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Post by toei on May 17, 2024 1:39:35 GMT -5
I "beat" DD Crew. I normally don't count hardcore credit-feeding as a real beat, but I don't believe it's really possible to beat this game legitimately and solo. I know it's not worth trying, anyway. It's a 1991 arcade beat-'em-up by Sega, so I would have expected it to be good, but it's so broken that I wonder whether it actually came out commercially in the state that we can emulate it today. It feels more like a prototype. Or like Double Dragon 3 arcade, maybe.
Every 2D beat-'em-up works because of an idea that really doesn't make sense - that if 4 guys are in front of you and you throw a punch, it's going to hit all 4. That's how you're able to fight all these guys by yourself. But DD Crew is more realistic, I guess, because it doesn't work that way. Hits only hit one enemy at a time. You also can't just walk up to an enemy to grab them, and then throw them on enemies; the only time you can do that is once an enemy is down. Then you can grab them and throw them onto others, though for some reason it won't work twice in a row on the same enemy. You regular attacks don't really combo in any normal way, either. One-on-one against a regular enemies, they mostly do the job, but you never know when it's going to knock them down. It's not a set number of hits. Up+attack and down+attack produce different hits, and sometimes specific attacks work better. Sometimes they just don't hit and you don't know why. So the only method that works is this: jump kick to knock one enemy down, grab him, throw him on some others. You're still going to get stabbed 700 times, as it's harder to do than it sounds. Only use normal hits when there's just one guy left, or if the rest of the crowd's at the other end of the screen.
Bosses are even weirder. Some of them are almost always invincible, ie most of their frames of movement, no matter what they look like they're doing, disables their hitboxes. You can't combo them at all, either. You just gotta keep trying to hit them and now and then a hit will count. It's fucking weird. Others have weapons and will kill you in two hits, but at least your hits work against them. The music is a really bad attempt at early '90s hip-hop beats, with voice samples. The main one you hear through seemingly '90% of the game is a rip-off of a track from one of the 3 Ninjas sequels, I'm pretty sure. Although maybe this came out first?
The graphics are cool. That gritty Sega look from that era. There's these animations of the bosses' faces when they show up in a realistic, almost digitized way, and they all seem to be based on actors. The final boss is a yakuza with two swords, so that's cool. He's based on the Japanese actor Mikio Narita, who's played a lot of yakuza (and evil samurai). Too bad the gameplay is so rotten. A real waste of visuals.
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Post by Ex on May 17, 2024 10:03:53 GMT -5
There's these animations of the bosses' faces when they show up in a realistic  Never heard of this one until you've reviewed it just now. Turns out Kurt wrote an article on this one: www.hardcoregaming101.net/d-d-crew/"At its base, D.D. Crew is just blithely mediocre, and there’s not much reason to play it when many other brawlers offer so much more than just eye candy with random park bombs." |
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Post by toei on May 17, 2024 12:29:51 GMT -5
Good review. That scaffolding level is something else, it really does seem to go on for 15 minutes. It's probably as long as the first 3 stages together, and it's the least interesting visually. This game really had some incompetent game design going on.
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Post by Sarge on May 17, 2024 14:42:37 GMT -5
Ex While I appreciate Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, they're not quite my platonic ideal of a Zelda game. Twilight is the best-balanced of the 3D entries. I still have a huge soft spot for Skyward Sword, and I also have to admit that Ocarina, when experienced through the 3DS remake, is also great. That's probably my 1-2-3 for 3D Zelda. Well, retro, I'm not sure if BotW or TotK would displace Ocarina or not. Funnily enough, my most recent amazing experience in that genre would be God of War 2018, but that ain't retro yet.  I would not put that above either Skyward or Twilight, but I probably would take it over Ocarina.
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Post by Ex on May 17, 2024 14:47:32 GMT -5
While I appreciate Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, they're not quite my platonic ideal of a Zelda game. Well I was writing more in regards of bonesnapdeez 's "peak of 3D action-adventure / hack and slash / modern ARPG" in totality, which to me meant all generations, not just retro. So I was wondering if you thought TotK supersedes TP in this regard. But if you think TP is still the best 3D Zelda, then hey cool I've already beaten the best 3D Zelda there is.  (Regardless, I intend to play BotW this year, but I'll talk about it on the modern side when that happens.) |
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Post by Sarge on May 17, 2024 15:15:53 GMT -5
Yep, I do indeed think Twilight is the pinnacle of the 3D Zelda series at a minimum. I'm trying to think if I've played a better 3D hack-and-slash/AA. It's hard to actually quantify that kind of stuff (as you know!) because different games handle different aspects better or worse. I think there are games that handle combat better than Twilight, even if that game's no slouch, but the exploration is really hard to beat.
I can absolutely see the argument for Demon's/Dark Souls, even if it's not quite my choice. Wholly unique titles, but perhaps a little too stressful moment-to-moment for me to put at the top of my list. Extremely strong world-building in DS, though, which is the only one I've actually finished.
I'm honestly not sure where you're going to come down on BotW. In some ways, I think it will very much appeal to your sensibilities, and in some it may utterly grate. I also think Tears changes the formula in very profound ways, despite using the same foundation. I mentioned this elsewhere, but Breath requires you to engage with the environment a lot more - the simple act of navigating the world can be a challenge, and it really doesn't hold your hand much at all. Very anti-Zelda in that regard. Tears has much more of a "pop in from above" setup that really shortens travel time and lets you take part in dramatically more content, but being able to do that really pulls the focus away from overworld navigation.
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Post by toei on May 18, 2024 6:56:19 GMT -5
For a while now I've been trying to beat Taito's Rambo III arcade game (no connection to the Genesis game by Sega). Most of it's unusually easy for a 1989 arcade title - it's very easy to beat the first level without dying once, and then in levels 2 and 3, even without much practice, you'll either die once or not at all. The last two are a little harder, but still nothing crazy. But the final boss - which is really a huge, insane wave of foot soldiers, tanks, jeeps, fighter aircrafts and who knows what else - is super hard, and using a credit there restarts the battle. I'd tried dozens of times, but could never win. I finally got a win, though I wasn't able to replicate it after (so far). It's all so chaotic that it's hard to reproduce the same steps.
I'd say it's one of Taito's better games, and it's ahead of its time in some ways. It's a rail-shooter that starts with a side-scrolling level very similar to Cabal, then switches to pseudo-3D, forward movement by level 2. While you're running forward automatically, there are times later on when you can hop behind obstacles to stop moving forward and take cover for a moment (from basic shots, at least, but not bombs or grenade). Level 3 is on a motorcycle and is the most fun, since on top of the shooting you're zigzagging around obstacles and even leaping in the air at points. Level 4 is a cave, where blowing up barrels or landmines will cause debris to fall from the roof, which can kill enemies or hurt you depending how far you are.
For that final boss, the key seems to be to unlock the right powerups at the right time by killing the right enemies in the right way. But there's so much going on that I absolutely don't see a pattern for the most important power-ups - the full health and missile refills. On my winning run, I was about to die when I got both almost at once. I saw right away that I had a real chance that time, so I quickly (but carefully) used the arrows to take down a few of the worst enemies from the end of the wave (planes and tanks), and for the first time, made it to the final, special fighter aircraft with most of my health (I'll reach it now and then, very unreliably, but always near death). There are a bunch of weapons on that plane that fire different types of projectiles, and somehow I was able to take out the worst ones quickly and get in a decent rhythm avoiding shots. I was still very near death with just one or two parts of the plane still going when I got a single extra explosive arrow and a mini health refill, so I shot it at the right target right away, then managed to destroy it just barely. But it still feels like a lot of it was luck, or the right instincts kicking in on a whim. I still don't really know how to beat that boss.
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Post by Xeogred on May 18, 2024 21:56:52 GMT -5
I'm convinced you guys all secretly formed a pact to not tell me about the final boss of Y's being one of the thickest nastiest slices of total bullshit.  Oh and of course this Mushihimesama Black Edition Extreme Expert Ultra Mode boss is tied to refresh rates for the PC/modern versions. The monitor I played this on is at 165hz, thankfully I could manually set it to 59 for the game. But still, took another 30 tries after that "fix?" I think the most annoying thing in this game though is the Health Potion. What were they thinking? Here's a potion players can use in the field/dungeons... but not in boss battles. This final boss was pure luck.
The mirror maze was also a little infuriating. I finally just looked up a few archaic things about the Darm Tower in spots like that. I did wonder after a point, maybe going back into the same mirror would teleport you somewhere else. But it just had to be THAT special unique one. These devs were trolling. It's not the 90's where Y's 1 is the only new game I own or have rented to play for the week and have days to spend on it, so I wanted to move on. lol
Hopefully Y's 2 refined some stuff and has less BS?
Overall, I had a lot of fun and this only ran about 5 hours. I'm guessing that's like 10+ hours shorter than the original version. I'll maybe skim some videos. It's cool how this Chronicles+ version has three different OST's you can toggle whenever. I though the sprite work was a 10/10 look too. I'm not sure how I feel about Adol maxing out so quickly at level 10 though, then the final dungeons are freaking massive but I guess they're just mazey brute force puzzles to get through. It does and doesn't make sense that levels would cap off quickly for a brief JRPG, but yeah. Was missing those level up dopamine hits. I'll wager a lot of the older Y's games are like this though? Adol levels up fast and maxes out when you have that glorious full screen health bar.
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Post by Sarge on May 18, 2024 22:02:28 GMT -5
I've not played through the Chronicles version, but those Ys games are very level-based. Just a couple can turn the game from impossible to a cake walk.
I honestly don't love either of Ys I/II (TGCD version, anyway), but they're still a decent enough time. But the soundtracks are god-tier. Waiting for you to experience what I consider the best track in either game coming up early in Ys II. It's so freaking good.
As for how it plays, I think you're going to find Ys II's approach very different from Ys' focus on bump combat. You'll see what I mean when you get rolling.
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Post by Xeogred on May 18, 2024 22:05:33 GMT -5
Yeah, I noticed a single level made a big difference on the first main boss. But I was maxed out at level 10 by the Abandoned Mines portion probably, so the whole Darm Tower section was just having to brute force it and the final boss. That's maybe where a little grinding and a higher level cap might not have been a bad idea, if another level or two eased up the final boss fight. Eeesh. Can't even fathom how that fight is on anything higher than Normal.
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I would not put that above either Skyward or Twilight, but I probably would take it over Ocarina.
(Regardless, I intend to play BotW this year, but I'll talk about it on the modern side when that happens.)
Oh and of course this Mushihimesama Black Edition Extreme Expert Ultra Mode boss is tied to refresh rates for the PC/modern versions. The monitor I played this on is at 165hz, thankfully I could manually set it to 59 for the game. But still, took another 30 tries after that "fix?" I think the most annoying thing in this game though is the Health Potion. What were they thinking? Here's a potion players can use in the field/dungeons... but not in boss battles. This final boss was pure luck.