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Post by dsparil on Jan 17, 2024 18:22:23 GMT -5
Airwolf (NES, First Time)
Jeremy Parish put out an early-for-patrons video on Acclaim's Beam developed Airwolf today, and he mentions something like "no one will see this to the last level" which felt like a personal challenge. He's super negative about the game, but I didn't think it was that bad. It's not actually good, but did someone at Beam run over his dog or something? This is a first person helicopter "sim" based on the TV show of the same name which I have never seen. You fly around small maps shooting down missiles and fighter planes in order to get to hostages at which point the game switches to a side scrolling view so you can pick them up. The same goes for the combined repair and refueling points.
There's a whole host of problems, but I think there is a nugget of a good idea here. It's mainly just way too repetitive more than anything else. There's 25 levels some of which have intricate boundaries, but most are basically squares without much thought put into the layout. They might as well have been randomly generated. After you get through the 25, the last five seem to loop endlessly. Beam did do good work like Nightshade and the SNES Shadowrun so I do think they were capable of turning this into a genuinely good game, but they probably were not given enough time so here.
I finished in 01:32:32.
Rating: 5
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Post by dsparil on Jan 18, 2024 8:32:59 GMT -5
Super Pitfall (PC-88, First Time) If you can believe it, this is the sixth and I think for real this time last variation on Pitfall II. This was released at about the same time as the NES game, and is clearly made by a different team. The layout is totally different although they do share some minor elements. There are some enhancements like permanent upgrades and a health bar, but it also has the hidden power ups and keys so this isn't an obvious choice for people that don't like the NES game. The controls are a bit weird too. You jump with F6 which isn't a problem if you have some ability to remap keys. I don't think M88 lets you so I used a general utility (Karabiner if you're on a Mac). This is still good, but I still actually like the NES game more.
Rating: 7
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jan 18, 2024 12:59:36 GMT -5
Quake II: Call of the Machine (Nintendo Switch; First Time)Here we are, the final and most recent of the Quake II campaigns available for the Nightdive remaster. This was made by MachineGames (the folks best known for the 2010 Wolfenstein games) specifically for the port, much like their "Dimension of the Machine" campaign for the 2021 port of the original Quake. I never played the campaign due to finding most of the Quake I expansions too difficult for my speed and not even bothering with it, but after watching Noah Gervais' excellent retrospective on the series and hearing him gush about the MachineGames campaigns, I was curious enough to give Call a go. I might go back and check out Dimension cuz this was quite a good time. Unlike the other campaigns, you're provided with six self-contained locations that you can access in any order, and there's a good bit of variety in the design of these things in terms of visuals, the level structure and the enemy placement. You can a bunch of different Strogg bases that look quite different from the main game, a couple of places on Earth that have been laid to waste, and one or two other strange areas along the way. Some areas lean into the normal Quake II style, while others ramp up the intensity of the enemy encounters to where it almost feels more like Serious Sam - I was concerned about the latter thing happening, but it's amazing how well it manages to ramp up the tension and forces you to instinctively weave your way through the chaos. I'm seriously impressed by that, and the overall control of tone it has. I never associated much of a strong mood or vibe with Quake II, and yet I found myself compelled by slowly scavenging for weapons in sewers, exploring the twists and turns of facilities, and briefly panicking when the doors opened to reveal a couple dozen enemies gunning for me. Out of the various official Quake II campaigns, I'd say this is probably my favourite of the bunch, and a nice way to cap off the whole batch. It's wild that MachineGames basically made two new Quake games with their campaigns, and combined with the recent news that the upcoming Slave Zero X has released a prequel mod called Episode Enyo officially made for Quake I, I'm pining for the days when decently sized developers could earn their bread and butter by doing official mods or expansion packs for games. It's frustrating seeing studios with plenty of talented folks only putting out one or two games a decade, if even that, and I'd love to see folks be allowed to more openly play around in doing smaller projects for pre-existing games - to stretch their feet, play around with ideas, or just have something to show that isn't the result of a multi-year death march.
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Post by spanky on Jan 19, 2024 12:27:02 GMT -5
Super Mario RPG (Switch, First Time)
Putting this in blue because I played this co-op with my son, so I'm not sure it counts. I read for him (he's about to turn 6), guided him and did some of the trickier platforming segments but he did pretty much every battle (once again with my guidance) and he played it on Breezy mode too which just turns an already easy game into a complete cakewalk. He absolutely loved it.
This is the latest in the line of high profile remakes - one of those that hews pretty closely to the original game. People dog on pre-rendered graphics but the look of the original puts me in a certain time and place and feels...unique I guess. The remake looks nice but some of the animations have kind of lost their "pop." Also, the performance was surprisingly chuggy at times, which I guess is just the Switch showing it's age at this point though nothing in this game feels exactly resource intensive. The music was good and you have the option to listen to the original version if you wish.
The script keeps a somewhat surprising amount of the original translation though there's lots of real world allusions that have been removed as well as some slight censorship here and there. There's been a handful of new scenes added (there's a scene after liberating Seaside Town where Bowser and Peach talk about what to do next), and some have been rewritten slightly. The lion's share of changes are the name and attack changes and most are welcome though overall some of the charm feels like it's been stripped out but only a weirdo like me who has played the original a dozen times would even notice. For example, Bowser referring to his soldiers has been changed from the catchy "Koopa Troop" to the more awkward "Bowser's Minions."
Mario RPG was already pretty easy - it's a game that throws lots of random boons towards you. You can get freebie items when you use them in combat, some enemies drop flowers that restore health or give you extra turns, the Princess pretty much lets you sleep walk through any fight. The remake adds even more of these boosts - you now have a Chrono Trigger-esque triple attack, splash damage on timed hits, different party makeups confer unique bonuses and you can now swap out characters in mid battle - even ones that are currently incapacitated! The game tries to balance this out a little bit by throwing in the occasional tougher versions of random enemies but they'll barely slow you down.
The original game is one of my personal favorite titles and this remake accomplishes it's goals pretty well, it's just that given the shortness and breeziness...it's BEGGING for an expansion of some kind. A new post-game quest or epilogue would have gone a long way in my book. It's still an excellent, if short and easy RPG and I like it better than a lot of other games in the Mario RPG line. I think I still prefer the original version as the new features here don't really add enough for me. 7/10.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 20, 2024 13:25:11 GMT -5
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (Switch, First Time) The very short version is don’t play this on Switch just don’t. There’s save game deleting crashes that aren’t going to get fixed at this point. If you do play this version, save very frequently and cycle your saves. From looking around, it might be all the console versions that have this problem. Anyway: Baldur’s Gate represents one of the games that turned back the "cRPG drought" of 1994 to 98*. How much of a drought there really was is debatable. It’s not like the entire genre just disappeared—the Exile trilogy, Daggerfall and Shadows over Riva are some I remember playing—but it's both not a modern invention and inarguable that prominent series were fallow or having difficulties. SSI losing its D&D license exclusivity and then the license entirely didn't help the perception either. Plus, the overlapping booms of FPS and RTS along with the money sink of multimedia put publisher and developer attention elsewhere. Having been developed in the midst of the RTS craze, Baldur’s Gate is clearly influenced by them. In fact, it was made out of an engine intended for an MMO-RTS called Battleground Infinity ergo Infinity Engine. There’s been so much hemming and hawing over the Realtime with Pause system Baldur’s Gate uses (but did not invent), and I’m mostly neutral on the concept itself. Like so many things, it’s the implementation and game itself that mess it up entirely. D&D was obviously not designed as a realtime system and does not adapt to one super well. The key issue is with the passage of time. It’s one thing when the “in-game” length of a round inside and outside combat is purely an abstraction, but its quite another when nothing is happening during combat because the next round hasn’t started yet. It’s probably worst when detecting traps which is done once per round and makes exploring locations with traps a literal crawl. On top of this, the character AI is just a mess. Usually it’s fine, but you’ll get things like the AI deciding that bow attacks have to be done at point blank even if the character was close enough to begin with. Sometimes the game just eats the commands so characters will do nothing or just act strangely in general. This is also a separate issue from the Party AI which automates characters. It is hypothetically a nice feature especially when fighting the masses of filler enemies, but it’s barely usable outside of the simplest “attack with current weapon” setting. It would be nice to just leave everyone on the Ranged setting (attack with bows/slings at a distance, melee if in range), but it’s more like ranged 90% regardless of distance with the other 10% split between swapping correctly and deciding to engage in melee even if the enemy is far away. Combat ends up being both less tactical and more finicky than in a turn-based game. What doesn’t help either is the very unbalanced division of the content which makes most of the game dreadfully boring. You’re just traipsing through generic woodland (with a smidge of desert in the southern part) in medium sized maps that generally only have one or two things of interest. There are very few exciting combat encounters, and you’re mostly fighting the same weak enemies over and over again. I can give the generic areas a bit of a pass because the backwater locale was mandated by TSR/WotC. However, their dull design has no excuse. I never even got halfway through when this was new because it was just such a chore. However, once you get to the title city of Baldur’s Gate, things do get a better. Most of the game’s non-filler side quests are there and there is a decent number of them. It’s just exhausting to get to this point. I'm also going to link to Scorpia's review for CGW which I 100% agree with. It's a four star review (one of the lowest it got!) but it reads much more negatively than that. I know for this game the score was collectively decided up, but I forget if a group decision was the general policy. For all the talk of RPGs making a return back then, turn-based games didn’t really make a huge comeback on PC. Ironically, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the splashiest turn-based western RPG in literal decades. Still, there is something here otherwise I wouldn’t have finished the game twice. The first time around was the standard player generated protagonist with a recruited party. It was such a slog to get through as so many of your character choices are not great or annoying. I swear half the reason that Viconia became such a fan favorite is from being the least grating. You also have to contend with the fact that the game’s quests hand reputation points out like candy making it hard to use Evil characters some of which are the best in their class. You end up randomly slaughtering a civilian every now and then to keep your reputation down. I ended up rushing this one towards the end because of this. The second time around was with a fully created party. Oddly enough, what made me do this was new interquel Siege of Dragonspear. You automatically get pushed into it after the final boss, but Imoen is taken out of your party if you had been using her and replaced with a different thief character without any items that were in Imoen’s inventory. Suffice to say, she was holding a lot of things that I would have preferred to have kept. Faced with redoing the final boss, I decided to start over entirely instead. The original game let you make a custom party by creating a multiplayer game with only one player, but it’s a regular option now. It doesn’t take much time to get a party together with exactly what you want with high stats where it matters. I still felt worn down by the game at times, but it just feels better with the exact party mix you want especially with the added class kits of BGII and the Sorcerer. I went with Human Inquisitor (Paladin kit), Half-Elf Ranger, Half-Orc Barbarian, Elf Priest of Helm (Cleric kit), Elf Thief and a Human Sorcerer. I somewhat regret the Ranger who seems to always get targeted by enemies, but it was fine overall. This time I did pretty much everything including the expansion and I can’t emphasize how much better the end game is over everything else. One difference too is that I played on Core Rules difficulty the second time around. The default of Normal is really the Easy mode as it reduces damage and gives you max HP rolls every level up. The game is genuinely not that difficult barring some specific combats. Just make sure to give everyone ranged weapons and don’t rush headlong into things. The enemy AI almost always only activates once on screen so you can split up enemy groups into more manageable chunks by slowly creeping along or turning on auto-pause for enemy sightings. Going below Core Rules might make the game too easy especially if you take Normal as being the “real normal” and drop down to Easy which also gives other bonuses on top of further damage reduction. However, a console is not a great way to play this game. I read that Beamdog had been asked about an Xbox port went the EE was originally released, and they brushed it off as requiring too much UI reworking. Well their eventual course of action was to just half-ass the whole thing. Character selection got mapped to ZL (along with some savable groups that almost never actually work) and a few things got mapped to a ZR menu. The sole nicety is what the game calls Drive Mode which lets you control a character or group directly, but it drops out of it when an enemy is on screen so you just start scrolling away when that happens. For everything else, it like trying to control the game with arrow keys. The non-drive mode doesn’t even use a virtual cursor, it’s locked in the center and you move the camera around. Because of this, you lose out on thing like targeting beneficial spells using the character portraits. You also can’t use mods which is a given, but there’s a large enough community that this is a significant disadvantage. Then there’s the bugs. The absolute worst is save loss like I mentioned up top. Everything else is small potatoes compared to this, but there’s a lot including seemingly random crashes, sound effects cutting out until the game is restarted, slowdown and unresponsive UI in weird places, the pathfinding just failing outright at times, and negative effects not being fully dispelled i.e. the status is no long listed but the effect persists. Most are not pervasive, but this feels very much like it was barely tested. The funniest thing though is that when I got pushed in Siege of Dragonspear, some of my characters didn’t get moved into the game. They were still in the final boss room! Luckily, the game autosaves before starting SoD and a reload fixed this. Having already played the sequel and gotten most of the way through the “trilogy” ending expansion to it (not sure why I never finished it) in the past, at least I know that things do get more exciting from here. Overall, you can’t really avoid this game if you’re going to play through the series. Just stick to the computer version if possible, it’ll be much more pleasant especially with all the keyboard shortcuts not to mention safer. I finished in about 52.5h. Rating: 4 (I’d give the game a 7 but with minuses save game deletion, general bugs, poor UI) * It's a little bit tricky to define, but it was certainly over in ’98. If you want to bound it by games, Ultima VIII in March ’94 to Might and Magic VI in April ’98 has a nice symmetry with the fall of one series and the mostly triumphant return of another. For someone with good game availability or varied tastes it probably didn’t seem so bad, but I’ve read some people’s experience was basically like the genre did disappear for a while.
Tales of the Sword Coast (Switch, First Time) This doesn’t count separately since it’s integrated into the game, but I figured I’d go over it a little since it’s a few discrete bits. Considering that I never finished the game in the late 90s, I unsurprisingly never picked this up. It’s actually a little skimpy for an expansion, but there is some good stuff. The most minor is a small dungeon. I’m not even sure why that was included as it’s so slight. The second is a sort of extra chapter that takes place after being shipwrecked ironically while in search of a shipwreck. This part is just a town map and a wilderness map, but there’s a few side quests and it has more direct story content than the regular chapters. It’s a nice side adventure all in all. The headline content is Durlag’s Tower. The base game doesn’t have much in the way of dungeons. There’s only four real ones with two being optional single floors and the other two aren’t especially large either. If you want to be generous, you can count the Nashkel Mine, but that might as well just be the boss at the end despite being multiple floors as the main enemies are 4HP kobolds. Durlag’s Tower is the large dungeon the game so desperately needed. I still wouldn’t describe it as large, but it’s miles above anything else in the game. Just make sure you have a thief with 100 in trap detection and lock picking.
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Post by personman on Jan 21, 2024 3:05:53 GMT -5
Mega Man(3ds via legacy collection, replay)
Had to get a new 3DS last year and the one I bought this from already had this collection installed. I have both volumes of the classic series on my Switch but I don't carry that thing around and figured why not hold onto them? Decided tonight to take a break from my Majora's Mask play through and start working on going through the classic series again since the mood just kinda struck me.
So as many of us know the first entry in the series was pretty damn good for the time and stood out with its ideas but time hasn't been too kind to it. I wouldn't say its bad but I'd tell most people to skip it and my position on that stands unsurprisingly. However I had an okay time with it, more than I thought I would. I don't have too much of interest to say about this that you all haven't heard already so I'll just point out some things that struck me on the revisit, good or bad.
-Powers are actually more useful than I remember and I was able to spot some places where their use made getting through a couple levels way easier. That was neat though they are a bit janky still.
-Mega feels so heavy in this one. Especially when you fall off one of those moving platforms in Gutsman's stage. Like he doesn't just fall off as much as JET out of existence. I find it funny.
- I always liked how just about every Megaman game early on had at least one strange stage that begged you to ponder what the heck this place is and what its for. I'd say this one is definitely Bombman's stage with the weird bulbous towers in the background. What the hell are those things?
-It donned on me the point system does absolutely nothing. Don't know why I never realized you don't even get free lives after a bench mark or anything its just there. I also assumed that the bonus assigned to beating a boss just rose as you progressed but its instead completely random. Just weird, and it makes those stupid point balls drop more often than not instead of recovery items so boy am glad this was never a thing again.
-I didn't abuse the pause trick once this time. Yay lol.
But yeah, its a rough one, very first game syndrome sort of deal. Even if my feeling is that 2 is way overrated its a huge step up, guess I'll give that a spin soon too.
Rating-4
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jan 21, 2024 8:48:26 GMT -5
Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten PS5 FTP 31 hours
A prequel to the equally long titled Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception; Monochrome Mobius is set 10ish(?) years prior and follows side characters from the aforementioned game. Instead of being a tactics game this one is a Dragon Quest inspired. And it's okay. The battle system is functional but kind of boring. I mostly listened to podcasts when outside of story bits. I do like the characters and world though so that kept me playing.
I had initially picked this up on release and played a few hours, but got distracted by something shinier. I prefer the Utawarerumono games but this one was decent. And it looks way better than another game I tried recently Pokemon Scarlet!
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Post by JoeQ on Jan 21, 2024 13:09:11 GMT -5
Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll (DS) - First playthrough, Time: N/A, Rating: 3/5A decent port of Super Monkey Ball for the DS, replicates the experience faithfully with nice graphics and good physics. Unfortunately the controls (D-pad or touchscreen) aren't quite as precise as a game like this requires, making any levels requiring finesse very frustrating. The difficulty curve in general is very wonky, it's more of a gentle upward slope with occasional massive spikes peppered throughout. I was stuck on one of the early worlds for a long time because of one incredibly difficult level I was only ever able to clear through sheer luck. There's also a decent selection of minigames as is series tradition. These force you to use the touchscreen only and aren't much fun to play alone. The sole exception is the minigolf, which was actually very good and could've easily been expanded to carry a full game on it's own. I beat all ten main worlds and also unlocked and cleared the two extra worlds that became available after beating the main game. Alphabet Challenge: FPS
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Post by personman on Jan 22, 2024 12:31:16 GMT -5
Mega Man 2 (3DS, via Legacy collection, replay) Couldn't resist the call of a nostalgia trip. This was one of my first games ever, I specifically remember going to an old store chained simply called Gamers and picking out a bunch of things for the NES I was getting for my 5th birthday. There was just something about the art on the cartridge/boxart that just drew me to it I thought it looked pretty cool and nowadays I still think its cool just for how off model yet still kinda sorta in the ball park it is lol. Though even better is the european boxart: Absolutely metal lol. (badumtsh) Anyways much like the first game I'm sure I can't think of too much to say that hasn't been said before. However one of the other reasons I wanted to try this is I have long held that while very good this one is overrated and I preferred 3 as the best of the classic series. Going through this again I still hold that opinion still just perhaps not as strongly as before. I was mostly having a blast save for a couple parts like in Heatman's stage or Airman's. But once you get to Wily's place it just falls apart. It's hard in the cruel vindictive ways I never enjoy with the third stage in particular being really terrible. I love when they try to think of ways to get you to use your special weapons but that was just way too much. It also has one of the most overrated game tracks ever lol. Like going through this I was reminded how much of a jam most of the main stages are but Wily Castle 1? Never did anything for me it just sounds so repetitive and... meh. I must be sounding like a hipster lol but it's always annoyed me how I would go to OCRemix back in the day and it was just a flood of Wily Castle 1 remixes. Ugh. Ignoring that though the tunes definitely helped me enjoy this more. Like I mentioned about the last game most entries early on had a stage or two that was very 'wtf' with that sort of goofy style of abstraction you used to see so much in the 80s and 90s. Here like every other stage is like that. Who can guess what the hell Flashman stage is supposed to be? Or Crashman's stage? Just a tower network of pipes, yeah sure why not? Fitting the fun jaunty stage theme too. Airman has giant float Oni demon things because reasons and Heatman's looks like a normal sewer just with lava. Yep. I love this nonsense. Also how weird is the ending, like what suddenly Megaman decided to walk the countryside after his victory and can command the seasons now? Neat lol. Then theres the Metal Blade and how busted it is. But its a fun kind of busted. Guess I rambled a bunch anyways, go figure. I had a good time with this and find myself fonder of the game than I used to be. Admittedly some of my rejection for it was just due to me being sick of hearing about it all the time, I grew up with it so it just wasn't as special to me I guess; kinda like how people go on about the Grand Canyon and as a former Arizonian to me it was just a really big crack in the ground I got dragged to go see every couple years. Big whoop. Anyways despite me finding a new charm to the game I just cant excuse how mean the last stretch of it is which really while the majority of the game can be a challenge its fairly relaxed so to have it go from 0 to 100 puts me off even more. I seriously think I spent 2 hours just trying to get past the third stage of the castle, ugh. It's a very good game, it's an important one to both the series and action platformers as a whole but the best? No I still don't think so. However will I still think my personal favorite coming up next is the best? Well I suppose I'll see. Rating-7
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Jan 22, 2024 17:57:52 GMT -5
Two for the price of one:
MENERVA-324 (PC, first time, about 2 hours?)
Starring a humanoid of some sort escaping from a lab, or something, there's no story whatsoever. You have to find the usual stuff (shot, dash, health bar charges) and the keycards to move around the lab and find the exit. Seems polished at first with nice GBA-esque graphics, some jumping challenges and neat obstacles, but the last leg feels incomplete, and possibly is given the description. Also it has one of the most baffling design decisions I've ever seen, putting a save spot right in the middle of the final boss chamber, basically giving us unlimited energy because the room doesn't reload, and the boss is stationary and very difficult to lose to even without this gimmick, so what's the point? Game doesn't even have a real ending so it's not like defeating that ugly turret feels meaningful or anything. Anyway I did enjoy it, especially the greenhouse part. 7/10 for the effort.
Witch-Bot Meglilo (Steam, first time, about 30 mins. to reach the end?)
Vertical bullet hell by Astro Port, the makers of SATAZIUS and Supercharger Robot Vulkaiser. Actually, this is a spin-off from Vulkaiser, set in the same universe with some of the same characters, but parodying 1970s magical girls shows instead of mecha anime. Meglilo is a good witch from the magical realm and gets killed in a skirmish between the Gogoh Army and Vulkaiser's Prof. Amamori, so the good professor rebuilds her as a cyborg and sends her against the invader army. The gimmicks are that Meglilo has two drones that can get an alternate shot each and most importantly she can momentarily stop time/warp to avoid bullet patterns or unavoidable obstacles. Fun game that I had in the Steam wishlist since 2016 (!!!) because I liked Vulkaiser so much but didn't decide to buy this one back then for some reason. The mechanics are fairly clever and the combination of cutesy old-school graphics reminiscent of old anime, goofy characters and sprites with black humour (let's say that Meglilo doesn't really save anyone...) is hilarious. My only complaint is that the in-game volume is really high and can't be modified in any way unless you mute it, and that some times you lose control of Meglilo, losing lives because the inputs go haywire, maybe I should have played it with a controller? Anyway, finished it at Easy since I'm really bad at bullet hells, but maybe I'll try playing it on Normal so that I can get better with the warp ability. 7/10
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jan 22, 2024 18:51:47 GMT -5
Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories (Wii; First Time; 12 hours 36 minutes)
Decided to grab this because I'd always enjoyed Cing's adventure games but had never tried this one, and I wanted to cover the Switch remakes of this and the original DS game for the website. A nice way of hugging two birds with one arm, and it worked out surprisingly well cuz I really enjoyed this. It's much slower paced than the first game, and at some points that can kinda drag, but I also found it to be a relaxing game that really let you take in the vibe of Lake Juliet; appreciating the lovely graphics, enjoying the great chill music, and getting to know its many characters. There's some excellent scenes later on that are concisely written and expertly directed, which gave me more reason to keep playing.
I also really dug the many motion controls puzzles, whether it was using the game's Wiimote stand-in or miming the motions for various actions. I've owned a Wii for about a decade but I never touched many games that used motion controls for whatever reason, and yet playing this and seeing all the kinds of cool puzzles they came up with has made me excited about playing games with the Wiimote like it's 2007 again. I even made a shortlist of games I definitely want to try out, so perhaps I'll have more Wii games to post about in the future. Very glad to have finally played this, to enjoy one more classic Cing adventure title, and to find a new spark of passion for a system I'd previously not had especially strong feelings for.
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Post by Snake on Jan 22, 2024 19:18:35 GMT -5
Zelda 2:The Adventure of Link (Enhanced/Link is Adventuresome), PC, fan-hack by Hoverbat (replayish, completion time: approx. 10 hours) Extended fan-hack game, and quite an impressive one. You can find it for download here: hoverbat.itch.io/ziiaolWhile the game does start out as a bit more of a challenge, playing to completion with full level-9 stats and all items makes it a lot easier by the end game. It's the same ol' tried and true gameplay; which puts it in a love-it or hate-it camp, depending on your flavor of gaming. Personally, I loved it. It breathes new life, with tons of new areas to explore. Palaces have been remapped, with variations in layout. New enemies, and expanded side quests. But what I really enjoyed are the quality of life features. There are underground tunnels to unlock, so traveling between towns is a short-cut. A map feature is added to the item screen. A whole subset of hidden items have been added - from monster food, to a shield ring, an upgraded shield, power bracelet, and even.... the Master Sword (which adds more penetrating power) that shows up in the game's title screen! The magic refill necklace is especially handy (and does make the game easier, along with permanent added lives when finding the Link dolls). Credits also feature actual names of the original game staff, in addition to contributors to this project. And once you finish the game... there is a.... 2nd Quest!!!! Although it's mostly the same, there is an expanded territory to explore which is a pretty cool twist. I won't spoil too much about it, but it's a pretty creative add-on. Definitely recommended for hardcore fans of this particular black sheep of the Zelda series. Score: 9.5
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Post by JoeQ on Jan 23, 2024 17:28:52 GMT -5
Potato Thriller: Steamed Potato Edition (PC) - First playthrough, Time: 2.1h (Steam timer), Rating: 1/5Had this on my Steam account for some reason and decided to give it a try. That was a mistake. It's an asset flip Unity game "parodying" the PT demo, before veering off into more random attempts at humor and abysmally bad gameplay. Yes, I understand it was basically made as a joke by a single dev, but it was still terrible on every level. Alphabet Challenge: FPS
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Post by spanky on Jan 24, 2024 7:20:23 GMT -5
Ducktales (NES via PS4 Disney Afternoon Collection, Replay)
My kid has gotten into the 1987 Ducktales and I even read him The Life And Times of Uncle Scrooge which they had at our library. When I told him there was a Ducktales video game of course he wanted to see it. Ducktales has a great reputation that's mostly earned and more or less launched* the beloved line of Capcom Disney Games.
And it really is a well designed game. Something I like is that each level - the Amazon is a straightforward path that winds around, Transylvania is a maze, the Mines a sort of a loop that leads to an interior section and you can choose which way you'd like to go etc. The pogo jump and golf swing are both fun to use and appropriately themed, all kinds of characters from the show make their appearance, and you all know about the music. They don't get the love the Moon theme does but the African Mines and Transylvania songs absolutely bang as well.
Capcom games would be known for being super well programmed and refined but this game isn't quite there yet. Enemy hitboxes can be vague and aggressive, bosses will jump into you while they still have mercy invincibility, and if you duck on moving platforms, you stop moving with the platform. Stuff like that. There's also some half hearted attempts at non-linearity and some vague "can I go down in that pit or not?" moments in the Himalayas. None of this bothered ANYONE in the 80s but in 2024 it can be annoying.
The flaws of this game weigh on me more than they used to for some reason but overall I still love it. 7/10.
*Capcom published Mickey Mousecapade in the US first...but that was developed by Hudson
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jan 24, 2024 14:35:15 GMT -5
Mega Man X SNES Replay 3 hours
All the cool kids are doing it!
I'ma list a couple things I don't like about one of my favorite games.
1) That jump in Flame Mammoth's stage to get the buster upgrade.
2) The upgrade armor looks lame. No details on the chest and boring white.
3) Filling sub-tanks still sucks outside of the last stage trick. And even then it takes too long.
4) Having to re-map dash to a trigger button every time. Face button dash is bad.
5) Forgetting the password for the Sigma Stages has you restart all the Sigma Stages. Never stop mid-run!
Uh, and that is all I can think of. Obviously a terrible game. /sarcasm.
Palate cleansed for the Infinite Wealth/Reload/Rebirth madness that will consume me these next few months.
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