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Last Topic's Ratings:
Aztec: The Curse in the Heart of the City of Gold - GGG - 100% (3)
Miracle Jim no Bassing Beat - BB - 0% (2)
Rally de Europe - GGA - 83% (3)
Oujisama Lv1 - AA - 50% (2)
Pong: The Next Level - ABAB - 25% (4)
Warpath: Jurassic Park - BGAAB - 40% {5}
Even after 200 topics, things you never expect can still occur, like Cryo Interactive having the highest scoring game in a topic. I was also kinda surprised that Rally de Europe placed higher than the original.
Games for this topic:
Blast Lacrosse
Bust-A-Move 99
Gun Shooting 2, The
Jet Moto 3
Kid Klown in Crazy Chase 2
Seikoku 1092: Souheiden
"The Gun Shooting" is easily one of the best titles of all time. It's even more hilarious that there's a sequel! Speaking of games that I'm surprised got a sequel, we also have Kid Klown. This should be a fun topic.
Blast Lacrosse - B
ReplyDeleteBust-A-Move 99 - G
Gun Shooting 2, The - G
Jet Moto 3 - G
Kid Klown in Crazy Chase 2 - G
Seikoku 1092: Souheiden - A
I don't know anything about Lacrosse, but it turns out you don't really need to because Blast Lacrosse is basically just a worse version of Wayne Gretsky's 3D Hockey. The game plays exactly like a hockey game, you use a basic pass / shoot / check system, and similar to all other midway sports titles there's also a turbo meter and you can get on fire if you get 3 goals in a row. The biggest issue with this game is the goalies are way too good and thus the game has basically no nuance. You can perform charged shots, but they will absolutely never score, and passes are slow so one-timers are also a non-factor, your only way to score is just to turbo towards the net and perform a turbo shot and hope it goes in, which it will maybe 1 out of every 10 times, so you need to just fire a million of them across the game. There's very little neutral game either, as players just get sent flying left and right, but even if you get a breakaway there's no effective way to score so it really doesn't matter. The game basically just feels like irrelevant chaos and luck, which isn't a good combination for this type of game. Even the presentation is nowhere near as good as Wayne Gretsky's 3D Hockey, with blocky players and an overly repetitive announcer. There's really just not much reason to bother with this one. It's technically playable, but it gets boring fast.
Much like Bust-A-Move 2, Bust-A-Move 99 is very similar to the N64 version. I was initially concerned that the hidden characters might not be available in this version, but they still are, they just don't show up on the character select screen until you unlock at least one of them. As before, this game is very similar to Bust-A-Move 2 except with the addition of drop patterns for the characters, which are not the most balanced, but not to the point of being gamebreaking. It has a ton of content and a bunch of different modes, and the puzzle creator mode returns with its 1000 built-in puzzles. You really can't go wrong with this, this is a classic puzzle series and this is one of the best games in the franchise. The N64 version is very slightly better due to reduced load times and the controller being slightly better for playing it, but this is still a very good version of the game.
Surprisingly, The Gun Shooting 2 is a huge departure from the first game. While The Gun Shooting 1 is a rail shooter similar to Area 51, the sequel is instead a gallery shooter like Point Blank. Actually, it's very similar to Point Blank, notably having the exact same scoring system. I do like some things it does here, for example there's a medal score you can get for each game and this can unlock some gallery stuff, and the games themselves are also not bad. They don't quite have the humour of Point Blank, but the game where you have to save the girl from being abducted by ghosts is cute, it feels like something you might see from the Point Blank series. Of course, when talking about any lightgun game, we have to ask if it supports the Guncon, and it does. Initially, my testing seemed to show that the guncon support was not very good, but it looks like the issue is actually that one of my guncons doesn't work all that well, as it worked decently with my other guncon (also, make sure not to calibrate the guncon as that seems to make it work way worse). The biggest issue here is that this game has less than half as many games as Point Blank (it has 30 to Point Blank's 70), but at least all of the ones I played were decent and it was a budget title. At any rate, it's a decent little addendum to Point Blank if you want more games.
Jet Moto 3 is basically just bigger and better than Jet Moto 2. Compared to Jet Moto 2, it's even faster, but thankfully course design has improved, with better placement of grapple poles and generally somewhat wider track design overall, and the framerate has also been greatly improved, so it actually feels better to play compared to the second game. This is almost certainly PS1's fastest racer (eat your heart out, Wipeout), so if you want to go fast, you're in the right place. There's also a pretty decent amount of content here, there's a good number of tracks and they're pretty varied and there's also some secret characters to unlock if you're very dedicated. Overall, this is just a very solid and unique game and it's a shame they never did anything else with this series.
DeleteSurprisingly, I actually kind of enjoy Kid Klown 2. The basic idea is very similar to the SNES game, but it's been a very long time so here's a refresher. Kid Klown has to run through an isometric course filled with various hazards to reach the goal in time. In doing so, he also needs to collect the four card suit symbols to get the key needed to clear the stage. The game has seen one enormous improvement since the SNES game, and that's that you can now run backwards. The symbols are always hidden in balloons, and it's insanely annoying to miss one in the SNES game because it forces you to start the stage over, now you can just go back (though obviously this loses some time) so the game is much less frustrating to play. There are a million hazards, of which you'll definitely hit a few, but Kid Klown can take quite a lot of punishment and has funny animations when you get hit so it's not so bad. Collecting all the coins on the stage allows you to play one of a couple terrible bonus games, so I'd recommend simply not bothering to get all the coins as these generally harm the experience (and collecting every coin is slow and harms the game's pacing). It's a very simple game and it's not very long, but I still kinda like it.
Seikoku 1092: Souheiden is a fairly basic RPG with a couple interesting mechanics. Combat in this game involves mechs, and it uses a strategy battle system where you can give a certain number of commands to the mech each turn, which increases as your level rises. These commands will primarily be movement or attacks, for example you could move forward and then use the sweeping attack to hit everyone around you, or you could instead use the jumping attack to move you to your target, then use a close range special for big damage. The mech has blood and water meters, which roughly represents HP and MP, but you'll need to keep both topped up or you won't be able to do much of anything. Your character levels and you can also get new equipment for the mech, but the primary way to strengthen the mech is through the absurdly complicated sacred stone system. The third option on the menu lets you see a disk with 64 coloured stones set in it. You can swap the stones around, which alters the mech's performance, potentially powering it up or unlocking passive abilities. Some of these are immensely powerful, like Auto Recover, which makes you recover your blood while walking around and almost totally negates the need for recovery items, while some are actively harmful, like decreased attack power. There seems to be almost no way to know what combinations will yield which effects (I even looked up a Japanese site and they had no idea how it worked), but luckily the game shows you what the effect of moving a gem will be so you can basically just fiddle around with stuff until you get something decent. Further complicating matters is the fact that your gems gradually die and must be replaced. You cannot buy new gems, you have to steal them from defeated enemies, about once every 3 fights you win you'll get to steal the enemy's disk, which you can either keep to sell or use to replenish your gems. If you do replenish the gems, you can press triangle to swap between their mask and yours and steal their gems to your liking. I eventually figured out that a lower number next to a gem means it's more powerful and further away from expiring, as the number gets higher the gem gets weaker, so you want to steal low number gems when you can. It is a bit annoying that once you look at their gems you can't decide you want to sell their disk instead, but save states easily handle that issue. In any case, this system is kind of interesting and I guess it does help break up the monotony, but it doesn't feel quite as good as it could be. There's not really too much else to say about the game, the structure is otherwise quite basic and it's significantly hampered by an extremely high encounter rate. At least NPCs are reasonably helpful at pointing you where to go next, so I was able to make progress, but this game would have greatly benefited from visible encounters as fights are numerous and lengthy and it makes dungeons a real slog.
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