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Reply 4500 of 5848, by leileilol

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Renegade is a bit rough with the fov you're given, the wimpy damage feedback, and then there's the hilarious recycling of the same unit death noises and some levels are just way too obtuse and big. Also it's had many, many delays and that it was once a plan for the PSX ~1998 so it probably had a lot of the 'single player fps but large scale for the first time ever!!!' legacy design stuck to it. Probably the only other similarly designed game around that time is Codename Eagle (famously technically evolved into the Battlefield series).

The loading times took quite a bit too. Where it shined once then was the multiplayer.

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Reply 4501 of 5848, by Sombrero

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-12-06, 09:01:

Also, I think Frank Klepacki worked on the soundtrack for Renegade as well, which is another reason to check it out I guess.

He did, some of the tracks in the game are remixes from the original game like the classic Act on Instinct, but I thought they were all inferior to the originals. Was still fun to hear familiar tunes.

There was also one stinker amongst them unfortunately, imagine listening to this for an hour on endless repeat. Christ that police siren sound started to get on my nerves.

Reply 4502 of 5848, by Joseph_Joestar

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Sombrero wrote on 2022-12-06, 09:16:

There was also one stinker amongst them unfortunately, imagine listening to this for an hour on endless repeat. Christ that police siren sound started to get on my nerves.

Heh, that gets annoying really fast, with the beeping and the sirens.

Personally, I always preferred his music from the original C&C and RA to the track remixes in the later games from the series.

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Reply 4503 of 5848, by newtmonkey

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Blaster Master Zero
Finished it just now! 7.5 hours to complete with the real ending. I really liked this, but I'm not interested in doing any of the extra modes, etc. that unlock once you beat the game. I enjoyed this mostly from start to finish, but the dialog and story were really bad. This game simply doesn't need that stuff, and it was annoying to get constantly interrupted with dialog boxes.

Anyway, great game! I'll give the sequel a try early next year.

Reply 4504 of 5848, by NovaCN

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newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-06, 11:36:

Blaster Master Zero
Finished it just now! 7.5 hours to complete with the real ending. I really liked this, but I'm not interested in doing any of the extra modes, etc. that unlock once you beat the game. I enjoyed this mostly from start to finish, but the dialog and story were really bad. This game simply doesn't need that stuff, and it was annoying to get constantly interrupted with dialog boxes.

Anyway, great game! I'll give the sequel a try early next year.

Weird bit of trivia: the character Eve in BM0 got her name from the Worlds of Power (a series of children's book novelizations of NES games) book for the original Blaster Master. Eve was an original character added so Jason would have someone to talk to, and now she's canon apparently.

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Reply 4505 of 5848, by appiah4

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I'm ripping my hair out trying to get through the space section of Halo: Reach on legendary. The controls for the Sabre fighter craft are astonishingly terrible with a keyboard and mouse. And the second wave of Seraphim/Banshees annihilate me within 2 seconds of engaging them. I am looking online and the only tip I can find is "BARREL ROLL CONSTANTLY" but I can't even manage to figure out how to do that. Space/Jump doe sthe backflip, but what does the barrel roll? I don't want to end up punching my monitor..

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Reply 4506 of 5848, by Repo Man11

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I love the computers in Half-Life 2. That appears to be a real Slot 1 motherboard, upside down, with no CPU installed.

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Reply 4507 of 5848, by liqmat

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Sombrero wrote on 2022-12-06, 06:36:

As sad as I am of Westwoods passing, that would have had a chance of being good only if the lead designers had been swapped to some other people. The problems Renegade has go way beyond beginner mistakes, seemed to me they either didn't really even understand what they were doing or the development team had major internal issues that lead to Anthem type of situation.

Which reminds me... I have no idea how good it is, but there is Renegade X from an indie dev.

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Reply 4508 of 5848, by Demetrio

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-12-07, 00:44:

I love the computers in Half-Life 2. That appears to be a real Slot 1 motherboard, upside down, with no CPU installed.

Wow, never noticed: awesome 👍
Now I have to know what type of motherboard is inside the computers in Portal 😁

Reply 4509 of 5848, by dr_st

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-12-07, 00:44:

I love the computers in Half-Life 2. That appears to be a real Slot 1 motherboard, upside down, with no CPU installed.

F.E.A.R. (or maybe just the expansions?) had DELL XPS systems.

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Reply 4510 of 5848, by newtmonkey

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Having just completed Blaster Master Zero, I was in the mood for another "metroidvania." I went through my Steam library and tried a few for a bit to decide what to play next.

Axiom Zero
This started out very strong, with a fantastic soundtrack and some nice NES style graphics. However, the dialog/story sort of ruins the atmosphere (it would have been better without any dialog at all), and I found the level design to be quite poor. It feels more like Metroid than Super Metroid or Castlevania: SOTN, with a bunch of corridors and very little direction. That works in Metroid because there really aren't that many items to find to make progress; in Axiom Verge, I felt like I was constantly finding new navigation-related items, and having to constantly backtrack all over the world to figure out where I could now go. Worse for me, though, is that it just feels almost 100% like Metroid, from the way it controls to even how you walk in doors. Maybe it gets better later, but for now I'm putting it aside.

The Messenger
This is a lot of fun so far, though it's not really a "metroidvania" game at this point (it's more like Ninja Gaiden on the NES). The big twist here is that it changes from a linear action game into a metroidvania at the halfway point, apparently. It's very jokey, and although it's very funny sometimes, the jokes get old. You can buy upgrades in shops throughout the levels, and it's pretty fun to gain new abilities and master them. There's a bit too much of a focus on precision platforming at times, but it's not too hard so far. I'll keep playing this.

Blasphemous
This is like Dark Souls mixed with a metroidvania. You've got deliberate combat with parries, upgrades purchased based on "souls" dropped by enemies, etc. It really feels like playing a 2D Dark Souls game. The overall setting and atmosphere are quite unique, and the game takes place in some crazy world based primarily on Holy Week in Seville, Spain (all the voice acting is also in Spanish). It's very, very edgy and violent, but it looks and sounds great. It's not too hard so far, but does require some precision platforming here and there. Bosses so far are pure Dark Souls; giant monsters that require you to learn their patterns to defeat them, since you take a ton of damage with each hit. As a big fan of the Dark Souls series, I am really enjoying this so far.

--[EDIT]--

Duck Tales: Remastered
I had already completed this on the NES back in the day, so I figured it would be fun to revisit the game with this modern version. It leaves a great first impression, with awesome sprites that seem to have been taken straight from the cartoon, and voice acting from the original cast (or at least, for Scrooge McDuck, anyway).

That good first impression, sadly, is brief because the game forces you into a tedious tutorial for a game originally played with two buttons, that was played and mastered by children 30 years ago. It's not long, but why is it in here? Why can't you skip it?

Then you get bombarded with dialog boxes all throughout the level. I get what they were trying to do here (make it feel a bit more like playing an episode of the cartoon), but I just don't feel that such a simple action game needs this. It kills the pace of the game. You can skip these, but you need to press a button twice to do so; this seems like petty complaint, but when you are getting interrupted 10+ times a level with this stuff, it gets very annoying.

The levels have all been expanded, adding things like minecart rides (similar to Donkey Kong Country) or having to collect 10 doodads throughout the level to unlock a door. The boss battles are also much more complex, as there are more attack patterns to memorize and the bosses themselves require many more hits to kill. What's to complain about? They retained the lives system from the original NES game, and once you are out of lives you get kicked back to the level select screen. Dying at the boss means you've lose all your progress in the level, including all the many doodads you need to find just to reach the boss. There's nothing fun about that.

I'll put this aside for now, and maybe revisit it some other time. Not impressed so far.

Last edited by newtmonkey on 2022-12-08, 07:11. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4511 of 5848, by Jaron

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If you haven't played it, and though it's not retro, try Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It's made by Iga and others who were very involved in SotN and other Castlevania games.

Reply 4512 of 5848, by newtmonkey

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Jaron wrote on 2022-12-07, 16:27:

If you haven't played it, and though it's not retro, try Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It's made by Iga and others who were very involved in SotN and other Castlevania games.

I actually do have that one, but was in the mood for 2D graphics this time. I'll give that one a shot!

Reply 4513 of 5848, by NovaCN

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newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-07, 17:04:
Jaron wrote on 2022-12-07, 16:27:

If you haven't played it, and though it's not retro, try Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It's made by Iga and others who were very involved in SotN and other Castlevania games.

I actually do have that one, but was in the mood for 2D graphics this time. I'll give that one a shot!

I would also recommend Timespinner. Also a Metroidvania, and the influence from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is strong. It came out less than a year before Bloodstained and I honestly like it a bit more. It's a much smaller game but it's a bit more elegant in its design I feel; there's far less unnecessary cruft. Bloodstained is really good in its own right, but at times it feels like they went for scale over consistency, and I'm not really a fan of the "bigger is always better" mentality in game design. Also Timespinner has 2D pixel graphics, which seems relevant.
I really do love this game (and kind of want to replay it now!) but what really made me into a permanent evangelist for it was when I happened to see the creator streaming—he occasionally goes live on Twitch with work on the in-development sequel—and mentioned to him that I was transgender, asked if it was possible to update my name in the Kickstarter backer credits. And in the next patch, it was. Good dude, solid game.
Actually, at some point it might be interesting to play both Timespinner and Bloodstained back-to-back and writing on how they contrast with each other, the differences between when the former director makes a Castlevania successor vs. when a fan does it.

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Reply 4514 of 5848, by newtmonkey

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NovaCN wrote on 2022-12-10, 14:00:

I would also recommend Timespinner. Also a Metroidvania, and the influence from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is strong. It came out less than a year before Bloodstained and I honestly like it a bit more. It's a much smaller game but it's a bit more elegant in its design I feel; there's far less unnecessary cruft. Bloodstained is really good in its own right, but at times it feels like they went for scale over consistency, and I'm not really a fan of the "bigger is always better" mentality in game design. Also Timespinner has 2D pixel graphics, which seems relevant.

I hadn't heard of this one! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a look!

Reply 4515 of 5848, by newtmonkey

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I realized that I will not be able to finish Exile: Escape from the Pit by the end of the year unless I really rush through it, and I like it too much to do that. So, I've put it on the back burner and will revisit it early next year. I'm also a bit burned out on RPGs, as I've been playing and completing basically only RPGs (console and PC) since September, with many of them being older games that required a lot of note taking, etc.

The Messenger
I was really enjoying this for a while, but toward the end of the first half of the game, it suddenly went from a nice 8-bit style platformer, to one of the those "I Wanna Be the Guy" games where you just go from one death room to the next. It's definitely not nearly as hard as IWBTG or whatever, but it's not what I like look for in a platformer. Will revisit next year.

Quake
I've been slowly working through the modern version of this game on Steam. I remember at one point this version was all messed up (movement was weird, music was way too quiet even at max volume), but it seems they've fixed things in the meantime, because it feels and sounds great now. I never completed this back in the day, but did play it a lot. The furthest I ever got was completing the first three episodes, and then getting stuck somewhere in the fourth episode.
Anyway, I just completed the second episode last night and did a couple levels in the third episode today. The level design in this game is just perfect, and I like how each enemy has its own quirks and strategy to defeat it. I think it still looks good today (I definitely prefer texture filtering OFF), thanks to the moody lighting, gritty textures, and abstract looking levels and enemies.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I've spent many hours on this, but have never completed it, so maybe it's finally time. I do have the Special Edition, but after comparing both versions, I actually prefer how the original looks, so I am going with that. I installed two mods: SkyUI (gives the game a slightly better interface, better suited for playing with kb and mouse), and a mod that replaces the default map with something a bit more legible.
Neither of these mods seemed to work right with my old game in progress (from years ago!), so I started over. I got through the tutorial and arrived at Whiterun, and that was enough for today. I think this game looks pretty good even today.

Reply 4516 of 5848, by Joseph_Joestar

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Done with Final Fantasy 7. The beginning was kinda slow, but everything picks up pretty quickly after Disc 1. The Yamaha XG music is definitively worth experiencing, even if there are no lyrics in the One Winged Angel track when using that mode.

The controls still felt kind of weird compared to the PlayStation version, and I was almost tempted to dig up my old Logitech RumblePad2 and use that instead of the keyboard. Didn't want to change things mid game though, so I left it as is for this playthrough.

Was a pretty fun ride overall, but some of the mini games did annoy me a bit. Overall, I think the original FF7 is still a fine game which stands the test of time. Didn't play the remake yet, but I do intend to give it a shot some day. Should be interesting to see how things have changed.

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Reply 4517 of 5848, by clueless1

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Tomb Raider (2013)
I've been having so much fun with The Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered that I've hardly played this one lately. My last session was 6 days ago and I've sunk a total of 7.5 hours into the game so far. It's getting better as I go along. The graphics are beautiful and the story and setting are really good. I'm just not a huge fan of 3rd person games (Sniper Elite 4 was an exception) and especially when platforming is emphasized. My least favorite parts of this game are the timed sequences where you have to jump across collapsing platforms, scale vertical rock faces, or mash buttons at the right moment. My favorite parts are when the enemies are cleared and you can freely explore sections of maps for loot, or just watching cut scenes that unfold the story. It's a very good game overall, and I'll definitely finish this one (barring any future platform exercises that are too difficult for me to pass).

The Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered
I'm 36.5 hours into this one and still building up my party with targeted exploration. My Paladin, Monk, Bard and Rogue have all hit level 15. My two mages are in the process of class-changing. Jaana started as a Conjurer, maxed her spells, switched to Magician, and just maxed her spells there and is starting to work on Sorcerer. Nystul started as a Magician, maxed his spells, switched to Sorcerer, and has almost maxed out his SO spells. One level to go, then he will class-change to Conjurer. When both complete those three classes, they will both switch to Wizard, by which point we will probably be ready to approach the conclusion of Part 1. We have completed the Sewers awhile ago, gotten through the first two levels of the Catacombs, and now switched over to the Castle level 1 for higher XP battles. Combat strategy continues to be a highlight of this game. My plan is to party transfer all the way through the trilogy, but not straight through. I'll play other games in between Parts 2 and 3. I have a huge backlog of RPG games I want to play, so I'll mix it up. It might take a year to complete Parts 2 and 3. These are the other RPGs on my backlog:
Baldur’s Gate 2
Might and Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Darklands
Legend of Grimrock 2
Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
Pool of Radiance
Icewind Dale
Eye of the Beholder 2
Wizards and Warriors
Ultima VIII
Underworld Ascendant

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Reply 4518 of 5848, by Sombrero

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clueless1 wrote on 2022-12-11, 14:37:

Underworld Ascendant

I backed that on kickstarter but backed out at the end after getting a bad feeling about it. I was really glad I did that as the game evidently turned out to be pretty bad.

I haven't played it myself and no longer remember the specifics why the game was concidered to be really bad, but I do remember the issues were bad enough to recommend you forget that one and spend your time with something else instead. Arx Fatalis is pretty good Ultima Underworld-like if you haven't tried that.

Reply 4519 of 5848, by clueless1

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Sombrero wrote on 2022-12-11, 15:02:
clueless1 wrote on 2022-12-11, 14:37:

Underworld Ascendant

I backed that on kickstarter but backed out at the end after getting a bad feeling about it. I was really glad I did that as the game evidently turned out to be pretty bad.

I haven't played it myself and no longer remember the specifics why the game was concidered to be really bad, but I do remember the issues were bad enough to recommend you forget that one and spend your time with something else instead. Arx Fatalis is pretty good Ultima Underworld-like if you haven't tried that.

Thanks! I've heard of that. I'll have to check if it's already on my wishlist (it wasn't, but I just added it on GOG to wait for a sale).

I'm familiar with the poor reviews for UA, but I did buy it on a steep discount and I've installed it and checked it out already. It seems like it might not be that bad. At least I'm willing to give it a shot.

Incidentally, the order I listed my RPG backlog is based on their composite ratings at gamefaqs.com. So that's why U8 and UA are at the bottom. 😀

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