Out with the New and In with the Old

I finished Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge on Friday night, closing out my pile pledges for the month, even if Hemidal doesn't believe I finished The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King like I did at the beginning of the month.

Overall I really enjoyed Monkey Island 2 and thought the new graphics and commentary were mostly well done. The humor and charm are still there 20 years on and the new interface makes some actions easier, but others harder. My biggest beef with the game was something that makes logical sense, but led to some frustration: items that "activate" only after other conditions had been met. In one very memorable instance I attempted to pick something up but the game wouldn't let me. Several events then happened and I became totally stuck until I turned to a walkthrough which informed me that I had to pick up what I couldn't pick up earlier..../facepalm. Other minor issues included the ability to accidentally skip a cut-scene, some spoilers in the commentary, and not being aware that "hint" and "highlight item" keys had been added to the game until the credits rolled and I received achievements for never having used them. Also, I hope that the card-catalog puzzle/guessing game never makes it into another game.
These aren't really major quibbles, however, and MI2 has aged remarkably well. The new graphical overhaul really cleans some things up and changes some things in interesting but unimportant ways (for example the Sam & Max costume is replaced by the Purple Tentacle and a woman turns into a man complete with different voices).

But wait! There's more!

I also, after 19 years, beat Mega Man X on the SNES, and in doing so have finished all MM games in my collection (2, 3, 4, 9, and X). Strangely, the difficulty curve of MMX can best be described as a valley with mountains on the left and right. When starting out, Mega Man is horrendously underpowered and, as usual, picking the correct order of bosses is crucial. As health, health tank, armor, and ability upgrades begin rolling in, most stages and bosses become a cakewalk - until the end of the game, that is. The Sigma stages, even with full upgrades and the hadouken (which I only used once - against Sigma because it felt oh-so-good) were extremely challenging/frustrating and one boss in particular made me hate spiders even more than I already do.
The 16-bit graphics and sound were a nice upgrade and the controls were very precise...once I realized that I didn't have to double-tap in a direction to dash... The formula is certainly fun, but aside from buying MM10, I think I'm done with the series for the forseeable future.

That brings me to 6 down for January with no additions

AUs_TBirD wrote:

I also, after 19 years, beat Mega Man X on the SNES, and in doing so have finished all MM games in my collection (2, 3, 4, 9, and X). Strangely, the difficulty curve of MMX can best be described as a valley with mountains on the left and right. When starting out, Mega Man is horrendously underpowered and, as usual, picking the correct order of bosses is crucial. As health, health tank, armor, and ability upgrades begin rolling in, most stages and bosses become a cakewalk - until the end of the game, that is. The Sigma stages, even with full upgrades and the hadouken (which I only used once - against Sigma because it felt oh-so-good) were extremely challenging/frustrating and one boss in particular made me hate spiders even more than I already do.
The 16-bit graphics and sound were a nice upgrade and the controls were very precise...once I realized that I didn't have to double-tap in a direction to dash... The formula is certainly fun, but aside from buying MM10, I think I'm done with the series for the forseeable future.

That brings me to 6 down for January with no additions :)

MMX2 is quite enjoyable too, but the original X is still my favorite of the X series. I'd say you've got all the Mega Man bases covered (+ MM4) based on playing MM1-9 and MMX1-5 (thanks to the collections lest gen) except maybe Mega Man and Bass (Forte in some territories). That one was pretty fun, but I've never been able to find a legit way to play it. Also, don't let anyone tell you you are missing anything by not playing the original Mega Man. It's not really worth it to go out of your way to play.

Vanquish (360) has been... uh... vanquished. With work, getting our house ready for sale and a general apathy towards gaming this month I'm glad I was able to finish at least one game. I may try and finish up Ghost Trick or Limbo (I've heard it's short) in the next couple of days, but we'll see.

As for Vanquish, it was a good enough time for the 5 or so hours it took me to finish, but the story was just awful. It actually reminded me of the Gears of War series, although, at least those had multiplayer. Well worth the $20 it cost me, I just don't think I would have been very happy with it as a full priced game.

Whew! Darksiders finished, with 10 minutes to spare, eastern time.

That's right 4 pile games this month! And a 5th new one down before it could ever sniff the pile.

No February thread?

Well I pretty much struck out this month. Opted to try and plough through Skyward Sword instead of DX but didn't manage to finish it. Hopefully next month!

mrtomaytohead wrote:

That one was pretty fun, but I've never been able to find a legit way to play it.

There was a GBA port in the early years of the handheld. I'm really surprised Capcom never put MM&B on Virtual Console. Or packed it into any of the collections for that matter.

And I failed to kill off Bioshock... something always happens whenever I think I have enough time to devote to gaming and nothing else...

February, then!

shoptroll wrote:

Well I pretty much struck out this month. Opted to try and plough through Skyward Sword instead of DX but didn't manage to finish it. Hopefully next month!

mrtomaytohead wrote:

That one was pretty fun, but I've never been able to find a legit way to play it.

There was a GBA port in the early years of the handheld. I'm really surprised Capcom never put MM&B on Virtual Console. Or packed it into any of the collections for that matter.

I never had a GBA until I got married and the wife had one. I guess I have a DS Lite that would play it, but I'd rather it on a non-portable.

I'm aiming to finally finish Borderlands.

Skyrim qualifies for Pile status this month (February).

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Skyrim qualifies for Pile status this month (February).

Already?? I only managed to beat Oblivion last month. Now I'm trying to decide between the first Dragon Age or getting suckered in to the latest RTS bundle (Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II) on Steam.

I was out of town yesterday and today. I just got back home. I'll get a February thread up tomorrow morning.

So I officially failed, but my excuse is that I had a massive research project that was due on Feb 1st (rather than the 15th, as I previously believed), necessitating some heroic hours to get done.

But Deux Ex will fall in the month of February, oh yes it will.

Looks like I failed Bastion thanks to getting side tracked by the last few achievements in Rage (really wanted to free up the HD space) and Gun (no idea why I wanted them so bad other than having been lacking only 3 achievements for years now). I am only a few minutes from finishing the first play-through of Bastion though.