How different is it from the NES version?
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Beating Games
- Thread starter Octopus Prime
- Start date
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- the end times
How different is it from the NES version?
I just watched 20 minutes of a playthrough of the NES version. The GB version used a lot of the same stages, bosses, and weapons, but the NES stages are longer, and the order is different in a few places. Some bosses and areas are unique to one or the other too. So, they are very similar, but not 100% the same game.
Finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Good game. Saw some complaints about boss fights but I didn't have a big problem with them.
I finished The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, which was a mostly pretty cool game that I think I played wrong. You play the leader of a teenage gang, and choose how to use your time. You can read books and study for school, work out, fight other gangs, get a job, eat, play table tennis or pool, or just wander around not doing much, among other things. Alongside that, there’s a plot line that seems to play out pretty much independent of what you do, though I think you have to go to certain places to trigger each event.
I spent most of the game building my stats, and finished it with all books read, all academic stats maxed, at max level with maxed kick and punch (pretty low throw stats though), with (I think) all the fighting moves learned. Thing is, none of that really matters, aside from my being able to take out like thirty of the endlessly spawning rival gang members in the final encounter. And I think that’s the point: the plot has your gang basically quitting on you to pursue their own interests/problems. There’s one guy who from the start basically doesn’t participate, there’s another distracted by his family situation and his gambling problem, another who finds a different calling, and so on. Ringo’s gang stuff is basically pointless, as is much of the gameplay. I think you’re supposed to just hang out and do what you want, which for me is kind of undermined by having the stats be visible. I am a sucker for numbers-go-up.
I dunno, it’s a very slow paced game, which isn’t inherently bad, but I kinda wish the main plot had played out quicker.
It also has a few instances of a three letter word starting with f that I could have done without. I guess for a game set in an 80s high school that’s probably realistic, but I don’t think that makes it any better.
I spent most of the game building my stats, and finished it with all books read, all academic stats maxed, at max level with maxed kick and punch (pretty low throw stats though), with (I think) all the fighting moves learned. Thing is, none of that really matters, aside from my being able to take out like thirty of the endlessly spawning rival gang members in the final encounter. And I think that’s the point: the plot has your gang basically quitting on you to pursue their own interests/problems. There’s one guy who from the start basically doesn’t participate, there’s another distracted by his family situation and his gambling problem, another who finds a different calling, and so on. Ringo’s gang stuff is basically pointless, as is much of the gameplay. I think you’re supposed to just hang out and do what you want, which for me is kind of undermined by having the stats be visible. I am a sucker for numbers-go-up.
I dunno, it’s a very slow paced game, which isn’t inherently bad, but I kinda wish the main plot had played out quicker.
It also has a few instances of a three letter word starting with f that I could have done without. I guess for a game set in an 80s high school that’s probably realistic, but I don’t think that makes it any better.
I forgot to post, but I played through all of The Curse of the Golden Idol in a weekend and it made for a really good weekend! What a fun and novel game. Yes, Obra Dinn, which is the nearest thing like it, is better, but I still really like what this is doing. I even bought and played through the DLC as soon as a I was finished with the main game, which is a rarity for me. Highly recommended if you like whodunnits or narrative puzzling.
I finished FF7 Remake the other day. I liked it overall, but I ended up being a little disappointed in some of the changes they made, especially to the Shinra Tower sequence - the original game's getting thrown in jail, waking up to an open door and a massacre, and following the blood trail to find president Shinra impaled was simply superior in every way to falling off a catwalk into a long extra dungeon and then following a trail of goo to get a longwinded poorly-written "dramatic" scene between Barret and the president with convenient interruption by Sephiroth.
Then the ending went way off the rails with all the fighting the whispers and destiny and such, which also ended up being somewhat pointless? What destiny were they fighting against, anyway? At that point they were totally going along with the original timeline just fine, riding out of the city and vowing to follow Sephiroth. And then fighting one of the many different versions of Sephiroth for some reason (the real reason being "it's FF7 and you need to have a Sephiroth fight"), and then just going on their way after all. The remake was Very Anime but this sequence cranked the dial to Extremely Anime, or perhaps even Dangerously Anime.
And the battle system never quiiiite "clicked" with me - it got close, but if they were going to go for an action hybrid I wish the dodging and blocking had been more responsive. Also, some of the stuff just never seemed to work - Aerith's arcane ward rarely seemed to trigger, possibly because she'd always do this little jump away from the dang zone before casting, even when I was manually controlling her.
Anyway. Whine whine whine. I actually did like the game overall; I liked the different characters' play styles and how they handled ATB and abilities, mostly; the different weapons and getting materia builds to support them, especially. And Aerith, she was great. And I liked how they handled Cloud, making him broody and moody but also awkward and not afraid to let goofy moments happen to him; see the Honeybee Inn sequence for the most obvious example. Tifa was a bit too Damseled for my taste - almost every cutscene has Cloud diving to cover her or pull her (and/or Aerith) from danger, and only a very few have her actually getting to be the badass that she is. Barret was a bit over-the-top start to finish, I wasn't a big fan. I'm looking forward to playable Red XIII in the sequel.
Now to play the Yuffie DLC, I suppose!
Then the ending went way off the rails with all the fighting the whispers and destiny and such, which also ended up being somewhat pointless? What destiny were they fighting against, anyway? At that point they were totally going along with the original timeline just fine, riding out of the city and vowing to follow Sephiroth. And then fighting one of the many different versions of Sephiroth for some reason (the real reason being "it's FF7 and you need to have a Sephiroth fight"), and then just going on their way after all. The remake was Very Anime but this sequence cranked the dial to Extremely Anime, or perhaps even Dangerously Anime.
And the battle system never quiiiite "clicked" with me - it got close, but if they were going to go for an action hybrid I wish the dodging and blocking had been more responsive. Also, some of the stuff just never seemed to work - Aerith's arcane ward rarely seemed to trigger, possibly because she'd always do this little jump away from the dang zone before casting, even when I was manually controlling her.
Anyway. Whine whine whine. I actually did like the game overall; I liked the different characters' play styles and how they handled ATB and abilities, mostly; the different weapons and getting materia builds to support them, especially. And Aerith, she was great. And I liked how they handled Cloud, making him broody and moody but also awkward and not afraid to let goofy moments happen to him; see the Honeybee Inn sequence for the most obvious example. Tifa was a bit too Damseled for my taste - almost every cutscene has Cloud diving to cover her or pull her (and/or Aerith) from danger, and only a very few have her actually getting to be the badass that she is. Barret was a bit over-the-top start to finish, I wasn't a big fan. I'm looking forward to playable Red XIII in the sequel.
Now to play the Yuffie DLC, I suppose!
I finished the Diablo 4 campaign yesterday. It's probably the best story this series has had so far, but I still wouldn't say it's anything exceptional. I am extremely glad they let a female protagonist (ie. a named character who isn't your avatar) not only live through the entire game, but also set her up to be the focal point of the presumed expansion/DLC.
I'd probably recommend playing through the story on the lowest difficulty rather than world tier 2; granted I didn't have the best build for my Sorcerer, but most boss fights felt like they had just a bit too much HP and overstayed their welcome.
I'd probably recommend playing through the story on the lowest difficulty rather than world tier 2; granted I didn't have the best build for my Sorcerer, but most boss fights felt like they had just a bit too much HP and overstayed their welcome.
It never quite clicked with me either.
I think the basic problem I have with action RPGs is this: I always prefer single character action RPGs to party action RPGs. Most of the time the party is braindead or simply functions as extra lives (this character died; let me switch over to the other character).
FF7R felt egregious at times with braindead party members. How am I dodging or blocking all the enemies big attacks and you are getting hit every time?
I don't hate party RPGs. But I think they need to be structured like Monster Hunter (humans controlling every member) or they need to be turn based. I have never found a party action RPG that I love battle system for. Ys probably comes the closest; but it plays to me like a single player action RPG.
Yeah, I actually enjoyed "classic" better, where I didn't have to worry about the unresponsive blocking and dodging and all my characters actually got ATB turns so I could control them more equally. Otherwise my party members do nothing but just attack and wander around.
It was also less frustrating to just take damage like you do in FF7 et al than trying and failing to block or dodge stuff on time. Maybe that's a skill issue and I just never got the rhythm of the game, but again, that belies the attempt to make it an action system.
It was also less frustrating to just take damage like you do in FF7 et al than trying and failing to block or dodge stuff on time. Maybe that's a skill issue and I just never got the rhythm of the game, but again, that belies the attempt to make it an action system.
I started playing this because of your post and am having a really good time. I can't stress how charming the game is! The animations are pretty impressive too, though I guess it came out pretty late in the Game Boy's lifespan. Looking forward to playing more.
I recently beat the final boss of Darkest Dungeon 2 on the highest difficult, so I'm calling it done. It's a real good one!
It basically fixes the problems that I had with the previous game, which was an all-timer that was held back by being really long and grindy and just really dragging through the boring middle third. But here it's all fuss, no muss, with basically the same combat engine grafted onto a more traditional run-based roguelike progression with meta unlocks. I really like meta-progression systems, and I think this one strikes a good balance of progressing at a slow and steady rate, with a few key upgrades that really make you more powerful, but generally being unnecessary to succeed, with familiarity with encounters and mechanics being far more important than the kind of small incremental improvements offered by the upgrade tracks.
It loses the sense of managing a camp/team over time, and the fun little interactibles in the dungeons that would respond differently to different items, which were both things I really liked about the previous game, but I still think I ended up preferring it to the first game in the end, although it took me a while to feel that way; I definitely more immediately fell in love with DD1.
DD2 makes a few little changes that really have an outsized impact on the game for the better. The first is hit percentages. Gone are the fine-grain hit %s of the first game, where literally every single hero or monster ability had a very finely-tuned hit % which got very fiddly and could make for real big swings of good or bad luck, replaced by a much simpler system that seems inspired by the likes of Mario vs. Rabbids, of all things, where every ability on both sides of the battlefield just has a 100% hit chance unless modified by specific buffs or debuffs like dodge, which gives a 50% dodge chance, or blind, which gives a 50% miss chance. There are a bunch of abilities that grant, inflict, cure, or remove dodge and blind, so if you're just sitting there flailing at enemies with bad odds, then sure, you might be okay, but you're probably doing something wrong. And you can set up some gross dodge tanks on your side, which is very fun. (Riposte Highwayman still owns bones.)
Another change is that instead of a bunch of random mooks with job classes, these are now all named characters with personalities and backstories, and they each have much more of an identity. This is reinforced through one of my favourite new additions, the shrines of memory, where you get to slowly explore everyone's backstories through a combination of short stories interspersed with puzzle battles that tell the story through gameplay, ranging from helping the Gravedigger poison her abusive husband and busting the Highwayman out of prison to giving an academic anatomy lecture as the Plague Doctor and challenging a hobo to dueling banjos as the Jester. These aren't all bangers (there's a music puzzle for the Jester's second memory battle that I still haven't figured out), but by and large they're novel and fun and a really great way to stretch the combat engine further than it feels meant to be stretched. For experiencing these memories, you get the small mechanical benefit of a skill upgrade token and a new class ability, slowly making each character more flexible over successive runs and opening up a wider party build space.
Yet another great change is the relationship system. You're still managing everyone's stress levels, but here that's largely a secondary consideration that feeds into the greater relationship system (when someone maxes out stress and has a breakdown, it harms their relationship with the rest of the party). Over the course of a run, through combat, decision points, and item use, you slowly manage relationship meters between each pair of party members. If it gets dire enough, characters might start to hate each other, or become rivals, refusing to follow commands in battle or stepping away from each other, and being forced to equip abilities that you might not otherwise choose and causing stress to each other when they use those abilities. However, if a pair likes each other enough, they might become Hopeful, Respectful, or Amorous, each of which gives paired abilities (one from each character) a tiny perk when used. For example, the Plague Doctor might get less stressed when the Man-at-Arms uses Bolster, while he might get less stressed when she throw a plague vial. And if someone hits one of them, the other might strike out back out of turn in a rage, or give a pep talk and boost the other's spirits. Basically, the end goal of every successful run of DD2 is to roll up to the end boss with a giant polycule of murderers that support each other and beat back the darkness with the power of free love.
And speaking of successful runs, DD2 makes the great decision to borrow another genre staple: ascension levels. The introductory level is a great intro to ease in new players, but DD1 veterans should make short work of it, and it offers 4 more ascensions levels that slower layer on mechanics and complexity while tweaking numbers up and down to keep things challenging, and each ascension level offers a unique final boss. There are also further challenge modifiers that can be applied to each run to make things easier or harder via "torches" that you apply to your stagecoach, but I honestly didn't engage with that system at all. It's cool that it's there, though! More options are always good!
The less said about the boss of Ascension 3, the better, though. It just feels like they had a cool idea for a boss--and it is cool--and weren't willing to let it go even though it doesn't really work. It's basically a puzzle boss, but the puzzle is poorly explained and difficult to manipulate, and it was a huge roadblock for me that I eventually just brute forced. It's a shame that the much cooler final boss is gated behind that jerk, because my progress through the game stalled on him big time.
Anyway, I had a great time with Darkest Dungeon 2, and that true final boss of ascension #5 is an all-timer that's a real spectacle, with cool visuals, clever mechanics, and a great summation of everything in the game that led up to that point, and I hope that more people get to see it, because it was definitely one of the game's highest points for me. It's a really long one, though, so buckle in-- I'm glad I managed to get it on the first try.
It basically fixes the problems that I had with the previous game, which was an all-timer that was held back by being really long and grindy and just really dragging through the boring middle third. But here it's all fuss, no muss, with basically the same combat engine grafted onto a more traditional run-based roguelike progression with meta unlocks. I really like meta-progression systems, and I think this one strikes a good balance of progressing at a slow and steady rate, with a few key upgrades that really make you more powerful, but generally being unnecessary to succeed, with familiarity with encounters and mechanics being far more important than the kind of small incremental improvements offered by the upgrade tracks.
It loses the sense of managing a camp/team over time, and the fun little interactibles in the dungeons that would respond differently to different items, which were both things I really liked about the previous game, but I still think I ended up preferring it to the first game in the end, although it took me a while to feel that way; I definitely more immediately fell in love with DD1.
DD2 makes a few little changes that really have an outsized impact on the game for the better. The first is hit percentages. Gone are the fine-grain hit %s of the first game, where literally every single hero or monster ability had a very finely-tuned hit % which got very fiddly and could make for real big swings of good or bad luck, replaced by a much simpler system that seems inspired by the likes of Mario vs. Rabbids, of all things, where every ability on both sides of the battlefield just has a 100% hit chance unless modified by specific buffs or debuffs like dodge, which gives a 50% dodge chance, or blind, which gives a 50% miss chance. There are a bunch of abilities that grant, inflict, cure, or remove dodge and blind, so if you're just sitting there flailing at enemies with bad odds, then sure, you might be okay, but you're probably doing something wrong. And you can set up some gross dodge tanks on your side, which is very fun. (Riposte Highwayman still owns bones.)
Another change is that instead of a bunch of random mooks with job classes, these are now all named characters with personalities and backstories, and they each have much more of an identity. This is reinforced through one of my favourite new additions, the shrines of memory, where you get to slowly explore everyone's backstories through a combination of short stories interspersed with puzzle battles that tell the story through gameplay, ranging from helping the Gravedigger poison her abusive husband and busting the Highwayman out of prison to giving an academic anatomy lecture as the Plague Doctor and challenging a hobo to dueling banjos as the Jester. These aren't all bangers (there's a music puzzle for the Jester's second memory battle that I still haven't figured out), but by and large they're novel and fun and a really great way to stretch the combat engine further than it feels meant to be stretched. For experiencing these memories, you get the small mechanical benefit of a skill upgrade token and a new class ability, slowly making each character more flexible over successive runs and opening up a wider party build space.
Yet another great change is the relationship system. You're still managing everyone's stress levels, but here that's largely a secondary consideration that feeds into the greater relationship system (when someone maxes out stress and has a breakdown, it harms their relationship with the rest of the party). Over the course of a run, through combat, decision points, and item use, you slowly manage relationship meters between each pair of party members. If it gets dire enough, characters might start to hate each other, or become rivals, refusing to follow commands in battle or stepping away from each other, and being forced to equip abilities that you might not otherwise choose and causing stress to each other when they use those abilities. However, if a pair likes each other enough, they might become Hopeful, Respectful, or Amorous, each of which gives paired abilities (one from each character) a tiny perk when used. For example, the Plague Doctor might get less stressed when the Man-at-Arms uses Bolster, while he might get less stressed when she throw a plague vial. And if someone hits one of them, the other might strike out back out of turn in a rage, or give a pep talk and boost the other's spirits. Basically, the end goal of every successful run of DD2 is to roll up to the end boss with a giant polycule of murderers that support each other and beat back the darkness with the power of free love.
And speaking of successful runs, DD2 makes the great decision to borrow another genre staple: ascension levels. The introductory level is a great intro to ease in new players, but DD1 veterans should make short work of it, and it offers 4 more ascensions levels that slower layer on mechanics and complexity while tweaking numbers up and down to keep things challenging, and each ascension level offers a unique final boss. There are also further challenge modifiers that can be applied to each run to make things easier or harder via "torches" that you apply to your stagecoach, but I honestly didn't engage with that system at all. It's cool that it's there, though! More options are always good!
The less said about the boss of Ascension 3, the better, though. It just feels like they had a cool idea for a boss--and it is cool--and weren't willing to let it go even though it doesn't really work. It's basically a puzzle boss, but the puzzle is poorly explained and difficult to manipulate, and it was a huge roadblock for me that I eventually just brute forced. It's a shame that the much cooler final boss is gated behind that jerk, because my progress through the game stalled on him big time.
Anyway, I had a great time with Darkest Dungeon 2, and that true final boss of ascension #5 is an all-timer that's a real spectacle, with cool visuals, clever mechanics, and a great summation of everything in the game that led up to that point, and I hope that more people get to see it, because it was definitely one of the game's highest points for me. It's a really long one, though, so buckle in-- I'm glad I managed to get it on the first try.
I just beat Mario 64 DS using a hack that enabled analog controls on 3DS.
Playing this game was an interesting experience. I haven't played Mario 64 in like 25 years, so it was fun to revisit. A lot of areas brought up memories of how challenging the game felt when I first played. But, years of playing Mario Sunshine, Galaxies, etc. have honed my 3D Mario skills, so the different experience was pretty wild. It was fun revisiting the courses.
I would have preferred if they just kept just Mario & Luigi as playable characters, and left the powerups how they were in the original game. As-is, there was a little too much time switching characters to clear a small obstacle here and there, and half of them feel bad to play as. Also, early in the game when you are still unlocking characters it's frustrating that some stars are unobtainable.
The extra stars that were added to courses were generally good, but I did not hunt down all of the extra hidden stars in the castle or get the 100 coin stars. The updated graphics are nice too. the minigames, like I mentioned, are not worth checking out. Overall, it's a pretty good portable version of a great game. Very glad I was able to play it with decent controls.
Playing this game was an interesting experience. I haven't played Mario 64 in like 25 years, so it was fun to revisit. A lot of areas brought up memories of how challenging the game felt when I first played. But, years of playing Mario Sunshine, Galaxies, etc. have honed my 3D Mario skills, so the different experience was pretty wild. It was fun revisiting the courses.
- Bob-omb Battlefield: great first level. the open field with a spiral mountain is a perfect design for teaching how to navigate 3D space.
- Whomp's Fortress: A little too similar to course 1 and a lot of later levels, but the boss is neat.
- Jolly Roger Bay: Way better than I remembered. Swimming controls are actually pretty solid, and this level has a lot of fun hidden secrets. The eel design is less creepy on DS.
- Cool Cool Mountain: Another spiral mountain. but, this one has some very memorable stars.
- Big Boo's Haunt: Good theme, but not super fun to play through. The stars locked behind different characters may have been part of the issue.
- Hazy Maze Cave: Man, I just love this place. It's just a bunch of weird rooms underground, but the atmosphere is great.
- Lethal Lava Land: I'm surprised by how much I like this level. My one critique is that the volcano should have been bigger to give it a central visual point.
- Shifting Sand Land: This one is just a pain to navigate. Way too much quicksand. The inside of the pyramid is good though.
- Dire Dire Docks: mostly seems like stars that were outtakes from JRB. Plus, the big tunnel in the middle is annoying to swim through. Kind of a dud overall.
- Snowman's Land: A second ice world, but this one had some fun challenges. It managed to feel unique.
- Wet-Dry World: Another one like Hazy Maze that I just adore. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I love exploring this course.
- Tall Tall Mountain: of all the spiraling mountain levels, this is my favorite. It just feels well designed and fun to ascend. There's always something fun to do.
- Tiny-Huge island: a great concept, but such a pain to navigate. When you're big, it's easy to slip or get knocked off. When you're small, it takes forever to get anywhere. Just not fun.
- Tick Tock Clock: I just entered when the minute hand was at 12 and it was super easy. Cool idea though.
- Rainbow Ride: I'm not a fan of forced movement. It does have a few good stars and overall it contributes a lot of character to the game.
- Luigi is really fun to play as. He jumps higher and can slow his descent, which makes a lot of areas easier. He can turn invisible.
- Yoshi has a tongue/egg attack instead of Mario's punching and diving. Plus he can breathe fire and flutter in the air. The inability to dive forward out of a jump makes him feel a little restrictive, and his abilities are rarely useful.
- Wario sucks. He's very slow, and his jump is really low. He can turn metal and break certain blocks, but otherwise he's awful to play as. Bad Mario indeed.
- And they made Mario unique by taking away wall jumps and flying from the other 3.
I would have preferred if they just kept just Mario & Luigi as playable characters, and left the powerups how they were in the original game. As-is, there was a little too much time switching characters to clear a small obstacle here and there, and half of them feel bad to play as. Also, early in the game when you are still unlocking characters it's frustrating that some stars are unobtainable.
The extra stars that were added to courses were generally good, but I did not hunt down all of the extra hidden stars in the castle or get the 100 coin stars. The updated graphics are nice too. the minigames, like I mentioned, are not worth checking out. Overall, it's a pretty good portable version of a great game. Very glad I was able to play it with decent controls.
The new Zelda game is real good
Pentiment is not a long game but it's a really good one that's been sticking in my head in the days since I beat it. I might actually do what is extremely rare for me, and go back for a second playthrough with a whole different personality and see how differently it plays out. The setting of 16th century Bavaria is a weirdly compelling one!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
It's so good, and I was surprised at how many little details changed on a different playthrough.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I beat Shadowrun on SNES after all these years. Interesting game - it feels like it would have been more at home on PC, and it still boggles the mind how it didn't support the SNES mouse. But it's still playable enough. It's more of an adventure game than RPG - while there are combat elements, most fights devolve into standing there shooting until one of you dies, and that's dictated by how good your weapons/armor/mods are. Although some enemies can stun-lock you, so that's where spells are handy, like Invisibility or Freeze. Definitely glad to get this one in the books.
(Speaking of mouse support, I am aware of the mouse patch out there, I just wanted to play the game as it was. I will try it at some point, though.)
(Speaking of mouse support, I am aware of the mouse patch out there, I just wanted to play the game as it was. I will try it at some point, though.)
Fyonn
did their best!
Skyward Sword HD! Brief detour to playing Banjo Kazooie in the form of Tadtones aside, I adored Skyward Sword. Such a joy to control, and in its controls it finds a friction to combat I find lacking in every other 3D Zelda game. It was absolutely brilliant to give Link the bow last, I spent so much time getting creative with other tools because of it. It's my second favorite Zelda game, right behind Tears of the Kingdom, because for my tastes, Skyward Sword does manage to be the peak of what Zelda was before Breath of the Wild.
it's not just the combat, i feel; the friction on most actions, and the density of the world, brings a sense of physicality to playing it that i found super compelling almost all the time, and made those little ritual breaks like the puzzle solved chime actually feel like a bit of a reward and a mental reset where in ocarina, majora's, tww, i remember feeling so often like "i wish i could just walk to the next room faster..."
i didn't really hate tadtones, but it definitely doesn't really add much to the concepts introduced in the first round of swimming stuff...it's kind of the same with the stealth bit at eldin, it's not that bad but the game doesn't have anything new from itself to show you even if you might learn a bit more about the mechanics. which is why those (along with that one repeating boss) feel like the most obviously filler parts of a game that had been wildly successful about repeatedly introducing new game ideas for so much of its (fairly long) runtime
i didn't really hate tadtones, but it definitely doesn't really add much to the concepts introduced in the first round of swimming stuff...it's kind of the same with the stealth bit at eldin, it's not that bad but the game doesn't have anything new from itself to show you even if you might learn a bit more about the mechanics. which is why those (along with that one repeating boss) feel like the most obviously filler parts of a game that had been wildly successful about repeatedly introducing new game ideas for so much of its (fairly long) runtime
Fyonn
did their best!
Reflecting on it, I really think the purpose of the third revisits is to give the player an excuse to run around and play the game with the Master Sword. Personally, the Master Sword could be available exclusively in the final battle and I wouldn't particularly care either way, but it's an understandable impulse.
Homebody is a pretty cool Clock Tower-esque escape room horror game with a time loop mechanic inspired that's heavily by The Outer Wilds and some really fantastic writing. The controls can be fiddly (as expected in a horror game with fixed camera angles), a couple of the puzzles are a bit over wrought and there's disapointingly no bonuses for replaying after your done, but those are nitpicks. It's very solid and worth taking a look.
Beat Spider-Man: Miles Morales yesterday. Had a good time with it! Traversal was really a joy and very much the star of the show, just swinging around the city, vaulting off rooftops. I wasn't particularly a fan of the combat, but I guess it did its job. After credits rolled, I didn't want to put it down just yet so I was glad to see the scavenger hunt pop up, which I did alongside finishing up the mixtape beats. Good excuses to just websling around for a little longer. It speaks well of my time with it that I wanted to keep playing after finishing it.
I’m not a big user of the adjective “tight” to describe games, but El Viento is a contender for the the least tight game I’ve ever played. At least it’s built around it, I guess: you can’t avoid damage a lot of the time but you don’t take much (unless you get stuck in contact with something that damages you continuously), one of the sloppiest jumping sequences has a pit beneath it that just drops you unharmed at the start of its sequence (though the others in that level all drop you onto spikes that quickly drain your HP if you don’t get off them, but this is countered by several health drops in the level), and if you fall off your dolphin in stage four (probably knocked off by the giant pixelated jellyfish), it comes back for you and the water doesn’t seem to do any harm.
It’s certainly an interesting game, with nice cutscenes between stages and some cool bosses. I think if it had infinite continues instead of three lives total I might have beat it legit instead of using save states at the start of each level and sometimes before the bosses. The last level is a real slog, running up a skyscraper while pursued by infinitely spawning bats which can only really be controlled with the highest level magic spell, which takes quite a while to charge during which you can keep running but can’t otherwise attack. Ultimately the key was learning the way through and focussing on moving quickly (not entirely easy with the loose controls). I don’t think it’s possible to make it to the boss with any substantial HP remaining, but fortunately although it has a lot of HP itself, it does very little damage and I got it after four or five attempts (which without save states would have meant starting from scratch at least once). Oddly, the second last level was one of the easiest, I think the only one in the game I cleared on my first try.
It’s certainly an interesting game, with nice cutscenes between stages and some cool bosses. I think if it had infinite continues instead of three lives total I might have beat it legit instead of using save states at the start of each level and sometimes before the bosses. The last level is a real slog, running up a skyscraper while pursued by infinitely spawning bats which can only really be controlled with the highest level magic spell, which takes quite a while to charge during which you can keep running but can’t otherwise attack. Ultimately the key was learning the way through and focussing on moving quickly (not entirely easy with the loose controls). I don’t think it’s possible to make it to the boss with any substantial HP remaining, but fortunately although it has a lot of HP itself, it does very little damage and I got it after four or five attempts (which without save states would have meant starting from scratch at least once). Oddly, the second last level was one of the easiest, I think the only one in the game I cleared on my first try.
Finished Nobody Saves the World today, which I've surprisingly seen almost no one talk about. It was the next game Drinkbox made after the Guacamelees, and it was cute and fun. The game constantly gives you new abilities to play with and then rewards you for playing with them. It's not super long or difficult, just a nice little dopamine vending machine for a few days.
I played through this one with my SO a few months ago, and it was a really good game to play in local co-op.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I am always interested in more local co-op games so on the list it goes!
Alan Wake's American Nightmare is an interesting experiment in how to create a new experience in an existing AAA franchise on a relatively small budget.