Games Beaten 2016

[Exhuminator]

1. Mega Man ZX Advent|DS|2007|platformer|8h|7/10
2. King's Field III: Pilot Style|PS1|1996|dungeon crawler|1h|8/10
3. Sleeping Dogs|360|2012|action-adventure|20h 45m|8/10
4. Sleepings Dogs: NiNP DLC|360|2012|action adventure|1h 22m|5/10
5. Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS|GB|1992|shmup|33m|8/10
6. Vattle Giuce|GB|1991|shmup|45m|5/10
7. MechWarrior 2 (Clan Wolf)|PS1|1997|mech sim|2h 35m|7/10
8. Gradius: The Interstellar Assault|GB|1992|shmup|27m|8/10
9. SolarStriker|GB|1990|shmup|23m|7/10
10. Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|45m|6/10
11. Dead or Alive (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1998|fighter|23m|5/10
12. Asuka 120% Burning Festival Final (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|26m|8/10
13. Soul Blade (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|18m|9/10
14. Trax|GB|1991|shmup|23m|7/10
15. Street Fighter: The Movie (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1995|fighter|36m|5/10
16. Warpath: Jurassic Park (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1999|fighter|17m|4/10
17. Psychic Force (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|figher|22m|7/10
18. Touki Denshou: Angel Eyes (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1997|fighter|27m|7/10
19. Advanced V.G. 2 (Arcade Mode)|PS1|1998|fighter|15m|8/10


20. StarHawk|GB|1993|shmup|1h 15m|3/10



Well here's an infuriatingly difficult shmup for Game Boy, that I wouldn't have beaten, if not for five short stages and infinite continues.

What makes it so hard? Three things. Even the smallest enemies take way too many hits to kill, so it's best just to dodge around them. Power-ups are very infrequent and when you do get one it's hardly even useful. And the bosses consist of parts that must be destroyed systematically, rather than all at once. That means if a boss has three arms and you have to kill all three to win, you can only destroy the arms in whatever order the game wants. That means the other two arms are invincible for no reason until you kill the right one first.

What does StarHawk have going for it? Half decent graphics I guess. Detailed sprites and a few nice parallax backgrounds. But the music is trash and the sound effects are jank. Controls are simple, and best I can tell both buttons just shoot, no bombs or special weapons to speak of that I came across.

StarHawk is a junky second rate shmup, I don't recommend it to anyone.


21. Nemesis|GB|1990|shmup|28m|7/10


Nemesis is a rather competent early shmup for Game Boy. If you've played Gradius you know what this is like. The Game Boy version is very accommodating with lots of ways to setup your game. You can do a straight run through all five stages, or pick any stage to start from. You can start with 1 life or 99 lives if you wish. You can have auto-fire or no auto-fire, it's up to you. Graphically Nemesis looks pretty good with detailed sprite work. The OST is above average and has that 90s Konami flair we all know and love. Bosses are impressively large and fun to take down. If I have any complaint about Nemesis, it's that the game is really short. The stages are compact and you'll run through them before you know it. However, you could always try to do so with 1 life on hard mode with no auto-fire. I bet this game would be your nemesis then for sure.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Toro! Let's Party! (PS3)

This was a game I saw recommended on a few Playstation importing threads I looked at, so I got it on sale off of Play Asia thinking that it'd be a silly party game, and it didn't disappoint. Especially because, like Okami on PS3, it's completely in English if you have your system language set to English.

It's a collection of about 20 mini-games, some are single player and some are multiplayer, although I haven't tried it on multiplayer. They're all fun at least passably, and they're good fun for a quick laugh, mostly the ones that use the 6-axis motion controls and make you do really drastic actions in a coordinated but frantic fashion. They're not for everyone, but I enjoyed them. My favorite was the one where you've gotta use both arms to "cock your arm back" to pound Mochi for a moon-cat.

My favorite part of the game by far was just the sillyness and lighthearted (mostly) nature of the story itself. If you know stuff about Japan and tropes in its media, I think you'll have a similar enjoyment, but I was just constantly giggling to myself with all of the stupid situations that Kuro and Toro get themselves into, not to mention all of the ridiculous costumes that Toro wears X3. The story if also further enhanced by all of the great Engrish, because the last-half of the story chapters' translation AIN'T great XD

If you're just looking for a fun silly romp, it's good fun. I'll have to give some sort of update on the multiplayer component sometime (hopefully I can test it out this weekend).

Perhaps you too, can "BECOME A BOWLING!"

[ElkinFencer10]

I just finished Life is Strange....and that game was hard. I don't mean hard as in difficulty. I mean hard as in it was emotionally exhausting and hard to endure because of how it hits you RIGHT in the feels, especially in the last two chapters. Fucking masterpiece, though, in my opinion. If a game can make me cry, it's a damn work of art in my book.

[Fragems]

1. 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (DS)

Okay first off let me say this if you don't like games where you have to replay them to get the "true ending" this game probably isn't for you. However if your willing to give it a chance and sink sometime in it the story is actually quiet good.

Basically it's a survival game with 9 characters forced to solve a variety of puzzles within a 9 hour time limit in order to save there lives. The majority of the story is spent reading with the occasional break for a point and click adventure puzzle most of which are centered around mathematical or matching puzzles. The story branches quite a bit and there are a total of 6 endings available 4 bad, 1 safe, and 1 true. To experience the the full game requires multiple play through as due to the branching story you can only experience a little more then 1/3rd of the available puzzles in a given play through. You also cannot experience the true ending without playing at least twice since the true requires that you first achieve the safe ending. I however recommend playing without a guide at least at first since there is some useful back story buried within the bad endings as well which while not entirely necessary fills in some gaps. However if you hit the same ending twice do yourself a favor and look up the requirements for the safe ending and true ending so you don't end up playing the game through 6 times like I did since I hit 2 of the bad endings twice . Overall if your looking for a good visual novel on the DS give this a shot but be patient with.

Another tip is to be sure to utilize the fast forward option in new game plus just hold down the right button on the direction pad and it will speed through everything till either a puzzle or new dialogue pops up and once you have the puzzles memorized most of them can be completed in under 1 minute so being forced to replay them isn't to bad. You can honestly speed run most of the game in 1-2 hours after your first 2 play troughs.

Honestly I hated it during my third, and fourth play through as well as the end of the second since it kicked me in the balls by giving me the same ending as my first play through . However the safe ending play through was better since it added quite a bit to the story and the true ending play through was downright awesome since it basically felt like it doubled the length of the game. Altogether I probably sunk between 16-20 hours into it over the past two days and I'm kind of sad it's over.

At least I have Virtue's Last Reward to look forward to, but it looks like it's changed quite a bit. Really hoping they tie up some of the loose ends from the end of 999 and that the "Old friends from 999 return to join a new cast" isn't just referring to brief cameos.

[flash1987]

So is it kind of visual novel/prof Layton?

[touchofkiel]

It's basically a text adventure, with choices leading to different (sometimes very different) paths. In between those there are "escape the room" puzzles... generally pretty easy. I think I might be more forgiving of the mediocre writing if the puzzles were more interesting...

Game beat, sort of: Mutant Mudds Deluxe. I beat the first basic levels... which felt like a major accomplishment. Now I have to collect all the thingies from those 20 levels... and then find the secret levels within those 20 levels... and then the 20 ghost levels... and the doors in the foreground would appear to be 4 more levels? Not sure yet. But the game is kicking my ass, those first 20 levels were pretty damn hard (or maybe I just suck)... so I'm not sure yet if I'm going to consider this one "beat" or not.

[flash1987]

1. Grim Dawn (PC)
2. Dragon Ball GT: Transformation. (GBA)
3. Sunset Riders (MAME)
4. Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Fightcade)

NEW

5. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows over Mystara (MAME)
6. Mystic Warriors (MAME)

A friend came around and we've been enjoying the old arcade games so blasted through another 2 brilliant titles.

The D&D game is great fun and I like the classed and choices of paths in a hack & slash game but they also left us with some questions/issues.
How exactly does levelling work? One character didn't seem to level at all and there didn't seem to be much benefit.
Same for items, how do you know if something is better than another?

Mystic Warriors was as much fun as Sunset Riders the other day. 2 of the best arcade games for a quick run through I find although I think SR works slightly better with the old west setting and better humour.

[touchofkiel]

Mystic Warriors was as much fun as Sunset Riders the other day. 2 of the best arcade games for a quick run through I find although I think SR works slightly better with the old west setting and better humour.

Cool, I'll have to check it out. I recently replayed Sunset Riders myself... fun little game, though I think the arcade version in particular suffers from the arcade quarter-gobbling cheapness.

As for the D&D games... haven't played them myself. I've been debating whether to spend the money on the rare JPN exclusive Saturn version... or the physical copy for PS3 (also JPN exclusive)... normally I'd buy the PSN version, but recently I've become wary of buying as much digital as I used to. Must be that retro racket by influence

[flash1987]

Nice write up. Mystic Warriors is a little more forgiving as you get 3 hits per life and 2 lives per credit but still can feel a little cheap sometimes and unless you learn the game you're definitely going to go through a lot of credits. We used around 40 credits between us! I don't mind that in multiplayer as its still good fun but when playing solo it isn't fun just endlessly throwing in credits to get through a game.

[touchofkiel]

Heh, I just realized I made a note to play Mystic Warriors... though I've never heard of it... must have been when I was reading up on Sunset Riders for the blog.