Your 2021 Gaming Diary

[Cube]

At 00:03 today, I finished Donkey Kong 64 for the first time, with 101% completion and everything found.

 

Incidentally, the single most frustrating part in terms of camera and platforming was in the first level, so a lot of the rest of the game was a lot more enjoyable.

[Sméagol]

22 minutes ago, Cube said:

At 00:03 today, I finished Donkey Kong 64 for the first time, with 101% completion and everything found.

 

Incidentally, the single most frustrating part in terms of camera and platforming was in the first level, so a lot of the rest of the game was a lot more enjoyable.

What was your hardest banana to get (yes, I purposely phrased it that way)?

I found the mechanical fish thing or whatever it was, you have to hit 3 targets behind a propellor, to be the hardest. It was the 2nd to last babana for me to get, but couldn't do it, and it was annoying to retry. Left the game for years after that I believe.. Until I finally tried again, and found out there was some kind of trick to it.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Sméagol

[Cube]

1 minute ago, Sméagol said:

What was your hardest banana to get (yes, I purposesly phrased it that way)?

The two beaver bother ones in Creepy Castle were very difficult. That mini game just doesn't seem to work. The ones where it goes dark and you have to shoot the banana before it goes dark again pretty much need cheating (due to HDMI input lag and the game running quicker on Wii U, it's impossible without pausing).

 

The Jetpack Rings were some of the hardest ones.

 

Luckily the mechanical fish wasn't as much as a pain as I could retry fairly instantly due to save states (yeah, it's cheating, but having to travel to the other side of the map, get a jetpack, fly up, play some music and race back is not fun at all, I used it to skip long repeat times a lot).

[Jonnas]

15 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

What was your hardest banana to get (yes, I purposely phrased it that way)?

 

9 minutes ago, Cube said:

The two beaver bother ones

I never played DK64. Is the entire game this naughty?

[Cube]

6 minutes ago, Jonnas said:

 

I never played DK64. Is the entire game this naughty?

There's a female monkey with massive breasts that talks about showing you how to use your instrument (all while porno music is playing) and loads more innuendos.

[Glen-i]

13 hours ago, Jonnas said:

 

I never played DK64. Is the entire game this naughty?

It's N64 Rare. Their games were full of this.

[Glen-i]

I'm pretty sure I'm coming up to the end of Terra's path on Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

Spoiler

I've seen some naïve characters in this series, but Terra really takes the cake.

It kinda all culminated with the perfect image of the game telling me to "put Peter Pan in his place". The guy is a fountain of awful choices.

Anyway, had to look up a guide for synthesis, glad I did. It's all far too confusing. Dream Drop Distance handled this much better.

I was always wondering where a Lilo & Stitch world would show up and this game was it. It's weird that it's set in the opening segment of Outer Space. Considering that only makes up about 5 minutes of the movie. Unfortunately, that means I didn't get to hear Stitch try and talk English. Except for when he tries to say Terra. That made me smile. Stitch's voice is always great. Also made it weird when the game hinted that Stitch does have the desire to make friends. His character development doesn't even begin until he meets Lilo... Still, Kingdom Hearts taking liberties with Disney stories isn't anything new. But I think they didn't utilise Lilo & Stitch enough.

I should watch that movie again.

But yeah, off to the Keyblade Graveyard, which sounds just lovely.

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by Glen-i
Birth by Sleep is a silly name. You can't blame me for accidentally typing 'of'

[Hero-of-Time]

Terra is a moron. Dude gets played like a fiddle. Aqua though... Easily one of my favs from the series.

[Glen-i]

5 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Terra is a moron. Dude gets played like a fiddle. Aqua though... Easily one of my favs from the series.

I groaned really hard when Jumba had a Freudian Slip when describing Stitch as a destructive creature and Terra didn't even question it for a bit and just broke him out of prison.

It's started to get kinda funny at this point.

[Aperson]

Should probably mention this game has a "Sonic Adventure" like structure where if you beat all the character's stories you get the "true" ending. Except Birth by Sleep has more specific requirement for getting the true ending. Difficulty matters very much so I would definitely recommend to do Ventus and Aqua on harder difficulties.

[Glen-i]

4 minutes ago, Aperson said:

Should probably mention this game has a "Sonic Adventure" like structure where if you beat all the character's stories you get the "true" ending. Except Birth by Sleep has more specific requirement for getting the true ending. Difficulty matters very much so I would definitely recommend to do Ventus and Aqua on harder difficulties.

Nah, I've never cared about getting the secret endings in Kingdom Hearts games. Kinda wish I chose Beginner with how stupid the hit stun is in this game.

But I will do all 3 paths. It's pretty obvious that the plot has a lot of holes that I'm sure the other 2 characters will fill in.

[Aperson]

2 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Nah, I've never cared about getting the secret endings in Kingdom Hearts games. Kinda wish I chose Beginner with how stupid the hit stun is in this game.

But I will do all 3 paths. It's pretty obvious that the plot has a lot of holes that I'm sure the other 2 characters will fill in.

Technically the game's actual ending and final boss IS that final story though. Terra, Ven and Aqua have their own story final bosses but the game's real final boss its technically fought in the final story. And then in Final Mix the story continues with an additional boss battle.

 

That leads into the ridiculously titled 0.2 passage that comes on the 2.8 compilation which then has some bearing on III.

[Hero-of-Time]

4 minutes ago, Aperson said:

Technically the game's actual ending and final boss IS that final story though. Terra, Ven and Aqua have their own story final bosses but the game's real final boss its technically fought in the final story. 

To this day Mysterious Figure is one of the hardest boss fights I have ever encountered in a game. Bosses in Sekiro, Dark Souls and Bloodborne have nothing on that guy. 

[Glen-i]

Oh boy, it's time for Terra's Final Boss, I sure hope I get smacked into next week because I tried a 2-hit combo after avoiding one of their attacks!

*Sigh*

See, I genuinely enjoy playing Kingdom Hearts, but I absolutely hate fighting most late game bosses in the series. You have all these elaborate moves, but if you ever actually attempt them, you get punished, because the boss will just teleport away mid-combo and then slap you out of your attack animation.

Inevitably, this means the best way to handle it is taking cheap potshots whenever a (very brief) opportunity arises. I finished him off by reflecting one of his projectile spam attacks. It's not very satisfying.

The camera really sucks here as well.

But Terra's story is done (Leaf Bracer is the only reason I beat the final boss on my first attempt). I'll be doing Ventus' story next, purely because Aqua is the leader of the BBS team in Melody of Memory, so I get the feeling she's the most important character.

[Aperson]

1 hour ago, Glen-i said:

Oh boy, it's time for Terra's Final Boss, I sure hope I get smacked into next week because I tried a 2-hit combo after avoiding one of their attacks!

*Sigh*

See, I genuinely enjoy playing Kingdom Hearts, but I absolutely hate fighting most late game bosses in the series. You have all these elaborate moves, but if you ever actually attempt them, you get punished, because the boss will just teleport away mid-combo and then slap you out of your attack animation.

Inevitably, this means the best way to handle it is taking cheap potshots whenever a (very brief) opportunity arises. I finished him off by reflecting one of his projectile spam attacks. It's not very satisfying.

The camera really sucks here as well.

But Terra's story is done (Leaf Bracer is the only reason I beat the final boss on my first attempt). I'll be doing Ventus' story next, purely because Aqua is the leader of the BBS team in Melody of Memory, so I get the feeling she's the most important character.

I think this is the intended order, Terra's story, then Ven's then Aqua's. That's the order I did them in anyway.

 

And yeah, that boss took me so many attempts to actually beat. So difficult... I think I got lucky on my successful attempt too.

[Glen-i]

Oh right, I forgot to give my thoughts on Birth By Sleep's story so far.

Now, I've never played this game, so please, for the love of Disney. Don't actually answer my questions if the game answers them later.

I'm mostly just writing down my thoughts because I'm already a bit confused and thought it'll be interesting to see how wrong I am.

Spoiler

OK, so Xehanort's plan is pretty straightforward. Use the darkness in Terra's heart to jack his body and be young again. Except it's not Young Xehanort, because he shows up in Dream Drop Distance? Not sure what Vanitas has to do with it, though...

This younger Xehanort looks like Ansem? That dude from the first game? But it doesn't matter anyway, because Terra beats him up, despite being just a soul (I think that's what happened)?

Can't help but feel that everything bad that happens in Kingdom Hearts is because Terra is a dumb dumb. Anyway he's sorta dead now because of that massive light explosion and so is Ansem? Not sure how he manages to show up in KH I...

Oh, and can I just point out how surprisingly horrifying seeing Ventus' frozen like that with his eyes still moving? Bloody hell, man. This is supposed to be a family game!

And Mickey Mouse made a blink and you'll miss it appearence near the end, but I suppose he never meets Terra.

The first point where this game started to go full on Kingdom Hearts is when Terra visited Destiny Island and met Riku when he was a kid.

What made Terra decide to go there all of a sudden? That comes out of nowhere... But I suppose they needed a reason why Riku was meant to be a Keyblade Master. (So you only need to hold a Keyblade to see if you are deemed worthy? OK... Sure...)

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Glen-i

[Londragon]

We've been having a lot of fun with Among Us, and invited some of my English students for a game over last weekend.

[Together] Among Us (Part 5)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son are joined by Kevin and Daniel who all get killed by The Imposter, mhwu huh huh!

[Dcubed]

On 01/01/2021 at 12:09 AM, Cube said:

At 00:03 today, I finished Donkey Kong 64 for the first time, with 101% completion and everything found.

 

Incidentally, the single most frustrating part in terms of camera and platforming was in the first level, so a lot of the rest of the game was a lot more enjoyable.

Lockdown must really be getting to you if you managed that!

You poor, poor soul...

[Dcubed]

Anywho, I need to post my thoughts on what I’ve been playing throughout 2020.  Though I have been radio silent all year, I have actually managed to complete some games amazingly enough!

Will probably be posting them tomorrow when I’m off work.

[Glen-i]

30 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Anywho, I need to post my thoughts on what I’ve been playing throughout 2020.  Though I have been radio silent all year, I have actually managed to complete some games amazingly enough!

Will probably be posting them tomorrow when I’m off work.

Well, make sure you post it in the correct thread then.

[Cube]

39 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Lockdown must really be getting to you if you managed that!

You poor, poor soul...

It wasn't too bad. According to the Wii U log, around 36 hours, but that would include idle time as well.

[Dcubed]

5 hours ago, Cube said:

It wasn't too bad. According to the Wii U log, around 36 hours, but that would include idle time as well.

That’s actually not a bad time for your first time through! Pretty impressive!

I did 101% it as a kid (and it definitely took me way longer than that), but I would never willingly do it again!

Edited January 3, 2021 by Dcubed

[Hero-of-Time]

I understand the criticisms levelled at DK64, but I still enjoy the game. Collecting the 4800 collectibles certainly gives Ubisoft games a run for their money.  

For me, it's another N64 Christmas classic and reading Cube's posts about it has certainly got me thinking about reaching for the Wii U GamePad. Oh, banana!

[Cube]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

That’s actually not a bad time for your first time through! Pretty impressive!

I did 101% it as a kid (and it definitely took me way longer than that), but I would never willingly do it again!

The only part that was new to me was the final fight. I'd already completed everything as a kid on the N64, but couldn't do the DK Arcade for the second time to get the Nintendo Coin.

[Aperson]

I never actually 100% completed DK64 because the Wii U controls were too finicky for one of the Shooting Gallery mini-games in Crystal Caves which I never managed to beat and which forced me to put the game on hold until I want to say 2018 was when I finally beat the game.

 

Speaking of annoying moments in platformers... wow, Run it Bayou is such a ridiculous level.

 

I spent nearly all day on just this level and it's companion side story level. Died over 70 times on the first one trying to get the box gem and died over 100 times likewise trying the same thing on that one. The worst part? I DIDN'T GET EITHER BOX GEM.

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out some boxes were hidden behind steps. OK... I think it needs to be said, if Super Mario Maker has taught me anything it's that there's a fine line between a well hidden secret and bad game design and I think so often Crash 4 falls on the wrong side of things with it's secrets. So many of these are hidden in such a way that you're given no hint whatsoever that something might be there, I literally think that without the internet you would never be able to find some of this stuff on your own. Run it Bayou I think is one of the worst offenders of this, I looked up where the Hidden Gem was and I'm like WHAT? How is anyone supposed to know that anything is there? With the Wumpa Fruit not doing much in this game Toys for Bob missed a trick in using it to hint towards secrets. The Naughty Dog Crash games understood the need for the player to be able to figure out secrets and they for the most part hid their secrets well. They were done in a way that was subtle and not very obvious, but something you could figure out. What happens if you go back to the Polar Bear in unbearable? Notice anything about that staircase of Nitro crates in Bee-Having? The platforms at the end of Bear Down?

 

Crash 4 is just having secrets for the sake of having secrets and with no hints, not even subtle, that something might be there then you're just missing so many box gems because the game designers gave no clue whatsoever that there might be any hidden boxes and it is especially frustrating when the game requires pixel perfect speedrun level play in order to just get every single crate in certain sections. In Run It Bayou there is one segment where you're on top of a motorhome boat and have to hit all the crates along the way. In the remixed version you have to be absolutely perfect in order to keep up with the motorhome and hit all the crates and I died at least 50 times on that section.

 

Anyway, I was involved in a collaboration with a friend on MTG Arena. I'll link the video below but unfortunately due a slight mistake in the recording I'm incredibly echoey. You can tell we're both amateurs when it comes to this collab stuff! Video may contain strong language, I'm posting this as the second half of the collab is going to be on my channel in a week's time.

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Aperson