Justice shot!

Wednesday, March 1, 2006 » gaming thought

Just got back from the revered/infamous Emerald Hills Golfland. It was pretty much deserted, maybe because everyone was waiting until this evening's $6 free play session. But, it was great having full access to all the games they had, including Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, Virtua Cop 3, Mario Kart Arcade GP, and the requisite array of music games, including a new (to me) one called Percussion Master or something along those lines.

Some thoughts:

Tekken 5: DR - The first things I noticed about this were the new character art and "remixed" stages, which were cool variations on the originals. Dragunov was fun to try and felt sort of like Kazuya, but I'll probably need more time to play this and pick up all the subtleties before I can reasonably evaluate the new characters, or the changes they made to the existing ones.

Mario Kart Arcade GP - I tried this before and wasn't too impressed, so I passed it up this time. I couldn't really get used to playing a Mario Kart game using an actual steering wheel/pedal setup, plus all of the items were pretty boring.

Virtua Cop 3 - I didn't even know this was in the works, so it was a fun surprise. Since graphics have come so far since Virtua Cop 2's blocky characters, it was hard to recognize this as a Virtua Cop game, save for the classic targeting reticles around each enemy. Upon seeing the Time Crisis-esque floor pedals in front of the cabinet, I thought maybe Sega had copped out1 and added in a hiding mechanic, but instead stepping on the pedal sends you into bullet-time, dubbed "ES mode," which lets you shoot incoming bullets or grenades out of the air. Very useful for the enemies with fast-moving reticles. Also, occasionally the action would stop and highlight several targets, like the windows of an oncoming truck, and you'd have a limited amount of time to shoot them out before the action resumed. It was hard to tell whether success in these situations affected the course of the level or maybe just saved you some health. Overall, it was pretty fun. I'm looking forward to seeing it pop up in more locations, since I've played Time Crisis 3 almost to death.

DrumMania - This was admittedly the first time I'ved tried a DrumMania game, since finally there was no long line or huge crowd gathered around the machine to see me flailing around. Verdict: It is fun to hit things with sticks, especially to Tomoyasu Hotei music. Also, I suspect this particular machine linked with the Guitar Freaks unit beside it, which I've never seen an arcade actually utilize. Didn't get to try that out, though.

Percussion Master - Speaking of hitting things with sticks, there was this other game that was sort of like an arcade version of Taiko Drum Master, except it had two extra pads on either side of the center drum. I actually think I liked this better than DrumMania, since the smaller number of targets and their more centralized arrangement made for a much more intuitive experience. I was able to pull off some decent scores on intermediate-level songs, which was not the case with DrumMania. I hope this is still there the next time, as it's apparently a couple years old.

In conclusion: Empty arcade + shooting/rhythm games = :]

1 Virtua copped out. AHAHAHAHAHA.