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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Gaming What was the last videogame you beat?

Discussion in 'Community' started by Siths_Revenge, Mar 21, 2005.

  1. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos DLC

    Set atop a group of artificial islands floating / travelling through the atmosphere of a gas giant, this won't be the most innovative piece of DLC you've played, but much like its predecessor, Terror on Gorgon, it's a fun piece of content. Navigation is far easier than Gorgon too, but the main appeal remains the quirky cast and some very sharp dialogue. Combat is fun enough, but its the conversations that are the star here.
     
  2. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    Some PSP games got PS3 releases. The two God of War PSP games did. But they were super-popular; I'm sure a lot of less popular games didn't.
     
    DarthBoba likes this.
  3. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
  4. Moll

    Moll Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2016
    Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla - Wrath of the Druids DLC

    I really enjoyed my time in Ireland for this DLC, it was very pretty and fun to explore on my adorable Lynx. I also really enjoyed the trade post quests, that was a cool feature. Looking forward to Siege of Paris.
     
    darthcaedus1138 likes this.
  5. darkspine10

    darkspine10 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Dec 7, 2014
    Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005). Thanks to the recent remaster, I had a chance to revisit this classic PT era game from my childhood. Does it still hold up? Yes, pretty much :p

    It's definitely still the best game for putting you in a 'boots on the ground' experience, there are a wealth of little details that make it feel like you're really seeing the Clone perspective. The squad mechanics are mostly solid, the AI follows commands well, apart from occasional jank (one time I got stuck in a hangar near a Super Battle Droid dispenser, and the other clones could barely react fast enough before being cut down in endless loops). The Ghost Ship level in particular is great, starting out as space horror, before turning into a New Hope style prison break, before climaxing in several hangar defences against multiple enemy waves.

    Some funny aspects seem a little dated, like Geonosians showing up in the final level on Kashyyyk just to pad out the enemy variety a little, or film stuff like Phase II troopers not being incorporated and all the clones sounding completely different.

    Plus it's not a particularly long game, it only took me a couple of days to beath. But overall it's still a very fun time, even coming from someone who really doesn't like First-Person Shooters (it's basically this and Half-Life 2, I hated the Bioshock games' combat).
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2021
    Moll and christophero30 like this.
  6. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    Rogue1-and-a-half Plays Through the History of Video Games: FLASHFORWARD EDITION!

    [​IMG]

    Silent Hill (1999) – Konami
    Part 2

    *Okay, well, only one person responded to my question about whether I should do this walkthroughs as a single long post or break them up in sections and that person said I should do them as a single long post, so that means that I’ll be attempting to complete my full walkthrough of Silent Hill in just this one post.

    *So, one of the walkthroughs I used when I got stuck in this game says that the game has a prologue and nine chapters. We’ll be starting here at the beginning of chapter two. In other words, buckle up for a long post.

    *All right, so Midwich Elementary School. As we enter the darkened school, we grab a map. The school has two floors as well as a basement, a roof & a courtyard with a clocktower, so we’ll be exploring here for a while, but I’ll hit the highlights.

    *I think I neglected to mention that we’ve already picked up a flashlight. The school isn’t foggy, but it’s dark.

    *As we go through the school, we come across various ambiguous clues. Cryptic messages scrawled on the wall in blood, strange symbols carved into the ground . . .

    *These maps are super-cool. Like they’re very simple and schematic, but I think I’ve discovered that exploring areas with a map really scratches an itch for me. It is just so satisfying to go through rooms, one at a time, making them off the map as you go and marking where doors are locked and where particular items are. It’s so cool.

    *And I have to say, exploring an area without a map is fine, but I often try to just stay on the main game-path in a case like that. But if I have a map of every room in an environment, I WILL ******* GO IN EVERY ROOM.

    *Anyway, we’ve got some demon children lurching about with knives that you have to either outrun or kill. They’re the main enemy in the school area.

    *There are also these weird little shadowy figures; they are also about the size of a toddler and they will rush at you when you enter a room, making a high pitched squeaking sound. They don’t hurt you when they touch you though; they just go right through you. Likewise, you can’t kill them. So, I guess they’re just for atmosphere.

    *And fair enough because the first time I entered a dark room and one of them charged into my flashlight beam, squeaking, I just about pissed myself.

    *Also, there’s a really good jump scare involving a cat in one of the locker rooms. It’s a cliché to have a cat jump scare, but I’ll forgive the game because it’s pretty well executed.

    *There is one pretty cool riddle here involving a piano keyboard and a poem about birds. You have to figure out which keys correspond to which birds, based on the poem being about black birds and white birds. You know, like the black and white keys on a piano. I dug that puzzle. It’s probably the second best puzzle in the game.

    *The puzzles here are, on the whole, not bull****, which is weird for a game like this. I only had to look up a puzzle solution a couple of times.

    *So, you’re finding items that you need to take to the clock tower in order to get the clock tower to unlock. Pretty standard gameplay. And, of course, once you have them all, the clock tower remains locked because there’s no power. And as we all know, when there’s no power in a horror game, TO THE BASEMENT WE GO!

    *Hilariously, nothing happens in the basement. You literally just walk into the boiler room and turn a wheel and then go back upstairs.

    *It’s at this point in the game that we enter the nether-realm, one of the hallmarks of the Silent Hill series, usually signaled by a siren or something like that. So, you’re in the same basic layout of the school, so the maps still work and everything, but the environment has changed to a sort of industrial Nightmare on Elm Street boiler room aesthetic and you get to explore the entire school AGAIN!

    *This is actually a really smart way to get extra gameplay out of a map. You essentially can build your levels and then just double the amount of environments you have just by changing the skins. And somewhat changing the way you have to maneuver through the area by locking different doors and such.

    *It is at this point that the game introduces hissing cockroaches as enemies. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

    *The game does a weird thing wherein the bathrooms serve as portals to a different floor. So, you go into a bathroom on the first floor and when you exit, you’re on the second floor and vice versa. Simple as this sounds, it really messed my head up because I just could not figure out what was happening for an absurdly long time.

    *So, the blood writings and symbols you’ve seen have kind of teased a cult or a ritual of some kind as the reason for all of this strangeness. But in the school library, you’ll find a book that talks about ghosts and how they are often associated with young girls which seems like a clue as well.

    *And it’s around this time that Harry just lampshades something else the player might have been thinking: what if he’s actually in a coma after the car accident and this is all in his head.

    *So they’re really throwing everything at the wall.

    *Combat, I should say, is pretty fun, especially against the more human sized enemies. When you’re outside, there are flying monsters, kind of skinless pterodactyls (great band-name, by the way) and they can be a little harder to aim at and the cockroaches aren’t that easy to shoot either. But once you get the controls down to where you can reliably aim/shoot/move at the same time, it’s pretty fun.

    *Of course, like in RE, you don’t necessarily want to waste your bullets shooting things you can easily avoid. If you’re just passing through an area and there’s a couple of monsters, just dodge them and sprint on through. If you need to stick around and explore, you might want to headshot them.

    *Now, in the Library, you also find a book that features a strange story about a knight fighting a giant lizard: “The huge creature attacked, jaws open wide. This was what the man wanted. Calmly drawing his bow, he shot into the lizard's gaping mouth. Effortlessly the arrow flew, piercing the defenseless maw. And the lizard fell down dead.”

    *Hmm, what an interesting anecdote to just randomly come across at a time like this I’ll bet you ten dollars I have to fight a lizard in the next ten minutes.

    *Yup, it’s back down to the basement one last time where a giant lizard has materialized. Luckily, at this point, Harry’s found a shotgun and this boss isn’t all that much of a boss, unless you missed the shotgun and the lizard story above.

    *Once the lizard is dead, the nightmare school reverts to the normal version and Harry has a strange vision of a young woman he doesn’t recognize. He flatly intones, “What was that? Who the hell was that? This is . . . a boiler room? What is going on here?” and then gets back to business.

    *It’s the “this is . . . a boiler room?” that made me laugh out loud. Yeah, if I only got to ask four questions about the situation you’re in right now, Harry, I’d definitely waste one of them on whether or not the room with four boilers in it is a boiler room.

    *But as Harry heads back upstairs, he hears the distant tolling of a church bell and that means Chapter Two is over as Harry heads back out into the streets of Old Silent Hill. Farewell Midwich Elementary, you were a lot of fun.

    *You have to puzzle your way to the Balkan church by going through a house in order to get around some obstacles but when you get there, things take a real turn.

    *I just have to briefly reference one of the walkthroughs I was using. I just stumbled across a walkthrough from 2004 written by Adnan Javed for gamefaqs.com and I like using personal walkthroughs sometimes as opposed to more official ones and the reason is because of details like this.

    *At the beginning of the walkthrough, Adnan gives us some stats on the game: “Difficulty: Easy; Endings: 5; Playable Characters: 1; NPC: 5; Annoying Characters: 1 (dahlia)”

    *Well, brace yourselves, because “(dahlia)” has arrived.

    *Though, I gotta say, I think the statement that there’s only 1 annoying character in this game is VERY generous.

    *Anyway, Harry enters the church and encounters an old gypsy woman. I know things have been pretty confusing to this point, guys, but no worries, Dahlia is here to clear things up.

    * “I’ve been expecting you. It was foretold by Gyromancy.”

    *Oh boy . . .

    *I know things have been pretty confusing to this point, guys, but no worries, Dahlia is here to clear things up.

    * “The town is being devoured by darkness! Strength must overcome petty desire, childish sleep talk!” “The demon will swallow up this land . . . There’s only two left to seal this town to the abyss, the mark of Samael.” “You must follow the path of the hermit concealed by Flauros.”

    *I hope Harry’s next objective is turning off the gas because I’m pretty sure there’s a leak in here.

    *So, Dahlia gives me a weird object shaped like a pyramid, calls it the “Flauros” and peaces out the back door, locking it behind her, of course, so I can’t follow.

    *I was looking up Dahlia on the Silent Hill wiki in order to pull those quotes, which I promise you are all real, and I discovered that Dahlia is supposed to be 46 years old. I literally loled.

    [​IMG]

    *Dahlia “it’s the mileage” Gillespie.

    *This, by the way, is Dahlia Gillespie in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

    [​IMG]

    *I probably shouldn’t have called Shattered Memories a “remake” in my introduction. Clearly more of a “reimagination” or “porn version.”

    *Anyway, before she leaves, Dahlia tells Harry that the next place he should check out is the hospital in town.

    *Rare moment of lucidity for William Blake over here.

    *Anyway, you then leave the Church with a Drawbridge Key and “the Flauros,” whatevertf that is. Once you get to the drawbridge and lower it with the key, you stroll across the river and out of chapter three, making chapter three pleasingly short.

    *Now you’re in Central Silent Hill and before Harry gets to the hospital, he swings by the police station where we get more possible explanations for what’s going on here as Harry peruses newspaper stories and files about a mysterious new drug that’s being sold in Silent Hill with unknown side effects and also it induces hallucinations!

    *I do like that the game gives you so many red herrings. A lot of games use hidden materials to flesh out the main story, but this game uses them to obscure the story and make you even less sure what’s happening. I like that.

    *Just down the street from the Police Station? The hospital, which means that Chapter Four outdoes even Chapter Three in the brevity sweepstakes. On into the hospital and Chapter Five.

    *I have to say that the game really is hitting the classics in terms of scary environments. A school and a hospital, right? Easy choices for a game like this, but it does them well.

    *So, here we find ourselves in Alchemilla Hospital which is a less obviously referential name than Midwich Elementary, at least to me. It’s almost certainly a reference to something as just about everything is in this game, but it’s over my head.

    *The map of the hospital indicates that we’ll be here for a while: a basement and three above ground floors.

    *But before Harry gets too far into the hospital, he runs into Dr. Michael Kaufmann, the medical director at Alchemilla Hospital. He’s barricaded himself in a back office with a gun.

    *Or rather, he’s acting like he’s barricaded himself. I mean, the door was unlocked, dude.

    *He tells Harry that he was taking a nap in his office and when he woke up, everything was . . . the way it is.

    *He also shoots at Harry when he enters the room. Yeah, he’s got a gun.

    *Kaufmann is the character I kind of think is about as stupid as Dahlia. Or maybe stupider. “Thank God. Another human being.” *less than two minutes later* “Well, I’d better be going. I can’t just sit around here doing nothing.” And he just leaves.

    *Um, bro, where exactly are you rushing off to so urgently? WHERE are you going? I mean, if you’re anxious to get to Thursday Night Bingo, I THINK ITS BEEN CANCELLED

    *All right, so that utter moron out of the way, it’s time for Harry to start exploring the hospital.

    *I do just want to really praise the save mechanic in this game. There’s a notebook in the lobby of the hospital, right? That’s where you save. So, as you explore the hospital using the map, you can, at any time you want, just return to the lobby and save. I love this. It allows you to stop playing at any time; just go back and save at whatever point you are. And you can save as many times as you want, so if you feel like you just made a lot of progress or passed an important scene, just go save before going any farther. It’s so cool.

    *So, yeah, I’m using the map and just exploring everything I can here. And at one point a mysterious 4th floor appears on the elevator button panel, so this hospital is awesome. And it’s actually pretty cool how, once you get to the fourth floor, disorienting and unsettling it is to be exploring an environment you don’t have a map for. The game has trained you really well to just expect to always have a map, so it’s very unsettling to suddenly not have one.

    *It is at this point that Harry begins encountering zombies. These are the first recognizable as human enemies in the game and they’re mostly doctors and nurses of course.

    *You also have to double tap them if you shoot them, because they will absolutely fall to the floor and then get back up. And here’s another interesting maybe-clue/maybe red-herring. When you double tap them on the floor, what you’re actually doing is shooting a strange tumor on the back of their necks. Right? They fall face down and then they all have a large tumor or growth that appears to be moving. And it seems that THIS is actually what you have to kill in order to make sure the enemy is dead. So, THAT’s interesting.

    *As Harry explores the hospital he’s finding plates, which are not plates you eat off of, but metal insignias or something. And I laughed out loud when I found the first one because you have no idea that you’re even looking for anything specific and then suddenly the game is like: “YOU FOUND THE PLATE OF THE TURTLE.”

    *Anyway, the plates obviously are used to solve a puzzle that is actually a really cool riddle puzzle involving, just like the piano puzzle, using an abstract poem in order to figure out a sequence in which to line up eight different colored plates. I have to say, after the piano puzzle and this one, the puzzles in this game are above average in my opinion. This plate one is downright fantastic as a riddle-based puzzle.

    *So, I think this hospital chapter is the longest chapter in the game. There’s a lot of backtracking and exploring and then, of course, you end up in the Nightmare version of the hospital. But I never got bored. I just genuinely like the atmosphere of this game.

    *So, anyway, after tons of puzzle solving, item finding, exploring and backtracking, let me just get to the meat of the story as we wrap up the hospital section.

    *You eventually find yourself in the basement and you’ll find a secret tunnel. Harry then discovers a hidden room where it appears a patient was being kept. Looks like the patient was named Alessa and there are pictures that make it seem like she was here for years and . . . in a couple of those pictures, she kind of looks like Cheryl, Harry’s daughter. And this also kinda looks like the woman Harry’s been seeing in visions.

    *Next, Harry goes back upstairs and encounters Lisa Garland, a nurse at the hospital. Just like Kaufmann, she claims she was taking a nap and when she woke up, everything was like this.

    *I think the real story here is the toxic nap culture of Silent Hill. Why’s everybody just napping in the middle of the day while they’re at work?

    *Harry mentions the basement, but Lisa says she was never allowed into the basement. Almost no one at the hospital was. Harry’s, of course, asking Lisa if she’s seen Cheryl when Harry has a sharp pain and he blacks out.

    *When Harry wakes up, he’s back in the real world and Lisa’s nowhere to be found. You know who is? Dahlia Gillespie, still babbling about the Mark of Samael and the Other Church and a ritual of some kind. Apparently, Harry’s the only one who can stop whatever is going on here. Dahlia gives him a key to an antique shop and ducks out the side door. Harry leaves the hospital, heading for this mysterious antique shop and we’re into chapter six, back out into Central Silent Hill.

    *I have to say that at this point, the game does kind of take a step down in quality in my opinion. But it might just be that as a player you get kind of used to a game’s atmosphere and its tricks and, at this point, we’re past the half-point of the game, so maybe I had just gotten used to it. Regardless, I think a little more than the first half of this game is really great. Both the school and the hospital are great environments and the game uses them well.

    *Anyway, Harry gets to the antique shop and finds a hidden passageway in the back of the store. Before he can enter the passageway, guess who’s back: Cybil Bennett, our police officer friend from way back at the beginning.

    *I was genuinely surprised to see her again. In some older games like this, the usage of characters can feel very clumsy, like they’re more plot devices than anything else, showing up to spout exposition or outright tell you where to go next. So far in this game, that’s pretty much been how the characters have been used. So I figured Cybil is there to tell you that Silent Hill is cut-off from the outside world, give you a gun and then she’s done, you know? So I wasn’t expecting her to come back.

    *And, no spoilers, but this doesn’t really impact the overall story of the game. There’s a scene later with her that’s important, but it could have been cut out quite easily and so her return doesn’t feel mandated by the laws of the game. Her coming back to Silent Hill to try to help Harry feels like . . . it feels like an actual character decision. That’s pretty cool.

    *Anyway, Cybil tells Harry that she saw a young girl out near the lake, but when she tried to follow her, she disappeared. Maybe that was Cheryl.

    *Cybil cuts through all the crap after Harry tries to school her on everything he’s been hearing from Dahlia Gillespie: “Darkness devouring the town? Must be on drugs.”

    *Anyway, Harry decides to go on down this secret passageway and Cybil says she’ll stay behind to “cover him.” From another room? Something about these tactics seems a little off.

    *Anyway, Harry discovers an altar and some occultish paraphernalia in the basement and realizes that this place where the cult has been performing its rituals is what Dahlia meant by the “Other Church.” I actually like that. That has a very menacing ring to it, the “Other Church.” This secret church. Yeah, I like that.

    *We then do a weird cutaway to Cybil up top, calling down to Harry. When she gets no response she goes down the tunnel and discovers that Harry has disappeared. That’s just kind of strange, cutting away from the player’s character like that.

    *So, where is Harry? Well, he’s waking up in the Nightmare world in the hospital with Nurse Lisa. Lisa’s puzzled about the situation. Why is she trapped in this nightmare world when it seems that all of her colleagues have been turned into monsters? I guess this is just a vision. She shares a little information we already know about how culty everybody is in this town and then Harry wakes up in the basement of the Antique Shop. But he’s still in the Nightmare world and apparently Cybil is still back in the real world.

    *So, Harry heads to the hospital because he figures Lisa might be able to tell him how to get the lake, where Cybil said she saw Cheryl.

    *Anyway, the route back to the hospital has been blocked, so Harry has to go through a nearby shopping center and fight a giant worm.

    *You also find a hunting rifle in the mall and it is the most useless weapon in this entire game. You can move while aiming and shooting both the pistol and the shotgun, but when you go to use the rifle, the game makes you stop and stand completely still while shooting it. And you just can’t really do that in this game. You kind of have to be able to move while shooting or you’ll get swarmed.

    *Anyway, once you defeat this worm, you’re finally able to make it to the hospital.

    *It’s kind of weird talking about playing through a game. Since the game has characters, I’ve been trying to use, for instance, “Harry” when I’m talking about the action of the game, but I have noticed that I am occasionally slipping into saying “I” did something or, as I did just above, referring to the player as “you,” as if I’m talking about the experience you would have, should you play the game, which is kind of how a lot of walkthroughs are formatted.

    *And, since I don’t edit, I guess we’ll just be confused together, okay?

    *Anyway, I/Harry arrived/you will arrive at the hospital and Harry demonstrates the kind of tenderness that makes him a good friend: LISA: “Harry! Thank God you came back! I was scared to be here all alone! I’m real happy to see you.” HARRY: “Lisa, can you tell me how to get to the lake?”

    *Lisa tells Harry that if Bachman Road is blocked (spoiler: it is), then the only thing that might be a possibility is going through the tunnels from the old waterworks near the elementary school.

    *She begs Harry not to leave her at the hospital alone, but Harry says he has to go after Cheryl. He asks Lisa to come with him and, in a moment I found surprisingly honest, is just like, “Look, I’m not going to be able to really protect you probably, but I’ll try.” But, no, Lisa can’t bring herself to leave the hospital either, so Harry peaces out.

    *OH **** when Harry gets outside, he gets attacked by a giant moth. I mean, about twice about as big as he is. I guess the thing he fought at the mall was a larva and now he’s back. Anyway, boss fight 3 is also pretty easy. The boss fights here are not where the game really shines. They’re not particularly creative or fun or difficult. But the game obviously feels like, despite being a game about atmosphere and dread, it does still need to have some boss fights, so we get a few.

    *Okay, so here we are at the Waterworks and it’s time for that old horror game standby, the “Sewer Level.”

    *Now, I know a lot of people say that sewer levels are consistently awful, boring, repetitive, ugly to look at and overall just annoying.

    * . . .

    *Oh, I’m sorry, did you think I was going to say something contrarian? Um, no, that’s all true. This level sucks.

    *The sewer is definitely the worst level of this game. And, despite it having a fairly simple map, it was also the most confusing because everything looks exactly the same.

    *We get a couple of new monsters here, but who cares?

    *Shout out to the one really good sewer level I’ve ever played which was in the original Outlast. It’s got two really good encounters with Chris Walker in it.

    *Once you exit the sewer, Harry finds himself in the Resort area of Silent Hill and we’re into chapter seven, if you’re keeping count.

    *Inside Annie’s Bar, you’ll run across Dr. Kaufmann wrestling with a zombie. Harry shoots the zombie and saves him.

    *Dr. Kaufmann apparently still has a full calendar: “A military rescue squad should be here any time now. If they come through the town, we’re home free.” “I hope so.” “I better get going.”

    *I mean, look, that dry cleaning ain’t gonna pick itself up.

    *So, Kaufmann leaves, but Harry quickly discovers he’s dropped a strange key.

    *Anyway, more cryptic notes are soon found, talking about deliveries and a mysterious woman. In a safe, Harry finds a stash of drugs.

    *Anyway, there are more notes when Harry explores a small motel and then he finds his way to a pier with a houseboat. On the houseboat, Cybil’s just chilling.

    *No, for real, Cybil’s been busy. I kind of love that the game gives this character her own agency. After she lost Harry at the Antique Shop she did exactly what Harry did, minus the detour by the Hospital to see Lisa: she went to the waterworks and used the sewers to get back here to the lake because this is the last place she saw Cheryl. I mean, she’s being the hero.

    *Anyway, Cybil and Harry barely have time to catch up before who should show up but Dahlia Gillespie who . . . did she also take the sewers? How is she here?

    *She babbles some more in her own inimitable way, but then gives Harry a couple of genuine pieces of information. The cult is intending to sacrifice Cheryl in order to fully summon the demon who has been taking the form of Alessa, the girl Harry’s been seeing in his visions. Also, in order to stop the ritual, Harry needs to go two places immediately: the lighthouse on the lake and the center of the amusement par-

    *Wait, does Silent Hill have an AMUSEMENT PARK?

    *I was prepared to grant them a “resort” on the lake because I think we all know how truly rinky-dink some “resorts” are. But an amusement park? I thought Silent Hill was supposed to be super-isolated?

    *Cybil and Harry decide to split up, Cybil heading to the amusement park and Harry heading to the lighthouse. I dunno, guys, I’m starting to actually like Cybil. She’s just like a take-action kind of character.

    *Okay, in kind of an interesting twist, Harry gets to the lighthouse too late to stop the ritual there. He sees another vision of Alessa and sees that the Mark of Samael is already carved on the floor at the top of the lighthouse. So, he heads for the amusement park.

    *Okay, we’re into chapter eight as we head *sigh* back down into the sewers, which is the only way to get to the amusement park.

    *Now, I know a lot of people say that sewer levels are consistently awful, boring, repetitive, ugly to look at and overall just annoying.

    *Wait, I already did this routine. The sewers still suck and the enemies are getting more aggressive.

    *So, Harry arrives at the amusement park and finds Cybil slumped in a wheelchair on the carousel which is the only thing at the park that seems to be moving. Next thing you know, Cybil stands up, draws her pistol and STARTS SHOOTING AT HARRY. She’s stumbling around like a lot of the people Harry’s encountered already. It seems the curse of Silent Hill has claimed another victim.

    *So, this Boss Fight is pretty hard, at least for me. If you can dodge her shots, Cybil will run out of ammo and then you can just go knock her out. However, her shots are one-hit kills, so even if you’ve got a lot of health packs saved up, you’re out of luck.

    *I mean, I guess it does make sense that she can basically just headshot Harry, but right about now I’m wishing she was substantially less of a badass.

    *Yes, I know I was just praising the character for being tough and capable, but LOOK I HAVE COMPLICATED FEELINGS ABOUT STRONG WOMEN OKAY

    *You can also try to shoot her, which will eventually just kill the character. So, I was trying to save the character, so I didn’t want to shoot her, but when I tried, I found she takes a lot of pistol damage and I had unfortunately used up all my shotgun ammo. And since you have to actually stand still and take aim in order to use the rifle, she could always kill me before I could get a shot off with the rifle.

    *So, nothing’s working, so eventually I decide to go check out the walkthrough and see if there are any tips for defeating Cybil.

    *And it’s like, “Now is the time to bring out that Vial of Red Liquid you found in Dr. Kaufmann’s office,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah, of COURSE, the Vial of Red Li-wait . . . um . . . hang on . . .”

    *As you may have guessed, I did not find the Vial of Red Liquid in Dr. Kaufmann’s office back in the hospital.

    *If you have the vial of red liquid, you can throw it on Cybil and this will cause the thing on the back of her neck to drop off and you can then kill it. Cybil is then back to normal and Harry and Cybil can proceed together to the next scene.

    *If you don’t have the red liquid, basically your only option is to kill Cybil, which sucks because she’s a cool character, but I would have done it if it was the only way to proceed. But, as mentioned above, I was out of shotgun ammo.

    *By the way, I don’t know how I missed that vial. I remember going through Kaufmann’s office at one point and I was going very slowly and investigating everything. You know, because of the maps. But I missed it fair and square, so whatever.

    *I VERY briefly considered trying to backtrack to the hospital. So far Silent Hill has felt pretty open worldy, you know. You can backtrack and I’d already been to the hospital twice at this point. So I thought, should I go back?

    *But I would have had to go through the sewers to the resort, through the resort back to the other sewers, through those sewers back to Central Silent Hill and then through Central Silent Hill back to the hospital. That seems a bit over-the-top and it’s quite possible that, at this late point in the game, the game would have me blocked from going that far back.

    *So, yeah, long story short (lol), this was my wall. I couldn’t proceed past Cybil at this point. And it’s a bummer because, as you will find out, I am very close to the end.

    *So, anyway, I went on YouTube and watched a no-commentary playthrough of the remaining sections of the game. But, yeah, I’m in chapter 8 of a 9-chapter game, so I got darn close. And had a ton of fun doing it. Honestly, if I could have got past Cybil, the rest of the game is almost entirely story without much in the way of combat. So, I was super-close. Still, let’s move on. I screwed up fair and square by both missing the vial and failing to successfully manage my shotgun ammo. That’s a fair loss.

    *Oh, one more thing about this showdown on the carousel. If Harry runs away while Cybil is shooting at him and then tries to sneak up on her again, he will find her sitting side-saddle on one of the carousel horses, waiting for you. I cannot tell you how adorable this is.

    *It is little moments like that that really make a game feel thoughtful and creative. It’s such a clever and creepy and yet funny thing to put in. Really great.

    *So, anyway, once Harry saves Cybil, they have a brief conversation during which Harry reveals that he and his wife adopted Cheryl after they found her abandoned by the road as an infant just outside Silent Hill.

    *Something it would have been nice to know YESTERDAY!

    *I have no idea why Harry has been explaining that Cheryl is missing to every damn person he meets and yet he has not, until right now, thought about mentioning that she has a connection to Silent Hill. I’m also wondering, given Harry’s penchant for talking to himself, why he hasn’t mentioned this to himself at some point. I mean, he’s been going over every possible explanation for this whole scenario up to and including a Jacob’s Ladder situation, but he has yet to muse to himself about the fact that CHERYL’S REAL PARENTS PROBABLY LIVE RIGHT HERE IN SILENT HILL.

    *Anyway, now we all know. And then Alessa arrives. Harry follows Dahlia’s advice and produces the Flauros (which I think we all forgot about) and it shoots a beam of some kind at Alessa and knocks her out.

    *Harry starts trying to question Alessa about Cheryl’s whereabouts when who should appear but Dahlia Gillespie and it’s time for the twist. Dahlia tells Alessa that she was surprised Alessa was able to escape from her, but Alessa’s psychic powers have grown immensely, which is why Dahlia needed Harry to help her recapture Alessa. Alessa weakly calls Dahlia “Mama,” and then Dahlia tells Alessa she has just one more thing to for her and then Dahlia and Alessa disappear in a ball of light.

    *Yes, it looks like Dahlia’s been the villain this whole time and Alessa was her daughter that Dahlia was holding captive. So Harry just helped Dahlia, the leader of the cult, recapture Alessa, who is the one who was actually trying to stop the cult!

    *I mean, this would be a better twist if Dahlia hadn’t been obviously the main villain from her very first appearance. I mean, she’s an evil witch. That’s obvious from her first appearance. But still, good twist.

    *Harry then passes out because of course he does.

    *He wakes up in Chapter Nine: NOWHERE and he’s back in the hospital with Lisa. Lisa’s not doing well. She says she’s finally figured out why everyone else is a zombie/possessed/in a drug induced trance/infected with a neck parasite and she isn’t. It’s the reason she can’t leave the hospital as well. She, in fact, IS a zombie/possessed/in a drug induced trance/infected with a neck parasite and just hasn’t realized it.

    *I mean, is that how it works? You have to realize it? Also, you just realized it. I mean, by realizing that you hadn’t realized it . . . you did in fact realize it, so . . . why are you still just Lisa?

    *Anyway, Nowhere is a pretty cool location. For the first time in the game you don’t have a map and it’s a kind of mishmash of all the previous locations. So you’re in a room in the hospital with Lisa, but when you exit, you’re in the basement and then you find a door and go through it and you’re in the antique shop. Head to the basement of the antique shop where the altar is and suddenly you’re back in the school. This is pretty cool.

    *Anyway, you do some more puzzle solving and item collection and then Harry arrives at the climax of the game after finding out some more information while in the hospital and we’re close enough to the end that I’m just going to explain what happened instead of explaining it in the way the game explains it which is by expressing it through a lot of dialogue that slowly gets less elliptical until you finally kind of figure it out.

    *I should say that what is to follow is my interpretation of the game’s backstory. This might not be entirely correct, but here’s what I think happened.

    *So, Alessa is Dahlia’s daughter and Dahlia is the leader of a cult in Silent Hill. The cult decides to do a big ritual to like summon a demon, but the ritual goes very wrong and Alessa’s soul splits in two. Half of it stays in her body and half of it leaves her body. The half that leaves her body either enters the body Cheryl as she is being born in the same hospital where the ritual is happening or else that half of the soul actually just forms itself into Cheryl as a baby. Either way, Cheryl has half of Alessa’s soul.

    *Not clear on how infant Cheryl gets to the side of the highway, but she does and she is picked up and taken by Harry and his wife.

    *Meanwhile, Alessa has been horribly burned in the ritual, so a secret room is made for in the basement of the hospital (Harry found it earlier). All this is happening at the hospital because Kaufmann is also part of this cult. He’s also behind this new drug, White Claudia, and he’s making a lot of money off of it. Nurse Lisa Garland has become a user and Kaufmann is able to blackmail/bribe her into being Alessa’s full-time basement nurse, controlling her by providing her with the drug.

    *Flashforward to the events of the game. Harry and Cheryl arrive in Silent Hill and the first one to realize this is Alessa because she has psychic powers.

    *I forgot to mention her psychic and telekinetic powers. Not entirely sure if she had those originally or if she gained them in the ritual. Doesn’t matter really.

    *So, the situation of Silent Hill existing in this kind of Netherworld scenario is down to Alessa. She realizes that, now that Cheryl is back in town, that the cult will try to kidnap her from Harry and use her to complete the ritual. So she uses her psychic powers to create this reality bubble or something and plunge the entire town into this situation.

    *I’m not clear on the zombies. They seem infected with something and I kind of feel like the cult did that based on the fact that, as we are about to find out, the vial of red liquid from Dr. Kaufmann’s office is a chemical Kaufmann developed as a way to fight “possession” by those slug things because he was afraid of Dahlia using them and getting to much power. So I think the possession stuff is the cult’s doing and Kaufmann has been secretly working against Dahlia for a while and that’s how he created the red liquid.

    *Everything else is Alessa, I think. So, the big twist is that Dahlia has been saying that Alessa is trying to summon a demon when, in reality, Alessa is using her psychic powers to try to stop Dahlia from summoning a demon. Dahlia was able to trick Harry into defeating Alessa because, for some reason, Alessa had become too powerful for Dahlia to defeat alone.

    *So that is the solution to the mystery. I think.

    *Anyway, it’s time for the big climax; Harry and Cybil confront Dahlia just as she’s about to use the horribly disfigured and defeated Alessa and Cheryl to summon the demon.

    *Suddenly who should appear but Dr. Kaufmann who, yes, is working against Dahlia because he thinks she’s gone mad with power. So, Kaufmann shoots Dahlia in an attempt to stop the ritual. However, Cheryl then mutates into an angel. Kaufmann throws the red liquid on the angel, apparently realizing that it is actually a demon disguised as an angel; sure enough, the angel then morphs into a horrible demon (as rendered in PS1 graphics, of course). Dahlia is still alive and tries to attack Kaufmann, but the demon kills her. Not sure why.

    *So, here’s the final boss fight of the game. Once Harry defeats the demon, it morphs into Alessa, no longer disfigured, holding a baby (!) which she gives to Harry. Then the entire structure starts falling apart. Harry and Cybil flee with the baby. Kaufmann tries to follow them, but suddenly Nurse Lisa appears and, apparently having realized that she’s a zombie, she’s now a zombie! She attacks Kaufmann and keeps him from escaping as the flaming building collapses on them.

    *Harry and Cybil find their way outside, gazing in awe at the newborn baby who is Cheryl reborn (and, according to the internet, also Alessa reborn).

    *This kid is going to need some therapy.

    *Anyway, game over, guys. Game over. That’s Silent Hill, 1999.

    *That is, of course, the good ending. All the villains are defeated, Cheryl and Alessa are both reborn and both Harry & Cybil survive. Good ending.

    *If you killed Cybil in the Amusement Park instead of saving her, you can still get the good ending, just Cybil’s not there. The bad ending results in Alessa & Cheryl both dying when Harry defeats the boss. In that version, when the boss is defeated, Cheryl is seen fading away and you hear her voice thanking Harry for loving her while she was alive and for freeing her from the curse. Harry collapses to the ground in grief – roll credits.

    *And then there’s a joke ending where when Harry goes to the lighthouse, instead of the game proceeding from there, a UFO lands and aliens come out and reveal that this has all been an experiment they’ve been running and the game ends.

    *So. Final thoughts.

    *Two pretty big flaws here: the writing (plot & dialogue) & the acting. The voice acting was downright terrible. Not a good performance in the bunch. And the story, ultimately, just isn’t really . . . good, I guess. The “twist” that Dahlia is actually the villain is incredibly telegraphed. And I’ve made plenty of fun of the dialogue as I’ve gone through this review. It’s clunky and often unintentionally silly.

    *I’m not going to include the graphics as a flaw. They are PS1 quality, no question, but sometimes you want that nostalgic 90s flavor to the graphics. I don’t consider that a flaw. And some elements of the graphics really hold up. The fog is bold and atmospheric and the way the game uses darkness is also really effective and helps create a creepy and foreboding mood.

    *And it really is that mood that is the game’s strength. I didn’t really find the game super-scary, but it’s definitely creepy. I think the basic premise is good and some of the characters, particularly Harry & Cybil, are good. The premise allows the game to create a world that is simultaneously familiar and eerie and then to peel back the layers of that world to show something even more nightmarish and spooky beneath. So, while it won’t scare you exactly, it does create a creepy and compelling atmosphere that really does pull you into the game and it does generate suspense because of the way it so often keeps threats out of sight.

    *Then there is one way in which I think the game is genuinely ahead of its time and that is the score by Akira Yamaoka. It’s very industrial with a lot of drones and dissonance. There are some more traditional pieces to at some of the more dramatic moments, but during gameplay, the bulk of the score is entirely electronic, I think, without any traditional instrument sounds. Famously, the first time Yamaoka demoed gameplay footage with the score, the rest of the Silent Hill team thought the game’s sound was glitching and Yamaoka had to explain to them that, no, that’s actually the score. Luckily, he was able to convince them that it would work. Because it really did and it feels to me like something pretty new in video games at that time. I don’t really remember a score this industrial sounding prior to 1999, though I’m sure someone can correct me on that.

    *As a marker of just how ahead of its time this score is, check out the music to P.T., the latest game in the Silent Hill series (yes, I know it’s “just a demo” or whatever, but it’s better than most full horror games, so I count it as an entry in the series). That one came out in 2014 and the score in that one by Ludvig Forsell is basically the same as the score in the original in tone, sound and philosophy, just dissonant drones creating an unsettling atmosphere. That kind of ambient soundscape was genuinely unsettling in 1999, it was genuinely unsettling in 2014 and it’s genuinely unsettling right now playing Silent Hill, more than two decades after its release. It’s a downright great score and it’s a huge part of the creep factor of this game.







    *And, yeah, that is one of the worst album covers of all time.

    *And, finally, Silent Hill is also just fun to play. The combat is fun and so is dodging monsters in order to just keep running. The puzzles are, for the most part, pretty clever and creative without being too hard and it makes exploring the environments really fun. This was a game that I looked forward to playing every day. I never got tired of it and always enjoyed it.

    *Up until I failed, of course, and couldn’t progress. But that felt fair; it wasn’t arbitrary. In order to fail at that point, I essentially had to have screwed up in two ways, missing the vial of red liquid and not properly managing my shotgun ammo. I did both of those things, so I failed. Fair enough.

    *I never mind failing at a game if I feel like it’s fair. Or sometimes I mind, but it doesn’t make me mad.

    *So, anyway, Silent Hill is still somewhat revered I think, though it’s been kind of eclipsed by Silent Hill 2, which most people call the masterpiece of the franchise.

    *Again, if you’re counting P.T. . . . then THAT’S the masterpiece of the franchise.

    *But regardless this first game is really excellent and deserves to be remembered fondly. I recommend playing it, which is not something I can say about a lot of games from the late nineties. It has its weaknesses and it shows its age, but the ways it has aged are actually charming and nostalgic and its also really strong atmospherically and a lot of fun. Now to go buy the soundtrack.

    *All right, this was an epic. If you read this far, thank you for your time. This game was fun to play and it was fun to review, so hopefully it was also fun to read about. Maybe I’ll get back to this History of Video Games project again soon. Until then, save your shotgun ammo and go through that desk again, just in case you missed something.
     
  7. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2011
    Thanks for the walkthrough. Even though I’ve never played it, there was a lot of stuff that I could identify with. The maps, the town. How is there an amusement park but also ONLY ONE WAY TO THE LAKE. I mean, lakes are usually large. Other than the one road, the only way you can get to a freaking lake is a secret tunnel? Why can’t you go over land? Why doesn’t the road circle the lake?

    We’ve all been through the stationary weapon thing. Usually put in to prevent it from being OP. But good design finds areas where it can be effective, like a long range sniping opportunity where you don’t need to move.

    Forgetting the red vial made me think of having to go back and get the PSG1 in MSG1, except that was intentional, you weren’t supposed to have the right weapon for that boss.

    I haven’t played it, but a lot feels familiar, so I’m wondering if it had an influence on later games I have played. Cybil in particular is a very familiar character for a horror game, as is her fate. The parasites are classic, obviously, we can all connect those to something (RE4 for me).

    I still have a PS1, just no TV it will work on. If I ever get one, maybe I’ll get Silent Hill. I’ll definitely check out the soundtrack.
     
  8. Moll

    Moll Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2016
    Gone Home

    The first time I played this, I found it very spooky and atmospheric, however on my replay some of that was lost. Despite that, this is a very fun walking simulator, which an emotional story about a young girl with mental health issues falls in love with another girl at her new school. Th game itself is only a couple of hours long, but it an interesting experience. I also went back and picked up some of the speed runner trophies I didn’t do last time! :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2021
  9. FatBurt

    FatBurt Sex Scarecrow Vanquisher star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 21, 2003
    FF7R Intergrade

    Nice little side trip with Yuffie
     
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  10. christophero30

    christophero30 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 18, 2017
    Played 2 N64 racing games.
    1. Wave Race 64
    One of my favorite games, and one of the best racing games ever. The graphics still look great, and this game still has the best wave physics I've ever encountered. I've unlocked all the tracks, and the last track is a cool night track. Way better than the Gamecube version.
    2. F Zero 64.
    Another classic update of the classic SNES racer. I've heard people talk about the graphics not being good, but considering there are 30 craft on the track the frame rate it is pretty impressive. I like this one much better than the Gamecube version, which was too difficult. Lots of different tracks, sometimes it is a challenge just to finish the race, as you can fall off the track or explode if your shields get too low.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2021
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  11. Moll

    Moll Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2016
    Dear Esther

    This game is very thought provoking and has wonderful visuals. The last time I played this was…gosh, years ago. It was with a friend at his parents house, and we played it together, which was a nice experience. I really enjoyed my replay today, reminded me what an amazing little walking sim it is. Although, I think it was a better experience with company, as you could discuss it as you went along, miss those days! Lol :D
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2021
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  12. christophero30

    christophero30 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 18, 2017
    You know you can actually go outside for walks. :)
     
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  13. Moll

    Moll Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2016
    What is the fun in that!? :p It is a bit grey out today as well, so want to stay indoors and be antisocial [face_laugh]
     
  14. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    Gone Home's a great game. And, yeah, I really love the atmosphere of the game. Like I genuinely think it has more atmosphere than a lot of actual horror games.
     
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  15. Rew

    Rew Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2008
    I don't know what's happening with me, but I seem to be losing my interest in video games these days. I have to force myself to sit down and play them, and even then it tends to be in short spurts. I'm currently playing through the Kirby series, and these are great games so far! My latest entry is the one I was anticipating the most (yet it took me the longest to complete). Nevertheless, here it is...

    Kirby Super Star
    It's not hard to see why this game is among the most iconic and beloved entries in the entire series (that is, until its remake came along on the Nintendo DS some twelve years later and became the definitive version of the game). It's not even a single game. It's a "fun pak" of numerous games starring Kirby with very distinct themes and gimmicks. This is very engrossing and keeps players coming back for more and more variety (well, except for my dilatory ass who would take forever to come back to it).

    "Spring Breeze"
    Basically a 16-bit remake of the original Kirby's Dream Land with just a bit of cut content (RIP in peace Kabula). There's not much to say here. It functions almost like a tutorial for the rest of the games. You get to test out Kirby's copy abilities on the Super NES (ironic given that this mode remakes stages from the only game without copy abilities), both new and returning abilities. Oh, and all copy abilities (even the old ones) now have a diverse move set! That really expands the gameplay capabilities of this title compared to its predecessors. Also, you can have helpers based on defeated enemies and the copy ability that you discard--though they tend to get themselves killed a little too easily for my liking.

    Anyway, beating this was as easy as expected, nevertheless it's always gratifying to beat the **** out of King Dedede in his own boxing ring. [face_beatup]

    "Dyna Blade"
    This mode is probably the closest we get to a standard, straightforward Kirby adventure. You go through regular stages (though you do have a map screen, which is new for the series), activate switches for 100% completion, there's an optional mid-boss battle along the way, and then you end by fighting the final boss, Dyna Blade herself. Apparently she was just protecting her chicks, as you see during the ending--but then why was she attacking the land in the beginning? I don't know, that didn't make sense to me, like they were trying to create a plot twist, but it doesn't make much sense on closer inspection.

    "Gourmet Race"
    A racing mini-game that's inexplicably listed amongst the regular game modes on the cork board screen (with iconic Super Smash Bros. music!). Anyway, I'm proud to say that I beat Dedede on my first try on all three courses, for a perfect record of 3-0, and didn't look back from then on. :p

    "The Great Cave Offensive"
    Hoo boy, this one. Of all the game modes in Kirby Super Star, this is the one I was looking forward to the most by far. Vast areas to explore with lots of treasure to collect for 100% completion? Yes, please! But dear Waru, some of those treasures were damned near impossible to get. Some required you to activate a switch to open a gate, then use advanced speedrunning tactics to make it through the gate in time. Then there were those that required you to carry a certain copy ability a long ways to a different portion of the stage to reach a treasure--looking at you entire section of Old Tower requiring Hammer, despite putting Bonkers on practically the other side of the stage! Obtaining all 60 treasures in this game mode is easily the most difficult achievement in the entire game. It took a lot of grumbling, cussing, and wondering if it was possible for humans to achieve, but I finally got them all. I made Kirby a very rich pink puff ball!

    "Revenge of Meta Knight"
    A sharp contrast to the open-ended plodding exploration of the previous game mode, this one is very fast-paced and cinematic. I couldn't pay attention half the time, but I loved seeing the reactions of Meta Knight's minions to Kirby's saboteur efforts and their interactions with each other and general scheming. It's weird because this is the only time (I'm aware of) where Meta Knight is a full-blown villain instead of just a darker shade of gray antihero that he is in other games like Kirby's Adventure. Dude legit tries to kill Kirby at the end. Still, it's very gratifying getting on the Halberd and watch it gradually fall apart thanks to your efforts. (And yes, now I understand why people called "The Subspace Emissary" so derivative of this game back in 2008!) That escape sequence at the end is hard as hell, but worth it to see Kirby ride off on his Wheelie into the sunset.

    "Milky Way Wishes"
    The grand finale of Kirby's adventures in this collection. Our hero is duped by a jester to get the sun and moon to stop fighting by collecting all the star power and making a wish. The interesting gimmick about this mode is that Kirby no longer gets copy abilities from inhaled enemies. Instead, you have to collect Deluxe copy abilities--which then gives you that ability permanently. The more abilities you collect, the more versatile your attack strategy becomes. Of course, if you're like me, you probably just got Hammer, then used that the rest of the way. That was tempting, but I tried not to be so cheap. Once I got a new Deluxe copy ability, I tried to keep it and use it exclusively until I found the next one, so that way I would eventually have some degree of familiarity with them all. There were a few times (near the end) when it got too hard to do this with certain abilities, so I would fall back upon the tried and true Hammer Kirby.

    By this point in the game, it does seem like the developers were starting to run out of ideas (or assets) because most of the stages/planets feel like repeats, with music from previous game modes, and boss and mid-boss rematches galore. One exception to this trend was the first planet Floria, which introduced a season-changing mechanic. Basically you start this stage in spring, and if you enter a doorway, you wind up back in the same area but in a different season, in order: spring -> summer -> autumn -> winter, and back around again. Different seasons would change the stage layout subtly, thus making the stage a large puzzle. In winter, there might be a snow bank in your way, preventing progress, but changing to a warmer season would take care of the problem. This added an element of depth in seeking out the Deluxe copy abilities in this stage. Even the enemies change depending on the season! It was such a neat mechanic that it's a shame it was only confined to this one short stage and never got to be fleshed out elsewhere in the game.

    At the end, Kirby collects all the star power and is about to make his wish before Nova when Marx the jester knocks him out of the way and wishes for world domination. Kirby then has to go into the Death Star--er, Heart of Nova--and blast through a surprisingly challenging auto-scrolling shooting sequence to destroy the machine from within. Then you fight against Marx, the true final boss of the game. And honestly, after the Nova stuff--and compared to other final bosses in the series--he was pretty dang easy. Maybe that's because I was already familiar with his attack patterns thanks to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? Nevertheless, his attacks don't do much damage, so I was able to bludgeon him to death with Hammer.

    But that's not all!

    "The Arena"
    The true challenge of the game to attain 100% completion. You have one life to fight through 20 rounds against all the bosses and mid-bosses in the entire game, their order randomly generated but always ending with Marx. At the beginning, you're free to pick up any copy ability you want, then between rounds you have five Maxim Tomatoes with which to heal yourself, as well as two randomly generated copy abilities. You might think I went with Hammer as per usual, but I wanted a powerful ranged attack so I could fire away from a safe distance. And thus I learned the value of Plasma. Charging it up doesn't take too long, and you can even guard while doing so.

    Still, this is a tough mode, and it took me quite a few tries before I finally managed to beat it. I still think collecting all 60 treasures in "The Great Cave Offensive" is the hardest part of this game, but "The Arena" is fairly close to it. Nevertheless, it really wasn't as difficult as I was fearing it might be.


    So now that I've completed this gem and thus have four Kirby games under my belt, it's time for more rankings. Not surprisingly, this game is the new #1, but Kirby's Adventure is a much closer second than I thought it would be. I still think that game holds up pretty well for a late NES-era title!
    1. Kirby Super Star
    2. Kirby's Adventure
    3. Kirby's Dream Land 2
    4. Kirby's Dream Land
    Up next is the game that basically closed the Super NES chapter of Nintendo history: Kirby's Dream Land 3, which I'm told is a pretty laidback Kirby experience. I do know it will be very different from its SNES counterpart!
     
  16. The Regular Mustache

    The Regular Mustache Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2015
    Leisure Suit Larry. Totally beat it!
     
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  17. darkspine10

    darkspine10 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Dec 7, 2014
    Star Wars: Squadrons (2020). Only finished the story campaign, not too interested in the multiplayer or whatever. A fun enough game, but kinda short. The campaign is more of a long tutorial covering various aspects of the gameplay, which isn't a bad idea for it.

    Also, it's hard to really capture that feel of Star Wars ship combat in a videogame form. Almost every game featuring playable ships feel noticeably too slow or sluggish, especially when turning. But at the same time, if you sped things up to film/tv speeds, it'd be an unplayable vomit inducing rollercoaster. So I don't really have a solution.

    I actually prefer the Battlefront II ship combat, although I can appreciate that there's a lot of depth to the Squadrons systems. While I really like the cockpit view hud, I do also miss that third person view (and more ship variety, eg. Prequels, would be nice). Story was structured a little oddly, since by playing both Rebels and Empire you feel like your missions have less point half the time since you know the Rebels will win out in the end. Plus the Imperial pilots in your squad lack the same fun character quirks that the Rebel side have.

    So, could be better, but I am glad I gave it a go, brief as it was.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2021
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  18. christophero30

    christophero30 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 18, 2017
    The Rogue Squadron games have pretty good combat.
     
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  19. Rew

    Rew Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2008
    Where I am this time of year (i.e. the Deep South), I actually prefer going outside on gray, overcast days, as it’s too hot in the blazing sun!
     
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  20. Boba_Fett_2001

    Boba_Fett_2001 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Dec 11, 2000
    Celeste

    Not gonna lie, I didn't exactly have the best first impressions in the first hour or two. I could certainly acknowledge that it was a solid, competent platformer but I didn't really get what all the fuss was about. Thankfully though the game, for the most part, just gets better and better as it progresses (those wind sections in Chapter 4 can go **** themselves). The levels, mechanics, music, and story are all at their peak (pun intended) in the second half of the game. Even though the theme of the game is kind of simplistic (overcoming anxiety = climbing a mountain) I think it works pretty well and I can see why players loved that aspect.

    And boy does Celeste put the "precision" in precision platformer. It just seemed like at times there was literally no room for error down to the pixel. Fortunately, difficult platformers are my jam so I gladly accepted the challenge. :p I don't think Celeste is the best in its genre but it's still very good and I'm glad I finally got around to playing it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2021
    Rogue1-and-a-half likes this.
  21. Adam of Nuchtern

    Adam of Nuchtern Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition

    Playing this one right after the first game really highlights how much better it is gameplay-wise. No more wasting time sorting through the inventory screen, ditching the mako, side quests that have you fighting in the same two environments over and over, and combat that actually manages to be fun. Easily up there with Dragon Age Origins as Bioware's best game.
     
  22. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    Unfortunate choice of words.

    Glad you liked it. I am absolutely not good enough to finish it as it is fiendishly difficult; the developer said that was the point and so I defend his right to make it that hard. But I ended up finishing it with the immortality cheat on. I know, I know.

    But it is a great game. I love the art style, Madeline has become one of my favorite video game protagonists and the score is phenomenal.
     
    Boba_Fett_2001 likes this.
  23. Jedi Knight Fett

    Jedi Knight Fett Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2014
    Mass effect legendary edition. Highly recommended. Even 3 wasn’t as bad as I assumed it would be. Sure I can get why people were disappointed especially with the originally ending before they released the extended cut. But other than the ending the game was just as good as two and one.

    Now I don’t know what I’ll play next.
     
  24. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    There's stuff in ME3 that plays off decisions all the way back in ME1.
     
  25. Jedi Knight Fett

    Jedi Knight Fett Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2014
    Which is why it’s a great game. It is. It’s the ending that brings it down from being one of the best games ever to just a great game.