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#662 - Pokemon FireRed (Game Boy Advance) – Winter 2017
It's crazy how long it took for me to really get into the Pokemon series. I played Gen 1, took off for a decade, returned and bounced off Gen 4's terrible initial versions, took off for a decade, came back and played everything retroactively in the late 2010s. This series is basically comfort food, as far as games go. They're never all that demanding or difficult. The gameplay is simple, to the point, and you feel like you're getting somewhere every time you play.
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Biggest QOL Improvement: You can now play as a male or a female hero, so nobody needs to feel left out. Also the female hero is a real fox, which would pretty much be the norm in every Pokemon game from here on out.
Path of Least Resistance: Picking Bulbasaur at the beginning of Gen 1 is a surefire way to make the game easy.
Toughest Fight: I found the fight with Lance to be nasty in this one. His Dragon-types can one-shot a lot of your 'mons.
Posts HERE. (for LeafGreen)
#663 Pokemon Soul Silver (DS) – Winter 2017
Next remake. Gen 2 is a good one and this remake is solid AF. It was during an era I missed, but getting Pokemon Platinum and the Gen 2 remakes fairly close together in the late 2000's is probably the best one two punch the series ever had.
Path of Least Resistance: Chimchar, the fire 'mon, is the strongest in this one by a good margin.
Toughest Fight: Once again, the final postgame fight with Ash / the Gen 1 hero is far and away the toughest battle in Gen 2.
Posts...not here? I really need to do more Pokemon games. Especially given that I left off on some of the best games in the series with this and Platinum.
#664 Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (3DS) – Winter 2017
Next remake. This one goes into the realm of 3D visuals and also speeds up Gen 3 a bit. It's like a hybrid of Gen 3/6, my two least-liked, that results in something solid. All three of these remakes were really good. They should have stopped there because the later Gen 4 remake was pretty much ass. Not sure we're getting any more after that. Gen 5 would be weird to remake anyway.
Path of Least Resistance: The fire starter wins again, as it turns into the fire/fighting dynamo Blaziken.
Toughest Fight: Tate and Liza, the psychic double-teaming boss. If they were going to make a double-boss, why did it have to be psychic?
#665 Rise of the Tomb Raider (Playstation 4) – Winter 2017
Sequel to the solid reboot. Lara runs around and climbs on things. This is definitely the prettiest game I played on the PS4 to this point from a graphics perspective.
What Were They Thinking?: Lara Croft is in a baggy winter coat for most of this game. Lara Croft, the explorer who shows off her figure in any climate. She fears cold weather suddenly? And her tight shorts were a total thing of the past at this point too, nowhere to be found. There's no way she would let slightly cold weather keep her from rocking gams. They brought the shorts back in the next one so I guess they figured things out.
#666 Five Nights at Freddy’s (Android) – Winter 2017
The game that launched a thousand Youtube reaction channels. Is this really #666? Yeow. It basically created a new genre and that doesn't happen very often. For anyone unaware, the game consists of you opening and closing doors to prevent killer bear animatronics from getting into your office and killing you. This involves tracking their movements on security cameras, turning lights on and off, and so forth. You have a finite amount of electricity available to do all of these things, including holding doors shut. Run out of power and you're a sitting duck. Survive seven levels of increasing difficulty and you survive your week of night security at this hellhole and can collect your modest paycheck.
This game can get down to the absolute narrowest margins, and I recall times where I ran out of power with maybe ten seconds left on the (unseen) clock and had to just sit there defenseless hoping the night would end before something burst into the room. Moments like that - especially if you made it - are what make this game such a neat experience.
#667 Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (Android) – Winter 2017
Improves on the first by adding more evil puppets. The simplicity of the first game can't really be beat, though. This one does expand the variety and the lore, so it's worth a run after the first.
First Switch game I finished. It was a quick one. It's Bomberman alright, but with some 3D elements that it didn't really need. Either way, it was fine. Most notable thing about it for me was the video I made on it where I pretended it was the just-announced Metroid Dread:
#669 Pokemon Sun (3DS) – Spring 2017
Pokemon's big comeback. Gen 7 here is when people were really talking Pokemon again for the first time in ages. With an island setting and some pretty nice visuals for a portable, this was fun from the get-go. The only frontier left from here was to finally give us a console Pokemon. This game came out months earlier when the weather was just getting cold, and most people finished it way before I did. They were still playing it competitively even now though. I took a long time to grind my way through it and by the time I finished we were well into the new year and the snow was all melted.
Starter of Choice: Rowlet (Grass). Egad! Finally Grass wins! It isn't "path of least resistance" anymore because by then they'd long-since balanced out the starters to make them pretty much equals. It was mainly the first three gens that each had one starter be significantly easier than the other two.
Fun Memory: One of the employees at my game store was depressed, underpaid, overworked, and needed time off. That or she was just trying to get some time to play Breath of the Wild. She lived around the corner, so I got her a large plush Rowlet and left it on her doorstep and it cheered her up. She soon returned to work...maybe because of the Rowlet, but probably because she finished BOTW.
#671 Mortal Kombat (Game Boy) – Spring 2017
This is when I was recording "Let's Play With My Girlfriend" videos with...you guessed it, my girlfriend. We did the first two MK's on the SNES and almost did a video for this as well. I didn't want to subject her to how bad it is, but at the same time it might have made for some good content. MK3 on SNES was also a consideration but it never panned out and we just sorta left the MKs at the two videos we did and moved on to other things. Regardless of all of that, legendarily terrible port here. Think the framerate was around...5 FPS. I've talked about this game a lot already in the past.
Favorite Character: In this one? Probably Rayden. It isn't like I could get anyone's special moves to work either way, though.
Toughest Part: Taking down Goro. He's WAY more aggressive than in the console versions, and no-sells most attacks.
Post HERE with all the Game Boy MKs.
#671 Mass Effect Andromeda (Playstation 4) – Spring 2017
This just did nothing for me compared to the first trilogy. Given how magical the trilogy was, this was just a weird, colossal letdown. It probably wasn't even that bad of a.game, but it felt like it was. Seemed like nobody actually liked this game
There was no reason at all to have this be set in the Andromeda Galaxy (as if you'd ever run out of space in our galaxy). Even then, the game takes place inside of this one nebula, not the entire galaxy. Andromeda is a massive galaxy, much bigger than the Milky Way. For a minute I thought we'd get a bigger galaxy map than previous games, with way more stars and worlds. Nope. Just this one little nebula that could have been anywhere in the Milky Way and felt like not much more than a DLC to the first trilogy.
Toughest Part: Trying to make an attractive female character. It was pretty much impossible.
#672 Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 (Android) – Spring 2017
Weird game here that was a step down from the first two; at least it followed the same general gameplay loop, unlike the two later games I played in this series. Main difference is that you just have one main antagonist (the terrifying Springtrap) instead of the previous four main animatronic foes and their minions.
I played the first two in the back room at work, which was fitting, and then this was the last one I played in that setting. This one took me a lot longer to finish than the couple hour runtime of the first two. Much more difficult game.
#673 Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (Playstation 4) – Spring 2017
Got this from the game store, plowed through it. Pretty standard shooter, does what it says on the tin. Has lots of bullets. Actually a pretty high-quality game, for the short time it lasts.
#675 Super Bomberman 4 (Super Famicom) – Spring 2017
#676 Super Bomberman 5 (Super Famicom) – Spring 2017
Played all three of these back to back. Can't tell the difference between them. They're all Japan-only games that we didn't get over here. The second game in the series was really good, so I just wanted more of that. The bite-sized levels of these games were great for playing at work during downtime. This was when I was officially in padding the numbers mode, I think. Just plowing away going for 1000 now.
#677 Mortal Kombat 2 (Game Boy) – Spring 2017
A game I wanted to play for a long time, and finally got to it. It's a good fighting game, especially for Game Boy. Probably my favorite fighting game on the system. I think this, Street Fighter 2, and Killer Instinct are kinda the reigning tied trio on that system. They don't exactly have any real competition.
Favorite Character: Kitana
What Were They Thinking: No Kintaro? Seriously? It does have Jade as a hidden fight, though.
Played this many times in multiplayer before this. Here's where I went and did the single-player and beat the game and so forth. Can't remember much about this except that it was my last hurrah with the awesome Wavebird controller. I think I had a real struggle defeating a giant hand at the end of the game. That was one of these, anyway. Maybe all of them.
Favorite Character: Samus
#679 Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) – Spring 2017
Mostly remember this having the pretty "late 2000s Wii bloom" visual effects on everything. Was a good looking game for not being HD. This and Mario Galaxy punched above their weight on graphics for this system.
Favorite Character: Princess Zelda. This is the Twilight Princess version and she's insanely beautiful. She fights with a slender-bladed straight sword and is the picture of elegance. Why can't we get a game where we play as her, in this form,.and actually able to fight? Not a chibi version, not a superdeformed 2D stubby version, not having to summon pots to throw at foes.
No, just normal, adult, elegant Zelda, with a sword plus various sub-weapons, tools, and equipment, doing dungeons, fighting monsters and bosses. I challenge Nintendo to give us that game in a real, legit, 3D, tentpole series entry. No reason they can't do that in the next major game after the Ocarina of Time remake. Not a "Shiekah Mode" where they just reskin Link on NG+ (though that would be interesting), no 2D superdeformed Zelda. Just adult, elegant, sword-wielding, spell-slinging, unadulterated, pure-cut, radiant, motherfucking ZELDA.
My hypothesis as regards the weird ending to remake!Northern Crater mentioned in the previous post is that THAT death scene is so iconic that featuring it in the remake at all put the writers in a sort of double-bind. Change it and they'd be accused of messing with a classic and catering to obnoxious fans. Keep it and they'd be accused of being uncreative and not using the reboot premise to its fullest. So they just went with "weird mind-whammy that'll pay off in the next one probably."
ReplyDeleteIDK if that makes it any better, just an idea that occurred to me.