seriously, the juxtaposition to everything else going on in that environment is just, 
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well, in a video game context perhaps
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I am playing Onimusha Warlords Remaster. Should I enter the dark world? Is it worth it or can I go straight towards the end of the main story and play Onimusha 2?
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TOP GEAR OVERDRIVE
SHORT VERSION: More like Top Gear Undercooked! A poor personās Beetle Adventure Racing, this racer starts out great but begins to break at the seams the longer you play.
LONG VERSION: This game has some great stuff going for it! First of all, the vibesā¦ it has an aesthetic from this era that I love, where the tracks are shown at different times such as dawn, sunset, night (and different seasons in this case, too). Each time gives the tracks a very different mood (helped by the fantastic skyboxes), with dawn being my favourite due the purple/blue lighting. The blurry textures add to the mood, adding a dreamy haze over everything, like you just woke up and are about to go on an adventure or returning from one.
Porsche Unleashed for the PC was the peak of this aesthetic, IMO.
These moods are NOT matched by the soundtrack, which was all done by a Soundgarden knock-off called Grindstone, who supplied generic 90s alt rock. I ended up just turning it off and playing my own music.
The framerate is smooth (in lo-res mode), impressive considering how great the game looks for N64. It plays well, too! Well, at first.
See, there are some big issues that hold this backā¦ first of all, there is only āchampionshipā mode. No time trials or such, probably because the cars are all unbalanced due to how progression works.
See, you earn money for placing 4th or higher (also thatās the only way you progress past a race), which can then be used to either upgrade your car (or buy extra nitro) or buy a better carā¦ so each newly available car is ābetterā than the previous to justify this system, hence no balance.
The championship mode is one loonnggg campaign, by the way. No starting at different seasons, just erasing and starting from scratch. Again, I suspect due to the progression system.
There IS a versus mode, that lets you play one track that youāve already won in championship mode, but thatās the only other option. Both modes support 1 to 4 players, which is nice.
Youāre also playing catch-up from the start of every raceā¦ you always start at 12th, with 1st waayyy far ahead on the track. I suspect itās either to make up for lackluster AI and/or not being able to show a grid of cars due to how many polygons would be onscreen at once.
This means that finding and using the shortcuts on each level is compulsory to catch up (assuming the shortcut actually IS faster). It felt less like I was racing, and more that I was just trying to optimise my path as much as possible. If you miss a shortcut, or blow your car up, you may as well just restart the race (especially later on when it becomes much harder to place 4th or higher).
And youāll blow up A LOT. Sometimes seemingly at random! Sometimes Iāll just lightly tap another car and BOOM (theyāll be fine, though). Sometimes youāll bounce off a wall, other times it will blow you up. Literally NOTHING blew me up on the beach level several times, which seems to be an especially glitchy track.
This gets worse as you upgrade the cars, since you start going so fast and your vehicle feels uncontrollable. This made blowing up more common, and also made it harder to slide down shortcuts.
Also why do the CPU cars pick up the money on the road?! They donāt need it!! Itās just punishment for having a car in front of you.
Anyway, it came down to constantly restartingā¦ thankfully the game lets you instantly restart with no consequence, a HUGE saving grace. So I kept restarting and restartingā¦ now, I donāt mind games like Trackmania where you do that because itās always just you optimising your path and such, and this felt similar.
BUTā¦ in this game, there are 11 other cars strewn across the track. They add a huge variable aside from your own skill, adding too much chaos, and often I would screw up just because there was another car in my way.
When I realised this, it sucked all the fun from the game, and I lost interest and stopped.
So yeah, great vibes and I was having a good time for the first few seasons of the championship, but it eventually devolved into an exercise of chaotic tedium. I really did like those first few seasons, though!
BONUS COMPLAINT: When you buy a new car, the rubber banding of the CPUs also upgrades, so its best to stick with the previous car until you have enough money to upgrade the new one from the base model. Youāll definitely have to change to the new one to stand a chance eventually, though.
9 Likes
you playing on an emulator? the game isnāt totally smooth on hardware; itās a bit choppy and canāt hold 30 FPS. usually hovers around 25. some (most?) emulators run it at 30.
the soundtrack is unimaginably awful, lol. probably the worst N64 soundtrack.
i need to spend more time with it. real shame about the modes and rubber-banding and glitchiness.
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Playing it on an everdrive! Itās not super-smooth or consistent, but I was talking in likeā¦ N64 terms haha.
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fair lmao. i think it probably overall runs a bit better than BAR! so itās certainly a strong effort performance-wise!
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28 posts were split to a new topic: nothing tastes as GOOD as a BAD SOUND
Some of the most Video Games shit I have ever heard
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OoT Romhack Legend of Zelda The Sealed Palace promises a full new Zelda adventure on your N64. Which is incredibly ambitious since we already had 2 + 1+ 1.
It starts with a stealth prison escape from Hyrule that if the guard sees you you have to start over. It is not fun. It is baffling why they start like this. The level design is semi-naturalistic in an Oni way, but directional awareness isnāt a strong suit of the OoT engine. I had previously escape the opening area reach the Temple of Time saved and quit. So starting tonight I found myself in the prison.
Took me 25 minutes to figure out I had the ocarina song to warp me to the temple of time. Took me over an hour to find the āgraveyardā that Navi kept bugging me about. Iād describe the world design like one of those nightmare eurojank games some of you love. I donāt think any of those are as evil to make a castle town defined by 3 story buildings that are all unmarked and lost in this cramped maze. Finding out from a longplay thatās where the graveyard was shocked me. I donāt know why you design a town like this outside of your own hubris and disregard for the player.
I proceeded to run around for another hour trying to figure out what exactly the game wanted me to do with āthe outskirts.ā The game has the lost woods without a tell of how to navigate it (thanks game, really.) This still didnāt help me.
The devs decided OoT needed Precision Platforming. But OoT doesnāt have a Jump Button. Thatās right you poor bastard just try and angle that crap and hope for the best. Otherwise youāll have to do the entire first dungeon again before you can try the jump again. I almost admire that kind of evil.
But back to trying to find the first dungeon. Looking online they said it was in a cave above a river. Of they really did want me to skirt along? I looked around for another 20 minutes with this cave which only contained the fishing minigame. Going back to the river I found out No. There Was A Second cave, past the first. Near impossible to spot.
So after 4.5-5 hours of wandering around I arrived at the first dungeon. Which took me about an hour and was pretty good.
I would say the overworld design is Donkey Kong 64 like.
I would not say it is good or enjoyable but it did make me say āwow they really made this (negative).ā About 20 tines.
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You certainly donāt need to bother with the dark world to finish the game. I didnāt think the game was mechanically interesting enough to bother beyond the one attempt I made where I apparently reached the halfway point of the gauntlet.
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edit: apparently The Sealed Palace is 2023, so I guess she must have been playing a different one - The Missing Link, probably. actually it may also have been Dawn & Dusk
edit 2: ok it was definitely Zelda 64: Dawn & Dusk (2019) because The Missing Link is 2021 and The Sealed Palace is 2023.
idk! but my experience sounds very similar to yours despite the hack being different lol
i watched my partner at the time play thru The Sealed Palace in 2020.
kinda impressive at times but yeah i had a similar takeaway. i mostly enjoyed exploring new stuff in the zelda engine - feels neat. Kat liked it enough to play thru the whole thing, at least
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Excited to find out there are at least two other full OoT hacks.
Now maybe someone has made a decent LttP hack since those two ones that are always on replica stores and are Not Good.
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Is the sequel better?
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Canāt say myself. I havenāt played it.
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i was curious enough to watch some of it and i like that the hyrule field equivalent just seems to be named āContorted Gorgeā. set sail for adventure.
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itās such a common trope for romhacks to have an absurd amount of work being put into something where if you step the slightly wrong way you instadeath. also like 15 different layers of insular community injokes that no one cares about outside that community. and donāt forget weirdly boxy/overly large scale level design and a far less interesting/more drab version of the original gameās story being retold. frankly iām always surprised whenever i see things that are not actually that.
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I like Contorted Gorge as a name.
Thatās one of 4 separate fields if you leave town btw.
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maybe b3313 is so smart to me primarily because it takes this fan impulse in romhacks/mods to make incredibly unnecessarily overly large and complicated versions of the thing which already exists and somehow turns it into an asset instead of a baffling annoyance.
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