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Post by personman on Apr 18, 2024 12:42:06 GMT -5
Hmmmmm? Did someone say Mega Man Powered Up? HMMM As you can guess that one is next! And heck Valkyrie Profile was another one of the games I played a bunch on it. Never finished though, should pick that back up one of these days. But first: Neon Drive (Linux/Steam Deck, first time, 3 hours) I've been in a synth/vaporwave kick lately and just randomly stumbled onto this. I'm not really into rhythm games but its been on sale for 3 bucks lately and figured I'd try it. Glad I did! It was a pretty fun straight forward affair with distressingly pretty 80's visuals and some fun music of course. There isn't much to it, just drive your barely legally distinct Ferarri and other vaguely 80s sports cars down a track avoiding the obstacles. However it does find ways to switch up the the presentation and put a slight spin on things. Like one segment turns into a quasi shump, another your car transforms into a jet and the second to last stage turns into a short endless runner sort of thing now that your car is discount Optimus Prime. It's pretty neat! It's a short affair with just 8 levels and nothing really to unlock besides achievements but that's fine, I found it fun for what it is and didn't wear out its welcome. Has two higher difficulties that just speed up the tempo which I wasn't really interested in tackling but hey if you're an enthusiast then perhaps you'll like it. May seem light on content but I mean I'm not sure what else you do with it besides just having more levels, perhaps unlocking different vehicles or backgrounds? Either way for the price I think it's plenty. And just cause I love this aesthetic heres some random pretty screencaps: Anyhow I thought this was pretty neat. I'd recommend giving it a whirl since its so cheap, unless of course this sort of music and look isn't to your taste which fair enough. rating-7
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Post by dsparil on Apr 19, 2024 7:20:28 GMT -5
Drop Off (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)
A sort of interesting Breakout clone, but the level count is a bit low.
I finished in 00:55:45.
Rating: 6
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Post by Snake on Apr 19, 2024 12:56:40 GMT -5
Hook, Arcade (1st time, approx. 33 minutes)
So-so Final Fight style game based on Hook, the movie. The character art for Peter Pan is a bit of a far cry from looking like Robin Williams. More fun to play with friends, with Rufio, Thudbutt, Ace, and Pockets also being playable. I tended to stick to Thudbutt and Pan. It's actually reasonably easy for an arcade quarter muncher. Enemies and bosses are constantly cloned and rehashed. Experiencing this game once is enough.
Score: 6/10.
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Post by JoeQ on Apr 21, 2024 3:27:44 GMT -5
Tyrian 2000 (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 13h 42min, Rating: 3/5Played through the OpenTyrian2000 sourceport. Been in a gaming slump lately, but finally got one done again. Tyrian 2000 is the final version of Tyrian, one of the quintessential so called euroshmups of the nineties shareware era. In many ways Tyrian exemplifies the the best and the worst of that design. It has really nice aesthetics and music, focus on story, upgrading your ship and having a lot of content. On the downside it's also often extremely poorly balanced and in typical "eurojank" fashion doesn't have any i-frames upon getting hit, meaning that even though you can take multiple hits with your shields and armor you can also get just instantly deleted when enemies ram into you or certain other attacks, which never feels good or fair. I beat all five episodes in both story mode and the hidden Super Arcade mode (PQZ ship). A single run would take about 3-4h. Alphabet Challenge: FPST
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Post by dsparil on Apr 21, 2024 4:16:47 GMT -5
I love Tyrian, but the arcade mode in particular is very much balanced around the first episode. I've finished the first one in the shareware version at least a hundred times and genuinely possibly hundreds across difficulties, modes and the arcade secret ships; you also get doled out the secret ships so much more quickly in the shareware version. The full game though, somewhere between five and ten across v2.0 and 2000.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 21, 2024 10:35:29 GMT -5
Metal Gear Solid (PSX/Switch, First Time)
Oh boy. I don't really have anything nice to say about MGS. I played it a bit on PC when it was originally released for it, I forget if I borrowed it or actually bought it, but never finished it. That version is based on MGS Integral which is a separate download for the Master Collection. I stuck with the original US PSX version though.
MGS feels very much of its time, and exemplifies two very specific trends. The most obvious is the struggles in the move of 2D games to 3D. It's not just that MGS is a 3D version of 2, it's a worse version. The view is so very cramped and it can't fit as many enemies at once for performance reasons. This makes the hypothetically more advanced stealth a wash since any given location is small and devoid of enemies. Pretty much the entire sneaking section of the training mode and in the VR Missions disc is superfluous since none of it matters in the long run. Once you have the pistol and silencer which is available early on, the game is basically a straight action game. Avoiding cameras is also basically out since you almost always have to use Chaff Grenades to disable them instead of avoiding them.
The other trend is of course multimedia. At the time of its release, the grand notion of live action FMV being the future was basically out, and it was also more of a side show on consoles compared to PC anyway. However, MGS is just a low poly 3D version of the same idea except with minimally animated radio conversions to pad things out even more. The game has literally 4 hours of cutscenes and codec conversions which actually puts it as having less gameplay than even the original Metal Gear. (Edit: To clarify on this, cutscene compilations are about 4 hours long and non-speedrun full plays are around 6 ergo 2 hours of core gameplay versus 2.5 hours). It'd be one thing if all the story content was good, but it seems very content at being a schlocky techno-thriller with some small glimpses at being better.
I have many other criticisms including how much it cribs directly from MG2, but that's also the core of it. The US just never got MG2, and people generally were not even aware of its existence. It did get fan translated in 1997, but you'd have to be pretty tuned into the MSX scene in particular to even know about it; it's fair to say that most people paying attention to emulation back then cared more about consoles than niche-in-the-US computers. After MGS was out, then it became more well known but still a footnote until MGS3 Subsistence included it. It's a huge jump from NES Metal Gear to MGS, but it's more of a hop and a stumble from MG2. The Japanese reception does seem equally rapturous, but I think so much of that still comes from the novelty of having something approaching a playable action movie. I just wish it was a good movie.
My final timer time was 08:19:05.
Rating: 5
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Apr 22, 2024 8:50:48 GMT -5
Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360; First Time; 8 hours 43 minutes)
What a surprise. I'd played all three of the Ninja Gaiden games by Team Ninja over the years, though the only one I've beaten up until now was the original version of the controversial Ninja Gaiden 3 (I made a solid attempt at Ninja Gaiden Black back in 2020 but threw in the towel fairly close to the end). I picked this up in CeX along with Clive n Wrench and the 24 game for PS2 since it was only a couple euros, to see how I'd manage this time around.
I'm genuinely shocked I was able to beat this, considering how crazy challenging it tended to get. I played this once or twice previously but I don't think I even managed to get past the second stage, so it's wild that I overcame that hurdle and managed to experience NGII in all its manic and insane glory. Enemies keep coming at you, folks who can individually deal some real damage if you're not careful, so you're always encouraged to stay on your guard, adapt to whatever nonsense gets thrown at you and keep pushing. I played this on the lowest difficulty level, but it's by no means the "easy" mode and I experienced an appropriate amount of challenge.
Something I really appreciated is that there's often enough wiggle room, in your moves, the weapons, the items you can use and whatnot, that I never felt truly stuck. If I got my ass handed to me, I just needed to take a different approach and that would usually be enough to tip the scales in my favour. Admittedly using my best friend the eclipse scythe at more or less every opportunity helped with that, it's an excellent enemy shredder. It's kinda a shame there isn't much else to do after you've beaten in, other than to do a new game plus on the same difficulty or play the game on harder modes. I would've liked even a basic chapter select to replay stages or bosses, cuz there's otherwise nothing pushing me to keep playing. (Though maybe I'll check out the Sigma version which is an easier version that adds various extras and alternate bosses to spice things up.)
Couple of my favourite moments from the third act: fighting that army of ninjas up the staircase, where there's so many of them that the framerate slows way the heck down. It's genuinely beautiful to see the game struggle to render its ambitions, almost acting like a dramatic slo-mo fight scene, and the way it just kept going made me smile to no end.
An unexpected surprise came in the chapter where you return to the Dragon Ninja Village, and gradually make your way out through the woods, until you reach the ninja fortress that was the very first level of the 2004 Ninja Gaiden. I first played that game 18 years ago, and as someone who wasn't very good at it, I replayed that opening level many times. So it was so strange to be exploring that ninja fortress - only now in ruins with most places unexplorable. It felt so oddly melancholic to revisit this place after a much longer gap in time than the original release (just under 4 years if you were playing these at launch), and such an unexpected walk down memory lane.
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Post by lurker on Apr 23, 2024 16:06:53 GMT -5
3D Streets of Rage 2 (3DS, First Time)
I finally sat down to do a run for the challenge, which I meant to do sooner, but I was busy and distracted with other things. I had picked it up around the 3DS shop's final days. Still a very fun game with the occasional annoying spots. The 3D's really nice, too.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 24, 2024 6:38:13 GMT -5
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (TurboGrafx-CD, First Time)
I used to play the Deluxe edition a ton as a kid, but never managed to finished it. Well, now I can say I managed to finish some version. It's a classic game, but this version is a bit basic.
I finished in 00:53:54.
Rating: 6
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Apr 25, 2024 17:28:49 GMT -5
I'm going to add another one that I forgot because I think I'm not going to update the topic for a while...
Gemcrusty (Steam, first time, around 2h 45)
Casual game made in Thailand with an anime-esque style that takes elements from Helltaker (the hub zone, mainly) and dating sims/visual novels, but very basic. You are an explorer that digs underground to gain gems (digging reminds a bit of games like Mr. Driller, but again, more simplified) that can be used when getting back to the surface to upgrade the abilities like digging power, the oxygen timer, damage taken, bonus multipliers and so on. The gimmick is that every number of meters underground we'll meet anthropomorphic representation of gems that we can get back to our abode on the surface and improve the relationship with them, basically by talking to them every time we get back to the digging missions (like in Helltaker when we bring back demon girls from Hell and let them live in our home). In the underground parts we also have to avoid explosives and fight enemies, the mole men, just by moving the arrows in their direction when they are adjacent to us in the fight screen, as I said it's all very simple and I won't be surprised if it turned out it was actually a mobile game. At the start we have to keep an eye on the timer and enemies, but after amassing a big number of riches and maxing out all our stats the game becomes too easy and it's possible to go on almost indefinitely, weren't it for the last gem girl that is kept prisoner by what is basically the final boss but which is more a gauntlet of enemies to be defeated and obstacles to be avoided. Not much more to say about it, it's a nice cute simple pastime to spend some time when you have nothing to do: portraits of the character are fairly cute (and the devs are making money by selling digital artbooks of the characters as DLC, since the main game is free), music is too repetitive, concept is fairly fun and interesting but a bit limited, plenty of achievements to keep us occupied, nothing to write home about but bizarre and fun enough to be enjoyable. Girls' characters are the usual anime stereotypes (the motherly and hard-working one, the shy and flustered one, the tsundere, the lustful mature woman, the hyperactive but intelligent weirdo, etc.) but it's all good-natured enough so I was not annoyed by it. The molemen getting smacked on the screen when you defeat them, on the other hand, is funny at first but it quickly becomes tiresome.
7/10
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Post by dsparil on Apr 26, 2024 8:35:58 GMT -5
Blue Blink (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)
Pretty good action-platformer from Westone.
I finished in 01:15:03.
Rating: 7
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Post by personman on Apr 26, 2024 19:33:33 GMT -5
B3313 (Super Mario 64 hack, emulated on Steam Deck, first time?) Guess I won't flag this one just incase, again up to you dsparil. It does technically have an ending an a small progression track it just doesn't necessarily end traditionally which no surprise being what it is. Anyways I got wind of this listening to random youtube stuff at work last week and thought it sounded pretty interesting. Hacks usually aren't my thing as I find they tend to be over designed and sadistic and unless its fixing flaws that could just make the game better without reinventing the thing I just prefer to play the games in their default form. This however just kinda touches on a particular flavor I've always found interesting; even before it was this popular 'horror' trope with the liminal spaces I was having dreams about surreal empty labyrinths and a few times I even had dreams of this very game with a warped version of the castle lobby and its pretty uncanny how similar this hack feels compared to those just dialed up to 11. Of course it has a dash of Backrooms stuff with some jump scares and creepy things that cause the rom to crash which thankfully are few and far between so they don't get annoying and usually errs on the side of being a subtle creeping terror; the kinda that's like everything in this room has been replaced with an exact copy sort of deal. Though as you might have guessed it is overdone. The lobby is an absolute labyrinth and much of the paths are deviously hidden. Its so ridiculous that it ends up making lives valuable again since you don't want to game over and have to start over from the beginning of course. However this time around I think it mostly works in its favor. While there is progression and an end goal of sorts its really best served as something you just jump into and screw around to just see what you end up finding and even when I tried to button down on getting to the ending I was still getting lead away just wanting to see what the next corner would bring. Maybe its just nostalgia for the base game letting me be more immersed in these dingy halls than they deserve but I enjoyed poking around everywhere. Reminds me of times I was sneaking back into the storage areas of the huge church buildings I grew up going to, just kind of this neat thrill to see a mess of stuff and ponder what stories are behind them while hoping you don't get caught being somewhere you're not supposed to be. Hyper specific I know. Anyhow along with the lobby mazes there is also a ludicrous amount of stages too some based on the original's in a remixed or in a beta state (they use a lot of cut beta assets to boot) but many are original too. I bet I only visited barely a third of them but what I saw was just fine. Being a hack I was expecting them to be dickish and what not and while a couple certainly demanded some advanced play you don't have to be a speed running expert or anything. While I wouldn't say any of them will blow you away they all were pretty solid and some do some nifty things with vanilla assets to make things you never would have seen in the base game. I liked one that was a big empty city at night. Of course a version of Bomb omb battlefield is present but then it leads to another version of it... then another version of it then has two other paths that also lead to two other levels on top of that. Fucking level turducken. One issue that did bug me is it mostly retains the original games rule of booting you out of the stage after getting a star. With that particular stages case it quickly got exhausting to have to keep going back in and repeating the same path like 5 times to get all its stars and red coins. Fortunately that is like the only case of such a thing happening but still I wish they did away with that rule. Thing is you only need 33 stars total to get free run of the place. It was way too late before I figured that out (my final count was 147) but you can seriously just stop after that point which you gotta ask... why is there 425 of the damn things to find then when the required amount is so low? While I was still taking a gander at stages here and there out of curiosity and didn't mind what I saw it definitely knocked the wind out of my sails to bother finding anymore. Instead what you need is to go after are red stars which only show up in special spots, often from boss fights. These not only grant you back some moves you don't have from the start but grabbing all 13 of them will open the final level... which good luck getting them without a guide as some I would have never found with out help. It's a little excessively obtuse but again its a rom hack you have to expect it to a degree and rushing to the end isn't the point of this to begin with, plus you know it could have been way more annoying like... Tunic for example. There is a light story I guess too. It's based off this dumb myth about some adaptive personalization AI that people have made creepy pastas about. If you've heard of it you can gather what it's about and I guess it's fine. Thankfully it stays mostly in the background. But yeah I actually had a decent time with this and think its worth a look if you're up for both a nostalgia trip and some pretty decent homebrew 3d platforming. Has its own soundtrack too which are mostly remixes of songs from the original and the Mario series but I really dig many of them. Heres where you can get the patch: romhacking.com/hack/b3313-super-mario-64-internal-plexus And I used this to patch it: www.smwcentral.net/?a=details&id=11474&p=section All you need then is to just grab a rom and I'm sure most of you here know where to look. But yeah, I'd consider taking it for a spin sometime. Rating-7 Now that I had a break I best get back to trying to force myself to get MMX8 going. having a hard time getting into it for some reason and then I just want to give Powered Up one more go before I gather my thoughts on it, thing has a lot more to it than you'd expect!
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Post by JoeQ on Apr 28, 2024 4:34:53 GMT -5
SpellForce: Platinum Edition (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 287h 02min, Rating: 3/5My big gaming project of Spring finally done! A compilation of the original SpellForce: The Order of Dawn and it's two expansions Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix, which conclude the story. A hydrid of a RPG and RTS, which could be described as a fusion of Baldur's Gate and Warcraft. You control a single playable hero character which can gain levels, use equipment and learn new spells and abilities, but also summon other NPC characters from runes you acquire or enter RTS mode by activating monuments in certain maps. Objectively speaking SpellForce is quite mediocre, neither the RPG or RTS components or the story are especially good or would stand on their own. The RTS segments especially can easily become very frustrating due to the way the enemy units work, unless you "cheat" by running around pre-emptively destroying enemy encampments with your hero. But still there was something oddly addicting about it and it kept me playing for nearly three hundred hours, that's gotta count for something. There's also a ton of sequels which I'm planning to tackle at some point. I beat all three campaigns and the quests in Free Game mode. Alphabet Challenge: FPST
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Post by dsparil on Apr 29, 2024 10:35:12 GMT -5
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Switch, Replay)
Such a coincidence that today is 4/29, the same day during which most of MGS2 takes place! It's a game I've beaten repeatedly, I think this is my seventh, but at the same time I go back and forth on it. It really comes down to enhanced gameplay but iffier story. It feels much like a real stealth game than MGS since additions like bodies sticking around and enemies having to report in mean that you can't just run and gun as much. It also takes significantly longer for alert modes to end if you're found so there's more of a reason to actually not get caught. The areas are mostly larger too.
The story has always been the most contentious part of the game. I remember X-Play had a segment decrying how much cutscenes and codec conversations break up the game, but I think this is actually worse in MGS. Rather, the problem I have is that while the themes are still relevant today, the actual plot is just a mess. It just loves to pile twists on top of twists and then hammer on things way too much. It also doesn't help that last boss battles are buried amidst something like forty-five minutes of the most excrutiating cutscenes to sit through. An outline of the game even as it is probably sounds fine if convoluted, but it's exhausting to actually sit through.
Overall, I still do like the game for the most part, but it could have used so much more restraint in the story.
I finished in 10:41:21 by the timer which doesn't include restarts from the menu. I wonder what the playlog time ends up being.
Rating: 7
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Apr 30, 2024 10:19:03 GMT -5
Gonna drop these in before the month's out lol
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Director's Cut (Windows; Replay; 9 hours 18 minutes)
I recently noticed that there isn't a HG101 article covering Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse, and started having thoughts about asking to make that article. However, I didn't quite get into that game despite beating it last year, and I figured it might be a good idea to try and play through the entire series, so that I can have a better understanding of 5 whenever I get round to it. It also gives me a good excuse to revisit the original Broken Sword (or at least the Director's Cut* released back in 2009, which is the only version I've ever played). I've gone through this about half a dozen times since first checking out the DS port in 2013, bought in the Blarney branch of the long-since-closed XtraVision shop, and it's probably my favourite 90s adventure game.
It's a very cozy adventure where a lot of the dialogue makes me smile and occasionally laugh a bunch, helped greatly by the voice acting which lends a lot of flavour to the conversations. I'm particularly impressed by how much each area you head to feels like a place you truly get to know, despite only being comprised of a handful of rooms and three or four people to talk to at any time. I remembered most of the puzzle solutions at the back of my mind, so I took the opportunity to mine more conversations out of characters I previously ignored and showed as many items to everyone as I could
There's a lot of fun tiny discussions to be had, especially in places with more characters such as the pub in Ireland and the town square in Syria. But I noticed that there aren't as many unique replies around the final third - with either quick and dirty "does this mean anything?" "no" conversations or George straight up deciding not to even bother showing the item. I wish the game had a little more time in the oven so there could have been more unique convos written and voiced, but I get how that can happen. Still, it was very nice to come back to these familiar places and faces once more, and super cozy playing it on a laptop where I could click on something, sit back and enjoy the story being told.
*The Director's Cut version added a few things, mainly sections where you can play as Nico in a story that occurs before and during the first third of the game, a hint and diary system to better keep track of things and help you out, and unintentionally goofy character portraits drawn by Dave Gibbons (of Watchmen and Beneath A Steel Sky fame). They also removed the moments where you could get killed, which never bothered me since this is the only version I've experienced but there you go. The upcoming Reforged port is based on the original version, but the Director's Cut is planned to stay available along with the very original game which is really nice.
Spyro the Dragon (PlayStation; Replay)
Fun personal story about the original Spyro: I never owned it as a kid despite having 2 and 3, and I can only vaguely recall seeing or playing a tiny bit of it in someone's house circa 2001 or 2002. I only got round to playing this in 2010, when I grabbed it and a PlayStation from a local retro game shop that had just opened (and is still open, though I've not been in years). I was desperate to play through PS1 games again, with my interest getting kickstarted from YouTube reviews of childhood games I hadn't been able to play in years, and this allowed me to do that while also getting to experience games I'd never properly played.
I have no clue how many times I've played through the original Spyro over the years, but this playthrough marks the first time I found everything. Normally I'll try to find what I can but elect to skip past something if it's a bit too tricky for my patience, so it's rad that whatever mindset I was in allowed to persevere and obtain 100% completion! Having also found everything in Spyro 2/3 (albeit in 2019 and 2017 respectively), this means I've finally 100%-ed the entire original trilogy after playing them on/off for roughly 14 years.
I also did something a bit unusual. Instead of playing through all the levels in each world before moving on to the next like I always did, I would find whatever I needed to advance to the next world and immediately head on over. This allowed me to reach the fourth world within roughly an hour, since the amount of dragons/gems/eggs you need are fairly small, and I then spent the rest of my playthrough bouncing back and forth between all the worlds to play through the levels I'd skipped past.
This really breathed new life into the game, using its freedom to experience levels in totally different orders from what I'm used to. I'd bounce back and forth between the earlier simpler stages and the later trickier ones, noticing greater contrasts in the architecture (like how Ice Cavern has a lot of the "Peace Keepers" towers and buildings but frozen over) and enjoying a more varied experience overall. I get why the looser structure can feel a bit repetitive when you're doing the same thing of "go in, find what you can, leave", but the way you're allowed to experience a lot of this makes it more interesting for me to replay than 2 and sometimes even 3 - despite those having more varied missions and level designs.
It's always nice to revisit the Spyro games, and even nicer to have beaten the entire game within just a few hours - with a new approach that I can bring into future playthroughs. Maybe even bring that approach to other collectathons with a similarly open structure?
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