9th January 2008, 5:58 PM
Well, I was in the local game store today, and he'd finally put out all of those Dreamcast games he got in a few weeks ago but hadn't gotten around to dealing with yet, so of course I got some. For $20 I got:
Sega Rally 2 - Sega Rally Championship -- First impressions say 'not so good'. Framerate is poor, graphics are kind of bad, two player only (all racing games should have four player support), game is annoying, I never liked rally games all that much anyway... meh, it's okay though.
Re-Volt -- great stuff! It's as good as the PC version... I got the N64 one a little while ago, but the framerate was just awful. Here it's perfectly smooth. :) Re-Volt is a great game on PC and Dreamcast... four player, too. Way too many DC games are two player only. I blame Sega. I mean, many of those two player games are their own titles! Gamecube has way too many two player only games too for a console with four controller ports, but at least there Nintendo always makes an effort to make four player games, just like with the N64. Sega did nothing of the sort on DC. It's kind of like why the SNES has so many more games with battery save... Nintendo actually put battery save in all of their SNES platformers. Sega didn't, with very few exceptions (Sonic 3, Wonder Boy in Monster Land if that even counts). Re-Vol's by Acclaim... maybe that's why it's four player? :D
Speed Devils Online Racing -- Awful. Even worse than I was hoping it would be based on the poor reviews... it's really too bad, because the original Speed Busters (PC) was a fantastic game, and the first DC one -- Speed Devils -- was great too... but they messed up the car control, got rid of splitscreen multiplayer mode (Speed Devils had 2-player splitscreen. Not good enough, but okay. Speed Devils Online is online only for multiplayer -- NO splitscreen mode! And there's no online play anymore, of course, so it's one player only), and there's absolutely no campaign, series, unlockables, anything... just choose a race and race it and go back to the menu at the end and race another one. It does have 22 cars (11 new compared to Speed Devils) and "16" tracks (read: 8, 6 of which have alternate versions (four with one alternate, two with two alternates) that they call new tracks), one of which I think is new but is online-only so it cannot be accessed, but with zero presentation, no reason to play, bad play control, and the removal of the interactive track elements (for instance in Speed Busters you'd get something (I forget what, really) based on how fast you were going at certain points in the track, and there were environmental hazards -- a shark leaped out over the pool, the giant ape or godzilla thing punched down... (in the demo Hollywood track) but in this one everything is static and the speed thing is gone, it's just simple "finish" or checkpoints. Blah. A bad version of a good game is a bad game...
Bang! Gunship Elite -- port of good PC space action game (kind of like Wing Commander but with Rogue Squadron levels of arcadish gameplay...). Not as good without gamepad (or mouse), but decent. Single player only, though.
Wild Metal -- DMA Design game, haven't played yet.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - Rogue Spear (Including Mission Pack: Urban Operations) - haven't played. Just got this one because I needed one more $5 game for the 'get one free' thing and couldn't convince myself to get any of the OTHER $5 or under DC games... they had a bunch of realistic-style racing games for instance (Sega GT, Ferarri F355 Challenge, Monaco Grand Prix, CART Flag to Flag, Tokyo Xtreme Racer...), though I of course prefer arcade-style racing games so most of those didn't interest me too much. As for the more expensive games... I've spent enough recently, I think. :D
Sega Rally 2 - Sega Rally Championship -- First impressions say 'not so good'. Framerate is poor, graphics are kind of bad, two player only (all racing games should have four player support), game is annoying, I never liked rally games all that much anyway... meh, it's okay though.
Re-Volt -- great stuff! It's as good as the PC version... I got the N64 one a little while ago, but the framerate was just awful. Here it's perfectly smooth. :) Re-Volt is a great game on PC and Dreamcast... four player, too. Way too many DC games are two player only. I blame Sega. I mean, many of those two player games are their own titles! Gamecube has way too many two player only games too for a console with four controller ports, but at least there Nintendo always makes an effort to make four player games, just like with the N64. Sega did nothing of the sort on DC. It's kind of like why the SNES has so many more games with battery save... Nintendo actually put battery save in all of their SNES platformers. Sega didn't, with very few exceptions (Sonic 3, Wonder Boy in Monster Land if that even counts). Re-Vol's by Acclaim... maybe that's why it's four player? :D
Speed Devils Online Racing -- Awful. Even worse than I was hoping it would be based on the poor reviews... it's really too bad, because the original Speed Busters (PC) was a fantastic game, and the first DC one -- Speed Devils -- was great too... but they messed up the car control, got rid of splitscreen multiplayer mode (Speed Devils had 2-player splitscreen. Not good enough, but okay. Speed Devils Online is online only for multiplayer -- NO splitscreen mode! And there's no online play anymore, of course, so it's one player only), and there's absolutely no campaign, series, unlockables, anything... just choose a race and race it and go back to the menu at the end and race another one. It does have 22 cars (11 new compared to Speed Devils) and "16" tracks (read: 8, 6 of which have alternate versions (four with one alternate, two with two alternates) that they call new tracks), one of which I think is new but is online-only so it cannot be accessed, but with zero presentation, no reason to play, bad play control, and the removal of the interactive track elements (for instance in Speed Busters you'd get something (I forget what, really) based on how fast you were going at certain points in the track, and there were environmental hazards -- a shark leaped out over the pool, the giant ape or godzilla thing punched down... (in the demo Hollywood track) but in this one everything is static and the speed thing is gone, it's just simple "finish" or checkpoints. Blah. A bad version of a good game is a bad game...
Bang! Gunship Elite -- port of good PC space action game (kind of like Wing Commander but with Rogue Squadron levels of arcadish gameplay...). Not as good without gamepad (or mouse), but decent. Single player only, though.
Wild Metal -- DMA Design game, haven't played yet.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - Rogue Spear (Including Mission Pack: Urban Operations) - haven't played. Just got this one because I needed one more $5 game for the 'get one free' thing and couldn't convince myself to get any of the OTHER $5 or under DC games... they had a bunch of realistic-style racing games for instance (Sega GT, Ferarri F355 Challenge, Monaco Grand Prix, CART Flag to Flag, Tokyo Xtreme Racer...), though I of course prefer arcade-style racing games so most of those didn't interest me too much. As for the more expensive games... I've spent enough recently, I think. :D