Great choices man and I would like to get a Retrotink as well. At 1st it took me a while to get used to Contra Hard Corps but nowadays for the true ending I can get through the game pretty easily.
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I finished Umihara Kawase Fresh over the weekend - what a superbly executed new direction for the series! The open world, by and large, is used to expect more from the player, while also being more welcoming to beginners. Quests are self contained point-to-point challenges across the map, instigated from a menu, Super Mario 64 stars style.
The only downside is there’s more (arguably) unnecessary cruft in here - like a story, material gathering and a cooking system with buffs. But I don’t think the latter two harm the game at all (there’s also time trial and challenge modes which do away with these elements), and I was pleasantly surprised by the dialogue in story mode. The bittersweet ending was lovely too.
So yeah, it’s not quite the triumph of minimalist design that the two SFC and PS games were (for instance, the excellent short tutorial sequences from those games are now replaced with lengthy explanations which give away a lot of the discovery) but it’s still excellent, and a direction for the series I didn’t know I wanted yet.
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Also been playing a lot of Virtua Racing - posted impressions in the thread.
FFXII Zodiac Age is interesting, so far it feels like the world is the main character of the game. Unfortunately the core gameplay didn’t become particularly exciting until I acquired a party of three, really digging the flexibility of the gambits system now.
Sorry I missed this. Dangerous driving has parts of Burnout but it’s not all there. I guess the best way to describe it is the game has no soul.
- A light tap can crash your car so car feel more like paper mache than an actual car
- Driving physics feel a little too floaty. I’ve crashed into walls and then immediately sped up. There’s no gradual sense of speed
- I’m not a big fan of DJ Atomica but there needs to be something more here.
- AI doesn’t do much to keep you interested. They are either brain dead or dead set on destroying you.
- The gameplay boils down to hit the boost button as often as you can, and go as fast as you can. This is like saying the Sonic games are about pressing right and going as fast as you can. While true it doesn’t capture all of what made the original compelling.
It’s just so bland and in this day and age, there are better games to play.
Mortal Kombat 11 (PS4) - This entry is a lot of fun. I just finished the story on Easy as I was a Street Fighter kid and I’m not too familiar with the controls. The addition of a comeback move that drains a quarter of your opponent’s life bar is new but detracts from the gameplay for me. I would prefer skill takes precedent and the move is always the same and unskippable similar to a Final Fantasy summon. It’s sort of neat the first time but after a couple of times, it gets old fast.
Sekiro (PS4,X1) - I’m not terrible but not great at these types of games. I love the Dark Souls series and really enjoyed Nioh. This game is more about fluid movement and I love what I’ve played. It’s still a get good or get out mentality but I keep coming back for more.
Borderlands (PS4) - I have fond memories of this game and even finished it twice. When I started this version I almost turned it off due to advertising. Before you start the game you are met with an add to pre-order Borderlands 3 and there’s even a menu option to find out more. Disgusting.
No problem! And thanks for the analysis.
I always thought the game looked rather workmanlike whenever I saw it, but put it down to a lack of budget for the presentation over anything else. It’s a shame it also plays like that.
In some ways Dangerous Driving comes across as an unnecessary game - Criterion already perfected its style of arcade racer with the backing of EA, and trying to recreate it today with a fraction of the resources almost seems like a fool’s errand.
It’s hard blame Three Fields for going down that route in an ever crowded market - it’s just a shame that going indie doesn’t necessary mean new options for old devs due to the risk involved.
Played through Wave Race 64 over the weekend - first time! What a beauty of a game. It crazy how well it controls and plays. Just need to do Reverse now.
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I played and completed the original Leisure suit Larry this week. Great game that held up way better than I expected (and way better than at least the first three Kings Quest-games). Guess I should check out the sequel!
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For modern games, I’m basically playing Apex Legends and Call of Duty BLOPS IIII exclusively lately. I dunno… just need that multiplayer first person shooting fix when I have time to play.
After the Anniversary Update, I’ve been playing a ton of Sea of Thieves and did a Pirate Legend Athena’s Voyage yesterday, along with bumping my Hunters’s Call rep up to 10. I’m also in the middle of a Legendary run for Halo 2 in MCC and did a handful of MCC 4v4 multiplayer matches.
For retro, I’m playing I-War (think Tron meets Battlezone) on the Jaguar for a high score club. I’m also on a Apshai kick and playing Gateway to Apshai on my Atari XE, which is an intoductory RPG, released as a prequel to the remastered Temple of Apshai Trilogy. Then I’m going strait into the Temple of Apshai Trilogy on my Atari ST. The Temple of Apshai Trilogy is probably one of the earliest remastered video games ever, with updated graphics, sfx, added music and quality of life gameplay updates. The original trilogy; Temple of Apsahi, Upper Reaches of Apshai and Curse of Ra were released seperatatly between 1981 to 1983 (part of the 11 game DunjunQuest series of RPGs). Then Epyx released Gateway to Apshai to reintroduce people to the Apshai world in 1984 and finally the remastered Temple of Apshai Trilogy in 1985.
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Atari Love 
Amazing game. Gem of a soundtrack too - can’t get enough of that title screen music!
Nintendo EAD really was firing on all cylinders when making N64 software. Shame we don’t see such focused arcade-like games from Nintendo these days, save for Labo VR’s games I guess.
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I’m playing Tembo the Badass Elephant.
It’s a real good game! It’s a game I wanted to play for a long time since it was developed by Game Freak, who is known for developing another game I absolutely loved: Drill Dozer.
They released a new game called the Giga Wrecker which looks awesome too! So I figured now is finally the time to play Tembo so I can be ready for Giga Wreck later.
Tembo is real simple and fun, each stage has a collectible/completionist aspect to it, but it’s more reliant on exploration and hidden sections than application of your skills and moveset. I believe if you do 100% the game all you get is achievement, thus I’ve no desire to go back and complete all stages. The stages in general are quite linear so another reason why I’m not too incentivezed to revisit them.
that said, the game actually is quite easy… until one stage in particular goes full Battletoads on you and chases you with an insta-kill, and the only way to survive is with perfect execution. I got so many game overs on this part, that by the end of an hour I had it down perfect and even 100% the whole stage.
I hope I never play another stage like that again lol.
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Finally got around to starting symphony of the night on my Ps4. I’m a few hours in, so far I’m really digging it. The music is fantastic but it’s a bit on the easy side. Haven’t had to use a single potion yet.
My niece and nephew really wanted to play a scary game. So we decided to play outlast. Watching them scream at every jump scare and run out of the room is hilarious. I keep trying to play other games but apparently they were loving it. Not sure if I should be concerned about that.
I’ve been playing borderlands the pre sequel in preparation for borderlands 3. I’ve been slowly chipping away with it with a buddy online but we have a limited schedule to play which means it’s going slow.
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I’ve bene focusing on two games lately - though I’ll probably add Baroque (Wii) in at some point.
NiGHTS is one of the two games, and I absolutely adore it. I’m just so impressed by how well it’s been thought out and designed, and how to this day remains something wholly unique. Despite NiGHTS (the character) flying as fast as Sonic, the racing game-like laps you do around each Mare means it never feels like trial and error - every lap is an opportunity to optimise your run by discovering new places, stringing together combos differently, or trying something new with the flying physics. It’s just a perfect fit for the high-scoring mechanics too, where your primary enemy isn’t an explicit threat or a health metre but the ticking time at the top of the screen. Trying to figure out if you’ve got enough time for one more lap, then just clocking it off with less than a second left on the clock is such a satisfying feeling - moreso if you manage to rack up a large chain at the same time!
The other game I’m playing is the PS2 port of arcade Sega Rally Championship 1995. It’s just sublime in several ways. The main reason to seek out a copy of it today isn’t just how well the game stands up, but in how well they’ve programmed the analogue stick controls. Unlike the Saturn version, where the position of the stick substitutes for the wheel controls this is more like a more nuanced version of the power slide D-Pad controls, and it feels so good under the thumb.
Everything else is just really impressive - the visuals are still extremely distinctive, the handling is just perfect, up there with Wave Race 64 in arcade exhilaration. The course design encourages you to eke out extra seconds on every round. The harsh timer encourages mastery of every facet to the game, from manual transmission to handling the vicious AI (especially in the forest course) to cornering. It’s also impressive because it shows just how close the Saturn port is at capturing all those key facets to the game’s success. Despite the upgrade in visuals and framerate, it feels uncannily similar to the Saturn version. I think the Forest course might be more dynamic on arcade, and the difficulty is obviously tuned differently, but it’s so close.
I’m chuffed about this port - it’s been a long while since I’ve played the game at the arcade.
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Nice, would love to play this too. I notice SR is NTSC-J, how are you playing it, do you have a Japanese PS2 ? Or do you have a modded PS2 ? I have a Pal PS2 with freeMCboot on a memory card, I’m not too clued up, can I play imports using this setup ?
SRC95 was only released in Japan, right?
Yeah. It was bundled with Sega Rally 2006.
Japanese PS2. Both slim models have universal power supplies (earlier slims have them external, the last revision have them built in), so it’s as easy to get working as swapping your cables.
I played Nights on Saturn for about 10-15 minutes as a kid at a kiosk at Toys R Us back when saturn was new. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old.
I dreamed about playing it again for nearly 2 decades because of how strong an impression it made on me, but didn’t have access to saturn hardware and didn’t know anyone else who had the game. Finally, I purchased a Saturn about 4-5 years ago, and the game totally lived up to how I remembered it. It’s a game of WTF is this? But in the best possible way.
It’s another fine example of what the industry is capable of when grappling with new control schemes and technology for the medium. 3D navigation and analogue control was still extremely new and experimental when this was in development (I believe at the same time as Mario 64). So you can see how the developers compensated for that with tight on-rails gameplay that still lets you explore.
The system really needed a 3D Sonic to compete in the US and we never got a real one until the Dreamcast. But Nights was still a really solid effort that I like to revisit. But it just couldn’t hold up to what Nintendo and Naughty Dog were able to achieve with their respective mascot games. Both were more marketable and easy to grasp. And Nintendo was able to nail Mario’s feeling of flight in an even more convincing fashion, making Nights feel like sort of a half step in video game evolution in comparison. And that’s what people craved most at the time: something new that couldn’t be done on previous hardware.
But Nights is great at what it does, even if less revolutionary, and makes for a very fun retro game to replay over and over again.
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I’m picking up Samurai Shodown today. As a long time Neo Geo fan, I am super excited.
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