October 2019 TR - Is That A Nightmare In Your Pocket...?

[prfsnl_gmr]

I beat Castlevania Legends, one of the most aggressively average games I've ever had the honor of finishing.

Yep. I beat it earlier this year, and it very, very OK. Now, however, I understand the origins of the sub-weapons! I feel so enlightened!

Except it isn't canon anymore, which makes it glorified fan fiction.

It is a pretty silly premise, honestly. Wasn't there also the implication that Alucard was a progenitor of the Belmont clan? I can see that being an issue.

Yes. It’s very weird. Glad that they took it out of continuity, for what that’s worth with the Castlevania series. If I recall correctly, neither Castlevania 64 nor Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness were canon....until Portrait of Ruin said they were, and Cornell the Werewolf showed up as a playable” character in Castlevania Judgment.

[Sarge]

Interesting. Didn't know the N64 games were de/re-canonized.

[opa]

Thank you, Partridge, for playing Corpse Party so we don't have to.
---

Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D: a quick rundown/thoughts

At the time of its release, Mercenaries 3D was filling a void in the 3DS library. It seems hard to believe now with the massive library of awesome titles, but when the 3DS first came out things were rough for a while. I didn't even grab a 3DS until the OoT remake released and as I recall that was after the price drop (remember the 3DS costing over $200?). If you were one of the early adopters you were pretty much stuck with Steel Diver, Pilotwings... I think there was a Street Fighter game as well. Things weren't going great.

Along comes Mercenaries to provide some quick zombie-killing arcade action. And by golly its actually an okay experience for a 2011 3DS game. The game plays like all the other Mercenary modes in previous titles wherein getting kills and maintaining combos keep adding to your score and time limit. You can choose from multiple characters (Jill, Barry, Wesker, etc) and get to use a variety of weapons.

There's a couple of issues, however. The game runs a little strangely. Enemies in the distance run at like one-fifth the frames. Even if you shot them they just choppily collapse.

The most notable issue is one I had forgotten about: the game cannot have its save data cleared. Back when the game released Capcom caught some well-deserved flak for this. I have no clue why they did this (maybe prevent a couple of used game sales, perhaps?) but irregardless it kind of blows to not be able to unlock things on your own. So if you're gonna grab this and you want a clean slate you either need to find a sealed copy or download it from the eshop.

Overall, if you need some quick Resident Evil action; this isn't bad, just not mind blowing.

Oh, and the menus suck, btw.

[noiseredux]

cool to hear about Mercenaries. I never heard anything great about it. I still wanted to check it out, though. Now, more so.

Revelations cont'd...

Episode 6 was cool. I mean the whole game is cool. I seriously wonder what the reception would have been if the Revelations games had been released as numbered title instead of the RE5 and 6 we actually got. Hmm.

The first chapter was a bit of Chris and his partner making their way to the ghostship. No big woop. But the second chapter was where the real excitement was at. It opens with Jill and Parker needing to make a daring underwater escape. Good stuff. And I'm happy to report that the swimming controls work well here.

Then there was some more exploration of the ship, culminating in a pretty intense boss battle that starts on an elevator and ends on the top floor. It was a pretty long battle as this huge zombie thing with some shielded armor had a lot of HP. But I'm happy to report we came out unscathed (and low on bullets).

OH! I wanted to point out that there's sections of the ship where elevator doors, or huge doors to other parts of the ship are seriously loading screens in disguise. As a longtime RE fan, I can't tell you how much this makes me grin.

[opa]

I'm actually amazed at how seamlessly they threw the swimming section into the game. It doesn't feel awkward at all.

That armored boss was sad, tbh. All he did was charge attack... which by taking a few steps to the left or right you were a-ok. lol.

[CFFJR]

Noise, I'm really enjoying your very appropriate episodic breakdown of Revelations.

I quite like the Revelations spin offs (Revelations 2 is among my favorites in the franchise) so it's good to see you're having a positive experience with the game.

And Partridge, if you're still checking this thread, your Corpse Party review was top notch and a great read.

Opa, I bought a sealed copy of Mercenaries 3D last year. Now you mention the save file issue I remember the controversy, but I had completely forgotten about it over the years until reading your post. Now I'm glad I didn't buy the game used.

[PartridgeSenpai]

And Partridge, if you're still checking this thread, your Corpse Party review was top notch and a great read.

I'm kinda outta games to play to participate, but I'm absolutely still checking in on the thread. It's fun seeing what y'all are playing, and Noise's experience with Revelations is especially cool to walk through~

Thank you so much! It's one that I gave a bit more time to the prewriting phase of than a fair number of my other reviews, and I'm really happy how it came out ^w^

[noiseredux]

That armored boss was sad, tbh. All he did was charge attack... which by taking a few steps to the left or right you were a-ok. lol.

yeah he wasn't difficult or anything, but he was a bullet sponge.

Noise, I'm really enjoying your very appropriate episodic breakdown of Revelations.

I quite like the Revelations spin offs (Revelations 2 is among my favorites in the franchise) so it's good to see you're having a positive experience with the game.

Thanks, man!

...

cont'd...

It feels good to be halfway through the campaign, halfway through the month. As such, Revelations has turned out to be a pretty perfect Halloween game for me this month. It's not overly demanding of my time, with most episodes lasting somewhere between thirty and sixty minutes. It's exactly the kind of game that fits into my life right now.

Episode 7 was pretty cool... though not QUITE as memorable as some of the previous ones. Let's see... we had to make our way out to the deck and getting a little drone missile thing ready for launch. This was fine. But the end of this episode involved a ticking timebomb scenario. You know the classic countdown clock thing (think the opening of Super Metroid)? I like these kind of dashes of variance to the game. And the timer added some intensity to what was going on.

Also there was lots of zombies. LOTS of them. And Rachael - the zombie who had been running through air ducts earlier - came back and starting hunting me again Nemesis style. At one point I found a bazooka and hit her with it so I don't know if that'll do it. Probably not.

At any rate, it was a brief-ish episode but ended with a cut scene of a huge tidal wave hitting the ship which makes me think that I'm in for some more swimming...

[PartridgeSenpai]

I re-played through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow earlier today, and put my thoughts on it in the Beaten thread. A fantastic Casltevania game. Maru and I were chatting a bit in the Slack chat about it, and he noted that it was the first game after SotN where they REALLY got something that worked, and I second that.

On that note, I also picked up Circle of the Moon on the Japanese Wii U eShop today, after making the decision that I will finally finish this thing. I'm already farther than I've ever gotten in the game (could never beat the twin dragons before), but damn, this game is definitely as rough as I remember. The double-tap to run, lack of any kind of dashing to dodge, as well as how hard the DSS cards are to find (when they're by far one of the strongest parts of the game's design) are all making this game a lot harder to enjoy than it should be. I should be able to finish it after work tomorrow though.

I had a wonderfully frustrating experience earlier today though were I found a bug where I would just randomly take damage while walking around doing nothing. I thought it was invisible enemies all of a sudden until I found it was literally everywhere and also totally random. A reset fixed it, thank goodness. No way I was playing through the first 5 hours of this again Xp

[opa]

I still need to finish Revelations (I'm on chapter 8 or 9). Although I have been playing Mercenaries here and there. It's grown on me a little more than I thought it would. Being able to jump straight into the action for a few minutes scratches the zombie itch. If y'all haven't seen Barry's alternate costume for this game you ought to image search it if you need a laugh.