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BoneSnapDeez
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by BoneSnapDeez Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:58 pm

1. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom)
2. Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu (Famicom)
3. Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken (Famicom)
4. Hello Kitty World (Famicom)
5. Galaxian (Famicom)
6. Esper Dream 2: Aratanaru Tatakai (Famicom)
7. Ninja Jajamaru-kun (Famicom)
8. Jajamaru no Daibouken (Famicom)
9. Front Line (Famicom)
10. Field Combat (Famicom)
11. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (Famicom)
12. Mississippi Satsujin Jiken: Murder on the Mississippi (Famicom)
13. Space Harrier (Famicom)
14. Geimos (Famicom)
15. Attack Animal Gakuen (Famicom)
16. Sky Destroyer (Famicom)
17. Ripple Island (Famicom)
18. Oishinbo: Kyukyoku no Menu 3bon Syoubu (Famicom)
19. Bird Week (Famicom)
20. Baltron (Famicom)
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Everything was "tron" back in the 80s, huh? Enter Baltron (1986), a horizontal space shooter for the Famicom, presented courtesy of Shouei and Toei. The game's epic tale is presented via some Zelda-esque scrolling text that follows the title screen. The "Baltron" itself is apparently some sort of "ultimate weapon" threatening humanity, and it's the player's duty to annihilate it.

At first blush Baltron appears to be closely modeled after Konami's earliest attempt at a side-scrolling shmup: Scramble. When the A button is pressed, the heroic spacecraft of Baltron (apparently called the "Gistorias") simultaneously launches forward-travelling missiles and drops arced bombs. There's an ever-depleting fuel gauge. And the entire game consists of one (very) lengthy stage, with alternating outer space and cavernous segments.

But wait! There is a wrinkle to the formula. The auto-scrolling of Baltron seems slow, oddly slow. There's a "radar" mini-map which displays oncoming enemies, as well as those attempting a sneak attack from behind. The Gistorias can flip around at will, to travel in a leftward direction. And the ship gains and loses speed based on how long the d-pad is held. Sounds familiar? Yes, apparently someone at Shouei was a fan of Defender, as this control scheme is ripped straight from the Williams classic. It's a novel idea: an attempt to merge Western and Japanese shooter design. It also doesn't work particularly well in practice. Defender was successful because the control scheme felt logical within the given environment: giant wrapping space arenas. Shoehorn these controls into what is otherwise a more advanced "third generation" shmup, and things turn ugly fast. The Gistorias always seems to travel too fast or too slow; achieving a level speed equilibrium is all but impossible.
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The entire game is filled with strange capricious elements. There are two special attacks, awkwardly performed by holing up or down on the d-pad in tandem with the B button. The Gistorias can drop a "smart bomb" capable of destroying all enemies on the screen. There's also a warp, which can be used to bypass particularly tricky areas. Both maneuvers drain tremendous amounts of fuel. Said fuel can be regained, apparently, by collecting moving blue orbs that occasionally materialize. I didn't collect a single orb during my playthrough. They're nigh indistinguishable from enemy crafts, so I ending up shooting them down. Thankfully, one-ups, which appear in the form of koalas (seriously), are in ample supply.

Game difficulty is wildly and comically inconsistent. There enemy AI is clueless, making no attempts to zero in on the player's spacecraft. While traveling through the outer space stretches, it's actually possible to just stay put, while mashing the fire button, and never take a hit. In contrast, the interior cavern segments are annoyingly difficult, featuring narrow stretches of rock that require pixel-perfect precision to navigate properly.
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Aesthetics are particularly bland. The outdoor night sky has the requisite star dots, while the indoor caverns are typically just dull treks of brown and black. Enemy sprites are pretty abysmal. Many are quite literally just "shapes" -- triangular airplanes, circular alien ships, and so on. The soundtrack consists of a single repetitive jingle, which doesn't quite inspire feelings of appreciation or annoyance. It's just there, oddly muffled in the background, as if it's being played from a distant boombox.

Baltron is yet another shooter bobbing in the sea of mediocre early Famicom shmups. It admittedly has some interesting ideas, but everything feels rushed, undeveloped, and haphazardly pieced together. Baltron perhaps could have been a more worthwhile experience, had it been allowed to cook for a few more years.
pook99
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by pook99 Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:00 pm

MrPopo wrote:Reading opinions of Dragon's Lair and Double Dragon makes me want to see a TAS that plays Dragon's Lair 1 & 2 off the same set of inputs and call it Double Dragon's Lair.


The whole game can be set to the horrible 90's double dragon cartoon, I would play it ; )

Games Beaten:

23. Dragons Lair (switch)
24. City of Heroes (openbor)
25. Callys Cave 4
26. Double Dragon (nes)
27. Duck Souls


27. Duck Souls:

Not a typo, I did not just finish dark souls, I finished duck souls

Duck souls is an indie single screen hardcore platformer. The story is you are the last remaining duck and are visited by a the souls of some dead ducks(hence the title), in order to save the duck species from extinction you have to play through 100 levels and rescue the duck egg at the end of each level.

In an obvious nod to dark souls and to further pun up the name of the game this is meant to be challenging, and it is a challenging game, but it is probably one of the most fun and least frustrating hardcore platformers I have ever played. Every level is a single screen that is littered with various obstacles. One of the most endearing parts of the game is how frequently new obstacles are introduced, every few levels you will see a new deathtrap, this keeps the game incredibly fresh and no one obstacle ever wears out its welcome.

Control in this game is absolutely perfect. It is simple, responsive, and very easy to make pixel perfect jumps. You have a jump and a dash, you can dash in all 8 directions, but can only dash once per jump. You can also wall jump and scale walls ala super meat boy, but you can only jump on the same wall 4 times before having to stand so you cannot infinitely hang on walls. Everything works exactly how you want it to and I never once blamed my death on the controls, when I died it was my fault.

When you die (and you will) there is instant respawns, the quick respawns, combined with the tight control and relatively short levels means this game will never frustrate you. The graphics in this game are nice, everything has a nice 8 bit aesthetic and the main character is an adorable little duck.

Duck Souls is just a great little indie game, and fans of platformers will definitely enjoy it. It is not the longest game out there, it took me about an hour to beat all 100 levels(really 99 levels, the last level is just the ending) but it retails for $2 and for that price you really can't go wrong.
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prfsnl_gmr
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by prfsnl_gmr Fri Mar 01, 2019 12:11 am

@Bone

You continue to kill it, reminding me I need to play more Famicom games. Why are there only 24 hours in the day?!

.....

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)


Sin & Punishment (N64) is a rail shooter by Treasure. It is pretty awesome, and I wrote about it in this month’s Together Retro thread. I’ve been picking at it for a while, and some parts frustrated me at first. There are also a few questionable Treasure design decisions scattered throughout. The last boss is pretty great though, and a playthrough on “easy” after a playthrough on “normal” demonstrated to me just how much I had learned about the game. (My first attempt at the easy mode had me using up my continues by stage 2-2. When I beat the game again a few days ago, I almost 1CCed it, and I had almost 20 credits in reserve when I took down the last boss.) Recommended with reservations.

Love You to Bits (iOS) Is a simple, charming point-and-click adventure game my son and I have been playing together for a while. In it, you play as a boy searching for the parts to his best friend, a female robot destroyed by a villainous dinosaur scientist. The game is level-based, and it consists of nearly 25 levels. Despite its length, however, each level is distinctive, and you visit locales inspired by classic science fiction movies, Dawn of the Dead, Steamboat Willy, classic video games, el Dia de los Muertos, etc. (One of my favorites starts you on a flying pirate ship being chased by a monster, which turns out to be a hotel. It’s odd., but consistently charming.) The levels are full of content, and each of them have cleverly hidden collectibles that both add replay value and endow the game with emotional depth. Most importantly, the game simplifies and streamlines point-and-click controls to their most basic elements, and the game benefits tremendously from it. Items with which you can interact are clearly marked; so, there’s no pixel hunting, and you interact with different aspects of each level in only one way (i.e., you don’t have to look at, talk to, open, close, etc. everything to solve puzzles.). Nonetheless, the game is just as engaging, if not more so, than adventure games with vastly more complicated interfaces. Highly recommended.

Mega Man Powered Up (PSP) is a 2.5D remake of Mega Man (NES). The new style game rearranges the levels, the music, the boss order, and adds two bosses - Time Man and (the problematic) Oil Man. If you defeat a boss using only the Mega Buster, you “rescue” him and can then play through any level with him. The bosses play very differently, and they add a tremendous amount of replay value to a relatively short game. You need them to get some of the unlockables for the stage creation mode, and by my count, you would have to play through the game at least 27(!) times to “completel it. It’s a fun game, but even as a fan of the franchise, that’s a bit much for me. The old style game is a straight remake of Mega Man (NES) with the original music, original level design, original boss order, etc. It utilizes a new engine, however, and this mode highlights the mechanical gameplay differences between Mega Man Powered Up and its 2D, sprite-based predecessors. The differences make the game easier in ways and harder in others; so, the old style game ends up approximating the original experience pretty well. The game felt a little odd at first. It grew on me, though, and I ended up really enjoying it. Recommended to fans of the series.
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BoneSnapDeez
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by BoneSnapDeez Fri Mar 01, 2019 11:46 am

I suspect Sin & Punishment is better with the authentic N64 controls (I like the N64 controller). Worth tracking down the cart? Maybe.

1. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom)
2. Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu (Famicom)
3. Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken (Famicom)
4. Hello Kitty World (Famicom)
5. Galaxian (Famicom)
6. Esper Dream 2: Aratanaru Tatakai (Famicom)
7. Ninja Jajamaru-kun (Famicom)
8. Jajamaru no Daibouken (Famicom)
9. Front Line (Famicom)
10. Field Combat (Famicom)
11. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (Famicom)
12. Mississippi Satsujin Jiken: Murder on the Mississippi (Famicom)
13. Space Harrier (Famicom)
14. Geimos (Famicom)
15. Attack Animal Gakuen (Famicom)
16. Sky Destroyer (Famicom)
17. Ripple Island (Famicom)
18. Oishinbo: Kyukyoku no Menu 3bon Syoubu (Famicom)
19. Bird Week (Famicom)
20. Baltron (Famicom)
21. Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Famicom)
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It's easy to forget, but there were indeed a host of fighting games that predate Street Fighter II. Many are terrible, clunky, unplayable messes, though there were a handful that still feel satisfactory today. One such game is Konami's earliest go at the genre: Yie Ar Kung-Fu. Originally appearing in the arcades in 1985, it was quickly ported to European home computers, the MSX, and of course the Famicom. The Famicom port is vastly simplified when compared to its arcade ancestor, in terms of enemy roster and the available moveset, to the point where it could arguably be considered a different game.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu sees the player take control of Lee, a young warrior seeking to avenge his father. Standing in his way are five fearsome adversaries. A fighting game that contained an actual roster of distinct opponents was in fact novel in these days. It broke the mold of "karate guy vs. karate guy" seen in games like Data East's heinous button-masher Karate Champ. Lee is a little stiff to control, but the limited moveset makes Yie Ar Kung-Fu a quick one to master. Lee can punch and kick, both low and high. He can execute the ever-useful jump-kick. And though it's not really a "move" per se, if Lee jumps into the edge of the screen he "bounces" off. This is best way to leap clear over opponents, and utilizing this technique is all but required to complete the game successfully. It should be noted that every character, including Lee, loses a bout after taking nine hits regardless of their origin. So, a standing punch is just as devastating as a jumping kick. Thus, one should only choose moves based on positioning, there's no damage prioritization to be considered.
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Poor Lee. He's armed with only his bare fists, while his enemies utilize short and long-range projectiles. Prepare to jump, often. Right out the gate Lee faces the massive Wang, who wields a long stick. Next up is the fire-breathing Tao, then Chen the chain-man, followed by the shuriken-tossing female warrior Lang. Rounding out the party of five is Mu, a rotund man who somehow manages to hurl his entire body the length of the screen, not unlike the Raiden character of a certain other fighting game that would follow almost a decade later. Overall, Yie Ar Kung-Fu isn't too difficult. Success seems to be predicated on predicting when opponents will unleash their projectile attacks, which becomes second nature after awhile. Personally, I found the difficulty a tad unbalanced. The Lang battle is probably the toughest of the game, while Mu isn't really much harder than Wang or Tao.

Severely hampering the quality of Yie Ar Kung-Fu is the issue of hitbox programming. Seriously, the hitboxes in this game are atrocious. Sometimes Lee hits enemies, sometimes his fists and feet glide right "through" them. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. While opponents technically go down in nine hits, that's nine successful hits; expect to actually punch and/or kick each opponent twenty of so times per match.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu looks like a 1985 Famicom game. There's a lot of black. The character designs are rather appealing, and dare I say (unintentionally?) cute. There's a single indoor backdrop, which changes colors after each game loop. It all looks competent enough. The stock "Chinese music" is a bit kitschy, but complements the visuals well.

I went into this one with bated breath. I anticipated another Karate Champ, the "only" fighting game available to 80s NES kids, and one that traumatized us all. But Yie Ar Kung-Fu isn't that bad. If it weren't for the tragic hitbox business I'd be willing to call this an absolutely essential example of an early fighter. As it stands, it's an interesting historical piece, and one can plainly see how bigger and better genre titans were spawned from the game's conventions.
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laurenhiya21
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by laurenhiya21 Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:17 am

Woo, forgetting to make reviews as usual :P At least I only had these to write and I'm caught up now.

2/12: Bravely Default (3DS)
Oh boy, I sure am late to this one haha. It’s such a well received turn-based RPG that I’m sure everyone here has at least heard of it. I knew I wanted to play this some day, as turn-based RPGs are one of my favourite genres, but I didn’t decide to get into it until I received it as a gift (thanks again, Stark!). Before going into it I as a little bit worried about not enjoying it, as a number of times I’ve been very disappointed by an extremely hyped game, but thankfully I really enjoyed it!

At first glance, Bravely Default might seem like nothing special. The story revolves around stopping the evil stuff from taking over by reviving the four elemental crystals (bet you haven’t heard that one before), the combat is mostly a pretty standard turn-based system with plenty of jobs for the party members to take on, and there are plenty of people to talk to and places to explore. While it sounds like it could easily just be a boring, generic RPG, what makes Bravely Default so fun to play (at least for me) are the characters, generally quick battles, and being able to adjust the battle frequency.

For the characters, almost all of the major ones have quite a bit of depth to them. The main cast is especially great and I found all four of them to be interesting during the story segments and funny during their skits (although Agnes got a little bit on my nerves some times). Additionally, many of the villains aren’t just evil because they’re evil, and you’ll slowly learn their motivations throughout the story.

For the quick battles, one of the unique features of Bravely Default is the Brave/Default system. Each character has BP, and they’ll use 1 BP to make an action (like attacking, using skills, or using items) and gain 1 BP when their turn comes around again. You can just do a normal action and be done with their turn (just like a standard turn-based RPG) but you can use additional BP and make it go into the negatives to take additional actions in a character’s turn (up to a maximum of 3 or 4 turns… I forget which). If the character still has negative BP when it’s their turn again, their turn is skipped. To gain additional BP, your characters can also Default to defend, plus there are a few skills they can learn to gain more under certain conditions (such as gain 1 BP when given a status effect). How does this make the battles quicker? Well, you will need to fight a number of random battles throughout the game (yeah it’s grinding but it’s pretty minimal compared to other games), and if you’re sure that you can easily kill the enemies, you can just make everyone Brave the maximum number of times, murder those enemies, and bam! Battle over. Don’t even need to let the enemies take a turn. Even if you can’t instantly kill the enemies like that, the Brave system really does speed it along sometimes, unless you’re a bit too overconfident and the enemies murder your party instead.

Finally, for the third big plus! Being able to adjust the battle frequency is an amazing feature. If you want to play with the normal number of encounters, then you can just leave it alone. However, whenever I wanted to grind up a bit, it was so nice to be able to double the encounter rate and reduce the time I was running around in circles. On the flip side, whenever I just wanted to get to the next location, it was super convenient to completely turn off the encounters. Obviously it’s probably not a good idea to turn off the encounters for the entire game, but I really wish this kind of feature was in more RPGs.

For a few extra, smaller pluses, I really enjoyed the music and graphics. The English dub for the characters was also surprisingly not too bad as well, although I have a minor complaint which I will talk about later.

For negatives, I actually don’t have too many. I was pretty engaged with the game most of the way through, but I did run into two points in the game where I wasn’t good enough to get past and I needed a lot of assistance from my husband who helped grind my characters a bit and set up my characters jobs to not be as awful (my job setups were much less than ideal ha). Most of you RPG fans here would probably have no trouble though, and this is probably more of a me being bad thing.

Another complaint I have is the pretty infamous latter half of the game where it gets quite repetitive. I don’t want to spoil is, since there is a story reason for the repetition, but I feel like it could have been trimmed down a bit to be a little less tedious. I personally was ok playing this section, as I just turning off the battles made it fairly simple to get through, but it’s still wasn’t particularly enjoyable for me.

My final, somewhat nitpicky and minor, complaint is about the voice acting. While I was a bit disappointed that there was no Japanese dub option in the game, I figured that there might not have been enough room on the cart or maybe the Japanese dub couldn’t be brought over due to contract issues. However, something I discovered is that you can re-watch the cutscenes in English or Japanese (and maybe other languages but I forget). If you have the option to re-watch the cutscenes in Japanese, why not have the option to play them in Japanese in the first place? I realize that this is a super minor complaint, and it really didn’t take away too much from my enjoyment of the game, but I really don’t understand the reasoning behind this.

While I did have a few complaints, overall Bravely Default was a lot of fun and I’m really glad that I got to play it, even if I needed some assistance at points. I would definitely recommend this if you enjoy turn-based RPGs.


2/12: 8-bit Adventure Anthology Vol 1: Uninvited (PS4)
Uninvited is a bit of an odd game for me, since I don’t really play that many of these sorts of adventure games, but I’ve played Shadowgate before and really enjoyed it with a guide. I played it through 8-bit Adventure Anthology Vol 1 (which includes the NES versions of Uninvited, Shadowgate, and Déjà vu), so that’s how I played the game on my PS4. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy Uninvited as much as I did Shadowgate. I think I enjoyed Shadowgate for all the weird ways your character can die, but there wasn’t as much of that in Uninvited. Not sure if it’s because Uninvited is a bit older, or if the developers just got particularly creative with Shadowgate but either way it was a little bit disappointing in that way. I don’t regret playing it, however, as it was a bit funny to how many weird things the game expects you to just figure out on your own. I definitely would not have been able to play it without a guide. Maybe those of you who are adventure game fans would be able to enjoy this more than I did, but for me Uninvited was only fine.


2/25: Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (GC)
Alright, time to get a bit nostalgic! I didn’t have a particularly large number of games growing up (especially didn’t help too much that a few of them were really bad), but Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (AWL) and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (MM) were two of my favourites. I recentlyish tried to play AWL again to see if I still enjoyed it, and I was a bit disappointed (only to later realized that I probably enjoyed the game as a kid because of cheats) and I couldn’t get very far in the game. I wasn’t sure if it would be the same case with MM but thankfully MM has aged a lot better than AWL has.

The premise of MM is simple. You got to a village to start up a farm and find that the Harvest Goddess has turned to stone because she doesn’t like how badly people treat one another. It’s your job to revive the goddess by collecting music notes, which you find my doing random tasks or fulfilling certain requirements. These range from normal tasks (like shipping all the different ores) to weird (like not touching the controller for a certain amount of time) and range from easy (like a note for going to each of the festivals) to more difficult (like having over 100,000G). There are 100 notes in total, but you only need 50 to revive the goddess. While technically your main goal in the game is to revive the goddess, you could easily ignore these tasks and just manage your farm however you please. Like most of the Harvest Moon games, it’s a very relaxing game. I really enjoyed doing most of the tasks, including growing crops, fishing, mining, and going to the festivals.

MM is not a perfect game however. If you want a lot of deep character interactions and cutscenes, you’ll be very disappointed here. There just aren’t that many, and the only character cutscenes I got were with the guy I was wooing (Ray, the fisherman) and they both were just “here, have a thing!”. I just found that I knew very little about the characters, other than really basic information like how one is a fisherman, or one likes to tinker with machines, or one is Mexican. Most of the other Harvest Moon games I’ve played have a bit more interaction and character depth than that, so it was a bit disappointing.

Another bigish negative with the game (which is not something I got to in this playthrough), is that you can have a kid in the game, but they never grow up past the crawling stage. They’re just stuck crawling around, being noisy and annoying. I guess in general, some many of the sound effects are pretty annoying, such as the shrill noise the girl main character makes when she charges up an axe swing (not sure if the boy character sounds better) and the obnoxious noise the cow makes when you pat them. I don’t think you can turn down the sound effect noise either (although I can’t remember if I checked or not), so this was a fairly annoying thing for me.

Other than those few things, I have a few other super minor nitpicks but nothing to big to complain about. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is overall just a relaxing game to play. While part of my like for the game is that it’s such a nostalgic game for me, I would still probably recommend it if you like other Harvest Moon games or Stardew Valley.


2/28: Kirby Star Allies (Switch)
I haven’t been a big fan of most of the Kirby games I played so far, but I picked up Kirby Star Allies on a bit of a whim since I heard it was on the easier side. That was indeed the case for the Story Mode, so I had a pretty good time playing it. It’s colourful, cute, and just a lot of fun sucking in enemies and using their abilities. I also enjoyed the unique mechanic in this game, having enemies tag along as friends to help, as it just meant that I had a bunch of cute characters to follow Kirby around. This might be a negative point to some, however, as they make the game very easy. Thankfully they are not stupid as they won’t die all the time and will generally do what you need them to do, but they might be a bit too smart as they’re very good at killing enemies and bosses. I didn’t mind this at all, but if you’re looking for a challenge then you probably won’t find it in the main story as even I only died a few times and ended the game with ~50 lives. There are a bunch of other modes to play, which I assume are a lot more challenging, but I haven’t tried those out yet. I probably will later though.

Overall, I had a really fun time with Kirby Star Allies. I would probably recommend it to a lot of people, just keep in mind that the main story is rather short and super easy.
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pook99
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by pook99 Sun Mar 03, 2019 12:48 am

prfsnl_gmr wrote:
Mega Man Powered Up (PSP) is a 2.5D remake of Mega Man (NES). The new style game rearranges the levels, the music, the boss order, and adds two bosses - Time Man and (the problematic) Oil Man. If you defeat a boss using only the Mega Buster, you “rescue” him and can then play through any level with him. The bosses play very differently, and they add a tremendous amount of replay value to a relatively short game. You need them to get some of the unlockables for the stage creation mode, and by my count, you would have to play through the game at least 27(!) times to “completel it. It’s a fun game, but even as a fan of the franchise, that’s a bit much for me. The old style game is a straight remake of Mega Man (NES) with the original music, original level design, original boss order, etc. It utilizes a new engine, however, and this mode highlights the mechanical gameplay differences between Mega Man Powered Up and its 2D, sprite-based predecessors. The differences make the game easier in ways and harder in others; so, the old style game ends up approximating the original experience pretty well. The game felt a little odd at first. It grew on me, though, and I ended up really enjoying it. Recommended to fans of the series.


Holy Shit I did not know this was a thing, I always thought the powered up was just a re-release with better graphics, I will definitely check this out.

There is a fan game called rock force that also lets you play through as some old bosses after rescuing them.
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Markies
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Markies Sun Mar 03, 2019 9:33 pm

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)

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I completed Shining in the Darkness on the Sega Genesis this afternoon!

I absolutely adored the first two Shining Force games as I think they are some of the best games on the system. They had the perfect blend of strategy RPG that just made every battle exciting and were games that I could not put down. I had both of those games in my collection for several years as I actually bought all three Genesis Shining games at the same time. I did them out of order as I skipped over the dungeon crawling first game in the long running franchise. Well, this year, I finally got around to playing the one I passed over and I got to see how the entire franchise started.

It was obvious that they used the same engine from Shining in the Darkness to make Shining Force. All of the archaic bits from Shining Force started here such as complicated item switching and very similar menus. The game is about 95% first person dungeon crawling like the old Wizardy games. Once the game gets going, it is enjoyable to explore the dungeons and they did add some nice quality of life helps in the game. You have the ability to escape at any time, ropes to climb floors and even the ability to warp to a previous location in the dungeon. Battles aren't too long as they only last a round or two, so you get in and then move on. The characters are interesting from the little dialogue that you have in the game. It's not much in regards to story and characters, but what is there is really good.

With the main focus being the dungeon crawling, the game gets repetitive really fast. You have 9 dungeons to go through and each dungeon can last 3-4 hours with several runs. It doesn't change from hour 1 to hour 40 and it really begins to grind on you. Until you get an actual party, the beginning of the game is a horrid grind. With your party of being three people, it is easy to get screwed by RNG. One guy knows Esuna/Life, so if he dies, it's over. One girl knows Escape, so if she dies, it's over. And you can only carry 8 items, 4 of them being Equipment and the rest for Special or Regular items.

Overall, I had a mixed experience with Shining in the Darkness. I like the characters and how they implemented the Dungeon Crawling is really nice. However, 30-40 hours of the game is rather long and the game can be incredibly cheap and grindy at times. If you love first person Dungeon Crawlers, this is a good one and worth playing.
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BoneSnapDeez
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by BoneSnapDeez Mon Mar 04, 2019 8:29 am

High IQ post.

I played the game last year and had a similar take.

It's too long of a game. There's like 10 real hours of quality content. It has no business dragging on as long as it does.

The game's like a really pretty first-person Dragon Warrior (or a prettier Deep Dungeon III, to throw out a more obscure reference).

The character designs and game art manage to salvage the whole experience.
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alienjesus
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by alienjesus Mon Mar 04, 2019 9:18 am

I'm also playing through Shining in the Darkness at the minute - I'm only near the start right now (grinding my 2 new party members to the same level as my main guy) and I can definitely see it getting old. The game does have a real feeling of quality about it though despite that - lovely presentation and a real feeling of care put into it. If anything that makes me look forward to Shining Force down the line, which I've not yet played.

I've got a few more Sega RPGs to get through before then though - Shining in the Darkness and Phantasy Star III are both on the agenda before that one.
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Ack
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Ack Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:19 pm

1. Dusk (PC)(FPS)
2. Project: Snowblind (PC)(FPS)
3. Soldier of Fortune: Platinum Edition (PC)(FPS)
4. Ziggurat (PC)(FPS)
5. Wolfenstein 3D: Ultimate Challenge (PC)(FPS)
6. Destiny 2 (PC)(FPS/RPG)
7. Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris (PC)(FPS/RPG)
8. Destiny 2: Warmind (PC)(FPS/RPG)

9. Destiny 2: Forsaken (PC)(FPS/RPG)
10. Star Wars: Rebel Assault (PC)(Rail Shooter)

11. Castle Werewolf (PC)(FPS)

I know what you're thinking. "Ack, are you still playing FPS?" You bet I am! Ack's Year of the FPS continues!

Did you like Wolfenstein 3D? Do you wish to return to old school pre-DOOM FPS? Do you think all of this would have been improved with the addition of werewolves? Well, that's Castle Werewolf, only without all of the high quality of the game that so clearly inspired it!

Look, I gotta be honest, this is a tricky game to give a fair review. It's a cheap, $3, bottom-of-the-bargain-bin kinda throwback FPS made in 2017 by a guy who used the problematic Raycasting Game Maker to develop a title that was clearly inspired by a much celebrated pinnacle of the FPS genre. It suffers immensely form the limitations of the RGM system too, so there are no floor or ceiling textures, saving is a comparative dinosaur of a 3 file system, controls are not changeable, etc. Heck, there isn't even a difficulty setting, though you probably wouldn't want one anyway. The game is easy, but the AI has some cheap tricks I'll go into. RGM is also notorious for not playing nicely with a mouse; I had to edit the properties of the game's executable file to make mine work, and that was a relatively simple fix. For some folks, RGM titles can be completely unplayable.

But say you spend the few bucks to pick this up, what should you expect? Well, Castle Werewolf has a story hidden in the options menu that is misspelled but generally legible. Basically you're a soldier from a platoon in World War I that was sent to investigate a German castle, only to be captured and imprisoned. You manage to bust out of your cell only to discover that the Kaiser's troops have been experimenting with hybridizing humans and werewolves, so you have to kill your way through a variety of werebeasts and hybrid soldiers to escape.

As for gameplay, you use W and S to go forward and back, A and D to strafe, Left and Right arrows to turn, and Spacebar to open doors. Shooting and changing weapons is done via the mouse, so if you're having a mouse issue due to RGM, you're pretty much screwed. The only options in the game pertain to audio, though I kinda liked the music, and the sound effects aren't bad, though the volume levels are different for certain things. That's annoying. Every now and again, you'll hear a wolf howl off in the distance, irrespective of the music. It's a nice touch. The music can get a little repetitive, but the game is brief enough that I didn't find it too bad.

The game is straightforward: go through each level and find the Top Secret door to progress to the next area of the castle. Each level is denoted on a map shown between levels of your progress through the castle, with certain levels serving only as hallways between areas. I like this idea, as it makes for a nice breather between certain levels which can end with a werewolf rushing crescendo. Plus, you know, hallways exist in real life. Why not in classic FPS? The map also tells you that certain levels have secrets, though it's up to you to find them. I found it usually wasn't worth sticking around in a level once I found the door, save to ensure my health and ammo were topped off before progressing.

The gunplay is mostly hit-scan, though you seem to target objects before enemies. Don't expect anything special with the weapons; they're the usual mix of pistols, machine guns, and a shotgun. They tend to get more powerful as you go up, though all use universal ammo, and you only get ammo for the gun you currently have equipped. In general, it's not worth it to use a weaker gun once you have a stronger one, unless you have to break a barrel or something blocking your path. The guns do get noticeably more powerful, with the shotgun one-shotting werewolves. It's also the only true projectile from what I could tell, firing a ring of buckshot straight ahead that werewolves might sidestep if timed poorly.

Enemies are...well, not great. I like the sprites, though they only face forward, and at least one type does literally nothing. Werewolves drain health when they get close enough, but the absolute worst is anyone with a gun, because they fire repeatedly, accurately thanks to hit-scan, and can shoot around walls and as soon as doors open. You'll probably lose most of your health to these guys, and there's not much you can do outside of gunning them down immediately.

Look, this isn't a good game, but it's serviceable if you need a quick FPS fix. It's $3 on Steam, and odds are that you will get a coupon for it. I did, so I only paid $1.50, which I feel is justifiable for the entertainment that I got. I don't think I'd have paid the $3. There are much better throwback FPS games on Steam, like Dusk, but there isn't much if you want to get back to the dawn of the genre, and that's what you're getting here.
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