Stompy
Lieutenant
Thanks muchly to Andy for the looking, wagging and tapping!
Posts: 328
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Post by Stompy on Oct 19, 2005 16:55:15 GMT -5
I have. The Zoids Vs games still look better in my opinion. Giant Animal Stompy Robots look kind of ridiculous doing what they're doing in this game, almost out of character. The animation is quite good, the models are poor, the textures are poor and the backgrounds are okay.
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Post by 尹 眞悟 on Oct 19, 2005 21:32:07 GMT -5
I've seen Full Metal Crash in action too and I have to disagree with you. I've played VS III enough to see virtually every zoid in it in battle using most of their moves and I can't really say that the graphics were better than what I saw in FMC.
I also like the movement (from what I've seen anyway), VS III it felt like you were driving a tank rather than piloting a living machine designed for high tech warfare.
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Stompy
Lieutenant
Thanks muchly to Andy for the looking, wagging and tapping!
Posts: 328
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Post by Stompy on Oct 20, 2005 10:30:37 GMT -5
I'd have to disagree with you! (About the driving like tanks thing). Your comments are fair enough, though. All I'm saying is that I believe the giant animal mecha genre doesn't suit fighters too well, in my opinion. Of course Zoids fight, but I'd miss the long and mid range aspects of the fight in this game.
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Post by 尹 眞悟 on Oct 20, 2005 19:22:13 GMT -5
I can see where you're getting at, I thought the idea of having a fighter sim of all things was a bit ridiculous. But I still feel that in the VS series, you feel like you're piloting a *Watch your language!* rock rather than a living thing.
There's also the fact that the Struggle/Crash games actually let you use your animal forms for something. I was wondering how melee would be handled in VS and to say that I was disappointed would be an overwhelming understatement. Really, there wouldn't be so much difference between having a gundam style mech and a zoid in the VS series what with how melee is handled.
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Post by Silverliger on Oct 20, 2005 19:25:03 GMT -5
I'd have to disagree with you! (About the driving like tanks thing). Your comments are fair enough, though. All I'm saying is that I believe the giant animal mecha genre doesn't suit fighters too well, in my opinion. Of course Zoids fight, but I'd miss the long and mid range aspects of the fight in this game. Oh like when you can go on top of a cliff and snipe our your characters. Yea, that's fun! Some other things on this game that I've seen through screenies and on the website is that you can knock armor off of your opponent (Unlike any of the Versus). Also, you can bite! ^^ |
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Post by adamassc on Oct 20, 2005 19:34:14 GMT -5
I must admit minor dissapointment myself. I loved the VS games because of the freedom of movement in them.
I've never really told anyone this, but I have a small obsession with sniping targets. FMC might be fun, but it won't be the same if I can't hide among the buildings and pick off my opponents before they ever even see me.
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 20, 2005 19:37:44 GMT -5
The fighting in Struggle was very similar to the arena matches of Fuzors, the CC episode when Van toasted Raven's Genosaurer, the GF episode where Thomas and Karl (under Reese's control) fought inside, the NC0 episode when Bit first fought Stoller, and many other small area fights.
Struggle set out to represent a subset of Zoid battle, just as VS did. In the case of VS, the subset was that of medium-long range, multi zoid combat, and it did a good job. Struggle focused on mano-e-mano close range combat, and did a superlative job. Unlike a lot of fighters, the controls were kept simple, and the damage system was very neat.
So yeah, Struggle (and presumably FMC) did a terrible job at doing what VS did, but did a great job doing what it was meant to. The zoid models and lighting effects made for great presentation as well.
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Smilodon
Lance Corporal
Cat Zoid Fanatic
Posts: 64
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Post by Smilodon on Nov 13, 2005 19:49:53 GMT -5
After having played Full Metal Crash for a bit, these are my thoughts. I wish I had done more reading and realised that it was just a Zoids Struggle rehash, with few obvious differences. Graphically, the texturing appears low quality to me, both in resolution and appearance. The models themselves feel out of proportion and very blocky. I guess the word I'm looking for is "outdated". The destroyable armor bits are a sort of nice touch, as with the previous version.
There were a few minor niggles with the posing of the Zoids, like the Blade liger looking as if it has a neck problem, the head posed much lower on the body than in the anime or model when you start fighting and so on. The backgrounds were similarly lacking. Other fighters from years ago had considerably nicer looking environments.
The animation is pretty poor in my opinion, certainly lacking the fluidity of the VS titles where the Zoids often moved quite smoothly and the running didn't look too awkward. I didn't find much that really grabbed me about the gameplay, but I have to bear in mind I may have missed some things, seeing as it's mostly in Japanese so there was a bit of guesswork involved as with Struggle ( and of course the graphics weren't helping me either ).
The sound was the same as Struggle. Not particularly inspiring especially during the story mode conversations and a fairly limited soundtrack, nothing really stood out there.
All in all, I am pretty disappointed I bought it. Poor graphics, movement that really isn't very convincing, and lacklustre gameplay. I'd love a good Zoids fighter, but unfortunately for me, this isn't it. If they addressed the visual issues I'd probably get into it quite a lot more. As far as fighting games go, this one just sadly didn't rate in my opinion, but if you enjoyed Struggle and want more of the same sort of stuff, I imagine you'll like it. I -wanted- to like it!
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Post by KAndrw on Nov 13, 2005 20:58:54 GMT -5
Other fighters from years ago had considerably nicer looking environments. <snip> Poor graphics You cannot compare FMC with mainstream fighters, especially not the franchise ones. Those games have orders of magnitude more money behind them and a huge fanbase. Zoids is a niche property. FMC and Struggle used Renderware for graphics. RW is a multi-platform middleware solution for video game graphics. It is considerably more powerful than anything a small-medium sized development team could create within the scope of a project, but it is not as powerful as the sort of platform-specific graphics engine that a major project can demand. The human-based fighters tend to use models of approximately the same shape and size, though some of the more recent titles have experimented with more extreme variations. FMC has a considerably greater range of model geometries, which in turn limits the type of interactions between the zoids. From a coding point of view, FMC is in some ways far more sophisticated than Tekken 5. The enormous number of permutations of weapons makes for a very complex system to balance. Personally, I think that the graphics in FMC are pretty good. The stompies stomp convincingly. The small, fast zoids move convincingly as well. Hell, the Liger Zero in FMC turns better than the LZ in the Fuzors anime! I don't agree that the animation in VS looked better, but if it did, that was probably a function of the very different game types - FMC had to devote a lot more of its animation resources to close-up action, which is much harder to make look good (trust me, I spent several months this year trying to use game graphics to do convincing cutscenes!) In terms of prettiness, a niche title like FMC could never compete with the franchise fighters. I'm always a bit disappointed when I hear people criticise games by comparing their graphics to X (where X is the current big-budget tedium of whatever genre is considered closest to the game in question) - it's that attitude that winds up with the sort of situation that you currently see in US television: the trend away from risks and originality. I love Struggle and FMC. I far prefer them to fighting games like Tekken. They have an elegant simplicity that Tekken lost a long time ago. A new player can pick up FMC in a fraction of the time it takes to pick up Tekken, and that makes for much more interesting matches. In my opinion.  Totally disagree with your stance, but pleased to have read it nevertheless! |
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Smilodon
Lance Corporal
Cat Zoid Fanatic
Posts: 64
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Post by Smilodon on Nov 13, 2005 21:20:13 GMT -5
Sure, I do understand that. I'm not expecting it to be up there with the latest fighters. I was just surprised at the lack of good modelling and decent backgrounds, when I found so much to like about the VS offerings in the past. I'm actually more comparing the game to Versus than other fighters. I'm not really a big fighter gamer myself, but I do appreciate graphical aspects of games done to a reasonable level. That's imply a personal standard. As someone who's involved in software QA and development I do have an understanding of the huge amount of grind that is required to create software, games in particular with all the graphical assets and so on required. There may be a bit of a misinterpretation here. I'm not expecting it to look "pretty". I'm not expecting it to be as good graphically as a decent gamecube fighter from say, 3 years ago. I'm a gameplay person myself first and foremost and I hate games that are all style and no substance. I'd agree that too much of a focus on looks -does- kill originality and innovation with games ( so do shareholders mind you ). However, graphics are important to some extent in these sorts of games for me and movement, textures and modelling all play a part in how I tend to see it. Obviously though, we've got different preferences as to what is "decent". Don't give me 50 ( in my opinion ) not so well modelled / animated Zoids with low res textures, give me 10 that look and feel the part, and more engrossing gameplay. Part of that comes down to the feel of the movement and impacts and so on. For the record, I can't stand Tekken either It just felt fiddly and not very "solid" when characters struck each other and so on, a very good example of style over substance imo! I guess what I was mainly trying to say here was "If you like Struggle, you'll like this. I liked some earlier Zoids game offerings like VS and Saga, and I didn't like this. Here's why". I hate giving negative reviews so if it came across as me just bashing FMC, that certainly wasn't my intent. I'm glad that others are enjoying it for sure! P.S. Wow another NZ Zoidfan. Cool |
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Post by KAndrw on Nov 13, 2005 21:29:39 GMT -5
Don't give me 50 ( in my opinion ) poorly animated Zoids with low res textures, give me 10, and more engrossing gameplay I make 16 or 17 distinct models out of the lineup of 31 - about half are variations like Elephander CT, LZ Panzer and Genobreaker/Genosaurer. I suspect that the texture resolution is carry-over from Struggle on PS2, which is very good at pushing polygons but has rather pitiful texture resources. I thoroughly enjoy the fighting, but the story makes me want to stab the controller. Gragh! |
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Smilodon
Lance Corporal
Cat Zoid Fanatic
Posts: 64
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Post by Smilodon on Nov 13, 2005 21:32:40 GMT -5
You'll have to pardon me, I was just pulling random numbers out of my head really to make a general point. In this specific example I'd even be happy with 5 basic models or so if it was going to improve quality, although I'm sure that wouldn't wash with a bunch of other Zoidfans and people who'd miss their favorite Zoid so it is understandeable. The story makes me wish I could read Japanese instead of having to sit there impatiently hammering the "next" button and then wondering what I've just agreed to |
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Post by Silverliger on Dec 13, 2005 22:17:28 GMT -5
I have a question. For those who own the game, what are some of the unlockable zoids? (Not the ones you start out with)
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Post by KAndrw on Dec 13, 2005 23:12:35 GMT -5
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Post by Silverliger on Dec 14, 2005 10:23:01 GMT -5
Oh ok, wow, there is still alot to unlock. Oh and by the way, how do you save? (My copy is on it's way) |
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