2024 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Tabe]

Pocketpair had responded to the Nintendo lawsuit over Palworld. If my interpretation is correct, based on the Mr. Sujano video covering it, Nintendo is claiming patent violations of incredibly vague patents. Patents that were filed AFTER Palworld was released. 

 

[DragonZombie]

Some early Castlevania clones from decades ago..

Rusty for the PC98 released by C-Lab in July 1993. You use a whip and are a vampire huntress.

8 Eyes for the NES. The story is different between the English and Japanese versions. Player 2 can control the helper bird.

Holy Diver for the NES. Fireballs instead of the usual whip and the stairs need to be jumped on rather than pressing up. There are some IREM shoot them up elements too.

Master of Darkness for the Game Gear and SMS.

Sword Master for NES is sorta one.  It tries to move away from the more simpler game Castle of Dragon.

Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro for the MSX2. Similar to Vampire Killer on the MSX2.

[twiztor]

1 hour ago, dragonzombie said:

Holy Diver for the NES. Fireballs instead of the usual whip and the stairs need to be jumped on rather than pressing up. There are some IREM shoot them up elements too.

this got a cartridge (re)release a few years back that i picked up. Beautiful packaging and with black cart. It is hard as hell. I was fresh off a run, completing Castlevania 1-4, and thought i'd be able to add this to my beated games list. WRONG. just brutally difficult. never did finish it. 

[Ramo2653]

I'm about 4 hours into Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and once I got used to the combat system I can say I'm digging it. The board game mini game is also oddly fun but I do love me some board games. Also Terra is an idiot. Not even a loveable idiot like Sora, just an idiot.

And as someone who only played the mainline games before and didn't know all of the story, imagine my confusion when I started playing KH3 after not touching any of the games in almost a decade in 2020. It's making a bit more sense now.

[DragonZombie]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

this got a cartridge (re)release a few years back that i picked up. Beautiful packaging and with black cart. It is hard as hell. I was fresh off a run, completing Castlevania 1-4, and thought i'd be able to add this to my beated games list. WRONG. just brutally difficult. never did finish it. 

It's of the hardest NES games, one that requires good memorization and timing.

Japanese site below, which details what to do. If you let it auto translate

https://w.atwiki.jp/holydiver/pages/5.html

[odessasteps]

Finished my Grim Fandango replay. Still such a great game. 

[Cliff Hanger]

Dominus Collection got me to finally go back and beat Aria of Sorrow and move on with the series. I'm right up to Abadon in DoS, but I got tired of losing to Death after 3 or 4 tries and started Ecclesia as well, because I'm not well. The time between Ecclesia and Bloodstained, and between Bloodstained coming out and me playing it, and then revisiting the GBA and DS games, means that I only just realized yesterday that Miriam in Bloodstained is just Shanoa's look and gimmicks with Soma's power structure.

 

Also, hopping back and forth has caused me to get mixed up and try to do combos with Soma, thus accidentally switching gear sets.

[A.M.B.]

Love Order of Ecclesia so much, it’s my favorite Castlevania. Glad it’s getting relevance 15 years later because I always come back to play the DS Castlevania’s every few years. The great thing is their quality is pretty consistent so your favorite game is largely just a matter of which one aesthetically pleases you more. I love the dark atmosphere and organic settings of OoE.

One thing I’m remembering while I play these games is what I call the Castlevania Conundrum, you want to grind for better gear and for quests but the drop rates are so low you’re gonna level up so much through the grinding that now you’re overlevelled and have stronger weapons as well. The Souls series was brilliant to fix this issue by making exp your catch all currency.

[JLSigman]

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix may be a bust for me at this point, because of a new boss they added in that you have to beat at the beginning of the final area, which is stupidly hard, and I am too old for this shit.

[odessasteps]

Ordered the new Tetris game coming out tomorrow with all my Xbox rewards points. It’s very meta from a review I watched, where you play retro versions of the game during I guess story mode? 

[Cliff Hanger]

42 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Ordered the new Tetris game coming out tomorrow with all my Xbox rewards points. It’s very meta from a review I watched, where you play retro versions of the game during I guess story mode? 

Kind of. There's a timeline full of documentary footage, historical texts, etc. with each included game in its place on that timeline. (You can also just jump to the games.) It also includes one entirely new game which bounces you thru different eras of Tetris but doesn't have a story mode per se. Digital Eclipse, who have been packaging other companies' retro comps for 30 years, shifted to this format with 2022's Atari 50, and this is their third "Gold Master Series" release using the Atari format for projects of smaller scope.

[odessasteps]

I wasn’t sure how to describe it after watching the video. Will see tomorrow I suppose.

[Ramo2653]

2 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix may be a bust for me at this point, because of a new boss they added in that you have to beat at the beginning of the final area, which is stupidly hard, and I am too old for this shit.

In KH2, when in doubt, spam the reflect spell. It'll put the damage back on him. Also Limit Form is underrated with the attacks, the one where you can toss your sword like a boomerang does good damage and gives you invincibility while it's happening.

[Craig H]

Grrrrr...There's no way I'm going to play through all of Front Mission 3 or Xenogears. I don't think I have the patience to play through that first disc again and I don't feel like relearning the combat system. And for Front Mission 3, eh, I'd rather just play Through the Breach.

I should have let Colony Wars and G-Police remain as fond memories because both of those games completely suck. Actually, no. G-Police is terrible now, but pretty ambitious for what it was. Colony Wars in all honesty is quite solid and deserves a remake with those types of games becoming popular again. Elite Dangerous is essentially Colony Wars on steroids and No Mans Sky is, man, I don't even know what No Man's Sky is anymore. But a Colony Wars remake that is not quite as intense as Elite Dangerous and not as easy or reliant on resource gathering as Starfield or No Mans Sky would be pretty damn sweet.

Power Stone, Power Stone 2, Virtua Tennis, and Tennis 2k2 on the Dreamcast all totally hold up. The only downside is just playing these in single player on my mock Steam Deck. I'll have to look into a way to see if it's possible to get 4 players at a time locally if I dock the Ally X and connect it to a tv.

I'm still not using GameFaqs for Giant Gram 2000 and am basically just wading my way through learning how to play the game. It's a complete shame that this team never got to make another wrestling game. Even as an arcade fighting game, it's incredible.

I opted to use a rom for the Gamecube version of Skies of Arcadia Legends instead of the Dreamcast version. I just figured the Gamecube version would look better and maybe have some more improvements. If I play any JRPG, it will be Skies because I never played more than a handful of hours of it on my Dreamcast.

Both of the Def Jam games totally rule so fucking hard. Fucking AKI going to fuck off and make mobile dress up games after making two badass wrestling/fighting games.

I never played SD vs Raw 2006 even though I own it. I always saw people compare it to a modern No Mercy. After playing it...Ehhhhhhh...It's pretty dogshit.

Rogue Squadron 2 is still fun as hell. I'll put some more time into that.

Sadly, I can't get Panzer Dragoon Saga to work so that will have to wait.

And out of all of the retro revisits I'm doing, Vagrant Story is still the best one to revisit. It feels so modern. If they re-released a copy of Vagrant Story on Steam today or put it in Early Access, I don't think anyone would say much about the graphics. I talked about it before, but it fits in so well with the deluge of rogue-likes and Soulsborn games out today. It even fits in extremely well with many of the indie games that get released on Steam. 

[JLSigman]

14 minutes ago, Craig H said:

And out of all of the retro revisits I'm doing, Vagrant Story is still the best one to revisit. It feels so modern. If they re-released a copy of Vagrant Story on Steam today or put it in Early Access, I don't think anyone would say much about the graphics. I talked about it before, but it fits in so well with the deluge of rogue-likes and Soulsborn games out today. It even fits in extremely well with many of the indie games that get released on Steam. 

The graphics are insanely good for PS1, and still really hold up in that retro way. I would absolutely day 1 purchase any kind of re-release of it.

[Tabe]

20 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Ordered the new Tetris game coming out tomorrow with all my Xbox rewards points. It’s very meta from a review I watched, where you play retro versions of the game during I guess story mode? 

Am curious to hear your review. The review I watched last night said the documentary portion of the package was outstanding but that the game portion was severely lacking. The Nintendo versions are not present. The Sega arcade version isn't present. The Tengen version isn't present. So you end up with a documentary spending a bunch of time on versions of the game that aren't available to play. 

That, and the $35 price, has me holding out for now. 

Edited November 12 by Tabe

[odessasteps]

I used my Xbox points so it cost me $5. Biggest disappointment, after 5 minutes, is that apparently, the Apple II version that I had in college doesn’t have the Classical/Russian music while playing. 

 

Edit: was told it's in there. Also, if you want the Russian folk song it's based on stuck in your head....

https://youtu.be/pH1IgBMPkuE?si=tanOmgACL54RWnPO

Edited November 12 by odessasteps

[odessasteps]

I watched a documentary on Ultima IV last night and now I have an inch to replay it. Loved that game as a teenager. 

[AxB]

I used to love playing Giant Gram 2000 and getting to 100% damage on a body part. And then getting to 100% damage on another one as well. You could break their skull, neck, back, both arms and both legs. The most sadistic wrestling game ever.

[assfax]

Were any of those WWE games that did the GG2000 "reenactment" modes worth a shit?  If anything, I believe that Kings Soul PS1 game is underrated and criminally underplayed.  VERY weak on the edit mode but goddamn I think It's kind of slightly better that KOC2.  Sacrilege i know.  There's just a little more Fire Pro surprise in the matches.  You have to love that era of AJPW but it ain't a prerequisite.  Imagine if Spike and Aki could've got together on Dreamcast* with a generous budget and license....

 

*neutral ground or is it?

[odessasteps]

I was never good at the reenactment matches in GG 2000.

[Tabe]

8 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I watched a documentary on Ultima IV last night and now I have an inch to replay it. Loved that game as a teenager. 

Which documentary? There are multiple great ones. 

U4 is incredible. It's far more of a grind than you remember but I love it. It's free from GOG and there's graphic and music upgrades available. Do it! 

[odessasteps]

There’s also one for Ultima V I’ve not watched yet. 

[Craig H]

I "beat" Slay the Spire in as much as I made a complete run with all 4 characters. The Watcher I had the hardest time with. With every other character it's so important to add cards to your deck and playing as the Watcher I did the same thing and was just dying over and over again. I watched a few minutes of a YouTube video and quickly learned you want to skip adding a lot of cards and you also want to remove a lot of cards. I figured out how to go infinite and got a Steam achievement for that. Yeah, going infinite is kinda cheap, but it's also pretty neat.

Awesome, awesome indie game, but I don't think I'm going to keep playing through the higher level challenges with each character. I beat it, I got the ending, I'm good.

[twiztor]

I'm continuing my jumpstart on the 2025 Switch backlog (previously completed: Super Bomberman R2, Nintendo World Championship):

I played through Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch) over the last couple weeks. This is a really good 3d platformer. Minimal challenge, as is standard for a Kirby game, but the collectibles/secondary objectives add in just enough to keep your attention. And it's beautifully created- looks great and level design is spectacular. I even completed the post-game stuff, which is unusual for me (the final final boss put up one hell of a fight!). If you looked at the game as the step right before Super Mario 3D World on the 3d platformer evolutionary ladder, i'd say you're in the right ballpark. So if you liked that one, give this one a shot!

speaking of Mario, my next Switch game is Wonder (probably won't start until mid/late December). But my next game to play is Skylanders 3: SwapForce. what can i say? i'm a sucker for the toys.