There are a lot, so I may save some to mention later. The earliest of the games either didn't grab me, which means I only played them for 15 minutes or so, or they did, in which case I beat them in about an hour. I found some more of them than I mentioned before by cruising through collections too. I'm being pretty arbitrary strict in my choices: it has to say "hack 'n' slash" in the game's description or as part of the genre on wikipedia. So here's what I played (most of it) this week.
Shifting gears again this month. Now I've decided to focus on the best games of the years 2004-2006. I went through the Metacritic list and picked out what I liked.
A week ago I was browsing the new releases on Xbox and came across a remake of 1981 RPG Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I nearly lost my mind seeing that. My friend Mad Krammer bought it immediately, but at $35, I waited. A week later, after watching him play it, he gifted it to me and now we are both playing it excluding all else.
Much more than just Shmups this week but I played a lot of Shumps and finally had my fill of getting beaten down. I think I'll put the Shmups aside for the rest of the month. So I've also been exploring games of the late 80s both from hits lists and my own lists. I've got the Switch, Retron 3 and Xbox Series S all running and sourcing whatever I can find. So here goes.
These are the games I played last Tuesday when I was off work. The routine is somewhat different every time I get to play. Like last week I played some Gears of War Judgment in four player co-op. It was fun and I'm going for a hardcore run of the game that way. I didn't get to Gears last Tuesday though. Here's what I got to.
On October 18, 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was launched in the US. Among the 18 games released alongside it was Kung Fu. A rather unassuming title, Kung Fu has an intriguing history behind it. It started as an arcade game from Irem called Kung-Fu Master and was intended to be based on the movie Game of Death- Bruce Lee’s final film before he died. Later in the course of development, the story and characters were changed to become a tie-in to the Jackie Chan film Spartan X (aka Wheels on Meals). Most noteworthy about the game was its genre-defining gameplay elements that are considered by many to be the first example of what would come to be known as a beat ‘em up.
Yes, I'm alive. Busy and burned out at work and it's not even June. More about that at the end. I've been gaming more these days, so I actually have something to blog about for a change. And yes, true to form, they are all "late to the party" games that I'm sure everyone else played ages ago.
A giant mashup of everything I played the other day becomes another great game. Read to play.
What would a "dungeons spire" be, I ask? Maybe something in the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings; and, I wish I had "Castlevania Quest Friends"; although, I think all of you here are that. I like "Rime Fight" - might be like a rap fight except between sailors using sea shanties. "Who's got ye best shantie, yar, let us see". So, altogether it means: sailors having a shantie battle with their friends Alucard and a collection of Universal movie monsters in a spire buit deep in the Mines of Moria. Yeah. Actually it's just the eight games I played today.
I forgot to mention that I slipped in some Minecraft in between all the games I played this week. I went in wanting to create a fishing village. It didn't quite work out.
As it so happened, the Game Boy was the perfect present, as my older brother found out when he graduated from middle school. After the party was over and everyone had gone home, mom and dad came downstairs with a just one more wrapped present. I still remember my brother opening the box and joyfully exclaiming “It’s a Game Boy”! Since Tetris came packaged with it, we wasted no time playing that Russian puzzle game for years to come. It was the perfect game to complement the perfect present.
While GRIS is a short, 3-4 hour experience that doesn't take a whole lot of gaming skill for most of its run-time, don't be fooled into thinking there aren't legitimately challenging platforming and puzzle sections. Whether this immerses you more in GRIS's world or is just an interruption to your good time depends on what kind of games you like, but I'd say it's well worth the experience.
If there’s one thing I absolutely adore about Dragon Warrior (aka Dragon Quest), it’s how much its subtle charms have influenced each sequel to come after it. There’s just something special about playing the latest game in the series (currently Dragon Quest XI) and still hearing the familiar sound cues of attacking an enemy, taking a hit, or the brief but satisfying victory chime and level-up fanfare. Additionally, the character designs by Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball creator and illustrator) give a visual continuity throughout each game. Without question, the Dragon Quest series has laid down some deep roots that all started here. But although it's a beloved first entry for nostalgic fans of the series, newcomers might not warm up to certain gameplay elements that would not be refined until much later.
I noticed something about my latest list of games I’ve reviewed lately at GamerDad.com. Two of them feature ninjas, so we’ll bookend them here. Like always, please click on the links and read as many reviews as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. And speaking of ninjas, tell me your favorite video game ninjas. Mine would probably be the Ninjis from Mario games, I-Ninja from a forgotten Namco platformer from the GameCube era, Ebisumaru from Goemon, and Taki from Soul Calibur. Not sure why I like Taki, though. She’s just cool I guess. Anyway, here are the reviews!
I'm sitting here waiting for fireworks. Immediately, of course, I think of a video game. This one is Rocket Mania. It's a fixed screen puzzle game I played way back in 2003 on PopCap.com. Reconnect the fuses as fast as you can and watch the fireworks. I just noticed there is a Deluxe version on Steam for download for $1.25. Yippie! But that's not all my droogs, I've been playing lots of other things too. Details!
Earlier this morning I was supposed to go to the dealership to get the oil on the truck changed. Instead I moved it back a bit because I may have woken up a tad bit late due to watching not only the West Coast late airing of Billions (best show on Showtime) but watching the end of Fast and Furious (F&F 4) on another Showtime but then finding the original F&F was on yet another Showtime channel, probably their action one. Instead here we are, not at the dealership or at my usual spot, on a treadmill complaining about weird guy who dipped himself in Axe Body spray, I am here in front of a laptop typing out my thoughts for games I played this past week including one game I finished.
Jazz Jackrabbit headed to GBA this year, but I still remember playing it on PC at the neighbors'.
With the advent of the new century, so came the Sega Dreamcast, a harbinger of bullshit to come. Me and Gregg moved out of the ghetto in the late 99 and eventually found a home in the Sunset area of San Francisco, near the beach. We were both making good money and could afford to pay out the nose. For that Christmas my parents blessed me with a Dreamcast, and I returned home with it and Sonic Adventure.
I'm convinced now. Minecraft has been tweaked behind the scenes to make it harder.
ARMS is Nintendo’s newest fighting game on Switch. Originally I wasn’t going to get this game for a while, but I found a sale where it was ten dollars off. Doesn’t sound like much, but considering Nintendo’s first party games hardly ever go on sale, I decided to take the plunge. ARMS has a lot of interesting fighters, so I’ll do what I usually like to do with these kinds of games. Here’s a blog about each of the ARMS fighters! Nintendo has said that more will show up as DLC, so I also posted my own ideas for original fighters and existing characters, too!
So I think the novelty of sorting/organizing my digital crap has worn off. For the past couple of days I took a break from organizing the Photo Drive, and I jumped on the Media Drive to do the same. Like I said in Monday's (or was it Tuesday) blog, I found more pictures so I threw those into a folder named Sort Photos and then I was off to clean up the Media Drive. The Media Drive was a lot easier because most things I could just toss, like I had copies of my micro SD Cards from my first Smart Phones. Yeah I don't know why I kept them, especially after I made the jump to iPhone, but I kept them, along with a ton of random documents, and other interesting yet unneeded items.
