ShaolinAce
Ninja Combat Warrior
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2019
- Posts
- 528
If you had to choose one? Which gives you more enjoyment?
My reason for liking Ninja Commando is It's a 2d game with some 3d elements, pretty art style, fun gameplay, cool music, has a classic shtmup element, cool bosses.
Its funny how when I first started buying MVS games, 2nd squad was one of the first games I owned. I didn't know much about the first one until people started making threads about it being better then the 2nd. When I finally got ahold of the 1st one I was blown away at how good it was and how good it looked.
Even if the slow down was fixed in the 2nd one I really hate the art direction they took. That 2d wannabe 3d art style just doesn't look or feel right compared to the first one.. 2nd Squad is a Neo game I could live without.
I thought there was some 3d effect when performing specials in Ninja Commando. Maybe I'm mixing it up with another game.Errr... what 3D elements?
I'll admit that the hand-drawn pixel art of Ninja Commando is more appealing to look at than the rendered stuff in 2nd Squad of course. I don't think NC has better music though, it's not bad but 2nd Squad has some absolute bangers.
There are some cool bosses in Ninja Commando, they're huge... and then a giant samurai runs forward and takes off 50% of your life with one hit...
What it really comes down to is that I don't think the gameplay is as good. For one credit play purposes you absolutely have to be doing the special moves over and over, especially on bosses. It's neat at first doing fighting game special moves but it gets old and doesn't feel as satisfying to me as chaining together a bunch of melee kills on 2nd Squad.
The rest of this post is exactly what I'm talking about, people writing off 2nd Squad because the comparisons to the original are unavoidable, so nobody wants to take the game on its own merits without comparing it to the original. Or writing it off because they'd rather focus on graphics over gameplay.
Shock Troopers 2nd Squad is a hugely misunderstood game that deserves better. I'd rather play 2nd Squad over any Metal Slug that came out after X, and yes that includes 3.
Word.My reason for liking Ninja Commando is It's a 2d game with some 3d elements, pretty art style, fun gameplay, cool music, has a classic shtmup element, cool bosses.
Shock Troopers > Ninja Commando > Shock Troopers 2nd Squad
So you were mistaken about something and then tell me to "Err the fuck off" when I only said that about the thing I wanted clarification on. Okay! If it was about the C button specials, I understand, but that's just good ol' fashioned sprite scaling since they always tried to work that into all those old Neo-Geo games.I thought there was some 3d effect when performing specials in Ninja Commando. Maybe I'm mixing it up with another game.
You can Errr all you want. I could care less what you think. I've been playing the Neo-Geo for almost 3 decades and I like what like. You asked why I like Ninja Commando and I told you. I'm not arguing, just giving you my opinion.
Err the fuck off.
Always interesting to see feedback on gameplay mechanic by a superplayer like you. After all, lastly you were mastering fixeight and outzone.me before I clicked on this thread - "Certainly most people here are going to say 2nd Squad is better, right?"
....oh.
I don't get it, I think people really overexaggerate how bad Shock Troopers 2nd Squad is, because it's not a bad game at all. It's a worse game than the original Shock Troopers, but the original Shock Troopers is also one of the best games on the Neo-Geo, so there was no way it could ever live up to the lofty heights of the original. But 2nd Squad... is not bad! Yes, the slowdown sucks, yes the pre-rendered graphics are weird. Nobody's mentioned the bad balance with the lifebars and the half-assed special weapon system, and how you take >50% damage from pretty much every hit from stage 3 on... but at this point I don't really expect most people on this forum to really dig into gameplay-related discussion.
Despite all these things, I still think Shock Troopers 2nd Squad is a good game. It does do some things that the original doesn't have, like vehicles and the multiplier bonuses for consecutive close-range kills. That stuff is fun! And the game is still a fun challenge to play for 1CC purposes, although Leon and Toy got a much easier time. Pretty fun to play for score too if you don't know about the stage 4 leech point. It's a satisfying game that people write off too quickly because "eww slowdown, ewww graphics, this game is garbage". But it's not! Because it has the Shock Troopers name everyone compares it to the original, which is unavoidable but also puts this clear bias in people's minds that the game is automatically trash. I am certain more people would be more accepting of it if it was taken as its own game and didn't have to live in the shadow of it's predecessor.