Games Beaten 2016

by **Exhuminator** Mon Sep 19, 2016 8:51 am

104. Umihara Kawase Shun: Second Edition|PS1|2000|platformer|37m|7/10

The Umihara Kawase series started on Super Famicom, continued onto the DS, and 3DS eShop and I think it's even on Steam now. I can't keep up with the ports. What I can tell you is that all of the games in the series are basically the same thing. You play as a high school girl walking around a strange aquatic themed world, filled with dangerous sea creatures who also walk around. To maneuver you must use your springy fishing rod to attach to surfaces and swing around. It's a bit like Bionic Commando, but more chaotic with weirder rubber band physics. You can also catch the sea creatures with your rod, and capture them into your backpack for points. To finish a level you must swing around, avoid getting killed by fish/spikes/bottomless pits, and find an exit door. It's simple in concept.

However understanding this game and playing this game successfully are very different things. The original Umihara Kawase is legendary for its difficulty, and the PS1 sequel is even harder. If you don't master this game's wonky physics and strange swinging mechanics, you'll never get far. And even then, there are wicked bosses to deal with. Honestly I enjoyed the Super Famicom original more than this PS1 sequel. The PS1's physics feel a little sloppier, and the polygon based levels sometimes obscure edges in a way that's not entirely fair to the player. What I did love was the OST. Both the PS1 and the SFC games have amazing chillax OSTs, that will help calm your nerves when you want to rage. And you will rage.

So if you're in the mood for a quirky and challenging platformer, give Umihara Kawase Shun: Second Edition a try. Play it on PS1 as an import, or import the DS version instead, which includes this game along with the SFC original. Even if you don't enjoy the gameplay, the music alone is worth it. And if you do enjoy the gameplay, these are games to be mastered for speed runs (there's a speed run system built in). Also a fair amount of replayability as there are multiple paths of progression, leading to different stages and bosses (this is true for the SFC original as well). I can't recommend this series to just anybody, but you true platformer lovers should try an Umihara Kawase game at least once.

For more information on the series: http://kawasefan.net/umihara-kawase-media

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How hard is this game? Well GameFAQs lists it as the number 3 hardest PS1 action game:

And here's what HG101 has to say about the first game's difficulty:

"The game is also draconian in difficulty. Everything kills you in one hit, bottomless pits haunt your existence, and the game demands incredibly crazy stunts just to barely survive. There's no continue or save game function, so once you're out of lives, you need to start from scratch. And yet it's all very possible with some practice; veterans can make this game look really easy, which seems a bit unfair to the rest of us amateurs, and it's a favorite amongst speed runners."

And what HG101 had to say about this more difficult sequel:

"Once again you must trust in your fishing pole to spring, bounce, pull, and swing you around every deadly corner. This game has more bottomless pits, more spikes, more stunts, and less mercy. In other words, the perfect update for fans of the original. The new gameplay challenges you to learn every old trick in a new way. Fortunately, once mastered, this game is actually easier for pulling off stunts. And that's a good thing too, because this sequel has no shortage of crazy challenges, especially if you take the more obscure paths."

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/umihara/umihara.htm

by **prfsnl_gmr** Mon Sep 19, 2016 11:33 am

First 50

51. Armillo (WII U)

After realizing that the second half of the game was too difficult for me to play in front of my children - they can only watch daddy attempt the same level so many times before they get bored - I finally pushed through Armillo. I am glad that I did because the game is a thoroughly charming 3D platformer that fans of this neglected genre should not miss.

Armillo - which is both a Wii U exclusive and only $8 in the eShop, BTW - is equal parts Super Mario Galaxy, Marble Madness, and Sonic Spinball (with just a dash of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes thrown in for good measure). In it, you control the titular character and, briefly, his brother, as he rolls around small planets and moons collecting orbs, rescuing his friends, solving basic puzzles, and fighting engaging in relatively challenging boss fights. He moves quickly, and controls wonderfully in a Marble Madness sort of way. (Some later levels throw a few control issues at you, similar to the famous "Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy" level in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. At that point, you realize just how well the game controls otherwise.) The game spans five galaxies, each with four worlds, and it can be beaten pretty quickly. You receive a medal each time you beat a level, however, and obtaining a gold medal in each level is quite challenging. (I gave up on that goal about half way through the game.) The game also has 20 hidden levels, and you must defeat at least eight of those to unlock the final boss. These levels are play in 2D, and IMO, were the game's weakest segments. (The controls in those sections are little too floaty, and the time limits are a little too strict.) Finally, the game has two "bonus" levels, one of which contains a completely unexpected - but nonetheless totally awesome - Shovel Knight cameo. (Seriously, it came out of nowhere, and it was as shocking to me as GladDos' cameo in Rush.) Accordingly, the game contains enough content to keep most experienced 3D platforming fans busy for quite some time, but not so much that it wear out its welcome.

The game also poses a modest challenge, and I had to <gasp!> restart some levels after failing them completely. Fortunately, the game allows you to spend the orbs that you collect on various upgrades (e.g., more life, more starting lives, more time in bonus areas, etc.), and these upgrades make the game more manageable.

Finally, while the game sounds great and has great atmosphere, it is not a graphical powerhouse and stutters occasionally. (Basically, it looks like a HD version of a PS2 game.) This did not bother me since the art direction was so solid, but those looking for a game to show off the Wii U's graphical potential should probably look elsewhere.

In sum, I highly recommend this game, and fans starved for quality 3D platforming action should not miss it.

by **ElkinFencer10** Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:09 pm

Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 96

January (20 Games Beaten)

February (8 Games Beaten)

March (8 Games Beaten)

April (13 Games Beaten)

May (6 Games Beaten)

June (13 Games Beaten)

July (7 Games Beaten)

August (15 Games Beaten)

September (6 Games Beaten)

96. The Witcher - GOG.com - September 19

I've been meaning to play this game for quite a while. I've had it on my GOG account for a year or two, but I've just never gotten around to playing it. With the release of the GOTY edition of The Witcher III and my refusal to start a series in the middle, I figured it was finally time to fire up the game and dive into the world of Geralt of Rivia. And my feelings on the game are mixed.

First and foremost, the game feels dated. That's not, by default, a problem with the game. It's one of those games that you probably won't notice feels dated unless you've played or seen gameplay of the later games (I haven't played II or III, but I've seen gameplay). It's like the original Mass Effect; most people won't have much negative to say about the first Mass Effect game aside from the god damn Mako, but once you play Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 3, you'll go back to the first one and think "Jesus Christ, how did I ever play this game?" That's the kind of dated that The Witcher feels like - it's not unplayable, and the game is still really fun once you get into it, but definitely feels like it's 8 years old.

You do, however, get a good bang for your buck. Being an older game and the first in a three game series, it's not terribly expensive these days, and you'll get a lot of gametime out of it. GOG Galaxy decided to stop tracking my playtime randomly halfway through and start up again just as randomly a few days later, so my playtime in the client isn't accurate, but I'd reckon I spent between 35 and 40 hours on the game. I didn't complete every side quest, but I'd say I definitely did more than half. Straight storyline, you'll probably get 25 or 30 hours out of the game; completionists will likely get 50+.

While the story is engaging (albeit a little slow to get going) and the characters themselves are interesting, the plot's biggest weakness - and this is a MAJOR weakness IMO - is the presentation. The writing for the dialogue is....okay....and the character animations are decent although not particularly convincing. The big problem is the voice acting. Dear god, the voice acting is atrocious. There will be parts that feel totally fine and like they got actually competent actors to do the dialogue, but then you'll get back to Geralt or Dandelion or one of the incidental characters, and you can just tell that the guy was reading straight from a script with zero fucks to give about the job. And that's really a shame because it seriously puts a damper on an otherwise immersive world. It also doesn't help that, outside of major plot-centric characters, you'll see the same four or five faces over and over and over and over again on countless different characters throughout the game. That's also kind of immersion-killing.

Mechanically, my biggest problems are the crafting and quest tracking. The crafting system - especially the weapon modifications with the blacksmiths - are extremely counterintuitive and have a steep learning curve. I never did figure out how to get the blacksmith to modify my weapons instead of just sell me other weapons or buy my extras. The quest tracking works well about 70% of the time, but the problem there is that the quests that it allows you to track (which is, I'd estimate, about 40% of them) sends you to a pre-set waypoint that doesn't necessarily indicate where your objective ACTUALLY is. I don't mean like it sends you to a dungeon and you have to scour the dungeon for the objective - that's fine. I mean like your objective is to talk to Dude A, so it sends you to his house, but then you find out that Dude A is off galavanting fuck knows where between noon and midnight so you have to either search high and low in hopes of stumbling upon this ass hole or trek back to the other side of the city just to take a nap and then go back to the OTHER side of the city to talk to him. It's not game-breaking by any means, but it is extremely irritating.

Now despite the crap I've given the game, I did thoroughly enjoy it. There are some serious performance issues that you need to iron out or deal with, though. There's no option for V-sync in the in-game video settings, and - at least on my monitor - there was MAJOR screen tearing that actually did render the game unplayable for me. Fortunately Nvidia's control panel let me force V-sync for all my programs across the board, but if you don't have something like that with your video card, you're kind of SOL. Even after fixing the screen tearing issue, I'd have some random stutters and frame rate drops as well as not-infrequent crashes (roughly one or two per 5 hour gaming session). Nothing that totally kills the experience, but it definitely didn't run as well as I'd have liked, and I had to get into the habit of saving more frequently than normal. I'm not sure what caused my issues, if it was just poor optimization in general or if it's finicky with Windows 10 or what, but a GTX 980 shouldn't struggled to keep a solid 60 fps in a game from 2008.

All in all, I'd definitely recommend The Witcher to fans of Western RPGs, but be aware that it's only available on PC; the console port was scraped for the first game. Also, for those of you with children who may see you playing, the Enhanced Edition on GOG has the censorship removed, so in addition to the usual fantasy game tits, there are definitely several furry tree nymph and vampire-lady vaginas with noticeable vulvae.

by **MrPopo** Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:48 pm

Re: the voice acting. Play with the Polish vocals.

by **Kuruwin** Tue Sep 20, 2016 12:51 am

39.King's Field (aka King's Field 2)

I was expecting this game to be relatively short (8-12 hour's) but it ended up being lot longer than that and it had the same problem than King's Field IV. Which is that the game just drags on. Both were enjoyable at first but eventually started to wear me down. King's Field 1 especially has that problem because there aren't just enough enemy types to go around and most of the places look barren.

But i did like that the game did have the same policy as Dark Souls which means the world feel's connected. You might have a valley area and you see like a ledge up somewhere and later on you run into that ledge and can see thing's from upper angle. It's very cool idea to create the games world this way and i would like to see it done more often.

The other positive that isn't really positive in a sense is that this game made actually appreciate the IV more. At this point King's Field really isn't the dark boding RPG that the series is made out to be. It does have some darker aspects but they didn't seem to have really focus on that until third or fourth game (though i haven't played the Japanese King's Field 1 so i can't say how that's like)

Good example of King's Field not being that dark is the ending that basically is

Anyways. It's still playable. Eventhough i have a poor sense of direction and eventhough the game is mazey i still didn't actually have to resort to a guide all that often. There was only two occasions i think where i had that "where the hell do i go now?" moment's and the few other occasions were due to missing a path so the game is lot more managable than other games like it.

by **Exhuminator** Tue Sep 20, 2016 8:17 am

Kuruwin wrote:I was expecting this game to be relatively short (8-12 hour's) but it ended up being lot longer than that and it had the same problem than King's Field IV. Which is that the game just drags on.

King's Field III is even longer. It can take about 30 hours without a walkthrough easily. I love these games though so the longer the better. :lol:

Kuruwin wrote:King's Field 1 especially has that problem because there aren't just enough enemy types to go around and most of the places look barren.

I didn't mind the barren look as I find that to be atmospheric, but that's all personal choice fair enough. If you want enemy variety definitely check out Shadow Tower, it has something like 150 different monster types.

Kuruwin wrote:At this point King's Field really isn't the dark boding RPG that the series is made out to be.

I'd still consider King's Field & King's Field II darker than the average JRPG, especially for their time. But compared to King's Field III & IV, it's true, King's Field II is leaning a bit more towards fantasy rather than fantasy-horror.

Kuruwin wrote:There was only two occasions i think where i had that "where the hell do i go now?" moment's and the few other occasions were due to missing a path so the game is lot more managable than other games like it.

The one complaint I'd add to that, is with the first two KF games, even normal doors are hidden due to lacking a proper texture 99% of the time. Finding doors can be a real pain, and secret doors (of which there are tons) are even harder to find. Thankfully KFIII got away from that and doors started looking much more pronounced.

While I don't think you enjoyed KFII as much as I did, I'm still happy to see somebody else not only play it, but also finish it. Congratulations, you have above average taste in gaming.

by **BoneSnapDeez** Tue Sep 20, 2016 1:51 pm

Nice write-ups on this page, guys. Y'all are getting through some hardcore games.

First 50:

51. Akumajō Dracula (Famicom Disk System)
52. Castlevania (NES)
53. Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance)
54. Guardian Heroes (Xbox Live Arcade)
55. Metal Slug (Neo Geo MVS)
56. Metal Slug 2 (Neo Geo MVS)
57. Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo MVS)
58. Soul of Darkness (DSiWare)
59. Code of Princess (3DS)
60. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
61. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
62. The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bōken (Famicom Disk System)
63. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC)
64. Shan Gui (Steam)
65. Space Fury (ColecoVision)
66. Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (ColecoVision)
67. Gateway to Apshai (ColecoVision)
68. MURI (Steam)

There are seemingly millions of "retro" indie platformers. What's sets MURI apart is that it's modeled after those old Apogee Software DOS games, rather than the NES classics. And it truly looks and feels like it could have come from that era. There's that same stuttery sort of movement, Sound Blaster styled sound effects (with minimal music), and big sprawling levels with both obvious and hidden power-ups scattered throughout. Hell, to quit the game you even choose "Exit to DOS" from the options menu.

Though the aesthetics may be pure Apogee, gameplay is a lot like Turrican. The protagonist is a robot of sorts who can only shoot left and right. Gun power-ups are numerous and activated automatically, with the game defaulting to the strongest weapon. There are four "missions" to get through, each broken into smaller sub-stages and concluding with a boss. Note that you can't save partway through a mission (in fact the only thing the game seems to save is high scores) but each one takes about 25 minutes or so to complete. That said, you can begin the game on any mission.

Indie platformers have a reputation for being tough as nails. Not MURI, the difficulty runs from fair to downright easy. With health refills and gun upgrades aplenty any genre vet should be able to roll through this during their first playthrough. If anything, the game is almost too easy. Certain weapons are essentially screen-clearers, no aiming involved.

The levels look fantastic. The game beings in a futuristic cityscape setting before diving down into subterranean depths (again, reminiscent of Turrican). The background is a Metroid-esque stark black throughout which adds to that desolate "lost in space" feeling.

Unlike those old DOS games, the controls here are perfect. Jumps are huge and floaty, though it feels comfortable as the levels are designed with this mechanic in mind. You can "lock" your gun in one direction and walk backwards while shooting, which is an immense help during certain boss fights.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It's really, really good. It's a nod to the retro scene without feeling like a rip-off or "ironic" tribute, and it lacks the obnoxious design that unfortunately characterizes so many of these games. Get it.

by **Sarge** Tue Sep 20, 2016 5:45 pm

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

September:

122) Xenoblade Chronicles X
123) Final Fight (ARC) (via Final Fight: Double Impact)
124) Magic Sword (ARC) (via Final Fight: Double Impact)
125) Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
126) Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty

A shortened, download-only chunk of R&C. It's fun for what it is, but dropping a lot of cash on it would not be advised. I happened to get it for free with Into the Nexus, so it worked out. It can be funny at times, but it's really missing some of the best parts of R&C: no Clank for your platforming, no purchasing of weapons (they're given at story-appropriate times), and no armor upgrades. Really, bolts are only pretty much good for getting through the progress-gate that is the Smuggler.

If you've got access, or just have to have some R&C and have exhausted all other possible avenues, it'll do.

(For the record, I think the series is grand, and is the closest thing to a modern 3D Mega Man that we will likely ever get.)

by **noiseredux** Tue Sep 20, 2016 8:54 pm

1. The Match Of The Millennium (NGPC)
2. Pocket Tennis Color (NGPC)
3. XCOM 2 (PC)
4. Street Fighter V (PC)
5. Spelunky (PC)
6. Gone Home (PC)
7. Day Of The Tentacle Remastered (PC)
8. Heroes Of The Storm (PC)
9. The Elder Scrolls Legends (PC)
10. Land's End (GearVR)
11. Hearthstone: League Of Explorers (PC)
12. Metal Slug (PC)
13. Broforce (PC)
14. Metal Slug X (PC)
15. Hearthstone: One Night In Karazhan (PC)
16. The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition (PC)
17. The Stanley Parable (PC)
18. Lucky's Tale (PC)

Anddd I beat my first Oculus Rift game. Lucky's Tale is fantastic. A super fun little 3D platformer. I didn't know how the genre would fare in VR, but it does so superbly. Lucky's controls are spot-on. I never felt like I wasn't in control of his jumps. It's not too tough until the last couple levels, and the final boss battle is awesome. I would say I recommend it though I assume anyone with a Rift has played it (since it came free).

HLTB · by **Xeogred** Tue Sep 20, 2016 9:17 pm

Sarge wrote:If you've got access, or just have to have some R&C and have exhausted all other possible avenues, it'll do.

(For the record, I think the series is grand, and is the closest thing to a modern 3D Mega Man that we will likely ever get.)

That's a funny comparison, as my roommate knows Mega Man is my bread and butter, and he loves R&C just as much. He got me onto R&C though and man, I freaking love the series myself now too. Still need to get the newest game which looks fantastic. The original was really rough going into a bit new (a year or two ago), so this redux/remake will be a nice replacement for that. Are you saying you've covered the rest of the games, or still have some left to check out? Into the Nexus was cool but kind of a weird, definitely a cheaper budget installment and shorter. I'm hoping the remake is a lot bigger in scope.

I hear the movie kind of sucked haha, pretty pointless in my opinion... but I'll check it out sometime.

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