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Post by lurker on May 9, 2020 1:13:09 GMT -5
I thought the music was fine for a modern day Streets of Rage.
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Post by Bumpyroad on May 9, 2020 1:30:32 GMT -5
This is as modern as 2017. Miles better than anything SoR4
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Post by toei on May 9, 2020 4:06:42 GMT -5
The music in SOR4 is nothing special, but it's not especially awful either. Not one of the tracks really annoyed me (though two levels do gameplay-wise, but that's another story). I kind of like the title screen song, actually, which is a Koshiro track.
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Post by Woody Alien on May 9, 2020 13:04:32 GMT -5
Operation Wolf (Arcade, replay, about 20 mins)
Just wanted to do some shooting to vent a bit, I'll post some more significant endings in the next few days. I actually had the DOS version as a kid but never finished it; once you get past the first two stages it becomes surprisingly easy. Maybe I'll try the sequels just for fun.
7/10
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Post by dsparil on May 10, 2020 5:55:08 GMT -5
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (Switch, First Time)
The Switch isn't exactly overflowing with dungeon crawlers, but this is a decent option. The story concerns a witch named Dronya and her apprentice Luca coming to the town of Refrain to explore its eponymous dungeon. They don’t actually do the exploring which falls to the the Tractatum de Monstrum (Tractie for short), a magical book which is the player stand in. The story at first isn’t anything all that great and is mainly just scenes of Luca or Dronya interacting with townspeople, Dronya being an abusive jerk to Luca and Dronya just being a jerk in general. It isn’t until the halfway point that the story really picks up properly, and it actually does get pretty good.
The dungeon crawling of course is the main attraction and that is pretty solid. There’s about 50 levels total divided into 8 areas (plus an extra post-game dungeon I didn’t do) that are both of the “worm tunnel” and wall sharing variety. Battles seem random at first, but they actually aren’t. You can get various “skills” to help with exploration with the first being the permanent ability to see monsters. They do repopulate the dungeon (and also leave it) so it isn’t possible to clear out a level.
Tractie also doesn’t actually do the fighting either and controls a group of “puppet soldiers” divided into “covens”. There’s a selection of 8 classes with another 2 becoming unlocked later on. They all have weird names, but fall into standard types although the vast majority are some type of physical attacker. You have 5 slots for covens which can hold up to three puppets each. You have to collect “coven pacts” though and can’t just slot them however you want. Spells are also attached to covens and not characters which I didn't like. It’s also worth mentioning that on top of critical hits, there’s also gore hits which maim you puppets and decreases their maximum HP and other negative effects until repaired. They still look human which makes it a little disturbing. You can do them to monsters too though although there’s no graphical change or anything.
My main issue is that everything is way too complicated. Puppets have so much attached to them like a stance that gives stat boosts and hindrances, a stat growth modifier, a nature that controls equipment stat boosts and even a lucky number that comes into play in some places! They also have a “soul clarity” level which greatly affects stat growth and only gets boosted by resetting their level to 1. However, in order to get the largest boost and to pass on the largest number of the passive skills, you need to do that at level 99 and four times to get maximum clarity! This is honestly not particularly difficult for 99% of it and so many of these mechanics only matter for the extra content or on the highest difficulty.
Overall, I did like it, but it falters a bit in trying to appeal to both general RPG fans and really hardcore dungeon crawlers. There’s so much that basically doesn’t matter at all if you’re playing through once normally. It’s totally feasible to be able to beat the game with a bunch of puppets with minimum soul clarity just to get destroyed by two of the extra bosses needed to unlock the true ending and the post game content.
I finished in 38:40:10.
Rating: 7
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Post by alexmate on May 10, 2020 10:13:07 GMT -5
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 1st time, time taken: 7hr 49 minutes timer.) Great game. I don't think it's quite as good as SMW or SMB 3, but it is one of the best games on the SNES. My grievances with it are minor, some really annoying levels and the number of levels could be cut down a world.
Rating: 9
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 11, 2020 4:23:01 GMT -5
]Went through it again thinking: maybe my high expectations shaded the quality? Nope, still don't hear it. With the 2 best tracks coming from Harumi Fujita(and even those barely making it). The rest is just contemporary trash for the masses. I mean, it's supposed to be contemporary. If anything it would've been 'for the masses' if they just tried to replicate's SoR2's success. What they did now was more of a present-day continuation of SoR3. I don't necessarily love it (some of it comes too dangerously close to dubstep), but the style is fitting. This is as modern as 2017. Miles better than anything SoR4 IDK...that's pretty generic and doesn't really fit SoR.
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Post by dsparil on May 11, 2020 13:14:36 GMT -5
Defunct (Switch, First Time)
A kinda cute time trial game where you play as some kind of industrial robot trying to get back to its ship. It reminds me a lot of a 3D Tiny Wings but with a robot. There’s a few additions like having a jump and some rare switch flipping to open a gate. It’s pretty ugly to be honest, but the point is to go fast enough for that to not matter. The robot has just enough personality too. It’s pretty short at an hour or two, and could have sustained a longer game. Based on the credits, I think this may have been a student project that got turned into a commercial product. I paid something ridiculous like 29¢ on sale, but it’s definitely worth more than that.
Rating: 7
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Post by Woody Alien on May 11, 2020 16:42:50 GMT -5
Life Is Strange (PC/Steam, first time, 20 hours according to Steam counter)
I had the first free episode in my Steam backlog for quite a while, but only recently started to play it despite it being famous and acclaimed. So when I completed Episode 1, I almost immediately bought the others and started playing them... it's as good as everyone says it is! Liked the characters, setting, plot, graphics, the fact that is more of an interactive movie in parts rather than a game (these days I can't concentrate too much), overall mood, despite generally not being too much of an adventure game fan.
My only problem is that the 5th and final episode comes when most of the plot had been wrapped up already, and consists mostly in a long fantasy/nightmare sequence with annoying stealth sections, and in general doesn't add much to the setting and secondary characters, which are for the most part quite interesting. For the rest I think that everything from the UI, Max's diary, collectibles and all added to the general experience, and that the dev group nailed the teen drama-turning-into-supernatural mystery style.
Sure, maybe the soundtrack is a bit hipster-ish, but then again it's from the point of view of a teenage girl in an art college in the mid-2010s, so it's understandable. I like how some of the choices (like hiding a certain pair of car keys) have quite a bit of options attached to them, it makes the world seem more alive and complex than it actually is.
A quite good game but I'm unsure on whether to buy Life Is Strange 2, since it has pretty much nothing to do with this story.
9/10
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Post by mainpatr on May 11, 2020 17:24:12 GMT -5
Life Is Strange (PC/Steam, first time, 20 hours according to Steam counter) I had the first free episode in my Steam backlog for quite a while, but only recently started to play it despite it being famous and acclaimed. So when I completed Episode 1, I almost immediately bought the others and started playing them... it's as good as everyone says it is! Liked the characters, setting, plot, graphics, the fact that is more of an interactive movie in parts rather than a game (these days I can't concentrate too much), overall mood, despite generally not being too much of an adventure game fan. My only problem is that the 5th and final episode comes when most of the plot had been wrapped up already, and consists mostly in a long fantasy/nightmare sequence with annoying stealth sections, and in general doesn't add much to the setting and secondary characters, which are for the most part quite interesting. For the rest I think that everything from the UI, Max's diary, collectibles and all added to the general experience, and that the dev group nailed the teen drama-turning-into-supernatural mystery style.
Sure, maybe the soundtrack is a bit hipster-ish, but then again it's from the point of view of a teenage girl in an art college in the mid-2010s, so it's understandable. I like how some of the choices (like hiding a certain pair of car keys) have quite a bit of options attached to them, it makes the world seem more alive and complex than it actually is.
A quite good game but I'm unsure on whether to buy Life Is Strange 2, since it has pretty much nothing to do with this story. 9/10
Have you played Captain Spirit yet?
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Post by JoeQ on May 12, 2020 6:17:41 GMT -5
Fusion: Genesis (X360) - First playthrough, Time: N/A A somewhat ambitious attempt to combine a twin stick shooter and an eliteclone, but end result falls short. It was okay still. I completed the main campaign and all the faction storylines and unlocked all the achievements. Rating: 3/5Alphabet Challenge: A-CD-F-H-J-LM------TUV---Z Number Challenge: --2-------
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Post by dsparil on May 12, 2020 7:29:37 GMT -5
2064: Read Only Memories INTEGRAL (Switch, First Time)
A lot of people like this, but it really went over like a lead balloon for me. The window dressing is nice, but the core story is so generic and has zero new to say at all on the topic of AI. It’s really dumb that the focus wasn’t actually on genetic and technological augmentation since those are issues that have real modern day relevance even more so since the game’s original release while the field of AI research has greatly lowered its goals over the decades. There’s a few scenes that have the glimmers of a significantly better game, and I have absolutely no why the developers settled on such mediocrity when they’re clearly capable of much more.
Edit: I should mention that the Switch version also comes with some extras like an exclusive side story starring Chad and Oliver, a possibly expanded digital art book and the soundtrack. It's on sale for $3 until Thursday if that sounds appealing.
Rating: 6
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Post by Woody Alien on May 12, 2020 10:12:23 GMT -5
Have you played Captain Spirit yet? I have downloaded it just today; unfortunately even if it looks almost identical to LiS it works like shit on my PC (which isn't even that old) even if I keep all the details to a minimum. From what I've seen it seems interesting though, even if I'm quite bored of superheroes
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Post by Snake on May 12, 2020 11:16:37 GMT -5
Ys Book 1 and 2, Turbografx CD (replay, approx 10~12 hours?)
This game still holds up. Out of all the releases, I think this version has the best arranged pieces of music. Gameplay is simple but satisfying. And the ending overall feels quite complete, and likely the best ending for games at the time of release. Even replaying and finishing, I still feel that same sense satisfaction and melancholy as the credits roll and Ryo Yonemitsu's version of "See You Again" is playing while various characters and bosses appear on screen and dance. One of the great things about this game was the ability to save and load at any time, instead of hunting down a save point or journeying back to some "priest" or "inn" like in Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, and the like. I played this on the PC-Engine Core Grafx Mini, and it is just a delight. Picture perfect emulation. Beyond that, last 2 segments of the game consisting of Solomon Shrine and the Underground Waterway is quite labyrinth confusing. I forgot how much you needed to keep in mind where certain places and things are, where you need to back track. I actually was missing a magic staff/spell, the one between "Return" and "Transform," this playthrough. I'm guessing it was a heal magic?
Score: 10/10.
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Post by halftheisland on May 12, 2020 15:45:54 GMT -5
Man, I haven't posted here in a while but that's largely because I've been working on...
Dragon Age: Inquisition + all DLC (PS4, 1st time, 160 hours)
I'm really still digesting this and will likely have a lot more to say about it in the coming days, but a quick summary is that this is hands down one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. To an extent I don't want to write too much about it because it will inevitably devolve into picking at all the little threads of things that didn't quite work.
I adored the constant sense of progression in the plot and thought it increasingly did a great job of making you feel like the head of a powerful organisation, having to negotiate all the politics and diplomacy that come with that. The dialogue also held up consistently, to the point that I have no idea how Bioware put so much work into it. Loved the companions and their banter, the little vignettes and side stories gave real depth and a sense of them as people (there's a poker game at Skyhold at one point that worked perfectly).
Pretty much rinsed this, I think the only thing I didn't do was complete a few of the collections (mosaic pieces, dwarven mugs, bottles) and it doesn't look like those do much more than some XP bonuses which I really didn't need by the end.
I'm not sure if the Trespasser DLC is able to be counted separately for the purposes of this thread - it's only accessible in-game but once selected locks off all other content and moves the plot forward several years, unlike e.g. the Jaws of Hakkon DLC which just gives you an additional in-game area you can access at any time.
First in a long time for me but this is absolutely a 10/10.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (PS4, replay, 4 hours)
Not much to say about this one - nice to replay it and interesting to see where it's held up and where the flaws are. The first couple of USMC missions in particular are abysmal, with no hint as to whether you need to keep pushing to stop infinitely respawning waves of enemies or whether it's a scripted point that you need to hold out through.
I know single-player has never been the focus of these games but boy does this go by quickly - from memory I had expected to get another couple of hours out but it felt almost cut short to me.
A fun enough experience and nice to revisit history but not hugely recommended in its own right. 6/10
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