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Author Topic: Father's Day: 52 games/year Challenge  (Read 17037 times)

WarpRattler

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« Reply #15 on: August 08, 2014, 10:37:29 PM »
I actually was just discussing replaying DKC1 and playing DKC2 co-op with my dad the other day. We'll see if that happens.

I'm still working on Astro Boy, but the final stage in Rebirth on Hard is completely nuts. I'm also working on the first exploratory platformer for my earlier thing, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and the first game for another series I'll be doing here, Kirby Triple Deluxe.

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #16 on: August 14, 2014, 08:04:59 PM »
Game 7: Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D



(I didn't get a screenshot of the ending movie because I had assumed I'd be able to rewatch it in the movie gallery, but apparently I need more puzzle pieces before I can do that.)

69% completion; total playtime of 13 hours and 21 minutes. And that was on easy mode. No game overs, beat the final boss on my last life (or second-to-last; since I've never gotten a game over, I don't know whether the last life is on 1 or on 0 like it was in the SNES ones). I did buy extra rocket hitpoint potions from Cranky for the last rocket barrel level, but other than that, I only bought keys, so I've got over 800 banana coins now.

So, this is the only DKC game out of the five whose music wasn't composed by David Wise... except he actually did compose most of it. The soundtrack leans pretty heavily on nostalgia. It works, though. And I suppose it should be expected, considering the name of the game is literally Hey, Remember Donkey Kong Country? This Is A New One, Which Is Something That Has Not Happened In A While. (In the Volcano world, though, I think the main theme is new, and it sounds pretty Norfairish)

I don't think Retro really tried to copy the physics (or "physics") of the original trilogy, and they're probably better off for it. Donkey Kong feels much more like he has actual weight and momentum, and while going from one game to another takes some time to adjust, I think Retro ended up with a better feel overall. (Also, the fact that the camera can zoom out to give you a wider view when necessary helps a lot, especially on some of the boss fights with bigger fields.)

Playing it on the 3DS is nice because there's no controller shaking. I've never been one to hate on motion controls, but DKC4 is definitely a case where they added nothing of value and made the game harder to play than it should have been.

I like it a lot.

(I do want to go back later and get 100% and do the bonus levels and all. I'm thinking I might do an epilogue of stuff like that if/when I hit 52.)
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

WarpRattler

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« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2014, 08:41:15 AM »
Game #3: Kirby Triple Deluxe

I've actually been done with the main story for a while now (before my previous post, in fact), but I'm slowly working on 100% completion.

What stood out to me while playing this was how good these guys still are at copy power design. The last new non-gimmick non-remake Kirby game I played before this was Squeak Squad several years ago, so I hadn't used the new powers from Return to Dream Land or seen the various changes to classic powers, but I quite like many of them, and the Beetle power (new to Triple Deluxe) is one of my favorite copy powers ever. For classic powers, Fighter's various changes turn Kirby into the shotoclone this series needed, and the iconic Hammer, Beam, and Parasol abilities all benefit from minor tweaks and improvements over their Super Star incarnations; also, many classic one-trick powers, like Wheel, Needle, and Stone, have been given additional capabilities that make them a lot more fun to use.

Aside from copy powers, I really liked the boss designs, the keychains, Dededetour!, Kirby Fighters (which totally needs a side tournament at EVO 2015), the soundtrack, and the smooth 60fps.

« Reply #18 on: August 16, 2014, 03:58:53 PM »
Turns out SMB is kind of hard.

Game 2: Wind Waker HD



(Link toMiiverse post)

I got this game for Christmas last year and I finally decided to beat it. I've enjoyed it all the way through. The Wii U version was not just a port by any means. It added tons of new content and even made some parts better (Triforce pieces+Swift Sail) If you liked the original, you should definitely get this.

If you're wondering why I'm going kind of slow, it's because I've been on vacation and school is starting soon, so going one game/week is kind of taxing, and it's getting kind of crazy. (hint)
« Last Edit: August 16, 2014, 08:57:36 PM by bobbysq1337 »

WarpRattler

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« Reply #19 on: August 16, 2014, 05:39:40 PM »
YA YA YA YA YA

I'll be posting another game later tonight, if all goes well.

WarpRattler

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« Reply #20 on: August 16, 2014, 10:11:23 PM »
Game #4: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

So, I don't feel like writing up the whole "why 'Metroidvania' is a bad term and how no one learned anything from Super Metroid" thing tonight, but...of all the games I've played that get the "Metroidvania" term thrown at them, Circle of the Moon is one of the few that actually deserves that term, being a Castlevania game that's very close to Metroid.

CotM stars Nathan Graves, apprentice vampire slayer, as he explores Castlevania on his quest to halt Dracula's resurrection and rescue his master. Along with standard Castlevania gameplay mechanics like whipping candles and throwing crosses, and standard Metroid gameplay mechanics like defeating bosses to get new items to improve your mobility and open up new areas, CotM features a very cool mechanic called DSS, in which you combine the cards you sometimes get from enemies for special effects. Some of these combos are stupidly good, like Uranus/Thunderbird (which makes you invulnerable for several seconds and does huge damage to everything on-screen for its duration) and Pluto/Salamander (which lets you use Richter Belmont's Item Crashes).

Once you clear CotM for the first time, you can start a new file with the name "FIREBALL" to activate Magician Mode, as seen in the linked picture. CotM features five distinct classes: Vampire Killer (a normal playthrough, with balanced stats), Magician (high INT/MP, low HP/STR/DEF, and you start with all twenty DSS cards), Fighter (no DSS at all, but high HP/STR/DEF), Shooter (mediocre stats in general, but you get a lot of hearts, and subweapons get huge buffs), and Thief (crappy HP/MP/STR/DEF, but higher LCK at level one than all other classes' LCK at max level).

Luigison, since the core rules of Circle of the Moon change quite a bit between different classes, would separate playthroughs count as multiple games for this thread? (Note that I'll be playing through the game again as every class regardless of the answer.)

« Reply #21 on: August 16, 2014, 10:26:26 PM »
Game 3: Crazy Taxi (Android, Crazy Box)

http://i.imgur.com/3yEVATp.png (Spoilers on what you unlock after beating Crazy Box)

[Will add more later, pretty late right now and still hyped from beating S-S with less than a second on the clock]

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #22 on: August 30, 2014, 06:05:21 PM »
Game 8: SteamWorld Dig




So this is kind of a Metroidvania-ish game, I guess. You're a robot and you dig, and you keep digging to find powers that let you dig further and money to buy stuff that lets you dig faster. And then there's a boss battle at the end. It's quite short, probably falling into the category of video game candy, but it's very well designed, with a very clear and satisfying feeling of progression. Sound is good, character design is good, controls are good.

This is the fourth time I've beaten it, and my first time doing it in under 3 hours. A run under 2 hours probably wouldn't be too difficult for someone much better at video games than me. My first time through, my 3DS's shoulder buttons were broken, so I couldn't switch weapons, but it was actually still beatable. There are places where you need the drill to get through a rock, but if there's a laser nearby, you can lead the laser into the rock and break it that way. There's a lot of potential for speedruns and challenge runs here.

I may end up rebuying it on the Wii U someday. I like it a lot.
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #23 on: September 03, 2014, 06:33:16 PM »
Game 9: Art Academy: Lessons For Everyone


(had to take pictures of the diplomas with my phone because they never made a Miiverse community for this one)

I haven't done all the sidequests or the DLC missions yet (those'll probably be post-52 content), but after playing 30 hours in the last two weeks, I've finished the main story.


Looking at this one now, that shadow looks kinda off. Reflection still looks pretty nice, though.


Really like the stem on here.


On this lesson, Vince only had me draw the tree and not the background. I want to go back and do the whole scene now.


Fungi.


This one was pretty simple to do, but I think it's really effective.


One of the sidequests. Not sure if I'm totally happy with the skin, but the pit and hole came out really well (this will sound good out of context).


What is up with those clouds? I guess it works though?


First time with pastels, and one of the first ones that I was really happy with. I like the sense of depth that the different levels of detail give.


Perspective on the building came out a bit weird, but maybe I can just say that was an artistic choice? Like the ivy is choking and distorting everything in your field of view?


A koi. This one's starting to grow on me I think.


NSFW?


Okay, I really love the wet sand on this one.


Should the tabletop have been more defined? Who knows?


This is Diego. This is the only face picture I'm happy with.


One-point perspective!


Water! I like this one!


Another one in pastels. This one came out better than I was expecting.


So yeah, this is supposed to be a portrait. Google recognized it as a face when I uploaded it, though, so I'm going to count it as a success.


I think I redeemed myself on this sidequest anyway.


The Tower of London. Trees could have used more work, though.


Westminster, the final boss. The lens flares on the lights were my own addition.


After beating the final boss, I went back and did this sidequest, though I went a bit less impressionistic with it than Vince recommended. I really really like this one.


Finally, I topped it off with a totally original painting of my cat in my driveway.

As for a review of the game itself: It's a pretty powerful painting tool (for making small jpegs), and the lessons are actually really good. It does actually kinda feel like I took a real-life introductory art class, with drawing technique and smatterings of art history and color theory. Great presentation, too -- the music, the ambient sound, and Vince talking like Bob Ross really puts you in a painting mood.
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #24 on: September 06, 2014, 12:30:18 AM »
Game 10: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle







<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQHbVGFZ0v0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQHbVGFZ0v0</a>
Some mood music.

This game was my Final Fantasy 7 -- a game with a big serious cinematic story, played on a brand new console that was way ahead of what I was used to, first played when I was about 11 or 12. My first experience with the game was playing a demo of the first level, City Escape, in a store. It was the kind where the TV was attached all the way to the top of the case and I had to crane my neck all the way back, and the level completely blew me away. And when it got to the part at the end with the truck chasing you, I heard a kid walking by go "Whoa! That's awesome!" When I finally saved up enough to buy my Gamecube, I bought Luigi's Mansion and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. I was really into both, but I was absolutely obsessed with SA2B. I even recorded a VHS tape stitching all the cutscenes together in chronological, coherent order into a single movie, which ended up being about 2 1/2 hours long with some levels included. I made multiple revisions of that tape. I made a case for the tape. I would make my younger siblings watch the movie with me (at the beginning, some of them were still young enough to think they were playing the game if the tape was going and they were holding an unplugged Genesis controller).

I can't find my old memory card right now, but I know I had hundreds of hours clocked on it. Possibly over a thousand total, because I think I actually got up to like 300 or 400 hours and then got my file erased somehow and got back up to hundreds of hours again. A lot of that was leaving the game on overnight to age my Chao, of course, but still. And I never even got close to getting all 180 emblems, even with an Action Replay.

So anyway, this is the first time I've played it in a couple of years. And honestly, it's aged better than I expected. The translation and voice acting are pretty bad, but gameplay-wise, it's definitely not a bad game. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's a lot more like an actual complete video game than Sonic 06.

So one thing that really stood out to me going back to it this time was that it is absolutely packed with extra content beyond just getting to the end of the 31 levels of the main storyline, but none of it is required. There's five missions on every level, there's a boss time attack, there's a very hastily thrown together kart racing mode (there's no collision detection between your kart and the CPU players' karts. Was there supposed to be? Who knows!), and there's a very in-depth virtual pet garden, but the developers trust you to go check out all that stuff on your own if you want. In Sonic Generations, after you get through a few levels, you eventually hit a plateau where you have to run around doing side missions like that to earn your way to the next pack of levels.

There are still the Knuckles/Rouge levels to break the momentum, of course. But those levels are actually pretty good if you can get in the right mood for them. It's a very abrupt genre shift, which isn't aided by the fact that so many of the levels seem completely pointless to the story, but exploring all the details of the large environments can be pretty fun.

And I really love the music in this game. That definitely hasn't changed. If anything, I like the music even more now than when I first played it.

I didn't really mean to write this much for my three-sentence review, but yeah, this game is always going to have a special place in my heart, and fortunately it actually is still pretty good.
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

WarpRattler

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« Reply #25 on: September 11, 2014, 07:27:12 PM »
Game #5: Ikachan

 くコ:彡  くコ:彡  くコ:彡  くコ:彡  くコ:彡

Ikachan is an odd freeware single-map sidescrolling swimming action game by Pixel, better known for the phenomenal Cave Story. (It was originally an engine prototype for Cave Story, I believe?) The title character is a squid who wakes up to find himself trapped in an unknown underwater village, ruled by the fish tyrant Ironhead, whose subjects live in fear of the constant earthquakes happening in the area. Ikachan's goal is to escape, and he'll help a bunch of villagers and fight Ironhead along the way. His sole method of propulsion and attack is swimming around; there are also minor Metroid-esque elements with swimming upgrades, and very slight RPG elements with a level system. The game is very short (I finished it in under an hour), but it's very fun during that time, and it's full of the same charm and smart game design that made Cave Story a beloved classic. Highly recommended!

WarpRattler

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« Reply #26 on: September 12, 2014, 11:09:03 AM »
Game #6: Continent of the Ninth Seal

I'm invoking the "play for at least 8 hours" clause on this and the next post, as both are MMORPGs.

Continent of the Ninth Seal, or C9, is a free-to-play Asian MMORPG in the same vein as the incredibly popular Dungeon Fighter Online, featuring instanced quests for one to four players, with real-time clientside combat models and serverside damage and loot calculation. However, while DFO is a sidescrolling beat-'em-up in the vein of classics like Guardian Heroes, C9 draws its inspiration from games like Devil May Cry, and is a 3D hack-and-slash-and-sometimes-shoot game. I've been playing as a Witchblade (no relation to the comic of the same name) and having a lot of fun killing everything with twin swords and magic, but man, as a non-paying player, this class has some of the worst outfits I've seen in any game in a long time (example). Also, the combat grading system makes very little sense; it grades you on four categories, but you can seemingly only really influence a couple of them through play. I haven't looked into it much yet, but there seems to be very little in the way of English documentation for the game, making looking into anything about it difficult.

WarpRattler

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« Reply #27 on: September 12, 2014, 11:36:34 AM »
Game #7: Marvel Heroes

Marvel Heroes is a Diablo game where you play as your choice of one of dozens of Marvel characters. If you've ever played Diablo, you know exactly what to expect: endless loot, endless enemies that are generally weak and act as loot piñatas more than obstacles, an inconsequential story that mostly exists to provide context for you fighting endless enemies to get endless loot, and enough clicking on things to wear out your mouse in a week. I'm currently playing as Cyclops, who's honestly a pretty boring character at the moment; my goal is to get him to level 50 to unlock the XP bonuses he grants for my other characters, then switch to one of the other characters I haven't played as, then switch back to Cyclops once he gets his rework (hopefully next month) and becomes more fun to play.

WarpRattler

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« Reply #28 on: September 13, 2014, 08:42:50 AM »
Game #8: Ragnarok Odyssey







Ragnarok Odyssey is a monster-hunting game based on the world of the incredibly popular MMORPG Ragnarok Online. You (and up to three friends) fight monsters and giants, and harvest materials from their corpses to upgrade your weapons and armor so you can kill bigger monsters and giants. The gameplay is very similar to Monster Hunter, with the key difference being that RO has jumping and airdashing and stuff.

I bought the original version of Ragnarok Odyssey on release, but never finished the main story, as the gameplay balance was pretty poor; solo play was absurdly difficult, to the point where end-of-chapter missions stopped being doable around chapter six (of nine), and even playing with a friend in online co-op, we got stuck in chapter eight. I recently picked up the expanded rerelease, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, and have been playing that instead; as with other monster-hunting games' expansions, ACE includes the base game in its entirety, but all the new gameplay systems are available as well, massively improving the gameplay experience, and making solo play far more reasonable.

In addition to all the new content and gameplay systems it already included, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE just got an enormous free expansion a few weeks back, so I'm going to be playing it for a good while longer. ACE itself will be getting another post here, as it's a separate release; when I'm done with that, Soul Sacrifice and Soul Sacrifice Delta will be receiving two separate posts for the same reason.

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #29 on: September 13, 2014, 11:39:49 AM »
Game 11: New Super Mario Bros. 2





I actually beat this a few days ago, and I just haven't gotten around to working up the motivation to write three sentences about it.

It's not a bad game at all. It's a solid platformer, and it does have some pretty interesting additions from previous NSMBs. The endless runner warp cannon levels are one of my favorites. There's nothing outstanding about it, but it's a good game. I think most of the problem was that it was announced at the same time as NSMBU and it felt like there were too many NSMBs, when there've actually only been four (or four and a half?) in ten years, and only one per console.

I do kinda wish we could just take all the best parts from all the NSMBs and just make one game out of it, like how once the third Hobbit movie comes out someone should edit them all down to just an adaptation of The Hobbit (which would be maybe two hours long tops).
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

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