#779 Puzzle Quest

Posted: 7th September 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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896th played so far

Genre: Puzzle/Role Playing
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Infinite Interactive
Publisher: D3 Publisher

Yeah, I’ve kept Puzzle Quest until the end. It’s a puzzle RPG which, to make it easier on myself, I’ll be playing on the DS so I have some TV distraction if I want it. I’ve had a great time with You Must Build A Boat, an endless runner RPG that similarly builds on the match three genre, which makes me hopeful we get something good out of it too.

Our Thoughts

One of the big joys of a match three game are the big combos, where destroying one set of blocks leads to another as things keep cascading down. Even more, to make that happen you do your best to plan ahead and set it up so you get that big five in a row on the next round. That strategic layer is completely lost in Puzzle Quest as you alternate turns with your enemy, which moves your goal from setting up the combinations to preventing your opponent from getting any. It puts a cap on the excitement and progress through the game. Added to that, the gems add up to give you mana, which gives you a chance to fire spells at your opponents. However, as they take up a turn, they rarely seem worth it – board effects aren’t worth it when that’s the case and the damage seems a bit low sometimes. It’s all a bit of a mess and the imprecise controls don’t help, when a wrong move means you forfeit the turn rather than being allowed to try again.

And yet despite of these battle issues, the game is incredibly addictive. It’s grindy, but I kept chasing more as the quest expanded around the world. I had to keep going, grind out another step in the quest, get my stats up and find some spells to use. It’s not the most special story, but there’s a lot more going on in the world that it stays interesting.

Final Thoughts

Puzzle Quest works despite its core puzzle mechanic, not because of it, and I see the places where that could have been changed. There’s a great world here and I am sure I’ll explore it again at some point – and hope the sequel changes as much of this.

#338 Intelligent Qube

Posted: 3rd September 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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895th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Playstation 1
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: G-Artists
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Intelligent Qube feels like it fits in with a number of these puzzle games with simpler graphics, using the system’s 3D capabilities but using the abstraction to not need complicated graphics. Devil Dice comes to mind as a similar game, as well as the Nintendo 64’s semi-tech demo Wetrix.ย  It looks like this comes in in the same mold – which isn’t the worst idea, as I at least got some entertainment out of those games for a while.

Our Thoughts

One thing Intelligent Qube carries over is how streamlined the game is. The graphics are about the same as on the box, translucent cubes on which a small character moves around as you control them. A couple of blocks roll towards you and it’s your duty to destroy them by laying down ‘mines’ and triggering them as the blocks go over them. There are some different cubes – one that place a bigger ‘mine’ and another that shouldn’t be destroyed. Any blocks that fall off the edge instead of being destroyed (except for the ones that aren’t allowed to be) add up to shorten the stage, both amping up the pressure as you need to destroy the blocks faster and giving you less room to move around before the blocks kill you. Being rolled on by a block kills you and lets the current set go to the end – making everything worse.

As you can tell, this creates a stressful game, where failure induces more failure and you are rushing around to figure out what to do as you die. Both the time limit and the blocks moving at a somewhat erratic pace (or in a way that I haven’t quite figured out yet) don’t help. It’s frustrating, but it’s also some extra pressure that helps the puzzles stay more interesting.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know whether I can take playing this game for too long at a time, at least at the moment, but there’s something that works in its simplicity. It’s worth a visit, but like the other puzzles, maybe not something that’ll sustain you for that much longer.

#413 SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash

Posted: 30th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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894th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Neo Geo Pocket Color
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: SNK
Publisher: SNK

Although Pokemon: The Trading Card Game dates back a good two decades by now, it feels like the genre hasn’t taken off until the release of Hearthstone about six years ago, with plenty of other games following – including one I had a hand in, the ill fated Fable Fortune. Since that’s after the last revision of the book, it’s no wonder that none of these are mentioned, so what we get instead is this odd series, using SNK and Capcom characters to create a card game instead.

If we look at the Marvel vs Capcom series, we know that Capcom has plenty of characters ready, and this particular clash has also appeared in Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000. Here, though, the fighting mechanics don’t matter, and it’s all about the way the different rules play here.

Our Thoughts

Although at this time, there are some limits to what the systems can do, the aforementioned contemporary Pokemon Gameboy implementation was quite a decent implementation of a card game like this. At the same time, we have some other card games that follow the same idea like Yu-Gi-Oh, focusing on characters with high numbers to attack and defend. With it being a video game rather than cards, Card Fighters Clash can bring in some logic that you can’t easily do in person, but you’re more limited by the logic you can bring in as you’d need to program each special case.

What that means is that there are a lot of character cards in the game and that different group of characters (through their relationship in the franchise) get boosts when paired together. On the other hand, there aren’t many utility cards – probably the more complicated ones to edit, but you really end up focusing on getting characters set up. It’s a nice feature, but the default decks don’t have that much synergy and it feels like a lot of work and take a lot of time to actually get to that point.

What doesn’t help there is that the battles get quite boring – since you’re not modifying your deck much, and the loop of attacks and defending gets quite repetitive, there isn’t much more that the game seems to offer – get your matches right and use the utility cards when you can get them – just not that many.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know what more they could have done, but somehow this feels a bit emptier than the game could have been. It’s a good way to see an earlier version of these games, but it’s interesting to see how the genre moved on since then – and a later edition of the book would probably have gone for the more modern iterations.

#170 Revenge of the Shinobi

Posted: 26th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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893rd played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Mega Drive
Year of Release: 1989
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega

I’m sure I’ve mentioned wanting to make sure I spread out entries in a series, but I haven’t done a great job with Shinobi. I played the previous one just over two years ago, but here we’ve got the second of its platformers while the Playstation 2 3D action/adventuer still waits (the box is in our big pile right now). With a three entries series, I should probably start the second before we reach the final 100, so here goes…

Our Thoughts

I guess this is the point where I mention that there isn’t that much that I feel I can add to the game. The game still looks nice, considering the time in which it was made, as before, and that helps make it nice to play.

At the same time, there are its differences. You’re no longer scurrying around the level to rescue different hostages – your only goal is to reach the end of the level, as your one hostage is there. It’s a bit of streamlining of the design, but in this case means it just blends in further with the many other action platformers that we see here.

On the other hand, the moves you get feel a lot better. You get several different attacks. They’re limited by ammo counts – making the game even more difficult – but there are some options. The enemy variety is still great enough that you can keep planning around that, which helps build up that combination.

Final Thoughts

Like Shinobi, Revenge of Shinobi takes the existing genre and executes it well, creating a game that’s varied but also very, very difficult – too difficult to show too much of itself to me, but it’s clear there’s still a reason why it’s this notable. I’m not sure it’s an improvement over its predecessor – I’d style it as a step sideways, showing something different to be done within the series.

#519 Suikoden III

Posted: 22nd August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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892nd played so far

Genre: Role-Playing
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo
Publisher: Konami

I’ve been careful going through the JRPGs as I always enjoy them for the blog – and because they are pretty long plays, which I need to be careful with so I can keep up the pace of playing so I have a chance of completing it – a bit more than a year left!

Suidoken III looks interesting in part because of its cast. Based on the characters of The Water Margin, we have 108 characters, with about 27 or 28 being more proper main characters. Still, that feels ambitious, especially if they get more background than the typical Tactics characters.

Our Thoughts

Even in the time I had for the game – which exceeded the five hours I took for this, thanks to the Easter bank holidays stuck inside that gave me extra time – I just barely scratched the surface. There are thre emain characters, each with a number of chapters, and a fourth with less chapters as more of a support character. That last one I didn’t get to see – nor did I get to play one of the three main characters, as the story of Chris Lightfellow, the (female) paladin took about four hours while the rest of my playing time so far, of Hugo, the indigenous swordsman, involved a fair amount of grinding as it’s the canonical first character and starts at level one, while the others start a bit higher.

Aside from being an interesting set of characters, a lot of events happen from another person’s perspective as well, which makes for a nice different cadence f or its storytelling, especially as it works in any order (so far) as well. You have the remnants of story telling of the other characters around, with bits and areas that only make sense later (or are a nice area to revisit). It gets a bit confusing sometimes, but works out eventually.

There’s a whole castle building system that comes up after these first few chapters, but I didn’t get to really play with that yet. Similarly, I didn’t recruit many characters beyond the default ones for the first chapter, but I did see a lot of it around already. There’s named characters standing around, asking for things, but it takes a while (and the right character) before you can do anything with it, but it seems like a fun set of challenges.

Aside from a decent RPG battle system, the game also has strategic battles at a bunch of places. You move several teams of characters around these nodes. When they encounter the enemy, you take them on, but in the first one I tried, the main focus was to escape and you ended up fighting some strategic battles to make sure you can continue from there.

Final Thoughts

Not only did I enjoy this game throughout, I ended up getting other games in the series as the idea behind it appealed to me so much – the size and scope, the amount of contents, that part of my brain that wants to collect all of them. It feels like a fun challenge while providing a world and story that I’d love to dive deeper into over time.

#108 Darius

Posted: 18th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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891st played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito

For a lot of these shooters, it feels like it’s a bit more of the same – I swear that a lot of them go by different ways of handling weapons. Raiden, for example, always keeping you supplied with them. For Darius, however, something else applies – rather than having a single screen you play the game on, the arcade machine had three screens side by side. It’s something that’ll be more difficult to emulate at home… good thing we have far higher resolution monitors.

Our Thoughts

Darius actually looks gorgeous – the three screens mean that there is more room to display it and it works well to create a good looking game – it certainly feels more detailed than you’d expect from a game from 1986. It’s not just a nice surprise, but it helped me be drawn into a game more than others have done to that extent.

The game itself helps with that. The shooting is decent too, facing both flying enemies and turrets, with some separately coloured enemies that have the power ups – you don’t need to destroy everyone, but it helps. The level ends with a boss that’s, obviously, far more challenging, but not as unbeatable as some of the other games are. They’re not as elaborate, sure, but they work really well.

Final Thoughts

Darius has a pretty simple, straight forward gameplay, but it looks good and what it does, it does well.

#156 Impossible Mission II

Posted: 14th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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890th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1988
Developer: Novotrade
Publisher: Epyx

Impossible Mission II is, in fact, not related to the Mission Impossible franchise, despite using the same words in the title. It is, instead, the sequel to Impossible Mission, which is about a secret agent infiltrating an enemy base and, well, at least sounds like it’s a similar thing?

The first game had less enemy robots and, it seems, some other minor feature changes, but otherwise this is a sequel very much based on the original. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have to cover both.

Our Thoughts

Impossible Mission II feels quite complex considering the systems it was released on, the primitive graphics and how it looks like a standard one screen platformer looking better than, but deriving from something like Bounty Bob Strikes Back. In fact, Nebulus is close to it, having you climb towers while having little resembling the complicated interactions this game has.

In this game, you have a time limit to climb eight towers, solving puzzle rooms to get parts of a passcode to get into the ninth tower and beat the game. Each room – there are a handful per tower – has its own puzzle, involving some mild jumping, timing your moves around robots, and taking over these robots. You interact with varions PCs to get items and codes to continue and with that the bottom screen has a lot more going on, in part to record these different code fragments that are in-game audio files. As much as the game is described as an action game, it’s a puzzle on what to do.

Even beating a single room is difficult, even with help there was so much going on and I couldn’t make sense of what the various bits were.ย  It’s the other side of the impressive coin, and the complexity in this way doesn’t transfer to modern sensibilities – the lack of mouse support, additional text to give some hints and the expectation that you memorize icons not fitting in well.

Final Thoughts

Impossible Mission II is a mix of different ideas, most quite good but in an interface that isn’t readable enough yet to pull it off. I’m not sure whether the modern remake fixed it, but it feels like a concept that other games could get a bit closer to and be even more interesting.

#398 Silhouette Mirage

Posted: 10th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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889th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Playstation
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Entertainment Software Publishing/Working Designs

I feel like we’ve been covering a bunch of games by Treasure recently, with action shooters being one of their clear fortes that we’ve covered with Alien Soldier and the Gunstar Heroes series. Silhouette Mirage draws from the same base, a semi-platformer that has you race around killing various enemies, this again with its own twist.

Our Thoughts

The gimmick of Silhouette Mirage is interesting enough. Your jester-like appearance comes from your body being split in half. The one that faces the screen is the active one, and you change by facing the other way – or doing a slower switch of sides, which is a bit more situational. Each side is more effective against certain enemies and a lot of the time you end up fighting in one side as you try not to be attacked in the back. It’s challenging although aside from the threat of falling, it tends to make battles more similar. There are a bunch of special moves, including some grabs and throws as well as reflecting moves, so it becomes more of a challenging beat ’em up.

What helps is that the game looks good. The graphics are pretty cartoony, looking fun but going smoothly, and the enemies have a slapstick feel toย  them sometimes. There’s this looser, more animated feel to it – it hides the difficulty, but it’s still a treat for the eyes.

Final Thoughts

Silhouette Mirage‘s twist works for it most of the time, although at times the one direction you face for most of an encounter can feel difficult to stay on top of. Still, it’s a treat for the eyes and feels replayable.

#765 Heavenly Sword

Posted: 6th August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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888th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Fighting
Platform: Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Time to be reductive: Heavenly Sword looks like a hack and slasher not unlike God of War or Ninja Gaiden, fighting your way through enemies with maybe some exploration. It’s no wonder that this studio was later tapped to develop DmC, the disliked Devil May Cry sequel, and specialized in this type of game beyond then. This is their first – somehow, as I could have sworn we played a game of theirs before – and I guess it’s the one I judge them by.

Our Thoughts

There’s something that feels pretty good about the fighting in this game. It flows well and once you get to actually use the titular Heavenly Sword. You have three different modes of your sword – basically mapping to short distance, long distance/ranged and crowd control. It’s quite intuitive and the many moves feel fun to fight with. If it was all of the gameplay, it would have been fun, a nice bit of exploration, with combat corridors that might have dragged a bit… but I guess that’s the game, and it fits what others in the genre do.

Then there’s the other side, though, where the game tries to break up the fighting with a different activity. You need to shoot in several sessions – both the main character’s sister using her bow, and a bit later using a clumsy catapult. It sounds like a nice way to break up what you’re doing, but the controls don’t work for me.ย  It’s difficult to aim and the enemies are small, so it takes lots of tries to hit them. The first time, this just meant more enemies in a fighting section, nothing wrong with that. Later, though, you are forced to destroy three catapults in a limited time, hitting four targets on each (three at first, then a second one later). The hitboxes are small and difficult to predict. You get some control over the cannon ball as you go through, but it still feels difficult and inaccurate. I don’t think the game is explicitly Move compatible, but it seems like they wanted to use a Wiimote but couldn’t do it. There are some joystick controls that work a bit better to aim, but it’s not great and nearly blocked me from getting through – long before you get anything you really want.

Final Thoughts

Heavenly Sword is a beautiful games and while the fights get a bit repetitive, mostly they feel good to play through in the right doses, a chapter at a time. On the other hand, the shooting sections are both required and usually too difficult to handle, and it feels like they don’t belong here. Still worth a try for everything else though.

#550 Jak II

Posted: 2nd August 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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887th played so far

Genre: Action/Platform
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

For some reason, we played some Daxter before I covered either this game or the first Jak & Daxter game. It takes place between the two, before the current game, covering the two years in between. And oddly enough, having played a bit of it, it sort of spoils that first segment with what happened to you. It’s a weird way to get into the story for these, but I know the technology to expect now.

Our Thoughts

Jak II presents an interesting world that’s quite at odds with the more idyllic village start of the first game – it’s a dark city, polluted and cluttered with traffic, the invasive police being a threat at all times. When you travel outside it, you end up in these polluted places where the water seems toxic and buildings collapse as you move along. The story of fighting off an evil regime is little more that decent, but that’s fine, it’s a nice enough twist to contrast with the earlier games and others in the genre. Doing so in a more open world of this size is really quite interesting.

It’s a shame, then, that I couldn’t get more than three or four missions in. The main criticism of the game was its difficulty, and man, did I feel it. It isn’t just down to difficult jumps or hard enemies. The controls are more annoying than they should be. To do a long jump, for example (and this is the most egregious example I wrote down – and wrote down twice in fact) you need to roll and then jump just before the end of the roll. You’d better judge how far to roll, to not miss and overshoot. If you do… thanks to its checkpointing and design, half the time it leads to you restarting the level, which is just frustrating. The camera doesn’t help either, fighting you at every turn, especially in the cramped areas the game uses fairly often. It’s either that or a static camera that doesn’t let you judge your jump – and isn’t cinematic enough to make up for it.

Final Thoughts

The difficulty and gameplay of this game feel so misjudged – there’s a good world in here that feels interesting to explore, but it’s too harsh to feel fun and playable.

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