Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

Assuming that we’re not including first-party, second-party or licensed games on an N64 choice of Switch Online games, I think the N64 has a couple of dozen games that fit that criteria. There’s a few in particular that I think could really grab people’s attention, specifically Mystical Ninja 2, Space Station Silicon Valley and Body Harvest. I think they'd be a big deal, if not quite enough so to feature on an N64 Mini. 

Mischief Makers is definitely one of them kind of games too. It's a bit of a mystery why this didn't come out Virtual Console. It's well-liked by people who've played it, has a good reputation in retro gaming circles and sold well enough. Treasure released another of their N64 games on Wii and Wii U, and it doesn't need a memory card to save any progress. Still, the N64 cart itself is cheap and fairly common, and alternatively I don't think it would challenge any technology you'd emulate it on.

Yeah, those sound like the sort of stuff that would be great to see on a N64 Online maybe Sin and Punishment as you don't see them often and lack of games from RARE (maybe not due to MS approach but then I could seem just putting them on the eShop) or things like WWF No Mercy that the library is limited if a Mini happens which has SM64, OoT, MK64 on it

I remember Mischief Makers - I dismissed it at the time as it was a 2D platform thing and that wasn't really my thing in 1999. I was balls deep in Natalya and friends, entrenched in 3D nirvana and Mischief Makers was too wild for my 13-year old brain. Rakuga Kids was another oddity I had on N64 that probably falls into Cappa's selection of weird and wonderful, although I've not revisited it.

Does Bangai-O count? Pretty sure that got an N64 release. I enjoyed that on the Dreamcast in what, 2001, 2002? Treasure should put out a collection of their titles.

gjones wrote:

Does Bangai-O count? Pretty sure that got an N64 release. I enjoyed that on the Dreamcast in what, 2001, 2002? Treasure should put out a collection of their titles.

That would be great as I loved Bangai-0 spirits on the DS and a lot of other Treasure games but I looked them up a wee bit after you said that and they seem to be in a bit of a sad state with their employee number dropping to 16 back in 2011. Also their last newly released game was a Japan only title in 2014 called Gaist Crusher.

Now this is total guess but it seems based off that they would maybe need a big publisher backing them or even a kickstarter.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Not really "finished" but I saw the credits on this earlier after pissing through the 50cc cups. I had this on the Wii-U so it was already a breeze (50cc is a bit of a joke, but I wanted them trophies!) yet the DLC cups were new to me. Animal Crossing was enjoyable as was the F-Zero level, but the Zelda one put a whopping great smile on my face. Replacing the coins with rupees and the Piranha plants with the Deku Babas was genius! You can genuinely see Mario Kart 9 being simply Nintendo Kart as there is so much potential for levels based on Kirby, Metroid, even Wii Sports!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the gradual increase in challenge on the other levels, but I just felt happy MK8 hasn't aged a bit in 2020. How is this game already six years old?

10/10

That was my favourite game of the last decade. I'd love to re-experience that DLC for the first time again, most of it just made me feel really happy.

~

On another note, I'm blasting through N64 games at the moment. I've got at least another ten finished, four others on the go, and around twenty-five more that I'm wanting to play and complete before I have to leave my collection behind and go back to the other side of Scotland where I work (likely in August). I'd review all these games as I've quite enjoyed doing it so far. But I don't want to dominate this thread with my stuff or with N64 chat. Would it be a better idea for me to just start my own seperate N64 reviews thread, or is that unneccessary?

From my opinion, I don't think you need a thread - some people really do post about every single game they've finished, even if it's a 5 minute prototype! Maybe the N64 is Retro enough for the Retro section? But this ain't an ISO 9000 site - I'm sure we'll read it wherever!

Right

Angry Dad and the Boy
I fear this might be a hotter take than you numpties who don't like Breath of the Wild, but...
It's OK I guess.
The game is presented really well - I can't believe it's another game where I actually care about the characters in the story, but they pulled it off. Therefore, heading from goal to goal (and ultimately helping the duo achieve what they wanted to) was never in doubt. And the characters actually developed in a somewhat logical manner (there are a couple of shonky bits for plot point). The environment was fascinating, especially the different realms, where all your normal world logic jumps out the window. And it was actually funny!
Where it's not good is when it's like God of War. I know some people bloody love the combat system. To me though it's so boring. Despite all of the puzzles, a lot of the game is about heading to the next shut-off point, where you can't progress unless you spend 10 minutes slowly denting in a bunch of baddies (who block 7 out of 8 of your move combinations, please try the other one).
I know Zelda also has historically had locked-off Kill Everything rooms; I'm OK with those as they only usually take a few seconds to deal with. Likewise Dark Souls is nothing but combat; however, only the bosses take any significant amount of time, and there's always the option of just pegging it past them.
So, a controversial 8/10 - like most games.

Well seeing the DS and Wii are gradually moving to retro status, then you're pretty safe with the N64 being retro that using the N64 thread in the retro section or something might make sense as like Jim says we will see it, be it there or here though.

Talking of Jimbob

Quote :

I fear this might be a hotter take than you numpties who don't like Breath of the Wild, but...

So, a controversial 8/10 - like most games.

Anyway I just finished

Ori 2 made a lot of improvements over the first game and might be one of the best games I've played this year, however the first one had a charm about it which this sequel lacks as we've seen it before with the art, music and narrative.

Maybe if I hadn't played the first game just last year the cap between the two games may have masked that.

Still, very much worth checking out.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

On another note, I'm blasting through N64 games at the moment. I've got at least another ten finished, four others on the go, and around twenty-five more that I'm wanting to play and complete before I have to leave my collection behind and go back to the other side of Scotland where I work (likely in August). I'd review all these games as I've quite enjoyed doing it so far. But I don't want to dominate this thread with my stuff or with N64 chat. Would it be a better idea for me to just start my own seperate N64 reviews thread, or is that unneccessary?

I'd quite like a special Cappa N64 review thread, mainly because I've only played a handful of N64 games and they're the classiques like Mario Kart and Banjo Kazooie, and you're blitzing through loads of random stuff I'll never play!

Iconoclasts

Balla recently described this as something along the lines of his "favourite 7/10 game" and I'm inclined to agree. It tries to tell an interesting and often morose story, which gets more intense and absorbing towards the end. Unfortunately, the pacing is a bit stilted in the first half of the game (in that the gameplay wasn't quite compulsive enough to make up for the fact that the story was taking a while to pick up the pace) and sometimes it felt like it bit off more than it could chew. Honestly I think it might just have had too many characters, which made it feel slightly bloated - I occasionally forgot the relevance of some characters, or never really understood it in the first place (Ash who?). And some characters got interesting arcs whereas some seemed throwaway (coughMothercough). Overall though, it was good, and it's incredible to think it was basically the work of one guy. Looks great and it did a lot of things right, and Balla was also right in saying it'll stick with you.

Agreement! I can't disagree with the gameplay either: I hated how Robin controlled for a good long while.  Ash and the three late-game bosses (you know the ones) felt the most pointless, although one of the three late-game bosses gets a pass for being one of the most epic-feeling boss battles this side of the outside of the Divine Beasts.  Speaking of which:

masofdas wrote:

Quote :

I fear this might be a hotter take than you numpties who don't like Breath of the Wild, but...

So, a controversial 8/10 - like most games.

thatsbait.gif

Well resisted. We don't seem to have many strong God of War (The Second One) fans on here, which I guess is somewhat surprising.

It is because it's one that I've toyed with putting in my Top 25 only haven't because of recently biased


MD came out today and four of us just finished it in CO-OP, which included one of us now finishing it three times already along with myself doing it 1 & half times as we started from the first level as a group in our complete play through as the other two hadn't started the game.

It was great fun but my 1 & half plays comes to 3.5hrs, maybe if you bought the game you could be annoyed at that length for £17 but due to the Diablo-like nature you will want to redo levels to for better gear and levelling up to take on higher difficulties & in this case unlock the achievements like get to level 50 and do the last level on the hardest setting.

I didn't buy the game as it's on Game Pass but I did buy the £8 Season Pass which comes with two more levels at some point and yes even though it's Mojang I still want to support the game that buying the DLC seems fair.

That sounds crazy short

I reckon playing as a group of four which had two level 1's, me at level 10 and the other guy at around level 40 took us two hours maybe two & half from start to finish.

It's certainly a game you need to like grinding and having a reason why to do it, like playing on Xbox One got the achievements to go for along with playing more CO-OP, on PS4 going for Platinum the iffy one would be Switch as it's not like a Pokémon you grind to get a Pokémon higher level for battling.

Jimbob wrote:

From my opinion, I don't think you need a thread - some people really do post about every single game they've finished, even if it's a 5 minute prototype! Maybe the N64 is Retro enough for the Retro section? But this ain't an ISO 9000 site - I'm sure we'll read it wherever!

Right

Angry Dad and the Boy
I fear this might be a hotter take than you numpties who don't like Breath of the Wild, but...
It's OK I guess....

So, a controversial 8/10 - like most games.

You son of a

Nah not really. The combat in God of War is a bit like smoking; you have to learn to love it - at least, that's what I'm told about smoking.

I didn't like that Kratos seemed to take forever to kill scrubba dubs, but there were moments where the protracted battles worked - such as fighting the Valkyrie - although I suppose those moments were all boss fights. I can't remember what the difficulty options were but it could well be a game best played on easy. That being said, I did get a lot better at dealing with the trash efficiently towards the end of the game.

The axe throwing is incredible though!

The combat in GoW is outstanding what the hell you on about

Finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake the other week. Fun game. Really enjoyed the combat. Haven't played through the original but could tell when things were artificially padded out a bit, but for the most part I enjoyed the side stuff and have done almost everything in the game. I've started playing the original, which I have played a little bit of in the past but never stuck with. Enjoying it now and it's fun comparing the two since I passed the part Remake stops at.

I can appreciate the approaches both games took and while I'm not going to say Remake necessarily does it better - since I've been preferring the original in some ways - I think it was pretty neat and smart the way they handled some things. Some stuff was built up to better - obviously helped that Remake had the hindsight and the space to do so as a 'Part 1'. The game was also a fair bit bigger than I was expecting - a plus, but I did think the endgame went on for a bit too long. Felt it could have been cut off sooner and not be any worse, with more space for extra content instead.

Spoiler:

And today I finished the remake of Resident Evil 2, going Claire first and then Leon for the 2nd run. Will maybe play the other scenarios later but feel like I've had my fill of the game for the time being. They're both pretty different but I've enjoyed the Resi 2 and 3 remakes a lot.

Maybe had the most fun with 3, but putting everything together in 2 felt a lot more satisfying. In part because there are more puzzles and, well, just a lot more game in general.
Also there were some pretty well constructed scares and a much creepier atmosphere.

Gato Roboto

I remember seeing someone else post about this (I want to say it was either Buska or Jas?). I just finished it - 100% completion in almost exactly 4 hours.

I loved it! Long story short: it's a really charming, well-designed, tightly-packed little Metroidvania. A Metroidvania mini. I got it on sale (as with almost every game I own from the eShop) and would definitely recommend it. Overall, it's not especially difficult, but each boss took a few tries to defeat and they were all distinct and reasonably challenging without being too frustrating. The collectible cartridges were neat (14 in total, each changing the colour palette of the game) and by grabbing them you can also net yourself a couple of extra upgrades. It's also so CUTE - you're a cat in a mech suit! Although sometimes you have to play as a cat out of the mech suit, avoiding enemies because you have no means of attack (think Zero Suit Samus in Metroid Zero Mission, except without a skin-tight jumpsuit or stun gun and also you're a cat). And in these portions the Y button becomes a meowing button. A MEOWING BUTTON.

Meowing button/10

That's one of those games I'd definitely get if I didn't already have three Metroidvanias in my backlog, but damn me if having a button specifically devoted to making an animal noise isn't one of the best things in any game that has it.

I got sent a code for Maneater so will do a proper review on my blog but for now just to let you guys know some of my thoughts on it.

When I first started playing I tweeted this might be the best silly animal game I've played but much like my second play of Untitled Goose Game the joke can only last so long. This is Maneaters the biggest problem you do the same missions again and again, which is funny the first 10 times eating a bunch of silly humans & listening to Jerry for from Rick & Morty telling me, however the 100th time it's not.

As a £35 game, it being 9hrs to do the main story and every sidequest which I had to do to grind to take on a boss might seem like okay value as I would still need to do all the collectables to get a 1000g.

Yet I would sooner it was £15-20 and about 3hrs long that the joke didn't get old and I went from this is great to is it done yet ohh look another dead human yay

I will also a mate in work bought it after my first impression, and he hates he controls which I found fine but you are underwater, and we all know about water levels.

Balladeer wrote:

That's one of those games I'd definitely get if I didn't already have three Metroidvanias in my backlog, but damn me if having a button specifically devoted to making an animal noise isn't one of the best things in any game that has it.

And it must always be the Y button!



Songbird Symphony

I played the demo for this a while ago, and it was pretty cute, and the game was on sale at some point, so I went for it and just got to playing it over the last few days.

You play as Birb, a chunky baby bird that isn't entirely sure what species he is, but was adopted by a peacock called Uncle Pea. You go off on a trek to work out what you are, and in doing so end up collecting new musical notes for an old owl who has a mysterious artifact in his house (duh). It's light platforming with simple puzzles, with a song or two in each level (which is a reasonably standard rhythm game affair - copy the notes at the right times, and you get a grade at the end). Each section has different birds (a palace of chickens, a beach of blue-footed boobies, etc) which is quite fun.

It feels like it's almost a 'my first platformer', with the story being very basic and not especially interestingly written; but then by contrast a lot of the musical bits have really quite difficult sections (sometimes they just move so quickly and you have up to 6 buttons that you use, sometimes simultaneously, that it can be tough to keep track). That said, even when I flubbed loads of notes the lowest grade I ever got was a B, while being very close to an A, so it's very forgiving.

I do have an issue with the music though, which is that it's just not very... good. Put it this way: I woke up this morning with a song from a video game that I played yesterday going round my head. You'd think it'd be this one, the game themed entirely on music, but not... it was from Ring Fit Adventure. I didn't find any of Songbird Symphony's songs especially memorable and the actual sound really grated (it sounds very midi-esque, and often you're asked to play notes simultaneously that result in complete dissonance - a peculiar design choice). I also didn't really like the art style. In a world where every second indie game is pixelated, you've got to do it well, and I just didn't really care for the style here.

It isn't a terrible game - you can try the demo for yourself - but there are a lot of better platformers out there. It reminded me at its core a little of old MS-DOS platform games like Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure - fun, but probably more so if you're an actual child, rather than a 28-year-old who's been playing video games for 20 years. It's quite charming, and the foundations are solid, but it's rough around the edges, and a bit lacking in substance.

6/10

I played this on the wrong console, I played it on Xbox One but this game was made for VR just I was always put off by the £40 price tag when it launched on PS4 with PSVR support and never really took any notice of it since, where I really should have seen if it went on sale on PSN sometime, guess lack of PS4 use I didn't see these things.

That's sort how I ended up with the Xbox One version, as I remember it coming a few months and just added to my wish list for it to go on sale this past week in a gold deal for £15 and I had a £5 voucher from Xbox Reward points, that for £10 thought lets get it here.

Trover is still very much an enjoyable game with the Rick & Morty humour and voice actors (hey I connected Maneater and Trover together) just your character is sat in a chair and you move Trover around who can only go so far without using warp nodes, also you can move up and down the Y Axis that if you were in VR you'd be overlooking the level in what is basically a 5hr platformer.

I did have one point where I couldn't judge a jump because of the lack of VR, think same as playing a 3DS game without the 3D on that uses the 3D really well. Also, the game mentions VR, yet I'm playing on Xbox also a character has a Dual Shock 4, I was thinking was just it being ported over but then Trover will say things like you only did that for the achievement where I'm guessing on PS4 he'd say trophy that new dialogue was recorded, so the dialogue about playing in VR seems odd.

Cheers for sharing your thoughts on Songbird Symphony, Rum. I played that demo too, and liked it all well enough, but didn't know if it would have the substance or tunes to carry through a whole game. If it goes on sale again, fair to say that I should put it on the maybe pile?

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Cheers for sharing your thoughts on Songbird Symphony, Rum. I played that demo too, and liked it all well enough, but didn't know if it would have the substance or tunes to carry through a whole game. If it goes on sale again, fair to say that I should put it on the maybe pile?

To be fair, I think I probably only clocked about 4 or 5 hours total, so it doesn't outstay its welcome (though the puzzles got a little repetitive because they mostly boiled down to 'tweet the notes to move the platforms around the right way'). It is pretty fun and the fact is that I finished it within a couple of days, which I wouldn't have bothered doing with a bad game! So yeah, maybe worth a punt in a sale. And most of the critics were a bit kinder than I'm being.