Super Metroid – SNES – Part II

I started playing Super Metroid a while ago, which is awesome, and decided that because I have basically 0 first-hand knowledge of this particular game or the series in general, I would do some live-blogging. At least until I get bored of doing it (or you get bored of reading it).

So, where we left off.

I had just finished the (pretty amazing) intro sequences and started encountering enemies (which I was exterminating with extreme prejudice).

And immediately, hilarity ensues.

I found the morph ball and procured some missiles, then started to head out. This was wrong, BECAUSE when I get almost back to my ship I see a little spot where I can only go if I go into morphball (MBM) mode. I do this and BOOM, I’m stuck in a cavern I can’t get out of.

Much Googling of the Googlez revealz that past the MB there was another path for me to follow where I would get freakin’ bombs!

I return to the caverns.

AND DISCOVER THAT THERE ARE NO BOMBS. Are the missles supposed to be bombs? Emulator bug? Weird.

OKOKOKOKOK.

The problem is that I didn’t know it took 5 missiles to bust open a pink door. You see, dear reader, you shoot a door to open it. I figured that out pretty fast, but that only seemed to work on BLUE doors. Not sure how I was supposed to figure out that it takes 5 missiles to blast a PINK door open…

/sigh

That’s probably enough futility for one night. This blog is rapidly becoming FORSOOTHED IS BAD AND HE SHOULD FEEL BAD.

However, I did kill a boss AND NOW HE’S DEAD AND I GOT HIS MORPH BALL BOMBS.

Next time: I see if I can get out of this hilarious pit of despair.

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Batman: Arkham Asylum

I know I know I know. This game isn’t nearly old enough to be retro, but it’s… like… totally old man. That’s true and irrelevant.

This is a good game. Everyone likes this game.

So as I often do, I bought it during a Steam sale and didn’t get around to playing it for quite a long time. Now, a bit about me and new (ish) games these days: I tend to dislike new games right off the hop. In the last, oh, decade it almost always takes me at least a few hours to get into any game. I combat this by waiting until a Steam and targeting GOTY editions… basically I let the gaming community pick the best games for me, I buy them, and don’t play them for a year.

It’s a great system

Eventually I’m sitting around thinking: “which of these billion games do I try?” I fire up Arkham Asylum and get about 5 minutes in. “THIS GAME IS HORRIBLE!”

I know, right? Literally everyone I know who has played this game went/goes on and on about how smooth the controls were/are. It’s a great story. Blah blah blah.

One night over (many) beers I’m chatting about this with a friend and he gets really offended and starts interrogating me, wondering what was so bad about the game. “The controls are horrific” I says (you see, after many drinks I adopt a this-is-what-I-assume-people-in-the-20’s-sounded-like accent.

“WHAT?!?” says he. “That doesn’t make any sense. Are you using a controller?”

Me: “no, controllers on PC’s are for n00bs… right???”

Turns out they’re not for n00bs

So, dear readers, I picked up an xBox PC controller a few weeks ago and SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS ARKHAM ASYLUM IS AN AMAZING GAME. The controls ARE freakin’ smooth.

Controversial declaration: controls are important for maximum enjoyment of a game. And it turns out, the keyboard isn’t always the best way to handle input. Seems like they could’ve mapped the controls better… but I digress.

Turns out I should go back to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood again.

PS – that game is damn near unplayable on PC without a controller. Seriously, try it out.

Afterburner – Game the game

Afterburner is a pretty boring game

My first attempt resulted in a lame score and only Stage 3

But I’m not sure why. I mean, it has all the elements that should make it pretty awesome (and why little Forsoothed would’ve thought it was awesome): you pilot a sweet F14, your missles ‘lock on’, you get to shoot billions of enemies, it’s not impossibly hard (possibly the name of someone’s sex tape)…

I can’t believe you clicked on that link, you perv! (srsly though, it’s SFW)

Maybe it’s just an example of a game/style that’s been done better as time moves on? Or maybe the ‘fly in a straight line with no real control over where you’re going format’ just doesn’t have any staying power once you’re past the coolness of the F14?

WHO DO I WORK FOR AND WHAT I’M I ACCOMPLISHING HERE? Are we at war? Who are we? What is war?

YOU GET TO DO MID-FLIGHT REFUELING! #rad

Warning – “game studies” sentences incoming

Afterburner is probably an example of a seriously ludo-game like Tetris, no story whatsoever, but without the interesting mechanics. A ludo-game without the “fun”.

End “game studies”

Anyhoo, the good parts: all of the aforementioned cool stuff, plus you get to launch from an aircraft carrier, the ‘Sega Enterprise’. Oh Sega, you do go on. The gameplay is quite crisp and since I’m not going to have the patience to play through the boredom, I immediately wanted to find a cheat to see what the bosses (if there are bosses) would be like. Apparently there are 18 stages in Afterburner, I think I made it to 5 or 6 with some real effort.

Final thoughts, or “After” burner (oh self, you do go on)

In retrospect, this should’ve been a ‘played it for 5’ game: worth resurrecting for a quick (barrel) roll, but I’ve spent more time writing about Afterburner than actually playing it.

You let me down younger self, you let me down.

I did get better, 10X my first go-round #hardcore

 

Chrono Trigger – SNES

/sigh

So I was writing this post on my phone and apparently when one does that, one must remember that the WordPress app is REALLY anxious to publish your post. One (me) did NOT remember that and a half-done version of this post was live over the weekend.

Sorry about that.

Anyhoo, ON TO THE ACTUAL POST!

http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Chrono_Trigger

I haven’t written in so long that I wanted to take any opportunity to start contributing to the blog again.

SO I decided to try out an Android emulator (after some quick research I bought SuperGNES) and spend some time with Chrono Trigger! This game is a bit legendary BUT I’VE NEVER PLAYED IT and I basically know nothing about it.

So. In the interest of actually posting something on this damn blog, I’ll forgo convention and just post!

This is going to be rad!

First off, I can only choose a name that’s 5 characters long… I’m glad THAT part of old games has died a horrible death.

Then IS THAT FREAKING PIKACHU? IS THIS WHERE GORD-DAMN POKEMON COME FROM???

Nope. Turns out that cats just look a lot like Pokemon in Chrono Trigger. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed.

No matter how many old games I play I always find the lack of hand-holding a little jarring. They were ok with having you wander around a bit being a confused. After all, aren’t you smart enough to figure this stuff out on your own (I’m not)? Does that ever happen anymore… aside from sandbox games?

To start off Chrono Trigger I’m supposed to go find Num09 (you get to name some of the characters, i’m guessing she’ll be part of my party later on – later I named a girl who ran into me and dropped a pendant, Penny… for obvious reasons). I named her Num09 because she’s an inventor, so obviously she would have a number in her name.

I’ll have to look into the bloodlines here, because aesthetically Chrono Trigger really reminds me of Final Fantasy, but I have no idea which one came first… that seems like a long, dark, deep, nerd hole to fall into. Heck, maybe all the RPGs looked like this – I mean: it works.

Side-note

The controls in this emulator work surprisingly well. I wouldn’t want to use SuperGNES to play anything that required precise or quick controls, like Contra, but for an RPG they’ve been totally usable so far.

This is an involved game

I didn’t play for all that long, maybe 30-45 minutes in total spread across a few days, but I’m going to keep putting in time on this game and I’ll keep you updated. I’ve found that the small phone screen discourages me from long play-periods, which will draw this out, but the overall experience is pretty solid. I’ll probably write more on that later as well.

Blades of Steel on NES – Game the Game

THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED IT TO BE! UP IS DOWN, DOWN IS UP, AND ICE HOCKEY IS THE ONE WITH THE DAMN PLAYER SELECTION!

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As you may remember, I posted a Pre Game with my mind’s eye not being able to distinguish between Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel. Well, dear reader, as you can tell from the headlines… was I wrong. So very wrong.

Here are some notes I wrote frantically whilst my entire world crumbled around me…

• Whoa whoa whoa… when you lose a fight YOU’RE DOWN A PLAYER!?!?!?!
• I can’t figure out how to pass – looks like it might be a problem with the emulator I’m using… apparently passing is actually a feature
• You control your own goalie – there’s an arrow that floats up and down in the net
• I can be Edmonton (whose colours are green?) AND NOT CALGARY (muaa ha ha)

MUAA HAA HAA, stupid Calgary!

In short, Blades of Steel is a very solid game. It’s just not the game I remembered… not in the least. The controls were also a weird adjustment for me.

(I’ll likely post about this in the future, but I was/am/always will be a huge fan of the early NHL games on the Genesis. They were probably THE fundamental series of games of my childhood. And lately I’ve been trying to get into the more modern NHL franchise with… limited… success. Anyway, all of this is context to me trying to get my little brain around the controls in Blades of Steel.)

It’s me, not you

My first few plays didn’t go phenomenally well (this image is of the CPU scoring… which it did a lot of), but that’s not a game issue. It’s entirely my lack of skill + total and utter loss and how I had misremembered this game. I’ll definitely be playing more Blades of Steel.

And stay tuned for my Game the Game for Ice Hockey!

COBRA TRIANGLE – NES – Actually Playing the Game Now!

We’ve had the Pre Game, now on to: GAMING THE GAME

They’re boat’n through your ocean, snatching your people up,
tryin’ to steal’em
so you better

hide your kids
hide your wife
hide your kids
hide your wife

and hide your motorboat
cause they’re stealin’ everybody out here…

– my wife, singing about Cobra Triangle
inspired by the classic: Bed Intruder Song

Wow, I had completely forgotten that this thing is fundamentally a racing game.

With that shock over, I quickly started shooting all of my motorboat enemies… though I’m not sure why we’re enemies… and why do they get shore-based weapons? It’s no matter as dispose of a few of them.

Right, I have a health bar. OOO powerups! It damages my body to run into the shore, makes sense, and I’m done the first level. That was pretty easy.

And this is the part that I’m really sad about forgetting: to get to the next level, my body sprouts a helicopter rotor and flies away! A HELICOPTER ROTOR! Dude, let’s just use that thing for the whole “race”!

So, are you trying?
– my wife commenting as I die for the seemingly 100th time while failing to prevent the enemy from making of with 8 helpless swimmers

In my first real attempt, I didn’t get very far. The first level is easy, then it’s kind of a bonus powerup level (that may be unlocked by performance, I’ll have to look that up), then it’s a damn guarding level. 8 helpless, drowning, terrified looking ‘people’ are arranged in a diamond with me at the centre to protect them. It’s horrifying! Enemy boats come and DRAG THE PEOPLE AWAY! … and the boats have UFOs!?! What in the blue hell is going on here?!?!?

And that’s as far as I got. I’m sorry that couldn’t protect you random, identical people… *single tear*

Look at this poor guy… THIS GAME IS DELIGHTING IN OUR TERROR

We now know fear.