LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055 Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 I tried to get Aerogauge done today. I just can't pull it off. Dear god the AI cars are impossible even on novice! You HAVE to get the boost at the starting line, or else just restart, you HAVE to the drift boost at every sharp turn or else just restart, you CAN'T tap the wall even one time or else...you get the idea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splain | 2,560 Editorials Team · Posted March 25, 2020 Author Share Posted March 25, 2020 4 hours ago, LeatherRebel5150 said: I tried to get Aerogauge done today. I just can't pull it off. Dear god the AI cars are impossible even on novice! You HAVE to get the boost at the starting line, or else just restart, you HAVE to the drift boost at every sharp turn or else just restart, you CAN'T tap the wall even one time or else...you get the idea Lol, yuck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,907 Events Helper · Posted March 27, 2020 Share Posted March 27, 2020 Hopefully @Sumez is gonna complete something soon....... @LambBrainz still waiting on ur bomberman . I must admit I have been lazy as of late..........gonna hit it hard next week and try to knock off both gex and either tonic trouble or silicone valley or rayman 2...........Might finish off tonight with a little bit of gex 3 to see if i am any good at it........reminds me of mario 64 with the diff. levels/paintings got me last time and it might get me tonight too.......but for sure next week imma hit it hard! gotta get the train rollin' again...........3 months down and we have slowed for sure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nugfish | 652 Posted March 27, 2020 Share Posted March 27, 2020 8 hours ago, Jeevan said: Hopefully @Sumez is gonna complete something soon....... @LambBrainz still waiting on ur bomberman . I must admit I have been lazy as of late..........gonna hit it hard next week and try to knock off both gex and either tonic trouble or silicone valley or rayman 2...........Might finish off tonight with a little bit of gex 3 to see if i am any good at it........reminds me of mario 64 with the diff. levels/paintings got me last time and it might get me tonight too.......but for sure next week imma hit it hard! gotta get the train rollin' again...........3 months down and we have slowed for sure! We've definitely slowed down. Hoping to finish DK64 this weekend and get things picked back up as well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdius | 1,507 Posted March 27, 2020 Share Posted March 27, 2020 Animal Crossing: New Horizons made me stop playing N64. I put 23h30min in it during the first 7 days since its launch. I really need to get back to the 64. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,871 Posted March 28, 2020 Share Posted March 28, 2020 Hello boyos... Might be working on a little N64, might be playing a bit of Blues brothers 2000, who knows? Don't call it a comeback, just yet... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdius | 1,507 Posted March 28, 2020 Share Posted March 28, 2020 (edited) I managed to play a bit of N64. I started with Mace but it hard kinda fast and I wasn’t in the mood. Then I decided to give Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth a try since I was feeling like playing a shmup. I just beat it and enjoyed it. It has really good graphics and the ost is cool. As a shmup game, it’s on the simple side but since the N64 doesn’t have many games of the genre, it’s definitely worth playing. Edited March 28, 2020 by Galdius 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,907 Events Helper · Posted March 28, 2020 Share Posted March 28, 2020 @Sumez needs to post pics of himself beating castlevania 64 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sumez | 2,927 Posted March 28, 2020 Share Posted March 28, 2020 1 hour ago, Jeevan said: @Sumez needs to post pics of himself beating castlevania 64 This picture sums up the game well! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,871 Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 Hey guys, working my way through BB2000! I was having difficulty with the level two boss, so I turned to gamefaqs to help me out. Noticed a familiar name had written the guide... Thanks @Splain! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splain | 2,560 Editorials Team · Posted March 29, 2020 Author Share Posted March 29, 2020 57 minutes ago, OptOut said: Hey guys, working my way through BB2000! I was having difficulty with the level two boss, so I turned to gamefaqs to help me out. Noticed a familiar name had written the guide... Thanks @Splain! I played through that game again last year for the thread, using my own FAQ as a guide. It was interesting to see all the weaknesses in it, having forgotten a lot about the game since writing it. So let me know if you have questions about the game or the FAQ. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sumez | 2,927 Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 (edited) As a major Castlevania fan I figured it was only a question of time before I had to play through the two N64 games .But in the case of this one, I really do feel that I took one for the team! And this is just the first of them. To be honest, if you really want to take Castlevania into the third dimension, I think this game had the right idea. Much better than the later PS2 games, and the outsourced Spanish mess that would come even later. Some amount of exploration, lots of cool world building that obviously takes more from the older games than the IGAvanias that would be the new standard after this. Lots of combat, but it's snappy and fast paced without too may" bullet sponges", and some tastefully interspersed platforming along the way. Each stage is massively different, with some requiring finding keys and backtracking while interacting with various characters, while others are straight up obstacle courses. Of course it's no secret that this game plays like absolute garbage, and I'm not sure how much I should really go into details, as it's already been massively documented by just about everyone on the internet. If any game could stand a really thorough remake, it's this one, because the fine idea collapses completely under the incredibly unmanageable gameplay. The platforming is actually surprisingly okay, but suffers from your characters unwillingness to turn on a dime. That would make sense in maybe a more grounded character combat design, but with all the jumping and platforming here, it just results in infuriating sluggish behavior, and the occasional missed jump because Reinhardt felt that he needed to do a small hop rather than the high jump you wanted him to. The biggest threat to platforming however, is the absurdly villainous camera, that rarely wants to show you where you are going, and goes out of the way to make it impossible to judge distances. It becomes even worse during combat. Some times combat feels snappy and responsive - hold the lock on button, and do a well timed whip which hits at a surprisingly long distance. But outside of aforementioned issue with judging distances, out of the three different camera modes (which are barely different), none of them really want to show what your enemies are doing while you try to fight them, which makes it almost impossible to know how to react to them. Combat against larger enemies is usually reduced to a game of learning patterns, guesswork and pure luck. The lock-on hits "randomly" decide to fail around 1 out of 5 times, which is especially infuriating against Dracula's first form, where the attack that's most likely to leave him open will guarantee to hit you if you miss the hit, and then proceeds to drain your life to heal him with HP worth 4-5 hits. He takes around 25-30 hits to take down, but in reality you'll have to hit him a lot more times than that. There's so much cool stuff in this game, especially when you get past the two first incredibly boring stages, but I can't for the life of me imagine a tester playing through all of this mess and saying "Yeah, this is exactly what the game should be like, let's ship this!". I'm sure the devs just gave up under the pressure of deadlines and hoped for the best, releasing what they had. I already started on Legacy of Darkness, and fortunately it fixes a lot of the issues this game has! Edited March 29, 2020 by Sumez 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055 Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 With my free time the past few days I started playing Armorines: Project Swarm after giving up on Aerogauge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmond | 152 Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 9 hours ago, Sumez said: As a major Castlevania fan I figured it was only a question of time before I had to play through the two N64 games .But in the case of this one, I really do feel that I took one for the team! And this is just the first of them. If you really want to take one for the team you'll beat Earthworm Jim 3D. I agree with most of what you said about CV64, it's unfortunate that people sort of just jumped on the AVGN bandwagon of dumping on it as some sort of bane of the N64's existence. There was another YouTuber though ( RetroSnow or something like that ) who did a good rebuttal vid on the largely negative opinion surrounding it. Like you say in the post though, it does lots of stuff really well, it's just bogged down by a lot of the technical annoyances. I've always been a fan of it though, great atmosphere ( thinking of spots like the cerberus fight, the 1st vampire encounter, the villa and maze garden , etc ), lots of replayability ( 2-4 characters, multiple endings, hidden boss(es), etc ), an interesting albeit half-baked Day/Night mechanic. There's just a lot to like even if the gameplay can be a bit janky, and boss fights devolve into kinda just needing to have enough health items stocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sumez | 2,927 Posted March 30, 2020 Share Posted March 30, 2020 (edited) 10 hours ago, JERedmond said: it's unfortunate that people sort of just jumped on the AVGN bandwagon of dumping on it as some sort of bane of the N64's existence. AVGN has always been good at spreading misinformation. Though I'll give him that its'definitely a terrible game though, in spite of the cool elements it does have. But I can totally see the video being infuriating to someone who's a fan of the game. I can see why you'd say Legacy of Darkness is "basically the same", rather than a sequel, because even though it does at a handful of new stages, and alters the ones it does reuse, the overall concept is exactly the same. But if your approach is whining about how bad the game is, it's a little unfortunate to overlook Legacy of Darkness, considering how much it fixes over the original game. It has the same cool ideas as the original, but it is way way more playable. Like, you can actually see the enemies while fighting them, and platforming is much smoother and more responsive. I think this is the right game to judge N64 Castlevania on. But more on that when I'm done playing it... Nevermind that AVGN gives up halfway through the game because he can't figure out that he needed to use the "use item" button to put down his explosives at the cracked walls. The exact same button he used to pick it up. I refuse to believe anyone else ever got stuck at that point. Edited March 30, 2020 by Sumez Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055 Posted March 30, 2020 Share Posted March 30, 2020 I'm a good way through Armorines. Some notes: If your going to play this, you need to turn the brightness on your tv waaaaaayy up. It's one of those games with super dark areas. Even with the brightness up you may have to utilize the IR goggles, if you find them, in a level to see where you're going. Alternatively shoot around randomly because your bullets also light up where they hit. Watch the longplay on Youtube. There have been a number of times I've been stuck trying to figure out where something is or how to advance to the next area. Unlike Goldeneye, this game requires you to complete all the objectives of a mission or you will have to re-do the mission. Try the edges of ladders. Some ladders in the game that look as though they span 2-2.5 character widths are actually only scalable on the side rail instead of the actual rungs. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,871 Posted March 31, 2020 Share Posted March 31, 2020 I played through Armorines a couple years age, thoroughly average game imo. I found the later levels somewhat more interesting, but nothing special tbh. Only thing I really liked were the 3d models and animations of the giant bugs, I fell as though a lot of work went into them. I just wish more attention had been paid to the level design and overall feel of the game. Way to many wide open areas full of nothing, and the combat is very repetitive because the bugs have like zero AI they just run at you. It's a shame because there are some nice touches here and there, and you can tell the developers at least tried, but oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sumez | 2,927 Posted March 31, 2020 Share Posted March 31, 2020 (edited) Damn, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is absolutely an improvement over the first CV64 in nearly every possible way. It's by no means a masterpiece like so many other games in the series are, but it's actually a pretty good and very enjoyable game. The stages that are completely remade are generally for the better (some of them are now among the best in the game), and most of the new stages are pretty nice too (with maybe the Art Tower leaving a little to be wanted). Though Cornell's quest is generally longer, I do miss the change of pace introduced with the Castle Center stage from the original game. The new progression structure of the Villa stage also makes its layout feel somewhat underutilized. Those things are all still in the game though, if you're playing Reinhardt's or Carrie's quests, unlockable after beating the game (and then playing Henry's quest which is kinda fun, but also feels pretty dumb especially due to how stupidly easy it is). Both of their quests also get the new intro stage with the sinking ship, the new versions of the stages that got changed, but they keep the boss fights that were unique to their original game (including Dracula's two final forms, which are different from the new incredibly badass one Cornell gets to meet), and each of them get a new unique boss to fight, too. This game has a lot of content, and it's very hard to justify even playing CV64 when this exists. The controls are slightly revamped. Not a lot, but enough to make platforming feel much, much smoother, along with the fixed camera which is now also much more likely to show you what you actually need to see. In the original game, every jump felt like playing the lottery, while this game has me confidently skip around across bottomless pits and lava, as if it were a Mario game. Legacy of Darkness has a lot more platforming than CV64, but it also easily gets away with it. Hitting enemies has become a lot more intuitive, and Cornell's attack has a big enough hitbox that it's pretty much guaranteed to hit anything he's facing even slightly. In general, fixing how it plays also puts the game very much in the easy end of things, and it probably could have done with a few more enemies, and a much higher damage scaling. That said, I haven't tried hard mode yet. I dabbled a bit in it with Reinhardt's mode, and from what I could tell, the pattern of the first boss actually changed to make it a lot less predictable. It might be worth playing through. Disclaimer: I played the ending in High resolution mode just to get cooler pictures from my screen, but it's not recommended. The framerate drops so low the game becomes super hard to control. If you have an expansion pak, avoid the high resolution setting even though the game asks you. Edited March 31, 2020 by Sumez 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splain | 2,560 Editorials Team · Posted March 31, 2020 Author Share Posted March 31, 2020 Great job guys!! I'm still making slow progress though Mario Golf and Milo's Astro Lanes. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055 Posted March 31, 2020 Share Posted March 31, 2020 17 hours ago, OptOut said: I played through Armorines a couple years age, thoroughly average game imo. I found the later levels somewhat more interesting, but nothing special tbh. Only thing I really liked were the 3d models and animations of the giant bugs, I fell as though a lot of work went into them. I just wish more attention had been paid to the level design and overall feel of the game. Way to many wide open areas full of nothing, and the combat is very repetitive because the bugs have like zero AI they just run at you. It's a shame because there are some nice touches here and there, and you can tell the developers at least tried, but oh well. I mean I don't think it's too bad overall just repetitive. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if they let you progress without completing every single task in the mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,871 Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 SPLAIN ALERT! Blues Brothers 2000 is complete! Would you believe I paid 60 pounds for this game? It's one of the more uncommon PAL titles, and I guess for good reason, seeing as this game is basically trash! However, some of you fellows know, I have a sick fetish for bad games, and I have to say this one hits the sweet spot for me! Random license, simplistic gameplay, hilarious level and game design choices, terrible graphics, sound glitches all over the place... I'm in heaven! This is a bad game that's playable enough that you can really see HOW bad it is, I would say well worth the price of admission, lol! It goes to show how bad the game is, there isn't even credits. You just get this really lame cut-scene with "your band" even though it's not your actual band members who you have been SAVING throughout the game so you can play together, just random enemy characters... What the ACTUAL fuck? Lolololol, the whole point of the game was to save your band mates so you could play together in the battle of the bands! 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splain | 2,560 Editorials Team · Posted April 1, 2020 Author Share Posted April 1, 2020 20 minutes ago, OptOut said: SPLAIN ALERT! Blues Brothers 2000 is complete! Would you believe I paid 60 pounds for this game? It's one of the more uncommon PAL titles, and I guess for good reason, seeing as this game is basically trash! However, some of you fellows know, I have a sick fetish for bad games, and I have to say this one hits the sweet spot for me! Random license, simplistic gameplay, hilarious level and game design choices, terrible graphics, sound glitches all over the place... I'm in heaven! This is a bad game that's playable enough that you can really see HOW bad it is, I would say well worth the price of admission, lol! It goes to show how bad the game is, there isn't even credits. You just get this really lame cut-scene with "your band" even though it's not your actual band members who you have been SAVING throughout the game so you can play together, just random enemy characters... What the ACTUAL fuck? Lolololol, the whole point of the game was to save your band mates so you could play together in the battle of the bands! Nice job! Yeah, I thought it was funny that you earn your place in the Battle of the Bands by... having a dance-off. And the game is very clear that you are rescuing your bandmates, they're always visibly held hostage in each boss fight. And you can't finish a level if you didn't find their instrument. Aaand then you perform with a bunch of randos. lol. I haven't seen the Blues Brothers 2000 movie, but I hear it's not super great. Maybe the game follows it really closely! And I agree that it's in a sweet spot of being a bad game. It's unquestionably bad, but it has a uniqueness to it that's almost endearing. And probably only to N64 fans. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,907 Events Helper · Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 Well @OptOut u did a solid...........but were you on a mission, from god? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OptOut | 8,871 Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 As an aside, @Splain you happen to notice any audio glitches while you were playing through BB2000? A couple of times all sound and music cut out entirely, and even quoting the game and going back to the main menu didn't help. The only thing that fixed it was resetting. No wonder the clowns that made this didn't want to leave credits, lol! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055 Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 Armorines done. God I wish it had even the most basic of maps 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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