The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[T-Pac | 8,225]

25/40 - Moonsweeper [Atari 2600 - 1983]

Finished: 2024/05/20

Caveats: Broke 100k. Cleared every type of moon at least once (not consecutively).

[T-Pac]

[Philosoraptor | 482]

11 hours ago, T-Pac said:

25/40 - Moonsweeper [Atari 2600 - 1983]

Finished: 2024/05/20

Caveats: Broke 100k. Cleared every type of moon at least once (not consecutively)

 

I have to say, I've been really enjoying the videos you make. I dig your sense of humor, and it's cool seeing both the gameplay and your art on screen at the same time. I haven't seen another creator or reviewer do anything like it. Most of all, I keep clicking play for your perspective on each game and how much fun you actually seem to have with them. I honestly struggle to find much enjoyment in games on consoles older than the NES, but you've helped me understand why they were as beloved as they were and are. Keep up the good work!

[wongojack | 331]

14 hours ago, T-Pac said:

25/40 - Moonsweeper [Atari 2600 - 1983]

Finished: 2024/05/20

Caveats: Broke 100k. Cleared every type of moon at least once (not consecutively).

[T-Pac]

I haven't watched your vid yet, but Moonsweeper is a great one.  It is deep enough in the library that not everyone has heard of it, but it is definitely worth playing.  Kinda has a Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom thing going on but also gives the player a few other screens and things to do.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

Side action: Inscryption completed

This was a carry-over from last year that wasn't officially on my list.  My detailed (and complicated) feelings for the game are in the dedicated thread.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Inscryption (8.5/10)
5. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
6. Firewatch (8.5/10)
7. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
8. Horizon Zero Dawn (8/10)
9. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
10. Rise of the Tomb Raider (8/10)
11. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
12. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
13. The Talos Principle (7/10)
14. The Quarry (7/10)
15. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
16. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
17. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
18. Dark Forces (5.5/10)
19. Beyond Oasis (5/10)
20. Turok 3 (4.5/10)

[wongojack | 331]

On 6/1/2024 at 9:16 PM, Floating Platforms said:

I played several levels back when it came out and then stopped because I couldn't think of anything interesting to solve the problems. It's such a weird mix of too much freedom, but also too restrictive because "THAT" actually doesn't work because of some other strange limitation. Ladder? Too short. That ramp won't have the right angle. Oh, shooting the thing actually destroys the star this time. Every low level animal can defeat your dinosaur in this level.

Trying to restart now, I quickly felt the same mental blockage. How do I make this so stupidly simple that I break the game and move to the next? I either need to be in a totally different mindset, as I felt like I was forcing it, or maybe I need to use a guide for a few levels to get the bearings back.

Thank you for explaining to me why I don't really enjoy playing Scribblenauts.  I hadn't really thought about it very hard, but I NEVER want to play it.  I think I have the WiiU version sitting untouched somewhere.

Edited June 3 by wongojack

[G-type | 2,840]

Scribblenauts (the original DS game) was one of the games I was tremendously excited for... I even preordered it and got a rooster hat as a bonus gift. The game just didn't hold my interest very long. It was a disappointing.

[G-type | 2,840]

I think my biggest issue with Scribblenauts was how clunky it was to move the character around the screen with the touchpad... they had for some reason forgone the d-pad (which I heard they corrected in subsequent games)

[Foochie776 | 1,070]

I’m still slowly playing Zelda II and it’s not horrible, I’m still not particularly enjoying it. 
 

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 is a little taxing. 
 

Banjo Tooie I’m very torn on and excited to complete and share my thoughts on. 

[T-Pac | 8,225]

On 6/2/2024 at 6:22 PM, Philosoraptor said:

I have to say, I've been really enjoying the videos you make. I dig your sense of humor, and it's cool seeing both the gameplay and your art on screen at the same time. I haven't seen another creator or reviewer do anything like it. Most of all, I keep clicking play for your perspective on each game and how much fun you actually seem to have with them. I honestly struggle to find much enjoyment in games on consoles older than the NES, but you've helped me understand why they were as beloved as they were and are. Keep up the good work!

Thanks, dude! Feels good to know you still watch the videos I make for games that aren't in your wheelhouse. I've actually wondered how many people just skip all the ones that aren't NES games haha.

[T-Pac]

[T-Pac | 8,225]

So I've officially admitted defeat on Boulder Dash [NES].

I wanted to like it sooo bad, but I just found the gameplay too frustrating. And knowing I'd never manage all 4 loops (even with save-states), I wrote it off and sold it to my local game store. And while that "technically" means I cleared it from my backlog in a sense, I'm gonna replace it with another game for my 2024 list. Probably Wrecking Crew [FC] since it's similar, but no promises on that.

[T-Pac]

[Philosoraptor | 482]

I got lazy about writing up reviews for a while, but I didn't stop playing games or writing reviews in my spreadsheet. Since the last post in early March, I've beaten 32 games and met two of my three goals for the year: beat 50 games combined for consoles I don't tend to play as often (32X, Dreamcast, Gamecube, Mega Drive, PS1, PS2, PSP, PS Vita, Sega CD, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox), and beat one game on each of those consoles. My only other goal this year was to beat 75 games, and I'm still well short of that.

Anyway, I'm not going to flood everyone with a thirty-two bullet wall of text with my thoughts on each game, so I'll just give the highlights. I'm also trying to better weigh my ratings against how good a game was when it came out versus its contemporaries. Games with high grades on older consoles might not still be a blah/10 game but I feel that they were at least a blah/10 game at the time. I have been retroactively adding ratings in my spreadsheet for how good and fun I think the game is today, but I omitted them from this list because it just ends up being too many ratings. I might include them in smaller write-ups in the future, though. As for what blah/10 means, I'm still going by Reed's excellent scale:

• Mario Tennis Aces (Switch)—A return to form, if you will, from the abysmal Ultra Smash. They still left out things I want to see in a tennis game, like five-set matches. I can understand why did that for online play, but at least give me the option to bore my friends locally, dammit. I also still think they haven't nailed down the size of the characters relative to the court, so the court seems very small compared to the early entries. Also, the racket-breaking gimmick is fine, but I wouldn't say it adds much positively or negatively. 8.5/10
• Arcana Heart (PS2)—I'm only mentioning this one because decisions were made when putting this game on a disc. Instead of the updated version with "rebalanced" characters being the default, they instead opted to make the more poorly received initial arcade release the default. Even worse, they didn't even give you an option of playing one or the other from the main menu like sane people would; instead, you have to go into the "Interface" and switch the option to "Full" to get the updated version. Stupid. Otherwise, it's an old-school 2D fighter with a cheap final boss that released in 2008, making it outdated compared to deeper fighting games like Guilty Gear on day one. 6/10.
• KOF PS2 games (2006, Maximum Impact, XI)—All good in their own right. All of them = 8/10.
• Guilty Gear Judgment (PSP)—What happens when you take fighting game characters (including their combos) and plop them into a side-scrolling brawler? Well, in this case, middling dreck. And that's not because of the 21 playable characters; it's because of the bland stages, lack of enemy variety, and bland bosses. 6/10
• Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, Banana Splitz (GC, GC, Vita)—Everyone's favorite digitized marble labyrinth game series, Super Monkey Ball shines in these three entries. Well, mostly. I can't recommend the Vita one as much as the ones on the Gamecube because the controls feel less precise, but 1 and 2. Hell yeah. 2 is probably one of my favorite games of all time with its array of challenging stages, dialed-in controls, and fun mini games. 1 is not too shabby either. If you haven't had a chance to play these, give 'em a shot. 1 = 9.5/10, 2 = 10/10, Vita = 7.5/10
• Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC)—Not my favorite in the series because of the buginess. However, it's still a fantastic fighter chock-full of things to do and fun to be had. 9.5/10
• Capcom vs. SNK 2EO (GC)—Worth mentioning because characters' special moves are mapped to various directions on the C-stick, making this an approachable fighter for newcomers. However, the control format that uses the C-stick doesn't also allow you to use the face buttons, meaning players who have put in the hours can be more precise and land better combos with the normal face buttons. 9/10
• Dead or Alive games (3, Ultimate 1, Ultimate 2 [Xbox])—Ultimate 2 is the winner of this bunch with it's insane number of unlockables, lots of characters, and smooth gameplay. Strangely, I think the first DOA game runs better and is more fun on the PS1 than it is in DOA Ultimate, even with the improved graphics. 3= 9/10, Ultimate 1 = 7/10, Ultimate 2 = 9.5/10.
• Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball—Fantastic volleyball action, the least objectification of the Xtreme games, a casino with blackjack, poker, slots, and roulette, and the option to listen to your own music at the expense of your game not loading! Plus, you can give your partner ugly gifts and slowly watch her descend into a clown show throughout the vacation. Not even heels in sand can stop these girls. 8/10.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Soul Calibur 2, SoulCalibur (Xbox, Xbox, Dreamcast)—Not much really needs to be said about these. They're all timeless fighting games. 10/10 for everybody.
• Project Justice, Street Fighter EX3 (Dreamcast, PS2)—3D, or even 2.5D, wasn't kind to Capcom fighters. They have charm and decent amounts of polish, but they also have a lot of jank and floatiness. I find them to be fun regardless, but they're certainly a tier below the major 3D fighting franchises (Tekken, DOA, SoulCalibur). 7/10 for both.
• Power Stone 2 (Dreamcast)—My preference in the two Power Stone games. I like that the rounds last longer in 2 and the camera isn't operated by a drunken sailor. Only a mildly drunken sailor. 7/10
• Magical Taruruuto-kun (Mega Drive)—A fantastic, challenging, unique platformer made by the people who eventually brought us Pokemon. The controls are tight, the graphics are insane for the Genesis/MD, and the music, honestly, isn't the best. But that's OK! Everything else makes up for it. Each of the four stages has both a miniboss of sorts and an actual boss. There are also checkpoints after certain screens, and up to three continues. Aside from the standard jump, Taruruuto-kun recieves three different types of magic after defeating the boss of the first three stages. He's also equipped with a glide, which must be used to get through narrow passageways, and a wand that he can both attack with and pick up and throw objects with. Even though it's relatively short, it's definitely one worth emulating if you don't have a Retron 5 or a Mega Drive sitting around. 8/10.
• Lords of Thunder (Sega CD)—This game is fantastic for 1993. Absolutely amazing. Everything runs smoothly with very little slowdown, and it's a really interesting amalgamation of both the old and new in the SHMUP genre. Almost all bullets are aimed at you, old school, but you get weapons that, when leveled up to their third stage, fill the screen, like a newer SHMUP. You also have highly-damaging melee attacks, which adds to the risk/reward gameplay, especially when your weapon isn't fully leveled up. 9/10
• Knuckles Chaotix (32X)—The last thing I want to do in video games is be tied to an AI character made in 1995. Literally. The same-y stages with very few enemies and hazards don't help. Even the bosses are lackluster, and there are blatant safe spots where they'll just never hit you. Plus, with your partner, you pretty much extra invincible in this game, since they die for about ten seconds before coming back. To die, you have to kill your partner and then get hit again with zero rings. 5/10
• Doom (32X)—I missed out on Doom when I was a kid. However, I had fun with this port. No, it's not perfect. Yes, it's missing levels. Yes, to strafe, you have to hold C and press a direction. Yes, it's extra pixelated, and yes it's buggy and can sometimes freeze for no reason. But, the fact that they got this game on a cartridge with 20 FPS in 1994 is impressive enough, even though the 32X could have probably handled an even better port. I also don't mind the controls, as hitboxes are pretty generous. The only other 32X game I own is Space Harrier, and I'd consider Doom to be the best of the three. 8/10.
• Ibara (PS2)—Considering its $200+ price tag, this is a hard one to recommend. It's glitchy, blurry, and has significantly less slowdown than the PCB. The explosion animations obfuscate bullets, and the choice of bullet colors makes them tough to pick out in frantic stages. However, it's also a Cave SHMUP, meaning it's still a very solid game despite it being neither the better version of the game nor one of the best Cave SHMUPS. 8/10 Due to the arrange mode being much better than the arcade mode, I'm bumping this up to 9/10.

Edited June 5 by Philosoraptor

[Sumez | 3,174]

6 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

Ibara (PS2)—Considering its $200+ price tag, this is a hard one to recommend. It's glitchy, blurry, and has significantly less slowdown than the PCB. The explosion animations obfuscate bullets, and the choice of bullet colors makes them tough to pick out in frantic stages. However, it's also a Cave SHMUP, meaning it's still a very solid game despite it being neither the better version of the game nor one of the best Cave SHMUPS. 8/10 

I know it's an uncommon take, but tbh I've often considered Ibara might be the best Cave shmup. It's very different from their typical style due to being conceived as a follow-up to Garegga, and designed by the same guy. So I think it represents a sort of freshness you rarely see with their games.

And it's really, really good. But you have to get into all its weird rules to really appreciate it.

I haven't played the ps2 version much, but I have the PCB, and in my impression the game really doesn't have much slowdown, and I wouldn't say it ever feels designed around it like some other games do - so I doubt I'd miss it

Edited June 5 by Sumez

[Gloves | 12,317]

I love me some Ibara.

[Philosoraptor | 482]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

I know it's an uncommon take, but tbh I've often considered Ibara might be the best Cave shmup. It's very different from their typical style due to being conceived as a follow-up to Garegga, and designed by the same guy. So I think it represents a sort of freshness you rarely see with their games.

And it's really, really good. But you have to get into all its weird rules to really appreciate it.

Interesting! I didn't know any of that. Very cool. If I were to pick a favorite Cave series, I'd probably go with Dodonpachi. I still think Ibara is a fantastic game, hence the 8/10 9/10.

Honestly, I didn't play the arrange mode, and I only focused on the original arcade mode. I'll play the arrange mode and post a follow-up with my thoughts. Maybe it'll improve my opinion of the game. Spoiler alert - it did.

 

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

I haven't played the ps2 version much, but I have the PCB, and in my impression the game really doesn't have much slowdown, and I wouldn't say it ever feels designed around it like some other games do - so I doubt I'd miss it

I've never played the PCB, but I just watched a couple of videos of both, and the PS2 one is significantly muddier. From what research I did, it seems to be that the PS2 runs at 480i, while the arcade runs at 240p. Also, aside from bombing at especially chaotic areas in the main stages, there's no slowdown at all in the PS2 version. I think I might have noticed some slowdown once in my many playthroughs. If you want a 1:1 arcade port, the arcade mode in the PS2 version isn't it. 

*Edit—I just finished playing some of the arrange mode, and it's essentially a completely different game. It has weapon select, your ship slows down when firing, your ship fires bullets faster, and enemy bullets are brighter and easier to see (bright pink instead of purple). Honestly, this mode does make a difference in my scoring, and the mechanics are more to my liking. I'm bumping it up to a 9/10. 

Edited June 5 by Philosoraptor

[Rhuno | 163]

Double Dragon 3 is done. The only one in the NES trilogy that I could never complete as a kid, though I did always enjoy it. It's not actually all that hard until the final boss. It's a fun, quick beat 'em up that's right up my alley.

[Floating Platforms | 826]

I've been on a kick of playing Nancy Drew games during my lunch breaks and I got another one finished.

Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake is done.

It ended up being one of the shorter ones, although I can easily see how it could take twice as long for some people. There is a forest maze that is central to the story and even with the map, it can be pretty confusing with all the dead ends and how same-y it all feels. But even with that, it was a relatively straight-forward adventure that had you bouncing back and forth between 3 locations and changing time a bunch to talk to the right people. The puzzles were also on the easier side. The strength comes in the story as it deals with the titular ghost dogs and a prohibition-era mobster who may have some still buried secrets.  It was a good time, but probably not going to be one of my favorites when all is said and done.

Next in the series is Haunted Carousel (which I've already done) and Danger on Deception Island (which I've already done), so my next game is skipping forward to #10 - Secret of Shadow Ranch

[Sumez | 3,174]

7 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

I've never played the PCB, but I just watched a couple of videos of both, and the PS2 one is significantly muddier. From what research I did, it seems to be that the PS2 runs at 480i, while the arcade runs at 240p. Also, aside from bombing at especially chaotic areas in the main stages, there's no slowdown at all in the PS2 version. I think I might have noticed some slowdown once in my many playthroughs. If you want a 1:1 arcade port, the arcade mode in the PS2 version isn't it. 

Yeah the 480i image is disappointing, but I think it also depends on how you hook up your PS2. If you aren't using RGB or component cables, of course it's only gonna be even more muddy. The crazy thing is I've heard you can literally force the PS2 into 240p mode by changing a few bytes of code in the game, so if you have a Gameshark or such, you can play Ibara in 240p. Of course that's only going to be helpful if you also turn your TV on the side when playing in tate mode.

7 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

*Edit—I just finished playing some of the arrange mode, and it's essentially a completely different game. It has weapon select, your ship slows down when firing, your ship fires bullets faster, and enemy bullets are brighter and easier to see (bright pink instead of purple). Honestly, this mode does make a difference in my scoring, and the mechanics are more to my liking. I'm bumping it up to a 9/10. 

I've never played the PS2 arrange mode, but from what I've heard it sounds similar to the (super rare) "black label" version, Ibara Kuro, which completely overhauls the game to feel much more like a traditional cave shoot'em up. I have mixed feelings about it, but I've also never had much chance to play it. Hopefully M2 are going to make a new port some day, to both supersede the PS2 version, but also make Kuro more accessible.

[Philosoraptor | 482]

On 6/6/2024 at 1:07 AM, Sumez said:

Yeah the 480i image is disappointing, but I think it also depends on how you hook up your PS2. If you aren't using RGB or component cables, of course it's only gonna be even more muddy. The crazy thing is I've heard you can literally force the PS2 into 240p mode by changing a few bytes of code in the game, so if you have a Gameshark or such, you can play Ibara in 240p. Of course that's only going to be helpful if you also turn your TV on the side when playing in tate mode.

I have official Sony component cables. However, I will fully admit that my SHMUP setup isn't ideal.  My only TV is a 40'' LCD flatscreen from 2010. So, my only real option I have for Ibara is yoko. Even IF I could play it in tate, it's stretched because Ibara only outputs in 4:3 and my TV is 16:9. I still get an unstretched, 19ish inch picture out of it, so yoko isn't the end of the world. 

I sadly also don't have a Gameshark. I had no idea it could do those kinds of things.

Mushihimesama is the other PS2 SHMUP that's often panned for blurry visuals. I have it both on the PS2 and Switch, so maybe I'll play both over the weekend and see which is better.

On 6/6/2024 at 1:07 AM, Sumez said:

I've never played the PS2 arrange mode, but from what I've heard it sounds similar to the (super rare) "black label" version, Ibara Kuro, which completely overhauls the game to feel much more like a traditional cave shoot'em up. I have mixed feelings about it, but I've also never had much chance to play it. Hopefully M2 are going to make a new port some day, to both supersede the PS2 version, but also make Kuro more accessible.

Yup, that's accurate. The Arrange mode in PS2 Ibara is like a version 1.5 between the arcade version and Ibara Kuro, which I've never played or seen. Apparently, Kuro has a second character, is harder, and has different scoring from both the arcade version and the arrange version. 

I will say that I do like the arrange mode more because it does play more similarly to a more traditional Cave SHMUP. However, I'll also say that the blurry visuals and bad colors on the PS2 arcade version are the vast majority of the reason why I prefer the arrange mode. If it was an arcade-perfect port on the PS2 in the correct resolution, I'd honestly say they're as good as each other. However, with one being blurry and the other having enhanced visuals, it's a tougher sell to say they're as good as each other in this package, at least for me. Take it with a grain of salt, though, because my setup isn't ideal. Maybe a Gameshark and a CRT in tate makes a tangible difference. 

Regardless, I'm also hoping for an M2 port. They've done fantastic work so far. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

The Walking Dead Complete

If I had to score the individual seasons, it'd be something like this:

Season 1 - 9/10
400 Days - 5/10
Season 2 - 7/10
Season 3 - 7/10
Michonne - 6.5/10
Season 4 - 8.5/10

Season 1 is great, and the gameplay is the freshest over that first 10 hours or so.  But there's definitely some diminishing returns the further along you get.  And much like with the actual TV show, eventually everyone dies and you gradually grow numb to caring about most of them.  In season 1 you try to save everyone.  By the end you're like "of course they died."

I also tried to space out the playthrough over the last 6 months, but I probably should have gone even longer.  12 months or more.  Just to give each season a little more space.  Oh well.

Also, Clementine is an all-time great video game character.  Kinda like Boyhood (Girlhood) the Game: you see her grow up from age 8 to 16, which is pretty dang cool.  How many games give you something like that?  The Ezio trilogy?  Maybe Uncharted?  And she's arguably a more compelling character than the both of them combined.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Inscryption (8.5/10)
5. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
6. Firewatch (8.5/10)
7. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
8. Horizon Zero Dawn (8/10)
9. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
10. The Walking Dead Complete (7.5/10)
11. Rise of the Tomb Raider (7.5/10)
12. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
13. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
14. The Talos Principle (7/10)
15. The Quarry (7/10)
16. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
17. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
18. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
19. Dark Forces (5.5/10)
20. Beyond Oasis (5/10)
21. Turok 3 (4.5/10)

[fox | 1,779]

Beat Paper Mario

I was a big fan of Super Mario RPG so I think when this came out I wrote it off a bit too quickly.  I'd already seen Yoshi's Island get watered down in Yoshi's Story, so I figured Nintendo did the same thing here, especially with Square no longer in the mix.  It was a bad take.

This has aged really well, due to it's unique Parappa-ish art style unlike a lot of n64 games of the era which look like a blocky blurry mess.

I originally thought the combat might be dumbed down a bit too much, but you might need a bit more skill.  The trick is the timed hits, they aren't just a bonus, you really need to nail the timing in order to dish out damage and keep yourself from having to eat too many hits.  You can level up, but it is also in small amounts, and eventually enemies start giving 1 xp or none if you stay in one place too long to farm.  So it actually avoids the power creep that a lot of RPGs struggle with.  During the Bowser Fight I was out of healing items, out of star magic, only had a few flower points left, I wouldn't have lasted more than a few more rounds if I didn't get the kill when I did.

The allies are all cool and have fun attacks and support skills to mess around with.  The badge system is awesome, and lets you customize things and play the way you want to pay.

Lucky this ended up on Switch Online, and I finally got one of those N64 controllers for Switch that were back-ordered for like two years.  I gave it another chance and found good looking and charmingly written game.

Edited June 9 by fox

[T-Pac | 8,225]

26/40 - Down Load [NEC PC Engine - 1990]

Finished: 2024/05/27

Caveats: Only used save states to pause between sessions.

[T-Pac]

[Sumez | 3,174]

Ender Lilies - Beaten 26/5 (best ending)

Take a look at the screenshot below. If you've played more than a couple of indie metroidvania games over the past 15 years, this will probably look immediately familiar to you. You will probably have a good idea of the rough outline of the game - and you'd probably be completely correct in every assumption.

Ender Lilies is a platformer on a single interconnected map, full of collectibles and the occasional path that you can't take until you've beaten the boss that unlocks a new traversal skill (or literal lock-and-key ability) that allows you to traverse or break the obstacle blocking your path.
Combat involves slashing enemies until their HP gets reduced to zero, and you have a dodge move that allows you to phase through attacks or enemies, ideally placing you behind them to freely wail some more on them. Fortunately, all of them are nice enough to tell you politely right before they launch an attack.
The game belongs to the quickly growing branch of vaguely "Souls inspired" metroidvanias, which means there's an increased focus on one-on-one combat with beefy enemies and aforementioned "dodge to win" mechanic. And yeah, you get Estus-style healing charges which are refilled when you rest at a checkpoint, which also respawns all the enemies you've killed since the last one.

Adding to the Souls influences, all the boss fights are tragic characters, shells of their former selves, and put in a trance-like state by the "Blight" infecting the lands, accompanied by melancholic music. I didn't pay attention to the story, because it's primarily told through tons of text dumps you pick up throughout the map whenever it feels the most inopportune to stop up and read a bunch of text, and I honestly couldn't be bothered. But the overall tone is cool, if quite stereotypical at this point.

Honestly, Ender Lilies is a very well made game, with really solid core mechanics. Movement is pleasantly fluid, with especially the ability to pull yourself up on platforms being animated in such a smooth way that it just "feels" good to move around. Your main character is a little girl with no offensive means of her own, which means each of her skills actually conjures the spirit of another character to do the fighting for her. It sounds odd, but it feels exactly like it should.

Throughout the game you unlock a bunch of these spirits by fighting bosses or minibosses, with each of the enemy types that you meet having a "boss version" hidden somewhere with a few extra attacks up their sleeve. The way you use and equip those feels similar to Aria of Sorrow or Bloodstained, but without the grinding for random drops part. It's potentially a really cool thing to experiment with, allowing for different playstyles. But I can't really wrap my head around that kind of stuff, and mostly just sticked to the same few skills that I got at the very start of the game, and they worked great for the entire game, usually just providing some increased damage output against most of the beefy enemies and bosses which pretty much all have extremely bloated life bars.

The "metroidvania" aspects feel as tired here as they do in most games of the genre. It's not as bad as Mummy Demastered which just has you following a linear path, and there are a few areas that I feel like I could have taken in any other order - and you never get a marker telling you where to go, so at least the game has a little faith in the player. But the layout also never feels particularly inspired, with most areas having a really similar feel.
Stage layout also doesn't matter that much, since the combat is focused entirely on enemy movesets. So when you're moving through an area with 10 of the same enemy, you don't really get any exciting new constellations - it just feels like doing the same thing 10 times.

I think Metroidvania fans will find something interesting to enjoy here, and the game is definitely worth at least checking out. But within this particular vein of games there is a pretty massive amount of alternatives that would probably provide an equally good time, if not better.
You could play Momodora 4, Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, or even Slain as well as you could play Ender Lilies, and I wouldn't be able to give you any good reasons to pick this one instead.
But it's a fine game, and it doesn't do anything blatantly wrong outside of a bit of forced backtracking, which never really bothered me much.

Edited June 10 by Sumez

[Tantalus | 500]

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. I got The Sands of Time when it was released and thoroughly enjoyed it. When the sequel came out, I ignored it, largely due to the shift in tone to a darker, edgier game.

I replayed The Sands of Time last year and found that it still held up, so I ordered a cheap copy of Warrior Within to finally experience what it had to offer. While the shift in tone makes this game much less charming than it's predecessor, I found it really wasn't that big of a deal and worked well with the themes of the story (although I could have done without the bikini-clad sand zombies moaning "Hit me harder, Prince" or "There's so much pleasure in pain" - a little too cringey).

The combat system has been refined and is much deeper here, but that also comes with the downside of a greater focus on combat, and less of a focus on the puzzles, which were the highlight of the first game for me. The parkour-like platforming is still here and mostly feels good, with just some occasionally wonky hit-detection and camera movement. Warrior Within also tries to be a much less linear experience and it handles that reasonably well, though I did end up lost a few times as a result.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Warrior Within. It never quite hits the highs of The Sands of Time, but it's still a good game in it's own right.

I did dabble a bit with the third game, The Two Thrones, back in the late 2000s, but never got too far with it and I remember very little of it. It'll probably end up on the 2025 backlog.

[LHCGreg | 149]

I'm rather late joining this thread but I do have a list that was made before the start of 2024:

For retro games I like to pick 2 random games from my collection and then decide on one of them to play next. That's not really in the spirit of this thread so for the purposes of this thread I'm only including the specifically named games from those goals.

1. Gunvein
2. The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors
3. Huntdown
4. Enter the Gungeon
5. Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
6. Super Meat Boy
7. Prison City
8. Mushihimesama
9. Battle Circuit

 

Thoughts on games I've already beaten as of making this post:

Gunvein: I was never super into shmups in the past. I'd play them and enjoy them but not more than any other genre. Last year I saw a bunch of Touhou games on Steam and picked up Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith, partly to throw some $ to the creator for finally making the games easily available to non-Japanese after having played some of the earlier games in the series through other means 10+ years ago. I really enjoyed it and realized I like newer bullet hell style shmups a lot more than the style from the 8 and 16 bit era that I was more used to. So I decided I'll play a couple every year. This year's are Gunvein and Mushihimesama. Gunvein was already on my radar and being familiar with the designer, Boghog, from his takes on beat em ups pushed it to the top of my list. The story goes that NGDEV asked for feedback on an early version and Boghog gave them back a detailed tome and they asked if he wanted to work for them on the game.

Gunvein plays very well. It's got three ship types and three difficulty levels. You can only have 3 lives and 3 bombs at once so you can't stockpile resources too much. Bomb fragments (10 fragments for 1 bomb) are given frequently for killing enemies. Quicker kills increases the rate you get fragments at. Extra lives are given at score intervals (every 300,000 for Mild, every 600,000 for Intense and Expert). I 1cc'ed Mild (the easiest) pretty quickly. After a week or two of putting time in practice mode and doing a couple attempts every day I 1cc'ed Intense (medium). Grade: A

The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors: Great beat em up. It's strictly left/right and vertical, no movement towards/away from the screen like in most beat em ups. Despite that, it still manages to have the spacing and crowd control feel of a beat em up with the more typical screen layout. You have just one life and unlimited continues. You can block by holding the attack button. There are 5 playable characters (2 more than the SNES version) and they all play meaningfully different from each other; they're not just "the strong slow guy", "the fast weak guy", and "the balanced guy". The game tracks your time taken as your "score" but it only counts if you don't use any continues. My one big criticism is that, once you've done a few playthroughs, there are only a couple places where you're in any real danger of losing your 1cc, namely the stage 5 boss and the final boss. The rest of the game is pretty smooth sailing. It would be nice to have a more even spread of difficulty. I 1cc'ed with all characters on both Normal and Hard difficulties. I picked up the SNES Ninja Warriors from ebay shortly after, inspired to bid more than I would have before playing the new version. I liked the SNES version more - it has that more even difficulty spread that I wanted. Grade: S. I still love a good beat em up even if it's not absolutely perfect.

Huntdown: @Webhead123 already gave a good rundown earlier in the thread. tl;dr 2D pixel art run and gun with an emphasis on cover and learning boss patterns. I'll add that I loved that frequent one-liners. Throw a grenade, blasting a group of enemies to bits. "I like my salsa chunky." Unfortunately I didn't notice any differences between difficulty levels in story mode other than your max health. I beat story mode with Anna Conda on Normal (5 hit points) and John Sawyer on Hard (3 hit points), and beat all 4 arcade mode difficulties. Grade: A

Enter the Gungeon: I have mixed feelings on this one. I like the combat in general. I did not like the enormous variance in difficulty between runs depending on what you find and how many bosses you beat without taking a hit. Beating a boss without taking a hit gives you an extra heart of max health. Take 1 hit instead of 0? Too bad, you just increased the difficulty of your run. It reminds me a bit of Gradius Syndrome from shmups where a small mistake has a relatively large impact on your chances of success. I also didn't like how so many weapons and items are gated behind unlocks, whether purchased with in-game currency between runs or by accomplishing some achievement. You only have a small fraction of the good stuff available from the beginning and I still hadn't unlocked it all by the time I was done. I unlocked all the hidden characters, killed every character's past (if applicable), and beat every hidden floor at least once, including Bullet Hell (I did not win at Punch-Out against the Rat but that's not required to clear the floor). Grade: B

I'm currently playing Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection and liking it so far. I know @Sumez is a big fan.

Edited September 21 by LHCGreg

[Sumez | 3,174]

6 hours ago, LHCGreg said:

• Gunvein
• The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors
• Huntdown
• Enter the Gungeon
• Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
• Super Meat Boy
• Prison City
• Mushihimesama
• Battle Circuit

What a fucking amazing lineup of games!