The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

Onimusha

Made me think of a cross between Resident Evil 2 and a Soulsborne (probably Sekiro).  Which brings all the baggage that would entail.  Shifting between fixed camera angles = not optimal for a swordfight against a boss.  Add in regularly respawning enemies and you could have the stuff of nightmares. 

Luckily,the challenge was muted enough that frustration was minimal.  I didn't die in combat once in the first 2/3 of the game.

Shame they never remastered parts 2-4.  I have the trilogy on PS2, so perhaps I'll visit those some day.

[Floating Platforms | 721]

This weekend, I also beat TMNT: Shredder's Revenge.  But since I have no kids, my 40-something year old friend came over. We beat Story Mode on normal with April and Splinter, then did Arcade mode on easy with Casey & Raph (to get the trophy for beating arcade mode without using a credit).  I'll wait to upload a pic for if/when I platinum the game. I would have liked a slightly longer campaign or to have some differences between story & arcade modes aside from an overworld map and collectibles.  However, we had a ton of fun and it was perfect for a lot of that first cartoon era nostalgia.

Last night I also beat Piczle Cross Adventure

This is essentially what I was looking for when I talked about Murder By Numbers last year.  An adventure game where you go around solving picross puzzles and sometimes those become items you use in other parts of the game.  It's still a very simplified version of that (because basically you get the item and run back to another location and hit A to unlock whatever it is), but the whole package was done well.  There was a good assortment of puzzles, with a chunk of larger 20x15's, which is great. The lead character had a fun personality and there was a nice sense of humor across the board.  I really wasn't expecting much from this, and it pulled me in.  I'll keep my fingers crossed for a more in-depth follow-up from them.

[Estil | 1,265]

I'm working on Tales of Graces and the chicks in this game are really kawaii...especially Sophie and that really perky what's her name, Cobol, Basic, Fortran...?  

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

40 minutes ago, Estil said:

I'm working on Tales of Graces and the chicks in this game are really kawaii...especially Sophie and that really perky what's her name, Cobol, Basic, Fortran...?  

Is this your official 2023 backlog?

[Gloves | 11,800]

7 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Onimusha

Made me think of a cross between Resident Evil 2 and a Soulsborne (probably Sekiro).  Which brings all the baggage that would entail.  Shifting between fixed camera angles = not optimal for a swordfight against a boss.  Add in regularly respawning enemies and you could have the stuff of nightmares. 

Luckily,the challenge was muted enough that frustration was minimal.  I didn't die in combat once in the first 2/3 of the game.

Shame they never remastered parts 2-4.  I have the trilogy on PS2, so perhaps I'll visit those some day.

Oh nice I didn't realize we were both gonna play Onimusha this year.

I still to this day can't shake that excited feeling I got when I first saw footage of the game, went to Blockbuster and played the demo. "It's just like real life!" is how we would say the graphics were good back in the PS2... PS1... N64... era... Oh god lol. Ah, memoirs.

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Is this your official 2023 backlog?

The PS3/PS4 Tales of games are part of it, yes.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

2 minutes ago, Estil said:

The PS3/PS4 Tales of games are part of it, yes.

Are we getting a post/list?

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

@SumezIf you've started with Kickle Cubicle this year, then you could post it over in the NES completions thread as this game hasn't been beaten, yet. Also, we're off to a good start and with some more helpers we might be able to beat the entire US library this year. 367 games are done, 300 more to go!

[Sumez | 2,968]

13 minutes ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

If you've started with Kickle Cubicle this year, then you could post it over in the NES completions thread as this game hasn't been beaten, yet.

Feel free to register me for it  

[Sumez | 2,968]

Yo! Noid - Beaten 22/1

As is probably well known, Yo! Noid is a complete reskin of a "masked ninja" game on the Famicom. I bought the American version of the game though because of how outrageously dumb it seemed.
Featuring some obscure company mascot I've never heard of outside of this game, and which I can't imagine ever had more than zero marketing appeal, "The Noid" is some creepy looking man wearing what looks like a full body red rubber rabbit suit?

Replacing various ninjas and classic video game environments like forests, rivers, and a volcano, are urban locations like skating rinks, a pier, cityscapes and the sewers, instead populated with various bums and scum and rodents. Very few graphics made it through from the original game, making it one of the most surprising full official reskins of an NES game that I have seen.
As far as I can tell though, the two games play 100% the same, with the same enemy behaviors and secrets in the same locations, and so on. The original ninja game even had the stage where you are skateboarding through a public park, and the carnival stage is also the same between the two games, even though the graphics have still been altered between them regardless.

So the game doesn't have the best reputation, but honestly it just doesn't have much of a reputation at all. It's a Capcom* platformer though, so it's gonna be at least a decent game, right?
Well, don't expect the new Ducktales here, but I think that goes without saying. The game is generally super janky and although the controls are surprisingly responsive, there's all these little things wrong with the game everywhere that adds up to it feeling kinda bad, and pretty much every death you'll suffer will feel like something that happened outside of your own mistakes.
Yo! Noid in't an easy game, but it probably would be if not for all the annoying things it does - Like, there's the rising water level stage, where standing on a platform slightly above the water will still drown you. The flying stage where being too close to the bottom inexplicably makes you unable to fly back up. The skateboard stage where it's weirdly impossible to determine what angle of jumping on an enemy will kill them or which will kill you. The carousel horse platforms which are perfectly safe to stand on until one appears over a bottomless pit, and it's suddenly now a falling platform. Paired with some really unreliable collision detection (and never in your favor), Yo! Noid easily becomes a lot more frustrating than it should be. Though everything can be learned, and give the game a few runs through and you'll probably ace it.

The level design is overall fairly uninspired and I think the game would join the ranks of mediocre unmemorable NES platformers such as Panic Restaurant or Time Zone if not for just a handful of ideas that give it a little more of its own identity... for better or worse.
At the end of every other stage you'll face a "boss fight" - in the original game, this was a battle of ninja powers, while in Yo! Noid it's... a pizza eating contest. Though in reality both of these are implemented through a very simple card game, where simply having the better card wins. There is very little strategy in it, and generally the best course of action is just having extra cards that help multiplying your number value, or cancel out the opponent's card. These cards are found throughout the stages, which is probably the most fun aspect of the card game.
Picking up better cards is some times required to even have a chance at winning, but the best part about finding them is that you also have a chance at getting through the card fight much faster than you otherwise would. If you game over and continue you will also lose all your cards, but simply die and replay a stage, and you will be able to pick up the same cards again. Lots of cards are also hidden everywhere in secret locations that you need to shoot with your yo-yo to uncover. Looking for these isn't the most exciting time I have had in a game, but it does add a little more meat to the game, and I can imagine a kid growing up with this game would probably have learned of enough locations to just fly through every card battle, I mean pizza eating contest, with a full deck of doubles and triples.

Win a pizza/card contest without taking a hit and you'll earn an extra continue. Some stages also have hidden exits (I found three, but I'm sure there are more) that you can unlock by winning a whack-a-mole game - which also earns you an extra continue. These continues helped me a lot practicing the game, but I think once you've become sufficiently familiar with all the stages, a 1CC is probably easy. Don't ask me to play this game again, though, the NES offers plenty of better ways to spend your time.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

Last night in Elden Ring I beat Ryckard and Niall.

The first few times I did Ryckard's phase two I withered under the onslaught, completely befuddled.  I had to look online and see what I was supposed to do.  Niall was straightforward in comparison, and I'm assuming he's one of the final bosses.  Still hard to say how much I have left.

There's also a couple bosses in Niall's section of the world map that completely destroy me.  So far I haven't let anyone get the best of me, so I might spend tonight throwing myself at them until I figure it out or get lucky.

[Gloves | 11,800]

14 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Niall was straightforward in comparison, and I'm assuming he's one of the final bosses.

Niall is entirely optional lol.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

39 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Niall is entirely optional lol.

Well then I don't know what the fuck is going on lol.

I got a thing.  I think it goes with a place.  Otherwise I'll wander.

[Sumez | 2,968]

Beating Niall is kinda necessary for some really cool things though. I insisted on beating him on my level 1 playthrough for the same reason. 

[FireHazard51 | 2,047]

@Sumez Domino's is a big pizza chain in the US and this mascot was well know during the NES era.

 

[Gloves | 11,800]

30 minutes ago, FireHazard51 said:

@Sumez Domino's is a big pizza chain in the US and this mascot was well know during the NES era.

 

I used The Noid as my online persona for about 9 years, it's what the Playstation Trophies community knows me by: https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/profile/47111-noid/

[Philosoraptor | 468]

January flew by. This month I ended up beating five games:

• Castlevania 64
• Snowboard Kids 2
• F-Zero X
• Granblue Fantasy
• Pokemon Crystal

I'd say F-Zero X was easily my favorite of the N64 games. Snowboard Kids 2 is a massive improvement over the first in that it's playable and doesn't feel like you're steering a brick down a mountain. Sadly, Castlevania 64 has some levels with some serious camera issues and easily missable things that hinder progression. And no, I'm not cheating and counting Castlevania 64 as my 2D Castlevania clear for the year.

I played Crystal in hopes of transferring some Pokemon to Pokemon Stadium 2, but because my clock has died in all five of the copies of Gold, Silver, or Crystal I have access to, it just ends up corrupting my save or not reading the game. Still though, I beat Red and his level 70+ team of 6 Pokemon in 32 hours with a level 66 Alakazam, a 54 Jolteon, and a 54 Alakazam.

The biggest time suck has been Granblue Fantasy. I played Granblue Fantasy Versus last year, and the story and characters interested me enough to play its gacha-filled big brother. How do you beat a gacha game? Well, I'm saying beating the main story counts. It ended up being 164 chapters with each chapter having at least four parts, so that's over 600 stages. Add on to that the side missions and extra missions, and I easily sat through 900 stages with pre-stage dialogue and usually also post-stage dialogue. All told, it's taken me around 350 hours to get to this point, and there's plenty more to do. Yes I realize that's 8 hours a day all month on average. Yes I also realize I'm kind of addicted to it, but thankfully I haven't (and won't) spend any money on the game. I'm probably going to continue to play this game throughout the year, as it's a good backup gacha with great characters, good music, and interesting mechanics, but I'll probably stop putting so many hours into it. Hopefully.

The art director is Hideo Minaba (of Sqaresoft/FF fame) and Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita as the main composers, so this game gives of serious Final Fantasy vibes. The gacha currency is crystals and there's even airships (shock)!

Speaking of that, the gacha system is generous in that you have a 6% chance to pull the rarest units in rate up times, which usually occur at least once a month. However, there's only two pools to pull from, and only one you really want to pull from. Since the game is almost 10 years old, there is an inordinate amount of weapons (some of which also get you characters) and summons. So much so that the 6% to pull the rarest unit suddenly becomes 0.016% for specific characters. Add to it that one 10-pull is the equivalent of $30 USD and pity (where you can select a unit from the banner) is 300 pulls, it quickly becomes apparent that the devs intended for you to play through the game and earn the currency for the gacha slowly over time, which is totally fine. It's a good FTP gacha game if you can be patient and resist the urge to pay for pulls.

Progress made this month:

• 5/50 games beaten.
• $472 of $5,000 worth of games beaten
• 2/5 RPGs longer than 20 hours beaten
• 2/10 games on handheld consoles beaten (I'm counting Granblue Fantasy for this because it's a phone game, and you can't stop me)

Edited February 1, 2023 by Philosoraptor

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

January flew by indeed. I was so busy with completing NES games, that there wasn't much time for anything else. But at least I've got 98 NES games under my belt within a single month. A new personal record. But out of these there were only 3 games part of my backlog, i.e. Little Samson, Rockin' Cats and Gargoyle's Quest.

Little Samson is a really great action platformer similar to the Mega Man games. It definitely lives up to its good reputation, but that still doesn't justify the steep asking price. But I've been wanting to play it for a long time and finally did so on an emulator, because no game in the world is worth that price.

What I personally didn't like so much about this game were the unmemorable stages. There are often mini stages in between and because of that it later felt like I was just going through a lot of throwaway stages. Mega Man for example did a much better job of making every stage stand out from the rest. On top of that some of the later levels in Little Samson were really difficult and for these you'd want to have all four of your characters. But if anyone of them dies and doesn't have a life potion, then you can't resurrect them and basically have to kill off every other character in order to get a fresh try. This got a little obnoxious later on. Those criticism aside, it's still a high point in the NES library.

Rockin' Cats was another really cool action platformer. Maybe not quite on the same level of Little Samson, but still really enjoyable once you get used to the controls

Gargoyle's Quest II was a little bit of a letdown since it's much closer to the GB game and not the amazing third entry in the franchise, Demon's Crest. As such it felt like more of the same. Solid, but nothing great. I'm also somewhat over old platformers thinking that they need to include RPG elements and an elaborate story, because it slows the game down and keeps you from playing the actual decent action levels.

[Sumez | 2,968]

5 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

at least I've got 98 NES games under my belt within a single month

[Sumez | 2,968]

On 2/1/2023 at 4:31 AM, FireHazard51 said:

@Sumez Domino's is a big pizza chain in the US and this mascot was well know during the NES era.

Lol this changes absolutely nothing about the stance I posted in my writeup  Seems like I was on point by everything

[Sumez | 2,968]

  

On 1/22/2023 at 10:33 PM, Gloves said:

the Shmup forum. I'm on there too but I really just lurk, and am under a different/older username

 

On 2/1/2023 at 5:03 AM, Gloves said:

I used The Noid as my online persona for about 9 years

 

[Sumez | 2,968]

Tangle Tower - Beaten 29/1

Yahtzee posted a video recently which claims in its title that for a detective game to really be good, the player needs to be able to fail. I saw this quite by coincidence shortly after having finished Tangle Tower.
I think that statement alone explains quite well what is the biggest issue with most detective games out there, but I can also see why it is hard to actually get around that trap. Because if you want the player to actually deduce information on their own, how do you make them prove that they have done so without making it possible to bruteforce, or nudging them so hard along the way that you are practically giving them the solution? You want them to piece together information and think for themselves, but you also want to make a video game - deductions should be incremental until they start forming the bigger picture, or you'd just have a simple quiz with one single question and answer.

Tangle Tower is, as I'd discover only after playing it through, the third in a series of detective games featuring "Detective Grimoire". And its approach to solving the above conundrum is absolute apathy, I guess.

It's basically a very simple point-n-click adventure game. You go through a series of rooms and find things and talk to people, with most rooms having an item locked behind a very simple Layton'esque puzzle. Since it's a detective game rather than a classic adventure game however, you don't find inventory items or combine them anywhere, you just make note of items and add them to your list of clues, which you can then use as subjects to discuss with each of the available suspects around the eponymous Tangle Tower. That's the basics of the gameplay - click on anything that looks interesting and make sure to discuss everything with everyone. Often it's logical which points of interest are most relevant to which people, but a few of them are kind of random, so right out the gate the game invites you to employ the spreadshot approach to make sure you don't miss anything.

Once the game dictates enough clues have been investigated to deduce something that doesn't quite add up, you get the option to discuss a "suspicion" with a suspect, something each of them has exactly one of. In order to prove that you have figured something out, the game asks you to drag and drop some keywords inbetween a multiple-choice of statements, in order to build a sentence stating what you have deduced. However, it is very difficult to get these wrong at all. Usually what you need to spell out is something that has already been stated very directly by the game, and among the already very few options available, only few form logical sentences. Some times however it is possible to build a sentence that is still a correct deduction, closely related to what they want you to say, but not the exact same thing - and you need to figure out how to change it. The system is a bit too weak to ever feel satisfying, and never really hinges on paying attention to little details that don't add up, like a classic detective mystery would. Instead you just discover things until the solution is plainly visible.

One thing the game does well though, is sprinkle a bit of mysteries right from the opening of the game, that only gradually start to make sense once the discoveries pile up. The characters are fun and interesting, the animation, though simple, is very well done, and the voice acting is solid. It's a likeable game if nothing else, but as a murder mystery I'm really missing all the little details that one could potentially have used to piece together who the murderer is if they had paid well enough attention, but instead with the way the story proceeds in Tangle Tower, the murderer could practically have been just about anyone, and the story wouldn't have been much different for it. Motive plays little role, and none of the clues ever actually point at the actual perpetrator - just the method with which the act was carried out.

I played the game on Switch, and it's quite obvious it was originally designed as a mobile game, played entirely with a touch interface. That's fine as such, as the touch interface is perfectly intuitive, but when you are playing with a controller it feels a little baffling that they didn't even bother doing the bare minimum to facilitate such a control method. Instead of binding buttons to basic actions such as going back from a menu, opening the map, opening the clues, switching between tabs, selecting dialogue options, and so on, every button simulates the same click, and you need to drag a cursor to the option you want to pick. That also means that to close an open menu, you need to drag that cursor all the way to the "X" button in the corner (but not *all* the way into the corner) and so on. It's a little annoying, but not a major dealbreaker - the game still plays very smoothly.

I'm not really sure what caused me to try out Tangle Tower, and I guess I'd consider it the first "joker" on my list for this year. I think I was in the mood for a good murder mystery, I heard someone speak favorably of it, and it was very cheap when discounted on the eShop. It's a decent game that had me somewhat captivated all the way to the end, but at the same time I don't really think it does anything unique enough that makes it relevant to straight up recommend it to anyone.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

Reached Mohg.  Got my ass kicked.  Nothing like rolling along like a badass, and then getting humbled by a dude with a phase two where shit's just raining down everywhere 

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,550]

 

Fucking clearly! 

Suck it, asshole!

[Sumez | 2,968]

14 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Reached Mohg.  Got my ass kicked.  Nothing like rolling along like a badass, and then getting humbled by a dude with a phase two where shit's just raining down everywhere 

Did you do the "The Omen" boss before this?