October 2019 TR - Is That A Nightmare In Your Pocket...?

[marurun]

Doublemint Jill

[prfsnl_gmr]

Man...I forgot how tough Dracula’s third form is in Rondo of Blood! Took more than a few tries, but he’s beaten now. (“Impossible!”). What a fun game! A good remake of a great game is still a great game. I’m going to play a bit more to unlock Akamajou Dracula Peke, but then I’ll be done with it, I’ll keep playing spooky games all month, but this will probably be the only “retro” one.

Fun topic! I look forward to seeing what else people write here this month,

[PartridgeSenpai]

I don't know, guys. I know this is considered a classic - and was probably the bee's knees back in the day - but the next time I want Castlevania, I'm reaching for a GBA or DS iteration. At least they're fairly streamlined and have a warp system wherein you can pick your destination; imagine that.

Completely agree with you here. I did a marathon of the Igavanias (that being the Metroid-y Castlevanias all but Circle of the Moon, which I do not like) a few years back and came to the same conclusion. Compared to later entries, SotN's design is a good foundation, but that's what it is: a foundation. Iga was very good at iterating on his work, and while SotN is certainly historically important, it has too many messy design choices and a general real lack of difficulty compared to many of the later Igavanias. I'm certainly happy that it came along and helped bring that kind of game outside of the window of mostly just Metroid, but (at least from what I've played) even the Igavanias themselves have had equals or betters among the indie Metroidvania boom of the past several years.

I've had my eye on Aria of Sorrow on the Wii U eShop for a while now. All this Casltevania talk on here might finally be the push I need to pick it up and play it after I finish Corpse Party~

[noiseredux]

Finally...do we have two Jill avatars on here now?! How will I tell Michi and Noise apart?!

My Jill still has her stylish hat.

yup, out of respect for Michi I went with Scooba Jill.

...

RE Revelations cont'd:

Episode 4 was on the briefer side, which is fine. I like that there's variety to these episodes, both in length and content.

In this section we opened up a casino on the ship. Again - the ghost ship is such a cool setting because it allows for all these crazy inclusions. There were some zombie fish to kill in a fountain, and some slightly puzzling to do and then we went off looking for an access lift behind the scenes. Of course the key was missing, so I had to do a bunch of backtracking to find it on the corpse of a crew member from earlier in the game.

It wasn't exactly a shock to find that her body was gone and that there was now a new zombie boss to take on. However, this boss battle was COMPLETELY different than the last one as she hopped into some ventilation and I had to track her throughout the area as she'd continually pop out to attack and then retreat back in and go somewhere else. This made for a pretty exciting boss battle, and in true dramatic fashion I ran out of ammo just as I reached the room where my partner Parker was so I was able to use him as a meat shield as he finished her off.

Anyway, this game continues to be awesome. For those of you who played RE5 and 6 and felt like the series had run its course, you need to check out the Revelations games if you missed them at the time.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Man...I forgot how tough Dracula’s third form is in Rondo of Blood! Took more than a few tries, but he’s beaten now. (“Impossible!”). What a fun game! A good remake of a great game is still a great game. I’m going to play a bit more to unlock Akamajou Dracula Peke, but then I’ll be done with it, I’ll keep playing spooky games all month, but this will probably be the only “retro” one.

Fun topic! I look forward to seeing what else people write here this month,

Epic. I'd still be stuck on Drac's first form.

I'm way behind on handheld Castlevania. I own Castlevania: The Adventure (awful), and Circle of the Moon and The Dracula X Chronicles (both seem good, but I've never sat down to play them in earnest).

That leaves two other GB games, two other GBA games, and three DS games that I'm completely clueless about! (Plus a 3DS game I guess, though it doesn't look like my style...).

Yeah I was slow to hop aboard the Castlevania train. I do plan to get Kid Dracula, but the Famicom version.

[opa]

I'm currently trying to come up with a new game to play that doesn't have "castle" or "vania" anywhere in the title. Although I discovered a patch for Dawn of Sorrow that takes out the touch screen gimmicks and I'm very intrigued as that's the major flaw of that title.

It wasn't exactly a shock to find that her body was gone and that there was now a new zombie boss to take on. However, this boss battle was COMPLETELY different than the last one as she hopped into some ventilation and I had to track her throughout the area as she'd continually pop out to attack and then retreat back in and go somewhere else. This made for a pretty exciting boss battle, and in true dramatic fashion I ran out of ammo just as I reached the room where my partner Parker was so I was able to use him as a meat shield as he finished her off.

Oh dude, I think I remember this bullcrap boss. If this is the one I'm thinking of the entire time I was thinking "the devs just want me to waste my ammo, don't they?"
I didn't like that section.

[noiseredux]

Oh dude, I think I remember this bullcrap boss. If this is the one I'm thinking of the entire time I was thinking "the devs just want me to waste my ammo, don't they?" I didn't like that section.

probably the same one, yeah. She moves around A LOT and there are swarms of popcorn enemies popping out with her, so ammo certainly does get wasted. Luckily, I had a few grenades which helped get her HP down. That said, I was pissed and freaking out when I ran out of ammo, so luckily it was when I reached that last room where Parker was. I've definitely gotten accustom to letting my AI partner use his ammo as much as possible while I just run around avoiding enemies.

[opa]

I grabbed a couple of 3DS titles last night. RE Revelations and RE Mercenaries 3D. I bought a refurb 2DS from Nintendo and haven't really had a chance to use it yet. Mercenaries's graphics should benefit from the smaller screen being an early 3DS title. I'm currently on chapter 2 of Revelations and am really enjoying it. Although the game defaults to a weird first-person aiming view. I swapped it to a third-person view like in RE4 so the transition from shooting to movement isn't so jarring.

[Michi]

I've started up Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare.

So far, it's pretty interesting. I've just gotten tot he point where I've found what I've needed to make my way down to the cellar. Right now it feels like a very low-res Resident Evil. You find keys, read clues, find items and find more keys. This is occasionally broken up by a random 'monster' fight. Unlike RE these encounters are not done in the same view-plane. As you're exploring the mansion it basically plays like a classic point-n-click adventure game. But when battles start it switches to a more isometric mode. Unfortunately, you can only aim in 8 directions, and the monsters can come at you from any angle. The game seems to have a rudimentary auto-aim feature to make up for this, which is only slightly helpful.

What would have been even more helpful is if the game in any way explained how health works. You find bottles of different colored liquid, but while the game decides it needs to explain to you how keys and locks work, it spends no time telling you what the liquid in the bottles do, or that they're even health potions. You either have to look it up, or go the trial and error route.

As for the monsters, so far I've only encountered some kind of dog (I assume it's evil/mutated, but there's no real way to tell on a GBC) and some overgrown spiders that I feel Carnby (our hero) would be better off stepping on them to kill them, rather than waste precious ammo on.

All that aside, the game is pretty to look at, though. I'm really impressed they managed to cram such pretty graphics onto a GBC. I mean, sure, they look like really blocky PS1 graphics after you sent them through the wringer, but for the GBC it's pretty damn good.







Now if only the sound didn't suck so much. I just count myself grateful that there isn't that much of it.

[opa]

That said, I was pissed and freaking out when I ran out of ammo, so luckily it was when I reached that last room where Parker was.

I think I inadvertently discovered a strategy for this boss. As soon as the fight started in the first hallway you encounter the zombie, I threw a grenade at her and ran to the next area. My thinking was that if I just keep running she's gonna pop out of the vents irregardless and I might as well try to save ammo. I run to the next area aaaaand nothing. Despite the scary music no zombies are crawling out of vents and the boss monster is nowhere in sight.

After taking a stroll I eventually reach Parker. He's all like "Jill, I'm glad you're safe!" Uh, thanks? I still don't have the key I need that the zombie is carrying but now I have Parker! I feel bad that I'm leading Parker to his demise but I don't care. We waltz straight back to the beginning of the fight and lo and behold she's still there screaming in zombie-rage.

Now that I have a partner this section was a cakewalk. In the room with the restrooms a zombie slithered out of a wall and, unbeknownst to me while I was shooting it, Parker was behind me with Rachel chewing his face off. Sorry buddy.

I'm sure this section would be really tense if you're by your lonesome but from now on I'm gonna go get the computer partner for bait.