Recently I tried out the half-life 2 beta recreation mod Dark Interval, it isn't as complete or polished as RTBR per say but it is still pretty cool, I like the general look of it as well, not as much as RTBR. Wish it didn't constantly error with the AI and keep me from progressing on Linux, otherwise I would have already completed it by now.

Spot Goes to Hollywood – a cool isometric platformer for the Mega Drive and another memory from my childhood, used to play it a lot during my school years. I actually recall trying to tape a walkthrough on VHS and send it to a vidya magazine, they would publish those and that was considered mad honor. I failed miserably because I couldn’t land a jump, kept re-recording it and eventually ragequit. Good memories. The game feels exactly how I remember it, as if I played it last month and not 20 years ago. One thing that struck me playing it now is how decently sized and open-ended the levels are, you’re free to explore and collect shit; there’s a nice verticality to some of them as well. You have to collect a certain number of “coins” to exit a level but other than that nothing bars you from going anywhere you can get to and the game is full of secrets to discover. You can also collect other stuff scattered about but sadly it’s mostly useless and apart from an occasional 1Up amounts to nothing but points, kind of a missed opportunity here in my opinion. Literally once in the entire thing you find boots that allow you to jump higher… for 15 seconds. There really needed to be more stuff like this, some buffs and whatnot to find, maybe extra weapons since all you get is one basic attack that takes forever to kill enemies with. The controls are pretty good, the whole isometric perspective thing can be hard to nail down and could naturally lead to some frustration but thankfully devs realized that and there’s an easy 99 lives code. You get used to it pretty fast and then it plays smoothly. The game’s not too challenging, in fact, the bosses here are a complete cakewalk the final one is almost insultingly easy and the only hard parts are the auto-scroll levels. The graphics are good, though it’s a bit hard to place – on the one hand, everything is impressively detailed and well animated but on the other hand, the color pallet is sorta dark and desaturated, and not very appealing. I raised the white balance in photoshop and it instantly made things look better. But oh well. At least it compensates for that with a great variety of locations, since the game is movie-based you get to visit all the major film genres, from pirates and post-apocalypse to horror and sci-fi. The music is pretty decent and reflects the locations nicely, although I think the game is kinda low on sound effects and also Spot’s squeak is annoying as fuck. All in all, this is a fun vidya. It’s pretty good despite being basically a commercial shilling a brand; probably the best ever made of that ilk. I actually went and bought 7Up for the occasion, so they succeeded 25 years later, oy vey. There's also a PS1 version that I need to check some time.

>>1246 SMT is a lot better than persona tbh anon.

>>1294 The earlier Perusona games were good, the series got heavily casualized as it went on due to normalfags' attention.

>>1298 Lol why even do that, peak (((american moment))) in cuckeo game translations.

>>1307 Americans are obsessed with niggers, mutt's law.

Tales of Zestiria – after Xillia my expectations were set high for this one and I gotta say, I was not disappointed. Well, maybe a bit initially, the game takes its sweet time to get going and at first strikes you as a step down, but then by about 1/3rd it really opens up and becomes a real joy to play and explore. Shame you have to wait like ten hours for that to happen but it is what it is. At least the whole thing is 50+ hours long so in the end that wasn’t a big issue. Just like Xillia, the game continues to be inspired by the 6th gen's FFXII-styled RPGs and here the resemblance is even more noticeable. But this time around the game is truly massive, with large open-ended areas sprawling in multiple directions, often interconnected with one another. I honestly felt very nostalgic playing it, like I was back exploring DQVIII, FFXII, Phantasy Star Universe and the like. Nowhere near as big or complex as those but still a very enjoyable experience. Some really comfy and atmospheric dungeons in this one too. Visually it even looks more like a high-end 6th gen game rather than a big PS3 hardware pusher. Despite being somewhat low tech and rough around the corners the pop-ups here…, this is still a very beautiful game thanks to a truly stellar art direction and sheer variety of locations. I would often just stop and enjoy the view, with its large vistas and monumental architecture. There are some nice anime cutscenes present, as per tradition, but sadly it’s all digital vomit at this point. Musically the game definitely stands out over its immediate predecessors. This was the series’ 20th anniversary project so they got a whole bunch of composers to do the OST together, and the result is pretty solid: you get everything from the big epic score to very subtle moody melodies, to some Nordic motives and particularly great stuff in trial dungeons that I wish there was more of. What I didn’t like is what they’ve done to the battle engine, it was always simple and to the point, versatile enough without being overly convoluted. Here they just over-crammed it with a ton of needlessly complicated and mostly useless systems. Due to that you’re constantly pestered with tutorials, but it’s impossible to comprehend all of it on your first playthrough and there’s no reason to, really, since the game is pretty easy in general. No point in reading essays worth of text when you’re just always winning anyway. I guess it’s nice to have as an option but it’s an illusion of complexity. One other notable downside – the game lacks any side activities, like mini-games and whatnot, to add some variety. There’s not even a casino. The story is pretty good as far as these modern Tales games go, dare I say best grills and fanservice as well. However, one thing that undermines it all is the catastrophic, nuclear levels of americanization and redditfication of the translation; they put even the ones in Xillia to shame. I have never seen anything on this scale before. At least, mercifully, there’s Japanese audio present but it’s not gonna save you from the literal doge memes and SocJus lingo. I would literally sit in disbelief for a good minute or two after reading some of this shit. The above mentioned tutorials are also harder to comprehend because of this. Despite that I still enjoyed this one a lot. 7th gen was really missing games like this; I wish it came out in like 2008 and not 2015 when the gen was already over.

La Pucelle Tactics – an excellent tacticool RPG from Nippon Ichi, basically a predecessor to the Disgaea series. Extremely wholesome, I greatly enjoyed it. The story’s nice, it’s characteristically cutesy but mixed with surprisingly dark moments – somehow when bad shit happens to cute chibi characters it feels even more impactful. Although, sadly, the game is heavily censored in the west but at least there’s Japanese audio option available so you don’t have to suffer through the horrific dub. The visuals are overall superb with exquisite sprite work and gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds. It is however very much a PS1 game running on PS2, it even came out on CD originally. As such, the 3D battle backgrounds, while still pleasant looking, are very rudimentary and the 2D backgrounds are static to the point where you have to be content with a motionless fountain. There’s also this weird thing where you can rotate the camera on certain battle screens but not the others for some reason. But it was never too bothersome, really. Well, maybe the fountain thing. I mean, just don’t draw a fountain there if you know you can’t animate it. The music was one of the highlights for sure, it's extremely good and I wish there was more of it… perhaps also a downside of using a single CD. Gameplay wise it’s a pretty standard nip SRPG. Good shit. Notable gimmick being the ability to convert any monster in the game to your side so your party ends up being 50% monster-based. I found it generally too easy tho, mainly because the map screens are so small there’s just not enough room for grander strategies and it feels more like comfy chess matches. In fact, some battles get so tight you actually have to accommodate meta elements like spawn and exit squares that enemies can’t step on into your strategy, which was interesting. On a side note, I know it’s characteristic of the genre but the whole not being able to select your target when facing multiple opponents and missing the enemy with 1 HP remaining is ass splitting. The game just radiates that carefree atmosphere of better days; it’s now one of my all-time favorites in fact. Would very much recommend it. Haven't played the Disgaea series yet, largely because of the NISA cancer, but if it's as good as this I'll find a way to get to it eventually.

>>1513 >the NISA cancer Don't even get me started about how much they ruined the English dubs of Neptune, and how badly they fucked the subtitles.

>>421 Late response but I was actually playing through both DMC1 and DMC3 at the same time at the beginning of the year but as with most games I sorta just stopped, both are a lot of fun though, guess I just didn't have the motivation...

>>1515 They, they ruined entire generations of vidya so now you have to jump through hoops to enjoy the games.

>>1516 I can't imagine playing two games at once, that would definitely lessen the enjoyment of both in my opinion.

>>1520 Basically I was playing one with a fren and the other alone, I started the third game cause I wanted to continue playing with my fren as we were sorta taking turns playing.

>>1521 I see. Though playing with frens can be fun in and of itself, I found that it doesn't really translate to the enjoyment of the game, especially when you grow older. I remember back in university me and my pal really wanted to play some co-op game, I think MK Shaolin Monks or some shit, and it seemed like such a fun idea, so then we bought it and started playing it but then lost interest really fast. We never played anything together again. We were growing out of that age where just fucking about together is the primarily objective, but at the same time my personal individual enjoyment of games became only stronger with time.

>>1522 How odd, the opposite for me, as I've grown older my interests have sort of waned, though I would say I am not much of what you would call a "gamer's gamer" besides the stuff I particularly enjoy. As time as gone on enjoying co-op like L4D2 with the few frens I got has been become even more enjoyable as I've gotten older, and the want to do it more has increased. I think it is because at this age I am sort of sensing my own mortality.

>>1524 Well that's good for you my nigga but I think the co-op stuff is more fleeting because like I mentioned you're enjoying the commutative process and not so much the game, you don't even care what the game is, everything is fun with pals. But then it becomes less and less fun because you're doing the same surface level thing. Whereas when you try to get into individual gayming, you get some really profound experiences.

The Story of Thor: A Successor of The Light – a superb action-platformer for the Mega Drive. Really good shit right here. It’s very much a Zelda clone but it has its own style and personality, more inspired by Zelda than simply outright copying it. And holy fuck does it look good, this is a very late-gen game, especially for Mega Drive, but it’s got to be one of the most beautiful and detailed game of the entire 4th generation. It can easily hold its own against the best SNES has to offer and I’m surprised MD can even run it. Though it didn’t escape the characteristic muted palette look. It’s also one of the few games on the system to have a save mode. All the sprites are large, intricately detailed, and fully animated. Clearly a lot of effort was put into animation and miscellaneous effects in general - for example, when you’re crawling you can see the character supporting himself with his hand on the ground, or how enemies would catch flame both from your attacks as well as accidental friendly fire. The score is equally impressive and is probably taxing the poor MD sound chip to the absolute limit. There sadly is no big iconic main theme of some kind. The world is beautiful and vibrant, with great variety of locations, it’s not as big as a Zelda world to explore but you are still given a decent freedom to wander about. Found a bridge? You can crawl under it and discover some goodies. Shame the story is rather basic, though; you can talk to people but they don’t say anything interesting, kind of a wasted opportunity here. The gameplay is really fun and surprisingly versatile, you get a pretty decent moveset and can use a variety of weapons at will. It’s really neat how you can even drop items from your inventory on the floor if you’re full or don’t need something. The main gimmick of the game is summoning spirits – you get your standard elemental familiars but the number of ways in which they can be utilized is really impressive and advanced. To summon them you need to find a corresponding element somewhere on the level, and it can be anything from – in water’s case – obvious bodies of water, to little creeks on rock surfaces, to a tiny drip from a ceiling that you don’t even register at first. You can even summon them from other enemies if they consist of or produce the element in question. You need to melt ice with a fire spirit to proceed further but you can also summon another spirit off the ice’s surface. The game often asks you to think about such things creatively to solve puzzles, especially for secret stuff. The variety of enemies gets pretty commendable by the end of the game, I liked the one enemy that’s immaterial unless you have a spirit summoned but then it starts attacking the spirit relentlessly, giving you but a tiny window to dispose of the damned thing. Zombies are also nice, they can give you a hard time but would literally crumble to dust if you’ll think of using fire. The bosses are also pretty cool. Though overall the game’s fairly easy, mainly because you have so much stuff at your disposal and can save anywhere outside dungeons, sometimes even in dungeons. But it does ask you to make some dubious platforming jumps at times. Though I wouldn’t call this game obscure, I’m surprised it’s not heralded amongst the greatest in Mega Drive’s library and the entire generation. I had great fun, often just taking my time appreciating the vibe of the backgrounds and music. Definitely a must play if you’re into 2D Zelda-type games.

Dawn of Mana (aka Seiken Densetsu 4) – a great little gem from when Square still used to make video games. Unlike all the other Seiken games, this is not an RPG but a rather unique action-platformer, which is why it being a numbered mainline installment is questionable, but it's still really fun nonetheless. The main gimmick of the game is that it is physics based – slashing around won't do you much good, instead, you have to use your whip to throw objects into enemies, smash them into one another, stagger and finish them off. The stronger you get, the more shit you can throw around. The combat engine is pretty basic and it's obvious that interacting with the world is the main crux of the game – knocking boulders on unassuming monsters, setting haystacks on fire and causing debris avalanches; all that on large sandbox levels with complex geometry. It’s pretty impressive to say the least and of course the game looks fantastic, with incredible art design and late gen technical prowess that you used to expect from Square. Music is extremely solid as well. The story is nice and simple but more of a fanservice for the fans of the series, especially considering the much shorter length compared to an RPG. All that gameplay freedom can make the controls a little bit unruly at times but that naturally stops being an issue once you git gud at it, and of course it's a great technical achievement that all of this works as good as it does. About the only downside of the game is that it's too repetitive, you do the exact same thing on every level and it’s a damn shame considering the variety of mechanics and puzzles that would work with this premise. The challenge level is also not particularly high, mainly because it's too easy to max out your stats on every level. All in all, a great vidya. It has that Kingdom Hearts/Dark Cloud/Okami vibe going on, comfiness levels through the roof and just good time in general.

Shiki Eiyūden: Jinryū Densetsu – a pretty interesting RPG for the Super Famicom. Its main thing is that it’s based on actual Chinese history, the warring states period to be specific. There’s no real story per se, you’re just in ancient China to visit real historical locations and meet real historical personas; all string together with the larger warring states narrative. It’s a neat idea but the story is just too basic, more like a collection of bullet points. There are so many verbose RPGs on the system but here the characters barely exchange two lines of dialog. A shame really because this political setting seems perfectly suited for a much more complex storytelling. It is cool though that on a few occasions you’re expected to know actual Chinese history – common enough knowledge in China and Japan I suppose – to advance further; I had to find and translate a source on the subject since it was available only in Japanese. Gameplay wise, however, it’s anything but simple; this is a rather tough game, at least for novices. In fact they probably realized that because you gain XP even by running away. The random encounter rate is really high and enemies hit you hard, you can only save in towns but in an unexpected move of charity you do get a no-encounters spell. There’s also no map whatsoever so you better have a pencil near you at all times because the game is super obtuse with directions, sometimes not even repeating where you have to go. You do get a decent arsenal of spells at your disposal that allows for some tactical deployment to figure out. Like for instance there is a doppelganger spell and bosses would often use a turn to dispel it instead of buffing themselves, giving you an opening. Generally, all this stuff is well thought out with good attention to details. I liked that you don’t earn any money here and have to sell loot by bartering with traders. The game also enjoys torturing you with hard mandatory puzzles. Graphically it’s not particularly advanced but still looks pretty good I have to say; though there isn’t much in terms of variety – towns and dungeons are mostly just color swaps. Music definitely deserves praise on the other hand, not just composition-wise but also the clear quality of sound itself. Overall I enjoyed it. I liked the higher challenge level and that the game doesn’t babysit you. The combat is also nicely nuanced. It’s really just the story that is a letdown – the characters, historical and not, have no personality and I don’t think the unique setting was utilized that well here. Still, it was a pretty stand out experience.

Gimmick! – a neat little Sunsoft platformer for the Famicom. One cool thing about this one is that it was a late-gen entry and had to compete directly with 16-bit games, so they made some special tech for advanced graphics and sound to have it stand out on the market. And you can definitely tell that right away, the visuals are very beautiful and detailed, with wonderful backgrounds and fluid animations. Even though all characters are just blobs. But the sound stands out the most, they made an entire extra chip for it, it’s way above the standard quality of this generation, the music is absolutely incredible. Mechanically the game is pretty unique, it’s in a way physics based – your sole method of attack is a star that you charge above your head and then release, after which it bounces around in a realistic manner. You can even jump off it to reach secret places or let it carry you across obstacles; if you can pull that off. Now, that’s a neat idea and all but I think it does limit the gameplay a bit because you have to charge the star to use it and then can’t use it again until the previous one is off the screen. Nothing gets any upgrades, either. There’s just not enough room for gameplay variety with that, so you’re only ever doing the most basic things throughout the game. I also didn’t like how they implemented the control scheme for this whole business – you get three items you can carry and the way to use them is to hold Up + the star charge button... in a game where you’re constantly jumping around. Needless to say, they are used up on accident all the time. I know there are only two buttons on the gamepad, but at the same time Select button is not utilized at all, c’mon. The game gets pretty challenging later on, especially since your character has a heavy momentum and slides on any surface and then you get to the ice level. So some frustration will be experienced. It is very short on the other hand and still really fun. There’s no story, either, it’s feels more arcady that way. So, a really cool project. Above everything else it’s worth playing for the visuals and music, I wish more 8-bit games looked like this. But the physics gameplay is neat as well. Also, check that cute playdough cover art.

i need to get back into gaming..

Jurassic Park: the Game (2011) – I’m a big fan of both the Jurassic Park franchise as well as point-and-click adventure games so you’d think this will be right up my alley, and it probably would have been if they didn’t fuck it up this badly. To begin with, this isn’t a traditional point-and-click type of game – there’s no exploration, no collecting of stuff to solve stuff; nothing. Instead, this is basically a glorified visual novel with QTEs. The whole appeal of point-and-click games is to walk around, explore stuff, solve things, seep in the atmosphere, that’d be pretty cool in a Jurassic Park setting. Instead, all you do is get punished with QTEs after suffering through terrible cutscenes. I did to some extent enjoy the whole ‘father and daughter have to escape from the island’ dynamic of the first episode, it had that sort of wholesome white family vibe to it and the atmosphere of Jurassic Park was palpable. But then they had to ruin it by adding an annoying old libshit hippie to the equation; after that the story is fanfiction tier bad and you have to suffer through wads of pointless dialog with horrible writing. Visually the game looked like crap way back in 2011 and nothing changed since then. Perhaps if this was a classic point-and-click without constant extreme close-ups for all the cutscenes and QTEs, it might have worked, but it’s so poorly made in general – it’s the kind of game where you see somebody holding an AK that floats half a meter away from the model. I guess the music is alright at least, it’s the expected John Williams sampling and some original score to go along with it. As mentioned, there’s barely any gameplay. The few times it pretends to let you play, everything you can click on is brightly marked so you wouldn’t confuse this with a video game. And the few puzzles present are an insult to ones intelligence. Of course it also has just 1 autosave file that locks you off from anything you didn’t finish “exploring”. I also didn’t like how they utilized the dinos in this, especially the Tyrannosaurus, I guess they thought it’s gonna be extremely tense if you’re constantly falling on his head and jumping through his mouth with QTEs. But in reality it just dissipates the danger and makes T-Rex look like an incompetent doofus. Sadly, or maybe thankfully, the game glitched on me at the very end at which point I dropped it. Overall it was a miserable experience that I wouldn’t wish on my enemy. The worst thing is that this was made on the very cusp of point-and-click genre dying out so now there will never be a Jurassic Park game like that. Fuck my life.

Call of Duty 2 – I got nostalgic for WW2 shooters so I decided to revisit CoD2 which I had fond memories of from playing it way back in the day. I was actually happy to see that the game still holds up pretty well. For one thing, it definitely holds up visually, given you maxed out the settings, which shouldn’t be an issue nowadays but I remember taking great pride in being able to run the game at max settings on my new PC when it came out. Back then the texture quality seemed magical. All the maps are nicely detailed and full of atmosphere. Decent amount of variety as you jump through different campaigns across the globe. The campaigns themselves are pretty good as well – you do feel right in the middle of a violent battle, with shit constantly exploding all around you and bullets trailing over your head as you scramble to the nearest piece of debris for cover. They did a good job recreating that hectic feel of war. All done entirely through gameplay without any scripted cinematic event™ bullshit. Very nice. I guess one drawback is that you’re always fighting with your platoon members right next to you, so occasional gameovers caused by accidentally shooting or exploding them are inevitable. The combat itself is simple but satisfying, no need to reinvent the wheel here. It just works™. The music, when present, is mostly a generic epic score but it does work well here. Good sound design all around, although NPC voice samples do get repetitive. There are, however, no scores, bonuses or anything to motivate you to play better, sadly. Nor is there any reason to explore the maps, there’s absolutely nothing extra you can find, not even weapons. This is honestly a let down and kills any replayability, I suppose the multiplayer was meant to substitute for that, I think I played it back in the day but I don’t remember much about it. I’m sure it was fun. Also, even on normal difficulty the game is piss easy so switching to hard right away is mandatory. There are no real “boss” encounters of any kind, either, I understand that they were going for realism but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of believably to fight some huge ass tank with a lot of HP on occasion. Certainly at the end would be the time, as the game ends rather anticlimactically. All in all, I had a good time. There was some expansion pack that for some reason only came out on Wii and PS2, and after that the series pretty much stopped being developed with PC in mind. Ironically, this was the last CoD game I ever played and it's staying that way.

Although I haven't finished either I am currently playing Touhou Genso Wanderer, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky, afterstory autism Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus and Burst, and Super Mario 64. I am mostly focusing on Super Mario 64 but have been having a blast playing every game at the moment. Any anons still around and are they still having fun with autistic games meant to help us forget our civilization is literally burning?

>>3245 >Any anons still around and are they still having fun with autistic games meant to help us forget our civilization is literally burning? Sure do. Backlog saves the day in the current year. You can play all the countless games from 3 decades you didn't gave the access to prior due to cost or technology.

>>3246 >Backlog saves the day in the current year Been enjoying some mobile gaming on my Vita and 3DS's backlog as well as PS3 and old PC games, you are correct about that anon.

>>3247 I'm more of a 5th-6th gen myself.

>>3259 Yeah I was trying to really get back into that era as well, was playing a bit of Kirby 64 recently and remember how much fun Super Mario Sunshine was a couple years back.

>>3246 backlogging is undeniably based, imagine playing modern "games"...

Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands – a forgotten 7th gen sequel to the Sands of Time trilogy, so the name is quite ironic. I always thought this was a movie tie-in game as it came out literally the same week as the film and the prince here kinda looks like the actor, but no, this is an actual full fledged sequel (well, technically a midquel) to the 6th gen games. Truly a bizarre marketing decision. For that reason, I had always steered clear from it as some quickly thrown together garbage. Shame as the game’s actually pretty good and I ended up enjoying it a lot. The most surprising thing, especially in the context of them already rebooting the series by this point, is that for a late 7th gen game it feels exactly like those 6th gen games: there’s not a single QTE, not a single prompt or scripted walking session – you have to do stuff yourself. It is somewhat casualized in places but not to an extent you’d expect and it’s unusual to see a western 7th gen game – from Ubishit no less – that requires actual skill and effort. That is not to say the game is particularly challenging, it’s pretty easy but not in a modern game sort of way where it just plays itself for you. Rather you have all the appropriate tools you need to deal with any situation the game throws at you. Extra challenge would have been appreciated as there’s not even a hard mode available but it is still a satisfying experience none the less. Graphically it looks like an HD remaster of a PS2 game but despite low tech the art direction is superb and thanks to that the game actually looks quite gorgeous; there’s some exquisite texture work on display. Of course you expect a particular atmosphere out of a PoP game, with exotic locations and scantily clad women, all of which is in full effect here. But I have to say that despite being well made, conceptually the game is pretty weak, It feels uninspired and redundant. The story is almost nonexistent and is a complete throwaway, seemingly thought up at the last moment. The original trilogy had a consistent theme behind everything but here you get your same powers for a completely different reason and in a way more generic manner. You then go through levels that are largely derivative of the previous games. Maybe this was meant to be another reboot originally, who knows. The music is also not as strong as in the older games I miss Godsmack, there are a few nice tunes but it largely feels like a stock fantasy score. Interestingly, the Wii version is a completely different game made by a different team, it looks much more compelling setting and story wise from what I’ve seen; maybe I’ll play it one day. That being said, the gameplay is still fun because you get to fight and platform on your own – something that became a rare commodity as the medium went on. The combat is simple but satisfying enough, there’s an equally simple skill tree where you can unlock new abilities like projectiles and buffs. But those are honestly not needed and I forgot about them even existing. Platforming is also well done, with some creative challenges; especially later on when you have to use your different time powers simultaneously. Sadly there are almost no bosses and those few present are virtually identical. The final one is alright at least. Overall I definitely enjoyed it, perhaps more so because I had zero expectations going in and was pleasantly reminded of a much better era in gaming. It’s been a long time since I played the original trilogy so I can’t really comment on how this stacks up to it exactly but it’s still kind of a miracle this game was even made in 2010. This was basically the last hurrah for the genre before Uncharted and AssCreed degraded it into no skill required cinematic events where platforming boils down to holding Up.

Grand Master – a neat little Famicom action-RPG. This one is also clearly inspired by Zelda, in fact, it’s outright copying it. But interestingly it copies specifically the Link to the Past when this is obviously a late Famicom game, so you get this weird idiosyncratic feeling of playing something that shouldn’t be. The gameplay itself is pretty simple and straightforward, very much like Zelda, obviously, even down to the grappling hook mechanics; however, you gain experience points to level up. And unlike Link you get a truly huge-ass sword with some impressive swing radius. You, too, explore large maze-like levels to collect weapons and buffs, and ultimately a key to proceed further. I liked the buff system – you can find several levels of upgrades for your shield, armor and every weapon, if you’re thorough enough, by late game you can literally breeze through bosses like butter, including the final one. Unlike Zelda there aren’t really any puzzles to solve and it is much more action oriented instead. The game is not too hard overall but you can get killed in a manner of seconds when enemies gang on you and they gang on you all the time. Plus the only way to replenish health is to find a single potion somewhere on the level. So this is not a leisure stroll either. But then the final stage is ridonculous, expecting you to beat all that shit without saving is crzay. Another cool thing about the game is its branching path system based on the order in which you decide to tackle the stages. If you don’t trigger certain events in a specific order you won’t get the proper ending. On that note, there’s a surprisingly decent amount of story in the game; even a bit of lore. It’s not anything to write home about but still a nice touch. There are even little animated cutscenes peppered throughout, although ironically there isn’t one for the finale; not sure if that was a creative choice or they simply ran out of time. Visually the game looks quite pleasant. There’s a decent variety of locations and the backgrounds are nicely detailed. The final level is particularly creative, with almost every other screen being different and unique looking. There are a few janks here and there but nothing major there is a way to soft crash the game in one spot tho. I especially liked the attention to small details like the hero changing his clothes to warmer ones in winter levels. There’s even some sweet 8-bit nudity. Lewd. The music sounds pretty good and clean as well, though I’m not an expert on 3rd gen soundtracks, but I think it sounds nice and groovy. And again, some tunes are lifted straight from Zelda. Overall the game is a quality clone, I liked it. Just like the progenitor it has a very adventurous, open-ended atmosphere where everything is in your hands.

>>4323 >>4393 Thank you for these quality essays sharing your gaming experiences N

>>4406 *anon.

>>4406 No problem anon, glad you like them.

Madou Monogatari I – a super cute RPG-ish first person dungeon crawler. A dungeon cuter. It’s part of a long running series and this is basically a Mega Drive remake of one of the earlier games. It actually marks the milestone of being the very last game ever released on the system in Japan. Also of note is that this is where all the Puyo Puyo games spawned from. It’s pretty solid and addictive, you enter a tower and have to navigate through about 15 floors with a cute loli while fighting equally cute enemies and solving various tasks and light puzzles. Despite the appearances, it is actually decently challenging, you must have a notepad and pencil on you at all times because the game marks literally nothing and there’s a fuckton of stuff to keep track of on every floor. Both in and outside of combat you have to directly input different button combinations to cast spells, kinda like in a fighting game, which is a pretty interesting approach and adds player's speed as an on-game factor; pretty good shit, I wish more RPGs used this. Visually it’s very impressive for Mega Drive, with detailed animated sprites; they had to sacrifice like 50% of the screen for that tho but it never really bothers you. There’s also a lot of good quality voice work. The music is pretty solid as well though there’s very little of it, probably making space for all that speech. Interestingly, the game goes for a rather unconventional approach of not using any numeric stats for the HUD and instead all the information is indicated through loli's expressions, music and text. Usually this idea turns into a pain in the ass but in a simple game like this it works fine. There's no story really, it's kinda arcady that way, but there are gags and funny interactions sprinkled throughout. Looking forward to seeing more of the games translated.

Paradise – as a big fan of graphical adventure games I was tracking down this one for quite some time now. Even finding it online isn't easy. Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s very recognizably a Sokal game (he’s like the Kojima of point-and-click games) both artistically and gameplay-wise, for good and for bad. Not so much the baby’s first graphical adventure that Syberia was if we’re talking any particular level of challenge, but it's still a pretty simple game, at least if you’re experienced with the genre. Though there are a few poorly designed puzzles that force you to look them up, however, just like with Syberia you’re mostly playing for the atmosphere. And on that note the atmosphere here is excellent, the game has truly exquisite pre-rendered backgrounds that craft an exotic journey through some hot third-world African shithole in the midst of a civil war, from a harem with scantily clad nigresses to deep jungle filled with Sokal’s trademark fantastical fauna. Good shit. Though it is a shame the backgrounds are mostly completely static, there are a few with animated elements and I don’t expect them all to be like that, after all this is just a AA Frog production, not Sqaresoft, but they could have at least added some animated polygonal objects here and there, stuff like that was done even way back on PS1. However, even though the backgrounds are excellent and there's a surprising amount of nice looking pre-rendered cutscenes, all the in-game aspects are kinda clunky and start to completely fall apart by the end of the game, with characters t-posing across the screen, events not playing out properly, etc. Maybe the game was glitching on my machine but I somehow doubt it. It’s like they literally ran out of time, and they probably did, but it feels cheaper because of this; Syberia this ain’t. Voice acting is passable and ranges from good with the main lead to average with everyone else. With that in mind the music was definitely a saving grace, it’s really good all the way through and elevates the experience despite the shortcomings. The story is actually pretty decent and quite morbid but, like mentioned, the execution sells it short, and all the flavor text dialog – the bread and butter of these kinds of games – is mostly empty fluff, sadly. Nonetheless, like I said I enjoyed it, chiefly for the atmosphere and exotic escapism combined with the general comfyness of the genre, and I miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds dearly.

Lost Horizon – after Paradise I was still in the mood for more graphical adventure games so I decided to play one from my backlog that I was putting off for a long while and man, talk about not judging a book by its cover. I was putting the game off because it looked kind of amateurish and indeed it is made by a tiny German developer, however, it turned out to be exceptionally well made, in fact by a mile better than the aforementioned Paradise which is supposed to be a large production but comes off lazy in comparison. The thing that initially turned me off was the general presentation, it has that particular nonprofessional feel to it – the cover, the font, the title screen, the background artwork which is hand-drawn but has that distinct tumblr look to it; all of that, on surface, strikes you as amateur in nature. But after playing it, the backgrounds absolutely won me over, they are actually quite charming and clearly so much work went into them, plus the art direction is not at all bad. And like I said the game is really well put together for such a humble project – everything works flawlessly, 3D models look nice even on extreme close ups, there are a lot of misc animations that even a lot of bigger devs wouldn't bother with. They also have an interesting seamless way of integrating FMVs into the actual gameplay, not even sure how they did it. Good job all around. Well, except maybe for the music, it’s alright but it’s just the stock epic music they probably bought off some site. But at least the voice acting is alright, especially from the main lead, they clearly went for the Broken Sword vibe with the protagonist having a snarky remark about almost every object on the screen, the writing is nowhere near as good but it did make me chuckle a few times. The story goes through all the classic globe trotting tropes – Nazis, Tibetan artifact, ancient civilization, asian waifu. In fact, it is almost to a tee ripping off Indiana Jones and the Thunder in the Orient but, just like with the visuals, the game tries its hardest with the material at hand, it’s nothing to write home about but I was enjoying the ride. Gameplay wise the puzzles are really nice, varied and require you to think (provided you turned off the hints, including them in a puzzle game at all is insulting but this was made in 2010); with some decent gimmicks like switching between characters and fakeout solutions. The final puzzle where you switch between two time periods was an excellent idea, shame it was rather short as was the ending but it’s almost always like that with these types of games. The game itself is pleasantly long. All and all, I was unexpectedly impressed with the game, it’s a great entry into the genre that rises above its humble origins and I would very much recommend it.

Recently I finished a small Doom wad Deafening Deals.wad, a very well made wad taking place in some sort of mall. I also completed said wad with an updated version of the old Moonman mod that was made by some guy featuring an /pol/ idealizes version of the orange man himself and Kyle the Kike killer rittenhouse. I don't think they are as well made characters as the original three, but I like the changea in speed to Zyklon Ben and I like some of the new effects/enemies

>>5947 Author also added a couple extra enemies such as a zombie chink giant, a nigger SS officer with song of the south esque sound effects, a beaner gunner, and my favorite, a yid that goes around screaming "oy vey your in our neighborhood goy RAPE!" and worms around the map like a faggot. He also fused the lost soul skin with the cyberdemon for a version of it which is a cyber tyrone comics, kinda cool. I guess, he didn't understand the original reference to the negro who was seething about moonman on jewtube back in the day, luckily it is still in the files so hopefully it can also spawn as well. Also one more thing, because of the nature of how Moonman Doom is obtained, by normalfags in particular, and the distinct lack of SS or Wehrmacht classes my guess is the modder updated an older version of the mod sadly, well nothing is perfect I guess. there is a chance he simply replaced them since both were never finished and were simply just Hitler at the time though Currently playing as Dup going through the Touhou Doom wad, its kinda find to hear dup spout loser, all the time whenever he kills a fairy.

>>5948 I also forgot about the most interesting mode added by the modder, absolute genocide mode, this game version makes it to where niggers respawn often, this allows for getting weapons, health, and ammo at a faster rate and in infinite amounts but is needed since hoards of enemies constantly refill the levels, kinda fun in for a bit in a novel way but it can get a bit unfair, going through a regenerating hoard of niggers, spics, and kikes with good old Zyklon Ben's improved super shotgun was a ton of fun though. You'd have to actually be good at video games and Doom in general to beat it which I'm not but I guess that is what save-stating is for retards like me with less gaming skill than the average zoomer. Either way had a lot of fun with this new version of Moonman Doom, glad to know some autist wanted to maintain it/add onto it.

Aladdin (SNES) – ah, the times when loicensed vidya used to be as good as you can get. A great little platformer from Capcom. And it really is little, you can beat the whole thing in under an hour, it's not at all hard compared to a lot of contemporary platformers. There are virtually no bosses or any particular hard spots minus the flying from lava stage, fuck that stage. The only real challenge here is to get all the collectibles but even then it's but a mild spike in difficulty. Kind of a shame, the controls are butter-smooth and the gliding mechanic is very satisfying. There was much potential here but they were likely under pressure by Yidsney to release it for the holiday season or something. At least it compensates for its short length with beautiful visuals and truly excellent 16-bit song renditions from the movie. And it's just all-around super comfy fun time that you can always jump right into for a quick session. I like how these games back then always incorporated original levels into the narrative to expand the playtime. For instance, you can't have a wacky Genie song number in the game but without it you'll miss an important story beat so they came up with a level inside the lamp where Friend Like Me plays and it's all about the Genie wackiness. Good stuff. Fun fact: this game was designed by Shinji Mikami, his last game before Resident Evil. Following that, I also played the Mega Drive version, which was made in the west. The really interesting thing about the game is its development history – all sprites were animated by the actual Disney animators who worked on the film itself, so in that regard this is the most authentic experience. And yeah, everything moves very fluidly and with that squishy-squashy Disney flair; it’s very impressive for the system. Everything else, not so much. Visually the game is kind of a mixed bag, there are some nice-looking locations but there are also some hideous ones and overall it looks way inferior to the SNES version, both technically and art direction wise. It also suffers heavily from that weird desaturated look that a lot of Mega Drive games have, like there's a drab filter over the screen and you just want to click the auto contrast button. But at least everything is sufficiently detailed. The music is not bad, obviously it’s all songs from the film but it’s kinda more aggravating than the SNES version, with the same track playing ad nauseam being more noticeable. Gameplay is also mixed, you do get to use a sword in this version but at the same time the execution is fucking terrible: there’s an annoying delay before every strike and it’s literally canceled if you try to attack while releasing the run button. They clearly didn’t understand how this whole thing is supposed to work and that you need precise control over your actions. At least this version is also pretty easy, so this wasn’t a game-ruining issue. It is overall more challenging than the SNES one, with actual bosses this time around, although platforming is nowhere near as demanding or satisfying. Tiny-ass bats are the game’s toughest enemy. Also unlike the SNES version where they added extra levels to extend the narration, here they just completely rewrote the story to suit the game and now it’s barely even coherent lol. This is an okay platformer more interesting for its production history than anything else, I recommend watching a documentary. It is also quite short, so there’s no reason not to check it out as well.

Magical Pop'n – a pretty solid action cuteformer. It’s a rather straight arcady affair as there’s no story to speak of, which honestly is a shame because I always enjoy the way they manage to incorporate lore and story into simple platformer/action games of the era. The game’s not too hard initially but does get progressively more challenging with the final stage being quite something. Even more so considering there is no save function or even a password system, and levels in this are quite long, easily up to an hour on your first playthrough. Something tells me not many little nips beat this game back in the day. Thankfully the controls are pretty tight. Visually it’s very appealing, with beautiful, nicely detailed backgrounds and special effects. Music was also a standout feature with some rockin’ tunes, especially later on. However, the elephant in the room is that they had some contemporary idol slut do the voice of the main girl and fuck is she terrible. It’s not like there’s voiced dialog or anything, how do you fail at basic cutesy sounds? This is the first time I've encountered such an issue. Though the game is still enjoyable, it’s definitely a bit bare bones and lacks something – some interesting gimmick to add more depth to the experience. You do get extra abilities you find throughout levels but they are almost entirely useless except for the two mandatory ones utilized in platforming. I guess the idea was that less skilled players will use these more often but since they consume resources you end up just ignoring and subsequently forgetting about them. Plus your sword strike is enough for virtually all enemies, including the bosses. Interestingly, this is one of the most expensive Super Famicom games due to its rarity.

>>6692 >cute witch girl goes on adventures Seems story enough to me anon.

Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Sister – a comfy little RPG for the Game Gear. It was quite alright. The game has a rather peculiar combat system that forces you to always be extra vigilant, though overall it’s not very hard; at least by non-normalfag standards and certainly for the era. The presentation was kinda interesting, at least to me. I haven’t played many Game Gear titles so it’s hard for me to judge how the game stacks up, but the graphics come off as a missing link between the 8-bit and the 16-bit hardware. Which I guess sounds about right for the handheld of the era. They aren't anything wild (the graphics) but you have to remember what the game runs on; to be able to play this on a bus in '94 would have been pretty impressive. The music is all around solid and was actually done by Hitoshi Sakimoto of whom I am a really big fan, so this was certainly a surprising revelation to accidentally find him all the way on Game Gear. The story is simple but pleasant enough to follow; could have been fleshed out more if this was released on a home console. The one downside that really bugged me is the absence of item description of any kind. You'll have to take the good ol' pen and paper and constantly make notes of this stuff. Which in itself is fine by me but considering the fact there is actual unremovable equipment (if you put in on you can't un-equip it) with ailments, you can get fucked over. I doubt that’s due to any hardware limitation and I can always appreciate some extra challenge but come on niggers, that’s just rude. It's not in the manual either. Overall, this was a pretty interesting experience. Game Gear feels like an underappreciated handheld, to be able to play games with such decent graphics and in color, when the only alternative was Gameboy, is undeniably impressive. Well, at least in theory, I know it ate batteries like nothing.

Monster World IV – an excellent platformer for Mega Drive, really loved this one. Despite being part of a series, it’s the only one from that prime 4th gen zone that made it stand out and caught my eye. And it's the only one within the series starring a cute girl, which makes it the best one in my book. Check out that clay figurine they made for the cover. I don’t know about the rest of the games but this one commendably strives to be more than a standard jump-n-slash platformer, there are some obvious RPG influences – you can explore a hub-town full of secrets and talk to people to get hints and some flavor text. You also have to find money to buy new equipment, sometimes having to go and grind for it. The story is very simple but pretty good for what it is, the cutesy lore is surprisingly interesting and I wonder if there's some continuity across the series. Visually it’s truly fantastic for a Mega Drive game, they tried their hardest to work around the system limitations and be on par with SNES quality as much as humanly possible. The game has a lot of those iconic SNES-esque pastel colors and the art direction is superb. The music is alright, there are a few nice melodies but generally it’s somewhere in the background and doesn't have strong enough themes to go along with the levels. And it definitely didn’t escape the iconic Mega Drive fart sound treatment. As a platformer, the game is pretty versatile – you can slash in any direction, jumpslash upwards and downwards and guard with a shield. As the main gimmick you get a floating pet blob-thing that is used in a variety of creative ways to platform and solve simple puzzles. Good shit. The game is not at all hard initially but, as if to compensate for that, the last few levels go over the top with platforming and get somewhat ridiculous. There’s also an impressive variety of enemies you encounter, although bosses are generally a joke, a few have a second form but you can just rush all of them. Sadly the waifu never returns in the series. Such great injustice.

i love video games.

>>7631 The two I knew about for GG were "Defenders of Oasis" and "Royal Stone" there was also a Gundam game I played to completion (either untranslated or I don't think story driven) and I also enjoyed briefly I think was called "Gamble Panic" There was just not a lot on the Game Gear that came out in the West that I could sample, without romhacking translation efforts that've since come to pass

>>8393 Game Gear was pretty cool in the day, but they didn't make enough unique games for it, and the ones they did are kinda stuck in that intermediate zone of not being as good as full-on 16 bit games.

>>8390 Yes.

Eternal Ring – I haven’t played the King’s Field series yet but from what I can tell this is basically King’s Field lite. This was a PS2 launch title and I don’t know whether FromSoftware wanted to or were asked to coincide the game with the launch, or whether they were testing 6th gen waters before the next mainline installment. Either way it’s pretty bare bones. The game’s main gimmick is a ring crafting system which is probably its best aspect; it’s pretty in-depth and satisfying: making rings, finding rings; rings with offensive spells, rings with defensive spells, status rings, there’s a lot to experiment with. The rings all also have very nice image renders. Other than that there’s really not much else to do, the game is pretty short and not particularly well designed; yeah it’s tough but also very primitive and easily exploitable - nothing can stand up to your circle strafing. The visuals are pretty weak and in fact the game kinda looks worse than King’s Field 3 on PS1, both in terms of art direction as well as actual tech. The game just has no mood or style to it at all. There’s also a plethora of bugs, with my favorite being projectiles hitting you through walls and ceilings. It’s so unfair I almost kinda like it, it completely changes the conventional vidya dynamics – “you thought you were safe behind that wall, faggot? Wanted to heal and regroup? Think again!” I did however like the HUD and UI, they are well designed and crisp. Despite the instruction manual and the game itself lying to you that the analog controls are supported, they are in fact not so you have to play with a d-pad and with PS2’s pressure sensitive buttons you have to jam hard the directional button for hours; my thumb needs an extensive therapy now. The music is pretty weak, it’s completely inappropriate 90% of the time with the same limp loop playing ad nauseam. Even no music at all would be a better choice. The story is barely present and sadly is also not very interesting, there’s just nothing to work with here. No good lore™ or anything either. You might be thinking I hated the game but despite all that I still enjoyed it, there’s a certain charm to playing something so hardcore and archaic, I just wish there was some incentive to play it other than meta. King’s Field 3 and 4 look much better in that aspect so maybe they are what I'm looking for.