VideoGame_Discussion

Number: 2
Full Title: River City Ransom
Platform Played:
Collection: Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: Pile Drivin' (1/2)

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I had never finished this one before, and now I know why. It's fairly obtuse in terms of which enemies need to be defeated and what all the items from shops do. That said, I wish RPG beat 'em ups were a thing these days.

First game of the year is down!

Arcade Paradise

I really enjoyed this. I don't typically like the Sim games, but the arcade games incentivized me. I snagged a physical copy at a good price, and figured if I didn't like it I could get rid of it. I'm definitely keeping this, as some of the games are legitimately great!

Taking a leaf from @Renaissance2K’s book here...

#2 Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid cleared Arcade mode with Adam (1995 Power Rangers movie Black Ninja Ranger) and Tommy (MMPR Season 2 White Ranger)

benstylus gifted the Super Edition to me sometime ago. I later picked up the Season 4 DLC pack because Adam. My inner child is happy; however, my outer grownup wants to scream at this game so much. But I won’t.

Truth be told: It’s a decent fighter that I wish got a little more love from its dev team. Unfortunately, it appears nWay left this one to fade away like the Green Ranger’s powers back in 1993, in favor of adventures in money laundering mobile game Power Rangers Legacy Wars, with still-incredibly-obnoxious AI (24-hit combos out of nowhere? Confirmed.) and no recent DLC packs. I’m glad Adam made the cut, but it would have been nice to see more characters, like the Dino Fury Rangers or the RPM Ranger Operators.

I beat two games: Donkey Kong and Game & Watch Gallery . Thanks to @HEHEHATE and @Missile for the sales!
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The first is tricky. Donkey Kong 64 emulates the original arcade ROM, complete with Game A and Game B, but you get a single life and the game doesn't loop when you beat Crank--er, Donkey Kong. So while it isn't exactly the same experience as arcade DK, it is still the game and a harder version at that. Took me a good number of tries to beat each game mode.

As for Game & Watch Gallery, this is way better than G&WG2. You only get four games: Manhole, Fire, Octopus, and Oil Panic. Each one has modern and retro versions, both of which are unlocked from the start in this entry. I find these games waaaay more fun than the six games in Gallery 2, but Gallery 3 is still the reigning champ in my eyes. Octopus has the best music in the series thus far, though Gallery 3's Egg comes close. I wanted to get all the stars from the Modern games, but Hard Fire and Hard Octopus were just too daunting, and I'm about ready to move on. As shown above, I reached the credits that you get from earning 40 stars, so I consider that beaten.

I'm the first person to earn Makin' Money with Minigames!

I beat my high score on PacMan on the xbox1 (beating this and dig dug gets me the quarter muncher badge)

@SupremeSarna, you can add me with the following systems:

Switch
3DS
DS
GBA
Evercade
Genesis
Sega CD
Turbo Grafx 16
Neo Geo

I won't even bother with systems I have in storage. I'll call Dragon Quest Treasures on Switch as my first game beaten in 2023. I rolled the credits, but like DQ XI, that doesn't mean it's actually over. So I'm not quite done with it yet.

I beat Wild Guns Reloaded five times, earning me the Gamer's Day badge.
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Awesome game, can't recommend enough. Give it five tries!

Third game down, first on
Bugsnax
Badge: 100% counts towards You're Winner as it was poor.

It was nearly a walking sim in terms of what you do, though you have to capture the titular Bugsnax by various means and then could feed them to the cast of around a dozen. Very much a fetch-quest style and got boring quick, to say nothing of the questionable story choices for a game aimed at children. Even without that aspect that I didn't care for, it had about 2 redeeming qualities: Bunger, Bunger was amusing and you really can't say the map wasn't diverse as it had forest, beach, desert heat and a frozen mountain. But it was pretty boring and had some rather insulting stereotype characters like the Valley Girl or the Meat Head exercise Bro, even the simpleton farmer and rude scientist were a bit much.

And the ending was simply odd, thoughts:

Bugsnax is a 10/10. Should not count towards You're Winner

I'd like to participate. Very cool idea. I have almost every system, so perhaps it would be easier for you just to add them as I go instead of making a huge preliminary list?

ThirdeYe wrote:

Welcome! Honestly, it would be easier to list them all ahead of time so I don't have to change my recording style for just one user. It's best for me personally to record everyone the same way. Hope that isn't a bother.

Kommie wrote:

@Slickriven I'm with Kommie on this one. Bugsnax isn't shovelware-y enough to fit You're Winner.

SupremeSarna wrote:

That's fine... I added/changed the language of the badge last year to be what I see you still use:
Beat 2 games with <55 review OR user score on Metacritic (ex: Sonic '06), or justify how poor your game was.
I did that b/c originally the threshold was <40 and I looked on Metacritic and found only like 200 out of 16k games or something would've qualified. So I upped it to 55 and put in that justification language.

I suppose Bugsnax wasn't that terrible on it's face, so count it for??
Bear & Bird? It was an first person perspective and didn't do a lot of platforming though, but was focused on mindless, although slightly more challenging collecting vs. say Banjo
Girly? It was on the nose about not being specifically aimed at girls though
Guybursh? Was more heavy on story and just walking around and doing small catch/fetch quests.

Slickriven wrote:

Collectathon sounds about right. It is about collecting things in a 3D space, even without the platforming.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Failed to mention last night because I was tired: Battle for the Grid is 1 point toward the Street Fightin’ badge

sailorneorune wrote:
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I should play Bugsnax again on XsX. Such an amazing game.

Kommie wrote:

Funny way to spell utter crap.

I beat Gin Rummy on the xbox360

Slickriven wrote:

That's Death Stranding

I'd like to participate this year. Primary consoles are PS4, Xbox 360 and PC.

I beat Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (PS4) on January 1st. Received as a gift on Christmas, I thoroughly enjoyed it and was relieved it was nothing like Marvel's Avengers.

Beat The Last of Us, Part II (PS4) ... enjoyed the gameplay but the story was a disappointment.

I beat Yugioh master duel for the xbox1 (beating this and gin rummy gets me the all aces badge)

Kommie wrote:

Haha, no arguments there.

Game #2: Lunistice 2/26

I got this for free during No Gravity Games' winter giveaway. I totally overlooked it when it was given away. After looking into the game, I found out it's a retro inspired 3D platformer... So naturally that's my thing!

The game was very okay... Some parts made me want to like it more, but the controls felt off. The character movement felt a bit slippery, making straight movement a tad difficult. It still took me less than a couple of hours to complete the whole game though.

I'd give it somewhere around a 6/10. It's good, but not great. It's a fun little throw-on if you're in the mood for some 3D platforming.

I beat Tony Hawks Pro skater on the xbox1

VedicBlade wrote:

Happy to have ya! I’ll add you in a short while.

#2 down. I beat The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening . I LOVED this game growing up, and I remembered most of it so I was able to clear it in only 3 days. I remembered not to die at all to get the good ending, and the short at the end was so good! Even though you've had 30 years to play it, I won't spoil the ending for you. I absolutely adore this remake, I bought the Dreamer Edition in 2019, but somehow didn't play it at all until a few days ago. The art style is so reminiscent of Captain Toad, I can't help but think this came out of the fact that Captain Toad was originally pitched as a Zelda spinoff.

The one thing I was very saddened about was the photo mouse's exclusion from this game. The photo mouse was one of my favorite things in DX, as you could print out your photos as stickers on the Gameboy Printer!

Yeah, Link's Awakening rules, no matter the version. Just wish they had done a little more with the dungeon making stuff in the Switch version.

4th of the year, 2nd
Aces Of The Luftwaffe
Badge - counts towards Destroy Z Core

I bought this a long while back with some M$-rewards that were about to expire, played it a few times but finally focused on it over the past 3 days and beat the BS final boss on at least my 6th try.
Game felt like it belonged on a mobile platform as it's look and necessity to grind felt a bit like other SHUMPs I've played. It is set in some alternative timeline with planes from the WWII era, only Germany was much more powerful and some foes were pretty nuts in their design.
There's a story and some really lame dialog and quirks from your main character and the 3 wingmen. Yet another game with pretty bad stereotypes - Main guy is suave blond guy, then a Texan with a cowboy hat and temper, next a goofball black guy and lastly an almost Russian sounding woman. Their quirks cause the Texan to rage out, leave formation and he can then slam into you, black guy falls asleep such that you need to defend him, and the lady wigs out from big elevation changes and totally leaves the screen for a while. It's got some standard missions like needing to pick up stranded troops, do air drops, escort/protect another plane and destroy X number of foes (special or overall). You earn an upgrade token each time you level up from collecting medals from destroyed foes and if you complete the 'side missions' like the drops and such. You then need to spend those tokens on upgrades to your squad. I did alright and beat missions 1-5 on acts 1, 2 and 3 without too much trouble, though act 3's boss was a challenge. I replayed a few levels as each has some additional challenge token to also get and I wasn't sure exactly how to earn them but tried for them and got some.
Act 4 got a little more challenging and the boss wasn't too easy initially. Act 5 surely ramped up the difficulty and 5-3 was another boss who sucked as he has an anchor attack that's an instant kill if it hits you or a wingman. But he also filled like 70% of the screen at times and dodging if you were on his wrong side was not easy. Then the final boss, was awful. I tried a few times and was at a loss, looked at a YT video and the player didn't seem much different from me and I confirmed that his 1 attack that fires 4 seeking missiles that can NOT be destroyed must be dodged long enough for them to fly off. That sucked, especially since he also fires some shots at you that come out as a tight ball of like 5 and then spread out some - way too often I was trying to dodge the seekers and got nailed by the other shots. He's also close to the full width of the screen and moves all over, shrinking the safe area at the bottom of the screen to nearly nothing. Pretty horrible boss design for the genre.
So I ended up figuring that I needed more skills/power and started to replay the levels on hard. I also ended up earning some more of the challenge tokens and some blueprints to access or enhance the selection of planes - you start with 4 I believe, but can unlock 6 and stronger variants - I still have 2 yet to find, but did get 2 upgraded 2x times. So I beat acts 1-4 all on Hard and act 5's missions 1 through 4 as well, upgrading my planes and skills as I went along.
Then I finally beat the final boss and got credits to roll. Annoyingly some achievements didn't pop for the game, but that's a known issue according to some reviews. There's also a DLC where you play as Z Germans, but it's $15 and many reviews complained that the DLC caused the game to be horribly slow to load and it already wasn't swift - so unless I spot a sale (unlikely), I think I might be done with this.
Overall the gameplay was actually pretty good and once I unlocked enough skills, that you could fully re-spec at any time, it was enjoyable in most levels. A few tweaks like cutting out the way too lame dialog/story (which I eventually turned the voice volume way down) and better boss designs (i.e. less BS) would've gone a good way to making this a better package.

DragonmasterDX wrote:

Yeah, I wish they had included the photos. It was fun to try to collect them all, and most of them would get you some bonus scenes/dialogue that were pretty funny.

While I did love the Switch version, I wish they had done more with it than just a 1-for-1 remake.

Scott wrote:


BloodPuppetX wrote:

absolutely agree, the dungeon maker is... cool i guess? I wish it had online connectivity, that'd be AWESOME. The only way to share dungeons is by amiibo, which is cumbersome.

#3 for the year. Beat Infamous: Second Son. Finally did an evil playthrough to get the plat.

VedicBlade wrote:
What system? PS4 or 360?

Sorry about that, Infamous: Second Son on the PS4

I beat Soulcalibur on the xbox360

Game #3 3/26 - Super Mario Land 2

This game actually still holds up incredibly well! I really enjoyed this playthrough, and it reminded my while I cherish this childhood classic!

My #4 is Greedfall.

https://ibb.co/mhTj654

Action-RPG set in the backdrop of fantasy colonization. Some of it's a bit janky, but good enough overall. 7.5/10

Number: 3
Full Title: 3D Space Harrier
Platform Played:
Collection: N/A
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: Destroy the Core (1/2)

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It's not every or really any day when the best version of an arcade game is on a portable, but no one does ports like M2, and no one makes arcade games like Sega. The fit of the latter's Super Scaler games with the former's 3DS ports is like a glove. I particularly enjoyed the final level's boss rush.

Heads-up, everyone: I'll update tonight since I'm gonna be out of town tomorrow. I'd like to update the OP every Saturday to keep you guys up-to-date, but that won't work this weekend.