I’ve got a tear in my eye. This is the perfect classic Daggerfall experience. God bless you
3 Likes
Completed the Five Towers in Terranigma and jumped down the massive hole and wound up in San Bernardino.
Yeah, man, Upland is a shithole. San Bernardino was a mistake.
Completed Evergreen. The boss was kind of annoying.
20 Likes
did you revive the optional bonus landmasses of Mu and, uh, Polynesia
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Is there a “best” Shiren game? I never played one…
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As Veronica said watching it on YouTube is possible and VERY funny, but also I’d like to say that, going back and playing all these old RTS games, Red Alert 2 is probably the easiest to get into. Great campaign levels emphasizing puzzle solutions, inspired faction design, and wonderful cutscenes. Maybe the best singleplayer RTS ever made.
I liked Tiberian Sun well enough, it was good, but it had strong difficulty spikes and very mid level design. Red Alert 2 is SO considered, SO purposeful, each element of every level snapping nicely into place like legos. I had fond memories of it, but now, as an adult who works in games and has a vested intellectual interest in their design, I’m genuinely impressed. RA2 aged very gracefully.
11 Likes
the tower of fortune and the dice of fate probably has the most stuff, but i think it would be best to start with the first one, as it’ll ease you in to the series’ concepts and and has a relatively normal old timey japan fantasy setting
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Sums it up pretty well lmao. This might call for a “vg recreations of socal” galaxy oddity thread
3 Likes
apparently there are two different writers, with the artist taking on writing all the sex scenes, so like… yeah, i guess something would feel different
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Seeing people claim the new stuff added to Kirby Star Allies after launch is the real “meat,” the real “good stuff,” so I reinstalled it, fired it up, and…look, I guess. I guess this stuff is better than the main game, if by virtue of being leaner/tighter than the story campaign.
I’m at 97% completion, and my last obstacle to what the game considers 100% completion is doing two more runs of the very difficult boss rush mode (there’s a level beyond 100% involving playing some of these other modes with every single possible character, and fuuuuuck that). There’s a move you can spam repeatedly with Magolor that doesn’t always come out perfectly, but I guess you are invincible while it plays out (it’s also pretty much fills the screen and does a ton of damage). The idea of spending an hour or two doing one move over and over again to make a number go up 3% just seems like a bad way to spend my time, though.
6 Likes
I love that this world map is centered on a Japan that isn’t even depicted
3 Likes
Finished Red Alert 2.
Yeah, okay. It’s the best one. I love the ambience of Tiberian Sun, but man, Red Alert 2 feels and plays like a mature, well-scoped game at the height of its creator’s prowess. Which is why it’s so funny that it’s a co-developed game, primarily made by the renamed Burst Studios, developer of another childhood favorite: Subspace. Totally breezed through the campaign - not that it was easy! - thanks to just how fun and engaging it is. Strong contender for best RTS period, honestly.
On to Yuri’s Revenge (the first Command and Conquer expansion pack I ever owned! I never played the expansions for the first three games lol). I might start playing Mental Omega on the side while working through Generals.
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ok, absolutely horrific npc character designs aside, i’m really enjoying shiren 4. the plot’s cool, there’s an actual evil villain, which i’m pretty sure is something that none of the other shiren games i’ve played have had (wait did the asuka spinoff have a villain? maybe?).
the tropical island setting is a nice change from the usual japan setting too (again, npc designs aside). there’s bananas as the main food item instead of rice balls, and like the peaches in 5, they ripen over time and eventually rot. and there’s just a generally differnt feel to the world. it’d be even cooler if there were different monsters, too, though
i’ve met one sidekick so far, a gun-toting bikini-clad texan who crashes from the sky on a hanglider the first time you meet her
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Yeehaw.
1 Like
As a Switch-lovin’ fool I picked up the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, and Konami’s solution for “what should we do if the audio references a Playstation button” being mute the entire rest of the goddamn codec conversation has me unreasonably upset.
If I can’t hear Paul Eiding talk about how the codec stimulates the small bones of your ear, then what’s the goddamn point. Stupid, brute force solution. Shameful.
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this cant be real omg
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those ports are cursed as fuck
previously there was an argument that the PS3 versions retaining analog face button support made them definitive vs the xbox versions but that’s so quaint in the face of everything wrong with the master collection
13 Likes
17 posts were merged into an existing topic: it’s more fun to emulate
Strider Hiryuu - PC Engine
i’m a pretty big fan of the original arcade Strider - i think it’s an ambitious, kind-of-broken masterpiece of an action game. once you adhere and adjust to Hiryu’s movements, and you understand the level layouts, it’s really a beautiful orchestration of setpieces with dynamic music and beautiful aesthetics.
so, seeing there was a PC Engine, Arcade CD version i’d never played, i figured i should change that.
first, the not as good - the color palette and parallax effects take a hit in this version, which is kind of a shame, because these help sell the game experience. next, there are load time in the middle of every stage because the CD tech can’t load things fast enough for the musical transitions and area transitions to occur as naturally as they do in the arcade. again, i think this is a pretty big deal; part of what makes the original so compelling is that these transitions and cues in the arcade are still kind of impressive to behold, while the PCE versions makes the seams a lot more visible to the player, to the game’s detriment. i’ve only gotten to Stage 4 so far, but i imagine this is true throughout.
another thing that i hate is that you can’t sequence break anymore i.e. the Stage 1 miniboss (big muscular screaming guy who bursts into flames when killed) is no longer skippable by having a well-timed long jump, because the game insists on locking you in to hear his pointless dialogue.
additionally, despite using the PCE Arcade Card functionality, the game suffers from a tremendous amount of enemy flicker. playing on a 4K TV (the Analogue DAC doesn’t support the Duo, yet), it means some enemies are completely invisible at times, leading to some cheap-feeling hits. on top of that, Strider’s blade feels somewhat nerfed, or the hit boxes are slightly off or something. i can’t mow through enemies in this version the way i can in the arcade.
the difficulty balance is a little weird, too. some things feel like the arcade, but some sections are missing enemies where they’d normally be, some enemies take less hits than usual, but some feel about the same.
now, the pretty good
the redbook audio arranged soundtrack is actually pretty nice. while i think i prefer the original FM synthesis, these renditions have feeling and still capture what was interesting about the original tracks, while giving a longtime fan something new to listen to.
as pictured above, there is an entirely new level added to this game - the desert. it’s not particularly good! and feels like it’s from a totally different game, lol, but i think it’s cool that they did this for this version of the game. really kind of goes above and beyond what they had to do for what is ultimately a console port of an arcade game that came out 5 years prior.
the cutscenes are sort of a mixed bag - we get full animations here (well…PCE full animations) and they look nice, and we even get dialogue before miniboss and boss fights, but they lose the charm of the original dialogue by having everyone speak Japanese instead of speaking their characters’ native languages, like the arcade game. not to mention that these all include a short load time, which again, breaks the flow of the game.
overall verdict
the team behind this (it wasn’t Capcom!) obviously really liked Strider, but they seem to like it for different reasons than me, OR they aren’t as good at the game as i am. i think taking the speed out of Strider is a mistake, and maybe it was a hardware limitation, so they decided to double down on the story aspect, along with the usual “gee, what do we do with all this CD storage space?” issue that plagued early console CD-based games.
i enjoy it in spite of its flaws, but if i want a pure IV of Strider injected directly into my veins, it’s probably gonna have to be the original.
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oh shit i played the online version of this a lot when i was a kid/teen. there was a hockey minigame i liked even though i was terrible at it
also this is the same studio that made toonstruck?? between those two and RA2, these people defined much of my childhood
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