Sly 2 is fantastic Emperor. Glad you're enjoying this. Prepare to have the feels by the very end of Sly 2 as something tragic happens, won't spoil it but it's pretty sad and Sly 3 builds off of it in the beginning so there's continuity.

Sept 19, 2023 21:03:10 GMT Emperor said:

I reckon one more 2-3 hour session will be enough for me to finish the game.

It was decreed, and it was done.

The Airship chapter was lot of fun. Besides the wonderful map design, there was a great variety of missions involving all the characters and their abilities. At first I was confused by a level where you had to "walk" a TNT barrel across the map. Was I supposed to nudge the barrel across by walking into it? No freakin' way. I had to go to YouTube to find the answer. You jump in the barrel, a mechanic similar to the infamous Metal Gear Solid cardboard box. This is not a new mechanic but since it hadn't appeared since about six chapters ago, I forgot about it.

These missions were difficult but fair. I particularly like how generous the game is with dying. Missions have plenty of checkpoints, so if you die during the mission, it resets you at the last checkpoint. The designers could easily have gone the unforgiving route which would have caused me plenty of frustration. The mission before the final boss gives Sly Cooper a temporary super jump, which was a lot of fun to play around with. Nice work.

The final battle is against Neyla controlling Clockwerk, given the awful name Clock-La. It's a multipart battle. The first battle is a plane shooter. Pretty unforgiving, at first it seems like it's impossible to hit Clock-La and she has a couple of seemingly unavoidable attacks. But over time and many deaths I learnt that the hitbox is pretty generous and those attacks can be avoided with a bit of ingenuity. Eventually I defeated her. Part 2 is a run-and-jump level in semi-gravity. It was tough, and not in a good way, but I did it in about a dozen tries so my frustration did not last long. The third part is a mere formality for Bentley and Murray to get some final playtime before the gripping conclusion.

During the struggle Bentley gets crushed under Clock-La's mechanical jaws. He cannot walk, and Murray carries him away from the carnage. Carmelita Fox catches up to the gang. Sly gives himself up to give Murray and Bentley the right to freedom. Murray gives up his uniform as he carries an unconscious Bentley away. Sly acknowledges the emotional damage done to his companions. In more positive news, Sly and Carmelita really hit it off on their helicopter flight. In the end Sly escapes, but now it seems Sly's attration for Carmelita is finally returned. A great way to end the game. I'm excited for the sequel.

Onto Sly Cooper 3: Honor Among Thieves.

Surprisingly tutorial heavy. Not only is there an introduction level, but then there's an explicit tutorial level to explain the basic movement mechanics. It's surprising because the previous two games didn't have any explicit tutorials, it was learn as you play. Sly Cooper doesn't have any new movement tech, but Bentley sure does. Why is that?

The reason is that, after the events of Sly Cooper 2, Bentley has lost the use of his turtle legs and spends his days in a wheelchair. Tragic, but Bentley's technological genius has made it work to his advantage. He now moves faster than ever and has some neat gadgets including a fishing pole with a magnet attached, allowing him to pickpocket almost as efficiently as Sly himself. Not bad.

That is some good writing, an exception in this series because the generally low quality narrative reveals itself very soon. The first mission sees Sly and Bentley travel to Venice, in order to re-recruit Murray, who has become a peaceful guru type figure. Sly ends up encountering Dimitri in prison, Dimitri being the first boss from Sly Cooper 2. Sly agrees to break Dimitri out of jail in exchange for Dimitri revealing Murray. Firstly, why the heck would Dimitri know who Murray is? Secondly, Sly breaks Dimitri out of jail and escapes, only for Murray to immediately pop out right in front of Sly. If that was Dimitri's doing, it wasn't very clear at all, it appeared like a chance encounter. I suppose the only point of that little segment is fan service. I doubt we'll ever see Dimitri again.

That chapter also re-introduces Carmelita Fox who has had a rather unflattering change in voice, a terrible Italian accent. The jury is out on whether this is an intentional character decision because the setting is Venice, or if we're stuck with this quasi-Italian Carmelita for the rest of the game.

Besides that how's the game? Pretty good. Not too different from Sly Cooper 2 so far except they've done away with the collectible bottles, a real shame because I quite enjoyed bottle hunting. What they haven't done away with is grinding gold to buy powerups, in my opinion the worst feature of Sly Cooper 2. The variety of mission types has increased. One of the first missions I played was a furiously fast-paced speedboat shooter. The staggering pace caught me off guard and I died several times in quick succession before my brain adapted. The mission type repeats itself later on. There's also a bizarre mission where Murray rolls into a ball and you have to bounce around the map. It's certainly different, but a lot of fun to play.

The boss fight was quite challenging, in a good way. After the level you can replay the missions with added constraints to get closer to that sweet 100% score. That replaces the bottle collectibles.

Vaguely remember Sly 3, been meaning to do a replay of it.

Enjoy this game while you can because once the gimmick happens of Sly 3 Emperor, you're going to wish you were replaying Sly 2. I feel Sly 3 was the worst of the 4 but even then it's still a solid game but again I played this almost a decade ago.

It does have the best heel to babyface turn though without spoiling it.

My buddy let me borrow his PS2 this weekend and so I FINALLY got to dust off my Madden 05 championship edition last night.

Holy fuck, the nostalgia. Easily the best Madden ever. The soundtrack alone was like taking a time machine back to high school. The training camp mini games, the radio host segments, newspaper articles, all the little in-depth details just make it the best franchise mode had ever been and, sadly, probably will ever be.

I'm super stoked. Already halfway done creating a custom fictional league that I had made when I was just a kid doodling logos and making backstories for Barry Sanders' clones.

Next idea is to make a "Super Bowl To End All Super Bowls" tournament with the 50+ historic teams that are available in-game.

Also, some of these overall ratings are laughable. I started a Bengals career and Jon Kitna is rated at 85. Lmao.

Oct 2, 2023 17:23:30 GMT rad said:

My buddy let me borrow his PS2 this weekend and so I FINALLY got to dust off my Madden 05 championship edition last night.

Holy fuck, the nostalgia. Easily the best Madden ever. The soundtrack alone was like taking a time machine back to high school. The training camp mini games, the radio host segments, newspaper articles, all the little in-depth details just make it the best franchise mode had ever been and, sadly, probably will ever be.

I'm super stoked. Already halfway done creating a custom fictional league that I had made when I was just a kid doodling logos and making backstories for Barry Sanders' clones.

Next idea is to make a "Super Bowl To End All Super Bowls" tournament with the 50+ historic teams that are available in-game.

Also, some of these overall ratings are laughable. I started a Bengals career and Jon Kitna is rated at 85. Lmao.

Man as much of a Sega guy as I am and as cool as the NFL 2K series is and the whole custom retro rosters you can still download for 2K5 its all amazing but to me Madden 05 is the perfect football video game. It probably could get it's own thread. I've recently started editing the All Time rosters with some of the newer guys in there like Mahomes for KC and Jackson for Baltimore etc. 

Madden 06 sucked on next gen consoles when it came out, super buggy/glitchy and lost the vibe that 05 had going, but I scored a copy of it for Gamecube years ago for .99 cents, it's surprisingly good once you get around that weird ass GC controller. It's pretty much an enhanced version of 05 but feels and plays better, idk if it's the faster more steady frame rate compared to the PS2/XBX versions of 05 I'm used to or what but it's a breeze and not too different from 05. 

Madden 2009 for the original XBOX(the last game ever released for the console back in 08) is the master version of that engine, beautiful football game that shits all over the next gen bigger brother ports that PS3/360 got(I remember buying the PS3 version and returning it a week later, buying a Sega Saturn with the store credit I got for it). 

Franchise mode simulating on Madden 05 is always a good time if the internet is down. Always get a kick out of how David Carr and Dominick Davis develop into elite level guys by the end of the 2000's, Carr ends up rated around 95-96 but for some reason he's tough to win rings with, always use him for trade bait once he reaches that level.

I got bored with it one time and decided to play moneyball always making sure I had the lowest salary in the league with the cheapest coaches to make it challenging, I think I made it to a conference Championship once playing that way, you have to be on point with the drafting playing that way(stay away from big money free agents). I learned that it's best to sign your later draft picks to long term deals on the cheap then develop them into starters. It's fun to try to build a team in a certain image you have, for me always love to build an o-line of nothing buy 6'8-300+ pound guys just the biggest freaks you can find in the draft. Then a trio of QB's one scrambler, a pocket passer, and at least 1 older vet. Then a trio of RB's one big power guy, a fast speedster, and a guy with hands that can catch. Same variety with the receiver corps.

I also learned that if you play as bad teams like the Cardinals it will be next to impossible to sign the higher rated free agents because they just don't want to play for you. Very interesting.

Sly Cooper 3's second level is set in Australia. At first the drab aesthetic didn't excite me but the missions played very fluidly indeed. Instead of encouraging exploration through collecting bottles, the trigger points for each mission are located all over the map, and the first mission requires you to hop, jump and climb around.

There's a lot of varieties in the mission types, Murray and Bentley are given more of a chance to shine, and you can tell the developers had a riot coming up with some of these plot types. I speak in particular of the giant Carmelita Fox stomping around the map, and the mission where Sly has to climb her like Shadow of the Colossus. The bar brawl was also a ton of fun, you fight an army of guards taking control of Bentley, Sly and Murray one at a time. They really let loose with these level types and it's paying off more often than not.

The level also introduces the new fourth member of the Cooper gang: The guru. His gimmick is that he can jump on enemies and control their minds. When he does so, they sprint at a speed and erraticness that is hard to handle. Guru missions basically involve possessing enemies and ramming them into things. Blindy I assume this is the gimmick you are talking about? Yeah...it's not good. Would have been OK for one mission but if I'm going to be doing this type of thing over and over again, yikes.

The bonus missions are competling the level missions under time pressure with one exception. The guru's bonus mission is to possess five guards without touching the ground. This is incredibly difficult. Think of it like pulling off a challenging Tony Hawk Pro Skater combo, but with awful controls and suboptimal camera work. I completed all the other bonus missions, it was fun to replay them again, but I'ma skip mister guru. It's not worth the pain to satisfy my completionism.

Oh yeah it suffers from having too many people. It tries to be like the Ocean's series but this doesn't work because you just want to play as Sly or Bentley or Murray. It just becomes a total slog as you move on but am peeled into your thoughts of this game.

Oi Neo Zeed

Have you seen that MyRetroLife channel?

It's a YouTube channel with a bunch of home videos from the 90s, documenting video game purchases and trips to the mall. Apparantly it's set over in your neck of the woods, and has a lot of clips of the Westwood mall. Might be a nice trip down memory lane.

Ocarina of Time

I was so bored the other week, I decided to embark on my annual Zelda playthrough early. Last year was a really thorough playthrough where I beat every sidequest as soon as it became available. This time I went the opposite route and wanted to see how quickly I could beat Zelda, especially after providing Papaya some expert tips.

After running my marathon over several stints I clocked in at...roughly 9 hours.

It was all smooth sailing through the Child Link sections, but in every adult dungeon I'd hit a snag and would lose a decent chunk of time. I also don't know what happened but I completely sucked against the Water, Shadow and Spirit Temple bosses and that caused some headaches too. My two big take-aways is that if I was going to attempt this again was to get an extra bottle for the ice cavern and for insurance and the magic upgrade after the fire temple since Gannondorf and Bongo can be painful without it.

I went on another playthrough and it was all going smoothly until I hit the Spirit Temple. It all started in the Gerudo Training Facility where I got hit by the OHKO move on two seperate occassions. Then I ran out of bombs in the spirit temple and couldn't figure out to proceed through the kill every enemy in the Anubis room. That was a massive time sink as I tried to come up with alternative plans before just restarting. There has to be another way but for the life of me I couldn't think of a back-up strat. I also had to sit through the Sheik/Zelda reveal scene twice because the Like-Like ate my Red Tunic before the Fire portion of Gannon's castle, so RIP. Still, it was a better effort at roughly 8 hours. (I'm using long form YouTube videos as a rough guide and just some background noise while I play - a Defunctland or Explore With Us video will typically tell me how much a chunk of a playthrough took up).

But if you thought I was done after nearly 20 hours of Zelda in a week, you'd be wrong, dead wrong. I'm curious just to check out the other versions - PC, 3DS, Switch and see if they're faster. As a lot of time in OoT is just taken up by cut-scenes and extremely slow text boxes.

I'll throw this game here since it's a PS1 remaster...played this months ago was just too lazy to give a formal writeup.


Pac Man World Re-Pac(PS5)

A game that gave me fits as a child, I think this game is maybe more so "A game that tugs heavily on your nostalgia" because replaying this in 2023, yeah this game is extremely basic. Just basic from story which is bare bones to the gameplay which given Pac Man World came out for the PS1, it is understandable that this game simply gets outshined by later platformers. Came away somewhat underwhelmed with this one, not to say the remaster was a poor job, it's just the basic game leaves much to be desired. Levels feel so basic, very little variety with each outside of the world setting(Typical lava level, typical ice level etc.). If this is your 1st platformer or something you grew up on, I totally get that this game might be good but as someone who has played dozens upon dozens of platformers, nothing is brought to the table in Pac Man World Re-Pac that has you remembering anything. Even the game's roll attack which is meant to not only damage enemies but also help you progress past ramps felt finnicky and felt like completely off where the momentum wasn't carrying over to allow me to make the roll jump past pitfalls/instant death which was frustrating. Repetition does happen quite a bit with Pac Man World Re-Pac where even the bonus levels don't stray apart too much, it's collect all of the fruits in a certain time and each world has it's own exclusive minigame so yeah that means you're playing the same exact mini game each time while in 1 world! By the 3rd time, I didn't even care to fully get everything since outside of lives, they really didn't offer much incentive to want to do the bonus levels. You do get tokens for the game's slot machine to try and get more lives or other goodies but once you've done the slot machine minigame after each level clear, it just gets repetitive. It was to the point that I just fast forwarded whatever and not even care if I won anything from the slots!

The good that this game does are the boss battles are actually solid for this type of genre. Nothing overwhelming and yeah a death means you start from the beginning but altogether, they offer a decent amount of challenge. The final boss in particular is a mini spectacle in itself even if it's a little repetitive at times. I also think the added content of older 80's Pac Man games is a good addition for the people who love those type of games albeit you probably have or will play this game through the countless various methods. Tons of collectibles throughout the levels to add a little sweetener to the coffee if you're looking to do more than just finishing the level and move on. The story is also decent enough for a platformer at this time which also ties to the collectible element since each kidnapped family member is scattered throughout each of the worlds in Pac Man World Re-Pac. By no means is this game some form of a collect-a-thon but given how bare bones the level designs often are with this game, you'll take whatever this game gives you.

Overall, not the best platformer you'll play for sure but if you have some feeling of nostalgia with this game where it was something you cherished on the PS1 as a kid, you might get more of a kick out of this remaster. I will say, the remaster itself is fine. No real glitches I can think of, it captures the game as good as it can while giving it a nice last gen graphical look. It's just the core material of Pac Man World Re-Pac leaves a lot to be desired and it just suffers from both repetition and level design simplicity too much for me to give it a better score.

So Blindy if we set up a tier-maker, you're saying Pac Man World is a C-tier game?

What would your PS1 era platformer tier-maker look like?

My rough list

A-Tier
Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot 3, Ape Escape, Spyro 2

B-Tier
Crash Bandicoot

C-Tier
Bugs Bunny Lost In Time, Emperor 's New Groove

I would have Crash 3 a smudge above Crash 2 but those 2 stand alone for me followed by Spyro 2 and 1 as the core 4. Spyro 3 and Crash 1 is probably 5th and 6th. I tried to get into the Ape Escape PS5 emulation but it was just so bad(Not the game but the port/emulation).

A:
Crash 3
Crash 2
Spyro 2
Spyro 1
Spyro 3

B:
Crash 1
Medievil 1

C:
Pac Man World
Croc 2(If the cameras were at all good, it is in the B tier range)

D:
Jumping Flash

F:
Blasto
Rascal


This is only the stuff I have played.

With the rise of competitive Pokemon and the 25th anniversary of Red and Blue come and gone, it got me thinking what it would have been like to actually build teams back in the day.

I tried to put myself in those shoes and on paper I'd be looking at buying:
Pokemon Red & Blue
A link cable
2 x GameBoy Pockets. (or hold off 8 weeks for the release of the Game Boy Color)

On paper sounded like the most optimal set-up, but then I remembered something.

The Super GameBoy! I wonder how many players dusted off their Super Nintendo, loaded up a Super Game Boy and would experience the game that way? Over in Japan, it would have been a more logical conclusion since they actually released a new version of the Super Game Boy in 1998 with link cable support, explicitly marketing it towards Pokemon fans.

So that blew my mind, 1999 being a Super Nintendo year, lugging that console around on different holidays and getting that grind in. A grind that would require multiple playthroughs since a lot of Pokemon required TMs and typical moves like Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Rest, Body Slam, Thunder Wave, Seismic Toss etc. were only available once per save. So theoretically you could be looking at six playthroughs just to raise one team, and even then you'd be aware of some type of IV/DV system in place but I'm not sure how well known that info would have been.

Yellow comes out a year later, but outside of a few move changes it wouldn't be that necessary.

It wouldn't really be until 18 months later, the first real upgrade would come in the form of Pokemon Stadium in March of 2000. This is where you'd really get to show off your competitive teams and you may have even made a head-start following the two Japanese releases. If you were playing Day one and sweapt up in the hype I could see a trainer having a full team of Level 100s. However 50-55s, 25-30s and 15-20s would have been doubtful. I could see the typical player unlocking Doduo and later Dodrio mode, taking advantage of that 3x time speed and building those teams up. Add an N64 with an extra controller and an extra transfer pack

Stadium would get a seven month window to itself, until Gold and Silver are released in 2000. This would actually affect Stadium as Pokemon could be traded up to those gens, taught Gen I moves it couldn't have otherwise learned and brought back to reshape that meta. Otherwise, we're dusting off that Super Nintendo yet again and we're playing that well into the first quarter of 2001. The player would have five months to prepare for Stadium 2, down from the 18 months from the original stadium. However, you'd have those OG Stadium teams to call on and there would be better coverage of Stadium 2 as well to make preparation smoother. So you spend those months, raising those monsters like Raikou, Tyranitar and all the other sweat mons getting ready for the big dance.

Unfortunately the entry point for Doduo Tower is tougher as you have to beat every cup or all the gym leaders in Round 2 just to access the speed increase. However once that's done, that becomes your main way to grind the game and build teams.

Then in June, the GBA comes out and it would be fairly useless with the inability to use the link cable and the worse battery life. It isn't until July Pokemon Crystal comes out with a ton of QOL features and a Battle Tower that would prove to be the ultimate challenge up to that point. Around that same time there's an event for Celebi, so like in mid-1999 when you got your Mew, you line up to get that mythical. Also you better be living in New York so you can travel to the Pokemon Centre and collect your weekly event Pokemon. Multiple shinies, exclusive move etc. monsters and that goes all the way through till March 2003.

That's where the journey ends. Ruby and Sapphire are no longer compatible with these monsters, so you store them in Stadium and Stadium 2, 100s of them on the off-chance you can use them one day. There is the ability to save that data and a work-around that makes those Pokemon possible to transfer, but all in all, that 4 1/2 years is entombed in those games.

It all starts again with Ruby/Sapphire coming out in March of 2003. Sadly you don't bust out the Super Nintendo. In fact you have a decision to make. Either suck it up and buy the GBA or wait three days and buy the superior GBA SP. I could see a scenario where you end up with 3, making you pretty popular for Four Sword Adventures/Crystal Chronicles playthroughs. Along with Ruby and Sapphire, you also pick up another link cable and a E-Reader for the eon ticket and those optional battles.

I'll leave it in June of 2003 when the Game Boy Player is released. Time to get a GameCube, two GBA adaptors and an extra copy of either Ruby/Sapphire so you can hunt a good nature/IV box legendary or Latias/Latios. Every once in awhile, you dust off that Super Nintendo and revisit those old games, even dusting off the N64 to take on Crystal's Battle Tower, which you can now play on your gorgeous GBA SP. Pokemania has died down, but you don't mind as there's a new meta to discover and an older one to perfect.

Nov 9, 2023 1:18:00 GMT Blindy said:

I would have Crash 3 a smudge above Crash 2 but those 2 stand alone for me followed by Spyro 2 and 1 as the core 4. Spyro 3 and Crash 1 is probably 5th and 6th. I tried to get into the Ape Escape PS5 emulation but it was just so bad(Not the game but the port/emulation).

A:
Crash 3
Crash 2
Spyro 2
Spyro 1
Spyro 3

B:
Crash 1
Medievil 1

C:
Pac Man World
Croc 2(If the cameras were at all good, it is in the B tier range)

D:
Jumping Flash

F:
Blasto
Rascal


This is only the stuff I have played.

We both need to play some Klonoa.

And also some Tomba, for Chibi.

I own 1 of the Klonoa games on PS3 emulation. Same with Tomba 1(And I think 2? But I could not get into Tomba).

I didn't count Mega Man Legends or Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey as traditional platformers!

Playstation 3D platformer tier list? Count me in! I'm going to be cheeky and include PS2 games as well.

A Tier

Crash Bandicoot 2
Crash Bandicoot 3
Sly Cooper 2
Spyro The Dragon 3

B Tier

Crash Bandicoot
Sly Cooper
Sly Cooper 3*
Spyro The Dragon
Jak & Daxter

C Tier

Spyro The Dragon 2
Ratchet & Clank
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

D Tier

Jak & Daxter 2

F Tier

Vexx


* Sly Cooper 3 is a work in progress.

I've never played any of the Rayman or Ape Escape games. Klonoa is a new name to me, I'll have to check it out.

I was tinkering around with NFL 2K5 for the original XBOX this morning. I have to admit tinker is about all I've ever done with 2K5. I've always been in awe with it, love and admire it for the masterpiece it is, but I'm just more at home with Madden 2005. But I did FTP connect into my soft modded XBOX(r.i.p.) and downloaded/installed all the retro rosters that are out there for the game. I think I even got a 2017 roster downloaded back before that season started. The custom made rosters are incredible, you can play a season through 1993, 1981, etc, take your pick, and the accuracy of all the created players is surprisingly spot on.

But this morning I discovered something that really blew me away. After all these years I never knew you could customize the stadium music with the music from your XBOX(the original XBOX you could rip your CD's to the hard drive and listen to them in games). I have all my oddball soundtracks(that aren't available streaming) ripped to mine, the X-Files cd that came out in 96, Desperado, Mortal Kombat 1995 soundtracks and a few others. I used the feature to put certain tracks in the stadium music, you can customize any clip from any song, customize everything from what plays when you get a big stop on a 3rd down, when the visiting team loses yards, when you get a sack, what plays at the start of the first quarter, 2 minute warning, any clip from any song you got for basically any moment and it plays like it's over the PA system of the stadium in the game. This is so fucking amazing.

I'm long overdue to play a season through 2K5, something I've always wanted to do but just never got around to it. I have my XBOX hooked up to CRT and the game looks absolutely fucking stunning, definitely better than any of the Maddens on the same system. The custom stadium music has me wanting to create Watt and find out a way to get Turn Down For What on my Xbox somehow.

I finished the main ending of Super Mario RPG Remake, such a fun time. It's such a digestible RPG all things considered, took me under 15 hours and I did as much of the side stuff as I could. I didn't get a full completionist and I only beat 1 of the end game secret bosses(Not Jinx or Culex, whom I beat both up, there are exclusive secret boss or should I say rematch boss fights with new gimmicks after you beat the game), mainly because it is such a slog. We're talking 20+ minutes and eating up a lot of your consumables. I could technically will the other secret bosses out but I feel like I got to see the majority of the game.

Not much has changed from the SNES version vs the Switch version except the following:

1) Updated graphics, game looks really nice. Of course it suffers from the Switch-Ism of framerate drops, especially early on in the game so don't be intimidated if the game runs super choppy early on! It does run better but it still suffers from dips in portions of the late game. Updated tracks/music is pretty catchy and cool too, def. worth a listen on Youtube for those tracks. Especially in comparison to the older tracks from the SNES version!

2) Ability to swap characters in and out. In the SNES version, you have to choose 3 characters and stick with them in a fight until you win, then in the main menu screen you can swap out characters. In the Switch version, if you have a party of MARIO-PEACH-BOWSER, but want Geno's really good abilities or Mallow's lightning spells, you can replace Peach or Bowser(Mario has to stay though! Sorry, it's his game afterall!) to swap in the others but once you do it, you can't go back until next turn so it isn't like Final Fantasy X where it's swap in, swap out, swap in, swap out.

3) There's a gauge meter that goes rom 0% to 100% based off the infamous timing sequences of doing double damage if successful and limiting the damage done to your character if you time the button press properly. This gauge meter is a game changer considering once you get 3 characters, it allows you to do a really powerful trio attack that varies. MARIO-BOWSER-MALLOW to an all elemental attack while MARIO-MALLOW-PEACH do a revival/full heal while MARIO-GENO-BOWSER do multiple powerful shots. Each one has their own CGI of like 5-7 seconds which is super cool, by far my favorite is MARIO-PEACH-BOWSER which basically has Mario doing a pele kick to Bowser's shell that is turned into star power/invincible via Peach.

SPOILER: Click to show

Outside of those things, maybe outside of some Quality of Life better aspects such as checkpoints so it isn't totally dependent on you saving up at spots if you forget to but die(Which I never did die until the 2nd post game boss, game isn't very hard!).....Super Mario RPG Remake is pretty much a 2023 version of the SNES one. Most if not all the dialogue and story is in tact so if you are a diehard of the original, you know exactly what to expect from this game.

Overall, the game is outstanding and still held up from the 90's so this is a no brainer. Yeah it's a full retail price for what is a pretty short JRPG but I think the additional bonus content makes any fan of the SNES version want to jump right in! Beat it in 4 days which again means it's not long but glass half full mentality means the game is really good!


(I put it in the retro thread because it falls under my rule of remaster/remakes of older games as this game most of the way is a updated port of the SNES version so lets keep the good vibes of the Retro thread rolling because why not?)

All this talk of Super Mario RPG has got me wanting to give it a shot on my SNES mini, a 15 hour RPG I can handle.

I just remembered last night that I have all the Tecmo Super Bowl NES modded roms for the 1966 to 1994 seasons. Trying to think of what teams/seasons would be fun to play through. Would be interesting to play through an AFL season with the Oilers in the 1966-69 roms. Maybe see if I can do better than 1-13 with the Butkus/Sayers 1969 Bears. Or some of the early to mid-70's Redskins, Earl Campbell Oilers 78-81, Neil Lomax Cardinals in 84. Having just won the Super Bowl for the first time in the OG '91 TSB I figured I would check out the 1992 rom with Houston, maybe give it a shot to see if I can defend my strap. I've never really played any of the modded rosters. The first game I played Pittsburgh and gave up over 200 yards rushing to Barry Foster, Moon got knocked out of the game with an injury early on and lost 35-14. Challenge accepted lets fucking go.

Just been tinkering around with old football games this week. I played a little bit of Tecmo Super Bowl II for the Genesis and stumbled upon a pretty crazy awesome little thing about the game that I never knew about before today. Something that makes the game stand out over the other 30 or so football games on the Genesis/Sega CD/32x. The game was released prior to the 1994 NFL season so those are the rosters and schedules you get. BUT I found something mind blowing today when you go to set up a season to play, you go to the schedule and it gives you the option to choose the 1992, 1993, or 1994 schedules for your team to play. Whats the big deal? Sega had that same option for NFL 95 that also came out that year, BUT the big difference is that in TSB II when you choose the 92 or 93 schedule it changes all the team rosters and player ratings to those seasons. So the regular roster for the game this is the year Warren Moon went to the Vikings, but if I set it to the 1993 schedule I get the 1993 Oilers with Moon, plus this is the only non-modded 1993 roster football game with Wilber Marshall on the Oilers(he didn't join the team until after the season started so he wasn't in Madden 94 or NFL 94 or the Tecmo Super Bowl game that came out in 93 for Genesis/SNES). The rosters are surprisingly accurate too, the 93 Dolphins have Steve Deberg instead of Dan Marino since he was out for most of that season with the leg injury. Also if you pick the 92 schedule you get the older school Patriots uniforms/colors/helmet. 

This is a mind blowing feature for this game for the time. Think of the replay value this added for you back in the day if you had this, you could play through 3 seasons 92-93-94 with the rosters changing along with the real life roster changes from year to year. Back when I used to play the fuck out of NFL 95 when I was a kid I used to think how awesome would it be if you picked the 92 or 93 schedule if you got those rosters too, even if you picked those schedules you still played with the 94 rosters. Low and behold TSB II actually did that. Too awesome.

I didn't like the Sega Genesis version of Tecmo Super Bowl but II is a nice improvement over it. But still not as good as regular NES Tecmo Super Bowl that came out in 1991. The games in II take about twice as long to play, the menu and play selection screen is even more convoluted and it also seems like the game is too easy. The NES original the difficulty would adjust to how good you were through the course of the 16 game season, the 16 bit versions didn't do that, they were too easy you could easily go 19-0 and put up ridiculous stats there was no challenge. The NES original would whoop your ass, you could fuck around and lose a playoff game or the Super Bowl or not even make the playoffs depending on what team you played with.

Just read that the SNES version of II has an extra difficulty setting that the Genesis version didn't get. Will definitely have to check that version out and play through a 93 season with the Oilers. TSB II falls into the NFL 2K5 category of games that I've always wanted to play a season through but never got around to it.

I wish I grew up with these games so I could contribute something to the conversation, but I'm digging these deep dives. I'm not sure if you've ever seen them, but there's this series of YouTube videos where they'll re-book NBA seasons based on Michael Jordan going to a different franchise in NBA 2K and they'll go about a decade long to see what the simulation tosses out. I'd love to see a sports title embrace that concept and just release a 90s NFL/NBA/FIFA etc. Set schedules, same draft classes/junior academies but a wealth of talent. Unfortunately it's all just a scheme to get people to buy online trading cards.

15 hours is like the perfect game length. I remember renting it frequently and it always felt like the perfect weekend game. Ain't nobody got time for these 50-100 hr Persona trash.

Games like Mario RPG, Final Fantasy III, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger etc. all felt so exotic. I just picture a classic SNES collection here including games like Mario World, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country, Super International Cricket, Super Tennis, Sim City, The Lion King etc. all pretty basic stuff and then you'd hear or read about these crazy concepts like Mario RPG where Mario teams up with Bowser, Peach and Pinnochio. All at a time where RPGs really didn't exist outside of the Mega Drive.

It's a game that I associate with early internet. Logging onto GameFAQs, learning about all these obscure games that were all accessible and felt fresh since people were discovering them for the first time.

It was an exciting time for the hobby. I also loved early YouTube where our generation started forming careers on there and putting together these fun retrospectives before the market blew up. Clan of the Grey Wolf especially had some of my favourite SNES vids. I don't think the early Let's Plays would have worked if they didn't have SNES games like Goof Troop, Mega Man X2, Zombies Ate My Neighbours etc. to help. It just gave those channels a whimsical tone back when YouTube was incredibly edgy and everyone thought black face and date rape was hilarious.

Sly Cooper 3 update.

I am now on the fifth world, where we have to rescue the Panda King's daughter in order to recruit him. I really like this development. Bringing back a villain from the first game and making him a reluctant babyface. It was written with nuance - Sly Cooper and the Panda King despise each other, but they are willing to cooperate. There's even a neat flashback to the boss fight from the original game.

In general I appreciate the vibe they're going for. As Blindy alluded to it's very Oceans, recruiting a big team with specialist skills and going on these elaborate heists. It's getting to the point where each mission is a multiphase quest with different characters playing different roles. The Guru is a swing-and-a-miss but all the other new characters are great and add to the variety of gameplay. Bentley's hacker minigame has been kept but improved in many ways: more challenging and way less monotonous.

The heist structure has led to a deemphasis on exploration, with no collectibles, which is fine. It's a shame to not be encouraged to explore the intricate maps, but gone is the frustration at not finding that one last bottle and having to scan through a YouTube to find it. They have kept the spend-gold-on-powerups mechanic, however the economy in the game is even more imbalanced than Sly 2. I counted that I need 12,100 gold to buy all the powerups that are available, and I estimate I've collected 4000 gold max, and I'm nearly 50% through. That's just not realistic, brother. I'm willing to bet most of the powerups are useless so I'm ain't grinding a single penny.

Getting back to the fifth world, they really turn up the zany Hollywood factor. I just completed a mission where Sly travels on air by jumping on objects and enemies levitated by the Guru. This is immediately followed by an awesome Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon fight where both Sly and the boss Tsao float through the air. The kayfabe explanation for this is even zanier than the levitation, but who cares? It's the best fight in the entire series. Round of applause.

Sly Cooper 3 becomes even more grandiose, the fifth world ends with a dramatic collapse of a building and fighting a dragon by leaping on its back as it flies through the air. A somewhat clumsy imitation of Shadow of the Colossus but at this point Sly Cooper is unashamedly going for full spectacle.

The grandiosity continues with the sixth world where the gang infiltrate a pirate island with plenty of raunchy dialogue and swashbuckling adventures. The highlight of this world is the introduction of a pirate ship battle minigame. I say minigame, it actually becomes the focal point of the level as you are suddenly thrust onto an open world map where you can engage in battles with pirate ships. In fact the battles are impossible to avoid since a bunch of forced missions feature them, plus it's very easy to accidentally enter one on the world map.

Although the pirate battle ship is a pretty fun and challenging game, it's forced on you way too much. An unexpected side effect is that it's an extremely effective way of farming gold, addressing a previous complaint. One of the bonus missions requires you to sink five enemy ships without dying. The first time I died while in battle with the fifth ship. The second time, I sank four ships, then entered a battle with three ships. It was tough but I beat all three of them. But the game didn't accept that I had completed the mission. "7/5" read the screen. Presumably it expects exactly "5/5". So I have to do it again.

The actual highlight of the level was the treasure map mission, where you have to find landmarks, take X paces, and so on. The game offers a delightful overhead view so you can pace precisely. I enjoyed this a lot and it's nice to see that there's a second treasure map mission in the bonus missions.

Always disappointed the last Sky ends on a cliffhanger and then the series disappears, wish we could get just one more for a definitive end.

Let me throw a few games at you.

Guild Wars

After struggling to get into FFXI, this was my last throw at the dice to get into the mid-00s MMO boom. Guild Wars was made for those who liked the idea of a big multiplayer open world but didn't like all the tedious game design choices that plagued the game. It also didn't have a monthly subscription, so you didn't have that sunk cost phallacy plaguing your run time.

I gave it the good college try back in 2005, I even bought a Prima guide and brushed up on all the gameplay, only for it to get lost in the shuffle. Life took over and it seemed like the game was constantly receiving new releases and before I knew it there was a Guild Wars 2.

Still, it was one of those games that in the back of my mind I was always going to return to and one day on a lark I recovered my old account and revisited.

Apparantly I made all the common mistakes. I picked a Warrior/Monk class with the idea that he could be a self-sufficient tank, when the Warrior doesn't receive enough MP to help itself. Your secondary class is just that and for some classes like Warrior, it really doesn't matter as you'll be using Warrior skills for the most part.

I was actually a little further than I remembered. I thought I was still stuck in the first area of the game, but I was actually mid-way through the snowy peaks which is the second. I hadn't upgraded any of my storage or gear so I went back and fixed all that up before continuing as a Hammer Warrior.

One nice thing about Guild Wars is that you can beat it solo if you want to. The game is always going to be better with actual people, but if you want to complete it at your own time you do have henchmen. Supposedly in later expansions, you actually get access to customisable heroes with better AI, better skills, better armor etc. but since this was the base game I had to make do with henchmen.

The game comes into it's own in the sixth area. All hope looks lost for the heroes as the enemy faction have captured all your powerful allies and you don't have the tools to bring them down. So you get whisked to this mystical realm called the Crystal Desert which is teeming with enemies. You have three main missions you can complete in any order and they're all based on PVP modes like capture the flag, king of the hill and team battle. Not only did these missions feel fresh for what had just been a dungeon crawler up to that point but the gameplay opens up as well.

Namely you come across these enemies with elite skills. Through an earlier mission, you learn a blue magic type ability that allows you to capture one skill from your opponent. So now you're actually hunting down specific encounters, and these skills will completely change your approach to the game. For the first half of the game, I was exclusively a hammer wielding warrior, through the second half I became an aggressive axe swinger pulling off AOEs, dismembering opponents and the gameplay became incredibly robust.

This build was able to get my through the rest of the game and after 25 missions and a solid week of gameplay I was able to knock over the Sith Lord and all the NPCs threw me a massive party.

Still, there's some things about MMO that I inherently dislike. Aggro makes encounters really tedious as you really have to play it safe and only pull opponents one at a time with the hope that you won't get into a fight with the entire map. Sometimes this can be really inconsistent as well as you attempt to pull one enemy, only for another half-way across the map to join in as well.

This also has Blindy's least favourite design, no checkmarks. Quests can take 30-60 minutes to complete and if you wipe, it's back to the start. There were so many missions where I'd get up to the final section only to get punished for not playing super conservative.

While I was playing through the game, I couldn't help but wonder what my experience would have been like had I stuck with it in 2005. Even counting skill and experience, I would have struggled simply because the game didn't have some of the QOL additions when I played. Being able to flag your henchmen made encounters so much easier to manage and with all the buffs and nerfs it became a lot more manageable. Funnily enough, reading through the forums, playing with henchmen is seen as a badge of honour as their AI is meant to be awful and heroes makes the entire experience that much smoother.

I'm actually tossing up whether I should buy the Trilogy/Expansion off of steam. Unfortunately it would mean a fresh account as AreaNet is completely seperate but I enjoyed my time and would be keen to check out other classes. If there's one issue with MMOs, it's that battles are so chaotic you really don't get an opportunity to appreciate all the work the team is putting in. Especially with henchmen where you're basically locked into your party and there's very little choice.

Final Fantasy X-2

I've got a strange fascination with the game. On one hand it's a Disney sequel and I rarely think about any of the original characters or plot threads introduced. On the other, it's still a mainline FFX with great music, art-work and some really interesting mechanics. The ATB here is really dynamic and makes for some really interesting strategies as you're swapping Dress Spheres for particular strategies.

What inspired the recent playthrough were those online videos we were talking about earlier in the Gamer Pad. I was actually curious to see one of the over-powered vids and I was shocked to realise that there was a updated version of X-2.

It's one of those things I ought to have known, but the X-2 re-release completely changes the way you power up characters with creatures added into the mix as well as a few more powerful dress spheres. Of course I don't have this version, so I've just been playing around with the base game to see how players would have gone about this back in the day.

Largely this has just involved me grinding in the Mi'Han Highroads. It's actually kind of relaxing coming back to this for 30 minutes to an hour, grinding some AP and then digging through my old Prima guide to see what you could do in the first chapter and the best way of going about things.

Most importantly, I just love the music and the SFX. That jazzy bridge theme and just all the SFX you hear while scrolling through menus - perfection.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

The recent release of Mario RPG inspired me to go back and play this on the NSO.

I'm just up to collecting all the star fragments, starting with Teehee Valley. Coming back to the game, I just love the zany energy it has, it really has that Undertale like story-telling where things just constantly unfold and take some fun hard lefts. They really leaned into the action commands, so timing attacks/counter-attacks keeps the combat engaging and actually makes getting into battles enjoyable. I find myself clearing out entire zones just because I enjoy the battling so much.

There's also a ton of side content like collecting beans for special perks at the coffee shop. I completely forgot about E Gadds appearance in this game.

One other design choice that sticks out to me is that there's no health station type of function. Usually there's a heal block or an inn to rest at, but here you're constantly using consumables just to make sure you're at 100% because it's easy to wipe if you're not careful.

Jan 8, 2024 0:00:03 GMT Emperor said:

But the game didn't accept that I had completed the mission. "7/5" read the screen. Presumably it expects exactly "5/5". So I have to do it again.

The solution to this conundrum is that you have to die after sinking 5 or more ships to complete the mission. Every other mission to this point autocompletes when you get the criteria, so it was surprising that you have to enter a new battle and get killed.

With that out of the way, onto the final chapter, which was a massive disappointment. Firstly, I had acquired thousands of gold in the pirate level, yet there's no opportunity to buy any powerups in the final world because of its unorthodox structure. Instead of the usual format of exploring an open world to find mission triggers, it's cutscene-mission-cutscene-mission. All characters except the Panda King get their own mission.

First up is the Guru. His challenge is to possess 10 sharks and take them to a beacon. Don't ask why, I don't even know. Something to do with electricity? This mission is tedious and frustrating, but the game at least had the sense to group the sharks together so it's four round trips instead of ten.

Next is Dmitri, the chap we acquired in pirate world who knows how to dive. The diving mission is nothing like the diving on the previous world, it's an odd first person autoscroller where you have to dodge obstacles. For some reason you use the shape buttons to move instead of the D-pad or left analog stick. A curious design decision. This level is somehow worse than the previous one because of its awful design. The visual cue for movement is so poor you can barely tell which way you're moving, or if you're moving. The nature of the obstacles is misleading: the point is each obstacle leaves a gap in one of the four directions...except about 25% of the time I dodge in the direction of the gap and get hit anyway. I don't have a clue how it's meant to work, but I just kept retrying hoping I wouldn't get hit enough to die before the end. Took me a dozen attempts but I managed. Then there's a lame boss battle. I died, because I had one hit point left, but fortunately the start of the boss battle is a checkpoint.

Next up is Penelope with a very enjoyable remote control car minigame. You have to speed alongside enemy cars and punch them with the L2/R2 buttons. Mildly challenging but good fun. After that Sly Cooper gets an aeroplane minigame, again good fun. There's three aeroplane segments concluded with a boss battle. The boss battle was nice because the ammo restriction is taken off so you can hold the R1 button and spam bullets. Very satisfying. There's an attack I couldn't figure out how to evade so I just damage boosted through it, I had just enough health to kill the boss before he killed me.

Next is what brought the Sly Cooper to the dance. Elaborate platforming. Sly Cooper finally accesses the Cooper vault - the point of the entire game - and takes on the thief navigation challenges built by his predecessors. Pretty challenging platforming, a good segment. After that Murray and Bentley get one last turn. Murray's mission is - as always - to pummel goons to death. These missions have been easy but extremely fun "mash square and win", but this one was genuinely challenging in a good way. I had to be patient, duck and weave like Muhammad Ali. There's a fuckton of guards too. I died a few times but got there in the end.

After that is Bentley's turn. He has to pick up treasure and attach it to the big bad whom Murray is grappling with. Don't ask why, I don't even know. Something to do with electricity? During the fight you have to use the remote control camera (one of the gimmicks I haven't talked about) to kill guards. This was not fun, but at least not as bad as the Guru/Dmitri missions.

Finally, Sly Cooper goes one on one with the big bad, in a final boss fight I would describe as...decent.

Carmelita Fox shows up, Sly Cooper pretends to have amnesia and asks who he is, Carmelita tells him he is Constable Cooper. The island collapses, everyone escapes and moves on with their lives, Cooper and Carmelita are revealed to be together, presumably married, at the very end. So let me get this straight - Sly Cooper pretended to be mentally ill to manipulate his love interest into being with him? Yikes.

Final thoughts: the high points of Sly Cooper 3 are the high points of the entire series. Some incredibly fun missions and boss battles. Overall, however, it's simply not consistent and polished enough to beat Sly Cooper 2. It suffers from the same problem as Sypro 3 in that they threw way too many ideas and instead of letting the shit drop to the bottom of the wall, they kept it in the game. The shit is mainly everything to do with the Guru, but also the final mission was a huge letdown. With some more filtering and quality control it would have comfortably surpassed Sly 2.

The one thing I did miss was the collectibles: Sly Cooper 3 did display a great variety and detail to the level design, but without the collectibles there is no motivation to explore the levels, so it felt like I didn't see much of Sly Cooper 3's worlds.

Jan 7, 2024 23:09:14 GMT RagnarokMike said:

Always disappointed the last Sky ends on a cliffhanger and then the series disappears, wish we could get just one more for a definitive end.

There was definitely no cliffhanger here. I presume there's a Sly 4?