__Hello.🙂 How's everyone's year going so far? I'm certainly hopeful for the near future, but in the meantime, I'm staying at home and keeping myself busy the best way I know how.🙂
__As it's the first Saturday of the month, this would normally be the time when I'd post a compilation of my "first impressions" mini reviews for all the latest movies I'd seen. However, I wouldn't have many this time because I've barely been watching any movies at all. Instead, I've been focusing on video games and TV shows. After all, I have a huge backlog of both. I'm going through all my unplayed games by year, so I've mostly been playing retro games on emulators so far. At first, I didn't bother commenting on them, since I find it much harder to review something without voice acting or anything that normally defines visual storytelling, but then I tried it and found that I did at least have a tweet's worth of comments on each one.🙂
__Before we start, though, I did watch one movie back in January: Infernal Affairs. You see, whenever I do get back to watching movies on a more full-time basis, one place I want to start is the last few titles on a "100 movies bucket list" poster I got a few Christmases ago. One of those movies is The Departed, so I thought I might as well start with the original film that it's based on. So, what did I think of it?
It's much more interesting to read about the themes in retrospect. In practice, it's paced so quickly that I could barely take anything in – not helped by the frenetic editing – so I kept getting confused about who everyone was.
My rating: 55%.
__And now let's get started on all the games I've played since the year began.🙂
__Well, to be precise, I haven't exactly played all of them; I watched Let's Plays of most of them because I didn't trust myself with the games themselves, particularly the infamously hard Super Star Wars trilogy. A recurring problem is that I have real trouble with the controls a lot of the time. When playing platformers like Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, I find it way too easy to overshoot a jump or undershoot it trying not to. Even in Super Metroid, it wasn't the enemies that gave me the most trouble, it was the platforming! In short, I have nothing against old school games; I just suck at them.
__I do have a couple of other rather lengthy things to say, but I'll save that for the end.🙂 Without further ado…
It might mean more to you if you're familiar with Lovecraft's stories, but to me, the story that's revealed through the books you find is just nonsense. The graphics look great for the time, but the music is too upbeat to be scary.
My rating: 50%.
It is what it is: Mario on Game Boy. That inevitably makes it feel like a lesser Mario offering, especially given its much shorter length. It's quite fun, but the best part is its twist on the "princess is in another castle" moment.
My rating: 70%.
It's basically just Metroid on Game Boy, with a far simpler goal than the first one: just go around killing all the Metroids. Am I the only one who's far more creeped out by Samus's Spider Ball move than any of the monsters?
My rating: 70%.
A terrific start to what would become the Mana series. The fun Zelda-esque combat and amazing music (especially for Game Boy standards) make it a delight to explore the endearing world it creates.
My rating: 85%.
Essentially an enhanced remake of the first Castlevania. While the NES classic is known for its difficulty, this one outshines it in terms of presentation. The graphics and music are top-notch, and no two stages look alike.
My rating: 90%.
A notoriously difficult game that's so well designed that it makes you want to persevere despite the challenge and see what comes next. Every level stands out, and I'd say it successfully adapts the first movie into a side-scroller.
My rating: 80%.
While the first game was riveting in spite of its difficulty, this one isn't. It just relentlessly punishes you, and after a while, the stages all start to feel the same. It doesn't do the movie justice, either.
My rating: 60%.
It's not as enjoyable as the first game or as tedious as the second; it falls somewhere in between. The quasi-3D vehicle levels were ambitious for the time, but the technology was too young; it just wasn't there yet.
My rating: 70%.
Possibly my favourite RPG of all time. With its seamless combat and clear-cut level-up limits, it's like it was purpose-built to address my usual issues with RPG combat, and the music is some of the best I've ever heard in any game.
My rating: 100%.
Not much to say about this one. It's fun, stimulating side-scrolling action that does all three movies proud. Standout moments include the maze of statues in Temple of Doom and the final boss of Last Crusade.
My rating: 80%.
Essentially, they took an already great game and perfected it. The opening immediately provides a superbly creepy atmosphere, and the ending is one of the best in gaming history. An outstanding game that deserves its status as a classic.
My rating: 100%.
This updated version of the original classic retains the invigorating thrill of running around killing demons, but getting lost in the increasingly labyrinthine levels is not ideal when there's… not a time limit per se, but a time par.
My rating: 85%.
A remaster of the arcade classic that allows us to appreciate Don Bluth's incredible animation, the refreshingly dippy characters, and the control scheme. Or not! I played with the move guide on, and I still often struggled with the timing.
My rating: 70%.
I chose the "watch game" option with this one because there are so many prompts to potentially miss. The adventure itself is completely insane, and the animation so chaotic that I feel I need to watch it frame by frame.
My rating: 65%.
Aside from the truly epic battle with Wyzen, I was never that invested in the world or the gameplay. I get that it's trying to be an anime, but apparently a ceaselessly bombastic one that I wouldn't enjoy. Not bad, just not for me.
My rating: 55%.
Square is best known for Final Fantasy, but this RPG is far more to my taste. There's no separate battle screen during combat, and the story actually engages me. I love the concept of a time-travelling mission to stop a catastrophe.
My rating: 95%.
__Speaking of which, I did also try playing Final Fantasy two and three (which are actually four and six) on Super Nintendo, but didn't get very far into either before I lost interest. In particular, I was quite enjoying three at first, but by the time I got to the opera house scene, there was no clear indication of how far through the story I was; nothing was really building up, so it just seemed stagnant. I looked up NintendoComplete's walkthrough on YouTube, and was thoroughly discouraged when I saw that it was two videos just shy of twelve hours each! I decided that that was way too long, especially when the story was showing no semblance of escalating (I think the cinematic term is "rising action") and just seemed to be rambling.
__Compare that to their walkthrough of Final Fantasy II. That's also two videos, but the first is 6 hours 25 mins and the second is 6 hours 15 mins, making the whole game about half as long as FF3! Secret of Mana, on the other hand, is one video just under 11 hours. Trials of Mana (which I'll be getting to soon) is two videos at just over 14 hours total. Chrono Trigger is two videos totalling out to about 16 hours 20 mins.
__I should also mention that I was inspired to play Asura's Wrath because I've been watching a lot of Joshscorcher's videos lately, and he mentions it quite often. The PS3 version is rare and rather expensive, but I did notice that it was available on the PS4 through streaming on PS Now. So I bought a month's subscription, thinking I could download the game, but alas! That put a considerable rush on my playing it before my month expired. Unfortunately, I haven't played the hidden DLC episode, because it said I had to either achieve an S rank in at least five chapters (which I was lucky to pull off even once) or play fifty chapters in total. I had no desire to play through the game again, so immediately I was like, "Oh, fuck that!" That means I haven't seen the true ending, but honestly I don't care. (Same with The Ultimate Doom: I didn't get very far into the additional fourth episode, "Thy Flesh Consumed", and I'm not too fussed about it.)
__…Well, that was a pretty miserable final paragraph! So let me end on some more positive notes.🙂
__Firstly, I now only have three games left to play from 1995: Donkey Kong Country 2, Star Wars: Dark Forces (which led to Jedi Knight and its sequel, Jedi Outcast) and, as mentioned before, the original Trials of Mana. Looking at my list, I realised that 1996 was the big turning point; it's pretty much all 3D games from then on. That was the year that saw the release of the first Resident Evil and the first Tomb Raider, not to mention Super Mario 64.
__And finally, I'd like to mention that I'm thinking of compiling a list of my top ten favourite pre-3D games. Super Metroid, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger will most definitely be on the list.🙂
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