Aug Together Retro: Animal Main Characters

[dunpeal2064]

That is some legendary shit

Sucks the game turned to shit, but for a post like that its worth it.

[Xeogred]

I'll find something else for my final TR entry here.

Sonic 2006!

[noiseredux]

Even as a Sonic Apologist, Unleashed (and Shadow The Hedgehog) were ones that I never even bothered with. I mean. I guess I would if they were freebies on XBLA or whatever. But I appreciate Exhum doing his due diligence and making a solid effort on that one. It was worth it for the end result pic, haha.

That said, I'm the weirdo who wishes that Sonic 2006 gets added to the Xbox One backwards compatibility list. Even bad games have their place in history!

I could/would/(should?) have just played a pile of Sonic games this month, it's just that I wanted to play something that I hadn't already had so much experience with prior.

...

EDIT: Okay, y'know what? Fuck it. I think I've found a suitable replacement game for the time being. I should have time to pick it up after work locally. It's a retro game where you play as an animal - and as a bonus, it's a game that I've played MAYBE a few minutes of back in the day so it'll be a new experience for me.

Alright so I played an hour of Crash Bandicoot last night. I picked up that Switch compilation to give it a try. I seem to remember back in 98 or 99 that a girl I was dating in high school had a little brother who was into this game. I think I maybe played a few minutes of it with him. Although I also had a Playstation at this point in time, I was "too old"/"too cool" to mess with animal mascots. Not only that, but A PLATFORMER? Hello!... Resident Evil was a thing. Platformers were for kids! Plus, I've never been a fan of 3D platformers to begin with. And I wasn't even sure what a bandicoot was. (I'm still not certain). I also think in hindsight that I was definitely more drawn to Japanese games at this period of time. It wasn't something intentional, as I don't believe I was hyper aware of which continent developers resided at the time.

The other thing is this - I always thought that the art STYLE of Crash was kind of ugly. And I still kind of think the same way, although many years removed I now find that Crash himself has some kind of ridiculous late 90's charm to him. Like... a certain stoner humor or something. I can't help but think that whoever designed this goofy looking dude was seriously baked. Maybe it's because I also remember those creepy live action commercials (that were years before BK did the same sort of thing w/ their King). So I don't know - now it's got a kind of "so stupid that it's funny" vibe going on for me.

Crash is far more challenging than I recalled. Surprisingly (or not?) I find that even though the game is mostly in a 3D space, I find it works better with a d-pad than with an analog stick. I think this probably comes from the fact that it was released on PS1 prior to the controllers getting analog sticks. So the game was designed with digital input in mind. But damn, the platforming here is not super easy - in fact it's rather demanding. Even in some of the earliest stages I found myself surprised at how precise one needed to be. And it's not like Crash is the most graceful of jumpers.

That said, the game is clearly designed with trial and error in mind. I don't think that levels were intended to be blown through quickly on the first try. IE: This isn't actually the Sony console's Sonic. There were some frustrating moments, and I had to use one continue so far but it looks like continues are unlimited? I do appreciate the way that level structures are so varied. Some are 3D levels heading 'into' the screen, while some have you running 'out of' the screen with a big Indiana Jones bolder chasing you (reminiscent of the gazelle level in The Lion King), while others are pure 2D sidescrollers. It makes for some fun variety.

[Sarge]

Wow. Well, you saved at least one person from it.

[Exhuminator]

Destroying a copy of Sonic Unleashed made the world a +0.00000001% better place. No regrets, other than having wasted eight ours of my limited lifespan on that piece of trash. (HLTB shows this game takes on average TWELVE HOURS to finish. Utterly insane, but due to how slow and repetitive the werehog levels were, I believe it.)

I really, really don't understand how Sega consistently put out trash 3D Sonic game after trash 3D Sonic game, for years in a row. In that regard I've played Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, and Sonic Colors myself. The only good one from that entire group was Sonic Colors. No I wouldn't touch Shadow or 2006 if you paid me. Last night while playing Unleashed (which I'd been steadily growing more and more angry with each passing hour) it all just hit me at once. So much money was spent on this amateur hour garbage, and yet Sega couldn't even make the controls reliable (I was using the Classic Controller btw, no waggle). How could a company take a franchise that had once been so amazing, and turn it into something as ridiculously awful as Unleashed... not to mention all the trash 3D Sonic games before it. The ineptitude is just staggering. Thankfully Colors proved that 3D Sonic doesn't always have to suck ass.

Anyway, I'll be hitting up an 8 or 16-bit title as my final pick. After Klonoa, Ivy the Kiwi?, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, and Sonic Shit Fest, I've had enough Wii platformers for a while.

[Gunstar Green]

Apparently the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed is significantly worse than the others I've heard? I don't really know, I've never played any version and have no drive to. The game actually has a lot of fans from what I've seen. Not as many as Colors or Generations but people speak generally highly of it most of the time.

It does say something about the strength of the Sonic brand that they were able to put out stinker after stinker and still not kill the franchise.

[alienjesus]

I got stuck into more Conker's Bad Fur Day tonight.

Conker is a pretty quirky game with lots of gameplay twists and interesting setpieces.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about Conker that I don't think gets discussed enough though. The gameplay? It's.... not that great.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game OK, but considering this comes from the company who made Banjo Kazooie and DK64, this is very much a B tier effort. Conker controls really stiffly and all his moves have too much starting lag. Lots of the gameplay ideas are fun in concept bit can be kinda clunky in execution, and I've have lots of moments where I was swearing more than Conker was.

Anyhow, if anyones played it, I found some cogs, slammed a boilers brass balls between breeze blocks, swam through a tunnel full of killer fan blades, and explored a dinosaur themed world. The bit in the nightclub was my favourite area visually in the game, and the most 'conker' feeling bit of the game to me thus far. Shame it was kinda shit to play though! Anyhow, I killed the boss by biting his testicles with a raptor and exposing his tiny penis, and it's off to the next world. I had a quick look at a guide to see my progress, and it looks like I still have 3 worlds to go, although one of them seems pretty long. Hoping to finish by the weekend.

[Markies]

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about Conker that I don't think gets discussed enough though. The gameplay? It's.... not that great.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game OK, but considering this comes from the company who made Banjo Kazooie and DK64, this is very much a B tier effort. Conker controls really stiffly and all his moves have too much starting lag. Lots of the gameplay ideas are fun in concept bit can be kinda clunky in execution, and I've have lots of moments where I was swearing more than Conker was.

I played Conker's Bad Fur Day last year and....yeah.....it's pretty bad. In fact, I did not enjoy the game at all. When the game wasn't being crude, the dialogue was funny. Besides that, the cursing and juvenile humor was too much for me.

But, yes, the controls and gameplay were fairly terrible compared to Banjo Kazooie. Yeah, I pretty much swore during the entire game. There are aspects that I enjoyed, but actually playing the game is not fun.

[Exhuminator]

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about Conker that I don't think gets discussed enough though. The gameplay? It's.... not that great.

Yes. I agreed with you.
-
I spent time with a few animal games today. Rhino Rumble on GBC, which felt and sounded like a sloppy C64 game. An actual C64 game called Ardy the Aardvark, which was kinda fun but a bit too brutal. Then there was Wolf, a 1994 DOS release that simulated being a wolf and doing wolf things, very cool concept but ended up more edutainment than entertainment. I've got my eye now on a Game Boy release, failing that an arcade game.

[noiseredux]

Played some more Crash Bandicoot last night. I'm still on that first island/world whatever. I tell you, the platforming in this game can be legitimately challenging. Especially when insta-death environmental threats come into play. The game plays really well on Switch, though. These kind of retro games feel like a perfect fit for handheld mode and listening to TV.