by frobos
Showing 1-10 of 35 items
Completed on January 1st I tried feeding my played games worksheet to ChatGPT and ask it to suggest me SNES games I hadn't played before that would be up my alley. In the list it provided, Magic Sword stood out as a game I don't think I've even heard of before. Trying it for a couple of minutes, I decided to commit a couple of playthroughs to it, and after a few tries I was able to triumphantly beat the game on my last chunk of life with my son at my side cheering me on. The concept of Magic Sword is pretty simple for an action platformer, go through the 50 floors of the tower and get to the bad guy at the top. This, along with the different power-ups and allies that you can pick up and level up along the way, provide a nice structure for each run that almost makes the game into a rogue-like. The controls are responsive and the enemies almost all go down pretty fast (except for those damn bats that swarm you). The bosses can be annoying because they will often corner you with no chance of escaping without taking damage, but it's up to you to plan ahead and not put yourself in that position. Playing the game with my son at my side was a real thrill. We did three runs together, and I was barely able to beat the game on my last try. He especially liked pressing the buttons between the floors to make the characters go up faster. We strategized on my choices of allies and speculated on which door would contain traps. Magic Sword was a great arcade-like experience on the SNES and I loved my experience playing it. Nothing special here, just good old fun. 7/10
Completed on January 4th Stellar Blade is an ... interesting game. It's a very competent clone of Nier Automata, if you only copied its exterior layer. It's got hot women wielding cool sword in revealing outfits, a devastated earth, androids that you think are human, and the chill soundtrack with lots of signing. Even with all that generic shell, Stellar Blade still had something going for it that made me compelled to see it through. The combat system is pretty good. It's a mix between a souls game and a character action game like Bayonetta. There are lots of systems and moves to learn, but everything is pretty simple to handle in the midst of battle. The story was mostly forgettable since it rips Nier Automata so much. The overall plot doesn't come through as very sincere or like it has anything interesting to say. The moment-to-moment story points are well directed and narrative moves at a brisk pace. One thing that annoyed me were the data logs that you found on dead sentinels. They all said the same thing over and over again, it was tiring to read about their suffering and hopelessness in 200 different ways. The open world exploration segments were a bit frustrating to me. There is a lot to see and do, but sometimes the checkpoints were very far apart and weren't even working until you activated a solar tower through different quests. Because of that, I didn't bother to do ALL the sidequests, but I still did a good portion of them. In the end I had fun with the game, and it somewhat makes me more likely to play a game from a developer I've never heard about before. 8/10
Completed on January 8th (Novice, Amateur & Professional Circuits) For some reason, I've always been familiar with Jet Moto. I think I played the first of second game on a couple of PS1 demo disks. It never made a big enough impression on me to seek the game out as a rental or ask for it as a gift. Playing the game today, I understand why it stood out at the time as a PS1 classic. The personality of the characters, the physics of the game and the craziness of the track layouts make out for a truly unique game. And I say unique, but not "amazing". The game has a ton of potential, but shoots itself in the foot by having track layouts that are borderline hostile to the player with tons of bottomless pits and narrow bridges that appear at the last second after climbing a hill. I completed the game on the first four difficulties, and didn't try the fifth one for real. I was already struggling at Professional to finish in a good enough spot to stay ahead in the standings, requiring me to sometimes restart a races dozens of time. The last few tracks I was finishing close to last because it just was too hard to avoid all the pits and stay ahead in the race. Jet Moto 2 has an amazing foundation for a racing game - you really feel like you are in complete control of those big flying vehicles. It's too bad that it's wasted on those bizzare tracks. 7/10
Completed on January 11th (Novice, Amateur & Professional Circuits) After playing Jet Moto 2, why not try the third game? It was developed by a different team, and it shows. There are a couple of things that hit you when you first start playing the game. First, the feeling of the riding the Jet Moto is way off. The vehicles feel like they don't weight anything and just fly off at the smallest bump. The graphics are also much more choppy, which is accentuated by the super fast speed at which the racers now go. Fortunately, the tracks seem to be well adapted to that new physics engine and most of them are less frustrating to race on than what was in Jet Moto 2 (at least for half of them). There is much less use of the magnetic grapple and there are some areas that are too open, making it possible to fall from a cliff and lose progress because of loop back to an earlier part of the level instead of falling to your death. I still had enough fun to play all three difficulty circuits, but it's certainly an inferior game to its predecessor. I'm now curious to track down the original game and complete the trilogy. It could potentially be the best game in the series if it keeps the physics engine of the first game without the outlandishness of the later tracks. 6/10
Completed on January 15th I'm 80% sure that I completed Yoshi's Island to completion back in the SNES days, but I never played through it again in the years after. I've fired up the first few levels in an emulator a couple of times, but never dedicated myself to completing the game again. At first, I was trying to go for 100% to unlock all of the bonus stages, but it quickly got too frustrating with some of the more challenging levels and the fact that you have to end the stage with 30 stars. The bonus stages also didn't seem to be worth the hassle, so I completed the rest of the game as best I could without worrying about 100%. What stuck me the most is how smooth the gameplay is. I don't know why, but I thought this game would run at sub-60 FPS because of all of its graphical effects. But no, it never skips a beat and always looks gorgeous between the beautiful art direction and the amazing sprite and 3D effects used. I loved the gameplay in terms of the moves and abilities for Yoshi, and most of the platforming levels. Some other levels were more puzzle or labyrinth oriented and those weren't as fun. I sometimes got stuck for a couple of minutes not knowing where to go, and this didn't feel very good in a Mario game. Overall the game was great fun, felt like a real big adventure, but didn't amaze me as much as the other highlights of the Mario series. 9/10
Completed on January 19th (Novice, Amateur & Professional Championships) I tried Beetle Adventure Racing a bit randomly, looking for a good N64 to play. I was aware of its reputation as being and underrated N64 racing gem, but never actually played it. After just a couple of hours, I was able to complete its three difficulties and had a good time doing it. Driving the Beetle feel good and natural. The game has pretty realistic physics with a forgiving handbrake that lets you course correct when necessary. There are also lots of fun jumps and nitro power-ups to vary the gameplay from time to time. The courses are all pretty long, with most tracks taking more than 2 minutes to complete a single lap. They are filled with shortcuts that you can take to save a few extra seconds or to pick-up bonus crates (I never went for those, the requirements of getting 100 points seemed to steep). The other racers were fun to race against, since each race goes for a long time you never feel like you felt too far behind, even after a big mistake. Overall a fun N64 racer, but a bit less memorable than I thought it would be. 8/10
Completed on January 24th (Novice, Standard & Experts for four regular cups) I was never a fan of F-Zero growing up. I don't think I ever played the original SNES game or the N64 sequel at the time. I saw the game in magazines, but the super fast racing didn't appeal to me (like most racing games at the time, actually). A couple of years ago I played through F-Zero on the SNES and I fell in love with it. The smooth mode 7 graphics coupled with excellent physics and a great sense of speed made the game very enjoyable and "tactile" to play. The soundtrack elevated the experience a lot, also. Moving on to F-Zero X, I didn't have the same immediate connection with the game as with the original. With the newly 3D environments, the game feels a bit more empty, sterile, and the music, while not bad at all, wasn't an upgrade over the original. Still, the enhanced sense of speed made me want to play more and more. I loved how varied the tracks were and how their design were diverse in terms of layout but also just track shape and hazards. On that note, I felt like the hazards like jumps, gravel and ice were used too sparingly, they were super fun to navigate around. I tried a couple of racers, but in the end I completed the whole game with Captain Falcon. I had a hard time winning with anyone else. In the end I enjoyed the game enough complete all tracks on Novice, Standard and Expert, but not enough to make me go through the impossible Master mode. 8/10
Completed on February 9th The N64 is one of the most nostalgic consoles for me, and I feel fondly about most of Rare's game. Every release from the studio was an event and the big R logo was like a golden seal of quality. I only rented Jet Force Gemini a couple of times, and ended up owning the game later in life. I never made it super far though. I loved the setting and the basic gameplay, but the structure of saving tribals, switching characters and revisiting planets didn't make much sense to me. So dropped the game on many occasions. Coming back to the game with my adult brain was a bit bittersweet. I still appreciate everything I used to love about the game. The cheesy sci-fi setting, the bombastic soundtrack, the huge arsenal of weapons, and the satisfying gameplay. However, committing to finishing the game also meant diving in those larger systems of saving tribals and replaying level with other characters. To be blunt, I hated that part. This is a great game that is almost ruined by the end game fetch quest of getting all 12 ship parts and EVERY tribals in every planet. There are many factors that make this an unbearable chore. First, you have to save every tribals on a single run. Meaning that if you discover in the middle of the level that you need another character to get all the tribals, you have to start over with that character. If you accidentally quit the level and enter a new zone, you have to start over. The tribals can also be killed by friendly or enemy fire, but that didn't happen to often to me. The ship parts are also pretty well hidden. I used a guide to finish the game so it wasn't too hard, but it was definitely a slog to complete. It's too bad because I loved first half of the game where you discover and explore all those planets and ships. The special segments like the Floyd missions, the racing sections and the boss fights were also super well done. Glad I'm finally done with this one, but I don't think I'll ever replay it to completion. 6/10
Completed on February 23rd (Every Gold Medal Including Bonus Levels) Ever since it came out, I have always loved Blast Corps. I remember renting the game multiple time and playing the first few levels and having a blast. I would hope that the person who rented the game before may had gotten pretty far so that I could see the later levels. That's how I learned that you eventually visited the moon. I owned the game for a number of years, but never took the time to learn the game and try to get as far as I could. This time I did just so, and had a blast doing it, pun intended. The vehicles weren't all equally fun to use, but most of the levels were so short that it didn't matter much. I especially loved how the game didn't waste your time. You could first focus on the runaway truck objective, complete the level, and the come back to 100% the collectibles (and the game remembered what you had collected on your previous rounds, making you only pick up what you left). It made the game so fresh to play, you never had to repeat the same objective twice. Talking of objectives, I'm glad I took the time to go for all gold medals and play every bonus level, because as you move on in the campaign, the settings get pretty wild. There are puzzle-like levels, a Pac-Man clone, tons of races and even some platforming challenges. The variety made it feel like no two levels were even close to being similar. Blast Corps is one of the best example of the creativity that games had during the 90s. A simple concept taken to the limit and packaged with AAA flair. Rare at its best. 8/10
Completed on Februrary 28th (Normal, Rogue) I had a couple of encounters with Diablo around when it came out. I think my first experience was playing the PS1 version cooperatively with a friend. I remember the game save taking a lot of space, so he had to buy a dedicated memory card for our playthrough. We never finished the game, but from what I remember we got pretty far. I also remember playing the PC version that I got free from a magazine. That's right, just before the release of Diablo II, a PC magazine was giving the full version of Diablo 1 as a bonus. I started a couple of playthroughs, but never made it very far. I also tried to play Diablo II a couple of years later, but my computer wasn't fast enough. Fast forward to today. I was craving a bit of PC gaming so I decided to start a new game in Diablo. I chose the Rogue (as I usually do in the original) and committed to my campaign. After around 12 hours, I reached the deepest reaches of the labyrinth and defeated Diablo in mortal combat. One thing that I especially appreciated this time was the atmosphere and the setting. The music sets the tone so well when you're in town, and the voice acting is also pitch perfect for the quiet horror story that it tells. I got more invested in the few side quests that are available and I felt like they fleshed out the story pretty well. I would have like to have a few more to do though, I feel like there was only 5 or 6 during the whole game. In terms of combat, the game was fine, but my Rogue playthrough left me a bit on my appetite. In the end, if you don't use magic, the combat is a bit repetitive. I'd be curious to go through the game again as a sorcerer to see how interesting it can be fighting with the whole assortment of spells. Talking of spells, I was able to use magic items to boost my magic stats and learn a ton of spells. I almost didn't use any offensive spells since they were rarely more efficient than storming the enemies with my arrows, but I had fun with the few support spells available. On thing that got tiring real fast were the back and forth town portal runs to town to identify the loot, sell unwanted items and stock back on potions. Sometimes it was fine, other times I felt like I was going to town every 2 minutes. One thing that made all this more bearable though was the persistent aspect of the world. Everything gets saved, from remaining enemies, to dropped items in dungeon and in town. This makes your adventuring through the labyrinth more meaningful as you clear floor after floor. It also prevents grinding, forcing you to commit to a build. Diablo is still a very fun game to play today, but it's obviously just the start of the idea. The potential of this franchise is bursting at the seems in this game, making me want to play Diablo II sooner than later. 8/10