Topic: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

[Order.RSS]

Here's a game that has very little coverage online it seems, FullBlast, for Wii U/Steam/iOS/even the Ouya and probably some other devices.




It's a vertical shoot-em-up. The above screenshot is from a phone version it looks like, but apart from some UI changes and the addition of bars on the side of the screen, it looks similar to the Wii U version.

The gameplay is decent mostly. Hold down fire, swerve to avoid incoming bullets, a few weapon upgrades can be found as well as screen-clearing bombs. Nothing new, but it's functional save for a few minor glitches I encountered in the final boss (occassionally my bomb wouldn't work even though I clearly had one; the boss can get frozen in the same position sometimes).

Presentation... is a bit lacking. Plot (evil aliens are here, kill dey ass) is explained through a few text dumps at the beginning and ending of levels, several of which contain mildly amusing typos. Visually it's not ugly, but the art style is suuuuuper generic. Music is a bit of a crapshoot too. It has some rock tunes, that are in no way catchy, and don't really suit the alien invasion vibe - electronic music would've fit better maybe, or some old-school mystery music (X-Files). Worse is that the volume is all over the place. Maybe the mastering was off, or some overlooked quirk in the programming caused this, but it's really annoying.

Difficulty is another problem area. FullBlast isn't very hard on the lower settings, BUT if you lose a life, it resets your weapon upgrades all the way back to a puny single laser. I game-overed a the final boss, and then you're stuck with 2 possibilities: A.) try the level again, now with just two lives, one bomb and just a single opportunity to upgrade your weapon... or B.) start over from a few levels back to build up a supply of lives, bombs and weapon upgrades.
I feel like this idea is good in theory, since it makes cheesing the game by constantly retrying less doable, but at the same time... I wanted to cheese through it towards the end.

So yeah. Super obvious translation mishaps, typos, unimaginative art direction, bad music that seems to randomly get LOUDER and then quieter, not too many enemy types, a few recycled bosses ("but now there's two!")... Yeah I can see why FullBlast got overlooked.
 It's not TERRIBLE, and the price was really low, but I wonder who this is for? Hardcore shmup fans will think it's too easy, but the unforgiving implications of dying make it a bit annoying for newbies. The phone origins make me think it's meant to be a fun lil' timewaster, but the levels are too long for that... You get the idea.
Two stars.

[Order.RSS]

Continuing the backlog purge, I passed the finish line in 2008's Speed Racer: The Videogame (actual title), on Wii.



This was released to coincide with the high budget film reboot of Speed Racer directed by the Wachowski's. Now I like a lot of their films - loved the Matrix and liked the sequels, Cloud Atlas I think is a very flawed but endlessly fascinating masterpiece, I enjoyed Jupiter Ascending as a dumb popcorn flick - but Speed Racer is probably the most deeply flawed one they made. That said, it nails a few aspects: crazy colourful visuals, a good sense of speed, it really commits to its corny aesthetic and I bet a lot of kids like it.

To my surprise however, the game apparantly reviewed pretty decently. Soooo here I am, a decade later to the party. The game is a futuristic racer, with some physical combat aspects, so surprisingly close to F-Zero in some ways. Control is done via tilt controls only, so I busted out the trusty Wii Wheel!
It's pretty decently implemented though the constant flicking motion to ram opponents does get tiresome after a while of play.

And ram them you shall. The game goes hard on car-fu (geddit) as a means to earns speed boosts to go even faster and make the already garish colour palette even more filled with neon. On the highest of three difficulty settings (there's a fourth too, but that's just your average 150cc Mirror Mode), you're on the tracks with 19 other who are constantly jostling you. It's almost impossible to keep a lead for long, which makes me suspect some heavy rubberbanding is going on.

With 20 racers all playable and with different cars and handling you have decent options, and the game cleverly pads out its measly 5 racetracks by designing at least 4 versions of every one of them. Short ones, long ones, medium, a mirrored version. A bit cheap perhaps but I imagine the budget here wasn't very high (judging by the limited soundtrack and cartoony "cutscenes").

Everything runs smooth though, no slowdown and a very good sense of speed. There's some amusing glitches, like pretty regularly the songs would just forget to loop making for a very quiet end of a race.
Speed Racer: The Videogame is a lot better than many movie tie-in games (more fun than the movie I'd say), and while it isn't fantastic, nor will it fill that F-Zero shaped hole in my heart, I could cautiously recommend it.
Wii doesn't have that many great racers besides ExciteTruck (I don't love mario kart wii haha), so this is a decent shout if you want to play another game with tilt controls and can stand it's woefully bloomy garish colour palette.

Three stars.

[azeke]

I remember developer of that game (and Shatter) being at constantly angry at Nintendo because his game bombed. For a Wii game back then "bombed" meant less than a million. Nowadays indies are happy is they reach a hundreds of that number.

It's a cool game and a movie is pretty great at what it was supposed to do -- at capturing the feel of a children's cartoon and delivering high speed action. Critics expecting Schindler's List have no one but them to blame for their disappointment.

An article by Adam Saltsman connects Speed Racer and Vanquish as 2 misunderstood pieces:

It is a cartoon, animated with a degree of bravado the likes of which the world rarely gets to see. It has all the energy of an unhinged Madhouse anime but informed by a remarkable level of attention to detail, and a willingness to distort time and space even within the same shot. If the story requires it, the foreground can be a perfectly traditional shot, while the background is mirrored geometrically, like a kaleidoscope, utterly without explanation; or maybe the background is moving in slow motion while the foreground remains in real-time; or both at once, in one memorable sequence. Whole sections of the film proceed as essentially flattened sprites in a diorama while other scenes possess a sense of space and dimensionality unrivaled in the medium.
 
SPEED RACER’s masterpiece status doesn’t come from just “being stylish”, though, whatever that might mean. It is a masterpiece because under that delectable veneer of chaos, immaturity, homage, and parody, every single imaginable detail, even the relationship between time and space in the diegesis, has been meticulously and obsessively tweaked and tuned to support, strengthen, and bind together the otherwise almost-always-flying-off-the-rails audio-visual story-experience.

Oh and Wachovski's best movie (by very, very, very far) is obviously Bound

[lolmonade]

I finished-out Golf Story (Switch) earlier this week.  My ending impression of the game is frustration, because there's the core golfing which is sound (if simple), but what starts as a bunch of quirky missions where you use golf to solve problems gets repetitive.


I enjoy the courses but wish the obstacles got a bit more zany as the game went on.  The end 3rd felt like a drag, and yet, the way the "story" ends make me feel like there was a portion of the game playing through a Pro league left out because they ran out of ideas near the end.


Golf story was worth a play, but it's a game that could have been served better with more time put into variety of gameplay and maybe a bit more cooked into the narrative.

[ShyGuy]

I beat The Stanley Parable. it has a gimmick that wears thin before the game if over, and I only played it for an hour.

[Evan_B]

I finally conquered a playable version of Heart and Slash!

As someone with no real love for rogue-likes for a variety of reasons, Heart and Slash hit all the right notes for me, largely because of the great variety in level design and a somewhat cohesive narrative that is told via the game's only true questline. The difficulty curve is somewhat backwards here, at least for Heart- as you conquer more bosses, you get permanent buffs to you attack and defenses that stick with you over every run. The experience system is also very nice, as it is used to upgrade weapons and equipment, but upon death in a run, you get to transfer over all of your remaining exp to the next run.

There are five bosses in Heart and Slash, but you can only ever do three per run, and the last one will always be the same. Likewise, there are only three different "locales" in the game- the opening factory, cityscape, and space elevator. However, all three are drastically different in design, which results in a variety of different kinds of encounters. The cityscape in particular is great, as it has lots of intentional vertical and open space. The Space Elevator can actually be hilariously broken if you obtain the jetpack and upgrade it to the max, as you can bypass a multitude of floors on your way to the final boss.

I do wish there was more to Heart and Slash than what already exists, but I have been very satisfied by my experience. The game was also recently updated with an endless dungeon mode, which I haven't explored yet, but will definitely revisit at some point. The game can be a bit glitchy, but I really respect what the developers did with the rogue-like formula, as it ended up being something perfect for me, personally.

[azeke]

I was looking into Heart and Slash because it was combining action combat gameplay with roguelikes and as i suspected RPG progression ruins action game foundation.

When i saw that even basic enemies don't get interrupted in their animations when you hit them -- i lost all interest and closed the video.

[Evan_B]

Well, not all of us have such refined taste in character action as you, azeke. I care for neither genre, but this blend worked just fine for me.

...also, I’m fairly certain light attacks don’t cause hit stun, but heavy attacks do. Every weapon has both.

[nickmitch]

I recently beat Kirby Star Allies

It's Kirby, so you know the gameplay.  I dunno if I just burned through it quickly, but it felt pretty short.  The friends gimmick works pretty okay, and for the most part you can use it as much as you like it.  I learned at one point that you only need allies to combine powers, get through certain doors, and activate certain abilities.  The plus is that you can immediately dump them when those parts are over.  However, there is the temptation that you constantly use the Dream Allies (Metaknight, Rick and the Free DLC Trio, etc), which I gave into.  Between Animal Pals and Gooey, you pretty much have all the power combos you need.

Speaking of the combos, they felt pretty limited at first.  I thought you'd be able to mix them all like in Kirby 64 (albeit that game had very limited abilities), but certain ones don't work.  It seemed like all you could was add elements to physical weapons (Fire/Ice/Water/Electricity to Hammer/Cutter/Yo-yo/etc); however, I did find that more worked than I thought would, including some fun surprised.

If you decide to play, do yourself a favor and turn off the hints.  I learned about this way too late in my play though.

Rating: Robot/Robobot

[ejamer]

Recently finished the two Zelda: Oracle of _____ (GBC) games on 3DS Virtual Console.


Seasons was quite enjoyable. The mix of action and puzzles felt pretty good, the in-game world felt well designed. No real complaints here - it's just a solid, old-school, portable Zelda title.


Ages didn't fare quite as well though. The world didn't feel as smoothly designed, and it felt like the game relied more on fetch-quest nonsense than I enjoy. Dungeon design still felt pretty sharp though; my complaints are mostly limited to the overworld exploration.


Combining the games to have an over-arching story with an added final boss was a neat idea. I don't think that the concept holds up well though, and the password system and needing to go back and forth between different games to unlock stuff feels a bit forced. Although I collected many of the passwords, the rewards of going back to an old game rarely seemed to outweigh the hassle. That said, playing the games back-to-back so that you get the extra boss was worthwhile and I'm glad to have done it that way.


Both games are recommended, but with a caveat that the playing experience isn't totally even.
Whether to start with the better (IMO) Seasons and then move to the lesser Ages or take the opposite approach is a tough choice. I don't regret the way it worked out for me.

[riskman64]

Subsurface Circular on Switch. It's a neat game that makes some interesting comment on the real world. It plays like a point-and-click mystery game, and you spend most of the time questioning robots while riding on a subway train. The puzzles are fairly simple, but the dialogue is engaging. Ultimately, I think the game is a little on the short side, but you can replay it multiple times to try out different dialogue options and to listen to the developer commentary as you play.


I grabbed it on sale on the eShop and found it a worthwhile title to experience.

[Shaymin]

Finished Never Stop Sneakin' this past weekend. It felt good to actually finish something for once.

I stand by where I put it on my GOTY list, especially since it's a roguelike with an explanation that actually makes sense in universe.

[Stratos]

Recently finished the two Zelda: Oracle of _____ (GBC) games on 3DS Virtual Console.


Seasons was quite enjoyable. The mix of action and puzzles felt pretty good, the in-game world felt well designed. No real complaints here - it's just a solid, old-school, portable Zelda title.


Ages didn't fare quite as well though. The world didn't feel as smoothly designed, and it felt like the game relied more on fetch-quest nonsense than I enjoy. Dungeon design still felt pretty sharp though; my complaints are mostly limited to the overworld exploration.


Combining the games to have an over-arching story with an added final boss was a neat idea. I don't think that the concept holds up well though, and the password system and needing to go back and forth between different games to unlock stuff feels a bit forced. Although I collected many of the passwords, the rewards of going back to an old game rarely seemed to outweigh the hassle. That said, playing the games back-to-back so that you get the extra boss was worthwhile and I'm glad to have done it that way.


Both games are recommended, but with a caveat that the playing experience isn't totally even.
Whether to start with the better (IMO) Seasons and then move to the lesser Ages or take the opposite approach is a tough choice. I don't regret the way it worked out for me.

Do you think the reason Ages feels off is because you played Seasons first? I played them in the same order and felt the same as you, but I've heard some friends argue the other way, and preference seems to coincide with the order you played them.

[pokepal148]

I played ages first and felt it was the weaker of the two.

[ejamer]

...

I don't think the order that you play the Oracle of ____ games in will matter all that much.


Some people may enjoy Ages more because it tended to feel more direct - I felt like there was less exploration or discovery or clever puzzles, and more clearly directed paths with action along the way. Personally, that's not why I play portable Zelda games though. I want the little bits of exploration and moments of discovery.


Is it possible that I was experiencing Zelda fatigue for the second game? Maybe. But I was really excited to start and the sense of disappointment only sunk in later, as it became clear to me that the design of Seasons was more to my liking. Anytime you play two games that have similar but subtly different designs, it's possible that one will appeal more to you... and that was exactly my experience.

[Evan_B]

Even if I played Seasons before Ages, I strongly believe the latter has a weaker design in almost every way. Some of the puzzles and quest chains are needlessly complex in a way that just flows better in Seasons, but Seasons’ central mechanic is far better because of how it stacks upon itself and forces the player to learn different combinations and iterations on the idea.

Also Subrosia is a vastly superior Underworld.

[Order.RSS]

Punched the clock on Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS) today!



This one's a remake of Radiant Historia for DS, that was a late DS title, this remake's a late 3DS title. I know it's about timetravel, but I can't imagine this sold amazingly. Which is a minor bummer since it's a pretty good RPG!

Story: there's a world/continent slowly being engulfed by sand, and instead of tackling the core problem, all the nation-states have instead decided to wage wars over the remaining scraps of habitable ground. WONDER IF THERE'S A METAPHOR HERE!!!?!?!?!?!?!!? You play as Stocke, who fittingly seems like a bit of a stock JRPG protagonist at first (single-minded, determined, selflessly heroic, etc.), a secret agent trying to end one such war - and maybe save the world somewhere down the line too.

Cool thing here is that this game takes obvious cues from Chrono Trigger and heavily deals in timetravel. There's at least 2 diverging timelines and dozens of moments where you make crucial decisions, many of which end in the world's annihilation. This remake adds many more 'possible timelines' to the original story, could be cool if you're really into this world. I however didn't play them because this game offers...

Flexibility: I wanna really commend this title's dedication to 'quality-of-life' improvements. Using the friendly mode you can eliminate almost every overworld battle if you want by pre-emptively striking enemies, removing many encounters. Additionally, the many added timelines can all be placed at the end of the story for people like me who just wanted the main adventure.
Save points are found often, and you even get a suspend save feature for when you can't find one. With exception of the endgame, this plays great in 30 minute chunks on your public transit.

Presentation: Pretty great I'd say. Visually it's not phenomenal, but it's not ugly either. Feels like a natural progression from Chrono Trigger in some ways. I understand some people didn't like the character redesigns in this version over the original; having never played that I can't comment. Atlus does sell the old skins as a DLC pack haha, so if you muuuuust... That said I didn't mind the designs, they're good enough.
Sound is where this one really shines though, several really great music tracks which you'll hum along to, and most of the dialogue is voice acted decently too.

Gameplay: Radiant Historia is an RPG. You walk through fields, towns, caves, deserts and such. You talk to people, buy stuff, choose whether to engage or avoid enemies on the field, level up, manage equipment, etc. There's very light puzzle elements in the field, but they're a bit tedious really.
The battle system is pretty great, it involves carefully structuring/altering the turn structure to get as many sequential hits in as possible and rob enemies of turns. Reminds me a bit of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Additionally, enemies are on a 3x3 grid, and you can push them around. Gather them all in one spot, and attack that spot to deal damage to all at once! There's some light tactics to be found here.

That said, while functional, Radiant Historia's gameplay feels more like a visual novel at times. There's a LOT of dialogue, as the game's core strength lies in mostly likable characters (honestly that's a feat for an RPG, many recent ones have such annoying characters) and lots political scheming. Not a bad thing per se, but it's not as involved as a Chrono Trigger for example.
Some things I would have liked: a bigger party and/or the possibility to swap Stocke out. Your main character always takes a spot in the active party, but I also want to have Gafka the honourable warrior, Raynie as a magic user, and Princess Eruca cause she has a cool gun in the fray. It's not a BAD thing to have too many likable characters, but I found myself defaulting to the Stock/Raynie/Marco line up because they were highest level and it gives you a fighter/magic/healer party. (Even though Marco is a rather boring character haha).
One more nitpick: there's a single moment that feels a bit 'fan service' to me. They also sell 'hot springs' DLC. Guess this is a cultural thing, but yeah it just makes me embarassed to play games like this. It's not very bad here, but I just wish this trend would reverse entirely.

Recommendation: Should you play Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology? It's one of the better modern RPGs I think, but I don't think it's quite in that 9/10 zone like NWR scored it. If you like RPGs, but have grown to hate bloated gameplay and annoying characters, then this offers something really neat. I liked most of the cast, the main character is a capable guy for once! The story isn't a knock-out but moves at a very high, constant-action-required pace.
The friendly mode + append setting for the added timelines really helped shorten the game too, I finished it in 19 hours and did a few sidequests early on. You could easily triple/quadruple that if you don't skip most battles, play on a harder mode, do more quests, etc. Atlus has packed this one to the brim with optional content.

3DS has many noteworthy RPGs already, and I wouldn't call this an absolute must-play, but if you want something akin to Chrono Trigger and can accept that those highs are unlikely to be reached here, it's a very solid choice. Four stars.

[ejamer]

Nice - I was a bit bummed that the Radiant Historia remake came out before I had a chance to play the original... but am still excited to play it. Post-game reviews like this only make me more excited for it.


Of course, that doesn't mean playing the game right now. As you say, lots of great RPGs and currently Etrian Odyssey IV is drawing my attention.

[Order.RSS]

Of course, that doesn't mean playing the game right now. As you say, lots of great RPGs and currently Etrian Odyssey IV is drawing my attention.
 

Hope that if you get the chance to play it, you'll enjoy it! For what it's worth, the demo of Radiant Historia is VERY generous. Gives you well over 5 hours of gameplay easily. If you have the DS version still I'd just play that though, I quickly stopped once I got to the new additional story timelines since Nemesia's character, around whom that seems to revolve, is probably the most annoying 'catchphrasey' person in the game.

I'd say Radiant Historia is more skewed towards players who enjoy stories in their RPGs, whereas Etrian Odyssey might be more about exploration?

[Evan_B]

Radiant Historia is a game for people who like Square Enix RPGs where battles are a necessary evil, while Etrian Odyssey is a game for people who like... well, pretty much only Atlus RPGs, where dungeon design complements the battle system because it forces the player to continuously engage in battles.

[Luigi Dude]

Radiant Historia has one of the best storyline's I've seen in an JRPG so I think the game is easily worth it for the story alone.  Of course it needs to be noted that there is a True Ending to the game that pretty much requires a guide to get.  In order to get the True Ending there's certain sidequests that need to be completed and one of them requires players to do a certain set of actions at different points in time that are impossible for anyone not using a guide to now.

Then again this is for the DS version which I played back in 2013 so I have no idea if they changed it for the 3DS game.  So if they haven't or anyone is playing the original DS version don't be afraid to look up the quest you need to do to get the full ending to the game.  I mean it's not a huge change but it does provide better closure to the story if you see it.

[broodwars]

Finished God of War 2018 & got the Platinum. Superb game overall, but it's end/post-game side content is weak. I've been really hit & miss with this series, but the strong characterization & focused exploration really sold me on this one.

[lolmonade]

I wrapped up the main story in Nier: Automata on Saturday, and I have mixed feelings of sadness, gratefulness there's at least side quests to play, and glad I could look past the anime bullshit to experience this game's story.  While the game starts with a basic premise of what can or can't have "human" intelligence/being/self-determination over time evolves into a story centered around an overarching existential crisis. 


What is, or is there any purpose to my existence?  What meaning does my life have?  If I've lost the purpose behind my existence, how do give myself a purpose in spite of my origins?  All of this interpreted through a story of Androids vs robots in a proxy war between the last vestiges of the human race and an alien intrusion.  I don't think i'm quite doing the games' premises and questions justice in writing it out.


The music is something that through the game does a fantastic job of not only being a beautiful soundtrack, but also setting tone through the various parts of the game.  They reprise the music at different points that adds extra oomph to the events taking place or muting it in a way that's really impactful.


Glad I gave the game a chance after hearing some spirited advocacy of the game in some podcasts I listen to.  This one will be sitting with me for a while, and I think I'll be sinking some time into the side quests just so I can get every ounce I can out of the game before I have to move on.

[Stratos]

For those who have played both versions of Radiant Historia, would you recommend it to someone who owns the DS version but never finished it? I'm tempted to pick it up, but wonder if I shouldn't just restart the DS version.

[Michie_]

Wario Land 2.


It wasn't as good as the first or the 4 one. It's a shame they never ported the VB version, I always hear that's a really good game.