|
Post by dsparil on Aug 26, 2019 6:50:36 GMT -5
I claim Final Fight (Xbox 360, Final Fight: Double Impact compilation). It took about 55 minutes. I just prefer Streets of Rage to Final Fight, and it's mostly because of Yuzo Koshiro's music. Was this the first time or a replay?
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 26, 2019 7:25:22 GMT -5
Mega Man X3 (NSW, 1st time, 6h15m) Did you play the first X game this year? For some reason I feel like you did, and I missed it. It doesn't come up in the search, but that barely works anyway. I'm interesting in seeing what you think of the rest of the series. When I played through it last year, I ended up having a rather heterodox ranking of them.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 26, 2019 9:54:03 GMT -5
Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz [Version 48] (DOS, Replay)
Zork II is definitely an improvement over the first game although it does stumble in some places. I believe it's more of its own thing rather than being heavily indebted to CCA even in the original version. It is actually pretty close to it though. I looked at a map for the PDP-10 version, and they're actually pretty similar although there are some tweaks. (Edit: Actually, I was right the first time and there are significant changes over the original although the map layout is pretty similar. III is basically a new game with what little content was still unused.)
The wizard is certainly much less annoying than the thief which is nice since defeating the wizard is more or less the point rather than a task you can do at almost any time. You also get an actual reason for gathering treasure, and there's much less of it so there isn't treasure in random places you'd never think to look. There's generally more writing, but items still really don't have descriptions. You actually also don't restart immediately after dying and get some important hints and "plot" that way. You can technically continue on, but it's still a hindrance so it's better to reload. The map layout is also a little more sensible in that it's in a rough hub and spoke layout although that room also spins. Turning that off can be done early and must be done eventually, but getting to that point involves a really confusing head scratcher.
There still are some other problems though which I'll address compared to my problems with the original:
1. The Combat - There's simply no combat. You still have your sword, but it's mainly used for the glow to indicate when the wizard is near.
2. The Thief/Wizard - As I mentioned above, the wizard is much less annoying than the thief. He can cast a variety of spells on you, but sometimes nothing happens, they backfire or the effect is not really a hindrance except in certain circumstances. The randomness of the wizard can be a little bit of a pain though. When I did this full play through, the wizard didn't appear a whole lot. When I did a quick check of a few things, the wizard showed up almost every other room until I got to where I was going.Â
3. The Maze - In this game, the Bank of Zork acts like a maze but is really more of a puzzle. It is an insanely confusing puzzle though, and I struggle to see how anyone could legitimately complete it without trying everything possible. You get half a hint for it, but a full one could have alleviated many of the problems.
4. The Puzzles - Many of them are still way too unfair and don't even have anything resembling a hint at all. It's really perplexing how with the BoZ, you get a tiny semblance of hint without having it be all that useful.
5. The Inventory Limit - It still exists, but having a centralized point where you can safely dump objects coupled with fewer objects in general certainly helps a whole lot.
There is a new issue though:
6. The Parser - It can be a real problem in this game. In certain situations, the parser won't accept the game's own designations for items but it will in others. Sometimes the exact phrasing of what you need to do can be a little hard to figure out. The game is a little more ambitious in your possible actions, but the parser isn't always up to the challenge.
Overall, a good followup but one that was less played. Its independent Infocom sales were a little under half of the original's which is a little sad as I would say it's a better game overall. It'll be interesting to revisit the third game as that's the one that's really an original game that just includes the few parts still unused from the original.
Rating: 7
|
|
|
Post by Snake on Aug 26, 2019 11:03:03 GMT -5
The Great Waldo Search I've completed on the Genesis. Without a doubt the worst game I've ever completed. I would feel sorry for anyone who paid for the cartridge back in the day, as there is about 20 minutes gameplay time max. I can only imagine the ones buying Waldo games get it for their nieces and nephews for birthdays and Christmas. I would certainly feel guilty if my parents paid any amount of money for a Waldo game. Especially when you could get 3 Waldo books at Price Club/Costco for half the cost of a new game.
|
|
|
Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Aug 26, 2019 12:35:39 GMT -5
Mega Man X3 (NSW, 1st time, 6h15m) Did you play the first X game this year? For some reason I feel like you did, and I missed it. It doesn't come up in the search, but that barely works anyway. I'm interesting in seeing what you think of the rest of the series. When I played through it last year, I ended up having a rather heterodox ranking of them. No, I played X1 last year. I'm interested too. X4, 5 and 6 look a lot more interesting to me personally. And from what I remember, X5 isn't that bad (that's the only one I owned previously). Really it all boils down to the design. Gameplaywise, they're practically identical to the SNES trilogy IIRC, and that's solid enough. But I'm gonna take a little break first, I think. I just feel so apathetic after playing X2 and X3 and I want to give X4 an honest chance.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 27, 2019 11:51:51 GMT -5
Zork III: The Dungeon Master [Release 17] (DOS, Replay)
The finale to the original trilogy is also the shortest game, but one that is generally fairer than the others with a couple of gigantic exceptions. As I mentioned for Zork II, this game only takes a single puzzle and the original ending section from the original version and is original otherwise. The writing is actually pretty evocative, much more than previously, which was probably allowed due to the game's small size. Returning to my list of problems, three are not issues any more:
2. The Annoying Main Opponent - There really isn't one in this game which is nice. 5. The Inventory Limit - Technically it still exists, but it might as well not exist assuming you don't pick up a specific item that has no purpose. 6. The Parser - There's still a few small quirks here and there, but it's much less troublesome than in II.
Three things still are:
1. Combat - It makes a small return in this game but tied to a battle that is actually a very opaque puzzle. You're much stronger than in I so you don't die quite so quickly, but there's still a big element of luck involved, and the descriptions aren't as interesting. It would have been better to make the battle an obvious puzzle.
3. The Maze / Royal Puzzle - There isn't really a proper maze in this game, but the Royal Puzzle has some maze-like elements and is the single worst thing in any of the 6 games I've played so far. It's a block pushing puzzle, but the implementation is awful. It's a 6 by 6 area with movable blocks, a hidden item and an exit that needs to be reached. The main problem is that you can only see the area immediately around you. The game is nice enough to give you an visual overview instead of describing it to you, but you see so little that's it's barely a step up. Being able to see everything at once would have gone a very long way to making this much more solvable. It is a little interesting that there's a 90s style mechanical puzzle in a game from the 80s, but the implementation is lacking and unnecessarily turns it into a maze with constantly shifting paths.
This was originally near the very beginning of what became Zork I but likely excised for technical reasons. The original interpreter Infocom created when porting the PDP version to home computers had a limit of 256 objects per game. This included items, rooms, other characters and even the compass directions. The RP on it's own is nearly a fifth of that total from the "rooms" and blocks! The RP was added something like a year after Zork came into being so it was probably like an additional hard puzzle for veterans that didn't require them to go through big chunks to get to. I think that if it had hypothetically stayed in that early section, the game's reputation might be a little different. It is just so frustrating and difficult that I suspect a huge chunk would have just dropped the game there and gotten a refund since that was still a thing you could. I'd finished basically everything else in the game on my own before getting to this point but gave up an used a walkthrough for it.
4. The Puzzles - The RP excluded, mostly fair, still with some BS but much lighter than previously. I'd say the big gotcha is that the map changes at one point that renders the game unable to be completed if you don't do necessary actions before that point. It happens a little ways into it, but it's totally possible to end up in that dead end situation. I did my first try, but luckily the game is small enough that you're able to quickly redo everything. The second most problematic puzzle in the game after the RP is in the final section so I'll be vague. It involves an incredibly intricately described room that's almost double the next longest description. However, it is still so confusing to visualize that the official map includes the exact visual layout. What you need to do is also completely unclear, but the actual solution is so incredibly simple that I'm still bewildered by the concept almost 20 years after first encountering it.
Overall, a kinda fun game that is mainly hampered by the "legacy" content is was required to have. For the trilogy as a whole, I'm a little split as to whether they're truly worth playing today on their own merits. There's a lot of obscure puzzles and not a whole lot of writing outside of III. They certainly have historical importance and aren't really that long if you're not stumbling about. Plus, they are cheap to buy digitally these days. Maybe just do what I did, and play as much as you can without a walkthrough and then either restart or finish using one.
Rating: 7
|
|
|
Post by halftheisland on Aug 27, 2019 16:56:41 GMT -5
This is a big one for me, and definitely something that has come as a result of working at finishing the games I start.
Hyper Light Drifter (PC, 1st time). I have no idea on time as the Twitch app doesn't track playtime, but it's waaaaay more than the 7.5hrs suggested by HLTB.
On an aesthetic level, everything about this game appealed to me, and that's definitely what drove me onwards initially. I loved the art style with its hyper-bright block colours and the music was very much my thing. I also definitely have a thing for the sort of melancholy ruined future feel - a couple of places I've seen have compared it to Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which feels exactly right to me.
What I'm really proud of, which I guess feels like a weird phrase to use, is that this is a much harder game than I would usually complete, regardless of how I found it aesthetically. I realise it's not quite on the level of a Souls game, but I feel like I got the briefest glimpse with this of why people are so obsessed with those games.
Learning each of the individual strategies for the normal enemies then building up to manage rooms full of them is intensely satisfying. Each of the bosses initially seems an almost insurmountable challenge, but a few attempts and a genuine focus on learning and understanding their patterns makes all the difference. Often I found this was more about breaking myself out of a predetermined idea of what "should" work. At least one boss was actually made hugely easier by moving to a more aggressive, close-up combat style over my preferred method of standing off and using gunfire.
A year ago, there is no way I would have come anywhere close to finishing this game, but having made a commitment to try and finish what I start has led to what must be one of my most satisfying gaming experiences of all time.
|
|
|
Post by zerker on Aug 27, 2019 17:24:01 GMT -5
Congrads, halftheisland . Hyper Light Drifter is easily one of my top 5 favourite indie games ever. Glad you enjoyed it too. EDIT: Finished Nier: Automata (PS4, first time) last night. Got endings A, B and C. Since I unlocked the debug room and chapter select, I reckon that's enough to count. I'll probably do endings D and E, but there's very little additional content there from what I read. Enjoyable game, but not without its flaws either. Probably 8/10 for me. Soundtrack's 11/10 though
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 29, 2019 8:31:54 GMT -5
Planetfall (DOS, First Time) Were you aware Planetfall is a Zork game? Not really, but Activision bundles it with the 5 Zork IF games for some reason but doesn't include the sequel Stationfall. Planetfall does have a certain reputation particularly for Floyd that I think is a little undeserved. It simply is not that fun and Floyd is a very overrated character. The game world is very large and does somewhat realistically model the facility that the game takes place in, but as a result, there's a gigantic pile of corridors. Coupled with the fact that you also have to manage sleeping and eating, it's all just too much. I counted on the map, and there's about 100 rooms! Only a handful are actually needed and a lot of streamlining could certainly have been used. It's not really all that large a game if you consider how much is pure filler. For example, there's a "puzzle" towards the beginning where you need to get some coolants for a machine, and it just feels like pure busywork. Cutting against the hypothetical realism of the layout is that the room with the coolants is on a different floor so you need to see which one you need, go the the elevator, wait for it to descend, travel a little bit to the room, get the coolant, go back to the elevator, slide the elevator access card, wait for it to ascend, go back to the room, dump the coolant, see which one you need now and then repeat several times. It's super tedious and not fun. No other puzzle is that bad, but most of them aren't really that good either. On Floyd, much has been made of his memorability as a character, but I didn't think he's that great. He does have a cute childlike demeanor and has a few memorable "idle" actions, but there aren't actually that many so they repeat quite frequently. You can't talk to him, and he only has a few comments for the various rooms. As a gameplay device, you only need him in two spots and has no real purpose otherwise. Infocom had already developed a conversation engine for their third game Deadline, so it's not like conversation couldn't have been included. Maybe I just couldn't figure out the syntax (it won't take Deadline's), but at a minimum, more comments on entering rooms would have been nice. Even if some space would have needed to be freed up, it's not like there isn't a plethora of corridors to trim out. (big spoiler for a 35 year old game) All that made it really hard for me to even care that Floyd "dies". This was something I knew about before, and it is quite sad in isolation. He's just such a thin character that it really lacks much punch these days. (spoiler for Fragile Dreams) For example, the robot backpack "dying" towards the beginning of Fragile Dreams was infinitely sadder to me as the backpack was much more characterized. That was much more noteworthy in the past, and even then it was called out by some people as being shallow and manipulative. Having fully played it now, I don't really disagree. It doesn't feel earned and feels like it's just there for shock value much like a certain other scene that many more people encountered over a decade later. On the other hand, Floyd coming back at the end doesn't bother me at all. Some people hate this, and it was a requested addition by the business side of the company. However, it's not like Floyd exploded or something so it makes perfect sense that he would be repaired. The timing is a little convenient, but I really don't have any issues. In all honestly, it's probably better to have this game "spoiled" for you and allow your imagination to fill in the gaps rather than confront the mainly underwhelming reality. Rating: 6
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 30, 2019 7:13:49 GMT -5
Oninaki (Switch, First Time)
Reviews have been kinda mixed, but I was really excited for this and wasn't disappointed. It is a little ironic that the first Tokyo RPG Factory game that isn't inspired by Chrono Trigger is the one that has the involvement of CT's director! Combat can be a little simple particularly towards the beginning as it takes a little bit to unlock all the different weapon special attacks. The weapon categories are a little like XB2's Blades in that there's a character (Daemon) attached which each have a little bit of personal story too. The main issue is that weapon skill points ([Weapon] Stones) are specific to the weapon type and you only gain them by using that type. So later types are at a disadvantage when you have all these bonuses tied to a specific earlier type. I ended up just using the sword the whole time as the Switch version comes with a slightly further in-game but non-unique sword.
Being a TRF game, there are of course a few slightly unnecessary features. Returning from the other games are battle modifiers and skill modifiers. There are simpler in this game though. When you enter the spirit world (The Beyond), there's a modifier that applies for the entire map rather than a random chance for a single battle. Skills can have up to 4 modifiers that are randomly gained, but they can be equipped and unequipped although I didn't get that many of them. The really unnecessary feature is that there's a Diablo style loot system, but one that's much more simplified. You get weapons all over the place and they have the possibility of having slots and possibly having something preinstalled. The difference with Diablo is that there's only slots without other modifiers so you end up with a whole lot of identical weapons. You can use those to upgrade the Attack of weapons you actually use, but I still ended up with hundreds of weapons by the end. You do get an equally large if not larger number of stones for the slots.
What I did like a lot was the story. This is a game where you can tell if a reviewer actually finished it or not as there's a big turn in the middle. The first half can be a little bland as the story doesn't really pick up until Chapter 2 (of 4). The main character Kagachi is a Veil Watcher, a group that solves the problems of souls (really ghosts) that can't move on and and be reincarnated. A lot of the beginning is a little "mission" based in that you get told to go somewhere and do something without having a huge amount of central story. It really picks up eventually though and Chapter 3 for instance is almost all story with just little bits of combat in between. Chapter 2 has such a dramatic ending too. It's possibly the most dramatic scene in any game I've ever played!
Rating: 9
|
|
|
Post by Null0x00 on Aug 30, 2019 23:21:12 GMT -5
Cleared all days in Postal 2 for Windows in 6 hours, 45 minutes on the Hestonworld (5th hardest) difficulty. This includes the original 5 days and the 2 weekends from Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend. Replay playthrough. Ranking: 6/10. A true titan of trash. It's janky, buggy, dumb, crude and vulgar, but despite that it still holds a certain charm and, for 2003, was well ahead of its time. Now, if the actual shooting mechanics, maps and missions were more polished up, it has the potential to be a genuine classic.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Aug 31, 2019 8:38:42 GMT -5
Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise (Switch, First Time)
Poor title/subtitle repetition aside, I quite liked this first person adventure game. It's obviously an homage to various spy properties though a lighthearted one with a good mix of mechanical and inventory puzzles and just enough story to keep things moving. It has simple but clear 3D graphics and a streamlined interface that gets out of your way. It's fairly straightforward and easy, but there's enough variety to keep things interesting.
Rating: 8
Pacific Wings (Switch, First Time)
A very obvious clone of 1942, competently made but otherwise unnoteworthy and super easy. For just a few dollars over the full price of $5, there's already a plethora of arcade shooters on the eShop many of which actually have very easy difficulties which negates the need for a beginner shooter like this one.
Rating: 6
|
|
|
Post by ResidentTsundere on Sept 1, 2019 2:51:37 GMT -5
dsparil: It was a first time playthrough. I blanked out on including that detail in my post. Sorry. >.>
|
|
|
Post by Null0x00 on Sept 1, 2019 3:27:52 GMT -5
Cleared the campaign for Postal Redux for Windows on normal difficulty in 2 hours. First time playthrough. 6/10. Short but surprisingly fun. I can see why the original game was so controversial at the time, as its much darker and plays itself totally straight unlike it's far more over-the-top and comedic sequel. It really is just Hatred v0.1.
|
|
|
Post by wyldesyde on Sept 1, 2019 20:51:26 GMT -5
Watchdogs on Xbone. I started this years ago, but only played a little bit. Maybe a few hours. Certainly didn’t get far into chapter 1 at all. It went on the shelf for a few year due to work and other things before I returned again 3 months ago. Should still count, right? *edit* Going over the rules I see it does not, as I didn’t start within the last 2 weeks of 2018 at the least. Feel free to ignore this
|
|