HG101 2022 Game Finish Challenge

[dsparil]

Atomic Robo-Kid (Genesis, First Time)
Atomic Robo-Kid Special (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)

In a shocking development, here is a second Micronics game that is actually decent and maybe better than the source material! They handled the Genesis port while original developer UPL ported it to PCE; this version did not receive a western release. There are some similarities in the levels, but Special is supposed to be an Arranged version so the levels are different. The game itself is sort of a shooter/platformer as you can move on the ground and air in both directions and there's no forced scrolling. Most of the levels are very short and sometimes over in seconds although there are also some maze-like levels mixed in.

The Genesis game is reasonably breezy. There’s an uncommon mechanic where touching an enemy just slows you down and only their bullets can actually harm you. The laser weapon is also very powerful against bosses as it goes through them and will hit their weak point from their generally less defended back. The only annoying parts are the battles against the “robot governors” which take the form of a duel with a barrier in the middle. While these aren’t especially difficult, they are very luck driven as the enemy AI just stays away if you’re firing.

The PCE version on the other hand is a total slog. You have a health bar in this game, but touching enemies damages you quite significantly. It’s mostly not too bad, but some of the maze levels are bigger and less fair; the bosses are spongier and the laser doesn’t pass through them; and most significantly, the robot governor bosses are significantly more tedious making the worst part even worse. This also lacks the intro, in-game dialogue scenes and ending that the Genesis game has. I’m a little curious to see what the original arcade game is like as it has a Switch port although I just missed it being on a rare sale and I’m not $8 curious.

I finished in 00:27:33 and 01:59:12.

Rating: 7, 5

[Apollo Chungus]

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers (PlayStation; First Time; 1 hour 22 minutes)

Hang on, didn't I already discuss beating this game for the first time last year? I did, but that was the Nintendo 64 version. As I mentioned then, the N64 version has a completely different set of stages from the PS1 version, so this is an entirely unique version despite the same basic gameplay and featuring the first two bosses exactly as is.

I was really in the mood to play something like Crash Bandicoot after watching ShayMay's video on the game for the fifth time, but I didn't have any of the games on hand so I ended up playing this game I had lying around on the house computer. I'd initially decided to just beat as many levels as I could muster, not bothering to grab the toys that unlock bonus stages, and I ended up beating the entire game in a single session! (Yes, that's happened again) The level design's fairly basic, though I do find the last stage of levels less frustrating than the N64 version and there's even some neat design ideas not seen in that game. Nothing particularly interesting, but it plays well and is very good for when you just want something simple.

(Something really amusing I noticed when I checked the time for the N64 version: I completed both games with the exact same time of 1 hour 22 minutes. That's mental.)

Frane: Dragons' Odyssey (Switch; First Time; 4 hours 3 minutes)

This was a game I bought as an indirect Christmas present, recommended to me by Lucky from the World Animation Discord. It's basically Kemco's take on Zwei: The Arges Adventure, where you control a party of two characters - the player character who uses purely physical attacks similar to the bump-attack system from Ys and an ally character who uses magic spells. You can use fire or ice weapons depending on the enemies' weaknesses, so you're best having one character use fire and the other using ice attacks. It's a very straightforward game with some navigational puzzles thrown in, and plenty of optional content including building friendship/romance meters, crafting items that can often be used to further increase those meters, a casino town with a couple of sidequests, and a few extra side-quests scattered around the world.

I chose not to partake in any of that, but I really appreciate how the game lets you do that. It's really nice being able to take in as much or as little of the game as you'd like, and the option of difficulty modes and modifiers* lets you make it challenging or breezy. I obviously went for breezy considering how quickly I beat it, so I won't really dig into what's there beyond it being a nice game to just run around in, crashing your way through enemies, solving basic puzzles and taking in loads of dialogue. I think it's a little too wordy, but it's a game that very much likes itself and its own vibe, so I can't really knock it for that. It knows what it wants to be: a very straightforward lighthearted fantasy adventure with goofy antics, sudden betrayals, and enough horniness to be somewhat funny and somewhat concerning if you're not into it.

*Albeit ones you have to buy like items, which is pretty lame.

Letters covered: #---D-F------------S-----Y-

[JoeQ]

Environmental Station Alpha (Windows) - Replay, Time: 7:19:13, Rating: 5/5

Replayed in NG+ to beat the bosses and see the endings and other secrets I missed on the first go. Still one of the secret best metroidvanias ever (though there's not much Castlevania here) and criminally overlooked, probably because it never came to consoles. I actually accidentally ended up doing two NG+ runs, because I forgot one of the endings automatically pushes you onto the next one.

Alphabet Challenge: ----E------------RS-------
Number Challenge: ----------

[Deleted]

Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2, First Time, 27:31)


My first JRPG completion of the year is Kingdom Hearts 2. I already spoke about the game some and my thoughts haven't really changed since completion but I will flesh them out since that was a few weeks back.

I did a playthrough of the original around a year ago after previously having some unsuccessful attempts over the years. Unfortunately with the original game I find a lot of confusion in the level design combined with a lack of polish with a particularly bad camera which leaves the game with frustrating combat but more so platforming. I concluded that it was a game with a great deal of ambition that wasn't able to be met where the final product has a feeling of being incomplete. Kingdom Hearts 2 addresses the concerns I had with the first, but rather than going all out to improve what wasn't working it does so by cutting the worst parts out altogether.

The game opens quite strangely, especially as someone who mostly skipped Chain of Memories with the player character now being Roxas as opposed to Sora and deals with his somewhat quiet life where he and his friends long for adventure in an uneventful Summer. Things are of course not quite what they seem and we revert to Sora as the protagonist after a handful of hours, with this segment being a bit of a lengthy prologue and tutorial stage. The very first part is odd as the game has you money grinding by completing various mini games, none of which are any fun which left me hesitant thinking the game would be another trip down memory lane. Moving past that there's never any reason to engage with these mini-games again, though there's a gimmick section here and there throughout. The prologue does set the pace for what's to come as it's heavy on cutscenes with some small scatterings of gameplay. Of course we gain more control more often but this linear, somewhat passive approach to the gameplay permeates the experience.

As we move beyond our initial visit to Twilight Town begin to adventure through the Disney worlds which for me were the initial hook to the games crossover concept. In the original these were heavily involved and featured the aforementioned convoluted designs. They continue with a more streamlined approach and there's something of a trade off here since there's less given to explore in these familiar environments, however there's also no confusion since everything is so linear. There's no platforming any more, which to be fair was the worst part of the original, and combat is usually better handled though there's no real depth presented. Actually visits to the world are pretty brief, though we do journey through each area twice which enables the pacing to feel like it's moving. Even though the worlds themselves are cut down there's a better sense of Sora and his gangs place with in them as dialogue and interactions feel more natural. The smaller environments also allows for the visuals to be improved, which was already a strong point in the first game. Animations are also much better.

Despite these worlds handling better from a player experience there is a sense that they don't really add to the plot. We have a nice set up at the beginning, then some advancement in the middle and again at the end of the game but the majority is handled in the original worlds created for the series and doesn't involve the characters you visit along the way, though Mickey Mouse is now heavily featured. Despite the overall series reputation for a mishandled and confusing plot at this point everything that is there makes sense and the story has it's own feeling of finality. 

Summing up Kingdom Hearts 2 I feel it's a nice improvement that cuts down on many frustrating issues in the original but does so at the expense of gameplay depth. For an RPG there's not really much to get involved with here, and whilst I find that is allows the game to feel relaxing there's not as much engagement as there could have been since there's no reason to explore the games crafting and combat depth. Generally the game is very easy and has something of a feel to an interactive movie. Fortunately from that perspective the presentation is top notch with some of the best visuals, animation and music on the PS2. There's many better games to play on the PS2, but Kingdom Hearts 2 has it's place if you're looking for a more passive playthrough.

Score - 7/10

[Snake]

Knights of the Round, Arcade (replay, approx. 36 minutes)

Bittersweet nostalgia. I loved playing this in the arcades. Mostly like Final Fight, but with swords, horses, and level-up upgrades.  It is kind of fun in a way, but it also got pretty tedious just beating up teams of cloned enemies.  The concept is fun, and the music has a bit of a catchy melancholy to it.  It's enough to playthrough once, and it's hardly what one would call difficult compared to Capcom's earlier games like Trojan and Legendary Wings.  

It would have been nice if the last boss was completely unique enemy, but he's mostly a palate swap with a few sprite touches.  

6.5/10

[spanky]

I played the the SNES version of Knights of the Round as a kid. It was perfect rental fodder - a game that might have been a slightly disappointing 70 dollar purchase but made a killer weekend rental.

[dsparil]

Avenger (TurboGrafx-CD, First Time)

Despite the generic name, I actually thought this was pretty good. The main quirk is that you’re in a helicopter that can fire in five forward facing directions which I thought was a fun mechanic. The one issue is the controls as you have to hold down a button to hold your facing, but this button is also the special weapon button if you’re not holding down fire. Suffice to say, there was more than one occasion when I hit that button a smidge too early and used up a special unnecessarily. Given the confines of the standard controller, maybe that is the least clunky way to handle it, but there would have been the option to remap Special to Select and maybe make holding your facing a toggle.

This is unique so far in eschewing lives and credits. Instead, you have a health bar and unlimited tries at the current level. You do lose you weapon power ups, but you select your weapons in general from a menu before each level so you can try out a different strategy. I sort of wish I had been going through these chronologically rather than mostly alphabetically as this is somewhat mid-period for the whole ecosystem although on the early side for a CD game.

I finished in 01:25:44.

Rating: 8

[Deleted]

Under Defeat had a similar directional system if I remember correctly. I don't really have the coordination for this style of control, though Avenger is quite nice to play.

[Woody Alien]

Another batch of free and cheap Steam games... I like to download some weird free stuff every now and then.

Disillusion (PC Windows, first time, about 4 hrs)

A RPG Maker-like game that however is sort of a first-person dungeon crawler. You climb a tower full of these bizarre creatures in order to attain enlightenment or something, there's some references to Buddhism and other philosophical concepts but it's not educational at all, in fact it's also full of "lolrandum" humor too... it's all very trippy and confusing, what with the grainy low-res sprites, psychedelic backgrounds, droning BGM, nonsensical enemy banter, weird wall textures that make the whole game resemble a mix between the Windows maze screensaver and some shitty experimental game from the late 90s/early 2000s. Guess that it's all part of the wave of nostalgia, or maybe the author wanted to make something weird for the sake of it? Anyway the gameplay is very basic and poorly balanced, it's nice in the beginning but it becomes monotonous and after a while you just want to see what kind of bizarre stuff he came up with and to get it over with. It could be interesting, were it not for the fact that the final boss is a total anticlimax and whether you accept its offer or defeat it (to break the cycle of samsara or whatever) you get either way an abrupt non-ending that explains absolutely nothing, not even the fate of our companion (a Greek muse rendered as a sort of anime style girl covered in a leaves texture that is the prime reason I decided to spend about 2.4€ on this). Whatever. I missed some achievements but I'm not sure if I'm going to revisit it.

5.5/10, 6/10 if you want to consider it an experimental art game.

EXCALIBURIAN!! (PC Windows, first time, about 8 hrs)

Yes, it's written in ALL CAPS plus two exclamation marks. A free RPG Maker game inspired by Dragon Quest mostly and also other 16-bit JRPG games. I know what you think, but despite being an unoriginal free game it's not bad at all, I could see it as a commercially released game 25 years ago. The plot is fairly interesting (again if you see it as a retro title), there's a good number of characters joining our party, many secrets, hidden enemies (some of which are also linked to the backstory) and side areas, the enemy sprites are cute, the character portraits totally look like something made in the late 90s and also a lot of optional dialogues and bystander banter too to make the world a little more "alive". The dev added several changes to the classic formula in order to make it more streamlined and not too grindy/tedious, it's a good idea but maybe the downside is that it becomes far too easy, or maybe I just played it in the wrong order since it's fairly open-ended? Anyway it's a nice cute game, and I'm giving it a good mark because it nails the kind of game it wants to be and is a good throwback if you actually played those games back in the day.

7.5/10

Swallow The Sea (PC Windows, first time, about 25 minutes)

Short free creepy mouse-controlled game where you are a newborn creature under the sea and try to survive by absorbing other little critters, avoiding predators and turning from a cell to a fetus to... eh maybe nothing, the point is, life is cruel, kill or be killed and there's probably also something about pollution and overfishing in the middle of it. But mostly it's about trying to escape from this monstrous, vaguely human-faced pink fish. Typical game for streamers, but it's fairly stylish with nice creepy BGM and a dark atmosphere.

7/10

[dsparil]

Jan 18, 2022 14:57:39 GMT -5 excelsior said:

Under Defeat had a similar directional system if I remember correctly. I don't really have the coordination for this style of control, though Avenger is quite nice to play.

I'll have to check that out sometime. There aren't enough helicopter games in general. I'm still waiting for a rerelease of the first Zero Gunner.

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2022 18:08:55 GMT -5 dsparil said:

Jan 18, 2022 14:57:39 GMT -5 excelsior said:

Under Defeat had a similar directional system if I remember correctly. I don't really have the coordination for this style of control, though Avenger is quite nice to play.

I'll have to check that out sometime. There aren't enough helicopter games in general. I'm still waiting for a rerelease of the first Zero Gunner.

The only other helicopter shmup I have is KyuKyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra also on the Engine. I quite like it but it's a straight shmup and to its detriment is very similar to Raiden since I have a particular fondness for that one. I haven't played Zero Gunner but I like the use of 3D polygons rather than sprites. It makes it stand out.

[spanky]

Link's Awakening (Game Boy via Zelda Game and Watch, Replay)

My brother in law gifted me the Zelda Game and Watch for Christmas. It's a neat little gimmick but if anything I was looking forward to replaying Link's Awakening which I probably haven't played in...25 years maybe?

I did own the game as a child and played it obsessively - the end result is it gave me a bit of contempt for the game. I played this so much that I got to the point where I became sick of it.

Of course, 25 years removed I really can appreciate it now. I wouldn't rate it quite as high as many people do but I'd say it's easily the second best handheld Zelda behind Link Between Worlds. It's also amazes me how much I remember from a game that I have not played in literal decades.

It's the first "side story" type Zelda game and the story and world is melancholy and weird - much more than I remember. The game is full of charming NPCs and you feel sort of guilty at what you have to do to accomplish your goals.

The feather might be the best item in a Zelda game but I think we all knew that. Being able to assign items to either button is nice but the game still involves tons of item switching, almost too much at times.

The handheld screen is really sharp and the game looks great on it - much better than the two NES games included. The G&W also remembers where you were playing even if you go into sleep mode or switch games - very handy. I beat the game with zero deaths so I got to see Marin as a seagull at the end.

It's a great Zelda game but not quite the top tier for me. It's an easy 8/10.

[dsparil]

R-Type Complete CD (TurboGrafx-CD, Replay)

Release Date: 3/25/88 for HuCard, 12/20/91 for CD

I decided to continue on chronologically, and the very first shooter on PCE is R-Type, a game with which I have a strong love/hate relationship. The first four or five stages are pretty fun and not too difficult, but I find the rest of the game less enjoyable. Conveniently, the Japanese HuCard release of R-Type splits the game in half due to capacity limitations so the fun half was available individually in all its infinitely looping glory.

A few years later came the Complete CD version which added an animated intro, ending and cutscenes every two levels along with new music. This version doesn't loop presumably due to the increased cinematic flair. There was never a localization despite it being a mid-period release of a popular game. The dialogue is not subtitled, but there is some amount of motion in the cutscenes. This is an interesting version, but I’d still lean towards Dimensions as the way to play it these days.

Rating: 6 (For the game itself minus historical significance)

[ZenithianHero]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4, First Time, 17 Hours, 30 Minutes)

The finale of the survival trilogy. It's lousy. This one has less combat in favor of select stealth segments and more wallclimbing and puzzles. Much of the previous entry staples are still here, which becomes imbalanced as result. You have a large skilltree and weapon selection but maybe half the game you are left with limited gear. The game would be better with trying something else instead of shoehorning all this stuff just for cohesive trilogy. I think the concept gotten muddled is all. I wasn't interested in the setting or story like previous two entries. I do like that Jonah was around the whole game. The plot full of missed opportunities, the game meant to show natural disasters but didn't live up to that for very long. The pacing was terrible after the midway point.

6/10

[dsparil]

Galaga ’88 (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)

Release Date: 8/15/88

I decided to throw in the release date for fun since I’m going chronologically now. I probably should have also made a separate thread for all these, and maybe I will if I start running into a lot of games that loop.

Anyway, Galaga ’88—released as ’90 in the US as it came out that year—really surprised me with how good it is. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Galaga or the earlier Galaxian (haven’t played Gaplus), but this mixed things up enough to really hook me. Being so much later than Galaga, the graphics are quite nice as are the backgrounds. You get the option of starting out with a double ship which makes the game so much easier than a double does in Galaga. There’s even a triple ship that gives you a new sprite that is luckily the same width as the double. The Challenging Stage bonuses have become the very whimsical This Is Galactic Dancing bonus stages. You even still get some points if you just watch it instead.

Also interesting is that the game actually has an ending instead of looping. There’s even four of them! You can collect two blue capsules per “area” which send you to a new slightly harder “dimension”. You can move up to three times which is where the four endings come from. To top things off, there’s even two small vertical scrolling sections broken up with Galaxian style formations and a boss at the end. All these additions and a few I didn't mention turn what was a fairly archaic game into one that’s still very fun over thirty years later.

I finished in 00:40:47.

Rating: 10