Skate Attack (PS2)

 As a publisher, Midas were famous mainly for two things: localising occasionally interesting Japanese budget games, and also publishing mostly-terrible original budget games. Skate Attack isn't one of the former, so my hopes for it weren't high. But I tried it anyway, being the fair-minded person that I am, and for a little while, I was pleasantly surprised! On initial inspection, this seems like not just a competent game, but one that's actually fun to play!

 

It's a skateboarding game that mostly plays and feels a lot like the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games at the most basic level. You skate around, there's quarter pipes to launch you up into the air, doing flip tricks with the square button, and grab tricks with the circle. There's also lots of rails and ledges to grind on, though Skate Attack uses R1 for this, rather than triangle. You can even do a manual upon landing, to lengthen your combos! Aesthetically, it clearly takes a lot of influence from Jet Set Radio, being set in a brightly-coloured near-future sci-fi city.

 

So, it seems like, with some pretty decent influences, and well-constructed fundamentals, that this is a game whose development was backed by real passion, and not just a cheap cash-in. But you might be wondering why, back in the first paragraph, did I specify that I was pleasantly surprised "for a little while"? Well, the answer to that (as well as the answer as to why all of the screenshots are from the same area) lies in the game's structure. The game's plot sees an evil robot demon thing named Virus forcing you to do a bunch of tasks. A big bunch of tasks. The first area, for example, has twenty-one of them, in three sets of seven. 

 

It's clear, too, that the developers quickly ran out of ideas for skateboarding-related tasks for you to do, too, since you'll soon be fighting evil robots, flying around atop stolen and fiddly-to-control drones, and other tedious nonsense. It's such a shame, because like I said, the actual skateboarding is really great, way above what you'd expect from a Midas original, and it even has a potentially interesting unique element in the grappling laser thing that lets you zoom onto the rooves of vehicles from a distance. But all these other psuedo-action game tasks are incredibly fiddly and annoying, and no fun at all.

 

Though Skate Attack turned out to be a disappointment after initially seeming to have so many things in its favour, it does appear that the developers made another skateboarding game: Skate Park City on PSP. The game's description on GameFAQs even also mentions THPS and JSR as influences, so I'll definitely be looking into that, to see if it realises the potential seen in this game. Unfortunately, whether it does or not, this is a review of Skate Attack, which is itself a game I don't recommend.

Gekifu Bakegyamon Ayakashi Fighting (DS)

 This is a game I've been meaning to write about for a long time, and finally, I'm getting around to it (the roadblock being that I misplaced my original DS and have now finally got ahold of a gizmo that can satisfactorily emulate the DS and take screenshots while doing so. Unfortunately, the 3DS can only do one of those things at the same time.) It's a licensed fighting game (based, unusually, on a manga that didn't get an anime adaptation), though while the fashion of the time was to make such things in the style of Smash Bros., this at least appears to be more of a traditional 3D fighting game, though it quickly becomes clear that it's quite a bit more experimental than that.

 

If you start playing with story mode, then the controls will probably be the first weird thing you encounter. There's only one attack button, that can be repeatedly pressed for a short beat em up-like combo. There's also a jump button, a special move button, and a button to crouch and pick up cards off the ground. And you block with the right shoulder button. Those cards, then: you start a match with four of them, and can hold up to eight. They're kept on the touchscreen, and you touch them to activate them, each one representing a different spell. Some are big powerful elemental attacks, others temporarily increase your stats, or decrease those of your opponent.

 

That's not all, as as soon as you win or lose a round, you'll encounter the next weird thing: every fight is a King of Fighters-style elimination battle between teams of three. Furthermore, the manga upon which the game is based is apparently a kind of horror-themed pokemon-type deal, so all the characters are monsters, mainly youkai-type guys. (Maybe they're all youkai? It's a little outside my realm of expertise. But there's tengu and kappa, at least). And of course, each team is acting as the proxy for some kid. Oddly, in free battle mode, you pick a kid, and then you can form a team out of all the monsters you've so far unlocked, while in story mode, each kid has a predetermined trio of monsters. Which makes me wonder what the point of picking a kid in free battle is. Just flavour, or does each kid have specialities of their own?

 

So, it's different, but is it actually good? Kind of. It won't be your new favourite handheld fighting game or anything, and I actually did get a little bored of it after a few attempts at getting through story mode on a single credit, as well as a bunch of trying out different monsters in free battle. (Since story mode only lets you play as the protagonist, and his set team, until you unlock more characters). But it's definitely unique, and the novelty of playing as monsters and casting spells during the fights does have its appeal. Apparently the manga did get an official English translation, so fans of that might want to pick up a copy, and if you've never read it (like me), you might still want to give it a look, just for how weird and interesting it is. It is definitely more weird and interesting than it is actually good, though.