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Metroid Dread (Switch) A triumphant return for the Metroid series and while it doesn’t reinvent the franchise, it is essentially 2D Metroid on modern consoles. The counter move, introduced in the 3DS Samus Returns I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) adds an extra nuance to gameplay, although is pretty much a necessity on bosses. Speaking of which, I thought the bosses here were excellent. Each major one I did, I pretty much got wiped out quickly and wondered how I’d ever defeat it, especially with no visible life bar. However, each attempt I lasted a little longer through naturally learning the attack patterns and my fingers hitting the right buttons a fraction quicker. It’s a pretty cool feeling and motivation to persevere, and actually after a few attempts I found I was taking them down. I’m glad they introduced the QoL improvements such as areas of the map flashing to indicate there’s a hidden power-up, without revealing exactly where it is, and the scanner to identify breakable blocks in an area. I was never that great in backtracking and finding lots in previous games, so this made that aspect faster and much less frustrating, especially as having a host of missiles and health is vital later on. I can see why views are mixed on the E.M.M.I. stealth sections. I appreciate whst they added, but I didn’t really enjoy them, employing a more cowardly ‘run, run, as fast as you can’ mentality a lot if time and seeing way too much of Samus’ death animation! I preferred the Zero Mission stealth sections. The Shinespark puzzles were clever, although some used mechanics I don’t recall the game ever mentioning, which made some much trickier. I did need to look up help on a few. I had no desire to replay it though, unlike some of the previous games, so I was determined to at least find and collect 100% of the items. Overall, great game, and fixes a Metroid itch and will introduce many to the 2D Metroid games. It feels tough, and players need a little patience, especially with boss battles. A good ‘once and done’ title.

Nice one! It really does complete the Analogue Pocket experience. Well pleased with my one

Well, I managed to score an Analogue dock on eBay for just under £170... it's the white dock, plus an Anker UK power adapter. It would have cost more to order from Analogue, if I could, which I can't due to the credit card issue, plus it's in the UK, so it should arrive soon.

Finished the game in the early hours of this morning. Having now played the modern trilogy, I think this is my second favourite, maybe a tie with Golden at a push. That's not to say its a bad game. I loved my time with it, its just that I think 5 is absolutely amazing and this one certainly doesn't reach the highs of that entry. When I play a JRPG I'm usually there for the characters and story. The characters in this game great and I loved pretty much all of them but the story takes far too long to get going. When the narrative does start to pick up, it has pacing issues, with long periods going by where nothing is moving forward. Persona 4 Golden had this same issue as well. The repeatative loop of doing a dungeon every month is fine if you have a narrative carrot dangled in front of you but that doesn't happen enough in both of these games but it's something that was fixed in Persona 5. I think part of this issue is a me problem though. As I said, I'm here for the main narrative and in JRPGs most of the sidequest activities don't interest me at all. A lot of the time I find them to be all filler and no killer. The Social Link aspect of these games are a huge part of them but most of them I don't really care for. You do get a few good stories out of them, the dying man (Sun Persona) being one of them, but most are just schoolyard nonsense. I guess it's probably an age thing. I'm pushing 42 and I just don't care for the teeny bopper side of things. Had I still been in my youth then I no doubt would have been more invested in these things. When the main story was firing on all cylinders it was a fantastic ride. This is one of those games I'm very happy to have played. Having not got into the series until the 5th entry (played 4 when it was out on PS2 but it wasn't until after 5 that I eventually finished Golden on the Vita), it's great to go back and play through one of the fan favourite entries of the series. That's another JRPG down out of the early heavy hitters of this year. It was certainly more enjoyable than FFVII: Rebirth but I have a feeling that once I get around to Like a Dragon and Granblue Fantasy (still waiting for this to drop) that one of these will take the crown.

I picked this up at the end of last week. The game dropped to a more reasonable £35 and so I decided to snap it up. Really enjoyed playing this, which shouldn't be that much of a surprise as I do enjoy the series. The story mode was a decent length and has you going through Jin's history with his father, as well as everyone who is connected to their bloodline. Awesome cutscenes and plenty of anime type power up moments were to be had. During the campaign you are forced to switch characters a lot of the time. Usually I'm not a fan of this but the game has a feature which makes things easier to use characters who's movements you aren't familiar with. By pressing the L1 button you can switch to a mode that allows the game to string together combos for you by just pressing a couple of buttons. It made things much easier and allowed me to carry on through the story without get bogged down into learning new move sets. You can use this in any mode, even online. There's also a standard arcade mode which unlocks the story and endings for other characters. This is more like what you seen it the classic Tekken games, where you are pitted against the AI in a series of back to back fights and then get an ending scene as a reward. I played a little bit of the online modes, purely because I needed to for the platinum, and found it to be quite fun. Connection speeds were spot on and you could tell it players were using wired or wireless and then opt in or out if their connections were garbage. This is something any online games should have, especially ones that require fast and precise movements. I also toyed around with the avatar stuff as well. At first I found these lobbies to be quite dead and imagined most were just playing online straight from the menu but once I turned on the crossplay feature these lobbies burst into life and avatars were running all over the place. Great game. I mean, it's Tekken and if you've liked past games then this one will be right up your street.

At it again

Aaaaand Blue Stake with every Deck done

Same here...I'm making so many stupid mistakes... Anyways, just beat Act 4 with Cadence Looking at my trophy list, I see that I've finished an All Zones run with Cadence, Melody and Bard back in 2016 (!!!). Simpler times back then

Ooh! Burnout 3 is another one that really should've come out on the Gamecube. The GCN got Burnout 2, but never Takedown or Revenge; which is a real shame. Actually, the loss of Burnout in general is a huge shame in general. Only EA could take such a simple, successful concept and manage to run it and its developer into the ground like that (a developer that also basically had a monopoly on multiplatform development middlware in the PS2/GCN/Xbox era with the Renderware engine to boot!). Man, I miss Burnout

Too Human started was originally announced for the PlayStation, but development was paused when they made a deal with Nintendo to make Eternal Darkness on the N64. Incidentally, Too Human is still available digitally on the Xbox store https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/too-human/BQ216SGGM4M8 It's cheaper than the physical versions, too. Still not sure it's worth the price.

I've tried a few times but never managed to get too far. The story parts and characters look interesting but I couldnt get on with the older dungeon mechanics or first person view when going through them. I think I watched a video explaining the lore from them that continues into the newer titles though. Actually explains things like the blue butterfly that appears in all the games.

You’ve covered the main ones I could think of, with the Rare move along with Shadowman (I didn’t realise about Winback though). Okami came to Wii. I suppose Toe Jam & Earl 3 was being developed as a Nintendo/ multi-platform game at one point. Too Human, as a Silicon Knights game I thought would be released on GameCube, before eventually coming out in XBox 360. I only recall that one as I read about how they’d lost a lawsuit and had to stop making new copies of the game / destroy existing copies. I immediately tracked down and bought a copy for cheap (under a fiver) and have still never played it, thinking it would naturally become a collector’s item. Needless to say, over a decade later and interest never picked up - you can pick it up for a couple of quod on eBay! 😂

Yeah I think it started a trend of having links between the games. 5's is that you can see Rise posters around Tokyo.

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Saturday Smash! (06/04/2024) - - - - -

ClayFighter Sculptor’s Cut NA release: 15th May 1998 PAL release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay N64 Magazine Score: N/A This is an “improved” and updated version of ClayFighter 63⅓ featuring some gameplay changes and new characters. It was exclusive to Blockbusters, the small amount of copies being sold after the promotion ended, making it one of the rarest N64 games. That said, everything good about the game you see before the main menu: the game’s intro is a nice little song. But the game is still incredibly slow and tedious. The main changes to gameplay are the removal of a bunch of special moves. Some of the new characters are slightly more inventive than the originals, but there’s still none that I wanted to actually choose. This is just a small patch for a terrible game. Remake or remaster? Like I said for 63⅓, throw them all in a compilation. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get ClayFighter Sculptor’s Cut

So good that PSO did a remix of mostly PSII songs but this song made it in. It's Fire Emblem, right? ...Right?

After watching the above video the other night, I sat and watched Not For Resale yesterday evening. It's a video game documentary I watched and spoke about in the early 2020's and it's about retro gaming, collecting and the rise of digital. I was curious to give it another watch after everything that has happened since. There's a section in the documentary about the indie game movement and how digital has been a great thing for them due to breaking down the barriers of not needing a physical copy of the game and being able to publish themselves. Fast forward to today and the bubble has very much burst for a lot of them. There are countless stories from these developers how it's so hard to make a living now, mainly because the barrier for entry is so low that the market is completely flooded. Even more so now than it was back when this was filmed. You had the owner of Limited Run Games explain why he wanted to start the company. He said words to the effect of he was tired of seeing garbage games on the shelf and being persevered when a lot of digital only games that were genuinely good were being left on digital marketplaces. Again, fast forward to today and his attitude has clearly changed. There are lots of LR releases that are very questionable in terms of their quality. It was great listening to the owners of the retro stores and hearing their passion for the hobby. Sadly, some of the stores had to close due to the death of the high street and that was back before the pandemic hit. I'd be curious to know how many of them are still running now. Probably not a lot. One owner who was interviewed said when people ever ask him how to go about opening a retro gaming store his answer was always "Don't!" I felt sorry for this one guy who brought in a massive Saturn collection that was in mint condition. Had he held on to all of that stuff for an extra year or so (I imagine the documentary was filmed in 2018-2019) he would have made a fortune during the pandemic when retro prices went through the roof. I dunno if I could ever bring myself to sell a collection that size. I suppose it depends on what was going on in my life at the time. The guy was looking to get married and buy a house and so needed the extra cash for those things. It was great watching it again but it highlighted just how much things have changed (both retro gaming and general gaming industry) since it's original release, even though not much time has passed since then and now. It did get my retro game collecting itch going again though. I may have to have a browse on eBay in the coming days.

Indeed.

I beat Mega Man last night. He's too slippery Other than that: Good game. Lot of fun, fairly difficult, solid start to an apparently legendary series. I also started Mega Man 2 and the dude is still slippery, though not as much as in the first game. Will the third installment be the one where Mega Man stops in place when you let go of the directional buttons?

Indeed I am. Well done.

Finished and then got the Platinum trophy on Spider-Man: Miles Morales over the easter weekend. That's back to back platinum trophies. @Hero-of-Time is no doubt very proud of me. I wasn't expecting much from the story but I was surprised as I thought it was pretty good, especially the ending. Having to do New Game Plus to get the platinum trophy unfortunately highlighted how short the story was if you didn't bother with the side missions. Regarding the side missions, I really enjoyed them, a nice variety and while I normally hate stealth in games (I don't have the patience), I completed quite a few of the enemy bases without being seen. The postcard scavanger hunt one was probably my favourite side mission. Quite touching with the messages from his dad. Gameplay was spot on as expected with Insomniac. As with God of War: Ragnarok, it looks great on the PS4 Pro. Now I really want to play Spider-Man 2 but I don't want to buy a PS5.

I know I want to do play GameCube games after N64 games, but I've come across a few interesting non-GameCube games I'm thinking about including due to having a sort of "N64" association. When looking into Shadow Man and WinBack (both notable N64 games, more so than the other platforms they released on), I discovered both had sequels that I'd never heard of. They're supposedly not great, but I'm curious to see for myself. On a similar note, when looking for GameCube prototypes (there aren't many, and some don't work well in emulators), I searched to see if there was one for a game that was a heavy part of early GameCube marketing: Galleon. I thought it had been cancelled, so I was surprised to discover it came out on Xbox, so I'm including that as well, because of how much I rewatched a VHS that included that trailer. Are there any other PS2/Xbox games that feel like they have an association with Nintendo or the N64, but never came out on GameCube - not so much "games that would have been nice on GameCube", but strange omissions (even if they were exclusive deals) - Soulcalibur III perhaps because of the popularity of 2 on the GameCube.