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Post by ZenithianHero on May 20, 2021 14:50:21 GMT -5
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved (PS4, First Time, 14 hours)
A solid twin stick shooter with a ton of content and variety of missions. The twist in this entry are these 3D shaped levels such as a cube or a cylinder that allowed 360 movement arenas. The concept works most of the time, however, there is a fine line of fun and frustration. Fast/erratic moving enemies can hide on sides of the level the camera doesn't show and the flashiness of the gameplay made me distracted in heavy traffic moments. The game is overall a bit too hectic at times and demands a lot from the player's skill to earn more than a single star on a stage. Although I suppose that is part of its charm.
7/10
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Post by dsparil on May 21, 2021 7:15:06 GMT -5
Guerrilla War (Arcade/Switch, First Time) Guerrilla War (NES/Switch, First Time)
Guerilla War is basically the "real" Ikari Warriors 2 since Victory Road is a tank-less sci-fi/fantasy game and Ikari III is a top down brawler. Thankfully, it's also much more completable as a single player game than IW which is just punishingly difficult without a second player and I doubt completable by anyone on 2 credits since it's technically only one stage; I truly don't believe the included gameplay video in the Anniversary Collection is not tool assisted in some way. GW also modifies some of the mechanics and makes the gameplay less exclusively vertical. The big change is that you stick out the top of the tank and can use whatever weapon you've collected while in it. The Museum entry seems to have some legitimately new tidbits of information like that element being inspired by a buggy Korean bootleg of Ikari Warriors that seems lost to time.
After the awful Micronics dreck that are the NES ports of IW and Victory Road, SNK handled the NES version themselves and it’s actually fairly playable. The adaption of firing isn’t perfect as you only lock your angle when stationary, but it’s at least solid on a technical level. It’s also significantly longer than the arcade game, maybe 3x, to give it more “value” but I wouldn’t say that necessarily a huge positive. It’s a fun game with a few new weapons over the arcade game, but there isn't much reason to actually play it when having equal access to the original.
Rating: 8,7
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Post by spanky on May 21, 2021 13:24:40 GMT -5
The NES port of Guerilla War is one of my favorite games for the system. Really fun little shooter especially with co-op. It's super easy with the infinite continues though.
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Post by dsparil on May 21, 2021 14:36:13 GMT -5
It's more of a score attack game as it is literally impossible to lose although I don't think it ever actually shows your final score. One of the weird things about it is that if you don't care about score, you can just run through fairly large chunks of the game.
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Post by dsparil on May 22, 2021 6:59:31 GMT -5
Ikari III: The Rescue (Arcade/Switch, First Time) Ikari III: The Rescue (NES/Switch, First Time)
Ikari III is just not a whole lot of fun for different reasons between these two versions. The arcade game is honestly a bit boring as you fight waves of similar enemies sometimes with weapons but mostly with punches and kicks. This still uses the Loop Lever despite being a melee focused game and that allows you to do spinning punches and kicks. It kinda works with a twin stick set up if you remap all the keys although I noticed that some of the controls are mislabeled in the UI. It is at least formally divided into stages. It's also too zoomed in which makes parts where you fight enemies with ranged weapons overly difficult.
The NES port is a totally different game, but a fairly buggy one. The collision detection is very screwy in general, and standing kicks are nearly useless because of it. Since you don't have rotation, SNK made the ground kick a half spin, but they almost never connect. Punches though seem to extend way beyond the sprite sometimes. Jump kicking (there's no attack-less jump) is very overpowered since you seem to be invincible while jumping so you can jump fairly safely until you hit a part where you need to defeat all the enemies on the screen. However, that jump invincibility seems to also apply to enemies. Enemies jump around all the time giving the impression that you need to rescue the president's daughter from some kind of militaristic dance troupe; for some reason is changed from son to daughter in the port. This could be a little fun, but the collision issues are actually fairly severe particularity with some bosses taking forever with no one doing any damage at all.
Rating: 4,5
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Post by Null0x00 on May 22, 2021 21:50:42 GMT -5
A 2-for-1 post.
Sora (Windows, First Time, 4 hours on easy difficulty) A brutally difficult action game that vaguely plays like a hybrid of a shmup and a 2D Virtual On. Sora, the main character is capable of locking on to individual targets, perform dash attacks with her weapons, and dashing through energy-based attacks to dodge them, but this comes at the expense of increasing your heat meter which acts as a damage multiplier to yourself. So the main strategy is to learn how and when to dash, when to risk attacking stationary in order to lower the Heat, and attack-cancelling to perform fast recoveries on shooting. Even on easy getting through the 7 main stages is rough, and the bonus EX stage after the credits where you must defeat 2 bosses in a row broke me, but as a game is it genuinely excellent. Add to that a truly amazing soundtrack and this game feels like a hidden gem that deserves more love.
8/10
First the diamond, and now the refuse...
Operation Body Count (MS-DOS in DosBox, First Time, 4-6 roughly hours on the default difficulty) Oh boy, this was painful. This is the first FPS made by the now infamous Capstone Software, the developers responsible for the later Tekwar game on PC. It's basically a Wolfenstein 3D reskin with the Nazi's replaced with Islamic terrorists and the Nazi castles replaced with the Twin Towers, except Capstone managed to take something as simple as Wolf 3D and completely mangle it. Basically all you need to do is kill 50% of the enemies on each stage to move up a floor (of 40), not a difficult job thanks to the braindead AI that typically runs into your gunfire. However, the terrorist movement is so fast and you take damage so quickly, that it's normal to be completely blindsided and die in seconds. You occasionally also have squad members you can switch to and control when running low on health, but they are just as braindead as the enemies so it's easier to just leave them at the start and use them when needed. And you will, as the developers were kind enough to not only put mines on dead bodies in the stages, but also on the level exits that do completely random damage, from nothing to a 1-hit kill, that you have no option but to tank and hope it doesn't kill you. You better get used to seeing the game over screen alot. Also, enemies are completely invulnerable when behind open-doors for some reason, like Capstone broke the ability to shoot through open-doors that was standard in Wolf 3D. Just insulting bad and worse then Tekwar. Don't ever play this game.
2/10
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Post by personman on May 22, 2021 23:42:39 GMT -5
Deadly Premonition Origins (Switch, first time, 45 hours)
So this game has a pretty decent reputation, mostly as a 'so bad its good' sort of thing. Honestly I disagree, its just good. Seriously its tremendously lacking polish and has some half baked things slapped onto it to meet publisher demands but on a whole it really is just a good and unique game. Yeah sure, it starts out like a rip off of Twin Peaks (which is a plus to me, that still is one of my favorite shows) but it really grows into its own thing as it goes. Maybe a bit too much at the end, it was pretty jarring how the climax was carried out when through out the whole game things were pretty grounded and then suddenly we have a big purple toad monster with a pineapple for a head. I guess it had to be expected at one point, and I will admit the writing did fall apart pretty bad (I thought the main antagonist was handled rather poorly) but the fact I still enjoyed the story is testament to how well they did for the rest of it. And apparently Swery did 80 percent of it himself? Christ good work man. Sure, some lines come off a little stilted but that's to be expected. For the most part everyone was pretty believable and the majority of the voice acting was actually really well done.
It really is the characters that carry this game. One thing that got me so burnt out on the open world genre is just how most of these games just have space for the sake of space and don't do much of anything with it. Never have many of the worlds in these games ever really felt alive. This game however I ended up noticing that a good deal of the characters go about their lives in such a way that informs you about their issues and connection to the case without words. Lots of foreshadowing is there to be found that ends up making replays pretty enriched and that right there honestly has to be the only case I can think of off the top of my head where a games open world was actually used for something other than looking pretty and that's really something I must say. Hell, for how dated the game looks these days I just can't help but admire how detailed the environments are. Speaking from my recent experience of traveling about the American midwest and visiting some small towns its pretty damn authentic what they put together. It's cozy as hell.
So I've been talking about the 'vanity' and such and nothing of the gameplay. Well honestly in my opinion that was the gameplay. This thing really isn't much of a shooter and its definitely not a horror game. I'd just say its a loose adventure game with a discount RE4 slapped onto it at the last minute. Yeah they aren't great but come on, they could have been so, so, so much worse. Would have the game been better without combat bits? Yeah, probably but whats there is fine and they're over quickly enough. I heard a lot of complaints about the driving too and yeah it is bad but still I say it's just not THAT bad and I enjoyed putting around town listing to York have conversations with himself. Besides if you cant laugh and smile over having your car do three barrels rolls into the air as you park at the diner then you need to live a little friend.
I could probably ramble more but in short its a charming as hell game that may be janky but is carried by character and soul. The folks behind this clearly had a ton of passion for the project and the fact it went through development hell for years and had to jump to a different console generation I'd say it managed very well, scuffed as it is. I won't lie though to many it is a very hard sell. Sure, I could recommend it to say, anyone who attends these boards but to the average consumer these days I can understand why they'd be put off by how rough it is. Especially with how they've clearly done no work to tighten this thing up with the Switch port after all this time. Not too great... honestly I was gunning to do all the side content but after all the crashes I kept running into and with how replaying chapters works I gave up. A shame but still, I think I'm satisfied, I got York's car back, got more insight into Becky, Anna's and Quint's dealings and I think the only thing that would have really been illuminating is seeing what the deal with the Ingrams was. Alas, I'm itching to move onto the the sequel now. Maybe later.
This game is a rough around the edges gem. Really nothing like it which nowadays when I'm feeling like I've seen it all I really appreciate how unique it is. I just wish they did some work on the technical issues, it gets really crash happy when you want to do the side content. Thankfully it happened rarely in the main game though. It's very much one of those things, if you can give your standards some leeway and meet the games on its own terms you'll have a good time. Some people that's too much and that's just fine though so, I'm not going to go around saying its a must play.
Rating: 6, above average personally but the games age and jankiness does bring it down a lot.
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Post by dsparil on May 24, 2021 8:31:15 GMT -5
Paddle Mania (Arcade/Switch, First Time)
Probably the last SNK 40th game for a while since SMT: Nocturne is out tomorrow. This is sort of a tennis game, but it’s more like air hockey since each side has a goal. There’s nine levels total with the quirk that the even numbered levels are against an opponent or team from a different sport like sumo or surfing. Those are more fun than the five tennis matches although they do sometimes have quirks of their own like moving goals. Not a whole lot to this one, but it’s kinda fun.
Rating: 7
Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition (Switch, First Time)
This is the more ambitious follow up to The Count Lucanor, but I don’t think it’s quite as good. In this game, you play as Brian Pasternack on his first day at Sintracorp, a nebulous giant company. He doesn’t know what he’s even hired to do, but quickly finds out that it’s to slay the hidden witch that has cursed the company. The horror aspects are readily apparent right from the start and the extremeness and the way no one seems to care gets explained away as being a result of the curse which pretty much throws out any potential for satire or criticism right out the window. A little subtleness at least at first would have gone a long.
The biggest failing is that the story just isn’t as good as its predecessor. The Count Lucanor was much more gameplay driven with more of a overall scenario than a plot, but it had a lot different endings some of which had to be set up right at the very beginning. This is much more directly plot oriented with less interesting gameplay, but that plot also has a lot of loose ends and doesn’t end in a satisfying way. The Executive Edition adds an alternate final section made accessible by a new optional area mid-game, but that section isn’t that great either and adds in even more loose threads.
I could go on and on, but in short, I found this to be a lot of wasted potential rather than actually being outright bad. Even ignoring the office elements, there’s a lot of set up without much payoff. It feels like there were certain plot points and twists the developers wanted to hit, but they never brought them together in a cohesive way and filled in some of the obvious gaps.
Rating: 6.5 (If I was feeling cutesy, I’d give it a 6.66 the same way the price is $16.66)
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Post by Apollo Chungus on May 24, 2021 10:28:46 GMT -5
Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy; First Time; 30 minutes)
A few days ago, I was told that I'd be getting my first vaccination at some point during the next week, but I could be called in at any time due to being on a reserve list. I'm very particular about having some amount of certainty for when things will be happening, to the point where having something so ambiguous really throws me off since I don't know what to do in the meantime, so I ended up grabbing a bunch of Game Boy games that I could play on my modded 3DS and stop playing at any time in case I got called in. (Thankfully, I was called in yesterday and have a clearly set-in date and time for the second vaccination, so I don't have to worry about this anymore.)
One of these was Kirby's Dream Land, which I went with largely because I've always heard it was pretty easy and basic. To be honest, I assumed that those claims were rather exaggerated, that it only came off like that in comparison to Kirby's Adventure in particular. But no, they really weren't that far from the truth. There's only four stages followed by a boss rush, and all you can do is suck, spit, and flutter about. I was especially surprised because I thought that the version that appears in the Super Star collection was a truncated remake, except it's more or less the same but now with spruced up graphics and music! But that said, the core design still works quite well and it's nice having a game that's so basic. It makes for something I could easily revisit whenever I'm in the mood for it, quite a bit like Choujin Sentai Jetman on the NES now that I think about it.
Ninjoe in the Dragon's Lair (Windows; First Time; 9 minutes)A short but neat PICO-8 platformer by Cubee Games/Pixel Shock for the Toybox Jam 2020, where you survive challenging rooms while collecting coins and dodging enemies. The artstyle is quite good and always makes it clear where you need to go, while the controls make going there feel just right. pixelshock.itch.io/ninjoe-in-the-dragons-lair
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Post by dsparil on May 24, 2021 12:07:09 GMT -5
Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy; First Time; 30 minutes)
A few days ago, I was told that I'd be getting my first vaccination at some point during the next week, but I could be called in at any time due to being on a reserve list. I'm very particular about having some amount of certainty for when things will be happening, to the point where having something so ambiguous really throws me off since I don't know what to do in the meantime, so I ended up grabbing a bunch of Game Boy games that I could play on my modded 3DS and stop playing at any time in case I got called in. (Thankfully, I was called in yesterday and have a clearly set-in date and time for the second vaccination, so I don't have to worry about this anymore.)
One of these was Kirby's Dream Land, which I went with largely because I've always heard it was pretty easy and basic. To be honest, I assumed that those claims were rather exaggerated, that it only came off like that in comparison to Kirby's Adventure in particular. But no, they really weren't that far from the truth. There's only four stages followed by a boss rush, and all you can do is suck, spit, and flutter about. I was especially surprised because I thought that the version that appears in the Super Star collection was a truncated remake, except it's more or less the same but now with spruced up graphics and music! But that said, the core design still works quite well and it's nice having a game that's so basic. It makes for something I could easily revisit whenever I'm in the mood for it, quite a bit like Choujin Sentai Jetman on the NES now that I think about it. The base game of KDL is pretty easy, but the Extra Game is significantly more difficult. Probably not the most difficult the series has ever been, but it's up there.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 24, 2021 13:36:44 GMT -5
Guerilla War (Arcade/Switch, First Time) Guerilla War (NES/Switch, First Time) This wasn't on my NES radar yet, but it looks pretty fun. Looks a lot better than most Commando clones on NES.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on May 24, 2021 16:42:24 GMT -5
Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy; First Time; 30 minutes) The base game of KDL is pretty easy, but the Extra Game is significantly more difficult. Probably not the most difficult the series has ever been, but it's up there. I really like the existence of the Extra Game. It's not something I'm ever going to go near, since I honestly find regular Kirby taxing enough, but it's a very good example of the kind of options offered in the Kirby series. All of the games are fairly accessible challenge-wise, but there's always the ability to increase the challenge if you prefer something harder - whether that's getting the highest scores in Epic Yarn without getting hit, or playing the Extra Game in Dream Land to take on tougher bosses. It's awesome, and adds another reason to revisit the games if you're in the mood for it.
(On that note, I'm currently trying out Dream Land 2, and I'm finding these little bonus rooms that contain bagette-shaped objects. I'm assuming those play into granting some extra challenge, though I have no idea if that means a later boss will get harder or I just unlock some new stages. Either way, I'm eager to find out!)
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 27, 2021 6:00:02 GMT -5
Ultimate DOOM The Way Id Did (Win10, 1st play, 15h45)This is actually two mods, one for the original 3 episodes, and one for the 4th episode. I played both in succession, but if you want to count them seperately dsparil, it would be: DOOM The Way Id Did 6h40m Ultimate DOOM The Way Id Did 9h05m
As the title suggests, this is meant to replace the maps of the original (Ultimate) DOOM with maps that are in the style of that game (specifically in the style of particular level designers of the original). The first three episodes are all pretty damn good. I think the first one is a bit slow, but the later ones are just good old DOOM. Whether they do a good job at replicating the level design style of the original episodes is up for debate. They stuck to the limitations of the time and to the general style (e.g. techbases for the first episode), but I think they're a bit bigger and look a bit more advanced than the original DOOM. But they're fun. I played on Ultra-Violence, since I'd imagine the difficulty would line up with the original DOOM as well, and I found it pretty easy actually. The fourth episode though, there are some parts here and there that remind me of the original Thy Flesh Consumed, and overall it's probably the most Thy Flesh Consumed-y of any fan mod I've played, but it's still mostly just a bunch of hard maps. There were a few stages that were very difficult but hooked me in much the same way as the original Thy Flesh Consumed, at least. But, there were also some bad ones. The final one in particular has got to be one of the worst DOOM stages I've ever had to sit through. It's a confusing, indulgent stage that feels unfinished, looks like garbage, and has nothing to do with Ultimate DOOM and should've never been part of the project. Also played this episode on Ultra-Violence, which was tough. Rating: 8/10 combined, or 9/10 for DTWID and 7/10 for UDTWID seperately.
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Post by dsparil on May 27, 2021 9:04:49 GMT -5
Infinite Space (DS, Replay)
The first part of Infinite Space is one of my favorite space games of all time. The main character is Yuri, a teenager stuck in an autonomous region ruled by a warlord that largely prohibits space travel. He gets into space with the help of the “Launcher” Nia Lochlain, and travels through the vaguely Eastern European Small Magellanic Cloud, gaining allies and seeking information on the mysterious Epitaphs while fighting pirates and doing military tasks for various governments.
The second part is just not as good. There is some excitement, but it isn’t anywhere near as interesting. It starts out well with Yuri having to become a pirate in the more Western European Large Magellanic Cloud, but that is dropped fairly quickly with Yuri essentially becoming an officer for one of the regional powers and having the game mostly turn into a straightforward military narrative until the final chapter which wraps everything up way too quickly.
The game uses the largest cart available at the time, 2 gigabits, but it is at least 11% empty based on unused space at the end. There’s certainly room for a fuller last chapter as it’s really short, but even just spreading out the Epitaph related elements through part two instead of having a big info dump towards the end would have helped. That isn’t to say that element is completely forgotten until the end as they are related to a big event earlier on, but they are largely forgotten outside of that.
The gameplay is solid at least. As a pure RPG, the move to warship-only combat is a good one since it greatly opens up customization beyond what’s normally seen in more action oriented games where a capital ship might as well be a fighter with poor maneuverability. On top of ship weapons, you also have the interior with each ship having a vastly differing internal structures that impact what facilities they’re able to accommodate. Then there’s also all the different characters to recruit to fill all the officer posts.
There are some minor issues with the gameplay and UI though. The main one is that melee combat between crews is a purely Rock Paper Scissors system that’s almost always impossible to lose unless you complete ignore your fleet’s melee combat rating. Ship to ship combat is also RPS derived, but less rigidly and with positioning also factoring in. A lesser one is that you can’t see a ships interior layout before buying it which is a little troublesome because the headline stats of some ships are very similar with only the interiors differing.
Overall, I still do like this game, but maybe not as much as the first time around when everything was totally new. It does feel fairly constrained by the DS and I would love to see an expanded remake.
I finished in 34:14:43.
Rating: 8
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Post by JoeQ on May 30, 2021 5:58:05 GMT -5
Mario VS Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!(DS) - First playthrough, Time: no idea The third game in the Mario VS Donkey Kong series. A solid puzzle game with bite-sized levels inspired by Lemmings (I think?). I unlocked and beat all the 111 levels in both Normal mode and the harder Plus mode you unlock upon beating the game once. Didn't play any DLC levels, but the servers are probably long gone anyway. Rating: 4/5Alphabet Challenge: ---D--------M-OP--ST--W--- Number Challenge: 0-23------
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