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Post by Sarge on Apr 12, 2021 20:49:25 GMT -5
I think I'm a mix of playing new games and replaying older games. I go back to the well quite a bit, especially in the 8/16-bit era. I've replayed Chrono Trigger many, many times, for example. The Igavanias always get replayed occasionally as well. But generally, unless it was back in the day, it's mostly short, NES-length games that I replay a lot. Mainly because they're a ton of fun and don't require the sort of time investment an over 30-hour RPG does. EasyHard: I definitely know what you're talking about with maintaining skills. I put in the work to finish Battletoads, and while I'm sure I could finish it again, it would take some time for me to get back to that level. It's very execution-heavy, with lots of gotcha moments that I've forgotten over the years in the later stages. I mean, for crying out loud, I actually had some difficulties in Stage 4 not too long ago. That's embarrassing! Xeogred: If I remember right, Odin was also the only Esper that gave a speed bonus. You didn't want to upgrade it before you were done beefing up your speed... if you upgraded at all. I did out of completion's sake, but in hindsight, I don't know that it's really worth it. paulofthewest: Crystalis is great. I was never good enough to blast through it perhaps that quickly, but I did get to the point that I could rip through the original Zelda in about two hours. Not speed run material, but pretty fast in my opinion! My brother was good enough in Metroid to get the best ending. Xeogred, EasyHard: I'm going to have to play another retro shooter at some point. I really fell in love with the original DOOM, and I already loved Dark Forces and Descent. The three "Ds", I guess.
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Post by Ex on Apr 12, 2021 21:02:22 GMT -5
That just doesn't seem as impressive as mastering BattleToads. It may seem silly but I don't consider "mastering" Battletoads, Contra, Ninja Gaiden or other oldschool hard games like that impressive. Concrete action games like those are 100% repeatable every time you play, meaning there's no surprises, no variation to the enemy placement or level design, no timing differences, no variable AI. That means becoming good at them is just a matter of internalizing the static flow of the experience, then relying on muscle memory. It's not like Demon's Souls for example, where the opponent AI has variation in its attack approach, or a really hard bullet hell shooter where the expelling origin constantly shifts the waves, or a difficult roguelike where the danger situations are never repeating. I definitely value someone's ability to survive evolving challenges, more than I do someone's ability to perform a choreographed climb against a well-mapped mountain. I think I beat Etrian Odyssey 2 four times Are you ever considering the remake? EO3 looks great to me because it has the oceanic sailing and islands theme, I like that stuff. Maybe not the new translations, but the FF6 hacks that resurrect lost content, fix bugs, and remove censorship matter to me. I beat that one on SNES, and I don't recall it having any bullet hell? But that was in 1998. The other night I got a good ways into Gun-Nac on NES. Now that is a fantastic shmup! I'll be beating that one sometime this month.
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Post by Sarge on Apr 12, 2021 21:17:56 GMT -5
I guess I'm a little more impressed by it, because in a lot of ways, it's like people that master a particular sport. The grind doesn't appeal to us all, but to some, that incremental feeling of constantly getting better and better is pretty addictive. While I don't really do it for video games (at least not explicitly), I definitely did that in my younger days when I would shoot basketball for hours on end trying to get better.
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Post by toei on Apr 12, 2021 22:03:55 GMT -5
EasyHard I played around with OBS a bit, it's gonna work. Simple and straightforward. Thanks for the rec. I actually tried using ZSNES's antique AVI recording option first, but you either end up with a horrible compressed mess or enormous files that break off into separate parts every 3 minutes or so. -- I was good at Double Dragon 3 NES when I was playing it - didn't need to spam the hurricane kick (which has its limits, anyway), didn't die. Comix Zone, too. But I would definitely need some time to get back to that level of skill, especially with the first.
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Post by EasyHard on Apr 12, 2021 22:44:28 GMT -5
Ex Yeah, I'm planning to play the remake of EO2, along with the rest of the series. Etrian Odyssey actually looms very large in my mind, despite having so many entries that I need to get around to. I like that I have this JRPG series that I love in my metaphorical back pocket. It gives me a sense that I don't need to worry about whether I should take a chance on this or that marginal looking turn based JRPG when I still got EO right there.
RE: shmups I didn't mean to say that UN Squadron was a bullet hell, I meant to say that my love for the shmup genre is heavily skewed towards two camps: doujin-style bullet hells and 8/16 bit shmups. I mentally categorize the rest the shmup genre as "arcade style" bullet hells (basically stuff that resembles Cave, Toaplan, Psikyo, etc.) that I've never glomed onto. RE FF6: I guess it depends on what you hope to get out of removing the censorship and bugs. You can certainly patch the SNES rom to remove the graphical edits, but that's probably not what was vexing you into making a tough decision.
When it comes to the notorious algorithm bugs, my personal bias is that it doesn't really matter. Playing a bug free version holds little appeal to me since I don't think you can really make FF6 "difficult" or "not easily broken in half" by fixing everything, so it is still going to be my responsibility to play in fun or creative ways. I admit my bias comes from having invested so much into the original version when that was all we had.
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Post by Ex on Apr 12, 2021 23:20:28 GMT -5
I admit my bias comes from having invested so much into the original version when that was all we had. I understand where you are coming from. It's just when I go back to replay an old game from my childhood, the idea that I'm playing a slightly improved or altered version of it is more appealing. I'm not big on pure retreads of things I've already done, been there, seen that. I realize that's a -me- thing, as most folks tend to not mind replaying the exact same experiences over and over. I don't slight anyone for it, but if given the chance I like to remix the past a bit.
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Post by Xeogred on Apr 13, 2021 3:10:13 GMT -5
Xeogred : If I remember right, Odin was also the only Esper that gave a speed bonus. You didn't want to upgrade it before you were done beefing up your speed... if you upgraded at all. I did out of completion's sake, but in hindsight, I don't know that it's really worth it. Xeogred , EasyHard : I'm going to have to play another retro shooter at some point. I really fell in love with the original DOOM, and I already loved Dark Forces and Descent. The three "Ds", I guess. Yup, he transformed into Raiden and that just gave +2 to Strength per level up. I don't recall Odin being very useful to actually use, but that rare +1 Speed was very useful heh.
Plutonia AD is a real hidden gem though, no one talks about it. It's only 5 maps and made by a single person so it has a much clearer vision. I have written in my wad notes "REALLY, REALLY GOOD. These are some of the best levels I've played." I think I found it when searching the doomworld forums. Still very difficult, but because the monster counts are way, way down and the traps are more reasonable it encourages the player to treat it like a serious challenge that you are going to work on and get through (instead of cheating to various degrees).
I'll have to look into that one. Have you tried TNT Revilution? I really enjoyed that one.
I hate how Steam had an update for Doom 2 once or twice since Eternal came out. Stupid new Betheseda splash screen and messing up my custom folders... but deleting the video folders worked and I could still copy/paste my old folder. Now there was another update so I'll have to do that again. I still want Steam to track my play time of Doom 2, but also through GZDoom hopefully...
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Post by EasyHard on Apr 13, 2021 7:40:07 GMT -5
Xeogred Nope, I haven't played TNT Revilution. I'll be sure to check it out though.
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Post by Xeogred on Apr 13, 2021 14:44:54 GMT -5
Xeogred Nope, I haven't played TNT Revilution. I'll be sure to check it out though.
My last posts were thoughts from Revilution haha. But yeah not a lot of DOOM heads here. I poke around Doomworld sometimes.
If you don't love TNT like most (I'm a rare fan I think, probably like it more than Plutonia. Even though I'll acknowledge TNT is very uneven haha), Revilution is just a good megawad with a lot of techbases that I dig. Like I joked in that thread there, I'm not sure what the design theme or personality trait of TNT was to try and make a sequel to... but yeah Revilution is just a good megawad on its own. We seem to have some different tastes in Doom though so who knows what you'll think.
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Post by paulofthewest on Apr 20, 2021 18:51:57 GMT -5
Well just for the record (as if that matters) I played Diablo II again to see how it was. The online community is still there, but (as I think Ex put it) the level grind is just flat out boring now. I think the situation is that Diablo II was in the right place (pseudo online) and came out at the right time. If it was 5 years earlier the technology wasn't there. Five years later, it would have been too late (something else would have taken its place.) So, I'm going to pass on the remaster and keep the happy memories. To clear my mind I popped in House of the Dead 2 & 3 ( my Wii component cable in so I got to test it.) Shooting zombies is way more fun.
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