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SpaceBooger
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by SpaceBooger Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:36 am

Ok, I'm about to beat Circle of the Moon (2nd form of Dracula has been causing me problems for a week).
Once I beat that, any suggestions on really unique or fun games on the GB, GBC or GBA for me to play and join in this month?
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by PartridgeSenpai Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:54 am

SpaceBooger wrote:Ok, I'm about to beat Circle of the Moon (2nd form of Dracula has been causing me problems for a week).
Once I beat that, any suggestions on really unique or fun games on the GB, GBC or GBA for me to play and join in this month?


Dragon Quest Monsters is always a neat one ^w^
And there's the Mega Man and Castlevania GB games as well, as far as stuff I can think of off the top of my head go~

---

I finally finished Tales of Rebirth, so I started SMT: Devil Children tonight! It's a really wild spin on the SMT formula, that's for sure :O

A very weirdly hard Pokemon-like as well. It doesn't feel *that* weird to have SMT with a Pokemon-like perspective, but god damn, it really doesn't mess around in terms of difficulty. The redesigned monsters are absolutely adorable though! The story is all around quite silly (although quite dark sometimes), but I love those cutesy designs most of all x3
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by MrPopo Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:52 pm

I'd say Dragon Quest Monsters fits the bill for "unique", as it's a major gameplay change from the main series AND doesn't really play like Pokmeon either; it's its own take on a Mons game.
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by prfsnl_gmr Fri Nov 12, 2021 6:49 pm

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Man…it’s November 9, and no one else has posted here yet!

For this month’s TR, I am paying Metroid Prime Hunters for the NDS. It is based, obviously, on the Metroid Prime series, which debuted on the GameCube in 2002, and it was released in 2006, between Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3. (Narratively, however, the game takes place between Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2, at least according to Wikipedia.)

Like its console forebears, Metroid Prime Hunters is a first-person action-platformer. In it, you explore abandoned space stations and alien worlds, fighting dangerous creatures, obtaining upgrades, and scanning objects for information. Both the morph ball and the scan visor make a return, and the game is presented much like Metroid Prime, but with much smaller environments and lower resolution textures due to the hardware. Still, the game looks great, and I imagine that had a really good Metroid game come to fruition on the N64, it would have looked similar.

The game differs from the home console games in the Metroid Prime series in several important ways, however. First, the Metroid Prime games for the GameCube and Wii are very focused on a seamless single-player experience, and they play very much like a traditional metroidvania, but in three dimensions. Metroid Prime Hunters, in contrast, has more of a “level” structure, and while you slowly obtain new color-coded weapons that allow you to unlock different color-coded doors, you don’t gain any new abilities that enhance your mobility, a hallmark of other Metroid games. In each relatively linear level, you must locate three artifacts, which open a portal to a boss. Once you defeat the boss, you have a set amount of time to return to your gunship and escape the level. These escape sequences can be very tense, especially if you encounter some difficult foes on your way back to your ship, and you repeat this process until, presumably, you collect all eight of the game’s “octoliths” and defeat a final boss. (I haven’t yet beaten the game, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it will play out.)

The game also differs significantly from its console predecessors with regard to its design focus. Whereas the console games are focused on exploration and puzzle-solving, Nintendo conceived Metroid Prime Hunter as a multi-player deathmatch experience, and the game’s primary selling point is its multi-player deathmatch mode. While the single-player experience isn’t entirely an afterthought, the multi-player design philosophy clearly influences it, and the single-player game’s best moments are those in which you fight against other bounty hunters seeking the octoliths. (In a way, these battles-between-equals against other bounty hunters are similar to the battles against the Mawkin Tribe in Metroid Dread.) These encounters occur at set times and locations during the first half of the game, but somewhat randomly during the second half of the game. When they occur, you find yourself locked into a room with one of several other, unique hunters, and you use defeat the Hunter to proceed. If you are defeated, the Hunter steals one your hard earned octoliths, and you must track the Hunter down, potentially in another level, to win it back.

While I still prefer the console games’ formula, I appreciate Metroid Prime Hunters’ deviation from series norms, and I think future games in the Metroid series might benefit from some of Metroid Prime Hunters’ design decisions. The game really nails the “you are alone on a dead alien world” atmosphere whenever you aren’t fighting the other hunters, which is something that Metroid Dread didn’t get quite right. Moreover, it’s nice to see Samus doing some actual bounty hunting, and it’s refreshing to see a storyline divorced from the Chozo, Metroids, Ridley, Space Pirates, etc. The game makes the Metroid universe bigger and weirder (even if the other hunters all look a bit like Lego Bionicle creations…), and I would like to see other Metroid games move in that direction (especially since, I think. Nintendo has now tapped out the original games’ narrative arc).

A few other random thoughts:

* The game recycles two non-hunter bosses repeatedly, and they are both REALLY annoying.
*The standard enemy variety is underwhelming, so say the least.
* The touchscreen controls are both awesome and infuriating, and the NDS’s fragile triggers weren’t meant to handle so much shooting. (RIP left trigger on my trusty silver NDS Lite. I’ll always remember the good times…) I’m now playing the game on a 2DS, which is much better.
* There isn’t as much to scan in this game as in others, which is understandable given the hardware limitations.
* The decaying Celestial Archives is a great location. I’d love to see it make a return in another Metroid game.
* I now understand the cameo at the end of Metroid Prime 3, and I’d be delighted to see some of the cooler Hunters return in another Metroid game.
* An open-world (open-galaxy?) Metroid game where Samus does actual bounty hunting in competition with other Hunters would be amazing. It could be Nintendo’s answer to RDR.

I now have five of the game’s eight octoliths, and I suspect I’m about halfway through the game. I’ll post some more when I beat it. In the meantime, I hope someone else joins me here!


I beat Metroid Prime Hunters last night, and I ended up enjoying the game quite a bit. Everything I wrote above remained true throughout the game, but I have a few additional observations.

The levels really open up quite a bit in the second half of the game, and while they’re still small compared to other Metroid Prime games, I did get lost a few times. I consider this a must for any good Metroid games.

You also pick up a lot of secondary weapons in the second half of the game. These are useful, primarily, for opening color-codes doors and defeating color-codes enemies. They are also necessary for the final boss, and one of them is helpful for navigating puzzles. Otherwise, however, they don’t do much, and I felt that there was some wasted potential there. (You do, however, get the Omega Cannon at the end of the game. I am not sure the developers of Metroid Dread meant to tie into Metroid Prime Hunters, but if they did, that’s pretty cool.)

Finally, the last boss is really cool. It’s also much easier and drastically less annoying than the other two bosses, which makes the final fight a lot of fun.

Overall, I enjoyed Metroid Prime Hunters more than I anticipated. The console experiences are, IMO, vastly superior, but Hunters is still a lot of fun. I hope future Metroid games continue to borrow from it, and I’m glad this month’s TR gave me a reason to <finally> play through it.
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by opa Sat Nov 13, 2021 9:58 am

Hunters was a pretty good multiplayer game back in the day.

Did you ever play the First Hunt demo?
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by PartridgeSenpai Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:53 pm

I finished SMT: Devil Children yesterday! I'll get to writing more about it in the Beaten thread soon, but it really was a wild experience. It's this really weird mix of portable Pokemon-like game and SMT, which is what you'd expect, but it's sorta a not great version of either of those. It feels more like a Pokemon-like made for SMT fans rather than anything else :lol: . I really enjoyed it, though! Weirdly put together as it is, it's a really clever take on making SMT more like Pokemon while still being very much like itself. They make party sizes smaller, they give you two sets of six demons that come out in order, they make your human not a player but just the coordinator of the monsters. It even has a pretty decent SMT-like story of devils against angels (instead of law against chaos), which I really didn't expect for the kiddy version of this.

I'm not super feeling DQ: Monsters at the moment, but I might get back to it after I'm done with the next thing I'm playing~. That said, I'm definitely a bit tempted to go out and pick up one of the Last Bible game, which are the OTHER handheld-/kid-focused conversion of SMT for GameBoy :lol:
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by prfsnl_gmr Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:04 pm

opa wrote:Hunters was a pretty good multiplayer game back in the day.

Did you ever play the First Hunt demo?


I did! I “beat” it last year, and it gave me some hope for Hunters.
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by MrPopo Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:38 am

So while waiting for SMT V to arrive I spent some time with Pokemon Stadium 2. Since I don't have a good save on Crystal to import from I've been using the rentals, which can be a major exercise in frustration due to the relatively poor stats and move pools. Often times it's better to run a mid evolution rather than final evolution because the better moves edge out the minor stat differences.

But one thing I'm really noticing is that graphically, it hangs quite well with X/Y. Like, you definitely will notice the polygon count difference, but the early designs of the first two generations handle low polygons well, and there's enough going on with the animations that there's a good amount of life there. And the announcer is a lot of fun; a wide variety of lines for different situations. It's kind of crazy that it took almost 15 years for the series to catch up with what we got on the N64.
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by PartridgeSenpai Tue Nov 16, 2021 6:38 am

Pokemon Stadium is one I really thought about trying out this month, but that would also involve playing through most of if not all of Pokemon Green, which I didn't really have the mojo to do quite yet ^^;

On a more interesting note, I've actually heard that X/Y is actually using some models/skeletons/assets that had been around since the N64 days (and that games after that even would as well). They just hold up that well for those relatively simple designs, I suppose (that could just be hearsay though. Hard to tell with Pokemon fans XP)
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Re: Together Retro November 2021 - How the Other Half Lives

by SpaceBooger Tue Nov 16, 2021 7:28 am

Tried DQ Monsters and either I didn't give it enough time or I just dislike Pokemon so much I could not get into the game.
I love RPG but hate individually leveling up characters, I usually don't ever change my party and only level up, equip, etc the ones in my current party. This is why the Pokemon genre is not for me.
I will be trying out some more GB/GBC/GBA games later this week.
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