Webhead123

I played The Tick on SNES to completion because of some challenge back in the NintendoAge days (Reed...was it you that put me up to it?) and I still haven't recovered. That "game" represents 3 hours of my life I'll never get back. If you looked up the definitions of both "repetitive" and "vapid" in the dictionary, you'd probably see a picture of it. The title of the very first stage is "Night of a Million Zillion Ninjas" and they weren't lying.

What really sucks is that The Tick is a personal favorite comic book property of mine and is defined by it's goofiness and irreverence. The fact that the video game was devoid of any humor, personality or entertainment value at all is the real knife through the heart. That and the fact that no beat-em-up game should ever, EVER take 3 f***ing hours to beat. Oi vey!

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

I'm quite certain all of them would be better without him. Though not much. 

Uncut Gems really took me by surprise and 90% of that movie owes itself to Sandler. Not his usual fare...and that's a good thing.

2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Waiting for @Webhead123 to realize Blasphemous is a Souls game 

You know, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. The initial vibe the game gives off is very much that Souls aesthetic, even down to some systems like parrying, rechargeable health potions, etc. Granted, I'm only in the opening area but so far I was surprised that I've not been beaten over the head with Souls-like difficulty yet. There was that opening boss fight, which seemed to be made to look impressive and intimidating but was kind of laughable. The first few enemy types have been similarly simple to dispatch. So yeah, I was (and I guess still am) expecting to be annoyed by difficulty at any moment...but that moment hasn't yet come. We shall see. We shall see.

As for the Souls-like "mopey gothic" thing...that's honestly one of the elements that has limited the appeal of the proper souls series for me. Again, I love horror, gothic architecture, blood 'n guts, mythical monsters and all that stuff...but I don't think it's too much to ask that such games mix it up with a little "fun" from time to time. The game doesn't have to be that emo, Marilyn Manson fanatic with a pentagram pendant and black nail polish you knew from high school 100% of the time. 

I was scrolling through my unplayed category on Steam last night and decided it was finally time to boot up Blasphemous and give it a go. It's a slow start and I'm only about 30 minutes in but I can see the potential for when I've got a few upgrades unlocked and this game finally starts opening up. I'm wondering if the "super-duper, mopey, gothic gorefest" aesthetic will get old after a while but at the moment, I'm still fine with it. Not that I'm some kind of prude or anything but I usually find those kinds of themes are more interesting when they're injected with a sense of bombast or levity (take Doom, Blood or Mortal Kombat for example). Thus far, Blasphemous seems to be playing that theme straight as a razor, which I can respect artistically but it does run the risk of becoming emotionally numbing to the player. Other than that, seems promising so far in terms of game play.

48 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm thinking 7.5.  But I have to round up or down.

This was actually my gut rating but I decided to round it down to a 7.

It has a lot of admirable qualities. The pixel art and overall graphic presentation, the music, even the characters are all good. It's in the genre of what I call "death cycle platformers", like Super Meat Boy, where the object is to die repeatedly learning the pattern of each area until you finally make it through by finding a perfect rhythm.

Also like Super Meat Boy, I've just learned that I enjoy these kinds of experiences for the first half of the game or so and by the second half, the memorization demand combined with the increasingly absurd twitch-response requirement just makes me ready to be done with it. With Celeste, I actually made it about 80% of the way through...more than I expected...but I will admit that I cheesed my way through the final stretch of the game, as I was just not interested in investing the hundreds of deaths it was going to require to finish the thing. When areas started to take a dozen deaths or more to figure out, I couldn't be bothered.

So, Celeste was a game that I can understand why someone might rate it as one of the greatest platformers of all time...but personally, although I enjoyed and appreciated it, it's not a game (or even a genre of game) that I'm very interested in revisiting.

14 hours ago, Splain said:

Finished Commander Keen Ep. 4. I'm pretty sure I used cheat codes to beat this game as a kid, but now I've beaten it for realsies. It's a funny game, most of the time it's easy peasy, but then there are levels with one little part in them that are hard as nails, and Keen has only one hit point ever. On Normal difficulty anyway. Great fun though. Time for Ep. 5 now.

Reminds me that I should try to work my way through this series this year. That and the Jazz Jackrabbit games. I've been sitting on them forever with no real excuse not to knock them out.

9 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

 

9 hours ago, final fight cd said:

Is there anybody that played a game with great gameplay, but the story was shit, so it turned you off from the game?

While it didn't stop me from finishing it (much to my regret), Far Cry 3's story kept getting shittier and shittier the further along it went until, finally, it reached the apex of diarrhea with the b.s. ending. The game play, although pretty repetitive by the end, was good enough that I powered through the "story" but that final middle finger to the player at the end basically turned me completely against the game and honestly kinda ruined me on the series as a whole. Except for Blood Dragon...but that game was intentionally bucking series trend, so it doesn't count.

19 hours ago, Estil said:

No, I'm saying that to @The Count  You do know why they call him The Count right?

Huntdown beaten.

This game kicks ass! The pixel art (especially the stage backgrounds with copious parallax scrolling and moving elements) is gorgeously full of color and detail and looks particularly good with the well-implemented CRT filter turned on. The music is hard-rockin' and perfectly fits the vibe. The sound design overall is quite good (one little touch I love is the way enemies scream if you knock them into a pit). The voice work is great and there's quite a bit more of it than I expected. The game has that 80's vision of a "dystopian punk-rock future" that is so very much my jam, with a very Judge Dredd/Blade Runner/Cyberpunk vibe. It also has plenty of nods to various films, including The Terminator, The Warriors, The Last Dragon and even a Star Wars reference or two...because why not.

As far as game play, what I assumed was going to be a standard run 'n gun was actually mixed up a bit with a few clever-but-not-complex systems. There's a nice assortment of both primary and secondary weapons and they even let you swap between your default sidearm and your current primary in case you don't wanna waste a rocket on one little punk when your pistol will do just fine. There's a simple cover system which uses both crates, barrels and other objects that you can crouch behind (and using them is beautifully simple) as well as the means of ducking into alcoves/doorways pulled straight out of Blackthorne (and the enemies can also do this). It made certain sections and boss fights much more strategic than they otherwise would have been.

Speaking of boss fights, there is some great variety on offer, both in terms of the personality of the bosses and also the way in which you have to fight them. Most of them boil down to pattern recognition (which is perfectly fine with me, I love a good learn-the-pattern boss fight) but with only one or two exceptions, the boss fights are all really enjoyable. I think they're kinda the best part of the game, just because each boss is so unique and the design of each fight makes them all feel fresh. You never really feel like any of the fights are just copy/pastes of previous ones.

It was a fairly quick playthrough, although I died plenty, especially against some of the bosses. Still, there's some replay value in collectables, multiple difficulties and the three bounty hunters to choose from. Their differences are pretty minor and I kinda just found my favorite and stuck with them to the end but at least it's an option.

Yeah, I could keep gushing but I was honestly surprised how quickly and thoroughly this game got my attention. It was a different (and superior) experience to what I was expecting and I was already expecting to like it.

9/10. Badass mo-fo of a run 'n gun. The devs should be proud.

1 minute ago, wongojack said:

Watched this vid today.  I don't agree with all of the choices, and while he doesn't pick a Bioware game for #1, he picks a Black Isle game which is almost the same.

Planescape: Torment is definitely deserving of high marks in the story department. What a uniquely weird and twisted game. I also can't believe I forgot about The Longest Journey. I never actually finished it (because my hard drive crashed and I lost my late-game save) but I remember being pretty blown away at the time.

While I've technically played the beginning of the first stage for about 5 minutes once, I won't count that as enough effort to have "played the game". Therefore, it gets a "never played, never will" nudge. It's a shame too, because the animated series on which it's based is probably my favorite piece of Superman media and deserved a decent game. In fact, Superman on the whole has been pretty notoriously shit on when it comes to video game adaptations.

1 hour ago, DarkTone said:

2 sides are at war. Many y5ears of some of the worst things imaginable. After death and casualties on both side, they decided the best way to settle it, was with 1 soldier from each side, battling it out but not to the death, but with skill. Highest points wins. 

My answer is Pong.

No joke, the instruction manual to Yars' Revenge had an 8-page comic explaining the backstory behind the game and, for the time, this was a pretty mind-blowing level of detail to give what is otherwise just a single-screen Atari game. At first, I thought this was the game you were describing...until the "highest points wins" bit. 

10 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I beat did a bunch of stuff for The Stanley Parable (Ultra Deluxe)

If you find these kinds of games interesting and haven't played it already, you might want to check out the absurdly-titled Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist. It's free and a very quick playthrough...and I mean very quick.

There are many kinds of storytelling in video games. RPGs are a classic example of games which usually have lots of "traditional" storytelling elements. While it has some minor stumbles of its own, it's honestly impressive just how well-constructed and deep the story of Baldur's Gate 3 gets at times. Not even counting the main story (which is still good), even just some of the individual companion character arcs are incredible. I dare say, a few moments tugged on the heartstrings a bit. I think it has some of the most well-developed characters in any RPG I've played.

I actually rather liked the way the story stitched together and circled back on itself in Eternal Darkness, managing to bridge characters across multiple points in history. It's been quite a while since I last played but I think it's about time to revisit.

Beyond Good & Evil also has a pretty intriguing story and some emotional character moments. It's sad that it's been over 20 years and we still don't have a follow-up to that game's ending.

Part of me wants to give a nod to the Bioshock series...but I think those games impress more through great atmosphere and world-building than strictly their stories. I mean, they're not bad at all but maybe not amazing.

I know I'm not qualified to vote here because...well, the only games I've played more than 5 minutes of are:

DQ1 (as Dragon Warrior), FF1, FF4, FF6 and FF7

While I have much more direct experience and nostalgia with DQ1 than FF1 (I didn't play FF1 until sometime in the mid-90's), I suppose FF1 is the better game due to the class and party systems, etc. My nostalgia is much stronger for DQ1, as it was my first RPG and I got super immersed in it at the time but if I try to set those feelings aside, I think FF1 has more to offer.

That's the extent of my ability to compare the series. As for the other FF games I've played:

FF4 - Great. 7/10
FF6 - Amazing. 9/10
FF7 - High side of average. 6/10

24 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I've somehow managed to not even touch my actual backlog lol, I have a problem.

Well...nobody's perfect. 

36 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I think Wonder, 3D World, the "New" games, etc. all work significantly better as 4-player couch co-op games.  Trying to go back and do stuff solo in them is a lot less fun 

Obviously, I've not played Wonder yet, so I can't comment on it but I agree with that assessment of 3D World and the "New" series which almost certainly plays a role in why they didn't speak to me. Although my sons do occasionally play some multiplayer games with me (and we did play a touch of 3D World together when they were younger), 99% of my video gaming is strictly solitaire, so much of the appeal of those titles I simply never get to experience.

14 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

The Talos Principle.  Fun stuff.  I had this idea in my head that it was going to be like The Witness, and was initially disappointed that it seems like it isn't.  Except I've never played The Witness so I don't actually know how that plays, or if this plays the same.  So I'm disappointed by things that live entirely in my head.  How silly.

Anyway, after Baba Is You I feel like my brain has sharpened so I didn't have a terribly difficult time here.  Except the stars.  Good luck finding those on your own.  And the late-game DLC stuff has two puzzles that broke my brain.  But other than that it wasn't anything beyond my meager capabilities.

I know it's tough to talk about without getting super spoiler-y but I'd be curious to know what you felt about the overall story/parable/philosophical explorations of it and how the game handled them. I'm a bit on the fence. I certainly appreciated the game playing with some deep questions but I also wonder if most of it was a little too on-the-nose.

3 hours ago, Foochie776 said:

I couldn’t agree more. You pretty much laid out of my feelings on it. I’ve played almost all the console Mario games and anything past Galaxy has just felt very uninspired and this one felt like a huge gimmick to me. 

Agreed. Honestly, other than some incredible standouts like Odyssey, I've had a hard time getting into most mainline Mario titles in a long time. Even 3D Land and 3D World were "pretty good" but were the kind of games that didn't leave much of a lasting impression after I finished them and have no real desire to revisit. I should go back and try to finish Galaxy. I liked it...but I never could stand the Wii's control scheme, so maybe playing it on the Switch remaster would feel a lot better.

21 minutes ago, Foochie776 said:

Started playing Super Mario Wonder last night and I’m pretty impressed. I knew I’d like it, as it is a Mario game but wow! 

I have to give credit where credit is due. When I first saw the announcement trailer for Wonder, I actually rolled my eyes and released an audible "meh". This was partly because I had been so thoroughly unimpressed with the direction of the "New SMB" series and kind of assumed that this was just going to be more of the same. Then, there was the whole "Elephant Mario" focus in the promotional material and it felt so completely gimmicky to me.

For whatever reason, a few weeks after it officially released, I ended up digging a little bit deeper. I think it all started with the announcement of Charles Martinet's retirement from the character. Little by little, I started to see the signs of so much artistry and care behind the design work of Wonder. While I don't think I'm unjustified for getting the impressions that I did from the early marketing, I'm glad I managed to see past that initial disinterest. Planning to fully dive into and complete the game this year and, based on what I've heard since release, I'm preparing myself for plenty of surprises.

15 minutes ago, spacepup said:

I beat 5 specifically on my list and I’m thrilled with that.  Idc about the percentage to my total list.  I’m very happy with it.

They weren’t on my initial list so I didn’t include them, but I beat a ton of other games in 2023, including several backlog games that just weren’t on the first list.  All in all, I made a ton of progress on backlogged games so 2023 was super duper successful for me there.

Looking forward to 2024!

Aye. 2023 was a great year of gaming for me overall. Some highly-anticipated titles that finally released and ate up many hours as well as just getting more organized with my digital collections and being able to knock out several games that I hadn't anticipated playing. I'm looking to carry that energy forward into this coming year and thank you to all you fine folks here at VGS for the continued inspiration, motivation and camaraderie!

I actually managed 8/14 with a little mad dash in December. Carrying a couple I didn't get to over into 2024 and abandoning the others for now in favor of some other titles that came to mind. I'm making an effort to try to split the backlog across multiple consoles both to give some variety as well as to not neglect any particular library. I'm trying to pin down a couple of Genesis games that I want to tackle this year but I'm not super familiar with the library beyond the most popular titles, so I have to do some digging.

All the Metal Slug games tend to run together in my head, so my rating is more of the series on the whole. A great game with tons of character. You can tell the developers were having a lot of fun putting this one together. I need to spend more serious time with it/them because I've never sat down to actually finish one but it's also just the kind of game that you can turn on and enjoy yourself for a few levels and turn it off feeling satisfied.

I will say that, although multiplayer can be fun in its own ways, I WOULD NOT recommend it as the primary environment in which to learn and experience the game for the first time. I think this is a game that benefits from being able to take your time with it, learn the nuances and explore the world and the ways in which you can interact with it. Putting yourself in a multiplayer game sets certain restrictions and places certain pressures that I don't think make for the best experience your first time through.

The genre isn't for everyone and even within the genre itself, BG3 is not the easiest to pick up or the quickest to master. I've got 400+ hours in the game and I'm still discovering features, interactions and systems that I didn't know about. Let it be a game about discovery, experimentation and refining your skills and I think you will enjoy it more. Also...there is quite a lot to explore in the game, so absolutely do not go into it hoping or expecting to find every interaction, fight every monster and complete every quest. That just isn't going to happen, so let your journey develop more organically and don't worry about completionism.