An explanation of what I'm doing here can be found in my introduction post.
Last week we looked at Rise 2: Resurrection, NBA Live 96, NBA ShootOut, and Panzer General.
And last Friday we continued through the 3DO's 1993 catalog when we looked at Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise, Fatty Bear's Fun Pack, Lemmings, Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, and Shelley Duvall's It's a Bird's Life.
This time we're continuing through March with Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire, Descent, In the Hunt, and Magic Carpet.
**This post is also featured on my site, fifthgengaming.blog, and can be found here.**
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire
Developer: Koei
Publisher: Koei
Release Date: 3/10/1996
Time to Ambushed By Bandits: 20 Minutes
This is 99% identical to the Saturn version, and everything I said about that also applies here. The only thing I can add is that managing multiple cities is way more complicated than you would normally want. Each city you own has actions taken independently of the others, with the number and types of actions available dependent on the officers you have stationed in those cities. The Money, Food, Soldier, and Horse resources are not shared between cities, and can only be moved by convoy, which if not properly escorted end up captured by bandits. This feels a lot like the kind of finicky crap that you would find in 80's computer games, which is where this series has its roots. Even still, I would rather play this over Panzer General, cause fuck 'em.
That's not a lot. So, let's talk about the source material. Fun fact #1: There's a big dumb statue of Guan Yu in Jingzhou. This isn't like one of those ancient Buddhist stone statues, it's made of bronze and was completed in 2016. I went to see it in 2019, because it's one of those tourist traps you make a point to see when you’re in the general area. There's a two story 'cultural center' in the base that contains a wide variety of art and memorabilia glorifying Guan Yu. None of this stuff is old, so it isn't a museum. There's even a seven-foot-tall statue in there using a very unlicensed likeness of Guan Yu from the Dynasty Warriors franchise. I would recommend visiting it, but I'm not sure where it is. Apparently, the year after I went, the locals in Jingzhou got tired of seeing the damn thing and the city government declared that it was going to somehow move it out of the city center and to a nearby village. I find all of this to be massively amusing, and I will keep y'all updated when I learn more.
Fun fact #2: Guan Yu's horse in the book is a famous character in its own right. It's called Red Hare and it was supposedly the greatest horse of its time. The traits ascribed to it make the thing sound almost like an ancient Chinese Shadowfax. There's even a short musical number about it in the 90's TV adaptation, which I'm including below. There's a whole thing with that horse in the book, but I went through the details in the video description and I don't feel like copy-pasting all that here.
That does it for now. It seems like I'll be able to avoid Koei strategy games for a while after this, which means I can continue fulfilling my ambition to not learn the meta for this franchise.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Descent
Developer: Parallax Software
Publisher: Interplay
Release Date: 3/12/1996
Time to Venusian Insertion If You Know What I Mean: 66 Minutes
I fell into the old trap of having expectations before starting this game, which almost always gets me into trouble. Fortunately, Descent largely lives up to the hype. This is a mostly direct port of the 1995 PC original, with a couple of differences that we'll get to later. For those unaware, this is the first game in the short-lived Six Degrees of Freedom genre of Shooters. The idea with this genre is that the player controls some kind of vehicle that is able to move and rotate in three dimensions. That's movement on 3 axes plus rotation on those 3 axes equals 6 degrees of movement. Implementing this kind of movement into a fully 3D video game was revolutionary, and all modern zero-g control schemes descend from this game.
The premise kind of doesn't matter. You're a mercenary drone pilot guy working for a nefarious space corporation whose mining robots have gone haywire all over the solar system. It's your job to clean out the affected mines of hostiles and blow their reactors. There's some stuff about the space corp causing the malfunctions through their wanton tinkering with alien thingys, but none of it is worth caring about. This set-up takes you through 27 levels, spread across 9 celestial bodies. I made it to the fourth level, which is the first in the Venus segment, in about an hour on easy, so there's plenty of stuff to do here. It's always nice to run into a game that is both competent and substantial from this era.
The levels themselves follow closely to the maze standards established by Doom. You collect keycards, find various pick-ups, and kill everything that moves. The design for all this fundamentally works and is thus hard to comment on. There's one mission type that's reused in every level, which is to blow the reactor and escape. This incorporates a countdown timer like in Super Metroid, except in every level. The placement of keycards, enemies, and the exit tend to be well considered and makes sense; though it makes a bit too much sense, as you can get a feel for predicting where things are in the levels just from using common sense. I'm struggling to find things to say about the design that isn't just calling it good and moving on. This is a solid B+ or A- kind of game, which is the hardest to write about.
Let's try negativity, I'm good at that. I take semantic umbrage with assigning the PS1 port of this game to the 6DOF genre. When you stop and think, moving something in a full six degrees of mechanical freedom is going to require 12 inputs, one for each direction of each degree. When you look at a PS1 controller, there are 12 inputs plus start and select. You can see the obvious problem: how does this game accomplish 6DOF movement while also letting you do anything that isn't movement? If you guessed, "remove one of the degrees of freedom, I guess" then you would be too correct. Movement along the y-axis (floating up and down) is not available in the controls, which actually makes this a 5DOF game. This entire genre is built on lies.
This brings us to the quality of this port as a whole. Descent seems to have gotten the Doom treatment in the port job, in that simplified geometry was traded for colored lighting and ambient music. That makes this version somewhat of its own thing compared to the original release, at least in aesthetic terms. And that aesthetic is mostly fine. The music works, the draw distance is fine, everything is appropriately textured, and the gameplay runs smoothly enough for enough of the time. Though, the wireframed automap runs like unmitigated trash in a way that felt like the game was about to hard-lock at any moment whenever I had it open. The issue is that while the environments are well-realized for what they are, the thing that they're trying to be is dull and repetitive. Every level is a mining site, with little variation in the visual design. The overall effect of the art design, when coupled with the disorienting movement, led me to a point where I felt like I was going to swallow my tongue if I didn't stop playing. So I guess only consider playing this game in short bursts.
As far as I'm concerned, Descent was the biggest deal among the various shooters that attempted to figure out the genre in-between Doom II and Quake. I briefly touched on that time period a couple of posts ago, but it is an interesting era to think about. Everyone knew that so much more could be done from the base Doom formula, but no one had all the answers. This led to all kinds of studios tweaking different aspects of the formula, whether it's this game's 6DOF controls, the various Shooters where you could look up and down with buttons, or the Shooters that incorporated heavy story or voiced elements. The actual correct answer came out with Quake in '96, putting everyone back where they started, but the two years before that was a real wild west.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Hunt
Developer: Funcom Dublin
Publisher: THQ
Release Date: 3/15/1996
Time to Torpedoed: 28 Minutes
Speaking of developments in the shooter space, let's talk about 'Shmups. As far as I know, the mid-90's is when the genre began transitioning towards niche Bullet Hell design and away from anything normal humans could enjoy. Yet, increased bullet density wasn't the only path the genre could have taken to make itself inaccessible. A handful of lunatics at Irem spent the early-90's figuring out their own niche in the genre: Run-and-Gun shooters with enormous hitboxes and visual chaos. That small group would leave Irem in '94 to form their own studio, called Nazca Corporation, and fulfill their dreams of making fucked up bullshit. In 1996, they finally accomplished their goal and released Metal Slug upon the world. There is much to be said about that series, but this is neither the time nor the place.
In the Hunt is not Metal Slug, but it is one of the three games that I would classify as proto-Metal Slugs. Originally released for arcades in 1993, this would be the second attempt at Irem by Metal Slug designer Kazuma Kujo to make a frenetic side-scrolling shooter with large, cartoony sprites. The other two attempts were GunForce I and II in '91 and '94 respectively. This game is a unique entry, in that you play as a submarine, which is enough of a conceptual change to impact the gameplay. Normally in a Run-and-Gun, like Contra, you run in a direction while firing in four or eight directions while doing some platforming if it's a side-scroller. In the Hunt has you moving in one direction while only being able to fire forward, up, and drop depth charges below. This simplicity is made up for by having the screen divided into above-water and underwater areas, and your up-attack can only reach surface targets if you keep your submarine at the surface line. This leads to a trade-off and adds a little bit of complexity to most of the levels. Otherwise, the experience is literally straightforward.
Because this is a glorified Metal Slug prototype, the art and music are generally very good even if not to the levels this development team would eventually reach. The game runs smoothly, which is vital for something that requires any quick reflexes. Also, probably because of its simplified gameplay, it's a bit easier than what you would expect from its pedigree. I made two runs and got as far as the fourth boss. Since this game only has six levels, I was able to make it two-thirds of the way through in less than half an hour. It's probably very feasible to beat this thing in only a handful of hours. Most 'Shmup sickos would consider that too easy, and it presents an issue for anyone who would've bought a full price disc back in '96. This really should have been part of some kind of Irem compilation instead of a standalone release, and I think we're on the cusp of publishers not being able to get away with doing this.
I didn't make any mention of the plot because it's barely there and could not matter less. This game also does that thing that console 'Shmups love by having a strict continue limit. I'm not harping on it too much here, as it actually seems feasible to beat this game on only five credits, which is a first. This is a neat little thing to poke around with, but I truly feel for any schmucks that bought it at retail prices back in the day.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magic Carpet
Developer: Krisalis Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 3/15/1996
Time to Looking Up The Manual: 20 Minutes
Time to Killed By Birds: 45 Minutes
Now we have to deal with this nonsense. Being a Bullfrog game, Magic Carpet wants to wow you by not conforming to any specific genre of the time. But In reality, this is a combination of bad early Real Time Strategy systems with bad Flight Combat gameplay. This nature is initially obfuscated by the expected Molyneux whimsy and a complete lack of interest in explaining itself. Something inside of me breaks when trying to form a take on this one, so let's walk through the details.
This thing is set in some kind of 1001 Arabian Nights knock-off world with warring wizards. You play as the apprentice to an old wizard who is trying to stop the Wizard Wars, which I imagine is the Potterverse version of Storage Wars. The old wizard eats it, so you have to hop on a magic carpet to fly around and finish the job. This is where I'll note that development of this game began after the release of Disney's Aladdin AND IT SHOWS. Also, if I'm going to keep reviewing British video games, I'll need to get around to reading Orientalism.
Starting the game dumps you into the first level with no introduction to the game mechanics. After learning how to play this the hard way, it turns out the point of the game is to fly around the levels, spawn tent bases, and kill various monster enemies. So, monsters will drop golden orbs of varying sizes after they die. You're supposed to use a spell, which are just your selectable attacks, to claim the orbs when they're lying around. Your tent bases spawn hot air balloons, which will float over to the orbs you've claimed and collect them to bring back to the tents. As those orbs are collected, a secondary bar on the tent status card will fill up, and once that hits a certain point you win the level. In addition to yourself and the baddies, there are civilian towns in each map that have non-descript NPCs running around. These don't matter at all in the early levels.
The flying gameplay feels like a cross between Agile Warrior F111-X and Black Fire, in that it's utter dogshit. The carpet accelerates and maneuvers like a plane but can be slowed down to hover like a helicopter. This movement feels terrible and navigating around the levels never stops being awkward. There are two slots for spells, which can be swapped out at any time. There is no explanation of the spells in-game, and there seems to be 24 of the damn things that can be unlocked. The only ones I saw are the standard fireball, tent spawner, orb claimer, and speed boost. These are all on different cooldowns and the controls for swapping out spells are bad.
The combat is its own flavor of infuriating. I encountered three enemy types in the first two levels: ground-based turd snakes, flying turd snakes, and birds. The turd snakes will wander around and shoot fireballs if you get close enough, and they have better aim than you. The birds are the primary exhibit for the deranged game design used throughout this thing, the damnable things have small hitboxes, fly in swarms, turn faster than you, and attack you from behind in a way that can only be shaken off by boosting away. The only way to effectively fight the little bastards is fly a tight circle around the swarms, rapid fire the fireball, and get lucky. None of this is fun, and the combat is essential to collect enough orbs to finish the levels.
A forgiving quirk of the gameplay is that as long as you have one functioning tent base, you can respawn infinitely with only minor penalty. So, it kind of doesn't matter too much if you get repeatedly ripped apart by birds as long as your base is intact. Now, the bases and balloons have their own health bars and can be attacked by the MoBs. This seems to only be a problem in later levels. From reading the game manual, because I had to eventually, it seems that the bases will automatically upgrade themselves if you build enough next to each other, yet the tent spell is very picky about on what terrain it'll build a base. Also, the random NPCs are capable of doing things that are determined off of a rudimentary karma system. I didn't see this myself, and I'm disinclined to take Molyneux games at their word when it comes to game features.
For as miserable as Magic Carpet is, I would have played more of it if I hadn't encountered a weird soft lock. For whatever reason, partway through the second level, the balloon refused to leave my base to collect orbs. This made the level unbeatable. There might have been an obscure mechanical reason for this to happen or it might have been a bug, it's hard to tell the difference with Bullfrog games. Either way, I was too annoyed by that point to care, and I closed the game in disgust. Also, it should be implied by now that the game looks and sounds like ass.
This wretched thing was supposedly a big deal when it originally came out in '94. I guess having open, 3D environments rendered in real-time was enough of an achievement to earn high praise. That seems to be a theme for Bullfrog games, they would drop shoddily thrown together games in rapid succession which would each have one new or interesting idea or feature. Maybe I'm basing that opinion on the later reevaluations of Molyneux as an auteur, but it's hard not to incorporate future knowledge onto past events.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even though this batch was all ports, we ended up with a better spread of games than the last few weeks. We're also rapidly approaching the end of Q1, and hopefully more noteworthy releases. Regardless, the Ranking of All PS1 Games requires attention.
1. Air Combat
…
8. Descent
31. Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire
34. In the Hunt
62. Magic Carpet
…
73. World Cup Golf: Professional Edition
Next time, we're going to wrap-up March and find some way to deal with the first truly big Playstation game when we look at Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed, Extreme Pinball, and Resident Evil.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I streamed these games over on my Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/fifthgenerationgaming. The VOD can be watched below.
Log in to comment