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Post by JoeQ on Jun 2, 2024 16:10:01 GMT -5
GanaBlade - First playthrough, Time: 31.7 hours (Steam timer), Rating: 4/5An extremely solid shmup inspired by Compile and Konami, made by a single Chinese indie dev. Doesn't do anything new or innovative, but does everything well. Good levels, bosses, controls, weapons, art, music, etc. The only real strikes against it are the difficulty curve sometimes being a bit wonky, poor English translation, nonexistent story and unfortunately some of the art assets very likely being plagiarized from other shmups (like Senjin Aleste). The Steam timer represents all my playtime, a single run takes about half an hour. I managed to 1CC Normal difficulty with all three ships and all routes, but despite my best efforts never managed to clear the two hardest modes, EX or EX Retro. Oh well, maybe someday... Alphabet Challenge: BCFGPST
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Jun 5, 2024 5:58:24 GMT -5
Demon Peak (Steam, first time, about 8 hours probably?)
A free metroidvania from 2017 that I randomly found on Steam, with a cool 16-bit Euro aesthetic (game was made by Finns) that reminds me of Psygnosis titles somewhat. Starring a warrior traveling to a mountain full of monsters and demons to defeat evil or whatever. It's focused on being fast and attacking/parrying smartly, not too much of backtracking but focus on speedrunning. Map is fairly well made and it's not that long with 4 main areas plus a central hub and the final detached gauntlet, it took me a long time mostly because it's fairly difficult and bosses are absolutely ruthless for this type of game, at times it felt like it was a matter of luck rather than ability. Reviews mention bugs and other problems but I haven't found any, guess that the devs fixed them in the meantime and then... did absolutely nothing else since this seem to be their last game according to MobyGames. Anyway as a fan of the genre I enjoyed it, reminded me of "Ato" that however came out a few years later and had more Japanese influences (that are still present in Demon Peak, just not to that extent). 7.5/10
JoeQ thanks for the tip on Gana Blade, I had it in my wishlist, now I will most certainly buy it on the next sales!
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Post by personman on Jun 6, 2024 16:42:39 GMT -5
Mega Man Zero 4 (NDS via collection, replay) I always found this one kinda unnecessary, 3 pretty much had the perfect stopping point narratively and after how milquetoast I found the last game I was rather checked out with the series. I still ran through the japanese rom when it was available and bought the game once it made it over here because I was a consumer whore of course. Both times I didn't really care for it and once revisiting it in the most recent collection on Switch I wasn't too enthused either. This time though? I'm not sure if 3 just soured me on the whole thing or what but while I don't like this game as much as 2 its a decent step up from 3 I think; warts and all. Biggest win in its favor is the level design being much better. Sure 3 had some gimmicks here and there but they were all just uninteresting or barely of consequence. Just about every stage here is pretty experimental and fortunately they tend to be pretty alright. One stage is a race down a maze with a time limit, another calls back a bit to MM6 with two paths through it, you've got one with magnetic polarities to deal with and one is flooded with such intense sunlight you have to dart between shaded spots to avoid damage. Perhaps nothing you haven't seen before but personally I liked how the challenge was emphasized on the stage design itself rather than annoying enemies popping up out of the blue to sucker punch you. A couple stages are duds but nothing too offensive and the bosses are much more up to snuff this time around save for a couple. Further you can actually change the weather for each stage basically having a toggle for difficulty. This usually ends up eliminating the stage's particular gimmick but more importantly if you finish the harder version of the stage regardless of how well you did that'll net you the EX skill. So rank is back to being nothing more than bragging rights which I say.... GOOD! On the other hand there is also some experimenting that was done that didn't quite land. Biggest among them is Cyber elves being streamlined and you just get one that you upgrade and customize. Problem is this ultimately limits you more than the last game since you only get so many traits you can activate before your score is affected and its all in a linear line too so if you want to get the option to use Street Fighter commands to do charges you have to switch on a ton of other crap first. In the least though rank doesn't matter anymore so hey go nuts, if you're willing to grind till your blue in the gills to level the damn thing up that is. Speaking of grinding they threw in crafting too; Yep that was entirely necessary. Enemies drop parts now which you can customize your armor with and much of their effects are things you earned in the previous games; great who doesn't love jumping through extra hoops to get things you're just used to having? Then there is a the matter of weapons which the shield is gone completely which I'm not broken up about. The exclusive weapon is the Z-Knuckle which is this improvised weapon thing where you'll just steal certain enemies stuff to use yourself. Honestly a really cool idea but as expected pretty much all of them are weak slow projectiles that just aren't worth bothering with save for a few that gives you an another melee weapon. In all fairness to make a gimmick like this work would take a bunch of work and time they likely didn't have as I'm sure production on ZX was already going on along side this thing. I just miss the chain damn it. The story I was never too interested in outside of the ending at first but again I'm not sure why I didn't see it before but now I realize it tackles some things that should have been happening in the series a long time ago; chiefly the relationship between humans and reploids which should have been a focal point way back in the X series. It doesn't spend nearly enough time on it here but for what it is at least some insight is offered and I appreciated them showing that your actions may have had some bad consequences for others you weren't thinking about. Further the rival character: Craft actually occupies a character trope you don't see as often and many don't really give credit for with the anti villain. I really like that alone but even more than that I thought they were real clever about it, See he winds up committing a pretty horrific act towards the end of the story and while yes you can just read it as a 'end justifies the means' sort of thing it actually dove tails into Asimov's robotics, specifically the 0th rule: (yes that's what its called lol) A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Not only did they consider his motivations by who he is but also WHAT he is which is fantastic character writing, gold goddamn star. Yes I know this is a silly game about robot people running around in metal briefs and perhaps I'm giving them too much credit if this was all coincidence but I loved it; especially the fact it was intelligent enough not to just up and quote the thing and beat you over the head with it. That little theme fits into the final encounter as well. The start of the thing kinda feels inconsequential and that may be a side effect that this was originally planned as a mid-quel between 1 and 2. After all the stuff that happens in 3 simply defending a human refugee caravan so they can have their camping trip isn't a great hook. But, later on things escalate enough and outside of the usual stilted dialogue I found the characters interesting for what they are. Hell of a climax too thematically and gameplay wise as well, Thumbs up. Interesting that this is like the one Mega Man series that ever officially ended on top of it. I liked this one much better this time around and think its pretty alright if a bit tired. Was pretty clear Inticreates was ready to move on and I'm glad they did. I wouldn't say anyone needs to play this but its not bad especially if you're into the series mythos. Rating-7 So not going to lie getting through that series was actually harder than the X series. Really I love the Zero series for its art direction, tone and story but actually playing them frankly I'm not wild about as they just go out of their way to be cruel and judge you for not being perfect when half the damn time I don't really think its my fault because you just cant freaking see anything coming at all. Its frustrating since bringing the draw distance out would fix SO much with all these games. On top of a ranking system that really didn't add anything besides stress, systems they tossed in that they active discourage you to use trying to pad out run time with senseless grinding all are pretty bad black marks. As such I don't think I'd ever tell anyone to check them out unless they're veterans of the series. Nonetheless I still respect them a ton as the things they did do right like the art direction and writing they absolutely nailed and fulfilled many of my wishes for the series. It also has quite a bit of tech which I can admire from a distance, I mean its apparently deep enough this man has dedicated his youtube career to it and branched out to the rest of the series. Anyways its like these are some of my favorite games in the franchise just not to actually play lol. I also may just finally be getting fatigued with these but I've only got a couple games left so I can't stop now. Plus I never actually finished ZXA so that'll be good to get out of the way. Onwards we go.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jun 7, 2024 14:24:29 GMT -5
Half-Life 2 (Xbox 360; Replay; 8 hours 45 minutes)I played Half-Life 2 roughly two or three times (though mainly with the invincibility cheat on iirc), but it never really clicked with me the way it did with a lot of folks. Even when I played through it without any cheats, I just found it kinda mediocre. I liked a couple segments like the escape from City 17 at the beginning and driving through the abandoned highway, but I didn't enjoy how the game would drop those ideas and play around with stuff like a zombie-infested city, commanding a squad and other things for far too long. Coming back to it, having played through the original Half-Life and its expansions in 2023 and with a different philosophy for appreciating creative works, I'm more fond of this than I used to be. While I do find those aforementioned zombie city and squad command segments still a bit tedious, I like how often and eagerly 2 changes up its mechanical focus (usually accompanied by a new environment like a city, a beach, etc). There's always something new around the corner, and it's rad that you visit all sorts of places - I'm amazed at how much of the game I could concretely remember despite having not played it in so long. A thought that popped into my head while playing was how much things in the world of the game seemed to be designed for your benefit. Most of the people you meet know your name and are happy to see you, there's all sorts of boxes with health and ammo stored in the strangest of places, and nearly everything that happens invariably works out in your favour. It got me to thinking about how the G-Man popped up in a bunch of places in the original game, with the implication being that they were manipulating events so that things would go their way and you'd end up in their services. Maybe the same was happening here, ust a man in a briefcase whispering suggestions to unaware people to expect and welcome a "Gordon Freeman"; a cosmic being of indeterminate status and power nudging at the tiniest of things to get the ball rolling into the biggest of benefits for them. I also appreciated all sorts of little details this go around. The way the physics add an extra degree of tactility and chaos to the combat encounters. The excellent sound design that grounds everything, with my favourite tiny tidbit being how noises make a tremendous echo when you're out on the highway. The believably expressive faces on the various characters you bump into, which honestly made me wish there was an adventure game where you could hang round grotty City 17 and talk to people without fear of getting killed. The fact that Dr. Kleiner called his pet headcrab Hedy Lamarr (yes, after the actress who Hedley Lamarr was repeatedly misnamed in Blazing Saddles). I remember a very old Errant Signal video where he talked about how the Half-Life games were "content treadmills", games where you got all its ideas served to you so long as you kept moving and didn't died. I dunno if he'd still agree with that term seeing as the video was from 2011 or thereabouts, but while I can understand the criticism, I also think that philosophy was why I enjoyed and maybe even needed to play Half-Life 2. Something where I can take one major idea at a time, not needing to think about looking back or holding other things in my head in order to make any progress, and yet still encounter as much visual and mechanical variety as this game doles out. I dunno whether I prefer this or the original more, but I'm very glad to come back to this and enjoy it more than I used to. Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit (Android; Replay)I played this back when it came out a couple years ago so I discuss it in my Hardcore Gaming 101 article talking about the original Game Gear version (and even talked about it on here), but I hadn't touched it since. Thanks to this kick I've been on of playing fan games and the like that have gotten Android ports, I jumped on this since a breezy 2D platformer really does fit a handheld context ever so nicely. Pretty much what I said in the past is still the case. It's a good game that has plenty of fun stages with unique gimmicks, there's some very cool setpieces thrown in to keep things interesting, and levels shift from slower methodical designs to faster rollercoasters. I even did what I couldn't originally do at the time and got all the Chaos Emeralds, leading to a frantic and tough final boss that I was somehow able to defeat. I also went on to play through Knuckles' campaign and briefly dabbled with the unlockable characters in the free play mode. I'm slightly disappointed that Knuckles only gets a couple of unique bosses and sections to explore, otherwise going through the same campaign you'd normally get. But I admit that's an understandable concession given the game took five years to come together, and also that I'm weird about wanting other Sonic characters to have more unique levels. Very good Sonic-styled platformer, and definitely worth a look if you've got some way of playing it.
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Post by dsparil on Jun 9, 2024 5:27:18 GMT -5
The Fall of Elena Temple (Switch, First Time)
The original Adventures of Elena is a pretty good platformer set in a large-ish dungeon. You have to collect most of the coins in the game along with eight gems to finish it. It's sort of like Pitfall II if collecting treasure was a requirement. It got a Definitive Edition that added two smaller extra dungeons with their own quirks. This one was originally for Panic's Playdate handheld, a sort of Game Boy throwback with a higher resolution widescreen display and a hand crank for some reason. This Elena Temple is a series of twenty (plus three bonus) levels where you need to collect every coin on the screen and then get to the exit. The quirk is that you can only jump one square directly up. In almost every level is a special crystal that lets you undo a certain number of falls ergo the title. Most of the gameplay revolves around falling into areas and going back (the Playdate version used the crank for this) with managing the fall sequence being a major element. There's not much else to it aside from some rarely appearing other powers. It's kinda short and fairly easy, but it's a fun time while it lasts.
Rating: 7
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Jun 9, 2024 16:56:09 GMT -5
Shipwreck (Steam, first time, 3 hours)
As always I collect free games on Steam, this one is a top-down adventure clearly inspired by the Legend of Zelda games (mostly A Link to the Past, but more for the graphical style than anything). We're someone who gets stranded after a tempest, finds themselves in a cave where they pick up a sword and then emerges in a town where the mayor says that there's a ghost causing these storms, and to find it and lift the curse we have to find the four seals at the end of four dungeons by finding other useful items, beating each boss and then finally unlock the door of the haunted lighthouse where the specter roams. Nice little retro style game with a few fairly nice puzzles, some combat, a couple digressions and a few catchy tunes. Nothing to write home about but it's still a cute retro diversion for a while with no frills but a good enough amount of content for what it is. My only problem is that the dungeon halfway through the game seems much more difficult than the others including the final one, and that if the bosses defeat you you'll have to go all the way up to their room (but thankfully dead enemies don't respawn), but other that that I had a good time with it. 6.5/10
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Post by personman on Jun 11, 2024 12:57:30 GMT -5
Spanky's Quest (SNES, emulated on 3DS, first time)
So like I said in the SNES thread cool little game that isn't a must play for sure but cool nonetheless. Really dig the funky soundtrack and just bizarre aesthetic, very, very 90s.
Rating-5
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Post by dsparil on Jun 12, 2024 8:16:49 GMT -5
Air Twister (macOS and iOS but I finished in macOS, First Time)
It's Yu Suzuki's take on Panzer Dragoon. That could be interesting, but the game sadly does not work that well. Visually, it does look nice especially when not confined to a cramped phone screen, but it's too much of a mishmash of visual elements from PD, Space Harrier and some new weirdness of its own. They're all struggling against each other, and it doesn't help that there aren't actually that many different enemies. The gameplay is a straight lift out of PD with the addition of a Sphere Grid-esque upgrade system. It's hard enough that you do need to grind through it a bit, but it also feels like an artificial lengthening. Everyone comments on the music, but it is genuinely strange that it apes Queen so closely for the most part.
As an Apple Arcade game specifically, I'm willing to swallow some of the problems. It was nice to have cross play although it plays better with a mouse and keyboard. For someone plunking down $25, I think it's a harder sell.
Rating: 6
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Post by dsparil on Jun 14, 2024 6:26:10 GMT -5
Picross S Namco Legendary edition (Switch, First Time)
It's Picross but Namco this time. I would say this one is a little on the easier side even for the giant Extra puzzles. They all tend to be more representational than the mild abstraction typical of the S series even the other licensed editions. I think Jupiter was probably trying to pull in the non-diehards who would get more out of actually seeing the image come together.
The selection of games used is a little weird though. It's almost entirely drawn from the 80s, and you do get the biggest hits like Pac-Man, Xevious and Tower of Druaga. Once you get past those though, it's a whole lot of Japanese exclusive games. I hope you like the Wagan Land series as a full 10% of the standard black and white puzzles draw from it. To be fair, most of the originally regionally exclusive games have had some kind of international release at this point even if fairly recently, but those Wagan games still haven't.
I finished in about 22.5h.
Rating: 9
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jun 15, 2024 5:46:00 GMT -5
Half-Life 2: Episode One (Xbox 360; First Time; 2 hours 35 minutes)Decided to jump straight into the expansions after beating the main game, which is something I always do if given the opportunity cuz I like to keep up the momentum I've built from playing that main game and using it to check out similar games (either doing their own thing or being a direct follow-up). This was a nice if surprisingly brief return to the Citadel and City 17, reliving a couple of the mechanical hooks from regular Half-Life 2 but with the added twist of having Alyx as an ally. That gives the game a slightly more extroverted tone, now that there's someone who can remark on whatever's going on and have more concrete conversations with other characters whenever you run into them. I ended up managing to do that "one bullet" achievement, where you use only one bullet (to open an otherwise unbreakable lock) and spend the rest of the game attacking enemies with the gravity gun, crowbar, and firing rockets/grenades at them. I was surprised to see how much of the game seemed designed to encourage or at least accommodate that, with Alyx being able to fend off enemies well enough (either alongside you or providing cover fire, like in the tense sniper section). Scrambling to find things to chuck at enemies works really well with the whole "trying to escape from City 17 before shit goes down" premise, and it made what's otherwise a neat more-of-the-same expansion more interesting. I also played through most of Episode Two, which I quite enjoyed once I was driving round the countryside and encountering cute vignettes along the way, but I had to pack it in after the overwhelmingly stressful silo defense sequence that caps things off. It was way too much for me, even with cheats on, so that sucks I couldn't finish off the Half-Life 2 trilogy. Sonic Time Twisted (Android; First Time)I remember trying to play this back when it came out, but our stupid old knackered house computer would only boot it up the once and never managed the feat again. I honestly forgot about it until I stumbled across a Sonic Retro wiki article that mentioned it had an Android port, and I figured I might as well try again. It's a decent enough game, one that positions itself as a sequel to Sonic 3 & Knuckles - and most crucially Sonic CD. It brings back the concept of time travelling, but by only sticking to "past" and "future" versions of a stage, there's much more room to provide each version with distinct visuals, enemies, and even major set-pieces. I'm quite impressed with how different the stages turned out, with only a couple common sections that tie them together as being the same place. I like that it also has you getting the Time Stones and Chaos Emeralds from Special Stages hidden throughout each level, requiring you to explore in order to find them (and also find the time posts to travel to the correct time period since Stones are in the past and Emeralds are in the future). While I find the later special stages got a bit too hard for me, it was nice to have an excuse to look around and explore for a bit. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'm really into this. I think in trying to split the difference between more typical Sonic level design and CD's explorative focus, it ends up not having the strengths of either. Levels don't have a sense of progression much of the time, just going on for a while until they stop. Meanwhile, there isn't as much emphasis on making stages puzzles to solve now that time travelling's so easy to do. Maybe if I hadn't just played the Sonic Triple Trouble fan remake, this wouldn't be so noticeable to me, but I find Time Twisted to be rather forgettable. Everything just kinda goes in one ear and out the other, which is a shame considering the hard work that's gone into crafting a game this big and relatively complex. I'm aware there's a 2.0 version in the works by the developers, so it's possible that might address some of my issues down the road. I hope so. gamejolt.com/games/sonic-time-twisted/24775
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Post by JoeQ on Jun 15, 2024 5:56:32 GMT -5
Mega Man Zero 4 (NDS via collection, replay)Interesting that this is like the one Mega Man series that ever officially ended on top of it. Not quite, it's fellow GBA Mega Man series Battle Network also had a pretty definitive ending with BN6. Amusingly both of the follow up series for DS, ZX and Star Force, were left unfinished.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jun 15, 2024 8:38:28 GMT -5
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door NS Replay 30 hours
For my money this is still the best Mario RPG we have. The Switch version fixes some of the backtracking issues the GameCube original with new warp pipes and adds a handful of other quality of life improvements such as a battle practice mode, the ability to retry fights, and a handy hint system if you get stuck. That being said the game is rather easy. The only time I came close to losing was in the bonus dungeon. I view these games as a good light-weight introductory to the genre much like Pokemon.
I had a lot of fun revisiting the TTYD. The dialogue is charming and the action command battle system is fun. The game can drag at points with backtracking and sometimes a bit too much dialogue but the good outweighs the bad. I did nearly everything the game has to offer including clearing the Pit of 100 trials. I have cooled a bit on the game since my original play in 2005 although that initial play-through remains one of my favorite gaming experiences. If you have never played Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and like lighter games I think you would get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
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Post by JoeQ on Jun 15, 2024 9:19:22 GMT -5
Ape Escape 2 (PS2 via PS4) - First playthrough, Time: 27:31 (combined in-game timer), Rating: 4/5Those darn apes have escaped again and they're up to no good. As Hikaru (funnily the PAL versions didn't change the names) you are tasked with capturing them all using your various gadgets controlled with the right analog stick accross a multitude of different platforming levels. An all around very solid early PS2 era platformer. Some people call it the weakest of the Ape Escape games, but I enjoyed its lightheardted charms and gameplay a lot. I played through the game twice as both Hikaru and Kakeru capturing all 300 monkeys and got all the trophies they added to the PS4 release. Alphabet Challenge: ABCFPST
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Post by personman on Jun 15, 2024 11:10:47 GMT -5
Mega Man Zero 4 (NDS via collection, replay)Interesting that this is like the one Mega Man series that ever officially ended on top of it. Not quite, it's fellow GBA Mega Man series Battle Network also had a pretty definitive ending with BN6. Amusingly both of the follow up series for DS, ZX and Star Force, were left unfinished. Ah, that right? My mistake lol, I fell off the series after 4. I need to get back to the BN games sometime, who knows maybe it'll be the palette cleanser I'll need after I finish the two ZX games. Heck I forgot Starforce was even a thing lol. Raystorm (Switch via RayStorm x RayCrisis HD Collection, first time) I had a copy of this back on the PlayStation and could never beat it. Hell I think I could only get to the half way point of the damn game as I have that curse were I am just awful at keeping track of ground targets to bomb, I still just really can't stand vert shmups that do this sort of thing and I knew that I wasn't going to love this when I bought it recently (it was on sale) but after how much I struggled with it back then I just had to get my revenge. Well this thing still kicked my ass left and right but least I could get farther into it this time. However still I had to just turn the difficulty all the way down before I could get to the end finally. Also woke up to the fact I like the second fighter, much, much better than the first as it locks on to more targets, seems to do as much damage and has a normal shot that actually is worth a damn. Otherwise I just don't have much to say about it. Again this style of shmup I just don't care for and the art direction and music is pretty bland to me where as the first game had a pretty neat presentation and impressive sprite work this here just feels very typical, like I'm sure it was impressive looking at the time but only due to 3d stuff in games being new-ish. Also it looks like this is purely an arcade port and I could have sworn the Ps1 port had another mode that did something or other, different enemy placements would be my guess so technically you're getting less content with this port and its not cheap either, hell none of Taito's rereleases are. I'd say the average person is best off emulating it. Eh it's fine. Nothing wrong with it but it just isn't to my tastes. And I knew that going in but again I'm a petty asshole and couldn't let it get away with defeating me in my highschool days lol. Really I ended up getting this as I'm far more curious about Raycrisis which I've heard many say is really unique. Rating-6
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jun 18, 2024 7:07:29 GMT -5
Silent Hope NS FTP 18 hours
In a rare moment of spontaneity for me I decided to pick up my play-through of this after abandoning it last year.
This is a Rune Factory spin-off (double spin-off!) that plays a bit like Diablo. You have seven characters that you can switch between, gear to find and craft, and a small selection of skills per character. There is a charming fairy-tale like story told as you progress through the different levels of a dungeon.
The combat is smoother than Rune Factory but there are not any interactions with NPC's or much of anything outside the dungeon crawl. Which is fine for a game like this. Clearing the story mode doesn't take too long and like most dungeon crawlers/rogue-likes there are extra areas and higher difficulties to clear with better gear to unlock. Silent Hope is simple yet fun. It also runs a lot smoother than Rune Factory 5. If you are looking for a simple anime styled Diablo-esque game to play I would recommend it.
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