Your 2024 Gaming Diary

[Hero-of-Time]

7 minutes ago, drahkon said:

You didn't have any problems like what's explained here?
I do and it sucks because I really want to play the game but simply can't

Nope, not at all. I was puzzled when you first mentioned it as two of my mates were playing it at that time with zero issues. Very weird.

[drahkon]

2 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Nope, not at all. I was puzzled when you first mentioned it as two of my mates were playing it at that time with zero issues. Very weird.

It is weird, yes.
But you mentioned that there was a cursor involved. Maybe there was a hotfix or something...I'm gonna download the game again and see for myself

[Hero-of-Time]

8 minutes ago, drahkon said:

It is weird, yes.
But you mentioned that there was a cursor involved. Maybe there was a hotfix or something...I'm gonna download the game again and see for myself

Did you not have the mouse cursor show up on your game? Like I said, I have no idea how I got it to pop up but it's much better to use that scrolling through the menus manually.

[drahkon]

1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Did you not have the mouse cursor show up on your game? Like I said, I have no idea how I got it to pop up but it's much better to use that scrolling through the menus manually.

Nah, I also checked the settings for that but couldn't find one.
But: There is that option now. Pressing L3 switches from stick to cursor navigation

[Hero-of-Time]

25 minutes ago, drahkon said:

Nah, I also checked the settings for that but couldn't find one.
But: There is that option now. Pressing L3 switches from stick to cursor navigation

Ah, that's what I must have hit.  

[Happenstance]

I've played Football Manager games still over the years but I think it was around 2012 that they made changes to make it more in depth that apparently my brain just couldn't handle and I've struggled with them ever since 😆

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, Happenstance said:

I've played Football Manager games still over the years but I think it was around 2012 that they made changes to make it more in depth that apparently my brain just couldn't handle and I've struggled with them ever since 😆

Yeah, I agree. Gone are the earlier days of Champ Man, starting a game with a Liverpool and Man U, selling all your rubbish for stupid amounts to Man U, selling all of their best players for pittance and then bankrupting them before the season even started.  

[Happenstance]

2 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Yeah, I agree. Gone are the earlier days of Champ Man, starting a game with a Liverpool and Man U, selling all your rubbish for stupid amounts to Man U, selling all of their best players for pittance and then bankrupting them before the season even started.  

I should try again with the series at some point. It was another one of those games which was perfect to just sit at the PC playing while listening to podcasts and I miss that.

[Hero-of-Time]

Lego Avengers

Platinum hunters, assemble!

Last year I played through Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. It was an absolute slog to finish and platinum. Thankfully, this was a more pleasant and fun experience. 15 stages, a few small hub worlds and a larger main hub...much more manageable than the massive areas in the Skywalker Saga and clocking in at around 30 hours, as opposed 80-90 hours.

I was surprised just by how much of the MCU this game covered. I thought it was just going to cover the first Avengers movie but it also covers The Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, Thor 2 and Winter Soldier. The way that some of the movie events play out are hilarious, which is what I've come to expect from the Lego games. They do a good job of adding humour to serious situations.

Platinum was the same as always in Lego games which means get 100% completion. It's always a worry that something will glitch when playing these games and then possibly lock you out of getting 100%. Luckily I had no such issues here.

I enjoyed the main game so much that I ended up buying the season pass, which was a bargain at a little over £2. It gave me six extra stages to play through that featured characters and stories that weren't part of the main game. I sat and played through most of these this morning. There were a bunch of trophies added for each of these levels. Needless to say I was happy with this. 

Finally, I will never get tired of the animation given to Quicksilver when he is powering up for a run...

 

[WackerJr]

Bastion (Switch)

Virtually always on sale now, I found the 13-year old Bastion to be alright, but a little underwhelming considering the positive things I’d heard about it over the years.

Lovely hand-drawn graphics hide what is distinctly ok gameplay.  Run and battle through isometric levels where the land rises up and appears close to you as you move.  Or it deliberately doesn’t and you learn to jump gaps or plummet to the abyss with, thankfully, no consequence.

Prior to each level you can select two from your growing arsenal of firearms and melee weapons.  They tend to grow in power so I tended to stick with the latest ones.  Each weapon has a short graded challenge level too, which are all rather neat and serve as tutorials for each.

The similarity of the weapons and levels means I found it got rather repetitive. The bosses were neat and overall it didn’t do anything really wrong, the game just didn’t grip me.

One area that did raise the quality of the whole package was the wonderful narration by Logan Cunningham. His gravelly tone not only narrated the story, but throughout the game there were context-sensitive lines that he’d say to me as the player. He’d comment on the combination of weapons for instance, mock me when I fell off the edge, or where one particular enemy leapt at me but I dodged it and instead it dropped off the edge of the level he dryly remarked about their lack of intelligence.  

If it wasn’t for the entertaining narration this was forgettable for me.

Link to my one-minute YouTube review.

[WackerJr]

Ratchet & Clank (PS4)

So the 2016 game is a game based on the movie based on the original PS2 game (think Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game methodology, only this game’s actually decent and the movie was much closer to the source material). 

I’m new to the series and what I found was a  likeable 3D Sci-Fi platformer with more emphasis on the shooting aspect.

Gameplay is really smooth, levels are fairly short, and the enemies are all well animated and are satisfying to take down with the huge arsenal of weapons collected. Some are more serious than others, ranging from your basic pistol to bombs to some of my favourites which cause enemies to stop and dance, making them easy pickings.

Clank’s levels tend to be more puzzle-based and I would have liked a few more to be honest.

I came away impressed and looking forward to seeing how the gameplay’s improved for Rift’s Apart, which I was gifted but is currently on my backlog.

One-minute video review

[nekunando]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Glen-i]

First things first.

I was surprised how much time I still had left to work with here. 100% in less then 2 hours sounds really hard, but studious use of reloading your save if you mess up too much makes it more then do-able.

Ironically, because I went back to a previous save a fair bit (Damn that Ridley Missile Tank where you have to race a chain of destructible blocks, even with all the upgrades, that one is hard, and don't even get me started on the last Energy Tank!), this took me longer then my previous playthrough.

Gotta take it slow to go fast. Anyway, I'm attempting a 15% run now. Stuck on Mother Brain.

Speaking of Mother Brain!

Super Metorid Redux is a ROM Hack of classic SNES game, Super Metroid. It aims to bring the mechanics closer to how Metorid games on the GBA play, with heavier jump physics, as well as just general improvements seen in those games, plus a few other things.

I love Super Metroid, but I do so despite the floaty jumps, awkward weapon switching, and Space Jump that decides to not work at random times. This mod fixes those issues. Jumping has that same snappiness from the GBA games. Missiles are fired by holding R, then firing. Power Bombs don't need to be selected, just morph ball, then fire a missile. X-Ray Scope has it's own dedicated button, which means you only need to use the select button to swap between three things (Missiles, Supers, and Grapple Beam).

It all comes together to elevate the original game even higher. Yes, it makes it easier, but if it means I don't randomly drop a Space Jump for the millionth time, I'm fine with that.

BTW, my time for this was 2 hours, 37 minutes, 39 seconds, and I got 77%.

Spoiler

Sea of Stars
Chained Echoes
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
Princess Peach Will Star As The Main Character In A Brand New Game
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
Hi-Fi Rush
Sonic Superstars
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line: Premium Digital Deluxe Edition (100%)
1000xRESIST
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch) (100%)
Miitopia (100 flipping per ceeeeent!)
Metroid Zero Mission (100%, Under 2 hours, Normal) 
Chico and the Magic Orchards DX
Super Metroid Redux

 

Edited July 28 by Glen-i

[Jonnas]

A Jonnas NSO Update

Sometimes, it feels like my progress slows down. Some other times, I look into the games I've occasionally been casually delving into, and find that the list is bigger than I thought:

The Brains

Solomon's Key is an NES puzzle game. As a child, I remember playing the Game Boy version. The NES version doesn't seem to be the same game, as there's no level select... and the levels seem to be more action/platforming focused, rather than about solving a concrete puzzle (heck, you even have very limited lives, and a useless scoring system). As a puzzle game, it is unimpressive, and the one music track gets a bit grating, but the game was mechanically fun enough to play for a bit. I simply have no desire to continue beyond the couple dozen of levels I've beaten.

Mystery Tower seems to be more designed like a proper puzzle game... but it is horrid. Between L~shaped blocks that take forever to learn how to navigate, to blocks that only obey gravity under specific circumstances, this is the most unintuitive puzzle game I've ever seen. Even Bombuzal was easier to understand than this. Oh, and there's lives too, because this game wasn't bad enough.

Solomon's Key 2  known in the USA (and therefore the NSO) as Fire 'n Ice, on the other hand, turned out to be the biggest surprise of the NSO so far. It bears some resemblance to the first game, but it very much has its own, strong identity. Levels are properly designed to be puzzles, no lives system, there are multiple music tracks (and they're all good)... and the level design is fantastic. It's good enough that the game has a level select system, but if you do them in order, you'll be greeted by one of the smoothest difficulty curves I've seen in the genre. And it's not like this game's short on ideas.

The production values are also surprisingly high, with a story, cutscenes, unique framing device, and some of the most fluid sprite animation I've ever seen in an NES (helps that it's a 1992 release). This game even has a level editor (!), that's actually amazing. The only flaw I can pinpoint on this game is that the password system is super clunky (not an issue on the NSO, thankfully).

Playing through this game's 150 puzzles has been a delight. I'd say it's on par with Mole Mania, as puzzle games go, and I mean it. 5 stars. Legitimate hidden gem.

 

The Brawns

Urban Champion is charming. Knowing what fighting games looked like at the time, I see that this one has a lot of character going for it, and it's easy enough to understand. Easier to control, too. Myself, I fought through the first set of matches, and I was done with it. It's more valuable as a fascinating look into gaming of yesteryear, rather than as a fun fighting game nowadays. The NSO is the right place for this game.

Kung-Fu Heroes is a top-down beat'em up, for the lack of a better descriptor. It's not particularly fun, and any mistake is quite punishing. Dropped it after a few levels.

Killer Instinct is a darling: a SNES fighting game that can compete with Mortal Kombat! I had played it before, but wasn't really feeling it back then... and after giving it more of a chance, I still don't feel it. I don't like the game-feel, I don't like how the punches and kicks feel, I don't like the sound design, and I can't get to grips with the combo system. I do like some of the character designs, and the music is great. But otherwise, this is a game that just doesn't click with me at all. It's got a Training Mode, at least, for 1994, that earns it 2 stars, at least.

Meanwhile, Joy Mech Fight is a fighting game made by Nintendo for the Famicom just one year prior... And it's really good! It's got a solid story mode, a command list with demonstrations (even in Japanese, you can understand them), a unique look, lots of charm, incredibly catchy music, and the commands are all quite simple to learn and execute. More importantly, the game is incredibly fluid, fun to play, and every principle of fighting game fundamentals is here.

Now, though the roster is impressive (36 characters, a number which wouldn't be surpassed until King of Fighters '98), the truth is that it is obviously imbalanced, and a good chunk of it is made up of clones with strictly improved stats. Regardless, I believe that, if this game had come out in the west, it would be a reference in the genre nowadays.

I don't hand out 5 stars to fighting games that easily, but this game is good enough for me to feel tempted. For now, 4 stars.

Comix Zone

Yup! It is finally time to tackle Comix Zone. This is a game I never saw for the original Mega Drive, only finding out about it in collections and whatnot. Every time I tried to play it, I'd always be taken aback by its uniqueness, and so I ended up putting it off for years. Until I pledged it.

So yeah, this is a Beat'em up starring Sketch Turner, a totally radical comic book artist who gets sucked into his own unfinished comic pages, and must now battle the gnarly mutants he was writing about. Thankfully, his pet rat Roadkill got comic'd along with him, so he's got some help.

Aesthetically, this game is amazing. The American comic look is fantastic, the action is segmented through panels, the art style is very 90s, and even the somewhat choppy animation contributes to the comic feel. There are also dialogue bubbles popping up all over the place, and the soundtrack pushes the MD to play the most 90s rock it can.

Design-wise, and very unlike most beat'em ups, CZ is not about defeating hordes of enemies at all. It's actually more about navigating each panel, deactivating traps, pressing switches, finding hidden items... Roadkill is an item too, being useful for certain puzzles, or to help with certain fights.

Each level has branching paths, and the player may choose whichever works best for them. This is a game that's quite short (6 levels in total), and it's meant to be replayed, retried, and properly learned. This was a common design philosophy of the time, but often applied to 2D platformers, not Beat'em ups. It's a unique combination for sure.

The game's big flaw... is that the fighting itself is fairly boring. You have a few punching&kicking options for approach, but none of them work in satisfying ways (whether your kicks will outrange the enemy or not seems to depend on pure luck), and combos are virtually non-existent. Even the basic punch-punch-kick sequence isn't guaranteed to work, and heck, even basic movement (like jumps) is too inaccurate and janky to be enjoyable.

Every time I played Comix Zone, I engaged with it as it was meant to: from the beginning, every time. I did get progressively better at it, and found plenty of enjoyment in learning it. But the moments where a projectile didn't go where it was meant to, or one of my jumps tripped on a hazard... those moments got more frustrating with time instead.

I eventually reached the final boss, and save stated at the beginning of the fight. I wasn't going to go through the game again to see both endings. Hilariously, the first time I defeated the boss, the game bugged and wouldn't proceed to the ending (I would've gotten the bad ending. Thanks to the save state, I ended up watching both anyway). I found a lot of bugs in fact, I didn't expect a visually polished game like this to be so buggy.

So, as much as I would like to give this game 4 stars, I can't, in good conscience, give it more than 3 stars. It's a good game, but it's brought down by some serious flaws.

...

With Comix Zone cleared, I only have 99 NSO titles left to clear Finally cleared that minor threshold (as long as Nintendo doesn't suddenly add 7 games to the service again...).

And also:

Half of the pledge is done, but the remaining games on it are quite long...

[Dcubed]

Banjo Kazooie is a 10-12 hour game your first time through, if that’s of any help @Jonnas

[nekunando]

I'm also up to Chapter 3 in Alan Wake Remastered and feeling kinda similar to Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, I guess. The gameplay isn't really delivering so far 😕

Thankfully, I've also started Metroid Zero Mission and it's excellent so far, as we know 😃

[drahkon]

5 minutes ago, nekunando said:

The gameplay isn't really delivering so far 😕

And it never will.
Stick with it, though, as the narrative and writing are incredible!

[Ike]

10 minutes ago, drahkon said:

And it never will.
Stick with it, though, as the narrative and writing are incredible!

Seconding this. Alan Wake II is even better (combat doesn't really improve much though).

[Glen-i]

OK, I just have to share this.

I beat it, barely.
For context's sake, that enemy only appears in this room, and in the Pixel Remaster, it's a 1 in 100 chance! Incredibly unlucky! No wonder I lost Mario Party last night.

EDIT:

There we go, I killed Chaos.
Because of that (un)lucky Warmech encounter, I ended up getting 100% bestiary by complete accident.
Kinda obligated to do the same on the other five Pixel Remasters here now... Warmech is the rarest encounter in all 6 games, it'd be a waste not to!

Spoiler

Sea of Stars
Chained Echoes
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
Princess Peach Will Star As The Main Character In A Brand New Game
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
Hi-Fi Rush
Sonic Superstars
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line: Premium Digital Deluxe Edition (100%)
1000xRESIST
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch) (100%)
Miitopia (100 flipping per ceeeeent!)
Metroid Zero Mission (100%, Under 2 hours, Normal) 
Chico and the Magic Orchards DX
Super Metroid Redux
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster

 

Edited August 3 by Glen-i

[Glen-i]

Anyway, here's a bunch of games I played for the first time.

  

The Legend of Starfy (Densetsu no Stafy) games are 3 platformers for the GBA that only released in Japan back in 2002-2004. They were recently added to the GBA NSO app in all regions, although all the text is still in Japanese.

The game follows Starfy, who is neither a star, nor a starfish. He lives up in a floating castle in the sky, but he tends to have the unfortunate tendency to fall from the sky, right into the ocean below. In the ocean, an evil sea slug called Ogura is doing... evil stuff? No idea. Can't read Japanese, I assume that's what's going on.

This series is interesting, the majority of the games take place underwater. It sounds awful, but Starfy somehow is more nimble in water then he is on land, so swimming around is very snappy and fun.

Also, discount Koopas!

Despite the amount of text the games have, you don't really need to know Japanese to get through it... Almost...
The first game's tutorials show some buttons, but it's not always clear what it means (The later games have visual demonstrations of these, so it's much better there), and the second game had a couple of puzzles where you needed context from a conversation, so I had to look up a guide for that.

Despite that, the games are great, relatively simple to get to the credits, but going for 100% in the two sequels is interesting as the number of levels suddenly doubles, and some of them get quite tough.

Shout out to the secret final boss in the third game, which I died to about 20 times, it's a comical difficulty spike that would make modern Kirby games proud

Spoiler

That's a one-hit kill, BTW, and it's at the end of the fight. I was literally one pixel from dying again. So glad there was no more fight after that.

Anyway, they're very good games, but if you only play one of them, play the third one, that one is excellent!

Spoiler

Sea of Stars
Chained Echoes
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
Princess Peach Will Star As The Main Character In A Brand New Game
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
Hi-Fi Rush
Sonic Superstars
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line: Premium Digital Deluxe Edition (100%)
1000xRESIST
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch) (100%)
Miitopia (100 flipping per ceeeeent!)
Metroid Zero Mission (100%, Under 2 hours, Normal) 
Chico and the Magic Orchards DX
Super Metroid Redux
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
Densetsu No Stafy
Densetsu No Stafy 2
Densetsu No Stafy 3

 

Edited August 3 by Glen-i

[Glen-i]

Add Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster to the list. Already talked about it before, where I mentioned that they fixed the final boss so you couldn't one shot it with a high level Toad spell...

It amuses me that the song doesn't even get to properly start.

[Glen-i]

For context, I chucked 12 shurikens in her face for around 9999 damage, still didn't die. Which means this thing has around 130,000 HP, Makes the Emperor's 15,000 HP look positively quaint!

And that's the third game done, but it dawned on me that despite the fact that I've played the Pixel Remaster version before, I never wrote about it for some reason, sooooo...

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster is a remake (Yes, it is a remake, not confusing at all) of the Famicom game Final Fantasy III that came out in 2023. Being a very late Famicom RPG, it never got released outside of Japan.
Yes, there was a DS version, but that one differs so much from the original game, it might as well be a different game. So as far as the 2D version goes, this is the first worldwide release of it.

The game follows 4 random orphans as they go spelunking in a random cave, but then fall down a hole. Down this hole, they find a big crystal that tells them that someone is trying to drown the world in darkness and that the four of them are the latest "Warriors of Light" to fight against it.

That's pretty much it. Compared to Final Fantasy II, the story is very much barebones. FF III is very much a gameplay first kind of RPG, and that shows through the job system.

The first Final Fantasy did have jobs, but they were set at the start of the game. FF III gives you more jobs to choose from as you find each of the four crystals, and you can freely change them at will.
As I'm sure you all know, I love job systems in RPG's. It allows a lot of customisation, but I'm not super keen with how Final Fantasy III handles it. You see, there are many instances where the game demands that you use a specific job for a certain boss, or dungeon, in order to not die horribly. Here's a good example.

Yes, I totally demolished that boss with 4 Dragoons, but if you tried to do that fight without Dragoons, you would die so incredibly fast. You're basically mandated to use Dragoons there, and FF III is full of those kinds of mandatory job requirements. Which ironically, makes this job system quite limiting. Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default would do this a lot better.

So, the Pixel Remasters kind of bother me, because most of them have some kind of compromise that stops them from being the definitive version. This is mostly because the GBA versions look better, and have bonus dungeons. The Pixel Remasters look closer to the NES versions and lack any of the bonus dungeons.
The thing is, the 2D Final Fantasy III never got a re-release, so the Pixel Remaster is the one entry that is actually a definitive edition.

The soundtrack, like all the Pixel Remasters, is truly excellent. It's easily the greatest thing about them. The Final Boss track goes in a very Bravely Default direction, which is amusing, because that game is well known for the job system it uses.

So yeah, I do like this game, but I kinda find it the weakest of the NES Final Fantasy games. I appreciate the straightforward first game, and I have a real soft spot for the totally wonky second game, so this one kinda falls a bit short in comparison.

Spoiler

Sea of Stars
Chained Echoes
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
Princess Peach Will Star As The Main Character In A Brand New Game
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
Hi-Fi Rush
Sonic Superstars
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line: Premium Digital Deluxe Edition (100%)
1000xRESIST
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch) (100%)
Miitopia (100 flipping per ceeeeent!)
Metroid Zero Mission (100%, Under 2 hours, Normal) 
Chico and the Magic Orchards DX
Super Metroid Redux
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
Densetsu No Stafy
Densetsu No Stafy 2
Densetsu No Stafy 3
Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster
Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster

 

[Dcubed]

Not a bad first attempt for the Job System, but it was certainly done better later on.

Still, it clearly did something right, because much like FF2 before it (SaGa), FF3 essentially spawned two entire series of non-FF games dedicated to expanding on its main gameplay gimmick (Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller).

[Glen-i]

10 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Not a bad first attempt for the Job System, but it was certainly done better later on.

Still, it clearly did something right, because much like FF2 before it (SaGa), FF3 essentially spawned two entire series of non-FF games dedicated to expanding on its main gameplay gimmick (Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller).

It's one of those games that you absolutely have to appreciate, but realise that it has been massively improved upon in other games since.

Kinda like the original versions of PMD: Rescue Team. I love them, but it's weird going back to them, especially now it has a more standardised remake.

[drahkon]

Meh.
Neat gimmick that gets old very quickly. There are better puzzle games out there.