VideoGame_Discussion

@SupremeSarna hey I just noticed my list isn’t updated still. Missing #11 Stray , #12 is Little Hope and my #13 is below, Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope Thanks!

#13- Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
A bit on the longer side than the original for my tastes between 30-40ish hours and yea those constant enemy respawns within almost every battle get quite tedious and frustrating. But overall it was still a solid sequel I thought adding onto what made the original game such fun and simple strategy turn based combat. The story was cookie cutter defeat the dark energy yadda yadda to save the Star bits blah blah but we all know what we came here for. That sweet turn based combat with elemental twists. And there’s just something that satisfies a primal need watching you dash into enemies and making them go flying into a combo maneuver passive counter attack. 👌🏻 But alas I did enjoy this one as a whole. Not sure if I’d play a 3rd installment or not, especially if it’s as long as this entry and has those damn enemy respawns. I got my fill for a while.

Happy Birthday @SupremeSarna

@Slickriven Thanks! I’ve got a heck of a day lined up for me tomorrow, so I hope to wring every drop of birthday fun from it! I’ll be adding a special game then, too.

@TalonJedi87 All this week’s April clears will be posted on Friday/Saturday. Hope you understand. I’m trying to keep things organized for ease of use.

Ah okay. I understand. Thanks again!

Happy Birthday @SupremeSarna!

Happy Birthday @SupremeSarna

Happy Birthday dude! @SupremeSarna

Number: 14
Full Title: Darius
Platform Played:
Collection: Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: N/A

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails...

This is one of my favorite series, and it really shines in ultrawide, making it so unique among classic and definitely not "retro" games. I will cop to taking the "easy" path, though I think R may be easier than S.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! I’m having a great day-off so far! For one thing…
I beat one of my all-time favorite games, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon .
[imgt w=640 h=480]https://i.imgur.io/HpULvFx_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sha...[/imgt]

What a game! It changed the direction of the series into more of a (button-controlled) point-and-click action-adventure game, and given how great LM3 turned out, I think that’s for the better. Prof. E. Gadd has more character than ever, the combat has a layer of nuance that no other has matched, there are five whole mansions to explore, and it stays creative the whole way through. Next Level Games pumped a ton of charm into it, too. My favorite part will always be the ScareScraper, which pits you and up to three friends against a gauntlet of ghost-filled floors, constantly searching for a way to the roof. It even has a slew of unique boss ghosts to catch and keep!

I wanted to celebrate this game’s tenth anniversary, and now I can celebrate my birthday at the same time. Genius!

Best1989 wrote:

If you don't mind, I'd rather count these toward April, since the March sheet is already squared away. It makes it easier to update the thread when I'm working off a single sheet.

#27 down: A Robot Named Fight on Steam Deck. This is my first clear toward the Metroidvania badge. It was also my first Metroidvania roguelike, and it was rough. It's fun to play (addicting even), but it's also frustrating, because nothing carries over from playthrough to playthrough except for more items being unlocked as possible pickups in subsequent playthroughs. To make things even worse, you unlock new biomes the more you complete that can be randomly included in your future runs, and the new biomes are even harder than the previous ones. I mostly was able to stick with this thanks to being able to play it portably and having a lot of time at the airport.

#14 for me is Kirby’s Dream Land on via the Game Boy emulators

It is nice to be able to finish a game in under 90 minutes at times. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Bet you can't beat it four more times to earn the Gamer's Day badge!

Ooooooo. Challenge accepted!

I didn't even know that badge existed.

So multiple clears of the same game in the same year count? Didn't know that.

I've already started, I'm making a kairosoft ipad game mine. And don't say I'm cheating because those games take at least a good 10 hours to beat each time!

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:
I was watching some gameplay of this. It makes me think of Metroid.

A Metroid like rogue? Interesting.

It's really fun when you get the right combination of power-ups. It's just rough starting a Metroidvania game over with a new procedurally-generated map each time you die. However, it does give you a code when you die for the specific seed you're playing, so you can do a seeded run on the same map. You still have to start over, but it gives you an opportunity to learn the map as you try again. It just locks you out of achievements if you play a seeded run.

nonamesleft wrote:

Best1989 wrote:

Only for the Gamer's Day badge specifically. It will still count as beating one game, but you get a badge for beating it five times, since it shows dedication to that game. It's best applied to speedrunners or people trying to get a high score. Beating the same game across multiple systems counts for the badge and multiple clears, though. But it has to be the exact same game, not a modified port or remaster, since those change the experience.

So if you beat Super Mario Bros. five times on NES, you get one clear and the badge. If you beat it once on the NES, Wii, and Wii U, you get three clears but no badge. Beat it once on NES, Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Switch, and you get five clears and the badge. Makes sense?

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:
Very cool that you can use the seed code. I've done that before. But in order to imitate previous results wouldn't you have to precisely mimic every action you did on the previous run? (This is what my limited knowledge of rng is making me think)

Probably. I never had exactly the same run twice. Even knowing the seed, it’s easy to get lost or forget what you need to unlock a particular part.

nonamesleft wrote:

#15 The Quarry
I heard this one was kinda dull in comparison to the Dark Pictures series but while it was indeed a slow burn for the first several chapters I thought the pace picked up nice in the second and third acts. Also the graphics were incredible. I now know where all the budget for this game came from to make those slime balls at 2K have the balls to charge $70 at launch for this 8 hour movie for the most part. But alas I did rather enjoy it in the end. I’m a sucker for the mythos creature portrayed here and thought the acting was much better than the stiffness in the last Dark Pictures game I played Little Hope. I got the ending where all the counselors survived too. Complaints of course come in the form of all these Supermassive games in where you controlling anyone feels janky and awkward and the damn walk fast button is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Overall if you liked Until Dawn you’ll enjoy this one from the same devs.

#16- Kirby’s Dream Land 2 Online

Man this was way more fun than the first game. More power ups from enemy assimilations and you get your pet pals to ride throughout most of the levels. They really encompassed the best parts of the SNES Kirby games into a neat little Game Boy package. The first Dream Land felt like a demo only having about 4 levels but the sequel here had 7 levels and about 25-30 stages in total. Not too shabby for a GB game.

@TalonJedi87 KDL2 has my respect for being the most deviously designed Kirby game. As it goes on, the stages start to reveal more and more insidious design choices and enemy behaviors to challenge the player. The stage that really gets me is in Cloudy Park—there’s a draft that pushes you upward through a tall room. Flying enemies appear all over the left and right sides of the screen out of harm’s way; if you simply remains still, the enemies won’t actually hit you. But because you see all the enemies flying around so suddenly, your instinct is to move to potentially avoid them, likely causing you to crash into at least one foe. It’s such a clever bit of design that speaks to Shinichi Shimomura’s talent.

Oh yeah absolutely. That entire cloud level made you use the force and channel your inner Kirby Jedi to try and anticipate where and when they would spawn while having limited control as the wind pushed you around. It was def the most challenging level for me and well crafted.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I occasionally think about trying to speedrun SMB1 since it's a game I love and it's so short. Maybe this is a good excuse to give it a shot.

I started this game back in October as part of the Retro Talkshop Thread's Castlevania month, but I didn't finish it until late last night. Despite long stretches of item farming and lots of juggling special abilities, I had an absolute blast with this game and can see why it was heralded as one of the best Game Boy Advance launch titles.

Number: 14
Full Title: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Platform Played: Analogue Pocket, GBA Consolizer
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Game Boy Advance
Original Platforms: Game Boy Advance
Applicable Badge: Metroidvania (1/2)

I've started Golden Sun for April's Retro Game of the Month, and with only a few levels remaining in Doom 64 (finally), I'll be able to put the time into Crisis Core that I've been trying to find since last December. It's not a very long game, so there's a chance I may pick something else up before April is out, but I doubt it.

My #19 is Resident Evil 5.

https://imgbox.com/UnCQLcXq

They took out all of the survival horror in favor for a straight up action game. You have a partner that shoots, has her own inventory, and is required to open the many doors with two buttons. That by itself takes much of the tension out of the game. Inventory system is much weaker than RE4. Boss battles are dull and uninteresting. Overall a mediocre game. 7/10

River City Ransom - Retroid Pocket
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This was the last on my playlist from last year. Not saying I'll never play another NES game. But I played a ton of them last year and this was the last of the long list of personal "essentials" so I can knock NES off my short list for a while.

#15 Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins via

This took me right back to when I was in elementary school. I remember the idea of having a Mario game on the go was amazing to me and this game didn’t disappoint and still holds up pretty well via emulation minus some random pockets of framerate stutter here and there whenever there’s a lot going on screen at once.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins via

8.5/10

This took me right back to when I was in elementary school. I remember the idea of having a Mario game on the go was amazing to me and this game didn’t disappoint and still holds up pretty well via emulation minus some random pockets of framerate stutter here and there whenever there’s a lot going on screen at once.

I’ll update the OP tomorrow.

I beat Picross e2 .
[imgt w=640 h=853]https://i.imgur.io/dvY2Noc_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sha...[/imgt]
Picross is always good, and this sequel adds a Micross mode, where you solve one puzzle and then each of the filled boxes becomes a puzzle in itself. As a result, e2 is superior to its predecessor.

#28 down: The Caligula Effect: Overdose on PS4. This gives me my first clear toward the Level Up badge.

This was leaving PS+ Premium, so I thought I should play it (especially since I actually own the sequel (which is still sitting sealed on my shelf)). This got pretty bad reviews (in the 50s on Metacritic), and I can see why, but it’s not without redeeming characteristics.

I’ll start with the good:

-The battle system is pretty unique. You plan out our your moves for all of your characters in advance and then can see them previewed before you commit to them, so you can gauge whether tactics will likely work or not before you engage. However, what you anticipate to happen can still fail (as there are accuracy %s and some parts of the chain can miss). There are a variety of things you can do, like heal, reposition to a better place to avoid attacks as you envision them coming with the preview system, launch an enemy in the air for the next character to knock down, etc. Lots of combo types are possible. It was a neat way to set up fights, although the strategy becomes less necessary if you level up enough, and you can end up just doing a few shield breaker moves and then spamming basic attacks.

-Some of the character backstories were fairly interesting.

-The overarching premise of the game is interesting.

The bad:

-Many of the characters are gratingly obnoxious, and the dialogue is frequently awful.

-The story never goes beyond the obvious, and, though it’s interesting, nothing about it is surprising.

-I don’t play animeish games like this often, and I was not at all a fan of the weird stuff like characters randomly deciding to take a bath multiple times and then a villain’s whole storyline being that he is a pervert who gets attacked after being discovered morphing into objects to spy on women. It was messed up and not even at all relevant to the overarching plot. At multiple points, I found myself asking what was wrong with the people who wrote this stuff.

#16- Hi-Fi Rush

Man I loved this game and it came out of nowhere. It was like Devil May Cry with rhythm based contextually timed button presses. You hack and slash with a robotic guitar thru 12 levels while gathering health and energy upgrades and collecting parts to unlock new crazy combos and special modes. You also get support summons from members of your crew which prove highly useful throughout the game and there’s even some minor platforming puzzle like elements in which you incorporate your crew to assist with. The music was kick ass, the acting and humorous writing was great, the anime style graphics were superb and minor platforming issues aside, this was one of the best action games I have played in a while. Highly recommend.

Just beat Macbat 64 on


I beat this back when it came out in 2017, but I learned that Siactro added a bonus level in 2019, so I did another full playthrough. Really fun but short experience!

Number: 15
Full Title: Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel
Platform Played:
Collection: Police Quest Collection
Native Platform: (DOS)
Original Platform: , et al
Applicable Badge: Guybrush Threepwood (2/2)

image

Thank goodness the VGA version of this exists, as it was borderline too antiquated. The EGA might not have had staying power. I am looking forward to later games in this series.

OP updated! Tell me if I missed anything.

Looks great to me. Thanks again!

Yoshi wrote:

I have real nostalgia for the old old originals, CGA version, arrow key walking, space bar typing. But I enjoy the VGA and later point n clicks too. I actually beat a bunch of those last year. Larry 1-3, Space Quest 1-2, King's quest 1-3, Police Quest 1-2, Colonials Bequest, etc. .

Dug out my old DSi this morning. I totally forgot about it. @SupremeSarna mind adding it to my list?

Also might as well add Frogger Returns as my game for as well. I just played through all 4 courses in about 29 minutes. This game is definitely rough. Terrible framerate and slowdowns, and awful depth of field.

Edit: That will make my console count 29 (it's currently at 28 but you have it marked 27)