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Post by toei on Nov 23, 2021 23:34:04 GMT -5
Nightshade is basically Shinobi 2 in my mind, so when I speak of PS2 Shinobi I mean both games.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 24, 2021 0:01:03 GMT -5
Ah, gotcha. Makes sense.
I still forever associate Shinobi, Shattered Soldier, and Rygar in my mind. They came out very close to each other and were all reviewed in the same issue of Game Informer back in the day. If memory serves, Shinobi got an 8, Shattered Solder got an 8.25, and Rygar got a 9. I'd probably dicker a little bit with that 8, but I think Rygar was indeed the best of those three.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 24, 2021 0:13:23 GMT -5
Ah you're talking PS2 Rygar. I played that game and thought it was pretty cool too, it's really faded from my memory in ways though. I just recall it kind of doing the God of War-styled format years before and not getting much attention or credit. Wonder if it holds up, still looks pretty fun to me. Outside of that walking animation/speed and the loud stomps. Dang you can see the DMC/Onimusha influence oozing from this.
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Post by Ex on Nov 24, 2021 0:36:48 GMT -5
Rygar PS2 is still a white whale for me. Many years ago, I got to the final boss, but couldn't beat it. I bet I could now. It is a great game though.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 24, 2021 12:24:05 GMT -5
Yeah, I remember people that didn't know about it being like, "man, this is a God of War ripoff." Uh, no, definitely not. But yeah, it takes some DMC or Onimusha, although I think the exploration elements are a bit more pronounced than those two. It also got a port to the Wii that wasn't very well received. The main character redesign was definitely doofy - it just didn't fit the rest of the atmosphere - but outside of that I'm pretty sure it's a pretty similar experience on Wii.
Speaking of Rygar, the NES game is also a really solid exploratory platformer. No, it's not as polished as some other games, but if you want something to scratch that Metroidvania itch, you can do a lot worse.
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Post by Ex on Nov 24, 2021 13:44:10 GMT -5
Rygar, the NES game is also a really solid exploratory platformer. I agree, it's pretty great. I did manage to beat that one legit as a kid. It has that same flaw as Blaster Master, in that Rygar is a fairly long game you're expected to finish in one sitting. Meaning there's no password or save system. As a kid I had the free time and moreover the patience for such shenanigans. These days savestates would be in order.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 24, 2021 14:09:42 GMT -5
Very much so. Once you know what to do, it's not too long, but it's definitely a pretty substantial experience just like Blaster Master. Both those games really needed a password system.
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Post by EasyHard on Nov 24, 2021 14:28:13 GMT -5
EYE: Divine Cybermancy - fun FPS shooting, mostly in cyberpunk-style locales, but it's obviously a low budget game and hard to recommend. Still, I was entertained until what I think was the last mission which is where playing felt like a chore so I dumped the game there. If I remember correctly, that mission took place across a sequence of desert areas with lots of terrain to walk through while a climax was supposedly happening around me. Everything about the story and mission objectives are poorly communicated (no voice acting or cutscenes, I think), which made this mission more unbearable.
Aporia: Beyond the Valley - 1st person Myst-like game, although more atmospheric, less emphasis on puzzles, and 100x more Cry Engine visual effects. I bought because I thought it might be fun to play after the Witness. Ended up abandoning it hard after an hour or two. I'm also very sick of the game idea (often found in indie games) that goes like "there are no NPCs, no towns, and no real plot, but the ~iMpOrTaNt StORy~ is going to be told without words via cave paintings and pictographs left behind by the ancient civilization/your tribe's ancestors/the gods/whatever.
One more, from ages ago: I dumped Killer 7 in the final mission, which judging by a longplay means there was probably about 30 minutes left in the game. Talk about learning a lesson about games that are a chore to play. I should have given up earlier. Killer 7 is the only game I know where you have to watch a god damn MOVIE (cutscene) in order to read text boxes. You can't press a button to advance to the next text box, because that button would end the cutscene. Most of these text box cutscenes have absolutely nothing going on in them. You just suffer through glacially slow and deliberately unintelligible voice acting that slowly mumbles each line of text before the next subtitle appears. Even after over a decade, just talking about this again brings back my frustration...arg.
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Post by Ex on Nov 24, 2021 14:34:24 GMT -5
You just suffer through glacially slow and deliberately unintelligible voice acting that slowly mumbles each line of text before the next subtitle appears Reminds me of another Suda51 game I dumped: People who praise Flower Sun and Rain either didn't play it very long, or are secretly hoping to troll others into suffering through it. I wised up fairly early on and dumped it with no remorse.
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Post by anayo on Nov 25, 2021 12:18:55 GMT -5
This is a cool topic and I have a lot to post about here. Ultra Pinball: The Lost ContinentI didn't like the way the ball handled. Army MenI didn't like the way the main character handled. Cyberspeed: The Future's Ultimate Grand PrixThis game sucks. The cut scenes are unintentionally funny, though. HexenI tried playing this in the late 2000s. I loved its MS-DOS soundscape and aesthetics but despised its gameplay. I basically wanted medieval, fantasy-themed Doom, but Hexen's pool of weapons is far less vibrant and the dungeons were way too long. Doom has the sense to limit its dungeons to a certain scope. I don't want to wander across an entire world map with multiple dungeons to flip a switch or find a key in one dungeon that does something in another dungeon. I earnestly tried to get into this, spending hours progressing through several dungeons before turning it off one day and never coming back to it. Star Wars Dark ForcesI gave up on this one in 2020 for mostly the same reasons as Hexen. Dark Forces's levels were far too sprawling and massive. The first couple stages were as convoluted and labyrinthine as stages 3/4 through Ultimate Doom. Indycar RacingThis game's MS-DOS vibes charmed the heck out of me, but I couldn't figure out how to get music working at all, nor could I handle my racer smoothly enough to not incessantly skid against the racetrack walls. The latter would always cause me to come through in last place. Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver 2 Get N' DirtyThis game was stupidly charming, mostly because I belonged to this game's target age demographic when it came out. But the framerate would often go into the toilet and cause me to lose. Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries: Titanium EditionI love all of the MW2 games, but the Titanium Edition of MW2 Mercenaries is just broken. It let me play 75% or so of the campaign then kept crashing on one level. Once I downgraded to the normal version of Mercenaries then it worked just fine. After researching this version online I learned that other players experienced similar issues. MW2 Mercenaries is great but don't waste your money or time with the Titanium Edition. UnrealEveryone who experienced Unreal when it came out praises it to high heaven. To be fair it does try to do more than Doom and Duke 3D with environmental storytelling and loftier themes. But I just don't like Unreal at all. It's puzzles were banal, the weapons unmemorable, and the environments and enemies forgettable. It's trying to do a lot of stuff that Half Life would later do 100x better and I experienced Half Life first. It also has this "student film" sort of quality like I could tell the guys who made it thought it was the coolest thing ever. But unlike other late 90's FPSes like Sin (1997) it's not campy enough to work as unintentional comedy. It has this weighty, somber tone that just comes across like an inflated sense of self-importance. I found the puzzles to be un-user-friendly, as though they expected me to go through a lot of personal inconvenience to figure out how to proceed. It felt like Unreal's creators were overestimating my willingness to wade through cryptic bullshit to progress in their game. The final straw for me was this one puzzle on a ship where I had to hop around multiple floors to fire up a fusion reactor. I kept running around in circles banging my head against the wall, retreading the same identical-looking corridors over and over again until finally I threw in the towel out of frustration. If you're nostalgic about Unreal because you played it when it was new then more power to you. But I hate it.
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