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Post by Snarboo on Nov 10, 2013 20:13:13 GMT -5
Having beaten Ardy today, I have to say this game is basically the Japanese equivalent to Bubsy. Much like everybody's favorite bobcat, Ardy feels very loose and slipshod, like the game is about to fall apart at any minute. The hit detection blows, the controls are slippery and only respond half the time, and most of the boss fights are either way too easy or consist of stupid gimmicks that grow tiresome very quick. Any one of these elements would be bad enough on their own, but when you put them all together, you have a recipe for a game that isn't very fun to play.
There are some brilliant bits here and there, and some of the stages are actually pretty good, but this honestly feels like the beta to a bigger and much more focused game.
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Post by TheGunheart on Nov 10, 2013 21:26:43 GMT -5
The Japanese version is also kinda creepy, what with the animal people tied up in the background that you can't save, or Ardy doing his little victory dance in front of Catry's skeleton...
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Post by kal on Nov 11, 2013 0:28:11 GMT -5
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Post by Feynman on Nov 11, 2013 4:27:46 GMT -5
Having beaten Ardy today, I have to say this game is basically the Japanese equivalent to Bubsy. Much like everybody's favorite bobcat, Ardy feels very loose and slipshod, like the game is about to fall apart at any minute. The hit detection blows, the controls are slippery and only respond half the time, and most of the boss fights are either way too easy or consist of stupid gimmicks that grow tiresome very quick. Any one of these elements would be bad enough on their own, but when you put them all together, you have a recipe for a game that isn't very fun to play. There are some brilliant bits here and there, and some of the stages are actually pretty good, but this honestly feels like the beta to a bigger and much more focused game. The movement controls for the game in particular are absolutely horrid. Like so many shoddy platformers of the era, they clearly tried to mimic Sonic here and failed. Like Sonic, Ardy doesn't have a run button, and gains and loses speed as he moves around... UNLIKE Sonic, this change in momentum is not gradual. Ardy has only two speeds (slow and fast), and the way he automatically shifts into "fast" (or back to "slow") speed is abrupt and difficult to deal with, made even worse by the way these speed shifts can happen while you're jumping. It often makes platforming that would be utterly simplistic in any other game remarkably irritating, and makes accurately landing on enemies even more difficult than it already is thanks to the shoddy hit detection. Also seriously, Scene 13 can go Zub a Zub, way to embody pretty much every problem with Ardy in a single stage game. Is that the level where you have to jump up like two dozen flying spear shafts to reach the top of a vertical room? Because between the shitty momentum and the crappy hit detection that level really is the Ardy Lightfoot experience in a nutshell.
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Post by zerker on Nov 11, 2013 16:31:28 GMT -5
Since none of the four retro game shops near me have either Plok or Ardy, I started up Gex while I wait for my orders to arrive. So far so good, although Gex really talks too much. Also: a password system? For PS1? Sigh. It's also strangely generous with extra lives. I died about 3 times in the first two levels and thought I wasn't doing too great. However, I checked and I was up to 7 lives at the time .
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Post by Weasel on Nov 11, 2013 16:46:22 GMT -5
Also: a password system? For PS1? Sigh. 3DO version is the only one that actually saves, to my knowledge (though I haven't found the Windows 95 port). Though the presence of a password system is a small boon for GC9X; you guys could share passwords!
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Nov 11, 2013 17:25:44 GMT -5
Since none of the four retro game shops near me have either Plok or Ardy, I started up Gex while I wait for my orders to arrive. So far so good, although Gex really talks too much. Also: a password system? For PS1? Sigh. It's also strangely generous with extra lives. I died about 3 times in the first two levels and thought I wasn't doing too great. However, I checked and I was up to 7 lives at the time . I'm playing the PSX version on the Vita at the moment, which I do not recommend. The pad feels really slippery, IMO, and it's a pain to use when trying to pull off maneuvers where you have to run (which requires the shoulder buttons) and then jump to stick onto a ceiling/wall. On the plus side, you can basically bypass the password issue by putting the Vita into sleep mode. It's not a bad game, but I'm really getting worn down by his constant "jokes", and aside from the sticking to walls/ceilings it's not that amazing of a platformer. I guess I was easier to please back in 1996.
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Post by zerker on Nov 12, 2013 17:18:55 GMT -5
I finished the first world yesterday. So apparently you can turn off voices in the options menu. I'd recommend doing so
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kutan
New Member
Posts: 11
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Post by kutan on Nov 13, 2013 0:42:53 GMT -5
Posting from my phone, so no wall of text. I mostly wanted to share this: let Gex sit on the title screen for a while, and you get violently assaulted by the 90's. It's great.
But yeah, a few days ago I made it to the 4th world of Gex, and just quit playing in the middle of a level and haven't picked it up since. There's nothing particularly offensive about the game (optional voices aside), but I think I got burnt out on it's medioctity. Gonna have to force myself to finish it.
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Post by Bobinator on Nov 13, 2013 3:11:47 GMT -5
Posting from my phone, so no wall of text. I mostly wanted to share this: let Gex sit on the title screen for a while, and you get violently assaulted by the 90's. It's great. That was totally worth it. So much so, I'm going to add it to the pro tips right now. Total Eclipse, from the footage I caught off it when I wasn't having my face buttrocked off, looks like a more FMV-heavy Star Fox, so I might have to check that out. I'm going to give an opinion that's probably going to end with me getting tarred and feathered. If the voice acting weren't so frequent annoying, I'd say I liked Gex better than Plok. Yes, I know you can turn it off, but I'd say that doesn't quite count. Maybe it's because I've been playing Gex since I was... six, I believe. I never played Plok until I figured out SNES emulation, so yeah. I honestly really LIKE Gex, though. The difficulty, at least for the first few worlds, is a lot less brutal than Plok. And I really love the whole wall climbing gimmick, and it's one I really wish was explored in a different game. That, and I don't think any game gets to be called mediocre when it's being directly compared to Ardy Lightfoot. Oh, by the way, guys... keep this on the down low, but my uncle who works at Crystal Dynamics told me there's a secret world. Nobody knows for sure how to get there, but -- GameFAQs? What's a GameFAQs?
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Post by Snarboo on Nov 13, 2013 12:19:50 GMT -5
That, and I don't think any game gets to be called mediocre when it's being directly compared to Ardy Lightfoot. It can still be mediocre, just not when compared with Ardy Lightfoot. :p I'm of the opinion that Gex is worse than Ardy if only because the voices are an integral part of the Gex experience. They're on by default, and you don't record that many lines for a talking CGI gecko if nobody is meant to hear them. Admittedly the level design is pretty bad, too, but that's small potatoes in comparison to Dana Gould. The game on its own is mediocre to average, but when the jokes on display are sub-Family Guy levels, it turns what would be a tolerable game into an insufferable one. Ardy at least has the benefit of not talking in addition to being a shorter game, meaning you only have to put up with the jank for a single afternoon.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Nov 13, 2013 14:12:49 GMT -5
That, and I don't think any game gets to be called mediocre when it's being directly compared to Ardy Lightfoot. It can still be mediocre, just not when compared with Ardy Lightfoot. I'm of the opinion that Gex is worse than Ardy if only because the voices are an integral part of the Gex experience. They're on by default, and you don't record that many lines for a talking CGI gecko if nobody is meant to hear them. Admittedly the level design is pretty bad, too, but that's small potatoes in comparison to Dana Gould. The game on its own is mediocre to average, but when the jokes on display are sub-Family Guy levels, it turns what would be a tolerable game into an insufferable one. Ardy at least has the benefit of not talking in addition to being a shorter game, meaning you only have to put up with the jank for a single afternoon. I'm only on the first level of Gex still, but the lack of enemy variety is lame as well. But yeah, it's like trying to play through a game with Dave Coulier doing a semi-related commentary but repeating himself every two comments.
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Post by Feynman on Nov 16, 2013 5:37:29 GMT -5
So you know what game is actually pretty decent? Plok!
It has some problems, but for the most part it's a solid game. The limb mechanic is fun, the flea hunt levels are designed logically enough that they never turn into mind-numbingly dull tasks the way crate collecting in Home Improvement did, and the vehicle marathon at the end of the game is amusing, albeit a bit too long. The game even has a sort of deliberately stupid kind of humour that manages to be be exactly the right amount of stupid to actually be entertaining. My only real gripe with the game is that between the high level of difficulty and how much time a full clear of the game takes, it desperately needed a password system. Also the final boss is really lame.
I said that the flea hunt levels and vehicle stages are decent, and that's definitely true. It's nice that they tried to add some variety by having three different types of stages, but the straightforward platforming levels are easily the most fun, and the game probably would have been better off just sticking to that... or at least, spreading the flea hunt and vehicle stages out as breaks in between platforming stages rather than essentially dividing the game into thirds.
Still, Plok is a solid platformer. Decidedly B-tier, but there's a lot of genuine enjoyment to be found within, and you could certainly do far worse. You could be playing something like Ardy Lightfoot or Gex, for example!
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Post by TheGunheart on Nov 17, 2013 0:16:25 GMT -5
Yeah, if Plok spread out the vehicle levels instead of making it an endgame gauntlet, it would've been much, much better. Mind, I think it's more a major problem with an otherwise awesome game than a total deal breaker. I also gotta say that I appreciate how it was a bit more technical than some plotformers of the era, what with little touches like Plok's limbs returning instantly when he hits something. Plus, the art direction was pretty damn cool.
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Post by zerker on Nov 18, 2013 17:11:59 GMT -5
Plok arrived today. So does Plok have any sort of way to continue from a previous session or is it pretty much a one-sitting game?
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