Ah, true, I was thinking of Mankind Divided but derped the name.
I think the point stands with HR compared to the original game as well, to a point, but Mankind Divided was even worse with regard to just doing more of the same. I replayed Dishonored and then the DLC right before 2, and I can agree that it's maybe a little more familiar than it could be. Especially with regard to the DLC. There are new things to it as well though.
Games Beaten 2017
Re: Games Beaten 2017
PartridgeSenpai wrote:I've never really been a fan of Metroid Prime, but if it's Doom 4-y, I might have to check it out. I just don't really enjoy playing FPS not on PC, generally, so I've never really given it too much of a chance despite having owned the trilogy on Wii for YEARS
Prime is not an FPS; it's a first person adventure game. There is a fantastic lock on system for all the actual shooting; while you can manually aim that general is just to help you pick a specific thing to lock on to when there's several in your near view (or if you're speedrunning and want to sequence break some bosses).
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
-
alienjesus
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 8776
- Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:10 pm
- Location: London, UK.
Re: Games Beaten 2017
Games Beaten:
1. 3D Power Drift 3DS
2. Maze Hunter 3-D 3DS
3. Hyrule Warriors Legends 3DS
4. Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly PC
5. Paper Mario N64
6. Catherine PS3
7. Glover N64
8. Blast Corps N64
9. Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! Switch eShop
10. Pullblox 3DS eShop
11. Pokémon Picross 3DS eShop
12. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
13. The Legend of the Mystical Ninja SNES
14. Alisia Dragoon Mega Drive
15. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master Mega Drive
16. Dynamite Headdy Mega Drive
17. Runbow Wii U eShop
18. The Mystical Ninja starring Goemon N64
19. 3D Puyo Puyo 2 3DS
20. Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa 3DS
21. SteamWorld Dig 3DS eShop
22. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch
23. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped PS1
24. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time GC
25. Pilotwings 64 N64
26. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones GBA
27. Puyo Puyo Tetris Switch *NEW*
28. Life Force NES *NEW*
29. Bionic Commando NES *NEW*
30. Bonk's Revenge TGCD *NEW*
Replays!:
1. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
2. Die Hard Arcade Saturn
3. The World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Mega Drive
Puyo Puyo Tetris
Puyo Puyo is a series and I love and hate. I've chronicled my experiences with the series in these threads over the past few years, and my general analysis has been 'This game is great, but it's way too hard'. However, Puyo Puyo is still one of my favourite puzzle game series.
I've never been a fan of Tetris - I find it tedious, and the lack of elements like chaining means I also find it lacks diversity in play - you just clear lines over and over because what's the incentive to set up higher than a 4 line clear anyway. I also hated the randomness of it - the L block never arrives!
Well, Puyo Puyo Tetris is a game that manages to take my thoughts of both series, solve many of my issues, and also provide a stupid, fun story and a set of particularly crazy alternate play modes that mix up the gameplay to create something really special.
The story of Puyo Puyo Tetris is incredibly silly and light hearted, and features the main characters of various Puyo Puyo series (most of whom I didn't recognise, as I've only played the Madou Monogatari era version of the series previously) all getting thrown together and then teleported to a starship where a bunch of Tetris themed characters (named Tee, Ess, O, Zed, Elle etc after the block shapes) reside, and then a bunch of crazy hijinks™ ensue. The story is ridiculously pointless and stupid, which is to say it's wonderful. Sometimes it drags out a bit too long, but the stupidly written humour and complete lack of taking itself seriously is fun and fits nicely with the game.
Gameplay in Puyo Puyo Tetris takes many forms. As well as the classic single player Tetris and head-to-head Puyo Puyo, you also play head-to-dead tetris and single player Puyo Puyo. On top of that, there is burst mode, a mode where you clear lines of tetris blocks in rapid succession or trigger pre-set Puyo combos as quickly as you can to deal damage to the opponent. In addition, you can play Puyo against a Tetris player or vice versa. Finally, there are 2 modes where you play both games - Swap mode, where you switch from a Tetris grid to a Puyo-Puyo grid every 20 seconds or so, and the ridiculous fusion mode, where tetris blocks and puyo blobs both fall into the same board.
Puyo works pretty much as it always has - trigger combos to drop garbage blocks on the opponent or to counter their combo. However, if like me you basically haven't played Tetris since the Game Boy, there are lots of changes to learn on the Tetris side of things. First off, you can always see where your tetris block will land at the bottom of the screen. This is useful because you can hit up to fast drop the tetris piece into that position, skipping the falling animation. However, this prevents rotation of the block once it lands, which is important for getting the best attacks off on your opponent. Othher important Tetris changes include the fact that you can 'bank' one block for later - either to save a useful piece like a T block or an I block for when it's most useful, or to remove a difficult piece that is being dropped if there's nowhere good for it to go. And the final significant Tetris change, and probably the most important for me, is that Tetris is no longer 100% random. In any set of 7 Tetris blocks, you will encounter exactly one of each shape - T, I, O, S, Z, L and R. The order is randomised, but in the first 7 you'll get 1 of each, and in blocks 8-14 you'll get another one of each and so on. This means it's possible to plan for certain pieces because the odds of them showing soon are fairly high.
Attacking in Tetris mode in head-to-head battle can be done in many ways too. Clearing lines is one way, with Tetrises being an abovious good method to attack that results in reasonable disruptions. However, I often found it better to attack using combos - clearing a line on each successive turn, which is best done by leaving 2 empty rows at the side instead of one. The final way to atack is the T spin, where you use rotation to mnove a T block into an otherwise impossible to get to position. This is the best way to attack, but was way too complicated for me to figure out!
Fusion mode is a very odd mode where many mechanics have to be utilised together. You must clear tetris blocks using lines as always, and puyos by matching 4. Some pieces from the skyfall swap between puyos and tetriminos and will be determined by which they are upon landing. Tetris pieces will 'crush' puyos they land on, dropping through them all until they reach the bottom of the board, or hit another tetris block. However, the crushed puyos will then drop back from the top of the board. If you fast drop the tetris block, it'll instantly crush all the puyos, but if you drop it normally, it'll slowly drop through the layers of puyos one by one, whilst you continue to place other pieces above, next to or even below it as it falls. It's a lot to take into account, and it's pretty complicated to get your head around.
In terms of difficulty, Puyo Puyo Tetris is much easier than the old Puyo Puyo games, but it still has some bite to it. I've heard some people complain that the Puyo stages were too hard, but personally I had way more trouble with the Tetris levels, so your mileage may vary. My main issue with the single player mode was the diversity of play styles - in 6 worlds, the first world is Tetris focused, the 2nd is Puyo focused, and then they start to mix it up. Very few Swap mode matches appear until the 3rd world, and Fusion mode is pretty much exclusively for the last world, meaning it's a bit of a learning curve once you get there. The game is fairly short and not too difficult though so it's not a major issue.
Puyo Puyo Tetris is a really gun mash up between one of the greatest puzzle games ever and Tetris
. It's also probably greater than the sum of it's parts, and if you like Puzzle games, I think it's a must own. Definitely buy it.
Life Force
Life Force was the 4th game I played for my summer marathon, and I'll cut to the chase on it straight away: I cheated to finish this one, no I don't care about 1CC discussion nonsense, we've been through this before. I'm counting it as beat anyway.
Life Force is a horizontal AND vertical shoot 'em up for the NES. It's a spiritual successor or something to the Gradius series, but I don't know about all that. The NES version features the Gradius power-up system, so at the very least this version plays similarly.
In Life Force you fly your ship to the right (on odd numbered stages) or to the top of the screen (in even numbered stages) whilst shooting at enemies who are out to destroy you. You die in a single hit, and dying removes all of your power ups. To gain power ups you defeat specific enemies or groups of enemies who give you an icon, which when collected moves your power up meter up one bar. You can then cash in the meter to buy the currently highlighted power up, but doing so sets the meter back to 0. The meter goes in the following order: Speed > Missile > Ripple > Laser > Option > Shield. Speed increase your flight speed and can be powered up many times. More than 2 is too unwieldy though, so I would recommend keeping it set to 1 or 2 max. Missile launches missiles in an arc up and down from your ship and can be powered up twice. Ripple swaps your pea-shooter default gun for an expanding ripple shot which makes it easier to hit stuff, and laser swaps it for a piercing laser that does heavy damage and keeps moving if it hits an enemy, rather than disappearing. They replace each other, but ripple is shit, so you just want to get laser instead. Laser can be powered up too, allowing it to shoot faster. Options create little orbs that fgollow you ship and shoot the same stuff you do - lasers, missiles, ripples, whatever you had. You can have up to 2. And finally, shield blocks damage inflicted on your and stops you dying. Except it doesn't.
One of the coolest things about Life Force is that the environments are often very organic feeling - stage 1 is a fleshy mess with teeth that crawl out of the walls, fleshy walls that grow outwards and block your way and more. The problem with this though is that they often use this to instantly kill you. Didn't know the walls up ahead would close in on your completely blocking the path? Tough, fly into them and die. Didn't know the wall hear would grow over your ship and instantly kill you? Tough, remember it for next time. This continues throughtout every level of the game, and it doesn't gel with the game menchanics for me. That shield that is the hardest power up to get? It's worthless. It doesn't protect you from environmental damage or things flying directly into you, and 98% of things that kill you in life force fit into those categories. Once you die, you might aswell reset the game too, because outside of the openings of levels there is almost nowhere to power up, and outside of level 1 it's difficult to even do so at the start of levels anyway.
Playing Life Force legitimately wasn't any fun, but the game itself is in general. And so I cheated. 1 save state at the start of each level, and if I died, I reset to the start of the level. By doing that I managed to progress through and see all the game and had a fun time doing so. Any other way, I hated Life Force.
Life Force is not a game I recommend. I find it to be too punishing to players when they die to things they could never have possibly even seen coming - the isntant kills are rarely telegraphed. Replaying an entire game every time it happens is just a miserable experience, and that's how I'd describe the game unless you cheat. Miserable. I'm done with Konami's Gradius series and related games I think, it's just don't have fun with them being so punishing. I'm glad to be done with this one.
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando was the 5th game I played for my Summer Challenge list, and it was a breath of fresh air after trudging through Life Force. At first I suspected the worst as the game introduced itself with one hit deaths at a time when you're trying to get the hang of the grappling mechanics, but if you know what to do, you can very quickly change that.
Bionic Commando is an action platformer for the NES where you run around levels shooting enemy soldiers in search of the bases core, which you must shoot to finish the level. Bionic Commando has some interesting gimmicks to make it stand out though, the main one being that rather than jumping, your character swings around using a bionic grappling arm. You can latch on to solid surfaces above you and either swing over gaps or use it to pull yourself up to higher ground. The game is well designed around making you use this mechanic, with obstacles that would be easier in other platformers posing a unique challenge when you can't jump.
Bionic Commando also features a map with branching paths which lets you choose where to go next. Some parts of the maps require items from other levels, and each level you beat offers a new reward, so exploring is worthwhile. Items to find include new guns such as a short range spread shot, a powerful rocket launcher or a rapid fire machine gun, an item which lets you take one free hit before taking damage, different communication devices to find new info in certain areas, and an item which lets you heal yourself once per level. You meager 1 hit point at the start of the game can also be increased by picking up bullets enemy soldiers dropped, with 8 being the maximum health. Knowing this makes the game easier as you can easily grind for 3 or 4 health or more on the first stage using respawning enemies to make the game easier. On the map are also enemy trucks, which when encountered switch the gameplay to an overhead perspective like the original Commando. These are short an easy, but each overhead stage offers 2 continues to acquire, and the trucks respawn endlessly, so game overs are not a concern in Bionic Commando after stage 1.
The difficulty in Bionic Commando mostly feels fair, besides a few levels where some very specific swinging is required. The worst of these is a stage where you must swing from lampposts to land on others before latching on for another swing, but the curved tops of the lights seem to randomly make you fall either left or right. I never really mastered the level, but some brute force got me through it. Otherwise the game is fairly easy once you get powered up, and even the bosses are rarely a concern. Interestingly, they can pretty much all be ignored, as they appear in the room with the bases core, so if you rush past them and destroy the core first you can avoid the fight.
The story of Bionic Commando has you as Radd Spencer, fighting the Badds, an army who want to revive Master D., the evil leader of their army who died previously, whilst also rescuing Super Joe, the main character from the Bionic Commando arcade game. Most of you will know that this is just a localisation change, and in Japan the man being revived is in fact Hitler. Luckily, you get to blow up his head at the end, so all's well that ends well I guess!
Bionic Commando is a really fun game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has some patience for NES era games. It has a learning curve, and a few odd difficulty spikes, but overall it's a unique and fun experience and I enjoyed it a lot.
Bonk's Revenge
Bonk's Revenge was the 6th game I played for my Summer Challenge. It's a platformer for the PC Engine/Turbografx and I played the version included on the Gate of Thunder 3 in 1 disc for the Turbografx CD (yes I know there's actually 4 games on there).
Bonk's Adventure was a game I picked up way back when when Virtual Console had just started on the Wii. I liked the game well enough, but felt it was a little bit clumsy and clunky, and that you'd oftern take an awful lot of hits from things. Bonk's Revenge in all honestly does little to fix those issues. Whilst it manages to up the game in terms of level design, I had a consistent issue with the responsiveness of the controls and the hitbox of the jumping headbonk attack, causing me to miss jumps or take hits that I shouldn't have.
Bonk's Revenge has all the normal platforming staples - run and jump through a colourful world whilst defeating enemies. Unlike Mario or Sonic, Bonk can't jump on enemies to defeat them, but he can get around it by using his head (lol). The II button (where B would be on NES) lets you headbutt enemies, and by using it the air you can flip upside down and land on enemies head first. In addition, because your head is how you hurt things, you can actually jump up into enemies from underneath to damage them too. A rather bizarre mechanic of the game is that by flipping the turboswitches up and holding the bonk button in midair, Bonk will spin around repeatedly, slowing his descent dramatically and letting you glide incredibly ungracefully though the levels. Unlike Bonk's Adventure though, it's not easy to skip whole levels with this, due to both a less flat and linear level design and the fact that they've slowed down the spinning, making you descend much more quickly than the first game.
Bonk does control inelegantly, but it does kinda fit for his character, as he isn't especially graceful in general. He climbs up walls with his teeth, erupts with power after eating meat, foams at the mouth upon death in the first game, and when powered up he has a butt for a head and is called butthead bonk (and you thought my earlier joke was bad. Now it's all come to a head (lol)). That's only in the US version, in Japan he dresses in makeup and blows kisses instead.
Anyway, the bad guy did something bad and so Bonk heads (lol) out to defeat him and save the day and the moon and the princess and whatever. The level designs here are much prettier and more varied than the first game, and the boss fights are far fairer and less like hitting your head against a brick wall (that one wasn't even deliberate). Whilst the graphics are colourful and large and attractive, the music is pretty bland and won't stick in your head (that one was).
Bonk's Revenge is fairly modest difficulty wise - it isn't easy, but if you take the time to hunt out the bonus stages (which you get taken to upon finding a certain type of flower) and master them, you can quickly stockpile more lives. It's no pushover, but don't expect it to make you suffer either.
I really struggled to write this review for Bonk's Revenge, and thats because I don't find the game all that notable. It's a decent little platformer, but there are plenty better in the 16 bit generation. Pick it up if you can, but don't go out of your way.
My review: Bonk's Revenge: It's OK. Not worth losing your head over.
1. 3D Power Drift 3DS
2. Maze Hunter 3-D 3DS
3. Hyrule Warriors Legends 3DS
4. Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly PC
5. Paper Mario N64
6. Catherine PS3
7. Glover N64
8. Blast Corps N64
9. Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! Switch eShop
10. Pullblox 3DS eShop
11. Pokémon Picross 3DS eShop
12. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
13. The Legend of the Mystical Ninja SNES
14. Alisia Dragoon Mega Drive
15. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master Mega Drive
16. Dynamite Headdy Mega Drive
17. Runbow Wii U eShop
18. The Mystical Ninja starring Goemon N64
19. 3D Puyo Puyo 2 3DS
20. Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa 3DS
21. SteamWorld Dig 3DS eShop
22. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch
23. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped PS1
24. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time GC
25. Pilotwings 64 N64
26. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones GBA
27. Puyo Puyo Tetris Switch *NEW*
28. Life Force NES *NEW*
29. Bionic Commando NES *NEW*
30. Bonk's Revenge TGCD *NEW*
Replays!:
1. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
2. Die Hard Arcade Saturn
3. The World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Mega Drive
Puyo Puyo Tetris
Puyo Puyo is a series and I love and hate. I've chronicled my experiences with the series in these threads over the past few years, and my general analysis has been 'This game is great, but it's way too hard'. However, Puyo Puyo is still one of my favourite puzzle game series.
I've never been a fan of Tetris - I find it tedious, and the lack of elements like chaining means I also find it lacks diversity in play - you just clear lines over and over because what's the incentive to set up higher than a 4 line clear anyway. I also hated the randomness of it - the L block never arrives!
Well, Puyo Puyo Tetris is a game that manages to take my thoughts of both series, solve many of my issues, and also provide a stupid, fun story and a set of particularly crazy alternate play modes that mix up the gameplay to create something really special.
The story of Puyo Puyo Tetris is incredibly silly and light hearted, and features the main characters of various Puyo Puyo series (most of whom I didn't recognise, as I've only played the Madou Monogatari era version of the series previously) all getting thrown together and then teleported to a starship where a bunch of Tetris themed characters (named Tee, Ess, O, Zed, Elle etc after the block shapes) reside, and then a bunch of crazy hijinks™ ensue. The story is ridiculously pointless and stupid, which is to say it's wonderful. Sometimes it drags out a bit too long, but the stupidly written humour and complete lack of taking itself seriously is fun and fits nicely with the game.
Gameplay in Puyo Puyo Tetris takes many forms. As well as the classic single player Tetris and head-to-head Puyo Puyo, you also play head-to-dead tetris and single player Puyo Puyo. On top of that, there is burst mode, a mode where you clear lines of tetris blocks in rapid succession or trigger pre-set Puyo combos as quickly as you can to deal damage to the opponent. In addition, you can play Puyo against a Tetris player or vice versa. Finally, there are 2 modes where you play both games - Swap mode, where you switch from a Tetris grid to a Puyo-Puyo grid every 20 seconds or so, and the ridiculous fusion mode, where tetris blocks and puyo blobs both fall into the same board.
Puyo works pretty much as it always has - trigger combos to drop garbage blocks on the opponent or to counter their combo. However, if like me you basically haven't played Tetris since the Game Boy, there are lots of changes to learn on the Tetris side of things. First off, you can always see where your tetris block will land at the bottom of the screen. This is useful because you can hit up to fast drop the tetris piece into that position, skipping the falling animation. However, this prevents rotation of the block once it lands, which is important for getting the best attacks off on your opponent. Othher important Tetris changes include the fact that you can 'bank' one block for later - either to save a useful piece like a T block or an I block for when it's most useful, or to remove a difficult piece that is being dropped if there's nowhere good for it to go. And the final significant Tetris change, and probably the most important for me, is that Tetris is no longer 100% random. In any set of 7 Tetris blocks, you will encounter exactly one of each shape - T, I, O, S, Z, L and R. The order is randomised, but in the first 7 you'll get 1 of each, and in blocks 8-14 you'll get another one of each and so on. This means it's possible to plan for certain pieces because the odds of them showing soon are fairly high.
Attacking in Tetris mode in head-to-head battle can be done in many ways too. Clearing lines is one way, with Tetrises being an abovious good method to attack that results in reasonable disruptions. However, I often found it better to attack using combos - clearing a line on each successive turn, which is best done by leaving 2 empty rows at the side instead of one. The final way to atack is the T spin, where you use rotation to mnove a T block into an otherwise impossible to get to position. This is the best way to attack, but was way too complicated for me to figure out!
Fusion mode is a very odd mode where many mechanics have to be utilised together. You must clear tetris blocks using lines as always, and puyos by matching 4. Some pieces from the skyfall swap between puyos and tetriminos and will be determined by which they are upon landing. Tetris pieces will 'crush' puyos they land on, dropping through them all until they reach the bottom of the board, or hit another tetris block. However, the crushed puyos will then drop back from the top of the board. If you fast drop the tetris block, it'll instantly crush all the puyos, but if you drop it normally, it'll slowly drop through the layers of puyos one by one, whilst you continue to place other pieces above, next to or even below it as it falls. It's a lot to take into account, and it's pretty complicated to get your head around.
In terms of difficulty, Puyo Puyo Tetris is much easier than the old Puyo Puyo games, but it still has some bite to it. I've heard some people complain that the Puyo stages were too hard, but personally I had way more trouble with the Tetris levels, so your mileage may vary. My main issue with the single player mode was the diversity of play styles - in 6 worlds, the first world is Tetris focused, the 2nd is Puyo focused, and then they start to mix it up. Very few Swap mode matches appear until the 3rd world, and Fusion mode is pretty much exclusively for the last world, meaning it's a bit of a learning curve once you get there. The game is fairly short and not too difficult though so it's not a major issue.
Puyo Puyo Tetris is a really gun mash up between one of the greatest puzzle games ever and Tetris
. It's also probably greater than the sum of it's parts, and if you like Puzzle games, I think it's a must own. Definitely buy it.Life Force
Life Force was the 4th game I played for my summer marathon, and I'll cut to the chase on it straight away: I cheated to finish this one, no I don't care about 1CC discussion nonsense, we've been through this before. I'm counting it as beat anyway.
Life Force is a horizontal AND vertical shoot 'em up for the NES. It's a spiritual successor or something to the Gradius series, but I don't know about all that. The NES version features the Gradius power-up system, so at the very least this version plays similarly.
In Life Force you fly your ship to the right (on odd numbered stages) or to the top of the screen (in even numbered stages) whilst shooting at enemies who are out to destroy you. You die in a single hit, and dying removes all of your power ups. To gain power ups you defeat specific enemies or groups of enemies who give you an icon, which when collected moves your power up meter up one bar. You can then cash in the meter to buy the currently highlighted power up, but doing so sets the meter back to 0. The meter goes in the following order: Speed > Missile > Ripple > Laser > Option > Shield. Speed increase your flight speed and can be powered up many times. More than 2 is too unwieldy though, so I would recommend keeping it set to 1 or 2 max. Missile launches missiles in an arc up and down from your ship and can be powered up twice. Ripple swaps your pea-shooter default gun for an expanding ripple shot which makes it easier to hit stuff, and laser swaps it for a piercing laser that does heavy damage and keeps moving if it hits an enemy, rather than disappearing. They replace each other, but ripple is shit, so you just want to get laser instead. Laser can be powered up too, allowing it to shoot faster. Options create little orbs that fgollow you ship and shoot the same stuff you do - lasers, missiles, ripples, whatever you had. You can have up to 2. And finally, shield blocks damage inflicted on your and stops you dying. Except it doesn't.
One of the coolest things about Life Force is that the environments are often very organic feeling - stage 1 is a fleshy mess with teeth that crawl out of the walls, fleshy walls that grow outwards and block your way and more. The problem with this though is that they often use this to instantly kill you. Didn't know the walls up ahead would close in on your completely blocking the path? Tough, fly into them and die. Didn't know the wall hear would grow over your ship and instantly kill you? Tough, remember it for next time. This continues throughtout every level of the game, and it doesn't gel with the game menchanics for me. That shield that is the hardest power up to get? It's worthless. It doesn't protect you from environmental damage or things flying directly into you, and 98% of things that kill you in life force fit into those categories. Once you die, you might aswell reset the game too, because outside of the openings of levels there is almost nowhere to power up, and outside of level 1 it's difficult to even do so at the start of levels anyway.
Playing Life Force legitimately wasn't any fun, but the game itself is in general. And so I cheated. 1 save state at the start of each level, and if I died, I reset to the start of the level. By doing that I managed to progress through and see all the game and had a fun time doing so. Any other way, I hated Life Force.
Life Force is not a game I recommend. I find it to be too punishing to players when they die to things they could never have possibly even seen coming - the isntant kills are rarely telegraphed. Replaying an entire game every time it happens is just a miserable experience, and that's how I'd describe the game unless you cheat. Miserable. I'm done with Konami's Gradius series and related games I think, it's just don't have fun with them being so punishing. I'm glad to be done with this one.
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando was the 5th game I played for my Summer Challenge list, and it was a breath of fresh air after trudging through Life Force. At first I suspected the worst as the game introduced itself with one hit deaths at a time when you're trying to get the hang of the grappling mechanics, but if you know what to do, you can very quickly change that.
Bionic Commando is an action platformer for the NES where you run around levels shooting enemy soldiers in search of the bases core, which you must shoot to finish the level. Bionic Commando has some interesting gimmicks to make it stand out though, the main one being that rather than jumping, your character swings around using a bionic grappling arm. You can latch on to solid surfaces above you and either swing over gaps or use it to pull yourself up to higher ground. The game is well designed around making you use this mechanic, with obstacles that would be easier in other platformers posing a unique challenge when you can't jump.
Bionic Commando also features a map with branching paths which lets you choose where to go next. Some parts of the maps require items from other levels, and each level you beat offers a new reward, so exploring is worthwhile. Items to find include new guns such as a short range spread shot, a powerful rocket launcher or a rapid fire machine gun, an item which lets you take one free hit before taking damage, different communication devices to find new info in certain areas, and an item which lets you heal yourself once per level. You meager 1 hit point at the start of the game can also be increased by picking up bullets enemy soldiers dropped, with 8 being the maximum health. Knowing this makes the game easier as you can easily grind for 3 or 4 health or more on the first stage using respawning enemies to make the game easier. On the map are also enemy trucks, which when encountered switch the gameplay to an overhead perspective like the original Commando. These are short an easy, but each overhead stage offers 2 continues to acquire, and the trucks respawn endlessly, so game overs are not a concern in Bionic Commando after stage 1.
The difficulty in Bionic Commando mostly feels fair, besides a few levels where some very specific swinging is required. The worst of these is a stage where you must swing from lampposts to land on others before latching on for another swing, but the curved tops of the lights seem to randomly make you fall either left or right. I never really mastered the level, but some brute force got me through it. Otherwise the game is fairly easy once you get powered up, and even the bosses are rarely a concern. Interestingly, they can pretty much all be ignored, as they appear in the room with the bases core, so if you rush past them and destroy the core first you can avoid the fight.
The story of Bionic Commando has you as Radd Spencer, fighting the Badds, an army who want to revive Master D., the evil leader of their army who died previously, whilst also rescuing Super Joe, the main character from the Bionic Commando arcade game. Most of you will know that this is just a localisation change, and in Japan the man being revived is in fact Hitler. Luckily, you get to blow up his head at the end, so all's well that ends well I guess!
Bionic Commando is a really fun game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has some patience for NES era games. It has a learning curve, and a few odd difficulty spikes, but overall it's a unique and fun experience and I enjoyed it a lot.
Bonk's Revenge
Bonk's Revenge was the 6th game I played for my Summer Challenge. It's a platformer for the PC Engine/Turbografx and I played the version included on the Gate of Thunder 3 in 1 disc for the Turbografx CD (yes I know there's actually 4 games on there).
Bonk's Adventure was a game I picked up way back when when Virtual Console had just started on the Wii. I liked the game well enough, but felt it was a little bit clumsy and clunky, and that you'd oftern take an awful lot of hits from things. Bonk's Revenge in all honestly does little to fix those issues. Whilst it manages to up the game in terms of level design, I had a consistent issue with the responsiveness of the controls and the hitbox of the jumping headbonk attack, causing me to miss jumps or take hits that I shouldn't have.
Bonk's Revenge has all the normal platforming staples - run and jump through a colourful world whilst defeating enemies. Unlike Mario or Sonic, Bonk can't jump on enemies to defeat them, but he can get around it by using his head (lol). The II button (where B would be on NES) lets you headbutt enemies, and by using it the air you can flip upside down and land on enemies head first. In addition, because your head is how you hurt things, you can actually jump up into enemies from underneath to damage them too. A rather bizarre mechanic of the game is that by flipping the turboswitches up and holding the bonk button in midair, Bonk will spin around repeatedly, slowing his descent dramatically and letting you glide incredibly ungracefully though the levels. Unlike Bonk's Adventure though, it's not easy to skip whole levels with this, due to both a less flat and linear level design and the fact that they've slowed down the spinning, making you descend much more quickly than the first game.
Bonk does control inelegantly, but it does kinda fit for his character, as he isn't especially graceful in general. He climbs up walls with his teeth, erupts with power after eating meat, foams at the mouth upon death in the first game, and when powered up he has a butt for a head and is called butthead bonk (and you thought my earlier joke was bad. Now it's all come to a head (lol)). That's only in the US version, in Japan he dresses in makeup and blows kisses instead.
Anyway, the bad guy did something bad and so Bonk heads (lol) out to defeat him and save the day and the moon and the princess and whatever. The level designs here are much prettier and more varied than the first game, and the boss fights are far fairer and less like hitting your head against a brick wall (that one wasn't even deliberate). Whilst the graphics are colourful and large and attractive, the music is pretty bland and won't stick in your head (that one was).
Bonk's Revenge is fairly modest difficulty wise - it isn't easy, but if you take the time to hunt out the bonus stages (which you get taken to upon finding a certain type of flower) and master them, you can quickly stockpile more lives. It's no pushover, but don't expect it to make you suffer either.
I really struggled to write this review for Bonk's Revenge, and thats because I don't find the game all that notable. It's a decent little platformer, but there are plenty better in the 16 bit generation. Pick it up if you can, but don't go out of your way.
My review: Bonk's Revenge: It's OK. Not worth losing your head over.
Last edited by alienjesus on Fri Jul 28, 2017 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BogusMeatFactory
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Re: Games Beaten 2017
WOOOOOO! AJ finally got to writing up his reviews! *reads with rampant fanatacism*
P.S. IT'S ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE BECAUSE STUPID ME! Everyone read it!!!!!
P.S. IT'S ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE BECAUSE STUPID ME! Everyone read it!!!!!
Ack wrote:I don't know, chief, the haunting feeling of lust I feel whenever I look at your avatar makes me think it's real.
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Re: Games Beaten 2017
alienjesus wrote:Games Beaten:
1. 3D Power Drift 3DS
2. Maze Hunter 3-D 3DS
3. Hyrule Warriors Legends 3DS
4. Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly PC
5. Paper Mario N64
6. Catherine PS3
7. Glover N64
8. Blast Corps N64
9. Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! Switch eShop
10. Pullblox 3DS eShop
11. Pokémon Picross 3DS eShop
12. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
13. The Legend of the Mystical Ninja SNES
14. Alisia Dragoon Mega Drive
15. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master Mega Drive
16. Dynamite Headdy Mega Drive
17. Runbow Wii U eShop
18. The Mystical Ninja starring Goemon N64
19. 3D Puyo Puyo 2 3DS
20. Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa 3DS
21. SteamWorld Dig 3DS eShop
22. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch
23. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped PS1
24. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time GC
25. Pilotwings 64 N64
26. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones GBA
27. Puyo Puyo Tetris Switch *NEW*
28. Life Force NES *NEW*
29. Bionic Commando NES *NEW*
30. Bonk's Revenge TGCD *NEW*
Replays!:
1. Bare Knuckle III Mega Drive
2. Die Hard Arcade Saturn
3. The World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Mega Drive
Puyo Puyo Tetris
Puyo Puyo is a series and I love and hate. I've chronicled my experiences with the series in these threads over the past few years, and my general analysis has been 'This game is great, but it's way too hard'. However, Puyo Puyo is still one of my favourite puzzle game series.
I've never been a fan of Tetris - I find it tedious, and the lack of elements like chaining means I also find it lacks diversity in play - you just clear lines over and over because what's the incentive to set up higher than a 4 line clear anyway. I also hated the randomness of it - the L block never arrives!
Well, Puyo Puyo Tetris is a game that manages to take my thoughts of both series, solve many of my issues, and also provide a stupid, fun story and a set of particularly crazy alternate play modes that mix up the gameplay to create something really special.
The story of Puyo Puyo Tetris is incredibly silly and light hearted, and features the main characters of various Puyo Puyo series (most of whom I didn't recognise, as I've only played the Madou Monogatari era version of the series previously) all getting thrown together and then teleported to a starship where a bunch of Tetris themed characters (named Tee, Ess, O, Zed, Elle etc after the block shapes) reside, and then a bunch of crazy hijinks™ ensue. The story is ridiculously pointless and stupid, which is to say it's wonderful. Sometimes it drags out a bit too long, but the stupidly written humour and complete lack of taking itself seriously is fun and fits nicely with the game.
Gameplay in Puyo Puyo Tetris takes many forms. As well as the classic single player Tetris and head-to-head Puyo Puyo, you also play head-to-dead tetris and single player Puyo Puyo. On top of that, there is burst mode, a mode where you clear lines of tetris blocks in rapid succession or trigger pre-set Puyo combos as quickly as you can to deal damage to the opponent. In addition, you can play Puyo against a Tetris player or vice versa. Finally, there are 2 modes where you play both games - Swap mode, where you switch from a Tetris grid to a Puyo-Puyo grid every 20 seconds or so, and the ridiculous fusion mode, where tetris blocks and puyo blobs both fall into the same board.
Puyo works pretty much as it always has - trigger combos to drop garbage blocks on the opponent or to counter their combo. However, if like me you basically haven't played Tetris since the Game Boy, there are lots of changes to learn on the Tetris side of things. First off, you can always see where your tetris block will land at the bottom of the screen. This is useful because you can hit up to fast drop the tetris piece into that position, skipping the falling animation. However, this prevents rotation of the block once it lands, which is important for getting the best attacks off on your opponent. Othher important Tetris changes include the fact that you can 'bank' one block for later - either to save a useful piece like a T block or an I block for when it's most useful, or to remove a difficult piece that is being dropped if there's nowhere good for it to go. And the final significant Tetris change, and probably the most important for me, is that Tetris is no longer 100% random. In any set of 7 Tetris blocks, you will encounter exactly one of each shape - T, I, O, S, Z, L and R. The order is randomised, but in the first 7 you'll get 1 of each, and in blocks 8-14 you'll get another one of each and so on. This means it's possible to plan for certain pieces because the odds of them showing soon are fairly high.
Attacking in Tetris mode in head-to-head battle can be done in many ways too. Clearing lines is one way, with Tetrises being an abovious good method to attack that results in reasonable disruptions. However, I often found it better to attack using combos - clearing a line on each successive turn, which is best done by leaving 2 empty rows at the side instead of one. The final way to atack is the T spin, where you use rotation to mnove a T block into an otherwise impossible to get to position. This is the best way to attack, but was way too complicated for me to figure out!
Fusion mode is a very odd mode where many mechanics have to be utilised together. You must clear tetris blocks using lines as always, and puyos by matching 4. Some pieces from the skyfall swap between puyos and tetriminos and will be determined by which they are upon landing. Tetris pieces will 'crush' puyos they land on, dropping through them all until they reach the bottom of the board, or hit another tetris block. However, the crushed puyos will then drop back from the top of the board. If you fast drop the tetris block, it'll instantly crush all the puyos, but if you drop it normally, it'll slowly drop through the layers of puyos one by one, whilst you continue to place other pieces above, next to or even below it as it falls. It's a lot to take into account, and it's pretty complicated to get your head around.
In terms of difficulty, Puyo Puyo Tetris is much easier than the old Puyo Puyo games, but it still has some bite to it. I've heard some people complain that the Puyo stages were too hard, but personally I had way more trouble with the Tetris levels, so your mileage may vary. My main issue with the single player mode was the diversity of play styles - in 6 worlds, the first world is Tetris focused, the 2nd is Puyo focused, and then they start to mix it up. Very few Swap mode matches appear until the 3rd world, and Fusion mode is pretty much exclusively for the last world, meaning it's a bit of a learning curve once you get there. The game is fairly short and not too difficult though so it's not a major issue.
Puyo Puyo Tetris is a really gun mash up between one of the greatest puzzle games ever and Tetris
Life Force
Life Force was the 4th game I played for my summer marathon, and I'll cut to the chase on it straight away: I cheated to finish this one, no I don't care about 1CC discussion nonsense, we've been through this before. I'm counting it as beat anyway.
Life Force is a horizontal AND vertical shoot 'em up for the NES. It's a spiritual successor or something to the Gradius series, but I don't know about all that. The NES version features the Gradius power-up system, so at the very least this version plays similarly.
In Life Force you fly your ship to the right (on odd numbered stages) or to the top of the screen (in even numbered stages) whilst shooting at enemies who are out to destroy you. You die in a single hit, and dying removes all of your power ups. To gain power ups you defeat specific enemies or groups of enemies who give you an icon, which when collected moves your power up meter up one bar. You can then cash in the meter to buy the currently highlighted power up, but doing so sets the meter back to 0. The meter goes in the following order: Speed > Missile > Ripple > Laser > Option > Shield. Speed increase your flight speed and can be powered up many times. More than 2 is too unwieldy though, so I would recommend keeping it set to 1 or 2 max. Missile launches missiles in an arc up and down from your ship and can be powered up twice. Ripple swaps your pea-shooter default gun for an expanding ripple shot which makes it easier to hit stuff, and laser swaps it for a piercing laser that does heavy damage and keeps moving if it hits an enemy, rather than disappearing. They replace each other, but ripple is shit, so you just want to get laser instead. Laser can be powered up too, allowing it to shoot faster. Options create little orbs that fgollow you ship and shoot the same stuff you do - lasers, missiles, ripples, whatever you had. You can have up to 2. And finally, shield blocks damage inflicted on your and stops you dying. Except it doesn't.
One of the coolest things about Life Force is that the environments are often very organic feeling - stage 1 is a fleshy mess with teeth that crawl out of the walls, fleshy walls that grow outwards and block your way and more. The problem with this though is that they often use this to instantly kill you. Didn't know the walls up ahead would close in on your completely blocking the path? Tough, fly into them and die. Didn't know the wall hear would grow over your ship and instantly kill you? Tough, remember it for next time. This continues throughtout every level of the game, and it doesn't gel with the game menchanics for me. That shield that is the hardest power up to get? It's worthless. It doesn't protect you from environmental damage or things flying directly into you, and 98% of things that kill you in life force fit into those categories. Once you die, you might aswell reset the game too, because outside of the openings of levels there is almost nowhere to power up, and outside of level 1 it's difficult to even do so at the start of levels anyway.
Playing Life Force legitimately wasn't any fun, but the game itself is in general. And so I cheated. 1 save state at the start of each level, and if I died, I reset to the start of the level. By doing that I managed to progress through and see all the game and had a fun time doing so. Any other way, I hated Life Force.
Life Force is not a game I recommend. I find it to be too punishing to players when they die to things they could never have possibly even seen coming - the isntant kills are rarely telegraphed. Replaying an entire game every time it happens is just a miserable experience, and that's how I'd describe the game unless you cheat. Miserable. I'm done with Konami's Gradius series and related games I think, it's just don't have fun with them being so punishing. I'm glad to be done with this one.
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando was the 5th game I played for my Summer Challenge list, and it was a breath of fresh air after trudging through Life Force. At first I suspected the worst as the game introduced itself with one hit deaths at a time when you're trying to get the hang of the grappling mechanics, but if you know what to do, you can very quickly change that.
Bionic Commando is an action platformer for the NES where you run around levels shooting enemy soldiers in search of the bases core, which you must shoot to finish the level. Bionic Commando has some interesting gimmicks to make it stand out though, the main one being that rather than jumping, your character swings around using a bionic grappling arm. You can latch on to solid surfaces above you and either swing over gaps or use it to pull yourself up to higher ground. The game is well designed around making you use this mechanic, with obstacles that would be easier in other platformers posing a unique challenge when you can't jump.
Bionic Commando also features a map with branching paths which lets you choose where to go next. Some parts of the maps require items from other levels, and each level you beat offers a new reward, so exploring is worthwhile. Items to find include new guns such as a short range spread shot, a powerful rocket launcher or a rapid fire machine gun, an item which lets you take one free hit before taking damage, different communication devices to find new info in certain areas, and an item which lets you heal yourself once per level. You meager 1 hit point at the start of the game can also be increased by picking up bullets enemy soldiers dropped, with 8 being the maximum health. Knowing this makes the game easier as you can easily grind for 3 or 4 health or more on the first stage using respawning enemies to make the game easier. On the map are also enemy trucks, which when encountered switch the gameplay to an overhead perspective like the original Commando. These are short an easy, but each overhead stage offers 2 continues to acquire, and the trucks respawn endlessly, so game overs are not a concern in Bionic Commando after stage 1.
The difficulty in Bionic Commando mostly feels fair, besides a few levels where some very specific swinging is required. The worst of these is a stage where you must swing from lampposts to land on others before latching on for another swing, but the curved tops of the lights seem to randomly make you fall either left or right. I never really mastered the level, but some brute force got me through it. Otherwise the game is fairly easy once you get powered up, and even the bosses are rarely a concern. Interestingly, they can pretty much all be ignored, as they appear in the room with the bases core, so if you rush past them and destroy the core first you can avoid the fight.
The story of Bionic Commando has you as Radd Spencer, fighting the Badds, an army who want to revive Master D., the evil leader of their army who died previously, whilst also rescuing Super Joe, the main character from the Bionic Commando arcade game. Most of you will know that this is just a localisation change, and in Japan the man being revived is in fact Hitler. Luckily, you get to blow up his head at the end, so all's well that ends well I guess!
Bionic Commando is a really fun game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has some patience for NES era games. It has a learning curve, and a few odd difficulty spikes, but overall it's a unique and fun experience and I enjoyed it a lot.
Bonk's Revenge
Bonk's Revenge was the 6th game I played for my Summer Challenge. It's a platformer for the PC Engine/Turbografx and I played the version included on the Gate of Thunder 3 in 1 disc for the Turbografx CD (yes I know there's actually 4 games on there).
Bonk's Adventure was a game I picked up way back when when Virtual Console had just started on the Wii. I liked the game well enough, but felt it was a little bit clumsy and clunky, and that you'd oftern take an awful lot of hits from things. Bonk's Revenge in all honestly does little to fix those issues. Whilst it manages to up the game in terms of level design, I had a consistent issue with the responsiveness of the controls and the hitbox of the jumping headbonk attack, causing me to miss jumps or take hits that I shouldn't have.
Bonk's Revenge has all the normal platforming staples - run and jump through a colourful world whilst defeating enemies. Unlike Mario or Sonic, Bonk can't jump on enemies to defeat them, but he can get around it by using his head (lol). The II button (where B would be on NES) lets you headbutt enemies, and by using it the air you can flip upside down and land on enemies head first. In addition, because your head is how you hurt things, you can actually jump up into enemies from underneath to damage them too. A rather bizarre mechanic of the game is that by flipping the turboswitches up and holding the bonk button in midair, Bonk will spin around repeatedly, slowing his descent dramatically and letting you glide incredibly ungracefully though the levels. Unlike Bonk's Adventure though, it's not easy to skip whole levels with this, due to both a less flat and linear level design and the fact that they've slowed down the spinning, making you descend much more quickly than the first game.
Bonk does control inelegantly, but it does kinda fit for his character, as he isn't especially graceful in general. He climbs up walls with his teeth, erupts with power after eating meat, foams at the mouth upon death in the first game, and when powered up he has a butt for a head and is called butthead bonk (and you thought my earlier joke was bad. Now it's all come to a head (lol)). That's only in the US version, in Japan he dresses in makeup and blows kisses instead.
Anyway, the bad guy did something bad and so Bonk heads (lol) out to defeat him and save the day and the moon and the princess and whatever. The level designs here are much prettier and more varied than the first game, and the boss fights are far fairer and less like hitting your head against a brick wall (that one wasn't even deliberate). Whilst the graphics are colourful and large and attractive, the music is pretty bland and won't stick in your head (that one was).
Bonk's Revenge is fairly modest difficulty wise - it isn't easy, but if you take the time to hunt out the bonus stages (which you get taken to upon finding a certain type of flower) and master them, you can quickly stockpile more lives. It's no pushover, but don't expect it to make you suffer either.
I really struggled to write this review for Bonk's Revenge, and thats because I don't find the game all that notable. It's a decent little platformer, but there are plenty better in the 16 bit generation. Pick it up if you can, but don't go out of your way.
My review: Bonk's Revenge: It's OK. Not worth losing your head over.
Re: Games Beaten 2017
Comments on recent reviews...
The Saturn does generally feature lower-resolution textures, but it can display a decent number of them. It has more texture memory than the N64 does. Also, Panzer Dragoon was a launch title, so it was super-early in the console's life, and it actually features some special effects (like the water on the 1st stage) that the Playstation and N64 simply cannot reproduce, in part due to how the effects are generated. I'd say for a launch title it's still pretty impressive. But I am glad you liked it.
As to Bonk's Revenge... I really enjoy the game, but I do understand how others might see it as imprecise. Bonk has a lot of... mass, it feels like. There's a kind of momentum and heft to his movement that can be difficult to adjust to. And yes, the hitbox can be a little weird, but mostly on bosses. I think the idea is that most things you can just dive on indiscriminately, but some enemies and bosses you have to be a lot more accurate when attacking, but they don't always communicate WHERE you are supposed to hit well. I see this less as a hitbox issue and more as a design communication issue.
The Saturn does generally feature lower-resolution textures, but it can display a decent number of them. It has more texture memory than the N64 does. Also, Panzer Dragoon was a launch title, so it was super-early in the console's life, and it actually features some special effects (like the water on the 1st stage) that the Playstation and N64 simply cannot reproduce, in part due to how the effects are generated. I'd say for a launch title it's still pretty impressive. But I am glad you liked it.
As to Bonk's Revenge... I really enjoy the game, but I do understand how others might see it as imprecise. Bonk has a lot of... mass, it feels like. There's a kind of momentum and heft to his movement that can be difficult to adjust to. And yes, the hitbox can be a little weird, but mostly on bosses. I think the idea is that most things you can just dive on indiscriminately, but some enemies and bosses you have to be a lot more accurate when attacking, but they don't always communicate WHERE you are supposed to hit well. I see this less as a hitbox issue and more as a design communication issue.
Dope Pope on a Rope
B/S/T thread
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B/S/T thread
My Classic Games Collection
My Steam Profile
The PC Engine Software Bible Forum, with Shoutbox chat - the new Internet home for PC Engine fandom.
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2017
marurun wrote:As to Bonk's Revenge... I really enjoy the game, but I do understand how others might see it as imprecise. Bonk has a lot of... mass, it feels like. There's a kind of momentum and heft to his movement that can be difficult to adjust to. And yes, the hitbox can be a little weird, but mostly on bosses. I think the idea is that most things you can just dive on indiscriminately, but some enemies and bosses you have to be a lot more accurate when attacking, but they don't always communicate WHERE you are supposed to hit well. I see this less as a hitbox issue and more as a design communication issue.
I feel very similarly on the Bonk issue. It's been a little while since I've played them, but I've beaten them all save for the 4th one on SNES. I thought 2 was where they really got it nailed down. The first one feels a bit unpolished, and the 2nd one really helps with that. It takes some getting used to, just because it's so different from your Sonics and Marios of the platforming genre, but Bonk's head-bonk is actually really fun to mess around with. Seeing what you can chain together to climb up things you may or not be intended to is great fun, especially in the 5th game where they DEFINITELY intend you to. It reminds me a lot of the spin jump that Mario can do in Mario World, actually.
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: Games Beaten 2017
Games Beaten in 2017 So Far - 70
* denotes a replay
January (10 Games Beaten)
February (12 Games Beaten)
March (6 Games Beaten)
April (9 Games Beaten)
May (14 Games Beaten)
June (10 Games Beaten)
July (9 Game Beaten)
70. Snake Pass - Switch - July 27
Snake Pass is an indie physics based 3D platformer with a premise that I found fascinating when I first read about it - you play as a snake. Granted, it's a stupid snake (what kind of snake is a vegetarian?) named Noodle, but still, a platformer where you play as a snake sounded really cool. Unfortunately, the best part of the game is the premise.
Story is definitely not this game's strong point. Honestly, I don't even remember what the story is, and I started the game this week. Something about having to recover magic crystals to restore portals or...something. That's your objective in each level - find a green, yellow, and red crystal, bring them to a portal to activate it and leave the area. In addition to your main objective, there are like 15 or 20 bubbles in each level and 5 golden coins that you can collect. They don't really do anything; there aren't any secret levels that they unlock or anything. They're just kind of there to give an extra little challenge. I promptly ignored all of the ones that I didn't stumble upon as I searched for the crystals.
In general, this game personifies "okay." The visuals are good, but they're not mindblowing. The sound design, both music and sound effects are extraordinary only in their mediocrity and sheer forgettability. The game does excel in one area, however - level design. All of the game's 15 levels - broken into four different worlds - are very well designed and keep the challenge interesting and gradually increasing. Well, mostly gradually; there are a couple of parts that are abruptly REALLY difficult. Most of the game's difficulty, however, are due to the aspect that pretty much totally undermines the game's fantastic level design - controls. On the surface, the controls seem fine; the right trigger makes you slither forward, the left trigger makes you grip (to help with coiling or climbing), the Y button has your hummingbird friend (named Doodle) pick up your ass, and the A button lifts your head (so you can climb). The left control stick controls which way Noodle moves, and the right control stick controls the camera. Pretty standard, right? Well, there's one GLARING flaw with the controls - Noodle will abruptly start moving in the opposite direction if the camera passes a certain threshold. If you're turning to the right and move the camera, you'll start turning to the left so quickly that it's a miracle the damn snake doesn't get whiplash. Couple this with a generally shitty camera that seemingly goes out of its way to do the opposite of what you want it to, and you take what could have been a fun platformer and get a recipe for unbridled frustration. I was really enjoying the challenge up until about level 12 or 13. Then it became more frustrating than fun, and that's not a point that games should hit.
Snake Pass is a tragic story of a young indie game bursting with potential and living up to none of it. Well, "none" is a bit harsh; it does have some legitimately clever level design, and the concept is brilliant. If you can get past the awkward controls and temperamental camera, one might have a lot of fun with this game, although the game feels a bit like trying to play Sonic the Hedgehog with Chris Redfield from Resident Evil (a description some of my Racketboy friends found hilarious). Even with those issues, though, I really enjoyed the first three quarters or so of the game. Towards the end, though, the camera and controls just get too frustrating to be worth it. It's definitely not worth the $20 it currently costs, but if you see it on sale for less than $10, I'd say it's worth a sale download.
* denotes a replay
January (10 Games Beaten)
February (12 Games Beaten)
March (6 Games Beaten)
April (9 Games Beaten)
May (14 Games Beaten)
June (10 Games Beaten)
July (9 Game Beaten)
70. Snake Pass - Switch - July 27
Snake Pass is an indie physics based 3D platformer with a premise that I found fascinating when I first read about it - you play as a snake. Granted, it's a stupid snake (what kind of snake is a vegetarian?) named Noodle, but still, a platformer where you play as a snake sounded really cool. Unfortunately, the best part of the game is the premise.
Story is definitely not this game's strong point. Honestly, I don't even remember what the story is, and I started the game this week. Something about having to recover magic crystals to restore portals or...something. That's your objective in each level - find a green, yellow, and red crystal, bring them to a portal to activate it and leave the area. In addition to your main objective, there are like 15 or 20 bubbles in each level and 5 golden coins that you can collect. They don't really do anything; there aren't any secret levels that they unlock or anything. They're just kind of there to give an extra little challenge. I promptly ignored all of the ones that I didn't stumble upon as I searched for the crystals.
In general, this game personifies "okay." The visuals are good, but they're not mindblowing. The sound design, both music and sound effects are extraordinary only in their mediocrity and sheer forgettability. The game does excel in one area, however - level design. All of the game's 15 levels - broken into four different worlds - are very well designed and keep the challenge interesting and gradually increasing. Well, mostly gradually; there are a couple of parts that are abruptly REALLY difficult. Most of the game's difficulty, however, are due to the aspect that pretty much totally undermines the game's fantastic level design - controls. On the surface, the controls seem fine; the right trigger makes you slither forward, the left trigger makes you grip (to help with coiling or climbing), the Y button has your hummingbird friend (named Doodle) pick up your ass, and the A button lifts your head (so you can climb). The left control stick controls which way Noodle moves, and the right control stick controls the camera. Pretty standard, right? Well, there's one GLARING flaw with the controls - Noodle will abruptly start moving in the opposite direction if the camera passes a certain threshold. If you're turning to the right and move the camera, you'll start turning to the left so quickly that it's a miracle the damn snake doesn't get whiplash. Couple this with a generally shitty camera that seemingly goes out of its way to do the opposite of what you want it to, and you take what could have been a fun platformer and get a recipe for unbridled frustration. I was really enjoying the challenge up until about level 12 or 13. Then it became more frustrating than fun, and that's not a point that games should hit.
Snake Pass is a tragic story of a young indie game bursting with potential and living up to none of it. Well, "none" is a bit harsh; it does have some legitimately clever level design, and the concept is brilliant. If you can get past the awkward controls and temperamental camera, one might have a lot of fun with this game, although the game feels a bit like trying to play Sonic the Hedgehog with Chris Redfield from Resident Evil (a description some of my Racketboy friends found hilarious). Even with those issues, though, I really enjoyed the first three quarters or so of the game. Towards the end, though, the camera and controls just get too frustrating to be worth it. It's definitely not worth the $20 it currently costs, but if you see it on sale for less than $10, I'd say it's worth a sale download.
Exhuminator wrote:Ecchi lords must unite for great justice.
Re: Games Beaten 2017
A vegetarian coral snake? There goes my suspension of disbelief.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: Games Beaten 2017
MrPopo wrote:A vegetarian coral snake? There goes my suspension of disbelief.
Right?? That's what I kept thinking.
Exhuminator wrote:Ecchi lords must unite for great justice.