by BBH » Fri Nov 09, 2007 10:48 am
Okay then, this is probably going to be miscontrued as "BBH sure does like to complain about stuff", but whatever.
The Japanese romset would have been a much, much, much better choice for this round. The "World" version of Undercover Cops is just plain horrible, and feels downright unfinished in comparison.
What makes the two versions different? Well, the main thing is that the characters in the Japanese have a much more varied assortment of moves. You can do a special dashing jump attack, you can do different variations of the main combo attack by holding the joystick in a different direction, and there are different throws when you grab the enemy. In the World version, all of that is gone. Only one dashing attack, only one attack combo, only one type of grab. Having such a limited pool of moves to use makes the game feel a lot more repetitive. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the regular attack combo is damn near worthless because the attacks come out sooooo slowly... in the Japanese version they come out faster, so there's a lot less occurences of the enemies walking away (or hitting you) when you're trying to do a basic attack combo.
The Assessment Day stuff seems different too - the game does not award stars for the "finesse bonus" as quickly on the Japanese version, but then the bosses are worth more money. I'm not sure if it's easier to reach the game's "quota" on the Japanese version, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me.
There are some other cosmetic differences in the graphics, and the music is a LOT better in the Japanese version. The scoring system is different in that everything in the Japanese version is worth 10 times as many points, not really sure why and doesn't really make one version better than the other, but it's strange.
There is however, one more major omission on the World version that's led me to make this post. THERE IS NO BONUS TALLY FOR COMPLETING THE FINAL STAGE. This is a HUGE deal, because there is a special bonus on the Japanese version where it awards 500,000 points for each remaining life at the end of the game. There is no bonus like that whatsoever in the World version. All you get is 9999 (WTF???) points for killing the last boss, and then... that's it. The bonus for remaining lives is a fair system... without it, anyone who finishes the game is always going to have a score that ends up in the same basic score range. In fact, it's possible for a player with more lives remaining to lose to someone with fewer lives remaining but a higher score! I'm not sure if that's going to be a huge issue in this round, because I can't say for sure how many players are actually going to finish this. But I'm curious as to what you coordinators think about this issue, because I think it might just end up being a problem.
I know it's too late for us to be playing a different romset, but... ugh, the difference between these two versions is so huge, it's so unfortunate that we have to play the version that's vastly inferior in every single way possible.
Chalk this post up to more trademark BBH whining if you want, but I had to get that off my chest.
i prefer the other formula even if you meet TRB on a SF game 
