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Post by lurker on May 18, 2020 13:08:21 GMT -5
The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game (Steam, First Time)
Although I've enjoyed the previous Lego games in the past, this one I generally skipped as it was a property I wasn't all that interested in. I was aware of the show that the movie is based on, though. However, I decided to give it a shot when I found out the game was free to own for a limited time. While it's not my favorite of the ones I've played, it still has a lot of neat little touches and the combo system is a welcome edition. Plus, there's a lot of nods to kung fu movies and a very short post credit level that covers another genre. I wasn't sure what to put for the time since Steam just covers the total time and not the amount it took me to complete the story.
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Post by dsparil on May 18, 2020 14:20:26 GMT -5
The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game (Steam, First Time)
Although I've enjoyed the previous Lego games in the past, this one I generally skipped as it was a property I wasn't all that interested in. I was aware of the show that the movie is based on, though. However, I decided to give it a shot when I found out the game was free to own for a limited time. While it's not my favorite of the ones I've played, it still has a lot of neat little touches and the combo system is a welcome edition. Plus, there's a lot of nods to kung fu movies and a very short post credit level that covers another genre. I wasn't sure what to put for the time since Steam just covers the total time and not the amount it took me to complete the story.
You can just put whatever it's at. The LEGO games I've played have their own timer, but I don't know about the Steam versions.
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Post by lurker on May 18, 2020 15:49:34 GMT -5
The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game (Steam, First Time)
Although I've enjoyed the previous Lego games in the past, this one I generally skipped as it was a property I wasn't all that interested in. I was aware of the show that the movie is based on, though. However, I decided to give it a shot when I found out the game was free to own for a limited time. While it's not my favorite of the ones I've played, it still has a lot of neat little touches and the combo system is a welcome edition. Plus, there's a lot of nods to kung fu movies and a very short post credit level that covers another genre. I wasn't sure what to put for the time since Steam just covers the total time and not the amount it took me to complete the story.
You can just put whatever it's at. The LEGO games I've played have their own timer, but I don't know about the Steam versions. Can't seem to find where it would be displayed. The ingame save file just mentions the date and the time of day the save was made.
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Post by dsparil on May 18, 2020 16:01:52 GMT -5
You can just put whatever it's at. The LEGO games I've played have their own timer, but I don't know about the Steam versions. Can't seem to find where it would be displayed. The ingame save file just mentions the date and the time of day the save was made.
You can just put down the Steam time if you want to include a time.
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Post by lurker on May 18, 2020 21:29:39 GMT -5
Oh and another thing. If you're not a fan of vehicle levels in the Lego games, it keeps them to a minimum. When they do pop up, they're more along the lines of a rail shooter.
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Post by mainpatr on May 18, 2020 21:43:23 GMT -5
So,like the first Lego Star Wars,then.
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Post by zerker on May 19, 2020 17:50:10 GMT -5
Yesterday, I finished Valfaris (PS4; First time). Now THAT is a quality action/platformer. 9/10. Game time: 6:35 (per below)
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Post by JoeQ on May 20, 2020 9:22:04 GMT -5
Bloodborne - Game of the Year Edition (PS4) - Replay, Time: about 62h Went back and got the platinum trophy, which required two more playthroughs to get the other two endings. Did a quick run on NG+ with my old character and then started a new one because I wanted to try a different playstyle. Ended doing a complete playthrough with that one, including the DLC. Some minor stuff started to irritate me more this time around, but Bloodborne is still a great game. Rating: 5/5Alphabet Challenge: ABCD-F-H-J-LM------TUV---Z Number Challenge: --2-------
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Post by alexmate on May 21, 2020 16:28:48 GMT -5
Sonic CD (Mega CD, 1st time, time taken: 1hr28 - timer)
Compared to most games I've completed this year, this game is short. It's a great sonic game, easily one of the best in the series, but not the best I prefer 1 & 2. I played the European version as I heard it has a better soundtrack.
Rating: 8
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Post by dsparil on May 22, 2020 8:36:03 GMT -5
I played the European version as I heard it has a better soundtrack. I wouldn't say either is better than the other. They're just different. The Past music is the same in both though. I think people generally just prefer the one they encountered first.
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Post by dsparil on May 22, 2020 10:39:52 GMT -5
Retro Game Challenge (DS, Replay)
RGC is such a pure distillation of the NES era. It's also a nice little encapsulation of the Famicom's history and progression since the US got games in a jumbled order. All the games go beyond what the NES could actually do graphically, but they still stick to general style better than other faux-retro games. As they are of such disparate genres, the overall difficult tends to be low and most include a semi-secret continue function. The inclusion of the fake GameFan magazine (with gradually rising price!) as a way of dispensing tips and cheats is a nice touch. The site's article doesn't mention this, but the release dates for the games generally match up with a similar-ish one!
Cosmic Gate - Having 64 levels, CG is really the only game in the collection that really comes close to being "full" length although its inspirations of Galaga and Galaxian looped. That would conflict with the final goal of finishing each game though. As the representation of the earliest FC arcade ports, it is a simple score attack game but you luckily don't need to play literally every level. The release date of 11/08/84 matches up with Xevious which is a little strange as Galaxian was released just two months earlier and is also a Namco game.
Robot Ninja Haggleman - This gets SMB's slot (9/13/85) although it's much closer to the earlier arcade style games, and nowhere close to the major epochal shift that SMB represented. The site’s article mentions Ninja Jajamaru-kun as an inspiration which I haven’t played. It's basically a mix of that game and Mappy but with a clearly Mega Man inspired ninja robot instead. Defeat all the enemies by jumping on them once or twice or hide behind a door and slam it on them instead. Defeat the boss that appears once all the normal enemies are defeated or when it's forced out from hiding. There's eight levels and you need to do two loops to finish it. I honestly don't like Haggleman too much, but the intentional mistranslation of hagurama (歯車) as haggle while putting gears in the logo is cute.
Rally King - Most people seem to really hate Rally King, but I like it more or less. I don't have much experience with top down racing games, but I didn't think it was too hard. It's just 4 races and you're pretty much guaranteed to come in 1st or 2nd if you don't take too much damage and explode. The drift mechanic is a little annoying as it's done with the accelerate button and can get triggered accidentally in the tougher 3rd and 4th races. This matches up with Nintendo's Mach Rider (11/21/85) to which is shares literally zero elements aside from both being racing games.
Star Prince - The semi-sequel to Cosmic Gate, it's one of the three real standout games even though it's fairly short at four levels with two loops. It is a fairly standard vertical shooter but with graphics in excess to what the NES could smoothly do. It’s release date mate B-Wings (06/03/86) is the closest of all to the games, and they bear some real similarities.
Rally King SP - Just a plain old special version of Rally King. The in-game material says that it’s tweaked somehow, but the change in graphics to night is the only one I noticed. It’s conceptually a sponsored version of the original with the in-game GameFan magazine’s mascot giving ads for ramen. This is obviously a nod to the ramen sponsored version of Gradius. I think this game in particular is why Rally King gets so much hate as it seems cheap to include RK twice, but these types of special versions are an element of Famicom history. The release date of 08/28/86 only matches up with Mobile Suit Z Gundam: Hot Scramble which is really weird. I can’t find a release date for Gradius Archimendes which probably didn’t have a firm one anyway.
Robot Ninja Haggleman 2 - This might have Takeshi no Chōsenjō’s release date (12/10/86), but it is the equivalent of SMB2 through and through. The All Night Nippon version of SMB was released the same month, so the date is probably supposed to be a reference to that. It’s more Haggleman, but harder this time. There’s the additional concept of enemy reinforcements and a proper final boss, but it’s otherwise just new stages.
Guadia Quest - GQ is the absolute best game in the whole package and clearly had the most time spent on it. It’s a fairly lengthy DQ-esque RPG but with some added conveniences like being able to save anywhere. It gets Megami Tensei’s release date (09/11/87), and the ability to form “pacts” with special Guadia enemies is vaguely reminiscent of MT. Plus, developer Coelacanth’s logo is similar to Atlus’s. It isn’t perfect e.g. money is nearly useless, but the graphics are nice and it leaves you wanting more by the end.
Robot Ninja Haggleman 3 - The final game in the RNH trilogy makes a gigantic shift to a style more akin to Ninja Gaiden, but with 3 large and freely navigable levels and purchasable upgrades. It’s a fun little game if a bit short which isn’t surprising. It’s release date of 07/21/89 doesn’t match up with anything in particular as the only games released on that day were a baseball game, a basketball game and Namco’s Tenkaichi Bushi Keru Nagūru. In some nearly microscopic way, I guess RNH3 does match up with TBKN in kinda being genre fusions.
Overall, this is just such a joyful game. It would have been nice for some games to be expanded, but that’s a minor issue.
Rating: 9
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Post by dsparil on May 22, 2020 18:41:24 GMT -5
Red Wings: Aces of the Sky (Switch, First Time)
I am such a sucker for aerial dogfighting games, but I feel like just a sucker in this case. Basically, RW is just a worse version of Skies of Fury DX with half the content and more boring overall. It feels like a real ripoff. This even has some of the Pilotwings style time trials that were a nice treat in SoF but with way less of them and poorer quality. Skies of Fury isn't perfect, but it is significantly better and the same price.
I finished in about 7.5h.
Rating: 4
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Post by Digitalnametag on May 22, 2020 19:15:53 GMT -5
Persona 5 Royal PS4 FTP 100 hours
Persona is my favorite game series and Royal adds a bunch of new fun stuff. Some of it makes the game a bit easy on normal but that's what higher difficulties are for! The new arc is a decent bonus chapter taking place at the very end. I could talk for hours about my love of Persona but simply put Royal is a great update to what was already a great game.
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Post by Woody Alien on May 23, 2020 6:22:41 GMT -5
Two little indie games:
Nirvana Pilot Yume (PC/Steam, first time, about 1.5 hrs)
A curious hybrid of short visual novel and futuristic racing game, full of weird technobabble, pseudo mysticism and a kickass synthwave retro soundtrack. I only reached the bad ending because I can't get to the end of any but the easiest tracks, so I will never have enough points to develop the romance with the girl pilot. Though you can practice them in the Arcade mode, but it's easier said than done. The girls' artwork isn't too good and it's pretty clear they were traced from other sources, and the rest of the retro/vaporwave graphics combining very simple polygons with hand-drawn graphics are nice but kind of overused at this point. Let's see if I can manage to do better next time.
6.5/10
Helltaker (PC/Steam, first time, 2.5 hours according to the Steam counter)
A nice short block/turn-based puzzle game by some Polish dude, found for free on Steam (you can pay for it through the DLC if you want). I heard about it on Know Your Meme of all places, because it suddenly became quite popular overnight. The reason? Protagonist goes to Hell to get himself a harem of demon chicks... but it's not what you think! All ladies are fully dressed and quite snarky or wacky, there's nothing NSFW and it has a nice laidback atmosphere and a Tumblr-esque artstyle that is still quite pleasing. Add to that the pick-up-and-play gameplay, stylish graphics and use of colors, good techno BGMs, funny writing and you have a nice little pastime whose only problem is being quite short. But it's free, so there's that.
8/10
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Post by Null0x00 on May 23, 2020 6:29:39 GMT -5
Cleared DOOM Eternal for Windows in 20.5 hours on the Ultra-Violence difficulty using no cheat disks or the Sentinel Armor. 10/10. This game has nearly dethroned Doom 2 as my favourite Doom game, with it mostly being an evolution of Doom 2016 with the speed and difficulty that now almost makes it feel like a first-person, demonic version of Vanquish. The entire game is essentially mini deathmatch arenas with some of the best FPS gunplay and mechanics of the entire genre, separated by occasionally frustrating platforming sections. Regarding the combat, Eternal expands on the glory kills and chainsaw meta with the new flame betch which is used to replenish your armor like how the glory kills give health and the chainsaw gives ammo. Coupled with the low max ammo for all the weapons and the higher difficulty, combat feels far more frantic with you constantly swapping to the best weapons to hit demon weak points, and then using a take-down on the mob demons when needed to get health, ammo or armor back. It's a game that actively rewards you for fighting and constantly killing demons which is immensely satisfying once you get the rhythm of the game's combat. As such, Eternal feels like the near-perfect anti-cover shooter.
My updated, personal ranking of the Doom games: Doom 2 >= Eternal > Doom 2016 > Doom 64 >= Plutonia > Ultimate Doom > Resurrection of Evil > Doom 3
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