Games You Played Today IV: Quest of the Avatar

[username]

@username

I currently have the game suspended at the stage 6 checkpoint and I have the first two bosses after it sorted out fairly well, so as long as I can crack however many are after/get lucky I should be close to closing it out.

So someone at some point told me about the cheesy strat for the final(ish) boss that let’s you rack up a ton of extra lives and I would like that thank whoever that was as it makes a huge difference! Died a few stupid deaths on it and still ended up with four lives when it went down, and thank god I did as apparently in the Japanese version the extra last boss comes after you on normal as well (yeah I know about the extra last boss, I lived through the SNES era it wasn’t exactly a secret) and I was not quite ready for that at all. Still I used every single bomb (you get one whenever you die) and every single life and beat it on my very last one. Wasn’t pretty, but the Alien Wars rarely are.

Anyways the ending was entirely in Japanese except for the words “try hard mode” so I’m not exactly sure what happened, I’ll pretend it said I get a parade.

[Polygonzo]

Finding myself exhausted re: videogames after beating Tomb Raider (as much as I adore it) but also nagged by three branching paths bubbling up in its wake (not that I’m promising to commit in any way, shape or form!)

• Tomb Raider 2
• Prince of Persia (1989 or more likely the SNES version)
• Tomb Raider (2013)

Hiding my impressions of each for those that care to vote form the hip

idk if I ever beat TR2, it seemed like the “logical next step” back in 98/99 but in hindsight, leaning into combat and human enemies and more representational architectural spaces (Venice was cool) seems at odds with what I like about the first one these days (I do like how Lara’s outfits change throughout though and being able to lock her butler in the freezer (maybe that’s all I remember))

As mentioned before, I traded my copy of Rebel Assault to an older kid for Prince of Persia (he was the son of our dentist, his father raised Gila monsters and I just remembered he was also the first person I knew that had a copy of Zone of the Enders and so it was at their place, mere feet from venomous reptiles, that I first tasted Sons of Liberty)). Pretty sure he thought he was ripping me off but in hindsight, I believe I got the better game, it was just too difficult and inscrutable for me at the time. I regard it as Important though.

I’m almost certain I’ll loathe the 2013 game but maybe that’ll be interesting. I’ve avoided that sort of AAA game for so long and have mostly loved everything I’ve played this year so maybe it’s time to fuck things up a bit. I got it for free on Steam.

[vodselbt]

Yeah I don’t think I have ever been more annoyed with the character struck by a reboot than Tomb Raider (2013). The displeasure is almost worth experiencing. It’s kind of hilarious at times. I don’t think there is a funnier example of a character murdering millions of people with such adept skill while complaining how they feel conflicted commiting murder.

Plus the disturbing eroticism with which they direct most of Laura’s graphic death scenes can really only be experienced by playing and failing a required jumping segment over and over again. That’s the only way the effect really hits you, where you start off super grossed out but become increasingly indifferent towards its smuttiness and yet increasingly alienated toward yourself.

[Sykel]

the correct answer is the DVD game version of angel of darkness

i tried playing tomb raider 2 recently and fucking hated it, it felt like such a step backwards from the first. fighting humans is boring, too much focus on combat and not enough exploration (which the engine is frankly not prepared for), and so many “puzzles” were just find the lever to open a door, it was just a miserable experience.

i liked the tomb raider reboot but also agree with everyones complaints about it here. i didnt bother with the sequels, felt i got everything i needed from the first one

[Rudie]

The fact that TR2 starts with you sliding down a path straight into a last second jump or spike death owns. I hate that game.

[Annetts]

Replaying TR2 right now and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

The original two levels designers continued to do the lions share of the work, and there are some real standouts: 40 Fathoms through to The Deck is a great sequence if you don’t hate water levels. Temple of Xian is also brilliant as an excercise in pushing Rummery’s level editor to it’s limits (by '97 standards) but maybe not worth sitting through most of the game to get there. The traps here pave the way for the bloodbath that is TR3.

The change of focus to human enemies does a lot to alter the tone of the game, even if in most cases, your kill count at the end of alevel will actually be lower in TR2. I rarely top 20 kills in most cases, whereas Palace Midas in TR1 will have you murder 40+ innocent animals.

I voted Price of Persia but if you haven’t played it already Unfinished Business is a good time. And somebody recently ported all the levels to the PS1!

[PS1] Tomb Raider Unfinished Business Final - Released!

[Victor]

someone play that TR2 Unreal engine fan remake, if possible

[notbov]

I for one think training modes and sandboxes are good

I’m also someone who has thought hard about and mentally theorycrafted damage rotations for phone games so maybe you shouldn’t listen to me, an obviously insane person

[Annetts]

It’s alright. The guy is still working on that and strangely it hasn’t been shut down by lawyers yet.

[stavekoff]

strangers of paradise is better than the last two numbered mainline ff games especially because it was clearly a budget title that had the gall to be released at full price

[stavekoff]

the problem with looking for a game to fill the same void as genshin impact is that they all have the same problems as that game (gambling)

[loki]

@loki

for some reason, sega 3d archives 3 crashes when i try to play it. boo hoo, i want 3d alien syndrome and turbo outrun!

fixed it

[username]

I went back and gave Tomb Raider 2 a shot a few years back and as someone who played the first Tomb Raider game to completion well after its original release date… I kinda despised it. Just a slog that missed so much of what makes the original game worth experiencing to this day, it is basically worse in every way.

Play the SNES version of Prince of Persia, best version of the game IMO.

[Sykel]

What are peoples thoughts on the legends trilogy? also i played one of the isometric lara games and it was pretty sweet

[Tulpa]

snes version of prince of persia is pretty nice overall but it changes so much from the base game that I still prefer sdlpop for recreating the (imo perfect) dos version on modern systems

[Cerium]

Playing a bunch of 3DS roms and man, for a series containing One Of The Best Arcade Games Ever Made, One Of The Best GBA Games Ever Made, One Of The Best DS Games Ever Made AND One Of The Best Wii Games Ever Made I think despite the seemingly recycled conceit that Rhythm Heaven Megamix was about the best entry the franchise can hope for (and hell, rhythm games in general).

I spent a LOT more time on Beat The Beat with NOE’s beautiful decision to include the JP tracks and the GBA one which as a perfect execution of a format since the original Tetris but they did a fantastic job cherry picking all the best games in the series and adding a bunch of new games (Curious how a lot of the more famous wii situations like the ninja/wrestler/cheerleader were backended like building towards a crescendo of karate man ultra at the end) along with the dial track which I completely forgot about doubling the games.

Like in terms of pure DENSITY I’d argue this rivals F Zero GX as nintendo’s most fulfilling effort, hell this one’s main innovation of feeding back inputs which is about the most basic thing you can ask from a rhythm game feels so much more complex here given these games difficulty and lack of ‘visual’ feedback on the top screen makes it very cathartic when you get a perfect hit on top of letting the animations complete (the trick star especially is a neat idea to encourage focus, showing you CAN get a perfect rhythm if you really put your mind to it).

Also the songs rule

[Rhythm Heaven Fever] ~ Cheer Readers (Perfect)

OOO

KKK

IT’S

ON!!!

RAH RAH SIS BOOM BAH-BOOM!!!

LETSGOREADABUNCHABOOKS YEAH!

[Polygonzo]

SWORD

FIRST KILL

PRINCESS

PREVIOUSLY INANIMATE PILE OF BONES BRANDISHES SWORD ON SECOND ENCOUNTER (really dig the simplistic intensity of tug of war fencing so far)

Playing Tomb Raider and Nidhogg leading up to this was like listening to Led Zeppelin and The Stones and then finally hearing ‘Smokestack Lightning’ for the first time. It slaps!

[Tulpa]

game is still excellent all these years later, the combat is so strangely satisfying considering it was a last minute addition with animations literally traced off of errol flynn’s robin hood

[smbhax]

Eternal Champions

Fighting game for the Sega Genesis.

About 50 Genesis games are available on Steam for 99 cents each; mostly they’re the same ones available in the Sega Genesis Classics collection that I have on PS4–but Eternal Champions isn’t in that collection, so I thought I’d try it.

When you buy it off Steam, it downloads the whole 1.5 GB Sega Genesis Classics thing, and defaults to running Eternal Champions through the collection’s 3d game room front-end, just like on PS4. Or you can opt to run a quick launcher mode that seems to give you quick access to the settings and things, but is in fact awful.

The installer creates an “uncompressed roms” folder in the install directory. So I took the Eternal Champions rom from there, renamed it “.bin,” and ran it in the Fusion emulator; once I had right-clicked fusion.exe and set it to Windows 7 compatibility mode, this worked great.

The single-player game in Eternal Champions, though, is not very welcoming. The menus are weird–when you select Single Player, your main option seems to be “Enter Contest,” where you quickly get mashed into pulp by a random opponent; this happened even after I got my six button controller set-up figured out in Fusion. There is no difficulty setting for “Enter Contest.”

Other than that, there’s what amounts to a training mode and a VS CPU mode where you can set up a single fight; these modes DO have difficulty settings: switching those from Player/CPU skill 8/8 to 1/1 let me mash a CPU to a pulp. Swell.

Not very fun, though; the moves have no real flow or feel to them. Glancing at a FAQ, the special move inputs appear to be largely direction+button–and they just sort of happen, in the least compelling way possible. The graphics have a nice, somewhat realistic, dithered look, but animate very poorly, and sound effects are so weak as to serve only as confirmation that, well, SOMETHING happened.

It feels real bad.

Wikipedia says the game was made by Sega. MobyGames says it was made by SEGA Interactive Development Division, who had been an independent California game studio called Interactive Designs from 1984 to 1992, when they were acquired by Sega; they had only made five games up to that point, but from the acquisition to when they shut down in '95 or '96, they churned out 13 games, with 1993’s Eternal Champions being the second of those (the 11th being 1995’s “Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side,” an “enhanced port”).

Edit: To be fair to SIDD, most fighting games from 1993 felt real bad.

[notbov]

I love the cursed knowledge that Interactive Designs made two equally bad Talespin games for two different systems for two different platform holders that are kind of similar but legally distinct enough

imagine being caught copying your own homework