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Post by zerker on Aug 21, 2019 16:46:11 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. Chocolate Doom only supports vanilla Doom features*. It's kinda the point
* - OK, you can also expand the engine limits so you don't run into bugs on large maps, but that doesn't affect how it plays.
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Post by toei on Aug 21, 2019 18:37:23 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? Yes, I've seen it with subs rather than the old Macek dub. I like it better than the game, honestly.
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Post by dsparil on Aug 22, 2019 9:11:25 GMT -5
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire [Revision 88] (DOS, Replay)
I went into this totally in good faith with just the hint map and what I remembered from playing this over the years, but I ultimately broke down and finished the rest with a walkthrough. This is going to end up being my pattern for all the text adventures as I have finished all of them in the past. Ultimately, my main issue with Zork I is that it's simply an unfair game. I think that might apply a little less to II and III as they deviate more from the trilogy's PDP-10 predecessor Dungeon created by the developers while working in a lab at MIT. I should also mention for anyone that doesn't know that Dungeon was heavily inspired by the first text adventure, Colossal Cave Adventure, as it was originally made for the same mainframe and lifts a fairly substantial number of elements from it. I have 5 main issues in no particular order:
1. The Combat - It feels very unnecessary and is way too random. There's only two enemies that you have to fight along with a third that has peaceful solutions. Combat feels very dynamic with a wide range of possible outcomes to attacks, however this is undercut by the fact that you are extremely frail and can die in just one or two hits. Combat can actually be a little fun if things go your way, but it can just as easily result in a series of reloads. I assume that this was an aspect that was much simpler originally and grew over time until being very intricate for a game where only one fight will likely last more than one attack command.
2. The Thief - This is simply annoying. The thief is the main enemy of the game, but will generally just steal an item off of you. If it's a regular item, it'll get dropped off somewhere while one of the treasures you need to finish the game get brought to the treasure room. This is also the only place the thief will immediately attack you. The thief will also move around dropped items. I learned early on that defeating the thief as soon as possible was the only way to really enjoy the adventure elements. You need the thief alive for it to steal a certain item obtainable at the beginning, and you are required to defeat the thief at some point so you might as well do it right away. This is one of the elements that was taken from CCA. I can't remember if the pirates in that game will steal regular items from you, but you also need them to take some treasure from you in that game.
3. The Maze - It is needlessly convoluted with every room having an identical description save for one, 10 possible directions to travel in with no indication of what's available, and in an absolute dick move, trying to go back can take you to a different place! All these elements were taken from CCA (including the room description almost verbatim) where the main maze is actually larger. You can hypothetically drop items to mark off where you are, but the thief might pick them up and drop them somewhere else. It would be nice if you could make a mark on the ground, but you can't probably due to engine limitations. Even if you're trying to finish this game the "right" way, save yourself from the headache and use a map. The official hint map even has this as it's own page if you want to avoid other spoilers.
4. The Treasure Puzzles - The non-treasure puzzles aren't too bad although a pretty big chunk of all the puzzles are directly related to treasure. Some of them are just out in the open to be grabbed, but way too many treasure puzzles have very obscure solutions with either no hints or require outside knowledge. Hope you know millennia old Catholic excommunication rituals because you can't finish otherwise although the developers seem to have confused exorcism with excommunication. Some of them are taken from CCA (outside knowledge) where they might have had hints that were not included here. MIT was so crazy for CCA in the 70s that perhaps some of those intended to be obvious homages rather than things impossible to truly figure out on your own.
5. The Inventory Limit - I don't have an issue with this per se, but Zork uses a D&D style weight system rather than a slot limit. However, the weights and your max are hidden. Sometimes I'd have to drop a very light seeming item in order to pick up something much heavier. You also have to pick up an item or two that should be impossible for a person to budge let alone carry but do so without issue. There is a bug involving the inflatable raft that bypasses the weight limit, but I didn't do that since it's a pretty major bug that was never fixed.
Obviously none of these things mattered to people in the first half of the 80s since Zork I was Infocom's single best selling title overall and the top seller from 1981 to 1984 while the combined trilogy was almost exactly a third (33.5%) of Infocom's lifetime sales before being bought out by Activision in 1986. It's a clear 10 for historical importance, but I don't think it's a particularly fun game to actually try and finish these days due to how much BS is involved. Even at MIT, some people considered it overly obtuse as one of the treasures was added at the unintentional suggestion of someone complaining about it. This could have been counterbalanced by the text itself, but there wasn't much space available. Some items and locations get nice descriptions and those are what people really remember, but too many items just have descriptions like "There's nothing special about X" or a very utilitarian description. So, worth playing through for the historical value, but there is a certain amount of "having been there" to enjoy compared to later Infocom games.
Rating: 6
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Post by GamerL on Aug 23, 2019 3:33:38 GMT -5
Yakuza 0 (PC, first time playthrough)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PC, first time playthrough)
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Aug 23, 2019 11:03:01 GMT -5
Mega Man X2 (NSW, 1st time, 5h)
A real zero steps forward, zero steps back kind of situation here. This is pretty much exactly like Mega Man X, and repeats every single of the mistakes Capcom made with that game.
Like with MMX1, they really shot themselves in the foot with the health system, as you have the potential to end the game with access to 20x the amount of health as you start with. You're too weak at the start to do most of the bosses in the game comfortably, but with some upgrades you're way too powered-up for the game's easy stages.
And these stages are easy even if you don't have any upgrades. Basically, you can just ignore enemies completely, and even if you don't, you can rip through them like they're made out of paper even with your non-upgraded X-Buster. Even if enemies had more attack power and health, the level design wouldn't be anything to write home about (it still would've improved the game, though). Enemies and stage hazards are rarely used to their full potential, and I already don't remember a single Sigma stage even though I beat the game less than 24 hours ago. Well, I remember they recycled one of the 8 Maverick stages for the final stage... Dashing and wall jumping aren't used very creatively often either, and just serve to make the game even easier to cheese through.
Like MMX1, the game is competently made on a technical level. It plays fine, it looks fine, and the music's great. I enjoyed the boss battles too. But other than that, this is, like MMX1, just not good from a design/balancing standpoint. At least I'm enjoying MMX3 a little more from what I've played.
Rating: 6/10
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Post by Snake on Aug 23, 2019 11:11:14 GMT -5
Final Zone 2, Turbografx CD (replay, approx 45 minutes)
Not as difficult as I remember. And I underestimated the value of one the characters. I didn't think they were all that different from each other, but one moves a lot faster and has bullets that will travel a lot further. The game itself plays like Commando, Gun.Smoke, Ikari Warriors, etc. Very straightforward gameplay. It's just a means to move the anime cut scenes forward. The voice-acting is terrible and amusing. Plus it seems like translation didn't have coordination with the programmers. There's one scene where a character is referred to as "Colonel Verda" on the voice-over transcript, but on the character select, and game screen, he is "Velder." Katakana translation mis-match? There are a few, very cool music tracks. The English counterparts to the original Japanese lyrics are actually pulled off quite well. (Forward maaaarch. Thrusters are full. Fight. To the death. Watching you fall. Burst into flames. With, bazookas.) What great lyrics.
6/10.
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Post by dsparil on Aug 23, 2019 15:05:24 GMT -5
Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Switch, First Time)
Pretty much every review I saw called this better than the original in every way which is actually true for the most part. I would say that basically everything is better except for the combat. It's still very simplistic and could really use a block button. However, you are much less likely to be contended with random monster invasions that demolish your base. That actually matters much less in this game though since rather than having a base level using rooms, you instead collect Gratitude from the residents. It's a much better system overall. On your home island, the Isle of Awakening, you use Gratitude to unlock additional items and extra islands which are randomly generated. Gratitude accumulates very slowly which does make unlocking stuff a bit of a pain especially since a few things are required for progression. Minor quibbles aside, a really great sequel, and I'm excited for what's in store for #3!
I finished in about 57.5h.
Rating: 9
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Post by dsparil on Aug 24, 2019 8:15:36 GMT -5
Milkmaid of the Milky Way (Switch, First Time)
An okay adventure game initially set in 1920s Norway but mainly taking place on an alien spaceship. You just do normal farm stuff for the first part until your cows get abducted and you need to rescue them. This second part isn't that good with puzzles that are way too easy and a plot that's a little dumb and underdeveloped. The whole thing is in rhyming couplets for no apparent reason and feels very forced. Honestly, a simple historical adventure about farm life would have been much more unique and interesting.
Rating: 6
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Post by Snake on Aug 24, 2019 10:15:04 GMT -5
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, Arcade (replay, approx. 30 minutes)
Charming 3-PLAYER game. Straightforward action, where you can actually get buy on raw skill! No need to spend $5 just to get to the end. Quite fun to charge up an attack and take out a group of armed soldiers in one blast. And always a joy to see robots joining in on the dance choreography.
7/10
The Great Waldo Search, NES (1st time, approx. 10 minutes)
This game is too easy. Okay, so it's just the Waldo book, made into video game form. The plus side against a physical book is: there's a scoring system. And there is a specific target that the NES game is looking for. That last level is killer though. I actually had no way to tell the real Waldo from all the other Waldo's. I just resorted to clicking every single Waldo until the game acknowledged it was the right Waldo.
4/10
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Post by halftheisland on Aug 24, 2019 11:01:28 GMT -5
Feel like I haven't been making as much of an effort to finish things recently, not least because I'm back in the throes of my Binding of Isaac habit. That said, I have a couple to claim:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Nintendo DS, on 3DS as part of the Trilogy. 1st time, HLTB has completionist as 22.5hrs which sounds right)
Played this over the course of a load of bus journeys to and from work, which I think is ideal as the few times I played longer sessions they started to drag. I generally really enjoyed this, and thought the plotting and characterisation was really good. There were one or two cases where it felt like you had to go around and basically present every item to every character until you found the correct combination to allow you to proceed. There was also a point in the final case where it was possible to make the wrong choice and end up in an unwinnable situation, which led to a fair amount of playtime to get back.
Ittle Dew (PC, 1st time, 3hrs)
A fun enough little Zelda clone. It looks like a lot of the value is supposed to come from replaying it a few times with various self-imposed challenges (only using 1 or 2 of the items), but I doubt I'll bother as nothing about it particularly grabbed me.
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Post by dsparil on Aug 24, 2019 15:18:53 GMT -5
Everdark Tower (Switch, First Time)
The second in Kemco's tiny RPG series after Archlion Saga, ET is just not as good. Where AS felt like longer game smooshed down to 2 hours, this feels like a sidequest padded out with a time to match. As a result, the story isn't as interesting, there are very few different locations and much less of everything overall. It is a touch harder for most of it, but the end is much easier oddly enough. Just a disappointing step down all around.
I was at 1:39:09 at the final boss.
Rating: 6
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Aug 24, 2019 15:48:18 GMT -5
Mega Man X3 (NSW, 1st time, 6h15m)Last in a thoroughly mediocre trilogy. It yet again makes all the same mistakes MMX and MMX2 made. I'm kind of pissed off about how lame these games are. This is well below Capcom's and the Mega Man classic series' standards. This time there's even more things to find in the stages but like always they either are upgrades that just lead to eventual other upgrades, or just help make you way overpowered. That is, until the final boss, which is insanely hard. Since the grinding process to fill up your sub-tanks is such a fucking drag, when I died at the final boss after using them, I just turned on Legacy Collection's 'Rookie Hunter' mode and called it a day. I wouldn't normally pussy out like that, but I really didn't feel like spending any more time on this game than necessary. I was also stuck with the worst chip upgrade at the final boss. The thing is, the game tells you you can only have one, but it doesn't tell you that the one you pick up first is the one you're stuck with for the rest of the game with no way to switch between them. So the one element that could've made the game a little more interesting was handled poorly, what a surprise. I actually felt X3 was a little more interesting than the previous two when I started it, but it's astounding how boring the levels yet again are. Just a bunch of terrain with almost no hazards and a bunch of weak-ass enemies randomly plopped on. And in this game's case it's mostly the same half-dozen or so enemies. They could make distinct and interesting stages back in 1987, so what happened? Some parts in these games are so pointless, so often can you just ignore stuff and just rush through with no repercussions. I guess it's up to Mega Man X4 to make purchasing Mega Man X Legacy Collection worth it... Rating: 6/10Feel like I haven't been making as much of an effort to finish things recently, not least because I'm back in the throes of my Binding of Isaac habit. We all have those games...
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Post by JoeQ on Aug 25, 2019 4:08:42 GMT -5
Mega Man Zero 2 (DS) - Replay, Time: 05:34:01 (timer) Originally played on the GBA. This was actually better than I remembered and a marked improvement on the first game. Got all the Cyber Elves and Forms and half the EX Skills.
Rating: 8/10Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP--S-------
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Post by zerker on Aug 25, 2019 6:58:15 GMT -5
Finished Mega Man V (GB via GBC then Super Game Boy; First Time*). Was playing most of this game portably while camping, but I made the mistake of trying to go to Dr Light's lab when continuing against the final boss and got kicked back to the beginning of the stage. I then plugged my password in again when I got home and finished via the Super Game Boy. A fairly enjoyable Mega Man game, though with fairly easy robot masters (especially with the overpowered charge fist). I was disappointing that the Wily fortress was just one long stage without clear and clever segments like the NES games, but righting a bunch of reject robot masters as fortress bosses was kinda fun.
* - Full disclosure: I did play this once back in the day on a rental around 1994/1995-ish. However, I believe I ran up against a wall with Sunstar and stopped there. It was ~25 years ago, so my memory is pretty hazy either way. I certainly had very little re-used knowledge from the first attempt, but I can't guarantee that I didn't finish. It's up to you whether you want to play it safe and consider it a replay.
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Post by alexmate on Aug 25, 2019 13:33:19 GMT -5
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, Arcade (replay, approx. 30 minutes)
Charming 3-PLAYER game. Straightforward action, where you can actually get buy on raw skill! No need to spend $5 just to get to the end. Quite fun to charge up an attack and take out a group of armed soldiers in one blast. And always a joy to see robots joining in on the dance choreography. 7/10 The Great Waldo Search, NES (1st time, approx. 10 minutes)This game is too easy. Okay, so it's just the Waldo book, made into video game form. The plus side against a physical book is: there's a scoring system. And there is a specific target that the NES game is looking for. That last level is killer though. I actually had no way to tell the real Waldo from all the other Waldo's. I just resorted to clicking every single Waldo until the game acknowledged it was the right Waldo. 4/10 The Great Waldo Search I've completed on the Genesis. Without a doubt the worst game I've ever completed. I would feel sorry for anyone who paid for the cartridge back in the day, as there is about 20 minutes gameplay time max.
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