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Flake
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by Flake Fri Jan 20, 2017 10:25 pm

Super Mario Bros Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 (GBA/WiiU)
Super Mario Bros Advance 2: Yoshi's Island (GBA/WiiU)
Wario Land 4 (GBA/WiiU)

Oh my gosh, can we talk about how great Wario Land 4 is? It really is. The level design is incredibly diverse, the 'collection' element of the gameplay is used conservatively enough that it never drags down the experience, and the game does a great job of conveying how it feels to be a bully like Wario that you end up identifying with the garlic chugging creep.

It is a real shame that there was only a single Wario Land game after Wario Land 4 - when Nintendo talks about bringing back 'dormant' titles, I hope they keep Wario Land in mind. I think that it is unlikely, though. Wario Land was handled by the same development team that handled the Metroid series - and since its dissolution, like Metroid, only 3rd party partners have driven development of the series.
Maybe now Nintendo will acknowledge Metroid has a fanbase?
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by PartridgeSenpai Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:54 am

Partridge Senpai's 2017 Beaten Games:

1. Tales of Hearts R (Vita)
2. UPPERS (Vita)
3. Volume (Vita)
4. Overlord: Minions (DS)
5. Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS)

6. Overlord II (PS3)

The sequel to the wonderfully evil Overlord, this game is largely more of the same, with some fun new stuff tacked on. I beat the original Overlord aaaages ago (albeit not the expansion), and had a blast with it, but the thing that got me into the series was watching an LP of 2. Thus, I waited and waited until I largely forgot the details of 2, and now I finally got to playing through it myself.

You are the Overlord! The old Overlord (the anti-hero of the first game) went missing some time ago, and the land has gained peace and prosperity under the rule of The Empire (who are basically just the Romans in all but name and ruler). It's up to the Overlord to restore the balance of chaos and order to the land, with the help of your trusty army of Minions!

Gameplay-wise, it's very similar to the first game. It's basically evil-Pikmin, where you play as the Overlord, commanding your army of Minions to help you dominate the land. Just like in Pikmin, you have several types of minions who specialize in different types of jobs (and can resist different elements). However, unlike in Pikmin, there is a much larger emphasis on combat, micromanaging a smaller military force (15 to 50-ish), and how each different minion type contributes to combat.

-First you have Browns, who are your tanky/basher minions. They're your front line troops.
-Second you have Reds, who have a ranged fire attack. They're more like archers, and are best put near the back like archers.
-Third are Greens, who are your rogues with a very powerful backstab ability. They can be very effective if used well, but it's often difficult to use them without getting them squashed. I mostly never used them, as the Overlord himself is such a competent unit, just wailing away with his melee is just as good (usually) a use of your time as micromanaging Greens behind enemy lines to get good backstabs.
-Last you have Blues, who are your healers. They can bring dead minions back to life! They're best put between your Browns and Reds, or on top of the Reds.

Approaching each encounter smartly and with the right unit composition can be the difference between victory, or getting your entire army wiped. Especially as your Minions are each individually special, and will acquire better equipment (which they pick up from killed enemies or smashed crates) and more levels the more they fight, so there's an incentive to keep them alive. However, you don't really HAVE to, it'll likely just give you an easier time.

There aren't as many diverse or memorable bosses as the first game, but the overall combat and encounters are still quite tough. The organized battalions of Empire troops can be really tough to get through at times, especially once you start encountering the elite troops. The main addition to this game are the mounts you can get for your minions, as well as spells that your Overlord can cast (I don't recall the first game having those, or if it did, it didn't have these ones). The mounts vary up combat a little by making your minions get slightly tougher or a new ability, but they're so pick-and-choose when the game decides to give them to you that it doesn't change the game that drastically. The spells though, especially the Dark Presence Spell, which allows you to make civilians your loyal slaves OR you can use it to just inflict damage on enemies, really vary up combat, and the mana you have really gives you a new resource that can be the deciding factor in a lot of harder combat (especially the shockwave. Dat be so good).

You find a bunch of gold and a couple other resources on your travels. These can be used to purchase upgrades to your minions' base stats, or can also be combined with Minions souls in your forge to make new weapons and armor for your Overlord. These are pretty cool (and those Minion buffs make a HUGE difference pretty damn quick in how long they stay alive and how much damage they do), but I just wish it gave you actual numerical stats on how good weapons and armor were. There are enough weapons that just give basically no description on how they're actually better, that you sorta just gotta assume that because you unlocked it later and/or it costs so much more of X-resources that it must be better somehow.

The story is largely very silly, with your right-hand Minion Gnarl always keeping you informed of your objectives through his silly commentary magically transmitted to your helmet. You recapture the minion clans, take mistrisses, and conquer towns, all in the name of evil (and yourself, of course). A lot of dry, fairly dark humor. It's not for everyone, but there were a good handfull lines that really gave me a good belly-laugh.

The game has fairly good music as well. I really like the final combat music, as well as the main intro. Very sweeping, and delightfully evil orchestra scores. The framerate leaves a LOT to be desired though (I have also tested it, and it runs just as bad on 360). If you're fighting a ton of enemies at once, or more likely if you're breaking a ton of stuff all at the same time, the framerate starts hopping all over the place. This is a very noticeable problem in cutscenes, as it seems not one in the whole game is free from it, making any lip-syncing of the voices that might be there virtually undetectable. However, I will say that the framerate virtually never impacted my ability to actually play the game.

Verdict: Recommended. It's a fun, silly strategy action game. Not quite as good as the first in many respects, but not bad by any respect. If you want more controller-centric RTS action and you're all Pikmin'd out, then Overlord is a great thing to give you more minions to command and objectives to achieve! FOR THE OVERLORD!

(Just a little sad to see in the credits this game came out in 2009! It's been almost 10 years since we got a proper Overlord game :cry: )
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BogusMeatFactory
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by BogusMeatFactory Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:02 am

PartridgeSenpai wrote:
(Just a little sad to see in the credits this game came out in 2009! It's been almost 10 years since we got a proper Overlord game :cry: )


There were actually 3 other overlord games that have come out after 2. Overlord: Dark Legend on Wii, Overlord Minions on DS and Overlord fellowship of evil on xbox one, ps4 and pc!
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by alienjesus Sat Jan 21, 2017 6:56 am

Flake wrote:Super Mario Bros Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 (GBA/WiiU)
Super Mario Bros Advance 2: Yoshi's Island (GBA/WiiU)
Wario Land 4 (GBA/WiiU)

Oh my gosh, can we talk about how great Wario Land 4 is? It really is. The level design is incredibly diverse, the 'collection' element of the gameplay is used conservatively enough that it never drags down the experience, and the game does a great job of conveying how it feels to be a bully like Wario that you end up identifying with the garlic chugging creep.

It is a real shame that there was only a single Wario Land game after Wario Land 4 - when Nintendo talks about bringing back 'dormant' titles, I hope they keep Wario Land in mind. I think that it is unlikely, though. Wario Land was handled by the same development team that handled the Metroid series - and since its dissolution, like Metroid, only 3rd party partners have driven development of the series.


I'm guessing the later game you mean is Wario Land: The Shake Dimension for Wii (which is by far my favourite in the series). Have you tried Master of Disguise or Wario World? I don't hear good things about the former, but the latter I hear some very mixed opinions of.

The Wario Land series is a mixed bag for me - I love some of them, and hate others.

My favourite to least favourite of the ones I've played:

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension
Virtual Boy Wario Land
Wario Land 3
Wario Land 4
Wario Land II

I really hate Wario Land 2. Wario Land 3 on the other hand managed to take that odd puzzley formula from 2 and do it much better, although it can still be frustrating. I loved the 'run back to base' thing they did in 4 and Shake though, at the end of levels.
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by PartridgeSenpai Sat Jan 21, 2017 8:21 am

BogusMeatFactory wrote:
PartridgeSenpai wrote:
(Just a little sad to see in the credits this game came out in 2009! It's been almost 10 years since we got a proper Overlord game :cry: )


There were actually 3 other overlord games that have come out after 2. Overlord: Dark Legend on Wii, Overlord Minions on DS and Overlord fellowship of evil on xbox one, ps4 and pc!


None of which have been called "Overlord 3" ;A;
I guess Dark Legend is kind of like the others, but Fellowship of Evil is a terrible Diablo-clone (from what I have read). I have no idea why FoE is even an Overlord game, tbh. You do have a point though. The series isn't completely dead (or at least wasn't). I'm just curious on if Triumph either doesn't want to make another RTS-style one, or if they just can't get funding to do it.

alienjesus wrote:I'm guessing the later game you mean is Wario Land: The Shake Dimension for Wii (which is by far my favourite in the series). Have you tried Master of Disguise or Wario World? I don't hear good things about the former, but the latter I hear some very mixed opinions of.

I really hate Wario Land 2. Wario Land 3 on the other hand managed to take that odd puzzley formula from 2 and do it much better, although it can still be frustrating. I loved the 'run back to base' thing they did in 4 and Shake though, at the end of levels.


I loooooove Wario Land as well! I'm surprised people don't like Master of Disguise! (well, that's not entirely true. I can actually understand why people don't like the whole "drawing on your costumes thing." The stylus hurts your hand to hold after a while, but regardless) That game is so great! One of my favorite DS action games. 2 is also my second favorite of the original series (behind 4, of course ;3). The only one I don't care for so much is 3, because I really didn't care for the day/night mechanic, and the game is very strangely short compared to all the others.
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by MrPopo Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:04 pm

1. Pokémon Moon - 3DS
2. Tony Hawk's Underground - GCN
3. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising - PC
4. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Retribution - PC
5. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness - PSP
6. X-Wing: Imperial Pursuit - PC
7. Star Wars Republic Commando - PC

Republic Commando is an FPS that came out after Attack of the Clones and was released for both PC and Xbox. It's clear that Xbox was the target development platform but the PC port is pretty well done. The only two things that scream Xbox to me are the short individual levels (which DX:IW also suffered from) and the fact that the menu screens have a hilariously oversensitive mouse control that makes me think they direct mapped it to the analog stick code. Fortunately it can all be navigated with the keyboard.

Republic Commando's main gimmick is that it's squad based, and more importantly very well implemented. You are the leader of a four man squad of Republic clones, specifically of commandos. These are your sort of down and dirty soldiers who you can send into the real shit and trust to get the job done. Consequently there's a bit more individuality in them as compared to the rank and file. Each of your squadmates has a personality and in the backstory they have specializations. However, it seems like when they playtested it the specializations probably were more frustrating than fun, so in gameplay terms everyone is equally good at everything. All the backstory stuff got left in probably because they made this decision after the audio got recorded.

Your squadmates are quite competent and they managed to get the balance to the point where you cannot Rambo everything and you cannot just let the squad do everything. As squad leader you have the ability to give orders to the squad. The first set is the general orders; you can have them focus fire a target, stick close to you, hold a piece of ground, or go back to their standard AI. Additionally, there are a lot of context sensitive orders available. You can tell a squad member to set a detonation pack on something destructible or to slice into a terminal to activate something; both of these take time to accomplish so whoever does it will need cover. In many locations there will be dedicated positions for sniping or using heavy weapons; you can command your units to take up those positions. You can order them into turrets to provide covering fire, and you can tell them to revive a squad member or go heal up at a bacta terminal. There's even a door breach mechanism where the squad forms one, one places the breach charge, one tosses a grenade in after the door opens, and a third provides covering fire. All of these operations can also be undertaken by you aside from the sniping/heavy weapons positions (as you have those weapons at all times). Much of the strategy in the game consists of picking out the right lines of fire and supporting your squad, as well as deciding when to send someone to place a charge vs. you doing it yourself. In defensive situations I found that my squadmates were better off taking the gunnery positions while I took care of the task of slicing/detonating.

My main complaint with the game is that on the level of individual combat the balance is rather spotty. Melee attacks are incredibly damaging (though this works for both sides), which can lead to a lot of you suddenly dying. There are a couple of highly damaging ranged enemies that are difficult to take down; one is an aerial enemy that is highly evasive and the other is an enemy with boatloads of HP. Both of these can kill you in a second or two if they catch you out in the open. When you have the full squad it's not so bad, as the various members draw fire, but your first introduction to both is a forced solo segment. Fortunately, you going down is not an immediate game over; like your squad members you go into an incapacitated state and another squad member can revive you. Normally they only do this if there are no hostiles but while incapacitated you can issue an order for someone to get you back on your feet. You need to weigh whether its worth one of your squad dropping what they're doing and focusing on you or not.

All in all a pretty good FPS, especially if you like Star Wars.
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Xeogred
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by Xeogred Sat Jan 21, 2017 3:34 pm

Been meaning to check that one out. How's it stack compared to Jedi Knight?
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by MrPopo Sat Jan 21, 2017 6:22 pm

Xeogred wrote:Been meaning to check that one out. How's it stack compared to Jedi Knight?

Mmm, not really fair to compare it to lightsaber games, because the lightsaber has a completely different feel. Compared to Dark Forces I'd say the gunplay is a bit tighter; you have a general purpose assault rifle, a sniper, and a grenade launcher, and you can pick up a single secondary weapon from enemies (and swap out when needed). Dark Forces kinda suffered a bit from the syndrome a lot of FPS's back then had of tossing in more guns for the sake of guns, making half the arsenal useless. Republic Commando does skew a bit on the CoD end; you're encouraged to iron sights your battle rifle and there's the aforementioned quick melee. I'd say the weirdest thing for me was the lack of feedback when I was shooting stuff; they tended to completely ignore you until you killed them when using the regular rifle and the emergency pistol. The sniper did tend to stagger.
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by Xeogred Sat Jan 21, 2017 6:36 pm

1. Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour (PC)
2. Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter* (PC)
3. Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter (PC)
4. D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (PC)
5. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (PC)
6. Deadcore (PC)

* replay

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DO YOU LIKE PAIN?
DO YOU WANT TO BREAK YOUR MOUSE AND KEYBOARD?
DO YOU LIKE SCREAMING FUCK?

Then you should play Deadcore. It's insane. I clocked in 3:44 which is faster than HLTB's average, but still... holy shit. I had to ragequit the last level a few times to take a breather (you get checkpoints throughout). And never has a game made me sweat so much.

Deadcore is a hyper fast first person platformer/runner/jumper with a godly cool aesthetic that makes me think of Star Fox SNES in hilarious ways. Great soundscape and atmosphere in general. You get a few abilities along the way to keep the puzzles evolving. But the last two levels go full on Dante Must Die Super Meat Boy and got a bit too trial and error for me. I "died" (respawn to a checkpoint) 150 some times in both level 4-5. And those two levels alone took longer than the first three. But I knew the game only had 5 levels after looking into it, then there was an in game message teasing me midway into level 5 that I was almost done. I just had to finish it. Thankfully I did, but you need balls of steel.

Not really comparable to Portal... which I find to be really easy in comparison and compared to this, extremely relaxing and serene. Deadcore is anything but serene.

Worth checking out if you think it looks interesting and think your first person mouse and keyboard twitch skills are prepared for destruction.

Took lots of screencaps:
viewtopic.php?p=1078081#p1078081
viewtopic.php?p=1077963#p1077963
viewtopic.php?p=1078877#p1078877
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Re: Games Beaten 2017

by REPO Man Sat Jan 21, 2017 9:53 pm

Borderlands for 360, as Mordecai on the second playthrough.
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