Recently I've become rather interested in the "Simple Series", a group of video games published by the Japanese company D3 Publisher on a shoestring budget for sale at a low price. In a way it's almost like a social experiment into how little you can spend on a game that people will still buy. Of course, most of the games in the series are either extremely basic or broken, but I'm hoping to find something worth playing. If you're interested in other Simple Series reviews, I've already taken a look at 2 games from the series; The Sniper 2 and Runabout 3: Neo Age which got 6/100 and 60/100 respectively. As for today's reviews, there's a racing game, in the shape of Dirt Track Devils, and a Beat 'em Up in the shape of Deadly Strike.
Game: Deadly Strike
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Psyworks
Release Date: 25th February 2005
In the world of Beat 'em Ups, there are a few things that can make a game truly enjoyable. Having a good number of varied attacks, intelligent AI, good level design, and tough but beatable bosses really adds to the overall experience. Deadly Strike is lacking all of these features. For a start, you have two options for attacking; use your sword or use your gun. If the sword is used your character will do the same combination of 4 attacks over and over again with the square button, and if the gun is used then your character will shoot until a weapon bar runs out and they must leave it to recharge.
As for the AI, they're quite happy to watch you standing in front of them and even to let you hack away at their health bars until they disappear. The only real challenge in the game is when you're surrounded by enemies, as your attack animations take a long time to run their course. The levels are bland and empty whether you're fighting in a field, rice paddy or temple grounds, and the game's bosses (if you can call them that) will freely allow you to walk up to them and attack in most cases. Gameplay essentially consists of fighting 10-20 opponents in one location, beating them all and then going into a portal to the next until a boss fight.
There are 6 playable main characters in the game with their own power and speed stats, although you're offered a male or female of each type, so essentially there's 3 types of character. It's best to go for the characters with 2 stars for both power and speed as the ones with more power get hit too easily, and the ones with more speed don't do enough damage. Each character is said to have their own exciting ending to the story, which you'll need to unlock by completing the game with them, but having experienced Reiji's ending that was basically "He got to the end, realised his true power and then disappeared from the public eye", I'm not hopeful for the others.
Players earn points by getting through stages of the game and these points allow them to buy items from the shop such as extra credits, life, costumes and a gallery mode which introduces you to the characters. While this is an incentive to replay the game a few times, the costumes and power-ups are pretty non-essential. Two player mode is pretty much the same as single player, with the additional fun of both being able to go off screen so that no-one can see what they're doing.
Initally the only other game mode is Survival (which is like playing through the first part of the game with a kill counter attached), but upon completing the game once, Boss Fight and Extra modes are unlocked. Boss Fight is exactly what is sounds like; you can fight any of the games bosses again with any character, and Extra mode allows you to play through the game as an enemy character. I was amused to find that the description of the Red Ninja character was simply "The only female opponent in the game".
In every mode of gameplay the camera is truly atrocious, as it floats above the player giving no sense of depth or proximity to enemies. Oftentimes the portal to the next part of the level is in the distance of a level and can be hard to find your way into. The most fun I had with the game was trying to build up a large combo; achieved by killing the next enemy within a certain time of the last. While the slow falling/getting back up animations do hinder this a little, I was able to get up to around a 50 combo.
Graphically Deadly Strike looks like it could have been on the original Playstation with low quality sprites, textures and clipping issues; there's nothing more fun than sending an enemy tumbling through a rock. The opening cutscene is particuarly low quality and hardly makes any sense either. The music which accompanies the game isn't bad but tends to loop quite often whilst playing, and the voice effects used are not only low quality but tend to be played at inappropriate times, as if your character is having a conversation with the enemies you're beating.
Overall the game is not only a poor excuse for a Beat 'Em Up, but has many disappointing features which could easily have been improved. The level clock counts down so slowly that it's irrelevant, there's only a few attacks to choose from, and the AI is so slow and badly programmed that it doesn't matter what you do anyway. The character stories could have been written much more interestingly, and bosses could have been made a fair amount harder. With these changes, Deadly Strike would have been an average 3D Beat 'Em Up with a little replay value but as it is, it's hardly worth a look.
Rating: 40/100
Grade: E
Game: Dirt Track Devils
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Vingt-et-Un Systems
Release Date: 31st October 2003
Titled "The Offroad Buggy" in Japan, and aptly released on Halloween, Dirt Track Devils is the Simple Series take on ATV and offroad racing games. When I picked up this game, I did wonder how any developer or publisher could manage to do too badly with a racing title, but I wasn't disappointed. The game was developed by Vingt-et-Un Systems, whose main output is Simple Series games and other Japanese titles.
Upon starting the game you're greeted by an announcer who explains everything you'd want to know and more. When you're faced with the vehicle selection screen, he helpfully says "Altogether there are 5 off road courses to choose from". While this is true, it's hardly relevant to what you're doing at the time. In addition to it's 5 tracks, there are 6 cars to choose from, complete with their own mediocre anime style driver.
The main "Off Road Race" mode is described as "A 10 race tournament against five fearsome AI opponents" on the back of the game case. While the first part of this is true, they fail to mention that the 10 races take place across five tracks, so you're racing the first track twice, followed by the second track twice and so on. As for the "fearsome AI opponents", the computer players are pitiful at racing and manage to slow themselves down in such ways as drifting their car to face backwards, crashing into the edge of the track and just being generally slow. There's no difficulty settings for the AI either, so they're stuck being painfully bad at racing.
Controlwise the game isn't too bad, it's fairly drifty around corners but that's forgivable for an off-road style game. There's also the option to race with a manual gearbox, although you mostly end up putting it into top gear and staying there. Two viewpoints are provided to players; first and third person, which is pretty standard, but an in-car viewpoint would have been nice. Oddly, there's no button to look back at racers behind you; I tried everything I could think of but it seems that only the simplest of controls have been put into the game.
All of the five tracks included in the game are very short with laps lasting 40-50 seconds or so. Consequently, the main game can be completed in around half an hour and there's no unlockables or extra content. The 6 vehicles you're allowed to choose from do have different attributes, but the only one that really seems to matter is top speed, as the truck with the worst steering stat seems to have no problem with steering anyway. Even if you decided to complete the main game with every vehicle, you'd be done in a few hours which is incredibly short, even for a simple racer.
Aside from the two player mode, the only other gameplay mode included is "Gymkhana Mode" which sets up obstacles around an oval track for players to make their way around with in a certain time limit. It calims to feature "dozens of track variations" so that you "never race the same track twice". This isn't strictly true as within a few tries, I got the same course again and they're all pretty similar anyway. This gameplay mode doesn't add much to the enjoyment of the game, and I suspect it was added so that there wasn't just one single player mode.
Again, Dirt Track Devils could almost have been on the original Playstation with its low resolution textures and lack of detail. The vehicles themselves look alright but they're nothing special either. There's one piece of music which loops (with a 10 second silence inbetween) and that's literally it for the soundtrack. The only other noise is fairly quiet engine sounds which don't really help the game in its quest to be even a little bit exciting.
Overall Dirt Track Devils takes the Simple Series title literally and delivers an incredibly short and simple racing experience with a small amount of tracks, vehicles and gameplay. The AI racers have no clue what they're doing and what you choose to race in doesn't matter in the slightest. Gymkhana mode adds virtually no replayability and all in all you can experience all the game has to offer in about an hour, if not less.
Rating: 30/100
Grade: E
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