(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[Cepp]

Yeah that's the plan with Ace Combat 3

The draw distance is why I'm hitting so many friendly craft. Need to make sure I get closer before firing.

I still have Starlancer and Darkstar One on PC to play through as well. Plenty to keep me busy

[Cepp]

Finished Colony Wars, or at least one of the routes anyway. I cheated to watch the rest of the endings.

It's not a bad starting point for the series but its a little frustrating. There's no room for error when figuring out how you accomplish a mission and you'll often fail and have to re-do it. The game only lets you save at the end of every act though and every act has between 3 and 5 stages. It uses branching paths to send you down different routes depending on whether you fail or succeed in a mission but you can't see it. Some of them are essentially game overs.

You can enter a cheat to enable all stages, which then shows you all of the branching paths. Having this viewable from the menu with the option to save and go back to take different routes would have been better.

The framerate tanks hard when there's lots of large ships on screen, more so when they blow up. They do look cool but it makes hitting enemies hard.

[chopemon]

On Saturday I bashed through the SF Zero 3 arcade mode with Cammy on Dreamcast. Been so long since I played it that I forgot about the extra fight before Bison. Great surprise.

Also played Super Monkey Ball on the Cube for the first time. I really enjoyed it but I'm not a fan of the lives system for games like this. I like to bash my head against a problem level over and over but in this you have to restart a 30 course run if you run out of lives.

[fallenangle]

Finished original Xbox Jade Empire.

A good game of its type, a RPG with a real time combat system, looks good and on the OGXbox pretty much unique; deserves wider appreciation IMHO.

[chopemon]

I really enjoyed Jade Empire. I remember it having some very cool locations.

I started Blue Stinger last night and had a blast with it. Really enjoying it and love how the shopping street area looks like a Geocities site covered in low res gifs.

[wakka]

After starting it a little while ago and then prompting hitting a bit of a slump, I've picked Sakura Wars back up again. This is the Saturn OG with the fan translation.

I love this game! It's such a relaxing, fun place to be. The story and characters are charming, and the division into individual episodes of about an hour or so each makes it perfect for picking up each evening to play one through start to finish. It's even more like actually playing an anime than something like Persona.

There's some really nice variety to the gameplay, too - each episode contains a mix of visual novel, SRPG combat, and usually a minigame or too on top. There's always some animated FMV to watch too.

Honestly, I can't speak highly enough of it so far. They could redraw the graphics and put this on Switch and they could honestly sell it for full price. Looking forward to playing more.

A note on my setup for this game - I'm using original hardware (packed to the gills with modchip/BIOS/PSU mods by Speedy, but using CD-R rather than ODE), connected to an OSSC, connected to an LCD desk monitor, and controlling it with the Saturn mouse on the official Sakura Wars mousepad. It feels vaguely retro futuristic and cyberpunk

[fallenangle]

Original Xbox Mercenaries - basically GTA3 but set in a faux North Korean war zone.

Not bad at all even if the set up makes no logical sense and gameplay is almost entirely derivative. It still works as a game if you can accept the idea of five armies each with their own agenda driving around all parts of the fairly large map shooting at each other willy-nilly for no real purpose.

Like GTA plenty of sandbox gameplay opportunities but unfortunately of no consequence ie. you can completely destroy any army base (which is fun) but on next reload it's magically rebuilt again.

[chopemon]

Blasted through nearly all of Dino Crisis 2 today and what a great little treat. I thought the first one was just okay but this one is great fun. It's silly fun and has some great set pieces. I have no idea if there is any team member overlap but some parts remind me of the wonderful Lost Planet and Regina dual wielding SMGs reminds me of Dante's independent aiming in the first DMC.

People keep asking for a Dino Crisis reboot and if Capcom does one, I hope it's a big dumb action game like this.

The game is split into different areas which you get to by boat. A reboot would be great if there was a small archipelago of small, intricately and deliberately designed islands that you can travel between at will.

[fallenangle]

I really enjoyed Dino Crisis, more than any Resident Evil TBH. Puzzle heavy and for me dinosaurs trump zombies and mutants every time.

Dino Crisis 2 was a refreshingly different experience I too very much enjoyed despite the change in emphasis in the gameplay. Its jone of those games that plays well despite that because it still stays within the limits of the platform and game engine. Its not an overambitious concept change that has had to be shoehorned in to fit.

Dino Crisis 3 I do not even want to talk about - I eventually ignored the poor reviews and bought it anyway. Wish I hadn't.

[dataDave]

Xmen vs. Street Fighter - MiSTer Some bug reporting.

Final Fantasy VI: Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition - MiSTer I seem to have lost three hours of progress from my save fiie. Very weird.

[phillv85]

I’ve been playing some X-Men vs. Street Fighter on the Saturn. It’s such a good game, but I don’t think the difficulty setting works on it. It defaults at 2 stars, which I blitzed through no problem. I then decided to stick it up to maximum 8 stars and it was just as easy. I need to try out the difficulty on the arcade board now and see if that makes much difference.

[Ghost]

Just finished Double Dragon on the evercade, its the first time Ive completed the game and I’m not ashamed to admit that I used save states. I forgot how brutal that game could be with no way to replenish your health or increase lives and no continues. The final boss battle was certainly an endurance run. I cant imagine finishing the game without using save states.

[fallenangle]

Still playing original Xbox Mercenaries.

GTA in a 'Korean' war zone - good fun and enjoying most of it a lot but some of the gameplay elements clearly were not thought through or play tested enough so it can end up being quite frustrating at times.

[Baseley09]

Real nostalgia buzz with this one, used to have this, Rastan and maybe Tekhan soccer (unsure deffo trackball sports game) At the Royal Albert pub my folks would take us to on Sundays. Is it a sin to use lever control?

[Cepp]

Finished Darkstar One which is essentially a Freelancer clone. It's not as good, the story is nonsense and the translation isn't too great but I do love Freelancer and found enough here to keep me entertained.