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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: Yesterday at 12:07:49 AM »

Finally closed the book on The Thing: Remastered, and yeah...vintage-era Spoony certainly wasn't lying about how bad this game was.



Where to begin on this thing...well, let's certainly get one thing out of the way: this game just fundamentally doesn't understand John Carpenter's The Thing, which is why it's kind of bizarre that this game had his personal blessing and for a long time was considered an official sequel.

The movie is about paranoia and body horror, never knowing who the characters can trust and who is a Thing in disguise just biding its time before it pounces and makes them one of its own. The game is a generic early 2000s squad shooter where you spend the vast majority of your time running around generic gray & blue hallways shooting Half Life head crabs and trying not to led your AI teammates' awful pathing drive you mad. Yes, at exactly ONE point in the movie, a Thing's head came off, grew spider legs, and scampered off. There are hundreds of the damn things in this game, not to mention scorpion Things that spit acid and who knows where The Thing found those in the antarctic.

As you progress, you'll occasionally run into soldier; engineer, and medic survivors and that's where the game's much-hyped "Trust" system comes in. Many survivors start off with their Trust in the yellow, and you need to raise that Trust to green in order to get them to follow you. Unfortunately, this system is just way too easy to negate. Doing a blood test in front of a survivor or giving them a spare weapon is all it ever takes to win their complete Trust, and you can gain additional Trust by using a med kit on them or killing Things in front of them. And that's literally all there is to the Trust system. Allegedly, you can lose trust by leaving your squad behind and going solo for a while, but I never saw any evidence of that. Any time a Thing hits one of your squad, there's apparently a dice roll in the background on whether they become infected and turn on you, but I only ever saw that when an entire mob of Thing head crabs swarmed a squad member and took them down. You CAN use a blood test on a squad member you suspect of being a Thing, but I never saw that actually expose them and there's no point to it anyway because even if they were a Thing you'd just gun them down then instead of gunning them down later.

It's strange how this system works because there are frequent moments where you have to repair these wall-mounted junction boxes (what Spoony memorably referred to as "Fuse Boxes"), and every time you do it the camera goes to an over-the-shoulder angle showing the area behind you as if something was MEANT to potentially happen there. Like, maybe it was meant for any infected squadmates to attack you here? As it stands, it just lets you see any enemies that spawned to attack you while you're holding the button down to complete the repair. I just don't understand the point of the Trust system if you never have to worry about Things in disguise ambushing you. 9 times out of 10, any weird behavior on the part of your squadmates is just due to them getting stuck on doors or getting stuck on a particular spot on the floor until you push them to a new spot that reboots their terrible AI.

There are 2 aspects of the squad system that do work as intended, though: First, you definitely want to make sure your entire squad is armed, because their aim is uncanny. They are WAY better at shooting jittering, bouncing head crabs than you will ever be, ESPECIALLY with the shotgun. 2 AI party members can clear out an entire room without issue. The only enemies that give them trouble are the human-sized things that you have to damage to a particular point and then burn to finish them off. Second, there is a Fear system in place for your squad when it comes to gore. They don't like hanging around it, which causes their stress levels to raise until they snap and go crazy (if left unchecked, they'll even kill themselves after trying to kill you), which is why it's especially annoying when AI teammates plant their feet and refuse to move in rooms with gore until you go over and force their bugged AI to repath.

Speaking of bugs, this game is full of them, and this is supposed to be the "fixed" version of the game. Ammo containers will just refuse to open at times until you close the game entirely and reload from scratch. Sometimes, the game will just spontaneously decide that an AI character that's not with you and you have to keep alive is dead now, forcing an instant game over. Saw that one quite a few times, actually. And I had to play the entire game twice because the game didn't unlock the last collectable trophy despite me following a checklist the entire game where I KNEW I'd used all the save points in the game. The only thing worse than playing a bad game is playing it twice. At least the game is very short.

On its own merits, this game has some real environmental design issues. Your "Objectives" tell you basically nothing useful, and levels make absolutely no attempt at indicating where you should go. I got really stuck at one point in a late-game level because I didn't realize there was a man-sized vent in the back of a dark cell I could shoot and crouch walk through to get to where I needed to go. Not only could I barely see the vent, but I'd tried to crouch walk through similar vents earlier in the level and hit invisible walls. Again, this is the Night Dive "fixed version." Auto saves are incredibly random, including there not always being one at the start of every level. Several times I would hit one of those auto-game overs for no apparent reason, only to load my last auto-save near the end of the previous level.

The game also has absolutely no musical score whatsoever outside a few cutscenes, which is just weird.

In Night Dive's defense, I have seen footage of how this game originally looked and played, and this is easily the most playable this game has ever been. Night Dive added enemy health indicators to your targeting reticule so you could tell whether your shots were doing any damage, as well as an indicator on larger Things for when you need to use the flamethrower to finish them off. They also added D-pad shortcuts for using medkits on yourself and to pull up the flamethrower. Very useful, both of those. They also updated the health and trust indicators in the squad menu to make it more clear exactly how close to death or psychosis your squad is. They also apparently tried to fix the Trust system, because in the original game squad members would sometimes trigger scripted Thing transformations regardless of their actual infected state. And squad members no longer riverdance by panicking in place, as Spoony memorably showed in his video.

And yes, the game looks fine for its age, so the actual graphical remaster was a good job overall. In fact, the game seems to have fairly advanced fire tech for its time, as flames from explosions or your flamethrower frequently spread from the original point of impact and require an extinguisher to put out.

Overall, this is fairly playable, but buggy, remaster of a bad game that can be quite boring at times. I think it was just too early for video games to really do this property justice, as I could see a modern game doing a really Alien Isolation-take on the concept and leaning into the tone of the movie.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 08, 2026, 12:33:36 PM »

I had to look it up to remind myself how Spirit Ashes work, but there are 3 basic steps:

1. You have to have obtained the Summoning Bell from Ranni at the church near the start of the game. She gave it to you when she gave you Torrent. I assume you already have this.

2. You need to have the Spirit Ash set in your active item slot.

3. You can only use Spirit Ashes in certain areas. You'll know if it's a valid area because there will be a tombstone in the corner of your screen, but generally it's any boss arena and some open world sections.

4. When you're ready to summon, use the spirit ash as an item. It's a re-usable consumable. This will cause your character to lose either HP or MP, depending on the spirit ash. If successful, you'll see your character stop, take out the bell, and ring it. Your spirit ash will then materialize.

As for Roundtable Hold, it's an area that gets more upgrade and shopping access as you progress through the game and more NPCs get sent to it. The upgrade station you found in the world can only upgrade to a certain point, whereas the blacksmith at the Hold can upgrade all the way. The station's there for people who haven't found the Hold yet. There will also be a separate vendor where you can upgrade your spirit ashes, and you want to do this as Spirit Ashes get outclassed pretty quickly. But don't blow all your materials on one of the early game Spirit Ashes, as there's a certain particular late game one you want to save for. And you'll know it when you see it. This spirit ash fundamentally broke the game at launch, and is still pretty powerful now even after all the update nerfs.

As for Margit, that is not the last time you will fight him, so it would still behoove you to get the shackles item in question for later.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 06, 2026, 06:37:59 PM »

I guess I would say the most milquetoast advice: if you find yourself getting stuck in one place or against one enemy, there’s no shame in returning to it later, especially because the game’s only indicators of being in the “proper place” are maybe not-getting OHKOd, and whether or not you think you can stay alive long enough to overcome your particular obstacle with careful play.

Some more specific advice I'd give is to make sure you thoroughly explore the area you start the game in as well as the southern continent before advancing to the castle up north for your first legacy dungeon and pair of bosses. A lot of early players run to the objective early on and get immediately wiped out by Margit the Fell Omen, who guards the first dungeon.

Regarding Margit, there is an item you can obtain from an NPC named "Patches" if you find and do his quest line in an early cave dungeon IIRC somewhere around the starting area. This re-usable item will lock Margit in place for a few seconds a few times, so it's a handy way to take him down.

While you shouldn't rush to the castle early on, I DO recommend advancing along the critical path long enough to run into this one lady who's hanging out in a shack in the windy area near the castle, as she will give you several useful items including a jellyfish spirit ash I found immensely useful in the early game. The thing just sits there and tanks damage while dishing out poison damage. IIRC, it's around here that you unlock access to Roundtable Hold, which is where you can upgrade your weapons and armor, too.

Don't **** with the many, MANY dragons in the game until you're comfortable with the combat system, and stick to attacking them on Torrent where possible in hit and run attacks.

Several of the chests in the game are trapped and will teleport you to areas of the map. In particular, there's a chest sitting IIRC just down some steps in the middle of a large field in the early game that teleports you to one of the most dangerous late game regions in the game. If you can just run out of the cave and past the enemies the game teleports you next to, you'll regain the ability to fast travel and from there you can make some decisions. That region of the game contains a lot of powerful equipment if you can just avoid enemies long enough to get it.

Do not be ashamed to run away from or past enemies in general. FromSoft were trolls when they designed ER, and they're fond of baiting you into fights you shouldn't be able to win early on.

Finally, unless it is your intention to 100% the game, don't try to do everything. I have done everything, and at least 75% of it is ****ing boring recycled slop because FromSoft was especially fond of Ctrl C + Ctrl V. Do what interests you. Skip what doesn't.

Edit: Addendum - If you have any interest in doing any of the NPC Quest lines, pull up a guide. Elden Ring is very poorly designed when it come to the side content. I know the game was patched to add NPC markers to the world map to try to address their habit of teleporting around the entire ****ing world at any moment, but I didn't find those helpful when I played the game so your mileage may vary.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 04, 2026, 03:11:30 PM »

Fascinated by your take on Onimusha. The demo did not really appeal to me despite my recent Capcom kick so to hear it turns into a more open-ended experience is interesting. I felt the game’s combat from the demo felt like I was juggling too many balls, personally.

It's worth noting that in the interest of being a demo, the devs give the player a bunch of mid-game abilities that you won't have when you play through that section of the main game. So if you think the combat is over-stuffed, it really isn't. It's just that the demo dumps a bunch of systems on you at once where the main game trickles them out. You can't even upgrade your character or unlock abilities at that point in the game, so no ranged deflection; no blazing state; no chain issen; etc. They also apparently updated the demo to include part of the open world area, though I didn't play that version of the demo.

On a side note, with us getting a new Castlevania game this month, I am tempted to finally do a serious playthrough of Lament of Innocence on my PS3 since I still have that hooked up. But first, I think I'm going to raise my Fuse Box count with the Remaster of The Thing.

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General Gaming / Re: Shadow of Mordor: A Mean-spirited, maybe self-aware game

« on: October 04, 2026, 03:07:44 PM »

Never got around to playing my Copy of Shadow of War (which, from what I've heard of the sequel and its many post-release patches, was probably a good thing), but I did play all the way through Shadow of Mordor. Annoyingly, it's a game that some day I should go back to and Platinum, as I only had 2 trophies left in that game and both of them are annoying (doing a kill-streak while on the cat mounts and raising a non-story goblin from grunt all the way to Chieftan and then killing him).

I remember liking Shadow of Mordor but not loving it. At the time, Assassin's Creed was just starting its long directionless period that started with AC 3, and this was a decent enough "one of those" with Batman Arkham combat. At the same time, the Nemesis system was really the only thing altogether notable about it, so once you saw all its tricks there really wasn't anything left over the course of a rather long game.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 03, 2026, 03:09:18 PM »

I wasn't sure how popular or successful Onimusha would be but sounds like it is doing alright. I think Capcom released some positive sales results and it even got a 10 from IGN. I guess focusing on making the combat and boss fights solid covered for the flaws with others as well. I heard from someone on a podcast that they did quit on that final boss. Do you know what your total play time was?

I believe when I looked at my save file, it was around 80 hours, but bear in mind I was basically 100%-ing the game twice between my original "Action" playthrough and my New Game + "Carnage" playthrough. I believe my first playthrough was about 45 hours long.

And yeah, that final boss is a hard one. He has 3 phases with no checkpoints, and you can only damage him in his 3rd phase when you're in Oni form. He also has a pretty damn lethal grab; a trio of unblockable attacks; and a super move in his 3rd phase that on Carnage will insta-kill you if you don't i-frame through it or counter it (I always chose to rely on i-framing through it with an Oni weapon attack). And just to add insult to injury, when you die he dances on your corpse. Also, the first time he grabs you he guts you while giving a long speech, which gets oh so fun by your 5th time redoing the fight.

However, his attacks are fairly easy to parry once you catch on to how his fight works, and he has 2 attacks that are pretty damn easy to Issen after some practice. It's really that grab and a drop kick he's especially fond of that can catch you off guard. It's the excessive damage he does when he breaks your stamina that really kills you.

He's rough, but he's not the roughest I've seen in an action game. That would still be Sword Saint Isshin at the end of Sekiro, which is a 4 phase fight, or Melenia from Elden Ring (which is a truly bullshit boss). I never played the Elden Ring DLC, but I've heard the final boss of that is some real bullshit, too. And as tough as Onimusha's fights can get, even they don't pull out absolute nonsense like Sekiro's Instant-kill Terror attacks.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 01, 2026, 07:14:29 PM »

I suppose i might as well start with a game I just finished off this afternoon on my lunch break:



I finally completed my platinum run on Onimusha: Way of the Sword by beating the game on Carnage difficulty and then beating all the bosses of the game again in Boss Rematch on Carnage difficulty.

Incidentally, the in-game rewards you get for doing this are a sword that gives you the same Issen attack frames in your normal form that you have in Oni form, as well as an outfit that makes your bow stronger and automatically draws in souls like your Oni form. Not sure what use you would have for the outfit when you've already beaten the hardest challenge in the game, but whatever. At least the sword gets to be immensely useful in Boss rematch.

Man, what a game. i haven't played through such a collection of excellent boss fights in an action game in years, maybe not since probably Sekiro, this game's spiritual successor, or Lies of P. Nearly every boss feels hard but fair in a way that Fromsoft seems to have forgotten how to make. Just about every attack is extremely well-telegraphed and can be parried; deflected; dodged; or countered (via an Issen, where you attack at the last possible second). Only 1 boss, the last one, starts pulling out the anime ninja **** FromSoft's become so fond of lately, and even he's an outstanding fight once you figure out how his kit works. The game even manages to make so-called 'gank fights' (where you're forced to fight multiple bosses at once) work in a way that FromSoft has never managed, as whatever enemy you're not fighting tends to be mostly passive in the background aside from occasionally rushing in to catch you off-guard.

While I wouldn't call the game's presentation especially noteworthy, I would note that the facial animation on Mushashi (the main character) is absolutely outstanding. The way his mouth and eyes shift during cutscenes and even mid-battle during clashes is extremely expressive and gives him a lot of character.

Unfortunately, the game isn't without some major problems, which I imagine will really hurt it come GOTY awards season. While the game's linear sections are generally excellent (particularly the Underground Lab, which features more legit horror than Resident Evil is willing to feature these days), the bulk of the game takes place in the small-ish "East Kyoto" open world area. And just about everything about this area sucks: the copied & pasted enemy trash mobs; the copied & pasted "rift' encounters; the whopping TWO mini-bosses that get recycled the entire game (but especially here); and the boring sidequests. And it takes an eternity to get anywhere since the city is designed like a maze with locked doors, areas you have to crawl under debris to get into, and even entire streets you can initially only access by crossing through several houses.

it was a chore to come back to this area and have to constantly re-explore it for randomly-spawning chests and rifts to close for crafting components. A handful of the sidequests are passable at best, but most are just generic "go to this spot on the map and kill some guys". And if you do New Game +, you need to do just about everything all over again because none of your sword; health; or gauntlet upgrades carry over. Get to grinding!

Enemy variety is also especially lacking. There are maybe half a dozen different mob enemy types that get re-skinned at least once each (several twice), and I already mentioned the whole TWO minibosses recycled the entire game. Also, for as well-designed as the boss encounters are, i didn't really enjoy any of the beast fights. This is a game about studying patterns, deflecting, and countering. The beasts, perhaps fittingly, tend to attack rather randomly. i could never get into a rhythm fighting them, especially since only 1 really has attacks that you can parry to trigger your Blazing state and obtain a major attack buff.

Overall, an excellent game but i hope that if Capcom makes a sequel or DLC that they just scrap the open world idea entirely. It doesn't add anything to the experience and is just there to triple the length of the game.

in other news, I'm currently playing Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon HD on my Switch 2. I played through this game before on the 3Ds and didn't particularly care for it, but I'm in the mood for this sort of thing right now and I am enjoying it more as a "pick up and play" game than I did trying to play such a repetitive game straight through back in the day. Up to the 2nd Mansion in that game.

There are more fitting games I plan on playing this month, but Onimusha was a considerable investment. I spent nearly the entirety of September playing through that game twice, it's a very hard game, and I need to detox for a while. Playing that Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight DLC tonight, which I don't imagine really qualifies for this.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: What is your favorite game this year?

« on: September 29, 2026, 05:45:53 PM »

You might want to update your topic name there. I did not play my likely favorite game of the year on the Switch 2.

As for actual Switch 2 2026 games, I guess my favorite would be Splatoon Raiders but I still found that game pretty lacking. Runners-up would be Yoshi & the Mysterious Book and the Star Fox reboot.

I expect if I played my copy of Fortune's Weave, it would probably take the top Switch 2 spot, but I'm very behind on my Fire Emblem games. I gave up on 3 Houses out of sheer boredom for its tedious gameplay loop, and Engage isn't exactly grabbing me so far (it doesn't help that it has some major audio problems on Switch 2).

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Switch 2 Storage Crisis

« on: September 27, 2026, 06:15:17 PM »

I've been sticking to buying physical only so far, so I haven't had any serious storage issues yet. The only time I've hit the cap was when I was downloading 2 different EA sports trial games for the sake of MyNintendo coins. I'm still using the SD card I had on my original Switch, and that seems to work well enough for the Switch 1 library I have stored on there.

I don't see this pattern changing all that much going forward unless Nintendo decides to go all-in on Key Cards for even 1st party in-house software, so I have no problem waiting for those insane SD card prices to go down.

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NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: A Memorial for September 23rd

« on: September 25, 2026, 08:00:55 PM »

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 992: One Day You'll See That It Was Truly the Legend of Zelda

« on: September 19, 2026, 08:58:58 PM »

For the life of me, I don't understand why Nintendo isn't milking their 3DS software lineup more on Switch/Switch 2 if they're that desperate for easy games to just throw out to fill a calendar. I mean, Kid Icarus Uprising and Metroid 2: Return of Samus are right there.

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NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: The Lettuce Cat is so last week. Mock me for being behind the times. is so last week. Mock me for being behind the times. Happy Mask Shop

« on: September 19, 2026, 06:29:20 PM »

So say they all.

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TalkBack / Re: Ocarina Of Time Remake To Launch November 5

« on: September 09, 2026, 11:15:46 AM »

Seems like you still can't preorder. Anybody know what the price is?

$70 physical, at least until Walmart does its thing and then Amazon does its thing. Probably $60 on the eShop.

I saw a $60 preorder option at Walmart just now, but before I could check out it said it was sold out?

Yeah, you really want to be following Wario64 for this stuff. Amazon reverted their price as soon as Walmart sold out.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: September 08, 2026, 06:52:49 PM »

On the subject of Unfinished Business, let me take care of one of mine here that's been a long time coming but couldn't make time for it during the event:









Yes, I've finally platinumed Puppeteer on my PS3. I remembered really enjoying this game back in the day, and I really enjoy it now. IMO, Puppeteer is one of the best Sony 1st party games on the PS3, and that's saying something since that's when Sony still gave a damn about their 1st party games. It was also the last great Sony Japan Studios game before their dissolution, as their next major projects were the Knack games and assisting on other team's projects.

Puppeteer is an extremely simple 2D platformer, and a pretty easy one as well if you don't care about unlocking the game's secrets. At its heart, it's extremely similar to a modern Kirby game: your puppet Kutaro loses a head every time he gets hit and each head can perform a special action at some point in each of the game's 7 acts (3 stages each). Sure, if you just want to get to the end of the stages you won't find much difficulty, but unlocking bonus stages and special routes requires careful management of what heads you have equipped, which heads you're picking up; and making sure you're not losing any to enemies and stage hazards.

The game is presented as a fantasy stage play performed by a cast of mediocre actors and one hell of an effects team, with backdrops; props; stage lights; and an ever-present audience cheering on the proceedings. In some ways, Princess Peach Showtime felt like it captured some of the charm of this game, but IMO it didn't commit to the "bit" as thoroughly as Puppeteer does. Stephen Greif really ties the experience together as the omniscient narrator. Characters in the game will often turn to him, Winnie-the-Pooh-esque, to criticize how he's characterizing them or telling the story. Hell, there are times in the game where the narrator just completely fanboys out about certain topics like his love of giant robots or random trivia when you activate a bonus stage with a completely off-the-wall setup.

The game's main gimmick are the magical scissors Calibrus, which allow you to snip; slide; and tear your way across the backdrop like a cardboard-infused Yoshi game to close gaps and take giant bosses literally apart at the seams. If you can conceivably cut it, you can use it as a temporary platform, and the game uses that to great and surprisingly varied effect. It's pretty impressive how much variety Japan Studios stuffed into the game. One minute, you might be doing a top-down race against 2 boss creatures, only for you to pull a "gun" head in a no-guns zone; get arrested and sent to jail; and then do a timed stealth mini-game where you break out of jail to return to the race as the narrator reads off your crimes like a police dispatcher. And all to return to what's now become forced scrolling horse race where you take turns boarding and sabotaging a train.

That's all 1 level, btw. The boss fights are also surprisingly varied from each other, with each one taking advantage of different mechanics and gimmicks. Hell, 13 years later the Dragon General boss fight still feels genuinely tense and exciting.

I've got to say, this game much have looked amazing back in the day on a 3D TV, as one of the few Sony games built for it. Characters and objects are constantly being shot at or swooping by the camera in exaggerated fashion, not to mention that the levels are built as "sets" stacked back-to-front, with the sets shuffling around and rebuilding themselves as you trigger transition points. Boss fights will frequently have Kutaro snipping through them into the screen or out of it.

If there's one major knock I have against this game, it's that the humor is very much of its time. For every genuinely funny moment, you'll have something intentionally cringe that just gets drawn out in the hopes that beating the joke into the ground will make it funny. It reminds me at times of vintage Doug Walker humor, especially with its love of self-aware humor.

It's a real shame that this PS3 exclusive came out only a few months before the PS4 launched, so it was completely buried. Sony does still like to reference that this game existed from time to time, as expected mostly in the Astro Bot games, but it's never been ported or remastered on any other platform. You can play it on PS+ streaming if you have the Premium subscription for it, and I can see a game like this that doesn't really on split-second timing probably working OK that way...but it's a real shame that Sony never released this game on other platforms considering the trash they DID port.

If you've never played Puppeteer and you still own a PS3, I highly recommend it. The game is a love letter to the theater; imagination; and artistry. I mean, c'mon...the game features a lengthy homage to the Thunderbirds TV series, followed by a battle against a giant crab mecha that ends with a character remarking how they defeated a "Giant Enemy Crab". How could I not love it?

Original trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk-a7We07Bk

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TalkBack / Re: Ocarina Of Time Remake To Launch November 5

« on: September 08, 2026, 11:27:07 AM »

I'm not sure how to feel about this unveiling, now that we've finally seen what the game looks like.

What they showed seemed...fine, but not exciting in any way. TBH, the game looks like every "THIS IS WHAT ZELDA WOULD LOOK LIKE IN UNREAL ENGINE 4! DO NOT STEAL!" video I've ever seen. I could take or leave or leave a lot of the stuff they added, like manual jumping and the day/night cycle being even more annoying since the clock never stops now. The voice acting generally sounds good, which after how bad the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom dubs were is reassuring.

Still, I basically thought the same of the Star Fox remake when they showed that off, so I'll probably like this just fine as well.

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TalkBack / Re: Ocarina Of Time Remake To Launch November 5

« on: September 08, 2026, 11:23:49 AM »

Seems like you still can't preorder. Anybody know what the price is?

$70 physical, at least until Walmart does its thing and then Amazon does its thing. Probably $60 on the eShop.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: September 07, 2026, 07:22:45 PM »

My argument against the whole "RPG Book Club" idea is that we basically already have that with the "What are you playing?" thread.

But yes, the longer nature of RPGs and the general dead air that is November and December these days (watch Nintendo put Ocarina out in November just to spite me) is why I was eying those 2 months (it helps that both months have "-ember" as their suffix, so the name still works). GTA 6 basically killed all releases after October, and I don't care about GTA so that's 2 months free for me.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: September 06, 2026, 07:59:17 PM »

Broodwars suckered me in good when he told Mop it up that there were like 16 Sonic Game Gear games and he wouldn’t be able to match that total. Yet, now he had found a way to hit 22.

In my defense, when I said that I meant it. I did the mental math and saw that Mop was going to hit 18 games if she cleared all the games in the collection. I think at the time I was still around 9-10 and I wasn't seeing how I was going to top that and still play stuff I wanted to play like those games I listed as honorable mentions.

And as it turned out, I didn't. I ended up falling into the rabbit hole of digging through my PSN and Switch libraries looking for stuff I could knock out quickly. I originally wasn't going to play Star Fox 2026 for this event, as I figured it would give people ideas that there was a recent game they probably all owned that they could "beat" in a half hour. 

Considering I was playing crap like Elea and the Jurassic Park collection after that just to try to catch up to where I thought Mop and you would end up, I would say I rather suckered myself. And I had to heavily de-tox from gaming with anime binging for several days when it was all over. 

As for your 2 last games, I have no issues counting them, though I'm surprised you only cleared Super Mario Bros. U when you had New Super Luigi U right there as well. I would have counted that game as well since it's individually select-able in that collection. 75 completed games is a nice round number for something like this.

Looking ahead, I think if we end up doing the RPG event in November (incidentally, I do plan to count Adventure games in that event), I think I'm going to forego the whole leaderboard thing unless people really want it. I don't seem to remember Shocktober using one. Seems to generate more stress than it does excitement, though it does look like we surpassed the views on 2024 and are making good progress on overtaking 2025's numbers.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: September 05, 2026, 12:36:29 PM »

At this point, it was getting to be late and I'd only beat 3 games and with one game very close to the finish line. I'll admit Broodwars number of 22 had deflated my enthusiasm.

Yeah, that is pretty much the reason I held that collection in reserve for so long. Well, that and the games in the collection being bad. There were comments early on in the thread about people feeling deflated at the prospect of catching up on the leaderboard, and I didn't want to kill morale any further.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Field notes: what Japanese amiibo actually cost in 2026

« on: September 04, 2026, 06:33:58 PM »

I'm glad that computer parts have soared in prices just so this thread could exist.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: September 01, 2026, 09:21:53 AM »

Well, that's another Backlaugust come and come, and assuming that everyone's games are in we currently stand at 70 games completed. That makes it not only the most successful Backlaugust so far, but one with more games completed than the last 2 years combined.

Wow. I'd like to thank all our participants this year, whether you contributed 2 games or far more. It's been a pleasure hosting this year, and I wouldn't mind doing so again in the future if no one else wants to take the reins. As I said before, though, I think I'll leave the leaderboard chasing to others, as it was fairly draining trying to keep up with the likes of Khush and Mop.

Some games I would have liked to have completed if time had permitted:

- Puppeteer - Maybe I'll save this one for Shocktober, as it somewhat fits the Halloween vibe.

- Marvel's Midnight Suns - The XCOM turn-based strategy game you play with cards. Also might work with Shocktober.

- Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Remastered (PS3) - Ebenezer ended up taking this game's spot, but I remember liking the Vita version and for some reason I never finished the PS3 version, judging by my trophy list.

- Escape Plan (PS4) - I dabbled with this one for a few hours, but despite liking the Vita version the PS4 version's controls just weren't working for me as much.

- Freedom Wars Remastered - Put a few hours into this one and was slowly warming up to it, but this was looking like a long one so tabled it for the competition.

- TMNT: Splintered Fate - About halfway through this one. Considered gunning for the credits to complete the month, but just wasn't up to it.

- The Rogue Prince of Persia - Still need to finish the Platinum on that one, but wasn't sure how many more runs that would take.

- Cronos: The New Dawn - A definite Shocktober candidate, and a game I wasn't particularly enjoying the last time I played it.

- The Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection/Dragon Quest 1-3 HD-2D remakes - Have had the former for a while now, and just acquired the latter. Maybe later this year.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 31, 2026, 01:55:44 PM »

69. Tails Adventure - Mop It Up

Backlaugust 2026 Total: 69 Games

...what? Were you expecting something else? 

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 30, 2026, 10:37:41 PM »

Next up is a quickie: Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy)





Ah...THERE'S the completely phoned-in, generic 2D licensed platforming action I was expecting from the 1st Game Boy game!

There are 8 fairly large open levels, and Grant must wander them collecting dozens of key cards that literally fall from the sky at times in order to open a big magnetic gate at the end of the stage. You shoot, you jump, and you swim to victory. Completely harmless and enjoyable enough for what it is, with the possible exception of the 2 auto-scrolling T-Rex chase levels where the level design can sometimes **** you over by goading you to take a wrong turn that turns out to be an unavoidable dead end. There are 4 boss fights as well, all with very clear patterns and obvious telegraphs.

A very competently-made generic licensed game. Not much to say about it. Ironically, it may be the best game in the collection by default.

Which leaves our last entry, Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES)









So...this one's a weird one. Like Ocean's other Jurassic Park SNES game, this one is fairly ambitious for its time, but in different ways. It foregoes a linear structure and the open world of the previous SNES JP game for something akin to a Mega Man game. You pick from a list of missions, after which you run through gigantic open mazes killing enemies and completing objectives. After completing a given level, you're assigned an "emergency" mission where you have to run through another maze under extremely strict time limits. Wash, rinse, repeat for 6 sets of levels, plus another 2 for the game's true ending.

Like the other JP sequels, this game has absolutely nothing to do with either the Lost World book or the movie that'd later be loosely based on it. Instead, Biosin (Lewis Dodgson's company. You know them? We have Dodgson's company here! See? No one cares) has deployed an absolute army to Isla Nublar to take over the park, and John Hammond responds by deploying Rambo...err..."Grant" to kill them all and protect the dinosaurs.

The main problem with Chaos Continues on SNES is that the game is really goddamn hard, and the collection requires you to play the game on Hard since that's the only way to access those 2 final levels and the final fights with the T-Rex and the Biosin chopper. Despite having video evidence saying otherwise, I refuse to believe anyone beat this game legit back in the day. Enemies respawn almost immediately upon death, decent ammo is very limited, and Grant dies in seconds under sustained fire (literally, in the case of the frequent flamethrower troopers). It's a Contra game with the sensibilities of Super Ghouls and Ghosts. It's absurd. And if you don't know EXACTLY where to go during the timed emergency missions, you WILL run out of time because the time limits allotted give the player barely any wiggle room, even if they're mainly just jumping over enemies.

On top of that, the developers decided to get cute and give the player 2 sets of weapons: lethal weapons triggered by the L button and non-lethal weapons triggered by the R button. The former is meant to be used on humans, and the latter is meant to be used on dinosaurs. Non-lethal weapons will do barely any damage to humans, and killing dinosaurs with lethal weapons incurs a penalty. For some...bizarre reason, the devs decided to give the dinosaurs a lives counter. When you kill one with a lethal weapon, the counter drops by 1. Over time, that number will slowly tick back up as the dinosaurs repopulate, but if you're not careful you can deplete that meter extremely quickly.

It's worth noting that raptor deaths, thankfully, do not contribute to the dino death counter, as raptors are not dinosaurs. That's just hard science right there.

This is just a bizarre game. It's quite polished for what it is, it still looks good, and if for some reason you really wanted to play a Jurassic Park-themed Contra game, well...there you are. But it's beyond unfair that the developers constructed these massive & extremely similar mazes, give the player NO indication of where to do and little idea of what to do, provide very rare health and ammo pickups, and then often slap a strict time limit on top of it. It's just needlessly frustrating.

And with that, that's the collection. If I had to rank the games in order of quality, I'd probably have them as such from best to worst:

1. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy) - It's nothing special, but it also doesn't have any serious issues.

2. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES) - It's hard as hell, but there's a solid idea in here for a decent game.

3. Jurassic Park (SNES) - It can be tedious and boring at times, but with a guide nudging you in the right direction there's a unique experience here, especially since you can save your game now.

4. Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition - Terrible level design and frustrating combat encounters, but it's playable enough.

5. Jurassic Park (Game Boy) - The terrible Game Boy hardware ironically sands down some of the edges of the NES version.

6. Jurassic Park (NES) - Boring, tedious, and absolutely unfair in its design.

7. Jurassic Park (Genesis) - What the actual ****?

And now...it's your turn.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 30, 2026, 09:56:25 PM »

Next up was a game I'd heard a lot about as a kid and the first of the games I had to beat twice: Jurassic Park (Genesis).







Yeah, I lost my screenshot from when I cleared the game as Grant. As you can tell, I was stockpiling a lot of them at the time.

As I said before, if I didn't have save states and rewind, the NES game would be the worst game in the set. However, I DID have them in this collection so THIS piece of **** was definitely the worst one. I have no earthly idea what all the Genesis players were smoking when they were hyping this trash up back in the day. Sure, the SNES game was cryptic and frequently boring, but I'll take that over this ugly; cheap; and barely functional garbage.

This was the game that was hyped way back when for having 2 campaigns: 1 as Grant trying to escape the park, and another as a raptor pursuing Grant to kill him. In hindsight, maybe instead of the devs creating 2 mediocre experiences with bad implementation, they should have focused on 1 halfway decent experience because this game is a mess.

Let's start with the controls, which make Blade Kitten look responsive. Grant plays more like the Prince in the original Prince of Persia or the dude from Out of This World than Mario. Everything about his movement is extremely slow and requires utter precision. If you want to climb a ladder, you have to be in a VERY specific, pixel-perfect position. Meanwhile, you're getting ganked by dinosaurs who can move twice as fast as you and can kill you in a few hits. And there are so many instant kills, from falling into water on a tricky jump you just barely missed...to the T-Rex breaking through the background with a hit box that is at best a suggestion

Then there's the Raptor. Yes, he is much more responsive than Grant, if still slightly clumsy due to his size. He also has 3 times as a big of a hit box, and he can only hit in melee in a campaign full of humans with guns.  It doesn't go well. You basically spend the campaign spamming your lore-accurate double jump tail whip, which only sometimes actually connects with your target.

Yeah, that's definitely one big ol' disappointment. Good thing I never have to play that ag-

Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition





SONOFABITCH!

Yeah, OK, I actually played the other Game Boy game first, but how could I not do that bit again when Rampage Edition basically just feels like a level pack for the first Genesis JP game? 

I'll give Rampage Edition this much: it IS better than the first game, mainly because Grant now moves like a normal 2D action character of the time and the Raptor can go into an invincible rage mode if you collect 3 lysine containers. Strangely enough, the plot isn't based on either the Lost World book or the (terrible) movie. Instead, it has Grant returning to the island to stop InGen from capturing dinosaur DNA, and then escaping from the T-Rex as usual. Meanwhile, the Raptor runs around killing things until you eventually kill another boss raptor and escape on that damn boat that pops up in all these adaptations. With rewind and save states, it's perfectly playable, just frustrating and dull.

The level design is basically nonexistent. You start in a huge open area, and run wherever in the maze the game allows you to run until the game decides you've suffered enough. Sadly, this won't be the last Jurassic Park sequel that does this. There are collectibles you can grab around the maps in order to "save" their respective specifies, but that doesn't seem to actually have any impact on anything despite the game tracking it.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 30, 2026, 09:34:02 PM »

Moving on, here's the one game in the set I not only have played before, but used to own and would regularly beat as a kid: Jurassic Park (SNES).







I don't know how I did it back then, because this is one of the most confusing, cryptic games I've played in a while.

I'll give the SNES version this much: it's certainly the most ambitious of Ocean's Jurassic Park games. Instead of a level-based structure, you have a small open world populated by dinosaurs and dungeons shaped like buildings. Outside, it's a top-down shooter. It's an Ocean Jurassic Park game, so you're looking for dinosaur eggs as well, and you're required to find all of them to beat the game. Inside, you're playing 3D Doom at 5 frames per second as you wander through absolute labyrinths looking for keys and consoles to interact with.

I remembered next to nothing about the actual progression of this game, other than that I needed to start by entering a utility shed to get a keycard before going into the visitor's center.

Pity I forgot that there are 2 utility sheds, the 1 you want is pretty well hidden, and I spent an eternity in the wrong one looking for a keycard that wasn't there. That then made me think my memory was bad, so I went to the visitor center...where I spent an even longer eternity looking for anything I could interact with and kept running into warnings that I needed keycards I didn't have in order to proceed. What a comedy of errors.

Once I started pulling up guides to point me in the right direction, things went more smoothly, but I can't stress enough what an absolutely cluster**** navigation is. Ocean had a love for mazes that bordered on the psychopathic. All of their JP games featured them, and none more than this one, and you're expect to remember where locked doors are and what keycards you need to open them later. The entire back half of the game expects you to crisscross the entire map 4 times over the course of clearing 1 dungeon, as you obtain keycards on the boat that allow you access to an area of the visitor center you need to reach to give yourself security clearance so you can explore the rest of the boat.

Then there's taking out the raptor nest, an absolute nightmare of identical corridors and walls you can very easily glitch through to get stuck in the void. At least the game is kind enough to remember what dinosaurs you've killed, as only certain raptors in the overworld respawn. And the collection does have a master map of the overworld that is quite handy, though sadly NO maps for the interior mazes that would be VERY helpful.

Where it isn't kind, and this is a big benefit of the collection, is with the game's save system. It doesn't have one, and it can easily take 3-5 hours to beat this game if you don't know what to do, and you're expected to do them all in one sitting. Again, I don't know how I routinely managed this as a child. Because the collection has save states, this game is way more playable now than it was back then.