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General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?
« Last post by Ian Sane on Yesterday at 11:22:45 AM »Strider 2
Picked this up a while back when the PS3 store was closing as I grabbed a couple PS1 games that are expensive in the retro market. I beat it in about an hour and not because I'm so talented but because the game has unlimited continues that plop you back into the action as if nothing happened. The game still has a ranking for how you did in each level (I got a nice 'E' on every one) so there is some objective for avoiding dying.
I still had a lot of fun though. I have the original Strider on the Genesis and the arcade version in Capcom Classics Collection but I'm not very good at it. I play the arcade one more because I have unlimited continues as I struggle to get to level 2 in the Genesis version. Strider is very much a set-piece game with all sorts of cool bosses and action sequences and there is a lot of fun to be had in just experiencing it. I'm not going to take the time to get good at it so the unlimited continues is almost a feature for me, to just experience the game. Ideally they should have let you restrict it though and set the amount of continues you want.
Something I couldn't help but notice is how the whole presentation is a great representation of what was cool during the PS1 era. Teenage me would have been all over this. As a result it created a sense of nostalgia, not for the specific game because I didn't play it at the time, but for the time period. The graphics also add to that as it uses 2D sprites on a 3D background. This doesn't really look that good and it looks old and dated, but again I find it has a certain charm to it. Blocky 8-bit sprites eventually became an intentional aesthetic and I feel like 32-bit polygons have that potential as well. PS2/Gamecube era polygons look too similar to present day games so they seem just like a lower res version but 32/64 bit polygons look distinct.
Now in terms of the ending, well aside from defeating the bad guy I really couldn't tell you what happened. The bosses have a few lines of dialog when they appear but it's in Japanese with no sub-titles so I have no clue what they said.
Picked this up a while back when the PS3 store was closing as I grabbed a couple PS1 games that are expensive in the retro market. I beat it in about an hour and not because I'm so talented but because the game has unlimited continues that plop you back into the action as if nothing happened. The game still has a ranking for how you did in each level (I got a nice 'E' on every one) so there is some objective for avoiding dying.
I still had a lot of fun though. I have the original Strider on the Genesis and the arcade version in Capcom Classics Collection but I'm not very good at it. I play the arcade one more because I have unlimited continues as I struggle to get to level 2 in the Genesis version. Strider is very much a set-piece game with all sorts of cool bosses and action sequences and there is a lot of fun to be had in just experiencing it. I'm not going to take the time to get good at it so the unlimited continues is almost a feature for me, to just experience the game. Ideally they should have let you restrict it though and set the amount of continues you want.
Something I couldn't help but notice is how the whole presentation is a great representation of what was cool during the PS1 era. Teenage me would have been all over this. As a result it created a sense of nostalgia, not for the specific game because I didn't play it at the time, but for the time period. The graphics also add to that as it uses 2D sprites on a 3D background. This doesn't really look that good and it looks old and dated, but again I find it has a certain charm to it. Blocky 8-bit sprites eventually became an intentional aesthetic and I feel like 32-bit polygons have that potential as well. PS2/Gamecube era polygons look too similar to present day games so they seem just like a lower res version but 32/64 bit polygons look distinct.
Now in terms of the ending, well aside from defeating the bad guy I really couldn't tell you what happened. The bosses have a few lines of dialog when they appear but it's in Japanese with no sub-titles so I have no clue what they said.
