What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

Pretty much. Yet distinctly lacking in anything gay, otherwise Fox News would get mad again.

Didn't they add gay options in the third game? When the gaming press pointed that out, there wasn't a lick or hyde of Fox News complaining then. I still remember that crappy SexBox headline they had for the first game. That was nothing controversy that went nowhere and only got the game more attention and money.

 

[Worgen]

Too many characters who don't amount to anything other than a loyalty side-quest. Seriously, why are Jack, Samara, Grunt, and drell guy even in this game? What exactly do they add to the plot? Speaking of which, the plot adds nothing either. The entire plot is about stopping a bunch of aliens from mulching human colonists. You then succeed in stopping them, the end. Which wouldn't be so bad if this was a stand alone game, but as the second game in a trilogy it adds nothing to the overarching plot. The whole game feels like a detour, and then at the end it's like 'Oh yeah, the Reapers. I guess we'll return to them in the final installment.'

Shouldn't you be complaining about Miranda and wanting to kill her off like everyone else?

I hope you're ready for your S rank runs on Mania!

Maybe, I might just mess around in other brawlers till the DLC comes out.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Shouldn't you be complaining about Miranda and wanting to kill her off like everyone else?

I mean, Miranda's not my favourite (and judging by how the third game quietly tucked her away she was nobody's favourite), but she at least has some plot relevance being the Cerberus liaison.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Still playing Rayman Legends. Does Rayman, of all series, need leaderboards and multiplayer challenge modes? For 8 years the same 1% of bhopping sadsacks have been placing at the top in every daily challenge. This is amazing. It's like I opened the locker in Men in Black II and you have this society of proto men centering their lives around some banal leftover from the real world.

 

[BrawlMan]

Still playing Rayman Legends. Does Rayman, of all series, need leaderboards and multiplayer challenge modes? For 8 years the same 1% of bhopping sadsacks have been placing at the top in every daily challenge. This is amazing. It's like I opened the locker in Men in Black II and you have this society of proto men centering their lives around some banal leftover from the real world.

I admit that I never cared much for the leaderboards, but I didn't mind they were there. I remember on the X360, I got to the top of the leaderboards a couple times before being beaten. It was fun while it lasted.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Yeah I'm playing GoW again too, though sporadically. I'm not trying to 100% it, just replaying it for the story, and to play around a bit with NG+, so I have all the fun combat attacks, and stuff. Still find myself more in love with hand to hand, instead of weapon combat. I find myself REALLY annoyed, that the runes you get most often, are almost exclusively designed around Runic Cooldown. Which...I just never use. I never see runes that are built for hand to hand, or just basic stat boosting stuff. It's always *random minor stat boost + some variant on Blessing of Runic Cooldown due to a conditional trigger, like parry or whatever* And..that's honestly entirely useless to me. So, yeah, runes are problematic. The new NG+ armor types are nice, but not different enough to really make a huge difference, stat wise. Still, I enjoy punching things. My favorite is to have Atreus, using the stunning arrows, just wail on a tough enemy as I rush at them, and finish off the Stagger meter with a shoulder tackle, and then just insta-kill them. It feels so satisfying to have the two of them just plow through enemies that way. In the killscene animation, Atreus has time to regen some arrows, so I can rinse/repeat super fast.

Not sure what armor types you have but I’ve found that experimenting with different setups has a dramatic effect on stat distributions. Like right now my best armor setup for me personally is Cuirass of Endless Mist, Gauntlets of Deadly Mist, and Warbelt of Cursed Mist. That gets me the most for strength, vitality and defense while also bumping up luck and cool down a bit, whereas if I just went with a straight up Cursed set it would favor Runic.

A general guideline for the differences in these sets (how they are slotted with enchantments augments them further though, especially with the Epic variety) -

• The Deadly Mist set: good boost for Strength, Runic, Defense and Vitality.
• The Endless Mist set: high boost for Strength, Defense and Vitality.
• The Cursed Mist set: high boost for Strength, Runic and Defense

 

[Xprimentyl]

Still playing Rayman Legends. Does Rayman, of all series, need leaderboards and multiplayer challenge modes? For 8 years the same 1% of bhopping sadsacks have been placing at the top in every daily challenge. This is amazing. It's like I opened the locker in Men in Black II and you have this society of proto men centering their lives around some banal leftover from the real world.

This might be the most cynical statement I've ever read and I love it.

 

[Piscian]

Still playing Rayman Legends. Does Rayman, of all series, need leaderboards and multiplayer challenge modes? For 8 years the same 1% of bhopping sadsacks have been placing at the top in every daily challenge. This is amazing. It's like I opened the locker in Men in Black II and you have this society of proto men centering their lives around some banal leftover from the real world.

Similar to when my friends start talking about fantasy sports my eyes roll back in my head when I hear about videogame achievements and scoring. I found out yesterday that theres a whole community around speed running records for Outriders, a game that'll be forgotten about in a year. Not my thing, but if they're supporting games I'm not gonna complain about it.

 

[Asita]

Just finished Subnautica: Below Zero. On the upside, it was more Subnautica, and I like Subnautica. New creature and environmental design is great, game feels tense without being overbearing or draining. Good stuff. And you know what? Despite never bothering with it in the first game, I actually quite enjoyed the songs on the Jukebox.

On the other hand, the story ended up feeling...strangely hollow compared to its predecessor.

With the original, the plot and stakes were very primal. In the wake of disaster you had to find some way to survive and get home, and the major emotional beats of story were directly tied to that. It was very much the Martian by way of Castaway. Just when things start looking up, everything goes sideways and you have to adapt. New problems kept cropping up that you realized that you had to deal with if you wanted to live long enough to go home. You get "oh crap!" moments when you realize there's a new complication and "aw yeah!" moments when you fix them.

With Below Zero? From the get-go it's mop-up. Robin goes to the planet to find closure over her sister's death, and despite being a relatively vocal protagonist, she doesn't really have much of a personal arc to speak of. There's no real conflict between her and Al-An, heck the two are broadly in agreement from start to finish. Despite presenting itself as a "whydunit" mystery, there's no real mystery to the plot, no stakes, no conflicting accounts, apparent inconsistencies, or even a big 'not what it seems' reveal. Heck, you'll essentially stumble across the answer almost spelled out to you at multiple locations well before you close that story out. Worse still, the story isn't really reflected in the protagonist, not even in how she views her sister as she learns more about the events. Consequentially, it lacks the emotional highs and lows that a central plotline should have.

Similarly, there's practically nothing to the Al-An plotline. It doesn't introduce new conflict, it has no impact on the story trajectory, and frankly the character ended up fairly bland. If you've been following development at all, there's an obvious reason why: the character is a holdover from a prior iteration of the story, in which Robin had to keep the character's existence a secret from her [living in that draft] sister and - by transitive property - Alterra. Interaction with that character created stakes and conflict in early drafts, and while the character persisted to the final draft, his narrative raison d'etre did not.

On the whole though: Fun game, meh story.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finished Castlevania(the first one) in the Castlevania Anniversary collection. Like a lot of First games of a series, it feels very dated by today's standards in addition to being fucking "Getting punched in the dick" levels of hard. And most of the reason it is hard is because the enemies pretty much don't play fair(the little jumping imp dudes can JUMP THROUGH WALLS) and because of the Janky mechanics. While you can kill most enemies in 1 hit, many of them can also kill you in one hit by knocking you off a ledge(and boy do they LOVE to do that). Not to mention you can be easily killed trying to use the stairs because simon occasionally mistakes "Descend staircase" as "Plummet to death". The fact you lose all your upgrades upon death feels like the cherry on the shit sundae because the upgrades make a lot of difference in boss fights.

And really, its a short linear game that makes up for basically being one long corridor by finding so many ways to murder you. What's so frustrating is that it feels like the game would be maybe half as difficult if Simon could attack in more then two directions, or could run, or could move while crouching, or jump a little higher or something. Not even joking when Dark Souls feels downright charitable compared to this game because Dark Souls actually gives you some freedom to dodge and block, as well as letting you keep your shit upon death.

Also, yeah, there's really no plot to speak of in this one. It's basically "Invade Castlevania, kill Dracula" so while there's the foundation for the later games to build off of, it's more a piece of gaming history then a particularly enjoyable game. Unless you like hard games because they're hard, but it feels like it's hard for the wrong reasons.

Anyway, with that out of the way, onto Castlevania 2: Simon's back for more suffering.

At least they gave you infinite continues, which is more than a lot of NES games. Imagine how awful the game would have been if you had to stop and put in a 16 character password every 3 attempts. The music was really good too.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Similar to when my friends start talking about fantasy sports my eyes roll back in my head when I hear about videogame achievements and scoring. I found out yesterday that theres a whole community around speed running records for Outriders, a game that'll be forgotten about in a year. Not my thing, but if they're supporting games I'm not gonna complain about it.

Back in Xbox 360's prime, there was a website called 360voice.com (I think.) Basically, you logged in with your XBL credentials, and your Xbox would blog about your activity (as long as you were online, of course.) So everyday, you could log in and see comments to the effect that "Xprimentyl played 6 games yesterday, and scored 300 Gamerscore across 12 achievements! Can't wait to see what they do today!" That aspect of it was a novelty, really dumb and mostly ignored, but the site also had badges awarded for different gaming feats, and this part drew the obsessive out of a lot of people... including myself.

There were badges for streaks of days playing, streaks of days earning achievements, and my personal demon, badges for total Gamerscore earned of your sum total possible. When I first signed up, I was awarded the 50% badge meaning of all the games I'd played, I'd earned over 50% of all total possible Gamerscore, and for some reason, I became obsessed with maintaining that 50%, i.e.: I would not put a game in my console unless I was confident I could get at least 500 of the [typically] base 1,000 Gamerscore. It went so far as my continuing to play games I didn't like just to get above the 500 mark of Gamerscore. It was a running joke between my best friend and I; one of us would get a new game, and before we asked whether or not it was any good, we'd ask "you gonna get the 500 in it?" This meticulous behavior actually got me the 75% badge eventually. I kinda obsessed over the streaks of days played and streaks of days with achievements earned too, but seeing as I was single at the time, those pretty much came naturally, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few days where I popped up at 11:30pm realizing I hadn't played anything that day, so played a quick session of an XBLA game just to keep a streak going. Thankfully, the site went defunct and I grew up, and now my profile is riddled with games I played for 20 minutes netting only tutorial achievements if any.

(But I still maintain that my Gamerscore will never end in anything save for a 5 or 0. It happened once back in the late 2000s' when I played The Orange Box and got an achievement worth "2" or something, but there was an offsetting achievement worth "3" to get me back to my 5 or 0, and it became my life's mission to do so and I did within that same day. But yeah, in nigh 15 years of achievements existing, my Gamerscore has never ended in anything other than 5 or 0. That means nothing to anyone save for myself and that same friend who tried to do the same, but got an odd achievement in Xbox Live Arcade's port of Mortal Kombat 3 (I think,) and the offsetting achievement is available in multiplayer only, and absolutely no one has played that game online in a decade! He acts like he doesn't care, but I guaran-fucking-TEE you, the second he manages to find an odd achievement to get him back to 5 or 0, he's gonna call and brag.)

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Back in Xbox 360's prime, there was a website called 360voice.com (I think.) Basically, you logged in with your XBL credentials, and your Xbox would blog about your activity (as long as you were online, of course.) So everyday, you could log in and see comments to the effect that "Xprimentyl played 6 games yesterday, and scored 300 Gamerscore across 12 achievements! Can't wait to see what they do today!" That aspect of it was a novelty, really dumb and mostly ignored, but the site also had badges awarded for different gaming feats, and this part drew the obsessive out of a lot of people... including myself.

There were badges for streaks of days playing, streaks of days earning achievements, and my personal demon, badges for total Gamerscore earned of your sum total possible. When I first signed up, I was awarded the 50% badge meaning of all the games I'd played, I'd earned over 50% of all total possible Gamerscore, and for some reason, I became obsessed with maintaining that 50%, i.e.: I would not put a game in my console unless I was confident I could get at least 500 of the [typically] base 1,000 Gamerscore. It went so far as my continuing to play games I didn't like just to get above the 500 mark of Gamerscore. It was a running joke between my best friend and I; one of us would get a new game, and before we asked whether or not it was any good, we'd ask "you gonna get the 500 in it?" This meticulous behavior actually got me the 75% badge eventually. I kinda obsessed over the streaks of days played and streaks of days with achievements earned too, but seeing as I was single at the time, those pretty much came naturally, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few days where I popped up at 11:30pm realizing I hadn't played anything that day, so played a quick session of an XBLA game just to keep a streak going. Thankfully, the site went defunct and I grew up, and now my profile is riddled with games I played for 20 minutes netting only tutorial achievements if any.

(But I still maintain that my Gamerscore will never end in anything save for a 5 or 0. It happened once back in the late 2000s' when I played The Orange Box and got an achievement worth "2" or something, but there was an offsetting achievement worth "3" to get me back to my 5 or 0, and it became my life's mission to do so and I did within that same day. But yeah, in nigh 15 years of achievements existing, my Gamerscore has never ended in anything other than 5 or 0. That means nothing to anyone save for myself and that same friend who tried to do the same, but got an odd achievement in Xbox Live Arcade's port of Mortal Kombat 3 (I think,) and the offsetting achievement is available in multiplayer only, and absolutely no one has played that game online in a decade! He acts like he doesn't care, but I guaran-fucking-TEE you, the second he manages to find an odd achievement to get him back to 5 or 0, he's gonna call and brag.)

Kinda reminds me of the gems and what it for Steam. I have no idea what converting gems does or what the points are even good for. I like trophies because they’re just a simple, stylish setup for a tacky system that carries worthless gamer bragging rights lol.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Still Noita. Man, I can lose a run no matter how good it is. I had two perks Tinker Anywhere and Homing Spells, I had a wand with always cast add mana and had it set up with energy orbs in such a way that I fired out orbs at an incredible rate and would never ever run out of mana. I could decimate everything in my path, enemies and terrain alike with no danger of backfire. It was incredible. I was going through the fungal caverns obliterating everything and getting new spells from wands along the way. I started to get a little low on health so I was going to go and dig back up with my one black hole spell to get to a health refill earlier in the dark cave. I needed a refresh in the last holy mountain for my black holes though, and I didn't want to collapse the mountain for some reason, and I also didn't want to use my potion of polymorph either for some reason, like I had been doing. Hmm, actually I think what I was thinking is that I would use the acid trail spell I just picked up to tunnel back down from the top so I wanted to get some teleportium that a cat thing had dropped everywhere when I killed it. I just needed a flask to put it in, but I didn't want to drain my acid flask or my polymorph flask, even though I didn't really have a use for them anymore. I think I felt it was too dangerous to pour out all the acid so I just decided to go back into the caverns and get one of the flasks I had seen in there. Well I saw an enemy that switches places with you when you shoot it, and so I shot it, and we switched places, and something exploded, and I died. -_-

10 seconds later I realized I had Tinker Anywhere and had no reason to worry about collapsing the temple, and didn't need teleportium, and there were a dozen other things I could have done that would have had no chance of killing me that I should have done. This game wouldn't be so hard if I didn't make so many stupid mistakes.

 

[BrawlMan]

Also, yeah, there's really no plot to speak of in this one. It's basically "Invade Castlevania, kill Dracula" so while there's the foundation for the later games to build off of, it's more a piece of gaming history then a particularly enjoyable game. Unless you like hard games because they're hard, but it feels like it's hard for the wrong reasons.

If you think that is bad, Castlevania: The Adventure (1st Gameboy Game) is one long tedious slog through the mucky swamp. At least the OG CV can be fun and offers variety in levels. You ain't getting that in The Adventure. It sucks that Konami did not package either ReBirth games in to Contra or Castlevania Collection. All of the ReBirth games were developed by M2, so it makes even less sense other than laziness and Konami hates video games. When you get to Dracula's Curse, just play the Japanese version. The North American version is unbearable in difficulty.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

If you think that is bad, Castlevania: The Adventure (1st Gameboy Game) is one long tedious slog through the mucky swamp. At least the OG CV can be fun and offers variety in levels. You ain't getting that in The Adventure. It sucks that Konami did not package either ReBirth games in to Contra or Castlevania Collection. All of the ReBirth games were developed by M2, so it makes even less sense other than laziness and Konami hates video games. When you get to Dracula's Curse, just play the Japanese version. The North American version is unbearable in difficulty.

Pretty sure NA was what I played as a kid, as I clearly didn’t know any better and took the punishment as such. Apparently the Japanese version has better sound so I’d like to revisit the game and play through that one as well. From the wiki page-

Besides the different title, Akumajō Densetsu, the Japanese version has several other differences. It contains a specialized "VRC6" coprocessor chip. The game's audio programmer, Hidenori Maezawa, assisted in the chip's creation. This chip added two extra pulse wave channels and a saw wave channel to the system's initial set of five sound channels. The majority of the music combines the channels to imitate the sound of a synthesized string section. Western versions of the NES did not have the ability to support external sound chips, so the North American release replaced the VRC6 with Nintendo's Memory Management Controller 5 (MMC5).[citation needed] The MMC5 chip's sound channels cannot be used with the NES, and the game's music had to be downgraded by Yoshinori Sasaki to comply with the NES's standard five channels. Akumajō Dracula Famicom Best was a soundtrack album that included the Famicom version of the game's original music.

Are both versions included in the collection? Just noticed the Famicom version was added as a bonus update. Neat. Also interesting to note, the director of Harmony of Despair listed Dracula’s Curse as his favorite in the series, citing the sound chip of the Japanese version as the reason why.

 

[BrawlMan]

Pretty sure NA was what I played as a kid, as I clearly didn’t know any better and took the punishment as such. Apparently the Japanese version has better sound so I’d like to revisit the game and play through that one as well. From the wiki page-

Besides the different title, Akumajō Densetsu, the Japanese version has several other differences. It contains a specialized "VRC6" coprocessor chip. The game's audio programmer, Hidenori Maezawa, assisted in the chip's creation. This chip added two extra pulse wave channels and a saw wave channel to the system's initial set of five sound channels. The majority of the music combines the channels to imitate the sound of a synthesized string section. Western versions of the NES did not have the ability to support external sound chips, so the North American release replaced the VRC6 with Nintendo's Memory Management Controller 5 (MMC5).[citation needed] The MMC5 chip's sound channels cannot be used with the NES, and the game's music had to be downgraded by Yoshinori Sasaki to comply with the NES's standard five channels. Akumajō Dracula Famicom Best was a soundtrack album that included the Famicom version of the game's original music.

Are both versions included in the collection?

Yes. You get the NA and JP of:

• Castlevania
• Castlevania II
• Castlevania III
• Castlevania IV
• The Adventure and Belmont's Revenge
• Bloodlines
• and a translated version of Kid Dracula spin-off that never made it state side on the NES. The GB version did make it to the states back in the day.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Yes. You get the NA and JP of:

• Castlevania
• Castlevania II
• Castlevania III
• Castlevania IV
• The Adventure and Belmont's Revenge
• Bloodlines
• and a translated version of Kid Dracula spin-off that never made it state side on the NES. The GB version did make it to the states back in the day.

I gotta get on that then, as I’ve only ever partially played Bloodlines and none of those other spin-offs. I’m mainly curious about III’s Japanese version though.

 

[BrawlMan]

I’m mainly curious about III’s Japanese version though.

The JP while difficult is much easier by comparison. I did the pathway to Sypha, though I went to Grant first, but switched him out for Sypha to have the "canon"/love birds ending. The story and later tellings in the franchise say all 4 defeated Dracula. For regional differences: they're some censorship in the US/EU versions and the difficulty gets absurd. From the tropes page:

• Bowdlerise: Lesser Demon was renamed to Leviathan, a statue had a bra added, and Medusa was turned into a male so its bare chest wouldn't bother the censors.
• In the NES version, dying against Dracula sends you back to the beginning of A-2 (instead of A-3 like in the Famicom version). While this seems bad, A-2's a very short section (the hardest part is the pendulums, which can be skipped if you have Alucard and enough hearts) and has a greater selection of subweapons (Axe and Holy Water as opposed to Knife). The only problem is the enemies can cut down your health before you even reach Dracula.
• Difficulty by Region:
  • The American version made multiple changes to ramp up the challenge from the Famicom release. Enemies were altered so they deal more damage in the later stages of the game, extra enemy spawns were added, some enemies take more damage, various bosses were changed in some way to make them more difficult (e.g. Dracula's laser attack is larger and can fire at more angles), and many sub-weapon spawns were removed or changed to the dagger.
  • The European version is slightly easier than the American version, but still harder than the Japanese ones: enemies do less damage in early levels and the stopwatch lasts longer.

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to play the Japanese version of Castlevania I. The re-issued version that comes with an easy mode in the collection, but I stuck to Normal. Holy Water and Triple Shot are the best way to go when beating this game. Even in the Japanese version, this game is still tough. Interesting trivia: When fighting Dracula's 2nd phase, that blue devil creature is not him. When his head and then body parts fly off, the creature manifesting is called the Curse of Man. That is the curse Simon gets plagued with after defeating it. Also, in the ending, only the Clock Tower porttion of the castle falls and not the entire thing. The reason being the Clock Tower is the heart of Dracula. It's implied parts of him are still alive. It and his body parts are the sequel hook. Konami always planned on doing a sequel. It's on this page for those interested.

Castlevania – Developer Commentary (2018) - shmuplations.com

The development of the three Famicom Castlevania games has long been shrouded in mystery. Recently, a developer who was mentored by Castlevania director/creator/programmer Hitoshi Akamatsu in the 90s began sharing memories of their conversations in a series of tweets, which I've organized here...

shmuplations.com

 

[Dalisclock]

The JP while difficult is much easier by comparison. I did the pathway to Sypha, though I went to Grant first, but switched him out for Sypha to have the "canon"/love birds ending.

Well, after watching the series I feel like you almost kinda have get Sypha at some point. Especially since Grant got more or less unpersoned in the series(though I've heard arguments the references to the "Land Pirate" in season 3 was supposed to be him).