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Last Topic's Ratings:
Blast Lacrosse - BAA - 33% (3)
Bust-A-Move 99 - AGGGGG - 92% (6)
Gun Shooting 2, The - GG - 100% (2)
Jet Moto 3 - AGGAGA - 75% (6)
Kid Klown in Crazy Chase 2 - GAB - 50% {3}
Seikoku 1092: Souheiden - AA - 50% (2)
There were 3 PS1 sequels in this topic and all 3 rated higher than their predecessors, which was interesting to see as I didn't especially expect it with Bust-A-Move 99. Kid Klown is a sequel as well, though it actually scored the same as the SNES game.
Games for this topic:
Champion Wrestler: Jikkyou Live
Hebereke's Popoitto
Kart Challenge
Pandemonium 2
Spec Ops: Covert Assault
Treasure Gear
We've got a couple more sequels this time with Pandemonium 2 and Spec Ops: Covert Assault, so I wonder if the trend of them scoring better will continue. Treasure Gear also looks like kind of an interesting game.
Champion Wrestler: Jikkyou Live - A
ReplyDeleteHebereke's Popoitto - B
Kart Challenge - B
Pandemonium 2 - G
Spec Ops: Covert Assault - A
Treasure Gear - G
Champion Wrestler: Jikkyou Live is a fairly basic Wrestling game. Easily the most impressive thing about this game is its presentation. The wrestlers and moves are quite well-animated and the game also has commentary, which many similar 2D games don't. Gameplay on the other hand is not as impressive. Strikes are terrible in this game (especially running attacks, which virtually never hit), so the entire game revolves around grapples. There's not much nuance to grappling either, you just have to be the first to hit the button after a certain amount of time has elapsed, if you hit too early the opponent gets the grapple. You have 3 grapple buttons, but they all basically do the same thing, there's not really any concept of strong and weak grapples, so most of the game comes down to just winning the grapple minigame over and over. As opponents get downed longer you can pick them up, then do a strike into a regrapple, and you can also eventually do turnbuckle attacks onto a downed opponent, but there's still nothing too fancy here. The wrestlers also feel very similar to each other even though there's a lot of them, largely due to the game's simple mechanics and the lack of finishing moves or anything like that. It's playable and at least it follows the general trend of moving away from pure mash that we saw in this generation, but it's definitely overshadowed by later games.
We've covered Hebereke's Popoitto like 4 times, but I never remember anything about it between tries other than that it's bad. Upon booting it up, it only took me a few seconds to remember why this is the case. This game is basically just Dr. Mario, except that the Viruses move, which is a godawful mechanic that totally ruins the game. See, a ton of the strategy in Dr. Mario involves stacking the pieces so when you clear out a virus, the pieces will fall onto other viruses, but you can't do that here because they move out of the way and thus whether the pieces land on the right virus or the wrong one is pure luck. This has the effect of removing all strategy from the game and it just turns into a boring game of stacking up one virus at a time and clearing the inevitable garbage that gets made by the pieces moving around. It's slow and boring and the only thing you'll think while playing it is "why am I not playing Dr. Mario or any other Puzzle game instead?". I think even the developers realized that it totally sucks because they couldn't even be bothered to program in a VS Com mode, which Dr. Mario 64 notably features. Even among Dr. Mario clones, Sanrio Carnival which we covered recently for GB is way better. Ugh, hopefully there isn't a GB port of this game.
The second I booted it up I knew Kart Challenge's interface felt familiar, but it took me a long time to track down the game that it's similar to, which is actually Speed Machines. That game was a collection of effectively 3 simplistic racers, and you might initially think Kart Challenge is one of them as Karts are a vehicle type you can race there (and I noted that the handling for the Kart section was the worst), but actually the tracks here are not the same and the handling engine is actually way worse here. There's really nothing else to say about this game other than that every part of it sucks, the handling is terrible, there's only 4 tracks, only single race, and no progression to speak of. Even for a budget game this is abysmal.
DeletePandemonium 2 is a pretty solid improvement over the original game. The basics are still mostly the same, it's still a 2.5D platformer that makes pretty elaborate use of camera angles, but the presentation is better and most things feel like they've been amped up a bit for the sequel. For starters, one of the lamest parts of the original game is Fargus. Nikki can double jump, and Fargus just has a useless spinning attack, so obviously you play as Nikki the entire game. Thankfully, Fargus has gotten a new ability in his ability to throw his staff, which you can fully control in the air using the directional buttons, allowing him to collect items and hit enemies pretty much anywhere. This is pretty much exactly what he needed and there's a number of places in the game where it feels like Fargus is the superior choice, which is not something you'd ever say about the first game. Nikki does not have any new abilities, but she still has double jump and this is still a platformer so this is totally fine, and it's nice to have both characters feel different and viable. Besides the characters, the levels have also gotten a pretty solid facelift, compared to the first game they're even more vibrant and creative and the use of camera angles is even more dynamic, there's quite a number of dramatic shots and the game frequently looks quite good, even all this time later this is still kind of a visual spectacle. It's actually kind of impressive this came out as early as it did, this is easily one of PS1's better 2D platformers.
Spec Ops: Covert Assault is almost identical to Spec Ops: Ranger Elite, down to having the exact same interface and mission structure, with the only change being the levels themselves. Compared to the previous game, levels are bigger and involve more verticality, but this is not necessarily a good thing as the game's engine does not handle either particularly well. Enemies can see through walls and simply aggro on the player once they enter a certain radius, which is super obvious as they will now attempt to shoot through floors to hit the player. While this does reveal their position, it makes stealth tactics impossible the vast majority of the time, and you can't really run and gun either as enemies have perfect accuracy and will instantly target you the second you're within their range. Instead you'll tend to just rely on precisely aimed grenades as the enemies will not move out of the way, but this definitely feels somewhat awkward and there's no question a game like Sarge's Heroes plays better. The core mechanic of having two characters per level is still decent and having to manage their recovery time between missions is an interesting system that encourages you to be strategic, I just wish the core engine had seen more improvement since the previous game.
DeleteTreasure Gear is a Mystery Dungeon-like game, albeit one that's not grid based. The basics of the game are quite similar to Mystery Dungeon, floors are randomized and have a ton of loot and traps, and your goal on each floor is to find the stairs and move on. As noted, this game is not grid based, which is a little weird, you have full 3D movement but if you stop moving, so does everything else. I kinda feel like it probably should have just been a straight up action RPG without the pause mechanic similar to Sorvice on Saturn, but it still works fine with this mechanic even if it does feel a little odd. As you might expect with this being a full 3D game, spacing your attacks well is important, and ranged attacks are very strong, if you can find a bow and some arrows you'll be in pretty good shape for most of the game. The game has a job system, upon clearing dungeons you'll get access to new jobs. Besides having different equipment, jobs gain skills which you can use by expending your food meter, which is actually kind of a cool mechanic, I'm surprised other Mystery Dungeon games haven't done this. Although your level is reset at the start of each dungeon, job levels are not, so this gives it a form of persistent progression besides items, and if you master a job you can equip it as a sub-job, which allows you to use its skills with any other job. As with most Mystery Dungeon games, item management is going to be a problem, though you can find bags that permanently increase your inventory capacity when used. Something else that's nice is that this game's progression is fairly basic, there's 4 dungeons which are at the town's four cardinal directions and you don't need to talk to anyone or do anything of the sort to start doing them (other than that you have to beat the other 3 before you can do the top one), so the localization barrier is low and the pacing is very fast. There's not too much else to say about it, it's a fairly competent game that feels somewhat unique and it's not too stressful to play.