That’s where Super Sobou Land was born. Looking through The Spriter’s Resource for maps and map tile sets brought me to the Game Boy Color version of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. Essentially an upgraded port, they added a little map for each of the eight worlds contained within the game. The person who ripped the sprite sheet also added a tile set into it, and this tile set was so easy to work with that I built my banner out of it.

Super Sobou Land at the start (click for bigger image).

The plan was to have Luigi go through six worlds, each with a various number of stages within. Each stage was an Unfinished game, and at the time I had 98 of them. With a world designed to have 98 red stages – including the castles – I thought it’d be fun to watch Luigi make progress as he took out World 1′s Castle, or took down World 2-4 through 2-7 in a single day. Cheeky nonsensical fun, and it made progressing through unfinished games into a game. I’d mark what happened to every game, regardless of whether I’d nulled it, removed it, beaten, completed, mastered… you get the idea.

As for new games, that’s what I had that little red pipe next to the final castle represent. It was clear I wouldn’t only have 98 unfinished games to take down during all this, so I plotted to have another banner afterwards. It made the map less “THE” 98 Unfinished, and more “the first 98 Unfinished on the pile”.

33 updates later, we're at the end of the road.

If my plan was to get back to having no Unfinished games left, that plan kinda failed. Between sales, gifts, Christmas, personal purchases, the desire to ruin someone not being a minion and so on, I actually ended up with six more Unfinished games at the end of this journey than when I began. If nothing else, I kept myself from becoming a Double Minion (Minion being having at least 100 Unfinished titles in your collection)!

But, the biggest failing of this map is that it never showed just what I had changed. If a person was attentive to my update history, they’d know, but for everyone else they’d only see that I had beaten a game, not what game I had beaten. I kept a log written down of everything I had done, and this post is mainly to remedy this problem.

[Note: CCC stands for Capcom Classics Collection]

 Games Beaten (29/96) 

1. Portal 2 (Steam)
2. Jamestown (Steam)
3. Mega Man Powered Up (PSP)
4. Genma Onimusha (Xbox)
5. The Binding of Isaac (Steam)
6. Dynasty Warriors Advance (GBA)
7. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition (DSiWare)
8. River City Ransom (VC)
9. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (PSP)
10. Monster Tale (NDS)
11. Dynasty Warriors 5 (PS2)
12. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Steam)
13. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (PSP)
14. Eufloria (Steam)
15. Dead Rising 2 (Steam)
16. Really Big Sky (Steam)
17. Minecraft (PC)
18. Limbo (Steam)
19. Ys I & II Chronicles: Ys II (PSP)
20. Guilty Gear Judgment (PSP)
21. Astro Tripper (Steam)
22. Zeit² (Steam)
23. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP)
24. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (360)
25. Rock of Ages (Steam)
26. ActRaiser (VC)
27. Dungeon Defenders (Steam)
28. Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins (PSP)
29. de Blob (Wii)

 Games Completed (37/96)

1. Half-Life: Opposing Force (Steam)
2. Lunar: Dragon Song (NDS)
3. Capcom Classics Mini Mix: Bionic Commando (GBA)
4. Castlevania Chronicles (PS1 Classics)
5. Your Doodles Are Bugged! (Steam)
6. Zombie Shooter (Steam)
7. Super Mario Kart (VC)
8. Sequence (Steam)
9. Ben There, Dan That! (Steam)
10. Granny in Paradise (Steam)
11. Trino (Steam)
12. CCC Remixed: Bionic Commando (PSP)
13. CCC Remixed: Black Tiger (PSP)
14. CCC Remixed: Last Duel (PSP)
15. CCC Reloaded: 1943 (PSP)
16. CCC Reloaded: Eco Fighters (PSP)
17. CCC Reloaded: SonSon (PSP)
18. CCC Reloaded: Pirate Ship Higemaru (PSP)
19. Rampart (GBC)
20. CCC Reloaded: Exed Exes (PSP)
21. CCC Reloaded: Commando (PSP)
22. CCC Reloaded: Knights of the Round (PSP)
23. CCC Reloaded: 1943 Kai (PSP)
24. CCC Reloaded: Mercs
25. CCC Reloaded: The King of Dragons (PSP)
26. CCC Remixed: 1941: Counter Attack (PSP)
27. CCC Remixed: Three Wonders (PSP)
28. CCC Remixed: Quiz & Dragons (PSP)
29. CCC Remixed: Avengers (PSP)
30. CCC Remixed: Block Block (PSP)
31. CCC Remixed: Captain Commando (PSP)
32. CCC Remixed: Final Fight (PSP)
33. CCC Remixed: Forgotten Worlds (PSP)
34. CCC Remixed: Magic Sword: Heroic Fantasy (PSP)
35. CCC Remixed: Mega Twins (PSP)
36. CCC Remixed: Section Z (PSP)
37. CCC Remixed: Side Arms: Hyper Dyne (PSP)

 Games Beaten & Completed (2/96) 

1. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls: Final Fantasy II (GBA)
2. Contra III: The Alien Wars (VC)

 Games Nulled (6/96)

1. Game & Watch Gallery 2 (GB)
2. Game & Watch Gallery 3 (GBC)
3. StarCraft 64 (N64)
4. Age of Empires (PC)
5. Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome (PC)
6. Inside a Starry-Filled Sky (Steam)

 Games Removed (22/96)

1. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (PS2)
2. Trauma Center: Under the Knife (NDS)
3. Freedom Force (Steam)
4. Freedom Force vs The Third Reich (Steam)
5. Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (PS2)
6. AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (Steam)
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Steam)
8. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (NDS)
9. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (GBA)
10. Fire Emblem (GBA)
11. Bit.Trip Beat (Steam)
12. Stacking (XBLA)
13. Capcom Classics Mini Mix: Strider (GBA)
14. Crash Bandicoot (PS1 Classics)
15. Alien vs. Predator Classic 2000 (Steam)
16. Delve Deeper (Steam)
17. Toki Tori (Steam)
18. Knights in the Nightmare (PSP)
19. Bit.Trip Runner (Steam)
20. Fate of the World (Steam)
21. Gratuitous Space Battles (Steam)
22. Night Sky (Steam)

The reason it is 96 and not 98 is due to a few errors. Contra III: The Alien Wars was mistakenly recorded twice on the map, and Fire Emblem was never an Unfinished game for this map. It works out well in the end though, as that makes the big final castle not a world at all. Fuse this with my new banner, and it is as if Luigi has entered Castlevania where he now must assemble a 104-piece password to save the day from the Evil Lord Bak’Laag. Onward, to more progress!

Myself, on the other hand? With more free time and a ton more games around to faff off with, I managed to Beat three listed games, Completed 10 listed games, and went above and beyond by Beating an additional 8 and Completing an additional 19. I also removed 88 games. All the stats will be in a list below, as I want to explain why I removed that many games.

With the help of some friends this summer, I reevaluated my priorities and the very reason why I was backlogging. I’ve been known to be stubborn, rage-infused, and almost violently-motivated to finish games no matter how bad they are. Then, through the conversations with and by others, did I realize that one should play games to enjoy them. They’re not an obligation, they’re a hobby. Something to enjoy, to use in your leisure time, and to have fun with. With my impulse buying giving me a ton of stuff I didn’t want to play but owning for the sake of buying cheap games, I had a paradigm shift and began removing anything I didn’t want to play.

I also finally changed my stance on duplicate games. Prior, if I had multiple copies of the same game, I’d list them and mark them beaten or completed so long as they were on different systems. Yet I was also against copies of games, duplicates, and the like. I changed my paradigm on this as well, making it so that if I had multiple copies of a game that were exactly the same I would null all but one favored copy. Games that were changed, ported and updated, or remade, I would keep all of them with the UBCM statuses. Exact copies became a one-medal-per deal, but to change the game in some structural way caused a difference in an experience and thus was worth giving it its own Beaten, Completed, or Mastered medal.

Overall, I’d say that The Summer of Beatsome 2011 was a great success, and I’m looking forward to doing something like this again! Thanks to Kari for the idea and the motivational support. And now, the complete list of games I beat, completed, and removed in the past 3 months.

Offical Summer of Beatsome Games Beaten (3):
Brutal Legend (360)
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
Ys I&II Chronicles: Ys I (PSP)

Official Summer of Beatsome Games Completed (10):
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs (PC)
Pikmin (GCN)
Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA)
Fallout (PC)
Phantasy Star IV (360 collection)
Gauntlet Legends (N64)
Harvest Moon (VC)
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge (GBA)
Golden Axe Warrior (360 collection)
Phantasy Star II (360 collection)

Official Summer of Beatsome Games Left Unfinished (3):
Final Fantasy Tactics: TWoTL (PSP)
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA)

Official Summer of Beatsome Games Removed (3)
Heroes of Might & Magic III + 2 expansions (GOG)

Additional Games Beaten (8):
=======
Qix (GB)
Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time (Steam)
Breath of Death IV (Steam)
Cthulhu Saves the World (Steam)
NodNation Racers (PSP)
Fallout 3 (Steam)
Bastion (Steam)
HOARD (Steam)

Additional Games Completed (19):
==========
Mega Man Xtreme (GBC)
Classic NES Series: Super Mario Bros. (GBA)
Back to the Future: The Game (Steam, all five episodes)
Swords & Soldiers HD (Steam)
Dwarfs!? (Steam)
Ecco Jr. (Steam collection)
Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (Steam collection)
Space Harrier II (Steam collection)
Galaxy Force II (Steam collection)
Alien Soldier (Steam collection)
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties (PC)
Half-Life: Blue Shift (Steam)
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1 (Steam)
RUSH (Steam)
Half-Life: Opposing Force (Steam)

Removed (EIGHTY EIGHT games):
========
Braid (Steam)
Cogs (Steam)
Droplitz (Steam)
Europa Universalis III Complete (Steam)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (Steam)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (XBLA)
Psychonauts (Steam)
Super Laser Racer (Steam)
Cortex Command (Steam)
Auditorium (PSP)
Vertigo (PSP)
Super Mario 64 (N64)
Apple Jack (XBLIG)
The Impossible Game (XBLIG)
Ecco the Dolphin (360 collection)
Ecco: The Tides of Time (360 Collection)
Phantasy Star III (360 collection)
1943: Battle for Midway (NES)
Air Fortress (NES)
Double Dragon II: The Revenge (NES)
Ghostbusters (NES)
Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES)
Legacy of the Wizard (NES)
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES)
Tetris (NES)
Tiger-Heli (NES)
Sky Shark (NES)
Borderlands: Mad Mxxi's Underdome Riot (Steam)
Golden Sun (GBA)
Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA)
Wave Race 64 (N64)
Yggdra Union (PSP)
Prinny 2 (PSP)
Monster Rancher Explorer (GBC)
Xenosaga Episode 1 (PS2)
Riviera: The Promised Land (GBA)
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (Steam)
LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
Madballs in Babo: Invasion (Steam)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox)
Columns III (Steam collection)
Puzzle Dimension (Steam)
Alien Breed 2: Assault (Steam)
DOOM (GBA)
DOOM II: Hell on Earth (GBA)
Gish (Steam)
Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete (GOG)
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe (PC)
Breath of Death VII (XBLIG)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360)
Borderlands + 2 DLC (360)
Tidalis (Steam)
Jam City Rollergirls (Wiiware)
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years (Wiiware, 4 tales)
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (360, collector's ed)
Bullet Candy (Steam)
A Game with a Kitty (PC D/L)
1213: The Series (PC D/L)
The Chzo Mythos Quadrilogy (PC D/L)
Gamma Bros. (PC D/L)
Streets of Rage Remake (PC D/L)
Nezumiman (PC D/L)
Soul of Dracula (PC D/L)
Spiral Knights (Steam)
The Orange Box (360)
Ridge Racer 6 (360)
Jurassic: The Hunted (PS2)
Guitar Hero II (360)
Guitar Hero III (360)
God of War (PS2)
Jeopardy (N64)
GT 64: Championship Edition (N64)
South Park (N64)

I could go on an enormous stream of consciousness rant, but my memory is terrible and I’ve already forgotten half of what I’ve done over the past three weeks. The long and short of it? I’ve completed four games, beaten one, and sunk around 75 hours into Terraria on Steam. In detail? Read below.

Week 21: 5/22 – 5/28

I got Terraria this week, which explains the complete void in game updates sans Age of Empires III. Just like Minecraft back in November, I was instantly hooked on this game and sunk dozens of hours into it with an earnest demeanor. That’s tapered off some now that I’ve reached my burn-out point and looped back again with a new character. The content-filled updates help a lot with recovery.

I did complete Age of Empires III, though. I’ve been a long-time fan of the series since my early teen years when I fell in love with Age of Empires II. Admittedly, it took a while to get used to how this entry in the series functioned, but I rather like how they adjusted the gameplay paradigm. The Home City and card deck systems added for a level of strategy not present in the prior games and evolved above the same old strategy. Do I take extra resource and peasant cards, and when do I use those over the military ones?

The campaign was also really fun. While not completely based on history like the prior games were, the sense of story and plot progression with the Black family kept me going  even when playing the game started to feel stale. Despite liking his character the most, I hated the incessant accent that Morgan Black had. It hurt to listen to, but I enjoyed him more than his descendants. All in all, Age of Empires III is a great RTS and an excellent sequel to one of my favorite RTS games.

Week 22: 5/29 – 6/04

From the night of the 28th up to the day of the 30th (Saturday to Monday), I was down in New Hampshire attending a Memorial Day barbecue at a friend’s new house. My reason for not writing that Monday? Lazy, apathy, lack of games, insert a hundred other excuses. I still did a lot of gaming though, having brought Final Fantasy Tactics PSP with me. Admittedly, I have a grinding problem. I’m up to Riovannes Castle in Chapter 3 and I’ve already got 55 hours in the game as of today (June 12th).

This entire week’s big accomplishment was beating Drakengard on the PS2. I love hack and slash games, as mindless as they can be. That’s why I’m a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, even if I only own Dynasty Warriors 5 and Xtreme Legends right now. Having a premise of Dynasty Warriors with Square-Enix influence in the game enticed me and I was prepared for greatness.

My preparation was worthless, though. Drakengard, in a word, stinks. Caim does level up and there’s a wide variety of weapons, sure. But every weapon is the same two-dimensional combo. There’s no variety whatsoever sans the moves you occasionally spam with the triangle button. The gameplay is stiff, boring, and repetitive; this is coming from a guy who loves Dynasty Warriors.  In DW, you’ve got various combo chains, different charge attacks (both DW and Drakengard use triangle for this), and it feels more fluid. Caim is clunky and stiff to play as, although the dragon you get to use is rather fun and reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon games.

Caim only gets three types of moves: a regular chain of attacks with the square button, special attacks that you activate by pressing triangle at certain points in that chain of attacks, or a magic attack that each weapon has… by also hitting triangle. There were plenty of times where I meant to do a special attack and instead did a magic, much to my chagrin.

The reason I list those, though, is due to many enemies in the game being resistant or immune to those magic attacks AND everything the dragon can throw at them. That cuts out half of your methods of attack and leaves you idly smashing square until enemies are dead. Enemies that never move on the map and instead just sit there, waiting for you to plow through them.

Really, the only redeeming factor of Drakengard is the plot, which is equal parts confusion and creepy. You can imagine my face when I discovered the first ending’s final boss, or when I read up on what had been cut out of the game when they brought it to the U.S. If Square had done better with the actual gameplay, Drakengard could have been great. As it stands, it is a mediocre experience where your desire to see what messed-up thing happens in the plot next keeps you playing.

Week 23: 6/05 – 6/11

In contrast to the prior two weeks, I actually did a lot in this week! Starting a “Summer of Beatsome” with Kariohki might have helped my motivation, but I managed to complete three games in this time, alongside putting more hours into Terraria, Final Fantasy Tactics, and lately Beat Hazard. The last of those three had just received a 200MB update and I decided to jump back in, this time with a Xbox 360 controller as my weapon.

Decap Attack: Starring Chuck D. Head was the first game I completed. It was one of the few remaining games I had to play on the Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. Knowing the quality of about half of the games in the collection, I wasn’t expecting much. What I found was a platformer that took some getting used to, but ended up being halfway decent. It wasn’t by any means a bad game. Rather, it just didn’t shine or really deliver on a great platforming experience outside of the audio/visual presentation and the item system contained within. While not the best game around, it was miles higher on the fun scale compared to other games on the collection, like Alien Storm, Altered Beast, ESWAT, both Ecco games, Flicky, Kid Chameleon, Phantasy Star II…. I should stop now. In short, fun platformer.

I also took down my first game on my Summer of Beatsome with Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs. A short but fun expansion to AoE3 that built on both the gameplay and the plot that the prior game presented. I really liked how they enriched a handful of Native American tribes as actual societies to play as, and filling in the gap of Nathaniel Black then extending the family tree with Chayton Black made the plot feel more rounded out. While I couldn’t built towers during the entire campaign, the versatility and long-standing use of the firepits made the Native Americans great to play as. I honestly hope that the Asian Dynasties is as fun to play, even if it’s not fighting Sioux raids on a cowboy frontier town with ninjas.

Finally, the last game was Mega Man Xtreme. Received it in the mail from Noi finally, and promptly sat down and played it until completion. If you’ve ever played Mega Man X and X2, Xtreme is basically a mash-up of various aspects of these two games with a silly original plot, all done in 8-bit. They excuse this by saying that “someone has broken into the Mother Computer System and X must go in as data and defeat the protection systems made of prior bosses and stages to fix the MCS!” This is why those eight Mavericks are alive again, and why you seem to fight Serges’ second form from X2 for no reason whatsoever.

There’s only one real problem that Xtreme has, and that’s the length padding with the “difficulties”. There’s no difficulty change. “Normal” is half the game, with the four armor pieces guarded by Chill Penguin, Storm Eagle, Spark Mandrill, and Flame Stag.  ”Hard” is the other half, which can be continued to from Normal and where you fight Wheel Gator, Morph Moth, Magna Centipede, and Armored Armadillo. Both sets of end stages are literally the same. When you beat both Normal and Hard, you are allowed access to the (E)xtreme difficulty, where you start back at the beginning with all your upgrades removed and the entirety of both normal and hard are available to play. That’s it. All in all? A fun 8-bit mash-up, though rendered useless if you already own both X and X2.

That’s the skin and bones of three week’s worth of gaming. Four completes, one beat, a bunch of time sunk into games I’m still working on, all while making more bead sprites over at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sobousbeads/. I’ve got few ideas for things I want to post more in the coming days, so we’ll see how that goes. If you read this (all the way through, even), then thank you! It’s good to know I still have readers. Until next time, folks.

Over Week 19, we had more of the same in Borderlands. I played that game obsessively, to the point where my Siren hit max level and farming Crawmerax became a dull task instead of the intense fight it had been the first time. Every quest was finished, and I completed the main game, the Knoxx DLC, and the Claptrap DLC. That left the matter of the Moxxi’s Underdome DLC…

On paper, it seemed interesting. Fight through expanded versions of the small arenas that the main game had with modular rules and enemies who slowly became stronger. Each round would consist of five waves: Starting, Gun, Horde, Badass, and Boss. Starting would get you into the groove, Gun would spam bandits and Crimson Lance, Horde would be entirely Manaics and melee midgets, and the last two are self-explanatory. You’d get to fight from a selection of ten bosses from across the main game, sidequest or otherwise, and once you finished the three “big” arenas, you’d get a skill point! In addition to that there’d be a bank where you could store your items. This all seemed great.

Then, once you finished the three five-round arenas, the luster would wear off. Each arena would take at least a half hour to forty-five minutes to finish. Moxxi’s cheeky comments became mundane, boring, trite, annoying, like overused memes. Success at hand, you’d turn in the quest to find that there was no reward. Instead, the three larger arenas were unlocked for playing. Five rounds had a long but fair amount of time to get through, even if the rewards were usually mediocre at best. These larger arenas? Twenty rounds, straight through. One hundred waves, back-to-back, without a break. I managed to get up to Round 14, Wave 4, in two and a half hours before I died. At that point, I realized why people hated the Moxxi DLC and nulled it. Two skill points were not worth going through six twenty-round arenas. No. Fucking. Way. Especially when I start back at the beginning if I die, and they take upwards of three to four hours of continuous play to beat just one of them.

Then there was Week 20, where Borderlands play died down to nothing. I burnt out on the game, felt tired with it. Got an idea for a Master run, and attempted to get achievements in the Xbox 360 version but my interest waned and I stopped. Ended up playing through Sonic & Knuckles on XBLA to beat it then moved on to Machinarium on Steam for the first time.

Previously, I had played Amanita Design’s Samorost 2 and loved it. They way they design point and click adventures fits better with my ability to solve the sometimes-bewildering puzzles these games contain. Instead of solutions and items that span the entire game, they instead chop up progression to various screens where only what is on or in that screen is important. A few items carried over from screen to screen in Machinarium, but this was far from, say, a rubber chicken pulley. Segmenting it up allowed me to step back from how overwhelming trying to solve these games is to me and take in a fraction of the game to solve.

There were several points where I still succumbed and used the in-game walkthrough to help me out, though. One thing I noticed about Samorost 2 that didn’t seem as prevalent in Machinarium was whether or not items were actually items or just part of the background. The game gave me help though, and I forced myself to not touch hints or the walkthrough book until I had exhausted my mental capacity trying to figure things out.

Machinarium oozes with an excellent visual aesthetic, and for the most part I enjoyed the music. It wasn’t a soundtrack I’d have in my music library though, since it feels more like one of those audio experiences that only works well in tandem with the game itself. Like the other Amanita Design games, I highly recommend it and consider it amongst my top point and click games.

Thursday night hit. Corvak gifted me Terraria. Welcome to my entire weekend. Eat, sleep, breathe, stretch, move around, and play Terraria. All. Weekend. Thursday night, all day Friday and Saturday. I kinda hate myself for obsessively marathoning the game, but Terraria is just so damn good. I’ll save a review proper for later, but in a nutshell, the game is 2D Minecraft meets Zelda II gameplay, complete with weapons, armor, accessories, NPCs, giant evil bosses and spells, and can be played single or multiplayer. It is addicting, and fully explains why this game got 50,000 sales in its first day without anything for a marketing campaign.

In closing, I apologize that this wasn’t as long as it could have been considering it covered two weeks instead of one. Addictions to nulled games or time sinks aside, I hope to start a “Beat More Summer” marathon of some kind to take myself down to under 100 unfinished games… but we’ll see how well that goes. In any case, thanks for reading and keep on gaming!

Surprisingly, I managed to take down three games this past week! Yet with the math laid it, I’ve practically made no progress. Traded Tales of the Abyss to my local friend Will in return for a new copy of Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection. -1 Unfinished, +3 Unfinished. I beat both Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: -Interlude- this week, then later completed Mega Man Network Transmission. +3 Unfinished, +2 Beaten, +1 Completed, and we’re back to a starting point. Ah well, read on and hear me gush about these games.

Final Fantasy IV (PSP)

I’m a “hardcore” Final Fantasy IV fan. It was my first RPG and still remains one of my favorites to this day, despite the version. I’m only missing the Super Nintendo cartridge to have all of the American/NTSC releases. After all the prior versions, each with their faults, playing this PSP remake/update feels right. It feels completely and utterly right. The game has been around for twenty years, so I won’t bore you with the details of the game itself. Rather, I’ll detail the changes made to this version that really stood out to me.

The graphics. Yes, I know. “lol graphics y u care so much about dem lol” and what have you. The visuals are drop-dead gorgeous in this, though. Character portraits are high-res drawings modeled after the original version’s portraits, so we don’t suffer from the GBA or NDS version’s portraits (especially Rosa GBA and her nose!). The world and locations look sharp, and I especially liked how each castle on the overworld was individualized to some degree. Each character sprite is detailed and larger, menus are crisp and sharp, and small things like the Lunar Whale look great with this update.

What really stood out to me in the graphics came in two pieces, though: the enemy sprites and the spell effects. Each and every enemy looks like they’ve come out of a painting. They look positively incredible, from the lowly Goblins and Sahagins to that incredible Golbez sprite (check out the video below). Every enemy looks like a work of art and it was great to see them all get a fresh coat of paint. Plus, some of the touch-ups and animated effects to certain enemies further made them visually appealing! The Mist Dragon looks like it has mist around it, and glitters with an aura. The Mom Bomb actually explodes and you see the three Gray Bombs and three Bombs form out of this explosions. Cagnazzo’s water actually flows around him, the Giant’s CPU rotates and reflects the background “lights” off of its shiny spherical form… I could go on and on.

The spell and attack animations are just as good. Summons are animated, and spells shine with the work put into them. Anyone who hasn’t played this yet: wait until you have access to Firaga and Blizzaga. Firaga is my favorite spell, visually, and thought it should have been the animation for Flare. Flare disappointed me, as did Bio, but that’s more waxing nostalgic for the older animations and being disappointed with how lackluster these two are. Beyond that, these animations are great and only serve to enrich the high visual aesthetic that the game provides.

Then there are all the little touches they made to the game that really enrich the playing experience. So many of these changes made me say to myself “It’s like common sense to have these in here, why weren’t they in games earlier?” Having portraits on your character menus in battle to better and easier identify who you’re using. Pressing Select to activate “Auto-Battle”, which uses the last command your characters used and will speed up the battles, made grinding and getting through easier areas so much better. Pressing Select on the world map or on a save point would bring up a box saying “Would you like to use a Tent?”! No more digging through my menu! And while I’m in the menu, pressing L or R would show how much experience every member of my party needed to level! YES! No more digging through my menu! And the Bestiary? That functions by displaying every enemy – and the amount of each you’ve killed – over the accumulated number of saved files you have for Final Fantasy IV. Missable enemies aren’t truly missable now, especially if you make extra saves in those points of no return (I’m staring at you, Babil).

In short, I’m in love with this game and this version feels like what every other ought to have been. I did like the Augments in Final Fantasy IV DS, but that felt too different from what I expected and Final Fantasy IV PSP restored a love that had been lukewarm with the last version of the game.

Final Fantasy IV: -Interlude- (PSP)

-Interlude- was designed to be a scenario that bridges Final Fantasy IV with The After Years. Something to fill in that large time span between the two games. If it was meant to do this, why did it fall severely short of expectations and leave me with more questions than anything? I’ll elaborate: Interlude is a rapid series of forced progression wherein you move from recycled point to recycled point until you ultimate end up inside the Tower of Babil again, fighting the equivalent of a boss rush at the end of this all. Your party cycles through ten separate characters during these two hours it takes to beat Interlude. There’s only 73 enemies in the Bestiary, most of which the player will probably never encounter.

The biggest events this entire thing has to offer lie in two distinct camps: Seeing or hearing about characters from The After Years being born, and visiting the Developer’s Room for this version of the game. That’s it. That interconnecting plot? The Tales in The After Years had more substance to them, and took longer to beat. Interlude left me with more questions than any answer, used nothing but old assets from Final Fantasy IV shuffled around to resemble a “new scenario”, and took me as long to beat as getting to Mt. Hobs in the original game actually took. Final Fantasy IV was great, -Interlude- was a huge disappointment. And as of this day, I still haven’t found a Bomb for my Bestiary.

Mega Man Network Transmission (GameCube)

And now for something completely different! Taking place between the first and second Battle Network games, Network Transmission was an attempt to fuse the RPG and card-collecting elements of those games with the traditional classic Mega Man series gameplay. And just like that fusion of old and new, I have a fusion of love and hate with this game.

I loved the folder building aspect, since I find it addicting and fun to constantly update and perfect a roster of attacks. That’s one of the major things I love about the Battle Network series, and being able to take that concept and use it in classic Mega Man style was enjoyable. I also loved the cel-shaded visual look that the characters had; the series was cartoon-like and was vibrant in color and Network Transmission didn’t skimp on either. I’m also a huge fan of classic (and X) Mega Man gameplay, so trading Metal Blade and Shotgun Ice for M-Cannons and Recov300 chips was enjoyable.

I hated the inconsistent difficulty. Early in the game felt extremely hard due to lack of chips and Power Ups for Mega Man, and the difficulty would continue like a wave. At some points it would be extremely easy (like with Needle Man and his stage), at other times ludicrously hard (Quick Man’s stage, fighting Bright Man and Star Man). The fight with bonus boss Bass was terrible and felt forced in because people seem to have a fetish for a dark angsty character whose only attribute is that they are beyond comprehension in terms of strength. Collecting all the chips became a chore that required repetition and forcing yourself to constantly adapt to situations to get the “best rank” on killing an enemy just for one or two of their best chip. The voice acting was also incredibly irritating; there was only Japanese voices in the game, and being young men for characters meant that both Lan and Mega Man were high-pitched squeaky ear drills meant to drive you mad.

But all of this was adaptable, easy to overcome, or just easy to ignore. The thing that really irked me was what I thought a failure in translation from the Battle Network games to here: Auras. Shields that required a minimum amount of damage to break and requiring even more specific setting up to get chips from these enemies. See, I have a problem with this because of how Network Transmission handles in contrast to Battle Network. In the BN games, you have your entire folder of chips at your disposal per fight, and they’re restored after every fight. On top of that, you can customize your folder and settings to where you can get that series of attacks you need to take out those Life Aura-covered enemies with only a measure of difficulty. In NT, your entire folder is used from during your stay on the ‘net. Enemies respawn, your chips do not. What you could depend on in other games becomes extremely scarce in Network Transmission and only serves to frustrate what is otherwise a good challenge. And that doesn’t even cover the enemies who have a regenerating aura. Did I mention you only have that max number of chips throughout each time you jack into a location? Yep, if you wasted all those M-Cannons getting through a few Life Aura-clad enemies, sucks to be you when you have to fight more of them.

Then there’s that whole other complaint about load screens everywhere, yada yada. Beyond the gripes I had above, I really loved this game. I want to love it more, but the hated aspects seem to bring down the enjoyment or only served to pad the game length. Don’t believe me about padding game length? Try and get a PopUp chip, or three more Rolls to round out the two you get with plot progression. It’ll drive you to… well, boredom. Maybe madness with the PopUps.

Do I recommend it? Yes. Does it work for everyone? Not like classic or X series Mega Man games. Is it at least different from all the cookie cutter sequels in the Battle Network series, and thus worthy of attention? Yep! Is it better than the StarForce series? You bet your ass it is. If you see this for under $15, I’d recommend snagging it if you like both Battle Network and Mega Man to some degree. In the end, Network Transmission was worth it.

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That’s all for me this week. Next week I begin my summer vacation, and the huge amount of gaming that comes with it! Until then folks, keep on havin’ fun. o/

So, instead of the usual mini-review of games I beat or completed in the past week, I’m going to give my thoughts on a topic that inspired this post on Twitter. Said topic is the concept of “cheating” in video games, and everything that goes with it.

Despite owning SNES and Genesis GameGenies, I can count the number of times I remember using them on my fingers since I acquired them. Either I was too lazy, didn’t care, or I just wanted to see how you could fool around with a game by using these external devices. It never felt fun or right to use a cheating device for legitimate gameplay, even as a kid, and this echoes with me now. If there’s no tension or threat present to you, there’s no motivation as a result to play the game and you lose interest. Yeah, it’s cool to make yourself invincible just to explore beyond the capabilities of the game, or to do other things of the sort. But when it comes down to it… the fact that you overpowered yourself to such a degree, then claim a proud sense of achievement for beating a game baffles me. My stepdad does this: he’ll either play on easy, or play on hard but give himself the full run of cheats from invincibility to infinite ammo, etc.

As far as actual in-game cheats go, I generally try to avoid them as much as I can. That theme of “legitimacy” seems to fit here, as I like to try and play games without needing to adjust things in any sort of way that would be an “in-game cheat” or otherwise. However, if a game is ridiculously hard and it has in-game cheats? I’m not above using them to help me in some way, so long as they’re just cheats to give me extra lives, continues, or to restart on the last stage I was at once I get a Game Over. Altered Beast is a good example of this, since you only have three lives worth for an entire game, and a Game Over means starting at the beginning. Holding a button/direction then pressing start at the title screen post-Game Over allows you to continue from the stage you died on.

This also goes hand-in-hand with save states. I can understand that older games could be brutal in their difficulty, and were designed as such. But I hold to the ideology that if I’ve managed to completely beat a stage, I shouldn’t have to repeat it over and over because I’ve died due to difficulty and a lack of experience on the stage after it. It becomes tedious repetition designed to inflate the amount of time you play the game and I get sick of playing Stages 1 through 4 just because I can barely make it to 5 and can get no practice on said stage because of this.

Games without continues, or with severe continue limitations, also fall into this category. Altered Beast had no continues, and Dynamite Headdy had its continues removed in the American version. Games this hard are made even harder for ridiculous decisions like no continues. They’re not arcade games so you’re not making money by pumping quarters into your Genesis, so why do we need to keep repeating parts of the game whenever we fail at the next step?  I want to experience the full game, and with the difficulty and just plain masochism of these titles, I’d never be able to unless I slaved for days on them. At that point, though, the fun is gone and I’m bald from ripping out my hair. I enjoy a good challenge, but relying on incredible amounts of memorization and nigh-perfect dexterity and control just to scrape by with a victory isn’t fun for me unless the game gives you an infinite number of retries. This is why, despite its difficulty, Super Meat Boy is good in my eyes. This is also why I’ll never finish a Battletoads game, and why I used save states on so many games in the Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection.

No, it’s not like how you played it back when it came out. I’m “cheating” by all accords to finish the game. But honestly? The games I use in-game cheats and save states on are frustratingly difficult to begin with and I succumb after dozens of attempts the “clean way”. If the game and system offer me these breaths of relief under the guise of “cheats”, then I’ll use ‘em to see the end if I’ve exhausted the normal method. I’m not a creature of consistent repetition because the designers made the game brutally hard. I’m a creature who will give it his all, then rely on other methods when the game is just that damn difficult, because I’d like a little resolution and closure to my experience with the title. These are decades-old single-player experiences from an era where games were literally ported from the quarter-chugging arcades to home consoles. If they want to play that way, I’ll give myself a larger amount of quarters than what they provide, and have fun while doing it.

Still, I managed to beat six games and complete three during the last two weeks. 14 days, 9 games, 3 of which are part of my Borderlands addiction? I’d call that good. Four on Week 15, five on Week 16, with at least something to say about all of them:

Week 15: 4/10 – 4/16

Tidalis (PC)

I’ve been let down a lot by puzzle games I have on Steam. Cogs, Droplitz, Osmos, they all serve to be overly frustrating or too smart for themselves and thus leech what fun they have away. This isn’t to say that they’re bad games necessarily, but some design choices were frustrating. Cogs? The soundboard puzzles. Droplitz? The game itself. Osmos? Those. Orbit-Based. Stages. You can see why I was nervous about Tidalis, right?

I was surprised to find a campaign  in Tidalis. In-between every two or three stages there were plot vignettes, a handful of odd characters, and a reason as to why you played so many different stages in the game. With that was a fun core mechanic: Various colored pieces fall ala Tetris and you eliminate them by way of activating any one to start a chain reaction of light beams. The light will travel from the one you activate and if there’s a same-colored piece within three blocks of where it points to, the light will continue. It’s like Tetris in that pieces fall, but instead of the Russian classic, your goal is to change the direction of the colored block so that you create one long chain and/or set up combos by preparing more than one. It’s easier to understand if you see it, and I liked the concept.

What I didn’t like came down to two things: All of the gimmicks, and the sheer length of the campaign. Tidalis has more stage gimmicks than you can hit with a bus. Ice, wood, chained-up blocks, falling stone eaters, water and bubbles, lava, stone, chain meshes… every one of them with some sort of little quirk that you have to work around in playing the stages. The worst by far were the gravity-distorting ones. Cool on paper in that you had to adapt to a new variation in the core mechanic to make combos, but honestly? Those stages sucked. It was frustrating and confusing trying to trace out paths in the stages centered around the fans, gravity, and the four-way pipes. Then they’d get worse by throwing other gimmicks into that, causing pain and chaos. I skipped a good 35~45% of the stages (thankfully) to get to a beaten game, but hey, it counted. Good game in concept, but all of the gimmicks and the sheer length of the campaign kinda take away from the fun… a lot.

Tetris Attack (GB)

On the other hand, this was a splendid puzzle game. A port of the SNES game by the same name, Tetris Attack GB was a surprisingly good port. I found it surprising that they were able to pack so much into a single Game Boy cartridge while keeping true to the original. The game mechanic itself was rather fun, though difficult at times, but that came down to my own personal skill. One of the half-dozen modes is a story mode wherein you have to defeat other characters by taking their hit points to zero. The way to do that? Either connecting three or more “!” blocks, or by getting combos. The former don’t show up much, the latter are something I’m terrible at doing. I managed to get through Easy and Normal without too much difficulty, but there’s a surprising lot left to do in this little Game Boy port. Would I recommend it? Only if there’s no way you can ever get access to the SNES version. This is good, but inferior.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (PSP, originally TurboGrafx-16)

I know I’d get some flak for this, but I almost never receive comments so that worry is out the window. For me, Rondo of Blood was a disappointment. Yes, I was tempered by an early childhood by Super Castlevania IV. Yes, I was spoiled into believing that the way Richter played in Symphony of the Night was analogous to how he played in Rondo of Blood. And yes, I despise the clunky, stiff and unfair experience that defines how you control Richter in this game, Trevor in Castlevania III, and Simon in practically every game he’s been in except for Super Castlevania IV.

I was irritatingly pessimistic while playing the port on the PSP collection, but for reasons I think are valid. For one, how could you innovate so well with the gameplay in Super Castlevania IV, then a few years later backtrack to your safe zone with characters that move like throwing shot puts? This ties in with the second character you can play as, Maria Renard. Fans of the game either love Maria or call her “easy mode” and denounce others who don’t play as Richter. Yet if people stood back from their masochistic safe zones of Grunty McLeadfoot and looked at how the game was designed in terms of stages, they’d realize that for all intent and purpose Rondo of Blood was designed for Maria. She’s a magical girl, a cutesy anime character, and her skills fit the stage design and some bosses to such an amazing degree that it makes Richter really look out-of-place. Take for instance one area in what I believe is Stage 3: a series of staircases just a bit too high to jump up with Richter, with giant steel balls that roll down them (some having Flea Men). You need to quickly jump on these steel balls while they fall, then jump up off them to make it to the next staircase. It is painful, tedious, irritating to get the timing, and just devoid of fun. Richter suffers here. Maria? Maria was made for this.

I definitely appreciate the merits the game has, though. It tried to bridge between “Classicvania” and “Metroidvania”, it managed to really show how good its system’s hardware was with all of the visual pageantry (right down to the anime cut scenes) and it contained within it a character whose play style would become paramount in building a blueprint for an entire sub-genre of games. Sliding, double jumping, control in mid-air, wide variety of attacks, all aspects we see in every Metroidvania in the series since then. So, to summarize: This is a great game, but it disappointed me. The design of the game all-but blatantly stated to me that it was designed for Maria and that playing as Richter makes this game tough as nails. Some fans of the game need to get over themselves with the “Maria = Easy Mode” mantra, since for people who don’t like a wrist-slitting challenge such as playing as Richter in this game? It makes a gem of a title fun. And bottom line, isn’t that what we’re playing it for?

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (GBA)

I don’t think I have a game with as many odd characters in its title as this one. A comma, period, colon, dollar sign and an exclamation point. Damn. The game is just as odd too! My first experience into the whole set of Wario games (unless Super Mario Land 2 counts), and a ridiculously fun one at that. Essentially, this is a series of quick-time events thrown rapidly at you with an enormous diversity in objectives. It tests your reflexes, attentiveness, and makes you struggle to figure out what to do within a few seconds. I can’t say I raged at this game. Sure, there were times where I would have felt frustrated or cheated, but WarioWare, Inc moves so fast that I didn’t have time to rage. The second I would have started complaining, another game would have come and gone and I’d be even further in the negative.

Colorful, a huge amount of variety in its “microgames” , a likable if eclectic cast, with some dynamite music and plenty of throwbacks to classic games. This was easily worth the $7 I paid for it, and I enjoyed practically every second of it. I rarely have the desire to replay sections of a game unless necessary or a large amount of time has passed, but I found myself going back to 9-Volt’s set of microgames over and over. Fun, simple to pick up, and all the extra praise I’ve given it thus far shows that I advocate this game, aye?

Week #16: 4/17 – 4/23

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (XBLA)

Sega put a ton of their Xbox Live Arcade games on sale in the last week. I happened to have 470 points sitting around left over from a 1600 point gift from Sadrack for Banjo-Kazooie, so I snagged both this and Sonic & Knuckles for 320 points. I was actually tempted to get Phantasy Star II and Ecco the Dolphin instead, since the concept of Achievements seem to give me more motivation to play games. But, I talked with myself about it. “Dude, you’d need to replay 35 or more hours of Phantasy Star II just to get to where you are in your other file, and the game is only 200 Gamerscore. Dude, Ecco the Dolphin requires you to play through it fully three times in a row, save state abuse or no, to get two achievements. Be smart, stupid.”

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 may not be as well-loved as Sonic 2, but it is my favorite of the quartet. This comes mostly from nostalgia – it was my first – but it stands as a solid game. Level design is fair and well-paced, not filled with the painful nonsense of so many stages in Sonic 2. Music is glorious (Ice Cap Zone remixes forever for life), and the little additional abilities that Sonic gains with his elemental shields further expand on what is a good design model. Yes, the game is only half a game since it doesn’t feel complete until you snap it into Sonic & Knuckles and play the whole thing, but I love it. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Bonus Stages for Emeralds are actually a fair challenge yet fun, unlike the ball-busting terrible design of the Sonic 2 half-pipes. Seriously, it’s a cold day in hell when your average gamer can be Super Sonic in the second title. The Emeralds should be a challenge to get, not a nightmare. All in all, fun stuff. Get it. It’s a game where both “Sonic” and “good” are actually together.

Dynamite Headdy (Xbox 360, originally Genesis)

Just like Rondo of Blood, I’m sure I’d get flak for this too. I love/hate Dynamite Headdy. Treasure makes great games filled with character, and Dynamite Headdy oozes this. A unique aesthetic, interesting stages, and it has a fun gameplay mechanic with Headdy’s.. well, head. Like a prototype Rayman who would headbutt things constantly. See, I love it in concept and the way it looks in execution, but the game is too hard for its own good. WorldDude tells me that the Japanese version gave you continues, something that the American version had taken away from it for whatever reason. You can earn continues… but only if you manage to snag enough of the collectables that fly from each defeated boss, and that is a hard quota to reach. The game is long, and several stages will beat you down, piss on you, then beat you some more.

The shmup stages, especially the difficulty of the boss. The red/green-faced boss with the infuriating stage flipping and quick platforming. The final boss in its entirety. The fifth stage, complete with climbing the tower. Or that asshole of a Gatekeeper boss. It’s examples like this that I had a ton of trouble with and would be roadblocks to me had I not had the save feature on the Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. What I played through should have been the game’s Hard Mode. Dynamite Headdy should have been easier, and kept the continues in. Instead, the difficulty is ridiculously high, and even has a harder mode! Woe be to the person who attempts it though, as if my research is correct, it is essentially one-hit kill mode. If you’re masochistic, look into Dynamite Headdy. Otherwise, you’re better off browsing other Treasure titles since Headdy isn’t as accessible or well-paced as other games by the developer.

Borderlands + Zombie Island of Dr. Ned + Secret Armory of General Knoxx (PC)

I wrote about Borderlands back in A Week in Gaming #36 and my thoughts haven’t changed too much. The game is repetitious yet fun, and I’m having a blast playing multiplayer as a Siren. Having friends around made the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned more of a good experience, and the lack of teleporters only waters down a fun experience with General Knoxx. I’m up to a level 46 Siren, with a(nother) forgotten Berserker sitting at level 21.  My drive to continually play this version of the game continues, since the online is free and I have better control over protecting and saving my progress on the PC. Plus, getting the game and all of the DLC for $7.50 is a huge motivational boost, considering that just buying one DLC for the Xbox 360 version costs 25% more at $10. Bottom line, if you like Diablo-styled loot systems with first-person shooters, this game is for you. I’ve put 64 hours into this version and I’m not nearly done yet.

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Sorry for the delay in posting folks! It might happen again where I’m in crunch time for the end of my semester, but once summer hits I’ll be consistently writing once more! Leave a comment if you’re so inclined, and have fun gaming. Until next time!

The past week had a lot of variety to it. At one point I played Super Smash Bros. Brawl with my trio of friends for a few hours and the days that I’ve streamed on I presented a medley of handheld titles. There were only two new games, both of which I’ll write about here, and all in all it was a good week. Now, for what I took down.

Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair (PC, originally Genesis)

This was my first dip into the Wonder Boy series. I was misled from the beginning by what appeared to be a good presentation in both visuals and audio, and the game had two genres I enjoy mashed together: run and gun and shoot ‘em up. It’s after you start peeling away the presentation that you realize just how bad this game is; how its flaws will beat you senseless and leave you in the dust. Later research indicated that this version, the Genesis version, was the worst of the ports and damn does it show.

Don’t let the visuals, audio, or the guy who is trashing the game hard in that video fool you. This game is nothing but an exercise in pain. Nine long stages, each divided into the run and gun and shoot em up sections. Everything in the game except those beach balls you see fired at the player will kill you in one hit, the balls will stun you then make you jump uncontrollably while you lose a portion of that time gauge. Earlier stages aren’t that bad when it comes to death, later ones will rip apart entire continues. The game throws more than enough food and weapons at you to restore that bar but it begs to question why bother with it when you so much as twitch and die. The weapons are also irritating in that they barely last more than twenty or so seconds. They become less a tool to use and more of the arsenal of someone with an attention disorder who can’t make up his mind. Plus, what good are getting better weapons over your pea shooter if you can’t ever use them on the bosses?

But all of that isn’t the worst of it. No, the worst come hand-in-hand with the one-hit deaths: the run and jump physics are terrible and there are no invincibility frames. Get hit with a ball, you bounce and are vulnerable. You can respawn from death and instantly die if the game is feeling like an ass and throws an enemy beneath you. You can’t dodge worth shit thanks to the hero’s horrible movement physics, either. I honestly hope that the rest of the series is better than this, because Monster Lair is a terrible game.

Bio-Hazard Battle (PC, originally Genesis)

A Genesis shoot em up with a unique presentation, an interesting premise, and an unfair difficulty curve: this is Bio-Hazard Battle in a nutshell. The long and short of the plot is that a biological world war occurred, tons of giant creatures now make it unsafe, and after decades in a floating space station humanity is going to strike back when they feel the bio-hazards are at a manageable point. To do this, you choose from one of four different bio ships, and yes the game is that focused on the biological. Each ship is different in some way, either from the movement speed or from the layout of which weapons it has. While some are blatantly better than others, this diversity echoes of games like Gradius or U.N. Squadron with their variety.

Beyond that variety, I found other things that I genuinely liked. For instance, collision detection and what actually hurts you. This game functions like Gradius in that one hit equals death. But where Vic Viper can’t touch walls ever, the four ships in Bio-Hazard Battle can. You can rub up against walls and collide into ceilings all you like, just don’t hit enemies. Extra lives were fair in when they were given and the amount of continues the game has seems like a genuine apology for just how brutal this title can get. The most striking thing to me, though, was the presentation: bloody good music and a visual aesthetic I can’t remember seeing in any other shoot ‘em up. Some of the on-screen creatures, like the giant flying black leeches in stage 4, literally gave me shivers while looking damn good. The giant flying green caterpillar-like monsters were also striking to me in how they looked, it seemed real in a sense.

The downside to this title was its difficulty, though. At some points this game was brilliantly balanced, at others I was a swearing nightmare. The bosses of stages 4 and 5 were especially asinine, though. It is bad enough that you have to fight a giant enemy that spams attacks at you, interspersed with trying to ram you, but the lines of enemies that filter in at the top and bottom of the screen? Pure overkill. It’s as if they thought the bosses weren’t enough and decided to put in the enemies to make up for whatever the boss was failing at. In short, more enemies, more collision death, dozens more bullets. I won’t even get into the rage that the seventh and eighth stage caused me, never mind the frustration of the final boss. All in all? A good title, marred by a few design choices and an unfair difficulty. I recommend it, but only if you enjoy shoot em ups.

Streets of Rage Remake (PC D/L)

Eight years in the making, a freeware juggernaut of a title that takes everything you ever loved about the Streets of Rage series and throws it into a blender, then makes it better. Tons of characters, an enormous amount of stages, a bloody incredible soundtrack, everything about this game practically sweats the polish that was put into it. I can’t give this game enough praise, and it has already earned a spot as “One of the Best Games of 2011″ for me. One of my favorite beat em up series, condensed into one singular game and given away for free by the guys who made it.  As of now there looks like they might be having legal troubles with Sega for whatever reason (despite having contacted them in the past about this project), but I still say give Bombergames and Streets of Rage Remake your support. There are few other remakes of this caliber in existence. I’d write more but where I could do a detailed review in an entire post I’d rather not write here all day about one of the four games.

Samurai Jack: The Amulet of Time (GBA)

Finally, the last game. I’ve got mixed feelings about this game, for valid reasons. It is based on a great IP – both a good and bad thing. It is a Game Boy Advance title that tries to emulate the formula of Metroidvanias, but was published and designed by two companies that seem to have vanished completely and whose pedigrees aren’t exactly stellar. But, being the curious bear I am, I decided to go into it and explore everything I could.

The plot is what you’d expect of a Samurai Jack game: Jack wants to defeat Aku and be sent back to his home time. In this game he has the titular Amulet, for which he has to collect four elemental gems. Jack has a plethora of moves at his disposal, which are usually gained by defeating bosses or gaining plot-important items, and all harken to the Metroidvanias. Double jump, super jump, wall jumps, elemental sword attacks and sub-weapons that allow further exploration, all are here and eventually at Jack’s disposal. In addition, enemies will drop a spread of items that are either consumable or that he can equip. The latter are particularly numerous, with spots for armor, two gauntlets, two rings, and three sword stones. While Jack doesn’t gain experience, throughout the game you can acquire items to permanently boost his statistics.

All of this seems good on paper, trust me. In execution, however, we’re left with an incredibly short title devoid of the polish and finesse that could have made it a stellar game. Despite having several areas to it, the game is essentially linear and quick to work your way through. Enemies, while diverse in appearance, are all simple creatures who are lucky if they have more than one basic attack at their disposal. The NPCs are lackluster and to say that there’s a series of quests in the game would be giving it credit. Several items are vague, and to this day I still don’t know what the Gold Ring, the Platinum Ring, or the Scotsman’s Bagpipes do.

The aspect that is likely to shut off people the most though are the physics. Jack moves clunky and rough, with more frames of animation than needed paralyzing him in contrast to the Belmonts or Alucard. Hitboxes are a complete absurdity in this title and require practice to actually discern whether or not you can hit an enemy and how. Jumping feels awkward and several times I’ve fallen through what look like solid floors because my hitboxes weren’t aligned correctly. You’re stuck in one direction for double jumping, and aerial maneuvering is almost a myth here sans gaining height.

Beyond that, the game is short as I mentioned above. Both myself and rightbelow of the Backloggery were able to beat the title within three and a half hours while nearly doing everything the game had to offer. But for those who are so inclined to continue, you can do (really you’re forced) to do a New Game+ when booting up a file you have beaten. All stats and inventory items are carried over sans plot-related ones, making you a juggernaut of death in a game too short for its own good. I beat it twice and did what I believe is 100% within six hours, and sadly enough the only changes for New Game+ were that the Scotsman appeared and became a boss battle, and that you get his bagpipes as a victory prize. That’s it. No harder difficulty, no new items or explanations or even an ending. Nothing. Short, a mix of sweet and bitter, an experience that will leave you wondering if the time invested was truly worth it. Better than other licensed games, but not enough to make it a great licensed title like some of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles or the Capcom Disney games of the 16-bit generation.

I’m a Metroidvania fanboy, so despite its shortcomings I advocate this title. If you can find it for extremely cheap and want a decent experience, I recommend it. Otherwise just leave this title in the dust where it should belong.

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That’s all for me this week folks. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week with hopefully another set of beaten or completed games. Until then, keep gaming and visit my Flickr page to see what else I’ve been up to (and possibly make a purchase)!!

I’ve not the motivation to write a three-thousand word monologue much like a few weeks ago, so I’m going to write in that short and substantial way that I’ve done in the past. With five games and low motivation, a long monologue dissecting these games would become flat and unfocused. Today we’ve got a spread between a few ported Genesis titles, two Game Boy Color titles, and a brief stint with a Game Boy Advance game.

Virtua Fighter 2 (PC, originally Genesis)

I have a seething dislike of pre-Saturn/PlayStation fighting games. I also happen to own a lot of them for some reason. After experiencing the likes of Ultimate Mortal Kombat III, Primal Rage, Street Fighter II, Ballz 3D… (though Killer Instinct was cool), I didn’t have high expectations for Virtua Fighter 2. This was a good mindset to have going in, as old fighting games never really age well. After looking up some info on it, I can appreciate what the game did in terms of pushing the envelope and being more realistic and all of that nonsense. But honestly, Virtua Fighter II was even more simplistic than Street Fighter II. Just take out the special moves and keep in combos and add in ring-outs. That’s basically it. Oh, and the final boss of the game? What the hell was up with that? I go from fighting a diverse ethnic selection of people as a guy who looks like General Tao or Master Asia… then the final boss ends up being a crystal-colored cyborg who I fight in Atlantis? What the shit.

If you’re into old or antiquated fighting games, this one could be up your alley. Otherwise, give it respect for what it influenced but never touch it.

Crack Down (PC, originally Genesis)

Here’s the other of the two Sega Genesis Classics I completed on Steam over the week. More and more I’m finding myself an aficionado of top-down shooters, and this one takes the solid formula that games like Gauntlet and Gain Ground used and modifies it. This felt like a double-edged sword though, as level design became increasingly frustrating with the time limit each stage has. The concept behind the gameplay is great: you have a time period to run through stages in a top-down perspective to plant explosives and escape. You’ve got two different guns and screen-clearing bombs at your disposal, the enemies have variety to them, you’ve got close-range combat available, and the stages are never truly the same.

Execution, however? Some stages are designed cruelly and one hit equaling death doesn’t help the situation. I’m reminded of three stages in particular that I hated: the one with moving platforms over lava, the one with the electrical circuits on the ground that required bomb abuse to get past safely, and the final stage. If nothing else, that final stage will leave people salivating in rage or abandoning the fight against Dr. X. Beyond these issues which can be overcome with time and tenacity? This is a good game. It’s not the best in the world, but I rather enjoyed it and don’t regret going in blind. It’s cheap on Steam, look into it if you’re interested.

F-Zero: GP Legend (Game Boy Advance)

This is the GBA game I had a brief stint with. On stream I didn’t play beyond the easiest circuit cup to complete and Rick Wheeler’s portion of the Story Mode. This plays like what you’d expect of an updated F-Zero SNES title, and it does so well. I found the controls tight and responsive, the music is glorious, and the fact that it has a Story mode really entices me. Even with being based on an anime, this game reeks of chunky F-Zero goodness with only a few things I found to complain about.

Mainly, those came from the “tracks” in the story mode where you had to race someone else to the finish. So many ninety-degree turns and odd design compared to your average track made these segments irritating and I didn’t like them. Beyond that I haven’t much else to complain about but I’m sure once I get more in-depth with the game you all can expect to hear me moan and groan about it.  As it stands now I do promote this title but we’ll see how things go in the future.

Looney Tunes (Game Boy Color)

This was one of the four Game Boy / Game Boy Color games I picked up in the impulse splurge spree I went on. I had no idea what to expect going into this, so you can imagine my surprise when I found a half-decent and colorful platformer lodged inside. Character and stage diversity are a positive but the sheer jump the difficulty decided to make at the halfway point left me feeling incredibly mixed about the title.

For whatever reason you have to play as different Looney Tunes to achieve various objectives that are miles apart from one another. The first stage belongs to Daffy Duck, which functions as your standard platformer. Controlling the duck means running, jumping, and throwing a frisbee for a projectile as you fight Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian for some reason. As soon as that is done, you’re suddenly playing as Tweety. With limited flight capacity you have to repeatedly run away from Sylvester and an odd kid who keeps appearing to chuck stuff at you. Stage 3 goes completely different where you end up playing as Porky Pig in a stage designed after horizontal shmups. For some reason Porky has a death feud with a witch and a giant black star but the stage is fun. Stage 4 is Taz’s stage and honestly this functions more as a bonus stage than anything. All you do is spin around breaking rocks while trying to collect as many pieces of meat as possible in the time given. All in all, these stages are great.

Stage 5 is a brick wall. Speedy Gonzales is inside of an Egyptian themed pyramid or some such, the stage is incredibly long and Speedy’s main form of attack is terrible. Speedy stops where he is and enters an unbreakable animation where he dances around shooting waves of stars to 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock. This entire stage is filled with ridiculous pain and I died many a time here before getting it down. Stage 6 isn’t any better, as now you’re in the shoes of the Road Runner, escaping from Wile E. Coyote. The game auto-scrolls the level and the only way to hurt Wile E. is to jump on him. Naturally the coyote has a plethora of things to chuck at the Road Runner and this becomes another serious case of trial and error. Once you manage to get this far, you finally end up at the final stage… which essentially is a fusion of Daffy’s and Speedy’s. Specifically, Daffy has been reskinned as Bugs Bunny in a stage designed much like Speedy’s, complete with a boss rush and ending with a battle against Elmer Fudd. Painful, odd, and subject to rage when you find out that Elmer requires a ton of hits to die and has a spreadshot built into his shotgun.

Overall this game isn’t too bad. The latter three stages are brutally hard in a contrast to the easy first four stages but all of them are designed well. This entire game just comes down to trial and error while learning the quirky physics of the game and the layouts of the stages. If I had paid more, I’d like it less but since I only paid $2 for it I’m happy.

A Bug’s Life (Game Boy Color)

I could write about how bad this game is. How it is literally impossible to finish with passwords, rife with bad design, and is presented in a horrific manner. Instead, I’ll summarize A Bug’s Life for the Game Boy Color with this.

Won't you help him make his harvester?

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Sorry for the delay folks, and thanks for reading! We’ll have another set of games to write about next week. I know it’s not the standard for you all to comment, but you could please do me a favor and tell me if today’s format was better than prior weeks? Thanks again, and keep gaming! o/

The one I promised I’d write about is Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve been working on finishing this game to 100% since January and have sunk 75 or so hours into it. At times this has been a tedious and boring chore while at other times I genuinely enjoyed this very divisive entry of the Final Fantasy series. Where five years ago I would claim this game didn’t exist in the series because of how bad it was, my game philosophy now made me give FF8 the benefit of doubt and a fair attempt through the entirety of it.

First and foremost: the plot both confused and irritated me. Sans the Laguna segments, the entire first disc seemed more science fiction in genre and fit well with the feel that I felt the game tried to give. As soon as the second disc hit, everything went up into what could be equivalent to a fantasy grounded deep in Squall’s mind. So many things within the plot didn’t seem to make sense, came out of left field, or felt so forced that I longed for the first disc again. Without going into too much detail: Rinoa, Time Compression, Ellone, NORG, the Orphanage, being leader of Balamb, Edea and Cid, Sorceresses. It’s vulgar, but honestly? What the fuck. Just what the fuck.

The Laguna segments in particular felt extremely forced and were always short. I had more fun as Laguna, Kiros and Ward than I did at any point in the rest of the game. I loved all three of them; Laguna and his derpy antics with a machine gun, Kiros’s calm and smooth demeanor and those deadly katar, and big ol’ Ward with his giant harpoon. Plus, the battle music (video above) is excellent.

I honestly enjoyed the GF system, with the Draw, Junction and item mechanics. Having random drops mean more than just acting as a useless battle item, or a silly piece of trash, it really brought items into more of a focus. This did allow for severely overpowering oneself in the first disc, but that was only on the basis of pursuing it. I found the GF and Junction systems obsessive to set up just how I wanted them and spent hours of that time Drawing magic that I didn’t possess. I also liked how enemies scaled in level with you, making every encounter worth something somehow. And if they weren’t, good ol’ Diablos and his Enc-None ability were there to back me up.

Now, this might be a bit controversial, but I have to be honest: I don’t really care for Triple Triad. I find Tetra Master to be a superior card game and I loved playing that more than the entirety of which I played Triple Triad during my run through FF8. I know that playing cards is completely optional, but where I went for a Completion file, or 100%, collecting all the cards became a requisite. A masochistic, bullcrap, completely obtuse and painful requisite. To start: FUCK THE RULES. Open and Trade: All, Diff, One. These should have been the only rules in the game. Random is a nightmare, Elemental, Same, Plus, and Same/Wall do nothing but make the game more frustrating and unfair, and all of them together with Sudden Death caused hair to be removed from my scalp. It was that infuriating.

Want 100% in FF8? Prepare to suffer with this for hours.

Then you’ve got the way to get the cards that require being made by the Card Queen’s father. Not only do you have to purposely lose a card to her, but she has to move to Dollet. If you don’t save scumm and force her to bounce between Dollet and Balamb, you face the possibility of chasing this bitch around the world losing and gaining cards from her until her psychotic ass is back at Dollet, giving you access to the next card in this side-quest. But that was manageable thanks to a very very very very helpful guide I found as a result of dealing with General Carraway (who as soon as the second disc hit became nonexistent in the plot). I needed to lose Ifrit to him (instead of y’know, just giving him the card I suppose?) so he’d play his Rinoa card. This is the only way to get the Rinoa card. When Deling City is stuck with the Random rule, this makes purposely losing certain cards incredibly hard and I spent hours going back and forth between Deling and other areas to get rid of the rule… to no success. Then I looked up help, and found an RNG (random number generator) abusing guide that would guarantee results. In less than five minutes, Random was abolished. I worked the Card Queen to nigh-perfection and she never left Balamb and Dollet.

The point behind all of that? This sidequest, the way to get these cards, and dealing with the bullshit rules was by far the most tedious and least fun part of the game I dealt with. This even overrides the rage and confusion I had at the plot, amongst other things. I also didn’t enjoy hunting down random obscure items for the sake of upgrading my weapons. It just seemed incredibly cheap to force me to hunt for hours (if I was uninformed) for random rare items that would give me access to stronger weapons. Disregarding the fact that outside of Lion Heart and Strange Vision’s 255% hit rate the weapons were useless, it just felt cheesy and thrown in for sake of being frustrating.

So I hated the plot, I hated the card game and everything attached, and I hated upgrading the weapons. I enjoyed the gameplay and combat system and the ways in which one would power-up their characters. As for those characters themselves? In statements:

• Squall: Whiny introverted moron who I’m convinced fabricated 75% of the plot as a wet dream when Edea spiked him.
• Riona: Irritating but had a solid character in the first disc, then became a forced love attraction to Squall and lost all semblance of meaning.
• Zell: Dude, your tattoo is ridiculous and stupid. You’re a derp otherwise and I enjoyed you at times, but that tattoo HAS to go.
• Irvine: I barely used or paid attention to you, so you just seemed like an archtypical “girl-loving cowboy”.
• Selphie: Spunky, energetic, and containing a trace of malevolent violence? This is a good female sidekick.
• Quistis: Smart, attractive, experienced compared to everyone above, badass whip, Blue Magic user… this is the heroine here, not Rinoa.
• Seifer: White trash douchebag.
• Raijin: Annoying, ya know?!
• Fujin: FORGETTABLE.
• Cid: You stole the FH leader’s name, you Robin Williams knock-off.
• Edea: Had a solid purpose as a villain… then disc 3 hit and suddenly you no longer mattered.
• Laguna, Kiros, Ward: As I said before, some of the best characters in the game.
• NORG: Where did you come from and where the hell did you go?!
• Ellone: I didn’t realize a plot-device item would be able to exist as a character.

Everyone else? Forgettable to some degree. Much like the plot, or the bullshit parts of the game. All of this probably explains why Final Fantasy VIII is so divisive between people who love it and hate it. Despite its shortcomings, I did genuinely enjoy this title and I’m glad to finally take down a quest that was originally set in motion over a decade ago when I first played the demo. For those who have yet to play this I recommend it. Give it a chance. It’s not the best in the series, but it is hardly deserving of all the biased and shallow flak people give it.

The other game this week? One that will be written about in as much length as the game actually was to play: Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers. Out of all the versions though, I’m specifically discussing the PlayStation 2 version. Somehow, this game has copies on the Game Boy Color, the PlayStation, DreamCast, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, Windows PC and GameCube. While the 2D and 3D versions differ greatly, the PS2 version can be summed up in one statement: A Crash Bandicoot clone.

I’ll admit that I have a huge soft spot for Donald, Gyro, Scrooge, and the nephews. I loved both DuckTales games and the cartoon should have been a part of my childhood. This is partly why I can’t really hate Goin’ Quackers for being a short ripoff of another established franchise. Honestly, this game actually manages to hold up rather well with its gameplay. The controls seemed responsive and well-made, the pacing was rather quick and stages gave reason for replay.

One inherent problem I had with this gameplay were the trademark Bandicoot stages that have the perspective more akin to racing than a platformer. That is, platforming from a perspective where you’re behind Donald and looking over his shoulder. Running forward means just that: you are running forward. This is what most of the 14 stages consist of. Those that do not either flip the perspective and make you run towards the screen (and away from a ripoff of Master Hand), or have the tried-and-true sidescrollig that platformers. Running away from the screen or towards it gave me an incredible problem with depth perception, and to add to that the lack of shadows for several things resulted in one too many deaths that could have been easily avoided.

Saving was frequent and stages were diverse enough to where it the game didn’t feel tedious or repetitious. But the problem that did persist is that the game and all 14 stages (plus 4 bosses) were really short. Starting from the beginning, with many many deaths, it took me two and a half hours to beat Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers. Granted I didn’t do replays to get the extra collectables the game offered, but when the core experience of your game is that short and lacking it leaves that experience wanting and shallow. Despite my love for the Ducks there just wasn’t enough here worth remembering and it felt like a cheap clone  used by Disney to generate a few bucks. Where I rode a wave of good feelings for prior Disney games, such as those two DuckTales titles, this blatant Crash Bandicoot ripoff just doesn’t seem to be worth the time you spend considering if you’ll pick it up or not.

If nothing else, I did have a bit of fun streaming it, and I’m more interested in trying out the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance versions of the title now to see how they stack up to their 3D counterparts. If you’re looking for a cheap Disney experience, I could recommend this… but only at a really cheap price.

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That’s all for me this week, folks. Look out for that Post Apocalyptic Mayhem review dropping this week at Snackbar Games. Where I return to normal classes and coursework, my progress might slow a bit, although if today’s two completions alone say anything I might have another giant post at the start of April. Until then, keep gaming! o/