The Gaming Den

Maxus wrote:I spent a lot of my formative years playing Sonic and remember how I figured out the barrels--I noticed they bobbed when I landed on them, so I ending up jumping and landing and so on.

That's how I did it too. The part that stumped me in Sonic 3 was trying to beat Robotnik in the third level as Tails alone (you have to fly under him when his drill isn't aimed down.)

But the most frustrating thing in the Genesis Sonic games was the final boss of Sonic 2. That bastard took me years to beat.

Metal Sonic was the hardest in that game, IMO. No rings when you fight him, and he has a more complex pattern than any of the other bosses. Compared to that, the boss of that level was easy.

I don't remember how difficult the final boss (that you needed the emeralds for) was, but I think it was still easier than that.

The final boss of the first Sonic is also full of rage juice.

Koumei wrote:With Knuckles I got as far as the Egg Zone (final stage) of S3, but didn't have the timing/coordination to beat the sub-boss (which was "the same as Sonic gets, except two of them). With Sonic, I once managed to get up to the anti-grav boss (but couldn't beat it), but generally couldn't beat that level, just the see-sawing platforms would get me :/

Launch Base (there's an exploit here to get unlimited lives via those things that sound an alarm and send birds at you. If you just stay there and spin dash, the score multiplier increases as more birds attack you, eventually letting you hitt the life cap). Death Eggzone was the last level for &K, not S3. Yeah, Death Egg Zone was hard. Though the first stage of the Walker was really easy (just stay in place and spin dash as you have higher priority than his hand).

Maxus wrote:I spent a lot of my formative years playing Sonic and remember how I figured out the barrels--I noticed they bobbed when I landed on them, so I ending up jumping and landing and so on.

Likewise, I didn't have problems with a lot of the bosses UP UNTIL the Death Egg at the end of Sonic & Knuckles--both the mini-boss (with the exploding spikes) and the Giant Egg Walker with the laster power by the master emerald...

Are you sure you managed to pass them just by timing jumps? I tried that. I tried making Tails do it. Didn't help. I initially didn't know how to dodge the Egg Walker's laser so I'd hit the gem once or twice and then get Tails to fly me out of the way. I eventually managed to figure out that bouncing off it right when it's about to fire the laser gets you high enough to dodge it.

Darth Rabbitt wrote:The part that stumped me in Sonic 3 was trying to beat Robotnik in the third level as Tails alone (you have to fly under him when his drill isn't aimed down.)

I remember that. Yeah, even if you know the trick it's pretty hard to pull off.

Also, the 'boss fight' against Knuckles was possibly my favorite part of the game. It's hilariously easy, but feels good. This asshole has been obstructing me at random intervals throughout the game and been out of reach (via invisible wall in the first stage. If you time it right you can jump just as he blows up the bridge and either fly or grab on to Tails, but there's an invisible wall protecting him while he laughs at you even though he's within easy reach), and now it's payback time. I liked that other than the punch, health and higher priority spin jump/dash, he's effectively a player character. If you happen to be under him while he drops from a glide, he'd take collision damage (or have Tails walk into him with his mercy invincibility from damage and once that wears off, both take damage (abusing Tails was one of my favorite parts of the game, though I rather like the character. The invincibility makes me feel less bad about it)). Sometimes I'd duck and pretend Knuckles impaled himself on my spikes. I think I saw a hack somewhere that let you play Knuckles and Tails, though Tails couldn't carry Knuckles in the hack. Still pretty nifty.

Ice9 wrote:Metal Sonic was the hardest in that game, IMO. No rings when you fight him, and he has a more complex pattern than any of the other bosses. Compared to that, the boss of that level was easy.

I found Metal Sonic to be much easier than the final boss, actually. His attack pattern might have been more complex, but his weak point is much easier to locate and hit than that of the final boss, who you also have no rings when fighting. So once you figure out Metal Sonic's attack pattern he goes down fairly quick compared to the final boss.

I'll definitely agree that Metal Sonic and the final boss are the two hardest fights in the game.

You know, playing as a Paladin in the Quest for Glory games was one of the most rewarding and organic experiences I've had in video games. I mean:

-First game: You're a fighter. You have a sword, a shield, and a lot of gumption.

-Second game: Still a fighter. Just a stronger, tougher, more skilled one. Work at saving a city. Become a paladin at the end of it because I went around being honest and awesome to people.

-Third game: Finally an official paladin. Do the quest, do things, eventually get a complete gamechanger: The gift of a magic score, enabling you to learn actual spells, just like a wizard. You can only learn a couple in this game, but you know what? That's cool. I was into my roleplaying and realized that Jek Benelis, Paladin Hero, would try to develop his magical muscles because magic is a damn useful thing and his obligation to defeat evil also means arming himself with all the tools that he could possibly need to do it.

-Fourth game: By far the best for Paladins. A few more spells, and then some very touching sidequests and a few cool moments: Becoming friends Burgomeister, until the dialogue changes from "Greet the Burgomeister" to "Greet Dmitri", the Rusalka quest, and burning down the evil monastery. I also loved how the Paladin's ability to sense danger has grown into a capacity to pick up emotional vibes of all kinds from his surroundings and creatures near him.

I haven't finished the fifth game, but kinda can't see how it'd win out over game 4.

And seriously, it felt great that every game brought something new to the character.

I like how Paladins in Quest for Glory are specifically 'greatest good for the greatest number of people' and if it comes down between honor and goodness -- except for one extremely irritating railroad decision -- you pick goodness. I also like Rakeesh. He's fucking awesome and the best character in the series.

I also like how in QFG4 people go from bitter and suspecting to genuinely warming up to you. That's something a lot of video games lack.

As for QFG5, it's kind of the weak link in the series but it's still worth playing if you can get around the interface. I'd rather read a Let's Play of it, personally. The SA Let's Play of the series frickin' rules.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:except for one extremely irritating railroad decision

NSFW
Really, when it's someone else's offhand comment, Daddy Lago needs his medicine. I hereby request that you deliver.

There's not much to talk about.

The irritating railroad decision in QFG2 is like this:

So you're storming the palace to try to stop an evil wizard from unleashing a demon he can't control that will destroy the city and countryside and etc. etc.

On the way to the summoning chamber, you come across the wizard's second-in-command, a cruel guard captain. So you swordfight him. Early in the fight, you disarm him and he's at your mercy.

If you kill him right then and there and go on to stop the wizard, you lose enough honor points to bar you from becoming a paladin at the end of the game no matter what you do. You have to let him grab his sword and finish the fight 'properly'. Even though the wizard is literally minutes from unleashing the demon and indeed if you lose the fight the last thing you see is the palace coming down on you as said demon breaks free.

It's really fucking irritating because in later games they pound the fact constantly that a paladin isn't about personal honor or glory of following the law -- it's about doing good, even when it's dirty or hard or inconvenient or makes you look bad. But here you are, risking the lives of an entire city if not continent to give a cruel bastard an extended swordfight.

Shit is quite ridiculous. And I could overlook it if it was just confined to the original game because the paladin mythos wasn't then fleshed-out, but not only does the remake keep that bullshit in... after you make the decision, fucker becomes the second-hardest fight in the game, next to the bonus boss. And the remake's difficulty is already a lot harder than the original.

Actually, I gotta say. That Bastard was my favorite fight, right next to sparring with Rakeesh. It seriously made me feel like I'd gotten some system mastery because it wasn't enough to attack and block, I had to counter and combo.

When I realized I was gonna win easily, I reloaded and cranked the difficulty way up to -make- him a hell of a fight.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great fight gameplay-wise, but storyline-wise it's incredibly stupid. Even moreso because QFG has always been about finding alternate solutions to problems (and indeed, the QFG2 Final Act was very, very good about that).

Going by how much I can remember enjoying them my top favored games based solely on how much fun I can remember having with them are:

Paper Mario 64 was the best RPG I had ever played up to that point. It was ridiculously fun and it was the first time someone had seen me play a game and actually requested to watch me play all of it because they had such a good time just with the commentary I provided.

Oblivion was similar and since I didn't play Morrowind it was the first time I'd played a game that was so freeform that wasn't GTA.

Starcraft took up a stupid amount of my time. I don't play SC2 but only because I am really out of the RTS loop anymore. I bought it, enjoyed the campaigns but stepping online just showed me that after not having played a single RTS game since right before WoW first appeared has left me without skill.

DOTA (from WCIII). I play League now though I had favored HoN for some time before popularity among people I actually know drove me to play League.

Halo, the first one. I hadn't been into shooters AT ALL before Halo hit the scene. I played Doom and all but never enjoyed it. Unreal T was too difficult for me to grasp and Counter Strike never left me enthused. Halo though, something about that Demo made me have to get it. I would say it was the way the enemies reacted to being shot. The epic beach landing scene they used to get me into the game. Perhaps all that plus how easy it was control wise. I don't know but for as much shit as Halo gets now a days it is the reason I even play CoD at all today.

Edit: Honorable mentions to both FF Tactics and Legend of the Dragoon which would easily make my top RPG lists any day.

I was never really a wrestling fan so I was surprised to really like the WWE console games. They translated (what little I know) of the mechanics of 'professional' wrestling into a videogame pretty well IMO. I like the little things like having mechanics for distracting the referee. It's nice that they didn't enforce the rules too strictly (a co op tag team wouldn't be as much fun if the untagged player couldn't run around attacking the opposing untagged player). And, it's fun trying crazy shit like propping someone onto a table below the ring and then jumping on them from the top of a ladder placed on the ring.

Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney completely wowed me -- except for a couple of complaints about the plot, it was excellent. Much better than I expected it to be.

Planning on playing Thousand Year Door as soon as possible.

Well, radtheman4?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Planning on playing Thousand Year Door as soon as possible.

Well, radtheman4?

Haven't actually gotten around to it yet . I forgot what I got distracted by at the time. I'll post about it once I get around to it though (and may or not try another playthrough of Paper Mario 64 beforehand).

Replayed Paper Mario 64 and made some progress on Thousand Year Door (currently in Glitzville). Holy crap it is amazing. I haven't even gotten that far, but it improves over Paper Mario in almost every way* which is no mean feat as Paper Mario 64 is pretty darn good. Better music, huge improvements to an already pretty good battle system, a higher frequency of hilarious moments, stackable badges, NO BADGE POINT CAP, party members have health and can be placed infront in battle (Koops' defence is nice), the superguard (counter), NO BADGE POINT CAP, etc. I'll write some more about it after I finish, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

*Stuff that Paper Mario 64 did better IMO:

The refresh star power (P64) instantly gives you 5 HP and FP instead of having to play a time consuming mini game (TTYD) to recover HP/FP.

The fortune teller could tell you where badges were hidden (TTYD has some badges that can be purchased in unlimited quantites, or taken from respawning enemies which is probably why this feature wasn't implemented, but it would be nice to be able to at least use it to find the fixed location badges that aren't in the pit)

The pit of 100 trials is okay if you're using an emulator and spamming quicksave like I am (beat Bonetail before entering Glitzville (love having extra badge points from the level ups and the Bump Attack badge is really nice for avoiding random encounters)) but I think I'd be really annoyed by it if I was playing it on GC or Wii. If you've leveled up a bit, the earlier parts are a real slog. If you die in there, you've potentially wasted a lot of your time. IMO they should have opened a two way warp pipe to the surface every 10 levels or so. By contrast, Paper Mario 64 had the Dojo which served a somewhat similar role as a bunch of optional fights (though way fewer), but you'd immediately get to the interesting fights and get to save and rest in between. There were also no consequences for losing as they were sparring matches. On the other hand the pit gives you some nice badges (Zap Tap (SUCK IT fuzzies, bats, bandits, etc) and Fire Drive being my favorites), a boost to inventory capacity and tons of experience points, whereas beating the Dojo gets 3 NPCs in the game to call you awesome and absolutely nothing else. Beating the Dojo and hearing praise from the Master and those 3 NPCs actually felt pretty darn good though even though you don't get any tangible rewards.

The Pit of 100 Trials was a bitch towards the end. So was the end of the game. I -had- been at a point where I could take out most stuff without getting hurt, but the end game enemies were nasty in their ability to inflict a ton of damage at once. I ran through a lot of items on the way there.

The Megaman Battle Network games (except for the 4th and probably the 1st one) are liquid awesome. And on reflection I like the plot and tone as an adult almost into his 30s than I would have as a teenager. Shit is immensely silly in a Saturday Morning Cartoon kind of way. CONNECTING TREES TO THE INTERNET.

I'm kind of sad that no one has really made games in the MMBN style; that combination of action and CCG. There's Network Transmission, but holy hell is that hard. I liked it, but I'm not the target audience. And that game is only slightly easier than Megaman Unlimited, especially the later sections.

The first one is on the Wii U Virtual Console. I've been on the fence about getting it.

You can safely skip the first one. It's not unplayable or bad or anything, but, every game that comes after it is better in all of the important ways -- humor, storytelling, battle system, quality of life improvements, etc.. Even that hideous 4th one.

Gotcha.

So what's wrong with the fourth one? I know almost nothing about it.

What's wrong with the 4th MMBN:

[*] The biggest problem, by far, is its repetitiveness. See, the game is structured in such a way so that you get one of a set of randomly determined branching paths via a tournament structure. Certain events (first, second, and final dungeon) are fixed, though. If you want to see all of the content you have to play through it at least three times and see much of the same shit over and over.
In addition to being repetitive, the game is structured in such a way as to almost not even have the minimal amount of plot and character development these games are known for. Because the brackets are random, if something happens in a tournament it has to be entirely self-contained with what happening having no overall impact on the plot. It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure Game.
[*] The game is unbalanced. Because of the above structure of the game, it's very likely that by the end of your first playthrough you'll have a folder that's only modestly better put-together than the first one. Because chip drops (the #1 determinant of game power) are random and determined by the opposition you face. The game doesn't last long enough for you to get a good set without mandatory grinding and in any case since the game puts a cap on opposition until subsequent playthroughs you'll be locked out of certain chips. Imagine playing Pokemon X/Y with the game's level cap at 30 and you being restricted from having legendaries or evolutions. Then you play again on hard mode and these things get unlocked.
[*] The translation on this puppy sucks ass. It's an RPG made by Capcom so that's to be expected; honestly the other games in this series have a greater amount of typos and ridiculous phrasing than the norm. But this is easily the worst of the series. I'm the world's worst at noticing these kinds of things but MMBN4 slaps you in the face with them.
[*] In addition to the typos and spotty translation, there are a few game-breaking bugs. One completely unavoidable one makes the game unwinnable if you play it on anything but a GBA original or an emulator that can simulate the environment of one. Another advertised feature will permanently brick your cartridge if you use it before you get to a certain point in the game.
[*] The plot is ultimately boring and stupid. Again, it's a MMBN game so it deliberately strives for a Saturday Morning Cartoon style, but there's a difference between fun-stupid and boring-stupid. This game is boring-stupid. None of your friends from the third game (considered the highlight of the series) show up here or ever again, sticking you with a bunch of one-shots and your obnoxious group of 'best friends'. The villain has no bearing on the conclusion of the plot or any of the 16 tournament scenarios except one. And the actual bit of plot you get is bare bones. There are literally three named villains from the opposing organization in the entire game.

Now, there are things wrong with the game in addition to what I said, but they're not going to make sense until you've played the other games. The game engine went a pretty significant overhaul that was honestly kind of needed because a lot of game mechanics were broken in PvP, but it was still at that awkward phase where the game developers weren't exactly sure of where they stood until the 5th game -- so a lot of stuff was horrendously underpowered for the main game save a couple of gamebreakers.

All that said, I still think that MMBN1 is the worst of the series, but it's bad in an experimental and fumbling way. I have a much higher tolerance for games fucking up in new and untrodden ways* than fuck-ups that are due to laziness and willful ignorance. Also, to me, repetitiveness is the number three sin that a game can make and even though MMBN1 is still overall worse it's less repetitive than MMBN4 so I hate it less.

*I still absolutely hate Chrono Cross, mind, but a lot of the ways in which that game fucked up are ways most games don't fuck up, so it helps tamp down on the rage.

MMBN2 is on the Wii-U Virtual Console and while it's not the best of the series (that would be 3 or 6) it's still pretty damn good and a much better introduction to the franchise than the first game.

If anyone is disenchanted with Kingdom Hearts II because of the (largely true) perception that it's a mindless button masher, I strongly, strongly recommend that you play Critical Mode from the Final Mix version.

Critical Mode disabuses you of the notion that you can get by with what flew in even Proud Mode. Enemies are more aggressive, deal more damage, and your hit points are halved. However, it's not all bad: you get a butt-ton more AP and you get copies of some very kickass abilities (like an extra copy of FINISHING PLUS and MP HASTEAGA) and your attacks do 25% more damage.

A lot of bosses and even regular enemy fights in this game require a brand new approach once you realize that even throwaway midbosses can one- or two-shot you even if you're not doing a Level 1 run. Granted, you start to get enough of an ability and item cushion so that the danger lessens by the midgame but it never really goes away. Especially for Organization XIII fights, who will kick your ass up and down the streets until you become intimately familiar with their attack patterns.

Basically, Critical Mode taught me a few vital things that I never had to learn in Proud Mode:
[*] Guard + Counterguard. You have to get used to guarding, otherwise you'll die when Heartless/Nobodies start swarming you. Furthermore, Guard + Sliding Dash / Flash Step (new ability for Final Mix) is often the only way you can safely approach a boss. You eventually get Reflect and that's also immensely helpful, but it's no substitute for the humble Guard.
[*] Summons. Summons were mostly pants in the lower difficulties because the offensive value was low and it ate through your drive gauge. However, you will learn to love them in Critical Mode. They can be used when your partners are down and give you a critical HP/MP refresh -- not to mention the sheer defensive value of stuff like Chicken Little and Stitch. I often prefer Summons to Drives in Critical Mode.
[*] Wisdom Form. You don't need it, not even for the 99 Demyx's Sora Clones in 30 seconds challenge, but once you get it it makes a lot of fights a hell of a lot easier. I ended up ignoring it in the original because the offense is kind of poor even if you use spells, but it's often the only safe way you can take on certain bosses.
[*] Watching the boss patterns more closely. Because bosses can quickly ice you even when you have the upper hand, you have to be situationally aware the entire time. If you're attacking a boss and you don't see them stunned, GET THE FUCK OUT OF DODGE. And oftentimes the voices are the only warning you can get.

Shit, man, I was disenchanted with Kingdom Hearts from the moment I first learned about it. What a stupid fucking concept.

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I got Legend of Zelda: Windwaker HD for the Wii U recently. Darth said that I shouldn't get it because of the large amounts of Tingle, but I decided what the fuck I'll give it a try. So far, it's one of the best Zelda games I've played since Oracle of Ages.

I've gotten to the part where I have to collect all the pieces of the Triumph Forks of Courage, which, I'm told, features the most amount of Tingle. I've also been told that the HD version makes this part of the game less tedious, and presumably less Tingly.