Now Playing: December 2019

The previous three months has been a trying time to find a game I can get into. I succeeded, but the percentage was low. The racing games of Hydro Thunder (PS), Burnout 2: Point of Impact (PS2), and Flatout 2 (PS2) were more of the usual rubber-banding AI opponents that can make for a frustrating experience.

Flatout 2 had the worst of this issue, but the most annoying problem was the destructible track elements that got in the way on later laps once they were destroyed the debris was laying about. Burnout 2’s deal was solely the issue of the AI being perfect. I was having fun even when not winning, but once a certain mountain area track was what I was currently racing there seemed to be no way to progress regardless of the car I selected. Arcade racer Hydro Thunder was fun, but the bare bones presentation and odd decision to lock tracks behind a currency earning progression system was where I fell off of this one.

I then went to portable side of gaming with my DS Lite and PSP. I was hankering for some Puzzle Quest, but Puzzle Quest: Galactrix was too much of a departure of what made the first game so enjoyable. On top of that they added timed puzzle to complete. This is not what I call a fun Puzzle Quest experience. It was an immediate turn this game off moment.

I had the sequel on hand so I inserted the cartridge for Puzzle Quest 2. It was much more of the traditional fun game with additions that are much more welcome. There isn’t any timed puzzled, thankfully. I didn’t complete the game, but at least I had gotten my fill of Puzzle Quest in a more satisfying way.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 was a first person shooter, as one would expect, but it’s on the PSP. Because of this everything hinges on how good the controls are. They’re…decent. It’s not a quick reflexes style of the recent Call of Duty titles on home consoles. It’s quite plodding to be very honest. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mainly suffer from AI that can aim accurately. This is bad when you’re under a time limit to get out of a base that’s going to explode! This is precisely the scenario I was in when I hung this game’s boots up and moved on.

The game I moved onto was a 2019 released game, if you can believe it. It was The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors. Not a new game in practice since the original version was from 1994 on the Super Nintendo. I love the original and this is definitely a worthy improvement. I’m not fond of the two new characters or that you can’t grab and throw the level 1 boss, but otherwise it’s excellent. The game didn’t need a two-player mode, but it’s done well enough with both players sharing the life and blaster (battery in the new version) meters.

Finally, I not only bought The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors in the last month or so, but I was also given Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night by Usagi704 for Xmas. My total new games for the year of 2019 is a big ol’ seven.

Game of the Year 2014 – Favorite Revisit

A number of games I have I’ll sometimes go back to them. This is especially the case if it’s short and going to be a quick session to play through. Arcade games fit this bill perfectly. Whether it be Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Contra, Ninja Warriors on Super Nintendo, or the fun horror game Splatterhouse on TG-16 (played during my Halloween Gaming Event). It’s always great to go back to these titles.

The one which caught my attention in 2014 was the arcade version of Robocop by Data East. It’s a bit tricky when it asks the player to level traversal that’s more than walk to the right, but otherwise it’s fun. It reminds me of a roller skating rink I used to go to and this blog post I mentioned it before in. All of this was spurred on by my purchase of the remastered in 4K Blu-ray edition of the original movie I picked up back in February.

Last year my favorite revisit was Tomb Raider: Legend and this year’s was Robocop!

Fun Times In Movie & Game World

My final original PlayStation game is here. It’s NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC and it feels like NBA Jam, but with the added feels of the 1990s NBC presentation. The theme they used at the time is is freaking awesome.

I got this game off of eBay. The seller refused to give positive feedback despite getting it from me. They didn’t like that I said the smell of smoke was on it in my feedback. It’s the truth and I don’t care if they don’t like that. The fucker can keep my positive feedback. I hope they choke on it.

Also below is listed a stack of movies and TV shows I recently bought from Best Buy. I had to return The Bourne Identity because the case was crap. I was treated as if I was trying to do something illegal. I’m guessing if they’d keep the case as it was then I should to. I’m very sorry my idea of quality is just too high for Best fucking Buy.

The Bourne Identity
The Italian Job
The Matrix
Knight Rider (Season One)
Xena: Warrior Princess (Season Four)

Now Playing: February 2014

There’s a lot to be said about the amazing artwork in Vanillaware’s games. One of those things, for me, would be that it tries to cover up what seems to usually be a shallow game experience. I’m always enjoyed my time playing their games like Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown, but with the current game, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, I felt it was pretty boring. This was especially the case at first. Since then it has gotten better the more I played, thankfully. The action still is a one button-mashing affair, though. I maxed out my character at level 99 and with 12 hours played I finished my eighth game of the year. There’s two characters stories to play through, but I won’t be doing that since nothing changes on the gameplay side and I didn’t care about the story as it was.

Other games I played that I talked about during the month was The Saboteur and Batman: Arkham Asylum. My complete thoughts on the former can be read here along with a small follow up about the ending. The latter I briefly mention here which includes quick finishes of Mortal Kombat Trilogy on PS1 and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition on PC Engine via the Virtual Console.

The next title I plan to play will likely be Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. Join me, won’t you?

Welcome to the Madhouse

From start to finish it was five days to complete the story mode for Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game certainly does what it does very well and that’s at making you feel like you’re Batman. I enjoyed combat more when I was tasked with sneaking around trying to take Joker’s goons out. It didn’t quite get a good feeling for the up-close personal hand-to-hand fighting. Also, like most everybody else, the boss fights were lacking in that they were all the same formula of avoid the big brutes and take out the smaller guys. Regardless it didn’t hurt the overall package too much.

Batman: Arkham Asylum stats – 76%; 164/240 Riddles; 18/20 Upgrades; 35/42 Bios; 56% trophies

Two other games I quickly added to the finished list was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. On MKT I played as Shao Khan and beat the champion ladder. My victory created a time paradox.

On the VC I beat PC Engine’s SFIICE three times. Once with Vega/Guile, a second time with M. Bison, and finally with Sagat. In the process I saw the normal ending, no-loss ending, and the higher difficulty no-loss ending.

The next game I’m going to start will be Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

DS Virtual Console Won’t Have All Your Favorites

Recently an announcement was made by Nintendo regarding their Virtual Console library on the Wii U. They are planning to release DS games for download.

Now this may sound great to some of you and it is to an extent. The television plus the Wii U tablet controller does seem to be simply a giant sized DS anyway. Why not release DS games to be played on it?

I’ll tell you why not. Because some of the DS system’s original and interesting titles simply don’t work well anymore once the dual screens are detached. Sure a slower game like Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars or one that doesn’t use the touchscreen in any unique way like Ultimate Mortal Kombat and New Super Mario Bros. will work just fine.

However many games won’t transition well at all once both screens aren’t in your field of vision at all times. Sonic Rush and Contra 4 are two games where both screens are used as one. Dodging bullets from the soldiers of Black Viper are now much more unfairly difficult when the enemy is firing from the TV screen at your character on the tablet. The whole reason this is problematic at all is because you have to move your head to look at either screen instead of it being in your peripheral vision at the very least.

Ultimately, I’m not saying Nintendo shouldn’t do this, but as long as they’re smart about it you won’t be seeing The World Ends With You on the Virtual Console.

Joystiq: Nintendo bringing DS to Wii U Virtual Console

Now Playing: January 2014

It’s time to take a small break from the gaming award ceremony to catch up on what I’ve been playing over this first month of 2014.

It started with the continuation of our PS1 Link Cable gaming. We (Usagi704 and I) played some deathmatch in Duke Nukem: Total Metaldown (a port of Duke Nukem 3D) and more of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Usagi even recorded video of this session of fighting game madness. I suspect you’ll see it soon. Keep tabs on his Twitter account and personal blog for updates.

Bayonetta became my first game finished for 2014. It’s definitely as great as you’ve probably heard. I did pussy out a small amount by choosing to play on Easy difficulty, but I did disable the item used for automatic combos. And oh Luka. How can I forget about Luka. He’s the lovable goof who goes from wanting revenge on Bayonetta to appreciating her for no apparent reason, but he’s forgiven all the same.

I’m currently playing Pandemic Studios’ final game, The Saboteur from very late 2009. It’s an open world game based in occupied Paris, France during World War II. It’s big graphical gimmick is similar to Prince of Persia 2008. In that game once you conquered an area the colors brightened up in said location. In The Saboteur areas are in black and white until freed and then color is restored. It’s quite a interesting game in which I recommend looking into.

Thanks for reading!

THIS MONTH’S GAMING STATS:
* Bayonetta – 6h22m; 16/51 trophies
* The Saboteur – 13h3m; 47% missions; 16% targets; 14/46 trophies

Now Playing: December 2013

This month of video game greatness has had me log nine total games played with four of them finished.

The first up was Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom. This 1993 beat-’em-up arcade game isn’t as exciting as I was hoping. It’s not to say that Capcom didn’t do well on the game. I guess there’s more to the game than I was expecting. I’m sure to pick it back up in the future to get a better feeling for it.

The next three titles, The Mark of Kri, Kirby’s Dream Land 2, and Sleeping Dogs have been talked about in their own blog posts. Check them out at the links provided above.

As gamers know, Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii has been praised much upon its release. One thing I realized while playing it is that I’m not one of those people. I also figured one other thing. I don’t think I’m as interested (or skilled) in platformers than I like to fancy myself as. This was evident while playing Kirby’s Dream Land 2, but much more so with Super Mario Galaxy.

There’s also several issues I think SMG actually suffers from. Here’s bullet-point list of them.

• The camera isn’t ideal for judging distance of jumps very well.
• Swimming in most every game is bad, but controlling Mario underwater was particularly craptastic.
• Spring Mario is the worst in control since the only way to move is by continuous jumping. It doesn’t help the use was normally on narrow paths.
• The pull stars aren’t all that bad, but when needing to move quickly under a time constraint, like say a race, isn’t exactly what I call fun.

I know I might be seen as a bit too picky about my complaints, but I did stick with the game for over 12 hours.

I played some of the DS exclusive title Space Invaders Extreme 2. Just like the previous game, the music is really great and the visual style gets me in the right mood to shoot some of those pesky classic space invaders. I suggest getting either game if you’re into classic arcade score chasers!

Finally, along with Usagi704, we hooked up our original model PlayStation systems to separate televisions and connected the consoles together with the PlayStation Link Cable. We had some fantastic fun playing co-op in Doom. We finished around ten levels.

Yesterday we played some of the classic launch game Destruction Derby. I still really like that game. Getting through intersections by “threading the needle” (aka close calls) is still as thilling as ever!

We also played some of Mortal Kombat Trilogy (a non-link cable game) and Usagi played his Team Shenanigans in 2-on-2 Kombat consisting of Human Smoke and Kitana. My team was a combination of Scorpion, Cyrax, and Nightwolf. Some characters were given new moves. Nightwolf was given a red Shoulder Charge (←←→HK) which helps a lot to get in and stay in close. Scorpion was given a forward Teleport Punch (↓→HP) to keep opponents guessing. As usual I still get beat more than not, but overall still a fun time!

Enjoy the New Year!

Hart & Usagi Podcast #41: ++Good PS4

In this episode of the Hart & Usagi Podcast, we welcome back Georgie and, for as a first-time guest, one of the hosts from ++Good Games podcast it’s Anthony!

Our main topic for discussion is our experiences with the recently released PlayStation 4. We also speak on games we’ve played as of late along with a couple of news items.

Strap one on ’cause it’s time to jam with the Hart & Usagi Podcast.

TOPICS:
* Sega 3DS 3D titles
* Killzone: Shadow Fall
* Kirby’s Dream Land 2
* Sleeping Dogs
* Doom
* Shadow Hearts
* Saints Row Twitter contest
* PlayStation 4 experiences
* Windows & Linux
* Pre-orders open for God of War Collection on Vita
* Persona 5 is Just the Beginning: Atlus Goes Persona Crazy
* Save The Last Christmas (For Me)
* Meeting Rob Van Dam
* Pacific Blue

Listen or Download (2:19:14)
New RSS Feed
Hart & Usagi Podcast at the Internet Archive
Matt: @HartKnight | HartKnight’s Archive
Mike: @usagi704 | WP blog
Georgie: @guuthulhu | Squiddy Fun Times
Anthony: @24bitAJE | ++Good Games

#HartandUsagiPodcast

Games that Need Sequels

A recent Game Sack episode was on the topic of past games which they felt needed sequels. If you listened to the previous episode of our podcast you would’ve heard us slightly touch on this topic.

Well I’m here to give you my top five games which I’d love to see a new entry from.

Burnout Paradise 2
It wasn’t until Burnout 3: Takedown that I’d even heard of this game series, but that didn’t stop me from becoming a fan right away. I’m sure a number of fans would like Burnout: Takedown 2, but I opt for a sequel to Burnout Paradise from 2008. All Criterion would have to do is give me a new city to drive around in.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within II
Before the reboot of Prince of Persia with The Sands of Time in 2003, I wasn’t a fan of the 2D games. However that all changed once I got a taste of the wonderful wall running and platforming that was on display. The combat wasn’t very good, though, just serviceable. In the follow-up, Warrior Within, the combat received a surprisingly fun upgrade and it didn’t feel ridged anymore. Sure the tone can be lightened up for a Warrior Within II and, no, I don’t count The Two Thrones as this wanted title. It introduced speed kills which made the combat engine mostly useless.

Power Blade 3
Natsume has quite a good track record as a developer. They take what would likely be an otherwise typical licensed game and make the gameplay actually competent. When it comes to the series in question, Power Blade was a fun take on the choose-any-stage-in-any-order style which started with Mega Man. The hero’s weapon of choice, a boomerang, was also quite fun to use. Power Blade 3 for downloadable services, please!

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks II
In 1997 Midway tried their hand at an action game for their Mortal Kombat fighting franchise. The idea sounds great on paper, but the ultimate result, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, was a disaster. However, in 2000, a larger disaster in the form of Mortal Kombat: Special Forces was also created and released. This is why in 2005 their third attempt was surprisingly successful. Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was a great 3D brawler with all of the usual MK flair along with a huge helping of MK and MKII nostalgia. Maybe for PS4 NetherRealm Studios can try their hand at creating Mortal Kombat: Black Dragon starring Kano and Kabal. I’d be up for that.

Final Fight 4
As a big fan of the beat-’em-up genre, I hold the original Final Fight in high regard. With the two Super Nintendo sequels I loved the series even more. As least where Final Fight 3 is concerned. This third SNES game gave the characters the ability to have fighting game like special moves. Each also had a super bar which could then be used to unleash a super move. A fourth game with Final Fight 3 as a base would be awesome. Also because we still need to wash the taste of Streetwise out of our collective mouths.