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

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GK:

--- Quote from: Discord.RSS on March 15, 2021, 03:44:20 PM ---
--- Quote from: GK on March 15, 2021, 01:20:14 PM ---Assault Android Cactus(PC)

Finally took out the final boss after a year or so of trial, error, & procrastination. Easily one of my fav twin-shooters. Not sure if I'll commit myself to getting an S+ Rank on every single stage or even bother with the new campaign+, but I may chase a few achievements between making sure I stay on top of my friends leaderboard.

Now if only I can get Steam's Remote Play Together working so I can try co-op...

--- End quote ---

Nice! The last boss is so difficult without the Shotgun character. Really cool game, I was best with Starch (laser + homing missiles) most of the game, but couldn't do the last boss with Starch. Wanna say Coral was the slow Shotgun class right?

--- End quote ---

Yeah, that's her. I used Lemon(spreader gun) for the majority of the game, including the final boss. I actually needed Coral to defeat that security boss, Judge.

MagicCow64:
Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch):

I am not a Paper Mario originalist who demands that Nintendo reiterate the 1,000-Year Door. In fact, my favorite game in the franchise is Super Paper Mario, and I'm perfectly happy to see what new approaches IS cooks up for each new entry. That said, I skipped Sticker Star based on poor reviews, as well as Color Splash, which didn't seem to deviate enough from that annoying-sounding formula.

But Origami King had a pretty warm response from what I saw, jettisoning the purely disposable combat item system, so I decided to dip back in.

It's . . . okay.

It looks great, it plays smoothly, if a touch on the pokey side. I enjoyed boinking around the environments in a mildly Luigi's Mansion-ish fashion, digging up toads and treasures. There's also a surprising amount of variety in the adventure gameplay department, though nothing too individually mindblowing.

Less successful is the meat-and-potatoes combat. I just don't really care for the brain-teaser format of the ring system, which always felt either completely obvious or impossible for me to figure out in the allotted time. It's telling that the game rewards you for solving the puzzles with one-round fights and punishes you for failing them by making you engage in this system for longer. Nor is there really any meaningful leveling up, equipment, or other standard RPG components that help keep the mook fights interesting. By the end of the game, I was doing my utmost to avoid non-mandatory encounters and would groan out loud when I tripped into one.

But, weirdly enough, the boss fights are generally really good, tense and engaging, always introducing new wrinkles into the formula that you have to learn on the fly (man, **** those scissors). I would have been perfectly happy if the only time the ring system came into play was during those boss fights and maybe the odd hand-crafted mook roadblock with non-randomized layouts.

Really, though, the game overall seems barely interested in its traditional RPG vestiges. Like, there's even a completely real-time category of enemies, including bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if the developers wanted to jettison the menu-based combat altogether, as they did with their best game, SPM. I hope the next title is freed to become a full-on gonzo Nintendo take on the adventure genre, though with the demise of the Mario and Luigi series that seems unlikely.

Finally, regarding story/character/writing junk, which I guess has more salience in an RPG, it's nothing to write home about. The core plot is perfunctory and the weird insistence on mostly generic toad characters definitely holds the game back from developing any particularly interesting scenarios or interactions. The tropishly naive origami gal is pretty dull, and the non-koopa companions are likewise fairly bland (though the game earns points for the end of "Bobby's" involvement). The odd line of random toad dialogue is funny, but otherwise little of the story's presentation or content is memorable. Not a big deal for me, but definitely room for improvement.

I'd say a solid 7.5/10 game, and a marked improvement on the last Mario RPG I played (Dream Team), even if it's barely an RPG.

MagicCow64:
Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS):


I finally got curious enough after the Dread announcement to give this a shot, despite my misgivings about the studio and bouncing off Mirror of Fate.

On the front of things, I was impressed by the "game feel", which alleviates some of my concerns coming out of the Castlevania attempt. Samus feels very snappy and fluid and you can really fly through the environments as you accrue upgrades.

I also appreciate that they kept far more of the original Metroid II design bones than I was expecting. For the most part it sticks to the hivey ethos of the progenitor, where you're digging through discrete zones to root out the Metroids within, weird blotchy distribution of upgrades and all. The only significant deviation I noted was the digging machine stuff, which was pretty bad, but the extra stuff in AM2R I think is arguably worse and more bolted-on feeling. (Funny, though, that both approaches felt the need to insert an annoying robot boss.)

Well, also the final Ridley fight, which was actually challenging if a bit too protracted. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I think the final Metroid variant is also different from the original, and more obnoxious, but it was probably the right call to switch it up.

Visually it looks okay-ish; a bit bland as most 2.5d games like this tend to be, but Samus herself looks good. Definitely limited by the hardware, so I'm hopeful the final Dread product will benefit from higher fidelity.

BUT

Goddamn does the counter system suck, worse than I anticipated. It isn't just an optional thing that speeds up combat, it infects nearly every enemy interaction. Almost all the varmints have obnoxious charge moves that you can't ignore. You just have constant organic missiles firing at you at all times, and it sucks. The freeze beam is so weak and short-lived that it's equally annoying to freeze enemies and smash them with the counter as it is to just counter normally. Every beam strength upgrade you get is matched with redder variants of the same enemies that are just as spongy, and commonly even invincible without countering. And they do outrageous damage.

Like, in the context of this particular game, I can see the counter thing being welcome in terms of the Metroid fights and rewarding knowledge and skill to shorten the encounters, but as a blanket mechanic is absolutely blows, and I don't know why Nintendo okayed it.

I also do not at all care for the aether system, or whatever it's called. I did not want another meter to babysit in this context, and it seemed to directly contribute to the sponginess of many of the enemies. The shield ability is okay as a fallback when you're low on health, but the mapping ability in particular is baffling. You get it very early on and it just totally takes the wind out of exploration. You can just find everything automatically and there's no reason not to. Maybe this would have been okay as a late game thing, but as it is it totally neuters one of the core pleasures of this style of game. I really don't know what they were thinking with this, other than feeling like they needed to layer on a bunch of missile upgrades with lame lock-and-key solutions that would not be at all fun to discover organically only to realize that you just had to come back later lay a super bomb.

So overall, very mixed on this remake. I would probably prefer it over AM2R if it wasn't for the tedious combat. I think in the end the original Gameboy game is pound-for-pound better, more impressive and atmospheric. And, I think, absolutely playable.

Adrock:
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (Switch)

I started with Bowser's Fury. It was really good and definitely helped justify double dipping (I was going to wait for a drop to $40 then settled for $45). I ran into a couple bugs. When I was at 48 Cat Shines, Fury Bowser wouldn't go away no matter what I did. I had to collect two more Cat Shines while Fury Boswer was raining fire then was forced into the "final" boss fight. The camera and controls during the Fury Bowser fights were pretty bad.

I finally beat the final two stages in Super Mario 3D World (Mystery Box Marathon and Champion's Road) and all I had to do was buy the game again after seven years. It's still good even if it feels a little dated. The limited camera mostly worked. When it didn't though...

Also, some of the Green Stars were infuriatingly difficult to obtain. I wanted 100% completion which is absolutely not going to happen because I forgot you need to clear each stage with every character. Will I replay every stage four more times including the aforementioned and obscenely difficult Mystery Box Marathon and Champion's Road?

Adrock:
No More Heroes (Switch)

I got the Limited Run Games physical release.

This game did not age gracefully. Much of the humor didn't hold up under a 2021 lens. Maybe I found it funny when I first played the game in my early-mid 20s. At 37, it was mostly intolerable. I remember liking Travis Touchdown as a character except he's kind of a ****. Additionally, models for the red shirts and NPCs walking around Santa Destroy are pretty bad even for a 2008 Wii game. The graphics in general are extremely dated despite the art style and everything seemed darker, particularly the shadows.

The story was nonsense. I don't know how much of it was intentionally nonsense or something Suda51 would claim was intended to be nonsense if anyone called him out on it. Travis' primary motivation was apparently to sleep with Sylvia (as she promised once he became the top assassin) but also revenge he didn't remember he wanted until the very end of the game. Also, he won his beam katana in an online auction yet somehow is a world class assassin who "lives for killing" except the entire United Assassins Association was merely an elaborate con cooked up by Sylvia so Travis could kill his half-sister, Jeane, for killing his parents (statute of limitations on spoilers has expired). Jeane's backstory was also weirdly dark. If it was a con, why would so many people act like the UAA was a thing and subsequently put themselves in a position to get murdered. No More Heroes doesn't commit to anything, and it was difficult to parse out what was even happening within its narrative. Maybe that was the point. I don't know. I guess it's better to simply ignore all of that.

The gameplay mostly holds up, the driving simulator in the overworld and a few minigames notwithstanding. The fighting is a little mindless but I still liked it. I started the game using the Joy Cons. Despite barely using them, the left Joy Con began to drift. *lose horn* That said, I played most of the game using the Pro Controller, and it was... better. I lauded the original release for its motion controls yet I only went back to the Joy Cons for a couple missions that practically required it.

My main issue with this port is that Suda51/Grasshopper Manufacture made very few quality of life improvements besides 60 FPS and a resolution bump to 720p. The frame rate in the open world was absolutely horrendous.

No More Heroes' greatest sin was how little it respected the player's time, and the port, unfortunately, did not fix this. There are still no "Retry" and "Restart Mission" options. If you fail or know you are going to fail, you have to sit through the loading screens to leave the mission and reenter the Mission then click through the intro every time. And you can pass certain Assassination Gigs, but it's kind of not worth it unless you get a Gold rating because some are so difficult. If you do manage to pass, you have to drive all the way back to K-Entertainment, accept the gig again then drive back to the location actually play it. Y'all had 13 years and couldn't be bothered to fix that. Come on, man.

I don't think I'll play this game again though I don't regret revisiting it/double dipping. I'll probably play a palate cleanser game before jumping into the sequel. I would like to finish that as well as Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes before playing No More Heroes III.

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