A general topic where peeps can express their opinions without having to necro a 5 year old thread. Give praise or vent your frustrations about games that were released eons ago. Spoilers are okay; just warn the reader it's coming. So I'll start...
AHEM.
I just completed Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure and oh my god what the hell was I thinking?! This is, by far, the hardest game I've ever played. It may seem like a simple platformer with a Puzzle League style puzzle game attached to the bottom screen, but no, it is not. Halfway through this game, around World 3, there is a difficulty spike unlike any I've ever encountered. And it only gets worse from there. By the time I hit World 5, the difficulty was dialed up to 11 and I was stuck on 5-1 for quite a while. Each level after that was hell on earth and that's coming from a diehard platform gamer.
Near the end of the game, there were pit falls everywhere and an enemy placed on every platform I could jump to. Each level had about 2 to 4 "murder rooms" where I could not progress until I killed every enemy that spawned on the screen. Eventually, there were throwing waves of brutes at Henry and with him maxed out, he barely did any damage to them. I was constantly switching between screens to power up secondary weapons, regain health or I'd desperately attempt to fill it for "Tea Time!". It was brutal. All it took was one mistake to screw up.
This is probably the first game I've enjoyed but could never, ever recommend to anyone. And I'm technically not finished since I recently discovered that secret levels exist that are the hardest in the game. Harder than all that hell I went through... NO. Just, no. Well, maybe. Later. Two years from now. I hate you.
I've got a couple of gaming "accomplishments" like that but I can only think of one right now which is that I beat the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PS2. The one that had the horrible, almost broken camera system that you couldn't manually control that made most of the stealth sections extremely difficult and frustrating. To this day, I still have veteran gamers raise an eyebrow at me when I say I beat that version. I found the camera very frustrating but just managed to get through it because I really wanted to see the game and at the time, I figured that was going to be the only way to do it. I'll see if I can think up any of the others. I think they're mostly from retro titles.
I remember some praise about Snake Eater. Well, that and you could eat alligators. Did any of the future releases address that issue?
--
I was able to snag a copy of Monster Tale for the DS. This game was developed by the same folks who created Henry Hatsworth. From what I've read, it's a Metroidvania-Lite with RPG elements. I'll write up some impressions after I dive in.
Also, I'd like to try a Paper Mario game. Never played one before, heard great things about 1000 Year Door... yet the first game (N64) is available on the Virtual Console. Is it worth getting at this point?
I thought Monster Tale looked interesting. Please do share.
I loved the N64 Paper Mario years ago, but I have no idea how it would hold up now. I'm sure 1000 Year Door would still hold up just fine. Also consider Super Mario RPG on Virtual Console
Snake Eater was a very good game but the camera system just made it substantially harder than it needed to be. There was an updated version releases for PS2 and the version in the HD Collection also has the updated camera. Metal Gear Solid 4 just ditched the top down view entirely.
This thread is going to be perfect for me in the next year as I figure my gaming budget will not reappear until at least some time next year.
Currently playing Civ V (gifted to me on Steam thanks to KidC's pre-order of X-COM) and feeling like it's pretty much the an exact copy of my memory of Civ 2. I'm having a real hard time figuring out why people love and replay these games over and over. I get that once you sit down to it, you just keep playing one more turn. But my reasons for going for that next turn are not good. Whatever I want to accomplish feels almost always out of reach and everything always seems to take many times longer than it should. I'm also basically falling into a just win by crushing everyone by military force type playthrough. It's too easy to do it, and I just don't feel compelled to bother racing after other victory conditions. The parts of the game generally seem good, and I manage to play it for long stretches each sitting, but it leaves a poor aftertaste upon reflection.
Also, on a positive note, I loaded up Batman Arkham City 2 days prior to it's 1 year release anniversary and I've beaten that, and despite all the issues, I enjoy the moment to moments and overall experience.
I finally finished AC:Brotherhood the other day. I liked it overall but was unhappy with a few small details towards the end.
Spoilers!
First: I could not find a way to finish Subject 16's memories without starting the point-of-no-return memory chain that ends the storyline. So I had to go back and do it after Desmond has been stuck in the animus. After I finish the puzzles, before going in to do the platforming section, I hear the team talking to Desmond... including Lucy, who Desmond had just killed 15 minutes beforehand. Maybe I just didn't see the path to get me there before completing the main story, but it was a little anachronism that took me out of it a bit.
Second: During the final sequence when Ezio is chasing Cesare to the castle and you have to climb the siege towers, the camera pulls out into this fixed perspective with tower in the middle of the screen and the panoramic vista behind it. It looks beautiful, but functionally it was bullsh*t. The camera angle alters the controls and makes the simple task of climbing the ladders arduous. At one point, since I couldn't move the camera, I didn't realize I was climbing the wrong side of the ladder, which makes exiting the tower impossible. I might have realized my error earlier if the controls for the previous 2 ladders hadn't been terrible.
Unfortunately, those two little issues happened right at the end of the game and soured my overall opinion.
I've got a couple of gaming "accomplishments" like that but I can only think of one right now which is that I beat the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PS2. The one that had the horrible, almost broken camera system that you couldn't manually control that made most of the stealth sections extremely difficult and frustrating. To this day, I still have veteran gamers raise an eyebrow at me when I say I beat that version. I found the camera very frustrating but just managed to get through it because I really wanted to see the game and at the time, I figured that was going to be the only way to do it. I'll see if I can think up any of the others. I think they're mostly from retro titles.
I must has been in a gaming daze, because I beat that version also and never was annoyed at the camera. I never touched subsistence until last year. :/
I just completed Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure and oh my god what the hell was I thinking?! This is, by far, the hardest game I've ever played. It may seem like a simple platformer with a Puzzle League style puzzle game attached to the bottom screen, but no, it is not. Halfway through this game, around World 3, there is a difficulty spike unlike any I've ever encountered. And it only gets worse from there. By the time I hit World 5, the difficulty was dialed up to 11 and I was stuck on 5-1 for quite a while. Each level after that was hell on earth and that's coming from a diehard platform gamer.
Near the end of the game, there were pit falls everywhere and an enemy placed on every platform I could jump to. Each level had about 2 to 4 "murder rooms" where I could not progress until I killed every enemy that spawned on the screen. Eventually, there were throwing waves of brutes at Henry and with him maxed out, he barely did any damage to them. I was constantly switching between screens to power up secondary weapons, regain health or I'd desperately attempt to fill it for "Tea Time!". It was brutal. All it took was one mistake to screw up.
If only you'd heard this earlier...
I'm also basically falling into a just win by crushing everyone by military force type playthrough. It's too easy to do it, and I just don't feel compelled to bother racing after other victory conditions.
I always find it interesting when people mention something like this about Civ V, I find Military Victories extremely difficult to pull off, I tend to fall into the old pattern of getting a Cultural Victory. I find that ridiculously easy and find myself struggling to achieve the other ones, to the point that I was actually putting off building the Utopia project in one game so I could get the Science Victory achievement.
I've got a couple of gaming "accomplishments" like that but I can only think of one right now which is that I beat the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PS2. The one that had the horrible, almost broken camera system that you couldn't manually control that made most of the stealth sections extremely difficult and frustrating. To this day, I still have veteran gamers raise an eyebrow at me when I say I beat that version. I found the camera very frustrating but just managed to get through it because I really wanted to see the game and at the time, I figured that was going to be the only way to do it. I'll see if I can think up any of the others. I think they're mostly from retro titles.
I only ever got to play that version. I don't recall having any issues with the camera really, but then I was still in super MGS fan mode at the time. I was probably on my twentieth run at MGS 2 by then. It would have taken a lot more than a crappy camera to ruin my enjoyment of MGS 3
Parallax Abstraction wrote:I've got a couple of gaming "accomplishments" like that but I can only think of one right now which is that I beat the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PS2. The one that had the horrible, almost broken camera system that you couldn't manually control that made most of the stealth sections extremely difficult and frustrating. To this day, I still have veteran gamers raise an eyebrow at me when I say I beat that version. I found the camera very frustrating but just managed to get through it because I really wanted to see the game and at the time, I figured that was going to be the only way to do it. I'll see if I can think up any of the others. I think they're mostly from retro titles.
I only ever got to play that version. I don't recall having any issues with the camera really, but then I was still in super MGS fan mode at the time. I was probably on my twentieth run at MGS 2 by then. It would have taken a lot more than a crappy camera to ruin my enjoyment of MGS 3 :P
Oh man, Subsistence was waaaay better than Snake Eater. I played PXA's copy for a while before buying subsistence and the difference is huge. MGS3 is my favourite Metal Gear game by a large margin, and that wouldn't have been the case with the original release.
As for me. God hand is a game I get around to every 8 months or so, every time it's an enjoyable playthrough, and I'm slowly ratcheting up the difficulty, even though the "level" system keeps things pretty difficult on its own.
For various reasons I won't go into at the moment, I had to play Damnation from start to finish while chronicling every bit of it.
It was a horrible experience. So much so that I can't think of any game I struggled to beat more than th-oh wait, nevermind. Star Ocean: The Last Hope. The worst part about that one is the final boss takes over an hour to complete, and I died the first time. Talk about one long ass endurance test capped off by another endurance test.
In comparison, there aren't many games that are as much a trial to finish as those two were.
Actually, I kind of thought of another one. Strider for the NES. This wasn't the version from arcades and the Genesis that most remember, it was a completely different game that was more of a Metroid-like action/adventure, only terrible. I got it in a bargain bin at the local Compucenter and since I didn't get games often, ended up beating it. It was one of the buggiest, glitchiest games I ever saw on the NES, the story and world made no sense at all (though apparently the game's based off an anime and if you understood that, it made a bit more sense) and the translation was terrible. I honestly can't remember most of it but I remember it took me forever to get through and even though I generally disliked the game, I felt super accomplished actually getting through it.
mrtomaytohead wrote:I'm also basically falling into a just win by crushing everyone by military force type playthrough. It's too easy to do it, and I just don't feel compelled to bother racing after other victory conditions.
I always find it interesting when people mention something like this about Civ V, I find Military Victories extremely difficult to pull off, I tend to fall into the old pattern of getting a Cultural Victory. I find that ridiculously easy and find myself struggling to achieve the other ones, to the point that I was actually putting off building the Utopia project in one game so I could get the Science Victory achievement. :)
I'm Playing on one of the lower difficulties. And military victory is the most obvious and easy to understand way to win, thus the easiest to point at and say that's what I'm going to do. All there is to that victory is wipe the opponents off the map using the military units you need to make anyways. Just make more of them. The others I think I know what I have to do, but I'm not sure, and i don't feel like I have a good grasp on how long it would take to get there. But as my posts mention, I don't have the slightest idea how long it takes to do anything in that game.
I just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the first time. The parts that it does right - the hacking, the stealthy gameplay, and the various conversational paths - were interesting and kept me going. The few things it did poorly it did really, really poorly.
Case in point: Early in the game I was infiltrating a base full of military forces. I was doing pretty well with the stealth, but at some point I tripped an alarm and was discovered. Luckily I had just uncovered a weapons cache, so I hunkered down there and fought off the security forces that were sent my way. There were now two guards left in the area, and as I hid their alarm levels gradually deteriorated from Alarmed to Suspicious to Normal. I proceeded to exit the level as those two remaining guards shuffled casually along their prior patrol routes, blissfully ignoring the violently murdered corpses at their feet, corpses that resulted from the GIGANTIC FIREFIGHT ONLY 5 MINUTES AGO. That pretty much destroyed the immersion for me.
Case in point 2: the boss fights. Ugh. Thanks for presenting me a game where I can pursue a strategy of subterfuge and trickery, and then forcing me into scripted positions where said strategy is completely nullified. If ever there was a game that absolutely did not need boss fights, this was it.
That reminds me of my experience with one of the Hitman games. I knocked out a postman and stole his clothes to infiltrate a mobster's house. However, the postman woke up... And went about his normal routine, not wearing any clothes, and no one said a word about it or thought it was odd.
It wasn't fun to win against a system that stupid, so I quit playing.
This is straight up Metroidvania.
Whoa, what? What system is this for again?
I was able to snag a copy of Monster Tale for the DS
Sold.
There are very cool nods to Castlevania and Metroid in both the soundtrack and the scenery with some Mega Man sprinkled here and there.
Double sold.
Those two issues almost kill the experience of an otherwise solid Metroidvania game. I'm near the end and will attempt to power through it. As much as I dislike those problems, the rest of the game is so damn fun that I can't put it down.
Less sold, but still sold. Was this a retail box release or a downloadable?
This a great thread, I might just alert the people in the 12 month pile thread about this. We're always finishing off old stuff in there. Hope you won't mind the traffic
Also, I'd like to try a Paper Mario game. Never played one before, heard great things about 1000 Year Door... yet the first game (N64) is available on the Virtual Console. Is it worth getting at this point?
I didn't finish the first game (not because it was bad, just got distracted) but 1000 Year Door is amazing. Yes, get it and play it. The graphics hold up perfectly since it's all "paperized" anyway, and it's one of the most fun and creative JRPGs.
Looks like Monster Tale is only $15 on Amazon right now. Those negatives you described don't sound like things that would bug me that much.
http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-...
I think I'll check it out.
So I was expecting Assassin's Creed: Revelations to be a bit of a slog since everyone says Brotherhood is the best, but if anything Brotherhood reminded me how the franchise can be tedious while Revelations reminded me of everything I like about the franchise. Of course, I think this is mostly because Revelations felt like a smaller game, or it was just easier to ignore a lot of the side quest things.
In the end, though, the most fun I had in Revelations was finding the different view points, collecting the 10 pages of memoirs and then all 100 Animus artifacts (even though after the first 25 or 30 it had little purpose other than to get an achievement. But hey! They give you a map after finding 50). It also felt like there were fewer missions that wanted to force me to play a specific way, even though there was certainly plenty of that as well. The story also felt like it had purpose, whereas I wasn't sure what Brotherhood did aside from introduce the Brotherhood gameplay (summon Assassins, send them off to do missions) and ...
Kill off the Pope for good this time (I think?) and make Claudia an Assassin herself
What it comes down to is Assassin's Creed is best under two circumstances.
1) You can freely roam around finding stuff, putting to full use all your parkour capabilities (including finally remembering that parachutes exist and they can be useful).
2) You are given a target and then the game says "try and kill him somehow".
The game is worst, meanwhile, when they want you to simply try and recreate some Hollywood experience flawlessly. Actors require rehearsal to get it right, and even then it is through the trick of editing and other things that it looks so flawless. If I can't see your goal immediately, then I'm going to screw up. And if I screw up, I would rather not be punished until I get it right. You're a game designer, not Stanley Kubrick.
In any event, Brotherhood felt like the real slog while Revelations was a lot more fun. I feel like anyone should just skip over Brotherhood if they want to catch up after 2, which I guess makes me the odd one out since nearly everywhere I look (be it this forum, the Conference Call or other websites) claims Brotherhood was the best one so far.
Mystic Violet wrote:This is straight up Metroidvania.
Whoa, what? What system is this for again?
Mystic Violet wrote:I was able to snag a copy of Monster Tale for the DS
Sold.
There are very cool nods to Castlevania and Metroid in both the soundtrack and the scenery with some Mega Man sprinkled here and there.Double sold.
Those two issues almost kill the experience of an otherwise solid Metroidvania game. I'm near the end and will attempt to power through it. As much as I dislike those problems, the rest of the game is so damn fun that I can't put it down.Less sold, but still sold. Was this a retail box release or a downloadable?
I definitely have to look this up. They used to make a new castlevania every damn year on the ds, and it was awesome. Now they stopped and I need my hit damn it.
That just reminds me of how much I enjoyed having Bowser on my party in Mario RPG, and how bad I kept feeling that they used him as the finger->butt of many jokes.
I started on The Last Story tonight. The one thing about longer games is the beginning always tends to take a while to pick up speed. I put an hour in and just didn't want to play any more. Not that it was bad, but I just wasn't feeling it yet. I can't remember how long it took for me to really get into Xenoblade, so I'm going to give it a bit more time.
999 or Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
This is one of the best games on the DS. The story has some plot hooks to say that even if you fail, there are reasons to replay the game. The little 'bad' endings will give you some sort of inkling to the true ending. I recommend it entirely. It is an adventure game and a good one too.
That reminds me of my experience with one of the Hitman games. I knocked out a postman and stole his clothes to infiltrate a mobster's house. However, the postman woke up... And went about his normal routine, not wearing any clothes, and no one said a word about it or thought it was odd.
It wasn't fun to win against a system that stupid, so I quit playing.
"That stupid" or "that authentic"? Neither snow nor rain nor concussions nor having all of their clothes stolen stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
God bless that digital postman.
Pages