Games Beaten 2016

[c0wb0y]

House of the Dead: Overkill - Wii
A neighbor and I have been playing through this on Sunday evenings for the last few weeks. About 3 weeks ago, we cleared the final level, got to the last boss fight and he said, "Well, I'm gonna go home and go to bed. Let's beat the boss next week."
Dude couldn't wait another 5 minutes to clear the game? Oh well.

So we picked back last night. We cleared the last level again, and beat the boss.

Liked:
Simple, mindless shooting. I have not watched any play through videos, so I'm sure I lack any finesse that could be applied to get better scores, but it was fun enough.
As the name implies, the story and foul language is overkill. I liked the pulp movie aesthetic.
Fun to play in co-op.

Didn't like:
Not enough variability between zombie types.
Playing this game, or most any other, on the Wii Zapper is not fun. Much better with the Nerf gun.

[ElkinFencer10]

House of the Dead: Overkill - Wii
A neighbor and I have been playing through this on Sunday evenings for the last few weeks. About 3 weeks ago, we cleared the final level, got to the last boss fight and he said, "Well, I'm gonna go home and go to bed. Let's beat the boss next week."
Dude couldn't wait another 5 minutes to clear the game? Oh well.

So we picked back last night. We cleared the last level again, and beat the boss.

Liked:
Simple, mindless shooting. I have not watched any play through videos, so I'm sure I lack any finesse that could be applied to get better scores, but it was fun enough.
As the name implies, the story and foul language is overkill. I liked the pulp movie aesthetic.
Fun to play in co-op.

Didn't like:
Not enough variability between zombie types.
Playing this game, or most any other, on the Wii Zapper is not fun. Much better with the Nerf gun.

This is one of my Top 5 Wii games, fer sher

[MrPopo]

You guys should pick up Typing of the Dead Overkill on Steam.

[c0wb0y]

You guys should pick up Typing of the Dead Overkill on Steam.

Nice suggestion. That was one of the games that I picked up when I finally committed to getting a Dreamcast! Very fun and unique.
Edit: I just saw the word Overkill at the end. I'll have to look into that. I picked up Typing of the dead on DC.

[Exhuminator]

Games Ex has beaten in 2016:

1. Mega Man ZX Advent|DS|2007|platformer|8h|7/10
2. King's Field III: Pilot Style|PS1|1996|dungeon crawler|1h|8/10
3. Sleeping Dogs|360|2012|action-adventure|20h 45m|8/10
4. Sleepings Dogs: NiNP DLC|360|2012|action adventure|1h 22m|5/10
5. Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS|GB|1992|shmup|33m|8/10
6. Vattle Giuce|GB|1991|shmup|45m|5/10
7. MechWarrior 2 (Clan Wolf)|PS1|1997|mech sim|2h 35m|7/10
8. Gradius: The Interstellar Assault|GB|1992|shmup|27m|8/10
9. SolarStriker|GB|1990|shmup|23m|7/10
10. Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|45m|6/10
11. Dead or Alive (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1998|fighter|23m|5/10
12. Asuka 120% Burning Festival Final (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|26m|8/10
13. Soul Blade (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|18m|9/10
14. Trax|GB|1991|shmup|23m|7/10
15. Street Fighter: The Movie (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1995|fighter|36m|5/10
16. Warpath: Jurassic Park (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|17m|4/10
17. Psychic Force (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|22m|7/10
18. Touki Denshou: Angel Eyes (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|27m|7/10
19. Advanced V.G. 2 (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1998|fighter|15m|8/10
20. StarHawk|GB|1993|shmup|1h 15m|4/10
21. Nemesis|GB|1990|shmup|28m|7/10
22. Cardinal Syn (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1998|fighter|54m|7/10
23. Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|15m|7/10
24. Street Fighter EX 2 Plus (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|22m|8/10
25. Battle Unit Zeoth|GB|1991|shmup|24m|6/10
26. Soul Calibur IV (Arcade Mode)|360|2008|fighter|12m|9/10
27. Mercenary Force|GB|1990|shmup|54m|5/10
28. Battle Arena Toshinden (Story Mode)|GB|1996|fighter|12m|8/10
29. Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior's Dreams (Arcade Mode)|GBC|1999|fighter|10m|7/10
30. SD Hiryu No Ken EX (Story Mode)|GBC|1999|fighter|24m|7/10
31. Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2002|fighter|8m|6/10
32. Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Revival (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2001|fighter|10m|7/10
33. Dual Blades (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2002|fighter|23m|4/10
34. Gradius Galaxies|GBA|2001|shmup|1hr 24m|8/10
35. Tekken Advance (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2002|fighter|15m|7/10
36. Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2002|fighter|22m|7/10
37. Black Belt Challenge (Arcade Mode)|GBA|2002|fighter|8m|4/10
38. Iridion II|GBA|2003|shmup|58m|9/10
39. King's Field III|PS1|1996|dungeon crawler|25h|9/10
40. Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel|360|2013|cover shooter|7h 54m|7/10
41. Panzer Dragoon|Saturn|1995|rail shooter|55m|7/10
42. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei|Saturn|1996|rail shooter|1h 25m|8/10
43. Kirby Air Ride|GameCube|2003|kart racer|45m|6/10
44. Mario Kart: Double Dash!!|GameCube|2003|kart racer|35m|8/10
45. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury (Arcade Mode)|GameCube|2002|fighter|35m|8/10
46. XG3: Extreme G Racing|GameCube|2001|racer|1h 35m|7/10
47. Mario Kart 7|3DS|2011|kart racer|1h 54m|9/10
48. Code of Princess|3DS|2012|beat 'em up|4h 25m|7/10
49. Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy|3DS|2011|flight sim|3h 42m|7/10
50. Crimson Shroud|3DS|2012|JRPG|6h 55m|7/10
51. Gunman Clive|3DS|2013|platformer|54m|7/10
52. Gunman Clive 2|3DS|2015|platformer|1h 30m|7/10
53. Attack of the Friday Monsters!|3DS|2013|adventure|3h 2m|8/10
54. Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception|PSP|2006|flight combat|2h 25m|8/10
55. Ace Combat: Joint Assault|PSP|2010|flight combat|6h 26m|4/10
56. Nayuta: Endless Trails|PSP|2012|action-RPG|16h 03m|8/10
57. Alpha Protocol|360|2010|action-RPG|12h 20m|5/10
58. Makai-Mura Gaiden: The Demon Darkness|Game Boy|1993|action-adventure|6h|7/10
59. Hangman|Atari 2600|1978|puzzle|15m|8/10

60. Beneath Apple Manor|Apple II|1978|roguelike|2h 28m|9/10
(I didn't beat the Special Edition, but I like this cover better than the original.)

Well guys and girls, to prove I'm the most casual gamer on the forum, today I beat a text based roguelike from 1978.

In all seriousness, beating this game was hard as hell on multiple levels. First off, just getting ahold of the proper 1978 version of Beneath Apple Manor was a beast. Then getting it to emulate properly involved contacting an Apple II computer specialist who lived in Australia. Lastly finding the 1978 manual for the game was not exactly a piece of cake either. Then I had to read the manual just to figure out how to play the game, considering the interface uses something like 28 mapped keys just to play.



So what is Beneath Apple Manor?

The short story is it's one of the first, if not the first, commercially available CRPGs. What's more, is that despite playing like a roguelike, Beneath Apple Manor actually released two full years before Rogue. No joke! We should be calling roguelikes beneathapplemanorlikes.

"I am the author of Beneath Apple Manor. It was released two years before Rogue came out. I was not influenced by Rogue (didn’t see it until something like 1983) and so far as I know the Rogue guys up at UC Berkeley hadn’t seen BAM either. We probably both came up with the same idea independently. But at least I can say Rogue is 'Beneath Apple Manor like'." -Don Worth (creator) http://www.roguetemple.com/category/rogue/

Anyway, this game has some serious history, which is already covered in these fine articles:

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2012/12/ ... -1978.html

http://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2015 ... ctory.html

https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/review-i ... ple-manor/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Apple_Manor



I originally started playing this because I wanted to beat a game older than I am. Considering I'm a pretty crusty bastard (by video game age standards), finding a game that was deep enough to keep my interest, but also fun enough to want to play, wasn't as easy as I'd thought. Luckily Beneath Apple Manor is a LOT of fun to play, once you get over its initial fairly steep learning curve. Of course, you can forget such pleasantries as nice graphics, good music, or decent controls. I actually ended up playing the 1978 version in text only (ASCII) graphics. Because seeing a $ symbol as a treasure chest was easier than say a gold block, for me anyway.



So what's the game like? In Beneath Apple Manor you enter a dungeon and seek out a Golden Apple. To beat the game, you must find the Golden Apple. To get it, you'll have to endure difficult randomly generated dungeons, in which you will die a lot. Yes you can find new gear, including magical gear, as well as buy gear. But there are plenty of random traps and monsters to kill you every time you turn around. You'll need to find hidden doors, wisely spend experience points, and remember that GHOSTS are a bigger pain in the ass than DRAGONS.



Despite how hard this game can be, I still loved it. I was consistently blown away by how complex a 38 year old CRPG could be. And although it took me many, many tries to finally successfully get the Golden Apple, I never got too frustrated. (BTW my completion time above only represents the final successful run I got.) Beneath Apple Manor deserves more recognition then it gets, hell it deserves a modern remake if you ask me. What started as a pure curiosity piece for myself, ended up being a legit fun game to play and finish. To top it all off, Beneath Apple Manor has a hilarious twist ending that I won't spoil. If you're willing to brave nearly 40 year old technology, read a complex instruction manual, and die many many times losing all your progress over and over, you too can find bliss in historical gaming.


You better believe I took it!

[Key-Glyph]

01. MagMax (NES)
02. World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (GEN) [2-player]
03. Sonic Spinball (GEN)*
04. Sonic Spinball (GEN)* [complete]
05. Comix Zone (GEN)*
06. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
07. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project (NES)
08. WCW World Championship Wrestling (NES)
09. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
10. Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
11. Wario Land: Shake It! (Wii)
12. Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)

13. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (GEN) [2-player]*

My bestest childhood pal and I decided to tackle Hyperstone Heist again, as we have done many times before. This time, though, we decided to kick off to our own Let's Play series by filming ourselves doing so. I wound up creating two shortish video compilations of our favorite moments, so if you're interested in watching us sing along to VGM or pretend the Mountain Dew we're drinking is mutagen, please do!

Links to the YouTube videos: Part 1 | Part 2

14. Gunstar Heroes (GEN)

So, I went to a gaming convention called Retropalooza this past weekend, which was in Texas. Hobie-wan was kind enough to house me and chauffeur me around for a few days, but perhaps even more graciously, he went into his Cartridge Vault and let me play a bunch of games that I've been super curious about but might never drop the cash for (or at least not before test-driving first).

One such game was the beloved Gunstar Heroes.

We started off by trying it co-op, which was fun, but confusing. We kept unintentionally tossing the other's Gunstar twin around, which, while admittedly hilarious, was not very effective in our untrained use of it. We moved on to other games for a while.

Later, Hobie was catching up on some record-keeping, and Gunstar was still rattling around in my brain, so I decided to pass a few moments working on it again. I didn't really intend to beat it in one sitting, but... I got Involved. It didn't help that I perpetually thought the game was going to be over in five minutes, either. It went something like this:

"There are only four stages. No problem. Oh man, except for this dice crap."
"Oh, well, okay, so here's a boss rush, so I've got to be done now."
"Okay, here's a new boss to cap it off, so now I REALLY must be done."
"Oh, um, here's an entirely new level then..."
"ALL RIGHT. THIS must be the final FINAL boss! YEAH!"
"Oh..."

I really enjoyed almost every minute of it (read: that dice crap!), but since I had such a limited window of time to play it in, I was getting stressed about how long the game was instead of loving it for being so vast. This just means that I'll savor it when I revisit it someday.

And I only beat it on Normal, so I still have two difficulties left to master, I think!

* = replay

[noiseredux]

y'know I like Gunstar Heroes, but if someone asked me for my tl;dr opinion of it, it would "that game's too long." So...

[prfsnl_gmr]

1. Ultimate NES Remix (3DS)
2. Space Invaders Infinity Gene (iOS)
3. World of Goo (iOS)
4. A Dark Room (iOS)
5. Shovel Knight (WII U)
6. The Room (iOS)
7. Mega Man 10 (PS3)
8. The Room Two (iOS)
9. Braid (PS3)
10. Kung Fu Fight! (WII U)
11. Kung Fu Rabbit (WII U)
12. Escape Goat (360)
13. Canabalt (iOS)
14. Leo's Fortune (iOS)
15. King's Field: The Ancient City (PS2)
16. Grim Fandango Remastered (iOS)
17. Dust: An Elysian Tale (360)
18. Shantae (GBC)
19. 3D Space Harrier (3DS)
20. 3D After Burner II (3DS)
21. 3D Classics: Kid Icarus (3DS)
22. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (GB)
23. Shantae: Risky's Revenge Director's Cut (WII U)
24. Final Fantasy Adventure (GB)

Shantae: Risky's Revenge improves upon everything I liked about the original Shantae and fixes everything I didn't like about it. In short, it is a superior game in every way. (If Shantae is Castlevania II, then Shantae: Risky's Revenge is Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.) It is fun and engrossing, and it is challenging without being frustrating. The sprite work and music are fantastic, and the game is overflowing with personality. It deserves all of its accolades, and it is one of WayForward's very best games. I highly recommend it, and I am very excited about playing through its sequel later this year (and, if we're lucky, it's sequel's sequel!).

I intended to play through Final Fantasy Adventure as part of the Summer Games Challenge, but in my excitement, I started and finished the game too quickly. It is a fun, engrossing, 10-15 hour ARPG that laid the groundwork for at least two excellent sequels. If you have played through The Secret of Mana, you will recognize many of its gameplay conventions (e.g., AI-controlled partners) and unique enemies (e.g., the ducks with helmets). I enjoyed it immensely, but I nonetheless recognize that it is a bit primitive and might not appeal to everyone. First, the game's complex combat mechanics require you to change weapons and items constantly, resulting in a lot of time spent navigating the game's menus. (The Secret of Mana addressed this issue creatively and successfully.) Second, the game's translation is very poor, and the game's objectives are often unclear. (I solved one of the game's most notorious puzzles entirely by accident, but I can understand why people would be frustrated by it.) Finally, I think - but am not entirely sure - that it is possible to make the game "unwinnable" in the final section if you do not bring the right supplies (i.e., keys) with you. I was well-prepared for the (completely unmarked) "point of no return" but would have been immensely frustrated if, halfway through the final dungeon, I realized that I had to start the game over again because I forgot to leave a basic item in my inventory. Accordingly, I recommend this game to anyone looking for a fun, portable ARPG, but I also recommend that anyone attempting this game read up on it a bit first to avoid unnecessary frustration.

[flash1987v2]

Had to change username, so just a repost of my list so I can find it again:

1. Grim Dawn (PC)
2. Dragon Ball GT: Transformation. (GBA)
3. Sunset Riders (MAME)
4. Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Fightcade)
5. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows over Mystara (MAME)
6. Mystic Warriors (MAME)
7. Hero Siege (PC)
8. One Way Heroics (PC)
9. Golden Axe (MAME)
10. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (MAME)
11. Strikers 1945-3 (Android)
12. Strikers 1945-2 (Android)
13. X-COM 2 (PC)
14. Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor (PC)

[BoneSnapDeez]

Didn't know you could get Shantae: Risky's Revenge on Wii U. I have the DSiWare original, I appreciate that a lot of that stuff can still be found on the 3DS eShop. I've been meaning to play through that series as well, especially as I now have that third game thanks to the recent Humble Bundle.

And yes, Final Fantasy Adventure is good but kinda janky. It's two subsequent sequels outshine it in ever way - they're two of the best ARPGs ever made, really.