|
Post by JoeQ on Aug 14, 2019 15:23:17 GMT -5
You gonna play the porn game too?
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 15, 2019 12:06:11 GMT -5
Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands (DOS, First Time)
ZN has a reputation for being the black sheep of the Zork series, but I liked it quite a bit. It is a very serious game dealing with alchemy and a doomed/forbidden romance, but there are a few tiny spots of humor. I'm going off of slightly faint memories, but it's also not like the text Zork games were all attempting to be laugh riots. I do like how it actually tries to really pin down an actual setting instead of being a conglomeration of random background details sometimes created as jokes. You get a lot of background between letters written by the main characters to each other and little snippets of books and other documents. Those go a long way to define the main cast which is fairly small at 6. I wouldn't be surprised if this was originally pitched as a non-Zork game, but the final product does feel like a real part of the series.
Gameplay has moved to being more of a Myst clone which is fitting given you explore abandoned or semi-abandoned areas. I would say that it's fairly straightforward for the most part although there are a few places you can die. It would have been better without them at all as they really do feel tacked on. The atmosphere is phenomenal though owing to the rather large number of people responsible for the sound design. The first three areas (initial temple, monastery and music conservatory) are very good and full of narrative detail. You get a really good sense of the characters of Sophia and Alexandria in those areas although Alexandria's adoptive father Malveaux is less well defined. He's the head of the monastery and that area focuses more on Alexandria's youth there and bringing greater definition to some of the religious elements.
My main problem is that the areas get weaker as it progresses. You can do any of the four areas after the temple in any order (the small number of inventory items are never used outside their initial area), but the two on disc 3 are much smaller and feel less narratively developed than the ones on disc 2. Wikipedia notes that there were development difficulties with the engine which might have contributed to this. The castle area in particular contributes the smallest amount while the asylum should be a much richer source of background than it ended up being. The end feels rushed too and is slightly confusing. QuickTime VR (which was using in The Journeyman Project 3 for instance) was released during development, but likely too late to switch to it and would have required dropping DOS as a platform. It's too bad the game hadn't started development just a little bit later as I think the ability to use an already developed technology could have given the story added richness. I do like what is there, but even more would have certainly been better.
Still though, a great adventure overall. Contemporaneous reviews were actually quite good and deservedly so. This gets called "Zork in Name Only", but I really don't think that's true.
Rating: 8
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 16, 2019 8:21:58 GMT -5
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch, First Time)
Edit: I really should have posted The Last Door first as my irritation at that game seeped into this.
It's the first new console FE in over a decade, does anything else need to be said? I did enjoy it quite a bit as there are some nice maps and more character development than usual for the series but they tend to be very one note. I choose the Golden Deer house which did have a nice storyline in the second part. The game is divided into two parts with the first being the same regardless of what you pick. There's 4 plot branches, 1 for each house plus one house splits although the GD branch and the "split" branch have the same maps. There's also quite a few cutscenes which I wasn't expecting. Pretty much everything else I'm split on. Some of it is because of the series's more mainstream position and Nintendo not wanting it to be off putting, but other changes have nothing to do with that.
The game is incredibly easy on Normal. I also chose Casual as it's the default, but I barely had any "deaths" anyway. They were mostly due to critical hits rather than relying on units falling back rather than dying. From what I've read, Hard isn't that much harder either and is mainly a slight stat boost. This isn't Rhapsody levels of easy, but you'd have to really try to fail a map.
Being able to explore the monastery on your "free day" is nice for the first few chapters, but it gets very tiresome across ~20. Spending 30 minutes a minimum of once a month running around and talking to everyone on the off chance you might get a support boosting encounter gets boring fast. You do have the option of some other activities some of which use "activity points" which go up with your professor rating although talking to people, fishing and planting crops don't use any. There's also little side quests you can do, but the bulk of them consist of "finding" an item which is always highlighted on the map. The rest are shortish battles. Subsequent intra-month visits don't take so much time since you can fast travel to whatever specific location you need (mainly for training) and dialogue is only updated monthly. The whole monastery element would have been better from a menu so it didn't take up so much time.
The big addition is the professor system which is also nice at first but actually becomes entirely superfluous later. Every character in your house has a Motivation level which goes up to 4 and is the number of individual "trainings" on any skill they can do during weekly classes. Your professor level dictates how many students you can train this way per week. The issue is that trainings give a pitiful number of points. Those don't really help much unless they're on the very edge of gaining a skill level. You can automate the trainings in which case the game will grab the appropriate number of students, but this does have downsides as you lose out on Support points. I avoided it until I had maxed out everyone. They also have Goals of two changeable skills which rise for everyone over the week. That gives a larger boost so it isn't quite as useless. The main problem is that your professor level doesn't affect the quality of the teaching just the number of possible individual trainings.
On skills, never has classes felt this vestigial. They almost feel like they only still exist to have different combat models. Everyone can use every weapon so classes only determine if magic can be used (but not the type of magic!), mounted/flying ability and a smattering of Abilities. A very large number of the higher tier classes are also mounted, and very few to none of the enemies are strong against mounted units to the point that trying to make everyone some kind of mounted unit eventually isn't a ridiculous idea. Flying is still weak to archers, but that isn't an insurmountable issues as you can dismount/mount for free removing the weakness at the end of your turn. Classes do have skill minimums required in order to be gained so you can't necessarily do whatever you want. I didn't do this, but it might not be entirely ridiculous to just set almost everyon'e goals to Lance and Riding or Flying (there's no flying mage classes) and switch to the appropriate mounted class later. I really might do an all mounted play through next time.
The story is good for the most part, but I do want to mention that it reminds me of Infinite Space in that the political narrative gets a satisfying conclusion, but the background story doesn't. Like IS, it pops up every now and then, but certain aspects are still confusing by the end. They are tied together unlike in IS, but it could have used much more development. What is nice though is the little character updates you get at the end of the game. It's nice to see what happens and who ends up together. You can only S-rank someone for the MC, but it only affects the blurb too.
I have been hard on some aspects but it's mostly because they're such a needless time sink. The core game is still very good although I do think it's lost some of its spirit. I'm mainly irritated at having to spend around 10 hours on needless wandering plus some other hours in menus for basically no reason.
I finished in 45:56.
Rating: 9
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 16, 2019 8:54:22 GMT -5
The Last Door: Complete (Switch, First Time) [Technically this would count for 8, but I'm leaving it as 1 unless someone also posts it]
This finally got patched to be completable a day or two ago, so I could finally finish the last 15 minutes. As I noted in the general game thread, there was a bug in the second to last puzzle of the game that rendered it unable to be finished.
LD is an occult themed adventure game divided into two four episode seasons (released individually) with a graphical style reminiscent of very early Sierra games but with an unlimited color palette. It's pretty easy overall with simple inventory puzzles and simple mechanical puzzles. It's usually pretty clear what you need to do since the game is in small discrete chunks. It's also impossible to die or get stuck (barring a bug which goes unfixed for four months!) which is always a plus. It doesn't feature a huge amount of "adventure game logic" although one spot still sticks out to me where you can't through a door that's simply covered with a tapestry until you get a razor to cut through it.
Season 1 is quite good although I can't really remember too many of the details since I had to wait so long before being able to finish. It starts off in a way that's disturbing mainly for shock value. The rest of the game doesn't come anywhere close to that. The story slows builds up over the four episodes until the season ends in a way that made me very interested in what was next.
Season 2 however loses a whole lot of momentum by switching to a different character and was very disappointing. Gameplay is expanded with the introduction of mechanical puzzles and a "world map" for traveling between locations. The story just takes such a nose dive and never really recovers plus the ending is disappointing and deeply unsatisfying. From what I've read, the series wasn't supposed to end at Season 2, but low sales made the developers essentially give up on it (my uncharitable interpretation).
It really needed a Season 3 that just cracks the whole story open and just get really weird. Much of my disappointment with Season 2 could probably we chalked up to it being the middle of the story. If it were truly the middle, then that loss of momentum is more of a delay for what probably would have been an interesting final part. Instead, it just fizzles out. From what I had seen, it seems like it wasn't intended to be a trilogy, but that seems like the natural direction. Maybe the open ended nature would have resulted in something where you wonder why you even bothered in the first place anyway. I'm just hopeful based on the potential that was shown that there could have been something good in store.
I finished in about 7.5h.
Rating: 0
Really a 6, but I feel like a game released in a state where it literally can't be finished doesn't deserve anything else. If it was fixed quickly, it'd be one thing. That this sat around with no recognition of even existing is super unprofessional. I even tried contacting the developer (which doesn't have any easy to find email addresses) and got zero response. They stopped giving a shit about this and it shows.
|
|
|
Post by zerker on Aug 18, 2019 6:58:59 GMT -5
Finished Pikuniku (Linux; First Time) last night. It was pretty meh; not a game I'm likely to return to. It seemed fairly well regarded, but I was actually rather bored through most of its already short length. 6/10
|
|
|
Post by Woody Alien on Aug 18, 2019 12:31:57 GMT -5
So, let's update this a bit. First with two free games found on Steam, which I hope count towards the total:
Geometry May. I swear it's a nice free game (PC/Steam, first time, about 2 hrs) I swear it's the title of this game. A hybrid platform/endless runner that I have completed in 2 hours just because of bad eye-hand coordination (though I haven't finished two of the optional hard stages). Starring a young woman with a hand cannon. The incentive is some unlockable animesque nudity (there's a patch to remove the censoring) but nothing too special, plus a bunch of diary entries nobody cares about. Nice little diversion when you have some free time.
Carpe Diem (PC/Steam, first time, 15 minutes) An extremely short visual novel whose only point is the twist at the end. Nice idea but it needed to be more fleshed out, though it seems there's a more substantial reboot out.
Also I finished another game just now:
Gunple: Gunman's Proof (SNES, first time, about 5.5 hours)
Seems that every year I have to play a cutesy colorful fan-translated Japanese SNES game, first Holy Umbrella, then Flying Hero and now this one. However I have the same opinion that I had about Holy Umbrella: graphics and sounds are quite good, but both it and Gunple are not as funny and great as everyone say they are. Gunple is amusing for its enemy designs and wacky characters, but the core game is quite repetitive and there's a bunch of stuff that just goes nowhere: most special attacks are pointless outside those one or two points where they are needed to proceed, the whole "explore dungeons to find the treasures" thing is pointless as well since treasures are only needed to score points that don't affect anything in the game; plus the whole extra lives system is kinda pointless too since you can still save the game, it's too easy (for one, you can crawl to avoid most bullets, you can avoid most enemies and most bosses have a safe point where you can shoot them with impunity) and becomes even easier the more items and power-ups you get. Also I played it with the keyboard so I guess it's even easier with a joypad. In short it seems a game with some strange design choices and others that are just padding for what is ultimately a quite short adventure. It was nice but I find that all the praise it got (even here on HG101) is exaggerated: Gunple is just a quirky colorful game that however doesn't leave a lasting impression.
And the whole plot (space sheriff possesses human being) is just yet another Ultraman rip-off.
|
|
|
Post by JoeQ on Aug 18, 2019 13:12:08 GMT -5
Mega Man Zero (DS) - First playthrough, Time: 07:45:44 (timer) Game beaten on Normal, got most of the Cyber Elves too (and spent a ton of time grinding to upgrade them). Solid gameplay, but brought down by lackluster level design and conflicting extra systems (Cyber Elves and ranking, ugh). Rating: 6/10Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP--S-------
|
|
|
Post by Snake on Aug 19, 2019 10:10:01 GMT -5
Cat Ninden Teyandee, Famicom (1st time, about 1 hour)
Solid action game from Tecmo, if a bit easy. While Samurai Pizza Cats was the adapted English title for the anime, the title characters are actually ninjas. Despite being by Tecmo, the difficulty level isn't at Ninja Gaiden levels of frustration. It's actually a super easy game, to keep kids from getting frustrated. Controls are easy, slick, and a lot more forgiving. Even better, you get a choice of 3 of the series characters, PLUS the supporting cast of cats. And you can call for help and swap out those support characters at will, if you need to fly, swim, break boulders, etc.
Graphics are quite attractive concerning gameplay sprites. And there are loads of cut scenes. Every level is driven by cut scenes, across 10-stages. And they're quite cute. I would call this a successful game for kid fans of the series. It's very accessible, and maybe a bit too easy.
7/10.
|
|
|
Post by ResidentTsundere on Aug 19, 2019 22:24:13 GMT -5
I claim Final Fight (Xbox 360, Final Fight: Double Impact compilation). It took about 55 minutes. I just prefer Streets of Rage to Final Fight, and it's mostly because of Yuzo Koshiro's music.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 20, 2019 11:44:06 GMT -5
Zork: Grand Inquisitor (macOS, First Time)
This is a pretty good example of how giving people what they want doesn't always lead to good results. The writing is actually pretty funny at times, and Michael McKean does alright as your sidekick/lamp. However, that's about it for its good points. The most striking thing is just how small it is compared to Nemesis and with substantially less video. I'm not sure why this is the case. Nemesis was kinda expensive to make, but it sold well. Perhaps Activision wanted to ride that momentum with a game closer to what was expected but cheaper too. They even decided to announce this game as the start of a new trilogy before it was even released. However, it sold less than expected so those plans were scrapped. I don't get the feeling that anything was held back for sequels; it seems smaller by design.
Size aside, the oddest problem is how completely illogical it is. This isn't hateful nonsense like in RtZ but a much more lazy kind where you do things for no reason other than you have the "tools" to do so even if the actual action doesn't make any sense. It's usually fairly clear what needs to be done once you have the item or spell, but it's the why that's lacking. It kinda feels like padding to be honest in a game that's already fairly short. One particular chain of puzzles that more or less stretches from the beginning of the game to about the middle feels particularly pointless and only acts to block you from getting to what should be the meat of the game. Keyword is "should" as that element is also disappointing.
What really makes the puzzles feel pointless is the general lack of any story aside from "stop the Grand Inquisitor and bring back magic". You get a few tiny little morsels of backstory and narrative, but nothing close to what you get in Nemesis. The story that does exist is confusing too as it isn't totally clear if the Grand Inquisitor has instituted a simple ban on magic or has somehow stopped it from existing. The elimination of magic aspect is contradicted by the fact that you can use it (and get quite a few spells) which could lean towards a ban. Both of these are at odds with Spellbreaker, but in a twist of added confusion, the timeline that ships with the game says that Spellbreaker is the canon reason despite that those events are both not mentioned in game and directly contradict it. Regardless, it's a total mess.
In all, it's just a huge drop in ambition from Nemesis in every single way. In trying to placate people that disliked the seriousness of ZN, Activision instead released this hollow shell of a game that threw out everything that worked in ZN.
Rating: 6
|
|
|
Post by ResidentTsundere on Aug 21, 2019 2:51:06 GMT -5
I claim Torchlight, Xbox 360, first playthrough. It took about 10 hours and 20 minutes.
On the whole, much more enjoyable than the mindless cakewalk that was Diablo III. And yet, it's not like TL does a lot different on paper. It's more than the sum of its parts, and at least the choices you make in items and skills feel more meaningful than in DIII, despite TL being very easy as well. I hope to get Torchlight II someday.
|
|
|
Post by Null0x00 on Aug 21, 2019 3:46:26 GMT -5
Cleared Doom II for DOS using the Chocolate Doom source port on Ultra-Violence (Hard) difficulty. Again, beaten only using the vanilla Doom 2 features so no jumping, vertical mouselook, cheats or other mods with the game running at 35FPS. Replay done in roughly 7 hours. Rating: 10/10. Still my favorite Doom game (Doom 2016 comes a close second).
|
|
|
Post by Snake on Aug 21, 2019 10:56:19 GMT -5
Saint Seiya: Ougon Densetsu Kanketsu Hen, Famicom (replay, about 2 hours)
I love this game for nostalgia. I couldn't recommend it to a casual gamer, as the graphics are simple. The platforming sections can consist of a lot of 7 Senses points grinding. The actual gameplay for the boss/RPG dueling sections feel like you get through on luck. The game does its part to stay faithful to the anime canon. The music, which consist of only a handful of looping melodies, besides the 8-bit rendition of the Pegasus Fantasy opening song, is primitive yet catchy. And make sure you brush up on your hiragana writing skills, to jot down that password for progress. I actually paid $30 for a complete-in-box copy of the game, and I cherish it quite a bit.
6/10.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Aug 21, 2019 16:02:28 GMT -5
Claiming Mirai Ninja (arcade) and Hyper Iria (SNES), both first times. The second is somehow good despite a number of flaws. The first is mostly just flawed.
|
|
|
Post by lurker on Aug 21, 2019 16:43:13 GMT -5
Claiming Mirai Ninja (arcade) and Hyper Iria (SNES), both first times. The second is somehow good despite a number of flaws. The first is mostly just flawed. Have you seen the Mirai Ninja movie?
|
|