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Post by Dashe on Oct 19, 2016 17:05:12 GMT -5
Losing your computer for a month is the sort of thing that usually leads to a burst of non-internet related productivity, unless you're me, in which case it just leads to beating some handheld games. That makes a grand total of two for the entire year! It's probably safe to assume that if you read any further, spoilers will abound for both games mentioned, so if you see something you're interesting in finishing, just let your eyes glaze over and your ADD take the wheel until the next image. And so I finally discovered the culprit in the case of the murdered shoulder buttons... I wanted to like this. I really, really wanted to like this. If you've read the other scathing reviews I've left in this thread, you're probably aware that I was very fond of the Kingdom Hearts 2 prologue for it's relative normalcy in contrast to everything else about the series. As far as I was concerned, Twilight Town was awesome and hit all of those "This could pass for a believable town!" bullet points, at least up until the part where it didn't. But we aren't actually talking about Kingdom Hearts 2, which from the outset, if you played the games in the order they were released, you already know to be the end point of the 358/2 Days, and you're well aware of what happens to everyone, so you won't get much new out of it.
Actually, I'm not even sure there was anything new about this game, aside from a panel-based system for leveling up and co-op multiplayer, the latter of which I've never used. The worlds are all places you've been before, Agrabah gets overdone even further, and getting through the game as a whole...there's a reason I was reminded of hitting bullet points in regards to Twilight Town just now. The gameplay segments were, by and large, like ticking off a really huge checklist, occasionally punctuated by parts of a movie. There was so little gameplay and story integration that I really can't think of a more appropriate analogy. It also completely ruined a second set of DS Lite shoulder buttons, meaning good old Nintendium hasn't been implemented in Nintendo's hardware construction for a good, long while.
My suggestion here: either watch the cutscenes on Youtube, or read the manga. Keep in mind, I've never read the manga myself, but it just seems a lot more practical for getting the scoop on the contents of 358/2 Days. And much easier on your shoulder buttons. I rate this game, as a game, out of 5, and just for the story, out of 5. If you value your time and money, watch the cutscenes and ignore the actual game. I'm sure Kingdom Hearts 3 will see its release someday. Eventually. Probably.
And all the other kids bought coffee table books from the Louvre instead! If you've been reading the alt text or looking closely at the image, this is actually the exact packaging my copy has, because I was feeling masochistic and decided to buy it while I was actually in France. This is where I learned the hard way that the price tags on imported software and hardware stay exactly the same, numerically, in Europe. They just change the currency marker from dollars to Euros. So a game that costs $19.99 costs €19,99, which is actually not that bad now. €1 was something closer to $1.50 in 2008. But it definitely beat getting some boring coffee table book that just added about a kilogram to your suitcase, AND it gave me something to do when my class tried to drag me through museums against my will.
Of course, like with most RPGs I start, I got bored and lost as soon as I ended up with access to the full world map, and switched to something else, until I finally beat the thing last month. I didn't realize until then that this was, in fact, a remake of an NES game until then, too. I'd assumed the whole time that it was originally either on the SNES or Playstation instead, which made looking at the original sprites and maps and comparing them to the DS remake pretty fascinating. Arguably more fascinating than the game, but if I were stuck with only an NES I'd think this game was pretty awesome. The characters had a lot more personality than Dragon Quest 2's (never did get a copy of 3). I'm not entirely sure of the point of cursed armor and weapons in this particular game, since once your remove them, they're gone forever, and I can't really keep focused long enough to grind through the same optional boss fight eight times to collect all of the last character's armor, but for early 1990s writing, it's pretty enjoyable. The translation was about what you'd expect, but I like what they did with the stereotypically French villain in Chapter 4. The French translation makes him stereotypically English. I liked that a lot more than I probably should have.
If I'm not mistaken, this also marks the first usage of a prettyboy villain with long, flowing white hair, predating Sephiroth by 7 entire years!
The whole thing nets a out of 5, which is like a 5 as far as NES games are concerned.
Here's a bonus dose of Everyday French for anyone with a test coming up: Une grotte = a cave Une graine de vie = a life seed (HP up) Une pièce d’or = a piece of gold Le casino = take a lucky guess Une colysée = a coliseum (yes, another one's in this game, and yes, you compete as usual, though that ought to go without saying) Détruire = to destroy Le coffre = the chest (for treasure)
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Post by Mikéy on Oct 19, 2016 18:31:24 GMT -5
I couldn't agree much more with that KH review for 358/2 days. I'm one of the unfortunate souls that owns that game and managed to "beat" its story. It really does just murder your buttons without any real substance.
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Post by Bean on Oct 20, 2016 8:08:02 GMT -5
Oh, cool. It was updated. Now to show how different things have been in the second half of this year...
4) Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (July 17th, Wii U) -Because Sega removed motion controls for this edition, guess what? This turned out to be my favorite of the Summer Olympic titles. Imagine that. Seriously, there are three levels of difficulty for every event in the main game, and you can have a second person join in. Every three events you play, you'll get character-specific challenges that pop up until you choose to move on to the next one. Fun times. Solid B-. Never bring back motion controls for these games again.
5) BoxBoy! (July 18th, 3DS [eShop]) 6) BoxBoxBoy! (July 26th, 3DS [eShop]) -Both of these are puzzle platformers from the people that make the Kirby games. Both of them are well-designed in that it's not only about getting Qbby to the goal but to reach crowns in the level in a certain number of moves. This means sometimes jumping with a couple of boxes overhead to hook on to other ledges or push off of walls to reach that crown that's just out of reach. The first game lets you create one set until the very end while the second gives you the ability to create two sets of boxes from the get-go. I enjoyed both of them, and both get a B+ from me.
7) Kirby: Planet Robobot (September 4th, 3DS) -And speaking of Kirby, here's his latest game. If you played Triple Deluxe, you should be familiar with this one. I do like that older one a bit more, but this game's main gimmick of hopping into a mech and combining it with powers is pulled off better than Triple Deluxe's Hypernova. Basically, Triple Deluxe has better standard level design while Planet Robobot does more with its featured gimmick stages. Both are great games, and I managed to even get the 100% clear on this one. A-, and currently, my favorite game I've played this year.
8) Strider (September 11th, PS4) -This is a 2D Metroid-like game that also serves as a reboot of the first two titles in the series. You get some neat powers throughout the game, such as the obvious deflecting of bullets and the not as obvious blade slashes and kunai tossing that can freeze enemies and turn them into platforms. It's a solid game in a genre that I enjoy and is my first and currently only game I've gotten a Platinum for on the PS4. B-. Good times.
9) Final Fantasy Explorers (September 25th, 3DS) -I think this game is trying to be Final Fantasy's take on Monster Hunter. I played the game solo, and I have a feeling it would've been more fun to have some friends or even online strangers around instead of AI partners. I don't know... it just never really clicked with me going through the game's missions, especially since they get repetitive with harder versions of the same boss you just fought, before you get to the end and a rather weak ending. There is more content after this, probably for the super-duper true ending, but no thanks. This one was one of those games I wanted over with by the time I reached the ending about 20 hours or so in. D+ for this Medicore Hunter.
10) Ys II Chronicles (October 2nd, PSP) -Definitely the more enjoyable half of the Ys Chronicles games, this direct sequel to Ys I has been improved on thanks to the additions to the combat system. Not only can you attack successfully by diagonally running into enemies, but the leveling system goes way higher than Level 10. There's still a bit of grinding, but at least you feel like you're making progress faster than you did in the original. Again, I prefer the hack and slash stuff of Felghana more, but at least this old-school title doesn't feel as ancient as its predecessor did. Thank goodness for that. I'll give it a slightly better than average C+.
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Post by Dashe on Dec 19, 2016 1:43:48 GMT -5
In a stroke of either total sadism or total masochism, or perhaps just in a bid to try and get some easy games out of the way to make it look like I'd beaten more games this year, I decided to start tackling the freebies on the 3D Realms site. Just looking at a lot of these screenshots led me to anticipate a lot of rage and shouting, so I started with the one title that was pretty much guaranteed to induce a healthy stream of obscenities as I save-scummed my way to the end slide. The one which, when the creator was prompted to say a few words about it for the freeware release, ended up with "There's only six people who will care about this." Humans of MMLS, I give you... PHARAOH'S TOMB I was under the impression that I'd be able to coast my way through this madness by just imagining a much younger fAB euphorically skipping at the prospect of paying 30 U.S. dollars for eighty single-screen levels of Pharaoh's Tomb, genuinely impressed at these cutting-edge graphics and sound effects. Then I actually got to the title screen. Welp. So maybe fAB wasn't that young when this game was released. Honestly, the image of a preteen fAB giddily prancing around in ridiculous parachute pants, a neon green hat, and giant, outdated 80s glasses over paying top dollar for these graphics is funnier. Keep that image seared into your minds, kiddies, because you're going to need to refer back to it as you're dying and dying and save scumming like crazy trying to get through all four episodes for the price of zero U.S. dollars. Don't say I didn't warn you. On that note, while you're still checking out that title screen, George Broussard apparently edited this game twice without realizing that he'd mistyped his own name. So you play as a bounding box named Nevada Smith, intrepid explorer and all-around moron for even going into this stupid pyramid. The key to beating any part of this game really does lie in considering the sprite's bounding box the character instead of the sprite itself, because that bounding box is also going to be your hitbox (and the same goes for hazards and enemies), so if you accidentally clip the edge of some spikes, too bad! You're dead anyway! Also of note are barely-visible turret walls, with just a tiny little indentation to distinguish them for regular, non-lethal walls. These bad boys will shoot singular green pixels at you, and like everything, they're a one-hit knockout. I'm pretty sure they're not surrounded by an unnecessarily large invisible bounding box, but they are pretty much the only part of the game that isn't. On top of that, there are also select stages where your character disappears, except for his hat, for no good reason. At first I thought this was a glitch, but realized that it was probably done on purpose when it kept happening. Should you decide to actually undertake this steaming dung pile, I have the following tips for you: - Save scum as soon as you clear a level. No exceptions.
- Keep as many lives in stock as you can. If you lose one, reload immediately.
- Never use your weapon unless you physically can't jump over an enemy, because in later levels, the game will try to trap you with a scarcity of weapons and enemies that cannot be jumped over. You can also only carry five spears at a time, so make sure you use them wisely.
- Don't actually play this game. Even if you're being held hostage by terrorists in a room by yourself with a computer with only this game on it, there are probably still better things you can do to pass your time. Being waterboarded comes to mind.
Sorry, imaginary 90s fAB, I'm going to have to give this a out of 5.
After that mess, I needed a breather, so it was off to GOG to knock out Neighbours from Hell. Honestly, either coming off the tail end of Pharoah's Tomb made this seem a lot better than it really was, or this game was actually pretty enjoyable. You play as an enterprising practical joke expert who not only wants to make his terrible neighbor's life miserable, but also shoot it as a reality TV show. One part strategy, one part point-n-click, and one part campy British cartoon comedy in the Aardman style make this something worth picking up. I'm pretty sure I must have won this in a giveaway, because the only game I paid for on GOG was Toonstruck, but if I had the chance to go back and buy it, I'd definitely...wait until it was on sale. While the game itself is pretty awesome, the episodes are generally pretty short, and I'm quite certain that there's a bug in this version that caps the ratings at 97% for the later seasons, because even with a step-by-step guide to getting full marks, I still found myself 3% short for literally every episode, so I can't see myself giving this game full marks for that reason. Still, the puzzles made sense and were quite intuitive, so it ended up getting a respectable out of 5 from me. If I didn't literally have two hundred other games to deal with, I might actually consider replaying this once I've forgotten how to beat it. Maybe after beating something that was actually not garbage. I know, I know. Such a short review for something I actually liked! This, MMLS, is why I've been deliberately playing garbage. Garbage tends to make writing the review a lot more satisfying.
I also had the pleasure of beating Pokemon Moon recently. Honestly, I kind of just blitzed through the story mode in under a week because I know that the internet crazies would be gunning for perfect Pokemon straight from the starting pistol and I wanted to be able to stand a chance competitively for at least a week. While the number of number-crunching crazies I've managed to beat in the Festival Plaza is sitting at a solid one, I've managed to curb-stomp everyone I've challenged in person, so there was certainly some merit to standing in line for five hours on Black Friday to get the $100 3DS for this. A lot of people had mentioned that for the two gens I ignored Pokemon altogether, things kind of went down a slippery slope, so I guess I went in expecting a catastrophe of epic proportions. In a certainly unexpected twist of fate, it seems that Hau'oli City was the first Pokemon Locale I'd visited where I'd actually been to the real-life counterpart as well, especially considering the US and France both got cameos in the gens I passed up. Go figure. (Hau'oli is supposed to be Honolulu, right?) Much to my chagrin, it ended up that most of my team was just full of Pokemon I'd used before. A lot of the new ones were statistic letdowns, to the point where half of my battle team at the time of writing this is made up of Pokemon evolution lines that have been around since Gen 1. Crabominable, here's looking at you. I haven't managed to get anything with a good enough nature to really make use of Poke Pelago yet, but it's nice to know that it's there for when I manage to snare something worth using when it's time to curb-stomp people beyond my own backyard. If you haven't grabbed your copy yet, you've probably heard that it deviates quite a lot from the Pokemon formula. Instead of gyms, the four Kahunas of Alola have entrusted a bunch of kids with creating challenges that are similar to gyms, but not really. Like gyms, they're all based around a single Pokemon Type, and the art directors put some thought into making the challenge areas look distinct, but sometimes the challenges get a little weird. Even so, the general structure is actually identical for most if not all of the challenges--you fight three Pokemon, and then a Totem Pokemon. So despite the effort to make it seem more unpredictable, it's still pretty predictable. The story's actually not too bad. I keep imagining everyone on Alola having some form of British accent depending on the island I'm on, so that made things fun. Guzma's probably the one character I'm going to be able to remember five years from now. He's pretty great. Despite having high hopes for the Poke-Finder function, I found it to ultimately be a huge let-down. It'd have been great if they'd been able to develop this further, to the point where it's at least kind of comparable to Pokemon Snap, but as it stands, I've only ever had more than one Pokemon pop up at a time on one occasion, and I'm starting to think I was imagining things. Plus, the grind to get 1,500,000 points is shaping up to be a nightmare. You can't even print out nifty stickers of this crap at your local Blockbuster Video! Pokemon Snap really just needs a sequel on 3DS. Overall, I'd have to give this a out of 5. I was pleasantly surprised, and it's not a bad game to buy a whole 3DS for. I still wish I'd been able to buy a 3DS for Mega Man Legends 3, but I guess we all can't get what we want, huh?
Finally...and you're reading this correctly...I jumped into ANOTHER round of 80 rousing Nevada Smith levels in Pharaoh's Tomb's sequel. Arctic Adventure attempts to make some improvements over Pharaoh's Tomb. Instead of jumping straight into the first level of the episode from the start menu, you're taken to a map, where you get to pick your poison and tackle the levels in whatever order you want, barring some minor restrictions. Some levels are locked behind doors that require a key, and some levels are only accessible once you find a boat. The keys and the boat are hidden away in levels themselves. I personally never ran into any accidentally unwinnable scenarios, but this is THIS game. I'd make sure to tackle all of the levels you don't need keys to unlock first, just in case you end up short one key. The final level of every episode is inaccessible until you beat the other 19 levels. You can also only save from the map screen. Gameplay changes include giving you unlimited lives and potentially unlimited ammo, stalactites and large square boulders that can drop on you from the ceiling, lethal water, slippery icy terrain, turret walls that are easier to distinguish from normal walls, and random snowballs that can chase you back from whence you came but thankfully don't respawn. The coins also spin, and there are different kinds of items you can pick up for points. If they'd kept the limited life system, I'm sure I'd have just given up and thrown my computer out a window. The first half was, believe it or not, much harder than the second half. By far the worst part was the final level of episode 2, where you have to make the following jump without getting killed on the spikes. And yes, you're still a bounding box, and so are those spikes. The final level in the entire game, by contrast, has zero hazards, zero enemies, zero pitfalls into frozen water...just a bunch of blocks that spelled out "Like it?"
No, George, I did not like it. I give Arctic Adventure a solid out of 5. While it tried to fix some of its predecessor's shortcomings, it introduced new annoying things that I didn't like too much either. I'm looking forward to not playing or thinking about playing this game again.
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Post by Bean on Jan 20, 2017 0:54:11 GMT -5
Let's finish what I took down in 2016 first... mainly since World of Final Fantasy is taking a bit to start my 2017!
11) River City: Tokyo Rumble (October 26th, 3DS) -Old school beat 'em up with some RPG elements. I guess what's neat is you get the choice of three different AI co-op partners to assist you as it goes along. It also has a second quest with a couple of new additions once you beat it. I thought it was a little better than average even with some repetitiveness mixed in. C+
12) Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas (November 6th, PS4) -Breath of the Wild is the reason this and Ittle Dew 2 were played. This one is a 3D take that is very much inspired by Wind Waker even though it's nowhere near as deep as that game was. Combat was disappointing at times, but it had decent enough puzzles to make up for it. It's an all right attempt at being a Zelda clone all things considered, but that's all it is. C+.
13) Hot Shots Golf (November 16th, PS1) -This game has the charm, but it still loses points for having it be hard to tell exactly how far your shots will go at times. We're still in the pre-Mario Golf era with this one, and it shows. C-.
14) Dragon Ball Xenoverse (November 21st, PS3) -First, the bad. The item drop rate is both random and not guaranteed. Getting 100% in this game would be a terrible chore, and so I stopped after realizing this. The good, this game feels like DBZ as you are flying around and battling the enemy on certain maps with a character that you create at the start of the game. You can play online with two people or offline and have the AI distract the enemy for you. I had a good enough time with this one for the most part, but I wasn't exactly all that eager to move on to the sequel right away as this one lasts long enough. C+.
15) Final Fantasy II (December 3rd, PSP) -This one is my favorite of the pre-SNES Final Fantasy games, but that's not saying all that much. Stats are different in this game since you earn them by performing actions in battle. Use spells, and your magic proficiency goes up. Get hit on the front lines, and your HP increases. I cheated the system a bit by using MP draining spells on my team to gain MP after battles, but I don't recommend hitting your teammates to increase health it takes the fun out of it, and this game already does that a bit with a high encounter rate in some areas. Dang. So close to a solid game, but not quite. C+.
16) Ittle Dew 2 (December 4th, PS4) -And here's the A Link to the Past spoof. Honestly, this one was more engaging than I thought it would be. Bosses were handled better than in Oceanhorn, and some of the dungeons were pretty fun and funny in style. For instance, one area is literally an art museum while another is a basement that's been flooded over. Yeah, this game was one of my favorite 2016 releases on a non-Nintendo system just for being a solid Zelda-stylized video game. B-.
17) Hot Shots Golf 2 (December 6th, PS1) -This one doesn't have the charm, but it's a better all-around game than its predecessor. I think this is the last one Camelot worked on before jumping ship to Nintendo's sports games. C.
18) Final Fantasy XIII (December 28th, PS3) -Even with its linearity in the first ten chapters or first twenty-four hours of the game, there was some fun to be had. I liked the battle system at the very least, but other areas were lacking. I remember laughing at how dumb the plot stuff was in Chapter 7 and loathing the dungeon design in both Chapter 9 and 10. When the game opened up in Chapter 11, it was fun enough for giving me the illusion of choice. I just don't know why it wasn't like that sooner. It took 71 hours to 100% this, and I wonder why I did looking back. D+ for having too much repetition in design and the long grind against the same enemies for hours on end when going for that 100%.
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Post by MegaTuga on Jan 23, 2017 7:12:50 GMT -5
Since I'm always on and off my games I rarely have a chance to play them to the end. But then I watch LPs on youtube as well... Let's just stick to games I personally played.
OxenFree (Steam)
I will be honest, I didn't think much of this one. It reminds of cheesy teenager horror survival movies and it follows the tropes to a T. However it innovates with a very colorful background painting against rendered characters. You really don't notice this until the included documentary talks about it. Let's not forget the nice ambiance set by the music. The two things that make this game unique are the chatting system and the radio. In the story, this group of teens explores a tourist spot island which has the strange phenomenon in that using the radio in certain spots and you will hear stations that don't exist. (It is explained later, long story short: ghosts).
So you have a radio which you can use at any time and go trough every station to listen to neat easter eggs among other things (if you are patient enough with the dial). The other thing is how the protagonist, Alex, interacts with her friends. She brought her new stepbrother with her to the island to meet her other three childhood friends and they all have a history together. It is a nice teen drama but the best part is that Alex will not speak unless the player picks an option. This is not a big requirement (there's an achievement for playing the game silently) but you can get more out of everybody and know more about their problems and issues that way as well as making Alex be whatever you want: a good friend or a complete jerk. Also, you actually can interrupt (and most of the time you HAVE to) any conversation. People complain that they can't get to hear the EXCELLENT voice acting this way but it doesn't break the immersion of you standing there doing nothing while thinking on what to say. It never breaks the flow, it just naturally adds up. For the spooks (not jumpscares) and the cheesy drama I think this is a really neat game 9/10
The aquatic adventure of the last human (Steam)
What would you do, if you were selected to explore a black hole (or whatever it was) but when you came back you find the planet Earth covered in ice and a higher sea level? There's no telling how many years have passed and as you explore the oceanic depths, it becomes obvious that something really bad happened. I think the title kinda spoils what happens but regardless... this game is a joy to play. Majestic aquatic life (which you can murder), great reefs, corals, plants... it's an exploration game with a metroidvania feel. Your Spaceship now turned submarine, must explore every available corner for upgrades against the menace of the ocean... and that's the part where it falls short. You see, the only real threat besides stationary traps is... the boss battles. I think this game is 40% exploration and 60% boss battle. I swear, these bosses give Dark Souls games a run for their money. When you find a boss prepare to die... or have a lengthy battle. Even the very first boss takes forever to beat. But the thing is that they are not boring. There's always something to avoid and be careful of, so your mind is in full alert during the whole battle. I never counted how long they are but to be honest, I began a gaming session of a couple hours on bosses alone (two, in fact) lots of deaths, yeah but the fact that you only have harpoons most of the time to attack, and their range is barely covering the screen, you have to be pretty close to attack and your shots only take 2% of most bosses' health. However the exploration is astronomical. There is always something behind something else which requires this other thing to get it. And that requires backtracking (there are teleportation stations) and a lot of enjoying the scenery and the music... the music is just a delight.
TL,DR version: Metroidvania submarince exploring. Massive boss battles. Great music. Tons of secrets. 8/10
Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS)
Let me say this first: I bought the game on a Thursday and beat it on Sunday. All the extra content (except the True arena and farming stamps) were completed on the next Tuesday. Maybe I played the game a lot but I still have the feeling that for 40euros, it deserved something more. Maybe I'm missing stuff, or maybe the plan is to improve your time attack. But I still don't understand why is there a need for three save file. I hope somebody will explain this to me. The story is as simple as always: new threat on Dreamland (or whatever the planet's called... Popstar? I forget) Anyway, I never owned a Kirby game but I played some. This one was a whole lot of fun too. The new abilities (Poison and Doctor) are awkward to use but they are fun to play with. Gameplay-wise it is Kirby as usual. Abilities have been revamped here and there but the shining star is the Ride Armor.... I mean, Robobot. There are a limited number of powers that a Robobot can have but they are all fun and simple to use. They even bring out the best things about some abilities which are not that used like Parasol or Mike. As far as regular abilities go, Mirror, Jet and Spark are my favourite. Lots of variations of their attacks also make up for their limitations. As far as collecting stuff, I don't like how it is a random chance. I have several stamps with three copies. I will flip if I get more than three copies of the same stamp as that makes them useless. Two should be enough to place on each Robobot's shoulder. Regardless. It is fun. The extra modes are a blast as well as the minigames. The music is neat too. 7/10
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Post by Bean on Jul 16, 2017 8:51:56 GMT -5
Oh dear. I never came back to update this. Let's just give a quick rundown of what I've played this year so far. Already beaten more games this year than last, so...
1) World of Final Fantasy (1/23, PS4) 2) Runbow (2/5, Wii U) 3) Metroid (2/6, NES) 4) Puzzles & Dragons Z (2/17, 3DS) 5) Star Fox (2/21, SNES) 6) Road Rash II (3/8, GEN) 7) Super Bomberman R (3/11, Switch) 8) Road Rash 3 (3/13, GEN) 9) Ys Origin (3/20, PS4) 10) Bomberman (3/29, PSP) 11) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (4/27, PS2) 12) Persona 4 (5/4, PS2) 13) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (5/12, Switch) 14) Team Kirby Clash Deluxe (5/25, 3DS) 15) Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (5/28, Wii U) 16) Blaster Master Zero (6/15, Switch) 17) Mighty Gunvolt Burst (6/19, Switch) 18) Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (7/4, Switch) 19) Cave Story+ (7/10, Switch)
Of all those games, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, World of Final Fantasy, Persona 4, and Runbow were my favorite games. The first doesn't need an explanation as it's just MK8 with a better battle mode and all the DLC on one cart now.
-World of Final Fantasy is basically Final Fantasy's battle style meets Pokémon as you're capturing monsters to help you in battle. It's also an homage to many of the games in the series even if they're told in different ways.
-Persona 4 is a long RPG that I didn't think I'd get into with the high school setting. Nah, it still had a fun combat system, and I liked fighting a lot of the bosses in this one. The one caveat to this game is the whole main character falling in battle means instant game over. Man, that's annoying. Still, I got about 80 hours out of this one while I was nursing a shoulder injury in April, so I definitely enjoyed it.
-Runbow is a party platformer where you are constantly hopping in color changing areas. If the background goes blue, all of the blue platforms will disappear... that sort of thing. The levels are less than a minute long, but there were around 180 or so of them. I also liked that all the playable characters were pretty much from other indie titles (Gunvolt, Lilac from Freedom Planet, Shantae, etc.).
Also, the Switch is a good system already. I'm enjoying all the indie games while Nintendo or a reliable third-party occasionally throws down something big.
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Post by Dashe on Feb 16, 2018 15:29:38 GMT -5
You know, I really, REALLY hate the attachment button in Proboards v5. It ate my reviews twice now. Not that I beat very much in the last year...it isn't even like they were physical games, just 3DS eShop downloads. Still, this time around it was a matter of quality rather than quantity. I'd better get started before Proboards eats another review. I'm sure there's been a lot of adaptation decay since the original post was drafted. I beat Blaster Master Zero back in August, actually. It was one of the few games where I could just pick it up and finish it in a timely manner. I even got the good ending, which is saying something about its difficulty. For those of you looking for something less convenient, you can play it on Destroyer Mode, which only lets you beat bosses using the weapon they're allegedly weak against. There are two basic gameplay modes here: an overworld where you mainly explore in your tank, SOPHIA III, and various caves where you're on foot picking up items and defeating bosses. I liked the caves a little better. You'll need to be very good at dodging attacks with those caves, though, because the only way I was even able to beat the game was by making sure I had all of the weapons picked up at all times. The Wave and Striker weapon upgrades were the only ones I ever used. Most of the bosses were easy enough, with the notable exception of Venom Master. I can't imagine trying to beat Venom Master just using Reflect. I can barely aim Reflect under normal circumstances. I remember trying to do it that way because nothing else seemed to do anything to it even on the standard difficulty, but then just defaulting back to spamming the Wave gun. The stealth area was easily my least favorite part, but I really liked what they did with the overworld boss at the end of it. It was surprisingly satisfying. It's telling that the stealth gave me a harder time than the two (!!) water areas. There was a good variety in the environments, even if some of them veered into the realm of cliché. Blaster Master Zero's plot isn't really serious, for the most part. If you know me, you know this is a perk, not a detriment. About halfway through the game, you actually get a Spotter, and it led to some Legends déjà vu. She never directs you to a door that's literally just sitting right in front of you, thankfully, but the resemblance is almost uncanny. I'd be lying if I said this didn't affect what I thought of the game as a whole. I'm giving this a out of 5. For the price, it's actually pretty good fun, and it's not something that's going to make you rip your hair out unless you really, REALLY feel like a challenge.
Yep, I finally did it. I downloaded and beat Earthbound. It took me about a week. I know if I found this fifteen years earlier, I would have fallen in love, but now I've just played and beaten so many games that have drawn inspiration from this one that it's not really something that stands out anymore. I called Ness's favorite food "Shit," and I really wish I hadn't capitalized the S, because there is no instance of Ness's favorite food ever beginning a sentence or being used in battle and it just stood out from the rest of the sentences. His favorite thing is an attack, so capitalizing that made sense, but I wish there had been some way of knowing that Shit wouldn't need to be a proper noun, or some kind of automatic common noun code that just switched it up depending on where in the sentence it showed up. I guess that would be a thing that'd be specific to western languages, though. Seeing dollars as the currency really amused me, especially since the prices for various goods didn't add up. That hundred-dollar sandwich had better be the best sandwich I've ever eaten! Of course, by the end of the game, I was a millionaire, so accuracy wasn't that big of a deal. I wish making a million dollars were that easy in real life. A word of advice to anyone with terrible parents who might start this game: don't ignore the parents in this game. They're not your real parents. If you don't call your mom, it negatively impacts your battle stats, and if you don't call your dad, you can't save or get any money. Just putting that out there. Also, it helps to play this before Mother 3. Jeff was my favorite party member, hands down. I loved his concept, I loved his intro, if someone ever named him after me in a playthrough, I wouldn't be disappointed. In contrast, about every other party member was comparatively bland. Ness was just a stereotypical, courageous stock protagonist. The only way Paula could have been any more Chickified would have been if they'd made her the healer instead of the black mage. And Poo? He showed up so late in the game that I really couldn't get on his level. He was just an intense warrior type with a funny default name. Yawn. He could've been a cardboard cutout and had the same level of development. On the subject of Poo, it would have been nice to have more food from Dalaam around to heal him. It was a cool plot point, making him intolerant to most Eagleland foods, but that gameplay mechanism could have been balanced better if he could get his home cooking from a street vender in Fourside.
Fourside was my favorite area, hands down. I really liked the Moonside subplot, and against all odds, I had no idea it was coming. I'd managed to avoid spoilers for that long. It wouldn't surprise me if Level-5 had used it as inspiration for Folsense in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, which is my favorite Layton game even today. It might just be my dark sense of humor, but I think they missed a writing opportunity with Penetella Giovanni's sidequest. It would have been a lot more striking if the contact lens had been the only thing his grandmother had left him, instead of the whole family just being a bunch of hoarders who never threw anything away. Maybe they could have stuck him next door to a sibling who ended up squandering the real inheritance, while he's putting up signs asking travelers to find a shriveled contact lens out in the desert.
After spending a few days trying to get to Threed and making it my goal, I really liked what the developers did with the place. That whole section was neat...after the fact. When I got there to find the place overrun with zombies, I was like, "I spent all that time looking forward to THIS?! I'm disappointed!" But ultimately, saving Threed was very satisfying.
I would have given this game a perfect score, but the ending was just plain weird. I'm not sure beating Giygas was intuitive for everyone. I had to consult a guide. In any case, Paula was the OG of Thoughts and Prayers (TM) long before Facebook jumped to using it to solve all of their problems, so I have to give her props for that. Unlike a lot of games that I've been repeatedly told have historical value, I can actually see the historical value in Earthbound. It's influenced a lot of things I like now, and I have ostensibly fond memories of getting screwed over by the developers alongside that fandom, or at least as fond as you can get when you're being screwed over by developers. I wish there were a more legal means of getting my hands on Earthbound Beginnings and Mother 3. In any case, the game gets a respectable out of 5. It's a game that would have been a five if I'd had access to it at a different time in my life, but there's not really much I can do about that. It was still really good if you ignore the ending. If I can beat even one game in 2018, I'll be a happy camper.
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Kobun 42
Mirumijee
i really want MegaMan Legends 3 or some HD remakes of the Legends series, after all, it's mega may!
Posts: 7
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Post by Kobun 42 on Feb 16, 2018 19:43:45 GMT -5
Ironically, I last beat Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and where else than this site to post that achivement, and now i'm on Megaman Legends 2.
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Post by MegaTuga on Feb 17, 2018 7:33:22 GMT -5
I completely forgot about this thread... well lets get to it. Asure Striker Gunvolt 2 (3DS)I expected that the second playable character, Copen, would require another save file to play. Apparently not. Dunno why but I'm kinda disappointed but now I realize that's because the game is meant to play with both of them as they tackle different stages and bosses tailored to their playstyle (I still don't know what was te big idea of pairing Gunvolt with the water-themed boss given his weakness to water) I don't think it's worth going much into the story but the main driving point is that a new organization is doing the usual "adepts are superior" monologue. They weaken Joule and distribute her power in mirror shards. Gunvolt wants to help Joule by recovering the mirror shards. Copen wants to help his sister whose health seems to be improving with the mirror shards. Oh right, there's saving the world too. Gunvolt plays the same as he did, run, jump, tag, zap. The main difference is that the Gun shots and clips are two separate things. You can have any type of weapon shot with any number of clips you want. Thing is the recipes for the clips require another clip so you are always expending resources if you want variety. And since the resources are a random chance to get... meh. There's also the two special skills which Gunvolt can get by exploring the stages, they have longer cooldown but don't require SP. That's really good in my opinion. Copen is... what? I don't know who came up with this gameplay. They must have looked at Mighty no.9 and thought "I bet we can do that but even more dangerous!". I at least can get behind the "shoot and dash" gimmick of MN9. But with Copen? You have to Dash INTO an enemy to lock into them. To balance this, Copen was given huge mobility in air with directional air dashes and such. Sure you are not required to lock on enemies but the stages go out of their way to position enemies in places you can't easily reach by shooting normally and they do have a considerable amount of health. It's fun but really difficult to pull the Dash tag. Copen can also copy the weapons of the bosses he defeats (but I rarely use these since you need full energy for the flashfield) and his jacket can be programmed with special abilities... I mean it's better than GV's eyelenses, pendant, and ring. But boy. Do these do nothing much. ASG2 is fun. And colorful. and pretty to look at. And I definitively recommend it. But be warned to a new gameplay experience that no platformer game ever did. 9/10P.S. Don't play the last stage as Gunvolt in a public space. I got very emotional and made a fool of myself for being a weeb. Megaman Battle Network (GBA)Boy, am I glad that Capcom didn't give up at the first game because... whew! Where should I begin? I played this game on my phone which itself was hard but doable. But the game itself... the viruses scale too fast. The chip codes are all over the place... and their attacks can get unavoidable if you don't delete them in time! I ADORE the Battle Network series and I'm glad that this was the first game so that sequels could be made. But geeeeeeeeeeeez. If you are hoping to play MMBN. Please don't start here. 5/10Might Gunvolt Burst (3DS)THIS GAME IS GOOD AND YOU SHOULD PLAY IT. 10/10I'm serious. The praise this game has is by no means just a fanbase trying to make it popular. Its only weakness its its repetitiveness with the short amount of stages for the huuuuge amount of characters with DLC. I wish I had an easy way to charge my eshop balance to buy them but alas, I can't. Doki Doki Literature Club (Steam)
*sigh* I tried to stay away from this game after being spoiled without even looking it up. When it launched, the internet memes just flooded everything in my sight for this game and... apparently that wasn't enough. I knew the things that were going to happen or at least I had a suspicion. But after playing this game I can tell that the spoilers from the memes are... minimal. I am a huge fan of Visual Novels. I have more than 10 games that I have to complete in my Steam library because I want to dedicate myself fully to each of their stories one by one. This game made me hate Visual Novels and the way I play them. After looking it up, it seems that it's more of a parody/love letter game. And I can see that. The creator also says how the game represents his love/hate relationship with the anime media. I can get behind that. And I like how this game probably brought the Visual Novel genre into a larger audience. But the way it was pulled off? I praise this game for what it has and for what everyone praises it for. But I have some notes to make about it which make it less worth in my perspective (so my view might not be seen by everyone). I give it a neutral 8/10 and a personal 6/10I hate this game for what it stands for.
During the first playtrough I was able to get deeply into the characters and see beyond their "moe" characteristics. I can relate to them which is something that most anime-based characters don't do for me. But then the game is ruined by it's meta. I like how it plays with the Visual novels aesthetics to give new visuals and apparent "glitches" which are more disturbing than "jumpscary" But the problem is how I play the game and how I feel about horror games. Most horror games throw disturbing imagery at you and there's nothing you can't do to avoid it. You can be scared, get killed, get super conscious about your surroundings... This horror game throws disturbing imagery at you and there's nothing you can't do to avoid it. The thing is you won't notice these unless you are paying attention. And the way Visual Novels work you ARE going to notice them whenever you like them or not. The text box at the bottom is where the whole story happens but if you just read the text then there's no need to have it be a "visual" novel. So you ahve to constantly jump your eyes back and forth. This makes it so that every glitch and odd behavior is not immediately noticed and when you think something weird is happening, chances are you already saw it but didn't register it. In horror this makes perfect sense but... I'm not a horror fan. I like the concepts of horror in games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. This game has horror for the sake of being meta and breaking the forth wall with the game "glitching" and being altered to the desires of the egomaniac Monika. And I didn't even mention the music. There's like four or five tracks in the entire game. But the game has about 25 different songs? No. It has "distorted" music. On purpose so it's not like they made one song and threw it in a randomizer to come out different. But the same song, the title theme song is playing 90% of the time. And that repeats on my head for hours on end. I played this on Valentine's Day for the sake of the theme. it's been three days and the song is stuck in my head like a looped broken record. If this is the effect the creator wanted, kudos. I guess that's where the warning disclaimers come from. Because tons of other games did suicide/self-harm/etc topics but never got so much into me than Yuri's "realistic eye staring" scene. I am curious about the hinted second game the creator is planning to do. I imagine it might have some of this meta but not in an anime trope parody but on a more realistic setting. But I'm not going to play it personally. Granted the game has its value but what it is trying to do is something that doesn't fit right with me personally. But I can be neutral to this game and say "play it" because it is good. Just not something I can play because of how it ridicules the concept of Visual Novels and character development. Maybe I will play some of the mods available which turn it into a normal game. Maybe.
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Post by Dashe on Jun 3, 2018 19:48:15 GMT -5
Gather 'round, kids. I just beat Monuments of Mars so you don't have to! Although this is running off the same ironically-named FAST engine as Pharaoh's Tomb and Arctic Adventure were, and although this has pretty much identical gameplay to the other two games, some guy named Todd Replogle, who appeared to be working on this concurrently with some other game project, was responsible for this mess instead of George Broussard. It clearly didn't seem to be his major focus, since the middle of the final episode brought brilliant levels such as this one to light: So like the previous two FAST-engine games 3DRealms is offering for free on their site, Monuments consists of eighty single-screen levels spread evenly over the course of four episodes, a full set of which would have cost you $25 US if you'd been a sucker in 1991. You can pick up diamonds to increase your score, and if the letters "M-A-R-S" are strewn about, collect them in order to get a major score boost. Ammo looks like an oxygen tank floating in the air. Do not, however, touch any flashing concentric circles in your path, because even though they look like they could be worth some points, they're just instant death, probably meant to be wormholes. It's unfortunate how much they look like collectibles. Like in Arctic Adventure, you get a gun. There are still those pesky turrets, which this time you can thankfully disable by shooting down an antenna if you've got sufficient ammo. Often, this is mandatory to progress. You also get to interact with switches and consoles to clear passages to a card key that's often needed to advance to the next screen. Anything you can walk up to, you can manipulate manually, but certain levers and all buttons can be operated by shooting at them, too. I do not recommend ever shooting a button or lever if you can help it, though, because ammo's scarce, unless you can get the game to bug out and give you 255 bullets at random. Episode 3 barely has enough ammo to get you through the mazes. You also get to deal with falling rocks that don't kill you, but have the potential to bury you alive to a point where you have to manually restart the level. Sometimes you need to get the rocks to fall a certain way so you can use them as literal stepping stones to progress. It's very finicky to deal with. Episode 4 looked and played like it was very, very rushed. It was definitely not a culmination of player skills that were developed and honed over the previous three episodes. Level 4-14 was actually broken. Restarting the level would just warp you to either Level 15 or a completely unplayable tile mess that forced you to just start over from the beginning of the episode. A hefty chunk of the middle levels just involve walking along a path with nothing to dodge or fight, like they just ran out of ideas and started writing things in. And the prize at the end you worked so hard for? For a minute, I thought this was a boss, but no, you have to jump at exactly the right angle and touch the face to pick it up, in which case you'd better not hit another key or you'll miss the textwall that touching it yields. It tells you that you take it to NASA on the way back to Earth. Good going, buddy. You're still a sucker if you bought this in 1991. I'm surprised 3D Realms didn't just find everyone who owned a registered copy from back then and pay them back some money in damages. Pharaoh's Tomb, Arctic Adventure, and Monuments of Mars were just that awful. This thing earns a solid out of 5 from me. I'm not surprised it lived up to its pseudo-predecessors' reputation. Don't touch this if you value your sanity, unless you're literally stranded on a deserted island with nothing but food, water, a computer, infinite electricity, and no other software to run on it. (5-6-18)
This week, I cleared The One That Got Away. I'm not messing around when I call this The One That Got Away. It didn't get away from me, but overall, Tomba seems to be that one game everyone over 20 has really enjoyed playing the demo for, but never actually bought at retail. The only reason I had this at all was because, in 2006, I managed to find a classmate who actually DID buy the disc back then. I still can't believe she let me borrow it. I doubt she has the collateral I traded her on the off-chance I'd still have her copy of Tomba in 2018, but that's why I gave her a collateral game in the first place. The first time I tried to beat this, I got caught in the same easily-avoidable rut she got caught in, and for whatever reason, I didn't touch the game again for nearly fifteen years and something like four apartments. Miraculously, I never lost the disc. I've figured out the trick to it now, which is great, because now that the game's available on PSN for about $9.99 US, a lot more people should probably have copies that aren't the demo disc that came with the PS1. Ultimately, the crux of it is that everyone should go into the game knowing that there is a severe shortage of mid-game 1-ups that comes into play right around the time your first bottomless pit area comes up. As you run through the game, you accumulate Adventure Points for completing the many, many sidequests (only one of which is permanently missable), and when you hit 30k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 500k, 1m, 2m, and 5m AP, you automatically get three lives added to your stock as a bonus. The first 100,000 AP comes pretty quickly because when you start out and start finding the sidequests, you get points for that, but afterward, when you're working to actually reap the reward from the back end of all of these sidequests, you start to plateau and have to subsist on whatever life stock you've accumulated. This is made really easy, believe it or not, because there are save points pretty much everywhere, and early in the game, you acquire an item that will warp you to the 100-Year-Old Man's Hut instantly. This lets you heal pretty much whenever you want. If you press the start button, you can load your game from any point with a full life gauge. It helps a lot, since the fruits that replenish your health don't respawn if you lose a life, but the enemies do. From the Mushroom Forest onward, make sure to always have at least 10 lives in your stock in case of an emergency. And speaking of the Mushroom Forest, that area is just cruel. It's the first instance in the game with instant-death bottomless pits, and the enemies in that area are these flowers that are invincible until they notice you and open their petals. The knockback from accidentally touching one in its invulnerable state usually ends up knocking you into the abyss, because the designers decided to place most of them toward the ends of platforms, AND if you pick up and eat a mushroom, it disables your weapon, in one case replacing your attack with running haphazardly in one direction while crying until you're able to find a curative mushroom amidst the platforms. Immediately following this area is another area with bottomless pits AND high winds that throw off the game's physics. One thing that will help is, during your first trip to the Forest of 100 Flowers, grind to spawn and catch 25 Leaf Butterflies in the hilly section before the odd cactus towers. Once you get to Dwarf Village and talk to the Elder, the area will become infested with enemies and collecting the Leaf Butterflies will become significantly harder, so you can save yourself a lot of lives just grinding for them at the first possible opportunity. On that note, after Yan runs off to look for hiding spots around the world, don't talk to him until you find his dad and get his lunch or you'll permanently get yourself locked out of the Take Out sidequest...and don't forget to use the item on him when you get it instead of just talking! Other than that, nothing can stop you from 100% completion. The bosses in Tomba take some getting used to, but once you pick up the pattern, you'll be able to get through any of the fights with minimal collateral damage to your lives. The final boss actually doesn't cause direct damage. It takes effort to actually take damage in that fight, and by then you'll have probably stocked up at least twenty lives and a bunch of healing items you won't actually need for the fight. It's really anticlimactic. I think they ran out of money at the end of the game, because the last sequence seems rushed and random for all of that buildup. Despite everything, Tomba's a really charming adventure-platformer, and if you need something easy to blitz through to make you seem like a better (or smarter) gamer than you really are, you can certainly do worse. The plot seriously reminds me of Dragon Ball, the writing, at least near the beginning, is engaging and never takes itself too seriously, and you could probably shotgun the whole thing in less time than it takes you to beat Legends 1 (with the requisite save scumming, of course). If The Last Story was the gaming equivalent of a home-cooked pot pie or something, Tomba is like a bag of Cheetos Paws. Maybe not the best metaphorical ingredients, but it tastes pretty freaking great. Don't actually eat your disc, though. Especially not if you borrowed it from a casual acquaintance in 2006. Lesson learned. I'm giving it out of 5 Servbot Heads, because despite its flaws, it's worth your ten dollars. (5/30/18)
I don't know quite what to make of the first Shantae. It looks downright gorgeous AND the credits list consists of a small handful of people, but on the other hand, it's not very fun to play, mostly because the level design isn't great, and the common enemies don't seem so much like mooks as they seem like deathtraps waiting to happen. If you're going through this because you're either a diehard WayForward fan or you love the art, it's something best treated like Sonic the Hedgehog rather than Mario or Mega Man. There are enemies all over the place, but your best bet is really to just ignore them and run in the direction you want to go very quickly, stopping for nothing. If you try and stand still and fight, they'll quickly have you surrounded, and the hair whip isn't exactly the easiest weapon to use. Maybe it's the number of animation frames on Shantae, but everything feels a little slow out in the fields and dungeons unless you're running everywhere, and in fact, if you don't make it a point to run everywhere, you even get areas where enemies start spawning ahead of you or directly on you and cutting off your path. As the game progresses, you get the ability to transform into various animals that, for the most part, move much more responsively than Shantae herself, with the exception of the final transformation--the thing that lets you fly. So you have to wait until the very end of the game to gain flight, and even then, the friction is drastically reduced in that form, so it's like an ice level everywhere if you need to use it (and you will). The actual ice level has a huge problem regarding saving. In the normal cartridge, you can only save at pre-established statues. Typically, you'd reach a dungeon entrance, and there would be a save statue close to it so when you lose all your lives in the dungeon, you'll respawn somewhere reasonable after the Game Over screen. Pretty typical stuff for games with fixed save points. The save statue for Twinkle Palace, though? It's on the far side, all the way down the side of a sheer cliff face that, thanks to some inclines, cannot be efficiently scaled from the way you came. You have to either warp using your dance moves to a town that's kind of close to the right side of the mountain to reach the palace, or if you don't have the right song for it, just walk the whole circuit. If it's your first time to Twinkle Palace, you can't even fly there. It wouldn't surprise me if some people just flat-out ragequit when they found out they had to walk all the way through every other zone just to get back up to the dungeon. All because you had the very reasonable thought that maybe saving before the dungeon might be a good idea. On the other hand, it's an extremely expansive and well-thought-out game for something on the Game Boy Color. The side characters aren't too bland, the towns somehow manage to be vibrant hubs, there's a lot of useful stuff to collect, and aside from construction flaws in the gameplay, it's not impossible to 100%. If you're going for it, try to save your baby Warp Squids for the Zombie Caravan, because it only has a set location at one point in the game. Once you get Rottytops to open up Cackle Mound, it randomly regenerates between two screens every night unless you warp there with the dance you learn from the Warp Squid. It's tempting to use them in a Warp Squid hut as soon as you find them, but you'll thank me later if you take four to the Zombie Caravan the first time you find it. I'm going to give this a handicap of one additional star for a small development team pulling off such an ambitious title for a cartridge release, with amazing visuals for the system. The credits sequence was shorter than the amount of time it takes for me to microwave a Hot Pocket. Even then, though, I'm going to have to slap it with a out of 5. Especially since the 3DS download version has a bug in the dialogue you have with the Spy Scope that renders it completely illegible. Even thinking to go looking for the Spy Scope isn't intuitive. It has the basic elements of being a really fun game, but it falls just a little short of enjoyable despite having a lot of things going for it. I hear the sequels are better, but I don't have time to get 'em. There's still a lot to play, after all. (6/3/18)
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RyanLEO
Poh
At the Stripe Burger!
Posts: 415
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Post by RyanLEO on Sept 21, 2018 9:39:36 GMT -5
REVIVING Got the new God of War when it was on sale a few weeks ago and couldn't stop until I beat it, would definitly recommend this. It's a little different from the old God of War games, but it's so good. Next up is Dragon Quest 11, amazing game so far and one of my favorite DQ's for sure. Looks like I have a lot to catch up on in this thread too
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Post by Dashe on Sept 21, 2018 15:24:20 GMT -5
Phew, I thought nobody'd ever beat a game before me again. I even just started hosting my reviews on a wordpress so I wouldn't be the only one updating this thread! But hey, awesome, my roommate's been playing DQ11 nonstop, so I'm looking forward to hearing what you thought of it. For me, the last game I beat was Ratchet and Clank, yesterday. I'm going to dive into the New Game + before making any judgments. I liked it quite a bit, though.
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Post by MegaTuga on Mar 13, 2019 6:49:15 GMT -5
Whaaaa? I completed games and realized this thread exists? What is this, rapture is going to take me now?
Retro Game Crunch
A compilation of 7 NES inspired indie games all packed into one. the price is super appealing for them but you have to realize that a couple of them aren't that replayable. My favorites go among the two metroidvanias where one you have to feed a little Dragon offspring and allowing it to evolve and aquire new abilities. When you ingest an enemy (that you can eat at your size), it starts a weird Dr.Mario minigame in its stomach, You have to match the colors of the nutrients with the required setup for the next evolution. The other Metroidvania is more complex, the map is divided in three for past, present, and future. You have to find special crystals and... shoot yourself by reflecting shots on them. At first it seems weird but once you start getting upgrades, the transition starts getting trickier and the navigation of puzzles is more complex. The ending was a disapointment tho... But yeah, there are several games which are worth your attention if you like the old school feel. This is a solid 7/10
Momodora: Reverie under the moonlight
Geez, I've been hooked on Metroidvanias recently... Momodora is another indie game series that takes inspiration on retro graphics. But unlike the simplistic Cave Story artstyle the first few games had, this one has a more artistic style to it. Giving the world a feeling of mysticism and fantasy like no other. And the music. Oh the music is so perfect, you can't imagine. You are a nun sent to purify a curse dispelled from a kingdom and on your way you find many characters who try to stop you or help you. Like Cave Story, this game puts emphasis on world building and character development. But most of all, exploration. For a metroidvania, there aren't many abilities you can get, the only ones that help navigating the map are an air dash and a cat form for small passageways. This game focuses more on using keys and getting savepoints to teleport into for easier travelling. It's all good fun. It also has a Dark Souls-esque mechanic where your items can be replenished when you reach a savepoint. and I like that for people who like to be in a rush, you can simply hit the savepoint bell rather than standing near it and using a menu. I knew that there were boss items that you could get by perfecting their fights. And those are very fun to use. Some can be bought but you can save your cash for other things you can get easier. yet those items never trivialize the game. It is hard. But you can like it hard in this case. A very well deserved 9/10
Slay the Spire
Oh boy, oh boy. I've been wanting to play this for so long. I've been getting into card-type games ever since I stumbled across Prismata, a strategy card game with RTS elements. But this game is very charming in itself. The world of the spire doesn't give much to imagine, you are just thrust upon enemies and wish you get good draws. There's three different levels with several floors each that you can choose your path with a very easy to understand map. On each floor, you either find a fight, an event, a rest site, a sub boss fight or a shop. You have three characters (two to unlock), each with their set of cards to use and starting abilities. As you build your deck, you can see what kind of playstyle you can go for. One character specializes in dealing heavy damage for low defense since he heals after battle. However He also has the best defense cards and cards which use that defense to deal damage! But that's not the same for every playtrough. during the course of a game session you will find relics which give you more abilities and those abilities sync well with some builds. For example, a relic that makes you more powerful for the amount of curse cards you have (negative status effects) but it goes well with another relic that allows you to delete a curse card for that fight and another that draws a new card everytime you delete one I didn't get it that time but I know of another relic that deals damage when you delete a card and... Well, I can go on and on but in reality, this never ends. There's an infinite mode which lets you set your own difficulty, your starter set of cards and relics, among other things. But the thing I enjoy the most is the daily challenge, which sets you a pre determined seed (this is a roguelike by the way), alongside some bonuses with negative effects which really allow you to think of new ways to make new setups. While repetitive, this game really lets you bring out a completely different set of combinations at every new session and that can greatly improve playing this. 9/10
Metro 2033
Me? Playing a first person shooter? What has the world come to? I really tend to hate FPS games for my own lack of aiming skills. But after playing things like Skyrim and fallout4, I think I somewhat got the special ability of "save scummung" and try to stealth most encounters. So that's gameplay, but what about story? Oh geez, oh geez. This really sets in the post apocalyptic mood more than anything I've played. I thought Fallout did a good job at that but it always felt like it was a parody. This one? Metro 2033 blows that out of the park. First, there's the radiantion going around which forces you to be careful about your air filters and when to remove your mask in safe spaces to save on those filters. Then there's the fact that after you get out of underground for the first time, the game loses no time to throw you in precarious after precarious situations. Basically, if you haven been hoarding in the first few levels... Well, you should just spend all your bullets at all times you can. And that's literal, since bullets are currency. They deal the most damage bt they are far too precious. I wish I knew that before hoarding them. Then there's the fights between either nazis or... mutants. It's such a clash of genres but it looks so well that I can't help but enjoy. Especially when you think you are about to be shot when a mutant swoops in and eats your foe... and then follows after you. Lastly there's a sort of "morality check" which allows you to choose an ending after reaching the final mission. It's not entirely obvious but it's interesting. I prefer to play the good guy in these types of games so that was easy, but... there's the fact that you can get negative moral points by simply exploring. And on the subject of exploring, you aren't given a map, just a compass telling you a rough direction to go. But it doesn't tell you when a level ends so it's far too easy to get out of the level while trying to look for secrets. And you are gonna need those secrets! I give this nothing less of a 8/10 as well.
Killing time at Lightspeed
Want to feel helpless in the face of progress? To be struck between the urge to follow the technological advancement and the lack of patience to wait it out? This is probably what you are looking for. it's an incredibly simple premise: You are travelling at near lightspeed and you are checking facebook. Yes. it's that silly. But here's the twist. Everytime you hit refresh, a year has passed on Earth. All your friends, relationships, and encounters, are passing faster than you can imagine. It's not much but you really feel connected with your friends and the people you follow. But the more connected you feel, the more distant you are and you feel like you are missing out. But soon enough, you become witness to the jump in technological advancement and the impact it has on society. Its suffocating yet refreshing. I really can't say much more about this game without spoiling. All you can do is like posts, reply to messages and comment. At every hit of refresh all your choices will influence your small group of friends and you can follow their happiness and struggles, even if a lot is missing it's easy to fill the blanks. The biggest downside is that this game does not allow you to save. But it's not long even if you are a slow reader and take care to read everything you shouldn't take more than 2 hours. I really can't recommend this game enough and I want to give it the perfect 10/10 if not just because it checks all the topics that I adore about sci-fi.
I recently aquired an r4 card so maybe I will give a shot at DS and GBA games since I rarely use my portable consoles (i own two DS and one 2DS), so maybe that's for a future review
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Digouter
Arukoitan
Who ate my crackerrrs...
Posts: 173
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Post by Digouter on Nov 18, 2020 4:12:10 GMT -5
The latest games I've beaten are Megaman Zero 1 and 2 from the Legacy Collection, and I'm working toward the third game. I'm not sure if those games count since I beat them in the GBA, but I figure they might as well ahahah. I beat Three Houses as well, and I'm looking forward to playing another route in that game (I went with the Golden Deer the first time). I also recently beat Ghost of Tsushima, that was a pretty wonderful game = v =. I had been playing Nioh 2, but I got so caught up in work and other things that I ended up putting it off for when things aren't so hectic.
Anyways! Here's to a lot more games finished in the future hahaha
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