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| NWR_insanolord:
I've been playing Celeste recently as well, first just because I wanted to play it again and now this week to try out the new DLC. Chapter 9 is a real bastard, the hardest yet and probably harder than most of the B-sides. It's not just the same bits over again, though, it includes some brand new ideas and mechanics which I'm enjoying a lot. |
| lolmonade:
Other than dabbling in the Daemon X Machina Demo to see if it's right for me, I've been mostly playing River City Girls. This game is about as good as it gets for side-scrolling beat-em-ups, IMO. The combat feels crisp, moves flow fluidly into multi-hit combos that can get progressively longer and more satisfying as you purchase move upgrades, and so far has helped keep the combat from feeling too repetitive. You can really chain together some long, slick combos and even juggle enemies in the air, it all feels real good. And holy cow, the effort put into its presentation absolutely shows. The characters so far have been fairly varied and interesting in style. Different sections of the levels feel diverse/distinct. The music is well produced and fits the tone of the game super well, so even though it's not exactly my preferred style of music, it put a smile on my face whenever it went into full-blown vocal tracks. The humor is well written, and none of the game so far has felt pervy, which is what I was concerned with going into it. If I had any issues, maybe it'd be that I felt a little lost at points because while this isn't an open-world game by any means, you have to find the right NPC to spit out dialogue in order to progress the story further. So at a few points so far, I didn't know where that right NPC was and ended up wandering aimlessly for a while before figuring out I had to backtrack to the beginning spot of the game. Also, I imagine the $30 price tag is a heavy lift for someone who isn't super into brawlers like this. I don't personally regret it since I am, and I can see that a lot of effort was put into this one. |
| Order.RSS:
Been playing Rodea: The Sky Soldier from 2015. The original one, on Wii. So this is Yuji Naka's swan song on Wii, and in Japan it's even the final game on that system since Ubisoft doesn't grant them yearly Just Dance instalments. It took forever to come out (I don't think it ever got a stand-alone release here, just as a bonus disc with the Wii U game of the same name), and spoiler alert, it wasn't quite worth the wait. Note: there's 3 Rodea games in total. This one on Wii which is Yuji Naka's original vision, a 3DS game which is pretty different, and a Wii U game which is basically an up-port of the 3DS one. The Wii U/3DS games aren't as well-regarded. Rodea on Wii's a rather wonky and uneven game in which you play as a robot, you fly through the air and collect rings gems, occassionally grind rails, punch bosses in their glowing weak spots, and skip through story beats. Consider what a combination of NiGHTS Into Dreams... and a 3D Sonic game would look like, and you're pretty close here. It's a Wiimote-only game, where you point at where you want to go, press B to zip to it, and maybe press A to use an attack while going there. This results in a game largely revolving around 2 things: keeping up momentum to stay airbourne (see NiGHTS), and locking onto enemies/objects and using a homing attack to knock 'em out (see Sonic). The Good: + The stages are decently laid out for what they want you to do here. You keep pointing into the screen, so it makes sense the levels are narrow on both the X and Y-axis, but they stretch far into your Z-axis. + There's a general upbeat vibe, with colourful levels and a somewhat simple, arcadey quality that keeps drawing you in. + Levels are around 15 minutes long, meaning shorter play sessions are accomodated for. + NIS America provides both a Japanese and English dub. Switched to Japanese immediately after the tutorial, the voices are insufferable. + Every cut-scene and instance of dialogue is mercifully skippable. The Bad: - The story is laughably generic. Amnesia, robots with a heart, etc. Could be a Saturday morning cartoon. - Every character is dumb, states the obvious, and the jokes are bad. - Characters designs have that distinct Beyblade quality about them. (By which I mean a distinct lack of quality.) - Camera controls are bad. Pointer used both for camera & movement, so it's always behind you. Turning is a real slog. - Bossfights are severely hampered by the camera issues, because you can't quickly turn/look behind you to switch targets. - No checkpoints during bossfights. The final one is 15+ minutes. The only reason I'm posting this in the 'playing' thread rather than the 'beaten' thread is because I can't beat the final boss after 90 minutes of trying (for reference, that accounts for ~20% of my total playtime!!!). The game suddenly wants precision and high-speed turning from you, when neither of these are easily done with its controls. Maybe I'll magically ace it in one go next time I try, that tends to happen to me sometimes, but it's definitely souring my opinion on the game a little. Rating: 2½/5 stars, cautiously recommended, provided you're the kind of person who looks at NiGHTS or Billy Hatcher and thinks "huh, could be interesting." For what it's worth, this is at least much better than NiGHTS on Wii, but it's not great either. I wanted to like this more. |
| Mop it up:
I have Rodea also but I never got around to trying it. I've heard about the last boss issues which is one of the reasons I haven't wanted to try it, as I like to complete games and this one sounds like a real pain to do so, or else I'd just have to leave it unfinished which is probably what I would do. Have you played the Wii U version or plan to play it? Would be interesting to see how you think it compares. |
| Order.RSS:
--- Quote from: Mop it up on November 12, 2019, 04:56:18 PM ---I have Rodea also but I never got around to trying it. I've heard about the last boss issues which is one of the reasons I haven't wanted to try it, as I like to complete games and this one sounds like a real pain to do so, or else I'd just have to leave it unfinished which is probably what I would do. --- End quote --- It's mostly just irritating that they make you start the whole fight from scratch every time, when there's 3 sections of the fight where it's very easy to die if you get cornered in a strange way while trying to rotate the camera. Checkpoints would've made it much more bearable. I've watched the fight on YouTube and turns out I've gotten super close to beating the boss, too. Bit more detail: Rodea can get hit 3 times, then you lose a life. But your powers also scale with your hitpoints; at full health your charge attack is more powerful, at 2 hit points you can still attack, but you're less powerful, at 1 hit point you can't even attack and your flight path is very short. Thus, you can basically just be hit once without losing offensive capabilities (which double as speedboost). There's plenty of replenishing health pickups in static locations, so you can remember them and stock back up... but losing the attack means you lose speed and flying range, meaning you're less likely to make a successful getaway. Throughout the game it's not a massive issue, in fact I would say the game is pretty easy overall, but during the final boss it compounds into a bigger problem. (At least, for me.) Will report back if I suddenly breeze through the fight tomorrow, now that I've drunk from the fountain of Youtube knowledge. --- Quote from: Mop it up on November 12, 2019, 04:56:18 PM ---Have you played the Wii U version or plan to play it? Would be interesting to see how you think it compares. --- End quote --- Haven't played it (yet), but might give it a shot. From what I can tell, the 3DS/Wii U versions include some loot-esque stuff, semi-permanent item upgrades which are more temporaneous in the Wii version, and the colours seem a bit more washed out too. That said, if the levels are largely similar, I don't really care enough to go through the same game twice. Getting the impression the Wii version is probably the better one; at least, Yuji Naka appears to think so. |
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