BoneSnapDeez wrote:Oh, and by the way, writing the number 8 followed by an end parenthesis makes the sunglasses man emoji.
Ugh, I'm pretty sure I'd noticed that, and just forgot to turn off smilies, too. Thanks for being my editor, Bone.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:Is Iris in Sakura Taisen 2?
She is. All six of the girls from the first game return, but only Sakura and Iris are around for the first few chapters. The second chapter is dedicated almost exclusively to Iris again, also. She's still very cute, and I find it difficult to not dote on her a bit, so she ended up in my third spot, after Sakura and Kanna, in the trust list. Any of the top four can be chosen as the heroine for the final chapters, but I can't bring myself to choose her to be the heroine, because the way she always talks about Oogami being her lover kind of creeps me out. I feel like the developers even kind of knew it was creepy, because, if you do a combo special with Iris, in some of the earlier battles, she magically has the form of an "adult" (probably meant to be 15 or something, but she at least looks over 18): https://youtu.be/INDcOV86wjo?t=421. The combo attack when she's chosen as the heroine makes me a lot less comfortable, though. I don't even want to link to it.
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)
I beat Mario Party on the Nintendo 64 this evening!
My college roommate was the one that got me into the Mario Party series. I knew him from High School and I use to visit him throughout my college days. We would get together and play 50 turn Mario Party games. I am such a nerd that I would spend my Friday and Saturday nights in college playing Mario Party while eating Papa John's pizza. It was glorious. When we transferred to different colleges, I made a point to pick up the Mario Party games for myself. Funny thing, I only ever played the second and third game. I never played the original until many years ago when I finally got a copy and started playing through maps by myself. I decided this year to sit down and finally play through all of the maps so that I could beat all of the N64 Mario Party games.
Starting with Mario Party 2 and 3, it's hard to go back to the original as I am used to so much more for my Mario Party Games. There is so much that is missing. However, if you take out those two games and just focus on this one alone, you can see the great foundation here. All of the maps are very interesting and highly unique to each other. Since it is more of a bare bones approach, you don't get any of the craziness later on in the series. So, most of the mini-games are 4 Player Games and the maps don't have many different spots. They are littered with Chance Times, which are the bane of my existence, but it's nice to play a bare bones approach sometimes.
However, the Mini-Games aren't all that memorable. A few of them cause you to rotate the thumb stick rapidly and that is not a smart idea. There are several mini-games where you are fighting off people taking money from you, so the money gets really small. The maps have odd star placement, so you can go through most of the game and nobody ever get a star. Also, Chance Time is seriously terrible. Seriously.
Overall, Mario Party is an interesting concept and I can see how they improved greatly on it in the other games in the series. Mario Party 3 is my favorite as it has the most variety, but it all started here with a great foundation. They took out what didn't work and improved on what did work. If you are a fan of the Mario Party series, then this is worth owning and playing as there is enough there that is good for you. However, if you are new to the series, it is better to start with a latter iteration.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary (NDS) 2. Reigns (iOS) 3. Castlevania: The Adventure (GB) 4. Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (GB) 5. Castlevania Legends (GB) 6. Yankai’s Triangle (iOS) 7. Mega Man III (GB) 8. Mega Man IV (GB) 9. Mega Man V (GB) 10. Sin & Punishment (N64) 11. Love You to Bits (iOS) 12. Mega Man Powered Up - Old Style (PSP) 13. Mega Man Powered Up - New Style (PSP) 14. Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA) 15. Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (NDS) 16. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (NDS) 17. Detective Pikachu (3DS)
I like Detective Pikachu’s concept, settings, personality, graphics, music, and voice acting. It’s gameplay, however, leaves something to be desired. There is no failure state; so, the gameplay boils down to, “Talk to NPCs for eight hours.” There are also a few quick-time events, but there is no penalty for failing those either. I probably am not the game’s intended audience, but I think even my children would have found the game a bit boring. (My daughter was watching me play it, and she said, “ All you do is talk to people?!”) I had to push myself a bit to get through it, but I finally have it under my belt. Now...back to old games!
BoneSnapDeez wrote:Thanks for the info playa. I've played the first installment and part five, but all those middle entries are unknown to me.
Oh, how is V? I don't have that one. I mostly just wanted to play 3, and thought I should play the ones before it, too. I'll probably be done with 3 and 4 fairly soon, though, so I'll have to think about whether or not I want to continue with the series after those. Maybe debate getting the remake of the first game on the PS2, also. There's apparently a new Sakura Taisen scheduled for release at the end of the year. I saw the opening trailer for it; It seems they wanted to include some tiddy-monsters this time, though.
Metro 2033 Redux Played through this, this month on the Xbox One. It is a fairly straightfoward console FPS from 2010 and has some clunkiness to it, but acting and dialogue and general world building are very charming and pull you in a bit. You end the game not quite sure what happened story-wise, but I am interested enough to check out Last Light in a couple of months.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
Megaman Legends (PSTV) The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (PSTV) Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)
March Games:
Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS) Mario Galaxy (Wii)
April
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS4)
This is my second time playing Arkham Asylum and first time playing the 'Return to Arkham' version. So I have a few thoughts about both the game itself and the 'remake'.
First the remake - it's nice to have a fresh coat of paint but compared to the 'remake' of Arkham City, it's hard to see any real improvement. I suppose if I had both versions on separate screens in front of me at the same time, I might see something. It definitely feels like a PS3 game in terms of models and environment, regardless of how nice the new texture mapping might be. I think that the biggest contribution of the 'Return to Arkham' remake is simply that the game is available on modern consoles again.
The game itself is really great. There aren't as many movement features as there are in the later games such as Arkham City but the way that the island is laid out makes Batman's limited tool set feel 'just right'. Combat is fluid without allowing you to go on auto-pilot and by the end of the game, I was routinely getting 20x or higher combo. I'm generally pretty horrible at action games where any type of flow or pattern are necessary but Arkham Asylum seems to sit in a nice place.
In terms of taking advantage of the Batman license, Rocksteady deserves credit for a LOT. Not just making a good game that makes you think like Batman would to solve problems but for creating a fantastic Batman universe. It would have been very easy for Rocksteady to have leveraged elements or themes from the Batman Begin's iteration of the character but that would have limited the growth of the property. The Christopher Nolan Batman universe is a small scale, intimate affair. Batman and the villains exist solely to justify each other in an feedback loop. Gotham, the GCPD, even the crime that Batman is stopping are window dressing. So yeah, Rocksteady could have easily created a single game in that same vein of story telling but there'd be no room for the story to expand.
By the end of Arkham Asylum, it is clear that there is a lot happening outside of the game's play area. It's clear that not only does Batman have a long and storied career, but so do his villains. That implied scale, even on the first game, helps with the immersion. Batman is not going through the biggest challenge of his career - this is one night in his endless crusade for justice. This type of game design is both ambitiious and understated and it makes me very happy.
Maybe now Nintendo will acknowledge Metroid has a fanbase?
Yay, late review for an obscure game that I didn't end up enjoying too much. wooo
3/18: Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel (PS3) The first two Ar Tonelico games are two games that I really love. Both games have plenty of flaws and aren’t exactly the most polished of games, but I really enjoy them all the same. With that being the case, of course I was excited to play the next game in the series, Ar Tonelico Qoga. Unfortunately, while there were some aspects of Qoga that I really enjoyed, there were also some things about it that I really did not like.
As far as what I did like, Qoga has some of best features of the first two games including the interesting characters, deep world and lore, and amazing music (some of which are some of my favourites in the whole series). All three of these things really kept me invested throughout the game. Seeing recurring characters from the first two games was also nice to see. While a bit confusing at times, the story had some twists and turns which was enjoyable as well. However, while these aspects of the game did keep me invested in playing, the negative aspects did get debating about whether I wanted to even finish the game or not.
I had two very big problems with Qoga. Firstly, there were many sections of the game that were a chore to get through. Main areas you have to go through are often not very interesting to go through, as you mostly just keep walking forward (with very little to explore outside of that), and many of these areas are also quite lengthy. Additionally, there is one area of the game (called the Clustania Executive District) that is the worst to go through. For one, this area is not only lengthy, but also a confusing mess to get through. It’s six floors of nonsensical corridors and elevators, which was a pain to navigate even with fan-made maps (cause there aren’t any maps in-game yaaay). What makes this area the worst, however, if that you have to through it at least five times, and some of those times you have to make your way back to the entrance as well. This area was probably the worst instance of needless padding that I’ve ever seen.
The second big problem I had with Qoga (and probably the most annoying one) was it’s combat system. In the jump from the PS2 to PS3, there series decided to greatly overhaul the combat system. Unlike the first two games, which had a turn-based system for the first game and a semi-turn-based system for the second, Qoga switched to a completely action-based combat system. While I definitely tend to prefer turn-based combat, I wouldn’t have a problem with this change if it was done well. Unfortunately, while there are a lot of complicated little bits in the system, most battles basically boil down to mashing the attack button for a while. Sure you do have to make sure your magic caster (who is defenceless while they sing their ultimate mega attack) doesn’t get hit, and there’s also a thing where you have to time your attacks to the music to help charge the mega attack but you’re still mostly just mashing that attack button. Most of your party’s attacks don’t even really do much of anything anyway, as your magic caster will charge up an insta-kill attack way before your main party can kill enemies a majority of the time. This makes the battles really, really tedious and boring. If I could flee from every battle without any consequence, I would do so with no hesitation, but you have to get those levels sooner or later.
Unfortunately, because of those two big negatives, I would not say that I enjoyed Ar Tonelico Qoga. I do not regret playing it, as I really liked the characters and soundtrack, but it is very disappointing that those aspects aren’t in a much better game. Overall, definitely do not pick up Ar Tonelico Qoga if you are not familiar the series, and only consider maybe playing it if you are a big fan of the other two games.
On a side note, I’m also kind of sad that I am running out of Ar Tonelico games to play! There are only two that I haven’t played, Ciel nosurge and Ar nosurge. I think at this point, the devs are probably done with the series, so once I play those, then that’s it :/ Hopefully those two are more enjoyable than Qoga was for me.
