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Post by toei on Apr 3, 2021 11:41:05 GMT -5
I played through Operation Wolf 3 twice last night.
It's basically Lethal Enforcers meets Operation Wolf, digitized graphics and all. Call me crazy, but there's a grittiness to the digitized sprites + washed out photographic backgrounds combo that just goes well with a light gun game. I don't mind it at all. The main differences with LE are that you use machine guns that automatically reload when you release the trigger, that you have 3 screen-clearing bombs per credit, and that it's cheaper. This one wasn't made by Taito, but by East Technologies. If that sounds familiar, that's probably because they made that crappy Double Dragon 3 (on which all versions except the NES game). They also made another subpar beat-'em-up called Silent Dragon. Considering their gameography, this isn't bad. The shooting isn't as satisfying as LE, and the 4th mission has tons enemies popping out of nowhere and shooting at you so quickly that it's almost impossible not to die all over place (at least in single-player), but the first half of the game is pretty good, and the bombs really help with the bosses. I liked the final mission's gameplay concept; a nuclear missile has been fired, and you have one minute to shoot it down from the sky (there's no need to think about this logically) while these little flying machines are firing at you.
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Post by Ex on Apr 3, 2021 23:55:18 GMT -5
I put a half hour into Combat Queen for PS2 tonight. Yeah I'm not going to bother beating this one, but it's weird enough to discuss briefly. Combat Queen is a PS2 Japan-only FMV based light gun shooter, developed by General Entertainment and published by Taito in 2002. The premise concerns swarms of genetically engineered giant beetles attacking Japan. To stop them, a squad of five female cyborgs are sent out in a pink jeep with laser guns. Yep, that's the story, best I could tell. The gameplay consists of crappy FMV sequences with 3D beetles overlaid, in which the player shoots a light gun (or moves a cursor in controller mode) to kill beetles. Apparently there's 8 stages, but I quit after the first 3. The "gameplay" is just too awful to keep going.
It's really hard to aim at the beetles. You run out of ammo quickly. You can't get more ammo while in a stage, instead you have to pause the game and siphon off health to refill your ammo. Yes your health converts to ammo, and it's just as problematic as you can imagine. If you survive the stage, you are awarded more life/ammo based on how many beetles killed... but never enough to refill both bars. So it's a slow net loss throughout the campaign. There's no variation to anything. If you play stage 1 you might as well have played the whole game... up until stage 5. Apparently at stage 5 the game design changes to a third person shooter. I don't know man. So what's your reward for doing really well? You can unlock bonus videos of the actresses bowling. Yes, you can watch these girls go bowling. Did you think this was an ecchi game? Nope. This is a beetle blastin' bowlin' game.
Combat Queen is just pure junk. I do give the actresses credit for really getting into their roles, they do it all straight faced. I can't get into the plot at all. The plot? I don't know what they were saying, as the audio is Japanese and there's no subtitles (not even Japanese subtitles). The menus however, are most in English, so navigation is easy enough. Who cares, this game is bile. It was mildly interesting to play an obscure FMV shooter about girls shooting beetles, but only for about five minutes. Ex's limited lifespan wasted on this shit: 30 minutes Ex's rating: 3/10
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Post by EasyHard on Apr 4, 2021 12:51:29 GMT -5
What the hell did I just click on.
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Post by paulofthewest on Apr 4, 2021 13:21:57 GMT -5
There's no variation to anything. If you play stage 1 you might as well have played the whole game... up until stage 5. Apparently at stage 5 the game design changes to a third person shooter. I don't know man. So what's your reward for doing really well? You can unlock bonus videos of the actresses bowling. Yes, you can watch these girls go bowling. Did you think this was an ecchi game? Nope. This is a beetle blastin' bowlin' game. Ha, bowling, ya that will get the young teens! I watch about 5 minutes of that video (okay more than I should have.) I can't tell what demographic they were aiming for in that one, maybe young girls? I don't know.
Also drastically changing game design is usually a bad omen. Thanks for taking one for the team.
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Post by toei on Apr 4, 2021 14:41:00 GMT -5
I find it bizarre that Taito published this, and not one the budget-game publishers, like D3. Unless they had a budget line too. This is such obvious shovelware, I can't imagine that they would sell it full-price.
Also, EX, there are real games and all. They just might not have all-girl casts all the time.
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Post by Ex on Apr 4, 2021 15:15:46 GMT -5
EX, there are real games and all. They just might not have all-girl casts all the time. Only the realest games have all-girl casts all the time.
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Post by toei on Apr 4, 2021 16:03:58 GMT -5
EX, there are real games and all. They just might not have all-girl casts all the time. Only the realest games have all-girl casts all the time. Games so real they're made by... General Entertainment, a company whose own name basically says "we don't really make games per se, just general entertainment" (seriously, most of their releases are in the "miscellaneous" section in databases - one of them is literally a 3d zoo visit software).
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Post by Ex on Apr 4, 2021 20:11:26 GMT -5
I'll bet the 3D Zoo Visit is better than the crap I played.
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Post by Sarge on Apr 5, 2021 20:16:26 GMT -5
I got through Freedom Force on NES. Of course it loops, but I got the congrats screen, so it counts. It's surprisingly tough, but I finally got through. Almost got through the second loop, too, but was stymied at stage 4/5.
Anyway, it's a decent game. Not amazing, but one of the better Zapper games I've played. 6/10.
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Post by toei on Apr 5, 2021 23:24:52 GMT -5
Played through Area 51 tonight. I remember seeing the box for that game all the time at the rental store, and I was always curious about it (along with Crypt Killer, another light gun game that got both Saturn and PSX ports) but I never got to play it. What I didn't know is that the arcade original literally runs on a modified Jaguar. It uses digitized sprites for people and pre-rendered 3d for environments, so the look definitely stands out. It's still from the post-Virtua Cop style, though, with lots of on-rail movement throughout the base as you fight off the aliens. I guess they were going for a chaotic feel, cause it feels pretty haphazard. It does have a few things that stand out; there's a weapon upgrade system (rather than just getting other guns temporarily), you can also find grenades (either by shooting at boxes labeled "ammo", or various objects in the levels), there's a lot of explosives you can shoot at to kill enemies indirectly, and there aren't actually any bosses except the final boss. You have a limited time to kill it, though the game doesn't tell you; if you don't, it flies off and you get a message saying you failed the mission. Whether you get the bad ending or the good ending (which is still just a few quick messages, without any end credits), though, the game loops over, but it skips the first section. Once you know, the boss is not hard to kill. You just have to let the basic enemies that keep showing up shoot at you and focus on the flying saucer, because you don't have time to worry about both. If you can make it there with a bunch of grenades, you can probably avoid taking too much cheap damage (or, course, if you have a second player). I'm not really fond of the super short ending + loop thing, it kind of neuters the feeling of accomplishment you normally get from beating a game. It's a pretty decent game overall. Probably one of Atari's better '90s games, but not as carefully made as the bigger 3d light gun games. It was their first hit in quite some time, and they made two sequels for it.
So far I'd rank if as my least favorite out of the 5 I've finished for this theme so far (well, maybe it's better than Operation Wolf 3?), but I liked it enough to play the sequel, Maximum Force.
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