Posted on March 24th, 2008 by JMT.
Categories: Articles.
It seems that all post-generation expansion of the Sonic the Hedgehog enterprise only focus on his speed. But the original sonic wasn’t all about speed. For every part where you’d whip around loops at top speed, there were other areas where you could take time and find some secret areas. The video looks to me like it’s entirely a fast paced on-rails 2.5D platformer. It might still be hella-fun, but I just can’t tell if it has other elements to balance it out yet.
I think it’s important for a platformer to have a good balance between the two. Sonic Adventure kind of accomplished it by splitting the two into different gameplay areas.
Even Mario had the balance. There was good old jumping and fireballing action, plus there were little secrets, like the hidden blocks, subterranean bonus levels, and warp zones.
And even Doom, with it’s good balance of chainsaw massacre and finding secret areas.
Posted on March 16th, 2008 by JMT.
Categories: Articles.
I just picked up Gradius III and IV for the PS2.
At first I thought something was wrong with the system. There was audio playing during the opening CG cinema, but it all went silent when it launched into the games.
Eventually I figured out that when the game is in the arcade emulation mode, audio is only output via the analog audio. There is no audio coming out of the digital optical output.
How is this even possible? I thought that that was a system feature, I didn’t think that a game itself could enable or disable the analog/digital audio output independently.
Also, the games seem to have some control flaw. Once you gain a couple of points of speed, the motion feels just too quantizes. When you tap UP, even lightly, the ship jumps up too far (jump distance is of course proportional to speed). Also, the diagonal motion feels awkward, like it’s jumping into a diagonal position instead of smoothly flying.
Scrolling shooters, even when you’re at faster speeds, should have solid ship motion. Holding down a direction may go faster, but you should be able to tap lightly to get a shorter motion. And the diagonal motion should be more proportional, and not feel like such a jump.
In comparison, the SNES version of Gradius III doesn’t have these control problems. but the SNES version is a modified game, and not the original.
Does anyone know if the original arcade had these control flaws too? (In which case, the PS2 is just correctly emulating the original arcade flaws).
Posted on March 15th, 2008 by JMT.
Categories: Articles.
I was trying to consolidated my saved files from my VMUs so I could sell some of them. But now I’m stuck, because my Chu Chu Rocket and Sonic Adventure save files won’t allow me to copy them. The copy choice is disabled in the pop-up menu. What’s up with that? Both are Sonic Team games, so I assume it’s some kind of security they’ve decided to put into their save files. Probably so you can’t give someone else your save game. But why should they care if someone else gets to have all the stages unlocked for free? At least they still have to own the game first. And when I want to use a different VMU, now I’m prevented from moving the files.
Posted on March 13th, 2008 by JMT.
Categories: Articles.
I picked up Tekken 2 and 3 at half price cheap, after continually hearing/reading that they’re the greatest 3D fighting game ever made.
And then we were playing through them (and dozens other games) in preparation to pull out lots of titles to sell at the game convention.
I just have to say I was totally unimpressed with the two games. The characters/graphics weren’t all that great. The virtua fighter characters are kinda plain too, but at least they all have noticably unique fighting styles.
But who cares about graphics, I like polygons you know. But gameplay… the special moves were incredibly hard to pull off. And it wasn’t just the PoS controller. I have one of those capcom controllers, and an arcade stick too. It didn’t matter. You have to hit those buttons at lightning speed. At least twice as fast as the combos on MK3. You have to go Yngwie on those buttons.
And what’s worse is the charge-back/chargeforward parts of special moves. In most fighting games, you just have to hold for 1 or 2 seconds, and if you hold it for more than that, no problem. But for the charge holds in Tekken, you have to hold it or like exactly 800ms to 1200ms. If you hold it for 1.5 seconds, it considers it too long of a hold and cancels the move. I could try a special move 10 times and be lucky to get it to work once.
And then they list all these special moves to do while you’re running, but they don’t actually exist. You perform the exact same special move just by running into someone, without having to press any of the buttons.
And the moves and special moves are all rather boring.
The only cool think about the games is the throws. Each character has a really cool hold/throw/backbreak type move, one from the front and one from behind. They sometimes last 10 seconds. Those are very cool. But they don’t make up for the rest of the game in my mind.
In comparision to other 3D fighters I’ve played, like Soul Blade/Calibre, and Dead or Alive 2, and even the original Virtua Fighter, it just didn’t stack up.