@“Punzai”#p103952 I’m having the exact same problem for 1972! The choices are real slim, as far as I’m aware— there’s Pong, and there’s Computer Space. I’ve played both, so technically they aren’t new. There’s also the games bundled with the original Magnavox Odyssey but as far as I can tell, they don’t seem to have been dumped or emulated? So I’m not sure if this challenge is even technically possible for us 1972 (and earlier) babies.
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@“Mnemogenic”#p104415 1993: The Punisher (Arcade)
Awesome glad you liked this! I played this one a bunch as a kid when I could bc beat em ups were my favorite arcade genre. Haven't played it in almost 30 years tho I bet.
I've played some of my games in the last week…. and I have some opinions.
1991 - Barbie - 4/10
Welcome to Dark Souls. Set in the sick and twisted dream and world of Barbie, you have to traverse a shopping mall, beach, and a 1950s soda jerk before meeting Ken. In the first level, you need to throw gems at dogs and cats for them to do your bidding. In the second level you need to avoid flying pizzas and throw bows at pizza ovens until they all close. In level 3 you’re a mermaid and, well, I kept dying so I don’t know what happens next. It’s has the exact same pattern recognition challenge as a soulslike and I love that for it.
1993 - California Games 2 - 3/10
This one is rough. I have fond memories of the hacky sack minigame California Games, so I thought surely the sequel would be even better. But all 5 minigames are bad. The Hang Glider and Bodyboarding are hard to read what you're actually doing and how your movements affect your ability to do tricks, the snowboarding uses like 10% of the screen so it's a weird claustrophobic experience, the Jetskis are just pointless (it doesn't ask you to stay inside the lines or cross checkpoints from what I can tell), but the Skateboarding works pretty good and you do some sick tricks. But I was over the game after about 20 minutes.
2012 - Aero Porter - 7/10
Yoot Saito is a genius. Full stop. More than anyone else in the world he understands the visceral thrill of elevators running on time. Aero Porter builds upon Yoot Tower’s ideas by narrowing focus to its most pure form. It’s a hypnotizing game about sorting luggage into different carousels based on color. As you watch the luggage pile up and go around and around, you are constantly planning your next move seconds in advance. It’s a dynamic puzzle that trains you on how to solve it more and more efficiently. It also has a sense of humor – whether it’s the mayor expecting his luggage to be onboard first or someone trying to sneak a bomb onto the plane. It loses some marks because things like the lights going out and needing to supply power are kind of annoying more than interesting. But the raw thrill of a perfectly timed drop is something beautiful.
2018 - God of War - 3.5/10
I know I'm not making any friends with this opinion, and I probably shouldn't have picked out this game at all, but... Wtf is this game's tone!? You go from a dead mom and a decently paced tutorial about a father's disappointment, and then all of a sudden nordic Machine Gun Kelly swoops in and starts yelling dialogue worthy of Forspoken... "I don't have time for this! [You can't hurt me!](https://youtu.be/fXW02XmBGQw)" The most gross-out and insulting part was, after dropping a big ol' rock on the guy, a bloodied Kratos limps back to his house, and then Machine Gun Kelly comes back and Kratos shrugs and ABSORBS HIS BLOOD BACK INTO HIS BODY and acts like nothing happened. Its as if the game stopped to say 'hey we're going to regenerate your health, don't forget you're in a video game!" Sorry for the cinema sins-eque critique but why even limp in the first place?
The game felt fairly restrained in the tutorial, but now it's just about two super heroes _so evenly matched that the ground underneath them split in half._ So after mentally adjusting to this being a marvel movie game, it whiplashes back into being serious and somber. I kept playing up until I met a the blacksmith who made my axe, and was just kinda bored by the exploration and puzzles. Looking at the tech tree I can't be bothered either. I am mostly confused by this whole experience and the critical response.
@“Tradegood”#p104556 I had a very similar early game experience with God of War, down to the tech tree despair. Kratos should have started with a more diverse set of skills because the combat was so weak at the start for me that it felt off putting but once you unlock the second tier of skills and find some runic attacks then it begins to coalesce. The over-the-shoulder camera, to me, wasn't conducive to a good early combat experience (though I found it better as I got used to it barring certain encounters), but speaking to a few people that really liked this game they said that the GoW camera gave them a more focused experience than the chaos of typical character action games with free cameras.
The other thing that I liked about this game was how ridiculously linear it is, barring the option to explore a fairly small hub world for the optional areas. It's the antithesis of open world games and I really liked that I didn't have to think about deviating from the critical path at all.
However, what I didn't like were the bumpy story beats. Parallels to superhero silliness were eye-rolling, and whilst Atreus' childlike thoughts are annoying at the start, there's a section, an hour to two long, in which he is uniquely irritating, before, thankfully becoming tolerable. There's also a little bit of back tracking, and certain areas feel like filler dungeons too, for sure.
I'd say it's worth sticking with just a touch longer, at least until the world opens up and you enter the second proper dungeon area. The early game doesn't do the rest of the game any service, and I don't think it's a fair reflection of the rest of the experience.
I feel better after reading your post, thank you! I'm not clamoring to pick it back up, but knowing that the beginning is the worst part is encouraging at least.
I forgot to mention the camera, I felt that it was limiting and especially annoying when you have multiple enemies behind you. I'm surprised they don't have different camera distances at least. Also I wish there was a way to turn off the zoom-ins during the fights when you parry or block. I turned the screen shake and the steadicam off but the flourishes in the combat still doesn't quite work for me.
Without spoiling anything, there‘s a brief moment about half way through the game where you revisit the area immediately outside your home, and I thought to myself, “oh yeah, this bit.”, and I’d come to realise how fluid the game felt at that point versus how I felt at the start of the game. I wouldn‘t suggest persevering that long by any means if the game simply hasn’t clicked but that was my personal experience, and I appreciated the point of progression that I'd reached. As I say, the game itself started falling into place during the second dungeon and whilst there are definite flaws, I was engaged enough in beating stuff up to make my way to the end.
I certainly agree with your point about the camera during combat too. As I say, I got used to it and from memory I can only recall it being particularly bad during certain optional boss fights that quickly move around a lot.
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@“Tradegood”#p104556 I’ve played some of my games in the last week…. and I have some opinions.
I like that you're jumping around in them! I decided to do my list linearly but I probably won't for round 2. There's a lot of stuff later on that I'm positively itching to try.
I like going through the list linearly because it let‘s me experience console releases in microcosm. Like the Playstation is about to come out in my list and I can’t wait.
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I know this isn't the sale thread but I know a bunch of us have Phantasy Star on our lists so I figured Id pass on the info that its on sale on the Eshop.
@“JXUA”#p104446 I bought it last night and I can't imagine getting far without the Ages enhancements. Its nice having the FM sound too.
(Edited to say "can't imagine" instead of "can imagine".)
@“Toph”#p104622 I bought this last night when it was not on sale. D'oh!
GOG is having a sale right now and I bought a bunch of the games on my list as well as a couple I miiiiiiiight sub in depending.
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@“Coffinwarehouses”#p104603 I like that you’re jumping around in them! I decided to do my list linearly but I probably won’t for round 2. There’s a lot of stuff later on that I’m positively itching to try.
Yeah! I mean it was partly because I didn't want to bother to figure out how the emulate Amiga games yet and figured it was now or never to try God of War lol. I do think there's something special about going linearly though, and kudos to you for doing it!
Bladestorm: Hundred Years’ War - 2007
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I was hoping European Dynasty Warriors would throw you into an over-the-top sequence where sexy Prince Hal has a dramatic face off with the rebel Hotspur’s faction at the Battle of Shrewsbury and the cutscenes take Shakespeare dialogue and run it through google translate enough times until it doesn’t make much sense anymore. I would have been fine if this game just re-skinned Liu Bei as Henry V, Zhang Fei as Falstaff, and Lu Bu as Joan of Arc and play around with the timeline to the heroes all fight each other since that’s part of what makes Dynasty Warriors fun for me personally. Koei today would have done that but I think 16 years ago they were striving for a patina of authenticity.
I can't fault this game's ambition. They took the idea of commanding small groups of soldiers similar to Mount and Blade, but instead of issuing commands to the AI, you’re basically a foosball team all doing the same action at once. It feels odd, and to make it work there are long re-charges and it slows down the action so you have to work around that. They improved this idea in the “Empires” line of games (though I haven’t played much of those). There's still charm to the way this was executed, where you snap into a cavalry commander or archery commander and have a limited set of options available to you. It also changes the stakes from being about boss fights and killing named characters, to actually strategically trying to control the map.
It also makes the battles feel like a war of attrition. _I certainly felt attrition_ in my 2 hrs with the game, thanks to the day night cycle, where it takes many in-game days to get through a map. It adds to the realism but it’s sort of annoying when you see the timer come up that the sun is setting. That and the long tutorials were fine when the game was made, but trying it out on PS Plus 15 years later, and I'd just like to make some progress, please.
Nowadays Koei's settled into a cadence of Warriors/Xtreme/Empires/Orochi spinoffs that only amount to narcissism of small details. People are mostly just playing the games for crossovers with bigger IPs and once that gets stale, I think Koei should try something like this again... 5/10
1989 - Sweet Home
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Definitely my favorite game so far. Switching between party members to make use of their unique tools has a fun proto-Lost Vikings vibe to it. I legitimately jumped when the above skeleton appeared. Great spooky atmosphere as far as the NES goes. You can definitely back yourself into a corner where it's impossible to progress, though. Early on I was using wood to build bridges and used up all of the wood and couldn't build a bridge to the next area!
Given Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors I should probably watch this movie.
Would keep playing: Yes. How Long to Beat says this game is 8 hours, so I may even try to finish it. Will need to use save states pretty liberally though because I don't want to get 4 or 5 hours in and find out I messed something up and have to start all over.
1994, ‘95, and ’96. In which I enter, and then escape, the Zeiram zone.
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1994: Sensible Soccer (Mega Drive)
>! Played to completion: N/A
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So, I’ve never played a Sensible Soccer game before; I only know of it by reputation. And yeah, this is easily the best soccer game I’ve ever played.
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I started out on the default beginner difficulty and played a match. I had fun, it felt alright to play, and I stomped a team 4-1. I turned it up to normal difficulty after that, and it made an incredible difference.
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On the normal difficulty, the game was extremely tense for me. Every time I had the ball I felt like I had half a second to decide what to do with it because there are two small men coming for me right now. Possessions change constantly. It’s so fast. And it’s thrilling to play.
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I feel like the only other games that demand this much concentration from me are rhythm games. It’s like that. You can’t look away because there are three things demanding your attention forever. Goal kicks become something you use to pause and take a breath.
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I expected that I would have a good time with this, but I didn’t expect such a uniquely good time.
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1995: Hyper Iria (SNES)
>! Played to completion: Yes.
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This game made me realize something: I would always rather have a navigator than a map. For most of the levels in this game, you’re trying to locate some stuff somewhere in the level (and the levels are big and winding). You don’t have a map to help, but you do have a helpful robot telling you where to go. “Continue right”, “Go past the stairs and head right”, “take the stairs to the left down”.
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Somehow it just makes for a better game to be imperfectly following somebody’s instructions instead of looking at a map and being your own navigator.
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Anyway, this is a pretty fun action game. Took me a few tries to get through and I had fun switching out weapons and subweapons to figure out what works best for each situation.
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As a side note, in preparation for playing this game, and the next one on the list, Zeiramzone, I watched the two live action movies and six episode OVA that they were based on. Zeiram and Zeiram 2 are great. Way better than this video game. The OVA is fine. None of it really enhanced my enjoyment of this game. It just showed me who the characters are and what the setting is like.
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1996: Zeiramzone (PlayStation)
>! Played to completion: No.
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The PlayStation is out and 3D games are taking the world by storm. For example, this mediocre beat ‘em up.
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Unlike Hyper Iria, this game takes way more after the movies than it does the OVA. Which is good I think. I generally prefer the look and feel of the movies.
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This game has some neat stuff in it. It has Fatal Fury style lane switching instead of letting you move up and down the screen. It works better than you might think! It’s also got some cool camera angles and close ups. The music isn’t bad.
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Unfortunately, the game is not so good to play. The combat is incredibly stilted. You don’t even have combos, just four attacks that sort of go together but not really. On top of that, it’s very difficult. I couldn’t get past the second level on easy mode.
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I was ready to have a good time with this, but it's just not a very good video game.
(1987)
So I started playing a touch out of order and started Phantasy Star since the Sega Ages version was on sale on the Eshop. This is how far I got (possible spoilers?)
>![upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/3whY6HF.jpeg]The scribbles are from my 2 year old wanting to draw maps too.!<
I'm reminded a lot of how I mapped out all the dungeons in Dragon Warrior as a kid and was happy to have the option to do that again. Im hoping to have more time to continue playing this one.
I love those notes! I haven‘t done that since the bush era. Do you save them when you’re done with a game? Seems like a fun way to go back and revisit the experience.
@“Tradegood”#p105123 To be honest I haven‘t done this since I was a kid and the ones I did then are more than likely gone, but for whatever reason when I found out that Phantasy Star had these blind dungeons I just knew I had to map them. Its been a really fun addition to what is already a pretty fun game.
And a lot of these earlier rpgs were vague in details and my adult brain is basically swiss cheese now so the notes help me keep track of things that seem important. I hadn’t planned on drawing the monsters initially but I liked their designs so they just started happening. I intend to keep these since my daughter seemed somewhat interested so maybe she'll get a kick out of looking at these notes one day.
I mentioned this before, but I am using my list for games to play and hang out with over the year. I just saw the credits roll on Doom Eternal over the weekend and I loved it. Doom (2016) is a modern favorite of mine, but I bounced off of Eternal when it first came out. This time all the systems clicked. The story and (so much!) lore are dumb as rocks, but the gameplay is pure arcade hyper-speed action. I will for sure be playing more throughout the year and have already started the DLC. I played on the easiest difficulty and still found most of the game a challenge. Hoping to step up to normal next.
I have also been playing Phantasy Star via Sega Ages on Switch. Mostly for 30ish minutes before bed and before getting up in the morning. It works really well in that fashion. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but found a few overworld maps online so I know where to head when folks mention places. Can't imagine playing without the Ages enhancements though. I would have dropped it right quick after getting lost in a dungeon. A fun way to play an older title.
I also am going to add a few games to my list after listening to the latest IC Annual. In addition to Arkham Knight I will be playing, the recently crowned best game of all time, Yakuza 0 which is also from 2015. This is a bit of a fudge on release date but I will be playing the DS version of Dragon Quest V which came out in 2008 in Japan, so that will be joining Too Human from that year.
Really enjoying this idea and thread if'n I've not said it before. Great idea @"Coffinwarehouses"#1237