Tag: games

Posted on

The GRcade Twitchcast Episode 21 – Simply Chatting Games!

This week Victor Mildew and Pedz start the GRcade Twitchcast and The Doom Spoon joins a little later into the show.

The topic of conversation starts with Victor detailing his experience with Borderlands 3 and how he and his wife have enjoyed playing it together, even though there were issues with the game on a technical level, along with how he thinks the game compares to the previous 2 in the way the game plays and if anything has really changed from the last 3 borderland games… BUT, what about all those guns? Did they change things up for Victor and Mrs Victor or did they simply select the guns that do the most damage and the wackier items go unused? Well, Victor does tell you about this too.

After Borderlands 3 chat Victor is eager to talk about his experience with Luigi’s Mansion 3. He says he has yet to finish the game but believes it’s worth talking about. The previous Luigi’s Mansion games are talked about and Victor explains if the LM3 is like the first 2 in how they play, while also explaining about how Luigi’s Mansion turned his head towards the Game Cube.

Talk moves over to a retro title that Pedz has played and finished recently. The game is Super Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Pedz had played a few levels in the past but didn’t really give a long session. Victor is also a fan of the game, and both discuss how it differs to Mario Land 1 & 2 and how Wario’s playstyle is a very interesting change from the norm with how Mario and Luigi are to play as. The ending is also talked about and we get to hear just what ending  Pedz got.

Doom arrives during the Wario Land chat, but the topic soon moves to Sonic Lost World. This is a game that Pedz recently finished. It’s a 3D Sonic game and that usually means the game is likely bad to very bad on the ‘how good is this game?’ scale. Pedz does have some positive things to say about this one though. Maybe playing Sonic 06 and Boom back-to-back broke his mind?

Unfortunately, this is where the wonderful Victor leaves us in this episode of the Twitchcast, but Pedz and The Doom Spoon carry on talking games and it’s another game played by Pedz. The game is Paw Patrol On a Roll. Well, I don’t know what Pedz was thinking he would get with the game, but, he certainly expected a game with a little challenge even if it is for young children, and who’d have thought there’d be SO MUCH voice acting? Pedz was shocked by all the chatter.

Doom finally gets to talking about one of the things he played recently, and the first game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. He says there’s the ‘odd’ glitch that is an issue, but overall the game is a positive experience for him.

We have Doom now talking about Ghost Recon Breakpoint, with the issues the game has, Ubisoft apologising for cocking up, but the chat generally turns to glitches, general issues, betas basically being demos before getting back on track.

Next up is a game called Farm Together, and this is an online game where you do farming and seemingly you can open or close our farm to random people to join in and help you out. How does Doom cope with randoms in his farm spending all of his money? There’s a simple solution that seems like a really good way to keep things friendly and stop people from abusing your things.

Pedz leaves briefly here for a toilet break, but Doom keeps talking to chat and he is asked about Arsenal, as in the football team.

When Pedz gets back the focus shifts back to video games and chat asks what are the hosts thought’s on if Activision were to sell the Single Player at the fraction of the price of the full game. Pedz and Doom have a short chat about it, and if they’d be more interested or willing to buy CoD if you could buy the game in 2 parts.

We then have the retro title that was meant to be talked about several weeks ago, but with Doom and Pedz having various things come up in real life it was always pushed back. Well, Kirby’s Dream Course, which was chosen by Mattking85 in the twitch chat finally was discussed. The interesting thing is Doom and Pedz both had wildly different views on the game.  Afterwards, a new retro game is chosen for Doom and Pedz to play. Doom has not played it, but Pedz has.

Lastly, there’s a little chat about Pokémon Sword and Shield, which is out the next Friday after this was streamed.

During the Twitchcast, when talking about glitches, Mattking85 said he was reminded of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and I have the YouTube link here for those that want to check it out. It’s pretty interesting and you should definitely check it out: Link

For audio-only download click here: Clickety-Click.

 

Posted on

Retro Monday Game 94 – Apocalypse!

Apocalypse was a ‘multidirectional shooter’ (or as we call them usually to call them now ‘Twin Stick Shooter’)  game for Sony’s PlayStation. It was made by developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It was released in 1998 and was the second game that was created by the Neversoft.

The game was picked via a poll of three games over on GRcade. The three games were picked by Preezy.

Another game I knew nothing about. Which seems to be quite the common theme at the moment.  Well, I have to admit, that the Playstation era visually for me, just isn’t very nice, it hasn’t aged particularly well. Obviously, it will depend on the stylistic choices made and the aesthetic of the game, but a lot that I see or play just don’t hold up. This is one of those games. It isn’t helped that I’m playing it on a 4K TV making it looks worse. For the time I think it would have been held fairly highly, and while the visuals aren’t amazing, when I re-adjusted to them, but the 4th level I was really digging the look of the game and in general prefered the game after the first level. I enjoyed my time with this, it’s not massively different to similar titles before it, when I was asked ‘what kind of game is this?’ in the stream, I said it seems similar to something like Smash T.V. but not as hard. It has different things to Smash TV, there are points where the camera angle changes and there are platforming sections, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. It’s a fun game, and for me, that’s what matters. A game doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to be fun and enjoyable, which I think a lot of people forget nowadays and expect some kind of revolution at all times.

The sound is actually pretty good, the first level I admit I wasn’t a fan, I thought it just sounded odd. I think the music picks up from there on. with music that suits the levels, and on occasion you come across a billboard and on it is a video from a music video which can be from several bands. The ones I happened to see/hear were not something I knew, bar ‘System of the Down’ and ‘War?’ and I thought maybe on was ‘Pantera’ well, it wasn’t. The sound effects were all well done too, the various weapons all had their own unique sounds which were distinct from each other and the explosions were very loud and explosion-y. BUT, the voice acting of Bruce Willis – yes, Bruce Willis the actor – were underwhelming, the quality wasn’t the issue, it was more than he sounded like he couldn’t really be bothered with it and it just seemed half-arsed. On top of that, the dialogue through the stages was repeated way too much you heard 90% of what is going to be said by Bruce by the end of the first stage. It’s a shame as it could’ve been so much more than what it was if there were more lines recorded and Brucey actually had an interest in it.

Verdict: Recommend.

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even  picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.

 

Posted on

Retro Monday Game 93 – Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins!

Back in 80/90’s Nintendo were seeing great success in general, but the Super Mario Bros, in particular, was massive, Nintendo was also having great success with the Game Boy, so why not bring the series to that platform? Well, they did in 1989 with Super Mario Land, they followed it up with Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. It came out in 1992 in Japan and 1993 for the west. The game wasn’t actually created by Shigeru Miyamoto who created the Mario series but was in fact created by Hiroji Kiyotake.

The game was chosen via a poll of three games that were selected by Super Dragon 64 on GRcade.

This is a game that I am familiar with. I loved it back as a kid and I still love it now. I’ve played it to completion a few times and I still think it’s a great game. I’m also still always amazed by how this game looks in comparison to Super Mario Land. Super Mario Land looks very very different, whereas Super Mario Land 2 actually looks like a Mario game. It does look a little off when playing on the GBC as it wasn’t a proper Color game, but on the monochrome screen, it was lovely as the colours weren’t off. Anyway, the game starts off with Wario (yes, this is the first game Wario was in) taking over Mario’s ‘house’ and you are on a journey to get it back. here are six different themed areas with 3 levels each where you have to get a golden coin and when you have all six you can unlock the door to take on Wario. The worlds themselves are all distinct from each other and have some lovely variety. For example, the first world I went to was a giant tree that I climbed, I later went to space and then a Scary Pumpkin. The bosses are a all well suited to the areas too, there’s no Bowser or Koopa Kids here. As I said they are suited to the theme of the area. So in Space, you fight an Alien, in the Pumpkin a Witch.

The Mushroom and Fire Flower make an appearance too, though the Super Mario’s design is different more than likely due to the lack of colour to differentiate from Big Mario as the was no colour. Hearts replace Green Mushrooms again I think it’s due to lack of colour and being able to easily see the difference. On top of it, you have a new power. It’s a Carrot. It makes Mario a Playboy Bunny… Ok, it doesn’t, but it does actually give him Rabbit Ears. These are used in a similar way to the Raccoon tail in Super Mario Bros 3. They aren’t exactly the same, you can’t run and fly with them, they similar in that you use them to slow your descent by tapping on holding jump. Holding it slows your fall, but tapping slows your fallrate even more, which comes in handy.

The music is great also, with a lot a variety again, sound effects are also on par. It seems like a lot of effort went into it to differentiate it from Super Mario Bros, yet retain the overall feel of a Mario Bros game. You can see that I’m really into this game, maybe nostalgia is playing a big part in that and I don’t personally have many qualms with it, other than the game is a little too easy for 99% of it. I died maybe once or twice and then I got to the final level and lost 40+ lives. It’s a massive difficulty spike. It’s still a very good level, but the middle section, for me at least, was very tricky, but I got there in the end.

Verdict: Recommend.

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.