PixlBit

Here it is, my continuation of the last blog detailing the games i've beaten so far in 2016. Unlike the eight game of last time, there'll be "only" five here. Now, without wasting much time:

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:

Around March or April of this year I caved in and bought one of the new Gamecube controllers with its separate adapter for Super Smash Bros. 4, mostly though because I wanted a new Gamecube controller as the one I had (a non-official I should say) may or may not stopped working and I needed one if I wanted to get further N64 games on my Wii. If you didn't know already, yes it works on the Wii as I decided to test it on a game I hadn't beaten and played in a long time: Ocarina of Time.

I'm gonna be frank and start with some negative and/or nitpick aspects. First of all, this game is very much dated. Obviously aside from the graphics (which I actually don't care too much), the camera can be a pain in the ass due to awkward angles you can get either because of your position relative to a wall or the one with the Z-targeting passing a wall and blocking your view, not helping matter is that Z is the only way to move your camera, which also doesn't help that you can't have it contantly change without breaking your running pace and you can miss a jump or or not react on time to an enemy due to bad positioning. Now, the camera and Z-targetting are about my big gripes, as really the rest of the aspects are fine on their own, but the dated aspect comes with the fact that having played Twilight Princess first, I felt that one expanded on many of the concepts and mechanics here like the combat, the dungeons, boss fights, the horse riding, etc, and fixed other nitpicks like now properly putting swimming and the Iron Boots as a use item instead of inventory equipment and fixing the Z-targeting and camera use (on the Wii version as I've heard the Gamecube and HD versions have free use of camera). Finally, having played a lot of games at 60 fps, some of the movement felt slugish and delayed on their use, although I give this a small pass since it's a Nintendo 64 game and has more detail than say, Super Mario 64.

Now, it may seem that due to that wall of text of my gripes that I didn't enjoy as much OoT, but despite that, I still really liked it! Much like Twilight Princess, I was inmersed in the game as I had a similar sense of adventure and discovery that made continue to see how the plot unfolds, which on that despite some lack of developmet, I did like many of the characters and NPCs as they have a lot of personality and give the world a feeling of activity and Ganondorf, although pretty standard, still feels like a legit menace. Even though I said that later games expanded on what was put here, aspects and stuff like the combat, items, overworld, secrets and most of the sidequests are well implemented and work solidly well. The dungeons aren't the best, but they work as great challenges for the abilities you've learned; my favorites have to be the Shadow, Light Temples and if you want to count it, Ganondorf's Castle, some of them with interesting and challenging boss fight, even when they have predictable patterns. There's definitely some well-implemented sad, happy and scary moments, and seriously, this game has some quite nightmarish moments and elements, from the Redeads and the entirety of the Bottom of the Well. Finally, the soundtrack is nice and that last boss fight was quite epic.

So to end this, even though I think it's dated, I still had a blast playing Ocarina of Time and I can see how revolutionary it was for the Zelda franchise and perhaps action-adventure games as a whole. If anything, I may get the 3DS remake when I decide to play it again as i'm hoping it has fixes to some of the problems and have an aceptable framerate.

A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda:

Don't have much to say except that even if it's nothing out of the ordinary or special, A.R.E.S. is a pretty solid and decent enough run-and-gun very influenced in some areas on the Mega Man X series with a pretty sweet soundtrack by the same guys that did the music for Dust: An Elysian Tail. It's a very short game and you're very likely to beat it in a single day, with the only replay value being achievements, secrets, scores with ratings and leaderboards if you're into those sort of things. I also had problems with framerate drops in certain areas, though I don't know if the game or my computer is at fault.

This game actually has an updated remake/version by the same devs and i'm actually going to give it a look to see how much they've improved the game and perhaps like it more.

Retro City Rampage DX:

Now here's a pretty sweet indie game.

I don't need to do much intro as I feel most here on this site know, even own and played Retro City Rampage. It's not only something of a throwback to the 2D GTA games (which makes sense since apparently this started life as a GTA III demake), but also the closest thing to an 8-Bit GTA and those who grew up in the 80s or are fans of the era will have a blast with the buttload of references to pop culture of that time. It is a short game compared to other sandbox games and I don't feel there's much replay value besides the challenges, collectables and cosmetics to unlock, but from its 8 to 11 hours it's a blast to play, either by its main missions (some which are quite creative if some of them quite hard) or simply causing havock like any GTA game, thrown with some nice humour and a great soundtrack by Jake Kaufman. Very much recommended.

Shadow Warrior Classic Redux:

Who wants some Wang!?

I consider having beaten this by doing the standard base game, which consists of the Enter the Wang and Code of Honor episodes.

If it wasn't for some confusing parts of the level and the bosses (except perhaps the Serpent God) being pretty basic (the lass boss being particulary anti-climatic), Shadow Warrior would be one of my favorites. Except for Half-Life (and perhaps the first Halo due to its age now) I never played much of the old school of FPSs and unlike Half-Life, this is as traditional as it gets, what's with the labyrinth maps, different types of weapons and items, healing with medkits and high speed of movement of your main character, Wang. Luckily though, I managed to get acostumed to the mechanics by the time I finished the first episode and even more when I change some of the key binding to be more comfortable (like binding the mouse wheel for changing weapons).

It's a very fun and very challenging FPS. It doesn't hold your hand and encourages the player to both plan their actions AND fight on the fly almost without stopping, since most of the time the game drops you at the start of a level in a zone already with enemies and traps. Aside from that the levels are pretty well-done and well-balanced on the combat, exploration, plataforming, secrets and some small puzzle-solving, and the humour although quite crude (and pretty stereotypical, but hey, it was a different time) I admit I thought was hilarious and, especially when some of the objects, events and people you interact with (read: mostly scantly-clad anime women) get commented by Wang, either automatically or pressing the Use button.

Overall, an excellent game and a blast to play.

Wipeout Pure:

Although I did continue playing this again around December of last year, I took a rest from it on January and finally decided to beat the game, which I felt it's done by getting gold medal on every tourney on every difficulty/speed setting.

It's a very fun game and it fills my void of having not played F-Zero is some years. It can get brutally hard on the later difficulties (mostly with the agressive AI), sometimes I feel the turning is not very responsive as I crash into walls quite often, two of the tracks can go to hell and better hope you have a turbo on the later difficulties when you get hit, cause gaining your speed again is a bitch. Other than that, it's fast, looks quite good for an early PSP game, I love the sense of speed on the later difficulties and the soundtrack has a great collection of songs by real-life Electronic musicians, and really, props for including Aphex Twin, even if it was one of his more weird songs.

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So that's it for this blog. Now that the Steam Summer sale is on, i'm now thorn in either spend money there or let my Sonic thrash side get the better of me and either spend on the gaming bundle or the Archie's Sonic series bundle at Humble....