Games Beaten 2015

by **alienjesus** Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:24 am

First 50:

51. Deep Duck Trouble starring Donald Duck Game Gear
52. Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX 3DS*
53. Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush Wii U
54. Retro Game Challenge DS
55. Pop Island Paperfield DSiWare
56. Stranded Kids GBC
57. Bomberman 64 N64
58. Inazuma Eleven DS
59. Bust-a-Move 4 DC
60. Sega Bass Fishing DC
61. Mario Party 8 Wii
62. Sonic Chaos Game Gear
63. Sonic the Hedgehog SMS
64. Jet Force Gemini N64 *NEW*
65. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U DL *NEW*
66. Kirby's Ghost Trap SNES *NEW*

This weekend I beat 3 games. 2 of them were alphabet marathon games! It's good to make some progress again.

Jet Force Gemini

Jet Force Gemini was game J of my alphabet marathon.

Rare's output on the N64 is pretty legendary. Most of their games remain highly praised for tight controls, fun gameplay and tons of character - Banjo, Conker, Diddy Kong Racing, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark cheif among them.

There are also the other group of Rare games that are either not as well though of overall (Donkey Kong 64 - which I think is fantastic personally) or mostly forgotten (Blast Corps). Jet Force Gemini is one of this group.

Jet Force Gemini is a third person shooter with platforming and adventure elements, where you play as the Jet Force and help save a planet of cuddly koala-like Tribals from an evil army of killer ants. You mostly do this by shooting stuff.

The elephant in the room for this game is the controls, which are mostly regarded as awful nowadays. And I can understand peoples dislike of them, but I find them much better than the default control scheme of, say, Goldeneye for the same console, and once you get to grips with their foibles, they allow the game to play very fast and fluidly. You move around (and turn) with the control stick, strafe with c-left and c-right, and switch weapons with the d-pad, or, more commonly, c-up and c-down. By pressing R, you switch to aiming mode where you cannot move (other than by strafing), but you can more freely aim at enemies. This is essential from the outset and can confuse at first, but you quickly become accustomed to it and it works well. Of course, A jumps and Z shoots, with B relgated to making you duck down to crawl through gaps.

The aiming in JFG can be both twitchy and stubborn, which I understand seems an odd combo. The cursor moves quite fast, but if it doesn't go past a certain point you won't turn and the cursoer will pull back towards the centre. This can make aiming at distant enemies kinda twitchy, but I kinda like that as it feels more real somehow for it to be hard to hit distant foes. It makes sniping twitchy fun too. Some weapons have a homing function though, and there's some generous aim adjustment at work, especially outside of aiming mode that allows you to run n gun through large groups when need be.

Jet Force Gemini is one of those Rare games where it seems quite surprising what they slipped under the radar. Not Conker bad, but a little edgier than you might expect for the content. Enemies explode into showers of green goo, most lose their heads (which are a collectable), there's lots of silly British humour (one NPC rewards you for finding his pants) and some slightly suggestive text at times (like a lonely NPC who is delighted with the 'Specialist Magazine' you give him, asking you to 'lock the door on your way out'. As well as enemies dying, the cute cuddly koala guys also die very easily, and it's these guys who are the other elephant in the room for JFG.

After completing the inital story as all 3 characters (they have unique levels and a few unique skills) and 'defeating' the boss, he runs away and threatens your home planet. You now need to colelct 12 hidden ship parts in the levels, one of which requires you rescue all the tribals. Tribals are scattered around any level, with up to 16 on some levels. They can be killed by both enemies and you, and to rescue all tribals in a level, you need collect them all in a single attempt - no getting 5 and coming back for the other 5 later, you need all 10 in one go. One dies, sytart the level over. Plus, due to the unique skills of your characters, you may get 9 of the 12 tribals and figure out you need Vela to swim down and get the last 3, causing you to start over.

This mechanic is frustrating, and I personally recommend using a guide to at least tell you which character you need to be, as I did. That said, I rarely lost a tribal due to them dying, there's tons of new areas to explore in old levels and even a few cool new levels. The mechanic is a game lengthening collectathon (hooray, Rareware!) but it's still a ton of fun and I don't regret any of it. It does however make up 2/3rds of the game, so if it's not your thing, you might want to avoid this one.

JFG never takes itself seriously, even though it constantly presents it'self as doing so. It has serious dramatic cutscenes, but it's full of cheesy dialogue, bad puns, and characters with names like King Jeff and areas like the Big Bug Fun Club, a disco with dancing ants and arcade cabinets (which are playable - Rare love mini games). The ending has to be seen to be believed, it's so stupid. It's great.

Despite the flaws JFG has, and despite it not being considered the cream of Rare's crop, I loved Jet Force Gemini. It's fast paced, silly, fluid and fun, and I think it absolutely deserves to rank alongside Banjo Kazooie and Goldeneye as one of the defining games on the N64.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Kirby's Ghost Trap

by **Ack** Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:02 pm

First 50:

51. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (PC)(FPS)
52. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (PC)(FPS)
53. 9:05 (PC)(Text Adventure)
54. Mercenary Kings (PC)(Run and Gun)
55. Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (SNES)(Pinball)
56. Pinocchio (SNES)(Platformer)
57. Iron Brigade (PC)(Tower Defense/TPS)
58. Iron Brigade: Rise of the Martian Bear (PC)(Tower Defense/TPS)
59. Anachronox (PC)(RPG)

Oh, Anachronox, you are such a flawed gem of a game. I adore some portions of you and loathe others. I find you enticing, exciting, baffling, and enigmatic, brimming with wonderful ideas occasionally marred by execution or genre convention. You are at times both a great friend and a bitter enemy.

If you haven't noticed, I have some mixed feelings about this game. A part of me really does want to sing the games praises and expound upon why you need to play it, but...well, I just can't. The glaring flaws it possesses keeps me from being able to do so. There are problems here, ones I find significant enough to keep me from declaring this the top of the pile. Ones which I figured I should just go ahead and break down. But first, a note on the positives:

The story is marvelous and well-crafted, capable of reaching a variety of themes and intermixing light-hearted humor with dramatic intensity. If ever I have encountered a story that could hit all the points, this is it. Seriously, you get intrigue and betrayal, hidden sorrows behind masks of joviality, a neo-noir hero working alongside his femme fatale, alcoholic superheroes, a lesson in extreme democracy, religion vs. science(and science as pseudo-religion), rampant corporations, powerful criminal syndicates, prophecy, threats to multiple universes, and even a twist ending that will leave you shaking your head before the cliffhanger ending. I am in awe at how much game designer Tom Hall managed to fit into this, and I admit that all of it leaves me clamoring for more. It is a spectacular shame that a sequel never materialized, but what we do have features a cast of characters so intensely lovable that I will forever have fond memories of them. If this game had been an adventure game, I think it would have worked just as well.

Unfortunately it is not. Instead it is a hybrid of western game design in a JRPG, which makes for an interesting idea that unfortunately doesn't entirely hold up in execution. For one, it relies on a Final Fantasy-esque battle system, which means an attempt at an active time battle system. This means you'll be waiting...a lot. The camera occasionally likes to freak out during these waiting periods or during actions too. But combat also comprises of a grid to move around, meaning your melee characters may have to blow turns moving to get close to the enemy while potentially getting in the way of your range folks. This is at least partly mitigated by most characters using range weapons at some point or having special abilities which can circumnavigate this issue, but it is an issue nonetheless. These abilities also don't come with leveling but with performing secrets in the game, which must be explored continuously to be found, which ties into another issue...

...extensive backtracking. Some nights I would start up the game only to spend the next few hours retreading ground so I could get folks to certain places to talk to certain folks for a new weapon or ability. Each time I would then have to spend another ten minutes getting back to base to swap out characters so I could do it again. This quickly became a laborious chore as I tried to find all the secrets hidden within. I do not lament this portion being done. I also didn't end up finding everything either, meaning I missed out on a weapon for Paco, my aging depressed superhero. His best weapons involve you searching for obscure objects to grab or photograph from the start of the game, some of which are entirely missable. This is maddening.

Not only are these almost necessary benefits hidden, but the stats are obscure too. Your characters statistics are represented by bars, not numbers, with no real definition as to what they mean. Heck, the whole game is largely cryptic in its explanations of how things work and don't work. I had to have Popo explain the Elementor system to me because the game does a horrible job. Status effects also don't get much of an explanation, and I didn't figure out what some of them do until the final boss battle, when they became a crucial piece which artificial extended the game by half an hour for me. I like PAL, but he really let me down there. Actually PAL is probably the worst offender for some of the game's problems, as acquiring his best equipment involves letting the game sit for four hours at a time while he goes and plays. Seriously.

At the same time, PAL's minigame special ability was one of my favorites. Every character has a special ability they can use to attain secrets or occasionally further the plot, and all of them are upgradeable. Some are fun, like Boots' lockpicking minigame, and his upgrade is a huge improvement that effectively eliminates his time requirements. Unfortunately some of the other characters aren't nearly so great, particularly Paco and Stiletto. I loathed both of their minigames from the start, and upgrading them actually made them worse.

Ok, ok, I suppose I have leveled a lot of criticism at the gameplay here, but I don't want you to think I hated the game. No, actually, I really loved it. I do want to take a moment though and praise one particular aspect, which is character design. In fact, I want to praise one particular character, whom I will call the Big D. Big D is the greatest RPG character ever. I'm not kidding, the Big D is the reason why I want to play video games, because ideas that are utterly ridiculous can be executed with such awesome and incredible style and handled so well that it just seems normal. Unfortunately I don't want to ruin why the Big D is such an amazing character, so to find out, you are going to have to play Anachronox yourself. Really, if you love RPGs, you should at least give it a try. It has some massive problems, but the reward is a story worth exploring.

by **Exhuminator** Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:19 pm

As someone who put in multiple attempts at getting through Anachronox, having many hours playing it, I think your review is on the money Ack. This game would have been better of as an adventure title, rather than a hybrid RPG-adventure. While I enjoyed the characters and story quite a bit, there really was too much aggravating game design and contrived time bloating inconveniences to competently keep me hooked. Honestly the most fun insofar as actual gameplay I had involved this:

Anachronox really did have a cool story and lots of great humor, it would have made a great sci-fi mini-series TV show.

by **Ack** Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:29 pm

Exhuminator wrote:As someone who put in multiple attempts at getting through Anachronox, having many hours playing it, I think your review is on the money Ack. This game would have been better of as an adventure title, rather than a hybrid RPG-adventure. While I enjoyed the characters and story quite a bit, there really was too much aggravating game design and contrived time bloating inconveniences to competently keep me hooked. Honestly the most fun insofar as actual gameplay I had involved this:

The OX Table

Anachronox really did have a cool story and lots of great humor, it would have made a great sci-fi mini-series TV show.

Thanks, Exhum. I believe Anachronox is ultimately a great idea that struggles with its design. For those not interested in playing the game though, there is the movie.

Also...

by **MrPopo** Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:34 pm

I ended up giving up on most of the sidequests and backtracking because the game is fortunately easy enough that you don't need the best gear or anything like that. If you get the chests in the current dungeon and keep up with the store inventories you'll do just fine. But I agree that it's a shame that I felt it was more worthwhile to skip the heaps of optional content.

by **alienjesus** Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:23 pm

I think I'm gonna stop spoilering my reviews. It'll mean my posts are ridiculously long, but maybe people will actually comment on them.

by **BoneSnapDeez** Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:49 pm

I read most everything that's posted here but I don't always comment because I figure people won't read my comments. :lol:

by **MrPopo** Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:53 pm

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I read most everything that's posted here but I don't always comment because I figure people won't read my comments.

We do read them, but this is what we see:

BoneSnapDeez wrote:Ys ys ys ys ys ynots? ys ys ys

by **Ack** Tue Nov 03, 2015 8:09 pm

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I read most everything that's posted here but I don't always comment because I figure people won't read my comments.

If it's a reply to me, I read it. I'm interested in talking about what I beat, so if people engage with my thoughts, then I want to at least consider replying.

by **TSTR** Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:25 pm

I actually have a handful of games to add here, but I've been too lazy to type up something meaningful about them.

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