Anything that is gaming related that doesn't fit well anywhere else
User avatar
Ack
Moderator
 
Posts: 22287
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:26 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Ack Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:24 pm

1. Renegade Ops (PC)(Multidirectional Shooter)
2. Borderlands 2 (PC)(FPS/RPG)
3. Gunpoint (PC)(Puzzle Platformer)
4. Robotrek (SNES)(RPG)
5. The Tick (SNES)(Beat 'Em Up)
6. Alien vs Predator (SNES)(Beat 'Em Up)

I am greatly saddened by this Activision game because it is not the amazing Capcom arcade beat 'em up that I love and adore so much. Instead this game is muddied and ugly, with bland and repetitive music and sound effects. It doesn't have anything like the frantic three player action as Predators and cyborgs flip around unloading unholy laser death on hordes and hordes of xenomorphs.

Nope, instead I get two enemies on the screen at a time(and maybe a face hugger), and combat that is completely different and far more ground focused. In a way, it's actually rather nice that this and the arcade game are both in the same genre using the same property and even include some of the same weapons(the spear and disc), and yet they are so very different in their approach. The arcade game utilizes a lot of jumpkicks and the like. The console one instead favors sliding kicks which can instantly trip opponents, hit downed enemies, destroy eggs, and wipe out chest bursters and facehuggers with ease. Whereas the arcade is frantic, this game is much more methodical, and I found myself trying to trick AI for better positioning the entire time as opposed to jumpkicking my way in and following up with a quick combo. And the throws. Oh my God, the throws. The xenomorphs are practically leaping into your arms to be tossed around like rag dolls. And nearly everyone drops a weapon for you to use to beat down the next group of H.R. Giger nightmares you come across.

And you'll need it too, as the aliens start out quite tough and remain that way throughout the game. Quite a few have significantly better range or can simply run into you too fast for your attacks to connect. While Alien vs Predator is still quite beatable, it isn't easy and makes you work for it. And then the final boss comes along and causes you to completely throw out the ground game and resort to jump kicking, or else the Queen will maul you to death. In fact all of the bosses offer a new challenge, and they're quite nice to look at compared to the repetitive sprites of the base xenomorphs you find throughout.

So what's the verdict? This game isn't nearly as fun as the arcade title, but it is at least different enough to offer a new experience and isn't a pushover. It's a perfect length with some variance in level design that I enjoyed, though most of the time you simply have to walk to the right and few of the environments offer any sort of interactivity. It's mediocre, far from greatness but still very serviceable when compared to the crap at the bottom of the barrel for the SNES. Just don't go in hoping it's like the amazing Capcom game. You'll only feel disappointed.
Image
Flake
Moderator
 
Posts: 8063
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:27 pm
Location: FoCo

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Flake Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:42 am

1/3: Super Mario Bros 2: Lost Levels (Luigi Run) (3DS VC/NES)
1/4: Super Mario Bros. (Wii / All-Stars)
1/15: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
1/20: Super Mario Kart 8 (WiiU)
1/28: Super Mario 3D World (WiiU)
2/15: Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon (3DS)
2/15: Super Mario Land (3DS VC/GB)
2/16: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (3DS VC/GB)

This game. Yes, this game. A thousand times yes this game. Never before and never since in the history of sequels being a thing has there been a 2 in a series that was this much better than the original, to the point that it is difficult to qualify them as being related to each other.

There is so much wacky stuff in this game - the effort they put into it really shows. Original sprite work at a time where multiple developers (looking at you Konami and Capcom) were repurposing sprites from NES titles. Gunpei Yokoi and the Nintendo RD2 team even went so far as to incorporate elements from Super Mario World such as the spin jump. A lot of the designs for this game took advantage of the seriously zoomed in gameboy resolution - I think that before this game, iconic enemies like Goombas and Koopa Troopas had never been given such detailed artwork.

There's some parts where the game has developed a few rough edges. The controls are awfully floaty, the platforming is inconsistent and the gimmick of allowing you to collect a ridiculous amount of coins (something that seems to happen a lot in Mario portables) feels a little half hearted as you quickly end up with more coinage than you can actually spend on anything in game.

Beyond that, this is a bit of Mario History that I wish could get re-made or revisited in some way or form. Maybe when Wario gets his 25th anniversary in a couple years?
Maybe now Nintendo will acknowledge Metroid has a fanbase?
User avatar
MrPopo
Moderator
 
Posts: 23908
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:01 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by MrPopo Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:56 am

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC

I'm not sure how I feel about this game. I like the idea behind it of you being an evil overlord that wants to take over the world. I love how the level select screen shows the lands you conquer turning into foul pits and over time the skies redden. But I think the thing that brings it down in my mind is that it's a lot more of a puzzle game than a real time strategy. I think this is a consequence of the fact that the game doesn't give you direct control of your units like an RTS. You have three options for controlling your troops. The first is to possess a creature, which puts you into a first person view that's frankly not very workable. With a particular room you can have up to seven monsters following your possessed monster, so you can use this as a way of doing a strike. The second way is to use the Call to Arms spell, which attracts monsters within a radius. However, this spell costs gold if it's not cast in your own territory, which can make assaults an expensive proposition. Finally there's manually picking up and dropping your monsters. However, you can only do so on your own territory, so you'll need to have your Imps (workers) extend your territory up to the enemy base. All three are rather clunky, and you have a similar problem ordering around your Imps; they will dig out areas and then lay down territory and fortify walls, but it's based on a slightly arcane AI that you have some measure of influence on if you really work on it.

What ends up happening is most of the levels in the second half become puzzle levels where you need to figure out how to put yourself in a good position, then fortify up and get an overwhelming force. The hardest level in the game is the 17th level, where your dungeon starts off with a breach and there's no way to permanently seal it until you're ready.

It's certainly an interesting game and the general aesthetics really have a lot of fun with the theme of a dungeon master. One of my favorite things is how you can capture fallen enemy troops and torture them into giving up information or converting to your side. You're even encouraged to heal the torture victims so they don't die, as anyone will turn given enough time.

Well, on to doing some more levels in Descent (damn you Vulcan robots!) and maybe dig some more into FFX-2.
Image
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
User avatar
dunpeal2064
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 5350
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 12:55 pm
Location: Central Valley, California

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by dunpeal2064 Tue Feb 17, 2015 4:23 am

Ziggy587 wrote:Thing is, I don't own a TG. I'd be playing it on an emulator via the Wii. IIRC, there's a few choices for TG emulation on Wii. Any recommendations as to which is the best to use?


You can use mednafen to load the turbo-cd version of Ys Books I & II on the Wii. Runs like a champ (As does everything for the console I've thrown at it, even games like Sapphire that require the arcade hu-card).
User avatar
Damm64
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1592
Joined: Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:49 am

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Damm64 Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:22 pm

1- Heavenly Sword (Ps3)
2- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PS3)
3- Sonic Generations (Ps3)
4- Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (3DS)
5- Legend of Zelda: Link between worlds (3DS)

6- Castlevania: Mirror of Fate (3DS)
7- Pokemón Crystal (GBC)
8- Pokemón Fire Red (GBA
)

Well Mirror of fate ended up being fun and enjoyable not sure if its because my standarts where lower a couple of months later or because the section of Simon is lame, maybe a bit of both. Anyway Alucard and Trevor are much better with a double jump, wall jump, nicer weapons and magic and they actually have final boss battles. Do not bother with the "secret" ending that you get obtaining 100% on every chapter in the game... it's not worth it it should have been the normal ending.

Now two pokemon games in a row... well they're pokemon and two of my nostalgic and favorite games on the whole series. AT first i tried a nuzlocke on crystal and after a while i was like i want to use other pokemon and droped the challenge because reasons. I manage to do another semi challenge with fire red that made the game actually interesting for the start of the game. I selected the 6 pokemon's that would been on my team at the start of the game and i wouldn't use anything else until i got those pokemon. This dosen't sound so bad but all the pokemon i choose where avaible until after the second-third gym in areas like lavender town or the zafari zone. Beating your rival two times with a over leveled ivysur feel great.
noiseredux wrote:I don't lend shit and I don't borrow shit.

Image
User avatar
Fragems
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 5429
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2013 1:01 am
Location: Proctorville, OH

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Fragems Tue Feb 17, 2015 3:20 pm

1. Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition(PS4)
2. Infamous First Light(PS4)
3. Drakengard 3(PS3) *Endings 1-4. Ending 5 I watched online due to BS boss.
4. Infamous Second Son(PS4)
5. Thomas Was Alone(PS4)
6. Uncharted Drake's Fortune(PS3) *
7. Uncharted 2 Among Thieves(PS3) *
8. Uncharted 3 Drake's Deception(PS3) *
9. Deadpool(PS3)
10. Red Dead Redemption(360)
11. Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare(360)

Decent game, but I had a boat load of glitches again which made it a chore. The issue I had this time around was every 30 minutes to an hour the game decided it didn't want to load zombies anymore. So instead it would load invisible NPCs that only had their clothes rendered which was a very odd thing to see :lol: . Needless to say whenever that happened progression was impossible so I would have to restart and things would be stable for another hour or so till they popped up again. Really was enjoying it to since the story was pretty goofy, and yet the game was more challenging due to limited ammo supplies. Luckily the game was only 7-8 hours long including playing all the stranger side missions so I only had to restart it around a dozen times before I finished it however the constant glitching did drain a lot of fun out of the experience.
User avatar
Sarge
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 7276
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:08 pm

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Sarge Tue Feb 17, 2015 3:42 pm

Yeah, Mirror of Fate got a lot more flak than I thought it deserved. It wasn't an IGAvania, but it enjoyed it quite a bit.
User avatar
Stark
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 9585
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:43 pm
Location: Wylie, TX

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Stark Tue Feb 17, 2015 3:59 pm

Damm64 wrote:1- Heavenly Sword (Ps3)
2- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PS3)
3- Sonic Generations (Ps3)
4- Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (3DS)
5- Legend of Zelda: Link between worlds (3DS)

6- Castlevania: Mirror of Fate (3DS)
7- Pokemón Crystal (GBC)
8- Pokemón Fire Red (GBA
)

Well Mirror of fate ended up being fun and enjoyable not sure if its because my standarts where lower a couple of months later or because the section of Simon is lame, maybe a bit of both. Anyway Alucard and Trevor are much better with a double jump, wall jump, nicer weapons and magic and they actually have final boss battles. Do not bother with the "secret" ending that you get obtaining 100% on every chapter in the game... it's not worth it it should have been the normal ending.

I thought it was worth obtaining 100% just because it was fun. I agree the secret ending wasn't anything to sniff at.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
User avatar
bmoc
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1864
Joined: Thu May 19, 2011 1:36 pm

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by bmoc Tue Feb 17, 2015 4:11 pm

1. Radiant Historia
2. Halo: Combat Evolved (Master Chief Collection)
3. Halo 2 (Master Chief Collection)
4. Killer Instinct (Season 1 Story Mode)
5. 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

999 is a decent enough puzzle game but the fact that you have to run through the game multiple times for the "True Ending" ruined it for me. With the ending that I got (the Coffin Ending) I would have to complete the game two more times to get the True Ending. I decided to just read a synopsis of the other endings. The plot gets goes really bonkers with some of those endings. I am pretty sure that I won't be picking up the sequel any time soon unless I come across it dirt cheap.

I've been making an effort to burn through some of my portable game backlog. Think I am going to focus on the PSP for a while now starting with Tactics Ogre. However I misplaced my PSP charger so I am waiting on a replacement to arrive.
User avatar
Damm64
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1592
Joined: Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:49 am

Re: Games Beaten 2015

by Damm64 Tue Feb 17, 2015 4:49 pm

Stark wrote:I thought it was worth obtaining 100% just because it was fun. I agree the secret ending wasn't anything to sniff at.


I lost the spirit on completing the games at 100% when only i don't get something in game for such effort. But yeah if the game is great i will play it at 100% just for fun. I tried to do 100% on Simon alone and after founding thinking 5 times "now i have 100" im still 5% from gettin it. And i don't want to use a walkthrough so yeah the game will stay uncompleted :lol:
noiseredux wrote:I don't lend shit and I don't borrow shit.

Image
Return to General Gaming

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 30 guests