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It's always interesting to see what other people in the circles you follow are playing at the time. So why not all share here and see where our interests are. And just the games you're playing for entertainment, mapping projects aside.
I myself haven't been playing too terribly much lately, exams and all looming. I finished Eternal Sonata a few weeks ago, and everything I have to say about the game is wonderful. Being on the 360, it's one of the few bright and colourful games for the system, and one of the only JRPGs for Xbox gamers. It deviates from the typical RPG style in the figting system, a mix of turn-based and action fighting, with special attacks dependant on whether your character is in the light or dark. A very enganging story and a weonderful score make it a wonderful game inside and out.
Before that chugged through Rock Band with a group of friends, mainly on vocals since I was unanimously voted the only one of the group who could hold a tune, heh. Typical rhythm game, but changes it up kind of how it incorporates karaoke too, and all band members depend on the others to get through the song. All different styles of music here, not just classic rock like Guitar Hero boasts. There's also a pretty sweet character creation option, and you can change the visual aspects of your band member as you go through the campaign, getting money at gigs to buy new clothes, haircuts, accessories, and even deck them out in tattoos. The guys always hated it when we girls would always "go shopping" after a few gigs. but it makes it also fun to just watch the game.
I've also been playing Prey on the 360 on and off for the last few months. Not too far into the game, so it's hard to give a true impression of it, but so far I like how it plays with gravity. Nowhere near how they do it in Portal, but it's fun nonetheless.
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This looks like a job for Science!
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Recently I've been playing Bully: Scholarship Edition on Wii. I actually find it more fun that GTA, even if it's mostly puerile nonsense.
Before that I've been lucky enough to be a beta tester for Soul Bubbles on DS, which is a really beautiful and fun game that everyone should buy. I've played it to 99.9% completion 3 times now and it's still fun.
Recently I've been back on Tetris DS's online multiplayer, realising how much I've lost my touch. I was ranking in the top hundreds but I've dropped to about 1500th now.
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I've always lagged behind everyone else in terms of computer power, and I've never had the money to buy consoles and original games. As a result, most of the games I play are older games that I never got to play when they came out.
I've always been a big fan of graphical adventure game, a genre that has sadly mostly vanished from the world of gaming. That, and platformers, which is why I've always remained in love with the 8 and 16 bits consoles, since they have so many to choose from that I still haven't played.
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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)
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While working on Zelda: Oracle of Hours these past few months, I kept away from games, and as I had finished that project past 11 PM on Mar. 31 (at least in my time zone), it's good that I didn't spend more time on playing games that I had!
I caved in to play some Super Smash Bros. Brawl and finished The Subspace Emissary (its adventure mode with an actual story of sorts). I also unlocked a bunch of stuff for multiplayer (all characters, all stages, the extra rules, all assist trophies, and a lot of music), though it's a good thing my brother swore off video games this semester and my friends are kind of busy lately that I didn't play much multiplayer yet other than to fiddle around. I played a few online matches, though. I've never been the winner, except maybe once by a fluke. There was a four-way Sudden Death one time, where I ended up being last for being smashed off first. All modes are available, and I've played them all, but I still have lots of music, trophies, and stickers to collect. I didn't use any of the sticker stat bonuses in The Subspace Emissary, but it's certainly a neat system that I will put to use when playing higher difficulty levels. It would be neat if there were more Masterpieces (demos of classic games that are available on the VC)...then again, I played like ten seconds of Super Metroid when I first got the game and didn't go into the Masterpieces again other than to see them there after I unlocked them all.
I did manage to not cut back too much on my DS playing, though, since I usually play DS games well past when everyone else has gone to sleep. So it didn't take away from any time I could've been at a computer working on my project. That said, I recently finished Professor Layton And The Curious Village and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Both are recommended, especially for people like TerraEsperZ that like graphical adventure games, though Prof. Layton is really more about the puzzles (think The Island/Castle Of Dr. Brain) and Apollo Justice is of course like the other Phoenix Wright games. I was surprised that it still managed to be epic, and eventually explains why Phoenix Wright isn't practicing law at the time of this game, seven years later.
Speaking of adventure games, I made time also to play some episodes of Sam & Max: Season Two on the PC. I haven't played the most recent episode yet, though. I liked the storyline in the first season better, but this current one certainly has had some fun moments.
Also on the PC, I'm playing Mega Man X 8. I'm like halfway through, as I never got a chance to get serious on it, and I wonder if I should have tracked down Mega Man X 7 first...that's the only Mega Man X game I haven't played (if you don't count the Xtreme games). But what's with the Mavericks? Optic Sunflower? o_0 Animals aren't enough now, I guess. And while pandas are my favorite animals, I thought that Bamboo Pandemonium was kind of a weirdo with a space rocket fetish. And Earthrock Trilobyte's stage was crappy. Oh well, I shouldn't expect every game to be as good as Mega Man II or III...though I wish they were. I'll finish X 8 soon.
Oh, yeah, and back to the DS...I've still got an active file on Pok?mon: Diamond Version, and I was planning to get all the Pok?mon before the one-year anniversary of playing, which I believe is April 28. Yes, I am catching them again, even if they are available in past games. Other than two of the three promotional ones, the remaining Pok?mon to catch are ones that appear with a 2% rate with Pok? Radar (Nidoran male, Miltank, and Trapinch). I'm through with the ones that need skill in this game...I hate that I have to depend on luck. Maybe I should just transfer those ones from Ruby/FireRed and move on to something else, as depending on luck is almost not worth the trouble.
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I must admit, I haven't played a Pokemon game since I got 100% completion on Pokemon Silver way back in the day. Not to say I dislike the series anymore, it sticks with the tried and true method that made it a hit in the first place, just adding new aspects to make it more interesting for returning players, but I was always a system behind the latest release, and when I finally did get around to getting myself a DS, I just kind of lost interest in it as a whole.
And really, there are just too many monsters now I find. And the creature design just keeps getting more aggressive. I miss the days when they were actually cute and you could memorize all the names.
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This looks like a job for Science!
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I personally think the series is very lacking in depth and originality. I played the original way back in elementary school, but I was dismayed to find that hardly anything has changed in the last decade. They made the graphics better, added a few gimmicks, and added 300 new Pokemon, but not much more.
I've been playing a little Donkey Kong GB now and then, but most of my time has been occupied by The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I made a new save file and installed a host of new mods, so I've had a lot to do. It and Morrowind are by far my favorite RPG games. Oh, and I'm still playing Smash Bros Brawl with my roommates pretty frequently.
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Revned Said:
I personally think the series is very lacking in depth and originality. I played the original way back in elementary school, but I was dismayed to find that hardly anything has changed in the last decade. They made the graphics better, added a few gimmicks, and added 300 new Pokemon, but not much more.
The discrepancy in our age is evident when I started university the year Pok?mon came out in North America, and you say you played it in elementary. o_0
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Yeah, I mixed thoughts on MMX8. The stage design was absolutely deplorable, but everything else was pure gold--'tis unfortunate that level design is so fundamental. =P
I do highly recommend X7. It's not as good as many others in the X series, but if you made it through X6, you should have little problem with X7. The camera's a bit of a problem in some places (here's looking at you Wind Crowrang's stage), but not as bad as most make it out to be. The Sigma battles at the end of the game (c'mon, that's not really a spoiler, is it? ;) are among the best in the whole series IMO.
As for me, I have Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest coming up as soon as I finish a couple other things I have going on.
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"So this is what it's like..."
- Spark Mandrill
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JonLeung Said:
Revned Said:
I personally think the series is very lacking in depth and originality. I played the original way back in elementary school, but I was dismayed to find that hardly anything has changed in the last decade. They made the graphics better, added a few gimmicks, and added 300 new Pokemon, but not much more.
The discrepancy in our age is evident when I started university the year Pok?mon came out in North America, and you say you played it in elementary. o_0
The discrepancy in our age is evident when I started university the year Pokémon came out in North America, and you say you played it in elementary. o_0
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This looks like a job for Science!
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I just started 2nd grade when Pokemon was released, but I honestly have never played a Pokemon game.
Anyways, I've been playing Brawl quite a bit, and it has been fun. The characters feel real balanced, and I can manage to beat my younger brother most of the time using Random. The only character I dislike is King Dedede. I also like how the single player mode is much more robust. SSE was quite enjoyable.
I've also been playing FF6A. I've never completed the original, but I find the game to be quite enjoyable for an RPG.
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Dot? Dot. Dot!
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I still consider Pok?mon a "new" Nintendo franchise because I was 18 when it first came out. I turn 28 on Monday - it seems like the last ten years of my life have gone by too quickly, so anything in that time frame seems so recent. After high school, life becomes a blur.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl's The Subspace Emissary is actually tedious in places...but in the past couple days I rushed through another file and got to 40% in a bit over two hours of game time. The point of doing that was to unlock all the remaining videos by making different choices. I actually didn't mind that too much, many of the cut scenes are awesome.
Thanks for reminding me about Final Fantasy VI Advance. I don't usually put games on hold, but I had done that with that one. I'm right before the end, but I stopped because I wanted to get all of Gau's Rages. Of course, when I tried to get them all during the World of Balance, I wasted five hours just because the stupid Litwor Chickens wouldn't show up. (I think it was the Litwor Chickens, even though they would still show up in the World of Ruin, but I wanted everything I could before the world changed...>_<) My game has been on hold right before Kefka's Tower because I didn't want to go through another multiple-hour ordeal of wandering on the World Of Ruin's Veldt. Like Pok?mon, it gets ridiculous to depend on pure luck. Maybe I'll find a GameShark/Action Replay code for all of Gau's Rages so I can continue on. I guess I need to finish the game to get to the second extra dungeon that wasn't in the original.
I did, however, have the patience to teach every character every spell. Magic-wise, they're all the same now, so thankfully the characters have other unique skills in this game to make it interesting.
RT 55J Said: I've also been playing FF6A. I've never completed the original, but I find the game to be quite enjoyable for an RPG.
I find this statement amusing since many people believe Final Fantasy VI to be the best RPG ever (at least if they don't say the overrated VII). If you don't find FF VI enjoyable, it almost sounds like you wouldn't like any RPG...
Ultima and Final Fantasy are interesting cases...besides being groundbreaking RPG series, seems like both of their peaks were with VI and VII. Most games don't even make it that far. Also in both cases, there is some divisiveness on its VIIIth installment...
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Well, I finally finished FF VI Advance a few minutes ago...but I still have to replay the new Dragon's Den to face the Omega Weapon and I have to play the other new dungeon, the Soul Shrine, which is like 128 battles (including bosses) in a row, or something. o_0
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I just started OoT: Master Quest today and made it all the way up to Jabu-Jabu's Belly. I have to say, as my first time through the MQ version, some of those dungeon rooms get pretty danged tough! We'll see how things continue tomorrow.
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"So this is what it's like..."
- Spark Mandrill
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I thought the Master Quest version of the Water Temple was easier than the original Ocarina Of Time's version...or is it just me?
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My first time through that game, the Water Temple made me almost want to cry. I made the one mistake where I used the only key I had on the wrong door. There was no way to get another key, and I didn't realize my folly before I saved. I had to restart the game from the beginning entirely.
Admittedly, I found the final boss Morpha was surprisingly easy. It's almost as if they were apologizing to the player.
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This looks like a job for Science!
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I've started playing Majora's Mask, mostly due to all the praise I keep hearing on the internet. I've played it before, but never bothered finishing it. :P
I've also been working on completing all of the challenges in Brawl. The one I'm currently working on is beating Boss Battles on Intense. I've managed to get to Tabuu once using Fox, but a mistimed sidestep made me a victim of one of his Red Rings of Death. %^%$%$^@*%##!
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
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I should probably finish all the other stuff first, but I did start Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring Of Fates (DS), and so far it's better than I expected. I also bought River City Ransom (NES) on the Wii Virtual Console for the heck of it.
And RT 55J, I hope you finish Majora's Mask. The MM-haters I know have ridiculous reasons like "it looks too much like Ocarina of Time" (absolutely disregarding the fact that it doesn't play like it), or that people dislike the time system.
Because Majora's Mask is so set up around the schedule of the three days, many NPCs actually have lives and places to be and places to go. Helping them out means lots of interesting sidequests, and since Link's character is so incredibly flat (let's face it, there's nothing much to him), Majora's Mask reigns supreme in the area of character development because you actually care about all these NPCs that you probably couldn't care less about when you met their Hyrulean counterparts back in Ocarina of Time. Ultimately, you want to help everyone out to get all of the masks. You can't tell me the quest to reunite Anju and Kafei isn't awesome.
One friend said he was tired of Zelda games being the same. "There's always Ganon, and Princess Zelda." I pointed out that Ganon actually appears half the time (he maintains the ratio by being in only one out of every pair of Zelda games) and suggested Majora's Mask, to which he replied that he didn't like Majora's Mask because it was different. Same=bad. Different=bad. You just can't win with some people.
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Well, I was playing some Dragon Quest V (j2e) and I just recently got the ship, and with free world travel so I can take it anywhere now. I'm at LV25. I have some sailing to do to find the Great Hero's Shield. While playing, I thought about mapping that games overworld only, since at rpgclassics.com there are maps for all of the game accept the overworld. Well, there is the overworld map there too but it's the small in-game map.
It would get bothersome mapping it if I couldn't find a Game Genie or cheat code that would allow non-existant random battles. There is a code like this for Ultima - Quest of the Avatar for NES so that code for Ultima would come in really handy for mapping that game (on NES..). I was also playing Ultima - Quest before DQV. I see here that the Ultima 4 overworld map for PC is very similar to the NES's map design.
At any rate, that's what I been playing over the last few months. Oh, and Gargoyle's Quest II which I have just two final maps to complete and should be done real soon.
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I borrowed my friend's PS2 starting from a couple weeks ago, finally, but he apparently can't remember where his copy of Final Fantasy X went to, so he lent me Final Fantasy XII instead. It's not like it matters what order they're played in, anyway. He also lent me the BradyGames guide, which I didn't ask for, but has turned out to be handy. I'm 61 hours in, though a quarter to a third of those hours might be from the "Negalmuur Auto-Leveling Trick"... >_> *cough* (The License Board system is neat (you earn LP that you spend on "licenses" that allow you to use magicks, technicks, weapons, armour, etc., and in doing so make adjacent license squares available) though the auto-levelling method has now homogenized everyone into masters of every ability...)
Before I borrowed my friend's PS2 I was almost done the Raiders Of The Lost Ark portion of LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures for the PC. I'll definitely get back to that one day.
My brother downloaded the first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People, the PC version, seeing as how I'm hogging the TV too much lately that he wouldn't easily get to the Wii version. :P I'll get to that soon. Seems cool from the little I've seen, though I haven't been a regular at homestarrunner.com for over a year at least.
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I'm currently playing Gauntlet Legends for the PSX, but I'm also making maps and a written walkthrough for it.
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Creator of over 760 maps on GameFAQs. ^_^
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I'm currently into playing the online game "Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory". My favourite weapons are dual colt/luger pistols, sten and the middleweight machine gun, I can't remeber its name but I nicknamed it Parahawk Rifle. My favourite scenes are 'the nocturanal Libyan city' and 'the mountain snowland'. Have you tried it? I used to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein a lot, but I wish there were additional missions and mods for it.
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Always lagging behind the gaming world, I've been playing Sonic Adventure: Director's Cut on my Wii, desperatly trying to complete all 120 emblems (up to 97 but stalling) and all 60 missions (stuck at 57), but being twarted by a horribly broken camera and twitchy controls. I should also start playing the sequel, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and its companion Shadow The Hedgehog in a few days as soon as they arrive through the mail (SA:DX and SA2B are among the best "classic" 3D Sonic games, which is why I'm not bothering with Sonic Heroes; as for ShTH, its story kinda complements/retcons SA2B, so I'm including it as well).
Hopefully I'll be ready for Sonic Unleashed when it comes out!
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Current projects: Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)
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I just finished Final Fantasy XII. :D
I guess I'll understand the sequel, FF XII: Revenant Wings on the DS, if I still want to be in Ivalice a little longer...
Though I could and should probably do some more side-quests and hunts in FF XII before I return this. What PS2 game should I borrow next from my friend? Final Fantasy X? Kingdom Hearts? Or mix it up a bit and go for Soul Calibur III?
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I have only been playing Journey to Silius. I decided to buy Bionic Commando Rearmed and see if it would actually work but to no avail, did It succeed. My comp sucks. At least I have it now and will try and afford a new compy.
As far as what game to play next, "Jon", I'd suggest Kingdom Hearts. It's a fine game. I got to play it some a few months back. You'd get more fun with it Ithink than with SCIII. If you've played one fighter game, other than Street Fighter, or Killer Instinct, then you have played them all.
Another fighter game that's an RPG (Japanese though) is being translated, "Samurai Showdown RPG" for NEoCD by Deuce. That game looks fun as a fighter.
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I'm up to now content on playing Capstone's "Witchaven", the most bloodstaining and gruesome game I have ever seen. Even the impaling I am not squeemish about. Have you the stomach to play it?
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I've been playing F-Zero Maximum Velocity this past week, and have decided to earn the Jet Vermilion the "real" way. To do that I need to complete all cups with all 9 vehicles on Master. The other way is to finish Championship Mode 255 times (or use a code). Boring. So far I've managed to beat all four cups with 3 vehicles: The Stingray, Sly Joker, and Falcon Mk-II. I've also managed to complete at least one cup with the rest of the vehicles. I doubt that I'll actually finish it since I have more important things to do. Also, the AI is really testing my patience.
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
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Still working on Final Fantasy XII's side-quests.
Wasted a whole day on Yiazmat (a superboss with over 50 million HP). And I still couldn't beat him. >_< I'll probably have to waste all day tomorrow getting the equipment people recommend and change all my Gambits accordingly. I swear they make it so stupidly challenging. There's challenging, and then there's ridiculous. It's not even fun to sit around all day just switching leaders 'cause they keep dying. Even more pointless when ultimately I lose. The PS2 was on that boss fight for literally 24 hours. >_<
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I finally got a copy of Okami, played it several hours last night.
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EDIT: Also, a couple weeks ago I finished replaying all of the main classic-series Mega Man games, as well as the GB games in anticipation of Mega Man 9. I'm curious if anybody else has decided to do this.
Yep. I didn't get around to the Gameboy games, but I beat 1-8.5 and X1-X6. Lots of fun.
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Super Mario RPG came out on the VC today. Tempting...though I've played it a few times before, and yup, even have the original cartridge. Second-hand, but still. I would still like it on the Wii. However, my brother has bought a bunch of VC games I didn't even get around to (that's okay though, I played them all before on the original consoles)...it's a matter of finding time.
Speaking of time, I finally beat Yiazmat. What a ridiculous, ridiculous boss. Hours long. I was playing some more LEGO Indiana Jones and then going back to the PS2 to check on it every few minutes just to make sure the guys were doing okay. It took hours though. Seriously. I also beat Omega Mark XII, but this Omega Weapon is a serious joke compared to previous FF's superbosses, and can actually be beat in a tolerable single sitting...it's like a flea compared to Yiazmat. What is Square-Enix on? o_0
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You must get SMRPG on your Wii. It is your destiny!
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Creator of over 770 maps on GameFAQs. ^_^
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Well, I was watching Heroes and The Biggest Loser on Monday and Tuesday so I only had time to beat three Robot Masters in Mega Man 9 on WiiWare.
When I'm not able to access the game 'cause my brother's doing his daily half-hour on Wii Fit or whatever other reason, I can now also busy myself with Kirby: Super Star Ultra, which I started last night. I finished Spring Breeze really quickly, and got 55 out of 60 items so far in The Great Cave Offensive already. I guess it's not hard when I've played the Super NES game a few times before, but I still surprised myself with how much of it I remembered...
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Just finished Okami. Capcom themselves advertised it as "the best game you've never played". Well, now I can say it's one of the best games that I have indeed played.
Quite a lot of it was reminiscent of the Zelda games. Wolf (Twilight Princess)? Shrinking down at one point to enter a stump (Minish Cap)? Some islands to explore at one point (Wind Waker)? Time travel at another point (Ocarina Of Time / Twilight Princess)? Amusing companion that does all the speaking for the silent protagonist (pretty much any recent Zelda game)? Though throw in brush techniques, a lot of Japanese mythology (though the ending was rather sci-fi-ish) and you have Okami. Besides, taking the formula from Zelda is not a bad thing anyway. If you're going to borrow someone else's game engine, at least it's a good one (like Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night compared to Super Metroid).
It's never taken me two weeks to finish a game on a rental before. But it's 'cause of everything else I had to do in the meantime, good thing I played it a lot on that one day I took off. I cut it really close...seriously. I returned it just in time to avoid having to pay restocking fees at Blockbuster. Not that paying a couple bucks or whatever more for that wouldn't've been worth it...but it goes against my "finish-a-game-in-a-single-rental" standard.
Like Twilight Princess and Final Fantasy XII, one of the few things in the game I didn't do 100% is the fishing part. What is it with fishing in all these epic games that I don't have the patience (or time) for? Save the world, or...go fishing. Hmmm...
I didn't mention it earlier but I finished Time Hollow on the DS a while back. Think The Butterfly Effect (actually, I haven't seen the movie yet) but using the stylus to open portals into the past whereby you can take or place items that change the past and present, and then you have to confirm the details of the new memories that flood your head due to the changes you make. Good presentation and an interesting story, certainly (though it tries a bit too hard at some points). Also the game kind of came out of nowhere, I hadn't heard of it until JUST before its release.
Now I can get back to Kingdom Hearts (I only started before playing Okami, so Sora hasn't even met Goofy and Donald yet :P), or do I want to play some LEGO Batman? Or do the second episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People before the third one comes out? Or take a break and do something productive *coughsiterevampcough*...
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It's been a very long while...
Just popped in quick to say I just finished Disaster: Day Of Crisis (E) on the Wii. I only missed one person to rescue!
Given that it's Mother's Day, I probably should've finished Mother 3 (J) (Translated) on the GBA instead. Oops. I'm on the last chapter so I probably will soon.
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GTA Chinatown Wars is really good. It has a lot of the feel of the first game, of which I have fond memories.
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JonLeung Said:
Given that it's Mother's Day, I probably should've finished Mother 3 (J) (Translated) on the GBA instead.
That's an odd thing to do for Mother's Day. I usually give my mother flowers and such...
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Revned Said:
JonLeung Said:
Given that it's Mother's Day, I probably should've finished Mother 3 (J) (Translated) on the GBA instead.
That's an odd thing to do for Mother's Day. I usually give my mother flowers and such...
Well, I'm paying for her upcoming trip to visit family in California...if I had finished the game, it would have been a neat coincidence, as it wasn't planned, though, yes, it doesn't really do anything for my mom. (Maybe completing Disaster: Day Of Crisis might have been implying something else? It mostly takes course over a single day...)
I'd only just started Chapter 8 (the final chapter, I believe) of Mother 3, and though I'm guessing it's not as long as Chapter 7 was, a glance at a walkthrough suggested it was still a good size and might be kind of tight so I opted to finish Disaster: Day Of Crisis instead. The last natural disaster is a hurricane, and a scene in the ending showing people in a stadium is reminiscient of Hurricane Katrina. I wonder if that's one concern for possibly not bringing the game over to North America? Mother 3 has a few oddities that I think Nintendo Of America would rather not deal with - it's only speculation but there are a group of seven "Magypsies" who are either gender-confused or transvestites, and they are major characters. There's another major character who may be racially negative and early on a character dies a brutal death. But NoA should try to do something, or rather they should have earlier. Though it felt a bit more linear than EarthBound, and there was an awful lot of experience building/grinding (though I did that while watching movies), it's still pretty enjoyable. I'm not done with it yet, though.
I know I played some games between Oct. 14, 2008 and May 11 this year - that's seven months, after all - though very few between and including December and March because I was working on Metroid Dread, obviously. I did replay Metroid: Zero Mission during that time, though, to remind myself of the Metroidian physics.
I recommend Retro Game Challenge on the DS. It's based on a Japanese show about a guy who plays old Famicom (NES) games (though I'm guessing the show doesn't involve time travel). In Retro Game Challenge, "Game Master Arino" sends you back in time to the 1980s, and you play NES-like games with his younger self. You have to complete challenges in each game to move on, some as simple as doing a "start boost" in a racing game or as challenging as finishing a whole RPG. The games aren't real classics, but look like they could have been, which makes it neat. There are also (fake) magazines, with previews and cheat codes (like in the good old Classified Information section in Nintendo Power) to collect that are humourous to read and very helpful for the games that you just want to blaze through. Like in the early NES era, the first few games are arcade-style games, but towards the end of the era, you get more deeper games. The last two games here, Gaudia Quest (an RPG very clearly modeled on Dragon Warrior) and Haggleman 3 (a platformer that looks like Ninja Gaiden but more item-centric) are the really cool ones. (I believe I mentioned in another topic that those two especially would be good to have mapped, if anyone wants NES-like games to map that aren't actually on the NES.)
I'm still behind on my games, though. Started some Dokapon Kingdom and Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World, both that I play with my brother, but I still haven't touched No More Heroes and Prince Of Persia. I probably shouldn't have started Klonoa, which came out only last week. Speaking of the new Prince Of Persia and the new Klonoa, are game developers just giving up on subtitles now, or what? I didn't get into Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom (J) all that much because it turns out it's another fighting game where my brother kicks my butt a little too much. Also, the character selection felt rather limited compared to previous "Vs." games, and the lack of familiarity with the Tatsunoko characters hurt that limited selection even more. Why only three attack buttons instead of six?
Since I own a PS2 now (don't remember if I mentioned it in this topic but the guy who lent me his PS2 decided shortly after to just give it to me), Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are still on my to-borrow-and-play queue. I think he gave up his PS2 because he has a backwards-compatible PS3, doesn't really play PS2 games anymore, has gotten married and has been busy with a new job, and came to the realization that video games aren't a priority in his life.
I think someone's going to tell me soon that I should realize that as well... >_>
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Those are all reasons why video games have to be a priority.
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Okay, so I got around to finishing Prince Of Persia last night. Still have to get the remaining Light Seeds though, but it apparently doesn't affect the ending. And since I played the PC version, apparently I'm screwed, since the downloadable Epilogue isn't available for it. I guess I'll just have to find some videos to see what happens next.
The ending of that game is enough for me to consider making a whole 'nother topic about that, or maybe about game endings altogether. Look out for that soon.
(Also started some Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop... Seems I can never stop...)
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I've been recently playing a couple of games:
-Just beat Maylene in Pokemon Platinum and am on my way to one of the lakes. The introduction of Looker was interesting, but I'm disappointed by how unsnowy everything is. And, just for kicks, I'm only catching female Pokemon. Even my starter is female.
-Halfway through world 3 in The Legendary Starfy. Everything in this game is so adorable. Reminds me of Wario Land + Kirby. I am definitely going to map the other games now. Too bad we never got them here.
-If it counts, my brother has been playing Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on Virtual Console, and I have been watching him intently. The entire time, I think about what it will be like to rip maps from it.
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YTT (38%) - WL4 (72%) - PM (47%) - YI (14%)
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UFC 2009 Undisputed - I've put in quite a few hours on this game since it game out almost a month ago. I've re-enacted all the classic fights and beat career mode with an undefeated created fighter. Recently I've been playing online a lot, trying to build up a good record. My record is something like 135-70, which isn't too bad. However, me and a couple other friends all use the same account to play online with, so it's not solely my record.
One of the big things I don't like about the game, though, is how when playing online, you can disconnect at any time and have the match become invalid. So, quite frequently when I'm winning a fight the other player will disconnect and the match becomes void. Supposedly a patch is in the works, but really they shouldn't have let an exploit like this into the finished game.
I've also been playing the old NES a lot lately.
I just beat Ninja Gaiden today for the first time. It took about 3 or 4 hours, all because of the last boss. The last boss is on stage 6-4, and for some moronic reason whenever you die on him, you go back to stage 6-1. Mind you, stages 6-2 and 6-3 are easily the hardest levels in the game and take a lot of practice to be able to beat regularly. Oh well, now that I beat it I don't have to ever play it again :P
Another game I've been working on is Battletoads for NES. This is the single hardest game I have ever played in my life. My goal is to beat the game all the way through without the warps, and the farthest I've got after years of trying is stage 8, the Intruder Excluder, and there are still 4 more levels to go. If I can ever beat this game, I'll have reached the pinnacle of my gaming career. Last year I spent a good part of the summer trying to beat Battletoads in Battlemaniacs for SNES and succeeded, but that game pales in comparison to the original.
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When I get back home (on vacation right now) I'm going to try and rip the sprites from Crystal Warriors (Game Gear) which means playing through the game.
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Since my last post I finished Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii) with an A ranking, and I probably finished some other games too, I don't quite remember. EDIT: Oh, yeah, I forgot about Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Wii). It was nice to have original voice talent, but the game was kinda bleah. Repetitive, and yuck. I don't know that I would like the other versions just because they have realistic graphics as opposed to a cartoony style.
Why, oh why, did I start Final Fantasy: The After Years (WiiWare) and The Conduit (Wii) yesterday when I have other games (and other things) I've been meaning to get to? They're good games, but I might have to prioritize. Oh, I also started Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales (DS) last week - I like how it's aimed at kids but the music choices are clearly nostalgic from several past FF games that their target audience likely wouldn't have played much of. This might sound silly but I'm also engrossed in EA Sports Active (Wii) for some reason that even I don't know. It certainly makes me sweat, unlike Wii Fit, (Wii) which I still weigh myself on daily though I don't do anything else on it for some reason.
Meanwhile, No More Heroes (Wii) still hasn't been seriously started, and Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA) has been sitting dormant without that new 128-level dungeon or whatever being tackled yet. Also, I'm still missing a couple of the 2% rare Pok?Radar Pok?mon in Pok?mon: Diamond Version (DS) - I'm sure I mentioned it before but I think a challenge should involve skill, not dumb luck, so unless I'm doing something totally wrong, after, what, a couple years you'd think I'd see a single $%#@!ing Nidoran by now. And I'm supposed to catch three? Get serious. And some Trapinch as well. (Maybe I'll just transfer them from Pok?mon: Ruby Version (GBA) and be done with it.) Anyway, those are the three games I should get back to, for completion's sake. Then there are so many other games (which are quickly becoming "old" or already old that I should get to), like all those PS2 games I've been meaning to borrow, but the PS2 my friend gave me last year has been sitting dormant for maybe more than half a year now.
In terms of making progress, I finally got all 1001 Light Seeds in Prince Of Persia (2008) (PC). The last several were hidden away in pairs, strangely. Okay, okay, I had to resort to a FAQ for the last eight or so. Strangely, despite having no way to track which Light Seeds had been obtained and which weren't, somehow I was able to quickly identify the ones I missed on the FAQ based on sometimes-vague descriptions despite not playing the game for a while. I don't know that obtaining all the Light Seeds was technically worth it, as after obtaining Elika's alternate "Jade" skin (as in Jade from Beyond Good & Evil), there was nothing more to do with the game. And I did catch a bajillion bugs and fish in Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) recently, since a bunch came out in July. Just the spider (still!) and tarantula are left...easy to remember, as both particularly gross me out in real life...
(I didn't think I was playing all that much, but when it's all written out, it certainly looks like it...)
I've really got to trade Friend Codes for Super Smash Bros.: Brawl and Mario Kart Wii with some of you guys here. Maybe also for Animal Crossing: City Folk and The Conduit. Would be fun. (If I'm not going to fight my addiction I might as well be more social about it.)
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Heh, might as well post a bit here. :)
I haven't had much time over the last year or so to play many games at all, nor have I had much interest in doing so. Producing a body of work (i.e. paintings) had been my number one priority, so there wasn't much room for anything else. But even now that the term's over and I've got all this free time, I tend to gravitate more towards reading manga. But in any case! :)
The one game I've been playing most recently has been Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. This series is always a lot of fun, though picking the right piece of evidence when it's not totally clear can be a bit of a chore. Other DS games that I've had on hold for a while include Final Fantasy III, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard. Oh! But the one "game" that I've been "playing" quite a lot over the last few weeks has been Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten! lol XD
That's been pretty much it as of late.
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I've been playing random Wii games (most commonly recently SMG) with cheats. Yeah I know cheating is for losers, but I'm a loser (at games). I don't cheat online though. And for anyone who wants it, 1934-0807-5940 is my friend code for Mario Kart Wii.
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I have been playing Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2, I'm almost to the end. Then I plan on doing the .Hack games next on the PS2. I beat the first game, but have not yet played any of the others in the series.
On the PC I have been playing Plants Vs. Zombies. That game cracks me up :)
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I stayed up late last night and dusted off my old save file for FF6 Advanced. I completed the dungeon right before Thasama (whatever it's called).
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
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Today I just finished replaying Super Metroid Redesign, which my favorite ROM hack, period. With a tad bit more polish I can easily see it passing off as a commercial release. Granted, the difficulty would also need to be lowered, considering the fact that nearly half the game can be considered masochistic in some way (Hell's run, the post-grapple beam segment, the pre-Phantoon area, the guardian hunt, Tourian, the escape sequence. Need I go on?).
Anyways, my time and percent are 10:21 and 83.7%, which is about half the time of my first playthrough (and a higher percentage to boot). Much of the improvement comes from knowing where all the guardians were (seriously, some of them are nigh impossible to find without a map) and just knowing where to go in general. I'm most proud of my performance in the Tourian segment. I managed to get past the Metroids without saving states or rewinding. Even so, I doubt I'll ever be as good as the hack's creator, Drewseph, who recently did a single-sitting 100% playthrough in 6:50.
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
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I finished both The Conduit (Wii) and the "main" portion of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (WiiWare) yesterday, which is funny since I also started both on the same day, Sunday.
The Conduit was okay, I haven't played a decent FPS in a while (I can't remember if I played any since BioShock last year, though that was actually on the PC), and the Wii controls made it easy to get into it. If only FPS fans didn't all seem to be graphic whores, you'd think we'd be seeing many more FPSes on the Wii. But I thought the game looked okay, if maybe a bit generic. I pretty much agree with any review out there, which all seem to say the voice acting and controls are both top-notch, and some of the weapons look neat, but the single-player campaign is short and somewhat clich?. So, sure, it was fun while it lasted, just not groundbreaking. I would like to try multiplayer one day, but as there's no split-screen local multiplayer, if any of you guys do play it, let me know.
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years was also okay. I've only played the "main" or "first" part, which ends with a "THE END" screen which clearly isn't the end, so I guess at some point me and/or my brother will be buying the other chapters. Though you mostly play as Ceodore (Cecil/Rosa's son), the story didn't actually seem to be about him, and after the first area, you don't get a sense of any characterization. There are a few loose ends - but I guess that's to be expected when there are all those other chapters still to go. It was a little more enjoyable than I initially expected, considering that I went into it knowing that it's originally a mobile phone game and thinking it looked too much like an amateur RPG Maker creation.
I'll probably tackle some of the other things I've been meaning to do that I mentioned in my previous post before starting anything new (Tales Of Monkey Island (PC) is tempting...), but my brother is picking up Street Fighter IV (PC) today from Best Buy so I know I'll be spending some time with him on that. I expect to get a faceful of Hado(u)kens.
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I seriously suck at Street Fighter IV, apparently.
Started making a focus of finishing off some of that old stuff. I suddenly decided to get the remaining Pok?mon the morning of Sunday before last, not knowing or remembering that just the previous day was the official release date of Arceus in Japan. Anyway, I now have at least one of each of the 493 Pok?mon in Pok?mon: Diamond Version (DS). Thanks to my brother who plays tons more than I do, who did the online trades for all those promo legendaries. I'm not going to bother with the alternate versions of Shaymin, Giratina, or Rotom until I get a game that supports them, but it's not going to be Platinum...most likely Heart Gold or Soul Silver.
Nextly, I've been building up experience in Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA). I didn't realize how quickly I could build experience in that one forest with the dinosaurs (or at least it's more quickly than I was expecting). If I had known that I probably would've done it before going through the new Dragon's Den (or whatever it's called) and fighting that Kaiser Dragon at only about Level 60. I mindlessly grinded while watching some movies like Shooter, Night At The Museum, and The Incredible Hulk, and so now I only have Gau and Celes to get to Level 99. Once I have all fourteen characters mazed out, I'll check their equipment, but then there's not much else to do to prepare before taking on the Dragon's Den a second time as well as that other new dungeon which is pretty much a gauntlet of 128 battles where you can encounter nearly everyone again, even bosses (it's an opportunity to steal items that would otherwise be a one-shot deal). After I do this, I wonder if there are any remaining GBA games that I really need to play.
I did start one new game yesterday: Wii Sports Resort (Wii). It's fun, and I expect it would be more so with friends. My brother can kick my butt in the Swordplay Duel, but it's still quite enjoyable. The single-player game where you fly around in a plane and try to find 80 landmarks around Wuhu Island is addicting, and I played it several times in a row and got 60 of them so far. I'm not sure how seriously I'll try to obtain all the Stamps in this game (Cycling is kind of difficult - who pedals with their hands, anyway?) but the important thing is that we now have two Wii MotionPluses for future releases.
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I recently bought a DS. First couple of games I bought were Chrono Trigger, Meteos, and Populous DS. Meteos is freaking addictive.
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Only recently? You have a lot to catch up on. I wouldn't have put Chrono Trigger and Populous on my to-play list... You are going to play the Castlevania games, the Trauma Center games, the Ace Attorney games, etc., right?
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Quite possibly the Castlevania games. Probably not the other two. I had never played Chrono Trigger before (I did not own a Nintendo system until N64) and it was fairly cheap. Besides, I still have some GBA games that need finishing.
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DarkWolf Said:
I had never played Chrono Trigger before (I did not own a Nintendo system until N64)
GASP x 2
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Best-selling videogame franchises I have literally never played (based on this):
- Final Fantasy
- Pokemon
- Dragon Quest
- Tekken
- Mega Man
- Street Fighter
- The Sims
Chrono Trigger isn't big enough to be on that page but I never played that either.
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Maxim Said:
Best-selling videogame franchises I have literally never played (based on
this):
- Final Fantasy
- Pokemon
- Dragon Quest
- Tekken
- Mega Man
- Street Fighter
- The Sims
Chrono Trigger isn't big enough to be on that page but I never played that either.
GASP x 6
It's 6 out of 8 because I never got into Tekken...and Dragon Quest and The Sims lose half a gasp each since I only seriously played the first of those...and maybe a couple others, but certainly not the recent ones.
But Mega Man? Are you serious? 0_0
Well, then again, if Maxim and DarkWolf grew up with Nintendo, maybe we wouldn't have all their Master System and Genesis contributions. :)
Maybe we could try to compile a list of "essential series" that we think everyone should have familiarity with...or something like the top 20 games for each console. I can't imagine that there are people who owned a NES that didn't play Super Mario Bros. 3, for instance, and you could probably name a couple dozen more. I was already thinking about making an "Essentials" list topic, as I'm sure there would be lots of discussion and controversy, or a topic about how we grew up to be the gamers we are today, since I often forget some people play vastly different games than I do.
I'm a long way from even considering ever having kids, but if I did, I'd probably scare them off from video games, because if they showed an interest at all, I'd probably bombard them with games I feel they ought to play. Maybe I'd, like, make Mega Man flash cards and teach them whose weapon beats who at an early age. >_>
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This seems to be turning into Jon's Journal Of Games...
Today I took care of another monkey on my back by completing the Soul Shrine and the revisitation of the Dragon's Den in Final Fantasy VI Advance. At last I can say I finally finished the best version of the best Final Fantasy game with 100%. :D
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My desire to finish a game with 100% is one of the reason why there are so many essential games that I haven't played, most notably in the RPG/JRPG genre. It just requires too much time investment, which is also the excuse I use in order to leave so much junk around my apartment like books, boxes and DVDs. I want to it perfectly in one sitting, but that would take too long, so I end up never starting.
...Yeah, I'm just lazy :)
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Current project: Little Samson (NES)
Upcoming project: New Ghostbusters II (NES)
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TerraEsperZ Said:
My desire to finish a game with 100% is one of the reason why there are so many essential games that I haven't played, most notably in the RPG/JRPG genre. It just requires too much time investment, which is also the excuse I use in order to leave so much junk around my apartment like books, boxes and DVDs. I want to it perfectly in one sitting, but that would take too long, so I end up never starting.
...Yeah, I'm just lazy :)
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Current project: Little Samson (NES)
Upcoming project: New Ghostbusters II (NES)
You accidentally a word.
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Lately, I've been playing the following games over the weekends.
Persona 4 (very sparingly, I've had that game for over 8 months now and still haven't beat it)
Murumasa (just got it yesterday for the Wii)
Mega Man Powered UP
And a ROM of Little Samson and Psycho Fox
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I was playing Retro Game Challenge, but got kind of bored with grinding in Guadia Quest (on the last challenge). I recently picked up My Japanese Coach and have gotten through a few lessons on that. Kind of wanted to do French (no new writing system to learn) but they didn't have it at the store and Japanese was my next choice. I seem to be doing better at the Kana than I did the last time I attempted to learn them. Maybe I just needed structure perhaps? Oh that's right, I also have recently gotten SimCity Creator for DS since it was fairly cheep, but I got a bit bored with it and put it back on the shelf. Why can't they do a decent SimCity anymore?
In the non-console world there's going to be a LAN Party after work tomorrow and we're going to be playing Unreal Tournament ('99). Ahh, the classics...
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Still working through Final Fantasy X...
On the DS side, I just finished Professor Layton And The Diabolical Box. Even the extra stuff that comes with swapping passwords with the first game, but of course not the third. Didn't try any downloadable puzzles yet though. The game was epic, and the ending was more spectacular than in the first game, though maybe a bit rushed. Still, a good 10 and a half hours of fun. What should I play next on the DS...Scribblenauts, or Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story?
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Final Fantasy X is definitely one of my favorite Final Fantasy Games. Are you the type of person that will beat the game and stop playing it, or do you try to find everything and do all the side quests and max out your characters?
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Man, I've got a ton of games I need to play. I recently bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii, Bit Trip Beat, Bit Trip Core and World of Goo for Wii Ware, and I still need to finish Portal which I only started playing yesterday. Unfortunately, my on-board graphic card sucks and the game is nearly unplayable since it's so slow, so I need to buy both a 3D accelerator card and a new power supply since the one my computer came with sure won't be able to handle it (it's 200 watts short).
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Final Fantasy X is definitely one of my favorite Final Fantasy Games. Are you the type of person that will beat the game and stop playing it, or do you try to find everything and do all the side quests and max out your characters?
I'm typically very thorough, though in recent years there seem to be too many games I want to play, so I'm now increasingly likely to be okay with not having 100%. With the main-series Final Fantasy games I still try to be very thorough, so as you saw earlier in this topic I semi-recently got through Final Fantasy XII with just about everything, and I even returned to Final Fantasy VI Advance even after a two-year hiatus to finally finish it off, when I probably wouldn't have returned to a game untouched for so long.
In Final Fantasy X, though, I lost in the mandatory Blitzball game, and even if that one was supposed to be pretty hard, I don't know if I have enough interest to get through many Blitzball games. It just seems to move too slowly for my tastes, and I don't like many sports to begin with. Apparently I have to play tons of Blitzball for Wakka's ultimate weapon or something, which sounds like it could be frustrating.
I could take my time since I own the game since it was part of that stack of PS2 games I got for cheap, but it's quite possible that I might just pass up on FFX's Blitzball stuff and just move on to the next game, which if on the PS2 will either be Resident Evil: Code Veronica X or Final Fantasy X-2. I don't like being behind, even though I couldn't bring myself to buy a PS2 (since like I mentioned, I got this one for free when a friend upgraded to a backwards-compatible PS3, even though he doesn't use the backwards compatibility much if at all), and those two, especially Code Veronica, are pretty old, and not in some kind of "retro" revisitation sense, but in a to-play-but-never-got-around-to-it sense.
I also have a bunch of Wii games I started, which I hope to get back to, like No More Heroes and Help Wanted, and I kind of started some Muramasa: The Demon Blade, plus at some point I want to play Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (though I'll likely just download a save since I finished it on the GameCube, I mostly just want to play with Ada). And then of course with new games on the way like TMNT: Smash-Up (if it's any good), A Boy And His Blob, Spyborgs, and a few others I can't recall, I'm sure I have no shortage of games I'd like to play for the rest of the year. I save my DS playing as a pre-sleep thing, which is why I have time for those games, and so I did get into Scribblenauts yesterday and finished most of the first world's puzzle-challenge stages (I haven't started the action ones).
But do you know what's been wasting my time the most during the day? Trying to catch a $@#%!ing giant petaltail (dragonfly) in Animal Crossing: City Folk. It only appears from 4 PM to 7 PM, (and I get home from work before 4 PM, if you're wondering) and is incredibly rare, and won't appear after Hallowe'en, so I have to spend up to three hours each day* just walking around, bored out of my mind. I'm incredibly lucky to even see it at all, so I know many days it's a complete waste of time, but at the same time I'll never catch it if I don't at least try. It is the final bug for me to catch, after all. But is it worth all this trouble just to complete my bug catalogue? Nintendo can be pretty cruel sometimes. This is worse than the stupid "2% rare" PokéRadar Pokémon in Pokémon: Diamond Version - which sure didn't feel like 1 in 50 since I never ever freaking saw one - because at least in that I could transfer them from my FireRed Version when I eventually gave up. It may be a good thing that if I don't catch the giant petaltail by Hallowe'en I'd have to give up by default before I go crazy, but then until next August I'll be wrestling with whether or not I would want to hunt them again since both hunting them and NOT hunting them are both so very unappealing. Don't you hate those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations? I just want to catch one so luckily and easily like my brother did (who just saw one sitting on a sign so he didn't even have to give chase), and I hope I do it soon. (See, at least if I was spending a lot of time on something like an RPG, I'd at least feel like I have the "productivity" of gaining more gold and experience, rather than just walking around with nothing to show for it by the end of each play session...)
*I'm sure any non-gamer and casual gamer would wonder why I should care at this point. At least I'm not missing out on life, which actually cuts into that three-hour time window by quite a bit, so maybe I'm not even spending an hour on it, if I get a chance to spend time on it at all, but that drags it on and reduces my chances of seeing these stupid giant petaltails, which makes me wonder if I shouldn't maybe spend MORE time on it...graaagh!
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Yea, I know how you feel. I used to do that with games as well, I must find every item and max out all character stats. Of course that made the game last much longer and when you don't have a lot of games or the next great RPG is not due out for a while it works great. But like you I have ended up with a stack of games to play. So now I just go through and beat the game and move on to the next so I can experience the variety of more games. Don't feel bad I also decided to skip the Blitzball part of FFX except for the few mandatory games to get through the story line. I did however max out the characters and do all the side quests that weren't blitzball related.
You speaking of trying to find that rare petaltail reminded me of trying to find the Pink Puff from Final Fantasy II (IV). You had a 1 in 256 chance of getting them to appear and a 1 in 256 chance once it appeared to get the pink tail from it. Fortunately I soon learned about the trick of setting up both controllers with one holding down "left" and the other holding down "right" to make you walk back and forth to trigger random battles and the turbo attack button held down to kill off all the enemies. Then just left it on overnight a few nights to finally get it. Then I just needed to do that 4 more times so I could get one for each person in my party.
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I checked two stores for Scribblenauts yesterday and couldn't find a copy. I'll have to hunt one down this weekend.
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I finally finished Final Fantasy X. With other stuff going on in, you know, real life, it's the first time a FF game has taken me months instead of mere days. :P Stupid side-quests. I managed to complete everyone's Sphere Grids, but I skipped all the stupid Blitzball. Now until XIII comes out, I'm caught up on all the main-series FFs (excluding XI but that's online which is kind of an excuse). I believe the order I finished them is: IV, (I), VI, VII, VIII, II, III, V, IX, XII, and X. The summer a few years back when I did II, III, V and IX was kind of a blur though.
I'll play X-2 at some point, but I think I'll put aside the PS2 catch-up for now and catch up on some Wii games instead. I did play some New Super Mario Bros. Wii with my brother last week and made it up to World 7, but one of these days I'll probably play it single-player as well. Then the next plan of attack will probably to tackle the unfinished Wii games like Help Wanted and No More Heroes and Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
Oh yeah, I finished every stage of Scribblenauts a little while ago...is it worth it to go back and do them three more times with different words?
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I finally finished Super Paper Mario. I have to say, it was kind of disappointing, and I really can't be bothered to collect all the cards and hidden chests and the #@!% Pit of 100 Trials. Whereas Galaxy gives you innovations and new ideas right up to the end, SPM really just has one real trick (the 3D flip) and then gets progressively more frustrating.
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I feel the same way. I never even finished it, actually. It started feeling quite tedious after awhile.
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Really? I managed to get everything in Super Paper Mario in a single rental, which is not what I could say about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the GameCube. In that one, I missed two Star Pieces and couldn't tackle the Pit Of 100 Trials (or whatever it's called) due to time restrictions, I think Blockbuster hadn't yet implemented the no-late-fees thing yet.
In Super Paper Mario, there was time enough for both me and my brother to play it on separate files. He didn't bother to go for 100%, though. While the Pit Of 100 Trials was fun, I would agree that it is clearly an attempt to extend the length of the game. I think there was two (correct me if I'm wrong), and when you get to the bottom of the second one, you get nothing and are sent back to the top and have to go through it yet again to get whatever it is. In that sense, they could've at least tried to be a little less blatant about it by just calling it the Pit Of 200 Trials and having a save/teleport point on the 100th or 101st floor, sheesh.
I miss the days when I could drop everything to finish games within a timeframe of mere days...and now with so many games I could be playing, I have to learn to prioritize.
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Sorry to revive this thread, but I just had to mention a Wii game that I managed to find after hearing about it on another forum, called Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The game itself is a sort of a 2-D RPG lite taking place in ancient Japan in which you get to acquire and forge over a hundred different swords each with different powers. In itself that's pretty neat but God is that game gorgeous to look at and listen to! Everything looks like traditional Japanese paintings, only animated! Seriously, I've never fallen in love with a game's style so much as with this one. There are tons and tons of parallax layers and everything as a painted feel to it, with added lighting and fog effects on top; forests, bamboo forests, rice fields, Japanese towns and castles, frozen forests, hell, heaven, you'll visit a ton of enchanting places.
As for the sprites, they are all animated superbly with tiny movements and deformations; it looks a bit like some flash movies but the quality is light years ahead. The soundtrack is also amazing with a ton of traditional instruments and some modern ones but always mixed well, and they also kept the Japanese voices to retain the 'feel' of the period.
Sorry if I sound like I'm promoting the game, but it's so rare that games with hand-drawn graphics that lok this good come out nowadays that I just had to share it with you guys :). Here's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKl0o3B4Sr4&feature=related) the best trailer for it in my opinion.
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I've been playing that too! o_0
I just got Momohime to Level 99 yesterday, survived the "Total Pandemonium" enemy lair, and got the bracelet that lets me do infinite special attacks without using any Soul Power. :) Now to do the same for Kisuke and get the remaining few brown swords.
I also finished Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story two nights ago, but apparently I have to do it again with all three characters at over Level 40 for something, I dunno. I found all the hidden underground beans, at least.
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Assassin's Creed II, Age of Mythology with friends, and I'll be starting on Uncharted 2 soon.
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I finally finished Mother 3, after a year of not playing it, haha. Very satisfying I must say! Now I just gotta wait for my Mother 3 Handbook to arrive. About the only other game I've been playing lately has been Lennus II. Slowly still making my way through that.
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I finished Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) sometime last week I think, with both characters at Level 99 and seeing each of their three endings. Beautiful game, but repetitive.
Finally got a hold of Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC) last night, I guess I'll see what the fuss is about. I only played around for like fifteen seconds, didn't even finish walking the Joker to his cell or whatever. Can I seriously not use a gamepad unless it's the Xbox 360 controller for Windows (which I don't have)? I'll have to find that JoyToKey program again to map keystrokes to gamepad buttons.
I should probably start The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS) soon especially since I consider myself a Zelda fan. It's just that I haven't yet finished Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS) a second time at Level 40 or higher, and for some reason I kind of only want one game going per system at a time. I wish building experience was a little quicker, it doesn't help that enemies don't respawn unless you totally leave the whole area and come back. I suppose I could use a warp to leave and come back, and that seems to work, but it's also annoying to have to walk to the warp.
I guess with my one-game-on-one-platform-at-a-time thing means I could also start another Wii game or catch up on all those PS2 games I got for cheap but lately it's just been about finding the time. Considering that I'm doing P90X (http://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness_programs/p90x.do?code=P90XDOTCOM) these days, that's over an hour of working out every day that would have earlier been gaming time. If anything else happens on any weekday, that usually means next to no gaming time at all that day. :(
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Spirit Tracks is not very long, unless you want to go nuts with all the train cargo/passenger tasks left over at the end.
P90X? Indistinguishable from Weight Gain 3000 as far as I can tell. BEEFCAKE!
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Finished Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC) last night, and solved the remaining riddles today. Funny thing is, I solved the last riddle in the same room as the "extra" Chronicle of Arkham. What are the chances?
Also, last night, I refinished Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS) at Level 40, only to find that they just tell you you're amazing. WTF, that wasn't worth the extra effort... Anyway, this frees up my DS so I should probably start The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)...
Got Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (Wii) today. I've got the original Japanese game so it's funny when noticing the subtle things that have been changed. One not-so-subtle addition is online play, so I hope to fight some of you guys one day! I'll post my Friend Code in the topic about the potential online Wii party.
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Finished Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (Wii) with all characters on the easiest difficulty, but that only earned me enough Zenny to buy everything except the extra colours. Considering I earned 27 million Zenny and each of the 26 characters have two new colours that cost a million Zenny each, I've only played a third of the time necessary to unlock everything. I think I'll save that for the Versus, since my brother's been too busy with studies to play with me.
I started Persona 3: FES (PS2) because my friend (the same one who gave me the PS2) insisted that I do, even though I thought I would play something else on the PS2, like one of the ten games I got for cheap, like maybe Final Fantasy X-2 before FF XIII comes out in March, so that at least for a little while I could say I played all the main FFs (even if X-2 isn't a "main" one, really), since I don't know if I'll ever be swayed to buy a PS3. But anyway, Persona 3 is interesting, for sure.
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I noticed that the story of Persona 3 FES begins on my 29th birthday and ends on January 31. 2010, which is when he lent me the game... 0_0
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I just started The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks last night. Heaps of fun, and so far better than Phantom Hourglass. The only thing I really don't like is playing the Spirit Flute with the Lokomos. Seriously, I'm not a musician. Keep complicated musical matters of rhythm and timing out of Zelda please--I liked it better when it was just pushing buttons in sequence. >_<
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Thanks to a dear friend, I got into Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky, which I got for Christmas but didn't touch because of the other games I was trying to catch up on. I'm surprised at the amount of fixes and new features they added, much more than Platinum compared to Diamond/Pearl. It almost makes Explorers of Time/Darkness feel incomplete. By a fun little coincidence, my team ended up the same as my friend's, only with the roles reversed. I was turned into a Cyndaquil, and my partner is a Shinx. Together we're Team Pearl Star!
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The only thing I really don't like is playing the Spirit Flute with the Lokomos.
It's not as bad as it may appear. When you play the game on a plane, the mic thinks you're blowing constantly, yet it's still possible to succeed (it ignores very shorty notes). So it's a test of your DS mic-blowing skills (blow slowly to avoid killing yourself) and timed stylus movements. Almost all tunes are adjacent notes anyway.
Nevertheless, panpipe-playing is probably the worst bit of the game, and also has a high playing in public embarrassment factor.
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I played a few dungeons of Phantom Hourglass awhile back and it is without a doubt my least favorite traditional Zelda game. It had no personality and was full of gimmicks. Should I even bother with Spirit Tracks?
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Spirit Tracks is equally gimmicky I suppose; it's basically the same game with new dungeons and a train instead of a boat. I seemed to find ST more enjoyable story-wise, but I played Phantom Hourglass in small bursts and Spirit Tracks mostly in a couple of huge blasts on 13 hour flights which might have helped with the coherency.
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With the exception of Linebeck, Phantom Hourglass seemed to be rather disappointing. However, I greatly enjoyed Spirit Tracks all the way up through the end. The puzzles are put together well and can really make you think in some places. A dear friend of mine is a Zelda fan and considers ST to be one of his favorite games. So yes, I recomment trying it.
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Peardian, you like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon? Have you ever played any of the Shiren Mysterious Dungeon games? They're some of my favorite and a new one is coming out in a couple of days.
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Admittedly, the main reason I like the game is because of the fact you play as the Pokemon themselves instead of the trainers who catch them, and the stories in both games were great. I'm not really a fan of roguelike games.
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Almost to the Fire Temple now, and I've pretty much got a hang on the Lokomo duets.
You know the thing that really bugs me about this game? Those ****ing instant death trains. And you never even get the capabilities to destroy them later in the game (from what I hear) either. Seriously, what's the deal with that? I understand increasing the challenge level, but taking one wrong turn when I'm just trying to do a side quest, get cornered by two of them, and instant game over? Urgggghhh...!
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Hehehe... they follow set patterns, (which can change when more tracks are added) so if you learn them, you'll have a much better chance at avoiding them. But yes, they are indeed troublesome. And the ones that actually follow you are worse. XD
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I just finished Mega Man 10 (on Normal, credits are going by as I type this). Despite being maxed out on items before beginning the Wily Castle, and even max lives by the rematch stage, I thought I was toast, after losing a bunch of lives to the rematch to Nitro Man. A couple at Pump Man and Blade Man each for some reason, too. I ended up using all my lives but my last by the time I beat them, after remembering about the 1/2 damage item, and had nothing else other than like a couple W Tanks, but the last Eddie/Fliptop gave me another life just before facing the second-last boss. Then, thank goodness the last stage gives another life, and one of each of the tanks, all in easy reach, making the final boss a peace of cake.
I don't know if I will attempt Hard Mode or all the challenges, but it was fun. Better than Mega Man 9, in my opinion, though the ending could've been better in this. Well, maybe I just like the ending montage of the Robot Masters in 9, but they couldn't've had them here, I guess.
EDIT: My time of nearly two and a half hours is a little embarrassing (it's 'cause I replayed Sheep Man's stage a few times to get lots of screws) but I got the "Tenacious" challenge done by not continuing.
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Two and a half hours and no game overs? That's actually quite respectable for a first playthrough. I beat the game a couple days ago, and my clear time was around 3 hours, with about a dozen Game Overs. Even so, I thought it was easier than MM9, and better overall. The levels and bosses are just as well-designed if not more creative. The weapons are a not as useful than MM4 or MM9, but all satisfying to use (like X2). The music is phenomenal. All in all, I think it might be my favorite Mega Man game, though it is a bit early to judge.
I also played through the game on easy as Protoman. The game practically beats itself on that mode. Seriously, there are like 2 Yashichis per level, assist platforms over 80% of the pits and spikes, and tons of goodies everywhere. I'm pretty sure my mom could beat it, and the farthest she's ever gotten in an action game is Butter Bridge 1 in SMW (which, admittedly, is quite respectable (especially in comparison to my dad)).
I played hard mode for about an hour last night and the only boss I was able to beat was Pump Man, but I did manage to get to a few others. I guess I'll be practicing them in their challenge rooms for a while...
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I haven't played MM10 very much, probably less than 4 hours total and only halfway through Wily's castle. I don't know if I just had too high of expectations or if the novelty wore off, but I don't like it nearly as much as I did MM9.
In other news, I'm in the process of collecting the last trophies for Heavy Rain. I really enjoyed it, though I'm sure it wouldn't appeal to everyone. It was a completely different experience from any other game I've ever played.
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The Legend of Zelda! =D
Yup, that's right, the 1986 NES original (well, on Virtual Console, that is). I'm actually planning to play through every Zelda game in the series, and there's no better place to begin than the beginning.
I beat the first quest today, 100% with 0 deaths, and I've now started the second quest--which I will finish up tomorrow.
And thanks to the maps of Rick Bruns, much of my exploring and dungeon trawling has been very expedient indeed. =0)
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And Zelda 1 is done! =D
Now on to Zelda II. D=
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Since February 1 I've been playing practically just Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES for the PS2 (other than when I quickly played and finished some Mega Man 10). It really looks likely that I'll finally get to finish this 160-hour game tonight! :D
As I alluded to earlier, my friend who gave me a PS2 last year lent me this game on January 31, 2010. If you know the story of this game, you know that is an incredible coincidence, as in the main story of the game, that day is "The Promised Day" (ie. the day you fight the final boss). (Another coincidence: the game starts on April 7, 2009, which was my 29th birthday.) He did not specifically mean to lend it to me on that day, which is what really makes it freaky/neat. Anyway, I hadn't considered playing this game, it was not on my queue of to-play PS2 games (of which I have a dozen I got for cheap, most of which I still haven't touched), and I was already behind on my Wii games as it was at the time. But I didn't want to be rude when he lent it to me out of the blue like that, so I started playing it, not knowing it would take me 160 hours (so far) over the span of three and a half months. I'm really behind now, but I am enjoying Persona 3.
I'm fairly certain I'll be finishing it tonight. The in-game date is January 28, 2010. All my characters are at Level 99, and two of my Personas (Ose and Messiah) have maxed-out stats, while Messiah is also at Level 99. I've created all the Personas I possibly can, except for some of those who required max Social Links.
If I had known earlier that pretty much the only way to maximize the Social Links given the limited amount of time you can do things, I would've followed the GameFAQs "Social Links" walkthrough a lot earlier. You can only Fuse Orpheus Telos (the "ultimate" Persona, a palette swap of the original Persona, Orpheus) by maximizing ALL Social Links in a single play-through, which is pretty tough to do without following such a guide to a T. In that sense, it's a little ridiculous. I am happy to have Fused the six Personas needed to Fuse Orpheus Telos, even if I can't make that final step. Regarding Orpheus, here's another coincidence: the "can-can" song in the credits for Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars originally comes from the operetta "Orpheus In The Underworld", and Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom was the last game I finished before taking on Persona 3. :O
I've also done all of Elizabeth's requests (side-quests)...at least all that I can. I can't do those that required some of the Personas I ultimately can't create now, and I missed a couple of the fetch-an-item-on-this-particular-day-or-else quests (I apparently didn't save when I fulfilled one of those, and I didn't notice until after I'd loaded and then saved after the due date). Also, because characters get "tired", essentially making grinding difficult, I had to take every opportunity to grind when I could, which is what really ballooned this to 160 hours. I managed to watch a number of movies using the split-screen function of my TV while doing this, at least. They weren't kidding when this game ended up on the GameFAQs "Top Ten" list of "Most Grinding".
Though I didn't finish it yesterday, there would've been two more incredible coincidences with this game: the name of the main 262-floor tower in the game is "Tartarus", a name I'd only heard outside of this game's context at church yesterday (even if it was a very, very brief reference), and when I was putting up the "Kyouryuu Sentai Juuranger (J)" map by Gennadiy_Master yesterday, I accidentally loaded up a Super NES game that also began with "Ky". It turned out to be a Megami Tensei game as well, which I also figured out when I started the game (despite not understanding Japanese) and seeing a tower with a full moon, and when you start the game, you're in a tower, with the phase of the moon very clearly indicated. I'm guessing a tower and moon phases are important in other games in the Megami Tensei series, but it was freaky that when I'd planned to finish it yesterday is the day I'd learn that by chance. Five coincidences in all...whoa! :O
Anyway, barring unforeseen circumstances I can put all this behind me tonight...well, at least the main story, "The Journey". This FES version includes the epilogue "The Journey", which I hope is short...I hope my schedule is clear for when Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out later this month.
Wow, this post turned out longer than I expected. Just like this game...zing!
I'm really behind on my games again, and this year it wasn't because of an April Fools' joke. Once Persona 3 FES is done, "The Answer" included or otherwise, it's time to move on. Other than Super Mario Galaxy 2, which will be top-priority, I still have a lot of other Wii games to get through, most of them M-rated for some reason. These include Dead Space: Extraction, MadWorld, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Other than M-rated games there are some others like Red Steel 2 and Monster Hunter 3 Tri which I should consider making time for. And on the PS2 front, there's also Final Fantasy X-2, which my friend was trying to tell me is crap (which might have led him to lend me Persona 3 FES in the first place), as well as the decade-old Resident Evil: Code Veronica X which I should play before tackling the PC version of Resident Evil 5 (and maybe I'll do the Ada Wong stuff in Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, another M-rated Wii game, but I'll probably download a save to not have to do the main game again). And a bunch of PS2 games are collecting dust, too. After playing a 160+ hour game, it's going to feel weird playing 5-hour games...
EDIT: Bwahahaha! I finished it! Coincidentally, just in time for Chuck. Coincidentally, the credits were rolling as the final episode of Season 3 of ReBoot is wrapping up, too. :P
EDIT: I put down my pre-order deposit for Super Mario Galaxy 2! And how did I forget that I still have Pokémon: SoulSilver Version sitting around? :P
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I am *so* in love with Super Mario Galaxy 2! I bought it today and couldn't put the controller down until I had collected 13 stars. Not because of that number, but rather because I have to go to work tomorrow. Looks like I can say goodbye to any free time for the near future... but when it feels this good, I don't mind at all :)
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As am I. So far, I've gotten to 51 Stars, but I didn't really play it much yesterday.
Brings back memories of when I was on jury duty back in November/December 2007 playing the first one. Partway through the trial, the witnesses weren't available for about a week (or five or six days, I think), but I wasn't expected to go back to work for a month, so essentially I got to sit at home and play Super Mario Galaxy all day long while still getting paid. :) I don't think I'll be able to finish the second one as quickly since I have so many other things going on, but I think I'll get a minimum of 5 Stars a day, so I should be finishing World 5 tonight then.
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There's still another two weeks until we get SMG2 in Europe :(
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I reached the Throwback Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2 today. Cute.
Speaking of which, it's mentioned here in kombo.com's Top Ten Monday featuring The Best Super Mario Levels (http://www.kombo.com/article.php?artid=14679). Note here the use of KingKuros's 6-10 map from Super Mario Bros. 3 (https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#SuperMarioBros3) and RyuMaster's Mario Zone 1 map from Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/index.htm#SuperMarioLand26GoldenCoins). :D
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Finally got to play Super Mario Galaxy 2. I love it. <3
I've just reached World 5. Everything is so amazing. :D
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I'm in the middle of World 4 right now, with practically every available stars before that finished except for the odd prankster comet or two. Has anyone noticed how the world maps seem to increase in scope with each new one? So far it seems to go Planetary System -> Solar System -> Star Cluster(?) -> Galaxy. I wonder if that stays true for the other two...
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I'm sitting at 125 out of 120 Stars right now. :P
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Looks like I was right!
It goes Planetary System -> Solar System -> Star Cluster -> Galaxy -> Galaxy Cluster -> Humongous Black Hole
And I think it's funny that despite Super Mario Galaxy's cosmology behind completely messed up in terms of what stars, planets and galaxies are and how big they should really be, they still managed to depict that huge black hole somewhat realistically, as a rotating black spherical object instead of a downward vortex, and they even showed the accretion disc as well as a small jet of ejected material along the rotation axis (not always visible depending on the camera angle).
About the only thing they didn't include for good reason is the visual distortion that would happen as the black hole bends the light coming from behind it (the gravitational lens effect). And yeah, I've been fascinated by black holes all my life, so it's neat when one is depicted with at least some attempt at accuracy.
Incidentally, I'm up to 103 stars but the last ones are getting quite a bit harder to acquire.
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Oh, there are definitely some challenges later on. And yeah, I was happy how they depicted the giant black hole as more realistic. They can't really do that very well for the stage black holes(?) because the disk/jet would get in the way/stand out too much, since they're supposed to be the space equivalent of a bottomless pit. Speaking of which, I noticed that SMG2 uses a lot less black holes than the other game. I don't recall a single round-holey-planet-with-black-hole-in-middle like in SMG1. I guess they could get away with that by having many of the Galaxies be in low orbit around the regular-sized planets.
By the way, I managed to get 160 stars over the weekend I was at home. I hope to get the rest of them next time I return!
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So while everyone else is gorging themselves on Galaxy 2, my progress on the Zelda marathon continues apace!
Since the week after Easter, I have gone through (with 100% completion) Zelda 1, Zelda II, A Link to the Past (original), Link's Awakening (DX), Ocarina of Time (original), Majora's Mask, Oracle of Seasons (unlinked), Oracle of Ages (linked), Oracle of Ages (unlinked), Oracle of Seasons (linked), A Link to the Past / Four Swords, and Ocarina of Time: Master Quest. Whew!
Up next is The Wind Waker, then Four Swords Adventures, The Minish Cap, Twilight Princess (GameCube), Link's Crossbow Training, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and at last The Legend of Zelda (Wii).
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Still trudging through "The Answer" segment of Persona 3 FES, whenever I'm not playing Super Mario Galaxy 2.
In that, I got 50 Stars today, bringing my total to 190! I'm doing the Green Stars in reverse order, so I only have the ones BEFORE Beat Block Galaxy left to get.
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Well, I beat my record of yesterday's 50 Stars by getting 51 today, bringing my total to 241!
I really should've gotten that last Comet Medal while I was in that final Galaxy. Now I have to do it again before even attempting the Prankster Comet take on the stage for Star 242, of which I'm already concerned about what that will involve...
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I JUST GOT THE FINAL STAR BWAHAHAHAHA
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A WINNAR IS YOU.
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Right now I am currently working on New Super Mario Bros. Wii, about halfway done with World 3. I am also working on Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the Gamecube which I have beaten before, but wanted to play again. I am also planning on starting Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga soon, I just bought that game and have never played it before.
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I'm still chugging along in SMG2 with 188 stars. It's hard to make progress when you can only play every other weekend before noon. :(
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I finally finished (Shin Megami Tensei) Persona 3 FES! Five months to the day...what a fricking long game. BWAHAHAHA!
It's also three months since the end of the in-game "The Answer" portion (which was April 1, 2010), and I started the game on Feb. 1, the day after The Final Day in "The Journey" portion. I was actually lent the game on The Final Day, but didn't start it until the next day...but it's still a freaky coincidence. I'm sure I mentioned it before.
I guess I should hit up some Transformers: War For Cybertron, where I'm halfway through the Decepticon campaign, and I finally started Pokémon: SoulSilver Edition with some seriousness and am about to face Morty (one of the Gym Leaders).
As a hype-up to Metroid: Other M, I'm "making" my brother play Super Mario Galaxy 2 and get a minimum of four Stars a day which means he should have all 242 by the day before its release.
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Haven't finished Super Mario Galaxy 2 on account of still missing 4 of the first 120 stars (and thus the possibility of find the remaining 122) and it doesn't look like I'll be going back to it for a while. I'll most likely be buying Transformers: War For Cybertron for the PC as soon as I can, seeing as the Wii version, entitled Transformers: Cybertron Adventures, is a rail shooter where transformation happens automatically at specific points in the various stages. Once again, the Wii end up with a decidedly inferior version of a popular game; thank god for the PC port. At least the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed was somewhat decent and had very similar gameplay as its next generation cousin despite being quite inferior to it.
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Just got 240 Stars in SMG2 thanks to my brother sleeping in extra late~
Oh and 9999 star bits, too.
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Just finished Transformers: War For Cybertron yesterday. I played mostly on Normal difficulty, but then redid the last checkpoint on the Decepticon campaign's final boss on Hard just to make it look like I did it on Hard. But then I forgot to turn it back to Normal difficulty and did a few missions on the Autobot campaign on Hard without knowing it. :P I guess I underestimated my ability. But then on the final boss on the Autobot campaign I wussed out and switched it to Easy. I didn't do much multiplayer, so I didn't take as much advantage of the "double XP" promotion this weekend...ah well.
Right now, though I should be playing other stuff, MySims Agents on the Wii is my guilty pleasure. It's like a super-cute point-and-click adventure game... :P
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While I did enjoy MySims Agents (Wii), the ending was a little...underwhelming.
Basically, if you didn't know how the game works, it's like an graphic adventure game, though with an emphasis on clues (as opposed to using items here and there), with the occasional puzzle and platforming elements. It isn't like the traditional Sims, or even MySims or MySims Kingdom, though it does feature many of the same MySims characters.
There is a furniture-arrangement portion at headquarters, which is really just to increase the particular "Interest" level of Agents that you can send out on Dispatch Missions. Basically Dispatch Missions are adventures that you send others to do, so all you get are humourous text messages via your cell phone as they make progress on those. In the meantime, you can be doing your own thing, but there are considerably more Dispatch Missions than cases that you personally investigate.
So after completing the "main game", there's nothing to do but hang out at HQ finishing up the Dispatch Missions. When you clear all 50, then you get a 51st Dispatch Mission, which gives you one of two "true" endings. The underwhelmingness comes from the fact that you still don't participate, so you're literally hanging around HQ for the last couple hours of the game sifting through text messages. Seriously? I would've thought they could've opened up a final area or something.
I think a decent ending is important for a game that has its story as its focus...but other than that, I guess it was an okay way to spend a dozen hours on (technically it's fourteen hours, but the last two as I mentioned weren't that exciting). Now I should probably hit up some other games...like I said, this was a guilty pleasure, because I don't think this was geared towards experienced 30-year-old gamers...
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What system do you have the Transformers game for, Jon?
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I bought Transformers: War For Cybertron for the PC. I haven't done any multiplayer since that earlier time I mentioned, and I'm not sure if I want to go back and find all the Autobot/Decepticon emblems. Being a completist, not to mention a Transformers fan, I suppose I eventually should...
I finished Trauma Team (Wii) this past weekend. IMO the best Trauma series game.
By having six different doctors with different specialties, there's variety in the gameplay. First Response, featuring Maria Torres, is very intense action, whereas Diagnostics featuring Dr. Gabriel Cunningham and Forensics featuring Dr. Naomi Kimishima test your intellect and reasoning as you try to identify a disease or solve a murder mystery. Each character is likeable for different reasons, and their stories are all very interesting, and then after getting through them all, there's a final series of episodes that feature them all working together to stop a freaky virus (but not quite as ridiculous as GUILT or Stigma from the Trauma Center games).
Sure, there is some suspension of belief necessary - each character's story features one of: amnesia, a ghost, a superhero, ninjas, a supercomputer, and psychic abilities - but at least you couldn't have seen this before on your favorite medical drama TV show. Also, the in-between cut scenes show a lot more action than the Trauma Center games' talking profile pictures.
Though it's only a bit over 20 hours and I don't think I'll replay it for all the medals and such, I definitely reccommend playing it through at least once. The story alone should put Trauma Team on anyone's top five list of the best Wii games this year. Seriously!
But I decided I should dust off the PS2 and start catching up on missed games. Since I want to eventually play Resident Evil 5 (PC), I should play the games I missed. I started some Resident Evil: Code Veronica X on the PS2 (the original Code Veronica is a decade old!) and it feels weird having to learn the "tank" controls again. I keep walking right into zombies and sudden camera changes mess me up. I thought I handled them pretty well when I played the first three games so maybe it'll just take a day to get back into it.
I'm still playing Pokémon: SoulSilver Version (DS)...recently just got into Kanto, and got my first two badges there...yeah, I'm a little behind. I remember when I had the drive to play these games until late each night, but my playing of this latest one has been very sporadic. Even when I have the time, I just don't feel like it. Maybe because I've played Silver before...my attitude might change back when Black/White come out.
I also got Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (PC), but for some reason I'm not as eager to play it as I was for the other PoP games. We'll see when I get to that, but it'll probably be after I catch up on the Resident Evils.
Before someone asks...I'll likely play StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty (PC) at some point, but I'm not in a hurry to pick it up this week.
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Still working on replaying Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the Gamecube, I am about halfway done. Also still playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and am on World 4. I got Dragon Quest 9 right when it came out and have been playing that a lot, but am still early on in the game.
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I've only been playing World of WarCraft lately. Don't blame me, g/f got me involved about six months ago.
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Finally finished Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PS2). Already had a file started in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Wii), so I'm on that now, continuing my RE catch-up.
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Finished Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles yesterday, at least the "regular" stuff. I "opened the door to the dark side" by beating the last boss in under ten minutes (though I switched the difficulty to Easy while gold-farming when I had done it), opening up the Krauser stages. Sadly, unlike The Umbrella Chronicles, these new stages seem to be just rehashes of the last two stages, of which Krauser was already playable, but now you can hear his thoughts. And he whines a lot, WTF. I'm having trouble beating the boss of the second-last stage so I think I'll either farm some more gold to upgrade my weapons or restock some ammo, or both.
The funny thing is that besides the all-new "Operation Javier", it recaps Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and as I had just finished Code Veronica X on Friday and finished the Code Veronica portion on Saturday, it was neat to see the same areas again while fresh in my memory. They changed certain details (I don't mean just taking out puzzles), including adding a whole wooden maze area. But there's no sense to get hung up on perfect continuity if Capcom doesn't care.
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Kind of ridiculous that it took me another three (!) weeks to finish the game again on both Easy and Hard and earn enough money to max out all weapons, including the Linear Launcher. I also earned the "Expert" title on every stage by not dying. Although I unlocked the "Very Hard" difficulty level, I think I'm done with Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. I didn't get every file (especially those dependent on skill), but I did unlock every text, movie, and sound file, since I wanted to know the whole story.
I downloaded a save for Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition to have a bunch of stuff unlocked (I finished the GameCube game back in the day and didn't think it was worth the effort to play again and I assumed it wouldn't load up GameCube saves - you'd think all GameCube-to-Wii ports would but nearly all that I've seen don't). Then I played the bonus "Separate Ways", which is Ada Wong's story that takes place during Leon's (this is different from "Assignment Ada" and was not included in the original GameCube version). It was harder than I expected (maybe because I just came off of RE:DC where I was used to plentiful ammo and just blasting away maniacally whenever I got into trouble) but I finished it that same day. I have to redo the last boss fight and run-to-the-rocket launcher sequence since I had to use a continue, but I expect that should be no problem to finish off tonight.
That frees me up for Metroid: Other M which comes out tomorrow! :D Good timing. Since me and my brother probably won't want to play while the other is in the room for fear of spoilers (since there's a greater emphasis on story now), I think I'll install Resident Evil 5 on the PC in the other room tonight as well and play that whenever it's not my turn on Other M. Then aside from the RE5 Gold Edition/Jill Valentine stuff (if that's only for the PS3), I should then be caught up on Resident Evil (minus RE: Gaiden and the online games and the countless remakes), hooray!
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Just finished Resident Evil 5! Though I thought the last boss felt unepic, compared to previous RE final bosses, and especially considering it is the end since RE6 is likely to be a reboot. RE games are never scary to me but this one didn't even seem like it tried. Something else seemed missing, I'm not sure what. Oh, probably the puzzles. Though I guess other than the key collect-a-thons there were, it'd be kind of hard to fit anything more puzzlish into this storyline. And there was way more action than I expected. But it was still a fun game. And I finished it just in time for the fourth movie (even though I likely won't watch it in theaters unless any of my friends want to go). I wonder if I should start and try to finish Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands before the DVD/Blu-Ray release of Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time movie next week. Boy, I'm easily influenced to set weird goals.
But, as a Nintendo fan, I should get to Metroid! I haven't started Metroid: Other M yet, but we got our Wii drive replaced by a local modder/repairer (edmontonmods.com) and so now I can. I can hear what I'm guessing is the end, or at least near the end of the game, as my brother is finishing it in the other room. At least now I don't have to worry about swapping turns with him if he is indeed near the end.
*sigh* I guess I should get back to Pokémon: SoulSilver Edition. I keep on having to throw my Pokémon back into their Boxes each night that I play because they have the Pokérus and I want them to keep it (supposedly there's a chance I'll lose it after midnight any day) even though there's no value to it anymore. It's kind of a pain. But I should since Black/White Versions are coming out I think next week in Japan (even though I'll wait for the North American release). Since I caught everything in Diamond I see little point to recapture them all since there are no new ones in HeartGold/SoulSilver, plus I played the original Silver, and I don't care for any of the extra stuff. Maybe I'll just recapture the Johto Pokémon anyway and see if I feel like doing the rest. But I did catch Mewtwo (with a regular Poké Ball) a few nights ago. I try to catch everything with regular Poké Balls because Master Balls involve no effort. :P
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Finished Metroid: Other M with 100% just now. Took me 10.5 hours. It was fun, but it didn't get interesting until halfway through. I think I mentioned earlier that the first five hours felt like bleah. Sure, it goes without saying that it's not Super Metroid, but hey, it was a good attempt. The addition of more "story" isn't a bad thing, I just wish Samus didn't sound so melancholy all the time.
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I agree that RE5 never felt like it tried to scare. It is basically an action title. I have no problem with action titles, but I missed the suspense of the other RE games.
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I finished Professor Layton And The Unwound Future (DS) and almost cried because the ending was so sad. ;_; I still have to go back and finish finding some of the puzzles, and do the remaining Toy Car/Parrot mini-games, as well as finishing off the last storybook. I think, if only to see the stories with incredible animation, everybody who has a DS should play the Professor Layton series.
I really should stop putting off Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (PC) and Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)...though Wii Party (Wii) and NBA Jam (Wii), both of which just came out, are tempting, at least for the multiplayer...
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I played and finished Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (PC) about a week ago over the course of two sesssions. I thought it was weak compared to the other games. Seems like every other game is alternatingly linear or open-world, and this was one of the linear ones. No love interest, only a couple new powers (I played the PC version, not the Wii version which has more), and the dark corridors are kinda bland especially compared to the lush world seen in the previous game (the one with no subtitle). They probably just rushed this out in time to coincide with the Sands Of Time movie. It's not a bad game on its own (though the ending could've been better, what's with the waiting through forty minutes of credits for two still screens for the lame epilogue?), but when compared to the previous four Prince Of Persia games, it feels like it's the most phoned-in.
Started some Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2). I don't mind grinding so I'm VERY early on and the three girls have already mastered their White Mage dressphere and soon their starting dressphere will be mastered as well. Paine has almost mastered the Black Mage dressphere, too. I don't understand the hate towards this game, it's not THAT bad, and I've been hankering for an RPG (other than just Pokémon) for a while (even though Persona 3 did take me five whole months earlier this year. :P)
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I finished Ufouria (NES) recently. It's a game I'd absolutely would love to love, but just can't. Yes, it's very solidly constructed and the cutest thing ever, but that just makes it's flaws all the more irksome.
Also for the NES, I've played Street Fighter 2010, James Bond Jr., and Vice: Project Doom, all of which I quit at the last level. SF2010 is probably one of my favorite NES games now (despite (or because of) it's glaring flaws), and I think the latter two would make for some excellent mapping material.
Right now, I'm playing through Shatterhand, and it's really good.
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I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for PS3 and with it I got a free download of Symphony of the Night. Even though I have SOTN on Playstation and have beaten that game several times I went ahead and played it again on PS3 this time, beating it in about 14 hours. That game is so addictive to me.
Also still working on Dragon Quest 9 for the DS, and I took a break from New Super Mario Bros. Wii cuz I was busy, but just started on that again. I am in World 4.
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Kirby's Epic Yarn is so incredibly adorable! I can't stop d'awwwwwing at it. Waddle Dees made of yarn? Most adorable things ever!
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Halloween night, I started Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I just got the double jump and am mindlessly wandering around the castle. Even though I don't like most of the monsters, I am really impressed by the atmosphere and environments. The floating eyeball enemy is neat, but please keep the rotting bodies away from me. :-X
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I didn't want to be juggling multiple games again but somehow I'm still playing Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2) (I'm grinding again, dunno why, I guess I just like to be overpowered) but then I started Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii) on Monday and also started GoldenEye 007 (Wii) Tuesday/yesterday since that just came out. >_>
Debating whether or not to get FlingSmash (Wii) (mostly for the new Wii Remote Plus, which I wouldn't've considered if you'd asked me a couple months ago, but now I feel I should have four Wii Remotes now that my place is "multiplayer central") and Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii). If I do, that's probably a record, I've never bought four games in one month before. (Sure, Kirby's Epic Yarn technically came out last month, but I didn't buy it 'til Nov. 1, which is unusual for me, I usually buy every game on its first day, or at least first week.) Who says the Wii is running out of steam? Starting its fifth year (usually the final year for most Nintendo consoles), and all these games are coming out...not to mention Michael Jackson: The Experience (don't laugh, the Just Dance games are my guilty pleasure), Epic Mickey, and next month's Super Mario All-Stars rerelease.
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I beat Aria of Sorrow! Graham's second form was disgusting. And yes, I did use the maps here to figure out what I was supposed to do to get past the waterfall. :P
I would be playing Kirby's Epic Yarn, but my brother forgot it in his dorm room. Derp.
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I am currently playing Donkey Kong country Returns and Disney Epic Mickey for the Wii.I ocasionally play mega man 1,2,3,4,x1,x2,x3,9,10,7,battle network1,super mario galaxy1 and 2,and super smash brothers brawl.Also,I play aqworlds.
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Over the holidays, I received Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem. Having played the two previous Lemmings-style games, let me say that this one is easily the best. I wrote a big ol' review for it on another board, so let me just copy/paste it here. Needless to say, I've found another game I want to map. ;)
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem is the fourth game in the MvDK series and the third in the Lemmings-style games based in controlling the Mini-Mario toys. It is quite polished compared to the previous games in the series, offering more interesting and lengthier gameplay. It builds on some of the elements changed and introduced in the previous game, the DSi-ware title Minis March Again. Most notably, you can no longer control the Mini-Marios after they are activated. In addition, all Minis are required to make it to the goal in order to pass. This means that you have to me more careful in managing your toys to ensure that none of them perish and that all of them make it in the door before the countdown timer ends.
New gimmicks added to the game make for interesting puzzles. The most notable new feature is the ability to draw and move girders between anchor points, which replaces the purple goo blocks from the previous two games. A set number of these iron beams are located on the map, and players can tap the rivets they are connected to to remove them, adding to the girder bar count. Each bar represents a single block worth that can be placed. In order to place a girder, the player presses down on a rivet and drags. Time freezes while the other rivets are highlighted. A girder can not be placed if the player does not have the full amount of bars required to link the two rivets. This is the most common puzzle element, and probably the most enjoyable. Later levels change things up by introducing conveyor belt beams and ladders which change things up and require players to think in new ways about the puzzle. Another fun addition is the use of slopes. Minis can walk up and down them like ramps, but if the slope angle is too steep, they will slide down it and change their direction. Frequently, girders will be used to create ramps for the Minis.
A number of gimmicks were removed that slowed down gameplay. Elevators and pipe joints that completely stopped the Minis are gone. Enemies are used much more sparingly, since Minis cannot be commanded to avoid them. Minis can no longer ride on top of Shy Guys, but they can now defeat them by sliding into them in addition to the usual method of smacking them with a Hammer. Item Blocks are gone, too, so no Fire Flowers. Don't worry, though, the gameplay is fine without these elements.
The gameplay has been changed up for the better, making the game flow better. The level select format now resembles the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong instead of Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2. Instead of picking one of the nine levels available, players have to go through each of the 8 level in order. Levels come in three flavors, each with a different way of solving the puzzle. Normal stages simply require getting all of the Minis into the goal within a short amount of time of each other. Every fourth level in a world features multiple types of Minis. Players start with a Mini-Mario and must free other Mini toys from their capsules, leading each one to its respective door. Timing doesn't matter with this one, so Minis can enter the doors independently of each other. The eigth level in each world features a lock and key, like in MvDK2. One Mini has the key, and that Mini must unlock the door before the others can enter it.
The boss and bonus levels have been changed as well, being more like regular gameplay than touch generation mini-games. Instead of firing a cannon at DK like before, boss levels play out more like normal levels where the player must guide automatically-activated Mini-Marios up to the top of the screen, where they will hurt DK. Collectibles can also be found in the level, for anyone who wants to risk spending time to get them. Bonus levels now feature Minis dropping in from pipes above. Randomly sorted toy boxes at the bottom of the screen carry different multipliers and shuffle around. Players must draw girders to guide the falling Minis into the positive boxes while avoiding the negative ones. It's pretty enjoyable, and novice players can use the time freeze from the girder placement to think. Activating the bonus level requires collecting all of the MINI-MARIO cards, which are divided up among the levels in the world.
This game has a surprising number of levels, even more than the first MvDK. Special "M" Coins can be found in each level, and are collected to unlock Special levels. There are 20 special levels, with a hefty requirement of 100 coins to unlock the last one. Special levels are unique in that the Minis all activate simultaneously once the player hits the START button. The levels are also more challenging than normal levels, often involving very little solid ground and lots of girders and spikes. As if that wasn't enough, beating the final DK battle unlocks the Expert levels, and they certainly live up to their name. These levels are unlocked by collecting trophies, which are earned by getting high scores on levels instead of the usual Gold/Silver/Bronze Star system. Beating the final DK also opens up Plus Mode, which doubles the previously explained level count. In Plus Mode, players are given different types of Minis. The catch is that players have to guide them to the goal in the correct order. The plus levels themselves are largely unchanged, with tweaks here and there to keep things from being too easy. What's more, the Coins and Trophies earned in Plus Mode only count for Plus Mode, so you have to unlock the Special and Extra levels over again to prove you can handle them.
The art style of the game is also more polished than the predecessors. The level tilesets were improved, making solid ground look a little more pleasing than just a solid mass of identical blocks. The backgrounds have forgone the "colored glass shapes" style in favor of a stylized render look, sometimes with backgrounds having 4-5 layers of depth instead of just 3. The whole game has an Amusement Park theme, with worlds being called "Attractions" and different park rides being seen in the scenery. The music is also all new. Like MvDK2, it mostly relies on remixes of past Mario themes. Some of the same themes from MvDK2 are used again, but with a new remix. My favorite is world 1's music, which uses remixes of SMB2 music, including the boss theme for the DK stage. Surprisingly, they either pulled from more obscure music, or half the game uses original melodies. Unfortunately, these songs are more designed to fit the level (which they do quite well) but are not very memorable.
I think that covers about everything. My only annoyance with the game is that Pauline's screams during the boss fights make me feel awkward when playing at my dorm. If you're into Lemmings-type games, or if you liked MvDK2, then I recommend getting this game. It's a good way to pass the time and tease your brain.
Gameplay: :D
Length: :D
Presentation: :D
Quality: :D
Overall Rating: :D
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It's been a while since I posted in this topic...time for a big one.
Played Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii), got 100%, but that doesn't include getting all Gold Medals (for getting enough Beads), and I still have a few Silvers. One of them is for Frigid Fjords, a vehicular stage that doesn't seem to have much room for error, and has really frustrated me.
I've only finished GoldenEye 007 (Wii) on the Agent difficulty so far, and despite throwing a couple game parties, certain people haven't shown up while we were playing that game in multiplayer, so I think I haven't enjoyed that as much as I feel I should, and then in the last one I think we ended up putting in the N64 one and playing that a lot more.
I got to the end in Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii), though I recall I lost a ridiculous amount of lives on the last boss, but though I've been meaning to do the Time Trials and get all the collectibles, it seems to have fallen low on the priority list. Not that it's a bad game, I think I'm just often not in the mood, and that's also on hold anyway (more on that later).
I love Back To The Future: The Game (PC), the latest episodic point-and-click adventure series from Telltale Games. My brother got the whole season for me for Christmas, but I've only played the first episode so far. I think the second is scheduled for February, not sure if it's released yet or not, if it is, I should make time for it. It's very true to the series while also having the kind of humour and shenanigans and puzzles you expect from the Monkey Island or Sam & Max games. Just one quirk I feel a need to point out; the explanation for why the DeLorean's still around was mentioned in an easily-missable dialogue choice, and seemed a little lame, so I hope it's elaborated upon in a later episode.
I finally got the means to play DreamMix TV World Fighters (J) (GameCube), intended to be a Christmas present for my brother, but my order of the Freeloader from Play-Asia.com got lost in transit, and though I maybe gave them an unnecessarily hard time about it, I guess stuff does happen. I ended up getting an Action Replay from CodeJunkies instead, which includes the Freeloader. Not much to say about the game other than that it's a Smash Bros. clone with a crazy roster of Konami/Hudson/Takara characters (Solid Snake, Bomberman, Optimus Prime, etc.), but it's really short, you can finish the game with each character in ten minutes if you don't lose. But I suppose with the Action Replay, I can now cheat in games that have bugged me for years, like the impossible F-Zero GX. Now there's a possibility...so I already ordered that, used, from JJGames.com, which, among other old multiplayer games, I should be getting in the mail any day now.
Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2) is on hold, and being in Chapter 4, which primarily consists of looking through CommSpheres just to do surveillance on every location in the world, is kind of boring. I do have intentions to finish this eventually - I took the time to max out the dresspheres that I have, and all three girls are at Level 99, after all.
I guess I played some Super Scribblenauts (DS), too. Awesome that they fixed the controls for directly controlling Maxwell, but there are way fewer action/platforming stages and more of it is just about what the game is about - writing down words to summon items to solve puzzles. The addition of adjectives is neat, but often felt underused. I just have to get a few more Starites to hit 121, but the remaining stages - the action ones I mentioned - are frustrating, as I have to do them three times with totally different words, and if I kill Maxwell, destroy the Starite, or fail in any other way, I either have to think up more words or restart, which is especially frustrating if I fail on the third try. So that's on hold too.
The reason for many games on hold is Pokémon: SoulSilver Version, which I put on hold for far too long. At the start of the year I told myself I'd catch them all again before Pokémon Black/White come out. I'd already done so in one game in each and every generation, including all 493 in Diamond, but since it sounds like most aren't present in the upcoming Black/White Versions, I figured I'd catch them all in SoulSilver and transfer them all into whichever fifth generation game I play, without having to take any out of my Diamond game. SoulSilver is a remake, and therefore doesn't require that I keep all 493 in there after I catch them all. Neurotic logic, I know. Anyway, at the start of the year I had about 100 caught, so I calculated that I should catch a quota of six and a half Pokémon a day to have caught them all before March 6 (the release date for Pokémon: Black and White Versions), so I maintained a minimum of catching seven a day, and often caught more, which was a pretty good pace and doable until recently. The fifty-some I have left require the Safari Zone to be set up a certain way for X number of days (20-110 days) so I'm definitely not catching all of those ones until at least May. There are a couple I need the daily "Swarm" - so that's dependent on luck and time - and finally, there are some that require using the Pokéwalker, and let me tell you, getting to 2 million steps (equivalent to 100000 Watts, if I don't get any bonus Watts) is going to take an unknown (but definitely long) amount of time. Seeing as how I can't do much more in SoulSilver itself other than wait, I should very soon be able to return to some of the games above.
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I'm actually surprised I played all the above, because all I really wanted to come here to do was recommend the current game that I'm having trouble putting down (fittingly, the ninth game that I mention here)... 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (DS). It's a visual novel - with some "escape-the-room"-type point-and-click puzzle-solving, but it's the story that is so engrossing.
The premise is that you are one of nine people, apparently kidnapped and brought aboard a cruise ship. After waking up and escaping the first room, you meet up with the other eight, and learn from your captor, who calls himself Zero, that you have to find a door with a "9" painted on it, within nine hours before the ship sinks, to escape. Everyone is equipped with a bracelet with a single digit displayed on it (from which everyone but you derive a codename), and a mathematical relationship determines which people can go through each of the numbered doors. As one would expect, there are deadly consequences for not following Zero's rules, and as the time ticks down the characters become desperate to escape and tensions rise. I guess it is kind of like Saw (film series) meets Myst.
The characters are quite a diverse mix, including a young girl, a blind man, a dancer, an amnesiac, among others. It's implied that there's a connection between all nine of the players, which is part of the mystery to unravel. You'll soon find out that you can't fully trust the others, and a lot of the text in the game is the dialogue between characters as they debate and argue over what to do. Unlike other horror games where the biggest threat is usually something obviously monstrous or evil, here you feel constant tension as you know that it's likely that you'll be betrayed eventually, but by which of your allies? Because of the nature of the numbered doors, you'll have opportunities to work through a puzzle room with each person at some point, so when it's clear that something is wrong and someone you know could be responsible, the suspense amps up.
What is really interesting is the concept of the doors - basically you can enter a numbered door if your party (of three to five)'s "digital root" equals the number painted on it. You learn very early on in the game that you find the digital root by adding up the digits on your bracelets, and if necessary, adding up the digits in the sum, until you're left with a single-digit number, which is the digital root. Due to the progression of the game, you're usually able to choose to go through any door when given a choice, but when people disappear, or are suspected of doing their own thing, you'll always be thinking about how and when certain people might have gone through the doors...at least if you like numbers. The numbered doors are clever obstacles that divide and mix up the teams, and the explanations for who went where and when, and even how some doors are circumvented, make you go "aha!", especially if you figure them out before the game explicitly states so.
And if you like paradoxes and scientific mysteries, there are many. It seems like every character has some crazy theory or story that they want to share, based around science or pseudoscience, some inspired by actual historical events - or at least supposedly happened - from real life. I won't spoil too many - and I certainly won't explain their relevance to the plot - but I did like the paradox of Locke's Socks/Ship Of Theseus (which is one of my favourites even before playing this game), or the metaphysical idea about how our brain may not be a processing unit but a receiver for instructions from somewhere else. Given the limited nine hours that the characters are in, it does seem like an odd time for such discussions, even when most are actually brought up with some context. But some feel especially forced, like when you're trapped in a freezer discussing the mystery of glycerin crystallization, you'd think the characters could at least wait until they got out...but it's mostly easy to forgive when some of the stuff they talk about is so interesting.
The M-rating on this game is accurate. The dialogue is realistic, in that people will swear when they're angry, scared, or tense, and for the most part it is within context and not gratuitous. What is disturbing is the level of detail in the descriptions of certain dead bodies. While the worst of each dead person isn't shown on screen, usually just an extremity, the body as a whole - or what remains - is vividly described. Reading these details feels much more intense than if they simply showed you the gore. As for sex, there isn't any that I've seen so far, but I saw a couple instances of innuendo (unintended by an oblivious character), which are light-hearted comic moments that are welcome as they break up the seriousness and tension prevalent in this adventure.
As a visual novel, there is a lot of reading - you'll actually spend a lot more time reading than working through the rooms behind the numbered doors, as most of the puzzles (at least that I've seen so far) are very easy. Even if you think you read quickly, there are tons to read - I got my second ending yesterday, but that took an hour and a half between escaping the last puzzle room and the start of the credits.
Speaking of which, there are six endings. You can't get "game over" from the puzzles, so you steadily make progress towards one of six endings based on the rooms you choose to go through. My understanding is that most endings are bad, though that is unsurprising. Ironically the first ending I got (called the "coffin ending") was apparently on the path to the "true ending", but because I didn't get the "safe ending" first, my first playthrough ended prematurely. I didn't want to follow a walkthrough due to the risk of seeing spoilers, but a handy flowchart on GameFAQs explains what rooms to take to get the various endings, so I got the "safe ending" last night, which as I mentioned took an hour and a half, explaining so many mysteries. Makes sense that it's the most important "bad end" to get, but it still left, and introduced, a lot of questions. Guess I won't be putting this down until I get all the endings! As creepy as the game can get, I feel spurred to keep going. Thankfully you can speed through text you've seen before on subsequent playthroughs, so it may yet end sooner than I want it too.
I'm not sure why I picked this game over Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations or Ghost Trick, but now I don't regret that decision. I'll eventually play those two at some point, but for now, I'm raving about 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. Perhaps it's because I'm still playing it, but I think this is among the best plot-heavy games I've ever played, and is most certainly one of the best games of any genre for the DS. Highly recommended, so please play it and soon, if you haven't already, as it's hard to rave about this any more than I have without spoiling anything. You can tell I like it if I take this much time out of a work day to write this. :P
(I also got to my 1000th day in Wii Fit (and/or Wii Fit Plus) yesterday, and I think it may be a good time to stop. I'm healthy, so this habit of weighing myself can die, and then I can save a couple minutes each day, which could add up.)
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Speaking of Ghost Trick, my bro is letting me try it, and I already love it. I was hooked since the start of the first cutscene. Sure, I'm only at chapter 4, (busy busy) but so far its great. All the characters are wacky and unique, the art style is awesome, the animations are so smooth and fun to watch, and Missile is the most adorable dog ever. For those of you who don't know about it, it's a detective game from the makers of Phoenix Wright. However, the twist is, you're the murder victim. You play as the spirit of a recently murdered man, trying to solve your own murder. As a spirit, you use your powers to jump from object to object, possessing them and making them do things (when possible). The gameplay itself is like a rube golberg puzzle, where you have to intereact with characters using the right objects at the right time, such as possessing a flag being raised in order to get higher. This wonderful combination of puzzle and story is quite charming, and I highly recommend it.
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Just got the "true ending" of 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. :D
From the point in the story where the game ended in my first playthrough (the so-called "coffin ending"), to the very end, was three hours and forty minutes. That's a long end. Well, technically there were two more rooms to escape from and a final puzzle on top of that, but that's still a long - but very satisfying finale. Some twists, many unexpected, and ultimately the end is worth the goosebumps and tension. Probably one of the best endings to a game...ever. Yes, I said it. Ever.
If you play it, I don't think you need all six endings...the "coffin/dummy ending" is just the premature ending if you didn't do the "safe ending" first...but there is an interesting idea behind why both are there, and you'd have to play the game to understand. The "sub ending" is interesting, and of course the "true ending" rocks. The "axe ending" is unnecessarily disturbing and the "knife ending" is kind of like a weak version of that.
Well, it's 3 AM...guess later this weekend I can get back to my backlog. Though I did pass the stupid Frigid Fjords stage with a Gold Medal in Kirby's Epic Yarn this morning...or I guess, technically yesterday morning. And in the afternoon - a single afternoon - I beat all my Just Dance 2 scores in Just Dance 2: Special Edition (Best Buy Exclusive Version) (stupid that you can't just transfer the save - the Special Edition just has three more songs - kinda silly), which was pretty fluky as I did that on my first try in most cases and even got nine scores over 10000 when before I only had three... :P And my brother installed the second episode of Back To The Future: The Game so I should get to that...
Anyway, time for bed...
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I just finished Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective just a few minutes ago, watching the credits now. You're right, Peardian, this is an awesome game! Love the puzzles, animation, and the story! At first, I figured it'd be like a combination of Final Destination and Geist. But it's certainly it's own thing, very fun, very cool! The downside is that you can't do much with it after you've finished it, other than to recommend it to others!
Between this, the recently-finished 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, the Professor Layton series, and the Ace Attorney series, I think the DS is an incredible platform for games with great stories, and it's really too bad there are so many people who don't play handheld games for whatever silly reason.
Ah, the credits are wrapping up. I guess, speaking of Ace Attorney, I should tackle Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.
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Not sure that I really want to get into all the details of what I've been playing since my last post, but I just wanted to say that after several years, tonight I will finally be hosting a session (the first of two or three) of four-player The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube. While normally using a GameCube with four GBAs connected to it, I'm replacing the non-SP GBA that I have with a "GameCube/Game Boy Player/TV" combo, and then using my Wii as the "main" GameCube. An interesting mix of Nintendo hardware, and with two TVs. Cycling between twelve players with varying levels of Zelda game experience, this will certainly be an interesting night!
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Just finished The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D! I should probably go to bed...
I'll play Master Quest, but likely not right away. I should return to Pokémon: Black Version...
(Oh yeah, and today (technically yesterday) I got a microphone for my Wii and both Karaoke Revolution: Glee games... Shhh...)
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It's been a while, so I likely forgot about some games...
Earlier this year, Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) was something I started and really wanted to get into, but I'm probably not far in it - I only just got out of the Bionis's Leg. It was hard to boot up since I only had packets of time to play games lately and wanted to dedicate longer sessions. I will definitely return to this someday.
My video game playing has been spotty at best in the past few months, but I made up for that very quickly in the past week and some.
Professor Layton And The Last Specter (DS) got me teary-eyed at the end...though I wasn't bawling like at the end of Unwound Future. Good as always, don't know yet if I should make time for the supposedly-50-100-hour RPG "London Life" that's included with the game (ironically in all but the European versions). I cleared all 170 puzzles, and didn't find them too difficult this time around, though I admit to consulting walkthroughs when it comes to some of the tricky sliding puzzles.
Kirby: Mass Attack (DS) kept me occupied on the plane both ways, so I got through most of the game while airborne. I finished the game back on solid ground, but I still have to go back and get some medals. I generally don't like games where you don't have direct control of the main character (or characters, in this case), but the game turned out to be more fun than I expected.
I somehow blazed through Kirby's Return To Dream Land (Wii) by myself this weekend, primarily on Saturday, and finished it yesterday, though I still have some Energy Spheres to get, as well as the entire "Extra Mode" to do. I hope to play this multiplayer one day. Though on the short side (if you don't count the Extra Mode which is basically the whole game again, but harder), it sort of feels like a spiritual successor to Kirby: Super Star which is a very good thing.
Picked up Super Mario 3D Land yesterday, and because of a birthday brunch buffet, I didn't get home until 4 PM (!) and even then I felt I had to finish Kirby first. So it was probably between 5 PM and midnight yesterday that I played it, even with having to go out to dinner. I made it to Princess Peach when the clock struck midnight (literally), and...well, not to ruin it, but I'm not done the game yet. Making it through most of World 8 I guess is good progress, but obviously this means the game is short. It's easy to blaze through a stage and get the Star Coins and be done with a stage. Though I did have trouble with 6-Airship and 7-Airship, which, though the Star Coins were easy, were hard to even pass... The former of which was really annoying - for some reason I couldn't judge where Pom-Pom's head is - ironic for a truly 3D game - and almost always got hit each time I tried to stomp, and when each of us can only take three hits, well, that didn't work out well for me, even if I had a Tanooki Suit. I think New Super Mario Bros. Wii had better 2D level design, and the console (psuedo?-)3D games (64/Sunshine/Galaxy) had more reasons to revisit stages. This game kind of finds itself in between (stage format like 2D games, but 3D gameplay) which is a little weird. Though I shouldn't complain about new content on the 3DS, this isn't the perfect Mario game if I could have finished it in a day if I didn't have real-life things to attend. EDIT: This game is longer than I expected...
I have another Nintendo Night this Saturday (to celebrate the GameCube's 10th and the Wii's 5th), so I'll be practicing games before then, or maybe I'll finish Super Mario 3D Land and make progress in Extra Mode in Kirby's Return To Dream Land, to free up time for The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword which comes out Sunday. Hopefully that won't let me down, but I haven't been watching recent gameplay videos - mostly because I'm busy - so I might as well keep that up and allow myself to be surprised.
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I have so much with DOTA, the frozen throne.... hehehe :)
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Just finished The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword and had trouble holding back the tears. I'm turning into a big softie.
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I tend to accumulate stuff for months on end, and every once in a while I'll just blow through everything within a few weeks. Right now, I still have these games to either finish or just plain start playing:
-Sonic Colours (Wii)
-Sonic Generations (PC)
-Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)
-Transformers: War for Cybertron (PC)
-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Trilogy (PC)
-The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
-The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)
Considering I'm in full mapping mode, I probably won't even touch anything on that list for another couple of months. Glad to know that Skyward Sword manages to have a touching story. I admit I'm a big softie too, and nothing feels better than a game that ends on just the right note. I remember finding the credit sequence for A Link To The Past very moving, if not quite to tears. That piece of music remains one of my all-time favourite, and I'm looking forward to the latest Zelda attempting something similar :).
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Just played Hook on the SNES for the first time since it's release. I think it's the only game I've actually sat down and played start to finish since last December. The game is so bad I wouldn't have played it for more than a minute if I wasn't feeling nostalgic towads it specifically.
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Just bought Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land on 3DS. I am almost done beating all the regular tracks on MK7, then I will start playing online multiplayer.
I will start on Super Mario 3D Land in a few days, after I finish up Dragon Quest 6 on DS.
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I just cleared Super Mario 3D Land with 100%!
I deleted my post where I was whining about the last stage. I tried again today, cleared it with Mario on my third try and cleared it with Luigi on my first and only try. I didn't have any trouble whatsoever after passing the one part I kept screwing up (where you have to jump off of Toad). The trick is to just hold on to that Tanooki Suit and make use of all three of its abilities. (Though I almost did screw up with Luigi, as I did get hit once - if you defeat Pom-Pom first, don't stand at the ledge above Boom-Boom laughing at him - because the upper ledge will drop down. >_> Luckily I had another Tanooki Leaf in reserve...)
Funny how leaving something that is frustrating and coming back another day, with a clear head, you can just do so much better. Like when I got the last Piece of Heart in The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword. That stupid Fun Fun Island... I wasted almost an hour the night previous, then the next day, I got it on my second try. I think frustration just puts you on a slippery slope; when it starts not being fun anymore, do something else.
Anyone else playing the Find Mii II game, in any 3DS that's got the recent update? I cleared the first Find Mii without having to hire any heroes, but I'm tempted to do so for Find Mii II. You can now hire anyone you've previously StreetPass tagged. So I checked the colours of the Miis I have...as of this morning, I had three or more of every colour, except for zero Yellows and only one Brown. I've actually StreetPass tagged over 70 people (not counting the Miis you get by connecting to the Mario Kart Channel) and no one likes Yellow? Sheesh. There are new spell combinations in Find Mii II involving two Miis, and I read ahead and saw that I need two Yellows in a future room, so I talked with my co-worker (who I usually StreetPass twice a day if he remembers to bring it) and we gave each other two Yellow Miis today. In the past, we just changed our main Mii's colour to help each other get past specific parts, but when hiring Miis, it's only going to have them at the last colour they were seen as, so making different Miis of different colours will give us the edge if we resort to hiring. More people need to update their 3DSes...all I have for puzzle pieces are the Donkey Kong Country Returns ones...which, aside from the starting piece, I spent exactly 100 Play Coins to get all the buyable ones...what else am I going to use those Play Coins for? (Thank goodness I got the "three identical pieces in a row" achievement for that, too...though that seems a little unfair as that's based on luck...) Now how am I going to get the new, unbuyable pieces? Are some people lucky enough to start with one of those?
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hi i am eric.and i am intersted in gaming.
I myself haven't been playing too terribly much lately, exams and all looming. I finished Eternal Sonata a few weeks ago, and everything I have to say about the game is wonderful.
Thenkyou.
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Yesterday, I just finished the main story of Batman: Arkham City (PC). My clear % is 50%; I know I've got all those Riddler trophies and other sidequests to do. Clearly, the best Batman video game ever. Almost every major villain (and some minor ones) make an appearance. (Except Scarecrow, but he had some big sequences in the previous game.) Good story, though it does seem odd that Arkham City could have been set up in the first place with Bruce Wayne only objecting it now...
I was debating between that and Portal 2 (PC) and L.A. Noire (PC) while deciding what games to play next, so I'll probably start one of those two when I'm really done with Arkham City.
Everyone keeps asking me why I'm a Nintendo fan and play primarily just Nintendo systems and PC...but so many of the really good PlayStation/Xbox games continue to come out for the PC, so I can't be faulted with that logic. :P
Speaking of Nintendo, I guess I should get back to Mario Kart 7 (3DS) at some point...when I feel like taking on those stupid CPU players in 150cc who like to hit me at the end of the last lap and all blaze by me all at once, dropping me from 1st-place-which-felt-assured to 6th-place-because-everyone-was-clumped-together-and-apparently-were-right-on-my-tail.
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I now have done all of the stuff to do in the main game of Batman: Arkham City (PC)! Side missions, Riddler trophies/challenges, Catwoman stuff, all done!
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3063/bac3r.jpg)
But my clear percentage is only 71%...I guess the Riddler's Revenge stuff apart from the main game still count towards the percentage. Should I do those too, or just move on to another game?
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Just finished Portal 2 (PC). Probably would've finished it much earlier had I actually had a chance to play it last weekend at all. Good game. Short, but good. Much easier than the first game (this was...a piece of cake...), but the story is much better. Well, the first one barely had a story...but Portal 2 was well voice-acted, too. I really liked how the final "boss" was defeated, though I wish the game didn't have to practically just hand it to you.
Somehow I forgot to mention that over the Christmas break I played the Special Editions of the first two Monkey Island games (PC). Seeing as how I replayed the second one many times before, blazing through it in under three hours was almost brainless. Often, I would play with the real-time version swapping, and it's fun to toggle instantly between the original VGA game and the new graphics and see what they've changed. In places where the detail was fuzzy before, they've added a couple LucasArts cameos...good stuff. Remember, LucasArts, you've got a lot more than just Star Wars...
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Just started on Super Mario 3D Land last night, what an awesome game. I got the hang of the whole 3 dimensional play really fast, I am moving through the levels quickly like I do when I play the 2D Mario games on SNES.
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So, a few days ago I randomly started playing Metroid Fusion, via 3DS. I beat it earlier today, with a clear time of 4:05 and 68% clear percent. I must say, it was great. Even though a number of things were spoiled for me already, via sprite sheets and the maps here, there were still a good number of parts that had me surprised.
One thing I noticed is just how similar to Other M it was. (Or, the other way around, really.) The way Samus narrates, the progression through the station, the clever use of doors and security hatches, how the creatures (bosses, mostly) affect the environment, and a good amount of the plot and events. Other M was practically Fusion 2.
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Other M was supposed to be a prequel to Fusion. Remember how Ridley disintegrates when you find him in Fusion? That's because he was already dead, the Queen killed him Other M.
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I've been playing a variety of games, most of them old ones.
I've been going through Wario Land 4 in Hard Mode, and am at Crescent Moon Village. This game can get quite challenging, especially without moon jumps and infinite time cheats. :P
In Metroid, I finally beat Kraid, and only thanks to the Restore Point feature. It saved me days/weeks/months I would have spent trekking back to my favorite room in Brinstar to fill up on health every time I died. And I died a lot.
In the original Legend of Zelda, I'm finally making progress in the Third Dungeon. Until just the other day, I thought Darknuts could only be hurt by Bombs, so I wasn't getting far at all. Even though I know better now, they're still a huge pain to deal with. In fact, I've only had one attempt at the boss because the Darknuts in the previous rooms keep killing me.
In Kid Icarus: Uprising, I have 99.5% completion. I have every weapon, and am only missing two powers. That said, I still have quite a ways to go on the Treasure Hunt. A lack of people to streetpass with means I haven't even completed Palutena's grid. Also, my new favorite weapon is the Aurum Orbitars. Pew pew!
And finally, in Pushmo, I've made some puzzles! They're big, so you won't be able to scan them if you haven't at least cleared Challenges 3.
(http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7301/hni0023c.jpg)
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5396/hni0024r.jpg)
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I just finished Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii! 139 hours and 22 minutes was my clear time.
EDIT: Earlier this week I had planned to finish it on Saturday, since I didn't think I'd have time during the week. If I followed through with that, it would have been a fitting coincidence...I just (re)learned that Saturday is the one-year anniversary of the "Operation Rainfall" campaign to bring Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora's Tower, and The Last Story to North America. Though I do hope to eventually get to those, maybe I could tackle some shorter games in the meantime...
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I finished Contra 3 - Alien Wars on Hard mode just the other day. Is it even POSSIBLE to beat this game under normal play without a cheat code on the Hard level? I think I probably used over 150 guys to beat this one.
I did of course, already beat it on Easy without codes though a while back. This game was a real big step up in challenge on the Snes from the NES Super C as I beat that one using just 3 men to start with. Contra 1 was also pretty easy too using 3 guys.
The past 8 or 9 months or so I actually played through a few NES games and beat them as I have been away.
Musashi no Bouken (Brave Fencer)
Contra 1 and 2
Chronicles of the Radia War
Bionic Commando NES
Bionic Commando Rearmed
NEW SMB Wii and DS
Zelda Skyward Sword
PC Wizard 101 heh..
PC Turok (New One)
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A little bit ago, I finished playing Brain Lord in Japanese. It was strange to see kanji compound words written in half kanji and half hiragana, like çâ€Å¸Ã£ÂÂã rather than çâ€Å¸Ã¦Â¯, 石ã² rather than 石碑, and ã‹ã„é“ instead of è¡—é“ to name a few instances. It made things a little more difficult to read, more so I think than if it were all in kana.
I've made it to the fiery underground area in Aretha (the one for the SNES), on the quest to retrieve the final Dragon Source (hahah, ç«œã®溠sounds a little strange when put in English XD). The battles are definitely different from what you'd normally expect. When you attack an enemy, there is no indication of how much damage you dealt, so you have really no way of knowing how you're doing against an enemy until you deal the final blow. Also, there can often be multiple enemy groups surrounding the players, so when you defeat one group, you turn to the next. Battles drag out far too much though because of this, so although it's an interesting feature, it does have its drawbacks. But aside from that, it's been a fairly interesting game to play through!
In God Medicine, I think I'm getting close to the last dungeon; the Sandman people are ready to transport me to the Demon King's Castle (éÂâ€Ã§Å½â€¹Ã¥Å¸Å½)! I'm definitely considering mapping this game in the future, since it　has been so much fun playing through the amount I have so far.
And from time to time I return to Ultima VI: The False Prophet (in Japanese, of course ;)). I'm at the part where I meet up with the gargoyles in the underworld and have to go fix the Gargoyle lens and get someone in Britannia to make the Britannian lens to view the Codex that will eventually end up in the void once again by the end of the game. It's been a little frustrating playing through this game lately, since I'm coming across a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary, and with all the game text being in kana, it makes things that much more difficult, since contrary to what people may presume, kanji actually makes things easier to read.
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I'm near the end of FF6 but there is a lot to explore and my party isn't strong enough to deal with a lot of stuff. I've been into the Zone Eater but got destroyed, so I chose to RETREAT!!!
The last thing I did before closing down the game and the stream was getting the magicite that gives you Fire3/Ice3/Lightening3 which will be learned by the party members one at a time.
I took a peak at the World of Ruin map here and uh...yeah, I was really lost but at the end of my last session I remembered that the white dots on the mini-map would've solved that without spoiling anything.
More exploring and and leveling next time =)
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I was hoping to get some maps done this week, but then Paper Mario: Sticker Star happened.
As far as Paper Mario games, this one is rather unique. Its battle system lies somewhere between the first game, Super Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. Due to it being a handheld game, the world is broken up into stages (like SPM) and the battles are much faster in pace. There's also a general inflation in battle stats. A normal Goomba has 5 HP, 2 POW (compared to 2/1), while Mario's normal Jump sticker can do a total of 11 damage if you get all the Action Commands. With the right stickers, you can clear a field. Also, possibly due to the length, the big bosses a very Challenging. Not only do they have high defense, but tons of HP. The first big boss has 90 and can heal!
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I was hoping to get some maps done this week, but then Paper Mario: Sticker Star happened.
Funny, I'm the other way around. I'm often hoping to catch up on the many games I have not completed/begun, but then mapping happens.
But for once, I've taken a break to play a game I helped fund on Kickstarter, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dream. The game is a modern update/reboot of the classic C64 era game Great Giana Sisters which was itself a Super Mario Bros clone. It features classic platforming gameplay with quickly ramping difficulty but what makes the game unique is the twisting mechanic. At any time, you can switch Giana from her 'Cute' form (which allows her to spin slowly downward in the air) to her 'Punk' one (which lets her dash in any direction as well as enemies). The twist (literally) is that the whole world as well as the soundtrack twist with her, from 'Cute' Giana's darker chiptune music and nightmarish world to 'Punk' Giana's rocking upbeat tunes and cheerful fantasy world. Obstacles appear and disappear with each form and the whole world dynamically morphs within seconds which is quite impressive.
The game is also kicking my ass pretty bad. And for once, it feels *good*.
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I finally got around to finishing The Last Story on the Wii earlier this week. This makes me probably the only one of my group of friends who've completed all three of the main "Operation Rainfall" games. Very few of them even know what is meant by that... >_<
Anyway, it's just in time for the Wii U! Which I will be picking up after a long wait first thing tomorrow morning. While I wait, I really should put some time into Pokémon: Black Version 2 which has mostly been neglected since I've just been busy with a lot of other stuff besides games lately.
Hey, what do you know, it's 10 PM here. New Yorkers are getting their Wii Us now! Let us know how it is, it's another 12 hours for me here, where there are no midnight launches (that I know of).
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Super Mario 64.
A bit shamefully, I've never beaten this game. As in, ever. I came pretty close when I first played it back in 2000. I'd gathered around 50 or 60 Power Stars and had beaten the first two Bowser battles. But I was interrupted when my brother introduced me to that Zelda 64 game, and I never looked back.
Until now! I've been at it since Thanksgiving and currently have 112 Stars. (I'm determined to collect all 120 before I finish.) I cleared Tick Tock Clock tonight, and that place is beastly. All that remains now are Rainbow Ride and Bowser in the Sky!
After this, I'm moving on to Super Mario Sunshine, a game that I've never so much as touched before. (I only hope the play control is better than in SM64.)
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After this, I'm moving on to Super Mario Sunshine, a game that I've never so much as touched before. (I only hope the play control is better than in SM64.)
It's not so much the controls that are bad, but the stages that are. Most of them are rather generic compared to SM64 or Galaxy 1/2 but all are massive, very challenging and usually quite obtuse as to what you need to do.
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Oh God, that sounds like the worst. >_<
Yeah, I'm currently going back and playing all the main series Mario games, and Sunshine was one of the few I haven't been very excited about. In happier news, I have 120 Stars in SM64, have sent Bowser packing, and reunited with Yoshi! This game has always been horribly difficult for me, so despite people's warnings about SMS, after 100%ing SM64, I sort of feel like I can do anything right now. :P
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Actually, I love Super Mario Sunshine's setting. Sure, the entire game takes place on a tropical island, but there is still a lot of diversity in there. After all, it could have been a lot worse by having only sandy beaches and jungles. With Sunshine, you still have the obligatory sandy beach, but you also have an amusement park, a snazzy hotel, and a busy harbor. Perhaps my favorite aspect of it is that, at almost any given time, you look out into the background and see the other locations on the island in the hazy distance. Unlike SM64 or SMG, where each level is essentially isolated, Sunshine always makes you feel like you're exploring part of one, big, coherent island. Of course, there are also the isolated platformer stages that you can find hidden in the main areas. Hopefully there is enough diversity to keep you entertained, though it helps if you have a love of tropical-themed settings like I do.
One of these days, I want to make a big map of the entire island. :P
Oh yeah, and I beat the final boss of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I'm only missing one(!) sticker and five things.
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It's not the tropical theme that annoyed me. I absolutely loved the first StarTropics game because of it and it managed to make every chapter quite distinct yet still fit some tropical setting like the inside of a whale, a pirate ship, a volcano, etc. It felt magical in a way that the second game never came close to capturing.
Anyway, the variety in terms of tropical areas is actually there and it all looks very good. It just doesn't *play* that well, which is a crime when it comes to a "main line" Super Mario game. It's way more difficult that SM64 or SMG1/2 and achieving 100% completion requires being a huge self-hating masochist or something. I mean, I'm not that good a player, but I managed to finish Super Mario 64 with 100% and I'm 3 stars away from doing the same with Super Mario Galaxy. I don't remember how much % I reached with Super Mario Sunshine, but I remember trying to get everything in the beginning, before quickly giving up because most of it felt like a *chore*. I did the minimum required to beat Bowser and never touched it again.
Look, I'm not trying to discourage you from playing it. If you like lengthy games with plenty of things to do and collect, and love a challenge, then you'll love it. I just felt the game wasn't for me unlike the previous Mario ones; there were too many things/secrets that I could never figure out and those secret levels made me come close to throwing my controller at the TV more times than I can remember. It's the most hardcore Super Mario game I've ever played.
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62 Shines in! (Well, 76 if you count my 140 uncashed blue coins.)
I definitely like this game a lot more than I thought I would. And it beats Super Mario 64 on the basis of controls and inventiveness, I think. I really like the blend of main tropical settings, then those separate secret levels where the game developers really went all out for uber-platforming experiences.
I've totally cleaned out Bianco Hills, Ricco Harbor, Gelato Beach, and Pinna Park at this point. We'll see how I do with Sirena Beach, Noki Bay, and Pianta Village (and of course Corona Mountain after all that).
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Just beat Super Mario Galaxy! Heh, only took me over five years to actually start playing this true gem of a game.
And I feel I've hardly scratched the surface! I have 105 Power Stars, so now I need to get the 15 Purple Comet stars. Then after that, I have to do it ALL over again as Luigi, all 120 (I hear everything is harder as Luigi?). Then there's some sort of post-game award I think that awards each brother an additional Power Star each, bringing the grand total up to 242. Whew!
As for Sunshine, I ended up succeeding at gaining all 120 Shine Sprites in that one. I really liked it! The game was a rousing challenge, and while I'm glad the series didn't end up going in that direction, it (like Majora's Mask in the Zelda series) was a nice departure from the norm. I really liked the tropical feel and how the scenarios stayed true to each region of the island, but then adding old-fashioned platforming in the secret areas. Sunshine actually surprised me by how much I ended up liking it.
But Galaxy might just become my favorite game in the entire Mario series. We shall see!
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I haven't been keeping up, but then again I'm not sure how interested you guys are in a total log of everything I've been playing.
But I did want to say that ever since last August I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on SimCity Social (Facebook). And to think I always used to look down on Facebook games for being too casual. The thing is, this game is far from casual just because it's "social". I am sort of proud of finishing every time-limited themed quest since I started playing, but I can understand the criticisms that it did demand either a lot of time, or real money spent on in-game Diamonds. And boy did I spend a lot of time. Though playing mostly alone for the first few months (most of my real-life friends wouldn't play it, or for long), in January I caved and made friends (on Facebook) with strangers whose only commonality was that they played SimCity Social, to help myself (and them in return) with some of the quests. I also ended up making some alt accounts as neighbours (heh) specifically to help with this game.
However, and just shortly after the debacle of the SimCity (2013) launch, this morning EA announced that in two months, they will stop supporting SimCity Social. Now I remember why I have always been cautious about online-only games...because one day the servers will have their plugs pulled, but this seems to be rather quick. And just a couple weeks shy of its one-year anniversary, too.
EA won't provide credits (or even partial) for anyone who's spent real money. I don't think EA should be wondering why they've been apparently named the worst company...
Oh well, perhaps the end of SimCity Social is a good thing (at least for me), as I was getting perhaps too obsessed.
I've been itching to spend more time playing "deeper", more "hardcore" games, and now that there's no point to keep playing SimCity Social, maybe I will. (And if I do keep playing - maybe I'll be tempted to at least finish some stuff off - at least I'll quit by default soon.)
Conveniently, Injustice: Gods Among Us (Wii U) comes out tomorrow, and I probably should have gotten to Tomb Raider (2013) (PC), Resident Evil 6 (PC) and BioShock Infinite (PC). I should probably finish Professor Layton And The Miracle Mask (3DS) and other loose ends too.
In the meantime, I've also been planning a video game tournament that I am hosting, as well as starting up a video game ministry at my church, so I've spent a lot of time doing work involving video games, though other than SimCity Social, not actually playing them. >_<
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You're still doing a whole lot more gaming that I am. Ever since my video card started freezing at random while playing even old, undemanding 3d games, I haven't touched anything that wasn't either an emulated or indie game. It was just too frustrating. I really need to get my stuff together and buy a new PC soon since this one is 7 years old and on its last mile. I have *so* many game to catch up on.
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I recently finished a couple "penultimate" games...
Professor Layton And The Miracle Mask was okay, I seem to be missing one Hint Coin somewhere though, but whatever. I do like how while Professor Layton games are for the most part standalone games, that the ending of this ties in with other adventures and leads right into the sixth, which is supposed to be the final one (even though chronologically it's not) - or at least the last one featuring Professor Layton as the main character. Though until then, I'll also be looking forward to the crossover with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
Resident Evil 6 I enjoyed more than most people apparently did. I don't understand the criticisms - 6 was most definitely better than the mostly unmemorable 5. And what criticisms I do understand - that it's no longer survival horror with puzzles and limited ammo, but linear straightforward action where you shoot your way out of any situation - is at this point, not new to the series so 6 alone shouldn't be to blame. I do like that there are seven characters in four storylines - which makes it feel about twice as large as most REs which have two concurrent storylines. I get why Resident Evil 7 is expected to be the last, though, you can only do so much with storylines about outbreaks and bioweapons. Though until then, I'm looking forward to playing the recently-released PC version of Resident Evil: Revelations, which apparently is closer to "classic" Resident Evil action.
Though these two series are both expected to end soon, they both have at least one more side-story for me to play and they both have films down the pipeline, too. Even when they do end, continuations with other characters (in Prof. Layton's case) and/or reboots (in Resident Evil's case) would not be surprising...
I'm not saying it's a burden to play every game in every series I like, but it can be time-consuming to love so many different series...
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Still haven't bought that new PC so... yeah, haven't gamed in a while.
I *did* play through the PC version of Fez, a game I was hoping would make it off the XBOX360 ever since I saw the first preview for it. I really enjoyed the whole thing, deciphering the alphabet and numerical system while playing and trying to understand the game's many puzzles (I found almost everything by myself except the solution to the Black Monolith puzzle and a few others). Some people might find the game pretentious but I loved how deep the game world seems and those endings were just beautiful. I wish there was a way to map this game but the day/night cycle with all the shifting colors and the cloud shadows make it pretty much impossible to do it properly short of hacking the game. Some people have made tools to extract most of the game's resources but I know nothing about XNA Game Studio (which the game was made with) so that would be impossible for me. Anyway...
As soon as my new PC is bought and installed, I have many games waiting for me to play.
Games I've bought but haven't played yet:
-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy
-Transformers: War for Cybertron (yeah, never actually started that one)
-Amnesia: The Dark Descent (really looking forward to be scared to death by this)
-Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
-Fallout 3
-Fallout: New Vegas
-La Mulana
-Vessel
-Alan Wake
-Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Games soon to be bought:
-Ms. Splosion Man
-Quantum Conundrum
I could actually take a one year sabbatical and still not finish them all!
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Nice picks, Terra!
If there's any reason for your ordering, I do like that you put the Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time trilogy up top. Everyone hated on the second one, Warrior Within, but I actually liked that one. Probably because it's not as linear as the first and third (and "fifth" if you count Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands). Though it is not part of the Sands Of Time series, I also really really liked the fourth game since the reboot, Prince Of Persia (with no subtitle), which, like the Warrior Within, allows for revisitation of areas to get and find everything...having worlds like that always feels more real than the games where you just get from point A to point B. Hmmm, seems they like to alternate between linear and exploratory games. Anyway, I would very highly recommend you add Prince Of Persia to that (and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the ending), but if you've got too much on your plate you can certainly skip the last one, Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. It wasn't all bad, not at all, but it didn't feel like it added much that was new and I'm pretty sure it was rushed to coincide with the release of the Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time film - which was decent, unsurprising that it's currently the highest-grossing video game adaptation film.
Why is Transformers: War For Cybertron on your list but not Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron? I rather enjoyed the second one, probably more than the first. They certainly take liberties with continuity, so consider them prequels to something like a G1, rather than prequels to "the" G1.
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I could actually take a one year sabbatical and still not finish them all!
Tell me about it. I have 28 games that I've bought but not yet played. I used to have a big problem with Steam/GOG sales where I'd buy anything that I was remotely interested in. I've mostly stopped, but I still add about 1 game a month to the list. I'm down from almost 50, so I'm making progress. It takes dedication though.
Nice set of games you've got, though. I'm a sucker for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. Alan Wake had great atmosphere, but the gameplay was frustratingly repetitive.
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Playing through Super Mario 3D Land right now (only took me a couple years to get to it, ha).
It's a very fun little game so far. I was worried how the mixture of 3D and NSMB elements would mesh together, but it's really nice. It's not quite to the level of the Galaxy games of course, but I probably like it better than the NSMB series. I do wish there was more than one inventory slot, though.
Just beat the game today, so now it's on to the Special Worlds and Luigi mode!
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Despite the fact that I already have more games than I have time for, I went ahead and got Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, Mighty Switch Force 2, and plan on getting Mighty Switch Force HD. So far, I've only played M&DK.
It's a cute little puzzle game, and definitely different from the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series. It starts off really easy, with there being pretty much only one way to solve the earlier puzzles, but it soon branches off into four different game styles. Mario's Main Attraction, the primary mode, has you placing tiles that are shoved your way in order to reach the goal. Puzzle Palace gives you a limited set of pre-defined pieces, which you have to place in order to reach the goal, or it will give you a board full of pieces that you move around like a puzzle. In this mode, there is no rush or time limit, which means you have a lot of time to think. Many Mini Mayhem has all of the board already filled in, and you have to manage 2+ Minis walking around. Lastly, Big Jungle only has three stages, but each one is really big and has a lot to collect. Combined with the four fun mini-games it has (most of which involve a slingshot), this little game has of content. I guess that's why it's nearly $10...
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I just recently finished Tomb Raider (PC) with 100%. I liked it, though the "survivalist" aspect that was so promoted (i.e. finding shelter, hunting for food, etc.) only happens as isolated events mostly just at the beginning for the sake of the story and is not a constant feature of the game. It's certainly different, and I have no problem with this version of Lara Croft, but then again I didn't have a problem with the second version of the Tomb Raider series (Legend/Anniversary/Underworld).
Just started BioShock Infinite (PC) last night, enjoying it so far, but I'm barely in it, and only just received the "Murder of Crows" Vigor. It seems more satisfying to shoot bad guys when you know they're racist...
I'm trying to get these PC games out of the way, because judging by last week's E3, I'll have lots to do on the Wii U this year! Also the 3DS - I'm playing some Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) as well.
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My 32 GB SD Card came a day early, so I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf all day! So far, I haven't been able to do much in the town of Delfino, but I'm loving it. Isabelle is just so cute!
Also, I played Mighty Switch Force! for the first time and kinda beat it in one sitting. I still have the bonus levels to do, but still. Fun game!
I've been playing more of Mario and Donkey Kong, and I have to revise my earlier assessment. Despite the early ones being easy, it soon gets to be difficult. A lot more difficult. I can't remember the last time I have been this frustrated at a game.Some of the levels in the main section have short time limits, and it's easy to lose track of time. There have been times where I'm not even halfway through a course before the 10 second countdown begins. And the terrifying buzzes it makes as it counts down makes it worse. That's why I'm sticking to the puzzle stages, which don't time you.
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Just finished BioShock Infinite (PC). Whoooooaaaaa...pretty trippy ending!
Three PC games down in a row. I'm contemplating maybe Resident Evil: Revelations (again, for the PC). I hear it's more in the traditional vein of the series (0, original, 2, 3, Code: Veronica).
But I guess I should finish catching stuff in June including the char, which won't be around in July, in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS). Unfortunately my brother is playing as the mayor, so other than contributing Bells to some of the projects he's chosen, I don't get to experience much of the new stuff this game has to offer, so it's pretty much like any other Animal Crossing game...ah well.
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Just finished playing through Kairo, a very atmospheric 3D adventure/puzzle game that I enjoyed very much. I had to resort to a walkthrough for the more obscure puzzles because, heck, I was never going to complete those otherwise. Most people would probably judge the game harshly based on the rather primitive graphics but that's not what got me interested into the game. It's rather the mystery of where you are and what's the meaning behind all the weird rooms you're in and what you see in them, and how the game never quite tells you what's going on explicitly, even though you get the gist of it by the end. In short, I fell a bit in love with the experience.
GOG.com got me with their no-DRM summer sale but thankfully, I managed to restrain myself from buying anything I wasn't interested in even though I might have saved more than I did. I'm just a bit angry at myself for adding a dozen more games on top the existing pile but at least for some of them, I *know* I'll enjoy myself based on similar games from the same developers.
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I've just finished Machinarium: Collector's Edition, one of my most recent acquisition from GOG.com and one of the prettiest looking and sounding game I've played in a very long time. It's basically a puzzle/adventure game taking place in a world of robots with a very unique style, which isn't surprising given that the company that made it is Czech. In fact, most of their stuff so far reminds me a lot of foreign animated shorts they would regularly show on TV when I was a kid (in the 80s). Some puzzle were too obscure for me but thankfully, there's a built-in hint book with hand-drawn images that you can access at any time by playing through a little shoot-em-up. In any case, the game's style more than makes up for the game's shortcomings and I enjoyed the game's world so much that I went against my decision to avoid any mapping during my vacation and mapped the whole thing while playing. I just have to assemble the whole thing but that shouldn't take long so expect a finished map this weekend.
Can't wait to play their next game (which I also bought) called Botanicula.
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Definitely looking forward to seeing those maps. Amanita's games are beautiful and very unique.
I'm playing Fallout 2 now. I played a lot of 3 and NV, but I had previously only played an hour or two of the earlier games. It's very good, as expected. It's also nice to see that the Fallout Wikia (http://fallout.wikia.com/) has complete maps for the first two games.
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I just finished Resident Evil: Revelations (PC). Sad to say it wasn't very revelatory, as the title suggests. It was also short and mostly unmemorable in the grand storyline of Resident Evil. What I did like is the "Previously, on Resident Evil: Revelations" recaps at the start of each chapter or when you load up the game. It's handy to remember what story there is when returning to the game a few days later - more games should have that. I think that, plus the short chapters, are both a byproduct of the game originally being for the 3DS, where shorter play sessions might make it ideal if playing while commuting. I think I was disappointed because of expectations - it gained such high praise on the 3DS, but on the PC it's a different feeling, especially shortly after playing Resident Evil 6 (which inversely, most people hated even though I loved it - at least as an action game, not horror at all), Revelations felt like a lesser experience. I was looking forward to more "traditional" Resident Evil (along the lines of 0, original/remake, 2, 3, Code: Veronica), but I guess I was misled in that sense.
The recent PC games I meant to play are now caught up on...I don't know if I should finish transferring my Pokémon from SoulSilver and Black to Black 2 before X/Y come out - which is quite a task on its own, or catch up on 3DS games. I am playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) daily but I am debating if I want to pick up Project X Zone (3DS), or games I somehow missed earlier, like Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS). On the Wii U front I'm waiting for the disc version of New Super Luigi U (Wii U) instead of the downloadable version which is already available, but in the meantime maybe I could revisit Injustice: Gods Among Us (Wii U) and get more endings and check out some more DLC other than Scorpion (guest appearance, originally from Mortal Kombat) which I already downloaded (who I can consistently defeat my brother with, he's hard to defend against without a dedicated block button, especially when spamming his teleport, bwahaha).
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I was playing Wander Wonder for PC but got stuck for quite some time and cant figure it out.
Anyone know the game?
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I know what I'm playing on my Wii U as soon as I get home:
DuckTales Remastered (Wii U) is of course something easy for my "generation" to get hyped up about. It's kind of interesting to see which games get remade and how. I know they're making Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (no "-ed", but "Remaster/ed" must be the word of the day) for the PS3 and Vita (not PS4?) for its tenth anniversary, but do you think we'll reach a point where remakes just won't be popular anymore? Games from twenty years ago makes sense...visual and audio fidelity and all...ten, maybe, but there's less of a difference, and as we move more into the future, I don't know if there will be as big of a gap that a remake would look and sound that much better. With downloadable services making old games available, people might be happy enough to download the original. Though I suppose if one were to redesign a game as a whole new experience (new interfaces, holograms?) and add new scenarios, there might always be room for at least some remakes. Though there's something to be said about totally new stories and experiences, of course. I like that they added a narrative to DuckTales Remastered...some of those NES games were lacking in the story department, perhaps due to technical limitations (though games like Ninja Gaiden still figured it out).
But I always wonder if younger gamers these days love their games as much as us older gamers do. With so many more choices, incuding increased competition and more platforms (including smartphones and tablets and browsers and all the free/inexpensive games on those), it's easy enough to plow through a bunch of forgettable games, whereas in my generation, almost everyone I know has played most of the good NES / Super NES game library because we spent a lot of time on each. You'd get a few great games a year, not this barrage of games every month, like nowadays. Am I just old and jaded?
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I bought the game as soon as I got home ;D. It's funny because as a kid, I only had a couple of games, DuckTales being one of them and although I loved it, I never got the idea from other kids my age that it was a much beloved game. Hearing about the remake a few months back made me realize just how popular it really was.
The funny thing is that back when I first got the game for my birthday, I managed to finish all five stages in somewhat short order. But since I couldn't understand much English at that age, I didn't understand why the game then sent you back to Transylvania, thinking it was some sort of attempt to make you play through the game again after being so cheap as to not even give you an "ending" screen. So I'd just always turn it off afterward, thinking that was that. Then one day, I let a friend borrow it and a few days later, he call me back after having found out that I kept turning the game off before I had even finished it and mean did I feel stupid...
Anyway, I've already played through the Amazon and Transylvania stages and it was really fun. It features enough change that I didn't mind that they hadn't really upgraded the controls beyond using the DuckTales 2 pogo control scheme. But man, are the boss fights so much tougher than before.
(I'm playing on Medium difficulty by the way)
*EDIT*
I've almost finished the game but the final boss is really kicking my ass. Oh, and have I said how much I love the remade soundtrack? I have? Well, let me say it again because I'm just a big fan of Jake Kaufman's videogame work. Some of you might remember him as 'Virt' when he used to make fan remix/remake of game tunes over a decade ago.
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Slowly transferring 30 Pokémon a day from my Pokémon: Black Version (DS) to Pokémon: Black Version 2 (DS). I'm at 360 so far, only 289 more to go! Kind of feels like a task if I don't make it part of a routine...
Speaking of daily plays, I'm playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS). Not really focussed on completing the catalogue just yet, I usually just focus on the bugs and fish. 80% encyclopedia completion already, thanks to the game coming out in June with the majority of fish and bugs catchable in the summer and/or the island. I recently maxed out my house upgrades, but I haven't done anything at all with the three side rooms on the main floor.
Also playing a bit of DuckTales Remastered (Wii U) here and there to eventually be able to buy all the extras.
Started playing New Super Luigi U (Wii U), only cleared World 2 so far...my gosh, this game is so challenging, mostly because I'm still not comfortable with Luigi's flutteriness and slipperiness.
Didn't realize the Mortal Kombat (PC) reboot-of-sorts was quietly released for PC last month, so I got that and started a bit of the Challenge Tower.
This morning alone, I hit milestones in every game in StreetPass Mii Plaza (3DS)! (Well, except for Monster Manor, and I've long been done Find Mii/Find Mii II...) I got the last two puzzle pieces I needed for The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword puzzle, so now I have every puzzle complete. I got the 120th and final rank in Mii Force, the Platinum-Tier...something. I got my 500th garden visitor in Flower Town. And I now have an army over 300,000 strong in Warrior's Way. I really enjoy StreetPass tagging...it can be surprising where I get them, I hope the release of Pokémon: X and Y Versions will increase the likelihood of 3DSes (and 3DS XLs and the recently announced 2DSes), but I am doing okay (I think) so far...
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Having just recently reacquired all of my gaming equipment from the packing boxes, I'm slowly going through all the games in my collection again for 100% completion and for the sheer fun of it! I'll admit, though, Star Wars: The Old Republic(PC: MMORPG) has most of my attention, but I'm still finding time to go through one of my favorites: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages(GBC). So many awesome memories! It's really too bad that the creators of this set of Zelda games didn't go through with a storyline focused around Farore.
Sadly, I'm not quite "up to date" with my consoles. I briefly had access to the Wii U, which was a very strange experience to say the least. I've been saving up for the 3DS. It would be just my luck that by the time I get to the point every other gamer is, there'll be a brand new console out. For what I do have though, I'm playing through Trace Memory(DS) in addition to the others listed above.
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Last weekend, I finally played through Portal 2's coop campaign all by myself.
At first, I was just nostalgic about the game's amazing sense of location after listening to the soundtrack and I started moving around the various maps in no clip mode just to try and get a sense of how everything was designed. After going through all the single player maps, I searched for the names of the coop maps online to try and access those and I eventually found a site explaining how you could play through the coop campaign in splitscreen by yourself, using a key bind to switch controls between the two robots. I know everyone says you should play it with someone else first, but I just couldn't resist the challenge right there and then knowing it was possible.
It turns out the whole game (including the Peer Review DLC) can pretty much be done that way and I did it almost entirely legitimately. I only had to use no clip mode on three occasions where I knew exactly what to do but couldn't get the execution right on account of having to do complicated sequences of moves with both characters almost simultaneously.
I really liked how the coop campaign pretty much took you through every type of environment you visited in the single player campaign. You start with the newer and entirely enclosed test chambers, then the old abandoned ones, then open chambers with no floors like those made by Wheatly, followed by the old enrichment spheres and finally, in the DLC, these weird new chambers that felt like a mix of all the other types, being newer in style but with lots of holes in the walls and ceilings showing that each one is contained inside a huge, hangar size room with water/acid at the bottom. And of course, I have to mentioned the various maps that are located outside the official testing tracks that showed even more of the Enrichment Center facility itself. In short, I had a blast.
I'm just in love with the Portal franchise, and more so with the game's environment than simply with the gameplay, story and humour. To me, both versions of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center (they felt significantly different in terms of atmosphere between both games) feel as much as characters in their own right as, say, the starship Enterprise does in Star Trek. In fact, one of my life long dream would be to have the skills to extract the 3D data of every map in both Portal games, import those in a 3D rendering program and present the content of both games as a series of expertly-made isometric maps, with all the right things made visible or transparent as needed for clarity. It will never happen since I really suck at 3D modeling (I never did managed to texture that small village model from the Lost Village area of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow) but I can dream, can't I?
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So I've recently finished New Super Mario Bros. U, and sometime in the next couple weeks I plan to take on New Super Luigi U. After that will be The Wind Waker HD, which I imagine will take me past or near enough to November 22. So after those two games, I'll have A Between Worlds and Super Mario 3D World added to my to-play list, and I imagine I'll get to them shortly afterward.
Assuming I finish all four games by Christmas break, that leaves me with an interesting decision. I will play either Super Mario RPG, the Wario Land series, or Kid Icarus: Uprising.
So in sum, here's what's to come:
- New Super Luigi U
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
- Super Mario 3D World
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
After that, it's a toss-up between these three:
- Super Mario RPG
- Wario Land series
- Kid Icarus: Uprising.
Which one of those three do you think should be priority for me? (And damn, I forgot about DuckTales Remastered, haha. The NES original was such a part of my childhood!)
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I agree. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U) and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS) are looking to be must-plays. A sequel to my favourite Zelda game? YES PLEASE! But despite being a Zelda fan, I did not pick up Wind Waker HD, or at least not yet. I thoroughly enjoyed the original on the GameCube, and this one has some revisions but very few actual additions. Not to say I won't ever play it, but right now I am playing too much and foreseeing more games on the horizon that to essentially replay a game is not really priority.
As for the decision you are making, Rew, I recommend Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars. Of those three, that seems the most like a must-play. (Surprising that you haven't played it already!) I enjoyed Kid Icarus: Uprising, and it was longer than I expected, but I didn't ever get serious about the multiplayer. And speaking of Wario, I started Wario Land 4 (GBA) a number of times but never finished it, or even got very far. I'm now close to doing so, having played it on the 3DS on boring commutes (thanks to it being one of the "3DS Ambassador" free games) - I have collected all the CDs and pretty much just have to defeat the final boss, but I've lost a few times...it's been a pain because for whatever reason I have been having trouble with all the bosses in this game. I only used items to help against one of the bosses so far (I think) and just saving up enough points to get an item is a pain too (silly mini-games, sigh). But thanks for reminding me that I should probably finish that, too. And back to speaking of Mario RPGs not played...somehow Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (3DS) slipped by me, oops. And I've enjoyed every Mario RPG so far. Does anyone recommend that I should play either one before the other? I feel like I might get muddled up if I play two RPGs concurrently, especially featuring similar characters despite being different continuities.
Meanwhile, my main focus right now is Pokémon Y (3DS) - I think I'm about halfway through the story, and my brother is playing X, working on mastering my Level 6 Infinity Blade in Infinity Blade III (iOS) - funny how I got into all three Infinity Blade games so seriously when not that long ago I thought any app games were silly >_> - oh yeah and I have gotten all but two of the objectives in Temple Run 2 (iOS) >_>... Forgot that I'm only halfway through Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition (PC)...should get back to that too.
Anyone with a 3DS should get all those StreetPass Mii Plaza (3DS) games...so addicting. I'm far (well, compared to most people) in all four games in that. Thankfully besides my brother and a co-worker there are usually also people I StreetPass tag on the commute to and from work.
Soon, there are those Wii U and 3DS games I'm looking forward to, already mentioned. Also the upcoming Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (3DS) and Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (3DS)...I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting that I'm playing or looking forward to. Oh yes, Just Dance 2014 (Wii U) - don't laugh - is good for daily cardio. Makes me contemplate if Wii Fit U (Wii U) is worth dusting off the old Balance Board for. I'm not fat but it wouldn't hurt to lose a few pounds or be a little more fit.
Ah yes, and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Wii U/PC) comes out next week...aagh, always too much to play.
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Thanks Jon! Yeah, for some reason SMRPG must've passed me by in my younger days when it was first released. I've never really been into RPGs normally (except Mega Man X Command Mission, which I ended liking a hell of a lot more than I thought I would), but I think I want to try the Mario RPGs. Uprising is probably going to come first, though.
Anyway, here's my latest gaming to-do list!
- New Super Luigi U
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
- DuckTales Remastered
- Super Mario 3D World
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
- Kid Icarus: Uprising
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
- Paper Mario
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- Super Paper Mario
- Paper Mario: Sticker Star
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
- Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
- Super Mario Land
- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
- Wario Land II
- Wario Land 3
- Wario Land 4
- Wario World
- Wario: Master of Disguise
- Wario Land: Shake It!
Yeah, that should keep me occupied for a little while. :P
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The other day I learned of a money-making glitch in Infinity Blade III (iPad) which renewed my interest in it (EDIT: as of the update today, the glitch appears to have been removed, but at least I got tons of money before then, and now there's new stuff apparently), and I only had one session with LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (PC) which was enough for me to play the first three stages to get to the free-roaming city and unlock Deadpool's room on the Helicarrier which allowed me to buy "Studs x 2" but then that was all I've done so far. (That Venom stage might have been appropriate for Hallowe'en, and I see that I will probably be facing Green Goblin soon, who with his pumpkin bombs will also be themed for today...more on that later...) I do need to return to Pokémon Y (3DS), where I just got Yveltal, and I haven't done Just Dance 2014 (Wii U) in over a week because I've been so busy.
And I foresee myself being busy with non-gaming stuff for the next few evenings, but there might be a brief reprieve in my schedule tonight, and I could just go back to anything I'm currently playing - as you see above, things just got interesting. But maybe I should go along with it being Hallowe'en and, after doing the requisite holiday stuff in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) and perhaps hunting down the ghost girl in Pokémon Y (if you don't know what I'm referring to, see here: Pokémon X/Y Weekly: Creepy Girl in Lumiose City (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00No-r5JaXY)), I'd also like to play something specifically for today.
I could get around to playing Clock Tower (Super NES), as I've been meaning to forever, or perhaps Amnesia, Outlast, and/or Slender (all PC, I think), if any of them are short enough to finish in one evening (I doubt Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii) is, so I probably won't play that tonight, even though I've been meaning to).
Assuming you see this post before this evening, what would be your recommendation for which (short-enough) horror game I should play tonight?
EDIT: Played and beat Clock Tower. Thanks, TerraEsperZ, your map came in handy!
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So, having now completely given up on Kid Icarus: Uprising, I think I shall now give Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars a try.
A bit of a confession: I've never played this game before. Ever. Even though I'm old enough to have played all the NES/SNES Mario titles back when they were current, this one passed me by for whatever reason. Probably because of my unfamiliarity with and general lack of interest in the RPG genre.
As such, this game is going to be a trail run for me. I don't normally like RPGs, but hey, it's a Mario game, and one that's gotten nearly universal acclaim. So I'll play through this one, and how much I like/dislike it will determine if I then go on to play the other RPG titles (i.e. Paper Mario series and Mario & Luigi series).
Anyway, I plan on a 100% run as usual through this game. Can anyone tell me about any permanently missable things I might need to be aware of?
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As far as I know, there is only one thing. The hidden Treasure Box in Mushroom Kingdom's castle can only be accessed once, when the Toad is escorting you to see the Chancellor for the first time. You have to hop off of his head to reach it, and this is the only time an NPC will be near the doorway to allow you to reach it, so you only have one shot at it.
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There's alot to do in this game to get %100... this will help you get started.
http://www.world-of-nintendo.com/super_nes/super_mario_rpg.shtml
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Currently Link Between Worlds (yes I'm mapping this out as well lol) and Chrono Trigger DS Version (again with the mapping).
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I'm slowly but surely making my way through the tons of games I've bought on Steam and GOG over the last few years. I finished Lilly Looking Through yesterday; beautiful looking and sounding, but a bit cheap with a few color puzzles and way too short. I'm hoping for a longer sequel with the same quality or better.
Sitting patiently in the queue right now (Steam only for now, lots more left from GOG):
-Castle of Illusion
-Doorways
-Fallout 3 GOTY
-Fallout: New Vegas
-Knock-knock
-The Bridge
-PixelJunk Eden
-Stealth Bastard Deluxe
-Unmechanical
Only a few big titles on there, but lots of indie stuff which I tend to prefer nowadays.
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Had a 26.5-day Christmas break which ended about a week ago; I didn't finish as many games as I thought I would. I did get 100% (with the help of my brother) in Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)...gosh, there's a lot to do in that...and it took us like six hours straight to perfect the final final final stage, sheesh. I also got nearly 100% in Batman: Arkham Origins (PC)...I can't get 100% because there's a challenge where I have to do four different takedowns, but it's only possible at two instances of the main story which I can't get back to...now that's not fair! >_< On a similar note, before the Christmas break I finished LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (PC), but because of a glitch I got an extra minikit, however, it does not consider 11/10 minikits in a mission as "complete", only 10/10, no less, (and apparently) no more, so in the end I had to download a 100% save - which I had actually truly earned but the game was being silly with that glitch.
Also during my break I also got nearly every ending in The Stanley Parable (PC), except the four-hour one. If you've played the game, you'll know which one I mean. This game is worth mentioning because it's pretty neat, pretty meta, sort of a satire of narrative conventions in video games. I suggest you give it a try. I really want to say more, but it would be at the risk of ruining it. Seriously, it's pretty neat. Quick to play (each ending only takes a few minutes, you can get all (again, except the four-hour one) in like three hours), and doesn't really require much skill (other than remembering what you have and haven't yet tried).
Since my last post on Hallowe'en I also finished The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS). Got/did everything, of course. That Octoball mini-game to get one of the Pieces of Heart was annoying, but I somehow fluked by. I also got all 50 StreetPass challenges done. Oh, wait, I guess I haven't done Hero Mode...maybe I'll save that for if I get a Zelda hankering later.
Also dusted off Professor Layton And The Miracle Mask (3DS), trying to finish up the rest of the daily puzzles. When I have access to my brother's 3DS XL, he lets me play Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (3DS, eShop)...I just finished the second case. Hopefully I'll be done both before the next (and supposedly last main) Professor Layton game and before the crossover of these two series.
And still working on Pokémon Y (3DS). I've got all the new Pokémon, I've also got all of them in the first Kalos Pokédex, and I've already prepared for Pokémon Bank/Pokémon Transporter (whenever it's supposed to come out...) by cloning all the first-to-fifth-generation ones in Pokémon: Black Version 2 that aren't available at all in X/Y. (I always have one of every catchable species in my cartridge/card per generation, that's why I had to clone those Pokémon to keep one of each still in Black Version 2, even though it's unlikely I will ever need to go back to them.) I still intend to catch everyone catchable in Y; I avoid trading unless there's no other option.
Looking forward to the point-and-click adventure game Broken Age (PC), by Tim Schafer of Monkey Island/Grim Fandango/Psychonauts fame, which I think comes out tomorrow....
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Finished Act 1 of Broken Age this weekend. I liked it. Probably going to say what most people have said...a little short (only about three hours) and none of the puzzles were really challenging. The ending was interesting, I'm certainly intrigued for the next act. I guess the decision to split it was a good one, the feedback has already reached Tim Schafer and he says the next act will be a little more challenging.
I don't understand the hate directed towards Tim Schafer. Am I missing something? Do people not know how Kickstarter works? What's the problem?
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So I have at last finished Super Mario RPG! I may be 18 years late to the party, but this one was worth the wait--and turned out to be more fun than I expected.
This was definitely a quintessential step into Mario's past, before the establishment of a fixed design for Peach's Castle (just before, as it turns out, as SM64 would be only a few months away when SMRPG was released), not to mention probably the last game where the princess went by the name Toadstool outside of Japan. The Chancellor is not yet Toadsworth, and we get introduced to numerous species that (so far as I know) we never see again outside of this game: the frogs/tadpoles of Tadpole Pond, the moles of Moleville, Mallow's cloud people of Nimbus Land, and most infamously the one and only Geno.
I also like how Mario and Bowser become allies (even if not friends) for the first time in franchise history (not counting games like Super Mario Kart, etc.). Granted I wish Bowser had been a more useful player in the game (he spent most of my run on the bench), but the thought was nice. He had some interesting story moments and character development too--I loved his reevaluation of his reasons for going into Smithy's Factory after the defeat of Exor!
The visual style and the gameplay really show how far the SNES had come here at the end of its cycle. It's interesting really, in that around 1994 or so, Miyamoto disparaged the art style of Rare's DKC trilogy and sought to take his next Mario game, Yoshi's Island, in a completely different direction visually. Now by 1996, it appears that the Mario team had capitulated as you can see a heavy influence from Rare here. The early areas in the game in particular look like they were lifted directly from the map screens of DKC3, the Midas River sequence (first part) reminded me of the K. Rool chase on the waters at the end of DKC3, and even Mario's Pad looks like it was directly inspired by DK's cabin at the beginning of the original DKC. And yet even more interestingly, in this game's sequel, Paper Mario (and its successors) the developers went right back to the style of Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Story. I'm not really making a point with all this--it's just an interesting observation to me.
The game is not particularly difficult at all. There were a couple times I had some scares when one or two party members would go down during a boss fight, but I never experienced a game over through the whole adventure (not counting failing the courses in Bowser's Keep behind those six randomly generated doors). Your party's arsenal and skills will generally be a little ahead of your adversaries as you progress through the world, so the learning curve is lenient (esp. if you're like me and faced off against as many enemies as possible to build up as much EXP as I could). You have three bonuses you can choose from each time you level up, and I deliberately alternated and spaced them out evenly as I powered up my party. That's perhaps not the absolutely best way to do it (for instance there's no point in adding magic/special bonuses on a party member whose special moves you almost never use). And of course once you get the Lazy Shell weapon and armor, the game absolutely becomes broken as your party crushes the resistance while being nearly impervious in its own right. Even the mighty Culex wasn't much of a problem by the time I was done.
I should say that the battles are (in general) the easiest part of the game. Nearly everything else ranges from difficult to absolutely cumbersome. While I'm a fan of the isometric visuals in the game, it makes for some unintuitive platforming, and nowhere was this more on display than in the 3-dimensional maze in the Sunken Ship (something which only belongs in games like Super Mario 3D Land/World) and the two "action courses" inside Bowser's Keep. If you've ever played this game, well, I'm pretty sure you know what I mean.
The mini-games I'll confess were not particularly fun. The Yoshi races (or Mushroom Derby) required a sense of rhythm I really don't have, and having no skill in music, the Toadofsky songs escaped until I just looked them up in a guide. Midas River and Booster Hill were vaguely amusing but sort of monotonous as well. Mole Mountain (the mine car ride) was more fun but only as a diversion. Grate Guy's Casino was a good idea in theory but terribly boring in execution (sort of like the mini-games in NSMB on DS). Perhaps I'm used to the good mini-games in the Zelda series, but it was obvious in SMRPG that the game makers had a ways to go.
Back to the main game, there were some really neat moments I liked. It was a little bit hilarious how shocked Mallow was to find he's not a tadpole when he looks nothing like one at all. And I loved Bowser's comic relief throughout the game, from his crying when reminiscing on the good old days when Mario was his only adversary, to recruiting Mario to join the Koopa Troop, and to being ignored by the Manager or Director near the end of the game. The stuff in Nimbus Land was really great too, to Valentina's blatantly obvious act, to people being confused how big "Prince Mallow" (i.e. Dodo) was but just rolling with it anyway--and one of my favorite moments in the game was when Mallow goes into the castle to reunite with his parents, and we see Mario pull out an umbrella (Toadstool's Parasol?) right before it starts raining with his tears.
Smithy put up a proper good fight in the finale (though I think Cloaker and Earth Link may have given me even more trouble) and was a very rewarding final boss. Add Smithy to the likes of Wart among villains I'd like to see return to the Mario series in some capacity (even as secondary to Bowser). The ending was cool, and I like the parade during the staff credits--which from what I understand is a Mario RPG tradition. When the sun went down and those floats lit up had to be some of the most breathtaking visuals I've seen on a 16-bit machine! I'll be curious to see how Paper Mario compares.
It's a shame we won't be seeing Mallow or Geno anymore. I know a lot of people clamor for the latter to be included in Smash Bros. I certainly wouldn't be against that, but I see Geno more as assist trophy material rather than a full fledged fighter character. If nothing else, I would love to see the upcoming Smash Bros. game give SMRPG some love in the trophies and music dept.! Also, since they're bringing the Koopalings into Mario Kart 8, why not Mallow and Geno? I think that'd be a great comeback for them.
Finally I conclude with an observation. Have you all seen much of the official art for this game? (You can find it in downloadable versions of the instruction booklet and player's guide.) And it's absolutely gorgeous. What makes it so wonderful to look at (and you can tell the game was trying to make it look this way too, though it's not apparent with the 16-bit limitations) is that all the characters look like toys and dolls. Heck, even the maps in the player's guide look like plastic play sets! And this is a recurring theme we see in the game: Booster uses dolls of Mario, Toadstool, etc. to rehearse for his wedding, and Gaz in Rose Town plays Mario vs. Bowser with his dolls in a very meta reenactment of the players ourselves playing an elaborate game of Mario and party vs. the bad guys. And especially given that this game is an RPG--a role-playing game--it takes the genre literally and produces a really neat result. It's interesting that the characters in this game look like dolls, and in the next installment the art direction is a bit more overtly modified with Mario and all the characters being made out of paper and the whole of Paper Mario looking like a story out of a pop-up book.
One could almost say that this was a precursor to the idea in the original Super Smash Bros. of the Master Hand representing a child playing with his/her dolls in a playroom.
I don't think I can really rank this game against the Mario series platformers, but if I did, I would say it's approximately on par with Super Mario Sunshine (another game I liked more than I thought I would) for me. I really would love to see a game like this again--a proper RPG with a full party, etc. The art style for this particular one would look magnificent on the Wii U. It's probably just a pipe dream, though.
(Side note: Shout out to Peardian because his SMRPG maps were immensely helpful during my run!)
Anyway, up next is Paper Mario! From what I understand, the RPG elements are a bit simplified in this game, but it looks like it has a lot of its own charm. I'll get started on that one tomorrow night hopefully.
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It's been a few months so I'm not sure I can remember all of what I've played...
I guess I didn't mention that I played Octodad: Dadliest Catch (PC) in pretty much one sitting...or maybe it was two. Short...amusing, sure, but short. Only got two of Octodad's ties, not sure if I'm going to get back to the game and get them all.
Finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (3DS), though I still have to go back and do the DLC chapter.
Caught all the Pokémon I could catch in Pokémon Y (3DS), and transferred from Black Version/Black Version 2 the clones of all the ones that are uncatchable in the sixth-gen games. All I have left (other than the promo ones) are the ones from the Safari Friend Zone, but I don't think I'll go to the trouble of "befriending" strangers just to catch those Pokémon so I think I'll get eggs of them off my brother. I don't know if I want to try and get them all caught/hatched before this November's release of Pokémon: Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, because I imagine those games will provide more opportunities to catch some of them, surely the third-gen ones at least.
Downloaded some NES Remix 2 (Wii U). Played a bit. Me and my brother are sharing a file on that and he's done a lot more than I have; most of the games have gold (three stars on every challenge). Some of the remixes are neat. Though I haven't played much, I'm liking it more than the original if only because of the games selection.
I'm sure I mentioned that I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for Tesla Effect (PC), an adventure game featuring Tex Murphy whose previous game was Overseer, back in 1998! So glad to see Tex Murphy back. Love these FMV-heavy adventure games. I only got the game two days ago...launch day I only had time to download it, and yesterday I only had time to watch the intro. Looking forward to diving into it this weekend.
But yesterday I did play some Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS) before bed. I figured, eh, I don't have time to get into Tesla Effect, why not play a bit of Kirby before turning in? I figured I would do a few stages, not a whole world per day like I've been doing since I got the game. But then I saw a couple stages in that sixth world only had one Sun Stone, so I thought, how hard can it be? I'll just do the whole world. Next thing I know it's getting near midnight and I'm still playing. Didn't help that there was an extra EX stage (past worlds only had one) and then the final bosses had so many phases! Well, maybe not "many", but definitely a few, and as I wanted to finish before going to bed, every additional phase had me cursing. It wasn't hard but I just wanted to sleep. Slipping back into bad habits of using electronic devices before going to bed again...sigh. Anyway, I got all 100 Sun Stones, but my file only has 69% and beating the boss ended with a "THE END?" so I'm guessing when I go back in there will be more to do. I know there are still keychains to find and the Dedede Tour but I don't think that counts towards the percentage...
Now what am I looking forward to? Well, I'm still really behind on my 3DS RPGs...I'll want to make time for those at some point...Bravely Default, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team...and (though not an RPG,) Professor Layton And The Azran Legacy (3DS). Don't know how easy that is going to be, with more Nintendo games coming out (yes, really!) I put down a pre-order for Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)...looking forward to that. Comes with a free game if getting it within the first two months, not sure what I will get, though - I already have New Super Mario Bros. U, so should I get Pikmin 3, The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker HD or Wii Party U (Wii U)?. Also Super Smash Bros. For 3DS (3DS) is coming out this summer, which will hold us over until Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (Wii U) comes out this winter. And as I alluded to, I will probably play Pokémon: Omega Ruby (3DS). Besides those I'm sure there will be some announcements of new games at E3, plus maybe Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright (3DS) will actually get a North American release date... And on the non-Nintendo side, I hope Transformers: Rise Of The Dark Spark (PC) and Ultra Street Fighter IV (PC) are good too.
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Hmmm, have I played much since last time?
I mentioned Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS) last time. Since then I've finished it, but I don't have all the collectible keychains and I haven't beat The Arena. The farthest I got was to the final boss but I can't seem to do it. I also got one of the endings in Tesla Effect (PC) but I'm pretty sure it's not the best one. I've been meaning to get back to it and get the other four, or at least the best one. Between my brother and I we got all the stars in NES Remix 2 (Wii U)...I think...but not all with the rainbows. That might be a little tricky. I don't even think we got all the stars in the first one, so I guess we're just better with these games featured here.
Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) is fun, so far I've got Gold with three stars on every cup in 50 cc and 100 cc so far, 150 cc is proving to be challenging. Unlocked all the characters and all the normal parts, but I don't know if I'll ever get all the golden parts. Remember that Mario Kart 7 community I made but never used? And I had, like, ONE race on Mario Kart DS with a few of you way back in the day. Maybe we should find a time to race each other in Mario Kart 8. When are you guys typically free during the week?
I haven't registered my copy of Mario Kart 8 in Club Nintendo to get my free game offer yet. I guess I should, now that it's the next Club Nintendo "year" (2014-2015) so the points go towards this one (I already got Platinum status in the 2013-2014 year). Which game should I get? I already have New Super Mario Bros. U. I already played Wind Waker on the GameCube, is there any reason to get the HD one? Wii Party U is okay, I guess, but I think if I wanted it it might be better value to get it on disc since it comes with a Wii Remote, if I ever needed another. So I'm leaning towards Pikmin 3, even though I don't get the hype, despite finishing Pikmin 2 (even the Challenge Mode, or whatever it was called).
On Canada Day I finished Shovel Knight (PC). Loved it! I used a NES replica USB controller for the full effect! :D Awesome. Awesome soundtrack, too, by virt (Jake Kaufman), who's done a lot of stuff lately, and Manami Matsumae, who's composed for the first and last Mega Man games as well as Mighty No. 9. I can't get enough of the first stage, Plains of Passage's music, "Strike The Earth! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7rhEKTX-sE)" I think if someone's looking for a new game to map with NES aesthetics, Shovel Knight would be a great idea! :D I can understand why some people are saying it could be a contender for "game of the year".
I also played the demos of both Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (Wii U) and Super Smash Bros. For 3DS (3DS) at Best Buy's Smash-Fest event, and got my shiny coin in the mail yesterday thanking me for my participation. On the 3DS, I just played Smash Run. The 3DS version will take some getting used to...I don't like the button configuration (why B and A for attacks when it should be Y and B?) and it's just too small! I will likely still get it, though. The Wii U version is spectacular as expected...on the first day of the event I won one match with the revamped Zero Suit Samus (amusing since I never use her much in Brawl), and on the second day I won one with Mega Man in a three-way Sudden Death. Quite fluky, I'd say, since I wouldn't consider myself good at the game. Looking forward to both (though for the Wii U one more) later this year!
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I finally found the time to play a game after god knows how many weeks of overtime and family obligations. Thankfully, it happens to be Shovel Knight and it's every bit as gorgeous on the graphics and audio fronts as everyone has been saying. Jake Kaufman is one of my favourite chiptune composer, although he can also do modern stuff; he's responsible for successfully updating the soundtrack for Ducktales Remastered, a feat I never imagined to be possible given how iconic the music of the NES game was.
Would anyone be surprised that I gave mapping Shovel Knight a try, and it's every bit as frustrating as you can imagine it to be thanks to several layers of parallax background that can't be turned off and a very limited color palette which makes separating everything that much more difficult. If I even complete the first stage (Plains of Passage), it will be a miracle.
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Would anyone be surprised that I gave mapping Shovel Knight a try, and it's every bit as frustrating as you can imagine it to be thanks to several layers of parallax background that can't be turned off and a very limited color palette which makes separating everything that much more difficult. If I even complete the first stage (Plains of Passage), it will be a miracle.
Speaking of which... (https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=2044)
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Shovel Knight is the bomb! I just bought it last week and it's very fun. Very pro quality for an Indie Game. I'm bout' to play some more. I've made it to the second part of the map after just beating The Reaper. And yes I can see how this game would be frustrating to map. But of course the first layer of trees in the first area are more-less running at the same speed of the one's behind so that layer could probably be eliminated. It'd clear up the map so the main path and platforms could be noticed easier.
Other than finishing Sword of Vermilion again after 15 long years making the maps, this is the only game I am currently playing aside from a few Indie Retro Demo's I played through that didn't take long.
Sword of Destiny (Demo only ATM) - Nice little Hack n Slash Side Scrolling Y's !!! type with neat Gfx and sound
Dungeon Heroes (Demo only) - Nice Dungeon Crawler in the vein of Dungeon Master with Turn based battles
Regalia Alpha (Demo only) - Another 8-16bit stylized Indie Game.
Chasm (Demo only) Metrovania style Rpg with very nice quality original stuff! This one I'm anticipating cause it'll be a nice long game. Lots of nice little things to do and descover in it.
EDIT:
It might just be me, but the first level of Shovel Knight reminding me of a Mega Man Stage with the sound, the ladders, and the retro feel.
Anyone else had that sense?
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It might just be me, but the first level of Shovel Knight reminding me of a Mega Man Stage with the sound, the ladders, and the retro feel.
Anyone else had that sense?
For me, it's the handling and controls that gives it a feel of a crossover between Mega Man (movement and super responsive controls) and Duck Tales (the downward shovel attack).
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My friend suggested my a mmorpg game he has been playing for some time now to try it out with him, I think its something pwi. I will be giving that a try.
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I've been busy with stuff, so I haven't had much time for games lately. I did, however, finish Pikmin 3 (Wii U), which I enjoyed but thought was rather short. I have yet to return to it and do the Missions and try for a better ending by getting all of the fruit, though.
I'm currently playing Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright (3DS), on Chapter 3, liking it so far. Interesting how (so far), they've managed to keep the formulas of both games intact yet they also seem to fit together well.
Speaking of crossovers, funny how nearly all of the games I'm looking forward to playing are crossovers of some sort...
-Bravely Default (3DS) is a game I didn't buy right away and only bought recently, and my brother already finished it, but I have yet to start it. While not a crossover, the job classes and spells are from the Final Fantasy universe, and I've heard it's a Final Fantasy game in all but name. Funny how they slap the Final Fantasy name all over the place, except this game which apparently feels more like an FF than those other ones. Guess I'll see.
-Hyrule Warriors (Wii U) mashes together characters from different Zelda games, and it mashes the Zelda series with the Dynasty Warriors series. I don't like the "preorder from different store chains, get different costumes" thing, hopefully they'll all be available somehow, but just in case, I preordered at EB Games to get the Ocarina Of Time getup, because I feel it's the most iconic, even though I also like the Twilight Princess look.
-Super Smash Bros. For 3DS (3DS) and Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (Wii U), having played the demo I think I will probably enjoy playing as Mega Man, I'm hoping Pac-Man will be good too, so besides being a Nintendo universe crossover we have Capcom and Namco's mascots in the mix (assuming you can call Mega Man a Capcom mascot anymore). And Sonic The Hedgehog from Sega, probably the best game he's been in for a while...
-Bayonetta (Wii U) and Bayonetta 2 (Wii U) I am sure I will check out...and while not truly a crossover, it does feature Nintendo character costumes, and equipping them allows for some of their moves too, like Samus's Screw Attack and Power Bombs (though that might just be in 2, and not the original, I think).
-Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (PC) features a whole bunch of DC heroes and villains, more than the previous one did, I don't get why they just don't call it "Lego Justice League"...
-Pokémon: Omega Ruby (3DS) while my brother plays Pokémon: Alpha Sapphire (3DS), I'm looking forward to catching them all again, since all I have left in Pokémon Y is just transferring and hatching, not catching, so hopefully this makes it easier. While not a crossover, the games do connect with each other...okay, fine, so it's a real stretch...
-Just Dance 2015 (Wii U) features the Tetris theme...
Crossovers in games I already have that are still currently in progress include...
-Game & Wario (Wii U) - which I only got because Nintendo's Platinum rewards are lame this year - has a number of Nintendo references.
-Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) I already have played, though I haven't gotten Gold with three stars in the 150 cc cups yet. It's a crossover because DLC is coming soon including Link from The Legend Of Zelda, Isabel and Villager from Animal Crossing, and a kart based on the Blue Falcon vehicle from F-Zero. Also, new tracks, themed from Excitebike, F-Zero and The Legend Of Zelda. The first of these is this November, I think.
-Ultra Street Fighter IV (PC), I guess the inclusion of characters originating in Final Fight make it a crossover too.
-Project X Zone (3DS) I could grab from my brother, since he seems to have given up on that...if I really needed more to play. That's that Namco/Capcom/Sega mashup game.
-Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright (3DS) I mentioned above, which I'm mentioning again just because.
And in the non-crossover queue, I feel like I should get back to Tesla Effect (PC) and get the other endings.
Aside from those already out, all the games I mentioned above will be available before the end of the year, so I am definitely going to be busy...and who says Nintendo gamers have nothing to play?
Anyone else going to be tackling some or any of the above?
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Finished the main story modes in Bayonetta (Wii U) (Normal difficulty) and Bayonetta 2 (Wii U) (2nd Climax difficulty). Love them both. The second game is, in my opinion, better than the first for a number of reasons, but most certainly visually, with more vibrant colours, but both games are great! Highly recommended if you have a Wii U, and if you don't, Bayonetta 2 (which is absolutely exclusive to the Wii U) should be a tipping point for those of you on the fence who don't have one yet. As if it's not enough that there are already a number of good games for the Wii U, Link is coming to Mario Kart 8 later this week and Super Smash Bros. For Wii U comes out next week. Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2's action and setting is a refreshing change for those who might be (somehow) tired of Nintendo's typical offerings, and the fact you get both games for the price of one is pretty sweet, especially if you missed the first one on the Xbox 360/PS3 five years ago (plus the rerelease of Bayonetta includes Nintendo-themed costumes).
I still have lots to do and unlock in both, most notably defeating the final boss in the first game WITHOUT the Climax Brace to get a proper ranking for the chapter (and overall), and doing all the post-game Witch Trials in the second game, but I wanted to quickly pop in and express that I think that Bayonetta 2 is definitely a contender for one of the best games I've played this year, or even in the past few years.
I should probably return to Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright (3DS) and finishing that (I left off quite a while ago with Professor Layton (supposedly) turned to gold, poor guy), and doing Looker's quest in Pokémon Y (3DS) to clear up those stories in time for Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (Wii U) and Pokémon: Omega Ruby (3DS) next week.
Also, I wasn't sure if I was planning on getting Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Wii U) but the latest trailer shown in last week's Nintendo Direct makes the game way too cute to ignore now.
Do I play too many games? :P
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Mario Kart 8 is the only Mario Kart I haven't played. I don't even own a Wii U. wished I did. Can't afford one.
I have been playing (and testing, helping out making stuff for it) Dungeon Heores
http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/dungeon-heroes/23169/
The other game I've been playing is one I just started making maps for that no maps exist for nowhere. NES Code Name: Viper. I've already mad it to level 7 which is the last level but just started mapping level one last night and finished it. I'll post it in a starter thread. Although Code Name Viper is... what some might say a rip-off of Rolling Thunder, it has it's own little charm to it. As others may have said, it's more of an Homage than rip-off. Lots of games are the same but different. Clones what have ya.. Heh :)
That's all I've been playing lately after Felix the Cat.
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I picked up Captain Toad: Trasure Tracker (Wii U) on Saturday morning because I noticed there was a deal at Target (while supplies last) where you could get a free amiibo with the purchase of that (or Mario Kart 8 or Super Smash Bros. For Wii U, but I already have those). Since I had just gotten a Peach and Yoshi amiibo from my Secret Santa at work just the day before, my only remaining choices among those available if I didn't need duplicates were DK or Kirby. My brother has a weird thing against DK, so we picked up Kirby. Now for the first wave all I need - if I feel I must collect them all - are Fox (I've seen him around, but not much) and DK (a bit more plentiful, but my brother's weird about him though), and those three (Marth, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer) that according to the Internet may or may not actually be discontinued depending on the source and the day this past week...it doesn't help that I've never seen them in stores (though my co-worker has) and that these stories are probably causing everyone to snatch the few of them up when they do appear. Clearly they made quantities of these figures based on popularity - before all this, it was often joked there'd be many Wii Fit Trainers all over the place, which is clearly not true - and if you want Mario or Link or Pikachu, it seems they're among the easiest to find anywhere.
Anyway Captain Toad is fun but short...finished Chapter 1 and 2 (with all gems and the objective along the way, rarely getting stumped - except for finding a couple Golden Mushrooms) that very day, and finished Chapter 3 on Sunday. The last three objectives were all Coin-based which were actually challenging, but I got them all before the day was over. So it was literally a one-weekend game, at least for the main part. I did all of the Bonus stages available up to before the ending, but other than the replay of the Chapter 3 Prologue, I still have the post-game Bonus stages to do, so there's that, I guess. Story was barely there, unsurprisingly, but I liked the ending which actually did surprise me a little.
Despite being finishable in the period of a rental (that is, if I could find any place that rents games anymore), I'm actually glad it was short and that I could finish it before my temporary relocation (also why I can't update VGMaps.com that often, lacking Internet access at this other place). Also, with so many Wii U games that came out this year that I haven't yet 100%ed, it's not so bad a thing that Captain Toad isn't a massively epic game.
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I know this thread is super old and nobody's replied to it in over a year and a half, but it's been too quiet here lately and I've finally managed to play a whole bunch of games over the last year I'd like to talk about! Maybe that would get the ball rolling again? Anyway, here's the first bunch of them (I have almost as many left to write)!
Note that I'm not taking into account the price of each game since nowadays, most of these are regularly on sale on GOG.com, Steam and other places with 50% off or more.
-Antichamber (PC): This game is one of my favourite game of all time and is a first-person puzzle where the goal is to reach the exit of the complex you're in and, alternatively, solve every puzzle room and find every sign. The art direction is great both in terms of visuals (everything is cell-shaded and white with the occasional dash of colored lighting) and sounds (very ambiant music with sound cues like bird wings or thunder to help situate yourself). The thing is, the game world is made up of a large number of puzzle rooms that are connected in all sorts of counter-intuitive and/or impossible ways; if you like non-Euclidian spaces, this will be right up your allway. The world is confusing enough that the game keeps an updated map of the world keeping track of what you've explored and/or solved in the starting "lobby", a separate room you can always return too where you can use said map to travel to any previously visited room of your choice instantly.
Anyway, completing every puzzle isn't required but really fun and finding every hidden dev room adds some challenge to the game. The puzzles are never explained but the game teaches you its mechanics through environmental storytelling, and the solutions can be a simple as finding and using every exit from a room (some might be hidden) or opening doors locked behind block puzzles which involve manipulating little blocks using colored "guns" once you've found them. The game also likes to play with your expectations, like showing you the exit door behind a large window in the lobby; you'll actually end up behind this window several time while playing but the exit door will only actually become the exit door near the end of the game. I'm really bad at summarizing why I loved this game so much but basically, it's both calming and stumulating and there's nothing else quite like it.
-Back to the Future: The Game (PC): One of the older Telltale Games, it doesn't look or play as well as more recent offerings but it functions pretty well as an interactive fourth Back to the Future movie. The story is pretty good and does explore Hill Valley during a new time period (1931 during the prohibition), and it does get somewhat epic in places. Overall however, it feels a bit uneven and the final story runs out of steam a bit early. Still, the voice acting is great (with Christopher Loyd reprising his role as Doc) as is the music, we get to meet a teenage Doc, and experience a whole bunch of time alterations and paradoxes that don't always make sense but that's Back to the Future for you.
-Broken Age: The Complete Adventure (PC): It's funny that so many people still don't get what Kickstarter is about (funding an idea, not pre-ordering a product) or in this case, don't get what the campaign was about (making a documentary series showing the realities of developing an adventure game). By the way, the Double Fine Adventure documentary is amazing and practically required viewing to see all that goes on behind the scene.
As for the game, while I loved Act 1, I felt let down quite a bit by Act 2. Technically, it's very good (graphics, music, voice acting) and the story premise is intriguing (two teenagers from widly different circumstances, in this case a supersticious village and a futuristic spaceship, find their destinies intertwined). However, the second act barely introduces anythying new, taking place in almost all the same locations from act one but with harder puzzles and the story resolution just doesn't work as well as they though. I still enjoyed playing it though.
-Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PC): This was one of my favourite puzzle/adventure game in recent years. Set in a medieval fantasy world, you play two brothers as they set out on a long quest across many perilous regions to find and bring back water from the Tree of Life in order to save their dying father. You control both brothers at the same time for which you should really use a gamepad (unless you have a keyboard with n-key rollover) with each brother being assigned one joystick for movement and one trigger for action, a setup that becomes surprising intuitive really fast. The brothers can never get too far from one another and must help each other for all sorts of puzzles all the way through the game. I won't spoil the story, but the bond between the two made me really emotional near the end.
-Day of the Tentacle Remastered (PC): Well, there's not much to say about this game except to say that they've remastered one of the best classical graphic adventure game. I'm not sure a newcomer to the genre would like it as much as an old-timer like me, but as far as remastering goes, it's the best one yet for a Lucasarts game. The graphics, sounds, voices and music are practically identical to the original, only with higher quality/resolution and you can actually compare to the original with the touch of a key at any time. Aside from that, the new interaction interface streamlines the game a bit by removing useless commands on a given object, the puzzles are still somewhat logical considering the horrors of the adventure genre and the story (three geeky friends try to stop an evil tentacle from conquering the world) is amazing!
-Expand (PC): I really enjoyed this relatively unknown game and I really wished its maker had enjoyed more success with it. It's basically as much a game as it is a meditation. The gameplay is simple, you guide a little square around a circular "labyrinth" while really soothing piano music plays out in the background. You move in relation to the center and the path is always circular. Each time a "screen" is completed by reaching the end of the path, the whole screen rearranges itself as a new path with more obstacles opens up. Sometimes, the path requires that you move inward or outward with the whole labyrinth "zooming" in or out, which is weird but cool. There are actually 6 areas in total to traverse, with the first five teaching you each a new mechanic (touching anything red resets the current room, some obstacles disappear in certain areas, etc). I know it sound simple and to be fair, it's not a very long or difficult game (probably a few hours at most) unless you're really bad at hand-eye coordination. But the music coupled with the themes of the various areas of the game just work really well. The music in dynamic and in general is really soothing except for the final area where the intensity just keeps increasing with the danger of the level itself. This definitely goes into my favourite games of all time list.
-Firewatch (PC): This game is more of an interactive experience (which sounds better than walking simulator) but I love those, so it's not a problem for me! I can't really say much without spoiling the story, but you play as newly-hired fire lookout Henri who took the job to get away from personal problems. The game stretches across a number of (non-consecutive) days as you complete your daily tasks while your only real contact is with your supervisor Delilah via radio. As time goes by, you get to explore your feelings with her regarding your life and problems as mysterious events start taking place in the area you monitor. All I'll say is that the game's stylized graphics look amazing and I really got involved in the story and my character. Some people hated the ending but I was quite happy with it, and even though it wasn't a very long game even after exploring everything (3 to 4 hours), I enjoyed the experience a great deal.
-Fran Bow (PC): A good old graphical adventure games that ventures into both horror and fantasy quite a bit. I won't say too much about the story except that you play as Fran Bow, a little girl held in a psychiatric hospital in 1944 following the murder of both her parents before her eyes. She eventually gets pills that allow her to see another, more horrifying layer of reality and that's when things really start unraveling. As the game progresses, what's real and what's in Fran's possibly deranged mind becomes less and less clear as she attemps to escape from the hospital and find out what really happened to her family. The art style for the game is rather unique but it fits the theme well. I liked it very much all the way to the end even if I found the ending itself too open to interpretation.
-Gateways (PC): This is an indie platformer that is the closest thing to a 2D version of Portal (aside from the actual "Portal 2D" flash game). The graphics are a bit amateurish yet charming and the gameplay is really solid. As you explore a rather large laboratory with your portal gun, you can at any time create two linked portal and the genius lies in using line-of-sight to display exactly what lies beyond each portal from your point of view. Eventually, you'll find a few upgrades like the Size Gun (allowing you to come out smaller or bigger than when you entered), Rotation Gun (when exiting a portal, you kept your orientation as if still affected by gravity on the other side, so this allows you to flip the whole world by 90, 180 or 270 degrees) and the Time Gun (allows you to exit a portal before entering it) which lets you complete puzzles with more than one instance of you! The puzzles mostly involve opening doors by holding down switches or redirecting laser beams but thanks to the gun upgrades, the solution eventually become very involved and complex so if it gets too difficult, you can just go do another puzzle since it's an open world. I loved Portal for its mechanics so of course I enjoyed this too.
-Gone Home (PC): This "infamous" narrative experience probably doesn't require much introduction, but I'll offer one anyway. Basically, you play as a young woman in 1995 coming home on a stormy night to the new family house after an extended time overseas only to find out that both her parents and her younger sister are missing. Saying anything more would spoil the game and the impact it might have. In terms of gameplay, all you basically do is explore the house while trying to piece together what happened to everybody (hopefully nobody here on VGMaps is ideologically and rabidly opposed to this type of game or its story). I love this type of game, was really taken with the story and the characters and didn't regret buying it.
-Knock-Knock (PC): This is a rather bizarre 2D puzzle games where you play an unintelligible man with insomnia trying to make it through a number of nights in an ever-changing house where nightmares or entities keep appearing in rooms left in the dark for too long. You have to visit these rooms to fix the light, but it's not clear if doing that is ultimately good or bad, as lights tend to burn out and can attract the attention of "things"... I'll be honest, this game is strange and as intriguing as is it frustrating. It doesn't really explain its rules to you and you pretty much have to experiment to know which light to fix, where to hide, what to do if you can leave the house... It's been quite a while since I've played and I've forgotten much of what little I'd determined so it's hard to explain clearly. It's a trippy experience though, so if you like bizarre unsettling games that *aren't* gory, you might take a look at this if it's on sale.
-Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (PC): Okay, I know I keep saying "favourite games of all time" but I guess it's inevitable considering I'm going through a backlog of games stretching several years. So anyway: this is one of my favourite games of all time :P. Imagine a 2D Metroidvania platformer with the look and feel of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and you'll get the idea. You play as Ori, a little guardian spirit tasked with reviving the forest of Nibel after the Spirit Tree had its light stolen. As you travel across the forest looking for the Elements of Water, Wind and Warth, you'll both heal the world (making the water safe to swim in, creating large wind currents for vertical travel) and earn new abilities (wall climbing, dash, ground stomp, swimming, etc), becoming almost as mobile and powerful as Samus Aran herself at her most powerful. The graphics and music are amazing and you really have to see and hear it to understand how good this all is. It's also quite a challenging game even after you've earn every upgraded and max out your skill trees. I heartily recommend the Definite Edition which improves on the original (which it comes with if you buy it on Steam) by adding instant travel across save points, the ability to revisit a few areas that used to become inaccessible after completing them, and two new areas with their accompanying abilities and story extension. If you like beautiful platformers, you need to play this!
-Soldats Inconnus: Mémoires de la Grande Guerre (PC): Also known in English as "Valiant Hearts: The Great War", this is a puzzle adventure game with comicbook style graphics taking place during World War One inspired by letters from soldiers and people of the time. You alternatively play as Frenchman Emile, his German son-in-law Karl, Freddie the American volunteer and Anna the nurse. Each of these characters find him or herself serving, willingly or not, in this terrible conflict. This isn't a shooter however, and you usually find yourself avoiding gunfire while making your way across the trenches, healing injured soldiers, saving civilans from chemical attacks and just trying to survive in general a conflict that brought out the worst in humanity. I really can't say much more since that would rob the story of its impact except to say that as cartoony as the game looks (and sounds in a few places), it really helps to understand some of the horror and insanity the people caught in that war went through. I played it in French since it was originally a French game, one of the character is from France and the voice acting, especially at the end of the game, was just so moving... I cried. Not just a few tears, but a whole bunch of tears for a minute or so.
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Yes quite old but hey we are all getting older by the minute and time passes before we know it!
I also played Brothers: A Tale of two sons. The controls are a bit testy at times but I manage.
I've played and finished (Mostly Retro 8bit/16bit Steam Games)
Oniken
Odalus: Thew Dark Call
Jet Gunner
Castle in the Darkness
Evoland 1
Strider HD
SuperFrog HD! (Yes SuperFrog!)
Double Dragon Neon
Aggelos - Very nice Wonderboy in Monsterland style game. I completed the demo but the full game may not even be ready. He has 2 other games called Eon which is a very nice and colorful Shadow of the Beast style game all original gfx and a Zelda Classics Project full game called Golvellius la quete du second. It's prety nice for a Zelda Classics game.
http://www.wonderboy-bobi.com/aggeloseng.php
I finished most of them and played a few Demos that haven't came out full yet but this is about it since over the last 8-10 months of my absence.
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Anyone playing Neko Atsume ::) ::) ::)
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I know this thread is super old and nobody's replied to it in over a year and a half, but it's been too quiet here lately after reading this i decided to give it a try and I've finally managed to play a whole bunch of games over the last year. Does GNC have phenq? (https://alvenda.com/phenq-gnc/) I'd like to talk about ! Maybe that would get the ball rolling again? Anyway, here's the first bunch of them (I have almost as many left to write)!
-Back to the Future: The Game (PC): One of the older Telltale Games, it doesn't look or play as well as more recent offerings but it functions pretty well as an interactive fourth Back to the Future movie. The story is pretty good and does explore Hill Valley during a new time period (1931 during the prohibition), and it does get somewhat epic in places. Overall however, it feels a bit uneven and the final story runs out of steam a bit early. Still, the voice acting is great (with Christopher Loyd reprising his role as Doc) as is the music, we get to meet a teenage Doc, and experience a whole bunch of time alterations and paradoxes that don't always make sense but that's Back to the Future for you.
This was the game for me. I was (and still am) so big fan of the movie (all the parts, especially the fourth), that I kept on watching the movies and playing the game. Your mention of the game brought old memories back. Going to start playing the game gain.
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It's always interesting to see what other people in the circles you follow are playing at the time. So why not all share here and see where our interests are. And just the games you're playing for entertainment, mapping projects aside.
I myself haven't been playing too terribly much lately, exams and all looming. I finished Eternal Sonata a few weeks ago, and everything I have to say about the game is wonderful. Being on the 360, it's one of the few bright and colourful games for the system, and one of the only JRPGs for Xbox gamers. It deviates from the typical RPG style in the figting system, a mix of turn-based and action fighting, with special attacks dependant on whether your character is in the light or dark. A very enganging story and a weonderful score make it a wonderful game inside and out.
Thank you for your advice.
Before that chugged through Rock Band with a group of friends, mainly on vocals since I was unanimously voted the only one of the group who could hold a tune, heh. Typical rhythm game, but changes it up kind of how it incorporates karaoke too, and all band members depend on the others to get through the song. All different styles of music here, not just classic rock like Guitar Hero boasts. There's also a pretty sweet character creation option, and you can change the visual aspects of your band member as you go through the campaign, getting money at gigs to buy new clothes, haircuts, accessories, and even deck them out in tattoos. The guys always hated it when we girls would always "go shopping" after a few gigs. but it makes it also fun to just watch the game.
I've also been playing Prey on the 360 on and off for the last few months. Not too far into the game, so it's hard to give a true impression of it, but so far I like how it plays with gravity. Nowhere near how they do it in Portal, but it's fun nonetheless.
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This looks like a job for Science!
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I play mario, hugo and pikachu game
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Recently I play again Elder Scrolls Online and in my opinion, it is currently the best MMORPG on the market which can be a long-awaited slayer of WoW :)
In addition, we often return to the iconic Fireboy and Watergirl with a younger sister. I miss multiplayer games that you can play with the other player on one device :c
For the curious:
- ESO (https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/home)
- WoW (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/)
- F&W (https://fireboyandwatergirl.site/forest-temple)