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Post by Ex on Oct 9, 2023 9:51:56 GMT -5
XeogredProject Eden certainly was ambitious for 2001. Apparently the PC version allowed up to four players to simultaneously control a respective protagonist to finish missions. That would have been fun, though a tad difficult to orchestrate. I watched some gameplay of a few levels, the levels are indeed large and intricate. Reading up on the design, I can see your Lost Vikings allusion. No way in today's gaming world a publisher would okay a game where: The player controls four independent protagonists per level. The levels are massive 3D mazes. There are multi-protagonist-solving puzzles galore, some quite difficult. Far too complicated for today's principle gaming demographic.
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Post by Sarge on Oct 9, 2023 12:12:54 GMT -5
Welp, I'll keep an eye out for this one.
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Post by Xeogred on Oct 9, 2023 18:56:15 GMT -5
This is one I can't predict at all. Maybe toei would like it since it's such an oddball unique game unlike anything else for the most part, and toei likes his weird games. Ex , I think it would be neat to go through the game co-op with a veteran of the game who can kind of steer things. Otherwise it's such an immersive game in my opinion, that it's just a far better solo experience where one can sink into it all by their own. Thief might be a better comparison than Deus Ex in ways and while it is mission/map based like Thief or Tomb Raider, it still kind of feels like a dungeon crawler in some ways. One better be good with a sense of direction and remembering some rooms to navigate this game. I kind of did a double take looking at the box art again and seeing "11 missions!" when you look at my completion time of 17 hours. Some monster levels here. They were all very well paced and pretty dang unique from one another. Some I liked more than others but for the most part, no filler in this game at all. Sarge maybe you would dig it.
The Tomb Raider DNA is in there for sure, but you can't manually jump or anything. So even people that don't like the Tomb Raider games could maybe get into this. You all know I like the TR TANK controls at this point, but I was kind of laughing at some point at how good Project Eden controls on a keyboard/mouse. Very smooth stuff. You can switch to and from first person view whenever too. It was useful sometimes, but I did prefer third person.
You can quick save anywhere, so that helps. Maybe even in the PS2 version. toei's question made me glance at the wiki again. The lead designers were the same two behind Tomb Raider 2: Heather Gibson and Neal Boyd. It does seem like CORE were big enough at this point to be a multi game studio. But it's funny how the box has no mention of TR3-4, when those would have been out by then. I guess maybe some staff took more pride in their own involved titles over the others or something. It's clear that CORE were getting tired of Lara with all the sequels. I read again the other day in TR5, the animators took pleasure in coming up with new death animations for Lara because they were so sick of it, lol. Eidos putting the thumb down on CORE. So with that said, I think you can feel a lot of passion in Project Eden. toei asked is it the best CORE game? I'm not sure, the most innovative after TR1 to me and while I've enjoyed all the CORE TR's now, TR2-4 had some warts. I feel like Project Eden didn't really have any nagging issues at all. I was rolling my eyes at one GOG review the other night how someone thought it was annoying having to move one character over to the rest one by one. It's not that hard at all for them to group up and have the AI follow you, then beyond that, it never felt like it was "painful" to get one character from point A to point B at any point. Yeah the levels are labyrinthine, but the check points and flow of the maps always felt pretty good to me. Yes you do have to switch between the characters a ton, fill them up on health or ammo one by one, etc, but again... I'm not seeing the big deal here. My single only tiny nitpick is that maybe there was a bit too many enemies deeper into the game. The final boss was comically strong, however many times I button mashed PN03 was probably how many hits it took. But in Project Eden you can just casually hold down fire. Why is combat NOT a big deal though? You have infinite respawns at the health generator/checkpoints. Think Bioshock/System Shock with the med bays and stuff. The final boss? I just had to open up a door again to get into the arena with him and continue chipping away at its health. I took dozens of deaths in the game, sometimes your friendly AI gets ganged up on, etc. But it didn't even feel like it was that big of a deal to run back to where you were to mop up the enemies or continue on. It makes me think of how much it freaking sucks when you do have someone die in Lost Vikings. That means restarting the whole level. You don't really "lose progress" at all in Project Eden. I was continually impressed at some points in the game trying to analyze how they would take multiple solutions into mind for some situations, if I could ever truly get someone stuck, etc, but that was never the case. Dense exploration and adventure is the real enemy to conquer in Project Eden. Can one see credits roll in this game, that is the question. According to GOG Galaxy, the average play time was 3:19. So I guess Project Eden was too tough for most.
As for CORE's backlog... yeah not sure how interested I am. But their 3D era, maybe there's some other stuff worth checking out. They definitely have a pretty unique looking library outside of Tomb Raider.
toei thanks for reminding me the Dreamcast exists. I just shrugged off its entire survival horror library the other night lol. Definitely some stuff on there I should check out.
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Post by spiffsneed on Oct 10, 2023 13:42:14 GMT -5
Was cruising through Card Fighters Clash, figuring I'd finish it in 6 hours or so, but damn, the endgame is brutal! This game's equivalent of the "Elite Four" is a massive step up in difficulty from the preceding "Gym Leader" battles. Even the first battle has cards that seem to average between 1000 - 1500 BP (card HP), while my cards average around 700 BP I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to just grind out booster cards so I can have a deck that can compete. Luckily, the battles are really fun, so it's not too bad, but it definitely seems like it will take a while, as I have almost no A-rank cards, and they drop extremely rarely. A little detail I love is that one of the "Gym" areas takes you to the Spencer Mansion in 8-bit glory: The NPC on the left happens to be our main man, Shinji Mikami:
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Post by Sarge on Oct 10, 2023 13:44:12 GMT -5
I completely forgot about that. Probably because I'd not even played Resident Evil at that point, so it went over my head. Very cool.
I don't remember how long it took me to finish. I reckon I can check and see if my save file is still intact, although I'm not sure it shows time?
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Post by Ex on Oct 10, 2023 22:41:37 GMT -5
Title: SNK Gals' FightersPlatform: Neo Geo Pocket Color Region release played: USA Year of release: 2000 Developer: Yumekobo Publisher: SNK Graphics: 4/5 Audio: 4/5 Challenge: 2/5 Fun factor: 3/5 Quick Thoughts: SNK Gals' Fighters is a 2D fighter starring a cast of 8 all-female characters taken from numerous SNK fighting series. The King of Fighters (Mai Shiranui, Yuri Sakazaki, Athena Asamiya, Leona Heidern, Shermie), The Last Blade (Akari Ichijyou) and Samurai Shodown (Shiki, Nakoruru). This may sound like the recipe for a T&A ecchi fighter, but not at all, the theme is slapstick comedy. The combat is basic, but depending on combat performance, the player is rewarded with random power-up items used to improve their fighter temporarily. SNK Gals' Fighters is a lighthearted, charming, and entertaining little fighter recommended to NGPC owners secure in their manhood. +Tight controls and fluid action. +Well drawn and nicely animated sprites. +Colorful graphics, with backgrounds having plenty of detail. +Sound effects and OST are good for the platform. +The item system adds a twist. -There's a "Queen of Fighters" story mode per character, but it's spartan. -Lower difficulty than average. -I don't like the button mashing mini-game where two fighters brawl in a dust cloud. -I'm not sure if this English localization is accurate at all. -The humor is appreciated but the lack of ecchi isn't. Ex's time to beat: 20 minutes
Ex's rating: 7.5/10
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Post by toei on Oct 12, 2023 15:18:24 GMT -5
So I've been playing a PS2 hack-n-slash called Realm of the Dead on-and-off. I'm not sure whether I'll finish it, as it's really subpar. But I discovered something interesting about it. The game is a PS2-exclusive, released in Japan and Europe, and is a spin-off of Idea Factory's Spectral Force/Generation of Chaos/Blazing Souls games, all of which are related. It wasn't made by IF, though, but by a Taiwanese company called XPEC Entertainment. So I'm looking at their other games and a couple years prior to Realm of the Dead, they made a game for the Xbox and PC called Daemon Vector, which reviewed quite poorly... and Daemon Vector IS Realm of the Dead, with cosmetic differences. Not just in the sense that the latter is a spiritual sequel, but it has the exact same levels, same exact enemies (some of which were slightly changed up to look undead, some not), same moves, same items, just different-looking characters and different story (the game is light on story anyway). It looks like Idea Factory just bought an existing game from a developer, threw in their license, and rereleased it, two years after its original release. Daemon Vector was only released in Asian countries outside of Japan for the Xbox, so Japanese players of Realm of the Dead wouldn't have known. We've seen cases where games were heavily modified when brought to the West, with licenses added or removed, so in that sense it's not unique. Except that Europe got both versions of the game that one time, from two different publishers, which is super weird.
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Post by spiffsneed on Oct 12, 2023 17:19:06 GMT -5
Rolled credits on Card Fighters Clash! Final play time was 16:39, just a bit above the HLTB average of 15 hours. The completionist time on HLTB is 50 hours, which seems about right given the pace of attaining new cards slows down significantly as you progress, and my ending card count was 160/300. Not gonna keep going for the full deck, because it doesn't really seem like much additional content opens up after beating it.
It gets a 9/10 from me. The core game is excellent, and my only desires that could improve it would be 1. more content, 2. a smoother progression curve and 3. a better translation (some of the card descriptions are functionally unintelligible in communicating what they actually do).
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Post by Ex on Oct 12, 2023 20:22:03 GMT -5
Ya gonna play the sequel next? And I don't mean the DS game either:
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Post by Sarge on Oct 12, 2023 22:26:08 GMT -5
Honestly, I should play that and see if I dig it as much as I did the original. And now I'm curious what my final time was... lemme see if I can dig my system out.
EDIT: Huh, I must have gotten lucky with a few card pulls. My time on there right now was 9h01m, with 104/300 cards.
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