What Games Have You Completed? (2021 Edition)
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Join Date:Posts: 50069
- Megaman X2|SNES
- Streets of Rage 4|PC
- Sekiro|PC
- Megaman 7|SNES
- Megaman 8|PS1
- Megaman X3|SNES
- Megaman & Bass|SNES
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4
- Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC
- Mischief Makers|N64
- Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC
- Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4
- Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy
- Virtua Racing|Switch
- Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC
- Crysis Remaster|PC
- God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3
- Resident Evil Village|PC
- Live a Live|SNES
- Clockwork Knight|Saturn
- DuckTales|NES
- Drakengard 3|PS3
- Double Dragon|NES
- Secret of Mana|SNES
- Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions|Android
- Halo 5: Guardians|XBox One
- Air Combat|PS1
- Kamui|PC
- DuckTales 2|NES
- Turok Dinosaur Hunter|PC
- Professor Layton and Pandora's Box|Android
- Ape Escape|PS1
- No One Lives Forever|PC
- DuckTales Remastered|PC
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon|PC
- Asterix|Master System
- McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure|Megadrive
- Fuga: Melodies of Steel|PC
- Quake|PC
- Return of the Obra Dinn|PC
- Tail Concerto|PS1
- Contra 3 (Hard Mode)|SNES
- Rocket Knight|PC
- Enemy Zero|PC
- Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
The first of the Quake mission packs, this one developed by Hipnotic, who would change their name after this to Ritual and go on to make SiN.
What this mission pack highlights is just how good Id were when it came to level design. This mission pack really feels like a bunch of fan made levels interconnected into a campaign. The developer really wants to show off their technical skill and they do some really crazy things with the Quake engine. They have levels that change geometry, rolling boulders, strange uses of gravity and other weirdness. However the game is missing the flow of levels in the Id developed game. While the Id levels are far less ambitious unless you get lost there is a great flow to the levels and very little down time.
Scourge of Armagon on the other hand has plenty of levels where you need to backtrack and to keep things interesting the designers just spawn in new enemies in areas you've already been through. It feels really cheap and frustrating and it's used constantly throughout the campaign. Id never resorted to these cheap tricks. There's also some amateur design here with some levels requiring you to take fall damage to progress. The last level of the third episode is particularly egregious. You face two shamblers on the ground and two ogres up above firing grenades at you. It's kind of bullshit but manageable, except there's a machine in the are constantly zapping you with electricity. If you turn the machine off it explodes setting off random explosions in the area that hurt like a full rocket blast and then you open the gate to the exit and is spawns another shambler. **** right off whoever designed this.
There's new weapons and enemies in this pack but they don't offer a whole lot. There's thors hammer which isn't as good as the lightning gun. There's a laser rifle which is actually pretty need. And there's proximity mines which just end up hurting you more or annoy you as you wait for them to explode. They're used once in a decent puzzle to open a secret level at least. There's a new final boss who isn't great but at least is a proper fight rather than the legendary shitness of Quake's final Boss. Looks a bit like a Strog from Quake 2.
Anyway, it's still a pretty decent set of levels that does some interesting things even if the level design is rougher than the god like Quake.
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GAME: GEARS 5
PLATFORM: XBOX ONE
I have mixed opinions of this one.
This game only had 4 acts (as opposed to the traditional 5) and the first and final acts were linear, with the middle two acts being two different open-world areas.
Yep, an open world element; but they didn't do much with it. All it was used for was a means to collect optional upgrades for your robot companion (new addition): go here, shoot enemies, get upgrade, leave, rinse and repeat. The main objectives of these open world areas were not different aside form being slightly longer with a boss. As a Gears game it fell kind of flat, but it wasn't terrible.
I just hope the next instalment (whenever it shows its face) doesn't continue the trend. I'd rather the linear action style of the original 4 games, but you know we won't get that. This is them testing the waters with the open world elements and it'll be fairly possible that the next game will be a light-RPG with upgrade mechanics for your character; their weapons and maybe their armour - as well as tons of side missions.
Other than that, the game overall was decent enough. I enjoyed the story overall but personally it didn't get properly good until the final Act.
Nevertheless it was good and I had fun, but just like Gears of War 4 - it doesn't hold a candle to Gears 1-3. Likewise with Gears 4, it ended on a cliff-hanger, so unless something goes horribly wrong with development, we're guaranteed a Gears 6 for Xbox Series X|S
I just realised I haven't numbered my entries since Gears 2 🤣
Post edited by Gamer Bhoy 89 on0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50069
- Megaman X2|SNES
- Streets of Rage 4|PC
- Sekiro|PC
- Megaman 7|SNES
- Megaman 8|PS1
- Megaman X3|SNES
- Megaman & Bass|SNES
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4
- Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC
- Mischief Makers|N64
- Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC
- Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4
- Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy
- Virtua Racing|Switch
- Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC
- Crysis Remaster|PC
- God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3
- Resident Evil Village|PC
- Live a Live|SNES
- Clockwork Knight|Saturn
- DuckTales|NES
- Drakengard 3|PS3
- Double Dragon|NES
- Secret of Mana|SNES
- Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions|Android
- Halo 5: Guardians|XBox One
- Air Combat|PS1
- Kamui|PC
- DuckTales 2|NES
- Turok Dinosaur Hunter|PC
- Professor Layton and Pandora's Box|Android
- Ape Escape|PS1
- No One Lives Forever|PC
- DuckTales Remastered|PC
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon|PC
- Asterix|Master System
- McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure|Megadrive
- Fuga: Melodies of Steel|PC
- Quake|PC
- Return of the Obra Dinn|PC
- Tail Concerto|PS1
- Contra 3 (Hard Mode)|SNES
- Rocket Knight|PC
- Enemy Zero|PC
- Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon|PC
- Final Fantasy II: Pixel Remaster|PC
Final Fantasy II: Pixel Remaster
This game has been dogging me for a long time. I've tried to beat it multiple times and have never gotten more than 5 hours in. I heard the real final boss of this game is getting over the 5 hour hump. I'm glad I finally have it out of the way now even if it was hardly a great game.
First, I'll go into the good and bad of the Pixel Remaster series.
The Pixel Remasters are almost amazing. They do so much right and then get the basics totally wrong. The good first. It's great to have all 6 of the 8 and 16 bit RPGs readily available on modern platfroms and on PC where they can be preserved. The new 2D pixel art is gorgeous as are the spell effects. However the absolute standout in the soundtrack. We all knew the FF soundtracks were special but these new versions recorded with live instruments are far and away my favourite renditions of these tracks. It's phenomenal. And when you get to the games with god tier soundtracks like FF4 it's worth playing just for the music. There's some great quality of life additions, like quick saves when you leave as room (a god send for FF2) and a speedy auto battle. Load times are insanely fast making the games a joy to play, especially compared the the awful PS1 versions.
Now the bad. The pixel art is incredible but it looks awful blown up to a modern display. There is a 'classic' filter you can use. This blurs the graphics and adds scanlines. However the scanlines are just dark bars across the screen and the blur is way too aggressive. I'd still recommend this over the standard pixelated look but I'd love to have been able to add your own shaders like in retroarch. The filters could have been a lot better. Worst of all is the frame pacing. These games are made in Unity and like with a lot of recent 2D Unity games they run at the wrong framerate, 70 FPS instead of 60. It means there is very noticeable judder which is very distracting until you get used to it. It's insane this got through to the final release especially when it's a very easy thing to fix.
One other thing that may be an announce is that the extra dungeons and post game content from the GBA and PSP releases of these games are not present in the pixel remasters. It's a very strange omission even though I never really found these extras well designed or fun. They really just focus on the content from the original release of the game.
As for FF2, despite being a black sheep of the series it actually pioneered a lot of features that defined the series. Elemental weaknesses now work well, including how the undead take damage from healing spells. This is also where the series focus on narrative started. The story is tripe but was ambitious for the time with playable characters dying. It takes a lot of cues from star wars and gets really daft towards the end with multiple antagonists appearing one after the other so frequently that it's laughable. The game also has a 'key word' system where you can learn key words from characters and then ask other characters about them. It's an interesting idea that adds nothing to the game and was thankfully dropped after FF2.
FF2 is notorious for it's levelling system. It was a pretty innovative system where you would get stronger the more you carried out certain actions. The original game however had the obnoxious feature of also levelling you down if you did opposite reactions which is bullshit. Thankfully levelling down has been taken out of this version. It's been rebalanced overall where there's no need to grind and stat increases seem to happen organically at times. It's still a right pain to level up spells and not really worth it considering how ineffective they are.
The rebalancing does make the game quite easy however it doesn't fix one issue with FF2, namely there's a few mobs that will utterly decimate your team if you get a bad round or an ambush. Some mobs have inflict status effects like paralysis, stone or even death that can cause you to lose a battle before you get a chance to react or have to watch as your team gets pummeled over 20+ rounds as you pray to RNGesus that status effects will wear off so you can control you party again only to get stuck in yet another status effect loop. This happens rarely and mostly towards the end of the game but it's never not frustrating. Thankfully the game auto saves liberally so it's not too much of an issue. I can only imagine how insane this would be in the original game where you could lose upwards of 45 minutes to some bullshit encounter.
One last thing to note about game balance is that the game might now be very easy but the original FF2 is known for having the biggest dick move final boss of the series and he still lives up to his reputation. Unless you have been grinding status enhancing spells which up to this point are useless you could end up in a situation where this boss is impossible. His damage output is insane and he has a habit of resetting multiple rounds worth of damage with attacks that can absorb massive amounts of health from your characters and heal the boss. There is a trick to make him easy with the blood sword but if you sold the blood sword then you are **** out of luck.
FF2 is an interesting game, if not a successful one. It's ideas would be refined in the Saga series which would give us some great games. And the focus on narrative and tasking the battle system is wildly divergent directions would become to define the series. It did enjoy the game even if at points it was a slog. However it's more historical curiosity than good game. At least if you aren;t interested in FF2, there's 5 other absolutely classics in the Pixel Remaster package.
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Join Date:Posts: 50069
- Megaman X2|SNES
- Streets of Rage 4|PC
- Sekiro|PC
- Megaman 7|SNES
- Megaman 8|PS1
- Megaman X3|SNES
- Megaman & Bass|SNES
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4
- Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC
- Mischief Makers|N64
- Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC
- Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4
- Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy
- Virtua Racing|Switch
- Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC
- Crysis Remaster|PC
- God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3
- Resident Evil Village|PC
- Live a Live|SNES
- Clockwork Knight|Saturn
- DuckTales|NES
- Drakengard 3|PS3
- Double Dragon|NES
- Secret of Mana|SNES
- Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions|Android
- Halo 5: Guardians|XBox One
- Air Combat|PS1
- Kamui|PC
- DuckTales 2|NES
- Turok Dinosaur Hunter|PC
- Professor Layton and Pandora's Box|Android
- Ape Escape|PS1
- No One Lives Forever|PC
- DuckTales Remastered|PC
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon|PC
- Asterix|Master System
- McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure|Megadrive
- Fuga: Melodies of Steel|PC
- Quake|PC
- Return of the Obra Dinn|PC
- Tail Concerto|PS1
- Contra 3 (Hard Mode)|SNES
- Rocket Knight|PC
- Enemy Zero|PC
- Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon|PC
- Final Fantasy II: Pixel Remaster|PC
- Sparkster (Hard Mode)|SNES
Sparkster (SNES)
Here's a game I've had a lot of misconceptions about. As I mentioned I was always envious that SNES owners got the better Rocket Knight Adventures sequel. It looked stunning in screenshots and when I briefly played it on an emulator (first stage) it seemed like a really good game. Well now that I've played it I'm really disappointed. I actually think this game is not only worse than the megadrive Sparkster but also worse than the much maligned Rocket Knight for the PS360.
First the good. The game really is gorgeous, one of the best looking games on the SNES. It's a lot more colourful than RKA on the megadrive and Sparkster's redesign looks great and much better than the Megadrive Sparkster. Konami's coders were really showing off with this game with some crazy graphical effects. Just in the first level there's reflective water, a weird miasma effect and a warping effect on some enemies. Later levels don't disappoint either. On the other hand the complexity of some of the effects means the framerate can really suffer at times.
Now for the disappointing aspects.
There's just something off about this game. The rocket pack, the series' USP, is a crap shoot. In RKA using the rocket pack committed you to an uncontrollable flight path but the trade of was invulnerability and a safe way to damage enemies. All too often you will get stuck in the hit box of an enemy after using the rocket jump and take damage making it a crap shoot and too risky to use.
After the opening stage level design takes a big nose dive. Levels become more open with some very haphazard level design compared to the deliberate and focused design of RKA. It means many levels are too long, too confusing and kind of boring. Levels will also incorporate instant death traps that discourage the use of the rocket pack which kind of defeats the purpose of having it. Bosses as very ordinary as well which is very surprising for a Konami game. One level in particular stands out for how bad it is and that is when the game turns into a shoot'em up for one stage. It's dull, bad designed and ends with by far the worst boss of the game. One of RKA's best set pieces was when you and your rival both commandeer massive robots and have to square off against each other. It's a real spectacle and a standout moment in the game. Sparkster tries to replicate this with a rock'em sock'em style robot boss fight that is pure RNG and way too hard. Any time I beat this it felt like pure chance that I managed to get the AI into a state that could be easily exploited. There's no tactics here, it just plain doesn't work as a fair challenge.
The soundtrack as well comes off really poorly compared to the megadrive Sparkster. Megadrive sparkster was scored by some of Konami's best composers including Michiru Yamane of symphony of the night fame and Akira Yamaoka before he became well known for his work on Silent Hill. It sounded incredible. The only track in Sparkster that stands out is the first stage theme which is a SNES rendition of the opening level theme from Megadrive sparkster and it sounds slightly worse in comparison. All the other tracks are forgettable.
Sparkster on the SNES isn't terrible, it's just merely decent. But considering this is a game from Konami at the height of it's creative output, decent is really disappointing considering the rake of absolute classics the company was pumping out at the time. It also disappointingly means that the glorious Rocket Knight Adventrue never got that sequel is so deserved.
I beat this game on Normal first and then Hard which unlocked a true final boss and ending.
Eh, no thanks.
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