What Games Have You Completed? (2022 EDITION!)
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
MakaiMura for WonderSwan
MakaiMura by the name alone might seem like some obscure japanese game but it's just the japanese name for the Ghosts n' Goblins/Ghouls n' Ghosts series in Japan. This entry is for the WonderSwan handheld made by Bandai and never left Japan. It was created by Gunpei Yokoi after he was forced out of Nintendo due to the failure of the Virtual Boy.
MakaiMura plays exactly as you'd expect from a Gn'G game. It's a fairly challenging platform game action game which has you fighting undead nasties while finding chests for power ups. While the game seems to have been developed internally by capcom it has a very 'off brand' feel to it, which may be due to the series creator not being involved with the game. It feels a little off. As a result the game isn't a tight in terms of controls and hit detection as the rest of the series. Jumping between platforms at times leaves very little margin or error, and the hit detection can be questionable, most annoyingly is when an enemy passes under Arthur when he is standing on a platform and he will take a hit when it looks like he should be fine.
The game feels a little rushed. There's some visual jank with some graphics getting corrupted when there's too many sprites on screen. Some weapons are quite useless and getting stuck with one can be infuriating. In particular I got stuck with a weapon that made the final boss gauntlet literally impossible to beat in the allotted time for the stage (the first boss will drop a random weapon on death so they did mitigate for this but it's not signposted well). While it's not as polished as the rest of the series it's still a decent handheld platformer with some great moments every so often. Boss fights are a highlight with some really well designed ones and a few troll moments. The best WTF moment is a fish boss that is particularly tricky that is replaced by another fish boss on death, not once but twice during this particularly gruelling fights. The graphics look nice with large detailed sprites and some snazzy graphical effects. It's a pity this game out before the Wonderswan Colour but the black and white sprites are nicely detailed. The Music is pretty ****, the WonderSwan had a pretty harsh soundchip that was significantly worse than the excellent sound from the gameboy. The WonderSwan is a console that can be played in landscape or portrait mode so of course MakaiMura has a level where you have to rotate the console and descend a chasm. It's reminiscent of the second stage of Battletoads and while a bit gimmicky it's a nice change of pace.
MakaiMura is a decent handheld platformer and one of the few WonderSwan games that's English speaker friendly.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)
The Ninja Gaiden series has a weird lineage. While everyone mostly knows it for the excellent NES games it actually started out as a Double Dragon style beat'em up in the arcades. What a lot of people don't know is that Sega took the Ninja Gaiden license and had to make their own games with it due to Nintendo's strict licensing rules at the time. Sega developed and released Ninja Gaiden games for the Game Gear and Master System and also had a Megadrive game in the works that was never released but there's a prototype floating around of it.
Sega would mostly back port Master System games to the Game Gear and just reduce the resolution, which wouldn't be a bad thing as Ninja Gaiden on the Master System is one of the all time great 8-bit games. However Game Gear Ninja Gaiden is a totally original game and actually came before the Master System release. It's also no where near as good.
Ninja Gaiden on Game Gear is your standard action platformer. The controls are really smooth and responsive and it scrolls really fast. Graphically it looks really nice, it's a very colourful game taking full advantage of the Game Gear's increased colour palette over the Master System. The music is fine. Nothing memorable but nothing grating either. There's a few weird niggles to the controls. Using sub weapons requires you to press down and attack which makes no sense and flies in the face of convention where up and attack is the norm. It also means you can't duck and attack without wasting a sub weapon. You don't have many i-frames when hit which means enemies can juggle you and quickly sap your health to nothing if you make a mistake. The first stage boss is especially weird. He is the toughest boss to figure out how to attack. You have to face away from him and quickly turn to face him and attack while his club is up. It's very strange and all other bosses are quite simple.
Other than these niggles Ninja Gaiden is a very playable game. The platforming and combat are fun although it's not as good as the Master System and NES versions. There's an attempt made at Ninja Gaiden's famous cinematic cutscenes but the story is nonsense and they aren't as impressive as the NES game. The main issue with the game is just how short it is. There's really only 5 stages and one of those is a short vertical autoscroller and another is just a boss battle. The game can be completed in about 10 minutes skipping the cutscenes. It's also not that difficult. Once you figure out that first boss only the final stage will give you much trouble. Dying at bosses sends you back to the beginning of a stage which is just a frustration made to extend the length of the game.
Ninja Gaiden on the Game Gear isn't bad, it's just very disappointing considering how good the NES games are. Sega already had a proven track record at making incredible Ninja action games on the Game Gear with the phenomenal GG Shinobi games on Game Gear so this one is a big disappointment compared to those two masterpieces.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
Aconcagua
Aconcagua is a pretty interesting PS1 game. It was developed by defunct studio WAC WAC! with Sony funding and released in 2000. It seems to be the last first party funded release on PS1 by Sony before putting all their focus into the PS2. As a result Aconcagua is a very high budget and technically impressive game.
Aconcagua starts with a bomb on an airplane that leaves the protagonists stranded on the mountain Aconcagua. It turns out that this bomb was an assassination attempt by the government forces of the fictional South American country Meruza to try and take out political leader Pacahamama. The crash survivors have to make their way down off the mountain while being harassed by military hunting them down. It's a race against time to get Pachamama to Meruza before riots break out and a military coup can be foiled.
Aconcagua is basically a point and click. It's broken into chapters and each chapter is it's own little self contained point and click puzzle. What this means is that there's far less walking around head scratching not knowing what to do next. There was maybe only 2 times in the game when the puzzle solution seemed a little bit obtuse. Puzzles for the most part aren't too taxing and won't take too long to figure out. The band of survivors grows to five members and each has their own special abilities. Protagonist Katoh has mountaineering experience. Steve is an engineer. Julia is a journalist but she has a lighter and is pretty lethal with a combat knife she just so happens to have. Lopez is stronger than the rest. And finally Pachamama eh.. knows Spanish which actually comes in quite useful.
I had a lot of fun with this game and it comes in at a brisk 4-5 hours. It's not the classic it could have been, the story unfortunately gets a little silly towards the end and the voice acting and script are a bit ropey. The production values are through the roof, it's a gorgeous looking game with lots of attention to detail. The in engine cinematics are very impressive with good animation but also fully modelled and synced mouths which was very rare on PS1. The standout is the sound design and music. There's really great Foley work in cutscenes, the crunchy snow sounds great and the soundtrack is incredible, a full orchestrated John Williams-esque score which suits the game perfectly.
I played the game with a recently released fan translation. Not the most amazing game but a thoroughly enjoyable one.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
- Monkey Island 2 Special Edition|PC
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition
I played a finally finished the first Monkey Island a couple of months ago and absolutely adored it. Funny, clever puzzles and bags of charm. It was taxing but not over taxing and I didn't need any help to figure out the puzzles. Monkey Island 2 though I found a little disappointing. The humour is still great but where this suffers is in the puzzles. There's some genuinely great ones but there's an awful lot that are quite esoteric and don't make a whole lot of sense. It meant I ended up using a guide for a few of puzzles and I'm not sure how you could solve a lot of them without some major trial and error. There was a few moments where I missed items hidden in the background. The final puzzle sequence with le chuck chasing you was infuriating and that ending was bizarre. It's a much longer game but I feel the original is much better.
The special edition is a mixed bag. I love how it keeps the iMuse music from the original, the backgrounds look great and the voice acting is excellent. The character animation is unfortunately a bit dodgy with that weird puppeteer flash animation style which is no where near as nice as the original hand animated sprites.
Overall I was a little disappointed in this one.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
- Monkey Island 2 Special Edition|PC
- Baroque|PS1
Baroque
This is a game I've always wanted to play. I first heard about it when retronauts were playing the music from the game in an episode and it sounded amazing. I looked up the game it came from and I was just fascinated by the game. Unfortunately it was a game left in Japan but recently it received a long awaited fan translation.
Baroque is a first person dungeon crawler rogue-like game set in a nightmarish post apocalyptic world. What really drew me to this game was the atmosphere of Baroques strange world. The starting are is sparsely populated by horribly malformed people lamenting their existence. You get to the entrance of the main dungeon, the Neuro Tower, and a creature calling himself the Archangel tells you to reach the bottom of the Neuro tower and kill god. Before he leaves he hands you an 'Angelic Rifle', a powerful weapon with only 5 shots that can kill any enemy in one hit, including God. Whether you succeed or die trying the cycle repeats. Being a rogue-like you lose all your items and start back at level 1. Of course nothing is quite what it seems. The starting area and Neuro Tower are filled with NPCs that will fill in details on the mystery of what the hell is actually happening. What the cataclysmic 'Great Heat' event is, what happened to everyone that they are so malformed, what awaits at the bottom of the Neurotower and why you keep having visions of your dead brother and creepy cherub creatures called 'Littles'. As you learn more the Neurotower changes, new floors open and everything just gets weirder.
The Neurotower is where you spend most of your time. It's a nightmarish maze of randomly generated floors, items and enemies. Anyone that has played a proper rogue game before will be very familiar with the level layouts, they stick quite rigidly to the classic rogue level design of everything being made on a grid with tight corridors between bigger open rooms. It's a proper rogue like as well. Death comes quickly to the unprepared, items need to be identified and sometimes you just have to figure out what an item is by taking a chance and consuming it or throwing it at an enemy. Aesthetically the Neurotower is a decaying industrial environment although there is quite a bit of variety in areas so it never gets samey. Enemy design is a real standout with some wonderful artwork and some pretty creepy enemy attack patterns. As you play you do learn a few tricks on how the game works and it does become a lot easier to survive. There is also a way to send items back to the surface to store for subsequent runs. The game is rarely unfair and has a nicely balanced difficulty. The game manages to be genuinely creepy and unsettling with some effective jump scares.
Baroque is an absolute gem of a game that we in the West unfortunately missed out on but I can also see why we never got it. The developer Sting is known for taking RPG tropes and completely turning them on their heads and Baroque is no different. While a first person dungeon crawling rogue-like seems rote in this day and age, back when this was first released on the Saturn in 1998 it would have been a crazy take on the rogue genre take retrospectively was way ahead of its time. I could see a Saturn/PS1 release of this game being torn apart by critics of the time that didn't understand how rogue games work, just look at the dismissal of rogue-like games such as Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter and Shiren the Wanderer before Spelunky popularised rogue-like games in the West. Progressing through the story of Baroque seems esoteric at first but if you pay attention to what items characters ask for you should have no trouble seeing the end of the game and the FAQ for the remake is still relevant to this version of the game. Special mention has to be made for the soundtrack. It's a mix of sombre industrial music mixed with creepy industrial electronica. It's one of the best game soundtracks of all time.
Barique was released first on the Saturn before being ported to PS1. The PS1 version makes some changes, adding extra dialogue options, making the Neurotower longer while also making the floor mazes shorter. The visuals were changed slightly, unfortunately the Saturn's widescreen mode is absent but the game does make good use of the PS1's prowess with transparency effect. A post game dungeon was also added which is insanely tough. Baroque was remade for the PS2 and Wii as a third person rogue like game which was lambasted by critics who didn't understand how rogue games work. I'd still recommend the PS1 version as a lot of the atmosphere is lost going to third person and the soundtrack was changed. While the soundtrack is still very good it's not a patch on the original soundtrack.
Anyway, I've waffled on enough. I think it's pretty clear that I adored my time with this game. It was a real experience.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
- Monkey Island 2 Special Edition|PC
- Baroque|PS1
- Alien vs. Predator (1999)|PC
Alien vs. Predator (1999)
Bit of a blast from the past this one. I didn't expect this to hold up and in many ways it doesn't. However it was still a lot of fun in spite of itself. It's made by Rebellion who managed to survive years making janky licensed shooters most of which were terrible until they found their groove with Sniper Elite. AvP has all the jank of a Rebellion game but it just all kind of works mostly. They managed to nail the look and feel of the two franchises. The three races you play all give totally different play experiences. Playing on the hardest 'directors cut' mode is a terrifying experience. The marine's campaign is the highlight. It's absolutely terrifying. The alien campaign I had more fun with than I thought. It's way more stealth focused but there's a lot of clever environment use to get through stick situations. The predator might be the weakest. While it's fun cutting down marines, the aliens prove a massive issue for the predator on the hardest difficulty. Some of his levels were very frustrating.
The game does have issues. Some levels are sprawling mazes that are easy to get lost in. Objectives you have to interact with are not well identified to the player which can lead to you wandering some levels until you learn what the game expects from you.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
- Monkey Island 2 Special Edition|PC
- Baroque|PS1
- Alien vs. Predator (1999)|PC
- Professor Layton and the Lost Future|Android
Professor Layton and the Lost Future
The final game in the initial Layton trilogy. This one is the best so far but marginally so. It's still severely lacking in many areas. Again the puzzles are the highlight. The second game Pandora's box had way too many box pushing puzzles and peg solitaire (which got absolutely **** obnoxious). Peg solitaire is dumped in the bin where it belongs and while there are block pushing/sliding puzzles they are relatively straight forward except in the post game puzzles. It's got by far the best collection of well balanced and judged puzzles so far.
Where the game falls is on the premise and writing. Level 5 and particularly Akihiro Hino's writing is absolutely atrocious and it hasn't changed with Lost Future. It's always the same structure for Layton games, set up a good premise which goes no where, spin the wheels for the rest of the game and at the end pull a ridiculous finale out of the writer's arse. It's the same in other Level 5 muck like the god awful Ni No Kuni. The Lost Future is particularly bad. It's a time travel story where narrative events have you travelling from present day London to London 10 years in the future. This premise never really goes anywhere and there's no time travelling antics, it's just another location to visit. As for the ending.... Christ. This has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen in a videogame since Illusion of Gaia's pig sacrifice scene. I actually exclaimed '**** off!' out loud at how insane it was. The game then ends on an emotional note is totally unearned but actually almost works entirely due to Layton's excellent voice actor really selling it.
There's three new minigames that have been added. The first is a puzzle game where you guide a parrot to its destination by laying ropes between pegs. This should have been a fun 'Incredible Machine' type physics puzzle but it's actively hateful as there's only ever one set solution and the parrots physics are totally random and unpredictable. Complete shite. The other two fair much better. The second has you guiding a car across a map collecting items before reaching the designated end. You have no control over the car once it moves but you have a limited number of tiles to place that tell the car to turn or jump. You are basically programming the car to beat the course and its lot of fun. Lastly is a sticker book. A story is told and you have to place the correct stickers in the book to tell the correct story. It seems simple enough but you have to scrutinise the text for clues on what the correct stickers are. It's a lot more fun than it sounds.
So Lost Future is a fun little diversion with some fun puzzles and two great minigames (and one awful one). The biggest issue with Layton is that with an actual decent writer and not the same clown that wrote Ni No Kuni, the series could actually be something very special.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3|Gameboy
- Shantae|Gameboy Colour
- The Forgotten City|PC
- Bulk Slash|Saturn
- Monster World IV|Megadrive
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough|PC
- Pikmin 3|Switch
- Bayonetta 2|Switch
- X-Com 2: War of the Chosen|PC
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts|SNES
- GG Shinobi|Game Gear
- Elden Ring|PC
- Castlevania: Dracula X|SNES
- Maken X|Dreamcast
- God of War Ascension|PS3
- Kirby's Dream Land 2|Gameboy
- Ace Combat 2|PS1
- Quake: Dissolution of Eternity|PC
- Final Fantasy Legend|Gameboy
- For the Frog the Bell Tolls|Gameboy
- Trails in the Sky: the 3rd|PC
- Call of Duty: Ghosts|PC
- Wonderboy: the Dragon's Trap|PC
- Silent Bomber|PS1
- God of War: Ghost of Sparta|PS3
- Lemmings|PC
- Quake: Dimensions of the Past|PC
- Deathloop|PC
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile|PC
- MakaiMura for WonderSwan|WonderSwan
- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear)|Game Gear
- Aconcagua|PS1
- Monkey Island 2 Special Edition|PC
- Baroque|PS1
- Alien vs. Predator (1999)|PC
- Professor Layton and the Lost Future|Android
- Ninja Five-O|GBA
Ninja Five-O
You have to feel sorry for Ninja Five-O. It's got one of the most ridiculous names for any game (in Europe it's the slightly less but still rubbish Ninja Cop). With a silly name like that and being a very late 2D platformer for the GBA the game got totally ignored by both reviewers and the game buying public. By the time people realised it was kind of amazing, there were very few copies left in the wild and now it sells for crazy money. It's a shame because as I said, it's a fantastic game.
Ninja Five-O is a 2D action platform game in the vein of 16-bit games of the type. The is very close to shinobi. Your ninja has a shuriken attack that can be powered up as well as a sword. He can also cast ninja magic that can clear the screen or turn him invincible depending on how full the meter is. Using the sword attack will fill the meter up quicker. As a Ninja he is quite nimble but also has another trick up his sleave, a grappling hook. This can be attached to any hook point or surface and allow the ninja to swing around on it. It takes a while to get used to but once you do it's very versatile and has crazy physics that allow you to pull off ridiculous maneuvers and kills.
Each mission has 3 Stages and a boss at the end. Stages are a series of interconnecting levels that you will have to explore to find keys and hostages that need rescuing before the stage can be exited. The levels are quite big but never maze like and confusing. While Ninja Five-O is a very difficult game it's never unfair. You take a lot of damage but you have all the tools to get you through any situation. Stages are like mini puzzles where you try to figure out the best route through them so dying and being sent back to the start of one is never frustrating. Each mission is punctuated by a boss fight and all of them are inventive, tough and a blast to take on.
Graphically, it's not the best looking GBA game but the animation work is excellent and it's about as good as a high level SNES game. I really like the attention to detail like how enemies on high ledges plummet to their death. There isn't much music but what is there is catchy.
Ninja Five-O is one of the best action platformers ever made and its unfortunate it hasn't been played by more people. It's crying out for a release. It was developed by Hudson and published by Konami so Konami are now sitting on the license. If Ninja Five-O was released on the SNES or Megadrive it would have been considered one of the all time great 16-bit games. If it was released today it would go down as a retro inspired indie darlin. It really is that good.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Trails in the Sky Second Chapter|PC
- Operation C|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds|PC
- Kid Dracula|Gameboy
- The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye|PC
- Illusion of Gaia|SNES
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- Pikmin 3|Switch
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- Silent Bomber|PS1
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- Ninja Five-O|GBA
- Little Samson|NES
Little Samson
Little Samson is a very late NES title (1992) and has become one of the rarest and most sought after NES games.
In little Samson some evil wizard guy is attacking the kingdom and it's up to Samson and three of his companions to put a stop to his reign of terror.
Little Samson is your standard NES platformer with a lot of similarities to Megaman. There's actually a connection with Megaman as the creator of Little Samson is an ex-Capcom employee. The game opens with you choosing one of four stages where you play as each of the four protagonists. It's a great way to get to grips with each character. After these four stages you are free to switch between each character from the pause screen. Each has their own life bar. Each character has their own abilities and strengths. Samson is a pretty standard character with a projectile attack and can climb on walls and ceilings. The Dragon has a charge attack, an arcing attack and can hover for a limited time. The Golem is the slowest but has the most health and his short range attack does huge amounts of damage. He can also walk on spikes. And lastly the mouse how has the least health but is the fastest, can climb on walls and ceilings. He can lay bombs to attack which are hard to use but are absolutely devastating to bosses and by far the most damaging attack in the game.
After the initial stages the game takes a more linear path although there are some branching paths and secret levels to discover. Being a late NES game, the visuals are stunning with some incredible animation work. The music while catchy is a weak point as each character has their own theme as you use them and it can get grating hearing the same four songs over and over. The boss battles are very impressive with some screen filling enemies or large multiple sprite monstrosities. The game is tough but perfectly manageable if you stick with it.
One thing to note about this game is you can't play the final three levels and get the true ending unless you play the game on normal. Normal difficulty is pretty brutal, there's more enemies and you have less health. The biggest change is that if a character loses all their life you restart the level but on easy you lose access to that character until you beat the level or continue (unless that character is samson). I recommend playing on easy to get a feel for the stages and then going to hard (there are mercifully passwords between stages).
Overall this is a very high quality NES game. It's not quite as good as the likes of Megaman 2 or Ninja Gaiden 2 but it's a game well worth playing and one of the top tier action games on the NES.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
The uproar over the short length of Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion was ridiculous at the time. Every year that goes by really just reinforces that Shigeru Miyamoto as right, 6-8 hours is the perfect length of time for a game to last. Who knew Miyamoto knew a thing or two about designing fun games?
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