Games Beaten 2015

[marurun]

Ok Solstheim isn't too bad, but Tribunal is absolute garbage.

I liked Tribunal... Not as much as the main game, but it was very pretty.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Ok Solstheim isn't too bad, but Tribunal is absolute garbage.

I liked Tribunal... Not as much as the main game, but it was very pretty.

I played through the entirety of the Morrowind and Tribunal was a really really tough pill to swallow. The city itself was miniscule in size, with a very convoluted plot that may or may not include a whacky dwemer ghost that guided you through the giant, empty dwemer city underneath. I felt like everything in that expansion was sterile and lifeless and just didn't capture the imagination. I can't really blame them though as they were limited by the times. the only good that came of the expansion was the weapons and armor update.

[emwearz]

Games Beaten 2015

1. New Super Mario Bros. 2 - 3DS
2. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - Wii U
3. God of War - PS2
4. Gunman Clive - 3DS
5. Dead Space 3: Awakened (DLC) - PC
6. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - DS
7. Rogue Legacy - PS4
8. Spinmaster - Neo Geo (Via Neo Geo X)
9. The Walking Dead: Season Two - PC
10. Transistor - PS4
11. Shadow Warrior - PS4
12. Assassin's Creed Unity - PC
13. Dying Light - PC
14. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark - PS4
15. Far Cry 4 - PC
16. Valiant Hearts: The Great War - PS4
17. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! - GBA
18. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - DS

Total Games for 2015: 18

Far Cry 4
Honestly, it is pretty much Far Cry 3 with a different setting, a different setting that is nowhere near as engaging as FC3's, in both story, characters and locations. Other than that it is more of the same.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
This was a really sweet game. It plays like a side scrolling adventure game, similar to something like Limbo, but with far more inventory based puzzles than physics. The story, which follows a family over the course of WW1 is fairly well told and with little history facts on each new stage, you learn something as well. I don't like giving numeric scores to games, but for what it was aiming for, it was 10/10. I also got all achievements in the game, not something I do often.

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!
Very fun "micro game" compilation. You can see how much later games like NES Remix borrow from the WarioWare formula, hell one of the stages is all NES games. It generally only take one or two game overs to learn what you are meant to do on each stage, then you fly threw it. There are quite a few unlockables to keep you coming back, overall I really enjoyed it.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
It is amazing how they put the feel of the console into the game, which I have to say is massive, it took like 35+ hours to finish it. It is a nice side story, nothing overtly engaging, but the gameplay is classic Kingdom Hearts, really gets me back into the mood to try and finish the first which I have bailed out of a few times.

[MrPopo]

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC

What a massive disappointment compared to the original Doom games, the Quake games, and basically every other FPS out at the time. The game sits in this weird spot between survival horror and action FPS where you have to deal with low visibility and a ton of "surprise monster spawned up your butthole" and then just a lot of monsters, but your weapons aren't as good as a regular FPS. So the whole thing is a massive chore to slog through. And then it comes all the way to the end and the Cyberdemon final boss fight is insulting. The arena is set up so he'll never do damage to you if you have half a braincell and you just run laps, killing five enemies, then throw your superweapon at the Cyberdemon, repeat til you've hit him four times (and you can come in with the superweapon already charged).

God, I hope they don't fuck up Doom 4.

[Ack]

God, I hope they don't fuck up Doom 4.

We all hope this.

I eventually need to go back and play through the BFG edition of Doom 3, but it is gonna be a while.

[Sarge]

A little early start on the Summer Games challenge. Finished up Donkey Kong Country 2.

It's an alright game. Really, it's got better physics than the reboots. But you can still see a ton of the Rare DNA, with some very Battletoads-esque sequences. The first game wasn't above this, either. It's also annoying that the game doesn't save your stock of lives or coins. Ugh. It also costs 2 coins in most instances to save.

Graphically, it's not a bad looking game, but everything seemed far busier than in the first game. There were many areas where I wasn't entirely sure if what I was looking at was solid ground or not, and I died simply because the background fooled me. Now, I'm playing through composite cables on a 32" Sony CRT (just too lazy to find my S-Video switcher right now), but the picture is still pretty clear. I think they just went overboard with the graphics. They're also very, very dark in most levels. Not much brightness at all.

Overall, I've got to say I prefer the original game. By a good amount, actually. I know everyone seems to think DKC2 is the better game, but it just didn't do it for me. Perfectly competent, even quite good, just not great.

But everyone else considers it a classic, so it counts.

[MrPopo]

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC
32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC

This is one of the first computer games I ever owned, though I originally owned it on my family's Macintosh LC II (feel that 4 MB of RAM with your 40 MB HDD). Of the three games we had on that Mac, Oregon Trail, TIM, and SimCity 2000, I think I liked this one the best. Oregon Trail I had beaten multiple times and I wasn't interested in trying to see if I could max my score or do a challenge run. SimCity 2000 is fun but too sandboxy; I wasn't of an age to be able to make a real attempt at beating any of the scenarios as I wasn't into diving into the mechanics. But TIM had real goals and was a nice brain teaser, with the freeform mode to satisfy that sandbox itch.

The Incredible Machine series is a series about building Rube Goldberg devices. Each puzzle starts off with a goal, some number of fixed pieces, and then a box of pieces you can place. What you can place is limited, so you need to use the tools that have been given to you to accomplish your goal. Sometimes this is fairly straightforward, but other times you need to get into some lateral thinking. In one of the last puzzles I did I needed to build a bridge using balloons that were lashed down (so they wouldn't float away) so the little man I needed to guide to the end could walk over them.

The Even More Incredible Machine is essentially an expanded version of the original The Incredible Machine. It has all the puzzles that the original had and a bunch more, so think of it like Ultimate Doom to Doom. The physics modeling is surprisingly extensive; the various balls have different bounce and weight properties and this varies based on the surface they're on, and the moving action of conveyer belts also works on the bottom, just in the reverse direction. This is useful for moving balloons around, but can also nudge flying objects. Another thing that the game models is gravity and air pressure. Gravity affects how fast things accelerate as they fall, and can be set on a scale between space and Saturn, with Earth in the middle. Setting it to space ends up causing some interesting effects; it doesn't go quite to zero, but it's near enough. Testing by having a ball and a balloon, the ball falls extremely slowly, but the balloon also rises extremely slowly (which makes sense when you think about it; without a strong gravitational force the displacement of the air by the balloon is not focused). Air pressure has a similar interesting effect. The scale there is space to water, with air in the middle. When you set pressure to water you'll see that most objects move slower, as the higher pressure increases the friction. But setting it to space means that balloons fall, as they are heavier than whatever they displace. I can't recall either of these sliders being used in puzzles; they show up on the screen so you can see if they were changed but if they were, only one or two puzzles did so. You have full access to them in free form mode and I know later games in the series make use of them.

The difficulty has a good ramp to it but it can be inconsistent at times. Some puzzles will have you really scratching your head until you reach that "a-ha!" moment. One thing that can trip you up is not every puzzle can be done iteratively; until you place a particular part in a particular spot things can seen counter production, but that new part you added alters a trajectory enough that things fall into place. Without realizing that part needs to be there you can be stuck trying to figure out why things aren't flowing the way they should.

Still, a very fun game, though it's more something you spend a few minutes here and there with, rather than shotgunning it all down. It has 160 puzzles (including the easy tutorial levels), which can keep you busy for a while. Later games increase the number of parts available, which can lead to some really interesting effects.

[bmoc]

32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC

This game came with my first PC that I got in the early 90's. Such a great game that doesn't get much recognition. I really should buy the compilation on GOG some day.

[MrPopo]

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC
32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC
33. Contra - NES

Another NES game down (I'm beginning to see how Bone beats so many games). This game definitely has a few humps that need to be cleared, though the hardest to me was stage 4, the second base level. You have to really learn the right set of reflexes for those levels if you're going to clear them, though once you do you'll be fine. The first base isn't too bad, but the second base really requires knowledge of what's going on and patience at times. The other two humps were stages 6 and 7. Both of these stages tended to get me with some of the obstacles being "surprise, you die", but fortunately the bosses for both weren't too bad (though the linebacker guy always got me with one of the little things he tosses). And then stage 8 was pretty easy to pull off after all that.

[dogman91]

This game definitely has a few humps that need to be cleared, though the hardest to me was stage 4, the second base level.

Yeah, it takes awhile to adjust to the perspective to the stuff flying at you thanks to the 'into-the-screen' third-person view, being a 2D game. While fun, I have to say the side-scrolling segments feel a hell of a lot more consistent (and better) than the base levels. I enjoyed the bosses in the base levels though, especially the music. Heck, the entire game's soundtrack is badass.

BTW, if you continue playing, the game endlessly loops (eg. like an arcade game) with the enemies increasing in number along with faster projectiles.

I recommend not using the 30-lives code and beating these Konami NES games without continues if anyone wants a satisfying challenge.