Sunday 26 June 2016

Backlog Beatdown: Delivering Sweet Chin Music with WWF War Zone


WWF War Zone is a game that I approached with some curiosity. I’d played the N64 version once and I was rubbish at it. But after that I bought a Playstation and got hooked on to the Smackdown series that later became the WW series that is released on a yearly basis even to this very day, and never looked back. Having a different development team brought a very different approach to 3D Wrestling games. War Zone’s controls were complex and fiddly, Smackdown’s were fast and arcade-y. War Zone was more strategic, Smackdown was more spectacular. Both developments created what were regarded at their time to be great games – but as I went down the Smackdown route originally, I was very interested to see what Acclaim’s development brought to the table.
Unless they are deliberately designed to be otherwise, Wrestling games are very much “of their time” in terms of their character roster, and the available characters here would raise a smile for anyone old enough to remember the start of the so-called ‘Attitude’ era. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the poster boy for it, along with Triple H, The Rock (still Rocky Mavia at this point,) Kane, The Undertaker and Mankind.
Oddly enough, Bret Hart was also a playable character in the game. Presumably his involvement in the development (some live-action promos from each wrestler were filmed for the Playstation version) occurred before the Montreal Screwjob. But since the game was released almost a year later when he would have been under contract with WCW, one might reasonably wonder just how long it took Acclaim to make this game!
Stunner! Who hasn't tried this on a
younger sibling at some point?
The wrestling was interesting beyond the basic punches, kicks and blocks. There were beat-em-up style input commands for some of the basic throws, which isn’t surprising since Acclaim were also responsible for the early Mortal Kombat games. You could pause the game to bring up your moves list, and work to that. But getting your opponent in a tie-up was where things got interesting, as your move was more likely to succeed or fail depending on the circumstances. In essence, the player who did the weaker move would win the tie-up against the player who did the stronger move, with the idea being that the weaker move would be less damaging but easier to pull off against a stronger move that would be more likely to be interrupted. But this would change depending on how much momentum your wrestler had built up; if you went into your grapple with full momentum or while your opponent was stunned, there would be no stopping you no matter what move you were trying to do! This worked great against the computer but I would imagine cause disparity between players of differing levels of experience; if you know how to do all of one character’s moves, it would put you at a distinct advantage against someone picking up the game for the first time.
I chose Shawn Michaels for my playthrough. The Championship mode was simple enough; defeat a succession of Wrestlers to become the World Champion at the top of the ‘tree.’ I think there were some other stipulations; you couldn’t lose more than three matches. Also, sometimes a previously-defeated opponent would challenge you to a ‘grudge’ match, and if you lost this one you’d drop a whole step off the ladder. Nothing a bit of scum-saving doesn’t sort out!
You would think that it would be the finishing moves that decided the outcome of the match, but they’re very tricky to do, requiring a longer-than-usual input command. I managed Shawn Michaels’ Sweet Chin Music a few times, but I often found that trying to do the move left me open to an attack at a time when I couldn’t afford to lose health needlessly. I found it a far more effective tactic to get the opponent’s health down to red and learn the command for Crucifixion – a pin that can be done from the standing position. That won me a lot more matches – and the Championship – than any mount of faffing about with complicated finishers!
Having now won the World Championship and been rewarded with a pretty standard cutscene, I’m ready to move on. I know the game has more to offer but it’s basically an unlock-fest from this point, and while War Zone is a good game, I don’t necessarily feel the need to play through it multiple times to unlock all the costumes and wrestlers. I might think about coming back to it later, though – there are wrestlers in this game that didn’t appear in the later games, so War Zone might be the only opportunity I have to play as Ahmed Johnson, or British Bulldog. Until then, I’ll move on to another game and see what new challenges await…

Saturday 18 June 2016

Backlog Beatdown: Destroying Cars with Destruction Derby 2


There were no shortage of racing games on the PS1, and Destruction Derby 2 was one of the ones that everybody had played at some point. It must have been something of a bold venture at the time, as racing games that had destructible cars as their main gameplay mechanic were almost unheard of. Yes, there were games where the cars could take damage, but not necessarily games where that was the whole point of the game!
Destruction Derby 2 is a racing game which follows a pretty straight formula of drive around a track and attempt to reach first place. If this was all there were to it, the game wouldn’t be much good. The graphics are OK for the time but the limited draw distance results in a lot of ‘pop-in’ on certain tracks. There is limited commentary that gets old quite quickly, and this game was released before analogue controls were standardised so it’s not that easy to control your cars effectively.
What sets this apart from the other racing games of the time is that it’s less about your race position and more about how many points you can get by causing your opponents to spin. If you collide with your opponent and cause them to spin 90 degrees, you get ten points. If you cause them to spin one 180 degrees, or force them to retire from the race, you get 25 points, and if you manage to get them to spin all the way around you get 50. Your points and those of your 19 opponents are totalled up at the end of the race – along with 50, 25 and 10 points available for 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions respectively – and the driver with the most points is the winner. The Championship mode involves four seasons of four races plus a ‘Destruction Derby’ mode at the end of each race where the cars all drive at each other in a coliseum-like setting and see who lasts the longest, and the idea is to get promoted to the top division and win the Championship.
Definitely the car to choose if you want to win...
It was a good idea, but it wasn’t terribly well-executed. Scoring points for the race by crashing in to other cars was fun when it worked, but more often than not it didn’t; sometimes the car wouldn’t spin, sometimes I’d clip straight through the car altogether. And let’s not pretend that the few times I did manage it weren’t more by luck than by judgement. The Destruction Derby levels were a lottery based on how many cars had already been knocked out of the race by the time you get a chance to score. And because you have to be hitting the cars at a certain speed to get them to spin at all, the only car to choose out of the three that are available is the Pro car – maximum speed, minimum control. The only reason I made it through the third season is that I was fortunate enough to score something like 400 points on the first race; to this day I still don’t know how I managed that.
I did eventually manage to beat the game but with such an inconsistent scoring method, the only way I could do it was to scum-save the game between each race when I got a relatively decent score. Somehow I’m taking up 5 blocks on the memory card with a one-block game!
There was a “Stock Car Racing” mode – a mode where the score is based on your position and nothing else – but I didn’t bother with that. Destruction Derby 2 doesn’t handle well enough to get much fun out of it as a racing simulation, and there are far better games out there for the purpose.
I probably sound quite negative about this game but the truth is that I did enjoy my experience with it. I learned little tricks and quirks of each track to help my progress, which gave me a sense of achievement. Actually making it to the finish line was always nice, and never a guarantee. And props to the soundtrack of grind-y Nu-Metal, which was very much of-it’s-time and leaves me in a nostalgic haze.