(Retro) What have you been playing this week?

[samanosuke]

Finally finished Earthbound (SNES) and Policenauts (PSX). Both absolutely amazing games.

Now onto Super Mario World (SNES) and Ys Books I + II (PCE-CD). Can you believe I've never finished SMW? Playing it through now has reminded me just how close to gaming perfection it is!

[nakamura]

Super Mario World is gaming perfection. I can't think of a single flaw.

[Jay]

Strangely I have also been playing Policenauts and Super Marioworld. Policenauts on PSP and Super MarioWorld on both my SFC and my GB Micro.

[aticatac]

Katakis (Denaris) on the C64

[fallenangle]

Still doing PS Rayman and really not enjoying it much. Great looking, fine control system and, apart from the camera, as polished as you could imagine a game like this could be on the good old PS. But as I've said here earlier: the problem I have is with the gameplay design - pedantic in the extreme. Learn a level by rote or die and die, many, many times is what I've done.

[Matt~]

Still doing PS Rayman and really not enjoying it much....
...die and die, many, many times is what I've done.

Tried a playthrough of this with a friend recently, remembering it to be quite hard. "Truly a test of platforming prowess," we dubbed our task, expecting to put in a good effort... then got a game over in band land

[Jamie]

Playing Grandia on the PS1 at the moment, also going through Super Mario World on the Snes for the hundredth or so time.

[fallenangle]

Tried a playthrough of this with a friend recently, remembering it to be quite hard. "Truly a test of platforming prowess," we dubbed our task, expecting to put in a good effort... then got a game over in band land

Band Land (Bongo Hills) is indeed where it gets really tricky. It's not hideously difficult to begin with although one mistake will kill Rayman, But with the camera not showing you enough of what's below/above/left/right him you're given minimum time to react to things like jumping from the collapsing or moving clouds. You have to learn those by rote.

Worse for me are the rotating 4-sphere moving platforms where you have to keep jumping between the spheres to avoid being knocked off. There's a level where you get attacked by one of those annoying flying midget enemies at the same time. It took me so many lives to get through that I had reset the PS, reload and restart Bongo Hills all over again.

When you get onto the Band Land (Presto Allegro) levels there are some horrible choke points involving miniscule 'ice' platforms which had me ripping what's left of my hair out. Apparently it gets harder later on.........

[nakamura]

Playing Grandia on the PS1 at the moment, also going through Super Mario World on the Snes for the hundredth or so time.

Grandia is so utterly sublime. It manages to combine the slapstick with the serious and tells a pretty good story along the way.

[fallenangle]

Like every traditional RPG I've tried I just couldn't get on with Grandia. I may be mis-remembering but I think it was ported to the DC and I think that is version I had. What I do remember is that I paid only a couple of quid for it new at Dixons when they were getting rid of all their old gaming stock and sold it on later for a good profit.

Very similar thing happened with Skies of Arcadia which I picked up from EB/Game when they were selling off their DC stuff. Tried to get into it but couldn't tolerate that either. Sold it on at a profit too.

[nakamura]

Grandia is Saturn and PlayStation only and sublime. Grandia 2 is DC and PS2 and is rubbish. Despite a good battle system, the rest of the game was boring, characterless and horribly dated.
Skies of Arcadia is good but certainly overrated. The main reason being the insane amount of random battles and the nice but hardly amazing visuals.

There are RPG's suitable for the more casual player of the genre, those ones are not ones I would recommend though.

[fallenangle]

Ah, it must have been Grandia 2 on the DC then. I know I tried the original Grandia so that must have been on the PS. Indeed the random battles is Skies of Arcadia just drained away all the fun, you couldn't go more than a few paces without triggering one.

It's the main problem I have with traditional RPGs and believe me I've tried to get into them including ones like FF7 and 8 with just a handful of hours play completed sitting in my unfinished games drawer for over a decade untouched. Currently resting from Rayman which I might go back too despite my frustration, I don't like to give up on a game which has undoubted quality even if the thing is frustrating the hell out of me.

Talking of which, I've gone back for some more sessions on PC The Longest Journey. I started it over 18 months ago and a lot of the time I love it. The diagolue and voice acting is excellent, often very witty and the story telling top notch. But then you'll get some obscure inventory puzzle or the game refuses to let you progress because you've missed some miniscule item you could only find by cursor wiping every screen. Then there are the times the game decides you're not standing in exactly the right place to use an item, deliberately hides an interactive item until you're standing right next to it or simply haven't done things or spoken to somebody in the 'correct' order to trigger the next event.

These sorts of things have always annoyed me about traditional adventure games right from the first time I played Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars on the PS.

[nakamura]

Random battles are indeed a chore. I can still tolerate them in a few old RPG's as that is how they were. I don't find them in FF7-9 to be that bad and in FFX you can get a gem that stops them altogether so at least you can explore and level up when you need to.

Games like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Grandia,Persona 3-4 and many more modern titles do away with random battles nicely.

I do enjoy levelling in games but I don't like it forced upon me. I like to explore an area and not be shut down by fighting every few steps.

['Press Start']

I got half way through Grandia and gave up. Not sure why just a natural disinterest in continuing. I really wanted to keep playing but I did not enjoy the battle system. I did the same with the Lunar series.

I hope Team Andromeda does not see this post. He will have a go at me if he does.

[S3M]

Grandia is Saturn and PlayStation only and sublime. Grandia 2 is DC and PS2 and is rubbish.

The Gandia Digital Museum on Saturn was quite good, but they did get worse each sequel, Grandia 2 wasn't bad just not as good as the previous one. Gandia Xtreme is a bit poor and Grandia 3 is terrible and kill off the series with it's poor sales.

On the gaming front just finished off Super Metroid on my US SNES and have started Super Mario RPG! Never managed to finish it yet but it's one of those great games I need to finally get around to finishing.