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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Dec 23, 2020 6:47:33 GMT -5
The port also includes a "Master Levels" campaign but I'm not sure if I am ready to dive into that. They're not that good. If they're the same Master Levels that got released back in the 90's. Some of them are fine, but a lot of them are just garbage. There's some fan mods available in the Switch port and probably The Plutonia Experiment, so there's better alternatives if you want more DOOM on Switch. Back to Saturn X ep. 1 is probably the best DOOM campaign I've played, and I'm pretty sure it's available on the console ports.
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Post by dsparil on Dec 23, 2020 8:55:10 GMT -5
Picross S (Switch, First Time)
The big move to the Switch (which actually happened between e7 and e8) is unsurprisingly a barebones release. 150 puzzles in regular and Mega modes topping out at a single 15 puzzle page of 20x15 puzzles as is the series standard by this point. However, there's nothing to replace Miicross mode in this volume. There's also a gigantic mechanical change in completely removing the penalty for fixing mistakes! I ended up playing the whole thing without mistake correction because of this. I think that removes too much of the challenge. I also used the Pro Controller which has a surprisingly awful and mushy d-pad* in comparison to the rest of the controller. Playing in "Free" mode ended up alleviating what could have been a very annoying source of frustration.
I finished in about 5 hours.
Rating: 7
* The Pro Controller is a real devil's bargain with such buttery smooth sticks but one of if not the worst pad on any first party Nintendo controller.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2020 9:07:18 GMT -5
Picross S (Switch, First Time) The big move to the Switch (which actually happened between e7 and e8) is unsurprisingly a barebones release. 150 puzzles in regular and Mega modes topping out at a single 15 puzzle page of 20x15 puzzles as is the series standard by this point. However, there's nothing to replace Miicross mode in this volume. There's also a gigantic mechanical change in completely removing the penalty for fixing mistakes! I ended up playing the whole thing without mistake correction because of this. I think that removes too much of the challenge. I also used the Pro Controller which has a surprisingly awful and mushy d-pad* in comparison to the rest of the controller. Playing in "Free" mode ended up alleviating what could have been a very annoying source of frustration. I finished in about 5 hours. Rating: 7 * The Pro Controller is a real devil's bargain with such buttery smooth sticks but one of if not the worst pad on any first party Nintendo controller. I use the 8bitDo SN30 Pro+ on Switch for TV mode. It has a really nice d-pad, and is cheaper than the pro controller. Might be worth considering since you play a lot of Picross.
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Post by dsparil on Dec 23, 2020 11:32:22 GMT -5
Thanks for the recommendation. I thought about that one, but ended up going with the Pro because the price difference wasn't quite that large. I mainly wish there was a version of the Pro with d buttons like the JoyCons. I never had a problem with them.
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Post by spanky on Dec 23, 2020 13:01:46 GMT -5
The Pro Controller D-Pad is a mushy mess. Nintendo invented the damned thing, you'd think it would be higher quality...I'm playing Link to the Past right now on my Switch and I'm wondering why I don't just play my SNES copy. The port also includes a "Master Levels" campaign but I'm not sure if I am ready to dive into that. They're not that good. If they're the same Master Levels that got released back in the 90's. Some of them are fine, but a lot of them are just garbage. There's some fan mods available in the Switch port and probably The Plutonia Experiment, so there's better alternatives if you want more DOOM on Switch. Back to Saturn X ep. 1 is probably the best DOOM campaign I've played, and I'm pretty sure it's available on the console ports. Good to know! There are a number of free campaigns available including something called Doom Zero that was released last week but I didn't really want to invest any time into something unless I know it was going to be worth it.
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Post by Woody Alien on Dec 24, 2020 10:30:40 GMT -5
My general thought is no if it's a regular demo, but yes if it's content unique to the demo which would make it akin to freestanding DLC. It's a little tricky in this specific case since it's a prerelease demo for something that won't be out for a while. Without playing through myself, I'll leave it to your discretion. Let's not count it then, even if it has achievements and everything. In the meantime I finished another game that I bought in a sale some time ago and then forgot: Milanoir (PC/Steam, first time, about 8.5 hours)
It is an Italian production, a shooter based on the Italian 1970s pulpy crime movies (" poliziotteschi") full of thugs, bosses, corrupt policemen, drug dealers, prostitutes and such. It's a top-down twin stick shooter with elements of cover-based shooting, where we control a hired gun and his quest to murder just about everyone in 1970s Milan (hence the title). Actually it takes about 5 or 6 hours to complete it; I thought that I sucked at it but, reading some reviews and impressions, there are actually problems with the gameplay, aiming system, some huge difficulty spikes (I actually had to lower the difficulty setting because I couldn't get past a certain section at all) and other bugs and problems that don't make it as enjoyable as it could be. It also suffers because it could have been either more arcadey and ultra-violent a la Hotline Miami, or they could have made it more sedated and played up the elements of puzzle shooting (since you can shoot street signs to OHKO enemies). But it's a hybrid that is not too satisfying. And the lone stealth section is really useless. And there are too few weapon types and enemy types. Not to mention the abrupt ending that makes it seem unfinished.
I make it sound horrible but still, the pixel art is quite good, as is the music, the style of those movies has been preserved (with an exaggerated amount of swearing, some brutal murders and a cheesy storyline based on treason and revenge) so I still want to give it a somewhat positive mark. Also, it is Italian, set in the town where I was born and it's almost Christmas, so let's not be too harsh 6/10
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Post by dsparil on Dec 24, 2020 11:55:46 GMT -5
Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X (PSP, First Time)
I was looking forward to this since it did get good reviews when it came out, but now I wonder what game they were playing. If it were MMX but with bland 3D graphics it'd be one thing, but there's a bunch of changes here and there that only makes some parts annoying when they weren't in the past. The Sigma stages have all been replaced which seemed good at first, but those floating platforms from stage 1 that I hate so much just got moved into the middle of stage 2 instead. It's also odd to me that the enhancements got shuffled around. Beating it does unlock Vile as a playable character, but it was so frustrating to play as him that I didn't get too far. There's also the fairly lengthy Day of Sigma movie as an extra bonus, but that's also part of the X Legacy Collection anyway.
Rating: 6
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Post by Digitalnametag on Dec 24, 2020 12:04:41 GMT -5
Super Mario Bros. 3 SNES via the Super Mario All-Stars Replay 4 hours
Forgot how difficult the last few stages can be! Lakitus are a giant pain too. Good thing it has one of the easiest sub-bosses in video game history! I don't often play this all the way through due to it's length on the NES. I made use of the save on the SNES though to play over a couple days. Play on a console with emulation you say? Never! SMB3 fares better on the collection than SMB1 does. It plays pretty much the same and the background changes aren't as horrendous.
SMB3 still has my favorite over-world of any Mario game. It has mini-games on the map and so many neat little secrets. I still suck at the face line up game. I do miss being able to have a stored power-up in level like World has but then World doesn't have an item inventory either. Of course an inventory full of Stars is pretty much useless anyway. Now an inventory of P-Wings... Cheese!
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Post by toei on Dec 24, 2020 13:03:59 GMT -5
Woody Alien The idea of a game based on that genre of movies is appealing to me, but I can't say the game and that graphical style are. Most of those movies I've seen revolve around investigations (or revenge), so an action-adventure (with, say, a detective based on Franco Nero) could be great. And it would need a great soundtrack, cause that's usually the best part of most '70s Italian movies.
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Post by spanky on Dec 24, 2020 15:51:06 GMT -5
The Legend of Zelda A Link To the Past (SNES Via Switch, Replay)
I've beaten this game a dozen times at least. One of those games where every about detail is just burned into my brain. Despite all that, I manage to find new things about the game all the time. Like I found out this time around you can throw magic powder on a chicken in one of the houses in the town and it will turn into a girl. I didn't quite 100 % the game. I didn't get the heart pieces from the minigames in the Village of Outcasts. Too much luck involved and I didn't have the patience for it. I also don't like to bother with the network of tunnels on the east side of Death Mountain so I left those behind as well. I don't think it's my favorite Zelda but it's up there. It's where the formula for the series really starts to set in and while I think the series gets strangled by it's own formula later on, it really works here. I love being able to sequence break here and there. I always found the game sort of weird graphically. It's very colorful and nice looking (the Light World in particular is one of the coziest looking environments in a video game), but it's very abstract in places. There's lots of weird rocks and bushes and other details all over the game that I'm not sure exactly what I am looking at. Like the weird pink and yellow topiaries in the castle courtyard. Playing on the Switch is fine. OK, I don't like the mushy pro controller and there is a hint of input lag that hurts more action based games but it works fine for Zelda. The Switch online service gets a lot of flack for some reason but it's hard for me to complain when stuff this quality is on there for extremely cheap. Super Mario Bros. 3 SNES via the Super Mario All-Stars Replay 4 hours Forgot how difficult the last few stages can be! Lakitus are a giant pain too. Good thing it has one of the easiest sub-bosses in video game history! I don't often play this all the way through due to it's length on the NES. I made use of the save on the SNES though to play over a couple days. Play on a console with emulation you say? Never! SMB3 fares better on the collection than SMB1 does. It plays pretty much the same and the background changes aren't as horrendous. SMB3 still has my favorite over-world of any Mario game. It has mini-games on the map and so many neat little secrets. I still suck at the face line up game. I do miss being able to have a stored power-up in level like World has but then World doesn't have an item inventory either. Of course an inventory full of Stars is pretty much useless anyway. Now an inventory of P-Wings... Cheese! Playing Super Mario Bros 3, the whole way through without warps was my go to to kill lazy summer afternoons as a kid. The only thing that really bugs me about the All Stars version of Mario 3 is the backgrounds in World 7. In the NES version, all the outdoor levels have a hazy orange background which I always interpreted as a sunset - which makes sense as you are approaching "Dark Land." I always thought it was a neat detail, even as a kid. The AS version loses this by having a lot of normal sky blue backgrounds in the stages. It always makes it feel like it's missing something to me.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Dec 24, 2020 17:03:02 GMT -5
The only thing that really bugs me about the All Stars version of Mario 3 is the backgrounds in World 7. In the NES version, all the outdoor levels have a hazy orange background which I always interpreted as a sunset - which makes sense as you are approaching "Dark Land." I always thought it was a neat detail, even as a kid. The AS version loses this by having a lot of normal sky blue backgrounds in the stages. It always makes it feel like it's missing something to me. It's so rare for me to play much of World 7 I barely noticed this hah. Usually by the time I hit World 7 I'm ready to use the warp whistle to quickly end the game. In the 90s my parents never allowed us to play video games long enough to beat SMB3 all the way through. Probably why I'm so much better at the first Super Mario Bros.
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Post by personman on Dec 25, 2020 8:00:18 GMT -5
KONA(PC/Steam) first time, 10 hours
Started this at the beginning of the year and dropped it. Now it'll be one of the last things I play this year, funny how that worked out. Anyways, I needed a bit of a palette cleanser after BNG kicked my rear up and down the street so badly a simple walking simulator type of things sounded alright. And that's basically what I'd say about this game on a whole. It was alright nothing really offensive and nothing impressive at the same time. It looks nice, has a decent foreboding atmosphere and the story is alright for what it is. I do like a detective mystery and there was something charming about the driving your truck around in the Ontario tundra though personally if I was going to put supernatural elements into this kind of story I think it would have been better served to try and make them subtle and maybe even ambiguous instead of what they did here. It's not terrible but could have been handled better.
It tries to have a little bit of everything you can find a couple guns to ward off wolves and keeping warm is given emphasis. Both of these things though are so easy to deal with one could argue they shouldn't have even bothered, but personally I don't mind them. It's just kinda like a little bit of texture if you will, little things that add a bit to the experience without really getting in the way. It's fine and besides why would you make it hard to find firewood and stuff in a far north Canadian village? Of course they have fire making materials everywhere. I really liked the journal interface too where its shown as the detectives case notes and little bits of evidence and photos you take tape into the pages, it just felt satisfying to fill it out and piece the case together thanks to it. May just be a weird thing I like, clever looking menus tend to get me motivated.
But yeah, it's alright. One of those nifty little rainy day things you go through once then never touch again, ha. Feels like the developers made what they wanted no more no less and its works maybe besides the story getting a little hammy at the end.
Rating: 6
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Dec 25, 2020 9:15:09 GMT -5
* The Pro Controller is a real devil's bargain with such buttery smooth sticks but one of if not the worst pad on any first party Nintendo controller. I've never really had too much of an issue with the D-pad for things like platformers or menu selections. I do always end up pressing up instead of right when I try to change weapons in BotW for some reason. Good to know! There are a number of free campaigns available including something called Doom Zero that was released last week but I didn't really want to invest any time into something unless I know it was going to be worth it. I think DOOM Zero is supposed to be pretty good. It's kind of interesting how most of the official mods they've added so far are recently made but stick close to the original two in style. I think only the two Back to Saturn X episodes really go above and beyond, and REKKR is the only one which actually changes it to something that isn't DOOM anymore.
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Post by JoeQ on Dec 25, 2020 18:08:21 GMT -5
Final Fantasy X-2 HD (PS4) - First playthrough, Time: 74h (estimate) Likely my last game for this year. The much disparaged sequel to FFX, but I actually liked it quite a bit. I liked the new game systems and seeing what had happened after the events of the previous game and the more lighthearted tone. I missed out on a bunch of stuff and didn't do the bonus dungeons or Last Mission, so I'll have to do NG+ at some point to get 100% Story Completion and the platinum trophy. Rating: 4/5Alphabet Challenge: ABCDEFGH-J-LM--P-RSTUV---Z Number Challenge: 012---6-8-
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Post by halftheisland on Dec 28, 2020 11:50:42 GMT -5
A very quick one, and a nice palate cleanser while I work my way through Breath of the Wild and Fire Emblem: Three Houses...
Glass Masquerade (PC/Windows 10, first time, 5 hours)
I really enjoy jigsaw puzzles and, underneath all the set dressing, that's essentially what this game offers - a stack of puzzles of irregular shapes and sizes, building up stained glass artworks. Did the base game + the two free DLCs (Christmas, Lunar New Year) to get 100% of the achievements.
There's not a lot to say about this really - visually stunning, nice puzzle design, sound unobtrusive but fine. The puzzles were largely OK with limited challenge, but building them in irregular shapes was nice. The only real downsides were that I found the snap-to when placing a piece is sometimes overly precise, meaning there are times when it's not clear if you're trying to place a piece incorrectly or just need to move it around a few pixels. On the larger DLC puzzles, I did start to feel the constraints of not having sorting boxes (as something like Pixel Puzzles offers), which would have helped in sorting similarly coloured pieces together.
I enjoyed this enough that I'll pick up the paid DLC as well, and I've got the second waiting in my library once that's done.
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