So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Been on holidays so haven't been playing a whole lot. Since I was starting a new handheld game I decided to stick with the DS for now and started the remake of the first Shiren game. It's a proper rogue-like, pretty hardcore but also quite approachable with some interesting mechanics that differentiate it from other games. I've gotten to floor 18 out of I think 50 floors so far. Some runs have been a disaster where I got beaten in the very first room but runs are usually relatively short anyway. There's also a surprising amount of humour in the game and little side quests that make future runs a little easier.
Also played a little of contra 4. Right old ball buster. Its great fun but there are some annoyances with the dead space between the top and bottom screens.
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Decided to move on to Final Fantasy IX over the weekend after finishing Chrono Trigger...just occurred to me that I'm actually kind of lucky given I haven't played it far beyond the first disc. Basically a PS1 era FF game Ive never played properly.
Hooked my PVM back up for it specifically. Was trying it on th big tv with a retrotink. Looked like absolute ass. I just don't think PS1 games can really work on a big modern screen, even with good shaders thrown at it.
The PVM on the other hand is jaw dropping. The FMV videos look absolutely incredible.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Started Tomb Raider 3 in the remake collection and the game is just mean. So many bullshit moments to catch the player off guard and it's really not a good starting off point for people new to the series. The levels are also way too big.
It's very obvious that by this point the core design team behind tomb raider was getting very burned out with the yearly production cycle and there's a lot of stuff here that feels like it didn't go through polishing during the play testing.
For instance you have the choice of 3 stages after you beat the India stage but if you choose Nevada last you will end up losing all your weapons before the final set of stages.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
I'm only really going through it because I couldn't finish it back in the day because my memory card corrupted on the second last stage. This is revenge.
I've heard Last Revelation is a real return to form for the series but never played it. Chronicles is meant to be really bad but bad in an interesting way so I'm curious.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Tomb Raider 3 just screams 1998.
Aesthetically the game is chock full of garish coloured lighting, putting it after the late 1997 release of quake 2 and the 3D accelerator revolution on PC where coloured lighting was all the rage.
There's a level set in Area 52 with aliens and spaceships putting it around the maximum hype point for the X-Files.
The only thing that's a bit of a stretch are the forced stealth sections in the London levels. Forcing stealth sections into an engine that can barely support the main gameplay elements let alone stealth is a very post metal gear solid thing to do. MGS was released in September 1998 in Japan while TR3 had a release of November. However considering the insane crunch the game was under (and how buggy and badly designed the stealth is) it might not be a push that it was shoehorned in last minute considering how much a month would be as a percentage of total development time.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Yeah I remember thinking it looked amazing but looking back at the likes of quake 2 now it looks garish and really ugly. Half-Life was the game I remember bringing back more natural looking lighting it more subtle use of coloured lighting.
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After a few beers in the garden, it was Mario time! With some Bubble Bobble on the side!
I keep meaning to get the last few stars on this save, but two of them are Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride 100 coins.
Also playing Animal Well and Crow Country on Steam Deck which are Nu-Retro. Animal Well is brilliant!
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Ive beaten the area51 and South Pacific stages of TR3 and I'm not on to the London stages.
It's very obvious that the south pacific and London levels were some of the last worked on because they are a great lesson in terrible level design and obscuring the readability of the stage with noise. There's just some flat out nonsense here and I'm surprised I managed to beat these stages on the PS1 without GameFAQs or YouTube.
There's a stage in south pacific with a climbing area that had me stuck for ages. Opened up a YouTube walkthrough of the stage and saw a massive spike in views at one area. Turns out that it was where I was stuck.
Basically you had to climb to the bottom of an area and jump backwards on to a platform behind you. However because of how the camera works in TR you can't actually look behind you to even see if that platform is there and there's no way to even see this platform from anywhere in the stage. I actually did try this but due to how small the area you need to jump into I kept hitting a wall, so there's a very small specific area you can jump from to land the jump.
Anyway London seems to be full of even more bullshit like this but to round it off it's a very unappealing stage to look at. At least the remake isn't as dark and full of garish coloured lighting in this stage as the original.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Played the first two London levels in Tomb Raider 3 and the level design is really starting to fall apart. Some good ideas but some really bad stuff as well.
The first Thames wharf stage is a pain in the ass. It's a good idea with having the level loop back on itself but it means doing the same slow climb back to the start of the stage multiple times when you complete an objective, or worse, miss something important. Took a while hour to complete which was a ridiculous amount of time.
The level has you making your way to a cathedral in the distance which was meant to be a stage but it was cut because it was too tough but left in as a secret stage if you get all the secrets. It's very obvious that it's been cut as one of the secrets gives you a Cathedral key which has absolutely no use and might have been left in as a hint about the level. The stage also ends with a Cutscene fight around a bell in some random house. It was very obviously meant to take place at the top of the cathedral as it's so out of place.
The next stage is Aldwych subway station. It's another massive level that loops on itself. There's some good puzzles but also loads wrong with this stage. There's a very easily missed key due to a poor camera (I walked by it three times), a secret with nothing in it on the PC version. There's a row of ticket machines you have to get a ticket out of but only one works and it has a small area where you can interact with it. There's no indication which machine works. There's also two doors where you have to be in very specific spot to interact with and it's so bad I thought the game had bugged (as did a lot of people online when I searched). There's a puzzle where you have to find an elaborate golden hammer and then use it to break a lock (Lara just does her open lock animation which looks stupid). There's also a subway train you ride to another area which is very unconvincing and has you enter and exit through a trap door.
This level took about an hour 40 minutes, mostly due to walking passed the key a lot and thinking the game was bugged. To put it into context no other level took more than 40 minutes outside of London.
After this Ive got the delightful Lud's Gate, a level that is far and away the longest in the game with an underwater maze that drove me nuts on the PlayStation.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Finally finished up Tomb Raider 3, glad to get that white whale off my back. Despite all my misgivings about that game I still found it really compelling, there's just something timeless to the old tomb raider games and how the exploration is more like a puzzle, especially with modern games making traversal pretty much a QTE.
I realised I never played the TR2 and 3 expansions, they seem quite substantial, pretty much half the size of the main games. I might go back to them at some point, I really enjoyed the TR1 expansion.
Other than that I've been mainly playing contra 4 and Shiren the wanderer on DS. Contra 4 is a fantastic homage to the NES contra. It's got the crazy set pieces of the later games but level and boss patterns feel more like they are from the NES era. Gorgeous pixel art as well.
Shiren is just an absolute gem. I've managed to make it to floor 26 but got ganged up on by monsters that slap your weapon and shield out of your hand and a ghost enemy that was immune to status effects and kept confusing me. It's finally made me understand rogue games and I can see why the mystery dungeon series and rogue likes were so big in Japan before they took hold again in the west.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Shiren the Wanderer broke my heart last night.
Got up to the final floor, had a plan for the final boss but it all fell apart spectacularly.
The last 5 floors are just brutal with some hard hitting enemies and you basically need to use every advantage you have to get through. There's no messing about on those floors to level up and collect items, if you find the exit then move on. I was kind of running low on food and health recharges by this point as well.
So floor 29 the penultimate floor was a disaster, a massive monster room (basically a room filled to the brim with monsters and loot). I dealt with it well in fairness, had to use all my crowd control items in the process and basically run for the exit once I saw an opening but I had the tools I needed for the final boss.
The final boss has so much health and is surrounded by the most annoying enemies that you kind of need a plan to finish him off. My weapons were pretty terrible but I had a lot of money by the last village to buy some nice items My plan was to use a victory herb, which I spent a lot of money on, to get a few turns of invisibility, and then throw monster meat at him. Monster meat will turn you into the monster associated with that meat if you eat it but will also do the same if you throw it at an enemy. So I would turn the final boss into a weak enemy who I could finish off in 2 hits.
I enter floor 30 and the boss is in an awkward position. So instead of popping the victory herb and making the most of it I walk over to another enemy to thin the herd a bit before the boss approaches me. Said enemy throws me to the opposite end of the map in front of another enemy. I take this guy out and lose a bit of health but I'm ok. In the mean time a floating undead enemy approaches me. These guys usually hot you with random magic effects that can move you about the map or teleport you. They aren't too bad and you can even get status buffs off them.
However these guys are different beasts on the final floor. They can hit you with some really nasty status effects, including a new one I found out about last night. Anyway, I hit this guy with a postpone staff which sends enemies to the exit of the level and paralyses them. There's no exit in the final area so it just paralysed him. Not a bad outcome. So I walk over to beat him to a pill and after the first slap he comes out of paralysis and hits me with a Bind status. Bind basically means you can't use any items and Shiren relies on you being able to use items. So I spent the next few turns trying to use the victory herd praying that the status wore off and getting beaten to a pulp by the boss and his friends. The worst thing is I had the tools to beat this guy if I wasn't an idiot.
It's rogue like so this happens. And it wouldn't have been the end since there's 3 post game dungeons to tackle.
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Join Date:Posts: 50636
Finally finished the main quest in Shiren the Wanderer. Quite a bit of luck in this run but it certainly wasn't plain sailing. It's an incredible game and I'm still not quite finished as there's quite a few bonus dungeons to tackle and apparently the real meat of mystery dungeon games is in the post game content.
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The fall of the Japanese arcade industry summed up in one photo!
I didn't realise Rent a Hero of the Dreamcast finally had an English fan translation last year. Been playing it all day, it's excellent. Has a bit of a Shenmue vibe to it.
Post edited by o1s1n on2 -
Join Date:Posts: 50636
Always wanted to give it a go. It was fully translated by Sega and even got reviewed when it was ported to Xbox but they pulled release at the last minute but it managed to get released online. It's a remake of a megadrive game by the phantasy star 3 team, feels like the same engine as well.
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