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Post by personman on Feb 13, 2024 23:12:18 GMT -5
X6 and X7 are funny because like it's a real close race for 2 or 3 being the best classic game I think it's the same situation for which X is the worst lol.
I'll have to see what I think if I do end up marathoning all of X as well but I find 6 to be worse just for how hateful it is and literally having like 3 unwinnable situations you can get stuck in. 7 is awful too but I found it more just boring than sadistic like 6 which I can tolerate more. Matter of taste and such, guess 6 is looked on more favorably today since there is a ton of speed run tech for it and seems like it's got a healthy scene last I saw.
Megaman 9 (Switch via Legacy Collection Vol. 2, replay; 2 hours)
So this one was a big deal right? Not only was Mega Man making a return but from what I remember it played a good part in lighting the torch for the retro game revival which the indie scene would carry on. Least that's what I can vaguely recall. I grabbed this on my 360 soon as it was available of course aaaaannnnddd I kinda hated it! Frankly this was in my college days where I had been completely wrapped up in MMOs for the most part so I blame the fact I was rather out of practice with this sort of game. As such I haven't held a high opinion of this one over the years and looking back now, eh there is a lot I still legitimately don't like. For one I just think the game looks boring. People praise that they paid close attention to making a game that could feasibly be on the NES and I don't doubt it but ever since 4 they were making them look WAY more interesting to see than this and had a lot of fancier graphical flourishes. The stages here are so goddamn boring to look at, like if you didn't want to try for the outright eye candy of 5 and 6 at least try weird goofy things like 2 and 3. That extends to the bosses too they all just look so generic and bland with the only stand out being Splash Woman for obvious reasons which I still don't care about. Music really doesn't do anything for me either like I was just playing it now and I can't remember a single song, least 4 had that cool theme for Dustman.
The actual game design though I am extremely conflicted on. Objectively its absolutely excellent! Just about every stage has an experimental gimmick to play with, the boss encounters are pretty good and the weapons have to be some of the most handy and versatile I've seen in the series so far. So whats the issue? Well, you know those jerks in Mario Maker that just get their rocks off making people suffer in terrible stages that are difficult for the sake of it? Or romhacks that are just dickish every second they get because its for 'real' gamers? Well it doesn't get quite to that level (thank god) but this time around the game is still quite an asshole and gets worse the farther you go of course. It varies with the main stages and some are pretty reasonable like Galaxy Man's, others are pretty mean and annoying like Splash Woman's. Then the Wily gauntlet is both the worst and best gauntlet ever. Seriously. So like action wise the game isn't bad at all, sure some enemies are annoying but they did a great job designing the stages to demand proper use of your weapons. That is my favorite things about these games so hey! A+, really cool how they can interact with the stages too, especially in the first Wily stage.
The issue is platforming wise its a bitch. Many of the hazards just demand you interact with them perfectly or you're wasted and its like damn near every screen is threatening to shove you into spikes some how. There are spikes fucking everywhere and the item to mitigate them is spendy, of course. It's not the worst thing I've seen but the difficulty is high enough to feel off and the Wily gauntlet has some flat out gotcha ya moments that was so bullshit I just had to put the controller down for a bit. Combine this with terrible checkpoints and I was pretty much hating my time with this toward the end, got flash backs to my frustrations with 2's final stretch. Again, it's not to ludicrous levels but its enough, say skill issue all you want, challenge is one thing and I welcome a Mega Man game that wants to be tougher but borderline masacore crap has never been what this series is about.
Despite though I didn't hate it. Certainly didn't like it too much either even with it nailing the weapon aspect... which just ticks me off more! You had something great here and you reached too far and ruined it. But I'm trying to be objective here and as much as it annoyed me I can't call it bad and I get why so many are impressed with it; Especially when it first released for the novelty alone. I've even heard some say its the best in the whole series and uh don't think I can agree with that but it is up there. What can I say though? It just plain rubbed me the wrong me way, short concentrated halls full of death traps stress me out and while the game is still plenty doable it was getting on my nerves most of the way. Perhaps I'm just so comfortable in my muscle memory with all of the previous games I just haven't developed the same with this entry, never played it since 2008 after all. So while my knee jerk reaction is to rate it poorly I don't feel right doing that, the game is real good but perhaps just not to my tastes.
Either way I'm glad its over and I don't see myself touching it again.
Rating-7
I only ever played 10 once as well on the Wii. Don't remember a thing about it besides people weren't too hot on it when it came out.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 14, 2024 4:32:21 GMT -5
With 10, I think Capcom overestimated the demand for a second 8-bit Mega Man after 9 did so well. It's been too long for me to remember anything specific, but I don't remember it doing anything egregiously wrong.
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Post by spanky on Feb 15, 2024 7:54:17 GMT -5
10 doesn't really do anything wrong but to draw a lazy analogy if Mega Man 9 is on the same level of quality as 2 or 3 (IMO....) then Mega Man 10 is on the same level as 4 or 5. It's very good, just not quite as good as some of it's predecessors.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 15, 2024 8:16:21 GMT -5
Melfand Stories (SNES, First Time)
Woody Alien covered this for the site a few years ago and also posted about it in an earlier version of this thread. I'd been meaning to play it since then but only got around to it now on a whim. To paraphrase, he described it as a nice looking but over simplistic fantasy hack 'n slash which is exactly the case. There's four character options, but they're all way too similar aside from the sole ranged mage. You technically have a three hit combo, but it's nearly impossible to actually land three hits in a row from knock back so it's all just single hits. There is some replay value from having multiple paths (one after the first stage then another after the third), but it's a short game at only five stages per play. I did the two least overlapping paths and couldn't bring myself to do the others. It does look very nice at least. On the one hand, I don't want to be too hard on it because it is clearly a game aimed at kids, but they still have better options like Golden Axe.
I finished in 01:00:01.
Rating: 6
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 15, 2024 11:14:42 GMT -5
Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity (Switch; First Time)
This is the second of the original Quake expansions made back in the day, developed by Rogue Entertainment (who made the quite cool RPG-styled shooter Strife and later created the Quake II expansion Ground Zero and American McGee's Alice). I'd previously gave this a shot back in 2021 but gave up near the end of the first episode due to generally finding it way too hard and getting stuck in a fight against a couple of flying wizards who shoot the same homing projectiles as those dastardly spider-ladies in the main game. But having played so much of Quake again, I figured it'd be worth another shot to see if I could overcome that hump, and I had a much better time of it.
I leaned into my mindset of quicksaving after every enemy killed or major pick-up collected, though I also started saving manually because I quicksaved just before getting squished by the portcullis mechanism in the first level and had to start the whole thing over again lol. It's a neat enough expansion for what it is, leaning more into medieval castles and other crumbling structures of antiquity, the way you start travelling back in time to fight enemies in Egyptian tombs and Aztec temples. But that does also get a bit repetitive after a while and even a little dull at spots, especially when stages last a lot longer than the main game. It's a solid enough way of getting more Quake if you're in the mood for it, though I preferred the next and last thing I checked out from the Nightdive port.
Quake: Dimension of the Past (Switch; First Time)
I remember reading about this many years ago, a bonus episode made by MachineGames to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Quake. In hindsight, it's cool that this led to the creation of the "Dimension/Call of the Machine" expansions that basically served as fully fledged new games to enjoy in between their other projects, and I like that this serves as a fifth episode in the way that it's paced. While it's definitely much harder and denser with cheeky combat encounters, levels tend to take about five to eight minutes to beat, same as the main campaign. It's equally dense with secrets, and I surprisingly managed to find both of the secret stages which throw some fun situations at you.
While the ending's a bit flat, climaxing with one of those "slightly harder" combat encounters that also concluded most of the main game's episodes, it was nice to conclude my time with Quake by going through a straightforward episode that gave me one last blast of the exploration, shooting, enemies, sights and sounds that make the game what it is. Going out of it, I genuinely like Quake in ways I previously hadn't. I'm really pleased at how things have turned out, considering how middling I felt when I first beat it, and I'm eager enough about it that I may try out some of the fan mods in the future. Hopefully I'll do that sooner than never. : )
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Post by dsparil on Feb 17, 2024 7:41:43 GMT -5
HunterX: code name T (Switch, First Time)
I really liked the first HunterX, a metroidvania that cribs its character system directly from Dark Souls but adds in a skill tree. The difficulty is not as high although it default to the Easy difficulty which is more of a Normal for the genre. It's pretty much more of the same with a new ability, the extremely long range Celestial Dash which makes navigation and clearing out certain missing map squares a breeze once you get it. The other other new addition is the return of weapon classes which were in the predecessor 3000th Duel. I didn't think that game was as well designed overall so it's nice to get what is essentially the good version of that game. However, this does make weapon progression less smooth than in HunterX since your preferred weapon type might not be what you get. I did find that great swords were overpowered compared to regular swords and spears. They knockdown and stun lock most enemies which makes them clearly better. The tradeoff is that attacks are slower, but that doesn't matter much if the enemy can't do anything anyway. I highly recommend this and the prequel.
I finished in 11:48:56.
Rating: 9
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Post by personman on Feb 17, 2024 12:06:56 GMT -5
Mega Man X 2 (SNES, emulated on 3DS, replay) This was the only X game I managed to catch out in the wild back before I got a Playstation and finally got to follow along with the series as it released. As such I played this into the ground for a long time after I did the same with the first and I can blaze through this with my eyes closed really. It's still excellent but through the whole thing is just feels like theres that extra little something missing when I compare it to the last. Stages are good but some feel like they have a gimmick and nothing else, like Overdrive Ostrich's stage barely feels like a stage at all for instance. Weapons are good but just not as handy and fun as 1's, mostly just stuck to Wheel Gators and Crystal Snail's when needed, otherwise the others have some utility but I never really needed them. Hazard of playing this thing for too long. Music is very nice but I have a hard time listening to it outside of the game as it feels like it all loops just too quickly and isn't nearly as much of a bop as the first's. Bosses are kinda meh as well. Bubble Crab feels like a first draft, Wheel Gator spends more time just hiding, Magna Centipede just stands around half the time. They aren't terrible but rather unimpressive. On the flip side of the coin the mini bosses that randomly show up through out the stages are actually some of the tougher in the series. To this day I can never get past Violen without being beaten to an inch of my life lol. I do like their time sensitive inclusion as it forces you to stray away from an optimal path and take a risk which I hear many complain about them for those very reasons but super optimized runs were never my thing, hell these days I avoid bosses weaknesses in the X series. One thing it does have a leg up on is the art direction itself. X1 looks wonderful still, but the stage art and boss character designs are dialed up to 11 here and I love it, the new armor looks great and it fun to play with, Crystal Snail and Bubble Crab's stages are beautiful, for how shallow its implementation is that bike he's ride on the box art looks awesome and is fun to zoom with regardless (and I got the heart tank without crashing again , not to brag ) its a real looker, if not the best looking in the SNES trilogy. Also has a better Sigma fight too and even though the fight with Zero if you fail to rescue him is tedious I do like the gimmick. It's still damn good, one of my favorites but theres just that tiny something missing and its doesn't reach the heights of 1 even if it does some things better. I think the stages needed just a little more meat on the bones and bosses beefed up a bit. Regardless, one of the all time greats. Rating-8
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 20, 2024 10:18:13 GMT -5
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (Switch; First Time; 3 hours 21 minutes)For some time, I've had something of a soft spot for the Legend of Zelda games developed by Animation Magic for the Philips CD-i, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Their cutscenes are charmingly odd and have a surprising amount of effort put into them, and I'm impressed at the attempt to pull off side-scrolling action-RPG gameplay on a system that didn't really have those kinds of games. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a spiritual successor to them being made, led by Seth "Dopply" Fulkerson (who made the unofficial remakes for the CD-i games back in 2020). I bought this primarily out of support for a couple of online friends who worked on this as animators (Nicholas "NAveryW/WalrusGuy" Walstrom who was involved with the cutscenes and "Geibuchan" who was a sprite animator), but I ended up enjoying the game loads once I properly gave it a go. It's a genuinely solid action-RPG, much in the vein of those old Zelda games, and I really dug being able to explore various levels, doing simple jumping and slashing antics while also finding items and talking to people. There's plenty of charming folks to encounter, including a hysterically surreal moment of finding a surfer dude chilling in a lava hot tub voiced by Dimitris "Modern Vintage Gamer" Giannakis of all goddamn people. There's plenty of items to look out for, which will often help you reach new areas or make things a bit easier, and it seems like the game's designed in such a way that there's plenty of ways to acquire powers and such. Although this means you'll be bouncing back and forth between levels, each one only takes a few minutes so everything's easily reached and you're given exactly as much info as you need on where to go or who to help out. Something I was surprised by was how easy things became after a point; the opening sections are rather tough when you don't have many moves and are just learning things, but after a point, getting enough powers/equipment puts things strongly in your favour. Even the bosses can be easily defeated by chucking bombs at them, though I appreciate that you're allowed to just cheese those fights. I'm so pleased to have enjoyed this one as much as I have, and I've not even gotten into stuff like how amazing the music is. It's emulating that kind of "CD era video game music" so you've got some very familiar virtual instruments performing a variety of upbeat tunes, and that style of music is extremely my thing. Every stage is backed by an awesome track and even when I was having a hard time with certain stages or fruitlessly backtracking, the soundtrack always got me excited. It's so nice to get a side-scrolling action-RPG that I dig as much as other folks dig games like Popful Mail, Rygar or Zelda II, and I'm strongly thinking of asking about covering this for the website. I'd taken a break from writing for the site some weeks ago due to burnout, but I'm happy to resume things just to let people know that this is a heck of a good time. Doom: The Golden Souls Remastered (Windows; First Time)I was talking with some friends on the HG101 Discord about trying out Quake mods, and to a lesser extent DOOM mods, and NeoRosa offered to help me understand how to install and use the GZDOOM launcher for playing DOOM games on my laptop. A couple folks also recommended me some mods to try out, primarily ones with surreal and colorful levels because I talked about being awestruck by pictures of a DOOM mod set on floating landscapes with windmills and such. It gave me the vibes of the original Spyro games, and I wanted to experience something like that. I believe it's from the Golden Souls series of mods by Andrea "Batandy" Gori, so I decided to check the first one out after wildweasel486 recommended those to me. This is a remastered version of the 2014 mod made in 2021, incorporating mechanical changes made in Golden Souls 2 and most of the stages from the Super Golden Souls expansion by salahmander2 into the base game. It's basically a Mario 64-themed take on DOOM, where you enter colorful levels from a hub world and are tasked with either reaching the level's end or finding eight red coins to unlock a Golden Soul. You collect them to open up more doors in the hub world, though levels are mainly accessed in a linear order (apart from the handful of secret stages you can find in alternate exits or by unlocking special gold coin doors with the big coins you can find in hidden areas). It's neat enough, and I like how it offers you a few unusual weapons such as a Serious Sam-style cannon in place of a rocket launcher or a Quake-esque nailgun to demolish certain enemies. But I also found it a bit too difficult; I decided to play on Normal after seeing that Easy offers regenerating health, but it turns out that the game has the same number of enemies and pickups no matter what difficulty you're playing at. Things deffo got tricky enough that I was often quicksaving after every other group of enemies, and it took plenty of trial and error for navigating some fights. Levels are also quite large, especially those where you need to collect eight red coins, to the point where I'd usually be exhausted with them by the end. I wish levels stayed relatively small or at least offered different sorts of objectives, because the amount of variety in the visuals and music is very well done. Each level feels unique, whether they're directly riffing on a Mario archetype or doing their own thing, and it's fun seeing the rhythms of DOOM (exploring, fighting enemies, collecting stuff) being translated fairly naturally into a collectathon. I recently realized that there's a lot of things that the Doom/Quake era of shooters and explorative 3D platformers have in common that I quite like, in terms of how levels can be designed or how their various gameplay systems are intertwined, so it's cool to experience a more direct mix of the two. I'm not sure if I'll try out the sequel, which has a lot more levels to contend with. This is pretty neat, but it's not for me. Oh well. Here's a link if this sounds up your alley. batandy.itch.io/goldensouls
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Post by personman on Feb 22, 2024 17:42:07 GMT -5
Glad to hear Arzette turned out good, I was legit interested in trying it. I may even check out the old Zelda CDI game some day just because they've always seemed so interesting and weird in a myriad of ways.
Mega Man 10 (Switch via Legacy collection Vol.2, replay, 4 hours)
So I'm not going to mince words here. I was absolutely miserable playing this pretty much all the way through. I played this only once back on the Wii and I remember having some difficulty with it but nothing like this! So where as 9 the platforming half of the game I found really harsh and annoying this one its mostly the exact opposite. You are constantly being swarmed but enemies all the damn time and very odd angles and they respawn non freaking stop or love to spawn right when you're wrestling with a touchy stage gimmick. It is extremely dickish and this is compounded by the fact most of the weapons are terrible save for Blade Man's and that's about it, like really this may be the worst kit in the damn series.
On top of that everything hits like a freight train and you pretty much have 3 hits in you before going down at all time..... or so I thought. See the big feature of this one is at long last they let us play as Protoman outside of that dumb boss rush arcade game. I stuck with Mega back on Wii so I figured lets try the older brother. Well despite no indication in the game Proto just plain takes double damage which I can only guess they thought was justified by him having a shield that actually blocks a lot of projectiles (though it can be fickle) and a slide and charge shot. Well the slide isn't really necessary in this one so its not like its a huge boon, the shield can be surprisingly useful but if you miss the punishment is so severe I usually didn't have the guts to try and block things, then his charge shot is about as wimpy as it was in MM4 so being made out of paper really seemed uncalled for. Going through the game as him was torture and with how swamped you're getting all the time and just how annoying enemies are in general it dove way over into rom hack difficulty like 9 did but way worse. Like now that I've had time to step away from it I respect 9 a lot and recognize it's about as high quality as 2 or 3 even if it was a little bit much for my tastes. This isn't clever at all like 9 was, its just cheap bullshit with meh stage designs themselves so frankly I was ready to name this the worst in the series when I struggled to get through the final levels; it was pure torture.
But when I did pull through I noticed Bass was suddenly on the title screen which I certainly don't remember. Guess this got some DLC I never heard about, so him being my fav classic character I had to at least give him a spin and cleared a level. The durability he has compared to Proto Man made a world of difference and it got me thinking. Decided to do the same stage as Mega Man real quick and sure enough they can take a fair number of hits that made the game feel like a breeze in comparison so I guess that was the sole issue: Protoman is just plain awful to play as since they gave him such a disproportionate punishment for having some abilities that only slightly help. That wasn't a very good call and it just ticked me off that nothing mentions it in the damn game, come on that's pretty important to know! Even worse is while playing as the other characters is easier there are a few segments I can recall that without the water shield or Proto's shield I don't see how you'd avoid damage which is real sloppy.
So realizing that I'm not gonna blast the thing anymore, but I'm not happy with it either. There are some plain bad decisions here and some of it just comes off as stuff that should have been caught in QA and smoothed over. It's an okay game so long as you stay away from Proto, otherwise buy as many damn E tanks as you can because you aren't getting through things without perfect mastery and the bosses are pretty damn sadistic. One time Chill Man seriously stun locked me right out of the gate and I didn't get to land a single hit on him before I lost... yeah real nice guys, I can just see the little gremlin of a developer hunched over in an cubicle rubbing his hands together in my minds eye. Screw you pal.
Least it looks a lot nicer than 9 and sounds better as well. Some great tracks to hear like Nitro Man's theme. Pushing Proto aside though it just doesn't do much that stands out and when it does its being an asshole. It may be more interesting than 4 and looks and sounds better but I'd rather go through that again than this, even with Bass or Mega Man. Glad to leave this one behind.
Rating-5
Thank god thats over with. Now to finally get to 11 which I'm really interested to start since I have heard such hate and love for in equal measure I really have no idea what the consensus is on it. Have had it sitting on my Switch for two years and haven't touched it so time to finally give it a spin and see if Jeremy Parish is justified in acting like it killed his first born lol.
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Post by spanky on Feb 22, 2024 18:44:16 GMT -5
Glad to know Arzette is decent. I have a natural aversion to "meme games" but it does look well made. personman I didn't like 10 when I first played it but replays have grown on me. Bass is pretty much easy mode though, but he's a lot of fun to use.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 23, 2024 17:07:26 GMT -5
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - Goku's Next Journey (Switch; First Time; 4 hours 59 minutes)
Once more into the world of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot I go, for the last bit of DLC released as part of the second season that kicked off last February with the Bardock expansion and followed by the 23rd World Tournament expansion in August. This expansion adapts another part of the original Dragon Ball story, this time going for the 28th World Tournament which acted as an epilogue for the Majin Boo arc and the end of the manga. 10 years have passed since the events of the Boo arc, Goku's got a granddaughter called Pan who's just as excited for fighting and adventures as he used to be, and there seems to be a new strong guy appearing at the latest tournament. What kind of things will happen here...
Actually, not a lot. The epilogue in the manga is essentially a joke, lasting a few chapters and acting like a whole new story arc's about to kick off, before suddenly ending and saying you'll have to imagine the rest for yourself. It's amusingly abrupt, and I admit I was curious to see how that would be adapted here. This epilogue isn't in the main game, which ends on a generic "the adventures continue after the defeat of Boo", and as weird as it was to omit that, I kinda feel it does work better in the form of DLC coming out a few years later. It's a very short expansion in terms of the main story; while it adds a couple extra sections of Goku hanging out with Pan, you only get a handful of fights (which mainly use the ground battle mechanics from the 23rd Tournament DLC) before things wrap up in pretty much the same abrupt fashion.
The bulk of things is reserved for the post-credits epilogue, where you get a bunch of sidequests, including the ability to fight against various bosses from the main game before concluding with a boss rush and a rematch against Vegeta. None of it's really notable, but it does feel like it's meant to act as an epilogue to Kakarot in general rather than a compelling self-contained expansion like most of the previous expansions have aspired to. You get to hang out with various characters, reminisce about certain moments and fights, and have a reunion with one of the main game's recurring original characters in a sidequest. You even get a little "thank you" splash card at the end of the main story, which is based on the final page of the manga but feels just as much a nod to folks who've been playing Kakarot over the years.
Perhaps it worked due to how I went into the game, only revisiting it whenever a new bit of DLC came out (basically every six months) and getting reacquainted with those familiar rhythms, mechanics and vibes for a few hours before it overstayed its welcome. Maybe if I was going through the entire game and all it had to offer sequentially, I'd be disappointed by how little this has to offer after everything that came before.
On its own, it's nothing to write home about and I'd say it's the weakest of the "story arc" expansions. The Trunks and Bardock ones are by far the best, and the only ones I'd recommend without hesitation if you wanted to have more of what the main game was offering. But as a way to cap off Kakarot, it manages to resonate with the manga's ending surprising well - that sense of "oh wait, it's over already? oh well, I quite enjoyed my time with it" which I wasn't expecting to feel to this extent. : )
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Post by personman on Feb 24, 2024 4:06:17 GMT -5
Mega Man X 3 (SNES, emulated on 3DS, replay)
My feeling on this one seems to keep shifting a bit. Was always fond of it, rented it like 8 times way back in the day and I spent so many nights goofing off with it in an emulator, I even thought it was my favorite for a little while. When the X collection released a few years ago I wasn't too hot on it and thought it was the weakest of the SNES games. This time? I think I love it again. I see many say its too slow and bloated and constantly complain about the buster upgrade being bad which I understand but for myself I found far more substantial stages, a better soundtrack, weapons that were far more useful than I remember and really good bosses.
The biggest thing that bothered me last time were the weapons which seemed pretty weak save for Neon Tiger's and I just don't quite get how I missed it but I found some functions of a couple that I seriously didn't find out about till now somehow. I never knew Tunnel Rhino's can be spilt into three missiles making it way more potent over course, Toxic Seahorse's seems kinda meh until you realize the arc of the lob can be controlled which makes it so versatile with how it does splash damage. Blizzard Buffalo's seems pretty worthless because its so damn slow but I didn't realize before just how much damage it does so get in close and you can obliterate a ton of armored targets really quickly, which if you hate the mid bosses a bunch that's your ticket to getting them out of the way pretty quickly. I wound up relying on powers in this just about as much as the first and though its still not as good as X1's set I had a lot of fun using them. Sadly nearly all of their charge variants are terrible for the most part and while I get why people don't like the buster upgrade I don't think it's nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
The upgrades in general are pretty cool though. The vertical dash is just plain fun to do and I liked getting fancy to using it to evade stuff. The helmet feels like another approach of what it did in X2 and I thought was more useful I just wish you could bring the map up again and not just at the start of the stage. The crazy thing is you can upgrade the armor further with with effects for one armor piece that you can only choose one of... unless of course you just hold out and pick up the secret gold armor that has all four effects, but regardless I like the idea. What they did with ride armors felt a little unnecessary and even though each stage has a platform to spawn them you'll be barely using them. I don't think they hurt anything but their inclusion is kinda half baked, but at the same time hey it's more stuff to find and what can I say? I like collecting toys lol.
The stages are a bit flat I suppose as there isn't nearly as much creative things going on in them like the first two games. Flashy as X2 was though the fact you could blink and miss an entire stage really didn't sit right with me this time. Things are a bit more sedate here but there's nothing wrong with them and they stick around just long enough I say, I'm good with them. The little changes to the stages as you beat other bosses is back too its just so subtle most people don't notice. And there is some real nice art direction too, the ruined frozen over city in Blizzard Buffalo's stage is very striking and that big glowing orb tangled up in vines you find at Neon Tiger's place is really neat. What is great are the bosses though, they are just what I wanted to see after how wimpy the bosses in X2 were. The guys are real damn tough and I'm gonna admit it: I got sent away like three times trying to beat Toxic Seahorse and Neon Tiger without their weaknesses. I got the body armor real late this time and X is pretty fragile without it but even then the crew here has aggressive patterns and switch things up, well save for Tunnel Rhino, he's a joke; but otherwise they're real fun fights that are tough but fair. Plus they have some of the coolest character designs in the series, Toxic Seahorse just looks so damn awesome. I also just thought it was real cool how depending on if you kill the Bit and Byte, two mid bosses that function a somewhat like the ones from X2, will change the boss in the first end game stage. If you kill Vile in his optional fight it'll change the second stage entirely.
Also I really like the soundtrack. There are some tracks that have the problem with looping too quickly and not having much too them but many of them hit and hit hard. The whole game has a more overt heavy metal tone to it which I really dig. Sounds pretty Metallica and the like to me, I can just listen to its password theme all day:
So yeah I really like this one. Not as much as the first for sure and it may be a bit excessive with all the little things they tried to cram into it almost as if they thought they weren't going to get a chance to make another one of these or something. Still I think it's got strong fundamentals and has the nicest aesthetic yet with its music and art and if you give the weapons a try they're great to play with. I'd put it just a fair bit below X1 but definitely above X2 though you can't go wrong with any of the SNES games really they're all some of the best gaming has to offer to this day in my opinion.
Rating-9
I've already started on X4 tonight and that'll be interesting since its a game I've held OPINIONS about lol.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 26, 2024 10:10:44 GMT -5
Tiger Road (Arcade, First Time) Tiger Road (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)
Capcom's arcade action-platformer and Victor's PCE "port" which is basically a totally new game. They're both pretty good.
I finished in 00:38:09 and 00:58:58.
Rating: 7, 7
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Feb 26, 2024 15:00:27 GMT -5
Eldritchvania (Steam, first time, 7h 27 in-game timer, 16.7 hours Steam timer)
A free La-Mulana homage set on and under a Scottish island but with Lovecraft's interdimensional entities instead of creatures from various world mythologies. It was made in Game Maker so I guess this is the reason why one couldn't take screenshots with F12 and not even with the PC's screen capture, so you'll have to trust me on this one. The discrepancy with the Steam timer can be explained thus: I got stumped several times on some puzzles, events and one particular boss, I redid some parts and in some occasions the loading times were excruciatingly long. But these are the only major problems I could find (loading times and no screenshots, especially since as an exploration game you have to remember and write down all the weird symbols and hints scattered throughout): the devs even patched the character's floaty unreliable jumps, so the only causes for all the deaths were the game's inherent difficulty as in the La-Mulana tradition. But luckily this game is nowhere near as obtuse, frustrating and overwhelming as NIGORO's game, so it's also much more manageable and you feel more compelled to solve the puzzles and explore instead of just wanting to throw the controller in the trash. The hand-drawn graphics feel strange at first, but they actually manage to enhance the grotesque atmosphere and the weird effects that pop up once your sanity meter starts depleting.
Eldritchvania is a really nice free game with interesting and well-thought out puzzles, and it also mixes surprisingly well La-Mulana's playstyle with Lovecraftian lore, and not just the most famous and overused parts of it (Cthulhu is just a statue appearing near the end this time). The soundtrack is also surprisingly nice too. A very nice surprise and did I mention it's totally free? 8/10
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 27, 2024 20:21:13 GMT -5
Link: The Faces of Evil Remastered (Windows; First Time; 1 hour 20 minutes - ESTIMATED)In the middle of the night sometime last week, I was stuck in the middle of a pretty rotten bout inattentiveness - not being able to focus on anything in particular when I knew there were things I wanted to work on. It was bothering me to no end, and to give myself SOMETHING to do, I grabbed the remastered remakes of the Animation Magic Zelda games Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon released back in 2020. These were made by Seth "Dopply" Fulkerson who would later go on to lead development on Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, which I've since gone back to and beaten on the unlockable hard mode. So I figured going through its inspirations would make for a cozy enough time, since I generally knew what to expect, and it would give me a better insight on what Arzette did. These remastered versions add a bunch of quality of life changes, including unlimited continues, a hint system that tells you if there's anything to do in that particular level, and more buttons to use (originally, you could only jump by pressing up on the d-pad and you could only access the menu by crouching and pressing the "use item" button), which make for a more comfortable experience. However, I wonder if those difficulties helped to make these games longer, because I was able to beat Faces of Evil in a couple of sessions lasting roughly 40 minutes each. Having just played through Arzette means I'm quite familiar with how this kind of game works, but areas are surprisingly tiny and don't contain a whole lot to do. I don't know if I consider this a criticism, cuz there is something rather neat about how you can blitz your way through the equivalent of a dozen-hour Zelda adventure in a fraction of that time. It makes a weird amount of sense why the characters you meet are often so strange, seeing as you're likely only going to meet them once or twice at the very most. Getting stronger, acquiring items or figuring out what to give people in a game where that only takes a few minutes is an enjoyably brisk experience, and I'd almost recommend it if you're in the mood for a side-scrolling action RPG that only takes a single sitting to beat. Maptroid Worlds (Windows; Replay; 23 minutes) I bailed early from a Japanese language class this evening, it wasn't going well and I just needed some space to breathe and exist for a bit. Couldn't connect to the internet so I decided to replay this as I still had it installed on my laptop and its very basic gameplay means I could easily go through it with keyboard controls. I wrote about it last year and my thoughts are pretty much the same, so I'll just link to that post. On the upside, I also went through all the stages in the Zen mode, where you fill out paintings fashioned after various video game references and other objects with lil jokes attached to them. It's a neat enough way of zoning out while listening to tunes of your choice. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon Remastered (Windows; First Time; 1 hour - ESTIMATED)Yes, this took even less time to beat than Faces of Evil. I genuinely beat it in a single sitting, which was likely helped by a better understanding of how these two games operate and the lack of elemental throwables you'd occasionally need in the former to reach certain areas (throwing snowballs at flame-type enemies and fireballs at ice-type enemies who would normally be impervious to your attacks). You're more or less free to explore where you can, and I realized that this is basically just an alternate version of Faces of Evil. You acquire most of the same items and power-ups, most of the same enemies appear, and it's actually a bit easier because a good few bosses can be defeated in one blow by chucking special items at them. (Admittedly, Faces of Evil's bosses could be defeated super quickly too with a trio of bombs.) Still, I like that there's basically two of these to mess around in, and that the remakes even throw in extras such as new difficulty modes and the option to play as other characters. That said, these games are pretty tricky as is, mainly due to the regularly respawning flying enemies and somewhat spammy enemy placements. I don't fancy playing this with tougher enemies, but maybe I'll change my mind if the mood strikes me. I didn't think I'd be much into trying Arzette on hard, yet I was able to pull through that (though it was quite annoying at the beginning lol), so who knows?
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