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Post by dsparil on Feb 1, 2020 13:44:01 GMT -5
Assassin's Creed III: The Tyranny of King Washington (Switch, First Time) (This would technically count for 3 but I'm going to leave it as 1 unless someone else submits it too. Each of the 3 episodes was originally available individually and is selectable from a menu.)
A kinda fun DLC "expansion" concerning an alternative history where George Washington becomes corrupted by a Piece of Eden and declares himself king. It's a little bit more fun than the original game as it isn't just inserting a bland plot into historical events, and you acquire some special abilities that would have been convenient in a larger game. It's actually relatively lengthy compared to the base game with about 4 or 5 sequences worth of missions. I definitely would have preferred that this concept be the base game with the historical stuff be the short extra.
I finished in 5:26:15.
Rating: 7
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Post by Woody Alien on Feb 1, 2020 16:10:18 GMT -5
MechaNika (Switch, First Time) A short-ish adventure game about a disaffected 7 year old alcoholic(!) quasi-supervillian* trying to building a giant mech to essentially destroy the world. The goal is to collect all the pieces of the mech although there are very few puzzles and most of items you need aren't hard to get and are sometimes just items in the environment. I'd say the main problem is that it's trying way too hard to be edgy but also kinda cute at the same time which doesn't quite work. It gets labeled as "A Pyschotic Adventure" in the credits which says about everything. This was originally released in 2015 as the first game of tiny Spanish studio Mango Protocol. The semi-prequel to this, Agatha Knife, was released in 2017 but came out before this on Switch. I'm a little curious to see how AK turned out, but it's more expensive and never seems to be on sale unlike this. Rating: 6 * Nika is never explicitly presented as a supervillian, but that's basically what's going on. I played MechaNika exactly 2 years ago on Steam since it seemed right up my alley (I like those things that are both cute and weird/creepy), although I can say that I have the same opinion as you, the game just isn't that great and having played it way after 2015 I already got tired of the "Adventure Time"-esque graphic style that is plaguing Western animation these years. As for Agatha Knife and her "Carnivorism" religion, I was interested at first but now I don't really care.
Oh and I also finished a game today:
Pikuniku (PC/Steam, first time, approx. 4 hrs)
It had a 92% discount on Steam so I bought it. Despite the name and the use of Japanese in the logo, this game is not Japanese (maybe European?): Piku is the player character and Niku the other character you control in the co-op levels should you want to do them. It's a short and very simple metroidvania (barely) with a cutesy/childish graphic style, cute soundtrack, and all around is nice, funny and well-made but ultimately forgettable. One of those games you play just to spend some time. One thing that annoys me is that most objects you find in the various areas either have just a cosmetic purpose or are totally useless, they should've added some more depth to this game that is too simple as it is. 7/10
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Post by dsparil on Feb 2, 2020 7:46:27 GMT -5
Agatha Knife (Switch, First Time)
AK actually ended up being on sale starting on Thursday, and it was too much of a coincidence to pass up. It is an improvement over MechaNika, but doesn't quite rise up high enough. It does present itself as having an actual meaning in being critical of religion. It makes half a legitimate point coupled with a bunch of stuff that's very surface level but ultimately ends up undercutting itself or at least being very muddled. You don't need a degree from Harvard Divinity School to criticize organized religion, but this isn't really "smart" enough to do so successfully. There's actually enough thematically that it could have been reworked into something more interesting, but c'est la vie. Agatha (Knife is her last name) is at least a significantly more sympathetic character than Nika in that she's just trying to save her family's butcher shop. Gameplay is much more in line with being a traditional adventure game and very linear. You get told what elements you need to create for Agatha's religion for animals Carnivorism (she doesn't want the animals to be sad about being slaughtered) and then create it usually with a small roadblock or two. There's nothing you can do out of sequence except for one incredibly minor action. Mango Protocol's current project looks like an action sequel to MK called Colossus Down which I'm not interested in, but they do seem to be going in a somewhat upward trajectory at least.
Rating: 6.5
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Post by Bumpyroad on Feb 2, 2020 10:41:05 GMT -5
(I like those things that are both cute and weird/creepy) You might well like Mila Kunis then.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 2, 2020 12:38:23 GMT -5
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS, Replay) I haven't played Hotel Dusk since beating it on release all though years ago as my copy got packed away in some weird place, and I've never been able to track it down. I had forgotten how good it is! It tells a nice and lengthy mystery without any loose ends, and packs in so much into a small location without any slack. The touch screen stuff generally feels a lot more tacked on than in Trace Memory though. I played it emulated and some of the actions could be really hard to do properly (the tape spooling with a pencil stands out). I don't remember having any of those issues on an actual DS though so I wouldn't hold that against it. It's still questionable as to why some of these things are touch screen events in the first place when they're so mundane. They mainly feel like they were "required" to be there after Trace Memory, but it also doesn't drag down the experience at all. One in particular does actually feel innovative but also very tricky to pull off emulated. I had to look it up*. In all, probably one of the best mystery adventure games ever made! The game does have a timer, but it seems to be broken. I don't think it's emulator issues as I vaguely remember the game originally being like that. Rating: 9 * For the part where you need to pull down two switches at once, there's a slightly non-obvious way to get around it. You need to pull down on one switch, pause the emulator, advance a frame, then pull between the two switches not the other switch. The in-between part is the non-obvious part, but it does make sense. If you push two points on a resistive (single touch) touchscreen, the selected point will go between the initial point and halfway to the second. That's my recollection of what happens anyway from playing around with my DS when I first got it.
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 4, 2020 12:31:45 GMT -5
The Last Eichhof (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: about 30 minutes? A "classic" beer themed euro shmup from my childhood! I finally beat it, after all these years and it was still pretty fun. I played the Windows port randomly available on Windows Store. Rating: 6/10Alphabet Challenge: -----F-----L---------V---- Number Challenge: -2--------
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Post by Snake on Feb 6, 2020 11:40:48 GMT -5
Castlevania, NES (replay, approx. 40 min)
Always a classic. Gaming comfort food. For me, the mark of a REALLY good video game is one that you can keep coming back to, and this is it. Brilliant graphics, design, concept, and fun. The game isn't so hard once you become familiar with it, but I still have a rough time with the final fight and Dracula. I decided to do a quick playthrough at work, after reading a producer interview on Shmapulations. Interestingly enough, the 2nd half of the boss fight, Hitoshi Akamatsu stated that you are fighting an "incarnation of the curse of man," rather than Dracula's demonic form. I guess that would carry over in Simon's Quest, since that last battle only has one form for Dracula.
Score - 8.
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Post by Bumpyroad on Feb 6, 2020 12:19:04 GMT -5
Castlevania, NES (replay, approx. 40 min)
Always a classic. Gaming comfort food. For me, the mark of a REALLY good video game is one that you can keep coming back to, and this is it. Brilliant graphics, design, concept, and fun. The game isn't so hard once you become familiar with it, but I still have a rough time with the final fight and Dracula. I decided to do a quick playthrough at work, after reading a producer interview on Shmapulations. Interestingly enough, the 2nd half of the boss fight, Hitoshi Akamatsu stated that you are fighting an "incarnation of the curse of man," rather than Dracula's demonic form. I guess that would carry over in Simon's Quest, since that last battle only has one form for Dracula. Score - 8. Here's my Grim Reaper and Dracula runs i did some time ago. The trick with "demonic form" is, that if you stand really close to it, it never shoots those fireballs at you. Dunno if that's an old and well known exploit, i just discovered it on my own by the accident.
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Post by Snake on Feb 6, 2020 13:20:56 GMT -5
Castlevania, NES (replay, approx. 40 min)
Here's my Grim Reaper and Dracula runs i did some time ago. The trick with "demonic form" is, that if you stand really close to it, it never shoots those fireballs at you. Dunno if that's an old and well known exploit, i just discovered it on my own by the accident. What?! You made the Grim Reaper look so damn easy. I usually make it a point to rely on holy water or boomerangs. Same for the Dracula demon too. That's a cool quirk to discover. I mostly mess up anticipating the high jump to get to the other side of him.
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Post by Null0x00 on Feb 7, 2020 5:40:24 GMT -5
Cleared Star Wars: Dark Forces for DOS in 8 hours on the hard difficulty. 8/10. Probably the most technically advanced raycaster game made for 1995, and a truly great FPS that's drenched in classic Star Wars atmosphere, only let down by weird oversights (no key rebinding in-game, only in the setup program), finicky controls (no vertical mouse but look up/down keys) and a weird difficulty curve. The mission on Jabba's ship without your weapons is by far the hardest mission in the game, while the final missions are comparatively easy and have a final boss who's a complete push-over. Still, it's great to see such a high quality licensed game that expands on the Doom formula and actually cares about having both a fun and coherent story campaign.
So now after beating all of the games in the series, my ranking for them is this: Jedi Outcast > Jedi Academy > Dark Forces > Jedi Knight.
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Post by alexmate on Feb 7, 2020 18:12:33 GMT -5
Left 4 Dead (PC Steam, 1st playthrough - all campaigns including Dead Air and The Sacrifice DLC, Time taken 7.7 hours - steam timer)
Really good game if you like the core mechanics. Really satisfying shooting, great atmosphere out of a horror film(s). Graphics are dated now of course and it is very repetitive.
Rating: 8
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Post by toei on Feb 9, 2020 15:50:51 GMT -5
Well, I didn't think I'd participate this year since I took a break from gaming but it looks like that break is over. I finished these so far: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (GB) Super Buster Bros. (SNES) Kenyu Densetsu Yaiba (Game Gear) Tempo Jr. (Game Gear) GG Aleste (Game Gear) Moldorian (Game Gear) All are first times. Super Buster Bros is one of the most underrated SNES games, IMO. It's great, and the levels are very different depending on the difficulty mode, so it has a ton of content. I beat it on Normal and Easy; one day I'll go back for the hardest mode. It took me long enough to beat Normal... As for all the Game Gear games, it's Game Gear month at Hardcore Retro Gaming, so I've been focused on it. GG Aleste is a great shooter, and evidence of what the Game Gear could do in good hands. It's fast, fun, substantial and has nice varied level design. It's very easy by shmup standards, but I'm fine with that. Moldorian is one of the only good turn-based RPGs on handhelds from that generation. It's not quite up to the level of a good SNES RPG, but it's better than anything on the monochrome Game Boy, and I'd say only Defenders of Oasis has it beat on the Game Gear (I'm not counting action RPGs like Final Fantasy Adventure or SRPGs like the Shining Force Gaidens and Royal Stone).
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 9, 2020 17:37:25 GMT -5
Half-Life (Windows (Steam)) - Replay, Time: 20h (timer) Replayed HL1 for the first since the early 2000s and it's held up remarkably well, outside some minor annoyances. Still a great, athmospheric rollercoaster ride of a FPS. I'm going to tackle Opposing Force and Blue Shift too. Steam had my time at 20 hours, though some of that is idling. Rating: 9/10Alphabet Challenge: -----F-H---L---------V---- Number Challenge: --2-------
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Post by paperchema on Feb 10, 2020 8:04:12 GMT -5
Half-Life: Opposing Force (Steam, 5 hours, 1st time)
I'm pleasantly suprised by this expansion to Half-Life. It's got a solid pacing, without any section that slows down momentum like the rail segment of the original game, and the small puzzles make for a good break between firefights. Speaking of combat, I think this expansion places a bigger emphasis on firefights, though there are new weapons to make them more manageable and fun.
All in all, a very decent expansion.
Rating: 8/10.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 10, 2020 13:12:28 GMT -5
Assassin’s Creed [III:] Liberation Remastered (Switch, First Time) Like the DLC, I think this would have also been a better idea for the main game. Louisiana during the transition from French to Spanish rule is a much less covered area than the revolutionary period in the northeast. Of course, that does end up as a tacked on plot point later on and seems to only exist to needlessly tie this game into III for a single small mission that comprises an entire Sequence. I did like that all the Assassin/Templar stuff in both history and the modern day is nearly non-existent. You can tell that this is the side game though as some important plot points get relegated to small blurbs of text between Sequences instead of cutscenes. Gameplay gets a few tweaks in having multiple “personas” you can adopt. The main character, Aveline, is the child of an aristocrat and a freed slave so she can go about as a Lady, Assassin or a in a slave disguise. Each has their own notoriety level (which is a gradually raised meter of 4 levels instead of 3 stars) with different ways of lowering it. Some side missions are also tied to which persona you have. This game also acknowledges how out of a place the Assassin garb looks and has a level 1 notoriety minimum. I don’t think personas get as much use as they could, but it’s a nice attempt at adding some variety. There’s still trading although now it’s more of a standard trading minigame instead of the overly complicated one in III. It is still totally unneeded as money is fairly useless. You supposedly need quite a bit to unlock one of the pistols (from buying collectible pocket watches), but I was able to just get it at one point. Not sure if that was a bug or a change made in the HD/Remastered version (the game uses both terms). Speaking of bugs, I had numerous crashes and assorted weirdness. At one point, I didn’t get out of water correctly and ended up swimming on land! At another, a heightened notoriety level wasn’t correctly removed and was instead made permanent. This also meant that it wouldn’t rise and didn’t reset until I died when something like a dozen guards converged on me. I finished in 22:48:31 which seems way too long considering the amount of content but tracks with the play log so I guess it is right. Rating: 7 Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (DS, First Time) A nice follow up to Hotel Dusk, although the story is a bit more of a standard crime caper. The game once again takes place in a hotel, although this time it’s the apartment building Kyle lives in which was previously a hotel. The building is going to get sold at the end of the month, and Kyle gets a mysterious request regarding the building's past that needs to be filled before everyone gets kicked out. Rather than each chapter being a single hour, they’re a whole day so the story can breathe more than the first game but also results in it being less tightly constructed. Gameplay is totally unchanged from the first game. The touch screen elements are a little better used although there was one that I couldn’t finish until I switched from the DeSmuME built into the generally excellent OpenEmu to the standalone Mac version for that one part. It’s a puzzle that relies on some weird “not quite closed” state that I’m not sure any other game uses. They both handle all the general aspects the same way, but I simply could not complete it until swapping emulators. The whole lid closing part is a bit too clever though and is both really unnecessary for what’s being done and makes the puzzle not make any physical sense for what’s being modeled. It's a music box with a key inside the cylinder. There's a gap in the cylinder and you can get the key out when the gap circles around. However, instead of quickly pulling the key out, you need to close the DS almost all the way so that the music box stops, then press R to make some made up mechanism pop the key up, open the DS all the way and grab the key. DeSmuME seems to have some special handling for this as it doesn't put the game into fake sleep when pressing the "close lid" key and instead puts it into that almost closed state. For some reason the key just never pops up in OpenEmu despite the mechanism moving and the box starting and stopping correctly. Just really weird. Still a good end to the "saga" of Kyle Hyde. Sad that we never got to see more of him. I finished in 12:51 as this actually has a working timer. Rating: 9 Prison Princess (Switch, First Time) I originally had zero interest in this ecchi adventure game, but a good review from Nintendo Life made me give it a shot. It is actually pretty good as an adventure game although the ecchi elements are unsurprisingly forced and totally unnecessary. The main character is the ghost of a hero that was tasked with saving two princesses from a castle and instead has to guide them out. As a ghost, you don’t have any of your supposed great abilities when alive except for being able to point out all the hotspots on a screen via your previously learned "thief sense". There’s a 12 use limit for the entire game though so I just ended up saving before using it and then reloading afterward. There’s a total of 10/11 screens divided into five rooms, and the low screen count is the main problem. You have to constantly recheck every room as things will change sometimes for no reason or you can suddenly investigate a hotspot that you couldn’t before. This really needs something like 20 rooms to not be so confusing. The game also has 5 endings with two relying on the completion of a bunch of puzzles that end up being optional. However, it seems like being able to get to those endings requires that the meter attached to each princess is maxed out which I wasn’t able to do for some reason. One was maxed out and the other was ever so slightly lower so I got an ending for the maxed out princess instead. It’s a little disappointing that something like a third of the game ends up not mattering because of a completely unexplained gameplay element. I also found a second ending from picking up an optional item that would seem to give a bad ending, but ending up being “better” than the one I did got at first! In all, a decent adventure, but don’t pick up anything optional until you have an end game save. It's obvious when you're at that point. I finished in 3:50. Rating: 7
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