AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I loved that game.

Crash Team Racing.
I was UNTOUCHABLE.
It was all I played. Before Warhammer...

I still play majesty the fantasy kingdom sim. But older than that...



I love this game.

CTR! -high five again-

Basically, any Crash Bandicoot that is Wrath of Cortex (first PS2 Crash game) and earlier... The new stuff is shit, imo

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

When I'm in a hurry and don't have the time to progress in Cave Story at school, I play a few rounds of blackjack in Larry. Maybe one day I'll actually replay the game.


Original, not remake.

I'm currently playing Wanderers From Ys. A game I played as a kid but never beat, because I only had it for rentals. But I couldn't have beat it anyway. Fucking game is HARD. And it has a low level cap. It may as well not even give you levels. The graphics are great, though.

Wanderers From Ys (SNES version) is a game that haunted me as a child. The difficulty is unreasonable and unforgiving. Replaying old games, I've found I am dumber, but more cunning. I figure out strategies faster, but my puzzle solving has gotten worse. So as such, combat has become my forte. So I went into Ys with the expectation of breezing through it. After all, I sucked at fighting anything as a kid. But I only found myself a more bitter, agitated counterpart to my youth.

The first dungeon is just as I remember. TOUGH. This is your first impression of the game. Simply walking into the first dungeon will get you killed easily. You have to buy a sword foremost, and you can spend your cheddar elsewhere. So if you buy items, but have no cheddar left over to purchase a weapon, you may as well restart the game. That's how unforgiving this game is. They let you make mistakes that BREAK THE GAME. After fighting a while, you gain a few levels, and can proceed. But your level cap is 16. You can make that easily by the second dungeon. But you aren't all-powerful, even at that level. They stacked the difficulty so high, it really detracts from the fun. Enemies do so much damage, a life bar seems incredibly unnecessary. A few dots to represent your life would be better. Especially since the game eagerly encourages you to not touch anything that moves. Contra-style. Your life depletes way too fast.

There's also a huge problem in the hit-detection. If you fight an enemy from the left, and strike, you'll make contact and take no damage. From the other side, it's just the opposite. The enemy's animation reverses, but its hit box doesn't. Bosses are an absolute mystery, however, as I could never pinpoint a consistent striking point and it often resulted in either me doing/taking no damage or receiving/doing no damage. This adds to the frustration the game already provides. Combat in general is very awkward and clunky. You can stab upwards, but the animation looks quite suggestive. You can also stab down, which helps in attacking while evading. The game is very similar to Zelda II in the elements of combat. It isn't a platformer, though, and it isn't challenging, just hard.

The length is another issue. For all of the stress and frustration it causes, it's only about 5 hours long. So you don't even get a satisfactory game out of it. It feels unfinished and unplanned. The control is another problem I have. Jumping is really awkward, and it's problematic getting over monsters or climbing over things. And menus are just a jumbled mess. The confirm/cancel buttons aren't intuitive and to select armor or items, you highlight them, as opposed to pressing a button. It feels really confusing. And it's easy to unequip armor this way. The game is linear in the same way Quintet RPGs for SNES were. The great weapons and armor spoken of are in plain sight or essential to beat the game. I don't fault it for this, but as faulty as the game is, it would have been nice to have a little something to explore.

The story is surprisingly decent. Nothing great, and it is a bit cliché at times, but it's not as bad as other games of its style that have no story AT ALL or bog it down with cheesy dialogue. The dialogue here is pretty straight-forward, and that's some of the charm for me.

Musically, the game is enjoyable. Not incredible or abysmal, it's just good. JUST good.

Graphics are probably the game's strong suit. It manages to pull off some great full-motion anime sequences, which I recognize as impressive as early SNES games go. Backgrounds and enemies have good graphics, as well. The town that serves as the game's HUB belongs in Zelda II, as do the characters. But everything else looks quite nice.

Unfortunately, the minor plusses this game has aren't enough to make it enjoyable. 4.5

I wanna play Rez.

Rez looked like all innovation, no substance.

When I play an RPG, one thing I demand, besides good music, is a good story. It's the only genre in which gameplay takes a back seat to the elements that draw you in like a movie or a book. Terranigma, while an action-RPG, hooked me on the story immediately. . . but had a horrible aftertaste.

The first thing one notices after playing Terranigma is the sheer amount of "stuff" they throw at you. It really lays all the cards on the table, and it's pretty overwhelming, yet exciting. The combat is quite good. You start off knowing all your basic and advanced combat moves. You go through five dungeons and a boss almost right at the start of the game. But these are mostly just a heavy-handed tutorial. You're given a weapon that gradually heals you, easy monsters, simple puzzles that teach you the gist of the game's physics and a pretty epic mission. Then the game actually starts, and becomes more challenging.

Most puzzles are simple, and everything is pretty obvious. But sometimes, things are poorly explained or way too cryptic. So you never know where you need to go, and traveling is an excruciatingly slow process, so looking for your next step is often a very boring experience. As well, there are issues with contact points. Such as when walking along ropes. You have to step on the exact spot to start the tightrope animation. Otherwise, you fall. This was something that didn't even need to be in the game to begin with, but it only makes it worse that it was botched. The only other major complaint I have with the gameplay is the lack of patterns. For example there is a portion of the game in which you are required to use stealth to sneak around a castle. But the guards walk around like normal townspeople. So you have no idea when they'll turn around to spot you. There is no major penalty for being spotted, you just get taken back to the entrance, but it gets really frustrating when there is no pattern. Most games would have the guards go straight, turn around, go back and repeat. But it is completely randomized here. There's a similar issue with the final boss's erratic pattern. Otherwise, this game could have been Secret Of Mana 2 just as easily as it is Illusion Of Gaia 2. It's very similar to both.

The story unfolds in a very strange way. But it holds its ground, building and building. There are several very eerie moments. One involves you waking up to the find the town is infested with zombies, another has an entire town being mass depopulated. The game sets the framework beautifully, keeping your head filled with questions, but only giving you more puzzles. The story was really holding my interest. Until the last 5% of the game. It's like skydiving, and having someone cut your chute 30 feet above the ground. It wasn't that the twists weren't good, it's that they were executed with absolutely no style. It couldn't have felt more empty if someone stood beside me as I played and TOLD me what was going to happen. The story was my favorite part of the game up to that point. Absolute disappointment.

Musically, I must say, the game delivers. Not phenomenal, but certainly worthy of appreciation. There are very few songs in the entire game I wasn't fond of. There's a very strong, epic tone to the music. It suits the game's style very nicely and isn't generic, which is usually the problem with scores of the nature. The sound effects are a bit irritating, however. Every time Ark is attacked, he sounds like a dog's chew toy. Now imagine that EVERY. TIME. YOU. GET. HIT. It is a very annoying sound, and one they could have done away with.

In graphics, it's one of the most impressive games on the SNES. But the majority of the game's strong visual showcasing is done in the beginning of the game. The rest of the game relies heavily on Mode 7. But the problem with the game is that the developers apparently knew the graphics were top-notch and made it so you must watch EVERYTHING. You can't skip through any of the countless cutscenes, because watching a bird fly around for the 60th time couldn't POSSIBLY be old. I detest the main character's design, too. Blegh. But minor gripes aside, the graphics are beautiful.

Terranigma, while not the pinnacle of its genre, developer or era, deserves recognition, blemishes and all. 8.0.

Yo BattleTanx was the shit.

Haha. The original GT. I was never a fan of realistic racing games, but it gets respect.