Other Consoles
A forum for any non-Nintendo consoles, including PC gaming.
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The inflated file sizes for ports like this (and Battlefront) always give me the impression that they've just ran every single texture though an AI upscaler rather than focusing on the ones that really need it and doing them properly. With the way the camera is and the original art style, you can't really tell that the textures are bigger (even in HD), but it's an easy way to "enhance" a game. I reckon the other graphical issues are because the port is based on the 3DS version, not the original. -
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Return of the Obra Dinn (Switch) This proved to be one of the more creative games I’ve played. Difficult, clever and puzzling, although somewhat arduous later one, Return of the Obra Dinn to me was like a mash-up of What Became of Edith Finch, Moby Dick, Cluedo, and Sudoku. Played from a first-person viewpoint, you’re an investigator exploring the now empty ship The Obra Dinn, to try and determine what happened to its crew and passengers five years ago. It’s not long before you stumble across the remains of a corpse. This is the main premise of how to investigate what happened, as the game then prompts you to use a mysterious pocket watch to transport you back to a freeze frame scene showing the moment of their death. This is usually preceded by whatever the victim heard in the seconds prior to this. From there, you can walk around the scene looking for any clues that may help identify the people in the scene or learn what’s actually happening. These scenes are the main mechanic for trying to solve the mystery. You’re given a logbook at the start, which you need to complete. Initially all this contains is a list of the names of those on board, along with their nationality and a sketch of those on board. Whenever you find a scene, a new page is revealed in the logbook, which shows an image of a person or persons in the scene, and then leaves it for you to fill in the gaps for their name, what fate befell them, and if they killed then who was responsible for their death. Rarely are all three key bits of information revealed in one scene. Sometimes you may hear a name said, and usually you’ll be able to work out how the perished. The game is quick to tell you that inferring things is key, and won’t try and trick you. If someone’s acting like the surgeon say, they’ll be the surgeon, if they look of a certain nationality they will be that nationality. Often in a scene who will discover another dead body, and this will then transport you to another scene. The logbook carefully groups these into a set of events, which help reveal the story of what mysterious happenings occurred the vessel. As I was quick to discover, the game’s not afraid to throw into your face that a person is in the throngs of death. If they’re been shot you will see gussets of liquid shooting out of their body. Or at least I assumed it was. To this end I was glad at the design decision to make everything black and white and grainy. Often you’ll be able to tell what’s happened, but thankfully the graphics don’t reveal the gore in HD detail. On the flip side though, it caused some of the clues to be a little too subtle due to the lack of clarity. I thought I’d be able to brute force some of the details, and I could for a bit. The game only reveals you’ve got someone completely correct once every time you get three people and their fates right. I did find I would get to a stage where I was confident of two, then would go through guessing the options of a third person until the game told me it was right. To that end, most of the clues made me feel smart when I worked them out. It wasn’t easy though, and for many of the ones I brute forced I never found out what the clues were. It also got very arduous towards the end. Once I found all the scenes there was no quick option to go back to them. Instead, I’ve have to remember where a corpse was and find it, which considering some were contained within a scene contained within a scene within another scene, made things a little too tedious. I wish I had kept track of some clues with pen and paper and I’d often find myself meandering around not remembering where or if I’d spotted something. Finding a corpse and the surprise of not knowing what scene I was about to observe, and the mechanic of playing a tricky and dark game of Guess Who were enjoyable and fresh. It lost it’s freshness in the second half, but for the first initial hours this was a really fun sleuth-em-up. -
I've had this on 3DS for a while and was planning to finally play it when I go on holiday in a couple of weeks... Suddenly I don't feel quite so excited about that! (Playing the game that is, not the holiday!)
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It's been a while since I last posted, but there's plenty of games I've been tackling. Curiously, it's been mostly compilations... Capcom Beat'em-up Bundle I have played this one before. Posted about it, even. But at the time, I hadn't actually finished most of these games, which means they were marked as "Unfinished"... Since one of my gaming resolutions for 2024 was to clear my unfinished games, I had to tackle these properly: The King of Dragons - One of the most accessible titles in this collection, and one that I found very enjoyable. It's 2 basic movesets distributed among 5 characters (each with different stats), but it's pretty well designed. Projectiles are surprisingly rare in this genre, so the fact that I can play as an Archer or Mage is pretty novel. It's got some tough, but surprisingly fair bosses, too. The only thing to keep in mind is that it's also surprisingly long for an Arcade game (something like 12 levels). Finished it with the Archer. 3 stars Knights of the Round - Back then, I thought this was the worst title in the collection. I still think that. The attacks don't feel impactful at all, and it's got a needlessly high barrier of execution for its most basic moves (a parry that needs to be timed, a jumping attack that barely works...). Dreadful experience. Dropped. 1 star Armored Warriors - Really fun Mecha-themed beat'em-up. Controls smoothly, difficulty feels fair, and it's got plenty of style. It's got a complex weapon/equipment system (you can equip stuff to your arm, shoulders, and feet separately) that feels more accessible than it sounds. A minor gripe is that the characters lose their unique moves the moment they pick up a weapon, but it's still a worthwhile experience. Finished it with... the main character whose name I forgot 4 stars Warriors of Fate - I thought this was fine back then, but I came to dislike it the more I played it. The various mechanics don't work quite as intended, but that's not what makes the game bad... it's the fact that enemies have gigantic health bars, and your attacks cause pitiful damage. And get this, when you die and Continue, every enemy on-screen takes damage equal to about half of their health. Never before have I felt an Arcade game that feels so pay to win. Dropped. 1 star Captain Commando - Is a fun and accessible one. There's 4 distinct characters, difficulty curve is fine for the most part, and it's got plenty of style. My only genuine complaint is that the final boss is a ridiculous difficulty spike. Finished it as Captain Commando himself. 3 stars That's 5 previously unfinished games cleared from my backlog. Overall, the Capcom Beat'em-up Bundle is still a lovely, well-put collection that's worth visiting, 5 stars. Even if a couple of games in there are poor, I'm very glad the collection exists. Double Dragon Trilogy So, this one wasn't exactly on my plans at first. Since I was blasting through beat'em-ups, I decided to give Double Dragon (NES) a try on the NSO. That game felt basic, but there was some depth to it. Billy gains experience throughout the game, and unlocks some new moves along the way. Furthermore, the bosses are set in creative environments where you can try to defeat them via punching or via ring-out, it's got some interesting ideas. Ultimately, the game got too difficult to continue, and despite its ideas, it just didn't grab me enough to continue. I then tried Double Dragon 2 (NES). This one was more interesting. You press one button to always attack left, and another to always attack right, regardless of orientation, which means that the A button is either a punch to the right, or a back kick to the right. It's so bizarre! Truth be told, they're good moves: the punch is quicker and shorter, the kick is longer and slower. Turning around to use one or the other is kinda fun, actually. Furthermore, the game actually has plenty of ideas throughout the playthrough (cramped corridors where you can't jump, a tank as a boss fight where you need to platform a bit, etc.), and what brings it down the most are the absurd platforming segments in the lategame. I needed the rewind feature to finish the game on Normal (and then they don't even have the decency to give me the proper final boss). I've had the trilogy on GOG for a very long time, so I decided, now's the time to check it out! Double Dragon (Arcade) turned out to feel more enjoyable than its NES counterpart (the entire moveset is available from the outset, and there are cutscenes that transition between levels), though those ring-out bosses were exclusive to the NES. The game definitely felt more difficult, with certain enemies even punishing me for landing a punch if I didn't mash fast enough. While enjoyable, it didn't hold my attention for long, for similar reasons as the NES version. Double Dragon 2 (Arcade) felt much different than its NES counterpart, not offering any of the kooky ideas from that version. I hear the original game did have the left/right dynamic, but this rerelease did away with it, reducing controls to a simple "A to punch, B to kick backwards", which manages to be more confusing than the original idea. All in all, this felt like a much more generic affair, and worse of all, boring. Double Dragon 3 (Arcade) was just a big stinker. Clearly made by a different company, this game runs horribly, feels janky and unpolished up the wazoo, and clearly cares not for balance or difficulty spikes. The worst aspect though, is that this may be the first-ever instance of pay-to-win microtransactions. That's right, you can purchase upgrades and new moves with extra coins. Disgusting. Finally, the Double Dragon Trilogy itself, released in 2015, might just be the worst compilation I've ever played with. Instead of preserving the original games, they made a bunch of needless changes to them (like redoing the UI, or the aforementioned rework of the controls in DD2) without giving the player any option to turn them on or off. Furthermore, they added widescreen to these versions... without changing any specifics of where the player can move to. In other words, you now run into an invisible wall where the old aspect ratio used to be. Did a weapon land on the edge of the screen? Tough luck, you can't get there. So obnoxious. DotEmu always had good intentions, but they were obviously not good at this endeavour back then. It was interesting to play through such historic titles, though I'm more saddened by the sorry state of their curation and preservation. The NES versions and the first Arcade game get 2 stars each. Everything else (including the collection) gets 1 star. Megaman for the NSO
The Gameboy Wars See, this game does have a nice boxart. Shame on the NSO for showing us a NTSC abomination. Anyway, this was a replay of a childhood game. Game is still lovely and nostalgic, and I'm really happy it's on the NSO, exactly as a I remember it. There was a brief scare where I couldn't replicate a platform skip in Iceman's stage... but then I eventually did it. I've just gotten old, my timing isn't what it used to be I also (re)played MMII and MMIII. From the NSO thread: On instinct, I rate these three games, in order, 4 stars, 3 stars, and 2 stars, but my enjoyment of them kind of transcends this grading system. Without much else to add... here's an attempt to lower the pitch in MMII. With corrected instrumentation, that soundtrack actually sounds pretty catchy. Megaman: The Wily Wars Still itching for Megaman, I decided to take the Wily Wars for a spin: I had never played this game, you see. Inspired by Super Mario All-Stars, this game is actually a collection of MM1-3, remade for the Mega Drive. The first time that classic Megaman was done in 16-bit, predating even MM7. Incidentally, this was developed by Minakuchi Engineering, the same guys behind the Game Boy games (except MMII). It... feels a bit off. The controls, I mean. Megaman feels a bit stiff, his sprite is definitely taller than in the NES, and he does NOT shimmy easily anymore. He also fires a bit slower, just enough to be noticeable. Some seemingly arbitrary changes were made to the enemies as well, as most bosses feel much sturdier (they have way more i-frames than before), but many of them also slower (most noticeable with Quickman, Shadowman, and Heatman). Once you get over that initial barrier of Megaman feeling "off", this is actually a competent and interesting version of all 3 games. The redone graphics look pretty nice, enhancing the intended atmosphere for many of the classic stages (for example, adding swaying heat waves to Fireman's stage, and Bubbleman's underwater segments), and in some cases making them feel entirely new (Topman's stage is now a toy factory instead of a greenhouse, and Cutman's stage doesn't look like rubble anymore). There are some annoying moments where you can't quite tell what's foreground and what's background, but they're few and far between. The soundtrack for each game was also redone with the MD soundfont, and many classic tunes sound pretty dang nice. The password system is gone, as you can now save in all 3 games (a godsend for MM1 especially). I dare say this might legitimately be the best version of MM1, in fact. (Granted, I haven't played the PSP remake, but that one looks like an entirely new game) And because remaking games wasn't enough, after beating all 3, you unlock a really fun new campaign: Wily Tower. There are 3 new robot masters designed for this game (they do look more like MMX mavericks), each with their own stage, and after defeating them, you have 4 more stages of Wily, with more bosses. They're all pretty cool, actually (shout-out to Buster Rod G., which is a worthwhile addition to Megaman, despite the ridiculous name). It sounds like a typical MM game, sure, but what makes this mode unique is that you can build your own arsenal. Yeah, you can choose 8 weapons and 3 helper items out of any of the first 3 NES games! It's a really fun idea, and I really enjoyed being able to use my own preferred weapons (none of which come from MM3). Since this extends to the items, I was even happy to use Item-1 instead of being stuck to the wonky Rush Coil. I had great fun revisiting this trilogy in such a new way, and I enjoyed Wily Tower even more. This quirky experiment deserves 4 stars for sure.
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