plays the best of the series, but I still wish they had done more with it. I wonder how small the budget for these games really was.
Descent Maximum is very similar to the original Descent, which is perhaps not surprising as it originally started its life as an expansion for it before being spun off into a sequel. In case you didn't play the original, Descent is basically Doom but you fly. The basics of the game are very similar, travel through levels in first person, collecting keys and weapons as you try to reach the exit, but you have full movement in all directions. This seems like it might be awkward to control, but it actually works pretty well on PS1, it essentially uses something akin to "dual stick" controls where the Dpad buttons aim and the face buttons strafe, with "forward and backwards strafing" being how you move, and using your weapons or rotating is mapped to the shoulders. The core game concept is pretty fun, obviously Doom is a good game and the flight element adds an interesting twist to it, it results in a game that plays well and feels unique. I did hope that more would have changed from the first game, in particular I was hoping for a slightly better framerate, as both games typically run around 20fps. It's certainly totally playable, but I was hoping the sequel might be a consistent 30fps. In terms of improvements, it looks like the main one for the sequel is somewhat more complex level geometry and improved lighting, which are nice, but don't fundamentally change the experience. Something I did learn is that disabling the "autolevel" function seems to improve the framerate a touch, and I strongly recommend it in this game as the more chaotic level geometry confuses it to the point it often acts as a hindrance. I also believe this game generally gives you slightly more weapon pickups, which is welcome as it lets you use them a little more, though the laser is certainly reliable enough to be used for most encounters. Overall, this is clearly still a pretty solid game and even if it is similar to its predecessor, its predecessor is unique enough that having a bit more of it isn't a bad thing.
Dragonseeds seems like a promising game at first but it's actually not fun at all. The basic gist of the game is that it's a sort of Monster Rancher-esque game where you raise and battle dragons. After creating a new Dragon by specifying a phrase, you'll leave it to mature for one day and then you can start training and battling it. Training costs money and requires you to play a lame minigame that quickly gets very repetitive, so battles are the main focus. Unfortunately, the battles in this game are complete garbage. The game's battle system is a turn-based strategy game of sorts where the two players take action simultaneously. In battle, there are 5 actions available to you, move forward, move backwards, special, reflector (defend) and sword (attack). Sword attacks only work at the closest possible range, so moving back always avoids them. Moving forward is necessary to use a sword attack, but you'll get hit if the enemy does anything at all. Special attacks hit at any range, but can be reflected by the reflector to hit the user. Both specials and reflectors have limited uses. If you use the reflector while out of uses, it will still block, but not send the attack back. If you special and the opponent does a sword attack, you also get interrupted. So right off the bat, this system has a ton of problems. For starters, there's absolutely no way to force offense as every form of offense can be countered. Sword attacks can always be avoided by moving back at close range. It is impossible to get close enough that they cannot move back, and there is no limit to how many times you can move back as the play field is infinite. Similarly, specials can always be blocked with the reflector, and if the opponent has no specials left (and you get very few), moving back every turn becomes a 100% unstoppable strategy that guarantees a timeout. This is already bad enough, but the problems with the battle engine are massively compounded by the fact that the AI cheats and reads your commands before deciding what to do. You would think the optimal play would be something like "get in close then use sword attacks and try to snipe their backdash with a special", but this doesn't work because every time you use special at close range, the AI will always sword attack or reflector, but the second you use your sword they will backdash, which you can easily verify with save states. As such, pretty much the only viable strategy is to stall with reflector and gamble with your special at range, which makes battles extremely slow and boring as they frequently go to time out, which takes dozens of rounds. It's a good example of how copying a popular idea like Monster Rancher doesn't work at all if you don't understand what makes the game good.
DeleteKururin Pa is essentially the same game as on Saturn, it just looks worse. As before, this is kind of a fundamentally broken game due to the bomb piece detonating all wicks around it, which completely eliminates any need to play strategically. As a test on this, I ran a new strategy where I simply didn't attempt to build anything at all and just dropped my pieces very fast with little to no regard for their placement. I was playing the bomb character, so I scattered a bunch of bombs throughout my board and then just played to fill up the whole thing, then blew up the bombs. This is VASTLY more effective than playing the game properly, as I consistently cleared my whole board anyway and did 60+ damage that the opponent had no way to counter. Part of the issue is that the bomb character is severely OP, but the game is so flawed in general that it's not fun even when he's not present. This just needed more playtesting. I think a simple rule where the bomb is just an omnidirectional piece but can't set off wicks that don't connect to it would fix most of the game's issues.
Makeruna Makendou 2 is a pretty fun game. For starters, we previously covered this game on SNES, but these two versions are very different. On the SNES version, I noted that it looked pretty good for a SNES game and had fun visuals but the hit detection and hitboxes were kinda wonky. Doing combos on SNES is really hard because characters frequently pass through and flip over each other in weird ways (it's hard to describe, but you'll instantly know what I'm talking about if you play it) and hitstun is generally extremely short. This is totally fixed on PS1, which seems to be running on a totally new gameplay engine. Combos now work as you'd expect and there are even some juggle combos available, making the core gameplay feel way more sound. Another unique feature of this game is the story mode. It functions sort of like an arcade mode where you fight a bunch of characters in sequence (albeit, with a short skippable voiced conversation beforehand), but has an interesting mechanic in that it has a levelling system. Essentially, the score system that pretty much every arcade fighter has is replaced with EXP here, and as your EXP rises, you gain levels and get more attack, health, and super meter. Because things like the round end bonuses grant a lot of exp if you win fast / with a lot of health, if you play well you can kinda get "ahead of the curve" and start to have a big advantage over the opponents, though you'll need it eventually because the last few opponents are quite tough. It doesn't change the experience radically, but it's an interesting idea that helps make it feel a bit more unique. On SNES, the story mode is also locked to the main character (you can play the other characters using a code, but it cuts out the story sequences), but on Playstation, every character has a full story mode complete with voiced dialogue for facing every other character, including the secret characters (and there's 2 more of them compared to SNES). The EXP system also matters way more than it does on SNES, where you can almost totally ignore it. Overall, this version is generally just drastically better, except for one issue, which is the game's input detection. Weirdly, the input detection is perfect on SNES, but it's much pickier on PS1. I eventually learned that the game wants its inputs to be fairly slow and precise, it's probably one of those games that expects every input in a QCF to be on a separate frame, so if you're in the habit of doing "down, down forward, forward + P", that will not work, the punch input needs to be delayed from the forward input. I eventually adjusted to it and I was hitting my combos at least 80% of the time, but the amount of times I would fail to throw a fireball at neutral was noticeable. Also, it's worth noting that the guide's inputs for some moves are wrong, for example the main character's super is not F, HCF + Magic (R), it's QCF, QCF + R. Supers are also definitely kinda busted in this game, they're very fast and I think they're also all totally unblockable, plus you can even do them as guard cancels using the new guard cancel system in the PS1 version, it's good that you can only do it when your health is really low. Minor balance and input issues aside though, this is a pretty fun and charming game and I'll probably end up playing more of it down the line.
DeleteSitting Ducks is okay. It's a fairly basic action game played from a top down perspective where the goal is to complete some simple objective before time runs out. This typically involves running some course while attempting to grab items and blue time tokens while avoiding red time tokens and enemies. There are actually two playable characters. The Duck can jump and his stages are generally more speed-focused, while the gator cannot jump but has the ability to carry items and interact with things and his levels are more puzzle-focused. On each stage, there's the ability to get a gold medal by either getting every item (when applicable) or completing the stage within a certain time limit. That's kind of all there is to the game. When playing it, I constantly felt like it felt like a GBA game, and indeed, it is also on GBA, even though Gamefaqs doesn't group the games together. I definitely feel like it would have been a somewhat better fit for that platform, but it's undeniably a pretty simple game either way, this was probably intended to be a kids game. It's still decently playable and I feel like it's not bad enough for B even if it wouldn't be anything I'd really recommend to anyone.
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