12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games): Day 12/Fighters Month - Spectral vs Generation

Game: Spectral vs Generation
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Idea Factory
Release Date: 30th March 2007

There seems to be very little information available regarding what this particular game is based on. Certainly there's influence from anime and other video games produced by Idea Factory, apparently two series in particular; Spectral Force and Generation of Chaos, which are part of a label called Neverland. There are also various other game releases which range from fighting games to RPGs and strategy titles featuring characters from this crossover.

From what's revealed of the story in cutscenes, each fighter has different reasons for wanting to eliminate the others, most of which involve thinking that other fighters are using "demon swords". The boss fight once all other characters have been defeated seems to always be against an incredibly powerful godlike creature called Earth, who is strangely a selectable character from the start of the game.

The gameplay seems to be a mix of  different games, resembling Street Fighter games most closely in the 2D cartoon style and controls, with elements of Soul Calibur (most characters have some sort of weapon), and perhaps other anime based fighting games. Fighting is fairly fast and responsive, with each of the face buttons controlling a different type of move, and quarter turns used for special moves and combos.

The difficulty is generally good, with no real challenge in getting to the boss fight. The fight itself however can be tricky, as Earth is overpowered and has many health-draining special moves. It's certainly less tricky than most Street Fighter games, though. On the whole the action is somewhat tedious, with no real flow or skill to moves and combos, but the combat does at least work as you'd expect it to.

Graphically the game is good; both by the PSP's standards and in general; characters are well drawn and animated, and you'd have a hard time convincing me that this was actually published by Midas in the UK. The music is a pretty generic rock accompaniment to fights, but it fits well enough and doesn't get repetitive enough to grate on players.

Overall Spectral vs Generation is a mediocre fighting game at best, giving players a sense of playing Street Fighter, without the speed customisation options, wide choice of characters or interesting character motivations. It's by far one of the best games Midas has ever had a hand in publishing, and I could recommend it without feeling too sorry for whoever had to play it, but it's nowhere near classic as a fighter.

Rating: 63/100
Grade: C

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games): Day 9 - Super Slammin' Dodgeball

Game; Super Slammin' Dodgeball
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: Access
Release Date: 2001

As the only entry in the 12 Days of Midas to be from the Simple Series, you might expect Super Slammin Dodgeball to be slightly worse than even the most hideous budget games featured so far. At first glance that definitely appears to be the case, with mediocre cartoon images featured on the box art and menus, and a choice of Single Game, Tournament and Tutorial modes available from the main menu.

As tutorial mode is literally a slideshow of images detailing the game's controls, and Single Game mode is essentially playing just the first round of a Tournament mode game, it's safe to say that there's not a great deal of content included. Even the options menu has a pitiful amount of things to fiddle with, difficulty being the only one that affects gameplay in any way.

Gameplay follows the general rules of Dodgeball in that any player hit by the ball without catching it is out of the game. Catching a throw doesn't result in elimination, however and players often cross the centre line of the court without consequence. The strangest change to the rules is the inclusion of three players from each team along the sides of the court who are also able to eliminate opposing players with their throws, but don't need to be eliminated in order to win a match. I can only assume these players were included in order to speed up gameplay and eliminate the need for rules regarding out of bounds throws.

The controls are simple and allow for anyone to quickly master the game, but this also means that there's no advanced strategies to use. Beating the game is fairly straightforward; players must win 6 games to become champions and then play a final game against "The Elementals" who appear to be a race of alien Dodgeball players, to become the best team in the world. Once the game has been beaten once, players can play as The Elementals.

Graphically the game uses 2D sprites which while more primitive than other games of the time is probably a good decision as budget games never really got the hang of good looking 3D graphics. The art style is bearable, and although there's a lot of reused sprites throughout the game, there's a strange Mega Drive era feel to the visuals. The music behind gameplay doesn't really fit the action in any way, but its better than complete silence.

Overall while the Dodgeball action is generally enjoyable in a flash game sort of way, the lack of depth and unlockable content cripples the game's replayability. I felt like I'd experienced everything the game had to offer after 20 minutes or so, in which time I'd completed Tournament mode twice. Perhaps with a little more to do, and some deeper strategy, this could have been a hidden gem, but that's a lot to expect from a Midas published title.

Rating: 38/100
Grade: E

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 8: Toy Racer

Game: Toy Racer
Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: No Cliche
Release Date: 22nd December 2000

Nowadays the concept of a multiplayer only game is fairly common as single player campaign modes are paid less attention and online gaming enjoys continued popularity. Back in 2000 however, online home console gaming was in its infancy, making the release of Toy Racer notable. While there was an offline multiplayer mode to go alongside the online aspect, anyone attempting to play the game alone could only drive around the tracks by themselves in training mode, without any AI opposition.

While I'm not a huge fan of games which exclude the single player element entirely, I have to consider the multiplayer merits of this game or there'd be nothing to consider. Like many games released in the late 90s and early 00s, Toy Racer is in many ways a Mario Kart clone, with elements of Micro Machines thrown in for good measure. As a sort of spin-off from the Toy Commander series, this isn't particularly surprising though it's a shame that so little effort went into developing original gameplay ideas.

The handling of all vehicles is fairly slidey, as you might expect from miniature cars. It's something that's easy to get used to and on the whole, racing is pretty fun with a good sense of speed. Conversely the track design is pretty poor, even considering circuits which find their way up walls and onto the ceiling. Add this to a mediocre selection of cars, with nothing left for players to unlock and without seeing the £5 pricetag, you'd know that this is a budget title.

The multiplayer experience is perhaps one of the weakest parts of the game. There's no way to access the official online multiplayer for the Dreamcast anymore, so online play isn't an option, and local multiplayer causes a lot of framerate issues with the game, making all movement and animation incredibly jerky and inconsistent.

Graphically the game isn't particularly bad, which is surprising considering just how budget other aspects of it are. While some of the textures on the tracks leave a little to be desired, the vehicles are all nicely designed and presented. The music that plays behind races is pretty generic, but not in a bad way; it's almost exactly what you'd expect to be featured on this sort of game.

Overall Toy Racer could have been a fairly average budget racing game with the small addition of some CPU opponents and a single player mode, but instead it sits firmly near the bottom of the Dreamcast rankings thanks to framerate issues and the lack off access to Dreamcast servers for the game, rendering it even more useless than it once was.

Rating: 37/100
Grade: E

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 7: Pacific Warriors II: Dogfight

Game: Pacific Warriors II: Dogfight
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: InterActive Vision Games
Release Date: 1st October 2004

Before playing this particular game, my expectations of World War II aeroplane games were based entirely on "Secret Weapons Over Normandy" for PS2, a fairly comprehensive and exciting account of the air battles of the war. While I wasn't expecting too much from a Midas published title, I found the experience to be frustratingly close to being an enjoyable game on some levels.

With campaign being the only game mode, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's another classic case of a shallow budget title, but there's a fair set of missions from both the American and Japanese sides of the war. The selection of planes is slightly more limited, with one fighter and one bomber for each side for a total of 4 planes. By completing missions, players earn upgrade points and can improve aspects of their planes for more effective use during missions.

Controlwise, the game is pretty solid; apart from having no real sense of speed, aeroplanes handle as you might expect them to. L1 and L2 buttons increase and decrease overall speed, R1 and R2 control weapons such as rockets and bombs, and the d-pad gives a selection of viewing angles from around the plane. Strangely though, the game seems to change viewing angles of its own accord at random points during missions, which is offputting even at the best of times.

Missions themselves are incredibly linear and short, usually with a single objective such as "shoot down all the planes" or "sink the ships". Once this is achieved, the next mission is unlocked alongside some story in the form of text. The variety of missions is also pretty narrow; there wasn't a single memorable objective in the whole American campaign.

Graphically the game is mixed; plane textures and graphics are average at best, as are the ground locations, however much of the map is uninteresting and empty. This gives a strange impression to flight which can only be compared to flying over some sort of post-apocalyptic world. The music and sound effects are generally good, and in fact reminded me of the style of audio used in Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

Overall Pacific Warriors II isn't a bad game in terms of gameplay, but its lack of variety, planes, true mission depth and graphical quality lets it down in many ways. A lot of work would be needed to make the game truly enjoyable but the basics are there, unlike many Midas published games. This is a game that might be worth playing on a rainy day as a basis for comparison to other war flying games.

Rating: 45/100
Grade: D

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 6: Mary King's Riding Star

Game: Mary King's Riding Star
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: Midas Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: 2000

You might think that a horse riding game is a strange choice to review, and I'll admit it's not something I'd have predicted being remotely interested in. A while back whilst browsing the top rated original Playstation sports games, I noticed that this particular title was at #4 and something like #27 overall on the console. Delving further uncovered mainly positive reviews for the game, and only served to heighten my interest as to how this game could be so acclaimed.

After playing for a while, I'm pretty sure that I now understand the generally high scores for the game, despite it being published by Midas. The sort of people who are keen to purchase and play a game about grooming, keeping and riding horses are not the sort of people who also enjoy 80 hour RPGs, or artsy games generally speaking. Simply finding a game that allows them to simulate one of their interests seems to be enough to enjoy its content, and this seems to be where the high ratings have come from.

Gameplay is split into two distinct sections; the first is presented as an almost tamagotchi style point and click animal care game, with meters for overall horse health, thirst, hunger and grooming. In order to keep the horse healthy, players must ensure these meters are full, by performing the necessary tasks and navigating the stables to find the necessary equipment. To assist players in knowing what to do, the farm owner and player character engage in awfully levelled and voice acted dialogue which is far too quiet to hear, and of little help anyway.

The other section of the game deals with "three day eventing" which consists of dressage, showjumping and cross country. Using an overhead view, players steer their horse whilst controlling its speed and timing any necessary jumps so as to clear obstacles. Not only are all of the challenges far too precise and difficult for anyone who isn't completely obsessed with horse racing, the controls are confusing and never explained. After three attempts to place better than 10th in a competition, I gave up and wondered whether it might be easier to enter such an event in real life and place.

Graphically the game is poor with an overhead camera angle for riding sections and a simply animated set of environments and models for the horse care section. Perhaps a camera angle from behind players would have benefited the game, as players could then judge the distance between fences much more easily than having them appear from offscreen unexpectedly. The music that accompanies gameplay seems out of place, though it'd only really fit Build Mode in The Sims. As for sound effects and voice clips, everything's pretty low quality and awful.

Overall Mary King's Riding Star seems to be a game targeted towards horse lovers/riders rather than people like myself. One issue with this however, is that most horse riders will go and ride one instead of switching their Playstation on to simulate equestrian sport. The very small market that this game was made for seemed to enjoy it upon its release, but essentially its just another poorly made Midas title.

Rating: 18/100
Grade: F

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 5: Ski Air Mix

Game: Ski Air Mix
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: KID
Release Date: 1st September 2000

As is often the case with Midas published games Ski Air Mix was brought over from Japan, having been published there in 1998. The concept of the game is fairly simple; players make their way down 5 different slopes, attempting to beat the record for either fastest descent or highest number of "air points". Once at the bottom of the slope, scores are ranked against the high score list and the game resets.

Overall the experience is as short as it sounds; each run only lasts a few minutes and everything the game has to offer can be played in around an hour. There are options of different skis which change the top speed and handling whilst descending, and a few player models and outfits which seem to change nothing, but besides this there's very little other content except for a two player mode that pretty much mirrors the single player arcade style campaign.

Controlwise the game is fairly easy to play until the harder slopes are reached. While many of the earlier courses feature wide, open corners later stages seem far more confined and colliding with the edge of the course is a common problem. The overall gameplay experience leaves much to be desired as there's little sense of speed or excitement, and pulling off tricks is near impossible, especially if you want to get a large amount of points.

Graphically the game is impressive for having been on the original Playstation, though perhaps not as impressive for having been released in the year 2000. Most of the time its easy enough to see obstacles to your descent, and only hitting the edges of the course seems to hinder progression. Overall Ski Air Mix is a short game with very little content, barely enjoyable gameplay, and poor slope design in the later stages; a typical Midas experience.

Rating: 30/100
Grade: E

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 4: Charlie's Angels

Game: Charlie's Angels
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Neko Entertainment
Release Date: 4th July 2003

Video games based on movies don't usually fall into the budget category of games, however if this game's budget was anything over £20, I'm convinced that the majority of it went towards anything but making the game enjoyable. The game falls loosely into the 3D beat 'em up genre, featuring rooms full of enemies for players to defeat before they can move onto the next room of enemies, eventually reaching an objective which swaps characters and continues the storyline.

Cutscenes inbetween missions are loosely based around the first and second Charlie's Angels films, and are badly written and voice acted. After each cutscene, players are assigned an individual angel who they can control either until they reach the objective or until they wish to switch to another of the girls. Completing objectives for all of the girls will end the level and result in the player's score being displayed.

The controls for fighting have slow response times and the moves themselves have long animations, meaning that it's difficult to predict when's best to hit opponents. The circle button is used to jump, although your angel leaps higher into the air than humanly possible and floats downwards, so calling it jumping is somewhat inaccurate. In terms of attacks, players are able to punch and kick with the Triangle and Square buttons, with the X button used to pick up weapons.

The AI isn't particularly bright and will stand near your angel waiting to be hit most of the time, but enemies can be a little tough in large groups. The action gets tedious very quickly as there's no effort to change up gameplay between sections or levels and there are only really 2 buttons worth pressing for the most part. At no time does the fighting feel satisfying, realistic or even exciting.

Graphically the game is below par also with blocky player models, low quality textures and animations, and generally poor visuals. To say that the angels don't look much like their onscreen counterparts may be an understatement, and apart from an incredibly short loop of "Get Free" by The Hives on the menu screen, the game's accompaniment consists of muzak-esque tracks and completely awful voice clips.

Overall it's hard to convey how truly bad of a game this is. Considering the technology of the time, it's probably the worst beat 'em up I've ever played, and that includes 'classics' such as Double Dragon on the Master System and Amstrad CPC. While it's not unplayable, I can't think of a single reason why anyone'd want to give this a go, aside from its notoriety as a terrible video game. So for anyone thinking of playing Charlie's Angels, it really is as bad as they say.

Rating: 22/100
Grade: F

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 3: Tokyo Road Race

Game: Tokyo Road Race
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Taito
Release Date: 22nd November 2002

Most Midas published titles I play have very few game modes to experience, but I think we may have reached a new low with Tokyo Road Race. It's bad enough that the only gameplay options are Arcade mode and Free Run mode, without even the option for a two player experience, but to top things off, playing in arcade mode only allows players to drive single races before being given the option to retry the race, no matter what position they finish. There's very little incentive to do well in the game, as the same result occurs once the race finishes, whatever happens.

With four tracks to choose from initially (one being an oval, and the others getting progressively narrower and badly designed), players can unlock up to 10 tracks in total, but actually winning races in order to do so is challenging enough thanks to the handling and general design of most courses. Added to the lacklustre racing experience, there's not a lot of reason to attempt unlocking more tracks.

The game seems to be attempting to emulate the success of titles such as Gran Turismo by including a choice of licensed cars from 6 manufacturers. The cars themselves aren't modelled too badly and there's around 40 to choose from, but as the AI cars are matched to the performance of yours it's a no-brainer to go for a slower car that handles more predictably, over some of the faster options. Having said this, even the slower cars appear to try and steer themselves at times, veering to the right or left as if magnetically attracted to the barriers.

Design-wise Tokyo Road Race seems to take the worst elements of arcade and simulation games and combines them. From arcade racers it takes its time limit, despite AI cars not being affected by a timer (one of my arcade racing pet hates), and a general lack of a 'bigger picture' or goal to work towards, besides unlocking a few more tracks, and from simulation games it takes its car choice which is strangely limited, despite featuring 40 cars, and heavy handling which doesn't fit the arcade style at all.

Graphically the game isn't noticeably bad, though there are points where backgrounds and crowd effects are pretty blurred. Additions such as tire smoke and fireworks look particularly 2D when compared to the rest of the game also. Musically the game is utterly forgettable with generic rock being the main accompaniment to gameplay and menu screens.

Overall Tokyo Road Race feels like the bare bones of an arcade racing game, hastily thrown together for the PS2. With racers being so prevalent on the system, this isn't a great approach to take, since it's easy to name at least 50 games that are better in every way. While I wouldn't say that Tokyo Road Race is awful, there's certainly no reason for anyone to play it for more than an hour.

Rating: 30/100
Grade: E

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 2: Sky Surfer

Game: Sky Surfer
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: TOKA
Release Date: 6th July 2001

Having found this title for 15p in my local CEX store, I was unsurprised to find that Midas Interactive Entertainment had published it; after all games even mentioned by Midas seem to lose all value immediately. The general idea of the game is that players partake in an extreme form of skydiving which begins with a freefall in which tricks can be performed, followed by a Pilotwings-esque stage with gates to parachute through. Besides the game's main mode (Dive to Air), there's only a balloon popping minigame and a multiplayer mode; a shortage of things to do is a staple feature of Midas games.

In Dive to Air mode, players can pick from one of the four characters (America, France, Germany and Japan), one of four boards with varied stats, and one of three locations to 'sky surf' in. The first is Easy, allowing players to play in a tutorial mode (which explains very little of how to actually play), or to play without the worry of failing by losing control of their descent. Medium and Hard modes both quit the game the moment players lose control.

To keep control of your surfer's balance whilst descending, the left analog stick is used to keep the red cross in the centre circle in the bottom left of the screen. Unfortunately not only is this incredibly difficult to do, the controls are also inverted and extremely unresponsive. In Medium and Hard modes I wasn't able to play for longer than 20 seconds due to losing control. Once players have control of the surfer, tricks can be performed by pressing certain combinations of buttons. After the trick has been done, players are also invited to rotate, but there's no clear indication of how to do so, and after at least 8 attempts, I gave up trying to crack the code.

Once players have descended for 1 minute 30 seconds, they're told to open their parachute. With no indication of how to do so, I had to turn to an online FAQ to find out that I was required to press R1, R2, L1 and L2 simultaneously. The parachuting section of the game is also pretty bland, as well as being equally difficult to control. Once again the controls are inverted, but much of the time player input is ignored and the on-screen character will steer themselves in any direction they want. This is as frustrating as it sounds and spoils the small amount of fun the game might have held.

Graphically the game is very poor, especially in the main game mode, where the ground is a foggy pixellated mess. It's no excuse that you're freefalling from an incredible height as there's no change once you get closer in the parachute section either. The locations are bland and uninspired, and the most fun to be found in the entire game is the balloon popping minigame, which is bearable if a little poorly designed. Musically players are treated to jazz piano behind their extreme sports which makes for an interesting contrast, as well as an announcer who'll only exclaim "My God!" every time you finish a trick badly.

Overall Sky Surfer is the definition of a budget game, with poor controls and gameplay, a complete lack of content, options and game mode, outdated graphics even for the era, unfitting music and terrible voice acting. Even for 15p this game wasn't particularly good value as it holds no real enjoyment at all. As I've said time and time again; Stay away from Midas published video games!

Rating: 4/100
Grade: F

12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 1: Crazy Frog Racer 2

It's Christmas, so what better time to play as many awful games as possible? For the next 12 days I'm going to be taking a look at some of the worst experiences the world of budget video gaming has to offer. While I'm calling this the 12 Days of Midas, in reality only around half of the games are going to be by Midas Interactive, with the other half made up of equally disappointing companies.

Game: Crazy Frog Racer 2
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Neko Entertainment
Release Date: 6th September 2007

I'm fairly certain that most if not all people aged 14 and above will remember "The Annoying Thing" or "Crazy Frog" as he was marketed by Jamster!. Originally just a silly animation and soundclip, the character was licensed and used to sell ringtone service subscriptions with over 70,000 adverts airing on British TV channels in May 2005; so many in fact that there were an unprecedented amount of complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency.

Despite this, various remixes of famous songs featuring the Crazy Frog were released and even made it to the number 1 spot in many charts. It stands to reason then, that eventually a video game would be released to further promotion of the brand. And so, Crazy Frog Racer and its sequel were released.

The core gameplay is essentially that of a Mario Kart clone, with some elements of F-Zero mixed in for good measure. All of the tracks featured in the game are floating in the middle of nowhere, and have no real defining features or interest to them. Items are available to help players gain positions, but unlike Mario Kart they're extremely ineffective; so much so that there's more chance of hindering your own progress than helping it.

The handling is pretty awful whether players choose to use the analog stick or the d-pad; with the analog stick, it's very touchy and even the slightest movement will result in a wild turn, but with the d-pad the handling resembles early ps1 era racing games, where turning only occurs after holding the desired direction down for a short while.

The overall difficulty of the game is hard to define as it varies based on track design, the racer you pick, and whether or not you're able to come to terms with the handling. On simple tracks whose coners don't require telepathy to navigate  the game is insultingly easy, allowing players to finish miles ahead of the opposition. However there are many tracks with unexpected turns, badly designed jumps and other flaws. When racing on these, it's almost impossible not to finish last.

In addition to the main racing mode, players can also attempt mini games. There's an unenjoyable Dance Dance Revolution clone as well as a poorly made pinball game which seems to be never ending. Honestly I'm not sure what's worse as both games seem like half baked attempts at adding content to a game that had very little to begin with.

Graphically the game is nothing special, although it's not as bad as it could have been either. The biggest issue is with the music, as every mode features songs remixed to include the Crazy Frog which tend to grate on the ears after the first 10 seconds or so. Having sat through Axel F, Popcorn, Hey Baby, The Final Countdown and I'm Too Sexy being thoroughly trashed, I'd have to say that the best way to play this if you're going to at all is on mute.

Overall Crazy Frog Racer 2 is exactly as bad as you'd expect it to be. The racing is shallow and bland, with a poor variety and quality of tracks, the minigames are pitiful and are essentially clones of existing games but with far less appeal and everything is set to the music that we were all sick and tired of 9 years ago after being bombarded with ringtone ads. All in all, not a bad way to start this look at 12 of the worst games ever.

Rating: 25/100
Grade: F