retroking1981 wrote:

@Wariospeedwagon glad you enjoyed DKC2, I'm taking a break before 3 to avoid fatigue myself. Out of interest what would you rate the original DKC out of 10?

I went a 7/10 for the original as well - was a better game than I was expecting it to be.  

Think I might have given DCK2 an 8 if I'd played it later in the year, rather than starting it right after DCK1.

Played and not finished a couple of things recently, but have managed these:

2. Journey to the Savage Planet [8]
Already mentioned that I liked this a lot elsewhere. It's Metroid Prime with lots of colour and some cheap laughs. The combat isn't the focus so it's mostly about getting out there and exploring, and it gets that aspect spot on. For me, it's pure comfort gaming, just looking for ways forward and hidden caves, figuring out how to traverse the environment and playing around with new tools. It's not hugely original but the open level design is very good, it looks lovely and it knows how to reward your efforts.

3. Skellboy [5]
Played for review, which is the only reason I finished it. There's a decent enough action RPG at the heart of it, but it's too slight and roughly designed to offer much satisfaction. Swapping body parts is a nice idea, but it's not used in any really interesting ways. And pixel art in 3D visual style doesn't do it any favours. It's not just ugly, it makes for very imprecise movement and combat, leading to plenty of frustration. There's some solid level design in parts, and a nicely interlinked world, but a lot of it is messy and a bit... bare bones.

Beresford!!!

I've been upgrading my friend.

With you Chalice that could mean anything. From getting a master race PC to getting some robotic dick replacement and going on a robodick sex spree.

Verecocha wrote:

With you Chalice that could mean anything. From getting a master race PC to getting some robotic dick replacement and going on a robodick sex spree.

Also, yes.

14. Toby: The Secret Mine - Switch (2hrs)

Truly horrendous budget Limbo clone.  Nothing works anywhere near as well as it should, which is unforgivable in such a simplistic copycat side scroller.  Some of the puzzles are okay, but the controls are terrible, so obviously in practice they're not. I thought I had a fair bit to say about it, but now that I'm sat at a keyboard I can't be bothered.  All anyone needs to know is that even if you only spend eighty nine pence* on it, the real Toby is you.  Strip away the not-too-shabby-I-guess visuals and it's an irredeemable mess.  I didn't even try to rescue any of the prisoners off the beaten track, yet I ended up with 20 out of 27.  Shite.  [2]  It made me yearn for another playthrough of Inside though, so something good came out of it I guess.

*At least I think it's 89p at the mo, I bought it last time it was dirt cheap.



Nope, I didn't even like the minecart section.

9: Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (5/10)

I'm not much of a rhythm game player but can't get enough of Persona ATM and the this is pure Persona 3 fan service.  Features great music from the P3 soundtrack and remixes.  You have to press buttons when the game tells you to.  I can't keep up.  My eyes hurt really bad while playing this.  I don't think I blink due to concentration.  I am terrible at it.

Aside from music you unlock conversations with the P3 party characters.  This conversations are a far cry from the world class side stories I expect from Persona games but the characters are fun to be around.  Couldn't have expected anything too profound from a game about being held hostage in a shared dream to win a dance competition.  That said there's maybe a bit to much gurning at vague double entendres.  Think I only laughed out loud one time but it was mostly amusing.

It gets a fairly low score though as it's not laid out very well.  These story bits are not unlocked as you beat the tracks, but rather you have to satisfy certain conditions (ie: have your characters wear different 50 accessories, score 10000 perfect notes etc etc).  It led to a pretty nasty grind after I'd 'completed' all the tracks.  Even at 10 hours it felt stretched thin.  Not bad but would have been better if it was an album with a comic, or something.

6. Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow (SNES) - 2hr 30mins

What first feels like a run-of-the-mill collectathon platformer, turns out to be a fun half decent one, that gets quite inventive at times.

First off the collectathon aspect. Initially I was under the impression that it was a compulsory objective to collect X amount of loot to get to the next level, artificially lengthening the game, forcing you to replay until you meet the minimum requirement.

Thankfully that is not the case at all, it turns out its all completely optional. What meeting the loot threshold actually does is unlock the end of World (called Trials in the game) bonus area. In these areas you are tasked with finding all the hidden fireworks in order to unlock the password for your adventure, which can be failed itself if you don't find them in the time limit.

Its a nice looking game, and some of the levels are really unique in design. Swinging on the vines in the Test of Duckhood Trial, or using your gun for momentum in the waters of the Sunken Flying Duckman Trial were a couple of the standouts. Not to mention when the game makes you switch between Maui Mallard and his Ninja abilities on the fly in order to advance.

Unfortunately the games mechanics are ok at best. Combat is quite poor, and more often than not it just turns into spamming the attack button, especially when your the Ninja. The bosses are pitiful with only the last one approaching anything near a challenge. Add to that the ever so slightly off jumping, and it makes an otherwise easy game a frustrating one for the wrong reasons.

Not a bad game but probably just on the wrong side of 'Is it worth playing?'

5/10

15. Ruiner - Xbox One (5hrs 30mins)

Unashamedly brutal and bellowingly unsubtle wave based twin stick close quarters combat game.  Take a pinch of Hotline Miami, a few drops of Running Man, a dash of Nightcrawler (see what I did there??  YOU'LL SEE) and repeatedly club what emerges from the melting pot around the head with Judge Dredd.  Now imagine it on horseback - Thirty/Thirty from Bravestar, obviously - sat just in front of Brian Blessed, charging forward while shouting "God, and King Richard!".  The cast of Cyberpunk-by-committee villains is astonishing.  A sum total of fuck all of them are any better than an imaginative 13yr old could design, but they're Cyberpunk characters!  They're supposed to be awesome and a bit amusing, right?  Job done as far as I'm concerned, plus they've got names like Mechanix, Techno Dogs, Nameless Protagonist, TrafficKing, Shadow the Triad Trooper, Titanium Cranium and NERVE.  But aha, I made at least one of those up (and it wasn't Shadow the Triad Trooper). 

Perhaps it's trying too hard and too much, there's a lot to take in with its dash/strike/shoot arena stuff, but for my money every aspect of the combat is legit.  If you attempt to focus on everything at once it feels a bit like spinning plates, so don't; play it how you like it, rather than spreading yourself thinly across all the systems in place.  It gives you a vast number of perks and skill trees to manually upgrade but that's nowhere near as daunting a task as it first appears.  You're building the way you want to play the game, and there's not enough runway over the 5hr runtime for an average player to max out more than a couple of categories anyway.  Are you a dash player, do you want to focus on melee combat, are firearms, shields or bullet time your thing, etc.  You can add and remove upgrades as you please, so if you get stuck you can readjust your tools and adopt a different approach.  

The key word is carnage.  It's probably aiming for 'balletic carnage', and to some extent it's successful, but you've got to picture Karl from Die Hard for a fitting approximation.  BECAUSE ALEXANDER GODUNOV WAS A BALLET DANCER.  If you require your games to constantly evolve and keep you on your toes with metronomic variety as well as playability then perhaps you should look elsewhere.  Not only does this play similarly throughout, but most of the locations could be mistaken for any previous ones.  For me, this is fine - it's a 5-6hr game, and what could accurately be described as repetitive combat is also fundamental to the appeal.  It's rinse/repeat, sure, but it's as addictive as anything comparable and short enough for the entire thing to maintain near-perfection, imo.  

@Facewon, I absolutely properly loved it.  Better than Mr. Shifty for sure, in fairness we're talking Nex Machina territory really, albeit not as endlessly replayable.  It absolutely nails the running riot feel.  The visuals are superb - picture a glorious modern Loaded - and while perhaps not as memorable as it could have been the music does its job very well.  You know exactly what it sounds like from one glance at a gif.

I think at this stage I'd be willing to play absolutely anything published by Devolver as it's starting to feel like they only ever release games I enjoy.  Plus *grabs trumpet* I was pretty good at it, gaining mostly A to S+ ranks first time, meaning it's a rare example of a game I probably should've played on Hard.  [9]

Was Webbins:

Webbins wrote:

Don't sweat the melee, it's a back up option, best used in combination with the stasis perk.  With most bosses you want to be keeping them at arms length, dash like a muthafucker, abuse that LB, keep them guessing, a lot of the time you're shooting at shit that is off screen.  Dash in, stasis, melee, dash out, strafe dash and shoot until you can stasis again.  I concentrated on levelling up dash, stasis, health, damage, but you can respec at any time without penalty.  Bosses can be frustrating, but once you learn their pattern, it's just putting it into practice.  You'll need the shield later so this will need levelling up but the shield dash bash is useful.

Interestingly, the melee was my main form of attack throughout.

Sudden death was an irritation at times, I'll agree there.  It could have done with a louder 'you are being hit' sound effect, or maybe an audio alert for ultra low health.  When concentrating on the action it was tricky to keep an eye on the energy bar at times.

16. Guardian Heroes - XBLA (50 mins)

Quick run-through of the snazzed up Saturn classic.  Played as Han, who was my third choice character back in the day (4th if you count Selena).  It's a bit more fiddly than I remembered, especially when you're being juggled all over the shop, but there's a huge amount of depth in there for a scrolling beat 'em up.  The multi-plane gameplay works well and multiple routes add replayability.  Visuals are still superb, I know some purists hate pixel smoothing but it works for me.  There aren't many Saturn remakes around, and although the 2D titles are undoubtedly easier to port than the 3D ones, I still think the amount of work put in for a minor XBLA release was a little under appreciated at the time.  Music is still God tier too, some of those themes will never be topped for this sort of thing.  In fairness today's run was a [6], but the whole shebang is a solid [8] by modern standards and was a strong [9] in 1996.

17. Gigantic Army - Switch (40 minutes)

Well it scratched an itch anyway.  Budget Cybernator clone that genuinely succeeds in looking and feeling like a 16-bit Cybernator clone from early '93, for good or for ill.  Most of these types update things a smidge with save states, niftier controls, checkpoints and the like, but there are no such concessions here.  One life, three credits.  If you run out of continues it's the title screen for you sonny Jim.  It's pretty easy once you learn the stage layouts though, I managed to clock it by the skin of my teeth on my second full go.  Tip: the default weapon/sub weapon combo is shite, go for the missile and boss crippling big beam instead.  I enjoyed it, but with only six stages it would've been one to rent in 1993. [6] today, 79% way back when.  DO NOT PAY FULL PRICE.

18. Panzer Dragoon Orta - Xbox One (2hrs 25mins)

Um...so does the Bone make OG XBox games look better?  I played it at the time and it looked fantastic, easily one of the finest looking Xbox exclusives, but I assumed the double gen jump BC games would look a bit ropey thanks to HD displays/nostalgia trying to pull the wool over my eyes.  Visually, it's pretty astonishing for a near twenty year old game.  I'll move past the way it looks shortly, but wow, you could easily convince me that this is a 5yr old reboot.  Stunning.  I thought the Xbox One just emulated old games, surely there's some extra jiggery-pokery going on here?  Stunning. 

It's a shame the same can't be said of the audio, specifically the music.  It aims for the Panzer Zwei Yamaha chiptunes style over the original's sweeping orchestral beat for beat Red Book score.  Unfortunately almost nothing here is memorable, which puts this firmly in Streets of Rage 3 territory as a pale imitation of former glories.  Yes, you could still place them as Panzer Dragoon tunes with a blindfold on, but they mostly sound like they've been rescued from the cutting room floor.  

Back to the positives then.  It's far better than I gave it credit for at launch.  IIRC I played through it once at the time, thought it was decent but missing the magic of Zwei.  On reappraisal it's actually right up there with the very best rails shooters (Sin & Punishment 1&2, Starfox 64, Panzer Zwei).  The triple dragon system works well, as do the elements of PD Saga that were added to the boss battles (positioning via boosts to line up with damage zones/avoid certain attacks).  I'd have to play Zwei again to be sure, but although this is missing some of the grander set pieces from that (the audiovisual wallop of the best bosses is never quite replicated), this may even be a slightly better game.  I'm gonna give it a [9], I only intended to play the first couple of stages but I did the whole thing in one sitting.