Games Beaten 2017

[Exhuminator]

Time for the Sega CD Dungeon Explorer! It's fantastic.

I've got it ready to go. I'm currently playing through Dark Chambers on 7800 at the moment though.

[ElkinFencer10]

132. Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes - Dreamcast - November 30

I'm pretty surprised you beat it so quickly. I know it's not too many missions, but I remember a few of them being really difficult. Especially with the Goufs. I was a preteen when I played it, though.

In terms of the combat speed and dynamics, it's kind of important to remember that no one in your team is a newtype. You've got a unit of regular infantry soldiers operating as best they can with the resources their provided. There was a bonus disc in Japan that could be sent for after beating the game, that allows you to play with the RX-78. The value re-release in Japan includes it, and now I'm feeling like playing that version to unlock it.

Ohhh, that's right! I hadn't considered that there weren't any Newtypes on the team. That makes a LOT of sense in the context of movement speed and reaction and such.

The Goufs were tough as balls, for sure, but Mission 4 and Mission 9 were the only ones that really gave me trouble. There were a couple I beat by the skin of my teeth, so to speak, but those two both took me multiple attempts.

[pierrot]

Time for the Sega CD Dungeon Explorer! It's fantastic.

I've got it ready to go.

Excellent!

The Goufs were tough as balls, for sure, but Mission 4 and Mission 9 were the only ones that really gave me trouble. There were a couple I beat by the skin of my teeth, so to speak, but those two both took me multiple attempts.

Good work, soldier!

If you're up for more Gundam on your Dreamcast, I would definitely recommend Renpou vs Zeon DX. It's a great arcade style arena fighter, and feels amazing to play with an arcade stick. It's also the progenitor of the Gundam Vs arcade game series--there was an earlier arcade release, but it's the same game without the extras of the DX version. There's a port for the PS2 also, that made it to the US as Federation vs Zeon, but I had that version back in the day, and it made me think the game was trash up until I played the Dreamcast version. It was on the NAOMI in Arcades, and it shows in the difference between the console ports.

Another import game of note, that has similar gameplay to Rise From the Ashes, except underwater, is Ao no 6-go: Saigetsu Fumachibito. Only trouble is that the rest of the game plays like a visual novel adventure game. It's great for fans of the Blue Sub #6 OVA, but definitely full of Japanese text.

[Segata]

Great game! Fun music. Sharp detailed 2D visuals. Fast and fun gameplay for a beat em up. The only real downside is no character selection but it's ok. You are basically Arnold from Predator fused with Arnold as Terminator. Makes no sense but who cares you play as 80s muscle action hero cyborg and punch robots to death. What more do you need in a video game?

[Sarge]

I remember seeing this in an early Game Informer and thought it looked cool.

[Exhuminator]

112. Dark Chambers | Atari 7800 | 1988 | 7/10



Dark Chambers was developed by Sculptured Software and published by Atari in 1988, for the Atari 2600, 7800, and 8-bit computer. Dark Chambers is an overhead view arcade game similar to Gauntlet, though slower paced. You are an explorer in an underground maze; your goal is to submerge through 26 different levels (labeled A - Z), and collect as much treasure as you can. The player has the ability to shoot offensive attacks to defend against monsters. Each level has a hidden ladder down to the next level, often locked behind a door, which the player must find a key for on the same level. As the player explores, their life bar slowly depletes, and the player must find food to refill it. Monsters also crawl each level, and when touched deplete the life bar as well. Monsters are spawned from destructible monster generators. Monsters come in a variety of shapes and strengths, and when you shoot a tougher monster, it will transform into the next weaker monster. Eventually a creature will become the weakest variant at which point it can be destroyed. In addition to the creatures and treasures, other items that can be found in the maze are potions (to restore health), poison (drains health), swords (increases attack power), guns (increases your firing rate), traps, shields, and bombs (shoot them to kill all enemies around). Dark Chambers can be played one player or two players simultaneously, and offers two modes of difficulty, standard and advanced.



Whether or not someone will enjoy Dark Chambers boils down to how much said person enjoys mazes. The primary difficulty in Dark Chambers is navigating its mini-labyrinth levels, fast enough not to starve to death, while crowd controlling monsters. The standard difficulty mode isn't too hard, I beat it on my second try (first try I got all the way to the last level and died ). However, if someone chose the advanced mode, I would recommend only doing that two players. When you die, it's straight Game Over, no continues or passwords here folks. I found Dark Chambers to be enjoyable as a simple dungeon romp, but there's plenty of room for improvement. For one thing, there's no background music. Another loss is that enemies do not leave random drops behind when they die. An ending screen would have been nice, as beating Dark Chambers simply loops back to the first floor again. Perhaps the greatest additional feature would have been to have randomly generated levels. But for what it is, a slower simpler Gauntlet, Dark Chambers is not half bad. Crawling around the meandering dungeon layouts, collecting keys and food, was strangely relaxing. Until Level Y that is. Level Y hates you and everyone you know.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Atari ftw!

[ElkinFencer10]

If you're up for more Gundam on your Dreamcast, I would definitely recommend Renpou vs Zeon DX. It's a great arcade style arena fighter, and feels amazing to play with an arcade stick. It's also the progenitor of the Gundam Vs arcade game series--there was an earlier arcade release, but it's the same game without the extras of the DX version. There's a port for the PS2 also, that made it to the US as Federation vs Zeon, but I had that version back in the day, and it made me think the game was trash up until I played the Dreamcast version. It was on the NAOMI in Arcades, and it shows in the difference between the console ports.

I'll be on the lookout for Renpou vs Zeon on Dreamcast. Looks like it runs anywhere from $40 to $60, so it may get put on a wishlist, but I'm definitely gonna check it out eventually!

[noiseredux]

1. Fire Emblem Heroes (Android)
2. Sara Is Missing (Android)
3. Civilization V (PC)
4. Portal 2 (PC)
5. Halo Wars 2 (PC)
6. Mario Run (Android)
7. Super Blackjack Battle 2 Turbo Edition (Android)
8. Diablo III (PC)
9. Madden NFL 18: Longshot (Xbox One)
10. Ultra Street Fighter II (Switch)
11. Layers Of Fear (Xbox One)
12. XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen (Xbox One)

I don't know how they keep improving upon XCOM, but here we are. War Of The Chosen was fantastic.

[Exhuminator]

113. WeaponLord | SNES | 1995 | 4/10



WeaponLord is a 1995 fighting game developed by Visual Concepts for SNES and Genesis, published by Namco in USA, and Ocean in EU. (Japan was too smart to accept this crud on its shores.) This 2D fighter seems conceptually inspired by The Savage Sword of Conan, Heavy Metal Magazine, and Jim Lee era comic books. The plot is about a handful of weapon wielding fantasy warriors trying to kill each other, I guess. Presentation wise, WeaponLord is a bit of a hot mess. Characters are amateurishly drawn yet overly detailed, apparently created by an artist with zero practical knowledge of homosapien muscle anatomy. (Although the artist understood how to draw female assets clearly enough.) Moderately decent backgrounds lazily mirror one side to the other, displaying a keen lack of effort (except for the stage with pulsating demon nipples). The "music" attempts to sound ominously dire, but sounds more like monotonous uninspired sludge. Sound effects are overly loud, sounding silly in their boisterousness. The blood splatter effects are well done though.



WeaponLord is really hard. Not in a fun way either. The AI isn't good so much as it is completely overpowered and cheesy. Often AI opponents will mercilessly pummel the player so quickly, the player has zero chance to break free or counter. Even worse, it seems that enemy hits always take precedence over a player's own attacks. There's a small delay from button mash to actual attack, which throws off the "feel" of the gameplay. It's almost like you're fighting under water, or perhaps drunk. Apparently this lethargy even confuses the combo counter, as it never seems accurate. Hit detection is quite haphazard, with hit boxes arbitrarily changing shape and size depending on the current sprite frame. These wonky hit boxes will throw off the player's fighting cadence in a hurry. And when the player dies, and they will die a lot, there's some serious trash talking to read. The AI mocking is real. When you do beat your AI opponent, it honestly feels like pure luck rather than any measure of player skill. There's only six initial warriors to choose from, and they all play about the same. After you beat the game the ability to play as a seventh character is possible, but requires a password to use.



I can admire WeaponLord's ambition, but not its misguided execution. I have read the sluggish animations were put into place to optimize WeaponLord for slow dial-up connections for XBAND service, timing parry animations and character turnaround time to account for lag. Considering 99% of people playing WeaponLord wouldn't be using XBAND, that was a really dumb decision. Reviewers of WeaponLord during its own day, panned the game, most complained about the choppy animations and unbalanced AI. So if you seek a brutally (read: unfair to the player) difficult fighting game, or you're just easily amused by loincloth warriors slashing each other bloody, WeaponLord accomplishes that much for you. WeaponLord even has gory beheadings, shamelessly aping Mortal Kombat (MK was vogue at the time). However, if you're looking for a well designed, legitimately fun, good looking/sounding, technically accomplished fighter, don't even bother with WeaponLord. This sloppy wannabe banked everything on blood and boobs, honestly, but even that isn't enough sometimes. WeaponLord's designers Goddard and Winstead, believe that Namco ripped off their weapon based fighting concept for the basis of the Soul Edge/Calibur games. I don't believe that personally, but if you choose to believe it, then at least one good thing came out of WeaponLord's awkward existence.