Another day, traveling through the star system in the Metroid Dread game. Actually, haven’t gotten far in the game. Rn I am at the Cajun gator-looking character.
Another day, traveling through the star system in the Metroid Dread game. Actually, haven’t gotten far in the game. Rn I am at the Cajun gator-looking character.
This past weekend I unearthed the Atari 2600 to finally play the Immortal John Hancock-produced "Catacombs of Chaos". And it was chaotic, to say the least. The rooms you travel through and their contents are randomly generated (hence the "chaos", though the last room you came from seems to be remembered), so you don't know what to expect. To put it bluntly, the game is basic wandering filled with hope that what you need will appear. You could get lucky and stairs appear quickly to get you down to the treasure's level or it's just an exercise in tedium. At worst, the game gets you stuck between to rooms with only one exit. This happened to me twice-I exited a two direction room from the left and I landed in a cul-de-sac. I turned back and the last area I was in got reset into its own cul-de-sac. After going back and forth with no change, I had to reset the game and start over. Losing all your life sends you into a dark world where you wander in the void though the same room setups until stairs are found. After a while, I just flipped the power off.
I then got in some Pitfall 2 and H.E.R.O. until I had to shut it off for a bit. Later on I decided to play some Genesis Mini and I decided to play Phantasy Star IV. It's been probably a good decade since I played a classic style JRPG (Pier Solar was the last game of that style I played). I had a great time playing it! It was strangely zen getting into a rhythm of assigning tasks to my team. I made it to Tanoe and am now trying to make my way into the basement of a storage building to get this herb (?) to help at another town. Hahn keeps getting slapped to near death that forces me to go back to the surface after a while. I could do a save state but the thrill of collecting Meseta to get equipment prevents me from doing that. I almost have everyone who can wear it have titanium protection. After my session I looked up the manual so I can better plan the use of Techniques.
PS5
Dark Souls II,Got the itch to play it again so i am for now.Still now that this callback to the era of snes,rpgs,sea of stars is out i'll probably try that next month.
I got farther in Phantasy Star IV by going into the the first bio-production facility and gaining Riko, the Numan. Aaaannnnddd.....that's as far as I got. The TV was in use so I focused on my Mac Powerbook 180 I recently got, along with 20 (so far functioning) 3.5 HD diskettes. I loaded up "Oregon Trail" and it was quite the difference from the old Apple IIe version I played back in school. One of my twins played it to completion as a Doctor (easiest setting). It was interesting as she was asking questions that could be answered by actually reading the screen.
"What do I do now?"
"Just read the screen."
"What...I have to?"
I got a little frustrated as it was like she refused to try anything on the screen that could answer her questions. It kinda shows how games are presented these days with tutorials on how to do, well, everything to a degree. She can plow through "Untitled Goose Game" but "Oregon Trail" was a stumper until she actually investigated stuff. I really wanted to get this game on my 512K but I don't have the hard drive module nor an 800K disk drive.
The next game I tried, which I never played any iteration of, was "Shadowgate". I died a lot at first due to my torch burning out. I had to find some instructions to learn how to properly interface with everything. On top of that, I had to also dust off the investigation skills and CLICK EVERYTHING THAT LOOKS LIKE IT CAN BE CLICKED! One gets a bit soft in adventuring when everything these days tends to glow, shimmer or somehow indicate "Hey! I'm usable or context sensitive!". Once I got the torch situation figured out (click on "Operate", then your sputtering torch and then click on a fresh torch) I continued to die in other ways, which was comical. I was really impressed with the digitized speech on a game that's pretty small! I went to a couple rooms and then saved as my legs were falling asleep as I was sitting on the floor, my modern laptop on one side to put files onto floppies while my Powerbook was on the other. Putting tape over the open hole on two disks, I made two 400K disks with "Shadowgate" on them so I can try it out on my 512K
And that was that for the long weekend. It was mighty hot, so I didn't do much with tech at all.
I finished up Mario Kart: Super Circuit on my Game Boy Advance SP a while ago, getting gold on every cup, which was a little tricky for the last couple cups of the Super Circuit and Extra cups on 150cc. I clocked a time on every track in Time Trial, getting the best time and lap on most but not all. I'm satisfied to leave it there. I didn't get a triple star ranking on any cup, so maybe I'll tackle that someday, but I can tell it would take a huge amount of time, practice, and luck to pull that off on every cup.
Anyway, I finally bought and started up a game I've been wanting to play for a couple years now: Fuga: Melodies of Steel. Its sequel already came out a few months ago (in what is planned to be a trilogy, I think), and normally, I'd be all over a new Little Tail Bronx game as soon as it's out. I mean, I imported Solatorobo as soon as it launched in Japan and then preordered the US release too (good thing, considering its current value). But the first Fuga launched when my daughter was still an infant and still not sleeping through the night. So I wasn't really in any position to tackle anything particularly involved. And with it being digital-only, there was no reason to buy it until I was actually ready to play.
I've only had one session with it so far, so I'm still in the midst of tutorials and trying to figure things out. I'm going into it practically blind, and being a modern game, there's no manual or anything, at least not for the PC version I bought on Steam. I debated which platform to get it for, since I could've gone with PS4 (or Xbox One, but that's not even hooked up), but it was cheaper on Steam due to a sale, and I got the Deluxe version with the digital artbook and soundtrack and such, which I'd rather download to my PC, if possible, versus having to be on my PS4 to use. It's definitely a low-budget game. You can tell this was published by CyberConnect2 directly, instead of having Namco Bandai funding. Tail Concerto and Solatorobo feel like they had bigger budgets, in terms of comparatively to other games of their time and platforms. But I like what I've seen so far. The music is excellent, like usual. I'm not sure if the art is still Nobuteru Yuuki, but it looks nice enough. The cutscenes feel like a visual novel, and the battles are that of an RPG, but it all feels like a unique combination and not quite like anything I've played before. Definitely nothing like Tail Concerto or Solatorobo gameplay-wise, which I'm still a little iffy on. Each Little Tail Bronx game seems to move further into the territory of being an RPG, but I love the platforming action of Tail Concerto. But it's fine. If they intended for all the Little Tail Bronx games to be super similar, they wouldn't give each its own unique title. The fact Fuga is its own series shows it is its own thing within the Little Tail Bronx umbrella, and I'm cool with that as long as it's fun in its own right.
Finally got through the next boss battle and have been venturing through the dread galaxy obtaining upgrades. The putrid sucker kept tryin’ to mess up the flow, but I knocked him down after a handful of tries.
I just finished Chapter 3 (out of 12, I think) in Fuga: Melodies of Steel on Steam. The further I get, the more I'm enjoying this game. Even in Chapter 3, there were some little tutorials as they introduce more and more mechanics. At first, the battles didn't seem much different than those in a traditional turn-based RPG like Dragon Quest or what have you, but now I really see how it's a strategy RPG. It's not a grid-based strategy RPG like a Fire Emblem, Shining Force, or Final Fantasy Tactics, and it's not like the Ogre Battle games. There's really nothing I can think of to compare it to. But it's definitely strategic, with the importance of formation, weaknesses, managing limited resources/turns, etc. I haven't sacrificed anybody so far, outside of the mandatory tutorial sacrifice that's then undone, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. So far, I've always chosen the more dangerous paths, just to get more experience and better items. Hopefully that'll help me in the long run. Oh, and I already ordered both volumes of the soundtrack on CD. The music is just too good to not add them to my game soundtrack collection. Besides, I already have the full soundtracks for Tail Concerto and Solatorobo, so it's a no-brainer.
Been trying to complete Hollow Knight. Must be near the end? Missing a lot of charms...I like the game, and the ability to stick pins on the map to note places you can't get to (yet) is good but clearly I haven't been using it quite enough.
A few friends and I are making our way through Baldur's Gate 3 very slowly; played on Friday.
Been slowly grinding away at Nightmare Dungeons in Diablo 4; have a seasonal barbarian that's level 84. Don't know if I'll make it to 100 before the season ends.
Rarely play any classic games these days - the gaming PC gets my attention almost always.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
Haven't gotten back to "Phantasy Star 4" as my lunch breaks have not been consistent. Tuesday and Wednesday I was off as my wife, adult kids and youngest son went to Minnesota to visit some old family stomping grounds. I didn't get to play anything during that time, though I did work on a tutorial for NESMaker (I have no idea if I'll even MAKE a game with this as I had so many false starts). I take that back...I DID get to play some "Dungeons and Doomknights" on the NES. I got past the stupid first save area that had graphics I thought were just background but it wasn't. I backtracked so much trying to figure out where to go next.
I did try the game "Faith" for PC, which is a horror game but with 8 bit style graphics and sounds (including digitized voice, like something you'd hear a TI-99/4A voice module croak out). The first chapter was alright, though I got the "murderer" ending. No hand holding or much informing of what to do, so it was just a trial and error mixed with looking up wikis. It has cut scenes that look like live actors were possibly rotoscoped with old computer graphics. It's well put together and does get the anxiety pumping.
Finally, I played a "day's" worth in "Arcade Paradise" in bed as I juuuusssst didn't want to go to sleep yet. When I dropped my Switch Lite on my face, I knew it was time.
I'm up to the intermission before the final battle of Chapter 6 in Fuga: Melodies of Steel on Steam, so I guess I'm about halfway through now. Still no sacrifices. It looks like there's only one character left to recruit, bringing the total to 12. Makes sense, since you need six for a full battle party (the three actively fighting and three more supporting them), and the game starts you off with six. So you could sacrifice all of the original six and get six more to replace them (two of each weapon type, just like the initial batch), but any more sacrifices than that would leave you shorthanded. Which is good, because there should be a penalty to overusing what's basically an insta-win option for the hardest battles. I've heard of people doing a "genocide run", but not even having three active fighters for all the regular battles makes the game really tough. Anyway, I just don't like losing characters. Like, I've never played a ton of the Fire Emblem series, but I'd always try to avoid losing anybody in those games too. Getting back to Fuga, I'm still really enjoying it, though I feel like the pace has slowed down a little. I think it was Chapter 4 where there started to be way more forks in the paths, and probably because I keep picking the dangerous paths, it seems like the chapters are getting more time-consuming. So it does make my sessions with the game a little less satisfying, in that I want to keep playing and make more progress but have to stop to get to bed. But really, if the game leaves me wanting more, I can't complain.
More less gave up on Metroid Prime, now moved onto Mario Wonder.
It's been pretty quiet on the gaming front lately beyond typing in a maze game for my CoCo 3. On a non game front, I got my Macintosh 512K in place and I did some writing on it. It took a few tries to boot from the floppy but I got it going. Other than the keyboard being a prime cause for carpal tunnel (that sucker is TALL), it was enjoyable to type on a CRT again. A New Year's resolution would be to negotiate with the wife to see if can organize some of her shhh....tuff in the basement so I can set up a bigger desk for retro computing. I want, nay, NEED my CoCo to be on a CRT.
Today, though, I did do some gaming. Played some N64 and dang....just not feeling it. I've touched it a couple times in the past several months and each time I don't play long. I played some "Excitebike 64" followed by the "Goldeneye" hack "Goldfinger 007". It was....ok. I used to be pretty fond of Bond but after a few generations and playing games like "Doom 64" on my Switch with dual stick control really spoilied me. It's really hard to go back to that configuration.
Afterwards it was some Wii time and there too, just not feeling the motion controls. I played a couple levels of "Warioware: Smooth Moves" and I had enough. I played some "Excitetruck" which was exciting but there too, just not feeling it. One of my younger step sons wanted to play "Tom and Jerry: War of the Whiskers" (Gamecube) and he pounded on that for a while.
Later on this night I fired up the OG Xbox and played a through Arcade with a couple of characters. Then I continued on Fable for a while until my hip hurt from being on the floor of the living room and it was time my daughter went back to her mom (she was in deep with some Roblox with her step brothers-my Macbook still is down so I couldn't join). When I got back I needed to kill some demons so I played some "Doom 64" on the Switch and got through level 5. I thought I unlocked a bunch of crap BUT I didn't save! I totally forgot that it doesn't autosave! Dang modern conveniences!
Tomorrow I'm debating going to the Garcade for an early birthday treat (and because they are closed on Monday).
The last few weeks have been pretty crazy for me, between traveling, all of us getting sick, trying to keep up with work deadlines, and of course the holidays. So not much gaming since beating Imagine Figure Skater. I tried to start up NeuroVoider on Vita, if only because it's supposed to be a fairly short game, but I quickly realized that I have so little experience with twin stick shooters that the control scheme doesn't feel natural to me. I got a game over almost immediately, and since the game is also considered to be on the more challenging side, I decided I didn't have the patience to get used to the game while also being sick.
So I decided to go with something a little more familiar and started up Gaia Seed: Project Seed Trap, a PS1 game that's available on US PSN despite receiving no localization whatsoever. It's a very import-friendly game, though, so there's almost nothing that would need to be changed for an actual localization anyway. The menus are in English to begin with, and the opening and endings can be watched with either English narration or English subtitles. That said, the English narration is done by a Japanese man with a heavy accent and tenuous grasp of English, and the subtitles are very Engrish-y too, so either way you go, it's tough to understand. But it does have that Zero Wing kind of charm. It would've been nice if they had at least made an English manual for the US PSN release, but it's a very simple, straightforward horizontal shmup so no biggie. What isn't import-friendly about the game, in terms of actually acquiring an original physical copy, is the absurd value it has secondhand. I bought it on PSN mainly because of that, since I figured I'll never own a physical copy. I first played on the Practice difficulty mode, which abruptly stops after Stage 4, but I've since beaten the game on Normal twice over, once getting a bad ending and then getting the good. It's interesting how it's got three different endings which aren't even related to your usage of credits but rather what you do on the final bosses. To get the good ending, you have to be a pacifist and let the timer run out. You can do that on every boss in the game, but it only makes a difference on the last two. The whole game has a weird vibe, from the messages in the story to the eclectic music and trippy visuals. But in terms of the gameplay, it's nothing remarkable, though it's still fun enough. Some diehard shmup fans complain that it's way too easy, but I'm not surprised. I always kinda regret looking up what other people have to say about shmups online, haha. It seems like only diehards talk about them and make it out like anybody else who plays them should be as good as them. I see people recommending starting straight on Hard in Gaia Seed, saying they got a 1CC on their first try, and claiming anybody can credit feed their way to victory on Normal, even though the game only offers something like 5 credits on Normal. I'd say the game is relatively easy on Normal, but I ran out of credits and lives on the last stage my first go. The second time I had it beat, but even after the third time, I'm still far from achieving a 1CC on Normal, let alone Hard. But I've never been great at shmups and don't play them super often. I think I'll check out the other bad ending, and then maybe I'll move on to something else. I've been seeing the endings with Japanese narration and English subtitles, so I could replay to see all the endings with the English narration, but eh, that'd probably be overkill for me.
Last edited by Aussie2B; 01-02-2024 at 01:16 PM.
I got the other bad ending in Gaia Seed on my Vita. It's the hardest one to get, as you have to wait out the turtle boss and then defeat the angel boss. If you're going for the good ending, you don't have to deal with the angel boss attacking, as it does nothing until it's fired at. Even though I had already beat the game twice over, I had a couple failed runs before I got the last ending I hadn't seen. So I've had my fill at this point, and I watched all three endings again, with the English narration, on YouTube, rather than putting in the time to do 3+ more sessions with the game with the voice setting changed. Now to decide if I want to try NeuroVoider again or play something entirely different.
I did get some "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" time in on New Years, playing through the whole celebration. After that I plugged away at some "Doom 64" and got to, I guess, "Hell".
For my birthday I took my daughter and son to the Garcade in Menomonee Falls for a few hours. I had a good time but discovered that my desire to play stand up arcade games is finite. I played my usual cabs, dabbled in some others but when I had to head back to town to drop my daughter off, i was "done". I never had the opportunity (or the skill) to just stand at a classic (as in no ending) machine and play it as far as I could go. Favorite games like "Time Pilot" or "Tron" I'd get a good run then try to do it all again but would choke and get worse scores.
I think I miss the potential loss of not having enough cash to get better at a game or trying to get as far as you can on one play. Sure I could artificially limit myself by either only playing a game X number of times, putting my own tokens into a small can to simulate the amount of cash I have. In the end, I'm a realist and I *know* I'm B.S.ing myself and the desired effect is gone like smoke in the wind.
Metroid Prime or Super Mario Wonder
I beat Exile's End on my Vita with over seven hours on the clock, but I didn't manage 100% completion. I had 85% of the items and 3 out of 7 of the hidden messages. Around the time of my last post about the game, I started talking to my husband about it, which got him interested and then he blew through the whole thing. Since he was playing on a much bigger screen, he could more easily spot breakable walls. I noticed the obvious spots in the first mine, but I didn't realize there were much subtler tells in the other areas. So I started examining walls much more carefully from that point on, but I'm not surprised I missed some. I'll check out some online maps to pick off what little I missed and try to get that 100% completion trophy. I obviously didn't get remotely close to earning the Fast Mover trophy, which requires beating the game in under three hours. I hate speedrunning trophies, so I'm just gonna say to heck with that one. I get speedrunning is part of this genre, starting with Metroid's different endings depending on how much time you take, but it's not my thing at all.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not amazing, but I never expected it to compete with the greats like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. I don't think it's fair to hold indie developers to the same standards as industry pros on top of their game. All the mixed reviews and criticism makes Exile's End sound a lot worse than it actually is, which is sad considering a lot of the criticism is straight up false. I guess it shows the difference between pretentious indie aficionados who want to pretend they're into retro games, even though they either haven't played old games since they were brand-new or are so young they never played them to begin with, and people like myself who still play decades-old games in the present day and have no problem playing an indie that tries to be fairly authentic to the way old games played. I found the game pretty straightforward and easy, so it's perplexing to me that so many people find the game so frustrating and confusing. The only real beefs I have with the game are the crappy way the map fills in (some rooms just never fill in completely, making it seem like you've got something left to explore when you actually don't) and that the involvement of the "legendary" Japanese industry veterans didn't amount to much. Despite having the same composer as Ninja Gaiden, the music in Exile's End doesn't stand out, in my opinion, and other than a nice piece of art when the game loads up, there's nothing about the visuals that's especially impressive either. They could've told me the game was entirely made by Western indie developers, and I would've believed it no problem.
Last edited by Aussie2B; 01-26-2024 at 04:01 PM.
I added roughly another hour to the clock to get the five rooms I missed in Exile's End on my Vita, but after that, I had 100% completion and saw the tiny extra scene added to the ending. It's not so apparent while progressing normally, but the areas are rather annoyingly linear when you're trying to navigate around the whole map quickly to look for things you missed. There are a lot of dead ends from places where you drop down but can't jump back up, and I often found myself thinking I could reach another area going a certain way only to hit one of those dead ends, then I had to backtrack to where I was before and try a longer way around.
Last night, I started up Lucifer Ring on my Vita. It's another PS1 game that originally only came out in Japan but much later got a US PSN release, with no localization work done to it. Like the previous couple I mentioned, it's stupidly expensive to get a physical copy of the game, hence my opting for a cheap digital copy instead. It's not quite as English-friendly as Gaia Seed, but all that people who don't understand Japanese would miss out on here is a little bit of narration for the opening, in between the five stages, and during the "ending". Not only did I start Lucifer Ring but I also beat it during my very first session with the game, and I use quotes because it was hardly an ending. Just credits, a small window of gameplay footage, and some narration talking over it. There's very little story in general. It's just a simplistic 3D beat-em-up in a fantasy setting where you collect four rings (by beating the first four stages) and use those to open up the gate to hell or something and defeat some big, evil monster. I played on the default Normal difficulty setting, and with the infinite continues, it was no problem blowing through it. You do have to start from scratch on whatever section/boss you were on if you use a continue, so maybe that presents more of a challenge on the higher difficulties. Once you beat it, you can choose which type of sword you want to use when you replay, and I hear you get a level select after a second time through, so I'll probably do that at least. The game felt really slow and clunky to me, but I thought the only way to run was by double-tapping, though apparently you can hold a shoulder button to run too, oops. It's not a particularly good game, but it definitely has that kind of quirky charm a lot 5th gen games have, in my eyes at least.
I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.Originally Posted by Aussie2B
Finally throughy kids' chess meet season. If your kids ever get into a school chess team, the meets are not parent-firendly. You can't watch them play even. You just sit in a crowded area all day trying to help your kid stay happy and focused enough (or helping the navigate Chrono Trigger on DS...).
I did in the last month play through Final Fantasy III (VI I guess) on SNES with my oldest son, and then for the first time finally played all the way through Final Fantasy V on the PS1. It was fun, and the job system was interesting, but needed a little too much grinding for what it is. Still, I liked it a lot, though it doesn't hold a candle to VI for me.
I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.
As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.
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