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Post by Sarge on Jan 6, 2020 19:42:03 GMT -5
I guess that's where passwords are useful. Just chip away at it over time.
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Post by Ex on Jan 8, 2020 1:47:09 GMT -5
Well I finally beat world 4... I'm currently on round 5-5: Round 5-5 means I'm actually on round 55. I've beaten over 54 "stages" at this point.
This is a pretty solid game with plenty of positive aspects. But to be honest, at this point Fire 'n Ice is already Mensa-level shenanigans. And there's five more worlds after the one I'm currently on! Ever since round 4-8, each successive round has become less fun to solve, versus simply exhausting to solve. I'm not enjoying the game much at this point, because every other stage is just ridiculously tricky. (I haven't used a single strategy guide or walkthrough thus far.) To put things into context, on GameFAQs' NES puzzle game difficulty list, Fire 'n Ice sits at 26, while Adventures of Lolo sits at 42, and Kickle Cubicle sits at 64. To put it another way, to reach the credits you have to finish 50 stages in Lolo, 67 stages in Kickle, and 101 stages in Fire. So yeah, this game's "Tough" rating is warranted. I'll be dumping this one in favor of something funner and shorter. I'm not looking to spend 15+ hours on a NES puzzler right now. Back in ye olde days, getting a long hard puzzle game like this was great... for a kid who only got one new game every six months. I'm not that kid anymore.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 8, 2020 12:42:07 GMT -5
Well, at least it gives you value for an NES game!
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Post by toei on Jan 8, 2020 13:48:31 GMT -5
That's why I haven't been playing that kind of game. Ten puzzles or so is cool, 100 or 200 or some other ridiculous amount... nah, I'm good.
Say, is Equinox / Solstice 2 on the SNES considered a puzzle game? I've always been somewhat intrigued by that one.
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Post by Ex on Jan 8, 2020 14:15:20 GMT -5
Say, is Equinox / Solstice 2 on the SNES considered a puzzle game? I've always been somewhat intrigued by that one. Indeed, both Solstice and Equinox are considered puzzle games. I actually spent a few minutes playing Solstice on NES last night. It seemed interesting, but the controls are really floaty - which isn't great for an isometric game. That said, the exploration aspect was well done, and the game was challenging right out the gate.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 8, 2020 15:32:48 GMT -5
I played a bit of Equinox myself, and it's equal parts puzzler and I guess ARPG? Or at least action adventure? I'd definitely include it in the bucket. Honestly, as many puzzles as Brain Lord has, I'd almost be tempted to count it for the theme as well... but it still firmly resides in the ARPG mold, so I won't do that. Also, Equinox might feel a little clunky at times, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it. It's another one of those "bucket list" games on the system for me.
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Post by Ex on Jan 8, 2020 15:49:53 GMT -5
Well I "beat" a game for this theme... Knight Move is a Famicom Disk System Japan-only action-puzzle game, developed by JV Dialog, and published by Nintendo in 1990. It received an English fan translation in 2003 by PentarouZero. This is a very simple game where the player (or players) controls a classic knight chess piece. The knight can only move in its traditional L-shaped pattern. The goal is to land the knight on heart pieces that randomly appear on the game board. However, the knight is always moving automatically. The player can only choose where it lands. And every time it lands, the knight slowly destroys each space it lands on, with every successive landing. If a space is completely destroyed, and the knight lands on the leftover hole, it's game over. However when a heart is captured, the next heart's appearance restores destroyed spaces incrementally. There are two single player game modes. In one mode you just grab hearts as they appear. In the other mode, hearts have a landing-counter, which depletes every time the heart isn't captured when the knight lands. So if you take too long to get the heart, it eventually disappears. Either way, every time the player captures a certain number of hearts, the game speeds up, and increases the "Round" number. So as the player's score grows, so does the difficulty due to the sheer speed of the knight's automatic movement. Thus the player must quickly choose the ideal landing space for the knight, while avoiding holes.
There is a two player mode, where players simultaneously compete to get the hearts. I wasn't able to test it out.
The graphics are simple, but get the job done. The OST is limited to just three tracks. Honestly there's not a lot of meat on this horse. As a single player game, you're just competing against your own high score. I imagine the experience is more entertaining in two player mode. But even that would become stale soon enough. It would have been nice to see a tiered set of missions, with special obstacles and circumstances per mission. Basically this game needed a single player campaign to be truly engaging. As it stands, Knight Move is more like an arcade game or simple proof of concept. I find it interesting that Nintendo published this in Japan honestly. Chess is far more popular in Europe, if anything I'd have expected Nintendo to publish Knight Move in the PAL region instead. Regardless, Knight Move is a quirky little oddity with a small bit of innovation I can appreciate. But seriously the knights should be landing on king icons, not hearts. Ex's rating: 5/10 Ex's time to "beat": 20 minutes*
*I made it to round 10, that was enough for me.
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Post by toei on Jan 8, 2020 22:47:49 GMT -5
Played through the first dungeon in Equinox. It's really more of an action-adventure game, with few actual puzzles so far. It's basically like a slower Landstalker minus any town, NPC, story or dialogue. I thought it was pretty neat at first but I have to say that first boss fight sucked. I can see myself playing it one day, but I'm not sure whether I'll keep going right now.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 9, 2020 22:54:53 GMT -5
Fire 'n Ice sounds like something that would have kept someone busy for a summer or year worth back in the day. But yeah today I think that would test my patience. It makes me wonder if I'd run into that with Lemmings thesedays, even the SNES version had well over 100 stages I'm pretty sure. I loved it though and keep wishing this series would get some new GOG releases and a revival. I'm sure it's easy to play the PC version though, just need to not be lazy about that someday. Boy I bet it's an upgrade using a mouse instead of the SNES controller, haha... I know the SNES version had some cool exclusive levels though.
On YT, the first longplay result for a Lemmings (SNES) full playthrough is 5h46m. And that's probably for someone doing all the levels perfectly and knowing them ahead of time.
I clocked in 3h 30m for Adventures of Lolo 1. That's a good chunk for something like these. Jumping into Lolo 2 right after that was a bad idea and probably aided in me abandoning it shortly last year, though the difficulty also started out way higher as well. I think Lolo 3 is the longest of them all, with a full blown world map and more of an adventure setup of sorts. So yeah... don't play puzzler sequels back to back like I tried last year.
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Post by Ex on Jan 10, 2020 2:48:42 GMT -5
Fire 'n Ice sounds like something that would have kept someone busy for a summer or year worth back in the day. As far as bang for your buck went, yes this game would have kept anyone busy for a long time. Fire 'n Ice is tricky as hell in the later stages. - I spent about a half hour each with these tonight: Finished world 1 in both, and both of these are high quality experiences. That said, they are both longer than what I'm looking for right now.
Donkey Kong '94 takes about 6 hours to finish, and Mole Mania takes about 7 hours to finish. Keep in mind, those are times I pulled from HLTB, which often has shorter than reality time-to-beat for this genre. Due to so many people using walkthroughs and strategy guides for puzzle games.
I had no plans to finish either of these tonight anyway, I just wanted to give both a fair try. So yeah, they're good stuff. DK94 gave birth to the Mario VS Donkey Kong franchise. Mole Mania clearly uses a modified version of the engine that Link's Awakening/ For the Frog used. Mole Mania is really polished, and came out very late in the original Game Boy's lifespan. It was a Miyamoto pet project. But anyway, both of these games are longer than what I'm looking for right now. That said, I tried a bunch of other puzzle games as well. And I think I've found some winners fitting the mood I'm in with this theme.
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