4847 replies to this topic

[The Satellite]

Lol, I could get sick of the series if I play all of those Castlevania in a row xD Those are so redundant...  With SOTN, Circle, Aria and Ecclesia it would be way more than enough. Good luck.

Thanks, but don't worry, I intend to take breaks between them.

[Eddy]

I finally began playing Majora's Mask 3D after such a long time of waiting for Joel or my dad to finish it. But yeah, I'm already approaching the swamp and so far, the game seems to play a lot more smoothly than it did on the N64 or GameCube. I especially love the fact that the bird statues can let you save and not quit the game at the same time. That's a big plus for me since I hated that in the original. I also like how the clock at the bottom of the top screen tells you the time rather than a sun or moon just spinning across on a semi-circle. It definitely seems easier to tell the time.

 

Looking forward to playing more of this 3D remake after what I've seen so far.

[Twilight Knight]

I mostly play Minecraft nowadays, though I haven't even played that in the last week.

 

I also played Ori and the Blind Forest a while back, that was a really great game, sadly it was rather short.

 

I can hardly call myself a gamer these days.

[SpacemanDan]

I got back into Xenoblade Chronicles. I'm about 15-ish hours in and have more or less stopped caring about sidequests. XD I'll pick them up and if I complete them along the way - cool. If not, no big deal. I've been really enjoying it otherwise though.

 

I've also been playing a neat little game called Mystik Belle. It's a metroidvania primarily. However, if anyone remembers the Dizzy series, it also plays like that where you find various objects in the world that will be used to solve puzzles and the like. I'm having a good time with it so far. It can be tricky, but things so far have made sense and flowed together nicely. :3

[The Satellite]

I lied.

 

On two fronts.

 

First front: I didn't go back to Wind Waker.

 

Second front: I went back to the first Castlevania.

 

I couldn't allow myself to leave it sit. So I went through it. I had new ideas. I cleared everything. Even Dracula, whose teleportation could be bullshit. Done. Game over. It's all behind me now. And verdict? I'd like the game more if there were fewer Fleamen and the controls weren't utter garbage. That isn't a challenge, that's just fake difficulty; I don't even mind the "can only whip in one direction" thing, it's just that being locked into a specific jump arc that you are absolutely unable to influence is completely asinine.

 

The game strikes gold in the soundtrack department though. Seriously. The tunes are superb and lend themselves wonderfully to the atmosphere. Couldn't ask for a better vampire-killing soundtrack.

[Air Luigi]

And that's where the importance of taking the appropriate subweapon is important. Don't use just the whip. Believe it or not, you can beat the game easily if you take the correct subweapon with you without any hits. But anyway, Castlevania III is way more interesting, with branching paths and more characters.

 

I'm battling through THE BATTLE OF OLYMPUS. Fuck the grinding, now I remember why I promised to not go through this pain again xD The grinding of olives is a shame, because is a really good exploration game with a nice progression, open world and nice use of clues. It's usually bashed as a AOL clone, but it's really very different (it plays more like a metroidvania with AOL combat mechanics).

[Air Luigi]

I finished Olympus! thank god there is a trick to make the grinding more quick and manageable. If someone want a AOL style game with use of clues and an authentic openworld, this game worth a visit! Quite hard, quite sweet. But try to check for the trick to make the grinding more forgivable xD

Edited by Air Luigi, 28 July 2015 - 05:43 PM.

[The Satellite]

Wind Waker complete. Still as awesome as always. Next Zelda game is Four Swords Adventures, a quite underrated one in my opinion. Or Harmony of Dissonance happens instead, one or the other. >.> <.<

[The Satellite]

Actually it was neither, Castlevania: Bloodlines happened instead. The only Castlevania game ever made for the Genesis... or Mega Drive abroad. The game itself also goes by a different name abroad, known as "Castlevania: The New Generation" in Europe and simply "Vampire Killer" in Japan. And it seemingly attempts to tie the Castlevania story in with the Bram Stoker Dracula novel itself. Well, sort of... the only real link is that the main whip-wielding hero is named John Morris and is presumably the son of the novel's Quincey Morris. That's about it, because the rest is standard Castlevania monster madness.

 

This game was made after Super Castlevania IV, yet apparently they thought those pesky control improvements were too good for this game, so they went back to the old style controls the NES games had. ... sort of. Jumping is still locked in straight-up or a single arc, but if you jump, you can whip diagonally-up or straight down. ... why bother removing whipping in eight directions then? Or taking out being able to control your jump? There were some spots in the game that I found annoying only because of the limited jump controls, but I guess that's standard Classicvania.

 

On the whole though it's actually overall an easy game for a Castlevania. ... except for a certain convention the entire rest of the series up until this point had that they also apparently decided was too good for this game: Infinite continues. Now, you only have three continues. Why?! That's literally the only thing keeping this game being "difficult." So I used an infinite continues cheat, because apparently I have to cheat to restore a series standard. What I didn't expect was that continuing didn't take you to the beginning of the stage like in previous games, but to the last checkpoint you reached in that stage; I guess the continue points were generous because they were limited, but still, limited is bullshit. In retrospect I could have made it more "authentic" by setting a save state at the beginning of a stage and reloading it after losing all lives, but eh, too late now; I'd probably consider it less easy if I had to redo the entire stage after a continue.

 

Overall though, stiff controls and limited continues aside, it was a solid game. Maybe someday I'll go back and give it that "authentic" treatment I mentioned, but I wanted to try the game out. I think that might honestly be my favorite Dracula fight as well.

[Air Luigi]

Limited continues or not... you don't win really a Castlevania game (or other games that used continues) until you win it with only one continue. And about the 8-way whip... the weird one is IV xD As I said in a earlier post, the 8-way whip destroyed the strategy of use the subweapons. I love IV, but it isn't classic Castlevania gameplay. Every Castlevania is different:

-2 is a open world metroidvania

-3 has branching paths and multiple characters

-4 has the 8-way whip

-Rondo has ton of secrets and easter eggs, and CD music.

-Bloodline is a game about gimmicks and you travel through Europe.

 

The stiff controls of classic Castlevania gameplay was always on purpose... It's like complaining that PC strategy games are slow and you want more action in them xD You can like it or not, but you are missing the point if you don't get why it works that way. In a way, it's like a puzzle, there is always a way to breeze through the game. Research a bit how other people play those games, and you will appreciate the games even more

Edited by Air Luigi, 29 July 2015 - 08:23 PM.

[The Satellite]

I get the point, it just doesn't make the controls any less irritating to me.

 

Shifting gears entirely. While going out for dinner, stopped by the local game store, left with Donkey Kong Country Returns and Perfect Dark. "But TS, don't you already own DKCR?" Yes! On 3DS. Which only has 30fps. The Wii version has 60fps. And also horrid controls, but there exists a controller hack I'll be using, possibly tweaking to use the 3DS/Tropical Freeze controls if they're not exact. Either way, I've been meaning to play it again, and in 60fps, it'll probably go smoother this time, even though I'll miss out on the 3DS version's extras, but that's a small loss.

 

Perfect Dark I've never played before, and I'll be playing that first. Often proclaimed as one of the best shooters of all time, and indeed possibly the best shooter on the N64, I'm anxious to see how Rare delivered this time.

[Air Luigi]

I get the point, it just doesn't make the controls any less irritating to me.

 

 

I started to play Castlevania with the metroidvanias, so I understand your feel. Best advice than I can give... Try to master one of the classics, when It becomes second nature, all will "click" into place. You will feel a great accomplishment and you will understand better all the design and how it works. Multiple playthroughs in these games are the key. Today, majority of games are designed in a way that you will feel good playing them in little time, but it's a false feel because they are designed to a win or win scenario with minimal effort. Retro games are the opposite, maybe in your first play you don't get how a game works and you don't have much fun with it, but in the long shot, they are much more addictive and fun to master.

 

Btw, I finished Shinobi (arcade) today with a single credit *.* I will try Rastan (arcade) now.

Edited by Air Luigi, 29 July 2015 - 08:55 PM.

[The Satellite]

Silly me, Perfect Dark won't let you play single-player without an expansion pak! I'll get back to this one. Instead I went to DKCR and the controller hack works perfectly. Though I wonder if I can edit it somehow to map running and everything else to the same button, or if that causes issues... Otherwise I have to get used to R for rolling/etc.

[Nicholas Steel]

Wait, what is the controller hack you speak of for DKCR? How are you associating the motion controls with buttons?

[The Satellite]

Using Homebrew and Gecko.

 

http://www.pixlbit.c...troller_support

 

Unfortunately the download there doesn't work anymore, so you'd have to get the files elsewhere or figure out how to convert the given codes to a .gct file.