52 Games Challenge 2023!!!

[tripredacus]

36. Super Space Invaders
I was not able to find the AV Adapter for my SMS, and didn't find my controller until later. Also i need to organize my console accessories better because I know I have the power adapter for it but was not able to find it. I'm fairly certain I do have the AV adapter somewhere as well. So I instead decided to play this on Retroarch. It keeps the old "limitation" of the original Space Invaders where you can only have one bullet on the screen at a time. Otherwise it is just the old game with some quirks like powerups but it uses a background image. The first level is a city. The main issue is that the game gets too fast to even deal with even on the first level. Like the enemies move faster than the inputs allow for you do move your ship.

37. Pole Position II
I could have marked this as blue instead of red. This was the 7800 version which I played on Retroarch. There seemed to have been some issues as I was not able to choose the first track. It starts by saying you need to qualify for your position. I drive a whole lap and then sometimes later the game just ends. You have score but there was no timer that I could see. It seems like there may have been some emulation issues as there was some letters and numbers on the screen that didn't look right.

38. Demon Attack
I do not have enough parts to make my 2600 work so this ran in emulator as well. It is neat game. I made it to level 4 but it wasn't that interesting to continue.

39. Riddle of the Sphinx
This game loaded but it wouldn't let me start the game or do anything.

[telly]

Game 16 - Contra (Switch) - 7 Hours

This is the NES version on the Contra Anniversary Collection. I will say that on the Switch, these games are best played with the Joy-con. I use the d-pad exclusively with these games and with the pro controller the game is not very precise. Holding the down button of the pro controller d-pad but on the right side causes your character to walk to the right shooting down instead of laying down like it should. So with the Joy-con it's not nearly as much as trouble.

I counted this game as beat after running through the game with the standard 3 lives/2 continues. I ended up not needing a continue at all on my final run of the game which was pretty exciting. It took a lot of practice of each individual stage and I used the collection's save state feature to practice stages until I got the hang of them. I do wish there was a rewind function so you can keep practicing stages after making a small mistake. It's also nice that they changed the bullet color in the snow levels to red.

I have always been fond of the first Contra game on NES, and I remember playing it fondly on an old NES at my university's video game archive back in college. Playing it through now, I think it was and still is a blast to play and does a lot of things right that are easy to take for granted. Being able to shoot in 8 directions, while crouching, and while jumping, vastly improves the gameplay experience. You also have perfect jumping and course correction which makes playing the game a breeze. Almost all the weapons are great, the fire weapon is the only one that's kind of bad since it can go around enemies. Combined with impressive graphics and kick-ass music, Contra is just a fun game to play, and it is still challenging even with the fluid responsive controls.

I think my only gripe is that, like Casltevania, it's easy to replace your great weapon with something less appealing. Unlike Castlevania however, items are in very clearly marked containers so you at least know when they're coming.

[kashell]

52. Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir

And just like that, I'm at 52 games. The 52nd game is another survival-horror game. Sort of. It's hard to pinpoint a genre on Spirit Camera. It's not hard to pinpoint a rating, though. The game isn't great. I'll talk more about it in a review. But, the long and short of it is that Tecmo Koei tried to move the Fatal Frame series into a bizarre direction via the Nintendo 3DS' superfluous features. This is the first game that I played that forced me to use the gyroscope and the camera. Instead of being able to kick my feet up and chill with a supposedly spooky side-story, I ended up making myself dizzy, frustrated or a combination of the two because the game forced me to. This was a lowblow to Fatal Frame fans.

[tripredacus]

40. Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Quest
Finally an example of being able to play a console game on actual hardware and not an emulator. I still have a good amount of Genesis consoles but I played this on my model 2. Controllers on the other hand are an issue. My arcade stick is good but I may need to clean it, as the special button (used for conversations here) sticks slightly meaning that the message screens blast past. Otherwise it is fine. My 6 button apparently has ceased to have a usable D pad, as Up and Left do not work. I ended up using the 3 button.

The sound is sort of OK but there are instances where it just plays a single note constantly as if the game is having an issue. Not so, apparently this sound is found in LPs also, so it is not me. I did start this the other day but spent most of my time playing the book game. I'm not sure how it is possible to get the "possible" 8+ color streak as shown on the scoreboard since the mini-game ends if you let too many books hit the ground. The highest I was able to get it was 5. There are some things I wonder about the book game. First is whether or not you can get the book in the window. The shopkeeper says you can have the book if you play the game, but you never get it. I also wonder if you can play the game indefinitely and how high your score can go. I may give just that portion a shot later on just for fun to see what happens.

I had watched an LP of the game so I had a pretty good idea of what to do. I got Gaston to move the rock, then the pumpkin guy tells you about the flowers. Then I had my first (and guess what, last) issue. I get into the forest maze and you can go in 4 directions. I already know what directions to move based on flowers but one of them is "North West". You can only go up, down, left and right. There is no compass so I only could surmise that Northwest was up and then left. But you get stuck in a loop of the same screen over and over again. I had already seen the end and technically I know there is a level code I could have used to get to the last level. Also the LP I watched the person died like 50 times on the horse level. I'm not even going to bother but that book mini-game tho...

41. Star Voyager
Impressive for a VCS game, unfortunately the controls were unbearable. The pitch was inverted and I kept fumbling it. I can't play a flight game without a flight stick.

42. Taz-Mania
For SNES... apparently this is a racing game? Did I have some faulty memory in thinking this was a platformer? The game starts like it is OutRun (or Pole Position II) but with obstacles and going out of control is extremely easy. I'm not ready for another racing game like this.

43. After Burner
My only memory of AB is playing it on SMS when I was 8 or so. I seem to remember the graphics were good. Well on NES the graphics are not good. Someday I will revisit the SMS version but I probably won't like that anymore either, even if it has the graphics that I remember. I didn't even care to push it to see if there was a tanker boss. I don't remember if I ever beat the SMS version back then.

Overall, it is really becoming apparent to me that I have lost my enthusiasm for the types of gameplay elements that are offered in console games, but this was the reason why I re-ordered my backlog anyways. There is only one way to find out.

[kamikazekeeg]

33 - Suika Game (Switch 2023) - ENDLESS - I don't often jump into the "Flavor of the Week" games, the ones that get picked up by streamers and see a big surge, often they tend to be like indie horror or other games that don't often appeal to me, but I like general puzzle games and since this got an US Eshop release (Still entirely in Japanese though, no localization lol), I figured why not.  It's fun, it's very simple, it's like...Tetris or Dr. Mario-esque, drop a fruit, match fruit to enhance that fruit to a bigger one, which in turn builds your score.  The challenge comes from the increasing size of the fruits and if you hit the top with them, it ends.  Very simple, very basic (Very cheap game too, only 3 bucks), but it's very satisfying.  It's good to just play a few rounds every so often, I'd recommend it if you are into these style of puzzle games.

[tripredacus]

44. 1943: The Battle of Midway (NES)
Played with arcade stick, which happened to use three buttons instead of two. Not sure how it maps exactly, but there was a rapid fire button that I used. I did one run to level 21 then called it quits. Started again later at level 20 using the Game Genie code. The game really is designed to not be played in this way because you lose your upgrades. I should have used a save state instead but I'll try to remember to do that in the future.

[tripredacus]

45. Roger Clemens MVP Baseball (SNES)
I didn't think it was possible for anyone to screw up a baseball game, but leave it up to LJN to do that. Now I have low hopes for this game's ports on other systems. Control-wise it is pretty simple, at least in the default view for pitching and batting. It took me 4 innings to figure out how to hit, and even got myself a grand slam. The fielding is where the problems lie.

Fielding in baseball games being a problem is not entirely a new situation. Many baseball games have fielding as a downfall. There are two primary issues with fielding. First is that while you technically have three outfielders, for all intents and purposes you only have one, whichever portion of the screen the game decides to render when it changes to outfield view. The percentage of actually being able to catch the ball is low when on this screen. Also you can go through the outfield wall, which I think is supposed to be a "ghost" view but it really doesn't help.

Throwing from the field is the absolute worst. It uses the typical D-pad base controls for other games, where Left is third, Right is first, Up is second, and down is home. BUT the fielding view flips the field and does not flip the controls. So when you have the ball and want to throw it to third, first base is on your left and third is on your right. BUT if you hit Right to throw (as would be natural) they will throw it to first. I'm never going to be able to un-train myself to throw to the opposite base. And besides that, it doesn't matter. The chances of actually being able to get an out by throwing to a base is like 5%, so it is better to just hold the ball and wait for the play change.



I did want to do a season, but it became clear to me that this game probably was designed for two people to play against each other instead of playing it vs the CPU. Whether or not you could get a shutout inning seemed random and totally out of my control. I was able to get one, but not being able to get the runs on the other side would go for a very long season.

Fun bug info. The maximum amount of runs that will be shown per half inning is 19. The maximum number shown for RHE is 99. There is an overflow that occurs on the commercial bump where it will show a number lower than 99 for both runs and hits. I saw 97 and 91. Fortunately the game recap does show the actual scores, and it might be interesting to find out what the game's maximum values are for this screen:


The results shown where there are doubles and triples. Only 1 double was legit. The other 4 doubles and the triple were the result of me playing around in the OF to see what the field dimensions were or where you could go. The game only really has singles or home runs.

46. Superman (Genesis)
On actual Genesis. I really don't have any interest in platformers. This will likely become a trend.

47. Aero the Acro-Bat (Genesis)
Platformer where it is not clear what you are supposed to do. Jump on some things but all enemies hurt you if you jump on them. Maybe using the flying attack, which wasn't very easy for me to do. I remember I abandoned this game previously when I was helping with Sega-16's "beat all the games" thing.

[kashell]

53. Crymachina

This was a very unique game that was surprisingly polished given the developer's reputation. They usually know how to deliver an amazing story with a few bangers, but Crymachina shows that they have stepped their game (and budget) up. The game's story really, really surprised me and that says a lot since I've played so many RPGs. Every song is also catchy or moody as hell. The biggest improvement was the gameplay. The stages are short and sweet, yet there's still a good 20 or so hours of content here. The way you can customize your characters so they're ready for flashy, Dynasty Warriors tier combat is surprisingly deep. Once the game ends, there's some post-game content that I'm trying currently working on and trying to figure out. For those that played Crystar, this one is a 180 improvement from it.

[telly]

Game 17 - Super C (Switch) - 5 Hours

Like Contra, I counted this game as finished when I was able to beat it with the standard 3 lives 2 continues. Unlike Contra however, I did have to use one continue around level 5 but I didn't spend as much time practicing each level either.

In many ways Super C is a direct upgrade to the first Contra on NES. It seems to be a bit overlooked in the franchise as a whole. The graphics and sound are some of the best the NES has to offer. The control scheme and weapons are basically unchanged, though the Fire weapon is much better. And that's great, because the first game was perfect in that regard. I really liked the top-down stages which added some nice variety, and some of the bosses were quite satisfying to topple, though the final boss was piss-easy, beat him on my first try.

I do think this game is not as good as the first Contra for the simple reason that this game throws a lot more randomly placed enemies at you. Those goddamn purple soldier-dudes that just run at you can go to hell. They constantly disrupt your forward movement because you have to turn back to shoot them, and they like to spawn at moments that are inconvenient to you at best and deadly at worst. I found that this game had a lot more what I thought were cheap deaths as a result because these enemies spawn when you're in mid jump or when projectiles are already limiting your safe spots on the screen. Practicing stages is harder as well because they're so unpredictable. The first Contra had randomly spawning enemies like this too, that's true. But they weren't nearly as relentless, and they aren't super prevalent until the later stages in the game.

[dhaabi]

32. Unpacking || PlayStation 5 || 09.25.23



As unconventional as it may sound, I enjoy unpacking. Moving into a new space and being granted a blank slate to organize items in has always been something I've enjoyed. It's not something I've had to do for quite some time, but in the rare circumstance, I warmly offer my help to those around me when it's needed, although even then it's less unpacking for me and instead just moving. So, does a game exclusively about unpacking offer a replacement for what I enjoy?

Well, for a game about placing items to your liking, how limiting the default settings are was a bit unexpected. Items placed in a location that I would imagine to be fine just aren't, such as a backpack being placed next to a desk that instead is only able to be placed in the room's corner. Along those lines, some items apparently are too tall to be placed in some spaces, although it certainly didn't seem that way. Other items such as clothing often don't have a more obvious placement either. For example, until late-game, there will never be enough hangers to accommodate the amount of clothing needing to be stored. Of course, Unpacking is a puzzle game, so there are other, more unorthodox setting spots. Still, it almost never felt like I was able to freely place and effectively design rooms to my liking in a way that made sense to me, although I do acknowledge the game's puzzle aspects in that the player is being forced to work within certain limitations. With that said, players can toggle off the placement restrictions, although this entirely disregards the game's puzzle aspects.

Naturally, players will realize that liked items such as clothing and kitchen plates may often be stacked together. Other items are even guided into certain positions, such as a book hovering over a shelf that allows it to be placed vertically alongside others. But, sometimes there were items that should obviously stack which don't in-game. I repeatedly came across this issue with cookware, which the game never allows to be stacked which forgoes much of the available storage space. For many of these types of items, they'd be relegated to high above atop a cabinet or even on the refrigerator, spots where I personally would never willingly place the items in a real-world environment.

Early on, I realized that there were some rooms that I did not want to find items' working placements one-by-one. By default and as the title implies, items are packed in boxes and must be removed one at a time. In nearly every room across every stage, I would begin slowly placing items wherever I wanted them to be but eventually became overwhelmed from having to immediately adjust its position. Players never know what's next to be unboxed, so I'd soon give up that method to instead move every remaining boxed item to the floor so I could quickly and more easily be aware of what's available. Sometimes, this was an issue to due to limited floor space, so I'd be forced to temporarily place items anywhere. Rooms often became quite cluttered in a disarray, but I suppose this mimics real-life circumstances for many.

Shortly into the game, stages with multiple rooms are introduced. Packaged items in one room may not necessarily belong to that specific area, so the player will be required to travel back-and-forth between rooms. Soon after multiple rooms, there are some stages where the player must place items in a room that's halfway filled instead of empty. Since what's already present almost never can be re-positioned, it's required to work around the existing placement. There were only one or two stages designed like this, but I did like that subtle shift in rules that greatly affects the player's sense of design.

Concerning Unpacking's game design, it is okay. Controls are fine, but its use of a cursor feels heavily designed for PC. Music is serviceable and easy-going, but after a track ends, about a full minute's worth of silence follows before the track loops. I'm not sure if that aspect was intentional or not, but it felt poor in execution, nonetheless. There are some other features such as a photo mode complete with filters, frames, and stickers, but I wasn't interested in that aspect at all. While unpacking, simple obstacles which as cabinets being unable to open if items in the way is implemented. Similarly, some stage components offer basic interactivity, which is a nice but simple inclusion.

Now, one may not suspect a game like this to have a narrative, but it surprisingly does. However, its storytelling is indirect, although I found this implementation to be successful. In each stage which follows a linear progression, we assume the role of one individual throughout major move-in milestones of their life. For me, I found it interesting to see new items accumulate alongside the abandonment of others. Sometimes, it seemed as if some items were discarded based on merely growing up, but other lost items seemed as if the player-character re-evaluated their intrinsic value. Although not entirely, each stage's limited and somewhat forced available space requires players to determine what is and isn't important. Items may be displayed in full view, tucked away in a corner, or completely hidden in a closet or drawer. Over time, I began to question if certain items continued to be shown due to how prevalent my previous placement with them had been. If so, that would be a really neat gameplay mechanic, but I haven't confirmed it with a subsequent playthrough nor have faith that such detail was actually designed. But it was a nice thought to ponder over, though.

With all that said, the general opinion of Unpacking is how it's so relaxing. While I somewhat agree with that opinion, I instead mostly considered the game to be opposite and even a little irritating. Still, the game's basic principles are something I enjoyed.

[kashell]

54. .hack//Infection

I'm not even sure what compelled me to give this series another try, especially since I found the GU games to be dull as ****. I saw all four games (CIB) at the store, I had the credit for them and...before you knew it I was walking out with them in the bag. A lot of it has to do with nostalgia. This series was out before social media, before smart phones, before so many things that encompass the technology of the modern world. (It was also out before the [overrated, IMO] Sword Art Online.) The series really felt ahead of its time. This becomes apparent when you start with Infection. Setting aside, the actual mystery behind what's going on really has me hooked. I played through Infection YEARS ago so some of it was familiar. But still, the story telling and overall production value is impressive. Gameplay ranges from serviceable to fascinating. Combat? It can get dull. Interacting with other "players"? That's pretty impressive when you think about it. So, yeah. I'm glad I'm back in The World. I'm going to finish up the post game dungeon and try to get Kite up a few more levels before hopping right into Mutation.

[kamikazekeeg]

34 - Frogun (PC 2022) - DROPPED - In my continuing hunt for low poly throwback games, this one stood out as having a pretty great looking aesthetic, but after a few hours of play, I'm not really enjoying it like I want.  It's not bad at all, it's the gameplay loop that isn't hitting me.  This one leans more into the more quirky PS1 style platformers you'd find, which were abit less of a thing for me outside of Crash Bandicoot, I always preferred N64 ones like Banjo and Mario that had like a world to explore. 

It's small levels, using the one gimmick you got, which is the "Frogun", a frog gun that shoots out a tongue so you can latch onto walls to pull yourself in or latch onto objects or enemies and launch them as attacks. It's okay for abit, the vibe kinda feels a little similar to Captain Toad, though you get way more mobility here, just sorta how the game structure feels.  You don't need get any other abilities or gadgets, it's more about the level design itself as I got up to I think the 5th area of the game out of 7 and it was definitely getting harder.  You can buy new hats with coins, each level has multiple pieces of jewels to earn to count to completion, so there's a lot to do in each of these linear levels.

It's not a bad game at all, honestly, I think it's quite good, I'm just not gelling with the experience, very much a "ME" thing, not a game thing.  I'd still recommend it if anything about the game itself looks good.

[bikingjahuty]

44. LA Noire (PS4)

This is one of those games thats been on my backlog for a very long time. I've had fairly high hopes for it all these years, one because it was made by Rockstar, and two because it seemed like a very interesting game seeing how you play a detective solving crimes in the 1940s. Having played and beat LA Noire finally, I have to say I am very disappointed in this game, as it started out very promising, hit what felt like its climax 1/3 into the game, and then just continued to sputter out more and more up until the very end. LA Niore's writing is its biggest flaw. The story is presented in such a disjointed and poorly delivered way that it makes it hard to be invested in most of what's going on. People are introduced and they're built up to be significant with no build up or development whatsoever; characters change their motivations on a dime and do things that go completely against who they are for no reason; a large chunk of the main story is delivered through seemingly random clips, until you're supposed to know it's all significant in the last third of the game. I could go on, but this is probably one of the most poorly executed stories in a game I've ever seen. It's too bad since i thought it was still pretty interesting and fun until about halfway through. Unfortunately, the story and writing aren't the only problem in this game. The gameplay is also filled with its own problems, particularly many of the elements added to LA Noire to distinguish it from the GTA series. The investigative gameplay is decent at times, but freakin awful at others. Evidence that you'd think would elicit a correct response from a suspect ends up being counted as incorrect, and evidence is some how not evidence given a situation that called for it. Also, going around and looking for clues at a crime scene can be very frustrating and many of these clues are poorly placed, especially in the final act of the game. This game is completely terrible however, as LA Noire's presentation is pretty good overall. The facial animations are probably the best, or at least up there with the best of the 7th gen, and definitely lend themselves well to reading people you're interacting with in order to tell if they're telling the truth or not. Other than that, the presentation definitely gets the feel and setting of the 1940s right. The audio is also top notch as every character is voice acted very well and all the other music and sounds just add to the game's noire atmosphere. As I said before, this game is a mess in so many ways, but for what it's worth, it was still enjoyable to me up until 2/3 into the game, even though the quality of the game began to start dipping just 1/3 in. I can't say I'd recommend this game, but at the very least I'm happy I finally played and beat LA Noire. (11/2/23) [33/50]

[tripredacus]

48. NHL 96 (Genesis)
Lost most of the week due to being sick. I actually completed this on Monday (by accident) and have not played anything since.

This was played in an emulator because the battery in my physical cart did not work, so I could not save a season progress. I first tried playing on actual Genesis, and I really need to find better controllers. On emulator I tried both controller and arcade stick but it became clear to me that my coordination was not good to even think about being able to play an entire season. Often me just playing a game meant I would score on myself. I can't even think to remember how I played these games on PC in the past using just the keyboard.

So I was resolved to just use the management aspect of the game and using simulations only. See if it was possible to simulate to a cup win. Well, it is possible. My first run was with Winnipeg where I played maybe 15 seasons. The rosters remain unchanged from the previous season when you make a new one, so it is like there is a continuation. However, there seems to be some sort of bias within the game when it comes to determining whether a team can make the playoffs or win a championship. I'm fairly certain that this value is determined at the start of a season which I will get into later.

During the simulations I had decided to do a vampire league strategy. No to the extreme of what you'd see in vampire Fantasy Football leagues. Basically if my team got shut out, I would trade my worst player to the team that won for a player on their roster that was 1-2 points higher in ability score. So for example, I would trade a 66 for a 68. During double shutouts, I would see about trading goalies. Winnipeg as a starter for this type of strategy had a limit, where basically I could not trade for anyone when my average ability score was 78. There is not enough 79 or 80 in the league to be able to get the 81 rated players. Despite having basically the best team in the league, some sort of bias was evident in the simulation where it was still possible to finish in last place in a division or not make the playoffs. Sometimes I would get lucky to win an award tho.



Also regarding awards and simulation, it is clear that the CPU does not always choose to use the best goalie when simulating games. About half of the time, a backup would win the Vezina trophy, when in reality (or if the games were played by a human) the backup would only come in relief. It became evident through the stats view that backups were getting more GP than they should have. So you result in an award like so, where this goalie is rated 67 on a team with a 92 rated goalie.



After hitting the trade wall (I was not forcing trades either, unless *my* team rejected the trade) and recognizing the bias, I decided to start over. I reset the rosters back to stock, and I was going to make the following changes: "attempt" to control each team for 1 year and switch if they do not make the playoffs (I say attempt because I did not know how strong the bias was beforehand, I fully expected that it would take at least 1 run-through of simulations (30 some-odd-seasons) before I would win. Still doing the vampire method but for teams with exception to the Sabres and Jets, I would trade the highest scoring player to the winning team for a player of at least 2 ability score points lower. So trading a 70 for a 68. With an attempt to weaken all of the teams in the league besides the Sabres or Jets so that I could win a championship with one of them. I would also force trades in this case. I made it through 7 seasons before I won the cup with simulation.

Anaheim didn't have a chance, they didn't make the playoffs the first year, but the bias previously seen in other seasons indicates this is normal. The Bruins did make the playoffs the first year but didn't the second year. The Sabres made it once and then didn't the second year, also normal. Now of these three teams, I was actively making the Ducks and Bruins bad while making the Sabres good. Then I played as the Blackhawks, they won the cup the first season. When you win, it shows this screen:


And then the playoff tree:


Sometimes the playoff tree will show the wrong team as the winner. The above screen was from my 4th year as Chicago. The first year this screen had shown that the opposing team had one and not Chicago, but I did not save a screenshot of that. The game will show you this playoff screen if you make the playoffs but not if you didn't. If you didn't make the Stanley Cup and play/simulate the games, you would guess that the team that won the Cup ould be the team shown as the champion, but this isn't correct.

Now onto the bias. I won the Cup as Chicago using a simulated season despite trading away all of my top scorers. I decided to push it along, as I thought it was just a fluke. I wanted for them to not make the playoffs and to continue on with my plan. Unfortunately, they won AGAIN in the 4th year. Now this 4th year version of the team had an average player value of around 68 or so, with average goaltenders. There is no reason in the world why this team would be able to win but they still did. I stopped playing after that.

Sound review: sound is better than say, NHLPA Hockey on Genesis BUT considering that the entire game is being played in the menu, there is only one song used. It gets annoying real fast.
Also another thing I noticed, despite being called NHL 96, it has the rosters and teams from 1994. It probably would have felt like a waste of money if I had got it when it was new and had NHL 95.

[telekill]

Decided to drop RE Remake (PS4) and anticipating playing Baulder's Gate 3 (PS5). RE Remake I had started to play and forgot about the zombie with all the explosives on him that if you shoot him at all, you blow up with him. I was about 30 min in on the replay and hadn't saved... so discouragement set in. As for Baulder's Gate 3, there's no physical edition for a game that clearly could use one. So it's removed until there's a N. American release or if it drops to $30 or less on PSN. No way I'm paying full price for digital only.

Instead, I've opted to replay Resident Evil 5 at some point. It may wait until next year though. My schedule isn't allowing for much gaming lately.