JamesRobot

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.

On 1/15/2024 at 12:57 PM, T-Pac said:

Personal list update:

I briefly tried out Bionic Commando [NES] and realized that it's probably not the kind of game I want to devote my time to.

Man, I get it.  Bionic Commando is not immediately intuitive.  In fact, it's entirely counterintuitive as a platformer with literally no jumping.

But it's a great game with a pretty satisfying and fun mechanic if you can give it a little more time.  The entire series is pretty awesome.

1 hour ago, a3quit4s said:

People keep giving him all this press just feeds into the ego, ignore him and hopefully he just goes away

But if not for the Greatest Video Game Player of the Century Billy Mitchell, who's celebrity hot sauce would we buy?

Billy Mitchell wins! TG scores reinstated!*

...or he loses!  

Honestly, it was just a settlement.  Kinda anticlimactic really. 

*Billy's scores were "reinstated" as part of Twin Galaxies' "historical database." 

The anthem of 1990.  Better than the original. If Ice Ice Baby is a 10, Under Pressure is a 2.

Yeah this song is overplayed, but Led Zeppelin as a whole is big 10.  And I'd wager that Stairway was the introduction to Zeppelin for 90+% of VGS.  Probably via Wayne's World. 

I have pretty solid impressions of the first time I sat down and just listened to Zeppelin IV in high school.  That album is a masterpiece, Stairway included.

We got McRibs at home.

McRib at home:

Dill Havarti and Swiss cheese toast with creamy tomato penne soup. 

5 minutes ago, G-type said:

Its $50 more for this than a Retron 77... but it looks like a 2600, plays 7800 games and includes the 10-in-1... I'd say that is worth an extra 50.

Man I wish Atari would have been earlier to market with this.  I picked up the 77 less than a year before the 2600+ was announced.  Can't really justify it now.

Well I guess I'm interested after all the praise.  Downloaded from PS+.  Now all I have to do is actually open it up. 

44 minutes ago, Estil said:

better than the original? 

Hold my beer.

Just now, skinnygrinny said:

Dude. what does mine say?

Sweet, what does mine say?

8 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I guess I forgot to buy anything in December.  But I got my Christmas present from @JamesRobot which fueled a lot of funny conversations at work today 

1111

Yeah, the kid's amazing.  I just learned about that rolling technique a week or two before this happened.

Can we get @Blue Scuti on the forum please? 

I'd give Kubrick a 10 on the Reed scale.  I've seen most of these and am interested in the rest.  

It was a tough call choosing a favorite among Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining.  2001 and The Shining are staples of my two favorite movie genres to be sure.  But I probably come back to Clockwork Orange the most frequently.

As for the "controversy" surrounding the ending, I think Kubrick's is a great juxtaposition in contrast to author Anthony Burgess' original vision and theme, and both ultimately propose the same question: If modified behavior is externally enforced, does it actually change the nature of the subject and instil actual reform?  

According to Kubrick and Burgess respectively (my own interpretation):

What, no Moon landing?

They were all alright.  I'm about a 5 on the series and didn't bother with the 4th one.  Funny enough but I'm not big into Depp or pirates.  I'd watch it if my wife decided to put it on.

As a player, I'd have to see at least a couple killer apps that bring this beyond the Nintendo/FC homebrew scene.  If it had Sivak's Battle Kid 3 or KHan's Larry 2 exclusives I'd be in.  I imagine you'd have to pay out guaranteed funds starting at $10k (a liberally low number) to get exclusives not including production costs of the software.  

And any existing known devs would still have to be willing to jump ship from the established NES/FC platform which wouldn't really make sense since the current scene is really about the passion for the system we all grew up with and have played for the past thee decades.  You would have to have produce something seriously special to make even the smallest impact on the scene as entrenched as it already is.

TLDR: Battle Kid 3 or Larry 2 exclusives and I'm in.