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Post by Snake on Jul 5, 2019 18:55:04 GMT -5
Konami Wai Wai World, Famicom (First time, about 2.5 hours)
Bucket list game, that I finally got around to completing after playing it nearly 3 decades ago. Pity Konami never revisited this concept. How cool is it to have a game where you play as Konami Man and Konami Lady, where you must rescue Simon Belmont, Goemon, Mikey of the Goonies, King Kong, Moai Head, and Fuma. Then board either the Vic Viper or Twinbee to the last level. It plays similarly to Castlevania 2:Simon's Quest, with shared sound effects and feel when you hit or kill enemies. The final boss theme seems like a direct lift from Contra. Lucky, you only take damage when you are hit, instead of being knocked back. Pit deaths can be abrupt, and brutal to progress. And Simon Belmont is definitely the go to, if you want to kill all the boss enemies in a hurry with cross boomerangs. That last stage... oh man, compared to Bionic Commando, there is really no time at all to spare.
7/10.
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Post by Woody Alien on Jul 6, 2019 4:46:06 GMT -5
Claiming Ninja Smasher! (PC/Steam, first time, 3.75 hours). A porting of a Japanese indie game for 3DS, a metroidvania in a retro-style resembling NES games. It's better than it looks at a first glance, since after you finish it with the standard character you unlock other three characters with their personal abilities and play style that is more suited to speedruns. Also the standard ninja abilities making them zip from one enemy to another and traverse the areas in a flash are implemented well, even if they make the game a little too easy. For an indie game it's quite nice if simple, shame that the devs don't seem to have done anything after that. Maybe it looked a little TOO retro?
Also I finished Gunman Clive again with Ms. Johnson, just to show that I may suck at games but I don't suck THAT much:
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Post by Null0x00 on Jul 6, 2019 5:08:31 GMT -5
Cleared Blood: Fresh Supply for Windows. Beat all four original episodes plus the Post Mortem episode on Lightly Broiled (medium difficulty) in 10 hours, 33 minutes. First ever playthrough. Rating: 10/10. What a fucking awesome game. It's the exact opposite of Tekwar in terms of quality, as it's probably the best game I've played in the Build engine. Monolith really knew how to work that engine to its limits. Also, the best "on fire" deaths of any game I've ever played.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 6, 2019 7:02:10 GMT -5
Claiming Ninja Smasher! (PC/Steam, first time, 3.75 hours). A porting of a Japanese indie game for 3DS, a metroidvania in a retro-style resembling NES games. It's better than it looks at a first glance, since after you finish it with the standard character you unlock other three characters with their personal abilities and play style that is more suited to speedruns. Also the standard ninja abilities making them zip from one enemy to another and traverse the areas in a flash are implemented well, even if they make the game a little too easy. For an indie game it's quite nice if simple, shame that the devs don't seem to have done anything after that. Maybe it looked a little TOO retro? This was originally an iOS game that was later ported to 3DS, and I did enjoy the 3DS version. The "developer" Rogue Ninja and the "Publisher" Q-Cumber Factory do seem to be the same group as Rogue Ninja is an iOS game that has never been ported. There's also the "prequel" Ninja Smasher which was ported to Switch and Windows last year like this game, and the Rogue-like Alchemic Dungeons which got an expanded DX release for Switch and Windows earlier this year with Flyhigh Works as the publisher. There does seem to be a new side scroller which has been in development for a little bit and I think it's possible that these ports were made for a little bit of extra cash. If you go back far enough on the Q-Cumber site you can see some development stuff on those games, and if you go even farther, it's just some guy's blog! Seems like a situation where a bedroom programmer managed to transition to commercial games.
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Murphy
Junior Member
Posts: 75
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Post by Murphy on Jul 7, 2019 7:49:46 GMT -5
I've beaten Sparkster (Genesis). (First time, 1 hour)
Compared to previous two games, this one is a little strange. The rocket boost now charges automatically and is activated with a press of button, but if you wait a bit more it upgrades to stronger boost that lasts longer. This in itself is a nice change, but in exchange Sparkster's movement has much more inertia than before. This makes some performing that requires precision a pain in the ass. Also, there's a roulette that gives you a random bonus item for every 10 gems collected, but it can stick a middle finger and drop a bomb on you, too. I don't understand the rationale behind this system.
The level design lacks both highs and lows from SNES Sparkster. They feels less cramped and instant death situation is rarer, so you can keeping using your boost without too much worrying. Shoot-em-up section is gone, which is okay since they tend to be unfair (not to mention the SNES game has extremely frustrating boss fight at that particular level), but the stage 4 is entirely dedicated to awfully boring mecha riding. Overall, it's often too empty and there's not much interesting going on, like it's one of the blander European platformers.
It's still a quality game with a few memorable boss fights, but it's definitely the weakest of the three. At least the music is one again stellar, even if my favorites are recycled from the SNES Sparkster.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 8, 2019 7:07:41 GMT -5
Paradox Soul (Switch, First Time)
An alright short Metroidvania although there isn't really any backtracking as there aren't any optional collectibles. The facility that the games takes place in is divided up into a 5x10 grid and the map you get towards the beginning shows the entire place which is nice. You can only explore chunks at a time until you either get an upgrade that lets you continue or unlock a door that lets you progress. The upgrades do feel a little superfluous as they only get minimal use. There's only a small handful of different enemies and the three bosses are all fairly easy. It's actually pretty fun though until you beat the final boss and have to escape the facility. I got all the way to entrance only to find that the exit was locked and then went back to the final boss area thinking I had missed something. I ended up looking up what to do and it turned out that there're two hidden keycards that you need to find. That you need to do this is not expressed at all in any way, shape or form. They're behind the only two bombable walls in the entire game, and the cracks that indicate that are very subtle. Kinda frustrating although knowing which rooms did help.
I finished in 2:10 by my own timing.
Rating: 7
WILL: A Wonderful World (Switch, First Time)
I had avoided this for a while because reviews of the PC and PS4 version were generally bad, but I actually ended up enjoying it a lot! The story centers on Myth and Will, two gods who job is to answer people's prayers. They're conceptualized as letters and you have to rearrange the events that led to their predicament to get a better result. Generally you're presented with two at a time and can swap events between them. The prayers come from 9 specific characters plus a few additional one off characters that are supplemental to the other storylines. They're clustered around Beijing which is more of a romance plot, Hong Kong which centers on organized crime and Busan, SK which is about a police unit fighting organized crime. There's some attempt to link these three slightly together though not into a single storyline, but it's very unnecessary and the characters used to do this are also the worst in the game and have the shortest plots.
What a (deliberately) misleading title too! Each letter generally deals with a pretty bleak situation and has multiple endings with the vast majority of the bad endings are murder, torture then murder (this might be more common than just murder!), suicide or accidental death although not all of them end in such a gruesome manner. Most also have a set of "neutral" endings, but you need to get the best one in order to progress. Such gruesomeness isn't totally unsurprising since so much of the game is about crime, but it pops up in the Beijing parts too just not as much. The Beijing and Busan parts get nice conclusions as does the framing story, but the Hong Kong part ends rather abruptly despite being interesting otherwise.
I finished in 10:33:38.
Rating: 9
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Post by JoeQ on Jul 8, 2019 10:08:09 GMT -5
Pajama Sam in "No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside" (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 2h 11min
A fun little point'n'click adventure game for kids. Got all the socks too. I probably would've loved this as a kid (provided I could've understood English.
Rating: 3/5
Alphabet Challenge: ABC-E-------MNOP--S-------
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Post by dsparil on Jul 9, 2019 7:27:36 GMT -5
The Pandora Directive (DOS, First Time)
In a first for the series, the action picks up only a few months after Under a Killing Moon. Tex actually got paid after stopping the nefarious plot in the last game but is out of money. Luckily Gordon Fitzpatrick overhears that Tex is a PI while eating at Louie's diner and hires him to track down his old colleague Dr. Thomas Malloy which nets Tex a retainer of $4000! The story is a lot better than UaKM (although the novel is a whole lot more fleshed out) partly because the game as a whole is longer and has more opportunity to develop the plot. The site's article spoils some of the mystery of the plot as the greater unpinning isn't readily apparent until about half through. I also noticed a few little details from the UaKM novel that got added including the reason for why Tex always leaves his office through the fire escape in UaKM.
The story does have some poor points though. Day 7 turns into a horror game at the very beginning but has a totally unexplained "monster". I feel like the novelization probably has some kind of explanation (GOG doesn't give the novel though), but it would have been nice to have a line or two especially because there is a logical place to include it. The backstory in general could have been developed more as several characters have really hazy motivation.
Sadly, the actual adventure aspects are a mixed bag. There's a greater emphasis on mechanical puzzles but many of them of them are awful. One even puts the supplemental information you need on the side which barely even helps and is mostly just trial and error. There's also not one but two sliding tile puzzles which I generally hate. There is a foolproof way to solve any square puzzle so I find them boring, but there's also a 2x5 one that is nothing but frustrating. I spent something like an hour on it before breaking down and looking up a video. It's a little like the developers could tell that mechanical puzzles were where the genre was heading, but couldn't really design good ones. Inventory items can also be hard to find as it seems like a greater number are sprites on top of polygons which makes them really hard to see.
Rating: 7
Edit: And it seems my time with this series has come to a close as Overseer does not work in WINE; supposedly it works somewhat but not to point of being able to be completed on Linux though it actually worked even worse for me than on macOS. It's always the stuff that's "ahead of it's time" in terms of technology on Windows that always is a gigantic pain to get running in the future. Maybe someday I'll try running it in Windows 95 VM after pulling the installed files, but that's more effort than I'm willing to put in right now.
Ranking: Under a Killing Moon Pandora Directive Mean Streets (a giant chasm) Martian Memorandum
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jul 11, 2019 10:55:42 GMT -5
Super Mario Maker 2 (NSW, 1st play, 4h)
The single player mode is alright. It's certainly a huge step up from Mario Maker 1.
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Post by Null0x00 on Jul 12, 2019 0:06:43 GMT -5
Cleared Cryptic Passage for Blood: Fresh Supply in Windows in 2 hours, 24 minutes. Now with that done I have cleared all of the official episodes for Blood.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 12, 2019 6:36:01 GMT -5
Windscape (Switch, First Time)
Pretty good at first but ultimately very disappointing. This is a first person action RPG (though it doesn't have levels) set on four floating islands. It actually reminds of a first person Zelda more than anything since it has somewhat puzzled dungeons, and you get a big heart after defeating three of the bosses which increases your health by 25 points. There's some crafting too, but not a whole lot even though it's the only way you get equipment.
Things start off well enough. The first island has a main field plus a separate graveyard area, a town with some people you can talk to, a few side quests and a few dungeons. Two of the dungeons are fairly small, but the last one is much larger. The cracks start to show in the second area. It's just a big square desert with a town containing only one NPC with dialogue and no side quests. The dungeons are still good although there are only two. However, the third area is just a single dungeon with no overworld and an incredibly easy boss while the last one is just a short and mostly linear path to the final boss.
Pretty much all the game's problems can be boiled down to it simply not being finished. This was apparently a Steam Early Access title for something like 3 years before being officially released a few months ago, and I feel like there must have been pressure to declare it "done" after such a long length of time. For example, you get some journal entries during the first island but never get a single one afterward. One of the entries also implies that it's multipart, but I also never got any more. Only the first dungeon and the third area have a dungeon map and the final area doesn't even have a world map. Plus there's the rapid shortening of each island. Worst of all, there isn't even an ending! You beat the final boss, and it immediately goes to the credits.
I had wavered a bit on getting this, because reviews were mixed. There are some good ones, but those were very clearly done without finishing the whole thing. It's impressive in some ways that this was made entirely by one person sans music, but the result leaves a whole lot to be desired. I supposed that much of my disappointment comes from the setting of expectations, and then not coming close to fulfilling them. If this had the two first islands with the third one being the final dungeon, it might not be so bad even if that dungeon is boring. Delivering what feels like half a game makes what does exist come off much worse.
Rating: 5
Edit: Also forgot to mention most of my miscellaneous issues. Money is completely useless except to buy the pick (for ore) and axe (for chopping down trees in the first and second areas only) at the very beginning. There's occasional merchants, but their items never change; everything they have except the pick and axe has no use after the first island. You can cook two items and never anything else. There's a whole host of brewable potions which are too weak to be useful except for the health potion which restores all your health despite the description saying it restores 100 points (you max out at 175). You can craft both of the weakest fire and ice spells, one of the medium strength and seemingly neither in the maximum strength. There's also a third elemental type that can't be made. I got one drop that would have been needed for the medium strength. It shows up as a resistance enemies have, but the spells never show up in the spell crafting station. There's also the potential for the game to be rendered uncompleteable due to an oversight. This is probably my pettiest quibble, but boss doors have big Zelda style locks on them while one a single door actually needs a key which has to be crafted. Only the final boss door actually has an animation of the door being unlocked (despite not needing a key) so it's weird that no other door uses the animation despite it existing.
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Jul 13, 2019 1:17:05 GMT -5
I beat Resident Evil Outbreak on the PS2. I played through all of the scenarios, taking 3 hours and 53 minutes. I have played through this game countless times. I played on Easy because it's been a long time since I played the game, and I was never very good at it anyway.
As a game, it's deeply flawed but deeply ambitious.
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Post by JoeQ on Jul 13, 2019 14:41:26 GMT -5
Pajama Sam 2: Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 1h 48min
The second one. Not much more to say about it.
Rating: 3/5
Alphabet Challenge: ABC-E-------MNOP--S-------
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Post by halftheisland on Jul 14, 2019 10:31:53 GMT -5
Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition (PC, replay, 27 hours)
Still one of the best RPGs ever made, this hasn't quite lived up to my memories of it. In particular, there are some really nasty and unnecessary combat sections, particularly in Curst, and there's a section towards the very end which makes a baffling decision which really turns it into a painful grind.
I guess I also have some disappointments with the Enhanced Edition. I don't know what remit exactly Beamdog were given when producing this, but they appear to have restricted themselves solely to technical updates and fixes. It would have been nice to see some of the original content restored by the Unfinished Business mod also restored in this, for example.
Unrelated to the Enhanced Edition, it's also something of a shame to see where I suspect corners had to be cut to get a final product released. With companions, for example, Dak'kon's conversations felt much more fleshed out and in-depth than almost anyone else in the game. There's evidence certainly that Fall-From-Grace was supposed to have more dialogue that wasn't ever included.
However, this doesn't take away from the fact that this is undoubtedly a brilliant game and one worth playing for any fan of CRPGs.
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Post by Snake on Jul 15, 2019 11:21:00 GMT -5
Bloodstained:Ritual of the Night, PS4 (1st time, 15 hours)
I wasn't expecting much, but it ended up impressing me a lot. It's basically Igavania Castlevania, without all the Castlevania properties - though you do get some glimpses that allude to the series in a *wink *wink *nudge *nudge kind of a way. If you were to take the characteristics of Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow/Dawn of Sorrow, Dracula X Chronicles, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia, and smashed them all into one game, this would be it.
I had my doubts about making this a Unreal/3-D modeled game over a pixel-based one, but seeing the level of detail and lighting being executed, I can see why they chose to go this route. Even if it means having to make 4 years of work (and still-in-progress for Free, DLC content). Considering I picked up the previous Nintendo DS Castlevanias for $29.99 or so, picking this game up at $35 is quite the steal.
The environments have a stunning amount of glitz and glam, while being meticulously gilded in some areas. Plus, there is a lot going on in terms of 2.5D map movement and camera panning for certain areas, that reminded me a lot of Pandemonium, Klonoa Lunateia's Veil, and the like. Boss fights are just challenging enough, where you can get by on raw skill.
What I didn't realize until the end was the amount of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure references made in the game. Very cool, and quite amusing.
9/10. Beautiful, familiar, content-rich comfort food.
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