Games Beaten 2024

[elricorico]

1. Sonic Lost World (WiiU)
2. Kirby and the Forgotten Land (NS)
3. Kinect Adventures (XB360)
4. Metal Slug (PC)
5. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES)
6 Modnation Racers (PSP)
7. Mario Kart 8DX - Expansion Pass (NS)
8. Splatoon! (WiiU)

9. Tactics Ogre:Let us Cling Together (PSP)

I finished TO:LUCT a couple of days back with nearly 60 hours put into the game. Probably came away with the worst possible ending, but I didn't want to let a guide make my choices, so I had to live with the consequences!

I have had this in my collection for a number of years. I had started to play once, but didn't persevere past the first couple of hours. A couple of months ago a good friend bought the "Reborn" version for PS5 which inspired me to give it another go, hoping we'd be able to talk about it as we played though. He only played the first couple of hours and I've now beat it.

The game does have a slow start; I kinda get why I lost momentum and why my friend stopped at about the same spot. However, once you break through the first handful of battles things really start to flow. This is a classic SRPG with an in depth job system, a highly political story, and plenty of choices that change the outcome of the story. There are multiple paths and numerous characters that may or may not join you depending on the choices you make. I ended the game with about 2/3rds of my characters being the generics I started with, but I do tend to get connected to characters and it takes something pretty special to knock them out of my party if I've been using them for several hours.

This game holds up well if you like SRPGs. There's not a lot of "flashiness" to it, but the core is solid. It is not easy, but also not brutal. There is a ton of content available, but you don't have to do much more than the main story if you don't want to. The only game in the "Ogre" series that I haven't beat is now the NeoGeo Pocket Color game. Once that gets a full translation I'm sure I'll play that one too.

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2024!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
2. Jackal (NES)
***3. Evolution: The World Of Sacred Device (SDC)***
4. Skies Of Arcadia Legends (GCN)
5. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (PS2)
6. Sunset Riders (GEN)
***7. Tactics Ogre (PS1)***
***8. Forza Motorsport (XBOX)***
9. Riviera: The Promised Land (GBA)
***10. Darkstalkers (PS1)***
***11. Splatoon (WiiU)***
12. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (NSW)
***13. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)***
14. 3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
***15. Puzzle Kingdoms (Wii)***
16. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan (GB)
17. Steel Empire (GEN)
***18. Super Mario Strikers (GCN)***
19. Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (SDC)
20. The King Of Fighters '95 (PS1)



I beat The King of Fighters '95 on the Sony Playstation 1 this afternoon!

As a Street Fighter fan, I have always been interested in trying out the SNK fighting games though I always have a bit of reservation. I have played several of the Capcom and SNK crossover games, so I know the characters and I know their move sets. However, some of the mechanics have always felt a bit different and the difficulty of the games can be absolutely brutal. So, every now and then, I like to dip my toe into the different games. One I had never tried were the King of Fighters series, which is like the all start version of the SNK fighting games. The first port to a home console was the 1995 version and that came to the Playstation 1, so I decided that would be a great place to start. Looking for a PS1 game, I thought it would be a good idea to decide if I could beat it or if I should sell it.

Thankfully, I was able to beat the game and it was quite enjoyable. It is a simple and standard fighting game with one unique twist in that you choose a team of three characters instead of your typical one versus one style. The teams are all set up and are mostly separated by country. Thankfully, I knew at least some of the characters, so I could choose the characters I knew the best. You then fight through 7 other teams and then a pair of characters as a final boss. It is mostly typical Street Fighter style moves and characters. Though, the Super Gauge at the bottom increases mostly if you hold a button instead of just doing powerful moves. I never pulled off a Super move, so it never really affected me. Because it is a SNK game, the graphics and pixel art is very sharp and crisp. It does have some loading times, but it still looks and plays quite well. With some nice voice acting as well, the presentation is top notching. Much like most PS1 fighting games, it is fairly bare bones, but it does the job rather well.

Overall, I still enjoyed delving into The King of Fighters '95. It wasn't as cheap as I thought it would be, though there were moments when the computer decided to win and just pull off amazing combos. Also, Rugal, the final Boss was quite mean. But, this was still a fun look into the series that I am curious to see more of. There is a plethora of games afterwards and as long as the quality and fairness stay positive, then I will be interested in trying out the series. If you love fighting games, this is another one to check out!

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2024 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
* indicates a repeat
1. Terranigma (SFC)
2. Eastward (PC)
3. Pulse (PC)
4. Lost Ruins (PC)
5. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (PC)
6. Dropsy (PC)
7. Call of Juarez Gunslinger (PC)
8. Pokemon Ruby (GBA) *
9. Secret of Mana (SFC)
10. Fire Watch (PC)
11. Bokura (PC)
12. Romancing SaGa (SFC)
13. Trials of Mana (SFC)
14. Castlevania Legends (GB)
15. SaGa 2 (GB)
16. SaGa 3 (GB)
17. Celeste (PC)
18. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (PC)
19. Celeste 64 (PC)
20. CB Chara Wars: Ushinawareta Gya~gu (SFC)
21. To The Moon (PC)
22. LOVE (PC)
23. Pikuniku (PC)
24. Night in the Woods (PC)
25. The Beginner's Guide (PC)
26. Suikoden (PS1)
27. Chocobo Dungeon 2 (PS1)
28. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Advance! Fire Adventure Team (Wii)
29. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Go! Storm Adventure Team (Wii)
30. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Aim! Light Adventure Team (Wii)
31. Line Attack Heroes (Wii)
32. The Quest for Camelot (GBC)
33. Tales of Destiny (PS1)
34. Metal Walker (GBC)
35. Frog Detective 1 (PC)
36. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (GBA) *
37. Frog Detective 2 (PC)
38. Frog Detective 3 (PC)
39. Super Robot Wars Alpha for Dreamcast (DC)
40. Brain Lord (SFC)
41. Lagoon (SFC)
42. Dark Hunter: Jou Ijigen Gakuen (PS1)
43. Ys: Books I & II (PCE)
44. Ys III: Wanderers From Ys (SFC)
45. Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (SFC)
46. Dark Hunter: Ge Youma No Mori (PS1)
47. Ys V - Expert (SFC)
48. Jaseiken: Necromancer (PCE)
49. Paladin's Quest (SFC)

50. Adventures of Lolo (NES)

This is a game I’ve owned on my Wii Virtual Console for aaaaages. I must’ve bought this 15 years ago at the very least. I have my Wii U hooked up at the moment to play some other games on my old Wii’s VC, and while I wasn’t in the mood for those quite yet, I figured I may as well try and knock out some other unbeaten games on there while I’m at it, and that’s how I found myself playing this old puzzle game once more. It took me about 4 hours to play through the English version of the game on real (virtual console) hardware, and I only had to look up one puzzle solution.

The fair princess Lala has been kidnapped by the great demon (known as the evil king Egger in Japanese), and it’s up to Lolo to travel through the evil lord’s insidious tower of puzzles to save her! It’s a very simple premise, and it works fine enough to set up the action at hand. No need for complicated stories when we have puzzle rooms to solve! X3

Adventures of Lolo is the first of HAL Labs’ Eggerland series to make it out of Japan (in a sense). Specifically, this is a combination of levels taken from the previous two Famicom Eggerland games released the year before. Lolo moves on a grid of tiles, and your objective is to collect all of the heart icons scattered around the screen, grab the treasure chest, and then carry on to the next stage (of which there are 50 in total). It’s not nearly as simple as it sounds, however. Lolo has all sorts of baddies out to stop him, and their methods of attack range from just blocking his path so effectively that the puzzle becomes impossible to solve, all the way towards just shooting lasers to outright kill him.

The puzzle design is overall relatively easy (compared to the more difficult of these games, at least), but that’s not to say the game itself isn’t challenging. I had to look up one puzzle’s solution myself, but that one’s solution ultimately just hinged on the fact that I didn’t realize that enemies couldn’t possibly walk on grass (which is something I probably would’ve known had I owned the manual). Getting through the other levels myself was a really fun series of brain teasers, and Lolo provides a great puzzling challenge of difficult puzzles composed of ultimately simple pieces.

The presentation is very cute and charming. While it’s a tad simple for a 1989 NES game in some regards (likely owing to the fact that it’s a mixup of games and assets put together in ’88 and earlier), it’s still by no means of poor quality. Lolo and friends (well, enemies, really) are simple but cute in a way that HAL would very much carry on to their upcoming Kirby series (where Lolo himself would even make an appearance!), and there’s never any issue with parsing what’s going on due to the graphics or otherwise. The music is also relatively simple, with there being quite few tracks (and basically only one main stage theme), but the music that’s there is still very fun and quality for what it is.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you’re a fan of more modern puzzle games like Baba Is You, then Adventures of Lolo is something you should absolutely check out. Granted, Lolo is actually something of an action game, so there will be points where you need to utilize timing or clever tricking of enemies to solve puzzles in a way that something like Baba Is You never has, but it’s still very much cut from the same cloth. While this may be quite an old puzzle game, it’s one that should nonetheless not be forgotten, because it’s still loads of fun (and on the Switch Online NES Service too!)

[Flake]

January
Injustice: Gods Among Us (Xbox Series)
Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch)
Fire Emblem Engage (Switch)
Knights of the Round (Switch)
Megaman: The Power Battles (Switch)

February
Metroid Other M (WiiU)
Metroid Zero Mission (WiiU)
Super Mario Bros (All Stars/Switch)

March
Xenoblade Chronicles Deluxe (Switch)
Mario Kart 8 DX Booster Course Pass (Switch)
Princess Peach: Showtime (Switch)
ACA NeoGeo Real Bout Fatal Fury (Switch)
Super Mario Advance (Switch)

April
Splatoon 3: Side Order
Mario vs Donkey Kong (Switch)
Super Mario 3D World (Switch)

May
Super Mario Wonder (Switch)
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter (Arcade)
Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of the Super Heroes (Arcade)
Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

Finish May with some great games. The original Marvel vs Capcom is one of my all-time favorite games. I know that MvC2 gets the most love but it's such a departure from the gameplay that started with Marvel Super Heroes that it feels like a completely different game. MvC1 still plays like an Alpha era fighter and the action is not so wild that it is hard to keep up with like MvC2. It's just an all around fun game with a great cast and no 'WTF?' picks like Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter had.

My quest to beat as many of the mainline Mario games as I can this year continues. This is my second playthrough of Super Mario Odyssey and I'm taking much more time with it this time. I still have this weird feeling about the tone and design of the game. It doesn't feel like a Mario game in some key ways. Something about the emphasis on movement over gimmicks, the music being a little out of place, the pop song at the end. The creepy humans in the game are also weird. It also feels like a smaller game than Mario Galaxy or Mario Sunshine. The large, open worlds are fun but they lack the reconfiguration aspect of other 3D Mario games. It's always the same field, the same area, the same gimmick. While it is nice that the game takes care to respect players time by not pushing you out of a level every time you obtain a macguffin, you also miss out on the variety of situations that the previous games had. Once you collect enough moons to move to the next level, there's not really any reason to hang out and collect more. Still, I like this game quite a bit.

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

1. Tormented Souls - Switch
2. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II - PC
3. Fantasy Empires - PC
4. Vagrant Story - PS1
5. Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor - PC
6. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - Switch
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project - NES
8. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - PS5
9. Tomb Raider Remastered - PC
10. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth - PS5
11. Unicorn Overlord - Switch
12. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: Solaris Showdown - PC
13. Princess Peach: Showtime - Switch
14. Fida Puti Samurai - PC
15. Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money - PC
16. Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts - PC
17. Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues - PC
18. Wrath: Aeon of Ruin - PC
19. Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road - PC
20. Super Buff HD - PC
21. SaGa Emerald Beyond - Switch
22. Blasphemous 2 - Switch
23. Trepang2 - PC
24. Homeworld 3 - PC
25. Blood West - PC
26. Marathon - PC

Marathon is a first person shooter for the Mac, developed by Bungie of later Halo fame. At the time, the pickings for FPSs on the Mac were extremely slim; they never got Doom, for example. Marathon is overall an ambitious game that suffers from poor level design, poor weapon design, poor physics, and two plots that are linked through coincidence, rather than having a proper segue. It does serve as a prototype for a bunch of ideas they would later use in Halo.

The titular Marathon is a colony ship built by holloing out one of the moons of Mars and sent on its way to Tau Ceti. You are one of the security guards, awaken from your cryo sleep due to the ship being invaded by an alien race. One of the ship's three AI cores serves as your mission control, giving you your objectives, although most of the time it is set dressing around "visit most of the map and kill most of the enemies". The bulk of the game is set in the corridors of the Marathon, though there is a segment where you perform a counter invasion on the enemy ship, which provides some visual and layout variety. In the middle of this, one of the other ship AI cores achieves sentience and starts to fuck around, looking for a way to gain a ship of its own. This is where the coincidence occurs. There is nothing in the game that indicates the sentience was triggered by the attack. Rather, the attack seems to have occurred right as the sentience was cascading, giving the AI a convenient vector to get out. A better plot could have been realized through the protagonist needing to remove the limits on the AI to try and fight back and it becoming sentient, or something similar.

The game is able to achieve room over room, and it's used well for the most part. However, the game is quite fond of various switch puzzles. You often will need to hit a switch to activate something far away, through twisting corridors. The game is also inconsistent in how switches reaction. Some switches are activate and stay activated. Some activate, then deactivate when the mechanism they turned on has finished its cycle. Some activate, then deactivate in a way desynced from the mechanism they turned on. And some can be activate repeatedly even though it doesn't do anything past the first time. Similarly, elevator control is very inconsistent. Some elevators go through a single cycle when activated, requiring you to engage in timing. Some will have a repeating cycle when activated. And some need to have a switch activated to get them to move in either direction, though they almost always have a switch at each end, so why wasn't this just a repeating cycle? Oh, and there's a hidden door in a deathtrap room. It's slow enough that if you think of looking for a hidden wall you can find it in time, but it's still a colossal dick move. Not to mention the multiple instances of forced damage from hazardous floors to progress.

On the physics end, the game only has a passing familiarity with the concept of gravity. You have straight on Wile E. Coyote physics, and it's required for moving through the game. One level requires you to ascend a series of elevators by running off the edge and turning around in midair to get to the next one, in violation of all sense. And there are segments where you are almost guaranteed to eat enemy fire because you need to jump into a hostile room, but your vertical view pan is limited and your fall speed is hilariously slow. Basically, any time you see a gap and think "man, I wish I had a jump key", try running off it. You'll almost certainly make it. Another weird component of the physics is that every weapon gives a noticeable amount of knockback to you. Now, when it's the rocket launcher, this almost makes sense (but again, you have feet to keep yourself planted). But when it's a gun firing bullets? What the hell?

Speaking of guns, they aren't great. Every gun has the same length long reload that you can't trigger early, so you often have to waste ammo to be prepared for a fight. The pistol is serviceable (moreso when you get a second), but the machine gun manages to have a worse spread than Doom II's super shotgun. The grenade launcher that serves as its secondary is nice; the game is extremely generous with ammo on it, so let loose. The plasma pistol is basically required for getting through the single stage that is set in outer space (which features the only time the oxygen meter in the HUD is used, even though it's always there), an it's the best tool for the heavily armored aliens, but the projectiles move barely faster than your run speed, so you're going to whiff with a lot of them. The flamethrower is very short range but is extremely damaging. It has two very major downsides besides the low ammo reserve. The first is it can't harm one common class of enemy (and weapon switch speed is nothing to write home about). The second is enemies killed by it have a special death, which overrides their existing one. Why does this matter, you might ask. Well, one late game alien drops a very good gun on death, but that doesn't occur when you flamethrower them. The rocket launcher suffers from too much damage splash in a game with tight corridors. And finally, we get to the one unambiguously good gun. The alien gun is rapid fire with a simultaneous spread (think of it like shotgun that fires like a machine gun) that can quickly take out every enemy. But you don't get an ammo display and can't reload it; you have to pick up a new one off an enemy corpse.

Marathon definitely does some stuff before it gets popular in the PC space, but it does none of it well. The most notable thing about it is the fact it was on the Mac; had it been a PC game it likely would have fallen into the dustbin of history with all the other FPS's that just weren't put together like Doom or Quake.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2024 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
* indicates a repeat

1~50

1. Terranigma (SFC)
2. Eastward (PC)
3. Pulse (PC)
4. Lost Ruins (PC)
5. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (PC)
6. Dropsy (PC)
7. Call of Juarez Gunslinger (PC)
8. Pokemon Ruby (GBA) *
9. Secret of Mana (SFC)
10. Fire Watch (PC)
11. Bokura (PC)
12. Romancing SaGa (SFC)
13. Trials of Mana (SFC)
14. Castlevania Legends (GB)
15. SaGa 2 (GB)
16. SaGa 3 (GB)
17. Celeste (PC)
18. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (PC)
19. Celeste 64 (PC)
20. CB Chara Wars: Ushinawareta Gya~gu (SFC)
21. To The Moon (PC)
22. LOVE (PC)
23. Pikuniku (PC)
24. Night in the Woods (PC)
25. The Beginner's Guide (PC)
26. Suikoden (PS1)
27. Chocobo Dungeon 2 (PS1)
28. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Advance! Fire Adventure Team (Wii)
29. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Go! Storm Adventure Team (Wii)
30. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Aim! Light Adventure Team (Wii)
31. Line Attack Heroes (Wii)
32. The Quest for Camelot (GBC)
33. Tales of Destiny (PS1)
34. Metal Walker (GBC)
35. Frog Detective 1 (PC)
36. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (GBA) *
37. Frog Detective 2 (PC)
38. Frog Detective 3 (PC)
39. Super Robot Wars Alpha for Dreamcast (DC)
40. Brain Lord (SFC)
41. Lagoon (SFC)
42. Dark Hunter: Jou Ijigen Gakuen (PS1)
43. Ys: Books I & II (PCE)
44. Ys III: Wanderers From Ys (SFC)
45. Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (SFC)
46. Dark Hunter: Ge Youma No Mori (PS1)
47. Ys V - Expert (SFC)
48. Jaseiken: Necromancer (PCE)
49. Paladin's Quest (SFC)
50. Adventures of Lolo (NES)

51. Adventures of Lolo (Famicom)

Don’t let that title fool you! Despite the identical title to the previous year’s NES game, this Famicom game is completely different! It’s a whole new game with all new stages to boot! Still wanting to play more Adventures of Lolo after finishing the first NES game the other day, I continued on to this one. I had actually meant to play the second NES game, truth be told, but upon learning that it wasn’t on the Switch Online NES service, I just opted for this instead. It took me around 9 or so hours to beat all 50 levels via the Switch Online Famicom service, and I did it without looking up any puzzle solutions and only using rewinds/save states on 2 particularly nasty levels.

Given that the Adventures of Lolo series already had a name in Japan, “Eggerland”, and this would’ve been the fifth game in that series (and the fourth one on the Famicom), it is completely beyond me why they chose to drop that old title completely and just reuse the title of the English localization they’d done the previous year. At any rate, it’s more Lolo goodness! The evil lord Egger has stolen Princess Lala once more, and it’s up to Lolo to solve another 50 floors of his tower in order to kick his lousy butt! As with the other Lolo games, we really don’t need much in the way of story to make this a good time. This does actually have some neat story/plot moments near the climax that make for a more memorable ending than the NES counterpart of the same name, but story or no story, the puzzles are fun all the same~.

And what puzzles they are! There are a few new mechanics introduced here, such as having lava stages (that you can’t float enemies across like you can with water) and self-destructing bridges (which burn up after a few seconds in the aforementioned lava), but most of the gameplay is the same old enemies and obstacles that we’ve grown to know over the earlier Lolo games. On the NES, we’d only had the original Adventures of Lolo up to this point, which was made of 50 easier levels from the previous two Famicom Eggerland games. This game on the Famicom, however, was clearly designed and balanced with the knowledge that people had already had over 350 levels of Eggerland on this console, so they needed to up the ante, and boy howdy has it been raised!

Granted, I haven’t played *that* much in the way of the larger Eggerland series, but at least comparing it to the NES counterpart of the same name, this game is incredibly difficult by comparison (something you probably picked up on given that it took me more than twice as long to beat this game as it took me to beat that one). I’m fairly proud of the fact that I was able to beat the whole thing without looking up any solutions, but the puzzles here aren’t just more difficult on your brain, they’re also just put together less fairly. That’s a word I don’t super like using, but I mostly use it because a very large amount of the puzzles are designed in such a way that the solution to it can’t be reasoned out from just looking at how the boards start out.

For example, many many solutions rely on killing an enemy and then blocking its original spawn point to force it to respawn somewhere else. These respawn points are completely unmarked, so you’ll just need to keep on engaging in trial and error until you’ve managed to figure out where to correctly place the blocks. A similar kind of thing manifests through how, as ever, currents in water aren’t marked, so you’ll just need to trial and error it up by pushing enemies into the water to see what happens. This is hardly the greatest sin in the world for a puzzle game, but going through all the steps in a level just to fail yet another part of trial and error can be very disheartening, and that’s especially true with just how difficult the execution is in so many of these stages. Far more than there ever were in the NES game from the previous year, there are quite a lot of stages where you are given *exactly* enough time to do something, and you have zero wiggle room to correct if you mess up.

I wanted a good idea of exactly how long the game would take to play if you were trying it legit, so a not small part of that nine hours I spent beating this isn’t just me staring at the screen thinking of what to do next (heck, one level was so hard I took a photo of the starting state and took it to work to look at and ponder during my lunch break XD) or trial and error-ing my way to the correct water current. A not insignificant amount of that time is just trying and retrying the same brutal timing puzzles over and over again. The first stage I cracked on my “no rewinds/save states” rule on was one quite late in the game with an absolutely absurd amount of instant death traps you need to time your way past. My heart goes out to anyone actually needing to do that on original hardware, because I had times where the Don Medusas actually managed to glitch through a half-width gap and kill me where they shouldn’t even have been able to, and that hardly made an already very frustrating stage more tolerable. It’s something I guess I should’ve expected by what can be considered the penultimate Famicom Eggerland game, but it’s still difficult enough that it’s far harder to recommend this outright like the NES counterpart is.

The presentation is still very familiar Adventures of Lolo, and anyone who’s played the NES game will be very familiar with how this game looks. This game, like that one, only has the one song that plays during normal play, but it’s at least a new song this time! (and it happens to be the one they’d go on to use the next year in making Adventures of Lolo 2 on the NES, in fact). The graphics are also largely unchanged, though there are a few little additions here and there. Some special levels use a new design for the rooms’ interiors, pushable blocks now sparkle to help indicate where they are, skulls are now whiter (to clearly indicate they’re skulls, I suppose), and those vile Don Medusas have gotten quite the face lift. It’s honestly so little it's barely worth mentioning (beyond the slowdown these new flashy graphics can cause in a level or two), but it’s still as good as it ever was, as far as I’m concerned.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This game is still simple puzzle fun like the NES game before it was, but it’s SO much harder, especially in the execution of those timing puzzles, that it’s far harder to recommend. If you’re really into puzzle games like Baba Is You and you want something challenging, Famicom Adventures of Lolo will certainly give it to you, but just be ready to use save states or rewinds to make those timing puzzles more bearable. The quality and care to detail of the earlier Adventures of Lolo is absolutely still here, but the difficulty is SO much higher that far fewer people are going to find it nearly as inviting and enjoyable as its English-language cousin.

[marurun]

Marathon is a first person shooter for the Mac, developed by Bungie of later Halo fame. At the time, the pickings for FPSs on the Mac were extremely slim; they never got Doom, for example. Marathon is overall an ambitious game that suffers from poor level design, poor weapon design, poor physics, and two plots that are linked through coincidence, rather than having a proper segue. It does serve as a prototype for a bunch of ideas they would later use in Halo.

Let me say up front that while I disagree strongly with a lot of this review, there's a lot of value in reading it, because I think that this will actually be the perception of many players today. Removed from its context it can, indeed, seem like just some has-been that was only notable because it was on the Mac. But there's actually more to the game than meets the eye. I did enjoy playing Doom single player much more than Marathon. The level design in Doom is definitely better for fast action. But I was a Mac user. How did I play Doom? It did, in fact, come to the Mac, 11 months after its PC release.

In the middle of this, one of the other ship AI cores achieves sentience and starts to fuck around, looking for a way to gain a ship of its own. This is where the coincidence occurs. There is nothing in the game that indicates the sentience was triggered by the attack. Rather, the attack seems to have occurred right as the sentience was cascading, giving the AI a convenient vector to get out. A better plot could have been realized through the protagonist needing to remove the limits on the AI to try and fight back and it becoming sentient, or something similar.

Marathon makes the bizarre choice to bury its best story bits in hidden terminals. Sometimes those terminals are accompanies by weapons and ammo, like a Doom secret, but sometimes there's just a juicy story or character revelation. These plot elements are not at all a coincidence, and the terminals are quite well-written. You have to take into account the viewpoint of the author to get at the truth.

Durandal was already rampant and was the one who sent a signal to the Pfhor. Durandal is the reason the Marathon was attacked. It was to facilitate its escape from the Marathon's computer environment in search of the ability to expand its resources.

Also, you are not merely a security guard, but an enigma of your own: an implied "missing", or at least not officially fully documented, Mjolnir cyborg. And guess who also knew that... Durandal. Let's just say there's a very good reason Marathon 2 is subtitled Durandal.

The game is able to achieve room over room, and it's used well for the most part.

So, the way the Marathon engine works, it's TECHNICALLY not able to do room over room. Rather, it does room in the exact same place as room. Meaning two rooms can inhabit the exact same space on the map, and you can use windows and openings to basically create portals between them. It's a really weird kludge and it mostly works. They also do some weird stuff with it to create phantom radar signatures with enemies in a completely closed off room in the same space you're in. So you'll never encounter them, but they throw off your radar. Additionally, later games will use them to create truly surreal levels, and multiplayer uses it to fantastic effect, with at least one arena which is two arenas with a raised walkway with viewports for shooting into the other arena inhabiting the same space. The walkway for the first arena looks out onto the open middle of the second arena and vice versa.

On the physics end, the game only has a passing familiarity with the concept of gravity. You have straight on Wile E. Coyote physics, and it's required for moving through the game. One level requires you to ascend a series of elevators by running off the edge and turning around in midair to get to the next one, in violation of all sense. And there are segments where you are almost guaranteed to eat enemy fire because you need to jump into a hostile room, but your vertical view pan is limited and your fall speed is hilariously slow. Basically, any time you see a gap and think "man, I wish I had a jump key", try running off it. You'll almost certainly make it. Another weird component of the physics is that every weapon gives a noticeable amount of knockback to you. Now, when it's the rocket launcher, this almost makes sense (but again, you have feet to keep yourself planted). But when it's a gun firing bullets? What the hell?

The Marathon and the Pfhor cruiser are low-gravity environments. Ships don't create full gravity, so you're basically floating. I think Marathon originated grenade jumping, and while Doom had a kind of rocket jumping, Marathon's take on it was deliberate rather than accidental and is the progenitor of modern rocket jumping.

Speaking of guns, they aren't great.

They sure aren't as visceral as Doom's arsenal, that's for sure. But I think the only weapon that's truly disappointing is the main fire on the assault rifle. Otherwise they are perfectly serviceable.

Marathon definitely does some stuff before it gets popular in the PC space, but it does none of it well. The most notable thing about it is the fact it was on the Mac; had it been a PC game it likely would have fallen into the dustbin of history with all the other FPS's that just weren't put together like Doom or Quake.

This is where I will absolutely disagree, but I also have a lot more context and time with the game. As a single-player game it isn't nearly as fun as Doom and it's not fast-moving. There are things you have to do with impeccable timing, and places where you have to move quickly, but the game isn't meant to be paced quickly in single-player. At least not until you've mastered the game and are going to attempt to speed-run it (and be a Vid-master). It was an FPS running in 640x480 resolution with 16-bit graphics that attempted to replicate low-gravity physics (it's not like Doom's physics were at all realistic, either, though they were better suited to a high-speed run-n-gun FPS). It used a novel room-on-room technique to create weird map oddities and achieve a room-over-room effect in places. It had many different story layers in well-written terminals. You experienced the surface level, but some hidden terminals uncover deeper truths and critical twists. It had meaningful alt fire and explosion jumping (there is some crazy nonsense you can do with the grenade launcher).

Beside the technical achievements and writing, Marathon's biggest draw was the multiplayer. It supported 8-player LAN multiplayer and the maps were all unique and optimized for speed. Marathon's multiplayer was thus fast-paced and chaotic and truly a blast. It used kill-to-death ratio for score instead of just kills, making those rockets and grenades a bit riskier, but no less fun.

Marathon wasn't Doom, to be clear. But it was influential, and not just for being a Mac game. It wasn't just another FPS Doom clone, either, though as you've demonstrated, at first glance it can be easily dismissed as such. Being on the Mac gave it an in, and because it got that in it got a number of second looks it might not have otherwise, and as a result its legacy was able to live on, not just in sequels and in Bungie's later games, but in the core of the very genre itself.

[MrPopo]

Critical plot points in secrets do not make for good story design. At most, you should have some reveal relevant to a sequel in a secret; not the parts that make your story actually decent.

And the grenade jumping in Marathon is garbage. The fact that it exists at all is novel for the time, but your massively constrained view means you need very precise setups, including one on a required path through a level (plus a second if you don't realize it's coming and preplaced yourself). Thank god the one absolutely required one has a shield charger so you can recover when you fail.

I get that they are using the "it's a low gravity environment" as a post hoc justification, but it feels like they turned down the gravity to solve some problems they were running into when they were designing levels. If the game had a jump key, now low gravity can create a proper interesting feel. Instead, it's just so they can let you cross gaps and then curse when you need to hot drop into an enemy room.

[marurun]

Critical plot points in secrets do not make for good story design. At most, you should have some reveal relevant to a sequel in a secret; not the parts that make your story actually decent.

I actually agree that they shouldn't have buried some of those revelations. That said, keeping the various characters' viewpoints in mind does mean the more obvious narrative becomes a bit more speculative and open to interpretation.

And the grenade jumping in Marathon is garbage. The fact that it exists at all is novel for the time, but your massively constrained view means you need very precise setups, including one on a required path through a level (plus a second if you don't realize it's coming and preplaced yourself). Thank god the one absolutely required one has a shield charger so you can recover when you fail.

It isn't my favorite. It's cleaned up a lot in Marathon 2. But it's important that it was there and intentional.

I get that they are using the "it's a low gravity environment" as a post hoc justification, but it feels like they turned down the gravity to solve some problems they were running into when they were designing levels. If the game had a jump key, now low gravity can create a proper interesting feel. Instead, it's just so they can let you cross gaps and then curse when you need to hot drop into an enemy room.

I'm more inclined to think they liked the feel of those physics settings and thought it made their feel a little unique and then designed for it. But I also agree that those choices do lead to some level design shenanigans. I think they had been playing their own game a bit too long without outside playtesting.

[ElkinFencer10]

Games Beaten in 2024 - 19
* denotes a replay

January (1 Game Beaten)

1. Army Men: World War - PlayStation - January 9

February (1 Game Beaten)

2. Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators S - Switch - February 18

March (3 Game Beaten)

3. Army Men II - PC - March 14*
4. Army Men: Toys in Space - PC - March 20*
5. Army Men: World War - PC - March 22

April (7 Games Beaten)

6. Army Men: Mobile Ops - Java-based mobile - April 10
7. Army Men III - PC - April 11
8. Army Men: World War - Land, Sea, Air - PlayStation - April 15
9. Army Men: World War - Final Fronts - PlayStation - April 18
10. Army Men: World War - Team Assault - PlayStation - April 20
11. Army Men: Air Tactics - PC - April 21*
12. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes - Dreamcast - April 28*

May (7 Games Beaten)

13. Army Men: Air Combat - Nintendo 64 - May 2*
14. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 - PlayStation 2 - May 4*
15. Portal Runner - PlayStation 2 - May 5
16. Army Men: Green Rogue - PlayStation 2 - May 13*
17. Army Men: Green Rogue - PlayStation - May 18
18: Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions - Gamecube - May 21
19. Army Men: RTS - Gamecube - May 29

18: Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions - Gamecube - May 21
19. Army Men: RTS - Gamecube - May 29



Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions continues 3DO's weird insistence on giving games different titles on different systems and, in this case, different regions. On PlayStation, this game is called Army Men: Air Attack 2. On PlayStation 2, it is also called Army Men: Air Attack 2, but only in North America; in Europe, it's called Army Men: Air Attack - Blade's Revenge. Here on Gamecube, it's called Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions. I don't know why they couldn't just pick a damn title and stick with it - at the very least, keep it consistent across regions for PS2 and just call it Air Combat 2 on Gamecube - but alas, here we are with a naming scheme that would put Nintendo's winners to shame.



Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions is a direct sequel to Army Men: Air Combat. Before I play a game, I often browse other players' and critics' reviews to see what they liked and disliked so I can pay attention to that and see if I agree. One of the things I noticed when doing that here is that - unsurprisingly - IGN is an utterly worthless source of reviews because their reviewer clearly didn't even play the damn game. They talk about how this is "the Gamecube version" of Air Combat "on Nintendo 64." Uhh, no. No it's not. It's a sequel. Yeah, there are some similarities because 3DO was pumping these games out like Russia pumps out war crimes, but they're absolutely not the same game. Baron von Beige, the primary antagonist in this game, didn't even appear in Air Combat. Literally the opening cut scene introduces him. It's like calling Star Wars: The Phantom Menace an expanded remaster of Star Wars: A New Hope. It's just objectively wrong in every sense, and I'm honestly surprised even "6/10 too much water" IGN would have such an egregiously lazy reviewer on their payroll. Anyway, this is why I make a point to play through every game before I review it or at the bare minimum play a good ten or twenty hours at least - it ensures I actually know what the hell I'm talking about.



Having established Green air superiority during the vents of Air Combat and Air Tactics, Tan dictator Plastro hatches a new plan to take the skies from the Green - ace pilot Baron von Beige, an obvious reference to Manfred von Richthofen, a World War I German fighter ace more commonly known as "The Red Baron" who was credited with 80 aerial kills. Baron von Beige is the only pilot who can match Captain Blade's skill in aerial dogfighting, although Beige flies a World War I style triplane. He also likely references Darth Vader from Star Wars as both are extremely skilled fighter pilots, both are shot down in the end of the movie/game, and both are (except for Vader's death scene) never seen or heard speaking without their masks. Regardless of whom he does or does not reference, Baron von Beige begins relentlessly attacking Green Army positions in an attempt to draw out Captain Blade. Blade, being a cocky Top Gun esque hot head, falls for the bait, and his entire squadron is shot down. Over the course of the game's 20 missions, you have to rescue your team (two or three times...), attack Tan factories and installations, and eventually confront Baron von Beige in a one-on-one dogfight (minus the infinitely spawning ground units that will attack you throughout the final battle).



Visually, the chips fall about where you'd expect; PS1 looks the worst with Gamecube and PS2 looking pretty on par. I thought the Gamecube version looked just a hair better, but it felt like the PS2 version ran just a little smoother in some places. They're so close, though, that both of those could just be in my head. Props to the PS1 version, though; while it looks pretty rough compared to the two 6th gen versions and doesn't run as smoothly, it looks a lot better than I expected to. It seems like 3DO finally figured out how to use the PS1's hardware pretty well by this point. It still doesn't look as good as some of Sony's first party games or some of the major big budget third party games on the system, but for an Army Men game on PS1, I was impressed. Sound design is also pretty good here. Music is solid, sound effects are pretty great, and the voice acting is good...in the context of Army Men, anyway. It's still cheesy as hell, but that's part of the series's soul. The most important part - the gameplay - is also solid. I don't know if I had some settings messed up or what, but the controls felt a bit clunkier and more awkward than they should on PS2. It controlled as fine as you could expect with a D pad on PS1, and it felt amazing to play on Gamecube, but something about the controls on PS2 just felt a little off to me, and I never could quite put my finger on why. Regardless, though, even with the unexplainable awkwardness of the PS2 version's controls, it doesn't take too long to get used to. This really is a pretty smooth and comfortable aerial combat game.



Army Men: Air Combat - the Elite Missions on Gamecube (or Army Men: Air Attack 2 if you're playing one of the PlayStation versions) is definitely one of the better games in the series. I'd personally put it at #4 - below Army Men II, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, and Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2; but above Army Men: Air Combat/Air Attack. I strongly recommend playing the Gamecube version if you can - between the visuals and the controls, it's definitely the best version of the three. Failing that, go for PS2. If, somehow, you don't have a PS2, a Gamecube, or a Wii, then PS1 is still a good option. Despite being the obviously weakest of the three versions both mechanically and visually, it still plays surprisingly well and is absolutely worth playing if you don't have access to one of the two 6th gen versions. The game had some bugs I noticed towards the end, but nothing that prevent me from progressing or that I found particularly irritating. It's worth owning this game not only to have on your shelf with your other Army Men games but to play and replay occasionally; it really is a genuinely fun time. It's one of three Army Men games on Gamecube, one of seven Army Men games on PlayStation 2, and one of ten Army Men games on PlayStation. If you're collecting for any of those systems or for this series, make sure this one gets a spot on your shelf; it actually deserves one which is more than some of its compatriots can say.




Real time strategy seems like kind of a natural fit for the Army Men series, but it took until the end of 3DO's life to make that a reality. 3DO didn't even release the Gamecube version two and a half years after the PS2 and PC releases; Global Star handled that port after acquiring the Army Men IP in the wake of 3DO's collapse. RTS games on console had long been attempted with several seeing releases on Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Saturn, but Army Men RTS was one of the first that really felt "right." Starcraft 64 was solid, but it didn't feel quite fluid enough with the controls to be on par with its PC counterpart; Army Men RTS, on the other hand, is the best console RTS in my opinion until the release of Halo Wars three and a half years later.



The game's story follows Sergeant Hawk and his Bravo Company commandos as they push across Tan lines to take out Colonel Blintz, a Green officer who defected to the Tan after being shot in the head. The game's story makes multiple allusions to the film Apocalypse Now which itself is based on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, even to point of Blintz's final line of dialogue in the game being "The horror, the horror," a direct quote from Heart of Darkness antagonist, Kurtz. I utterly loath Heart of Darkness thanks to the insanely deep analysis of it I had to do when I took AP English IV, but I can't deny its literary value, so referencing a film based on the book definitely pleases the academic in me.



The game features a 15 mission campaign that tells the story in addition to a set of "Great Battles" which are missions designed for building large bases and longer engagements as well as "Special Operations" which are missions with some very specific objectives. All in all, it's got a good bit of content with 23 missions over those three game modes. If you're playing on PC, there's also a multiplayer option, although since it relied on GameSpy, you have to jump through some hoops to get that to work. As you're building up your forces and fighting your way through the missions, you'll naturally have to keep an eye on resource management, a staple of any RTS game. While games like Age of Empires hit you with numerous resources to manage, Army Men RTS takes a page out of Starcraft's book; your only resources here are plastic and electricity both of which can be harvested from toys strewn about the world.



Army Men RTS actually looks pretty decent for a mid budget game, and unlike most of the series, it actually hit pretty good marks on each part of my checklist. The story is, while basic, well done to provide a context for the game's campaign. The visuals, as I just mentioned, look good. My only complaint there is the explosions; they're sort of a soft explosion like in the Toy Story 2 game on N64 if anyone played that instead of the more visceral explosions we saw in Army Men II and Army Men: Toys in Space. The sound design is good with some decent even if not stunning music and the solid voice acting that we've come to expect with the Sarge's Heroes universe games. Jim Cummings continues his performance of literally every single character in the game except for Vikki, and it's his performance, I think, that really elevates the game's sound design; the beneficial effect that just having a good voice actor can have for a game really can't be understated, and Jim Cumming's performance gives the game a light-hearted and humorous feel that fits the "toy soldiers" motif perfectly.



The biggest hurdle that RTS games on consoles always face is with control, and perhaps surprisingly give the mediocrity for which the Army Men series is known, 3DO and Global Star really nailed the controls here. It would take until Halo Wars three and a half years and a whole console generation later and developed with a significantly larger budget for a console RTS game to surpass Army Men RTS in controls. Deselecting units can be a little awkward, but selecting and directing your units feels completely natural, and that's the most important element of RTS control. Rather than having to select a specific building, you just hold the R button and can use up and down on the D pad to cycle through building menus to make the units or structures you want to build. Barbed wire fences also automatically appear connecting guard towers and fence posts as long as they're positioned properly. A lot of the things that were either cumbersome or omitted from past console RTS games have been creatively fixed here. RTS may not do much to shake up the typical RTS formula, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" has endured for so long for a reason.



Army Men RTS, while sadly 3DO's last Army Men game, is also one of their best Army Men games. I, personally, still prefer the tactics games on PC and the third person shooters on Nintendo 64, but as far as quality goes, RTS definitely deserves a place right beside Army Men II and Sarge's Heroes 2. The game's PC version has been updated and made easily playable on modern machines thanks to GOG, and considering that the PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, I imagine a lot of people still have one of those, making that version an option. I'm naturally partial to the Gamecube version given that that's the version I played growing up and is on a Nintendo platform, but I've tried all three versions, and there's not a bad choice to be had. Whether you go PC, PS2, or Gamecube (the real gamer's choice), Army Men RTS is a game that is worth checking out whether you're a fan of the series or not.