Your 2016 Gaming Diary

Did you finish super Mario world properly with all 96 exits? It's still solid!

 

Mario 2 I always found to be fantastic, it was never intended to be a Mario game which always made the game itself more interesting to me and it shows with the different mechanics. Also, wart is a bad ass.

 

I'm playing Super Mario world 2 at the minute, it's great to finally own it but when the baby starts crying I want to throw the SNES through the window.

 

I found a decent retro shop in Sheffield @lostmario and another one in chesterfield.

Ooooh where?

Did you finish super Mario world properly with all 96 exits? It's still solid!

 

Mario 2 I always found to be fantastic, it was never intended to be a Mario game which always made the game itself more interesting to me and it shows with the different mechanics. Also, wart is a bad ass.

 

I'm playing Super Mario world 2 at the minute, it's great to finally own it but when the baby starts crying I want to throw the SNES through the window.

 

I found a decent retro shop in Sheffield @lostmario and another one in chesterfield.

No, I was missing a couple, no idea where though.

Regarding the retro shop in Sheffield, Playtime?

After your text yesterday, @lostmario I also started Yoshi's Island (Wii U VC).

I completed the first 2 worlds then my 3DS turned itself off and nothing saved. Lost a bit of motivation now but I'll get it done.

The art style in this game is perfect, I never owned it on the SNES, only playing it at one of my mates.

I think the Playstation came out around the same time so that had my attention until the N64 hit.

I decided to put my new gadget through its paces and played through World of Illusion (MegaDrive) this evening. Still can't get over how good the games now look on my TV!

 

It's just a shame the game is a little short. Although you can play through it again as the other character if you want.

Fantastic game, I agree. I do recommend you play as Donald, though, he has exclusive levels, including that leaf-surfing one:

	Audio

(The same goes for Co-Op, but obviously it's not as easy to play that mode)

@Blade @lostmario

It's a place in woodseats opposite farm foods on the A61. No idea what it's name is!! It had quite a few N64 games, and a few cheap boxed SNES games aswell.

The place in Chesterfield is called geeks headquaters and it has some cheap stuff but not a massive selection.

I put some more time into Yoshi's Island last night and cleared the 2nd and 3rd worlds.

I have to say, i'm not feeling the game as much as I did when I played it all those years ago. Visually it still look stunning but the difficulty of the game is a bit of a mess.

If you were to just play through the game without going for 100% then the game is pretty easy and would be over very fast. If you want to give the game some legs then getting all of the collectables is a pain in the backside. Doing this turns the game from a platformer to a more adventure style game.

The process of getting all the red coins and flowers is made annoying due to the fact that if you miss even 1 then you have to do the whole thing again. Add to the fact that a lot of the levels have areas that you can't go back to if you miss something and this makes for a very frustrating experience.

@nekunando was it you who also takes issues with these things as well?

@nekunando was it you who also takes issues with these things as well?

Yeh Soon everyone will realise that I've been right about everything all along

Seriously, though, I wanted to love Yoshi's Island, clearing it twice, but it's a frustrating game and nothing like the platforming perfection of Super Mario World!

Finished Super Mario Bros 2 last night.

 

I abandoned my playthrough earlier in the week as I was just not enjoying it but I gave it another go last night and got the last few worlds done.

 

It actually turned into an OK game by the end, the level design on the last few worlds was really good with some great boss battles.

 

At times it doesn't feel like a Mario game with a few of the enemies looking out of place in the Mario world.

 

Its crazy it took me so long to play this properly and finish it.

 

We had this on the NES and I played 1 & 3 instead, same when we got All Stars on the SNES.

 

I am glad that I finally played through the game.

 

For me SMB2 was, understandably, a very unique title in the Mario series. However for me it had many of the expected hallmarks of one - great exploration, choices/options, and of course secrets! When I was an older kid on replays in All-Stars I'd use warps to cheat my way through to world 7 etc and mostly only play that world(which I used to struggle epicly with, apparently). However there's been a few times I've run through the game mostly in sequence(taking occasional level shortcuts) and there is some cracking design in there. I think as you mention the boss battles feel somewhat fairly unique, and the whole grabbing/throwing mechanic added another dimension to Mario for me there. Wart is such a great final boss battle, even if it is rather challenging. I must say I'm getting quite tempted to replay both SMB2 and SMB3 without warps sometime soon!

Yeh Soon everyone will realise that I've been right about everything all along

 

Seriously, though, I wanted to love Yoshi's Island, clearing it twice, but it's a frustrating game and nothing like the platforming perfection of Super Mario World!

You...are a strange lad.

2016 will be the year I finally beat Earthbound. God damn the combat system is annoying.

2016 will be the year I finally beat Earthbound. God damn the combat system is annoying.

The whole game is annoying. Baffles me why it's so popular.

I played some more Yoshi's Island (Wii U VC) last night. I was hoping to get the 4th world finished but I only managed to make it halfway through it, before knocking it off.

I spent around half an hour on a level looking for coins, stars and flowers, only to finish the level with 1 coin missing. Having to redo the level and hope that I find the thing killed my will power to keep pushing forward. I just turned the thing off and watched some TV. The game really doesn't respect the players time.

I started Day of the Tentacle (PS4) this morning. I preordered it from the Playstation Store ( first time i've done that! ) and woke up to find it was all ready to go. I managed to get an hour in before I set off to work. I can't wait to get back home and crack on with it.

I finished Day of the Tentacle (PS4) last night. Fantastic game. I haven't played it since the 90s and was really surprised just how much of the game and puzzles I remembered. It's funny the things that stick with you.

Sadly, this meant that the game only lasted 3-4 hours. Games like these you can really breeze through if you know the solutions to the puzzles. I actually finished the game again straight after finishing it for a first time. I played the first play through without going for the trophies and then went through the game to mop up those that I had missed. It only took a little over an hour to finish the game again once I knew what I was doing.

I remember playing this back in the day and some of the puzzles stumping me and my mates for days on end. This was before you had the luxury of Gamefaqs or Google, so you really had top try all the options out. I suppose maybe that's why I remember a lot of the solutions. We worked so hard to get a result that these memories have been deeply embedded into my brain.

Platinum achieved and a good amount of fun was had.

Been a bit of a slow month for me so far on the completion front but managed to get some time over the last few days to start up and finish two games.

First up, started and finished The Fall on Saturday. It's a relatively short game that plays out more like a point and click adventure title but with a couple of action sections to try and spice things up. The problem is that the interface/UI for the point and click gameplay, which is the main crux of the game, is too clunky to make it enjoyable to play. It's something that's been brought over the PS4 (I don't know how it was handled in the other console versions but I'm assuming it's more or less the same) with very little thought to being complementary to the gameplay. It's lucky then that there aren't any points that need quick reflexes. Over The Moon really should have spent a bit more time on making it feel more intuitive because as it is, it's manageable but by no means as effective as it should have been.

The puzzles you'll need to complete follow a similar suit and in some cases, you're left scratching your head wondering what the hell you need to do to progress as it's never made explicitly clear how to proceed at times. I understand not wanting to hold people's hands and give a sense of Eureka every time you solve something, but a little bit of handholding or sign posting would have helped alleviate a lot of the trial and error of trying every item in my inventory and aimless wandering I underwent trying to pinpoint any small areas I hadn't inspected.

The action sections generally involve some light shooting, popping in and out of cover (or using camouflage to the same effect) and taking out a couple of robots here or there. There's the addition of a boss fight towards the end of the game but by and large, I didn't feel the need for these points to be included. I wouldn't have been adverse to some run and hide/stealth element instead of this and I do think that that kind of gameplay would be more fitting of the overarching narrative.

The game comes alive somewhat through the narrative as you pilot ARID, a robot with a human pilot who is unconscious, around a strange and unknown location looking for aid to save her pilot. The little bits of information you gleam about the world, the unidentifiable bodies on crosses or hanging around and about the characters and yourself lend a sense of intrigue to the proceedings that more or less pull off, although the ending is somewhat noticeable prior to its occurrence.

The cliff-hanger ending and prospect of more though does make me interested in seeing narratively where they could go next but there'd need to be some significant improvements to the gameplay before I'd jump on that. Still, a somewhat enjoyable playthrough.

I next started up Murdered: Soul Suspect and finished it up yesterday, grabbing the platinum in the process. I'd been interested in playing it for a while and finally decided to give it a go and I'm glad I did as I enjoyed the game a lot. I'm a fan of crime games/novels/tv shows, so it fit in well with some of my interests and the whole Salem and witch setting added an additional layer to the proceedings that had me hooked from start to finish and helped to make an interesting story even more interesting.

Gameplay wise, I thought they handled the way in which you investigated areas of interest/crime scenes well but I thought solving the investigations was a bit on the shallow side and could have done with a bit of fleshing out. More often than not, each of them devolved to selecting the most obvious clues (victim, the murderer and one other innocuous clue) and it would have been nice to have a bit more depth to these and some proper problem solving to push things further. The addition of demons and having to hide from them I thought was more an irritant than anything else but gave a tension to certain sections and when you managed to find an opening to successfully pull of an exorcism on them, there was a sense of satisfaction.

Outside of that, the rest of the game fell to a load of collectibles that flesh out some of the story but also point to other murder cases/crimes which I thought would have been better utilised if they themselves could have been investigated, especially with being able to see elements of the past. Some of them I thought were particularly interesting in that macabre way so getting a bit more hands on with them would have been nice but as it was, they were a nice addition that I actively sought out due to being genuinely interesting.

So yeah, glad I eventually played it and a nice and straight forward platinum.

Should make an update before I forget what I have played.

Finished and platted the Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls remasters. Aside from showing what other people chose on BTS there isn't much else to them. The graphics are better appearently. They're already great enough so I couldn't tell. Loved the games when they were released on PS3, but since I basically remembered every detail about them, they become more of a grind for trophies. The games are best recommended for those who never got the chance to play the originals.

Bought Bastion and Banner Saga. They're good, but I'm not particular fascinated by either so I haven't beaten them yet, but I will.

Got Rune Factory 4 on the 3DS. Only through the first spring in the first year so far. Think I will play this in small doses so it won't become too much of a grind.

Still playing Star Wars Battlefront. 94 hours and counting.

The Uncharted Collection arrived today. Got number 2 for free on plus and bought number 3 used(or it was the other way around) so I've started on the only one I haven't played, Drake's Fortune. I intend to platinum them all, hopefully. Playing the first one on chrushing difficulty has been a bit of a bitch so far, died close to 60 times on chapter 4 alone. If there hadn't been a checkpoint midfight at the chrashed plane, I think I would have hurled the controller at the tv.

I finished Just Cause 3 last week. I completed the story, and liberated all the bases, before flying around collecting all the collectibles. The only thing I have left to do is a lot of the challenges, but I can't see me ever being arsed to do those, since most of them are rock hard. So essentially I have 100% this as much as I ever will.

Games competed in 2016:

Just Cause 3

(Forgive me for not spoilering that, but I'm on my phone, and it doesn't support spoiler tags. You'll just have to deal with my long list of completed games running off the bottom of the page and ruining your 56k internet limit.)

Finished Salt and Sanctuary. See the dedicated thread for more information. : peace:

Managed to reach Prestige 5 in Call of Duty: Black Ops III Multiplayer. It's just too much fun

It was a massive slog but I finally got through Yoshi's Island (Wii U VC).

I just find the whole experience annoying more than anything..

I'm definitely rubbing off on you..

I've been playing Tokyo Jungle today and have a lot to say about it.

First off, the game is weird as fuck. For those of you who don't know about the game, you basically start off as either a meat-eater or a plant-eating animal in a mode called Survival. It has rogue-like tendencies, so the animals you fight against are different each time, only the layout of the overworld stays the same. The game is a simple, yet complex. You kill animals to gain calories. Getting more calories upgrades you from rookie to veteran, then BOSS. The world is segmented into different areas, with each area containing flags/markers. By marking your territory, you claim it as your own and can set up a nest there with...yes...another of your kind. There are benefits to this, as you can gain other animals of your kind to wander around with you and you transfer to them when you die. They act as extra lives, very handy!

Now, as you progress, you can find items. These items boost your stats in an RPG kinda way and you find these small USB-stick type of icons. Now, these unlock the next chapter in the story. You need to obtain all three before the next chapter unlocks, but you can't get any more until you finish that chapter. So, you're constantly switching between Survival and Story.

Story mode starts off in a fun way. You take on the role of several different animals as you try to become the leader of that territory. Buuuuut...this mode falls off a cliff once you finish Chapter 10. Chapter 11 is pretty awful. Basically, you act as a hyena and have to work your way through the sewers to an enemy at the other end of the map in an ENFORCED STEALTH mission. Now, this sucks for many reasons:

1. You are fighting against Beagles (a breed of dog). Now, I know full well that I can destroy every single one of them pretty easily...but no, it HAS to be stealth and you can't be seen otherwise it's game over.

2. The checkpoints in this level are poorly placed.

3. It's just not fun to have to retry the same shit over and over again when you know you can do it better in another way.

The next level that follows is also shit. You fight a sabre-toothed tiger, which is a decent fight. Once that's done, you fight a hyena (I think), but it's overpowered for some reason compared to every other hyena you find in the game. Now...if you die, you've got to do both boss fights again! Why they couldn't put a check-point after the first one I have no idea.

Now, it gets worse. These USB-stick things contain archives that tell part of a story. Some of these are news articles explaining that animals are going crazy and are taking over, which is fine. The other half contain a completely nonsensical, shoe-horned story that...is just poorly told and explained. The final 2 chapters in the game are related to this.

I've completed the final chapter and you have to make a choice. I made my choice and was taken to the credits screen. Yay. I went back and made the other choice and there is a boss fight that is COMPLETELY NOT LIKE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME IN A SHIT WAY that really taints the whole experience. In the end, I gave up partway through the fight after dying for the tenth time and couldn't be fucked to finish it.

It's a shame that the story mode falls off a cliff because the actual gameplay is pretty fun. Survival mode is great and it's what should be played the most. Story mode is complete bollocks after 10 and I do feel that it ruins what was a pretty fun game.

I'd still recommend it, just don't feel compelled to complete the story mode as it's shit.

To end on a positive: Survival mode also has a list of challenges which also help you unlock more animals. There's a tree-system in place. So, you beat the dog challenge to unlock the cat, beat the cat's challenge to unlock the tiger, beat the tiger challenger to unlock the elephant, etc. I just made those up, but you get the idea. It's fun to try to take down biiiiig creatures like Lions and Crocodiles with small cats, haha. There is a great sense of humour to the game and it's pretty fun being able to see how long you can last before dying. Survival is by far the best part of the game.

Games of 2016

Flower - Finished

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - Finished

The Unfinished Swan - Finished

Grim Fandango Remastered - Finished

Race The Sun - Finished

The Wolf Among Us - Finished

Injustice: Gods Among Us - Story Finished

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone

Ico - Finished

Tokyo Jungle - Finished

The pure survival mode of the game is the best part. It's what I spent most of my time on. It was an epic ride when I made it to year 90+ as a bunny. Have been thinking about picking up again and make the 100 year milestone.

Don't remember much of the story, but if it's not required to unlock new animals(I don't think so), you might as well as skip it and just play the much more fun mode of survival. I do remember the last parts of the story mode were pretty shit.

Also I want to add a little part of the story; the game is basically put in a post acopolyptic world were humans are extinct. You take control of an animal, everything from bunnies to dogs like beagles, lions and even time travelling raptors, and have them survive in a toxic enviroment in Tokyo. To survive you must find food, a mating partner and breed offsprings that you will play as when yourself dies of old age or a hungry tiger. Game ends of course when you die without an offspring.

The pure survival mode of the game is the best part. It's what I spent most of my time on. It was an epic ride when I made it to year 90+ as a bunny. Have been thinking about picking up again and make the 100 year milestone.

 

Don't remember much of the story, but if it's not required to unlock new animals(I don't think so), you might as well as skip it and just play the much more fun mode of survival. I do remember the last parts of the story mode were pretty shit.

 

Also I want to add a little part of the story; the game is basically put in a post acopolyptic world were humans are extinct. You take control of an animal, everything from bunnies to dogs like beagles, lions and even time travelling raptors, and have them survive in a toxic enviroment in Tokyo. To survive you must find food, a mating partner and breed offsprings that you will play as when yourself dies of old age or a hungry tiger. Game ends of course when you die without an offspring.

Yeah, you don't need to complete the story to get new animals. The majority of the game takes place in survival. So, you unlock new animals, new chapters for the story, archives and items from the survival mode. It is the best part of the game and it is pretty fun to see which animals turn up in unexpected places. There was one playthrough where a gathering a chickens suddenly appeared on the map and I slaughtered every last fucking one, haha!

Cheers for adding the story synopsis. I'd rather they just ditched the story entirely, kept it as the basic "humans are gone, animals rule" kinda thing and go with that. Add more challenges and areas to survival. Maybe even special moves for each creature or the more powerful ones. I'm glad that I played through it and I love the majority of it. But, those final four chapters have left a sour taste. It really lets the game down.

How goes your playthrough of the game, @lostmario? You still chipping away at it?

Started and finished World 6 while watching the England match last night.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is complete!

I can't see myself doing what Hero did and 100% it, its good but not that great a game.

I lost all interest in the game around World 4, it became a struggle to get motivated to complete the last 2 worlds.

I must say that the art style holds up so well, there was times when I was playing it that I forgot it was a SNES/GBA game and that I was actually playing a 3DS game.

It was an enjoyable game to playthrough but is it up there with Super Mario Bros 3 & World, no, it's not. Its not memorable, not one level stands out.

You know what is next, Super Mario 64. If I can get to look right on my TV that is. Colours were off and made it very hard to play last time I tried.

I can't see myself doing what Hero did and 100% it, its good but not that great a game.

 

I lost all interest in the game around World 4, it became a struggle to get motivated to complete the last 2 worlds.

 

I must say that the art style holds up so well, there was times when I was playing it that I forgot it was a SNES/GBA game and that I was actually playing a 3DS game.

 

It was an enjoyable game to playthrough but is it up there with Super Mario Bros 3 & World, no, it's not. Its not memorable, not one level stands out.

 

You know what is next, Super Mario 64. If I can get to look right on my TV that is. Colours were off and made it very hard to play last time I tried.

You're really killing some of my great faves in this thread, lostmario! I can think of a few moments that did stand out for me - some of the boss battles are really great in it and the total mixup for the final battle with Bowser makes it feel fresh and impending too, imo.

I think it does spike difficulty wise at World 5. For sure as I kid I recall that being the world I struggled to 100% the most. However I did actually really enjoy the 100%ing of the game, I think the optional/hidden collectables are a really fun option; and whilst they can be slightly frustrating on some levels at first I don't think they are all that difficult, moreoften just requiring some patience(barring like...maybe 3 hidden things). I think the items option can obvs help a lot with some of them, as well as if you know how to get yourself stocked up on them easily *nudge nudge wink wink* but yeah. I'm rambling. Really enjoyed seeing you (re?)play through some of these old titles again now with a fresh and honest perspective, even if it doesn't sit with my view through the retrospecs.

Look forward to hearing about your SM64 adventures....and what possible gripes you could have there :p*!

(*actually a few very fair but small gripes to possibly be had with SM64)

I always felt like everyone thought I might be a little crazy to not rate Yoshi's Island particularly highly but it's interesting to see others playing it now who have similar issues with it. Playing Super Mario 64 will almost certainly make you wish for a direct sequel, @lostmario It was sublime when I last played it on the Wii Virtual Console

As for my own personal gaming, I'm still chipping away at Skies of Arcadia but I took a break to play Crazy Taxi last night. I've had it for quite a few years now but never really tried to get into it properly as, for whatever reason, I didn't feel like learning the advanced techniques. I now have no such reservations, though, and had loads of fun trying out everything and will definitely be playing it more often

Just finished Far Cry Primal (PS4). Started it yesterday morning and have spent the best part of Saturday and Sunday playing it. I couldn't put it down.

There was a lot of negative press about the game when it was announced and during its release. Many were calling it a cheap cash in and that Ubisoft were just knocking something together very quickly. I'm happy to report this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

Like most FC games, there's a crazy amount of stuff to do. Weapon upgrades, village rebuilding, character skill trees, beasties to tame and outposts to clear. It was nice just picking and choosing what I wanted to do and then switching it up if I got a little bored.

The taming of the beasts is a fantastic feature. Having a host of animals at your side made battles very fun and interesting. This was enhanced even further when you get the final rare animals by your side.

I would usually clear a fort out by first sending in my owl to scout the area and then perhaps attack an enemy or even drop a few bombs. I would then send in my sabertooth tiger to take out any enemies I marked with the owl. After that I would call him to return to me, jump on his back and then ride on into battle. Very epic!

There was once again a section in the game where you are high as a kite and go on some spirit journey. I swear the guys at Ubisoft are a bunch of crack heads. There's been a drug scene in all the recent FC games. Crazy people.

I've still got a few trophies to get ( Max skills and side quests ) but I may take a break from it before tackling the platinum. Maybe....

Finished playing Twilight Princess HD the other day, as some of you might have seen in the official thread I struggled to enjoy it for a while, but as soon as I reached the 4th or 5th temple it was a real joy to play. Feels kind of like a Zelda greatest hits, with some fantastic temples at the end. The City in the Sky with the double hook shots is an incredible temple, really effortless brilliance. The end fight was a bit of a disappointment though, it all ends a bit too soon.

I've never played Super Metroid through to the end, I've had a few false starts on it over the years but i'm determined to finally sit down and play through it, so I've started on that. Also bought Grim Fandango Remastered in the Steam sale, another one I've never played that I look forward to getting stuck into before Star Fox comes out.

Add me to the list of "People who don't like Yoshi's Island that much". I don't really know why, other than the fact that it simply didn't click with me.