Like I mentioned in this post, the PSX Patlabor game had a demo. It was bundled together with Macross: Do You Remember Love? This game came in 3 discs. The game itself was in the first 2 discs, while disc 3 contains 2 demos: one for Macross VF-X2, and another for Patlabor. Let's see what are the differences between the demo and the final game.
Just to remind you, this demo came out in May 27, 1999 (same day as Macross: Do You Remember Love? was released), and the final game came out in November 30, 2000.
First things first - this seems like the second version of this demo (I was told there was another demo at that year's Tokyo Game Show), like it says on the title screen of the demo. The game was just called "Patlabor - The Game" back then. The demo contains one mission divided into two parts. If you complete or fail the mission, you're booted back to the beginning.
The first thing you'll see is that the demo has a different style of cutscenes. The first cutscene is a fullscreen still of Captain Goto giving you the briefing. The final version has an opaque text box and smaller images. Also, you see an FMV of Unit 3 being deployed. This is done in CGI (computer graphics) style. This FMV doesn't feature in the final game.
For the demo itself, it's a completely different game. I guess this version was almost completely scrapped, given that the final game came out 1 and a half years later. The controls are completely different, and the Ingram has a very different feel. It definitely feels more sluggish and "stompy". The demo uses tank controls instead of the more arcade-like controls of the final game, and there's no grapple system. All your attacks are done with button pushes, no need to initiate a mini-game everytime.
The demo mission has two parts: in the first one, you walk down a straight road and fight a Labor at the end, and in the second one, you must search inside a bunch of warehouses for switches to open doors.
The controls are as follows:
D-Pad: move
X: low kick
O: punch
SQUARE: push/pull stuff, fire gun, use baton
TRIANGLE: walk slowly (can also strafe)
R1: first person view, aim with gun
R2: changes camera angle
L1 (hold): changes weapon
L2: rotates the camera angle around the Ingram
Up, Up: run forwards
Down, Down: quick backstep
Hold TRIANGLE, push left or right twice: jump to the side
X during running: slide
CIRCLE during running: tackle
First, the running controls are completely different, and you can also do an action while you're running. You can select and use weapons during action, by holding L1 and using Up or Down to choose a weapon. In the demo, you have three: no weapon, baton and Riot Cannon (the revolver). It takes a second to switch weapons. With the baton, you can push O twice to do a combo, or push SQUARE while in first person view to stab with it. With the Riot Cannon, you can take aim by holding R1. If there are enemies nearby, the game auto-aims at them.
The gauges are pretty different from the final game. Now you see your HP (armor) as a percentage, the same with batteries. You can find boxes around that can recharge armor, battery or bullets too. Looking at the gauges, you can see that you have 3 "spares" in armor and battery. If your armor goes down to 0%, you can see it goes back up to 100% and uses one spare item. The demo didn't have any spare batteries, but I guess it worked the same way as the armor. Another difference is that you have way more bullets for the Riot Cannon. You start with 18, and can get more during the stages.
For the story, the main difference is that the main character speaks, has a name (Morizono) and a portrait too. He's already the forward of Ingram Unit 3, and the woman is his backup. She goes by the same name as in the final game (Midori Soratani), although here her callsign is Soratani instead of Midori. So at least this part wasn't scrapped for the final game, just changed around a little.
The demo can be finished up in 10 to 15 minutes. It's actually not that easy, because battery drains pretty fast, and you have to find some switches to open the doors. The second part of the mission shows how you can move containers around with your Labor, by holding SQUARE. This is a very, very barebones system. It barely works, and I can see why they scrapped it.
The enemies fought in the demo are a weird tower Labor, Mice (those little red robots from Movie 1) and two normal Labors. Those two Labors show up at the end of the demo, and they seem to have an arm gatling gun. Since this is a demo, there are almost no animations to speak of, the enemies just teleport around.
So, you can see here that they wanted to do a more action-based game, but ended up scrapping this build completely, and went on with the "grapple" fighting system instead. I wonder how this game would have ended up.
If you want to see the demo in motion, there's a video here.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário