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Post by toei on Feb 3, 2024 3:13:40 GMT -5
I beat Dick Tracy (Sega Genesis).
This is a hidden gem and the single most overlooked Genesis action game. I say this because to me it appears even more obscure than the also overlooked Rolling Thunder 2 & 3, for example - I have never heard anyone talking about this game, ever, and never saw it anywhere when I was a kid. Furthermore, it would make perfect sense to assume that some licensed game based on a forgotten attempt at reviving an old comic strip franchise would be mediocre. This game doesn't have ending credits (!), just two quick screens when you beat it, but from what we know (based on resumes dug up by segaretro.org), it was the first game released by Sega Technical Institute, the Mark Cerny-led American studio that co-developed Sonic 2 and made Sonic Spinball and Comix Zone. Sega of Japan staff also contributed, so maybe it was a joint development like Sonic 2.
It's an action side-scroller in the vein of classic Shinobi or Rolling Thunder, where you must advance cautiously and methodically and you can take cover behind crates to shoot enemies when they get up or run out of bullets. There's a genius twist, though; there's a second layer of action in the background, which you sweep at with your machine gun instead, so you have to mind two planes of action simultaneously, with two distinct attack buttons. For variety's sake, there are two other types of levels; auto-scrolling levels where you hang onto a moving car and shoot at enemies in their own vehicles, and single-plane, weaponless levels where you just punch enemies. Those are ultra methodical and almost puzzle-like since you're literally outgunned. Then there are the boss fights, which are variations on the main level types; you actually have to traverse a level while shooting at the boss in the background layer and enemies in the forefront, until you get to the final area where their pattern may change. They're kind of hybrids between regular and boss levels and feel quite unique. There are also shooting range bonus stages where you can gain a ton of extra credits - you start with 3, but I could get up to 10 by the end.
The game does have some flaws. I got completely used to it, but the walking speed felt sluggish at first. I would have probably removed at least one weaponless and one car level. They provide a nice breather between the pure action stages, but they aren't as good. In general the car levels felt a little long, I would have shortened them too. Bosses kind of take a lot of shots to die, too, though I appreciate their set piece feel. I probably would have cut their HP by 20% or so (except for the final boss). Basically, I would changed a lot of little things to speed up the pace, which would have improved replayability. The level design is great in terms of enemy placement, but visually it's all very plain. It is an early Genesis game (1990), and the fact that you can shoot out most of the windows is an impressive effect for the time, though. It'd have been nice if there'd been something hidden behind those windows sometime; the game has no power-ups or one ups, ever. Just the extra credits from the boss battles.
I love the core action, though. Even with the flaws, my head says 8/10, but my heart says 8.5. It's also one of the hardest Genesis games I beat. I say "one of", but actually it might be the hardest, point blank. You really have to train your brain to handle two layers of action simultaneously.
There's also a scaled-down Master System port by Blue Sky Software that's inferior in every way, and an unrelated, somewhat crappy NES game with ahead-of-its-time open-world elements.
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Post by Ex on Feb 3, 2024 10:19:08 GMT -5
toeiTo me it looks like Dick Tracy combines Rolling Thunder with Cabal. With the licensed theme the end result is a little unusual. It is cool how enemies in the background can shoot stuff in the foreground, causing environmental danger to the player, that's an interesting idea. The mini-game where the enemy standees flip up to shoot, reminds me of the mini-game from Shinobi where ninjas drop down and you throw shurikens at them. The car chase levels where you're hanging off the car shooting adds some variety. Based on what you wrote, and watching the video, it's clear the developers were attempting to make a better-than-expected licensed game. I don't know that there's enough variety here to keep me going for an hour (about how long the video is above), but knowing your tastes better as I do now, I totally understand how Dick Tracy appeals to you. It does have that somber color palette, gritty pixel art going on that earlier Genesis games were fond of. The cover art is striking too:
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Post by Xeogred on Feb 3, 2024 16:24:57 GMT -5
I definitely like what I'm seeing here. I'll have to give it a shot sometime. Probably never would have looked into a Dick Tracy game otherwise, haha.
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Post by Chema on Feb 11, 2024 16:37:56 GMT -5
I beat Quake 4 (PC).
Overall, it's a good game. The gunplay and level design are as good as you expect from a Raven Software game, but it suffers from the same issue as Quake 2: the environments are too similar to each other. No matter how excellent the art direction is, the levels eventually start to feel same-y and you just wish for the game to end if it's not going to drop the industrial setting. Thankfully, it's a shorter game than Doom 3, which uses the same engine and suffers from the same problem.
I'd give it a 7.5/10. It's a game that does nothing wrong, but there were so many interesting things that the developers could have done with the environmental design and gameplay (the mid-game twist should have been more than just a 25 health point increase), that you can't help but it feel that it falls short of its potential.
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Post by Xeogred on Feb 11, 2024 19:30:31 GMT -5
I beat Quake 4 (PC). Overall, it's a good game. The gunplay and level design are as good as you expect from a Raven Software game, but it suffers from the same issue as Quake 2: the environments are too similar to each other. No matter how excellent the art direction is, the levels eventually start to feel same-y and you just wish for the game to end if it's not going to drop the industrial setting. Thankfully, it's a shorter game than Doom 3, which uses the same engine and suffers from the same problem. I'd give it a 7.5/10. It's a game that does nothing wrong, but there were so many interesting things that the developers could have done with the environmental design and gameplay (the mid-game twist should have been more than just a 25 health point increase), that you can't help but it feel that it falls short of its potential. I've been wanting to revisit Quake 4 via PC someday, but no matter what I can never get it running well. How it'd work out for you?
I don't even think the 360 port runs at 30fps. So I'm never touching that version ever again.
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Post by Chema on Feb 15, 2024 17:00:06 GMT -5
I beat Quake 4 (PC). Overall, it's a good game. The gunplay and level design are as good as you expect from a Raven Software game, but it suffers from the same issue as Quake 2: the environments are too similar to each other. No matter how excellent the art direction is, the levels eventually start to feel same-y and you just wish for the game to end if it's not going to drop the industrial setting. Thankfully, it's a shorter game than Doom 3, which uses the same engine and suffers from the same problem. I'd give it a 7.5/10. It's a game that does nothing wrong, but there were so many interesting things that the developers could have done with the environmental design and gameplay (the mid-game twist should have been more than just a 25 health point increase), that you can't help but it feel that it falls short of its potential. I've been wanting to revisit Quake 4 via PC someday, but no matter what I can never get it running well. How it'd work out for you?
I don't even think the 360 port runs at 30fps. So I'm never touching that version ever again. I followed the suggestions of PC Gaming Wiki. www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Quake_4In my case, the suggestions for the ini settings did the trick.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 15, 2024 23:34:14 GMT -5
That's a great reference for a lot of games. It's gotten me up and running in quite a few instances where I have original discs and don't want to shell out for GOG (if they're on there at all).
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Post by anayo on Feb 25, 2024 12:41:42 GMT -5
toeiThanks for pointing Dick Tracey out to me. I’d have never thought such a movie licensed game was worth playing. Have you seen the 1990 Dick Tracey movie it’s based on? The story isn’t the best, but the visuals are over the top, with lavish matte paintings, miniatures for establishing shots of the city, grotesque makeup effects for the gangsters, and a flamboyant color palette. I watched it on an old video tape, but I kinda want to find it on blu-ray now. ChemaI remember trying out Quake 4 on my cousin’s XBOX 360 when it was new. At the time it looked quite shiny and HD. But I haven’t been interested in playing it since it became dirt cheap and easy to run on potato hardware. I view the Quake games kind of like The Matrix movies, since I only really like the first one.
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Post by toei on Feb 25, 2024 21:25:12 GMT -5
anayo Licensed games made by companies like Sega, Capcom, Konami and a few others are usually worth looking into. Pretty sure that's how I found it, just digging into lists of Sega games looking for anything I'd missed. I saw the movie VHS when I was a very young kid, and I remember being aware of the character from that movie back then. But it wasn't one of those movies that made a strong impression for me. We probably only watched it once and I don't remember anything about it except the grotesque makeup and colors. I can't say those characters appeal to me visually in live-action form, they look like Prohibition-era Power Rangers villains. But it's got Al Pacino, and I wonder how they handled the old-fashioned detective stuff... I could maybe rewatch it one day.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 2, 2024 17:18:09 GMT -5
Shin Megami Tensei IV (3DS) - 2013 68h56m Level 82. St: 25, Dx: 143, Ma: 200, Ag: 93, Lu: 92 ~45 Challenge Quests ~266 Demon Compendium Chaos Ending
SMT4 is an absolute slam dunk of maximum JRPG dopamine. It's up there among the best I've played in the last decade, alongside its father SMT3, all the great DQ games I've been hitting up, the Front Mission series, Phantasy Star 4, Vagrant Story, you name it... an absolute must play for any of fans of the genre. Mainstream journalists crying about turn based being outdated or dead throughout the later generations could not be more wrong than ever.
Without going into much detail because the unexpected revelations throughout this journey hit me so good, this game has some huge twists. Not just in plot but even world design and mechanically in ways. Kind of like how some of the DQ games have some giant curve balls after some of their big arcs and evolve into something far more. The first dozen hours are grueling and harder than other SMT's I've played in ways, although I'm not sure if the bosses were quite as brick walling as SMT3 was at times. But anyone playing SMT4 for their first SMT would be in for a rude awakening. Like other mainline SMT's, the Press Turn system is in play here and hitting enemies with their weaknesses is typically what you want to go for and what makes you win against bosses. This isn't to say the rest of the 50+ hour journey was a breeze. Hardly that, one mob and bad luck could still have me sent to the grave and the Game Over screen rolling up. You had to be on your toes the whole game and I appreciate the challenge with SMT's in that way. SMT3 is pretty much a 10/10 in my book. So what does SMT4 do differently, perhaps even better? I liked the modern SMT QoL change here in being able to manually pick which skills I want to bring over from one demon to another during fusion. This was randomized in SMT3 to an extent, you could just back out of the menu's and go back in for it to change up until you got what you wanted. I got so addicted to the combat in SMT3 and fusing stuff that I eventually discovered that on my own, apparently they change that in the remaster haha. Maybe the one and only good change. From there I'm going to say that SMT4's story/characters and OST are even better than SMT3. As far as I'm concerned this is the best SMT OST of them all. And another one of those rare JRPG's where battle themes change depending on certain areas, keeping it fresh. There's a good dozen battle/boss themes here and they were all amazing. I also really loved Guns coming back, which I've seen in my sampling of the older SNES games. Guns are Dex based, you can equip them with status effect bullets or certain elements, get special Skills that hit multiple or full screens. A Gun build would be entirely viable, notice how little my STR stats were. So I focused on Magic and then Guns/Dex. It was kind of fun getting 5 stat points to spend per level up too instead of 1. The game is just absolutely dripping with atmosphere. It seriously takes me back to the magic of pre-rendered backdrops on the PSX. There is so much soul put into the backgrounds and sprite work here. While the 3D environments are more detailed than SMT3's. The demon designs themselves are incredible. Even some Kaman Rider artist who sadly passed away had done a lot of the designs here. When you get to level 50+ it just looks like you're riding with nothing but boss characters. The main setting is very cyberpunk, contrast to SMT3 feeling Mad Max-esque/post apocalyptic. SMT4's world is decayed and dangerous, falling apart, but a bit more lived in. It's wild how you can eventually have up to 24 demons in your party too. Did you read that right? Yes, a two dozen demon roster. This is probably why I could get stuck in the menus for a deluge of minutes as time sapped away, just looking at all the demons I could fuse, this and that. It might be a sigh of relief if Strange Journey or the next few I play are more restrictive again. But SMT4 letting me manage a whole faction worth of demons is another cool unique thing about it. Now it's SMT at its core and they're similar, but the structure and flow of SMT4 vs SMT3 is extremely different in a way. I would say SMT4 is like a big exploratory kind of adventure. 99% of the land mass outside of a few small NPC areas is dangerous and filled with enemies, so that remains. But you're exploring a big overworld with multiple locations that lead into bigger spacious maps throughout the game. What I'm getting at... it doesn't feel as much as a "dungeon crawler" in some sense like SMT3 was. Where each location was a really meticulous, boxy/square grid based classic dungeon filled with traps and tricks, not to mention the huge Labyrinth. SMT4 is still hardcore compared to the genre norm but yeah. Maybe some of this makes sense, it's just a different approach in level design and I was cool with it for the most part, but did long for some labyrinthine classic dungeons after awhile. There are a few in ways, but nothing quite like SMT3 or the others. Now what I've played of Strange Journey so far, seems to be THE dungeon crawler.
Unlike SMT3 and others, there's no random encounters. But the enemies pop up a lot and are quite fast. You'll be fighting a lot and for the majority of this huge adventure, as one can expect with SMT. If there's a nitpick or two, it's the Challenge Quest system and just general navigation/backtracking. Because the level design is different, the transportation Terminals don't always put you where you want to go later in the game. It gets a little tricky after a long journey to remember which exit to use in a town to get to a certain area in the world map, etc, it's a bit of a cluster. The Challenge Quests are kind of cryptic to complete at times, what triggers them, where to even turn them in. I really didn't like how for some of them you had to "active" them which could only be one at a time. Say there's a building on the world map that's just a single room/arena thing. If you go into it without the right quest activated, you won't know otherwise and nothing happens. Naturally some of the quest descriptions give you hints or tell you exactly what to do, but yeah. It was still kind of a mess in ways. I did 45 which is a lot but definitely skipped a good two dozen or so throughout. My other minor nitpick is a goofier one, because it's hard to really complain about "too much content". But in apparent classic SMT fashion, certain alignment routes can lock you out of content for an entire run. I guess if I don't hate FromSoftware games for this trope, I can't knock on SMT too much. But it's a real bummer when there was a particular character/demon that insists they'll "help" you out later, which means you can eventually fuse and create them. But if you don't do the right route with the decisions, too bad. It's the one thing I looked up after awhile and turns out I locked myself out of this particular demon for this run. The plot swings hard in the back half and I appreciate that. But even some of the minor side stuff getting locked out is a bummer. I remember in SMT3 I felt punished for doing the entire bonus Labyrinth dungeon and couldn't fight the "true" final boss because I landed on the neutral route. So I 99%'d that game pretty much but couldn't go up against the ultimate challenge. Bummer! Ah well. When I get 50+ hours, heck even 30 of something really enjoyable, I can't complain. But it's a testament to how addicting the gameplay loop here can be. I would have kept doing more late game stuff it it led to results I wanted. So people say its direct sequel Apocalypse has some quality of life refinements. Maybe it'll smooth out some of the kinks. Either way I want to give this like a 9/10 or 9.5. Could be my Retro GOTY right here already locked in for 2024. It will be a very tough one to beat.
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