2018 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Spritenaut 32]

4 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Squaresoft's PS1 output is staggering. FF 7/8/9, Chrono Cross, Xenogears and Parasite Eve 1 & 2 are a pretty great frontline of JRPGs, but you've got real keepers in Threads of Fate, Einhander, Brave Fencer Musashi, Legend of Mana, and the Bushido Blade games as well. I don't know what the other candidates for Best Third Party Catalog On a Single Console would be (and I'd love to hear 'em) but Square on PS1's gotta be way, way up there, right?

Rare Ltd. for N64?  Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie & Banjo Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day.  They also did developed Blast Corps and Jet Force Gemini, which didn't sell as well but were very good games.

Other than that, I'd go with the suspects already mentioned.  Capcom  for PS2, Capcom for Saturn, Capcom for Dreamcast, SquareSoft, Sega for GC.

PS1's fighting library would have been awesome if almost every game didn't have a simultaneous release on Saturn that was generally a little better since Saturn was a RAM beast (most of the PS1 fighters had frames of animation removed from the PS1 versions.  Sometimes whole gameplay modes).

And I really enjoyed the GameCube Sonic Adventures ports, which y'all are leaving out of your recommendations.  For shame.

[SirSmUgly]

Rare was technically second-party. 

[John E. Dynamite]

2 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:

Rare was technically second-party. 

Did Nintendo own the rights to any of the IPs Rare took to Microsoft? "Second Party" is such a tricky term; I've always read it as a console-exclusive developer working with the console owner's IPs. Would Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo + JFG count as third party games or were those IPs Nintendo owned at the time that they were willing to sell to Microsoft once Rare bailed?

[Kang]

Doki Doki Panic/ Super Mario Bros 2/ Prototype Super Mario Bros 2/Super Mario Bros USA/

 

I tried them all over the years. Doki Doki is probably badly balanced, with the Mousers taking 6 hits to kill while Wart or Mamu took 4. And you can only get the true ending if you use all 4 characters to beat everything. 

Anyway, I replayed and finished SMB2 today. Better game play elements added in like the run button and the boss ClawGrip and better hit balance for certain bosses. The better animations and sounds improve the game visuals that were lacking in Doki Doki Panic.

The prototype SMB2 is in the middle of things, as in a transition to the final product. 4 hits to kill Wart and no run button. 

Might move on to Sweet Home again or Mighty Final Fight or whatever. Ghosts 'n Goblins perhaps? Seeing how I have the game on Nes mini and I own the arcade version, might compare.

[JLSigman]

20 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I think the PS1 era has aged worse graphically than any other but a lot of the games are classics for a reason.

Suikoden I and II are still amazing.

[AxB]

On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 5:13 PM, J.T. said:

Mafia 3 has a mixed African-American / Caucasian parentage anti-hero protagonist crime lord murdering his way to success and a mini-game where you collect the centerfold pages from classic issues of Playboy magazine.

You know the game is borderline sketchy when nudity and the ability to feed racist criminals and crooked cops to alligators in a 1960's Deep South revenge fantasy cannot persuade a black man to buy it..

If you'd bought it, you'd have been disappointed in the (lack of) nudity, because it's Playboy covers that are collectible, not centrefolds.

The game sabotaged me yesterday. I was trying to steal the bagman's car to get to the underboss' hotel suite all sneaky, but someone called the cops. So I go to get in the car, but because 'Enter/ Exit vehicle' and 'Pick up Weapon' are both on square, instead of stealing his car, I take the generic pistol of his corpse, dropping the good sawn-off shotgun I'd been using. And then I keystone kopsing it about, trying to get my gun back, hide from the cops, picking up the wrong gun so now I've dropped my Sniper Rifle as well, and by the time I get into the car they've shot out three of the tires and now I'm in a ten mile and hour police chase and getting shot to hell. I had to make the cops follow me to the gay bathhouse so they'd all be murdered just to get away.

On the plus side, I got the trophy for being in a police chase for two minutes and surviving.

[CSC]

For anyone that liked Stardew Valley, Graveyard Keeper just came out of Beta and is a ton of fun.

Plus it's included in that Xbox game pass thingy that you can get 2 months for $2 right now.  

[paintedbynumbers]

anyone play the PS4 Shenmue collection yet? Is it good/comparable to Yakuza?

[SirSmUgly]

5 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Did Nintendo own the rights to any of the IPs Rare took to Microsoft? "Second Party" is such a tricky term; I've always read it as a console-exclusive developer working with the console owner's IPs. Would Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo + JFG count as third party games or were those IPs Nintendo owned at the time that they were willing to sell to Microsoft once Rare bailed?

I believe that "second-party" as an adjective simply means that a company is developing specifically for one publisher and made exclusive games for that publisher. Some second-party devs are owned in part by the publisher, some not. 

[Victator]

19 hours ago, D.Z said:

Might move on to Sweet Home again or Mighty Final Fight or whatever. Ghosts 'n Goblins perhaps?

If you have access to the arcade Ghosts 'n Goblins, you should play Mighty Final Fight. 

Loved your write up of Mario 2/USA. I really love the game and think it is underrated in terms of 2D Mario games. 

[Cliff Hanger]

2 hours ago, paintedbynumbers said:

anyone play the PS4 Shenmue collection yet? Is it good/comparable to Yakuza?

It's comparable to Yakuza if minigames were mandatory and you had one fight every other chapter.

[Cliff Hanger]

2 hours ago, paintedbynumbers said:

Oops, dragon punch there.

[John E. Dynamite]

37 minutes ago, Cliff Hanger said:

It's comparable to Yakuza if minigames were mandatory and you had one fight every other chapter.

[Death From Above]

Sad part is that's an actual screencap of Shenmue III.

[Shane]

Made it to the final boss of Dead Cells. Not sure how I’ll ever beat it, though.

Can consistently make it to the Clock Tower, regardless of the path I take. GOTY for me ao Far. 

[Coletti]

Having a blast with Guacamelee 2. It's nice dropping back into a world and feeling like you've never left, yet there's still all sorts of new platforming challenges, bizarre new enemies, new abilities, etc. That first trophy made me laugh out loud, too.

 

Edit - now I'm at a point where you start using these yellow floating balls to recharge a move mid-air and I'm supposed to use this to platform over spiky shit, and this is not cool.

[SirSmUgly]

5 hours ago, christopher.annino said:

Having a blast with Guacamelee 2. It's nice dropping back into a world and feeling like you've never left, yet there's still all sorts of new platforming challenges, bizarre new enemies, new abilities, etc. That first trophy made me laugh out loud, too.

 

Edit - now I'm at a point where you start using these yellow floating balls to recharge a move mid-air and I'm supposed to use this to platform over spiky shit, and this is not cool.

Yep, once this game hits the prison, it runs out of good ideas and starts throwing bad ideas and iffy design into the mix. 

I have no problem with a challenge - the secret mask piece areas and El Infierno are some of my favorite parts of the first game (especially that awesome Tree Tops platforming challenge), but these are not great.

Then they start mixing the recharge balls with the eagles that boost you in a direction, and those skulls are inconsistent in letting you latch on and boost yourself, so...it gets frustrating rather than enjoyably challenging. 

[Dolfan in NYC]

There's been a mass shooting at a Madden 19 tournament in Jacksonville. 4 dead, 11 wounded.   

 

It was streamed on Twitch.  The clip is extremely disturbing. 

Do not post the clip here. Find it elsewhere if you want. 

[Robert C]

Saw a BBC report that the shooter was one of the competitors, and had just been eliminated.

[odessasteps]

One of my first thoughts was admittedly "i wonder if Woods was there" before l heard it was a Madden event.

[John from Cincinnati]

46 minutes ago, Robert C said:

Saw a BBC report that the shooter was one of the competitors, and had just been eliminated.

Welcome back to the conversation, violent video games scapegoat?

[odessasteps]

It was madden, not GTA or Call of Duty or Halo, so id think we would not get soap boxing.

(Insert quote about the hyperviolence of american football) 

[Kang]

On August 25, 2018 at 7:20 PM, Victator said:

If you have access to the arcade Ghosts 'n Goblins, you should play Mighty Final Fight. 

Loved your write up of Mario 2/USA. I really love the game and think it is underrated in terms of 2D Mario games. 

I loved the pick up and throw mechanics.

Mighty Final Fight (NES, also on Gba and 3DS)

This game came out when the NES era was nearly soon done. It's somewhat of a port but yet a new game compared to it's Arcade parent it's based on.

The game features cute chibi sprites and impressive backgrounds. It's bit more surrealistic in style and the story is too. Belger (who's now a cyborg) wants Jessica out of love instead for example.

Unlike the SNES Final Fight version you can choose all 3 main characters. With special weapons too. (Gamers had to go to blockbuster and get the other SNES version to play as Guy.) Poison is in and uncensored in Mighty Final Fight, she was replaced with dudes for the SNES.

The progress system or levelling up system makes your character faster, stronger, more health etc. And it allows you to learn new special moves, so there's a sense of becoming a better fighter with this game. (Double Dragon NES has something similar.)

It's a very good NES beat them up, right up there with Double Dragon 2 NES and River City Ransom and Battletoads.

 

 

[SirSmUgly]

I've played through Mighty Final Fight before. It was decent.

I have it on the Capcom Classics Collection GBA cart, which also comes with Bionic Commando and Strider. 

[Spritenaut 32]

I realized over the weekend that 2.5D fighters are probably my favorite thing in gaming.  2D fighters are probably runner-up.  I'm not even much of a fighting game fan, but Capcom and SNK really churned out a lot of fun franchises.