finished polybius. I can’t really imagine score attacking it for how long it is, though it structures continues very generously: you can always resume from any level with the highest number of lives and the highest score you had when you got to that level, across any playthrough – so if you felt you’d started to dip around level 6, you can always resume from there, on and on up.
apparently I have the 201st highest score for a full clear on normal but I know this game didn’t sell very well and only 2% of players even have the trophy for clearing it so I’m not sure how impressive that is. anyway, a very good time; lots of oblique mechanics that are all about 50% ignorable if you’re able to instinctively play well enough and chain powerups from the intelligible ones.
Since I got a proper wired SNES-style pad for my RetroPi, I’ve been jumping around in the following:
Advance Wars
Metroid: Zero Mission
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
The first two are like returning to old friends. Aria of Sorrow is utterly new to me but I’m enjoying it a lot more than Symphony of the Night for some reason (maybe because it doesn’t take 20 minutes after dying to get back into the game)
yeah the entire reason to prefer symphony is the scale and the PS1 era 3D effects and the aesthetic production and the lack of animu, I don’t think many people would make the case that it’s more tightly designed, I just find the GBA/DS ones hard to like
Zero Mission and New Super Mario Bros were the games that taught me just because I liked a thing on paper, that didn’t mean I would actually like them in practice.
Unrelated but I finished playing castlevania legacy of darkness for the nintendo 64. In case you didn’t know, it’s basically the finished version of regular castlevania 64 with altered level design and stuff. I was dying to make this burning hot post about how it was “the only one that came after sotn that matters,” that it was this real hidden gem of an n64 action game, but hell no, it’s awful for the most part.
At one point you wander a maze to trigger a cutscene, leading to an escort mission through the maze, your reward being a key to unlock a door in the maze.
got a copy of the ps1 port of air combat for 54p off ebay. it’s okay, i guess. i mainly bought it for that delicious low poly aesthetic, but the draw distance is so short, you can barely see anything lol.
also, mortal kombat xl has a ton of fun single player stuff, which i definitely approve of. thanks @BustedAstromech
