Webhead123

I'd been dragging my feet but I'm finally back to the backlog grind again. Just a few more hours to put the nail in Psychonauts 2 and I started the process of reacclimating myself with Guardian Legend today. I'm going to give Gremlins 2 another shot, now that I've had some time to cool my frustrations but we'll see if I actually have the tolerance to beat the thing.

Randomly booted up Eliminator Boat Duel and finished it for the first time. Cool little racer. I have to give props to the developers for how they kept the game interesting despite the inherent repetition. I definitely would have appreciated having it in my library as a kid, if I'd ever known about it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this game was also one of only a handful (maybe 6 or 7 total) that I've ever committed myself to doing 100% trophies/achievements/whatever. I loved the game so much that I wanted to complete everything possible, and I did!

I believe this still stands as one of only two games I've ever pre-ordered (the other was the System Shock remake). This game pretty much consumed my free time when it came out. The visuals and character designs were absolutely mind-blowing for their time, the gameplay came the closest to making the player "feel" like they were a world-class detective and they managed to get both Conroy and Hamill to return to voice their iconic roles. It was pretty much a BTAS fan's wet dream of a game and it did not disappoint. I even, for a time, threw my hat in on the leaderboards for some of the challenge maps.

While I think Arkham City did the right thing and opened the game up even further (and was also an absolute gem), having to start somewhere, this game feels like it was perfect for what it was. If I have one complaint, it's the same one I think everyone's ever had with it, and that's the rather disappointing final showdown with Joker. But if 99% of the rest of the game is basically the perfect Batman experience for its time, I can forgive a lack-luster final boss.

9/10, easily.

14 hours ago, DarkTone said:

Fuck it. I'm gonna add hollow knight to the list. Right now I'm not sure if I want to go back to it or not. 

I haven't finished that either, although I'm not sure it would go on any "favorite" list of mine. It's been a couple years since I lasted booted it up but I just remember feeling very middle-of-the-road about it. I don't recall thinking it was deficient in any particular category. In fact, it seemed quite well-made. However, I also don't remember really being that blown away by anything it was doing, which is probably why I ended up getting distracted by something else, putting it down and then kind of forgetting about it.

I've actually never reached the end credits for Donkey Kong Country 2...

I've played through the game numerous times and usually get to the final world on most playthroughs but I've never seen it to completion for whatever reason. I really need to rectify that.

Fundamentally, I play games to experience them. There are some kinds of games where "winning" is effectively the entire intent of the thing but there are many games where I just play to explore the space and ideas that the designers have imagined for me. I like to challenge myself sometimes, sure. I like games that make me think and present me with the threat of "defeat". But win or lose, I boot up a game because I want to interact with the experience that it promises, even if that means only playing for a few minutes to "satisfy" that desire.

I never did find myself drawn in by the GTA franchise overall, although I've dabbled in a few of them across the years. Where I found my niche with the genre was more Saint's Row (specifically Row 3 but also a bit of 2). GTA V was the one GTA game I put the most effort into. It was okay and entertained me for a few hours but at some point I lost interest and didn't really care about any of the main characters. There was nothing specifically wrong with the game play either. It was all perfectly serviceable. I suppose it just takes a unique hook for me to continue to spend time in most open world games and GTA was always just kinda vanilla.

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction...now there's an open world game I could spend hours upon hours goofing around in (and have)!

GTA V...passable. I understand why some people love it but it lacked the chutzpah and absurdity of Saint's Row 3.

5/10...Fight me.

If a game is good (and is available at a reasonable price on a platform I have access to), I am willing to play it. For sake of convenience and affordability, I tend to play most all "modern" games on PC these days and I'm a bit behind on the console generations. While there are technically a PS4 and PS5 in my household, those are stationed in my kids' rooms and primarily used by them. I haven't owned a Microsoft console since the 360. I do have a Switch and I love it but the PC is just so flexible, comfortable and convenient, so it gets a majority of my "modern" game time.

When it comes to non-PC gaming, I tend to spend the most time with my NES, SNES and GEN, both revisiting old favorites as well as plumbing the depths of their libraries for games I've never truly experienced before now.

11 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Vampire Survivors.

I have witnessed the death of video games. I don't think I've ever played a skinner box that entirely plays itself so thoroughly. In every level you walk around a map for 30 minutes while enemies slowly walk into your impenetrable death ball while you do absolutely nothing. 30 MINUTES. Cookie Clicker is a more engaging game, at least you're constantly clicking stuff.

I like twin-stick shooters. From what I've heard, Vamp Survivors is like one of those without any finesse. Also, 30-minute survival rounds sounds way too long.

I played the original for about an hour or so when it was first released. I think the concept was neat and felt it created a good, tense atmosphere. The design space was pretty compact back then but I think that worked to the game's benefit. I haven't play any of the sequels but I can't imagine it was really made any better as a horror experience as a result. Horror works well when it is focused and personal and I think that's what made the first game successful.

Personally, I think the FNAF-inspired game Tattletail was the best experience from this genre because it was a pretty expert blend of 90's nostalgia, animatronic horror and an absurdist approach to the "dark and spooky with jump scares" horror game tropes. If you like the idea of the original FNAF and those kinds of games, try out Tattletail. I thought it was good fun.

I got my flight suit delivered literally an hour before trick-or-treat time, so my wife and I were able to go out as Ghostbusters. Sadly, we were in a rush to get out the door and it was too dark outside to take good photos, so we didn't capture the moment. But I may have to don the get up and snap a shot to share with you kind folks. Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

1 minute ago, Reed Rothchild said:

They Live is one of those movies (like Predator) where I never considered it to be horror, even though I love it, so I kept it off.

Yeah, I debate myself on that one, too. It's a horror concept at its core but Carpenter treats it more like an action-suspense movie with a sprinkling of comedy. Honestly, calling it action-horror much like Predator doesn't feel very far off the mark.

Wonderful list! Thank you for sharing. Looks like I've seen 55 of the films here. Quite a few that I also still mean to get around to but just haven't yet, for whatever reason.

I don't really know what my own top 100 would look like but I can say that I'm almost certain The Thing, Alien, 28 Days Later and Evil Dead II among several others on this list would rank very near the top. Also, Return of the Living Dead, The Blob (1988) and Tremors (if you count the original as horror-comedy, which I do).

It wouldn't be Halloween if I didn't put at least some time into Castlevania and Zombies Ate My Neighbors today, so I'll be playing a little bit of those.

Here's a few that come to mind:
The Super Star Wars trilogy (SNES)
Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (SNES)
Vice Project Doom (NES)
Axelay (SNES)

Frog Fractions is great and the best way to experience it is to go in blind. Don't look up any guides or playthroughs. Just download it, play it and enjoy.

1 hour ago, DefaultGen said:

Surely an analogy that served their audience of 13 year olds well.

True. I wouldn't become a fan of those films until I was 16. 

SH2 is the only game in the series I've actually played at all and even then, I've only played it for about an hour and that was almost 20 years ago. So, while my brief and distant memory of it was of being fairly impressed with the creepy atmosphere and Pyramid Head is still one of the cooler-looking horror monsters in recent history, I'm hard pressed to give a meaningful rating to the game. Let's just say 7/10 because why not?

13 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I just wish for stuff that's stuck on digital there was a way of recovery short of very welcome and deserving piracy in that case.  My mind draws back to Konami and the Castlevania, Gradius, and Contra unique entries on Wiiware lost to the world outside of theft or buying someones old system which has it still.  This is just going to be as bad or worse on 3DS and WiiU given the expansion of non-physical games in the decade since.

Yes, the Konami "ReBirth" series on Wiiware. Those games were absolutely excellent and I still weep over the knowledge that they basically only exist now on whatever Wii/WiiU harddrives have them installed and haven't yet gone kaput. I've got both Castlevania ReBirth and Contra ReBirth still on my WiiU but I didn't redownload Gradius ReBirth before it all went away. It's a damn shame. They need to get a proper physical release as part of some kind of compilation so that people can experience them.

In truth, it depends on the game. I know that's generally used as a cop-out answer but that's not my intention here. Like the example of Street Fighter II, sure the software is good on its own but it is true that other concerns like quality hardware and social environment can really strongly influence the "experience" of the game itself. Bad games don't (usually) inspire that kind of spirit, so starting with well-designed software is still the foundation but it can absolutely be elevated by other factors. I was never super competitive when it came to arcade games, so, in my case, I'd say games like that were about 80% software and 20% external factors.

For a contrasting example, I play a lot of Civilization VI (and strictly solo/offline against the AI). I don't stream or anything like that and I don't pay particularly close attention to the fan community around the game, so the act of playing Civ is a very quiet, private affair where it's just me and the glow of my computer monitor. That's an example of a game where, in my case, the experience (other than necessarily depending on working hardware) is almost entirely (95%) the result of the software itself. The design and aesthetics of the game and the particular form of interest that design evokes from me.

My two cents, anyway.

I've played around with Splatterhouse 2 a little bit here and there but haven't committed to trying to beat it yet. Thus, I haven't seen every stage and don't know if I'm qualified to rate it. That said, I'm a big, big fan of the original Splatterhouse and I have beaten that game (as well as Wanpaku Graffiti) and, for as simple as it is, it's a pretty good time. The original gets an 8/10 and everything I've experienced about 2 leads me to think it will rank similarly.

I started playing video games in 1985. At the time, most games weren't "beatable" in the sense that they didn't really have an end. Most were either about chasing a high score or pummeling an opponent into submission. E.T. for the Atari 2600 was kind of an exception for its day, as it had a defined goal and an "ending" as it were. I remember beating that game multiple times (I actually quite liked it, for an Atari game). It is still very short, though, and can be completed in just a couple minutes if you know what you're doing, so I don't know if it really counts.

If we're talking about something slightly more (relatively) substantial, it wouldn't be until I got an NES in '89 when I started playing more games which could be described as "beatable". Of them, I think the first one might have been Mega Man 2.

The last game I've beaten was Baldur's Gate 3. Top-contender for one of the greatest games I've ever played. Still playing it and will probably complete it two or three more times before I put it back down for a while.

In-between? That's a span of what, 38 years? So, half-way (19 years ago) would put us around 2004-ish. Around that time is when I was probably playing Spider-Man 2 and Beyond Good and Evil on Gamecube, so likely one of those.

I've played thousands of games by this point and a good percentage of them are straight bangers, so it'd be pretty easy to live with the knowledge that I can only play those. Sure, missing out on the occasional new hit would be a little sad but a pixelized duck-in-the-hand is worth two in the bush, as I'm sure the saying goes.

23 hours ago, Jaden said:

Haven't been on the forum for a while, but I did finish another game while I was gone. On August 25th, 2023, I completed the original Dragon Warrior for the NES! While this game certainly has that early RPG jank to it, I still had a lot of fun. When I was actually making progress and not just grinding, it honestly had some really cool moments. And the final battle with the Dragonlord is just epic. I can't wait to try out the rest of the series at some point!

Dragon Warrior was my first true RPG and what an adventure it was! I received it as part of the Nintendo Power membership promotion, complete with the posters, guide book and player aids. That was such a neat way to experience the game, as it made young me feel like I was on a real adventure. For the time, the game seemed dauntingly large, likely reinforced by the fact that wandering too far afield could easily get you killed. I played for about 6 months semi-regularly before taking a break for a couple months and finally coming back to finish the game. I'd say it took me about 8-9 months total to beat. Reaching the Dragonlord's castle and defeating him felt positively epic. One of the more memorable achievements of my early gaming years. It may seem primitive now but looking back on it, there were quite a few little design choices that were honestly incredibly smart for how it shapes the player experience.

I always looked on with anticipation to play the NES sequels but I never did get around to it. Maybe someday.

The early Castlevania games are some of my all-time favorites. I tried booting this game up for a few minutes and...no. Just no. Nothing about it feels like Castlevania anymore, except maybe the basic atmosphere of monsters and a mansion full of traps. The graphics and sound are unappealing and the controls were pretty lousy.