Castlevania Legends (GB)

So, this has always had a reputation as one of the worst Castlevania's, so my expectations were low going in. You take control of Sonia Belmont this time around, there are five levels with a hidden sixth, and two different endings, there are a few of things that set it apart from earlier games though.

Instead of the usual sub weapons you instead receive Soul Weapons upon beating the end level bosses. They are 'Wind' which freezes enemies just like the stop watch, 'Flame' which damages all enemies on screen, 'Magic' which makes you temporarily invincible, each of these use 5 hearts. Then there is 'Saint' which shoots out a wave of energy for 1 heart, and finally 'Ice' which restores all your health for whopping 20 hearts. As well as these you now have mechanic called 'Burning Mode', this is activated by pushing A and B together and lasts about 10 seconds until the burning gauge runs out. During this time you are invincible, move at twice the speed and inflict twice the damage. This can only be used once per level, or per life.

The game is linear for the most part, but playing as such will only get you the normal 'bad ending'. Each level does split into different paths, one leads to the boss whilst the other leads to a relic. Each level has one and you need to collect all five in order to get the second 'good ending'. There is also a hidden level midway through level five, it's a bit off the beaten path but nothing a Castlevania veteran shouldn't be able to sniff out. It's not quite Rondo of Blood but I don't think this game gets enough kudos for this, it's doing a lot more than the other two Game Boy entries.

Unfortunately where this game falls short is the level and enemy design, it's just so bland and uninteresting. There are a handful of standard enemies that you see over and over again. The bosses are ok but any challenge posed is broken by the 'Burning Mode' and 'Ice' Soul Weapon, you can just easily spam them, giving no real need to learn their patterns.
 
The plot is now non-cannon for better or worse thanks to Koji Igarashi. I like the fact the penultimate boss is Alucard, he wants to kill his Father himself, so by beating him he allows you the honour. He then returns to his coffin to sleep, presumably until awoken by Trevor Belmont in Castlevania III, that's pretty good. What isn't is finding out in the good ending that Sonia has a baby by Alucard making every Belmont a descendant of Alucard, that's a bit Eastenders esque, so maybe Igarashi was right to strike this one from the books afterall.

So, does this game deserve its reputation? Kinda, I think Castlevania (MSX), Castlevania Adventure (GB) and Haunted Castle (Arcade) are all definitely worse. For me it's probably next along with Simon's Quest, both are flawed but at least they spiced things up/aimed a bit higher. It's a bad Castlevania, but for me that doesn't equate to an all out bad game.

2/5

My reviews

It's funny because I don't remember seeing much of it about at the time. I had no idea there were MD and SNES ones. I think I vaguely remember the NES one but I don't think I ever saw it in a shop. I'd have definitely bought them at the time so lucky escape. By the time that the arcade game came to home consoles, I think I was over the hype.

Also, Indy and the fate of Atlantis.
The movie that never was.

hunk wrote:

Ì quite enjoyed Alien3 on the ms/gg back in the days. The gameplay doesn't really hold up to scrutiny now but the parallax scrolling was kindof impressive back then? I also remember an arcade lightgun version of Alien 3 an Jurassic park but not quite sure of their quality.

The T2 shooter was similar - I think they were all fun back in the day (especially with a friend) I think Consoles were emulating coin-op quite well by that point so you needed something a bit more to stand out so on rails with big guns had the same appeal as the Virtua boxing gloves.

Surprised no-one has mentioned the obvious best 90s videogame - Golden Eye (97)

We don't really do 3D in this thread tbf

We did that Appaloosa one in here a few years back. It drags a bit but it's not a bad game at all (and technically very impressive for sure).

Cross-posted from Just Completed:

Jurassic Park (Mega CD) - This is a completely different game to the other 16-bit versions and is a point-and-click. Your task is to collect seven different varieties of dinosaur egg, place them in the incubator and then escape the island.

The major CD content comes in the form of information terminals dotted around the island. There is a nice edutainment aspect as the real-life dinosaur expert who consulted on the movie gives you facts about the dinosaurs, which you then need to utilise in the game. You also receive the occasional FMV update on the story from a scientist lady. There is also the occasional FMV-based transition from one location to another, plus some of the background audio is real audio. That’s it. The FMV is all people talking to a camera and stuff that was probably filmed at the local park. There doesn’t seem to have been any real budget allocated to the FMV. The most high-effort section is the visitor centre, which is rendered in 3D with animated 3D transitions but this is just the one area. This was hyped up as featuring Q-Sound, which is supposedly a revolution in multi-directional sound. The sound design is utterly mediocre and the limited music appears to have been composed with GENS.

There is some nice pixel art and consequently some nice 2D animations of dinosaurs but other than that there’s not much to recommend this. The gameplay is bad and, frankly, spiteful. It just feels like the developers are trying to spite you to stop you just renting this and finishing it in an afternoon. The whole game is too pernickety. There is an overall time limit that is genuinely quite tight and requires actual min-maxing. I had to restart a nearly complete playthrough of the game due to this. You could also be forced to restart if you don’t retain enough tranquilliser darts for the combat encounter at the very end of the game. You must also pick up random rocks on the ground whenever you encounter them otherwise you won’t have time to go back and collect them later. The rocks are the key to all this - you require each and every one to complete the game. One of the rocks appears in a green night vision section in a sequence where you only have a few seconds to progress before you are eaten by dinosaurs. You are unlikely to notice it unless a walkthrough tells you it is there.

The whole game is like this. It’s understandable that in a game about dinosaurs, fucking with the dinosaurs will get you killed. But the game goes out of its way to put you in these frustrating encounters where you simultaneously need to explore yet also complete actions with lightning reflexes to not die. It’s not really in the spirit of the genre. I would have preferred something a bit more cerebral with some funny death sequences if you annoy the dinosaurs. As it is, the game always does a basic cut to black when you die so you don’t even get much fun out of that.

I was going to give this a point higher but the game ends with a genuinely hateful combat encounter that destroyed what remained of my goodwill towards the game. There was the potential for at least a mediocre, perhaps even moderately good game here but it appears to have been squandered, in large part because not enough resources seem to have been put into the project (I’ve read a quote from a developer along the lines of they did well managing to out the game out at all). Not recommended. [3]

Are there any good games with dinosaurs ?

There should be a fuck ton of them but I can't think of one.  Even a Godzilla game. Was the PS2/GC/Oldbox versus fighting game any good?

Bubble Bobble

Ah they're dragons apparently. Forget everything.

Oh and Big Nose the Caveman

Yoshi's a dinosaur.

Legit shout: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

That Capcom PS2 Lightgun one.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Legit shout: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

But not on the Mega CD apparently!