Summer Games Challenge 2025 - GET EQUIPPED

[pierrot]

Just a quick update on my Summer Games Challenge. I beat Yoshi's Story last week. It's decent and I had fun with it, but overall I think it's a bit of a letdown in comparison to Yoshi's Island on the SNES. I'll eventually play through the game a few times to get through all the levels for completion. Curious about others takes on this one.

I played this a number of years ago now, but I kind of liked it. Not a lot, but it was all right the first time through. I never bothered to play it again to play more of the stages, though.

Also, I started up Crusader of Centy on Friday. Really enjoying it so far. I came across the Sonic cameo already, which was a fun scene. I was wondering when I'd come across the blue blur. I just beat the octopus boss and reached the Burn Daisy area.

Man, I love Crusader of Centy. It gets kind of dumped on for being a Dragon Slayer clone (associative property of video games), but the collecting of little animal buddies and mixing their abilities is pretty fun. The platforming adds some cool twists to the gameplay, and I also quite enjoyed the story. Graphics are baller.

[prfsnl_gmr]

With Hollow Knight Silksong launching today, I’m calling it on this year’s Summer Games Challenge (even though summer doesn’t really end until September 22).

Thankfully, I was able to knock out Perfect Dark over the weekend.

Developed by Rare, at the very height of its power, Perfect Dark is a spiritual successor to Goldeneye 007. In it, you play as agent Joanna Dark, infiltrating buildings, rescuing AI scientists, uncovering conspiracies, etc. While there is a lot of gunplay, there’s also a fair bit of gadgetry and steath, and running into every situation guns-blazing is a sure-fire way to fail your missions.

I beat the game on “Secret Agent” difficulty, and much like Goldeneye, each mission features a series of objectives, and you can’t complete the mission unless you accomplish each objective. The objectives are varied, and they range from hacking into computers, to rescuing hostages, to assassinating presidential doppelgängers. The levels are equally varied. Some are straightforward descents through cyberpunk office buildings. Others are infiltration in the right corridors of airplanes, and yet others take place in open snow fields. The variety of levels and objectives really keeps things fresh, and while I definitely liked some parts more than others, I appreciated all of them.

Finally, the game has some really great touches that help immerse you in its gameplay. If you disarm and enemy and hold him at gunpoint, he’ll surrender. Enemies react to noise, and they move differently depending on where they’ve been hit. You must be mindful of both your allies and innocent bystanders, and completing each mission typically requires a lot of patience (you know…like a spy).

While I mostly loved the game, there were a few areas that rubbed me the wrong way. Specifically, it is very easy to fail some mission objectives late in a long mission, and the game does not feature any mid-level checkpoints. This makes it frequently unnecessarily frustrating. (Also, there is some of the typical Rare “meanness” to the game’s design.) Also, you must read the mission dossier before each mission, but even then it’s frequently very difficult to determine exactly what you’re supposed to do to accomplish some objectives. As a result, I spent a lot of game time running around almost empty levels looking for random control panels and shooting random things until the game <finally> told me I’d accomplished the objective.

Despite some quibbles, though, I mostly enjoyed my time with Perfect Dark. It is a game I respect probably more than I enjoy, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for a good spy simulator.

1. F-Zero X (N64) - inspired by @bmoc
2. Gate of Thunder (TG16 CD) - inspired by @marurun
3. Jet Grind Radio (Dreamcast) - inspired by @Racketboy
4. Perfect Dark (N64) - inspired by @Key-Glyph
5. Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PS2) - inspired by @Key-Glyph
6. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Dreamcast) - inspired by @alienjesus
7. Terranigma (SNES) - inspired by @SpaceBooger
8. Ys Book I & II (TG16 CD) - inspired by @pierrot
9. TBD
10. TBD

Five games down. Not too bad!

[bmoc]

Clock Tower Rewind (PS5)
Alien Isolation (PS4)
Capcom Fighting Collection (Switch)
Nier (PS3)
Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
Luigi's Mansion (GameCube)
Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (GameCube)
F-Zero GX (GameCube)
Convention Pickup 1 (TBD)
Convention Pickup 2 (TBD)

My SGC progress got thoroughly halted by Expedition 33 and Donkey Kong Bananza (both stellar games). With only 2 weeks of official summer left, I managed to roll the credits on Nier to knock one more off the list. Maybe I can squeeze one or two short games in during these last few weeks.

Nier

I've had Nier on my shelf for at least 7 years and never got around to playing it. I mostly blame that on having younger children at the time and not wanting to expose them to Nier's mature language. Similarly, I've had Nier Automata on my shelf for quite some time, and I wanted to get through the first game before playing it.

Was it worth the wait? Yes and no.

The Bad:
Outside some of the cutscenes, the graphics in Nier are really subpar for the era. The environments are rather dull and textures are often blurry if you zoom in on them even a little. The gameplay is nothing to write home about. It felt like a God of War clone with mediocre fetch quests. There's a sizable list of magic abilities, but I found myself the same two or three abilities the entire game. The thing that I found most egregious was having to do a particular dungeon three times as part of the story.

The Good:
The story is a bit dull for the first half of the game. However, once some of the mysteries of the world begin to be revealed, things get a lot more interesting. I wish some of those reveals could have been trickled out during the first half of the game. I don't recall any "bangers" that would prompt me to seek out a copy of the soundtrack, but the music wasn't bad by any means. Some of the characters had better voice acting than others. Kainé's voice actor is probably the standout, but I also found her dialogue to be the most entertaining - especially when bickering with Weiss.

The thing that I found most fascinating by Nier is the fact that it is a spin-off of one of the endings of Drakengard. Also, Japan had two versions of Nier - the PS3 version (Nier Replicant) which featured a young protagonist and the Xbox 360 version (Nier Gestalt) which featured a middle-aged protagonist. Other regions got Nier Gestalt branded simply as "Nier". Eventually, after the success of Nier Automata, other regions got the Nier Replicant v1.22 remake for PS4/Xbox One.

Overall, I found Nier good enough to add Nier Replicant v1.22 to my wishlist to experience the game's additional endings.

[marurun]

No Man's Sky (yes, I know, not retro) has been quite the obsession for me. It is a very sandbox game, and while I've beaten the two main questlines, there's all sorts of altered or new content from recent updates, and one major update that's out on everything but Switch but will be coming to Switch soon. I have an incredibly happy settlement, several hackneyed bases and one base that doesn't suck, a pretty good freighter, a small squadron of amateurs, and despite being able to crush just about any dogfight encounter or on-ground sentinel opponent, I have yet to successfully defend a civilian freighter from a pirate freighter. I just can't figure out the trick.

[bmoc]

Clock Tower Rewind (PS5)
Alien Isolation (PS4)
Capcom Fighting Collection (Switch)
Nier (PS3)
Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
Luigi's Mansion (GameCube)
Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (GameCube)
F-Zero GX (GameCube)
New Super Mario Bros (DS)
New Super Mario Bros 2 (3DS)

For my convention pickups, I decided to play the two NSMB games since they are relatively short and Mario's 40th anniversary celebration is starting. I was curious how they would stack up on my Mario rankings considering I got rather burnt out on NSMB Wii and NSMB U.

New Super Mario Bros
My time with NSMB was overall more enjoyable than 3D Land. I had less hand fatigue than I did with 3D Land but I also made sure to take more frequent breaks. It felt and played exactly other NSMB titles that I've played previously. I didn't care for the blue koopa shell powerup. I felt is was a little too unwieldy to be useful. The mega mushroom was fun but a little too scarce unless you were willing to spend star coins at a Toad house. Some of the character and enemy models were a bit rough around the edges on a 3DS XL screen. It probably would have aged better if it was fully 2D. Other than those nitpicks, it was just ok.

New Super Mario Bros 2
NSMB 2 felt like the most unique NSMB title that I've played with its emphasis on collecting coins. Otherwise, it was more of the NSMB formula. Thankfully the blue shell was gone, replaced by the Super Leaf from SMB3. I enjoyed my time with NSMB 2 much more than I did with the first game. I managed to knock it out in a single day in about three sittings. The 3D effect served little purpose in this game. I kept the 3D slider on about 50% because it seemed to keep the background textures in focus a bit better.

Going from Super Mario Bros 1 to Mario 64, each title felt unique and different. With the exception of maybe Odyssey, Mario titles have failed to captivate me like SMB1 - Mario 64 did. I feel like the entries of the NSMB series are incredibly similar. They are good games but I crave the originality that they earlier entries had.