Topic: Backlaugust 2023! (Forums Aren't Dead Yet?) Edition

[Khushrenada]

Huzzah! Other people have now posted games! I was beginning to wonder if this was going to just be a lonely Backlaugust for me! I realize that I was thinking of Kentucky Route Zero at first when I saw lolmonade's post about Road 96. I'll have to look that one up that since I don't remember hearing about it before.

Kirby's Dream Land 2 - For me, this is the first really strong entry when looking at the release history of Kirby games. I know many people like Kirby's Adventure for the NES and point to that as a top entry but I don't like that game. I don't know what it is about it but whether it is the NES version or the GBA remake of Knightmare in Dream Land, I find myself getting bored of the game very quickly whenever I play it and feel I'm always having to force myself to play more of it. Maybe someday I'll sit down and try to figure out exactly what it is that bothers me about the game but that day is not today. I don't quite have that problem with KDL2 although I find I'll want a break after a couple hours but that's not unusual for any game. I like the addition of the animal helpers and how they add different twists to the copy abilities and level obstacles like being able to fly against strong winds or swim against strong currents. They help add more challenge in getting some of the later Rainbow Drops. Sort of the equivalent of Yoshi and add more protection for Kirby. Collecting stars in the levels to get extra lives is your equivalent of collecting coins in Mario. Something that wasn't done often in Kirby games. Perhaps KDL3 is the only other game to do that. I'd have to think on that but I like that touch as it helps add something to the levels. You likely want a lot of extra lives if you didn't have the ability for Save States as a couple of later levels and especially the final bosses will definitely require quite a lot of lives and retries as you familiarize the patterns and work out how to take them down. I also managed to get 100% completion for this game for the first time. It's only the second time I've really played this game since a few years ago when I played it in Kirby's Dream Collection for the first time. Came close to 100% then but never got back to finishing that. Save states also helped speed things along in that regard. Snap judgement - 3.5/5 stars.

[Lemonade]

Travis Strikes Again is great, but not as good as No More Heroes 3

[M.K.Ultra]

Well, without broodwars it looks like it is up to me to include some Sony greatness in this here event. I completed Concrete Genie on PS4 last night. The game is rather brief and I completed it in two nights, probably about 8 hours. I was able to get all trophies including the 3 PSVR trophies. The PSVR mode is rather ancillary and I would recommend it be saved for last, but it's also a really cool experience. The picture on the bottom is from the VR mode.
In fact, I picked this game up because I thought it was primarily a VR experience, but I am glad I did because it is a really cool story with some nice level design and plenty of stuff to collect. There is decent use of motion controls here, though my controllers were giving me a little trouble and disconnecting. Essentially you go around the town and paint things back to life. There is some good puzzle platforming and the eponymous genies have various powers that help you out. In addition to designing the way the genies look, they are cute and want to play and interact with the environment so I really appreciated them as entities.
It looks like the development studio (PixelOpus) was shut down by Sony. In fact their other game (Entwined) is not available for purchase  . Oh well, I am sure these talented folks will end up working on something else.

[broodwars]

Well, without broodwars it looks like it is up to me to include some Sony greatness in this here event. I completed Concrete Genie on PS4 last night. The game is rather brief and I completed it in two nights, probably about 8 hours. I was able to get all trophies including the 3 PSVR trophies. The PSVR mode is rather ancillary and I would recommend it be saved for last, but it's also a really cool experience. The picture on the bottom is from the VR mode.
In fact, I picked this game up because I thought it was primarily a VR experience, but I am glad I did because it is a really cool story with some nice level design and plenty of stuff to collect. There is decent use of motion controls here, though my controllers were giving me a little trouble and disconnecting. Essentially you go around the town and paint things back to life. There is some good puzzle platforming and the eponymous genies have various powers that help you out. In addition to designing the way the genies look, they are cute and want to play and interact with the environment so I really appreciated them as entities.
It looks like the development studio (PixelOpus) was shut down by Sony. In fact their other game (Entwined) is not available for purchase  . Oh well, I am sure these talented folks will end up working on something else.

Supposedly, the people at PixelOpus still work for Sony. They've just been folded into one of Sony's other studios making the same cookie-cutter 3rd person open world action game with minor stealth & RPG elements. So, hooray for more bland, generic games that play themselves created by committee! 

While I appreciate the shout-out, I've gotten really tired with Sony's formula over the years. Perhaps that's ironic on a forum dedicated to Nintendo, but at least Nintendo knows how to use more than the same 3-4 colors.

As for Concrete Genie, I quite like the game. As a game, it's rather mediocre. It's not hard to see why the standard-issue puzzles & light stealth and platforming didn't exactly wow people. But as an artistic experience, I found it pretty magical the way you can just paint the world however you see fit, and it will animate and react to you appropriately and in a way that feels customized to you.  I have no idea how they pulled that off with so many possible moving parts.

[Mop it up]

Castlevania Bloodlines

Looks like this is the only game left on the Anniversary Collection that I hadn't yet played, and apparently this is the same one that's included in the Genesis NSO dealie, so I s'pose there will just be one Castlevania game this year for me. To round out the collection, I still played it there, even though the NSO version has better emulation features. I don't know if I ever really heard about this game, so I didn't have expectations for it. And I've gotta say...

...It's a'ight. There's always a bit of a disconnect when I play a game like this: the controls and physics are still the same as the NES titles, but now with Genesis graphics and sound. Thanks to advances in hardware, games during this era tended to improve on things like smoother controls and more dynamic physics, so it's always jarring for me to play a game that looks 16-bit but plays like something much older. Although, at least this guy learned how to whip upwards, even if only while jumping; still surprised me to see that! There's a fun variety of visual tricks across the stages, including reflective water, and a real mindfunk of splitting up the screen in a late stage. Relatively speaking, the tone of this one feels a little goofier than is typical, including a boss that is some sort of grouping of metal gears that dances across the room.

Moving past that however, the stage design here generally feels easier and more fair than the NES titles. There are usually less enemies in each screen, and it relies less on infinite enemy spawns, though there are still a few such sections. There are also a fair amount of bosses and sub-bosses, relatively speaking, and their patterns are typically slower and more predictable than the erratic ones in previous games. This one felt shorter than the previous ones, though I dunno if it actually has less stages, or just feels shorter due to the much easier difficulty. I'm actually kind of surprised at how breezy this game is, since it was released during the height of the rental era where many games were made more difficult to combat rentals.

It's increasingly clear to me that Classicvania just isn't for me. I don't know if there's necessarily anything wrong with them, and I can see why they're popular as they often had great presentation for the era. They look good, they sound good, but I just don't care for the stiff and rigid gameplay, even when the game is overall easier like this. I played a couple stages to try out the second character, but seeing that they seem to have the exact same levels, I think I'll call it here.

And thus, the Castlevania Anniversary Collection is also complete! Now I know that won't count as its own completion for this, ha ha, but I can still mark it as such in my own backlog.

[Luigi Dude]

I'm actually kind of surprised at how breezy this game is, since it was released during the height of the rental era where many games were made more difficult to combat rentals.

Technically it was made more difficult.  The North American/PAL version adds more enemies to certain parts of the game compared to the Japanese version.  You also have to beat the game on Expert mode to get the full ending in the Western version, while the Japanese version gives you the full ending just for beating Normal mode.  Of course the full ending is just about an extra 5 second cutscene but it's still something they made harder to see in the western versions.

The thing I find so weird about Bloodlines is it's the only Castlevania with limited continues but it still has a password system.  As long as someone writes down the password after each level, you basically have unlimited continues anyway, so why even have the continue limit?  I guess using a continue starts you back at the last checkpoint while Password at the beginning of each level, so there's kind of a tradeoff but it still kind of negates the point of limited continues which are suppose to make people replay the whole game when they're giving them another way to just restart the last level instead.

[Khushrenada]

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge - When trying to determine which VC Game Boy games for the 3DS eShop were worth checking out, the Mega Man titles came up during my Best of the 3DS eShop series. However, I was hesitant about whether it was worth pursuing these or not. I've never really gotten into the franchise. Around maybe 16 years ago, I thought to myself, "Let's do this!". I had the GameCube Mega Man Anniversary collection for a couple years in my games library because it had always seemed like a neat series thanks to Nintendo Power. Reading those issues as a kid, it sounded like they could be cool games with Robot Masters and using their weapons against each other. Looking at these winding level layouts. Also, I was into Samurai Pizza Cats which was airing at the time and giant robots getting destroyed which influenced me to build robots from Lego and have them taken down. But never had a NES until way later and the box art of Mega Man X just didn't inspire younger me to take a chance. Anyways, popped in the GC disc and started with Mega Man 1. It was difficult but I was chipping away at getting better with the level I was playing. Unfortunately, that brief burst of enthusiasm for getting into the series faded that one evening. At some point, I popped in the GC Mega Man X collection because I know I played the opening for Mega Man X for a brief while but found that beginning rather confusing for some reason and backed away from the series again. Sometime later, my younger cousin was talking about the series and how he was interested in it. He wondered if I'd played the games or had them. I showed him the GC collections I had and he went with Mega Man X to try it out. He got farther into X then I did to the point where you could select a Robot Master and start working your way towards one. The difficulty of enemies suddenly appearing and shooting and trying to platform around it wore down his enthusiasm. I took a turn at it and was doing alright at being able to work around the obstacles and make some more progress but after a few minutes we'd both had enough. I gave him my opinion of the series at the time which is that with some older games like MMX, game design was different and more of a challenge was expected to keep people continually playing to sort of learn and memorize these levels and stretch them out that way. The best way to probably play them now was if they were released on something like the Switch SNES app in which you can rewind and get through it faster rather then repeating a level over and over. Thus, I was hesitant about getting any of the Mega Man games for 3DS but kept them on my wishlist for a few years after they did get recommended on the forums. In the end, I pulled the trigger and got all 5 along with the two Mega Man Xtreme games for GBC because I just wasn't sure whether they'd end up on the Switch app and Capcom doesn't seem to have cared about putting them in any other collection to my knowledge. There's that long and unnecessary background story.

I gave it mainly to point that after all this time, it is Dr. Wily's Revenge that has ended up being the first Mega Man game I have ever beat and played all the way through. In 2023, it's probably going to be pretty rare to find other people who will make this game their first real entry into the series. Going back 32 years to the wild days of 1991 with this one. Booting it up, I have no idea what order I should be facing the 4 Robot Masters on my screen. I started with the top left one since it seemed like it had some kind of cutting ability or weapon. Right away, the game is smacking me around all over the place. Getting knocked around and depleted. Soon learn that enemies dropping health is pretty random and seems kind of low. Platforming feels a bit rough too as Mega Man doesn't always seem to be the best jumper or sometimes the levels have obstacles to make a needed jump tough. Quickly decide that I'm just going to have to start Save State scumming. Every time I was about to go to the next part of the level and load the next screen for it, I would create a save point. Then if I got knocked around a bit and lost health, I'd figure out what I had to do on that screen and reload that save state until I took care of the enemies or platforming I needed to do without getting hurt too bad or dying and then create a save point before the next screen to shift into view for the level. Eventually work my way to my first boss fight and just play out a war of health attrition between us. But after an attempt or two, I had finally taken down my first Robot Master in the series. Now which of the three do I want to try next? Later on in the game, it turns out you have to face a bunch more Robot Masters but they're basically back to back to back boss fights. It was at that point that I looked up a FAQ to see what I should be doing. Reading over it, I discovered that I'd pretty much gone the complete opposite way you are recommended to face the 4 robot masters. In a way, it doesn't matter since it is all one big loop but it had felt to me like the levels got easier as I went along. Part of that could be from me better understanding some of the mechanics of the game but, I swear, the Elec Man stage had much less enemies compared to Cut Man and was more about jumping and doing some platforming along the way. I may have unknowingly made the beginning way harder. Got some information on the order of taking out the 5 Robot Masters you have to face halfway on the way to Wily. Continued on and took down in Wily in about 4 tries. And with that, it is accomplished. I can now say I have beat a Mega Man game.

Early on, I was shaking my head and sympathizing will all the young kids who must have gone through so many batteries to try and beat this game. At least they gave them passwords to help with the process. Yet I would think anyone who would have beat that game would have been a legend back in the day. Surprisingly, though, as I kept progressing into the game, I found myself enjoying it more and wanting to come back and play more of it out of the other games I am currently playing on the 3DS. It became a screen by screen challenge / mystery of what do I have to do and then how do I do it well. I began to understand the mechanics and weapon systems and that further helped me get more into the game. On reflecting about it, I may not have felt this way if I couldn't play it with save points. Also, the presentation / story is pretty bones. There's probably something in the manual but in-game you are given no reason for anything. It's like you are just confronted with 4 Wanted posters. Pick a candidate and hunt them down. No reason given for doing so. Then after you do that, you go to some old guy's weird looking castle/laboratory and trash his place, beat him up and leave. The end. The credits throw a bunch of the enemy's names at you which is about the only lore you will get. At least it gives you a chance to know the names of the 5 Robot Masters you face off with in Dr. Wily's castle because that isn't done at the time you meet them. Just have to have played the NES games and know this stuff by heart, I guess. Anyways, despite the long journey it took to get here and the odds against it with its level and enemy design, somehow I ended up walking away with an overall positive feeling about the game. Snap judgement rating of 3/5 although I wonder if I'm being too generous here...

[Khushrenada]

Kersploosh! - Nothing like a game you can beat in an hour. This game came up a couple times on other Best of the 3DS eShop listings so I decided to give it a chance. It's more of an arcade-high score type game where the only real challenge is how quick you can get the object you control to the bottom of a well. There are only 10 wells in total and 10 different objects with different stats. It's not really that challenging to unlock all the wells. Just get to the bottom of one and the next one opens. The bigger challenge and more of a completion aspect will be getting all the different objects unlocked. I've got 8/10 but a couple of the last ones will take more work. For now, I'm content to mark this as beat and work on getting the last couple objects later. I may even see if I can get the time on the wells under a minute although I think that may not be possible on the last well. Might have to shoot for 1 minute and a half there. It's a nice little time waster. Reminds of early mobile phone games in that way. Just an app you can open to engage yourself while waiting for something.

I picked up the game because there had been praise for the 3D effect but the depth wasn't as great as I anticipated. I can think of a few other games in which the 3D depth effect was more impressive or stood out more. On the other hand, what I wasn't expecting was for this game to give me a pseudo-F-Zero GX experience. I see it as a racing game in which you are going from one of the track to the other. Along there way there are boosts you can get for speed bursts but a lot of obstacles you have to avoid that could slow you down and damage your falling object to the point of destroying it. When playing some wells to shave down my time and unlock an object, it reminded of that trained precision in F-Zero GX of going along tracks and carefully maneuvering your craft to hit the speed boosts along the way and avoid other things on the track at high speeds. The way different objects can be much more difficult to control than others is like how with 40 different racing vehicles some were just more wonky than others. Ah, the days when I was an F-Zero Champ and won an Expert Grand Prix with all the racers. For reminding me of that, Kersploosh!, I thank you.

But you're still a pretty basic game. Snap judgment rating: 2.5/5

[Khushrenada]

Mega Man II - I actually beat Dr. Wily's revenge a few days ago like Sunday or Monday but just didn't get around to posting it. At the time, it wasn't my plan to also play more of the GB MM series of games. I just wanted to at least complete one and finally dip my toe into the Mega Man waters. Yet, despite starting up and getting into some other games that I listed as potentially tackling this month for Backlaugust like Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword, Mighty Milky Way, and Maestro! Green Grove, I found my mind would wander back to the GB VC games I've still got to play and wanting to get more Mega Man action. I booted up the second of the GB games. Once again, I was unsure which way to start with the Robot Master but I figured the buzzsaw looking way likely had to be the weakness for the tree looking one so I could at least go in that order.

Right away, I could tell a difference in the design and gameplay. It just had a lighter feel. Less worry of having to be ever vigilant over the level of my health bar to get to the end. Health and weapon refills were much more prevalent and I was soon hardly bothering with doing much for creating save points. It was much more easy to successfully get from the start to the end of a level and likely with good health by the time you reach the boss. The ability to slide took awhile for me to catch on and realize it was there. Afterwards, thinking about the game, there's probably more times I could have used the slide ability when fighting since so many Robot Masters want to jump around their screen. As a result, there was a point where I did run out of lives and selected the Continue option on a Game Over screen but it was no big deal since I had just reached Wily's castle and started over on it fresh with more lives and all weapons full. Also, wasn't catching on to the value of Mega Man's dog at first but eventually worked out its benefits. In the end, I played up to the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters in Wily's castle in one day and finished the game today. It was just a much more compelling experience doing more to make the levels standout on the Game Boy and I just wanted to keep playing it. A very good Game Boy experience. Snap judgment rating - 4/5 stars.

[pokepal148]

Oh hai.

I see I have successfully scammed Khush into taking this over. How fun.

Baldur's Gate 3 is likely to become my main gaming obsession but I have started picking away at Tunic on my Switch so I'll probably keep picking away at that.

[broodwars]

Oh hai.

I see I have successfully scammed Khush into taking this over. How fun.

Baldur's Gate 3 is likely to become my main gaming obsession but I have started picking away at Tunic on my Switch so I'll probably keep picking away at that.

Just recently finished Tunic, myself, which just had a physical release. Well, at least it's 2/3 of a great game. Pity about the game completely going to **** in its last 1/3, getting bogged down in confusing level geometry; truly awful combat; and Fez-caliber cryptic bullshit that basically requires a guide. And all topped off with one of the worst final boss fights I've ever seen if you didn't use a guide to 100% the game.

[lolmonade]

Well, without broodwars it looks like it is up to me to include some Sony greatness in this here event.

I have plenty of Sony games on my backlog, I just doubt i'll have the time this month to accomplish them.  I'll add the one i've had meaningful time in for a stretch goal.  . 

[M.K.Ultra]

Everyone can now rest easy as I have brought an end to the reaper threat by beating Mass Effect 3 on Wii U. This was my first foray into the Mass Effect franchise and if it were not ported to Wii U I would probably not have played it. I did enjoy the game despite how martial is was; there was enough sci-fi in there to keep me entertained. The production values were certainly high with loads of fully voiced cutscenes and big name actors. Even some of the menus were narrated. What makes this game stand out to me is the ability to make decisions, not just with dialogue, but with story as well. I actually had a decent amount of control over some parts of the story, which was neat. The missions are a little samey, but I mixed in with the other aspects of the game: searching for assets minigame, exploring the citadel and ship, etc. it stayed enjoyable. I though the length was just right as well, with my casual playtime clocking in around 37 hours. Since this was a Wii U game, you might be wondering about the Gamepad. It is used as an interactive map, and I found it quite helpful. You could see the terrain, allies, and enemies in real time and you could drag and drop your party members' icons to direct them to different areas without pausing the action. Will I play another Mass Effect game? probably not, but I had a good time here.

As you can see I did figure out how to export screenshots from Wii U by pausing the game and going to the Internet browser, but this doesn't seem to work with the 3DS. Anybody know how to get screenshots from the 3DS without Miiverse?

[Lemonade]

Some final thought on a few games.

Resident Evil 2 Remake.
I was interested in this game because I heard so many good thing about it on podcasts. It turns out that I dont like it. Even though its a remake, going back this far into Resident Evil it just too puzzly for me. I dont like Zelda Dungeon like world design. I dont like the puzzles. I dont like Mr X. I dont like the survival aspect of barely having enough ammo to take out enemies.
Out of Resident Evil 4, 5 6, 8, Revelations, and 4 Remake, this is the first RE game I have played in the last few years I have not finished because I dont like it. I much prefer the newer more action style RE games.
I bought 2 and 3 remake on a significant discount earlier this year, so Im still glad I at least gave it a try.
I will start RE 3 Remake very soon.

Dillon's Rolling Western.
I put about 5 hours into the game, but Im done with it because I didnt get a good enough rank to unlock the next area. I dont feel like going back and replaying three missions again to try to do better. I had enough fun with the game.
It is actually pretty good, but very repetitive. Its also not very portable friendly because you can only save between each mission, which is probably 20-30 minutes of game time. I was playing it in 15-20 minute chunks before work in the morning. There was several times when I just had to leave the game running in sleep mode.
Afterward, I quickly revisited Dead Heat Breakers, which I played some of back when that game was new. I didnt like it very much at the time. Playing it now with more knowledge of the series, I appreciate the game more. It is much more complicated than Rolling Western, but you can see how the gameplay has evolved.
I dont intend to play more of Dead Heat Breakers.

Super Princess Peach.
I started this a few months ago when I streamed it here https://youtube.com/live/BH2f5auB7UA
The put it down for a while. I picked it up again over the weekend just to get it finished.
Its actually really good. Its a fun, cute platformer with a look and feel very similar to Yoshi's Island.
Im saying I basically finished it, but I didnt actually finish it because to beat the final boss, you have to collect all three toads in every level. I have most of them, but I cant be bothered going back to get all of them. Plus, from what I saw in a guide, the final boss seems like it would be very annoying to beat, so I dont need that.
The game also has amazing 2D art for the DS. You really should watch some of my video to see it.
As for Peach's powers of flight, water, fire and health restoration, they are all used very well in the level design in various ways. The only issue is how it was implemented, with them being her emotions. It doesnt really bother me, but I think it is probably why we will never see a re-release of this game.
Also, Im really looking forward to the new Peach game next year.

[Mop it up]

A Short Hike
This was recently added to Game Pass, and I remembered some people speaking highly of it as a nice breezy, relaxing time. And I've gotta say...

...It's one of those games that delivers exactly what it promises on the tin, nothing more, nothing less. I was worried when I first opened it up and was greeted by images that are a mess of undefined chunky pixels, but fortunately I quickly found the option to smooth out the graphics and then it looks fine. This is generally my ideal type of open gameplay: a small, condensed area with a focus on exploration and clear goals. I also appreciate any game that's able to deliver an engaging experience without containing violence or dangers.

I felt compelled to complete all the tasks (including the cheevos) since moving around the island is quick, easy, and fun, becoming moreso the more golden feathers collected, and the race minigame challenged me to improve my gliding skillz to get around even faster. There are a few niggling issues here and there; a largely static camera which doesn't always show what I want to see; switching tools should be assigned to buttons instead of having to open the menu; and some presentation choices I don't care for, but they're minor enough to not hinder the experience. All in all, I enjoyed the hike.

[Lemonade]

I played A Short Hike recently. It was good. I think the game is a bit over hyped though. I didnt like it as much as other people seem to.

[broodwars]

Well, it looks like I do have something to contribute this month, and perhaps more: after clearing out another recent release with Process of Elimination (one of the strangest visual novel detective adventure games I've ever played, but a recent release so it doesn't count here), I decided to try working on a few older games while I was on vacation this week. With Armored Core 6 coming out soon, I thought I'd finally get around to playing my copy of Mechwarrior 5 I'd been holding for a rainy day. More on that another time if I manage to beat it (it's a HUUUUUUGE game), but the one I'd like to spotlight is Dead Cells.

Dead Cells is a game I started years ago back when it first came out. I liked it then, and I still like it now. The game got a proper port to PS5 recently with a physical version that also included all the DLC (including the Castlevania DLC), so I figured...why not? I never had a successful run before...but I have now.

http://twitter.com/broodwars64/status/1691233470830325761?s=20

Yeah, I know there's still a TOOOON of stuff to see and do in that game, including the aforementioned DLC, but **** it. I've rolled credits. I'm calling that a win, and here on out I'm just playing for the fun of it.

To put it succinctly, Dead Cells is possibly one of the most mechanically perfect games I've ever played. While luck plays a role, it is a game that you can play to perfection just on pure skill alone if you're that good at it and you have the enemy attack patterns down. I am not that good, but I will take beating the final boss and proudly display my glorified participation trophy.

Because I've seen what it takes to 100% that game, and **** that ****.

[Mop it up]

Pokémon Trading Card Game
I was always mildly curious about this game, but never ended up getting the cartridge. Its inclusion on NSO is a nice addition. Now that I can finally try it out, I've gotta say...

...It's a card game all right! While there is a simple structure of progression for the title, it does very little to game-ify the card game, delivering it pretty straight. No grand adventure, no storylines, no real characters, not even something cool like having the Monz pop out of the cards, it's literally cards in the context of the game as well. I've never played the physical card game and have no interest in it, so I don't know what, if any, changes were made to this video game incarnation. I get the feeling it may be simplified over the real thing however, seeing that there are just 7 types.

Being a card game, luck is of course a big factor, especially starting out with a standard deck. As I went along and defeated more opponents to collect more cards, I was slowly able to add some better cards into my deck to mitigate the luck aspect and have useful cards pop up more often. The standard opponents seemed easy enough to tackle them with a wide variety of deck setups, but the final bouts required me to figure out some more specific ones to handle what they throw out.

Overall, while I didn't particularly enjoy the game itself, it was an interesting curiosity to learn some things about the card game and how things work. I would imagine that any fan of the card game would be satisfied.

[Lemonade]

Finished Resident Evil 3 Remake. It was great, I liked it so much more than 2 Remake. It is much more interesting with the world design. You go to a bunch of different locations instead of just being stuck in the police station for hours.
It has more action than 2 and doesnt rely so much on puzzles.
I think Jill is now one of my favourite Resident Evil characters.

If you dont mind seeing the end of the final boss, watch this scene, it is great
https://www.xbox.com/play/media/F4KYMY59AF

[Mop it up]

I completed The Revenge of Shinobi in the Genesis collection as a nice break from Tunic, with liberal use of rewind of course. I never really heard anything about this series so I wasn't sure what to expect, thinking maybe it was Sega's answer to Ninja Gaiden, which it isn't. With all the shuriken-tossing action, it sometimes feels more like a side-scrolling shooter. For a ninja, this dude sure moves slowly. A weird quirk of the game is that colliding with an enemy itself doesn't cause damage, only knockback, so I would sometimes use this to avoid being hit by their weapon. With some of the mean setups in later levels, this almost feels required. I find myself wishing I had more Castlevania games to play instead...

[M.K.Ultra]

I never really heard anything about this series so I wasn't sure what to expect, thinking maybe it was Sega's answer to Ninja Gaiden

I always thought the same thing. Definitely on my list of Sega franchises to one day visit.

[RABicle]

I’ve been posting more regular updates in the discord but to give proper rundowns here I have finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps, The League of Enthusiastic Losers and Florence.

So let’s do some mini recaps. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is very special. Some of the Metroidvania purists dislike aspects of Ori, like the semi-on rails chases and perhaps switching abilities too often to progress but I think it’s overall brilliant. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is just such a beautifully presented game. It looks good, it sounds better and the gameplay is challenging and fun and interesting. I can’t believe Microsoft jsut let us have this game and don’t lock it up on the Xbox, where it’s no doubt completely unappreciated by the shooter and sports crowd.
As for my progress in it, I had previously played one long session in bed a couple of years ago and when I came back to it I didn’t really know where I was or what the controls were so I just started a fresh save and within 3 hours I was up to where I was. In the end it took 15 hours to clear.

League of Enthusiastic Losers… well, an attempt was made, by the developer to tell a story, you couldn’t not finish this game, it’s an interactive story. I played through it over two train rides to work and back. There’s a story about a couple of mates (who are definitely not gay) that didn’t quite make it in life and how they’re uncomfortable around their more successful friends and their slumlord is trying to kick them out and they reminisce about their childhood when things were good under communism. The kids in teh tenements really like them though and not to spoil it but everything works out in the end. The art style is actually really nice and the sounds do the job but the story is whatever, and that’s crucial because the gameplay when it exists is unclear, buggy and unsatisfying. There’s no real player agency but maybe that’s part of the point? 🤔

And then there’s Florence, which i jsut played through on my iPad on the couch right then. Compared to League of Enthusiastic Losers, Florence is a masterclass on how to do an interactive story. text is minimal because the story is told through the pictures and music and the screen orientation and when the way you piece together the little mini games to progress the story add weight and impact. Like you go ona. Date with a guy and you can tell Florence is becoming more relaxed and conversation is easier because the little puzzles to put together the speach bubbles becomes more relaxed. It’s wonderful and I think everyone would enjoy the 40 minutes it takes to see it through.

What has caused huge damage though to my Backlaugust is Project Highrise. A game I have comprehensively mastered, back to front, reviewed and recommended. And all this talk about the housing crisis in Australia while I was working forum home inspired me to download it again, for iPad this time and play it while “”””working”””” from home. ScreenTiem says I’ve wasted over 25 hours on it in the past fortnight. I have literally 100% achievemented this game on Steam, where I own on teh DLC and it’s more playable than the weirdly cut down iPad version.

[Mop it up]

Another Genesis title in the bag, Shadow Dancer! I thought it was a sequel to Revenge of Shinobi, but apparently the arcade version released prior to it, and just took a couple of years to show up on Genesis. This one feels even more akin to a scroller shooter ala Contra, with infinite shurikens allowing for mindless rapid fire, and one-hit deaths. Fortunately the enemy concentration is lower than in Revenge, but it still results in a more difficult game. Shinobi now has a dog following him around that constantly barks whenever an enemy is on-screen, adding a robust annoyance factor. The bonus stage between rounds is surprisingly easy to perfect and earn three lives. With just four sets of stages it's shorter than Revenge, though it would have of course taken longer if I had to master it to clear it; some of the bosses would have been a real pain on actual hardware.

[Mop it up]

Rounding out the series is Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master! Three games into this franchise and I still haven't quite figured out the timing of the double jump. Shinobi has learned some more ninja moves for me to mistime, such as a wall jump, and climbing across ceilings and pipes; this game really makes you feel like an incompetent ninja. Moves like a drop kick can be very useful. Compared to the previous, the stage design is generally easier and more fair, and I hardly used rewind at all until the final stage which is a ridonkulous gauntlet. Rigauntulous. These games show an issue with the Genesis controller having only three main buttons, as whether or not Shinobi tosses a shuriken or slashes with his sword is based on distance to enemy, but it feels inconsistent and often still throws a shuriken at slash range. Having a separate sword button would have been ideal.

[M.K.Ultra]

These games show an issue with the Genesis controller having only three main buttons, as whether or not Shinobi tosses a shuriken or slashes with his sword is based on distance to enemy, but it feels inconsistent and often still throws a shuriken at slash range. Having a separate sword button would have been ideal.

So jump is one button and shuriken/sword is another. What is the third button used for?