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

[Canija]

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I recently replayed Gears 2 and Road to Ruin and I agree. It tried to do some interesting things with semi-stealth segments but I feel it was a bit too repetitive and didn't really fit with the tone of what happened storywise prior to that segment. So I can understand why they decided to cut it. I haven't played Aftermath (and Judgment in general), but planning to catch up later this year.

[Aussie2B]

I was focusing on the Scrooge 3 Medal Challenge in PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe on PSP, figuring it would be the easiest of the three I had remaining, but I was having a hell of a time with it. I'd either fail from too many monsters leaking through, or I'd fall short of the necessary cash to successfully clear the challenge. I hate how, with games from around the 7th gen and newer, it can be impossible to find any worthwhile general tips. Instead, the only info out there is in the form of YouTube videos. I don't want to just watch exactly what I need to do, but I eventually caved and watched about half the waves of a successful run at Scrooge 3 to get an idea of how to get started. I was right in thinking it was best going with the order of buying one interest, lasers, and then the remaining interest boosts, but I was overbuilding in some regards and needed more arrows. So with that bit of help, I cleared Scrooge 3 and moved on to Rainbow Team, which actually fell into place surprisingly easy. It took several failed starts, as you really need to know exactly what you're going to do and make a beeline for it, but once you get established decently, you can mostly cruise through the second half of the waves, just using a mine here and there if anything leaks through. So I didn't need to look at a video for that one. Now it's only the dreaded Tower Collector challenge that remains.

[YoshiM]

Ugh..here I am playing "Up Way Too Late". The wife and I are doing a one day get-away out of town, so I stayed up to get a discount on the room at a bed and breakfast place. Nice historic hotel type place with a wine and cracker social in the evening and then a big breakfast in the morning. The downtown area it's at is also historic and fun to walk around. A budget theater is half a block away with movies going for about $4 a person. I hopped on here to see what was up and just noticed the time. 1:07 AM.

So what's a few more minutes, right?

I haven't had a ton of time to play. I was doing the 2600 High Score challenge at Atari Age but I could not get a moment to sit in front of my 2600. I'm not fond of playing 2600 games on a system with a joypad as I could have done straight emulation, but I didn't. Oh well.

On the Switch I've gotten into the "Castlevania Collection" and spamming the hell out of the save states for the first NES game. I did discover my skills were decent as I could get to Igor and Frankenstein with very few deaths. I think I died maybe a couple of times and I used the saves merely to pause until the next time I could play. Fighting I and F....ugh...I was never good at that. It took a few rounds of reloads but I did it. Long story short, I'm at Dracula but I don't have a ton of hearts. I learned the pattern for attacking his first form BUT I started to get game fatigue, so it's sidelined until another time.

In "Animal Crossing: NH" I'm clearing out fruitless trees as I've got a lot of ground clutter. I'm also working on paying off this iteration of my house.

Since my last post I dabbled in both "Metroid Prime: Remastered" and "Horace", just pecking away at those titles.

[Aussie2B]

Whoo-hoo, I finally cleared all 24 Medal Challenges in PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe on PSP, earning a new trophy for the Tiki Hut and some more artwork in the gallery. I didn't even need as much outside help with Tower Collector as I did with Scrooge 3. Mostly I just read some general tips (unlock Laser Towers and Gem Towers first, place Laser Towers in good spots so you only need 3-4, and place 4-5 Gem Towers that are well surrounded so you can harvest upgraded towers for gems). I watched a video for just the first couple waves. I was already starting by placing three Cannon Towers, but the video had them in a row, which did seem better than how I initially had them more spaced apart, if only because it lessens having to run around to scoop up coins and gems. It took me several failed tries, where I was failing when the boss reached my base, either because I was a couple gems short or couldn't get things built fast enough to polish off the boss before all the Tiki kids were gone. But eventually I managed to squeak out a victory. Hard-core difficulty for the main game still isn't unlocked, so that must involve clearing more of the game on Regular (only ever cleared and earned rainbows on six stages on Regular). But I think I'll probably call it quits here. It's been fun, but I've had my fill for now. I'm satisfied with clearing all the stages in the main game, regardless of what difficulty, and all the Medal Challenges.

Beyond that, I'm still loading up Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PS4 for a few minutes here and there to read the lore stuff in the Glossary. I should finally just finish that off. I also bought and briefly tried out Freedom Wars for Vita and four Game Boy Advance games under the Petz umbrella: Petz: Hamsterz 2, Catz, Dogz, and Dogz Fashion.

[YoshiM]

As my N64 controllers have sticks that are in varying degrees of function (OK to great, with one stick a Hall Effect stick), I wanted to get my hands on an official OEM replacement. I have a Nintendo Switch Online N64 controller but the parts are not compatible with the OG controller. Bummer. I don't want to pony up for the NSO Expansion service as I already have the Family plan so I have a stick that's pretty much only used for Super Mario 64 in that Mario collection that came out a couple years or so ago. That got me to thinking-is there an adapter out there that would allow a Bluetooth controller to connect to the N64?

Enter RetroTime's BlueRetro N64 adapter. This little adapter is a little longer than the plug end of an official N64 controller. You plug it into your system, turn on the power and then go to Blueretro's site to connect to the adapter from your BT capable computer (and I'm assuming phone, though I haven't tried). From the web, you can update the firmware, set up how the controller functions (like having the ability to use memory paks, rumble or both-I set mine to "both") and format and manage the built in 4 virtual memory packs (you do have to format before you use them). It took a few minutes to update the firmware and maybe a couple more to set the accessory mode (the aforementioned "both") and format the packs.

Then came the test.

I paired my NSO N64 controller to the adapter and immediately I could navigate my Everdrive. I pressed the Home button to switch between the rumble pack (which makes the controller rumble) and memory pak mode. The Snapshot button switches between the 4 paks. I fired up Star Fox to try out the rumble feature and to feel how the control is. Sans the wireless feature and lesser weight, I was gaming like it was 1997 all over again. The controller was responsive with no detectable lag. The rumble was like Goldilock's porridge, just right. Not too strong and not weak. After getting through the alternate route of the first level of Star Fox, I switched over to the Japanese version of Wave Race. Rumble worked great in there, but I'm soooo out of practice with that game.

Beyond the test run, I got in some Animal Crossing today. I paid off my house and already signed up for the next upgrade. It's also looking like June has taken quite a shine to me. She sent me a letter stating how at times she likes to be alone, but there can be "too much of a great thing". Essentially she missed me. When I bumped into her on the island, she said it's been two months since we last spoke. She was quite happy I talked to her and said she had a daydream of picking apples, which had an insinuation that she wanted to pick them with me. I stopped at home to put up some drapes (which weren't the drapes I was thinking of) and she came over right away to hang out. She didn't stay long (which was fine, I had to finish my break) but dang, apparently she can't resist my human-ness.

[Aussie2B]

I finally finished up reading all the Glossary entries in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4 (once you get to the technology section, it just feels like reading a Star Trek wiki, haha), so after having it live in my system for nearly a year (outside of occasionally swapping in a Sailor Moon Blu-ray), I finally put that away, along with PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe.

I briefly tested a few cheap DS games I picked up: Clubhouse Games, Hamsterz Life, Petz: Dogz 2, and Petz: Hamsterz 2. Yes, I've been intentionally collecting Petz games lately, haha. But only ones that are totally unrelated Japanese games that were rebranded as Petz games in localization.

In terms of what I'm putting actual effort into, I have to be mindful of what I start up because the plan is to visit family again soon for probably at least a couple months. I've got a family member whose health is in decline, so I need to see him ASAP, and we also need to do a visit before kiddo starts kindergarten in September. So anyway, I don't want to start anything long that I would have to stop midway through on. Like usual, we'll take flash carts for the Famicom and SNES there and a couple handhelds, but that's still lot fewer options than I have here. I'll probably be gaming almost exclusively on my Vita like last time.

So in the meantime, I felt like playing some NES. I decided to revisit Cabal, which I had barely, if at all, touched in decades. Took a little practice, but I got my groove back and beat it. There aren't a ton of shooting gallery games like Cabal on any platform, but I thought Operation Wolf might give me a somewhat similar feel. That one I barely ever played before. I know it can also be played with the Zapper, but I'd rather just use the controller, even if it's rather twitchy. There isn't unlimited ammo like in Cabal, so you can't just sweep the field with gunfire, and between the auto-scrolling and enemies moving back and forth, you really have to dart the sights around. Thankfully, you can adjust the speed of the sights, as anything but the slowest setting destroys any ability to be precise. I quickly learned that when I started on the default Medium setting. I've gotten as far as the Prison Camp mission (the fifth of six). I've heard that the manual frames beating the game as clearing all four difficulty loops (the game loops endlessly, but it gets harder with each loop until you clear the fourth, at which point it just repeats that fourth loop), but you get a little ending after clearing the game's six missions, so I think I'd be satisfied and regard the game as beaten if I could get through just one loop. I usually don't even pay attention to harder loops that start after clearing a game's default difficulty, and I definitely don't consider completing those as musts to claim a game is beaten.

[fpbrush]

I briefly tested a few cheap DS games I picked up: Clubhouse Games, Hamsterz Life, Petz: Dogz 2, and Petz: Hamsterz 2. Yes, I've been intentionally collecting Petz games lately, haha. But only ones that are totally unrelated Japanese games that were rebranded as Petz games in localization.

Good luck, and enjoy the rest of that glossary!

Ah, haha! I remember, the early PC dayz of the Petz! Are the ds versions anything like them (e.g. are they fun still age wise)?

[fpbrush]

…I just rebooted my DS, and I am restarting my Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga playthrough.

[Aussie2B]

Some of Ubisoft's Petz games are fun, but outside of also being virtual pet games, they don't really have anything in common with the original computer games. Basically, Ubisoft bought the IP and slapped the name on anything they felt was fitting. Sometimes they contracted out bottom-tier developers to create games specifically for the Petz line. Other times, they'd buy the licenses for games that were developed in Japan and Europe and rename them as Petz games in localization for the North American market. Most of the "Horsez" games were from Europe, I believe, while a lot of the "Dogz" and "Hamsterz" games were from Japan. And of the stuff they licensed, there's a lot of variety, from serious simulations to silly, unrealistic games themed around whatever animal. Like in the case of Dogz Fashion on GBA, it's more like a dog-themed Mario Party than a simulation of dog ownership. And Ubisoft actually bought Digital Kids, one of the Japanese developers known for pet sims, and rebranded their offices as Ubisoft Osaka and Ubisoft Nagoya before presumably shuttering them after the virtual pet fad died down (seemingly because Nintendogs wasn't nearly as successful as Nintendo hoped, making everyone in the genre wary).

As for what I'm playing, I got up to the final mission in the first loop of Operation Wolf on NES. Up to the last boss even, it seems. I heard it was a helicopter, and there was a helicopter that looked different from the usual ones. But I guess I just barely ran out of life before finishing it off. It's a little frustrating that you can retry the first four missions (and the bonus one that pops up at a random point in the sequence), while it's an instant game over if you lose on either of the final two. Though, I did read that, even after a game over, the game retains which loop you're on, so that acts as a sort of continue. If you're trying to clear the harder loops, it would definitely suck to lose on the fifth or sixth mission and then have to restart on the first mission of the first loop.

[Nes]

Most recently played Qbert 3 on SNES. First became acquainted with Qbert on the Commodore 64 using a joystick. Accidentally fell off the edge more than once due to unfamiliarity with controls on the SNES.

[Gametrek]

I have been checking out the original Persona games on the PSX. Of course via emulation because it is too painful to play the actual original. Knowing the translation was made by some kind of supremacist r-tard and the amount of censoring including removal of the Snow-queen story ( which is like 2/3 of the game ). But what is worst is the PSP game ( thankfully people are modding it to be more like the original ).. The PSP game have better visuals but

A. Persona 3 music and sounds
B. lack of PSX music including lack of tunes in general.
C. No option to switch the HUD, or graphics to the original.

The only thing good is the translation. The voices are ugly but the translation is how it should have been. If we took the PSP

A. Faces
B. 3d animation FMV
C. Story
and stuck it inside the original PSX game it would be perfect. Even make an option to have either mark.

The voices of the monsters could be a mix, because some of them makes more sense in the PSP. Like talking to the Zombie girls.

[Aussie2B]

It took me quite a few attempts, but I finally cleared all six missions (or seven, if you count the bonus non-scrolling round that shows up randomly in the sequence) in Operation Wolf on NES (via our Famicom-style flash cart in our AV Famicom, if only because it was easier and quicker to set up than pulling the NES out of its box in the closet and fishing out the official cart). I never did try the Zapper with the game, and it doesn't even seem like there's any real consensus out there on if the game is easier with the Zapper or controller. I had a fair number of attempts end while I was trying to defeat the final boss and plenty of others that ended sometime during that final mission. Thankfully, each attempt was only taking me about ten minutes. I don't know why, but things seem to just fall apart for me on those last two missions. You always start the fifth stage with max ammo, and I was getting better and better at the first four missions (and bonus round) such that I'd usually remain okay on ammo and at nearly full life. But no matter how fast I'd try to take out enemies and grab icons for refills, I was struggling to not run out of ammo and/or life on those last two, even with being very careful to keep the innocents alive. I don't even recall how I lost a couple guys on my victorious run, but I ended up saving three out of the five prisoners, which is one short for the best ending. I might play a little more and see if I can get a better clear without too much effort. Honestly, it seems to me like it would be even harder to earn the worse endings. At least, you definitely don't want to be shooting a bunch of the prisoners yourself or your odds of completing the six missions go down the toilet. I dabbled in the second difficulty loop but lost on the fifth mission, I believe.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't bothered to return to Operation Wolf on NES thus far. Maybe I won't do so, since it's not really good enough to give me the motivation to improve. Right now, I'm kind of in a gaming limbo. I'll be traveling soon, and I don't want to get invested in anything new that I wouldn't have enough time to finish before going. But I also don't want to start up the games I'm planning to take with me just yet. I did briefly try out a couple recent purchases: Ys III for Super Nintendo and Populous DS. It's extremely rare that I buy anything for SNES these days, as most worthwhile games are prohibitively expensive, but Ys can still be had for rather cheap (by 2025 standards at least; I'm not expecting to grab stuff for around 3 bucks like back in the '00s).

I did, however, resume London Detective Mysteria on Vita. My previous save was from 2022, and I think I only played a few minutes then. All my other saves were from 2019. I knew I had just left off at some random point in the (lengthy) common route, so I figure it doesn't make a difference if I make some more progress and stop at another random point before my flight. Anyway, it's fun getting back to it. It's not that I stopped because I had any problem with it. I just have a habit of stopping in visual novels when something else starts taking up my time, and I always have the intention of getting back to them eventually. It often does take me years, but I don't find it hard to jump back in. It's not like with other genres where you have to relearn the controls and gameplay and try to remember what you have and haven't done and where you need to go.

[Aussie2B]

I'm up to, I believe, the seventh chapter in London Detective Mysteria on Vita. I'm not sure because I definitely can't recall how many I did previously, and the game just offers their names, rather than numbers. But I tried to look up how far along I am and how many common route chapters there are. Weirdly enough, I saw claims of both nine and ten chapters in the common route. Maybe that means you get locked into a character's route in the middle of the tenth chapter, who knows. I don't know if I have enough time before traveling to actually complete a route, but it would be nice to maybe reach the beginning of a character's route, so I could start "fresh" from there whenever I return to it.

[kupomogli]

Beyond the Beyond, it's not a bad game, and this is the kind of game that's really difficult but well balanced that you actually get some real enjoyment out of the classic style combat. It doesn't do anything special with the characters and the storyline is absolutely cliche, but it is also a decent storyline that unlike modern RPGs doesn't have you spending hours and hours and hours on boring ass dialogue that's just going in circles for 20 minutes at a time. I'm done with modern day Falcom because of this shit.

Beyond the Beyond is really not that much better than your early Dragon Quest games and is mostly the same, but without all the grind, or atleast that depends on who you talk to, and at the heart of it all is the LP system. Now. If they just removed the LP system and gave you extra HP for how much you'd recover due to being knocked out, this game would be way too easy, but instead you have these low health pools and the LP system is a sort of safety net to keeping the character from being knocked out. You have all this HP, but you only have it incrementally so it's much more of a focus on managing your LP.

Early game is wher the LP mechanic seems to shine the most as you have fewer characters. Recovering HP outside of combat gives you more HP than recovering inside of combat, and recovering HP at 5-10HP is a bit pointless and wasteful when you have a maximum of 18HP or somewhere around there. So much like Final Fantasy 4 and 6 for instance, you can put party members in the back row. You can do this in the late game as well, but when you only have three or four characters you still have the benefit of putting characters in the back row to mitigate losses at the expense of dealing damage. So this way when you do finally recover HP for any of these characters, you can get more out of it. There's always a chance that they'll receive a critical or high amounts of damage which is why the LP is a safety net, but using it to your advantage really goes a long way into making the game a lot easier.

So in my recent playthrough, which I haven't played this game in over two decades, I went from Zalgoon after going to the inn, all the way across this massive stretch of world map where the enemies get much harder to Luna, upgraded my equipment at Luna, and then when I went north to a dungeon, I completely forgot to go to the inn, I remembered this in my first battle after obvious reasons, I was like, oh well, I'll still push on, so Annie had 1MP. After some more open world and this long stretch into this dungeon and throughout the dungeon to the next town, I was finally able to rest at an inn, and this was because I'd move my characters around and use the LP system to get the most out of the herbs I had on hand which I did stock up around 10 of them before leaving Luna. No one permanently died and I never did hit 0 LP for anyone, close with Samson, but no one hit 0.

Now, I will say one of the games biggest problems with one of the characters Edward, is that the character goes last, even when he finally has caught up to everyone else's level, he still goes last. Now the reason this is such a huge problem is because when your dealing attacks on enemies, dealing a magic spell like Fire 2 hits all enemies, but if he does this spell last after everyone else already does their attacks and possibly kills one of the enemies, then it loses a lot of its benefit. Characters like Annie(who does go first,) Edward, Tont, etc, these characters should all be going first before anyone else because of how their actions work. You do gain "sources" to power up characters so I will holding on these to see how things go and maybe later in the game throw them on a character like Edward, but if Tont has the same problem as Edward, I'll be giving them to him instead because of his summon spells that hit all enemies and don't target specific groups. I don't remember, but if Domino was a faster character may also just drop Edward in favor of adding him to the party. There's finally this monk that you get later which leads me to my last criticism.

When you get these late game characters, including a character after the monk, the man in the iron mask who I haven't ever gotten but now that I know you can get him I'll do that, these characters all have started on level 1. Now the level curve is enough to where these characters will all reach the other characters level at some point, but you still have to use a level 1 character and build all these characters up. Just would be nice if these characters were on a relatively similar level because once I get to the monk girl, even if I'm kind of interested in using her, I kind of don't want to because I'll have to swap out a character that I know is good for a character that is unconfirmed. This is also the same issue I have with any game that doesn't have forced parity for party member levels. Just let the characters outside of your party gain the same experience points that the characters within your party gain. This is a complaint I have with a lot of games of this type. The latest Persona games I don't even bother using other characters because of this.

Anyways. I'd say that the difficulty of the games combat being high, but the game being really well balanced so that a lot of skillful strategies can be employed to make it a more easier and mangageable game makes Beyond the Beyond a much better game than people give it credit for, but even if people had to level grind. What's the diffeence between level grinding here and level grinding 80 hours on Dragon Quest 3? I think there's a lot of fanboy bias going around because Dragon Quest 3 is like your pair of Air Jordan's and these Chinese knock off Air Jordan's might actually be better, but they're waved off because their Air JorDan's instead.

[kupomogli]

Also, the dungeon design on Beyond the Beyond is also well done as well. The first puzzle dungeon you're in going up the tree. You take one or two steps to see the room, it's clear when the nut will get stuck it's clear you need to push it in the hole to progress, it's not rocket science, and you do it wrong, it's going to be a harder dungeon and keep you there longer than if you were to just make your way through the puzzle easily. You not only need to know where to push it but also don't rush, move one at a time.

Speaking of moving one space at a time, once again the next dungeon in the sewers. You can move off the ledges, but you can't move back onto the ledges without going up the stairs... I'd imagine kind of like a real sewer if it's too slippery to climb back up. If you have to take one move at a time do that. Again, a pretty well designed dungeon.

Now, I will say it was kind of bad design with the green emerald being in the dungeon on the way to the town with Tont. I don't know if there's a clue it's there even after getting to the town, either way, I found it in the dungeon before I found my way to the exit. Now, I don't seem to remember missing it before, so maybe it's just kind of hard to miss, but just a thought this might be bad design? Especially if you're given no clue that it's actually there. But again, maybe it's so hard to miss that it's mostly a moot point.

The dungeon design is pretty solid for a classic RPG, both very explorable, useful items to find in treasure boxes with good mechanics to break up the monotony. Something good for your classic RPG.

Also, here's one more thing to touch on, and this is just it being a classic RPG. So first off, classic RPG, no markers pointing your way, and I have a general idea of where everything is at so there's that one, but the game also still guides you in a way of the direction you need to go. Or it gives you some dialogue informing you where major locations may be. Look at where I'm at in the game and how long it took and I didn't have to search hours and hours and hours beating my head because I had no clue where I should be going. Modern games force you to follow the markers, places that'd never be found without one, but classic games are like, it's this general area and oh, poof, you run across it.

[Aussie2B]

I finished what was presumably the seventh chapter in London Detective Mysteria on Vita, and I think I'm near the end of the eighth as well. Now that I think about it, maybe the discrepancy in info on the number of chapters depends on if someone is counting the prologue chapter or not. Anyway, I've seen some people describe some of the chapters in this game as feeling like filler, particularly that seventh chapter, and I can see that. It basically existed for no other purpose than to introduce Abigail Hudson and have her and Emily Whiteley, the protagonist, become friends. The case was very low-stakes (a stolen plate, whoop-de-do), and most of the main cast weren't even present (Watson being the only love interest who is there for most of it, though Holmes pops up at the end). In comparison, the chapter I'm in now feels like it's flying by. I don't know if I'm more engaged or if it actually is shorter. Or maybe I'm just wrong that I'm near the end of it, but it seems where I left off has the case referenced in the title just about wrapped up. This chapter takes place on a school day, so all the love interests are present. Considering I picked this game back up at the very end of the chapter before the tableware case, where Emily discusses matters with her butler before bed, I hadn't seen the rest of the love interests in literally years. So it's nice to get reacquainted with the full main cast. The case itself is more interesting too, though I had a feeling from practically the beginning that there would be some sort of twist or gag to it at the end, so I wasn't surprised with how things went. What has had me scratching my head is my affection values in the game. I'm wondering if they somehow glitched out or something. I have no idea where they stood back when I was playing in 2019 nor when I played briefly in 2022, but right now, it looks like I'm maxed out with Holmes, despite still being in the common route. The only other affection I seem to have accumulated is a little with Jack and Akechi, and when I seemingly gained more with Akechi in this chapter, it didn't look like the amount changed at all. I don't care which route I end up on, nor which ending I get, since I always aim to ultimately do every route and ending, but I hope nothing gets messed up at any point. Since resuming the game recently, the game did fail to load once and also had a weird crash at one point. Even though I own a physical copy of the game, I'm playing the digital release I got before the physical version was even announced. I hope nothing about the game's install or my Vita itself is giving out.