Which Mario & Luigi title?
āMario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowserās Minionsā
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Love this game, when I still had a GBA SP I would play it once every couple years.
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Thanks to meauxdal and the SNEXploriscord for turning me onto Shadow Tower, which I loaded onto my Vita and is helping me ignore my momās right-wing asshole of a boyfriend on this long trip to QuĆ©bec.
I havenāt had much luck with From games; never got far in Demonās Souls or Bloodborne (though the latter finally did āclickā for me), and I even gave up on 3D Dot Game Heroes when its difficulty spiked. Getting used to Shadow Tower took some doing and I wiped more than a few times in the early going, but since then Iāve been having a great time! Maybe its slower pace is more my speed, maybe the fact that I can save and pause is appreciated, maybe the creepy atmosphere and audio design is doing it for meā¦ Whatever it is, Iām in love in a way I havenāt been for a game in a while.
The Vitaās PSX emulator allows complete and free keybinding, so Iāve been able to play the game with essentially modern console FPS controls, and it rocks.
7 Likes
Iām in the Gunstar Heroes is overrated camp. Not sure who else is in this camp, but it is probably a small camp. But that doesnāt change the fact that Contra: Hard Corps is much better than Gunstar Heroes.
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I would have no problem agreeing that like, 50% of gunstar is a drag to play other than in co-op, but the co-op is a lot of goofy fun & the challenge is fair throughout & a lot of the level concepts are just bonkers great
At some point I should probably play Contra Hard Corp.
I liked GH because I could compensate for my low skill with an auto-targeting weapon
I have never played it co-op, so Iāll give that a try sometime if I get the chance.
But still, I donāt think it is a bad game. I just donāt think it is a great game.
I do think it gets by on enthusiasm to a substantial degree
GUN STAR HEROES
SEVEN FORCE
SILLY DICE MAZE
2 Likes
I beat the final boss in DS3. I beat DS1 earlier this year. Bloodborne a couple years ago. DS2 a long, long time ago. I think I just have to beat DeS and I can finally be cool.
Hooking up that PS3 is going to be a hassle tho 
2 Likes
The ālast bossā of Demonās is best in class
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should I play this? Youāre the only one Iāve seen talk about it here
I will agree as long as weāre talking about the US version of HC and not the insubstantial lifebar Japanese version
One reason I put Gunstar Heroes comfortably above Hard Corps (and Shattered Soldier) is that it doesnāt play like a stream of whimsical boss attacks that are 1) questionably telegraphed on an initial playthrough, and 2) trivial āplug in the correct answerā once learned, almost like a QTE. Nakazatoās direction was so binary (you see this starting in Rocket Knight Adventures, too) that there isnāt much room for the player to grow, improvise, or take risks within that framework, and thatās when the real boss rush fatigue sets in. Those games jump between extremes and lack a chewy mechanical core like Gunstarās brawler-influenced one that confidently lets set-pieces and bosses drop away at times ā itās hard to imagine those games getting away with something similar to Gunstarās stage 5.
Gunstar has some quirky flaws (picking up overlapping items and maybe getting stuck with a combo you didnāt intend), but as it hasnāt really been answered by subsequent genre games (the sequel is weirdly awful) and is one of just a handful of 16-bit action games worth playing co-op today, it strikes me as a classic.
Enthusiasm helps, though ā can anyone think of a game that announces boss attacks on-screen beforehand?
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I would argue Gunstar falls into the same traps but also I have strats for every boss so mostly Iām infatuated with the moveset Treasure put in the game, which lets you be dumb and goofy and does anyone actually use the body check
it is from that initial set of games where they hadnāt quite gone up their asses yet and were willing to take existing frameworks and just play around with them and do silly things you wouldnāt see from other developers (though Dynamite Headdy is the first plunge up the rectum)
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all of this is okay because they eventually got to Bangai-o and thematically that was just a send of of their worst excesses attached to a cool game (bosses with nonsensical names and maybe a third of them are completely non-threatening in all ways and the plot isā¦ a plot)
also Gunstar was smart to ripoff Edward Randy, objectively the best and most out of control rollercoaster set piece video game ever made
today was the day that I remembered that I own a Vita and also that I installed nonpdrm on it, so hey, letās steal borrow some Japanese games from Sony and then also use another plugin to stream the output to my PC and yet another one to use a DS4 with games
Cross Ange - Rondo of Angel and Dragon: WOULDNāT BOOT 
(I am legitimately torn up over this)
Miracle Girls Festival: oh my god Sega
I get that Japan likes the Miku games. I like them too!
I get that a chunk of Japan that also owns a Vita likes anime about girls doing fuck all every episode. hey, I like the occasional brain vacation too.
a game that combines songs from anime about girls doing dumb, vapid shit with proven gameplay should be the worldās easiest layup
THERE ARE MOTHERFUCKING FRAMERATE DROPS
IN A RHYTHM GAME
IT SHOOTS FOR 30 FPS AND IT CANāT EVEN HOLD THAT SOMETIMES
I witnessed something that looked like it was in the low teens because the Vita could not handle the deadly combination of all of the Wake Up Girls, the crowd waving their glowsticks and a ton of leaves blowing in the wind, like a perfect storm of GPU murder
also I never got to play the full version of Daydream Cafe, only the TV version, therefore it is bad 
IA/VA Colorful: this is just a Miku game except made by the guy who produced all the Senran Kagura games and after about 5 minutes, I stopped because I wanted to buy a copy to own
something good had to happen eventually
Gun Gun Pixies: WOULD NOT BOOT (Iām glad this happened but also I wanted to suffer this)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica - The Battle Pentagram: itās a game for those Madokes movies
it is not very good
I did get to see Mami die twice in the tutorial though, so at least itās show accurate
Yahari Game Demo Ore no Seishun Love-Kome was Machigatteiru. Zoku: LIGHT NOVEL GAME
IT RUNS
I PROBABLY SPENT MORE TIME TYPING OUT THE TITLE THAN I DID PLAYING IT
Panzer Bandit: okay, this has actually been on my Vita for a while but I just wanted to remind everyone that Panzer Bandit is good
2 Likes
Iād say not to bother unless you really want to try an indie open-world shooter without all the open-world nonsense.
Itās fun enough that I finished the main content before getting bored. Itās a bit soulless: grindy, pitiful story, boring gating/no sequence jumping. But thereās stuff I thought was good: bot design, pew-pew lasers, gorgeous level/environment design, creepy anomaly stuff.
The main combat loop is interesting enough but has enough loopholes to stop it from being too challenging. It was kind of fun to find those loopholes?
So the world might be mended. So the world might be mended.
5 Likes