Retro
Slowing down a bit on my retro binge and will probably see it come to an end soon.
-Adventure Island II
I finally got back to this game. It’s been nagging at me for a while. While it’s significant improvement on the first AI, it seems like these games just aren’t my cup of tea. During the NES era when there just weren’t that many great games this would’ve been a clear standout. It’s good. It’s fun. It’s only moderately frustrating, but I just don’t love it. I did enjoy some of the hidden bits to skip levels and such. I think if you were actually playing as a kid and found these on accident it would be exciting and you could slow find the warps (Mario style) to get you to later levels to finish them up without having to play the whole game.
The game is incredibly robust and long. The levels are reasonably short. There are certainly some places that blow my mind with their need to memorize and the very difficult platforming. I still think a normal person could beat this game (which I certainly wouldn’t say for Adventure Island). The art is simple, colorful and pretty good. It’s a good game, but I just don’t care enough for it. I’ll undoubtedly still play the third installment and probably event the fourth (JP onry).
-Ninja Gaiden III
This game started reasonably but got ridiculous at the end. I found at least one point where you literally must die at least one time to finish the game. You can’t finish it otherwise for a reason I’ll elaborate on a bit later. Surprisingly the final few battles were considerably simpler than the ones from the first two NG games. It’s good to have them so simple at the end of such a difficult section of the game, though I still think it would difficult under normal circumstances. The new setting of the game still doesn’t sit right with me. Technology mixed with NG doesn’t feel quite right.
-Bionic Commando
Certain one of the classics that I missed during its time period. I’m playing it now and enjoying it pretty well. At first the inability to jump was a little jarring, but the bionic arm controls are amazingly smooth for NES. It really almost compares to the grapple beam from Super Metroid which came significantly later. I also find it rewarding to get new weapons and stuff as I go. Truly an impressive game. I’m looking forward to finishing it up.
Rant
Arbitrary time limits are bullshit. This was my biggest beef with all of the NG games (III in particular) and with AI2. In NG III the final level cannot be completed in a single go. I’ve learned to go absolute top speed because of the problems with these so far in the NG series and even at top speed with save states I cannot even get to the final boss room without being required to die and start a somewhat closer checkpoint. Even with that checkpoint I had under 50 seconds on the clock when I finished the last boss. Unlike the other bosses, the final 3 bosses (in a row) didn’t get a new timer. I didn’t die on them so I’m not sure if I’d get to restart right at the boss with a free timer or not. If not, I’d put this game at right next to unbeatable under normal conditions.
The same problem comes up in AI2 (and AI for that matter). There are too many spots where your literally have to have been pressing ahead on the most efficient route without getting hit only to get a piece of fruit (to bump the timer) at the last possible second. There are many levels I finished with only a single tic left on the timer. This is infuriating game design. This is not fun for anyone.
Time limits aren’t all bad. It’s only the arbitrary ones that are bad. At least give me a plot device like a bomb to create urgency. Having a countdown for no reason just makes the game frustrating. I guess it’s just a holdover from an era where you needed to have lots of challenge in a game. Timers and high score where the flavor and the idea of simply having something else make the game worth playing (like a narrative) were less important. This is especially bad with NG since the story is told really well for the time. There was no need to put arbitrary time limits in the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV
I don’t know what to say really. It’s fantastic. I’m sad it took me so long to discover this game. I really haven’t playing many open world games aside from Oblivion. I think the GTA IV world is much better realized simply because there’s actually stuff out there. I’ve gotten a little frustrated with the whole McReary clan. They just aren’t as interesting to me as some of the other characters so it’s too bad they monopolize so much of the game.
I’ve had a handful of situations that really just got me bent. Some missions are quite difficult and not having mid-mission checkpoints is agitating when you have to restart, hail a cab, drive to get some body armor, hail another cab, drive to the place, wait/follow or whatever and then execute the mission perfectly. If not… repeat it all. Luckily there have only been a few really terrible sticking spots of that type.
This game almost uniquely has a quality to it that makes me enjoy playing it while accomplishing nothing substantial. I think when it’s all over I might enjoy trophy hunting a tad. I suspect the trophy search will lead me to see a lot of things I might miss in the normal play of the game.
Upcoming
So Amazon had a deal on Red Dead Redemption. It looked interesting a while back despite my distaste for anything with a western theme. But the jury was still out for me and my wife was totally uninterested. Well, the Amazon deal made me take a second look. Me and my wife checked out some trailers and such. By the end we were both pretty convinced we should grab it. Especially after playing GTA IV and seeing the potential of that formula combined with how cool it might actually be, RDR seems an obvious grab.
