Resident Evil 4: Specifically, the Wii Edition. I played through this game some time ago on GameCube, so I already knew how spectacular it was. Having said that, I didn’t feel all that compelled to play through it again after I lost the save data and was unable to play through on the equivalent of New Game +. Already knowing I was a fan of the Wii’s change in controls, and suddenly becoming aware of how easy it is to grab Wii save files off the internet and use them in my own games brought me around for another go.

With everything unlocked, and Leon overpowered to shit, RE4 is a completely different experience. I love the opportunity to blast through enemies that gave me so much trouble before. Now I can enjoy the story and atmosphere in a relaxed, much less agitated, state.

Personal Trainer Walking: Probably the most enjoyable so-called “non-game” I’ve ever experienced. This is more of a software app bundled with a couple step counters. I’m loving all the stat tracking, as well as the ever-so-wise character who guides me through the mystical journey of walking a lot. The guilt he provides is a constant source of inspiration.

StarFox, Rock n’ Roll Racing, Aladdin, etc.: I hope it’s no secret that I’m hard at work on The Definitive 50 SNES Games video series here at Shufflingdead. As such, I’m in a constant state of research, reading about, playing, and bargain hunting for classic games. It’s already been an eye-opening trip to revisit the SNES catalog I loved so dearly as a child. Some games hold up significantly better than others (Aladdin is still awesome, Stunt Race FX significantly less than I remember).

It was another remarkably poor quarter for me. I hopped from 71 unbeaten games to 82. Beaten games barely moved, going from 130 to 131. I did manage to complete one additional game, taking that total to 13.

Details after the jump.

April:

bought – F-Zero Legend – April 4
bought, but had already beaten – Super Baseball 2020 – April 17
bought – Mortal Kombat II – April 17
bought – Blades of Steel – April 19
bought – WinBack – April 19
bought – Pokemon Puzzle League – April 19
received – SimAnt – April 24 (thanks sulci!)

May:

bought – Mario Paint – May 10
bought – Pokemon Platinum – May 15
bought – Kirby Superstar Ultra – May 15
bought – Super Mario Galaxy 2 – May 25
bought – Tomb Raider II – May 25

gave away – Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 – May 11
beat Ace Attorney Investigations – May 12

June:

bought – Personal Trainer walking – June 29
bought – WarioWare DIY – June 29

Muramasa: Spoiler alert: this game’s got an SDGR review coming up. Another spoiler: we’re very positive about it. Muramasa is a joy. From the beauty of its art-style to the simplicity of its beat-em-up play, the game never fails to entertain. Even in its bizarrely long backtracking sessions, the game maintains an hypnotic draw.

Pokémon Platinum: Garage sales are simultaneously my best friend and worst enemy. They lure me in with the hope of bargains and hidden treasures, and all too often let me down with absences of games, or, worse yet, abundances of games to spend money on. I picked up Kirby Super Star Ultra and Pokémon Platinum at one earlier this summer. I had to get Pokémon out of curiosity, I hadn’t played one since the GameBoy Color era, and it seemed time to finally check if the sluggish menus had been fixed. Of course they had. Platinum maintains the simple design of the old games I remember so well, and still finds room for all the conveniences of modern game design.

Stay tuned for another Dungeon’s Boss in a couple weeks when I update the database for Q2 2010.

Quarter 1 saw some incredible changes to my collection. I managed to beat-back the over-heavy presences of both unbeaten GBA games and RPGs. I found $1 copy Space Iinvaders for the Atari 2600 which, for the time being, has no system to be played on, and picked up some NES classics on the cheap, those being Lolo 3, Metal Gear, Blastermaster, and Hogan’s Alley.

Perhaps most significantly, I also picked up a PS1 (at the same thrift store I found the Atari game), along with my first PS1 game, WipeOut XL. I’m excited for another opportunity to check out how the “other half” was living, this time from the era when I was focused on blasting Russians in GoldenEye.

And now for a couple games played:

Ace Attorney Investigations: I picked up AAI near its launch, being a massive fan of the series, and excited for the opportunity to do a little more investigating in my anime lawyer games. So far, and I’m near the end at this point, I haven’t found that the game has supplied exactly what I had hoped for, although it is still enjoyable. It seems to just be me, but when it comes to Ace Attorney games, I enjoy the relaxing investigation portions more than the thinking-required courtroom portions.

Unfortunately for me, AAI seems to break up investigations with even more pseudo-courtroom moments, and prevents any significant wandering by generally keeping investigations to one room at a time. I’ve also found the writing to be a little less snappy than previous entries, with fewer of the pop culture references that excite me so much. Overall, it’s still got enough of the Ace Attorney charm to keep me happy, but I certainly feel the game could be better.

Golden Sun: I finally beat Golden Sun back in February, and had a surprisingly enjoyable go of it. I say surprisingly because, to be honest, I had never had much fun with the game previously. I made a number of attempts at the game over the years, and had just never been quite drawn in enough to push my way through to the end. Following a strong showing against the similarly problematic Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, and coming around to the concept of portable RPGs as mindless grinds to play while I listen to podcasts, I decided to finally put this one to rest.

I quickly realized my biggest mistake had been to ignore the Djinni sidequests in the game, Djinni being creatures you must find and equip on your players to learn magic. Cheating massively, I printed out a list of Djinni locations and backtracked through the game to find all the ones I had missed. After that point, the game became significantly easier, and significantly more enjoyable. I’m now honour bound to pick up a copy of the sequel, Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Quarter 1 2010 saw the following changes:

January 2010:

beat LoZ: Spirit Tracks – Jan. 10
beat Final Fantasy II – Jan 17
beat Final Fantasy – Jan 31
beat No More Heroes 2 – Jan 31

bought Space Invaders – Jan 12
bought No More Heroes 2 – Jan 26

February:

beat Golden Sun – Feb 7

bought Lolo 3 – Feb 3
bought Metal Gear – Feb 3
bought Blastermaster – Feb 3
bought Hogans Alley – Feb 3

sold Bionicle Heroes – Feb 3
sold GT Pro Series – Feb 3

March:

bought – WipeOut XL – March 3
bought – Final Fantasy III – March 3
bought – The World is Not Enough – March 3
bought – Wario World – March 4
bought – Ace Attorney Investigations – March 14
bought – Kirby’s Dream Land March 14
bought – Blast Corps – March 17
bought – Stunt Racer FX – March 17

I love the 8-bit mini-games, but now they’re entirely optional, and there don’t seem to be any side-quests. Without the need to make money between boss fights, I feel like I’m just blasting my way through the game instead of taking the time to really enjoy the experience.

A bunch of classics: The Nerd Olympics 2010 are fast approaching, and for me, that means hardcore training. In the last couple weeks, I’ve revisited Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Tetris, Bomberman, and many other classics. What’s great about a lot of these games is that while I’ve thoroughly played and beaten them, I haven’t necessarily 100%-ed them, which means I still have plenty to do. Beating the staff ghosts in Mario Kart is a fun challenge.

The disaster may change my strategy for gameplaying more generally this year, as well. I’m tempted to go back and relive some of my GameCube favourites and recreate those save files. This also makes me seriously want to buy RE4 for Wii, since I no longer have the New Game + keeping me tied to the GC version.

In these dark times, it is especially important to remember the good things. Last week, I uncovered a copy of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 at a local thrift store for a whopping $0.99. Of course, I don’t actually have an Atari, but it’s still a fun highlight in my collection, and inspires me to get into true, as in, pre-NES, retro gaming.

I would also like to address a broader issue which is most apparent in Spirit Tracks, but has been a problem in the Zelda franchise since at least Ocarina of Time, and that is the erosion of interesting over worlds. Spirit Tracks‘ gameplay largely consists of the player completing a dungeon, returning to the Tower of Spirits where a couple special dungeon floors must be solved, and then heading out to yet another dungeon. I would like to see a stronger emphasis on the “other stuff” I had to do in games like Link to the Past between dungeons.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix:… Accessing Data… here’s a painful fucking game. Galactrix takes the now established Bejeweled+RPG formula, and brings it into the dystopian future where… Accessing Data… DS games have evolved the need for load times. Additional Galactrix features include wildly unbalanced boss battles that require the player to grind for days before having a hope, a common puzzle type that depends on luck rather than skill or character level, and… Accessing Data… frequent menu navigation which queues up more load screens.

I found Galactrix, new, in a video store for $5, and that’s a great deal, even for a game I have come to hate. Despite my feelings toward the game, I can’t help but play it compulsively, the gameplay is extremely addictive. I have found the key is to constantly remind myself to stop clenching my jaw while waiting through load screens.

The tactics required for this are diverse, they involve:
1. Selling off games I no longer want, or which I will honestly never get around to playing
2. Buying the classic games I really want
3. Beating games with passion and intensity instead of letting them linger forever

To kick off this insane plan, I have delved into the deepest core of my anal-retentive nature, and assembled a complete list of my video game collection. This database, in addition to this blog, will give me something to manage over the course of this year as I slowly progress through the project. Enjoy marveling at my madness.

Legend:

GameBoy/GameBoy Color:

GameBoy Advance:

Nintendo DS:

NES:

SNES:

Nintendo 64:

GameCube:

Wii:

WiiWare/Virtual Console:

Sega Genesis:

Atari 2600:

PlayStation:

]]> http://shufflingdead.com/blogs/the-dungeons-boss/game-collection-database.php/feed 5 http://shufflingdead.com/blogs/the-dungeons-boss/games-played-preview-2.php http://shufflingdead.com/blogs/the-dungeons-boss/games-played-preview-2.php#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:05:26 +0000 Newbs http://shufflingdead.com/?p=2786 For most things in life, I am a procrastinator, even when it comes to tasks I enjoy. That includes school work, site work, cleaning, and email writing. Man, writing emails sounds like a lot of work before you sit down to write them. The one exception to this rule is video game playing: my anticipated start date of January 1, 2010 hasn’t even arrived, and yet I’m already deep into passionate gaming.

Last week, I discussed my experiences with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and F-Zero: Maximum Velocity. I had already beaten those games by the time I wrote about them, and so, of course, I have moved on to yet more games. This week, I will be talking about some games that I am no where close to beating, Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, from the Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls GBA collection.

Final Fantasy I: I haven’t so much been playing this game as staring at my save file, thinking about how much I hate it, and perusing GameFAQs for solutions. You see, FFI is a painful experience, full of random encounters, incoherent dungeons, and more random encounters. I find myself exactly where I left off with the game, which had to be at least two years ago, when I rage quit out of disgust. The game is designed to take as long as possible to play. The dungeons are mazes, the random encounters are painfully frequent, and there is little to no direction given, and so becoming lost and entering dungeons unnecessarily is quite possible! In fact, that is exactly the problem I face! Fuck this, I’m printing out an FAQ.

Final Fantasy II: This is a remarkably enjoyable game, especially considering its counterpart on the cartridge. FFII removes much of what makes FFI so annoying: it is obvious where you’re supposed to go next, and dungeons are small, simple, and laid out logically. Random encounters are still far too frequent, but because the game’s levelling system is readily broken (you can attack yourself for stat boosts), they are never a great hindrance. Based on what I’ve seen, I think FFII is near IV’s quality.

In the year of gaming that 2010 shall be, I hope to complete both of the above games. I will also probably acquire and beat Final Fantasies III and V (for DS and GBA respectively) so that I can say I’ve played all of the original six Final Fantasy games.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: The Ace Attorney series is one of my favourites, and one that forces the DS near the top whenever I consider what might be the best game system. Because the first game in the series is hard to find in stores, I started with the second game in the franchise, loved it, moved on to the third, loved it, and then went to eBay for the first, this game. I went into Phoenix Wright pretty sure there were five cases, and so I was quite confused when I was finishing the fourth case and everything seemed to be tying up so neatly. It turned out that there was a fifth case, but it was one added later on when the game was ported to the DS, and so it has little to do with the rest of the game, and a lot to do with being on the DS. I found the first four cases to be of the same caliber as those found in the rest of the series, but the fifth case was slow, painfully long, and non-engaging, with just a few highlights coming from the DS-specific gameplay. This game is probably my least favourite of the series, but still a great game in its own right.

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity: A lot of the games in my collection were not bought with a “must have” mindset. Indeed, much of the fun in collecting games for me comes from obsessively looking for deals, waiting for sales, and scouring bargain bins. Buying F-Zero: Maximum Velocity stands as one of my proudest miser moments. I was in EB one day, staring at the lock-box of old games as I always do, and found a copy of this game for just a couple dollars. That’s cheap even for that box, where games are usually at least $6. The game was fairly enjoyable once I found a control setup I was comfortable with, although it doesn’t really add anything new to the original F-Zero formula. The game’s main Grand Prix mode isn’t set up for portable gaming very well, requiring you to play five tracks in a series (I would have preferred four, with one more series instead), and then sit through your results which are slow and unskippable.

After getting very close to purchasing a Hori GameCube Digital Controller, something designed specifically for playing handheld games on the GameCube, despite the now slightly crazy prices the thing goes for online, I had a flash of brilliance. Actually, it was my brain accessing a memory: I can use my GBA with the GameBoy Player! Although the GBA uses the same d-pad as the GameCube controller (literally, the same part), the GBA’s d-pad is positioned better, and is not sunk in like the d-pad on the GCN’s controller.

I’ve tried this new solution with a little F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, and found that, while not ideal, this control method is a vast improvement over the other options. The game kicked my ass every time I tried it all the way up until the GBA-GBP method, but now it seems easy.

I’m not especially distraught about this failing, it was a good effort for a noble cause, and led to a much more reasonable gaming budget. For 2010, however, I want to attempt something more sweeping.

Next year, I plan to use this blog to map the epic journey I take as I systematically collect games for my older systems, and then conquer both those, as well as much of the lingering backlog of my youth. This includes N64, SNES, and even GameBoy games, some of which have been sitting on my shelf for more than a decade, unbeaten.

In a recent The Dungeon video, seen above, I mention that I still have Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos continues nagging at me from the darkest depths of my woe begotten youth. That game takes first place in what I call my “top three gaming demons.” Second place goes to Link’s Awakening, and third to The Adventure of Link. I’ve chosen Zelda games, because it’s my favourite franchise, and a true shame that I haven’t properly experienced all of it yet. Those three games, I predict, will be some of the ones I focus on first in this great undertaking.

I’m always worrying that Shufflingdead is far too gaming heavy, and I initially hesitated to even open this blog here, rather than on a new site, but hopefully Shufflingdead can contain this thing. Actually, it’s possible that by spewing my gaming-flavoured guts out here, I’ll be less inclined to talk about games everywhere else on the site.

I’m calling this blog “The Dungeon’s Boss” for several reasons. One, I want it to be obvious that this thing is about my experiences and opinions with games; I am “The Dungeon’s Boss.” Two, I want it to be loosely associated with my “The Dungeon” videos, which have a feel that I want to emulate here, and which often cover similar topics. Three, I wanted a nerdy reference, but decided a D&D reference (The Dungeon’s Master) didn’t make much sense; I went with what I pretend is a Zelda reference instead.

So, occurring at undetermined intervals hereafter, stay reading for answers to such burning questions as “what has Newbs been playing?,” and “what games has Newbs taken off his backlog this week?”