Posted: Thu May 03, 2001 9:22 am
Well this board's been a bit slow lately so I think I'll spice it up a bit with some of my homegrown game reviews. I just got a couple of new games recently so I'll talk about them.<P>The first is Digimon World 2. I never played the first one, but I did write a short little review for a certain newspaper in Dallas that I hope gets published soon. Like I said, it was a short review so I didn't get to talk much about it. But I will now!<P>Digimon is probably the most popular of all the Pokemon imitators, with an extensive toy line and a fairly decent cartoon to back it up. In Digimon World 2 you pick a team with a Digimon (there's a bat one, the flying hamster, and that orange dragon one), and then go into maze-like dungeons to battle more Digimon. One thing I like better about Pokemon than Digimon is that it's easier to remember the Pokemon monsters' names. <P>Anyway, battles are like RPG style battles. You can have up to 3 Digimon battle 3 others at a time. The Digimon look really good in 3-D, but the other graphics are horrible. Battle background graphics are mostly black and dungeon graphics are done worse than on the SNES. The only good things graphically besides the Digimon themselves are the pre-rendered graphics for the home base, and the fact that even though there's no human characters from the cartoon show in this game, they do look like that style of drawing. Music is pretty good, but they don't have the "DIGIMON, DIGITAL MONSTERS, DIGIMON ARE THE CHAMPIONS!" theme. That would've been funny.<P>Gameplay is also a little lacking. I'm getting tired of RPG battles. I picked the flying hamster Digimon because it's my favorite one. You can recruit more Digimon in battle. The last one you beat can join you if it has enough "friendlyness points." You can give gifts to enemy Digimon in battle to raise their "friendlyness points." Good Lord that is stupid sounding. Of course I didn't recruit more Digimon because I got bored real fast. Mainly because of the dungeons.<P>You see, the dungeons are randomly generated, which means each time you go into one, it'll be a different maze layout every time, with traps and treasure in different places, too (Maybe Leroy would like this game then?). I'm not a big fan of randomly generated dungeon games because graphics, level design, and structure gets lost in the process. I'd rather play a cleverly designed dungeon once through than a poorly designed random one a bunch of times. You drive through the dungeons in your "Digi-Beetle." No, it's not what you think. I was hoping it would be a VW Bug but it's just a tank. When you hit a Digimon then you battle. I hate the Digi-Beetle because it has fuel and the more you drive around, the more fuel you use. You can buy bigger fuel tanks, but this aspect sure takes the fun out of exploration. <P>So even though I didn't slam the game much in my unpublished newspaper review, I really didn't like Digimon World 2 very much. But don't beg for me to give anyone this game, I've already got a taker. I'm giving it to my little brother Jeff. I think the only people who'd really like this game are die-hard Digimon fans.<P>The next game I'll talk about is one I bought at Best Buy recently and it was only a little more than ten bucks. It's Gunbird 2 for the Dreamcast. It's a Capcom shooter made by Psikyo. Like Parodious and Ordyne, Gunbird 2 is a silly two player vertical shooter that doesn't take itself seriously at all. <P>Like AreoFighters, the best part about Gunbird 2 is the characters. They have funny attacks and after each level they have a funny conversation and ending (in two player mode at least). Some of the characters are Alucard the vampire, a robot, a witch, Morrigan from the Darkstalkers games, and my favorite, a little fat Arabian dude who rides a magic carpet. <P>The profiles for the characters in the instruction book are very entertaining to read. For the witch, they said she's 9 years old, but mentally she's 17. Leroy, did you write the instructions? ^_^ Anyway, according to the story, the reason why all these characters are in this game is because they want a potion that will give them any wish, but there are these pirates trying to stop them. I like the pirate lady, too bad she's not a playable character. <P>This game is like Kirby Super Star and Ordyne, meaning I don't play Gunbird 2 unless it's two players. It's no fun with just one. I usually play with Jeff, so we keep the difficulty level down low so we can both enjoy it. Anyway, each pair of characters has a different conversation and storyline in the game. When we picked the Arabian guy and the robot, the robot wished to be human, but the Arabian guy convinced him that he should be a fat human. So then they were going to fly off to make their own "fat kingdom" but their magic carpet couldn't get off the ground because they were too heavy! That's the kind of wacky endings Gunbird 2 has. When you pick the girl witch and the vampire, the girl witch wishes to be an adult. The vampire agrees to let her have the potion if he can suck her blood later. But when he goes to bite her, she holds up her stuffed rabbit and he bites that instead! Then she escapes. When you pick the Arabian guy and the girl witch, the witch falls in love with the fat Arabian guy. The Arabian guy wishes to make the witch his dream woman, and she agrees. But she didn't know that his dream woman was a fat woman, so she gets mad that she turns fat!<P>You have 3 different attacks. The regular shooter gun that can be powered up, a bomb weapon that you can throw out in front of you for powerful damage, and a weapon that destroys all the bullets onscreen (this is a Psikyo game, there's lots of bullets!). Each character has different attacks. The vampire shoots out bats. The fat Arabian guy's bomb is a big cartoon bomb that he chucks out (and he says "fat grenade" too). The witch blocks bullets by turning them into candy. I like the Arabian guy's bullet blocking weapon. He sends out a big purple genie lady (she's not fat) and she dances and all the bullets go away.<P>Yes, Morrigan is in this game but I haven't used her yet because I don't like her. What's funny is that my mom's favorite character in Super Puzzle Fighter is Morrigan because she likes her hair. My mom doesn't know that Morrigan is a slutty succubus. When she saw that Morrigan was in Gunbird 2, she said, "That's Morrigan?! She looks all X-rated and stuff. What happened?" I tried to explain to her that the characters in Puzzle Fighter were super-deformed. She didn't know what I meant, so she just said, "Well at least she still has cool hair."<P>So if you have a Dreamcast, go out and see if you can find Gunbird 2 real cheap like I did. It's well worth the price. I think I like Cannon Spike better, though. Cannon Spike is another Psikyo game for DC. I like it because you can be Mega Man and Cammy. My mom asked me why I always pick Cammy, and I said it's because Jeff always picks Mega Man before I do. It's a good thing you weren't there, Yamcha, when she asked that because I know how you would've responded!<P>Speaking of shooter games, I think I'll pay tribute to one of my favorite NES shooters. It's not my all-time favorite NES shooter, that award goes to The Guardian Legend. But I also like Gun.Smoke. It's a shooter also from Capcom! I always found it funny that they put a period in between the words. When I first saw this game in the arcade I thought it was based off the TV show! I was like, "Where's Doc? And Hoss?" <P>I like the NES one better than the arcade Gun.Smoke simply because it was more readily available. Gun.Smoke is one of the few games that I rented so many times I probably could've bought it. Other games that I've rented lots of times were the Mega Man NES games and Final Fantasy 2. I just like Gun.Smoke because it was a shooter that wasn't a flying spaceship, but a Wild West theme instead. I also like all the old classic Capcom pickups, like the barrel and the POW and the cow and the pinwheel Yashichi thing. I was pleased that PS Strider 2 had all those things as well. I also like that you couldn't fight the boss unless you found the hidden Wanted poster in the level. <P>Some of you may disagree, but I think that Gun.Smoke was equally as bizarre as Gunbird 2. In Gun.Smoke, you could find a horse to ride on as a power-up. The horse could take 3 hits before dying. It must be Super Horse! After the third bullet, though, the horse dies and you see it lying on the ground! I bet my horse-loving friend Cathy wouldn't like Gun.Smoke very much! Also there were ninjas you had to fight! And one of the weapons you could buy was a machine gun!<P>One thing I remember about this game also was that since I sucked at it so much, I cheated and used my NES Advantage's turbo buttons for shooting. When my dad walked in and saw that my little cowboy was firing off his two six-shooters like machine guns, he said, "Real men don't use turbo buttons." I cracked up when he said that. It did look pretty silly onscreen that my cowboy was shooting so fast.<P>But I DID eventually beat Gun.Smoke! It's one of the few shooters I've actually beaten. I don't think I've even beaten my favorite shooter: The Guardian Legend. Also, most shooters I only like if it's 2 player. Well I think NES Gun.Smoke and Guardian Legend were one player only, so you know that they'd have to be especially good for me to play them.<P>Well I think I've typed long enough. Please feel free to post your comments on Digimon, Gunbird 2, Cannon Spike, Gun.Smoke, or The Guardian Legend, or whatever<P>--Klonoa
