November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

[prfsnl_gmr]

The last level in Time Soldiers in utter garbage. I’m going to save state my way through it and put the game away forever after that.

[Exhuminator]

Shadow of Destiny : I'm on Chapter 5 now. Apparently this game's chapters flow like: prologue/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/epilogue. So I'm over halfway at this point. So far the experience has been decidedly mediocre with occasional moments of tangible intrigue. It says a lot that when SoD first released its Metacritic score was 78%, but when it re-released a few years later on PSP, that score is 54%. The point I'm making there, is some games do not age well, and SoD did not age well. The experience is not without some merits, but the writing and puzzle designs have not been very impressive so far. Considering those are the crux of an adventure game, that's a bit of an issue. However, I hate to judge a game prematurely, especially one that is plot driven, so I'm holding off assumptions as best I can until I finish the game. It would help though, if I had any idea whatsoever to my protagonist's past.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Off topic...You should play the Rusty Lake games (e.g., Cube Escape, Rusty Lake Hotel, etc.). I think you’d like them. They’re on Android, iOS and Steam, many of the bite-sized Cube Escape games are completely free. They are clever, claustrophobic puzzlers with a bizzare “Twin Peaks interpreted through Flash” aesthetic. (To a certain extent, they’re like Hotel Dusk...but good. )

On topic...The Cube Escape/Rusty Lake series has some time-travel elements, but the games aren’t old enough for TR.

[BoneSnapDeez]

If you're looking for a more interesting top down run and gun with a time travelling motif, give Ninja Commando on Neo Geo a go. It's pretty decent.

That has time travel? Damn. I just remember ninjas.

[Exhuminator]

they’re like Hotel Dusk...but good

[prfsnl_gmr]

Too funny.

[Ack]

I always wondered what that game was about. Now I know, and I approve.

[Sarge]

I'm on a mission this month; I need to get through Soul Reaver so I can get to Soul Reaver 2, which involves time travel. But man, this pre-analog stick 3D platforming is rough.

Are you playing on PC or console? I thought the PSX version supported the analogs. Sounds like pad support for the PC version's a mess, though.

[marurun]

Dreamcast is the way to play.

[alienjesus]

If you're looking for a more interesting top down run and gun with a time travelling motif, give Ninja Commando on Neo Geo a go. It's pretty decent.

That has time travel? Damn. I just remember ninjas.

Yep, each level is in a different time period - ancient egypt, fuedal japan, etc.


On an update of my TR games:

I played through 3 chapters of Flower, Sun and Rain. The game is relentlessly weird - one mission had me running around being run by a football obsessed programmer for some reason, and one had me 'finding' inspiration for a wrestler. The story is very silly and the whole game feels quite off-kilter, but nothing much has actually happened so far. The gameplay is also, to put it bluntly, pretty bad - you just talk to the next person you can (several times, because sometimes the trigger doesn't happen until your 2nd or 3rd chat) and then basically get told a number to plug into the final thing to win. There are optional 'puzzles' but these are hidden in random places and the solutions to them are very obscure and not at all fun to figure out. I'll play through it for the odd story, but it's not sold me on itself yet.

As a consolation, I've been playing Ghost Trick on my daily commute. I said in the slack chat earlier, but the first time I played this game, I decided it was in my top 10 favourite games of all time. That was obviously quite a bold claim, and I'd started to question it, and then when I've been playing through this time...

... I proved myself aboslutely right, this game is still fucking awesome and I love it to bits.