An explanation of what I'm doing here can be found in my introduction post.
Last week's look at Zoop, Agile Warrior F-111X, Lemmings 3D, and WipEout can be found here.
This week, we'll look at FIFA 96, Defcon 5, Space Griffon VF-9, and Viewpoint.
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FIFA 96
Release Date: 11/22/1995
Developer: EA Canada
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Time to Trounced By The Canadians: 25 Minutes
I'll say this once per sport as I encounter them here: I have no history with soccer or the FIFA series. All I know is that a ball gets kicked around until it goes into a goal on either side of a field. As far as I'm concerned, it's basically dry blitzball where you can't hold the ball.
Unlike with football games, soccer inherently lends itself to simple control schemes: you run around and use a button to shoot or pass. That simplicity allowed me to almost immediately figure out how to move around and play, which was a nice change of pace. Also, this game is pretty fully featured for the time with various modes that seem to be almost all be playable in both single and two-player. Though, these modes seem to just lead to playing soccer without much out-of-match gameplay. The 3D graphics look well done for 1995 and the animations, while tiny, are legible. From some limited research, this game is apparently the first 3D soccer game of all time and the first FIFA game to use real player names. From looking at the general reception, it seems like it was considered to be the best soccer game on the market at the time, and I will give it credit for that.
Now, if I've seemed positive about this game it's because I was doing my best to maintain objectivity. I only played one match in the season mode and got my ass handed to me by the AI. There didn't seem to be any difficulty settings, so I guess this was a normal amount of fuckery for the time. Now, I would have only lost 1-0 if I had known that the teams switch sides at halftime. Writing that out, it makes perfect sense that teams would switch sides for fairness reasons, and in the moment it was actually very odd how little resistance the defense put up. Anyway, I was too focused on trying to move the little soccer guys around with the d-pad controls that I scored an own goal in the second half, ultimately losing by 2-0 to the goddamned Canadians and embarrassing my entire home city.
After that one game, I soured on the whole experience and simulated the rest of the season, where my team ended up at the bottom of the standings with only two wins. The sad part is that those pitiful simulated season results were probably better than what I would have accomplished by playing it out manually. For as miserable as blitzball is on every level, I would rather play that because at least I can win at it.
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Defcon 5
Release Date: 11/24/1995
Developer: Millennium Interactive
Publisher: Data East
Time to Killed By Aliens: 30 Minutes
Here's a bizarre little piece of I don't even know what. There are some things to get out of the way before attempting to talk about this experience. First, DEFCON-5 is the lowest level in the DEFCON alert system and indicates the most peaceful military conditions, while DEFCON 1 is when the world ends. For reference, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a rare DEFCON-2 situation and the (current as of writing) large land war in Europe involving a nuclear power has prompted the longest running DEFCON-3 alert in history. So, having a game where you are in a base under attack by aliens that is called Defcon 5 indicates that no one involved with this project did their homework. Second, the tagline for this game is "Peace has a price…" which at first seems like a non sequitur but has a shitty meaning when taken in context with the plot set-up, so keep it in mind.
Now getting to that set-up, we are informed in a disorienting opening cutscene that there is a giant space corporation that is the main military contractor for…something. I didn't quite retain that part. But I did retain the important point that there have been large and seemingly malicious military budget cuts and frontier space bases need to be evacuated and their defenses automated. You play as a "Cyberneer", which, while that title rocks, practically means that you're a nameless character who gets shuttled into one of the aforementioned frontier bases to set-up the automated defenses. Coincidentally, endless waves of aliens start attacking that base shortly after you arrive.
All of this leads to the actual gameplay, which consists of wandering around an empty multi-level space base picking up data drives, dodging alien invaders, and futzing with the computer defense systems. When I say that the base is empty, I mean empty. There are two tower buildings with seven floors each, an underground service area, and three hanger bays which all consist of different series' of non-descript rooms and hallways with almost jack-shit in them. The one exception is the top floor of the Admin Tower, which is the Command Center. This Command Center is the area that you are told to go to immediately upon entering the base, though the game makes no effort to tell you where it is. Fortunately, I happened to correctly guess where it is on my first try, so at least that part is common sense. After meandering through a few extremely empty maps and finding the correct elevator, I got to that one room with stuff which takes the form of a couple of computer displays. Selecting these brings up a non-descript FMV lady who gives the one mission for the entire game: you need to set up the automated turrets and drones (doesn't explain what that involves) and then get picked up by a shuttle in 48 hours (there is no in-game timer). Almost immediately after that, the aliens start attacking. These attacks take the form of space fighters strafing the base and its 6 defense turrets (I don't know what the consequences of these attacks are besides temporarily knocking turrets offline) and alien boarding parties start to invade the base at random points.
The main interaction with this game is through the in-game computer system call VOS. In VOS, there are remote turret controls, turret settings, drone settings, life support control, door control for the player's current level, and an ominous self-destruct option. I eventually figured out that I needed to wander around and find program discs which are used to unlock and improve features in VOS. It looks like you can only hold three discs at a time and there are no clues as to where different kinds of discs are located. Also, even though you have a laser gun to fight enemies, they are all tanks and will kill you quickly. On top of that, the controls, as always, felt sluggish and interacting with the environment felt unresponsive. I made it about half an hour until my ass got smoked by a big ugly. There are no saves, so dying means restarting from the beginning. I was not curious enough to give this game another run.
I'm calling it a run because structurally, this is basically a rogue-like. That quality is not obvious at first, but it's there. Initially this game seems like an extremely early attempt at an Immersive Sim, or a System Shock-clone if you will, but none of the action, puzzle, or RPG elements that we would associate with that genre are present here. After playing it, I guessed that a speedrun of this game would take less than an hour. The one speedrun I later found is around 30 minutes and the run itself involves grabbing three specific discs, making some specific adjustments in the VOS, and waiting for specific event triggers before activating the self-destruct and going back to the starting location. The actual game of it all is in doing as many runs as it takes to figure out that sequence of actions. In my opinion, that sounds completely fucking miserable. I won't say this isn't a unique game, I'm not sure if I've seen anything like it, but not all new ideas are worth executing on, and Defcon 5 should have gone unmade.
Finally, to close the loop on the tagline, by taking the phrase "peace has a price…" with what passes for a plot in this game, I see something resembling subtextual social commentary. The crux being that lowering military spending directly leads to destruction at the hands of 'aliens' followed by craven retreats. Seeing as how this game was made in the mid-90's and the developer seems to have been based in the UK, it's easy to read this as a criticism of the drawdowns in military spending across the English speaking world after the end of the Cold War. The genre of guys who would have been making those kinds of arguments back then would now be classified as shitheads. So on pretty much every level this game is crap and I'm glad that it has been lost down the collective memory hole.
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Space Griffon VF-9
Release Date: 11/25/1995
Developer: Panther Software
Publisher: Atlus
Time to Completion: 10 Hours
Holy shit, where do I start. Space Griffon VF-9 is a story-heavy, mech-based, first-person-shooting, dungeon-crawler sci-fi-horror RPG. That's a mouthful, but it's the only way I can begin to describe what is going on here. But before I get into the wtf of playing this game, I need to talk about the astonishingly wrongheaded dialogue that is voice acted in maybe the worst ways possible. I'm so excited to talk about the genuinely terrible storytelling going on here. In fact, I'm going to break this write-up out into a separate post because I have things to say. The tl;dr is below for everyone who isn't a glutton for schlock.
This game follows the misadventure of a team of mech using paramilitary fixers (called "Cleaners" apparently) in the 22nd century who are sent to a moon colony that has encountered some kind of problem. When the team arrives, they find the nine level colony not only almost entirely devoid of life, but also chockfull of zombie piloted mechs, haywire military droids, and biomonsters. The veterans on the team are non-plussed and proceed to systematically kill everything level by level. The player fills the shoes of the team newbie, named Jim but callsign "Kid", on his first mission. Playing as Kid: you trudge through darkened hallways, encounter enemies, shoot those enemies, manage weapons, pickup loot, and gain levels.
Early on, Kid is ordered around to various levels to exterminate everything in them. In between the anime merc banter, things begin to grow increasingly ominous with a mysterious indestructible monster and an airborne zombie virus. This goes on for about 3.5 hours until the shit fully hits the fan and people start getting picked off. The sole survivors of the colony are found, the villain is revealed, there are twists, there are turns, there are obnoxious double-shield mechs, and the game ends in much the same way as Resident Evil or Aliens.
All of this plot is told through either slightly animated cutscenes that look like they belong in a MSX game or JRPG style talking heads that interrupt the gameplay at frequent intervals. If you are familiar with anime tropes, then congratulations, you've won nothing but an innate understanding of the characterization of the following cast of idiots: squad leader who sounds too much like David Hayter, tough chick, gruff veteran, jokey guy, large nerd, teen girl, Evil Scientist™, and slightly-less-evil-scientist-who-comes-to-their-senses®. If I were to ask you to guess how many of these characters heroically sacrifice themselves at some point and you reply, "all of them lol" you would be wrong because you forgot that at least one or two have to have gross-out zombification turns.
If it seems like I've been describing a C-tier anime OVA, then you know what's going on with this story. The truly shocking thing about this experience is that it is a completely functional video game. It is appalling how such a badly told, trope ridden story can be couched in such a basically competent gameplay experience. The pace is plodding, the draw distance is shit, and the framerate can be all over the place, but on the whole it works. There are different movement modes, a few different types of breakable weapons, a physical shield, and energy and health bars that need to be managed. The combat encounters require some amount of thought and consideration, but overall there's a steady and reasonable difficulty curve. I was even able to beat it without getting a game over, for crying out loud! This game should not come together as decently as it does.
If you've noticed me holding back on calling this game good, that's because I'm not going to lie to you. This isn't a good game, but it's the most entertainment I've gotten out of one of these since Jumping Flash! or Ridge Racer, even if it was for kind of the wrong reasons. This is the most I can say without going into the weeds, so check out the one-off post for details on the worst villain laugh of all time, unexpected baseball references, and why I think this game presages Resident Evil in more ways than one.
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Viewpoint™
Release Date: 11/28/1995
Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Time to Obliterated: 12 Minutes
Time to Getting Further In The Original Version: 4 Minutes
To balance out the sane difficulty of Space Griffon we now get to look at a game that is, almost immediately, just to the left of FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE.
Viewpoint is an isometric Shoot 'Em Up that is apparently a port of a Neo Geo game from 1992. That makes this the oldest game to yet be ported to the Playstation. This port also happens to be completely and utterly fucked, meaning I did not get very far at all. So let's go ahead and do a full recap. On boot up I was treated to an opening cutscene that riffs on the opening of A New Hope except in this case the spaceship being chased gets blown to shit instead of captured. Before the ship being chased eats it, a smaller ship thing is launched from it, which in turn launches an even smaller craft that is the main ship used in the game. This littlest ship chases the original aggressor through a warp hole and that's it.
With that out of the way, I began the game proper. It's immediately apparent that the artstyle is somewhat distinct and the music consists of some fairly alright electronica. That immediate impression was encouraging. The ship controls how you would expect an early PS1 'Shmup to control, and the weapons include a pea shooter and 3 screen clears that function slightly differently. The first five minutes of combat feel somewhat challenging in a proto-Bullet Hell kind of way. Not great but not terrible.
That's when this piece of shit threw the first obstacle of the game in front of me: a series of three gates which are individually opened by shooting a spinning gear on one side of each gate. In order to open the gates, you have to shoot the gears on the correct sides in order for them to spin the gates open. You can't shoot the gear for the second gate without opening the first gate and likewise for the third gear. The issue is that the gates are way too close together, so that by the time the first gate is open enough to shoot the gear for the second gate, there isn't enough time or space to get over to the third gear. I burned through most of the nine allotted lives on this one section. I eventually figured out that once the first gate was open, using the first (and only the first) screen clear was the only way to get the two other gates open in time.
Unfortunately, less than a minute after getting past the gates there is a second obstacle that consists of a rotating series of walls with a spinning thing in the middle. Only like three of the rotating walls are destructible and they have too much health to knock out in one rotation. There's no way around it, and dying to this thing respawns the ship back to before the fucking gates. Without the first screen-clear attack, it was impossible to open the gates again after respawning. This level design is absolutely insane.
Because I felt like I was losing my mind, I looked up the original Neo Geo version of this game for comparison. Not only is the music better, but it drops a tri-shot power-up at frequent intervals that makes the combat much more manageable. When I got the those gates again, I found to my shock that those things are more spaced out in the Neo Geo version and thus feasible. The rotating walls were even more sensible to deal with, meaning that I almost immediately got much further in this version. Once I made it past the formerly unpassable obstacles, I reached the point where I had to confront the issue of Viewpoint not being particularly fun even when it's playable. Oh well.
This little piece of almost nothing didn't register as much of a blip on the release list. The only thing of note is the topic I've been harping on this whole time, someone at some point in the creation process of this port decided to futz with object spacing and damage values and caused the whole thing to unbalance and go straight to hell. It's hard to imagine why those gates had to be closer in the PS1 than the original game, and the whole thing breaks because of it. And surely the Playstation was powerful enough to handle animating the tri-shot powerup that was in the original version. I have no clue why this port turned out the way it did. Whatever the reason is, the results were catastrophic.
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Next time we will finally exit November '95 and start to dig into the December dumping grounds as we look at NHL FaceOff, Hi-Octane, Thunderstrike 2, and Shockwave Assault. Only one of those games is any good, and I bet you won't guess which one it is! (hint: there's an "e" in the title)
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