I agree with Stark that Emwearz must have been talking about the Thief reboot, not the original.
A lot of people do swear by Thief 2, but I think it was a lesser experience for losing the supernatural stuff. Not that it's a bad game, it's just the steampunk robots didn't do it for me. I actually enjoyed the underrated Thief 3 a bit more than it. Honestly Thief - The Dark Project is my favorite game of all time; I was the weirdo who loved all the creepy stuff in it.
I agree with Stark that Emwearz must have been talking about the Thief reboot, not the original.
A lot of people do swear by Thief 2, but I think it was a lesser experience for losing the supernatural stuff. Not that it's a bad game, it's just the steampunk robots didn't do it for me. I actually enjoyed the underrated Thief 3 a bit more than it. Honestly Thief - The Dark Project is my favorite game of all time; I was the weirdo who loved all the creepy stuff in it.
Nice. I was just saying all that to get him to continue (thinking he was talking about playing the first haha). But I might be a bigger fan of the original myself as well. The cutscenes and story really stood out, everything was just so out there and weird. I love neo gothic sci-fi stuff, which is what the first felt like to me, whereas the second just kind of felt a bit more standard steampunk.
I did like the engine improvements with 2 though and Karras ended up being really cool. But yeah, the weirder monsters in the first game stand out a bit more than the mechanical elements of 2. I liked the focus on the Hammers in the first one as well. Talk about a cult, lol.
I'd say the music was probably the best in 3. Damn good stuff.
Games Beaten 2014 January-June
Spider - iOS
Metal Torrent - NDS
Injustice: Gods Among Us - PC
Thief Gold - PC
Shovel Knight - 3DS
Wolfenstein: The New Order - PC
Spoiler Alert - PC
Battle Arena Toshinden - Game Boy
Dungeons and Dragons - Shadow of Mystara - PC
Diablo III - PC Dungeons and Dragons - Tower of Doom - PC *new*
Expendabros - PC *new*
Doom III: The Lost Mission - PC *new*
Borderlands 2: Headhunter 1: Bloody Harvest - PC *new*
Kangaroo - Atari 2600 *new*
I like Tower of Doom better than Shadow of Mystara. I don't like either much, though I can appreciate what they do. They look purty, certainly.
Expendabros is a hoot. I will certainly buy/play Broforce at some point.
The Lost Missions is 8 more chapters and 2-3 more hours of Doom III, and pretty solid ones at that. Worth picking up in the BFG edition for $5 or less, in my opinion.
I grabbed the Headhunter DLC stuff in the current Steam sale and played the first one. It was fun, if short, but I look forward to the others...
Kangaroo was a game I picked up fairly recently (in the last year) and hadn't played. It is pretty fun and like many arcade games it is more meant to be played for score than to "get to the end", but I typically count these games on my list if I can loop them on one "credit". For this one, I did just that after an hour or so of trying.
They pulled off some kind of minor miracle here, as this piece of shit DLC actually manages to somehow be even more cheap and obnoxious than the piece of shit main game is
RyaNtheSlayA wrote:
Seriously. Screw you Shao Kahn I'm gonna play Animal Crossing.
Gamerforlife wrote:Oddworld New and Tasty - Alf's Escape
They pulled off some kind of minor miracle here, as this piece of shit DLC actually manages to somehow be even more cheap and obnoxious than the piece of shit main game is
Stop playing stuff that you know you're going to dislike.
Gamerforlife wrote:Oddworld New and Tasty - Alf's Escape
They pulled off some kind of minor miracle here, as this piece of shit DLC actually manages to somehow be even more cheap and obnoxious than the piece of shit main game is
Stop playing stuff that you know you're going to dislike.
For real dood. I seen you getting way mad at new games lately. Dig into the past.
1. Kirby's Epic Yarn Wii
2. To The Moon Christmas Special PC
3. Super Mario 3D World Wii U
4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Wii U
5. Chiki Chiki Boys Mega Drive
6. World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Mega Drive
7. Metal Gear PSVita
8. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake PSVita
9. Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy 3DS
10. Akai Katana 360
11. Metal Gear Solid GBC
12. Atelier Totori Plus: The Adventurer of Arland PSN
13. Tearaway PSN
14. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA ƒ PSN
15. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd PSP
16. Final Fantasy VII PS1
17. Dead or Alive 5 Plus PSVita
18. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 3DS
19. NES Remix 2 Wii U eShop
20. Starfox Assault GC
21. Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 3DS
22. Cybernator SNES
23. Gravity Rush PSVita
24. Perfect Dark N64
25. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood PSP
26. Wave Race 64 N64
27. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Extend PSP
28. Mischief Makers N64
29. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night PSP
30. Snowboard Kids N64
31. Mario Kart 8 Wii U
32. Double Dragon NES
33. Shantae 3DS VC
34. Maestro: Jump in Music DS
35. Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure DS
36. Bangai-O DC
37. Ristar Wii VC
38. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty PSVita
39. Muramasa Rebirth PSN
40. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom Wii U eShop
41. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara Wii U eShop
42. Mega Man Wii U VC
43. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together PSP
44. Mega Man 3 Wii U VC *NEW*
45. Mega Man 4 Wii U VC *NEW*
46. Scooby Doo: Classic Creep Capers GBC *NEW*
Three more beaten today for the list, plus an honourable mention in Mega Man 2. For me, this list is just about listing games I've beaten for the first time, so Mega Man 2 hasn't made the list. But considering I've beaten it as part of the first 4 Mega Man games in a row, I figure I might as well right a little about it to clarify my thoughts on how it fits in the series.
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 2 is much more polished experience than the first, but I don't actually think it's leaps and bounds better. Although things are generally more polished I feel there are a few more trial and error sections (quick man and heat mans stage especially) that seem a little unfair. Sure, there are easier alternative ways to pass these sections, but it's still a pain. I also think some of the enmy placements are more annoying (walkers near narrow corridors etc) and some attacks are to hard to dodge. The weapons variety is ...ok, but mostly overshadowed by the presence of the Metal Blade (although Air Shooter comes in handy on Joe Walkers)
That said, for the most part it's improved on the original. The stage themes are more interesting, the graphics and sound took a bump up in quality and the level designs are solid. It's a good game, and definitely one of the better in the series I've played.
Mega Man 3
OK, here comes the controversy - this is currently competing with Dr Wily's Revenge (the first Game Boy game in the series) for my least favourite of the Mega Man games I've played. It feels unfinished, and from accounts from Keiji Inafune, it probably is.
First of all, the difficulty here often feels cheap - not often in an instant death pit kind of way, but just hits that you won't see coming without knowing an enemy is there already, and particularly with the outrageous collision damage all the Robot Masters deal. Particularly the doc robots, who featured in horrible levels and were way harder than the Mega Man 2 versions due to their stupidly high collision damage combined with their overly large hitbox.
The weapon selection is subpar. They're more balanced than they were in 2, but they just don't seem to have many uses outside of boss encounters, with the exception of maybe the Shadow Blade or whatever it's called.
The stage design is also pretty uninteresting. Mega Man 2 had some gimmicky stages, but they felt distinctive and generally fit their theme well. Some of the stages in 3 are just dull. Top Man's stage is just...kinda leafy? There are lots of areas of flawed or glitchy game design too - Snake Man's cloud platforms killed me several times as they spawned underneath me by randomly flinging me into a pit. There are also several segments where you need to use the rush jet to proceed over a long pit, gathering weapon energy to refill as you go - but if you die even once on these segments, the level becomes unqinnable as the weapon energy is still gone. There are also numerous levels in Wilys fortress where dying on the boss sends back to the beginning instead of just before the boss as in other mega man games - including on the yellow devil fight.
As one final example of the general unfinished feeling of the game, the continue screen for the whole game gives you 2 options - continue and stage select. If you die on the last level, the continue screen loads....and the options are the other way up. Hit stage select and BAM, back to stage 1 of Wily's Castle for you. After falling for this the first time, I used a save state on the wii u to avoid it happening again (and believe me, it did), but I can only imagine the frustration if I'd been playing on original hardware.
I don't think I could ever understand how so many people rate this Mega Man game as their favourite. I'm not sure I could say I got a lot of enjoyment from it. I'd happily recommend 1, 2, 4, 9 or 10 over this one in a flash.
Mega Man 4
After not enjoying 3 much I was feeling Mega Man'd out, but I soldiered on through the series anyhow. And I'm glad I did, because Mega Man 4 is pretty great. The game doesn't expand on the formula much (it adds a charged mega buster, and there are 2 fortresses this time) but it just polishes things up nicely.
The robot master weapons are frankly still a bit lacking, although I got some use out of the Pharoah Shot, Dive Missile and Rain Flush. Too many weapons that just shoot straight ahead though, made even more redundant than usual by the chargable mega buster.
The Mega Buster is a pretty underwhelming addition but not an unappreciated one. It doesn't really change the game up a lot, but it is a nice bonus to have. I hope later games make the robot master weapons different enough to judtify their use over it though.
The graphics and sound in this game are top notch, and I actually liked the robot masters too. They're not the best in the series, but they're unique and distinctive enough, and their levels all feel true to their designs and interesting to play through. The difficulty isn't overly easy, but it is a notable step down from 3, and to a lesser extent 2's aswell.
It's hard to explain what I like about Mega Man 4, because it really doesn't break the mould, excel in any one area or revolutionize the formula. What it does do though, is do everything competently and manages to stand out to me as an enjoyable Mega Man game just by not doing anything wrong. I know it's not the most popular in the franchise, and it's probably because it was getting stale at this point, but in all honesty it's probably up there with my favourites in the series. It still doesn't come close to 9 though.
Scooby Doo: Classic Creep Capers
After years of Noise recommending this game, I picked it up as part of a bundle a few months back, and finally gave it a go recently. It plays as a point and click adventure game and reminds me a lot of lucasarts games like Maniac Mansion, only a lot more simplified.
Controlling a point and click using a d-pad isn't the greatest way to control, especially with the small game boy color screen making it hard to highlight small objects, so the game competently handles this by allowing you to move characters directly with the d-pad. When you're near an object you can interact with it's name will appear at the bottom of the screen and then you can press the a button and a direction to interact with it using one of three commands - talk, take and look.
The game is a bit rigid in the order it's puzzles can be solved with locked doors and certain objects not working if it'sbefore the time to use them, which can be annoying. It can often end up being a tedious affair of checking everything in the game multiple times when stuck in case a trigger has happened since last time. I also encountered a glitch where something didn't trigger when it should, which I had to reload and use a password to bypass.
Whilst these are annoying issues, they don't become to detrimental to the experience of playing. Not only is the exploration, interface and gameplay competent and fun, but the game feels like it was made by people who actually cared about it, despite it being a handheld game based on a cartoon license in a flagging genre published by THQ. The developers clearly took a lot of inspiration from early point and clicks.
They clearly were fans of the show too - the graphics here are superb, with full screen portraits of characters when they speak, and impressive amounts of colour and animation for a GBC title. The number of tracks is pretty limited, but it's very nicely put together, and the Scooby-Doo themes straight from the cartoon are really great. The game feels like an episode of the cartoon down to the little details too - The gang reach a spooky house and run out of gas, they split up and look for clues, velma loses her glasses, daphne gets kidnapped, scooby and shaggy get into trouble and eat a ton of stuff and he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids (spoilers!) etc. etc...it's formulaic, but in a good way, and very faithful to the show.
The biggest downside to the game is that it's perhaps a bit too faithful to the show - it's not a whole lot longer than an episode of the show is, clocking in at about an hour long. Whether development time and budget was slim, or whether they just couldn't squeeze any more giant graphics, animation frames and music tracks on the cartridge is up in the air, but this game really could have done with a couple more cases to tackle. I imagine for £30 back in the day it would've been a terrible let down to finish the game an hour after you got it home.
Still, for the prices you can pick this up for now, it's definitely worth a look. You can probably find it in bundle pretty easily. If you even have a passing fondness for the TV show, it's worth playing, and it won't take long either
