What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[celerystalker]

It's been kind of a crummy week for me in a lot of ways, but I finally squeezed in a little time today and finished Link's Awakening for Game Boy. Overall, I like it. The later dungeons are very tedious with gimmicks that require a lot of backtracking, and there's little to no challenge in the game. The jumping mechanic and boomerang are totally broken, allowing early access to a lot of stuff to a decent player, making dodging enemies a breeze, and the boomerang mauls everything. That said, it's still a pleasant overall experience, with useful items, piles of secrets, and quick pacing. It's the first Zelda I've enjoyed in years.

[celerystalker]

Played an old board game (Solarquest) with my wife until she was sleepy, then played some A Link to the Past on SNES for the billionth or so time. Went from new file through the fourth palace in the dark world in a couple of hours. Then, to cap it off, I played through Fatal Fury: 1st Contact on NGPC before heading off to bed myself. I have some fun stuff that'll be coming in the mail over the next couple of weeks including a couple of arcade pcbs, so that stuff'll be good. Probably finish Zelda tomorrow evening, then who knows.

[jb143]

I've been mostly playing handhelds for the past couple years due to convenience. Recently though, I started playing Skyward Sword. I bought it (and a Wii Motion Plus controller) when it was new and figured it was about time. I'm liking it so far, my only issues are with the controls. The swordplay is fine, it just bugs me to no end that they went with the gyroscope for selecting things on screen rather than the sensor bar. I constantly have to center it because my hand is not in the same position or angle each time I need to use the menu or target something. And I've even lost a battle or two because the cursor doesn't go the way I want. And I really wish there was a way to rotate the camera. A GameCube controller option would be great, other than the fact that it would negate the swordplay aspect which was the driving factor in most of the game design.

Other than those gripes I'm having fun with it so far. It's a little linear as far as Zelda games go, but at this point in my life I don't mind so much, knowing that I have limited time to put into games. If I know I'm only going to have, say, 40 minutes to play one night I'd rather not waste it just wandering around trying to figure out what to do next.

[celerystalker]

Played through A Link to the Past for the god-know-how-many-eth time Sunday and Monday, having been in the mood to play classic Zelda after finishing Link's Awakening.

Taito Memories II: Gekan was on the docket today. My son (he's 2 years old) sat on my lap to "help." We played through Night Striker (he was in charge of the shoot button) and beat it. That game, while derivative of Space Harrier, is the shit. Killer Super Scaler-style game that stands up well along the likes of Galaxy Force.

We did some Full Throttle next, which is a straight OutRun clone, but a good one at least.

Following that, we beat Chase HQ. My son was in charge of the nitros, which we naturally used immediately each stage, costing a couple of credits, but we still finished in four credits.

We played some Buggy Challenge next, and I suck at it. Next.

We finished off with beating Battle Shark on about fifty credits. My son was in charge of shooting. We died a lot toward the end. Very different playing it emulated on PS2 without the periscope on the cabinet.

I played everything else on the disc after he fell asleep, and some more Night Striker. I've really come to love big, beautiful arcade games that use tons of sprite scaling, especially GI Joe, Space Harrier, and Night Striker. I need to hook my GI Joe pcb back up in my Sunset Riders cabinet.