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Post by Snake on Feb 10, 2020 17:56:17 GMT -5
Legend of Zelda, NES (replay, approx. 2.5 hours)
Still a fun game, though I think a lot of the fun of it was the sense of adventure and discovery on the very first playthrough. This time around, I was able to rack up lots of spare keys, before even getting the Magic Key. Music still holds up well overall, as one of Koji Kondo's great legacies alongside Super Mario Bros. Teams of Wizrobes still manage to be my #1 nemesis. The last, 9th dungeon makes for a pretty fair challenge as a skull-shaped labyrinth. Difficult enough, with just enough backtracking, without being overly annoying.
On a side note, having all the dungeons take the shape of something like a manji, a lion head, etc, it kind of carried on in Breath of the Wild with the dungeons for the Divine Beasts.
Score: 8/10.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 12, 2020 12:06:18 GMT -5
Monster Tale (DS, First Time)
People do have some nice things to say about this metroidvania, but I absolutely hated it. Mostly boring with way too much backtracking just to pad it out. Having a familiar is nice in theory, but the entire evolution system for it is overly complicated, and it is significantly less useful than it could be. Hope you save your pennies towards the end, because you're pointlessly roadblocked unless you pony up 2750 coins which is extremely tedious to collect. Silly me for using my coins to buy upgrades like you're seemingly supposed to. Just awful all around and a total waste of time.
I finished in 7:34.
Rating: 4
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Post by Snake on Feb 12, 2020 12:21:46 GMT -5
Salamander, PC-Engine (1st time, about 30 minutes)
Interesting trade-off from the Famicom/NES Life Force. I feel like this game is a bit on the short side. And power-ups aren't managed in a Gradius way where you keep collecting power-ups to select for weapons. Here, it's easier where you just snatch whatever object for shields (instead of the Force Field in the NES), options, ripple, and so on. The last boss is different too. Even though the game cover has a giant space snake, there is no snake for the last boss (I don't believe there was one for the arcade version either). I also feel like this game is missing a level. This game is much more fun to play with a friend. Music is still catchy. But not really a game I'm in love with.
Score: 5/10
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 12, 2020 16:42:31 GMT -5
Disappointing to hear that about Monster Tale, dsparil. I'd been looking forward to playing that one. --- Half-Life: Opposing Force (Windows (Steam)) - Replay, Time: 6h (timer) Not as good as the original game's campaign IMO, but still damn good. Rating: 8/10Alphabet Challenge: -----F-H---L---------V---- Number Challenge: --2-------
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Post by dsparil on Feb 14, 2020 9:28:17 GMT -5
Disappointing to hear that about Monster Tale, dsparil. I'd been looking forward to playing that one. You should still give it a try. It seems like a love it / hate it type of game and maybe you'll fall on the other side.
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 14, 2020 10:00:47 GMT -5
Disappointing to hear that about Monster Tale, dsparil. I'd been looking forward to playing that one. You should still give it a try. It seems like a love it / hate it type of game and maybe you'll fall on the other side.
Unfortunately it's also pretty expensive nowadays...
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 14, 2020 11:43:22 GMT -5
Half-Life: Blue Shift (Windows (Steam)) - Replay, Time: 3h (timer) Shortest, easiest and weakest part of Half-Life, it strongly feels like a game made out of leftover parts. Nevertheless it was still pretty good and actually a bit better than I remembered. Rating: 7/10Alphabet Challenge: -----F-H---L---------V---- Number Challenge: --2-------
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Post by zerker on Feb 16, 2020 18:39:47 GMT -5
I'm back from my ski trip (2 weeks!), and finished a couple games après ski: The Touryst (Switch, first time). A fairly charming 3D adventure/platformer. Rather enjoyed it, but had two minor niggles: 1) A kayak is not a canoe. 2) Two of the the in-game arcade games are so blatantly Bomb Jack and Arkanoid that it feels wrong there is no credit to the originals. In-game playtime is 4 hours, 19 minutes. 8/10. Ape Out (Switch, first time) Who would have thought that being a violent ape was what my life was missing?
8/10; "2 hours or more" per the Switch profile. The game actually tracks per-chapter time, but I forgot to record most of these and you can't look them up later.
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Post by Snake on Feb 17, 2020 19:20:06 GMT -5
Astyanax, NES (1st time, approx 1 hour)
Overall, not terribly difficult. Every boss has a learnable pattern. Plot is the predictable "isekai," normal guy gets transported to a parallel dimension to be a hero. So while the cut-scenes are a nice bonus, it isn't all that interesting. The gameplay is very much like Legendary Axe, but with the addition of a magic attack/mega crush. Even down to the last level, multiple pathway labyrinth. But easier and less challenging than Legendary Axe. Nice to play once, but I don't think I would need to revisit it.
Score: 6.5
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Post by dsparil on Feb 18, 2020 9:17:13 GMT -5
Again: Interactive Crime Novel (DS, First Time)
Cing's penultimate game isn't as good as the Kyle Hyde games, but it isn't too bad either. It's a little funny that this is what gets called a crime novel when Last Window literally contains a novelization of itself in-game! HD and LW have the looser feeling of a novel while this is much more like a TV police serial considering the use of live actors and the little video clip that plays at the end of each day which looks a lot like the end of a TV intro. This isn't quite as close to an FMV game as you can do on a DS since it doesn't use the largest cart size (2Gb versus a max of 4Gb), but it could have been like a Tex Murphy Lite if doubled in size. It uses a lot of the same little clips over and over and most of the unique FMV is limited to flashbacks during the investigation portions.
Gameplay is mostly a refined version of HD/LW. Dialogue and movement between locations are in a standard VN format with the 3D portions limited to the investigations you conduct. The main character, Jonathon Weaver, has a special ability to see into the past and you get side by side views of the past and present. You mainly need to find differences between the two and also solve a few small puzzles. The double view does cause a performance hit although it isn't too bad overall. You can freely look up and down and the d-pad works as expected instead of based on a map (since there's no map).
The story is mostly pretty good and deals with FBI agent Weaver and his partner Kate Hathaway investigating the apparent resurgence of a string of 19 year old serial killings that went unsolved. It's fairly brisk for the most part, but it's basically all plot so there also isn't a huge amount of character development. Where it falters is towards the conclusion as there's still some pretty big loose ends, and some of the structuring of story leads to some confusion when it doesn't need to. This might be a fault of the translation as there are some errors/oversights, but it seems like a few lines of the story is missing. The site's article says the game ends on a cliffhanger, but it's really more like set up for a sequel that never came.
In all, a reasonable crime drama that could have used the polish that comes with being Nintendo published. I wonder how much being developed at the same time as Last Window affected both. It also would have been interesting to see what a larger size game would have looked like. It's a shame what happened to Cing since there aren't really that many crime/police/detective adventures anymore.
I finished in 7:35:36.
Rating: 7
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Post by toei on Feb 18, 2020 14:32:21 GMT -5
Astyanax, NES (1st time, approx 1 hour)
Overall, not terribly difficult. Every boss has a learnable pattern. Plot is the predictable "isekai," normal guy gets transported to a parallel dimension to be a hero. So while the cut-scenes are a nice bonus, it isn't all that interesting. The gameplay is very much like Legendary Axe, but with the addition of a magic attack/mega crush. Even down to the last level, multiple pathway labyrinth. But easier and less challenging than Legendary Axe. Nice to play once, but I don't think I would need to revisit it. Score: 6.5 I kind of enjoyed it too, but that weird hit detection really threw me off at first. It's a spiritual sequel to Legendary Axe, true, but it doesn't feel nearly as polished. It's a lot better than the arcade Astyanax, though, which is an entirely different game than this one (the only thing they have in common is the Legendary Axe-inspired weapon system), and is almost completely unplayable in single-player because there are just too many enemies for what your character can do.
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Post by Snake on Feb 18, 2020 20:56:02 GMT -5
Astyanax, NES (1st time, approx 1 hour)
I kind of enjoyed it too, but that weird hit detection really threw me off at first. It's a spiritual sequel to Legendary Axe, true, but it doesn't feel nearly as polished. It's a lot better than the arcade Astyanax, though, which is an entirely different game than this one (the only thing they have in common is the Legendary Axe-inspired weapon system), and is almost completely unplayable in single-player because there are just too many enemies for what your character can do. I'll have to try out the arcade version. Hit detection was especially weird for me using the "spear" weapon. It felt like I was missing half the time, and some of the enemy projectile bullets would be undodgeable.
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Post by JoeQ on Feb 19, 2020 17:07:28 GMT -5
Apotheon (PS4) - First playthrough, Time: 18h (timer) A metroidvania type game focused on combat (you don't really get any movement abilities), inspired by Greek myths and art. Somewhat glitchy and unstable, but nothing critical. Gorgeous artstyle and music. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Rating: 8/10Alphabet Challenge: A----F-H---L---------V---- Number Challenge: --2------- Pics (ending spoilers):
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Post by zerker on Feb 19, 2020 18:31:08 GMT -5
Finished Guacamelee! 2 (PS4; first time) on Monday. Just as enjoyable as the first one, and even made me chuckle a few times (such as the Dankest timeline). I considered trying to go for some of the optional content, but eventually gave up on the golden key under the Jade Temple, so... it's time to move on. 9/10. Finish time was 8:32.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 21, 2020 12:23:39 GMT -5
Tangle Tower (macOS, First Time)
Finally got around to installing 10.15* on my MacBook for Apple Arcade and started out with this as I had played a teensy bit on iOS already. TT is a pretty good adventure game about the investigation of a murder in the eponymous Tower which is really a mansion with two turrets on top as on character describes it. You need to gather clues, question all the inhabitants of the mansion and solve a few simple but occasionally clever mechanical puzzles along the way. This is a pretty easy game for the most part since there's no inventory puzzles and only about a dozen locations. Where it really shines is the dialogue which is well written, well acted, lightly funny and more voluminous than you'd think since you can (and need to) question everyone about every single clue and nearly everyone has something to say about everything. As usual, where this falters is in the plot and mostly the end. All the various plot strands never really come together in a satisfying way, and the ending itself is weirdly unsatisfying while not actually anticlimactic.
Despite that, this is still worth playing though if only for the whodunit aspect. This isn't totally exclusive to Apple Arcade, they only require the mobile exclusive, so there's also a Windows and Switch version. This is actually a sequel to an earlier game, Detective Grimoire, which I didn't play. The developer made Snipperclips for Nintendo in between the two so I don't think there's much expectation for people to have played the prequel since it's from 2014. It's just a shame that it can't quite bring everything together. It's really a situation where certain interesting but unresolved/underdeveloped plot threads didn't really need to come up in the first place and end up needlessly dragging things down.
Rating: 8
* I had dallied due to agonizing over how much space to allocate as I wanted to keep 10.14 for 32bit support but then remembered that the new filesystem doesn't require partitioning to make new volumes.
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