Webhead123

It seems no matter what I do, the journey to complete DuckTales is just going to fight me every step of the way. I figured out that part of the reason I was having trouble in spots on the NES version was the slightly sticky controls combined with the at-times very demanding collision detection. It would create jumps and pogo bounces that were deceptive to a point of being frustrating.

So, I remembered that I had the remastered version on Steam and thought I'd give that a spin. And while I do miss the original 8-bit aesthetic and the excessive talking/cutscenes do get in the way of just playing the game, overall it has been a very pleasant experience. Plus, they seem to have resolved the control and collision issues.

Alas, it seems I'm still destined never to finish this damn game because now I keep hitting some random bug that will cause the game to momentarily freeze and when it resumes, the game now only registers every second button input. It's as if my controller is toggling between "on" and "off" modes. I press the jump button and it executes the jump but then immediately shuts off all controller feedback, including d-pad/analog stick responsiveness. If I press the jump button again, nothing happens, but now all control is restored. Repeat. The worst part is, I can be playing for 10, 20 or 30 minutes and the game will work just fine. Then, in the middle of a stage or even during a boss fight, the bug shows up and the only solution seems to be exiting and restarting the game (which means starting the whole stage over again).

So, I've had to put it down for a while. It was just too much aggravation. Just when I was starting to dig it...

This conversation reminded me of a really interesting behind-the-code look at Fester's Quest, why its design was so frustrating and how minor changes could have dramatically improved it. Absolutely worth a watch:

Yes, if you want to give the game an actual shot, you just have to bite the bullet and spend 5-10 minutes at the starting spawn point grinding power ups until your weapons don't suck.

...And for the love of god, don't accidentally grab the "downgrade" power ups. Ugh!

I don't think I've ever gotten a blister from gaming. However, there was a time a couple years ago when I was playing WAY too much Overwatch and repeatedly striking the Space Bar so much started developing a callus along the side of my thumbnail on my left hand, which became a bit painful. Thankfully, I've come to my senses and stopped wasting time on that game and my thumb healed nicely.

Meanwhile, the thumb of my right hand sounds like a cement mixer when I bend it and it occasionally locks up. My mother and I have jokingly called it "Nintendo thumb" for years because it is almost undoubtedly the result of millions of button presses since I was a kid.

53 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Yeah, it had that Ninja Gaiden quality of having the respawn just on the edge of the screen so enemies were constantly coming. You had to motor forward pretty much all the time.

Which wasn't helped by the terrible weapon design in the game. The fact that your projectiles can be stopped by level geometry combined with the wide, wavy patterns of most weapon stages makes for an absolutely agonizing experience in many parts of the game. Using the whip becomes almost mandatory until you get the gun upgraded to the final levels.

This was one I had in my collection as a youth. Even at the time, my brother and I used to use it as a poster child for what a "funny-bad" NES game looks like. Janky as hell, way too difficult for all the wrong reasons and not particularly good-looking either. Good music, though. Never had the stamina to beat it, despite multiple attempts over the years.

Despite its numerous and crippling flaws, or in fact, because of them, it played such an influential role in my youth that I have a certain fondness for it. Yeah, it's a bad game but it's a bad game that's almost like watching The Room or Samurai Cop. It can be enjoyed for all the ways in which it tries to be cool and fails miserably.

5/10

7 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I can already tell Ion Fury is gonna land at a 5/10, at best.  Had a lot more fun with Dusk.  Will share full thoughts once I finish.

I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. I quite enjoyed Dusk and can appreciate the smartness of a lot of its design. I've never liked the feel of the Quake engine and it's imitators as much as the Doom or Build engines though and that was the only part of Dusk that I had personal quibbles with. But that's such a minor and completely petty nitpick that I don't dare hold it against the game.

4 hours ago, Sumez said:

In the case of Ion Fury, the issue isn't so much the length of stages, but the fact that every single encounter can potentially begin with an enemy one-shotting you with hitscan weapons before you even see them.

Yeah, one thing I can appreciate about the original Build trilogy is that they mostly toned down the hitscan enemies knowing how frustrating of a design they can be. That's not to say they didn't have their own obnoxious, run-ending foes...like the dynamite zombies in Shadow Warrior or any enemy equipped with rockets. There's also the perpetual threat that the player represents to themselves when using similar weapons. Collision detection and map/object boundaries can be deceptive. Yeesh!

13 hours ago, rdrunner said:

Looking forward to my next free trial of NSO to play this!

Yeah, when I heard about this I was jazzed but then remembered that I'd cancelled my NSO subscription over a year ago. Next free trial period, though...

21 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Started up Ion Fury,and @Sumez was correct, save scumming is the name of the game.

It's been decades since I've played a build engine game, but my memory says this was always the case.

Pretty much. One of the most impressive things about Build Engine games back in the day was how (relatively) large and complex some of the stages were. This is great for making the player feel both challenged and rewarded but because those games could also be unapologetically brutal, it meant that unless you wanted to replay a whole 10-20 minute stage all over again every time you die, you're gonna want to save constantly.

I still haven't played Ion Fury but I intend to at some point. My favorite of the original Build Engine trilogy is Blood by far, with Shadow Warrior very close behind and Duke 3D last but they're all excellent. Blood is a solid contender for my favorite FPS ever, actually, neck-and-neck with Doom. Obviously, the two games are separated by 4 years of technological and design advancement in the industry, so in that way, I feel Blood has the benefit of using Doom's foundation to craft a deeper and more engaging package but a big part of Doom's strength is in its simplicity, so it's hard to truly compare them.

I've heard about the series for years and have always been slightly curious but I'll probably never play any of them.

15 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

The irony is that DAO was the spiritual Baldur's Gate 3

Yeah, that's probably why I was ready to dive in back when it came out. It was a BioWare RPG. Greatness was all but guaranteed. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure that was the year that the disc drive on my Xbox started failing, so I bet that's what interrupted me from getting to actually play it. By the time I got it fixed (which didn't last all that long) and then eventually got another Xbox, enough time had passed and enough other games were calling me that it just faded into the fog of my collection.

This is the very first one, right? I started playing this WAY back in the day, probably when it was still relatively new but I only remember getting like an hour or so into it...and then my memory of anything about the game vanishes. I still own my copy. I can see it right on the shelf behind me. But I simply don't recall why I stopped playing and I somehow haven't picked it back up since. I probably got distracted by some other game, or maybe that was around the time my Xbox started crapping out on me. It's hard to say.

Will I ever get back to it? Honestly...probably not. Just too many other games. And these days, it would be competing for time with the likes of Baldur's Gate 3. Sorry, Dragon Age. I know you're well-loved. Looks like I missed the boat.

7 hours ago, Sumez said:

If you're not feeling a game, absolutely don't push yourself to keep on playing

This is crucial. It's okay to start off thinking that you want to play a game for whatever reason, then get into it and realize that you're just not having a good time. When you hit that point, just put it away and invest your time in something else. There's too little time to waste it on torturing yourself.

I didn't have a Playstation or even PS2 until way late, so I missed the train on the PS-era Final Fantasies. However, thanks to Spoony, I think I've experienced everything I need to about this one. There are much more well-regarded entries in the series that I will never play, so I can't honestly say that I'll ever make time for this one. I'm okay with that.

Necrodancer is still sitting unplayed in my GOG library. I fully intend to play it but I just don't know when I'll make the time. And I've told myself I'm not going to bother with Cadence until Necrodancer is done, if at all.

Rhythm games aren't really my thing but the idea of these titles is so charming that I couldn't ignore it. Probably not something I'll play beyond a single completion but something I feel like I should experience even just once.

12 hours ago, Gloves said:

Nice! I'm not too far in yet, but one of my favourite things to do is take an otherwise difficult encounter, lure them to a spot with my druid in cat form, and have someone else sneak up and push them into a chasm. Sure, I don't get loot (pickpocket first!), but it's hilarious every time. The freedom of approach is great. 

Absolutely. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that I trivialized a couple of late-game boss encounters with a little ingenuity and a "nudge" off a sharp cliff. 

Well, it's done. First play through of Baldur's Gate 3 completed. What a journey. Seriously one of the best games I've played in years and easily a contender for my top 10 favorite game experiences of all time. The campaign clock says 140 hours of play time...and that was even with me ignoring a fair bit of subplot content. There are areas of some of the maps that I didn't even explore. While there is certainly a central plot thread that the story follows, for all the space around that central thread the game does an excellent job not just of making player choice matter but making the player feel like it matters. Sometimes it's in little ways and sometimes in big ones but consequences of your choices make themselves apparent throughout the game. I'd be lying if I said the game didn't stir a few emotions in the old ticker. The writing is something BG3 did particularly well.

No, it isn't perfect. As impressively ambitious as it is, it still has occasional bugs and minor inconsistencies with some of its systems. Owing to its depth and complexity, the game also doesn't adequately explain a few of its mechanisms or systems, which can lead to moments of frustration from time to time. But against the sheer scope of what the developers built here and the frankly insane level of craft that's on display, none of that amounts to significant criticism. There is room for them to do further clean up and they've already been aggressively releasing patches to do just that.

So, if any game fits the classification of a "10", I think this one does. While I'm tempted to dock it a half-point just for the occasional technical issue, I don't think I can do that and still be fair to the game. If I looked closely at any other "10" game I can think of, I'm certain I'd find at least something of comparable significance to quibble about and few games are as ambitious and pull themselves together as well as this one. So, 10/10.

Now, time for another play through. I've got a lot of choices to make differently, new side quests to follow and regions of the map to explore. Adventure awaits.

5 hours ago, spacepup said:

I smile at myself cause 3 is a personal best hahahah.  But that’s ok, I’ve played lots of other games not on the list also, which was a separate goal - play more games, buy less games.

Agreed. Even if I haven't yet gotten to a lot of my proclaimed backlog, I feel like I've gotten more games knocked out so far this year than the last 3 or 4 and I think this might be my favorite year of gaming in quite a while. Some of it was anticipated titles that finally materialized and some of it was a concerted effort to go through my annoyingly long Steam library and sort it into "Will Play", "Won't Play" and "Done With" folders. I decided I was "done with" a number of those endless, online-only type games that are designed to suck away your time and offer no real end goal. I did enjoy some of them dearly but I was tired of feeling like I was falling back on those kinds of games and never putting time into all the others I could/should be playing. So far, it's been working well.

I would love to own a Saturn and a handful of games for it as it's one of the rare consoles that I've never ever played for even a minute. Unfortunately, I think I missed the boat a decade plus ago when I passed on some reasonably-priced stuff and I doubt I'll ever rectify that.

But I've heard that Nights, while graphically quite impressive for its time, wasn't much more than an average experience. Certainly not at the top of my list for Saturn titles to collect.

I knew it was going to be the case but Baldur's Gate 3 is positively devouring my backlog time. 130 hours in and I still feel compelled to keep playing. I was about halfway through Psychonauts 2 (which has been even more excellent than the original) and I'm finally getting somewhere in Oracle of Seasons, so I'm going to be finishing those as soon as I can make myself boot them up again...but...Baldur's Gate 3. The siren is calling to me. I cannot resist her.

I'm just glad I decided to wait on Tears of the Kingdom. I'll get to it one of these days.

On 8/22/2023 at 10:12 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

Yeah, I mean in the sense that I definitely wanted to play it for reference.

And for that little time and money, those are complete write-offs. People spend more on a morning muffin, or more time watching videos of cats on YouTube.

I did think Edith Finch was a superior game experience, for what it's worth.  Gone Home was about the same.

And for a little more background, I want to do a series on my top 100 favorite games in the near future,and I'm trying to get to as many remaining notable games as I can in the meantime.

It's a fair point. I've tried my hand at a few of these "experience" type games and I can appreciate the artistry and grand ideas behind some of them. They don't always fully coalesce, and I find many get too entangled in allegory or raw sentimentality. So, it's a genre that I'm ever curious about but have yet to meet one that sparks something truly deeper. The Talos Principle seemed to come pretty close, though itself quite heavy-handed in all its metaphor.

And I'd be super curious to see a "favorite 100" list from you. I've thought about doing one myself for a couple of years, although mine would be something like a "100 most significant". That being, there are certainly some games that were incredibly important and dear to me that I can't (or won't) continue playing for various reasons but that makes them no less "favorite" to me. I have also played significantly fewer "modern" games, so my list would certainly be slanted toward offerings from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. Still, those kinds of lists are always enjoyable to read.

19 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I beat Dear Esther since it was on sale for $1.49 and maybe one hour long.  Another one I can check off the list.

Worth the time and money?

I hesitate to give it a "proper" rating, as I don't feel I've spent enough time with it to make a full judgement. From the time I have spent, I will say it's probably worth at least a 7. It's an enjoyable platformer with some novel ideas, seemingly solid controls and nice graphics. Like many others, I am kind of at odds with the way the game handles the music but it is what it is. I'm not sure that I like it more than Bucky O'Hare or, say, the later Mega Man games, which is maybe what it's most comparable to but you can tell that some love and attention went into it.

I'm sure there's an obvious one that I'm overlooking right now but one that comes to mind is Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. I thought that game was cool as hell and it even ends on a friggin' cliffhanger...but I don't think it sold all that well and thus the sequel never materialized. Shame.