Your 2015 Gaming Diary

Finished Panzer Dragoon Saga. Bit of a weird feeling really, since it's taken me 17 years and £160 to finally finish it.

Just got Knights of the Old Republic to do, then probably on to the sequel. Still need to try GTA heists too.

Gah. Spent another 30 mins on WW and am stuck in the tower place. I can't get the second statue to follow me across the hole. I'm stumped.

  Dr. bob said:

Gah. Spent another 30 mins on WW and am stuck in the tower place. I can't get the second statue to follow me across the hole. I'm stumped.

Do you want me to tell you the answer or do you want to figure out the surprisingly simple solution on your own?

  Jonnas said:

Do you want me to tell you the answer or do you want to figure out the surprisingly simple solution on your own?

If it's the statue I'm thinking of, he's going to hate himself for not figuring it out.

Nah i'll figure it out. It's not exactly Mastermind levels of difficulty, i'm just being slow.

Ah do you know what? I had to look it up, but I hadn't realised you could control the statues directly with the wand song thing. I thought you could only make them follow you or carry them.

I had a bit of a lazy morning in bed today and fully finished Super Mario World, having been chipping away at it this week. I don't think I'll ever stop loving that game

Knowing the game so intimately really does make me view the New Super Mario Bros series in a completely different and perhaps underwhelming light. I've played them all and actually enjoy them a great deal but I honestly couldn't pick out one of those games and be able to tell you instantly what specific worlds or levels are in it and what each one contains.

I'm sure a large part of it is growing up with Super Mario World and exploring it in great detail, as well as being through it multiple times, but it definitely has that memorable quality that I don't feel has been seen in a 2D Mario game since then.

Anyway, I've always been playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village this week and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. It's been a good week

Started up last weekend, and finished it this weekend Valient Hearts. What a nice little game, very charming. I enjoyed it, and if it wasn't for PS+ i probably would never have thought to play a game like this.

  Jimbob said:

Started up last weekend, and finished it this weekend Valient Hearts. What a nice little game, very charming. I enjoyed it, and if it wasn't for PS+ i probably would never have thought to play a game like this.

Glad to see more and more people playing this game.

I started and finished Final Fantasty Type-0 over the weekend. Really enjoyed it and will just quote my thoughts about it from the other thread.

  Quote

Platinum GET!

 

Really enjoyed this game and glad I finally got to play it. I was one of those who was hoping it would get released over here on the PSP, so for it to finally arrive on these shores and on a console pleased me greatly.

 

Firstly, the bad stuff. Some of the voice acting is terrible, like really bad. I dunno if it's the way the characters are wrote, the delivery or maybe just both.

 

You can tell it was a PSP game due to the structure of the missions. Many of them are just corridors or streets with a few enemies scattered about.

 

The story was really good at the start but in true S-E fashion things get a bit weird at the end and I would have preferred it to stay grounded and concentrate on the political side of things.

 

Now the good stuff. The soundtrack is amazing, not just the new music but remixed songs of classic Final Fantasy tunes as well. One of the best soundtracks for a JRPG that I've heard in a while.

 

Some of the characters I absolutely loved. I also enjoyed the variety that each of them brings to the game. I often favoured the ones that could do long range attacks with guns or playing cards. I loved Ace! It felt like I was playing as Gambit through the game.

 

Some of the classic nods to other FF games like FFVI and especially FFV were done amazingly well. The FFV reference gave me such a huge smile and the event and how they fit it into the game was fantastic.

 

S-E had me in tears at the end again. I think that's the 5th game they've made that has brought me to tears. Well played, S-E.

  Hero-of-Time said:

The game looks very lighthearted but it gets very dark at times. The ending though....

Gameplay was pretty formulaic, and the puzzle elements were incredibly simple (although it did have me scratching my head on a couple of occasions) but I was compelled to keep playing due to the story. Unusual for me, as that's the aspect of gaming I give least importance to, but in this case it really was the driving force.

  Jimbob said:

I enjoyed it, and if it wasn't for PS+ i probably would never have thought to play a game like this.

In other gaming diary news... Yesterday I decided to go back to an older game (something I rarely do these days) and I ended up playing through one of my favourite Wii games, Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise (all the way to Remix 10) in a single session. :awesome: Man, that game is as fantastic as ever. I had an ear to ear grin on my face the entire time.

I also decided to skip the practice sections, which made things even funnier when I couldn't remember which games used A+B inputs.

  / nando / said:

I had a bit of a lazy morning in bed today and fully finished Super Mario World, having been chipping away at it this week. I don't think I'll ever stop loving that game

 

Knowing the game so intimately really does make me view the New Super Mario Bros series in a completely different and perhaps underwhelming light. I've played them all and actually enjoy them a great deal but I honestly couldn't pick out one of those games and be able to tell you instantly what specific worlds or levels are in it and what each one contains.

 

I'm sure a large part of it is growing up with Super Mario World and exploring it in great detail, as well as being through it multiple times, but it definitely has that memorable quality that I don't feel has been seen in a 2D Mario game since then.

Without getting too close to a Super Mario fetishism and derailing the thread - do you find the same feeling with any other Mario games? I played SMB3 after SMW, but have been through similar and feel I know it pretty bloody well(not AS tightly as SMW, but still quite well). SMB2 I'm pretty down with too. The only one to have done similar for me since SMW would be SM64.

  Rummy said:

Without getting too close to a Super Mario fetishism and derailing the thread - do you find the same feeling with any other Mario games? I played SMB3 after SMW, but have been through similar and feel I know it pretty bloody well(not AS tightly as SMW, but still quite well). SMB2 I'm pretty down with too. The only one to have done similar for me since SMW would be SM64.

It's funny because that's the same for me.

I love all the Mario games and enjoy them all but there's something special about SMW and SM64 that brings out a sense of satisfaction, joy and nostalgia all at the same time.

Oh man, Super Mario World.

Still have to play it this year. I've completed it multiple times each year since I've gotten it for my Wii.

Now I have a SNES and love to bring back part of my childhood once in a while

  drahkon said:

Oh man, Super Mario World.

 

Still have to play it this year. I've completed it multiple times each year since I've gotten it for my Wii.

 

Now I have a SNES and love to bring back part of my childhood once in a while

Having just seen the N-E frontpage article about titles available for download in the Stars catalogue I'm very close to registering all my still hanging around scratchoffs if they'll amount to SMW for WiiU. Quite keen for my mates to come round for a marathon day of it at some point. Just wish the Stars catalogue hadn't been so fucking retarded(as it seems, with Nintendo) to make your stars expire. Sure I redeemed original wii credit that expired too. Fucking...fuckers. Grrr.

/rantrantrant

  Rummy said:

Without getting too close to a Super Mario fetishism and derailing the thread - do you find the same feeling with any other Mario games?

Like @Hero\-of\-Time, Super Mario 64 is as close as any Mario game has come to being as memorable in my mind as Super Mario World. Having played through it last year and having a ridiculously good time, I came away from it feeling like I knew it all pretty well and can picture all the levels and their layouts in my head without much thought.

I love Super Mario Galaxy to the point where clearing it 100% for the first time made me wonder if it was my favourite game ever. I'll definitely be through it again in the coming years but as special as it was, I have no idea what levels are where or what is specifically included in each.

Like you, @Rummy, I didn't play Super Mario Bros 3 until after Super Mario World, via Super Mario Allstars. To be perfectly honest, I'm not overly fond of it and, controversially, probably prefer the Wii and Wii U New Super Mario Bros games I will probably play it again at some point but there was always something about it which just didn't sit quite right with me. If I'd played it first, things may have been different

Anyway, I've made a little more progress in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker If I didn't already know rouughly how many stages are supposed to be in the game, I'd have had a heart attack when the credits started rolling after 17 or 18 stages

*grumble**grumble* Enemy Mind is a perfectly good game that got unreasonably hard in the final level. I might need the gamepad to beat it, which is a shame. I planned on retaking it somewhere down the line, anyway, but the fact that I didn't beat it yet is going to feel like a thorn.

So, I'm retaking The Whispered World instead. A point&click adventure game I had put on hiatus due to a hectic schedule, but I can continue it now.

Also, I got access to a PS2 again recently, so I'll retake Final Fantasy X soon enough, as well.

  / nando / said:

Like @Hero\-of\-Time, Super Mario 64 is as close as any Mario game has come to being as memorable in my mind as Super Mario World. Having played through it last year and having a ridiculously good time, I came away from it feeling like I knew it all pretty well and can picture all the levels and their layouts in my head without much thought.

 

I love Super Mario Galaxy to the point where clearing it 100% for the first time made me wonder if it was my favourite game ever. I'll definitely be through it again in the coming years but as special as it was, I have no idea what levels are where or what is specifically included in each.

 

Like you, @/ nando / - I say you should come round mine for an afternoony/day and we blitz SMW together. Swap after castles, when leaving a world, or dying

Nando's pulled!

  dazzybee said:

Nando's pulled!

Super Mario World would definitely be a fast way into my heart

  Rummy said:

If you ever end up down London for some reason @/ nando / - I say you should come round mine for an afternoony/day and we blitz SMW together. Swap after castles, when leaving a world, or dying

I'm finding it hard to resist booking a flight over

I remember playing Donkey Kong Country with one of my friends a couple of years ago where we used a stop watch to race each other through levels, as well as doing the 2-Player Contest mode to see who could reach the end of a world first. It was good fun

We finished The Walking Dead - Season Two yesterday.

There is now a big hole in my life as I eagerly await season three. Please arrive soon.

Overall, Season One was better. Season Two could never live up to it as the bar had been set so ridiculously high to begin with, but there were still so many awesome or touching moments in this. I agonised over the final two decisions I had to make during the last episode.

Coming to the end of March and I still haven't finished Ocarina of Time... I'm at Gerudo Fortress so there's still time, can't wait 'til it's done!! Been playing lots this month, but mainly puzzlers or games you can't "finish" But still managed to get 5 done.

Finished Wheres Wally on the iPad, and I have to say I thought it was an amazing game actually, perfect iPad fodder, but I enjpyed it a lot and had a surprising amount of content and different ideas in it. Tried the sequel, Hollywood, and they ruined it, and it kept crashing so I binned it off!

Blek - an amazing little puzzler on the Wii U. Short at 60 levels, but I didn't care, still worth it, different to anything else I've played. If you like puzzlers i'd recommend it highly, or even if you just like innovative gameplay.

  dazzybee said:

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This one turned up on my Mii Plaza a few weeks ago! I thought I recognised you.

The credits rolled in Professor Layton and the Curious Village last night

It was a great wee game and one that I'm glad to have finally picked up and played, even if it felt like some of the puzzles were repeated a few too many times. I still have the odd puzzle to hunt down that I seem to have missed on my way through so I'll likely get through those before putting the game back on the shelf. I just hope there's no more slide puzzles as I tend to dislike those.. and always have

If someone handed me a Rubik's Cube today, I'd throw it at their face.. or maybe their balls