JamesRobot

I beat Mega Man Dr Willy's Revenge as part of my backlog.

I'm about a 6 on both.  Not my favorite tunes from either band.  But goddamn Superunknown is a fucking beast of an album.  

And Ten is fine and all but Vs is my favorite Pearl Jam album.

Just finished Mega Man Dr. Wily's Revenge.  I was fairly surprised at the challenge and completeness of this game.  Mega Man doesn't really suffer from the limited real estate of the Game Boy screen and feels right at home with its contemporary NES counterparts.  I'll be diving more into the handheld Mega Man games in the future.  Also really dig the Pinball Neon Matrix filter that the Analogue Pocket offers.

On 1/24/2024 at 5:33 PM, JamesRobot said:

Listening to Holiday Road on repeat on my commute home. Bumped it up to a 7.  

Watching Vacation tonight too.

Holy shit, I forgot how funny Vacation is.  Probably been about 10 years since I last watched.

And I've only listened to Holiday Road about half a dozen times since then.  I think it's out of my system now..

21 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Ok I just saw this 

edit: Wait, this thread is from 2021?  Long enough to laugh at the same shit twice 

I was really confused about being quoted in a DQ thread. 

59 minutes ago, Scrobins said:

FYI Action 53, Vol. 1 never had a box. I had one custom made a few years ago though I don’t remember if it was fsped or Uncle Tusk.

For sure.  Those last couple were more wish list.  Kinda assumed I'd have to put an image together for those if he's willing to print them.

3 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

You can always vote for me.  I’m running on a platform consisting entirely of promoting the death penalty for anyone that doesn’t use their blinker.

5 minutes ago, Estil said:

If you're at least 35 you can vote for yourself!  

I'm not throwing away my vote on a write in!  Can we get Lil Wayne or somebody on the ballot this year?

It was fine but haven't watched it since it was released on video.  So I guess that makes it a 5.

And another thing, who the hell am I supposed to vote for this year?  I don't see Kanye West or Princess Khadijah Maryam Jacob-Fambro running in this election.

59 minutes ago, Brickman said:

Anyway, US citizens don’t be stupid and lazy. 

It's my hot body!

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

It's a twitter link, no idea why VGS decided to obscure it, since it still exists
https://twitter.com/dwrkoa/status/1128894320692613121

On 7/17/2023 at 3:02 AM, Sumez said:

Someone here will get this one

 

4 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

barely any adult use dispensaries and none near me.

Just ask the high school kids for some.

Listening to Holiday Road on repeat on my commute home. Bumped it up to a 7.  

Watching Vacation tonight too.

Goddamn, I've had Holiday Road stuck in my head since yesterday.  Bumped it up to a 6. 

I decided to lean into Game Boy collecting after I got my Analogue Pocket.  Shout out to my Secret Santa on a couple of those.

Added a few Game Boy games I got over Christmas.

I'm not really big on Fleetwood Mac.  They're way overplayed in general as is that Stevie Nicks tune.  Holiday Road is great in the context of Vacation but I could take it or leave it outside of that.

4 and 5 respectively.

Virtually any animal is always better on the bone.  My favorite meal is a rare ribeye steak and I'm the last one at the dinner table gnawing the bone to the last shred.  Pork and beef ribs are up there too. 

And extra crispy fried chicken is way better than any breaded nugget.  (McNuggets are world class though.)

Don't get me wrong.  Burgers, sausages, and nuggets all have their place and are great, but no way am I passing on steaks, chops, and wings given the choice.

Skinny is on the up and up.  Long time community member with tons of deals.  I was on that Sqoon first thing but that CIB is just too much cheddar for me.  I would have paid him the day it went up if I could afford it.  

On 1/6/2024 at 7:13 PM, T-Pac said:

I can't really call any of my 2023 additions "finds", since I only do specific eBay hunting these days.

But I DID "find" a manual for Taz [Atari 2600] in my stack of overflow catalogues and stuff - and that's a game I'm hoping to pick up one of these days, so now I'm halfway there haha!

[T-Pac]

Taz is a blast.  Great game!

Dude, Batman NES is a 10.  It's in the conversation for best video game based on a movie.  Up there with Star Wars Arcade and GoldenEye.  And certainly the best film property on the Nintendo.  The play is tight, atmosphere and graphics are amazing.  Particularly the cut scenes.  I mean, check out the Batmobile.

I'm looking for the following:

Xmas 13 - 19, 22

Battle Kid

Study Hall

ET

Beat Em

Action 53 Vol. 1

Kraft Dinner Super Mario Bros

Started playing Celeste last night with the boy.  Just got through the (first?) dream sequence and I'm really enjoying it.  Can't quite rate it yet but I'm looking at a 7 as it stands on initial impressions.

The platforming is pretty tough but not impossible and the checkpoints are pretty generous. As a modern platformer, it reminds me a lot of Cave Story.  And I'd encourage anyone who enjoys this game to play @Dullahan Software's Nebs N Debs homebrew.  The dash mechanic very similar and lends to some really tight platforming on the NES.  

On 1/15/2024 at 10:08 AM, Sumez said:

Tunic - Beaten 1/1

Tunic was repeatedly advertised to me as a game that would fit my tastes in video games incredibly well, and to an extent I'd say it definitely does.
It's a game that does a lot of things, and all those things it does really well, and they are all approaches that appeal to me.

It's a semi-open ended action game by the way of a top-down zelda'ish adventure, with some elements of Dark Souls and Metroid, but most of all this game is basically the next Fez! If you loved the gradually increasingly complex nature of the puzzles in Fez, this game is what you have been waiting for! Are there details hidden in a spectrogram analysis of the music? Of course there is!

Not that that matters to the core game. The gameplay is solid, and exploration is very satisfying. Immediately after the "intended" first area I just happened upon an area that it felt like I wasn't supposed to explore yet, made it through, and came out with an item that immediately drastically increased the number of places I could go. I ended up in another location where the enemies were extremely strong, and exploration was filled with dangers - this time it took me a ton of deaths to get through only to find nothing of actual use yet...

Funny enough that adventure might actually have been the highlight of the game for me - because after that, once I found the places I was supposed to go, everything was suddenly much easier and less engaging.

It doesn't end there, though. What really drives Tunic is the way it drips information to the player by gradually revealing pages of an instruction booklet - this booklet also comes with the physical release, and I highly recommend not looking in it until you have found all of it in-game. It is absolutely packed to the brim with interesting information that will teach you hints and even secret abilities that you weren't aware that you had all along (think Super Metroid's walljump) which are essentially necessary to do all the things that the game ultimately asks of you to get the true ending.

What is extra brilliant about this, is how much information is actually in this book that isn't readily apparent! And discovering new secrets will consistently entice you to return to previous pages, rummaging them for new details, ultimately making you feel incredibly smart every time you figure out something new.
At this point however, the game stops being an action game, and for probably the last 10+ hours that I played, I was exclusively solving puzzles, rarely discovering actual new locations, and enemies being more of a minor inconvenience than an obstacle.

 

I'd say Tunic overreaches by pulling in too many different directions, especially the action game and puzzle game feeling mostly like two different games mashed together. It's hard to truly fault it for it, because both aspects are executed so well - but I really wish the action game had more to offer during the late-game experience.

 

Addendum:

This is also one of those games where taking notes by hand is a big part of the experience. As some may have noticed, that's something I seem to really enjoy. And these are probably some of the coolest-looking notes I've ever taken for a video game  Don't look too close at them once you start playing.

I'm sold.  Added to the backlog.  I was already looking at it pretty hard and to hear it compares to Fez to any degree is a major plus.