VideoGame_Discussion

I'm not gonna report anything until Sarna Senpai gets back. I'll just heap it on him all at once when he gets back.

#43 down: Fusion Frenzy on Xbox. I would like to count this toward the Makin' Money with Minigames! badge.

This game was...underwhelming. I'll be honest, I'm really not a fan of games entirely made up of minigames, but I beat this to work toward the badge. Plus, I needed an Xbox clear. The premise of some of the games is actually not so bad (like, for example, knocking each other off of a platform that gets smaller and smaller while rolling around in neon-colored giant hamster ball looking things), but the controls are slippery, which makes it a chore to play.

Game #28 of 2024

Rez Infinite on
This will count towards the "Now You're Playing with Plastic" badge, because I used a PS Move controller (except an extra mode where you had to use DualShock 4).

7th in May, 34th overall, 7th on
Evil West

Was pretty interested in this when it dropped last year, so when it ended up on GP I installed it right away. It was enjoyable, but for sure not easy. I beat it on normal and only 5+% of achievement earners have done so as well (with an additional ~2.5% beating it on novice as the achievements stack). I enjoyed many things, but found the combat, at times, frustrating. Nearly every encounter is in an arena like setting vs. running into just a few and often you get surrounded and it can be overwhelming and I died many, many... many times. But it looked really good with just about every level of the 16 looking unique and with lots of color saturation. Story was alright, sound/music/voice was solid. The enemy designs were really cool and I am thinking about pushing my buddy to try the game with me on NG+ as with a 2nd person the challenging encounters *ought* to be a bit easier to deal with.

#44 down: DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace on PS4. This, alongside my previous clear of Dexed, gets me the Destroy the Core badge.

DC League of Super-Pets is not a great game. It reuses assets everywhere and almost every level feels exactly the same as the others. (You're flying around dodging buildings and shooting a bunch of robots controlled by Lex Luthor.) The only real variation comes from the bosses, which were somewhat more interesting. There's also one trophy that was pretty annoying on the way to finishing up the platinum for which you have to not kill any lexbots for an entire level. That sounds easy at first, but every level has multiple parts where all these lexbots fly toward you and can run into you. Normally, that's no big deal. When they hit you, you get points for beating them, and they don't do that much damage. However, if you just barely clip a single one, you don't get the trophy. I finally found a level with fewer things to accidentally run into and then just ran through it over and over until I finally managed to dodge everything. Other than that, the trophies are pretty easy and straightforward. I mainly gave this game a chance because I needed one more game for Destroy the Core, and I noticed that this was leaving PS+ soon.

My #38 is Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cdtqDnESp8c5ffKu6

Didn't like this as much as the first. While the original delt with Senua's psychosis and inner demons, this one introduces other people which i feel subtract from what made the original so interesting. Still a great cinematic experience. I wish they made the puzzles and combat a little more fleshed out.

Game #29 of 2024
You Are Being Followed on

Even though the game is barely 30 minutes long, I'll count it for Gamer's Day badge. I decided to get all the trophies, which you can do in two or three playthroughs with a guide, except I don't like having to remove the VR headset to constantly look at a guide, so it ended up taking me five or six playthroughs to get them all because one requires you to beat it within a certain time limit and that one alone took three playthroughs to get.

Game #30 of 2024

Pirate Flight on

Rolled Credits on Animal Well this weekend.

I think all of the 10/10 hype around it is overblown, but I did really enjoy it. Written review coming soon

I beat Heavenly Guardian and Super Mario Land .
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOjSMCGbIAAKWdY?format...[/imgt]
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOovgZRaQAAtT4W?format...[/imgt]

Heavenly Guardian is a pleasant little arcade-styled game. It's similar to Pocky and Rocky, but about icicle-shooting goddesses competing to be the most beautiful (the single-player mode has a different premise with more story, but I was playing the multiplayer). It's not a perfect experience, but it speaks to me, and anyone can have fun with it if they give it a chance. The sound effects can get annoying after a while, though.

It's about time Super Mario Land made it to NSO. It's still simple fun, just the way I like it.

I'mma back from my vacation. It was very nice, even though my cousin broke his foot beforehand. So I had to explore Wilderness waterpark alone, sadly. But he had his new girlfriend to keep him company in the surrounding Wisconsin Dells, so he wasn't bored. We met up again for dinner and bought candy at the nearby sweets shop. It was a relaxing, fun trip all around.

Unleash the beast, @ErickRPG .

My #39 is Dead Space (2023)

#45 down: Hubris on PSVR2. This, alongside my previous clear of Robocop: Rogue City, gets me the 2nd Amendment badge.

Hubris is a sci-fi shooter that also has some crafting mechanics and some (very fun actually) platforming. Weirdly, for a shooter, the traversal was my favorite part. The swimming in VR is really cool, and the jumping around and climbing was pretty fun and smooth. Falling from a high height is a bad idea in this game though (serious damage) unlike in Legendary Tales, where you can fall from really high up with no damage (which really feels like falling in VR and is pretty incredible). It's not that hard to fall, as evidenced by the trophy for falling 10 times in different places. The actual shooting mechanics are decent, although the guns themselves are underwhelming (a pistol, a shotgun, and an automatic weapon, each of which have unlimited ammo and look basically the same regardless of upgrades (which are also underwhelming, as they just slightly change the cosmetics and up the damage a bit). The story was reasonably interesting. I should also note that this game is beautiful. It's one of the best games I've played in VR graphically. Some parts are just beautiful. Looking at this game made me wish we could get a remake of Farpoint in Unreal 5 on PSVR2.

Game #31 of 2024

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island played via

For the Retro Talkshop Thread's Game of the Month, I finished The Secret of Monkey Island on my Retro PC.

Number: 24
Full Title: The Secret of Monkey Island
Platform Played: PC
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PC
Original Platforms: PC
Badge: Hairbrush Steelwool (1/2)

I don't think I've ever finished a point-and-click game. I've played through a few demos, the most memorable being - appropriately - The Curse of Monkey Island on a PC Games demo disc. I've almost instantly gotten stuck with others, like Leisure Suit Larry. (Not even the promise of pixelated boobs to a teenager was enough to move me forward.) But damn it, I needed something to exercise my new mt32-pi setup, and what better way to do it than with some damn fine pirate reggae. Thankfully, the Retro Talkshop Thread was willing to vote for it during our May of Music.

This game makes absolutely no sense in the best kind of way. I don't think there's a single puzzle or objective in the game that got a "How clever!" reaction out of me. Almost universally, every time I moved a scene forward, I felt the pain and frustration of three-and-a-half decades of hint line calls, pounded keyboards, and angry mouse clicks. I know this is par for the course with ancient Lucasarts adventure games, and I'll forgive it simply because watching the little world unfold so primitively yet beautifully was so much fun.

And yes, it's silly as Hell. When I heard the recipe for grog not five minutes into the game ("PEPPERONI!"), I knew I was in for a treat. Sword fighting with insults is brilliant. The rag tag pirate crew is superlative. And I snickered every time somebody screwed up poor Toycrunch Greasepool's name. The music, while great, wasn't exactly the transformative experience I was expecting, given how many MIDI nuts on YouTube rave about it, but this game pulls off so much personality even with total silence that I'll give it a pass.

With one island tour done, I'm trying to wrap up Yoshi's Island for the Game Boy Advance before diving into next month's Retro Game of the Month - whatever it may be - as well as finally putting Pac-Man World to bed and finding those final friends. The big question for 2024 is when I'll find the time to finally play Diablo IV.

I beat Prince of Persia: Lost Crown on Switch. This is also the first Prince of Persia game I've ever played.

BloodPuppetX wrote:

Do you recommend it to a first-timer?

SupremeSarna wrote:

It's a pretty lengthy (about 25 hours) Metroidvania. And a really well made one. If that sounds good to you, then it doesn't matter if you've played any other game in the series. If there were any references to prior games, I obviously didn't notice it. (Well, besides an optional outfit from Sands of Time.)

@ErickRPG You're running out of time to submit your clears before the month wraps up.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I don't have many clears, I have like one long game I beat. And I don't submit it until I beat another one (because of the way I name them, it helps me keep track of how #many# I beat).

Game #32 of 2024

Remember Me on
First PC clear of the year.

Time's up for the month of May! I'll update the OP tomorrow.

Tasked with playing through a Psygnosis game at some point in 2024, I used it as an opportunity to settle a grudge that's been stewing for a long, long time.

Number: 25
Full Title: WipEout
Platform Played: PlayStation
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PlayStation
Original Platforms: PlayStation
Badge: Race Drivin' (2/2)

I've used these posts to talk about how I consider the WipEout franchise to be my perfect gaming franchise: a futuristic aesthetic, speed, powerful weapons, and an incredible soundtrack. It's Ground Zero for my love of techno and other electronic music. It was the first real computer game I bought for my family's new then-modern PC. It spawned a decades long love affair with the series across every PlayStation platform, which involved me interrupting three hour Amtrak ride to stop at the Times Square Toys 'r Us to pick up a copy of the newly-dropped WipEout Pure.

And despite all that, I never finished the original. I squeaked through the first four tracks many times in the early days, never making it past the fifth because I didn't know about airbrakes. (Didn't use brakes much back then in general, come to think of it.) When the game dropped digitally on the PlayStation Network, I found the shoulder buttons and made it to the infamous final track - Silverstream - only to get absolutely destroyed every single time.

This time, I was going to sit down and do it right. Having learned from a Digital Foundry video that the European version has an expanded soundtrack and is well optimized for the PAL standard, I booted that version up on my MiSTer to hear the extra tunes. I connected my black NeGCon with SNAC so I could use real analog controls with the game, a luxury I'm not sure how I ever lived without for such a fast-paced game. And I played through it on an analog display, something I hadn't done since the PlayStation Picks demo disc in the console's early days.

Playing WipEout was a full-bore, full-body affair. Twisting the NeGCon turned into a full body affair with my torso leaning into turns and my feet skating around on the carpet like a cross-country skiing simulator. There was a lot of smashing into walls, a lot of internal "How am I ever going to do this?" self-flagellating, and a whole, whole lot of choking and missed opportunities, but eventually, miraculously, you learn the dance. You start waving and surfing through a high-level chicane that moments earlier was turning you inside out.

It took me two nights to finish Venom Class for the first time. Most of that time was spent on Silverstream, naturally, which seemed like it'd maintain its status as a White Whale until a lucky start threw me to the front of the pack, where I stayed for the remainder of the race. Each Rapier Class race after that took a night in and of it self, even the first, until I squeaked out a sudden third place win with Silverstream again this evening. I was so zonked out and focused that the victory screen actually took me by surprise. I hadn't noticed that I squeezed into third place - the lowest qualifying position - just before the last stretch of track.

Now, when am I going to do this with WipEout XL?

With 25 games into 2024, the Retro Talkshop Thread has voted in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter as the Game of the Month. I could take the easy way out and play the remaster, or even the original PC version (which got me so excited back in the day after I got my first real 3D card), but seeing the game is one of only a handful with perfect compatibility on the MiSTer, I'm going to use this to christen the platform's Nintendo 64 core on my setup. The controller is going to be a challenge, but I guess that's what Easy Mode is for.

I beat Injustice:Gods Among Us for the xbox 360 (beating this and Lego Batman gets me the quest for peace badge)

With May passing us by, we move on to June. I've updated the OP as usual, and now I'll give the monthly rundown.
-We beat 70 games this month, an improvement from April. @Bleed_DukeBlue took the crown with 13, though I was pretty close with 11.
-We cleared 12 new systems altogether. Bleed_DukeBlue got three of those. Good to see we're making use of all our consoles!
-We earned 15 badges this month, tying March but falling just short of April. As anticipated, Bleed_DukeBlue claimed most of those, with five. (I like seeing your dedication to this thread, sir!)
-In my news, my unpaid internship hired me officially! While I have to adjust to the new hours and responsibilities, I can confidently say I'm moving up in the world. Between that and a lucrative side gig, I'm sitting pretty right now.

Congrats on the new job! Thanks for all the effort you put into this thread as well!

SupremeSarna wrote:

I beat Castlevania (originally NES).
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPL0FpPbMAAaKtF?format...[/imgt]

I was racing a friend and won in 41 minutes. I feel a little bad since he prepared for weeks playing CV3 (we have a rule that you can’t practice on the game itself, but you can practice with similar games), then I just waltzed in and trounced him without doing any practice. But we both had fun, and that’s what matters.

#20 Unicorn Overlord -

Great game. Knew I'd love it the second the original trailer dropped. It's like Ogre Battle being resurrected after 20 some years of absence. It finally gets a successor. It's a great game. There are things I like about the original better. I think the skills and counter skills really overly complicate things. I kinda miss just having 1 witch and 2 pumpkin heads and just having them throw their spells and be done with it. But in this game you see buff and debuff, etc. You can see like 10 skills in a row from both teams buffing and debuffing before someone even throws an attack. Holding R2 helps speed it up. But it loses some of it's simple charm battle system. I still completely enjoyed the game though. And would 100% recommend it.

image

I finished Disney Illusion Island on Switch. Visuals are kinda boring, but it's a decent Metroidvania.

Game #7 Pokemon Gold

Gypsy wrote:
I'm waiting for Pokemon Bronze, personally.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Do I owe you a RTT badge for this, or do you already have it?

Renaissance2K wrote:

I have no idea. I don't think I played it back then, so go ahead and send it. =]

I was supposed to get the vault boy badge

#46 down: Hand of Fate 2 on PS4. With my previous clear of Hand of Fate, this gets me the All Aces badge.

Similar to Hand of Fate, this game involves traversing through various cards to complete stages with tokens you can unlock based on meeting certain conditions for each card. Hand of Fate was a lot of fun, but the sequel improves on it in a number of ways. Its level design is more devious (with some levels requiring trial and error to find one of the few strategies that will work effectively and the use of cards in non-obvious ways). Its weapon and magic variety is improved. Its combat (while not perfect) is definitely more fun. I put over 50 hours into this one, not just beating it but also unlocking the gold token (which requires meeting tricky secondary conditions for each challenge) for all 22 challenges. Although there are some tricky and tedious moments, it's a great game overall.

1st of June, 35th overall, 1st on
Magician Lord
Badge - 1st towards You're Winner!

This was possibly the worst game I've ever played. It looked nice and some mechanics were decent, but my goodness was it a quarter munching load of crap. Endlessly spawning enemies, that often spawned right into your location, your attacks were weak as heck, you at least respawned right where you died, but that often lead to an immediate damage point taken. I think I likely used more credits than I jumped. The jumping was floaty with plenty of fall to death, you got knock-backed on a hit, so one section where I needed to traverse a set of moving blocks across a chasm led to me using a save state right before and I still likely died 30 times. I'm sure I had to be playing this 'wrong'.

Some list I found a while back suggested this was a 'good' Neo-Geo title - they're smoking crack. Thing is, if the gameplay was better it could've been alright, but what a mess. You could find power-ups to transform into apparently 6 more effective characters, but 1 or 2 hits took you back to your base form, thus I almost didn't care as I got hit SO flarking often the power-ups were nearly pointless. I honestly less 'beat it' vs. 'endured it' or 'used enough virtual quarters to complete it'.

Date: 6/9
Number: 20
Title: Final Fantasy Tactics
Time: Last save at 78:24'14
Badge: "Days Gone By" [FFT and RTC] image proof at link: https://i.imgur.com/80Qmudh.png

Haven't beat a game in almost a month...sheesh. Spent a lot of time training useless units because I forgot about all of the overpowered story characters you get in the later part of the game. Haven't played through FFT in close to 20 years. In its prime I recall having several save files of maxed out 99:99'99" playtime.
At this point everyone knows how they feel about FFT. I don't think I need to say anything more than it's one of the best Tactical RPGs to date and in my view, one of the best games with the FF name.
image

My #40 is Alan Wake II DLC: Night Springs

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hq99Gp1P2K1cz7AH7

I love everything this developer is doing. Great content even if it is short. The song is great too. Can't wait for the next DLC.

Slickriven wrote:

It looks great. It sounds great. It's a great concept. But it's executed to be as much of a quarter muncher as possible, so screw all y'all trying to enjoy it.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Yeah, unless I totally played it wrong, but there were only 2 buttons I believe, so I'm not sure what else I could've done. Maybe progress more slowly? You could only fire 2 projectiles at once, so I could've tried to be more tactful I suppose.

2nd in June, 36th overall, 6th on
Lego Builder's Journey

This was in the 2nd random set of 14 games sourced from a huge set of games I identified that I was interested in playing. So it was generally something I wanted to play but I just had way too many options. So I selected 2 sets of 14 (based on how I had something like 475 games in columns of 100... it was complicated) and I've been seeking to beat at least 3 from each set. I started 1 from the first set (didn't get far) and tried another (that I very likely won't bother sticking with). But in the 2nd set I've now beat Psyvariar 2 and Lego Builder's Journey - it likely helps that both were shorter. Once I beat a 3rd from the 2nd set, I'll 'close' that set and likely create another. I also want to revisit the master list and adjust some things, add some games, etc. Such is the plight of someone who flat out has WAY too many games...

Lego Builder's Journey was alright, though I didn't like that you left mouse clicked to pick up and then rotate a block and long left click to place it - I got that wrong far too often. Right click to place would've been better, but that was to adjust the camera a little, which I rarely did, oh well. Otherwise it was an alright little story and game to play..... on to the next game!

Slickriven wrote:

I'm not sure either. Like all of those brutal arcade games of that era, it's that combination of obsession and pattern recognition that gets you through the game, I imagine.

It's a shame. If you play through the console versions, you can power up your character more so that each hit/de-power isn't a practical game-ender. But then you only have five credits to get through everything.