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Post by Woody Alien on Nov 2, 2021 20:26:36 GMT -5
I have to add one from yesterday:
Incantation (SNES, first time, finished with save states)
A SNES game that I found by chance while reading Titus Software's list of games. Tried it because I never heard of it before and because I found the cartoony wizard on the title screen cute... but I should've expected something bad when the only options on the title screen were for stereo/mono sound and upon starting the game the wizard actually looked like a pudgy pissed-off dwarf. It's a generic platformer where the wizard jumps and shoots magic from his wand and has to find three emblems in each level to pass a toll booth and fight the boss, rinse and repeat. It's quite easy and I racked up lots of extra lives thanks to the bonuses and all... but then there's level 9, the only vertically-oriented stage and one where there are these bears or something that drop these insta-kill bouncing boulders from just off-screen and you also have to activate these floating platforms that you don't know the directions they will go in, and that's all there is about this level. I managed to lose pretty much all the lives in a matter of minutes, so instead of enduring this bullshit again I used save states and completed the rest without too much effort.
This is why I never heard of it: not only Titus managed to learn nothing from their previous mistakes and average/mediocre platformers, but they also released one that is really mediocre on a console known for the abundance of them and at the very end of its commercial life too. Who in 1996 still cared about SNES and such generic games? Seriously, I haven't played such a crap game in a long time. The levels are either confusing (at the beginning you have to shoot these crystal balls to enter alternate rooms where to look for the emblems, then they kind of forget about them) or poorly designed, the controls are kind of slippery, some rules are illogical (why do some treasure chests act as trampolines?), there's no way to replenish the energy bar and if you die you have to start the stage from scratch, the bosses are completely braindead and do the same one thing over and over, there's other stupid design choices, the idea of combining magical elements to obtain new spells is nice but under-utilized and very badly implemented (Magician Lord did it much better), music and sound effects are instantly forgotten... the only decent thing is the graphics that are kinda good and remind of Amiga and PC games, but then there's very little variety and originality in them. And when you defeat the crappy final boss (some armored guy with the fearsome attack of... making maggots drop) the only reward is a few generic lines of text that don't go away until you reset the console.
Wasted little more than a hour on this cobbled-together piece of shit. 4/10
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Post by alexmate on Nov 5, 2021 12:26:11 GMT -5
Booty Calls (Windows\Steam) Just tedious to sit through. Takes hours and is monetized. I think it is a pretty good game, but nowhere near as fun as Hunniepop. Rating: 6
Alien Vs Predator Classic 2000 (Windows\GoG) Honestly I couldn't get off the first level after 3 attempts.
Alan Wake (360) My joypad is broken at the moment, that's the only reason.
Beavis and Butt-head Do U (Windows) Beaten December 2021
Couldn't get it to run on 10. Will try it on my XP PC at some point.
Time Killers (Arcade\Mame)
Completed as one character only. Not much fun to play. Rating: 4
The NewZealand Story (Arcade) Most likely used save states. Rating: 7
Black Tiger (Arcade) Save States? Rating: 7
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Nov 6, 2021 19:26:26 GMT -5
Pumpkin Jack (Switch; First Time; Gave up due to a total lack of interest)
There's plenty of independently produced 3D platformers over the last few years, and this one caught my attention back when it was first announced for its pretty neat artstyle and use of colour. But I never bought it as I thought $30 was a bit too much when I didn't have more than a passing interest, until a recent sale put it on half-price and I finally picked it up. It is quite cool that this is made almost entirely by a guy called Nicolas Meyssonnier, but that's more or less the only really positive thing I have to say.
I think the idea with these indie 3D platformers is to try and pick up where mainstream 3D platformers had left off from the PS2/Xbox/GC days, focusing on weird art styles, more developed stories and unique gameplay ideas that deviated hugely from "Mario 64/Crash Bandicoot-styled game". As far as Pumpkin Jack goes, it definitely feels like that, but it sadly comes across like something by A2M (or BEhaviour Interactive as they're known these days) - they mainly made licensed games like the Bugs Bunny: Time Busters duo on the PS1 and that Kim Possible: What's The Switch? game that seems to be fairly well regarded. I've played quite a few of their games, but I always end up feeling extremely dispassionate towards them. They nail the presentation and play well enough (even if they're mechanically basic), it's just that they're not for me.
Pumpkin Jack has the same thing going on. Everything's fine, but I couldn't muster up any passion for it. I was bored out of my mind, going through the motions on a stage round the midway point that seemed particularly intent on repeating and developing ideas I wasn't at all keen on (they're decent ideas, mind, I just didn't like them), and called it quits by that stage's climax.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Nov 14, 2021 18:40:11 GMT -5
Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity (Switch; First Time; Gave up because the first episode's boss is basically impossible)
Although I'd planned to play more of the recent Quake port after beating the main campaign and the first mission pack, I completely forgot about it for months. I can't really say why, but I woke up early this morning and decided to take a crack at the rest of what's available - starting with the second mission pack, Dissolution of Eternity (made by Rogue Entertainment, who also made Strife and later developed American McGee's Alice).
I appreciated the focus on the more medieval side of things, with a larger focus on booby traps, bridges and mechanical devices than I remember the main game having. However, the difficulty even on the easiest setting is way too hard. Enemy placements and traps often had me quick-saving because of how often I died, and while you get plenty of upgraded weapons to handle them, it feels like they only exist to make up for how tough things are.
It was okay for the most part, but the ending of what I presume was the first episode can bugger itself on a cactus full of rusty nails. You're dropped into a cramped room with two flying mages that shoot tracking projectiles and a third, even more powerful one that teleports all over the place. You have to kill them all to progress, but there's no safe place to hide out because there's nails being fired out of nearly all the pillars. It's such a stupid, mean-spirited bit of design that it's actually put me off from playing any more of Quake.
I honestly don't know whether to check out the MachineGames' "Dimensions" episodes, if they're gonna be anywhere near as difficult as this mission pack. Time will tell, but I'm equally okay leaving Quake as a cool and interesting shooter that I'm otherwise completely dispassionate towards.
Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (SNES; First Time; Gave up because the first boss is way too fecking hard)
Back in 2019, I finally started checking out the Ys series with the PC version of Ys I Chronicles. I never got into II due to a really weird bug that prevented me from saving, but I liked what I'd played of the first enough that I wanted to check out more. For the most part, I didn't act upon it beyond a failed attempt at playing the Mega Drive port of III, until I grabbed fan translated versions of Ys IV and V a few weeks back so I could play some SNES games.
I got about an hour or so into this, getting back into the grove of ramming enemies (which is still as enjoyable as ever despite only being able to move in the cardinal directions), before I hit up against the first boss. That boss is way too hard given you have no magic to use, and there's no new equipment to buy in the nearest village. It's the worst kind of first boss where it forces you to somehow become really good without warning or makes you grind for what may be thousands of years so you don't die in a single hit of garbage ranged attacks that you're not at all used to dodging.
What a shame, as it's otherwise quite the solid Ys game.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2021 19:58:24 GMT -5
Fire Emblem Three Houses (Switch, Second Attempt, Gave up because the monastery gameplay is tedious)
Unfortunately Fire Emblem's tactical combat plays second fiddle in this latest entry to vapid micromanaging of aspects better handled in previous entries. It seems in attempting to expand their userbase Intelligent Systems decided to downplay what worked in favour of a misread attempted Personaisation where slice of life takes centre stage. Attempted because unlike in that series the entire concept falls flat, being repetitive, out of place and too involving to the player. Unfortunately enhancing your units and recruiting new ones requires running around the castle setting in what feels immediately like a chore and stats are micromanaged to the point of being vague. I found myself having to look up the effects of each activity several times, and how to recruit units is unclear. Hopefully future Fire Emblem entries look to the past and return to a minimalistic approach to unit management. I'm sure I'll give this a third try in hope that my opinion differs. For now I will look to play some other entries I haven't gotten around to yet in order to find what I loved about my previous plays of this series.
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Post by dsparil on Nov 15, 2021 8:04:50 GMT -5
I didn't mind the monastery elements in theory, but having to run around the monastery every single time was a big time waster. I averaged around thirty minutes per game chapter so a whole ten hours by the end. It would have been very nice if you could just pick from a menu and zoom through those parts.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2021 9:55:12 GMT -5
They made it skippable, but by doing so it's pretty clear you're missing out on the opportunity to recruit and enhance units so not progressing in line with the challenges presented by the combat missions. I think one big part of the problem is they allowed for too much autonomy in skills and classes for each character and I'd have preferred a each to have specific classes with less options. Allowing any unit to be any class and have any skills kind of makes each type seem a little worthless anyway, and the lack of weapons triangle makes it feel like the options aren't strategic in themselves and so not enhancing the gameplay, but rather detracting from it. As for the free roaming itself I wonder how much it was included simply to differentiate the game as being a 'big boy' game on a home system and therefore having to deliver something that felt in line with that. Contemporaries all use menu based systems for classes and even Persona does the same for relationships, so I think it was a mistake. Unfortunately I seem to be in the minority, so I do wonder if this series will leave me behind.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Nov 21, 2021 10:28:21 GMT -5
Enchanted Arms (Xbox 360; First Time; Gave up at the Lord of Earth boss fight) This one's actually kinda heartbreaking to me. I'd heard of Enchanted Arms years and years ago, but my interest was piqued last year by a video done by ThorHighHeels on From Software's many many projects, mainly due to its focus on tactics and character placement to deal attacks to enemies. I find most turn-based RPGs way too slow or repetitive for my liking, and I thought that having something where I could use a bit more strategy from the off would make for a neat long game to play while I downloaded shorter games on the 360 (also, it lets you save anywhere you like and I was really obsessed with that at the time). So I bought it in July and I've been playing it on-off since. It's a pretty neat game, with a focus on gathering monsters with different movesets and elements that you can swap with your main party, plenty of optional areas and dungeons to mess around with, and a cast of characters that I found myself becoming really attached to. Something that often gets brought up with Enchanted Arms is its English voice acting and how terrible it is, but I honestly can't agree. It's sometimes poorly directed so lines get delivered weirdly and the voices are silly enough in parts that I can see people finding it insufferable. But beyond that, I found it to be a really earnest, goofy effort with a surprisingly good localized script, plenty of hilarious moments between the main characters, and a sense of camaraderie that I've often heard people discuss for their favourite JRPGs but had never really felt myself apart from maybe Kingdom Hearts. (Incidentally, Atsuma has a good shot at the 'best idiot boy hero' title usually occupied by Sora). I kept playing the game just to see what adventures they'd get up to next, and how they'd grow as people by overcoming all sorts of trials and tribulations. I made it a good way into the game (around 73% by the game's in-game completion percentage) when I ran headfirst into the Lord of Earth boss fight, which is a ludicrously long fight of attrition where you can have to very slowly whittle down their health while they often bombard your party with health draining moves and attacks that hit EVERYBODY for massive damage. Even with all the attacks and items I'd gathered, it just wasn't enough and I have no idea how to proceed. So I think I have to abandon it. I'm not one to swear like this, but that fucking sucks. I love Enchanted Arms. It's become my favourite turn-based JRPG and I wanted to be able to beat it before the year ends. I'm not into this genre anymore and I was hoping that if I never got back into it, that I could at least complete this and consider it my final gigantic JRPG. But I don't think I can with that boss fight, and I hate that.
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Post by spanky on Nov 28, 2021 7:30:49 GMT -5
Final Fantasy VII: Remake (PS4, Never beaten)
I tried, I really did but I can't seem to get into this. I made it to the second reactor, life got in the way and I stopped playing for a week and completely forgot about it. More time passed and I realized I wasn't being drawn to play this. Don't get me wrong the game is fine, even good in most regards. The original game feels really original and forward thinking in a lot of ways. And this is...just a modern action RPG. I think the only real problem I have with the game is talented English voice actors delivering hammy and melodramatic Japanese-written dialogue.
Not saying I won't ever pick this up again but for the time being, it's going on the shelf. There's other things I'd rather play first.
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Post by dsparil on Nov 28, 2021 14:34:12 GMT -5
SolSeraph (Switch, first time, so very very boring)
The price finally dropped low enough for me to give it a try despite all the poor reviews, and that was a mistake to say the least. The tower defense parts are both extremely dull and way too frequent, and the action isn't any better either. I'm getting a strong feeling that Actraiser Renaissance was only made because this is so awful. Whether or not adding in tower defense to the formula was a good idea is debatable, but it certainly is better implemented in AR. Maybe SolSeraph gets much better the further in you get, but I could barely stand it for an hour.
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Post by spanky on Nov 28, 2021 18:53:36 GMT -5
SolSeraph (Switch, first time, so very very boring)The price finally dropped low enough for me to give it a try despite all the poor reviews, and that was a mistake to say the least. The tower defense parts are both extremely dull and way too frequent, and the action isn't any better either. I'm getting a strong feeling that Actraiser Renaissance was only made because this is so awful. Whether or not adding in tower defense to the formula was a good aside is debatably, but it certainly is better implemented in AR. Maybe SolSeraph gets much better the further in you get, but I could barely stand it for an hour. I bought this when it came out and I kinda liked the whole tower defense concept, though I'll admit it wasn't as executed as well as it could have been. However, the action sequences really sucked and were not fun at all to play. Actraiser's action stages weren't mindblowing but they never stayed around too long. I also thought the humans you were overseeing in SolSeraph had this...annoying detachment towards you. I think I prefer the helpless but pious humans of the original Actraiser, lol.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2021 4:07:37 GMT -5
Battalion Wars (Gamecube, First Time, Gave up because I suck) I just can't get my head around the controls. They seem really fiddly and trying to instruct a unit so often doesn't get the expected results. I got to a mission where I need to kill off some enemy planes at the end but the targeting is so unreliable. Perhaps I need to go back and restart with the tutorial levels, but for now I'm just not getting this.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Nov 29, 2021 5:34:27 GMT -5
Crush 3D (3DS; First Time; Gave up because I'd had enough of it)
I accidentally deleted the original post in trying to write a new one by quoting the formatting. I am a technical idiot. It's a neat enough dimension swapping puzzler, where you can turn the camera and pound the ground to change the perspective from 3D to 2D. A sequel to a PSP puzzler with the same concept, I mainly played on mornings where I had nothing to do but found myself increasingly swamped by the spatial reasoning needed to work out the trickier levels. I eventually reached a point where I got worn out and called it quits.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Dec 3, 2021 11:15:36 GMT -5
Sonic Robo Blast 2: The CyberDime Realm - Early Version (Windows; First Time; Gave up out of frustration)I guess I could put in Sonic Robo Blast 2 mods I wasn't able to beat, so let's do that. I was looking for more map packs to play and got really curious about the maps featured in a YouTube channel called Sonic Beyond, which features plenty of videos mixing various sprite/model and level mods to make it look like they're playing, say, Sonic Adventure within SRB2. Thankfully, they link to all the mods they use in the descriptions, and I downloaded a map pack called Xeno's Levels. I later discovered that this was an early version of The CyberDime Realm map pack I played back in July, but with many levels and bosses that got cut out of the more recent versions. Some of these were retro-inspired zones based on Sonic 1 like Green Hill and Marble Zone, while others were original stages with very tough bosses that got chucked right out. One of these bosses was at the end of Dark Woods Zone, and it's frankly a stupid annoying boss that I've got no patience for. I'm just gonna use the level select to play the other zones (and avoid their bosses too as they use the trickier bosses from SRB2's base game). I won't post a link to the download, as it's not available on the message boards and I don't feel right posting a version of the game its creator hasn't posted themselves. You can find the link if you know where to look, so I'll leave that up to you. Sonic Robo Blast 2: Zero's Halloween Level Pack (Windows; First Time; Gave up due to nonsense I can't concisely put into this paragraph)This is a two-zone map pack by XZero The HedgehogX (really bringing the mid-00s energy with that name and I love it), and it's a Halloween themed one with six levels of spooky labyrinths, grey hills and water, and a few cheeky puzzles. I managed to get to the final boss, but I ran into a problem I was previously unaware of when it comes to how Sonic Robo Blast 2 handles level packs. Most of the time (at least when booted up through the in-game add-ons menu), the game will treat the level pack as a separate game with its own set of saves and stats, so you never have to worry about anything technical screwing up. But sometimes the level pack will augment itself into the base game as such, and the game won't let you make another save since the game has been "modified". So all you can do is either use the level select on a pre-existing complete save file, or just start a new game without a save. The latter is what I did, but what I didn't further realize (yes, this is still going) is that the game doesn't offer you continues like it does if you have a save file. So if you haven't gotten one and you lose all your lives, it's back to the main menu with all your progress gone. This is basically what happened to me against the final boss, and I found the levels too annoying to bother pushing through the whole thing again. Especially since the final boss is the irritating Black Core Eggman robot that's the base game's final boss. I'll leave a link since it's been updated in the meantime to address some issues, but I'm happy to leave it at that. mb.srb2.org/addons/zeros-halloween-level-pack.3446/
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Post by Snake on Dec 3, 2021 14:01:29 GMT -5
Sengoku, Neo Geo (1st time, an hour, lost count of how many continues I needed because fights and deaths were so cheap)
I think I would've needed anywhere from $10~$15 worth of quarters to get through Sengoku in a real arcade. For a game that boasted 24-bits of gaming power, the music is kinda ambient sengoku-jidai level blah. While it did offer a cool option to switch between 2 other fighters as you progress, sometimes you would be worst off as their attacks weren't anymore effective. It's just mash, mash, mash and mash, with a bit of gameplay strategy. The last fight is especially just mashing away, a 4-quarter, many death, $1 end boss fight with a whatevers ending and credits. Little in the variance of gameplay, and the same rehash of enemies sent your way. One playthrough in a lifetime is enough.
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