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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 16, 2021 9:04:19 GMT -5
Sonic Robo Blast 2: The Mystic Realm V5.1 (Windows; First Time; 1 hour 35 minutes) I've been in the middle of playing Enchanted Arms and Disaster Report 4. They're very good games, but they're also fairly long and I reckon I'm not gonna beat them for a good while, so I thought I'd play something relatively short as a nice breather. The Mystic Realm is quite well known in the SRB2 scene, having been made as a complete 7 Zone map pack (with bonus stages) all the way back in 2003. In fact, it's famous enough that the final zone is included as one gigantic unlockable bonus level in the most recent version of SRB2. Having played it, it's pretty decent - I like the emphasis on exploration, which rewards you with emblems, lives and even secret shrines. These shrines, found in the second act of each zone, unlock bonus levels where you'll collect a Chaos Emerald. I've only been able to find three of them, but I might revisit the game on occasion to see if I can track the rest and see what I can find in doing so.
The V5.1 version is a fairly straightforward port to the 2.2 version of SRB2, with a few minor changes to make for a more convenient experience. So it doesn't feature anything in the way of slopes and level designs are blocky as ever, but at least the Emeralds are placed in such a way that you can't miss them while reaching the end. It was originally meant to be a more substantial redesign to bring it in-line with what 2.2 can do, but a lot of behind-the-scenes went down and the project fell apart. However, the game has since been made open to the community, resulting in the slow creation of an alternate version Mystic Realm: Community Edition - as this version seems to be intent on remaking or redesigning stages fairly drastically, would it be alright to consider it a separate game if it comes out?
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Aug 16, 2021 13:59:25 GMT -5
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (NSW, 14h30m, 1st play)It's okay, but ultimately I was annoyed for a too large portion of my playtime to really recommend this. I have a lot of criticisms, but let's start with the positives. I like the colorful world design, the different costumes you can unlock, and I think the new mechanics gel really well with the base Crash gameplay. Both the new mask powers and the new characters add some new stuff without feeling too different. The worlds are pretty cool and varied too, though it can be a bit hard to remember which stage in a world is which. Anyway, let's get on with the complaints. First of all, there's a bunch of issues with the main platforming, mostly coming from the camera. Especially with on-rails (literally on rails) or with chase/race sequences the camera will often change unexpectedly making it hard to make certain jumps and making it practically impossible to get all the crates in a segment without doing them over and over. This is made even worse when you consider the N.Verted versions of stages which often just smear some kind of annoying filter on the screen that makes it even harder to read, and especially the upside-down segments, which are fine in 2D sidescrolling sections, but can be very hard to judge in 3D (ever noticed how the flipped gravity sections in the Mario Galaxies only happened in 2D sections?) There's also some level design shenanigans, which I'll get back to, and some parts where you had to do a bit of leap-of-faithing or got surprised by something off-screen. The final level ends with with some borderline kaizo mario BS. Just little things that seem so easy to playtest, but maybe I'm just an exceptionally bright individual. Oh, and a couple of weird issues like some hit detection antics. Especially these platforms were broken as hell. I hate to say this, but I feel that half of my deaths in this game felt like they weren't my fault. The other big issue with the game is all the collectibles/shameless padding. Every stage has 6 gems to collect, one hidden in the stage itself (you won't find 90% of these without looking them up), three from getting a certain amount of wumpa fruit, one for getting all the crates, and one for finishing the stage with 3 or less deaths. There's also N.Verted versions of each stage that also has 6, and these stages are really no different except they're mirrored and have an (occasionally cool but mostly) annoying filter over them. Getting all the crates is very hard in most stages because there's usually some stupid ones that you'll miss and if you're grinding on a rail or riding a polar bear or something like that you won't get them unless you memorize everything and play perfectly. These on-rails and other autoscrolling sections are the number one reason I barely ever went for the 100% crates gems. Something that especially sucks is that you might be stuck at an especially hard section, and every time you get reset to the checkpoint you have to get a bunch of trivially easy, boring crates again. Imagine if you're trying to make a difficult jump but you have to waste time for three minutes each time to get some stupid crates that shouldn't be there in the first place. Probably the biggest level design issue with the game, and something that's either purposeful padding or just bad game design. It's especially annoying if you keep dying because of some finnicky jank and not because of your own faults. That's also the reason why getting the 3 deaths or less gem is annoying because there's just too many bullshit deaths. And to circle back to the crates, they don't cast any shadows directly underneath and due to the camera angles it can be hard to judge where exactly in space they are. They're also tiny as hell, so landing on them can be annoying even with the helpful highlighted shadow of your character. Let's see, what else is there? Well, there's also time trials which you have to do without dying, so they're impossible. I did the one for the first stage, and I beat the first time, but there's three times for each stage to beat and considering dying three times or less is already well beyong my patience's limit anyway, I didn't bother. There's also VHS tapes you can find, but you can only grab them if you have zero deaths in the stage up till that point. You can probably guess that before too long they're put way too far into the stage. It doesn't really matter because they lead to bonus stages that suck anyway. Speaking of bonus stages, those ? Platform from the PSX days are back, and they actually often lead to pretty damn fun bonus stages! Of course, sometimes they suck total ass and are full of gotcha moments, but hey. So that's a lot of shameless padding they put in. At first you only need a few gems to unlock a stage's costume, but at the end of the game you need 11/12 for a stage, so yeah. Now, you might be wondering, why not just play the game without bothering with all the collectibles? Well, the level design is really built around going out of your way to get all the crates, so a lot of parts become kinda pointless without trying to get the crates, and it's a pretty short game otherwise. So the game really expects you to the optional shit. And it's a contemporary 60 dollar game, so that's how one naturally will attempt to play it. So yeah, TL;DR version: It has some cool ideas, but there's some sloppy issues and it's too built around a quest for 100% which is probably the worst one I've ever seen but makes the game too brief if ignored. Rating: 6/10
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2021 8:27:49 GMT -5
Just 3 submissions for this month each of which caused me various frustrations.
James Bond 007 Nightfire (Gamecube, First Time, 13 Hours appx) I have various Bond games on my shelf for Gamecube and wasn't sure whether they'd be my cup of tea, so this being the best received I gave it a go before I made a decision as to whether to play the others or sell them off. I actually started this near the beginning of the year and have been chipping away at it very slowly since, which I guess answers my question there.
The game is developed by Eurocom, and as expected from them there's a high degree of polish to the gameplay which takes on various formats; the most prominent being first person shooting stages, but there are a number of vehicle stages also. The car levels play particularly nicely. Unfortunately where the game lets itself down is in its objectives, which are oddly described to you as though you have prior knowledge of the situations involved, and the various gadgets and locations; as though you're being treated as though you are Bond almost. As such I frequently found myself completely flummoxed by what the games expectations were, and, even though I played on easy mode, I came across regular fail states, and I required explanation from a walkthrough way more often than should be necessary. Disappointingly I found the experience highly frustrating, and though I'm sure many will have a better time than me I wouldn't recommend the game.
Score - 5/10
Mario & Luigi Dream Team Bros (3DS, First Time, 34:25 Hours) I had played a good ten hours or so of this a couple of years back but dropped it despite general enjoyment after hitting a frustrating segment. This time however, I was able to sail through the game. For the most part Dream Team Bros is a worthy follow up to Bowsers Inside Story, with a thoroughly enjoyable world, set of characters and a nice enough story (although often too wordy).
I won't dwell on the over abundance in tutorials too much since it's a much critiqued element of the game (as omma said in a recent discussion about Okami perhaps the developers weren't confident in their ability to design puzzles somehow). What I will say on the matter is that this way of presenting a puzzle steals the players own potential sense of achievement and exploration of the games mechanisms through discovering the answer organically. The game would simply have offered a more rewarding player experience had these explanations been kept to a hint system. My larger frustration with the game was that in place of true originality for this entry we seem to have a lot of overcomplication of the control system and combat. For the former super moves have in places been given awkward controls, sometimes involving various inputs of the 3DS such as tilt and touch. Some of these attacks are too unreliable, especially in the returning giant battles which I found to be a real chore, with no way to lessen the challenge yet expecting the player to pull off a near perfect performance including unreliable control inputs for lengthy battles. On the second issue, the complexity of battles, I simply found that enemy attacks would go on way too long, and unlike other RPG series with interactive elements in the battle system in Dream Team Bros winning in combat relies on performing well in avoiding and repelling attacks rather than just heightening of your typical JRPG stats.
On the positive end the game is extremely well presented with some of the best sprite work and animation I've seen and of course a lovely job has been done of the soundtrack. Even though I've spoken about my issues for a large proportion of the text I enjoyed my time with the game far more than I did not, and I would say my criticisms don't matter too much until the late game. Although the game is a little lengthy and follows the template set out by Bowsers Inside Story a little too closely, I would recommend this to anyone looking for more of the same.
Score - 7/10
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2, First Time, 47:08 Hours) Till the End of Time was my first playthough of a Star Ocean game, having initially gone in blind, found it to be a tough game to approach. The games story (at least pre twist) didn't stand out too much, although I will say I was surprised to find myself playing most of the game in a medieval setting. Really I was expecting something with a much greater emphasis on sci-fi which was something I was looking forward to. What is interesting in the game are various mechanisms that come into play.
Unfortunately gameplay came with many frustrations. Whilst there are various unique (at least from my experience) aspects to the gameplay such a horrendous job is done of explaining anything that it makes the player have to work hard to find how everything works. There is a basic explanation of the combat system via a tutorial at the beginning, but it is untimely, bizarrely semi-interactive in a way that left me scratching my head, and poorly explained. Progressing further presents the games other major gameplay element which is inventing. Here you're kind of told 'you can invent stuff now - do it in this building', then left to your own devices with no explanation as to how it works. Now, both the combat and the inventory system are highly rewarding - particularly when they're combined with the nice Battle Gauge system which rewards you with bonuses through how well you perform in combat. The problem is that there isn't much to be gained from any of these systems without a good understanding of all of them, and whilst I appreciate some elements of systems being hidden from the player to discover through experimentation, there is too much depth here for learning the systems to occur naturally.
Now, once those systems click; and the game did click with me eventually (far too late to fully explore them unfortunately); there's some really great stuff here. You have near full control over how your items and characters are set up, and inventing great equipment and learning the optimum offensive approach and chaining attacks together means you can wipe the floor with any enemy in your path, however a lack of understanding, playing with equipment bought in shops for instance, you'll have a really tough time. It did take so long for the gameplay to really click with me I wasn't able to enjoy what the game does offer fully, and in this case it's the game itself that's at fault for that I think. Though I did search various internet walkthroughs and discussion to gain more knowledge many only invited further questions. As such if there is a proper guide for this game anywhere that concisely explains how the game is played, along with including a map (a much needed fast travel system is missing disappointingly - unless it's there and there was just no mention), item creation guide, inventor recruitment guide, battle system guide etc, then that would be the way to play. I'd imagine if I played through Star Ocean Till the End of Time again I'd find much more enjoyment, however I certainly don't feel compelled to return to it nor explore the series further at this point.
Score - in part for the game I know is in there beyond my own experience - 7/10
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Post by dsparil on Aug 17, 2021 10:01:37 GMT -5
Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons — Episode I: Marooned on Mars (DOS, First Time) Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons — Episode II: The Earth Explodes Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons — Episode III: Keen Must Die
Unlike many people that played shareware in the early 90s, I have zero affection for the first Commander Keen trilogy despite it being one of the most popular games of that scene. Even at the time, I felt that the controls were clunky and a lot of the level design wasn’t particularly good. These pretty much single handedly turned Apogee and id (then ID) into the companies people remember, but its novelty mainly rests in being the the first smoothly scrolling DOS platformer which is a distinction with a very narrow shelf life. Non-hagiographic sources will note that the same techniques used in this game were already used on the C64 and Amiga, but seemingly no one really bothered to try implementing it on DOS before this game.
The first episode requires Keen to find the four parts stolen from his space ship. There’s technically sixteen levels with only six actually being required and nine of the optional ones all using a cone shaped sprite on the world map. Three are also tiny including the one housing the iconic pogo stick so there’s really only thirteen levels. However, this episode does tend to have larger levels than the other two episodes.
Episode two takes place aboard a Vorticon mothership and requires you to destroy eight death rays pointed at various cities around the world. There’s still a total of sixteen levels, but this time only six are optional with two additional ones acting as roadblocks. The levels are on the short side however, and my three times longer time compared to episode one largely comes from cheap deaths as many levels would otherwise be completable in seconds.
The final episode is on the Vorticon home world and has some quirky level design. Many of the levels represent everyday locations along with military facilities. One school even has a translation guide for the Standard Galactic Alphabet that appears throughout the entire series. There’s also a few very large levels including two mazes. However, the game is almost entirely optional as you only need to complete four levels to actually finish the game with the penultimate level having a complete bypass and the final one only being a rather unfair boss. The only thing keeping someone from blasting through is that the final boss requires a lot of ammo to defeat unless you have complete mastery over the fairly clunky controls. There’s seven targets that need to be hit, but I went through 35 units of ammo.
As much as I don’t like these, the five episode set is pretty cheap to pick up even at full price, and they’re on sale on GOG for around $1.50 often enough; episode 6 was a boxed release through FormGen so I think the rights are messy with it. These were made in only a few months, and I think it shows. I get the impression that there wasn’t any external play testing which would have sanded off a lot of the rougher edges and unfair parts. As it is, it’s less playable today than Duke Nukem which came out only seven months later. I would say the game’s real legacy is propagating the knowledge of how to implement smooth scrolling on PC-clone hardware as it quickly filtered into Apogee's own projects and externally developed games.Â
I finished in 0:32, 1:33, 1:42
Rating: 6
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Post by alexmate on Aug 18, 2021 7:35:00 GMT -5
Kung Fu Kid (Master System, timer 32 minutes, 1st time) I've been going through my MS back catalgoue. This one isn't worth your time. It's sort of janky and it's arguably better than Black Belt, but it's one of the lesser Ninja games on the system.
Rating: 6
Alphabet Challenge: ABCDEFGHI-KLMN-P--ST--W--Z
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Post by dsparil on Aug 18, 2021 8:00:40 GMT -5
Blaster Master Zero III (Switch, First Time)
A bit of a step down from II, but still good overall. There's a few changes to the gameplay formula like the addition of entering Super Dimensional space which is a little like the how the second castle was used in Harmony of Dissonance to create paths but without the one to one correspondence. I would say it's the easiest game of the three and probably the shortest overall too even though it's back to needing to collect everything in order to unlock the true final area. My time is a little padded partly due to the second to last boss being such a huge difficulty spike and just noodling about in a few places. I think my time would be more in the 8 hour range without that.
I finished in 10:06:32.
Rating: 8
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 18, 2021 16:52:30 GMT -5
Sonic Robo Blast 2: Improper Technique Zone (Windows; First Time; 28 minutes) This is a collaborative map pack organized by SRB2 forum member Othius, who has also been fairly involved in organizing other unofficial collaborations. The main gimmick with this 12 level pack is that every level was made in five days by each user with the fixed grid turned off. I'm not at all familiar with designing stages in SRB2, but according to the main post, this does impact how levels are put together. Whatever the case, it's a pretty good map pack with a bunch of spontaneous level ideas that had me on my toes, as I chose to main Fang and therefore had to work my way around the platforming challenges. Definitely worth a look if you want something relatively short and silly: mb.srb2.org/addons/v1-6-improper-technique-zone.2575/ Sonic Robo Blast 2: New Year's Collab Zone (Windows; First Time; 39 minutes)
This is another collab map pack organized by Othius, with the goal of creating one big map designed by multiple people as the first meaningful project of 2021. The main level features a dozen or so different sections, some of which bleed into each other while others are separated by teleporters. There's some pretty weird but neat ideas that get explored fairly well, with some highlights including the gorgeous yet brief winter section by DylanDude and the sudden disco stage by Fav. It's a fairly long level, taking about 10-15 minutes to beat, but I feel okay counting this as part of the challenge since it comes with a second level that took even longer. This level is simply called The Kaizo Trap, and is my first time properly engaging with a kaizo stage after years of hearing about them. It's just as hilarious mean-spirited and tricky as I've heard them to be, and I'm so thankful I played as Tails so that I could mitigate some of it. mb.srb2.org/addons/v3-new-years-collab-zone.123/
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Post by dsparil on Aug 19, 2021 12:28:23 GMT -5
Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! — Episode IV: Secret of the Oracle (DOS, Replay) Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! — Episode V: The Armageddon Machine (DOS, First Time)
Secret of the Oracle is undoubtably the high point of the entire series. You get sixteen normal levels plus a secret one, a decent variety of environments and some legitimately good level design and cartoony graphics. There’s also music, and while it isn’t spectacular, it does make it feel like a more full fledged game. Some of the levels are optional, but you have no way of knowing which ones are. I played this episode a lot as a kid, and the fact that you can actually save mid-level takes the edge off the remaining frustrating elements.
Like I alluded to in my post on the original Keen trilogy, the second had an episode peeled off and turned into the traditional retail release Aliens Ate My Babysitter which was actually developed in between these two. I didn't play it since it isn't in the GOG set as the rights are likely held by Infogrames Atari due to a series of acquisitions rather than id. I think that did end up negatively affecting V in various ways. Aside from the secret level, the entire game takes place in the eponymous Armageddon Machine which greatly limits the graphical variety; the enemies aren’t particularly interesting either. This also has the smallest number of levels at twelve normal levels, but each one is required so my time is a bit longer than for SotO. The level design is still generally okay at least.
Rating: 8, 7
I finished in 1:23, 1:37
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Post by dsparil on Aug 21, 2021 8:27:12 GMT -5
Axiom Verge 2 (Switch, First Time)
I liked this by the end, but the first hour or two are quite frankly fairly boring. I actually got this right away, dropped it for BMZIII and almost dropped it again. Without getting spoilery, the story and upgrade pacing could have used some tweaking and it doesn't really get fun until you get a few specific upgrades. The main character is also overly nonchalant the entire time considering everything that happens. It almost feels like placeholders for expanded dialogue that wasn't made. It is nice that you can tweak enemy damage taken and received as they're too spongy in general which contributed to the tedium. I wouldn't have expected this to be put in the Accessibility menu.
I finished in 05:54:01.
Rating: 7
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Post by dsparil on Aug 22, 2021 11:32:48 GMT -5
Inexistence: Rebirth (Switch, First Time)
A pretty good Metroidvania largely developed by one person. It's very indebted to the Castlevania side of the formula although there are some differences. The main ones being that you get two points per level to put into Attack, Defense and Magic directly on top of equipment bonuses and a single skill point per level to buy unique skills that cost 2, 4, 6 or 8 points; you can also find skill points in lieu of HP or MP upgrades. Some of the skill costs aren't quite in line with their actual usefulness, but I also had most of them by the end of the game anyway. I guess this isn't necessarily anything super special, but I had a fun time regardless.
I finished in about 3 hours.
Rating: 7
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Post by personman on Aug 23, 2021 13:47:52 GMT -5
Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow (DS, replay, 31 hours) I'll come clean: I wasn't really into Castlevania at all until this game was announced and to be totally honest it was mostly the main character's design that caught my attention. Hell, I still think Soma looks kinda cool. Anyways, this wasn't my first Castlevania since my manager at the Gamestop I worked at lent me his copy of Aria of Sorrow which I also loved and it was a treat to move onto this one after playing that already solid game. It's a concept that just works so perfect with this genre: every enemy can give you an ability to play with. That drives you to engage with enemies as often as possible and adds a ton of replay either by encouraging you to mix up your playstyle or just give an excuse to do a ton of grinding. Something I'm usually not fond of but in these games I find it relaxing. Even if some of the drop rates are just way too damn low. I remember this game being extremely easy but back then I leaned on items every chance I got and used relatively safe options to solve everything. This time I limited myself to using mostly magic and refused to use items unless the loss would be too great if I died before a save point or if I had to beat a boss again cause I messed up the seal. It wasn't the hardest thing but it was still a decent challenge actually and I think it settled into a good middle ground. I died plenty of times but it never got frustrating. I'm surprised how well a mostly magic character worked, I didn't even really bother breaking every candle I saw to recover MP and it was just so much more fun to carry on wondering what new attack or tool I may get from an enemy. But of course what everyone likes to harp on this game for is the touch screen stuff. Yeah there's no two ways about it. They suck, I still say Nanostray is the worse offender I've seen but having to draw lines or risk having to fight the boss again and being given like no time to do it can be frustrating. But here's the thing: people really blow it out of proportion. For one the things aren't nearly as hard to draw a people make them out to be and I've never had them fail for no reason. Also no, you don't have to beat the boss over again completely, they really only get about less than a third of their health so if you mess up then you'll get them down pretty quickly again. And the other touch screen gimmick rooms are VERY few in far between. I really don't think they detract from the game that much. I take bigger issue with other things. For one this game doesn't look nearly as good as I remember it. Abandoned Village is great, Demon Castle Pinnacle has an awesome song and you can see other areas in the background and then the Abyss is the craziest I think the series has ever gotten. But most the other areas really just fall short of their potential I feel. The Wizardry Lab? Just looks like a barren warehouse or something and there is like nothing to see there. The Garden of Madness barely looks like a garden save for like two rooms. And sometimes it just looks bad, like what is with this room?: Why is the outside blank save for the windows? It makes it look like the background is bugged. Man that looks awful. I guess I mention this mostly because one of my favorite things about this series is the atmosphere they evoke and sure I don't expect the DS to reach the heights of detail and charm Symphony of the Night did but damn do some of the areas bother me. At least spruce up the Lab please. Anyways I think the only other nitpick I can bring up is the weapon crafting system feels like it could have used a little more fleshing out. Regular swords have a couple paths they can take and give you more variety and special effects. This is awesome since if you're not keen on using a lot of magic this gives you reason to farm souls and get cool things to play with if you wanna stick with weapons. But the other weapon classes are mostly just flat and boring and have only one path to take. Maybe they just couldn't think of more ideas to give the other weapons outside of the top tiers for each class but it feels kinda half baked. Still ends up being a point in the games favor though. Other than those things I still love this game and I'm really happy I tracked it down again. Is it the best of its type? Naw, but its up there I think, maybe even top three for me. If I were to give someone a starting point and they couldn't get to playing Symphony I may point them to this one. ...and I forgot to mention Julius mode which is probably the best alternate character mode they've ever done in the series, ha. Rating: 8
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Post by spanky on Aug 25, 2021 19:48:55 GMT -5
Beat Claymates (SNES Via NSO, First Time)
This is one of the many B and C tier games released on Nintendo Switch Online that I have very clear memories of renting as a child.
Clay Fighter, while being a sort of lousy game, was popular enough that they decided to do the clay gimmick with a platformer. It's a fairly standard game where you play as a punching ball of clay but it has a gimmick where you can pick up colored balls of clay to morph into critters. The cat can climb trees, the fish can swim, the rat is fast and small, the bird flies, the chipmunk can dig and throw acorns.
The clay graphics are nice, though a significant amount of the sprites and background elements are just typical sprite work. The game also has a custom sound driver and the music is great! The overall aesthetic is old school and very charming.
The game is only about 18 levels long, but they are huge and sprawling with tons of alternate paths and secrets. Each life has a 10 minute time limit and I feel like in some of the final areas you would almost certainly run out of time if you never died. My big complaint is that it has a problem with a lot of western developed games of this era seem to have - there are too many cheap hits from enemies that come out of nowhere and too many blind jumps. The game does try to compensate a bit by throwing a bunch of extra lives at you, and each level has a few checkpoints. The final level turns into a SHMUP out of nowhere and it's a pain in the butt. Very slow, your sprite is huge and has poor hit detection.
In between each level, you have to do a somewhat annoying Sokoban-esque puzzle where you have to guide two robots into destroying obstacles. Most of the puzzles aren't too hard, but they do not really add anything to the game and there isn't an opportunity to pick up extra lives or anything for doing these puzzles quickly or anything. They're just padding.
It is a long game - I remember when I rented this as a child I only made it just past the halfway point. There is no save or password feature but there are hidden messages that reveal the location of warps. The warps in this game are VERY easy to activate if you know where to look. I didn't track my own time but a longplay of the game on Youtube shows it takes about 2 hours to beat - if you play it near perfectly. So having access to warps is a nice feature.
The box claims this game has "Blaze Processing" and to it's credit, it can be very fast, especially when playing as the rat. However, unlike say, Sonic, the abilities of your character and the level design are NOT conducive to going fast! Most of the time you'll immediately crash into something and morph back into a plain ol' clay ball, which you definitely do not want because it is slow and sluggish to control.
Overall though, I liked this quite a bit. It gets almost zero mention or love nowadays which is too bad.
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Post by dsparil on Aug 26, 2021 10:36:47 GMT -5
Picross S GENESIS & Master System edition (Switch, First Time)
Finally back to the modern Picross games, and this was too appealing to delay for S6. Everything you need to know is right in the title. It's just the S series but only with puzzles drawn from Genesis and SMS games. All the regular modes including the now standard Color are included, but there's none of the Extra gigantic puzzles. The only real issue is that the black and white puzzles in the S series tend to be much more abstract than the earlier games so that takes a little bit away from the theming. For some reason I have the game based on the anime Overlord despite never watching it, and that mixes things up with a little story and high resolution art for each puzzle. Something like that would have spiced things up a bit even just a greater focus on the Color mode.
The games represented are a good variety of the most popular ones with some of the more obscure along with arcade games that sneak in due to ports. Most of the games in the Genesis Classics Collection are included, but it's a little weird that there's nothing from Ecco for example. I suspect the need to include SMS games was a factor, but there's also multiple puzzles based on The Ooze which feels very unnecessary. Games that never got localized like Rent A Hero were left in which is nice.
I finished in about 17.5h.
Rating: 8
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Post by Woody Alien on Aug 27, 2021 10:08:00 GMT -5
Beat Claymates (SNES Via NSO, First Time)This is one of the many B and C tier games released on Nintendo Switch Online that I have very clear memories of renting as a child. Clay Fighter, while being a sort of lousy game, was popular enough that they decided to do the clay gimmick with a platformer. I thought Claymates was released before Clayfighters? That's why nobody ever really talks about it. Anyway here's my entry: The Enchanted Cave 2 (PC Windows, first time, ?? hours)
A Flash game converted to become a Steam title, the timer says 27 hours but the actual completion time should be around 8/9 hours, not counting the other modes, New game+ etc. Fairly simple roguelite from a few years ago which is fairly addictive and well-made but not particularly original, however at least there's a nice (and somewhat creepy) justification on why the cave always reforms itself and why you can save certain equipments every time you escape successfully from it. No real reason to complete it again after you beat it (there's not even a real ending) unless you're a completionist who wants to collect all equipment or a speedrunner. There are other game modes but they're way too grindy and difficult to be enjoyable. 7/10
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 27, 2021 18:07:37 GMT -5
Banjo-Pilot (Game Boy Advance; First Time; 1 hour 48 minutes)
I'd originally started this over a month ago, but gave up after having a lot of trouble with the Mumbo Jumbo boss fight at the end of the sixth cup. On a whim, I decided to give it another bash this afternoon and found that the game actually let me continue from the fight instead of doing the whole cup over (as I'd assumed). So I kept chipping away until I finally beat him, and was confident enough to push my way through to the final two cups. It's a pretty neat kart racer, but something I really appreciated was that it featured side characters and tracks based on locations from the GBA spin-off Grunty's Revenge. As a spin-off that doesn't come up very often from my admittedly woefully small experience, I was pleasantly surprised to see it given as much attention and validity as the main games. It must've been really cool for people who liked Grunty's Revenge or kids who grew up playing it.
Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories (Switch; First Time; 11 hours 38 minutes)
I'd been meaning to play this one for some time, and while the Switch port has some technical issues like a dodgy framerate, I honestly think the criticisms are fairly overblown. No, it doesn't run great, but I think it actually turns out alright given the game's slow pace - heck, I'd argue it kinda fits with how the game's about coping with an earthquake and the uncertainty of its aftermath. Why not have the relative lack of optimization itself play into that, where collapsing buildings don't just wreck the scenery but also the framerate? (Also, it means that the motion blur seen on the PS4 is completely absent here, making it the best version in my eyes both metaphorically and literally)
Elsewhere, this ended up being a much more downbeat game than I was expecting. I knew it was fairly down-to-earth, but it struck me how often plots or sections would end on sad notes with you not being able to do anything to meaningfully change things for the better. It speaks to the game's strengths that I was frequently pulled in so much that I desperately wanted to help the characters or berate people who were being jerks in a situation that just didn't call for it. But it also got rather draining by the end, not being to help anyone beyond very small acts. Part of this does annoy me, as the game gives you all these various choices - except most of them amount to just how you react to a situation rather than taking any actions, so it feels rather pointless. However, this is a game about role-playing in a sense, as someone who can't do a lot but has to make it through somehow. Specific details like attitude and appearance are up to you, and everything else is set in stone. You either roll with it or you don't.
There's an Epilogue DLC that can be purchased on the PS4 but comes installed in the Switch/PC ports, so I might play through that and count it as its own entry since it seems to be fairly substantive.
PaRappa the Rapper (OG on PlayStation, Played on PlayStation 4; Replay; 22 minutes) PaRappa the Rapper 2 (OG on PlayStation 2, Played on PlayStation 4; Replay; 35 minutes)
This pairing was also this afternoon, as I'd gone to my sister's while my folks went into town. I was alone with her Pomeranian Terrier called Eko with not much else to do, so I thought it might be a laugh to see how quickly I could play through the PS4 ports of PaRappa 1 and 2 I'd bought for her PS4 when taking screenshots for the HG101 articles I wrote last year. Skipping every cutscene and tutorial, I actually managed to clear nearly every stage on my first go - except the Cheep Cheep Cooking one from the original - in just under an hour. They're very good games, particularly in their music, but I think pressing inputs of sometimes dubious precision for that length of time kinda melted my brain.
Quake (Switch; First Time; 3 hours)
Despite how revolutionary Quake is for many technological feats and as a pretty evocative mood piece, I'd never actually played it until now. Trying to get it running in a source port with some finagling to have the soundtrack play seemed like a way bigger pain in the butt than I wanted to deal with, which was one of the reasons I caved and bought this port. Now that I've played through the original campaign, I can say that it's only fine. Mechanically, it's all very sound and I'm genuinely surprised how intuitively most levels are designed that I was always able to find my way despite murky colours and lack of a mini-map. However, it started bugging me how repetitive the structure became, with every episode having one military stage, followed by seven or eight levels with cathedrals and caves before abruptly ending on a slightly harder batch of enemies. It took the spontaneity out of the adventure, and while I like that you can play the episodes in any order, I ended up becoming rather bored by the end. I hope the expansions are more compelling, whenever I get round to playing them.
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