The Great PS1 Tournament of Champions: Round 3

Bracket as of Round 2:

http://betterbracketmaker.com/#!/30d3bc4ef0c15

It came down to the wire last round, but Spyro 2 managed to squeak by after an intense battle with Silent Hill. On to round 3!

Round 3: Final Fantasy IX Vs. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back!

Final Fantasy IX is the third game in the PS1 Final Fantasy mainline trilogy, and something of a swan song for Role Playing Games on the console, coming out around the same time as Breath of Fire IV, Parasite Eve II, and Chrono Cross, rounding out the last big RPG releases for the system.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back! Is the sequel to the PS1 killer app, Crash Bandicoot. The levels are bigger, Cortex is badder, and the game is an overall improvement in pretty much every conceivable way over it’s predecessor.

Graphics:

Let’s be honest here, the only part of the FF trilogy’s graphics that hold up extremely well are the pre-rendered backgrounds. Everything else goes strictly into “Your Mileage may vary” territory. Whereas Final Fantasy VII’s character models sought to recapture the sprite style of the SNES Final Fantasy game using 3D models, and Final Fantasy VIII went for full on realistic (at the time, anyway) models, Final Fantasy IX strikes a middle ground between the somewhat cartoonish style of VII, and the realistic proportions of VIII. That said… the character models are really, really, jaggy. Almost moreso than VII’s somewhat crude character models. Unless you have the smoothing option enabled when playing this on PS2/PS3/PSP/Vita/, it’s almost kind of distracting. However, it’s a game that pushes the PS1 to it’s limits moreso than any other FF game before it, a task that is admirable in it’s own right.

Crash Bandicoot 2, on the other hand, has a pretty simplistic art style in comparison to FFIX. It’s clean, cartoonish, and doesn’t attempt to get any more complicated than that. It’s that simplicity perhaps, that makes Crash 2’s visuals hold up as well as they do. PS1/N64/Saturn 3D visuals tend not to hold up well at all.  The 3D games from that era with defined art styles tend to be the ones  with visuals that age more gracefully, and Crash 2 falls squarely into that category. Crash 2 takes the visuals category.

Gameplay/Controls:

Final Fantasy IX controls about the same as any turn based RPG on the system. You walk around towns, talk to NPCs, navigate menus to equip weapons, armor, or items, and you navigate a menu during battle to attack and defend. Basic stuff, really. Nothing in it that necessarily revolutionizes the genre. The abilty to learn skills from equipped weaponry/armor is quite novel, though. The synthesis system seen in so many Square Enix games (Most notably Kingdom Hearts) has it's root in this game.

Crash 2 has somewhat simplistic controls to, at least at first. Crash can run, jump, spin and slide using the face buttons on the PS1 controller. After that, though… there’s a few other actions like the high jump, crawling, and of course, the body slam. In an era where 3D platformers lived and died by their controls and how well they controlled (*couge*sonicadventure*cough*), Naught Dog nailed the controls. Crash never feels like he’s too slippery or too stiff.nBoth games do exactly as they set out to do here gameplay-wise. I’ll call it a tie.

Replayability:

Final Fantasy IX is a pretty big game. It spans 4 discs, and every single one of those discs are packed with content. There’s mini-games to play, side quests to discover (True Story: A *very* late game sidequest was just only recently discovered in the game, 13 years after its release!) and optional bosses to fight. As far as Final Fantasy games go, this is one of the more content packed entries.

There’s no shortage of things to do.  Crash 2 is pretty much the same as Crash 1, as far as game structure goes. You play through linear levels, sometimes with hidden paths or secrets to discover, and go from point A to point B. It’s simple, and straight to the point. By discovering everything and getting 100% you can get a secret ending, but that’s about it, as far as replay value goes. Overall, there’s just so much more actual game to FFIX that I have to give the nod to IX.

Verdict:

Er… wow. Another tie. Looks like a coin flip is in order, then. Same deal as before, best two out of three.

FFIX is heads, Crash 2 is tails.

Flip 1: Tails

Flip 2: Heads

Flip 3: Tails

Looks like Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back wins. Can’t say I was expecting that!

The Great PS1 Tournament of Champions: Round 2

Updated Bracket:

http://betterbracketmaker.com/#!/87106724dca15

So far, Resident Evil 2 handily defeated Tomb Raider in Round 1. So without further ado, on to Round 2!

Round 2: Silent Hill Vs. Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage

Oh, this should be good.

Silent Hill is the inaugural title in Konami's psychological horror series. You play as Harry Mason, who finds himself in the fictional town of Silent Hill, USA as he searches for his missing daughter. Calling the game something of a mindfuck would be a massive understatement.

Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage is the second game in the PS1 Spyro trilogy, and sees him face off against the eponymous Ripto, a sorcerer wreaking havoc across the land of Avalar.

Graphics:

Spyro 2's definitely a fantastic looking PS1 game. Considering PS1 3D is hit and miss a lot of the time, 3D games with distinct art styles tend to be the ones that hold up better. (Crash Bandicoot and Megaman Legends are examples of such games) The game is colorful, runs smoothly, and the characters animate pretty well, too. If I had to come up with a list of some of the best looking games on the system, I think Spyro 2 would definitely be up there.

Then there's Silent Hill. Everything's dark, grungy and very foggy. The textures are kind of crappy. The character models leave a lot to be desired. But, this is one case where these aspects arguably work in the game's favor, rather than against it. It actively adds to the dreary, unsettling and flat out surreal atmosphere of Silent Hill. You never know what's around the corner because you can barely even see what's around the corner. That being said... from an objective standpoint, Spyro 2's still the more visually impressive game here, and to be honest, as atmospheric as Silent Hill's visuals are, they haven't aged well at all.

Gameplay/Controls:

In Spyro 2, Spyro controls about as well as you'd expect him to. The analog stick moves him around, he can jump, glide, spew fire, and charge into enemies. It's simple, but it works.

Silent Hill, like Resident Evil, employs tank controls. While tank style controls may turn of a lot of people, they work pretty well in games where it's pretty obviously designed around said controls. Silent Hill is such a game. However, it's arguably harder to transition back to in this day in age than Spyro 2's controls are. Spyro 2, on the other hand, has something of a weird camera. It's not as bad as say, some of the early 3D Sonic titles on the Dreamcast/Gamecube, but it can be disorienting.

On the gameplay side of things, Spyro 2 is your standard 3D 32-Bit platformer. It's a lot more open than the previous game. There's no shortage of tasks to perform, gems to collect, or bosses to fight. Unlike the first game, where a lot of the collectables were really only there for the sake of... well, collecting, nearly all of the collectables in 2 have a purpose, be it accessing new levels or new attacks.

Silent Hill is a lot like Resident Evil. You're thrown into a strange place with a very small amount of weapons, limited ammo, and puzzles to solve. Of course, this is all strung together by the game's plot, and the relative insanity of it sort of serves as a nice motivation to go through the game. You never know what'll get thrown at you next. As far as gameplay goes... I'd call it a tie.

Replayability:

Both games actually have a decent amount of replay value. In Spyro 2, it's tackling those sidequests to unlock new abilities, and in Silent Hill (again, like Resident Evil; Noticing a pattern here) It's completeing the game under certain conditions to unlock new endings and bonus weapons to use in a New game. Overall, I'd give the nod to Silent Hill here, if only for it's extra content being more plentiful. Once you 100% Spyro 2, you're pretty much done with it, and getting 100% in the game takes nowhere near as long as doing everything there is to do in Silent Hill.

Hmm... so with Spyro 2 taking visuals, both being tied in the gameplay department, and Silent Hill winning out in replayability, these titles seem evenly matched.. I guess there's only one way to settle this fairly: A (best two out of three) coin toss. Spyro 2 is heads, Silent Hill is tails. Alright, I've got my quarter, so let's do this.

Round 1: Heads.

Round 2: Tails

Round 3: Heads.

Verdict:

And Spyro 2 wins by way of coin toss and moves on in the tournament. It really says a lot about the quality of these games and how unprepared I was to find how evenly matched the games were that it had to come down to a coin toss, of all things.

The Great PS1 Tournament of Champions

We can all agree that the original Playstation is one of the best video game consoles of all time, right? Good.

I happened to be having a conversation with a friend about the console in question, and inevitably, we started talking about our favorite games for it. Amusingly, while we both had a list of favorite games for the console, we couldn't narrow down our favorite overall game on the console. A day later, I still found it curious that I still couldn't come to a conclusion for myself. That's when I got the idea for this.

Basically, I take my 16 favorite PS1 games, set them up in a bracket, tournament style, and take an objective look at each game, and have them face off. The one that ends up winning advances, until a winner is decided. Who doesn't love a good tournament, anyway?

So here's the Tournament Bracket.

http://betterbracketmaker.com/#!/bbe64cfcbca15

And without further ado, let's get started with the first match!

Round 1: Tomb Raider Vs. Resident Evil 2

Tomb Raider is the game that introduced the world to Lara Croft, an adventurous (and somewhat well endowed) treasure hunter. It's considered to have set the standard for 3D action adventure games to come after it, and it's influence can be seen in gaming today, most notably in the Uncharted series by Naughty Dog. It's also influential in that it was one of the first mainstream games to feature a female protagonist, something revolutionary at the time.

Resident Evil 2 is the sequel to Capcom's 1996 hit, Resident Evil. Credited with creating the "Survival Horror" sub genre, Resident Evil sees protagonists faced with a zombie outbreak, usually caused by the mysterious and powerful pharmaceutical company known as Umbrella Corporation. Resident Evil 2 would go on to become one of the most popular entries in the series, being ported to multiple platforms and having it's story adapted in multiple forms of media.

Let's take a look at them, shall we?

Graphics:

It's almost kind of unfair to compare the two in this category. Resident Evil 2 came out a full two years after Tomb Raider, and by that point, most developers had a handle on the hardware, while in '96, developers were only just starting to get their footing. 3D console development was still in it's infancy at that point. That isn't to say Tomb Raider is a particularly awful looking game, but it's visuals haven't aged well at all. Resident Evil 2, on the other hand looks decent these days, and a big part of that is it's use of pre-rendered backgrounds in lieu of polygonal based backgrounds. It still kind of dates the game's visuals a bit, but much less so than Tomb Raider. The character models, while not stellar, and a good bit more detailed than in Tomb Raider as well. Though again, it's almost unfair to compare the two given the amount of time between each other. Resident Evil 2 quite obviously wins here.

Gameplay/Controls

This is where both games kind of get weird, at least as far as controls are concerned. Both Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 2 employ "tank controls", a control method that as the name implies, gives your character the amount of gracefulness comparable to a tank. By that, I mean that the character's movement capabilities are rather limited. No matter what direction you're facing in, Up will always move you forward. Down will always move you backward, etc, etc. It works in both games, as they're obviously designed around their respective controls. I don't think either game's controls are really all that better than one other, to be honest. Lara may be a little stiffer to control, but again, it's intentional, and the game is designed around said stiffness, and quite well, I'd say. I'd call it a tie here.

The gameplay side of things is where things start to differ. Tomb Raider is a game focused on making huge jumps and solving puzzles with some gun play sprinkled in, whereas Resident Evil 2 is focused on puzzle solving, and avoiding and/or engaging zombies and other monsters with various firearms. Again, while I can't make any sort of objective decision over which has the better gameplay, I'd give the slight edge to Resident Evil 2, if only for the slightly deeper mechanics that come with it's gameplay (Limb damage, headshots, etc.)

Replayability

Resident Evil 2 wins hand down here. Once you beat Tomb Raider, you're pretty much done with the game. You have the option to play through the game with infinite ammo afterwards, but that's about it. Resident Evil 2 on the other hand, has loads of extra content. For one, it's a two disc game. Each disc contains a character scenario, and you can tackle them in any order you like. After that, you can unlock a third scenario for the game, and after that, a fourth one, as well as a score attack mini-game as well. A lot of these bonuses come from clearing the game under certain conditions, so you'll be spending a lot of time perfecting your runs through the game to get it's unlockable content. Resident Evil 2 takes this category.

Verdict:

Resident Evil 2 takes it over Tomb Raider. While it's not a bad game, it's still very much a product of it's time, and frankly, Resident Evil 2 just holds up a lot better these days. RE2 advances in the bracket.

Check out the blog later today for round 2!