November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

[BoneSnapDeez]

Fair point. Everything in that game is so fun I forget there's technically "optional" content. I hit up all those sidequests.

[MrPopo]

All the sidequests are good for character building, so they're definitely worth doing even if they didn't give the best toys.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I made a run at Time Soldiers today. It is definitely built off of the Ikari Warriors engine, but it is much, much better game. In it, you travel between different time periods to find all of your comrades (the titular Time Soldiers, presumably). Once you arrive at each of the time periods, such as prehistoric times, the Roman Empire, the World Wars, etc., you run up and down and from left to right shooting everything you see. As in Ikari Warriors, you can rotate your Time Soldier 360 degrees so that you can shoot stuff at different angles. In every time period, stuff is also trying to shoot you, and regardless of what time period you’re in, stuff shoots at you in pretty much the same way. (History repeats itself, I guess?) The changes in scenery and frequent swapping between time periods really does help to disguise monotonous overhead shooter gameplay, and while the rotating joystick controls are pretty awkward, Time Soldiers would actually make a pretty great twin-stick shooter...But...it is one of those arcade games where you are allowed to feed credits until the last level...which is drastically harder than its predecessors. (In other words, when you die on the last level, it’s game over, no matter what.) If I had spent $4 getting to the last level of this game in an arcade, I likely would have died putting my fist through the monitor when I learned this fact. Thankfully, we now have these small miracles called “save states” to prevent such tragedies, and I will make another run tomorrow. I hope to learn just how difficult it is to get through the last level in one credit...without having to plough through all of its predecessors again just to take a shot at it.

[Exhuminator]

Alright, I finally beat my first game for this TR:



Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is the third game I've beaten in this series. While I'm still not nearly as big a fan of these games as most people are, I'll admit that Unwound Future was a big improvement over Diabolical Box. Although the initial two thirds of this experience bored me, the final third somehow became very good. I ended up playing this game's final third in one run actually - which took almost five hours of non-stop play in one sitting. My eyes hurt from staring at tiny DS Lite screens for too long. The game's beat. Moving on. (More thoughts here if you care.)

Ex's time to beat: 14 hours 5 minutes (Finished plenty of optional puzzles, never used a walkthrough.)
Ex's rating: 7.5/10

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I'll be hitting up the PSP port of Shadow of Destiny next.

[laurenhiya21]

I'll be hitting up the PSP port of Shadow of Destiny next.

Woot! I actually have no idea how the PSP port is, nor do I know if you'll like the game or not, but I'm still curious what you'll think of it. It's definitely not a game that everyone would like, but if you don't end up liking it... at least it's short?

[CFFJR]

I didn't even know there was a psp port.

I ordered a copy of the ps2 version yesterday.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I made a run at Time Soldiers today. It is definitely built off of the Ikari Warriors engine, but it is much, much better game. In it, you travel between different time periods to find all of your comrades (the titular Time Soldiers, presumably). Once you arrive at each of the time periods, such as prehistoric times, the Roman Empire, the World Wars, etc., you run up and down and from left to right shooting everything you see. As in Ikari Warriors, you can rotate your Time Soldier 360 degrees so that you can shoot stuff at different angles. In every time period, stuff is also trying to shoot you, and regardless of what time period you’re in, stuff shoots at you in pretty much the same way. (History repeats itself, I guess?) The changes in scenery and frequent swapping between time periods really does help to disguise monotonous overhead shooter gameplay, and while the rotating joystick controls are pretty awkward, Time Soldiers would actually make a pretty great twin-stick shooter...But...it is one of those arcade games where you are allowed to feed credits until the last level...which is drastically harder than its predecessors. (In other words, when you die on the last level, it’s game over, no matter what.) If I had spent $4 getting to the last level of this game in an arcade, I likely would have died putting my fist through the monitor when I learned this fact. Thankfully, we now have these small miracles called “save states” to prevent such tragedies, and I will make another run tomorrow. I hope to learn just how difficult it is to get through the last level in one credit...without having to plough through all of its predecessors again just to take a shot at it.

You must have the SMS port of this one too?

[prfsnl_gmr]

I do! But, to my shame, I’ve never played it...

[Exhuminator]

I didn't even know there was a psp port.

It flew under a lot of radars when it was released back in 2010.

The PSP version has some notable differences:

The original audible dialogue was replaced with professional voice actors.

There are now more NPCs wandering in town to provide hints.

You can save at any time now.

The game is presented in widescreen format.

It's worth noting that besides being available on PS2 in all territories, and PSP in Japan/USA, Shadow of Destiny was ported to PC in 2002 for Europe/USA, and ported to Xbox in 2002 for Europe only. (In Europe this game is actually called Shadow of Memories.) With so many platforms available to play it on, this game is widely accessible.

For those looking to play a handheld game that fits this TR theme, consider Time Hollow on DS. Time Hollow is a spiritual successor to Shadow of Destiny. Both Time Hollow and Shadow of Destiny were written and directed by Junko Kawano.

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So I put an hour into Shadow of Destiny tonight, made it to chapter 3. I'm not ready to offer any solid opinions yet. I'll just say I've been impressed and unimpressed in equal measure thus far.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm gonna take a run at Time Soldiers next week.