1. Octopath Traveler - Switch
2. Dusk - PC
3. Forsaken Remastered - PC
4. Tales of Eternia - PS1
5. Resident Evil 2 (2019) - PC
6. Pokémon Trading Card Game - GBC
7. Metro Exodus - PC
8. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - PC
9. Project Warlock - PC
10. Magic: The Gathering - PC
11. Ghost 1.0 - PC
12. Call of Duty 2 - PC
13. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - PS4
14. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - GBC
15. Mechstermination Force - Switch
16. Shadow Warrior Classic Redux - PC
17. Lost Sphear - Switch
18. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal - PC
19. Dragon Quest III - NES
20. Rage 2 - PC
21. Blood - PC
22. Harvest Moon 64 - N64
23. Battlefield V - PC
24. Sigil - PC
25. Shining Force III: Scenario 2 - Saturn
26. Shining Force III: Scenario 3 - Saturn
27. Borderlands 2: Commander Lillith and the Fight for Sanctuary - PC
28. Gato Roboto - Switch
29. Timespinner - Switch
30. Amid Evil - PC
31. Pillars of Eternity II: Beast of Winter - PC
32. Pillars of Eternity II: Seeker, Slayer, Survivor - PC
33. Pillars of Eternity II: The Forgotten Sanctum - PC
34. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Switch
35. Orphan - PC
36. Project Nimbus - PC
37. Hardcore Mecha - PC
38. Grey Goo - PC
Grey Goo is an RTS by Petroglyph Games, a studio formed by a bunch of ex-Westwood employees after the studio was merged into EA Los Angeles. I was hoping their pedigree with Command & Conquer would translate into a new IP, but unfortunately it just doesn't catch the magic and ends up being a pretty mediocre RTS.
The basic plot follows three forces. The first is the Beta, an alien race who are setting up on a new planet after a threat only known as the Silent Ones destroyed their last one. They encounter a new threat on the new planet, though this threat does not seem to be the same as the Silent Ones. While dealing with this threat they also encounter something strange; a mass of nanobots that form army units and also attack them. The Beta seek to save their civilians and keep their race alive. Meanwhile, humans have seen this planet and sent their robot drones to explore; that's the first force that attacks the Beta. They finally get to have a conversation with the Beta and realize they shouldn't be fighting, and that the nanobots they dub the Goo are the remains of an old humanity probe system that didn't shut down when ordered. They come up with a plan to try and wipe out the Goo in a massive explosion, and one of the robot axillaries is lost in the process. Said robot merges with the Goo and becomes the leader of their hive consciousness, in the process discovering the Goo had encountered the Silent Ones, a force that seeks to extinguish all life. The Goo is now bent towards eliminating this threat, but the humans and Beta stand in their way. After smashing both armies the Goo is able to enact a plan to draw the Silent Ones to the planet to draw them into a trap and give the three races a chance. This finally gets everyone to realize they shouldn't fight, and the game leaves off there. While the Silent Ones (known as the Shroud) exist as a multiplayer race you don't actually get to properly fight them (the one mission where you do the trap is against special units and is mostly an interactive cutscene; it's easier than the intro missions).
The races, unfortunately are not nearly as differentiated as they seem at first blush; it's much more akin to the racial differences in Supreme Commander; every place on the tech tree has an analog in each race, it's just some subtle differences between a given counterpart unit that matters. The main differentiation between the three factions is in their base building. The Beta are built around a hub system; you place a hub that has a certain number of hardpoints, then you attach structures to those hardpoints. You have a wide range in placing hubs, but this also gives single points of failure (the hubs are generally weaker than the structures attached). The humans build around running power conduits from their headquarters to all their builds. This restricts their ability to expand a bit, but also allows them to more quickly build up their production structures (as conduits build faster than hubs). The Goo don't use traditional buildings; instead, they start with a Mother Goo which gains health when it sits on top of a resource pool (all three factions harvest from these pools). At various health breakpoints the Mother Goo has the ability to spawn off something; this could be another Mother Goo (expanding), a small unit goo, or a big unit goo. The spawning is instant, and then the production goos can transform into whatever units they want; you might get 4 infantry or 2 anti air from the same goo, as an example. This is also effectively instant. This causes the Goo to economically play very different from the other two races, as they can expand across the map much faster but also are more vulnerable (as they have no base defenses, other than the slow melee aura of the Mother Goo). It's akin to how Zerg hatcheries work in StarCraft; you spit out armies very quickly, but a given area can only spawn so fast (as you have a fixed resource gather rate) and you can't bank resources like other races can.
Personally, I don't think they go quite far enough with the Goo concept. While the economy is reasonably unique, after that the units are all pretty mundane, and a waste of a concept. The building differences of the other two factions is mostly negligible; the biggest thing you'll notice is that the humans have easier to use base defenses (the Beta garrison units on top of the tower posts of walls, costing supply, while humans use turrets which use minimal supply). And unfortunately, the campaign doesn't really salvage things to make up for it. Each race only gets five missions, with the first one being a tutorial. You end up climbing the tech tree extremely quickly as a result, and also as a result realize that the tech tree isn't really deep. The campaign also has some annoying things, such as an overreliance on spawning hostile units for objectives that require you to protect things. Even if you wipe out enemy bases you won't be safe for those portions of the objectives, which is a major feel bad. And the individual missions aren't really any longer than any other RTS"s mission; while Supreme Commander had 6 mission campaigns each mission ended up being akin to two to three standard RTS missions through both the general scale of the gameplay as well as expanding maps with new objectives midway through.
I'd only recommend this to RTS junkies; if you're just a casual fan stick to StarCraft and Command & Conquer.
Games Beaten 2019
Re: Games Beaten 2019
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 2019
Games Beaten in 2019 So Far - 40
* denotes a replay
January (12 Games Beaten)
February (2 Games Beaten)
March (4 Games Beaten)
April (3 Games Beaten)
May (8 Games Beaten)
June (5 Games Beaten)
July (6 Games Beaten)
40. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth - 3DS - July 10
I had a very love/hate relationship with the first Persona Q game, and my feelings about Persona Q2 are quite similar. On the one hand, it brings together the protagonists from three of the best JRPGs of the past two decades - Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 - into a single game. It also provides a pretty interesting dungeon crawling experience. On the other hand, the game is just way too damn long for what it is. It just feels like it drags on and on and on, and regardless of the actual time spent playing, if it a player ever finds himself or herself thinking "How much longer? I'm just ready for this game to be over," then the game has some pacing issues. That was the case in Persona Q, and unfortunately but unsurprisingly, it's also the case in Persona Q2.
Persona Q2 plays almost exactly like Atlus's Etrian Odyssey series. You pick a party of five characters from a list that, since it encompasses the three most recent Persona games, is quite extensive, and you explore and map dungeons from a first person perspective. As you explore and draw your map of the dungeon, you find switches, traps, gimmicks, etc. that introduce some challenges to your progression. When you encounter enemies, the battles are done from a first person-esque perspective in which your characters are not visible at all in a similar fashion to the original Dragon Quest games. In terms of gameplay and game mechanics like that, Persona Q2 is identical to Persona Q.
The story is also pretty similar to the first Persona Q - the three games' cast of characters all find themselves trapped in what appears to be a pocket dimension of sorts similar to the Velvet Room along with a couple of unique original characters. To find a way to escape, they cooperate with one another to explore their prison and discover its nature, purpose, and means of escape. What made Persona Q2 somewhat interesting was that despite throwing together the characters from three games, you actually had four protagonists; in addition to the protagonist from Persona 4, the protagonist from Persona 5, and the canon protagonist from Persona 3, you also got to play as the alternate universe Persona 3 protagonist that was introduced in the PSP port of the game, Persona 3 Portable. It was a fairly minor plot point that only popped up in the narrative from time to time, but it was cool to see Atlus give her an official and solid place in the Persona metaverse as being from a nearly identical but still distinct universe from the male Persona 3 protagonist from the game's original release.
Visually, the game is on par with its predecessor. It definitely looks better than most 3DS games, but I didn't find myself exceptionally impressed the way I was with a game like Resident Evil Revelations or Xenoblade Chronicles 3D. The sound, however, is exceptional, although gamers familiar with the Persona series would expect nothing less. The voice acting, while only in Japanese, is well done, but as is always the case with Persona, the soundtrack is what really steals the show. The game has some musical nods to the three source material games as well as truly great original battle music. The battle music especially hits a balance with which a lot of RPGs really struggle - maintaining a high level of energy without taking the focus away from the action. A lot of games will either have boring and forgettable background music or music that is so high energy that it steals the spotlight to a certain extent from the action. Persona Q2 not only finds that balance but strikes it perfectly. I had my fair share of gripes and letdowns with the game, but I have to give credit where credit is due; Atlus really knocked it out of the park with the sound design here.
My biggest complaint with Persona Q2 is the same primary complaint that I had with Persona Q - pacing. About halfway through, I was just ready for the game to be over. It's a good and enjoyable game, and it has an interesting story with characters that I went into the game already loving, but the game's pacing is just painfully slow. Each dungeon has between four and seven floors, and each floor is larger than the last save for the "boss" floor. While the game's five dungeons are all themed differently and each have their own gimmicks that set them apart from one another, within those dungeons, I found myself extremely bored after two floors, and with the giant ass dungeon with seven floors, I found myself pulling up YouTube videos to watch so that I could keep halfway entertained while I played just for the sake of seeing the game through to the end. For folks who LOVE dungeon crawlers or Etrian Odyssey super fans, the dungeons would probably be fine, but for me, the battles and gimmicks weren't nearly enough to break up the monotony of the dungeons' samey floors. Had each dungeon been half the length, it would have been fine for me, but a four floor dungeon felt like spending an hour playing FIFA '14, then playing an hour of FIFA '15, then playing an hour of FIFA '16, and then playing an hour of FIFA '17; they're all fine for what they were, but they're also all basically the exact same thing with some minor tweaks and differences.
Persona Q2 is absolutely a good game, but it's not a great game. In most ways, it's just more of the same as Persona Q, and that's not what I look for in a sequel. There were definitely improvements in some ways - the unique gimmicks that each dungeon had were definitely a nice touch, and the soundtrack was virtually perfect - but as an overall product, it just didn't expand on or add to the foundation of its predecessor the way that I think a good sequel should. It's not a sequel like Army Men to Army Men II, Resistance to Resistance 2, or Titanfall to Titanfall 2 were where major improvements and additions were made that affected big and positive changes to the gameplay and the overall experience. I would definitely consider it an essential part of a 3DS collector's library, but it's not necessarily a must play for 3DS owners in general. It's a high enough quality game to serve as a fitting swan song for the 3DS, but I'd be lying if I said I weren't a little bit disappointed.
* denotes a replay
January (12 Games Beaten)
February (2 Games Beaten)
March (4 Games Beaten)
April (3 Games Beaten)
May (8 Games Beaten)
June (5 Games Beaten)
July (6 Games Beaten)
40. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth - 3DS - July 10
I had a very love/hate relationship with the first Persona Q game, and my feelings about Persona Q2 are quite similar. On the one hand, it brings together the protagonists from three of the best JRPGs of the past two decades - Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 - into a single game. It also provides a pretty interesting dungeon crawling experience. On the other hand, the game is just way too damn long for what it is. It just feels like it drags on and on and on, and regardless of the actual time spent playing, if it a player ever finds himself or herself thinking "How much longer? I'm just ready for this game to be over," then the game has some pacing issues. That was the case in Persona Q, and unfortunately but unsurprisingly, it's also the case in Persona Q2.
Persona Q2 plays almost exactly like Atlus's Etrian Odyssey series. You pick a party of five characters from a list that, since it encompasses the three most recent Persona games, is quite extensive, and you explore and map dungeons from a first person perspective. As you explore and draw your map of the dungeon, you find switches, traps, gimmicks, etc. that introduce some challenges to your progression. When you encounter enemies, the battles are done from a first person-esque perspective in which your characters are not visible at all in a similar fashion to the original Dragon Quest games. In terms of gameplay and game mechanics like that, Persona Q2 is identical to Persona Q.
The story is also pretty similar to the first Persona Q - the three games' cast of characters all find themselves trapped in what appears to be a pocket dimension of sorts similar to the Velvet Room along with a couple of unique original characters. To find a way to escape, they cooperate with one another to explore their prison and discover its nature, purpose, and means of escape. What made Persona Q2 somewhat interesting was that despite throwing together the characters from three games, you actually had four protagonists; in addition to the protagonist from Persona 4, the protagonist from Persona 5, and the canon protagonist from Persona 3, you also got to play as the alternate universe Persona 3 protagonist that was introduced in the PSP port of the game, Persona 3 Portable. It was a fairly minor plot point that only popped up in the narrative from time to time, but it was cool to see Atlus give her an official and solid place in the Persona metaverse as being from a nearly identical but still distinct universe from the male Persona 3 protagonist from the game's original release.
Visually, the game is on par with its predecessor. It definitely looks better than most 3DS games, but I didn't find myself exceptionally impressed the way I was with a game like Resident Evil Revelations or Xenoblade Chronicles 3D. The sound, however, is exceptional, although gamers familiar with the Persona series would expect nothing less. The voice acting, while only in Japanese, is well done, but as is always the case with Persona, the soundtrack is what really steals the show. The game has some musical nods to the three source material games as well as truly great original battle music. The battle music especially hits a balance with which a lot of RPGs really struggle - maintaining a high level of energy without taking the focus away from the action. A lot of games will either have boring and forgettable background music or music that is so high energy that it steals the spotlight to a certain extent from the action. Persona Q2 not only finds that balance but strikes it perfectly. I had my fair share of gripes and letdowns with the game, but I have to give credit where credit is due; Atlus really knocked it out of the park with the sound design here.
My biggest complaint with Persona Q2 is the same primary complaint that I had with Persona Q - pacing. About halfway through, I was just ready for the game to be over. It's a good and enjoyable game, and it has an interesting story with characters that I went into the game already loving, but the game's pacing is just painfully slow. Each dungeon has between four and seven floors, and each floor is larger than the last save for the "boss" floor. While the game's five dungeons are all themed differently and each have their own gimmicks that set them apart from one another, within those dungeons, I found myself extremely bored after two floors, and with the giant ass dungeon with seven floors, I found myself pulling up YouTube videos to watch so that I could keep halfway entertained while I played just for the sake of seeing the game through to the end. For folks who LOVE dungeon crawlers or Etrian Odyssey super fans, the dungeons would probably be fine, but for me, the battles and gimmicks weren't nearly enough to break up the monotony of the dungeons' samey floors. Had each dungeon been half the length, it would have been fine for me, but a four floor dungeon felt like spending an hour playing FIFA '14, then playing an hour of FIFA '15, then playing an hour of FIFA '16, and then playing an hour of FIFA '17; they're all fine for what they were, but they're also all basically the exact same thing with some minor tweaks and differences.
Persona Q2 is absolutely a good game, but it's not a great game. In most ways, it's just more of the same as Persona Q, and that's not what I look for in a sequel. There were definitely improvements in some ways - the unique gimmicks that each dungeon had were definitely a nice touch, and the soundtrack was virtually perfect - but as an overall product, it just didn't expand on or add to the foundation of its predecessor the way that I think a good sequel should. It's not a sequel like Army Men to Army Men II, Resistance to Resistance 2, or Titanfall to Titanfall 2 were where major improvements and additions were made that affected big and positive changes to the gameplay and the overall experience. I would definitely consider it an essential part of a 3DS collector's library, but it's not necessarily a must play for 3DS owners in general. It's a high enough quality game to serve as a fitting swan song for the 3DS, but I'd be lying if I said I weren't a little bit disappointed.
Exhuminator wrote:Ecchi lords must unite for great justice.
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noiseredux
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Re: Games Beaten 2019
part of me really wants to get Q2 as the "swan song" of 3DS. But it was released on the heals of Etrian Odyssey Nexus which I played a lot of earlier this year so I'm not sure I want to get into another huge dungeon crawler. Plus, I'm not SUPER familiar w/ the Persona series either, so I feel like a lot of the inside stuff will be lost on me.
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ElkinFencer10
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- Posts: 8621
- Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2010 8:34 pm
- Location: Henderson, North Carolina
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Re: Games Beaten 2019
noiseredux wrote:part of me really wants to get Q2 as the "swan song" of 3DS. But it was released on the heals of Etrian Odyssey Nexus which I played a lot of earlier this year so I'm not sure I want to get into another huge dungeon crawler. Plus, I'm not SUPER familiar w/ the Persona series either, so I feel like a lot of the inside stuff will be lost on me.
Yeah, it's basically Etrian Odyssey in Persona fanservice cosplay. If you're not big into Persona, it would probably just be a confusing Etrian Odyssey game for you. Honestly, I knew going into it that I wasn't going to be crazy about it because I knew it would be just like Persona Q, but between its being the "swan song" of the 3DS and my being a huge Persona fan, I felt obligated. I don't regret getting it, but man, I can think of better ways to have spent that 70ish hours...
Exhuminator wrote:Ecchi lords must unite for great justice.
Re: Games Beaten 2019
pook99 wrote:@xeograd: I played dying light at its release and hated it, I don't know why, I just did, but since then it has been hyped through the roof. It is one of those games I want to go back to at some point and give another shot to, sometimes I irrationally don't like a game and then try it again and just love it, I hated god of war for ps4 at first and it is now probably my 2nd favorite ps4 game, I hated Max Payne 3 at first and then fell in love with it a few years later, and I hated RE6 at first which was a popular opinion but it is now one of my favorite action zombie games. I think dying light has the potential to fall into that category.
It sounds like the game has maybe changed a bit since release, with new content and updates. I have no idea, but I saw some similar comments somewhere (maybe Steam) at some point, how some people thought it was rough at launch, but it's a great game now. Don't quote me on this though heh.
I guess there's still tons of DLC content I didn't even touch. So I'll probably jump back in for some more fun eventually.
The beginning few hours are really slow for sure though and it's got a steep learning curve, but yeah I think if you stick with it it really pays off and gets more fun the more you play.
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Markies
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 1415
- Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2015 4:29 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: Games Beaten 2019
Markies' Games Beat List Of 2019!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*
1. Power Stone 2 (SDC)
2. Radiata Stories (PS2)
3. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)
***4. Saiyuki: Journey West (PS1)***
5. Shining In The Darkness (GEN)
***6. Metropolis Street Racer (SDC)***
7. Half-Life 2 (XBOX)
8. Soul Blazer (SNES)
9. Mario Party (N64)
10. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN)
11. Street Fighter Collection (PS1)
12. Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64)
13. Burnout (PS2)
14. Phantasy Star III (GEN)
15. Batman: The Video Game (NES)
16. X-Men Legends (XBOX)
I beat X-Men Legends on the Microsoft Xbox this evening!
During my pre-teen years, I was a rather large X-Men fan. I remember getting up early and watching the cartoon rather religiously. I collected the comics as well for a very short time. I always wanted an X-Men video game to go with the series and though my nostalgia goggles are strong on the Genesis' games, I know they are not the greatest ones in the world. So, when I saw a Gauntlet/Diablo style X-Men game that looked good, I instantly became interested in the game. Since I saw that the Xbox version was rated the best, I was happy to score a sealed copy and relive one of my favorite franchises from when I was younger.
X-Men Legends is a perfect implementation of the Gauntlet/Diablo style gameplay that you expect. You are able to run around as one of the X-Men and destroy many bad guys and fight iconic villains. And everything runs so smoothly and the combat is so satisfying. Obviously, with these styles of game, it gets a little repetitive after a while, but the ability to change characters really mixes up the game play. Also, you can customize and level up your character however you see fit and the ability to destroy almost anything in the game never gets boring. Only after long play sessions did I feel bored as the action never ceases to get old. The story is what you expect from a X-Men game with enough twists and turns to make it at least interesting. The great voice work also helps in the story and adds some realism to the characters.
However, the look of the characters was really unappealing. They all had this blocky appearance with a painted cell-shaded look. And they all got this modern look to them as I sorely missed their appearances from the cartoon. Obviously, some characters are more over powered then others. I used Wolverine throughout the entire game because his healing ability is quite broken. That didn't help against some of the bosses as they ranged from pushovers to utterly frustrating. There is no balance and they mostly come out of nowhere.
Overall, X-Men Legends is an incredibly good Gauntlet/Diablo style game using very popular characters. It's probably the best X-Men game I've ever played and would be very fun to play with multiple people. It makes a good game around the license with some unique features. If you like those overhead hack and slash games and enjoy the X-Men franchise, this is a game not to miss!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*
1. Power Stone 2 (SDC)
2. Radiata Stories (PS2)
3. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)
***4. Saiyuki: Journey West (PS1)***
5. Shining In The Darkness (GEN)
***6. Metropolis Street Racer (SDC)***
7. Half-Life 2 (XBOX)
8. Soul Blazer (SNES)
9. Mario Party (N64)
10. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN)
11. Street Fighter Collection (PS1)
12. Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64)
13. Burnout (PS2)
14. Phantasy Star III (GEN)
15. Batman: The Video Game (NES)
16. X-Men Legends (XBOX)
I beat X-Men Legends on the Microsoft Xbox this evening!
During my pre-teen years, I was a rather large X-Men fan. I remember getting up early and watching the cartoon rather religiously. I collected the comics as well for a very short time. I always wanted an X-Men video game to go with the series and though my nostalgia goggles are strong on the Genesis' games, I know they are not the greatest ones in the world. So, when I saw a Gauntlet/Diablo style X-Men game that looked good, I instantly became interested in the game. Since I saw that the Xbox version was rated the best, I was happy to score a sealed copy and relive one of my favorite franchises from when I was younger.
X-Men Legends is a perfect implementation of the Gauntlet/Diablo style gameplay that you expect. You are able to run around as one of the X-Men and destroy many bad guys and fight iconic villains. And everything runs so smoothly and the combat is so satisfying. Obviously, with these styles of game, it gets a little repetitive after a while, but the ability to change characters really mixes up the game play. Also, you can customize and level up your character however you see fit and the ability to destroy almost anything in the game never gets boring. Only after long play sessions did I feel bored as the action never ceases to get old. The story is what you expect from a X-Men game with enough twists and turns to make it at least interesting. The great voice work also helps in the story and adds some realism to the characters.
However, the look of the characters was really unappealing. They all had this blocky appearance with a painted cell-shaded look. And they all got this modern look to them as I sorely missed their appearances from the cartoon. Obviously, some characters are more over powered then others. I used Wolverine throughout the entire game because his healing ability is quite broken. That didn't help against some of the bosses as they ranged from pushovers to utterly frustrating. There is no balance and they mostly come out of nowhere.
Overall, X-Men Legends is an incredibly good Gauntlet/Diablo style game using very popular characters. It's probably the best X-Men game I've ever played and would be very fun to play with multiple people. It makes a good game around the license with some unique features. If you like those overhead hack and slash games and enjoy the X-Men franchise, this is a game not to miss!
Re: Games Beaten 2019
96. Blazing Chrome
One of my biggest gripes about the indie retro scene is how good contra clones are nearly impossible to find. Contra has always been one of my favorite game series and it seems that just about every modern day version of contra is just terrible for one reason or another and has always failed to capture the magic of what made contra special. (one exception to this is Super Cybrog which is probably the best modern day contra game I have played until now) Of course when Konami announced a new Contra game I was stoked, then it turned out to be a top down shooter and my excitement just disappeared. Luckily Blazing Chrome is here to fill the void and it does an amazing job of capturing what made contra great in the first place.
Blazing chrome plays most similar to hard corps in that there is a roll move (similar to the slide in that game) and there are 4 weapon slots, once you obtain a weapon you can switch between them with the triggers but if you die while using that weapon you lose it. There is also a melee attack which comes in surprisingly handy for when you are getting rushed by smaller enemies. Ib addition to the more standard cotra type stuff there are bots you can pick up that give you different benefits, there is a defense bot which is easily the best thing in the game and grants you 2 extra hits before you die, a speed bot that makes you faster and lets you double jump, and an attack both which gives you a little drone that accompanies you and shoots.
level design here is absolutely excellent, every level is exactly what you want, a non-stop barrage of enemies and platforming along with a healthy dose of mid bosses and bosses. The game is tough but, just like classic contra, as you learn the enemy placements and boss patterns it gets far easier to deal with. Each level is divided into 3 parts, if you play on normal you start with 5 lives and unlimited continues. When you die you respawn right where you left off and if you continue you are put back to your last checkpoint. Extra lives are awarded when you hit certain point values and are randomnly placed around the stages, it is all very fair and while you will often die, you wont have to replay entire levels.
My only complaint is that the game is a bit on the short side, in fairness all the good contra games can be beaten in about 30 minutes so I can't complain too much, but I would have liked to see a few more levels or at the very least a lower price point given the length of the game.
Despite that, Blazing Chrome is an amazing game, any fan of Contra, or action platformers in general, absolutely need to play it.
One of my biggest gripes about the indie retro scene is how good contra clones are nearly impossible to find. Contra has always been one of my favorite game series and it seems that just about every modern day version of contra is just terrible for one reason or another and has always failed to capture the magic of what made contra special. (one exception to this is Super Cybrog which is probably the best modern day contra game I have played until now) Of course when Konami announced a new Contra game I was stoked, then it turned out to be a top down shooter and my excitement just disappeared. Luckily Blazing Chrome is here to fill the void and it does an amazing job of capturing what made contra great in the first place.
Blazing chrome plays most similar to hard corps in that there is a roll move (similar to the slide in that game) and there are 4 weapon slots, once you obtain a weapon you can switch between them with the triggers but if you die while using that weapon you lose it. There is also a melee attack which comes in surprisingly handy for when you are getting rushed by smaller enemies. Ib addition to the more standard cotra type stuff there are bots you can pick up that give you different benefits, there is a defense bot which is easily the best thing in the game and grants you 2 extra hits before you die, a speed bot that makes you faster and lets you double jump, and an attack both which gives you a little drone that accompanies you and shoots.
level design here is absolutely excellent, every level is exactly what you want, a non-stop barrage of enemies and platforming along with a healthy dose of mid bosses and bosses. The game is tough but, just like classic contra, as you learn the enemy placements and boss patterns it gets far easier to deal with. Each level is divided into 3 parts, if you play on normal you start with 5 lives and unlimited continues. When you die you respawn right where you left off and if you continue you are put back to your last checkpoint. Extra lives are awarded when you hit certain point values and are randomnly placed around the stages, it is all very fair and while you will often die, you wont have to replay entire levels.
My only complaint is that the game is a bit on the short side, in fairness all the good contra games can be beaten in about 30 minutes so I can't complain too much, but I would have liked to see a few more levels or at the very least a lower price point given the length of the game.
Despite that, Blazing Chrome is an amazing game, any fan of Contra, or action platformers in general, absolutely need to play it.
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PartridgeSenpai
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- Location: Northern Japan
Re: Games Beaten 2019
Awesome to hear Blazing Chrome is good! Saw a trailer for it the other day and it certainly LOOKED excellent. I'm glad to hear the gameplay holds up as well! I'll definitely have to stick that one on my watch list ^w^
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Re: Games Beaten 2019
It Blazing Chrome as hard as Super Cyborg? I really had trouble advancing in Super Cyborg just because enemy spawn rates and positions made it very hard to advance, and I ended up burning out.
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Re: Games Beaten 2019
marurun wrote:It Blazing Chrome as hard as Super Cyborg? I really had trouble advancing in Super Cyborg just because enemy spawn rates and positions made it very hard to advance, and I ended up burning out.
Definitely not.
First off, the life system used is pretty generous and frequent enough checkpoints that you are not going to nuts, its not like super cyborg where every time you continue your back at the start of the level
Second, many areas dont have infinite respawning enemies, most of the time there is a finite amount of enemies and if you take your time you wont get overhwelmed.
Third, there is an easy mode that gives you 7 lives to start, weaker enemies, and a power up every time you die
Chrome is not easy, but due to the infinite continues and checkpoints, it feels easier than the other contra games, where as I feel that Super Cyborg was the hardest contra game I ever played in my life.