Games you are currently playing or recently beaten

[thaquestion]

Recently beat MegaMan 2, but, what I'm really excited about is getting my nephew in Final Fantasy 1.  He's 7, and the game came out when I was 8, so we were really close in the age the first time each of us played (can't believe it's been almost 30 years) !!!

[te72]

Castlevania Chronicles and Ape Escape. Castlevania Chronicles is the hardest game I have ever played, but it feels so good when you beat it. Also, Ape Escape is a fantastic platformer.

Chronicles is pretty brutal, I think I only made it about halfway through before moving onto another game.

 

I recently beat Resident Evil Code Veronica X for the PS2.  Resident Evil is one of my favourite game franchises and I really that classic horror feel the old games had.  I beat Resident Evil 1-3 about a month ago.  The next game I'm going to play is Resident Evil 0.  Can't wait for that

RE0 is still one of the most beautiful  games I've ever played, as far as the art style goes, and the drop anything anywhere was a lot better an idea than the item boxes.

 

Recently beat MegaMan 2, but, what I'm really excited about is getting my nephew in Final Fantasy 1.  He's 7, and the game came out when I was 8, so we were really close in the age the first time each of us played (can't believe it's been almost 30 years) !!!

Will be interesting to see if a game of that era can hold the attention of a kid growing up in the internet age... keep us posted?

[fousekis]

Ive started playing Nes Games like super mario bros and the original zelda.i didnt know how hard the games was back then!

[te72]

Ive started playing Nes Games like super mario bros and the original zelda.i didnt know how hard the games was back then!

As someone who grew up playing those back when that was the new thing, all I have to say is, "MWAHAHAHAHA!"

 

Just kidding. Games back then were often difficult, but when you find a difficult game that is balanced and the difficulty is something that can be overcome with skill and practice, those games make you feel truly accomplished. I could go on and on rambling like an old man, about how easy kids have it these days with all their achievements and trophys making them feel good, blah blah blah, nobody cares. Just wait until you get a taste of Battletoads.

[te72]

Still working on Gran Turismo 6, just cleared the IB racing league, and earned all golds on the IA license tests. Something about trying to be competitive while driving a Can-Am car without any driver aids such as traction control sure sharpens the skills a bit, since I nailed all but one IA license test on my first or second try...

 

That said, IA looks to be full of some fairly good challenges ahead. We'll see if this is where I peak, or if I'll be able to take on the S-class races with any skill.

[megadrive89]

I just downloaded Shantae:half genie for Wii U. It looks like it will continue the tradition of excellent Wayforward platformers. I agree with Vice350z that my steam library has about 150 items and I'm trying to play them. Otherwise. I'm playing Fire Emblem Awakening on 3ds and Link's Awakening on virtual console. By the way, everyone, Merry Christmas! Please be careful if you are traveling.

[kitsunebi]

Just finished Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (PC, 1991).  This is pretty significant for me, since I hardly ever finish games these days.  Of course, when I say "these days" what I really mean is "in the last decade or so" (M&M3 is the only game I've actually played this year).  What made it even better was that it was enjoyable the whole way through, rather than being one of those games I have to force myself to finish "just because."

[te72]

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

What made it even better was that it was enjoyable the whole way through, rather than being one of those games I have to force myself to finish "just because."

Hey, congrats! I felt that way when I played Fez last year, it was genuinely fun.

 

I'm still slogging my way through GT6, still need to do the S-class license tests, the Redbull X-car challenge, Goodwood Festival, and Senna events, then whatever in the S-class that I want to do. It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it can be quite challenging a the higher levels. I really enjoy taking a competitive car (as opposed to just out-carring your competition), but it can be difficult with the rolling starts and "chase the rabbit" gameplay when dealing with a ridiculously fast car that starts out in first place, who doesn't have to deal with the other cars like you do...

 

If I truly wanted one thing from the GT series, it would be better sound. The visuals are great guys! The sound could use some work at this point though, the engines sound muted and drony, there's no wind noise, even on the "large theater" setting and the volume turned up.

[CastleVanity]

I just beaten Tales of Phantasia (GBA) on the actual Handleld and i have to say i'm proud of what i accomplished.

Edited May 15, 2017 by CastleVanity

[MGS]

Recently started on a complete run of Tales of the Abyss, this game's a lot of work.

[CastleVanity]

6 hours ago, MGS said:

Recently started on a complete run of Tales of the Abyss, this game's a lot of work.

Any tales games is hard work but it's worth the trip.

[Areala]

My brother told me about the current sale on GOG.com, so I had a look and grabbed 'One Unit Whole Blood' for $1.49, which is insane considering complete boxed copies of this sell for around $30-50 online. It's the original 'Blood' game made by Monolith Software using the Build engine, so it looks similar to Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D, the 'Plasma Pak' which was Monolith's official expansion mission, and 'Cryptic Passage', the Sunstorm/WizardWorks third-party add-on. GOG usually throws in some extras as well, so there's the game's soundtrack, all the manuals, and even the music video for Type O Negative's "Love You to Death", which was included on the second CD that came with the physical release of the game in 1996:

'Duke Nukem 3D' will always be my favorite of the Build trilogy, but man, 'Blood' really is something else. 'Duke 3D' and 'Shadow Warrior' are light, filled with humourous jabs and pop-culture references galore, but always with tongue firmly in cheek. 'Blood' pays homage to gothic literature, horror films, and pop culture as well, but Caleb's wise-cracks and one-liners are muttered and snarled. Duke and Lo Wang revel in the humour, Caleb's only got time for the killing, and the bloodier the better as far as he's concerned.

It's not surprising, since he's essentially a reanimated zombie, doomed to an un-life of grief by the evil god worshiped by his cult, who slew the other three acolytes in front of his eyes, including his beloved Ophelia. Caleb's been grinding his teeth in a hollow grave for a long time. Duke's out to save the planet and get the women; Lo Wang's a skilled assassin targeted for termination by his former employer, but while they may not be paragons of virtue, they're still good people at heart. Caleb, on the other hand...doesn't really have a heart. He's willing to slay anything and everyone who gets in his way, up to and including the big bad guy Tchernobog himself. The world's gone to hell, and Caleb couldn't give a rat's ass: he's happy to let everything around him burn while he repays every cultist and hell-spawn back with napalm, shotguns, voodoo dolls, bundles of dynamite, and his pitchfork.

I'd forgotten how much fun this game was, and if you're at all a fan of the old DOS-based FPS games from the 90s with a GOG account and haven't already put this one on your shelves, do yourself a favour and spend that buck-fifty. 'Blood' is a bloody good time.

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

Man oh man.  Not to derail the conversation but did anybody ever have a band that they liked just to annoy someone?  I remember buying the Type O Negative album Bloody Kisses just because hearing the song "Christian Woman" annoyed my girlfriend.  And perversely, I sort of came to like the album.  It didn't last long, and though I bought the follow-up album as well (the one the above song is on), by that point the novelty had worn off and I lost interest.  I actually just discovered that the singer died in 2010.  Who knew?

Another band whose album I bought and loved (for pretty much the same reason I bought the Type O Negative album lol) was G. Love and Special Sauce's 1994 debut (and once again, I was disappointed by their follow-ups and lost interest.)  Apparently these guys are still around.

So there it is: bands/albums you liked to annoy your significant other. Discuss.

Also, Blood (the game).  Err...I played it.  See?  On Topic!

I could SO do this at karaoke.  Probably even better if I was drunk.

[Areala]

14 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Man oh man.  Not to derail the conversation but did anybody ever have a band that they liked just to annoy someone?  I remember buying the Type O Negative album Bloody Kisses just because hearing the song "Christian Woman" annoyed my girlfriend.  And perversely, I sort of came to like the album.  It didn't last long, and though I bought the follow-up album as well (the one the above song is on), by that point the novelty had worn off and I lost interest.  I actually just discovered that the singer died in 2010.  Who knew?

*LOL* Who knew? Anybody who was a fan of Type O Negative.

"October Rust" is the only album of theirs I care for, but that's because it was intentionally produced to appeal to a broad musical base. The rest of their albums are barely listenable to my ear, but "October Rust" is so beautiful that I don't care. I discovered them thanks to the soundtrack to the first Mortal Kombat movie.

If you want music to annoy other people, I have plenty of recommendations I can give. Joan Osborne had a hit single in the 90's called "One of Us" that is simultaneously catchy and annoying as hell. Meredith Brooks did the same with a song called "Bitch", and so did Merril Bainbridge with "Mouth". And if Faith Hill's "This Kiss" doesn't make the rest of your friends want to destroy your stereo, you have better friends than I do.

I also know of no one else besides myself who loves Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper" album, so playing that's all but guaranteed to get people throwing trash at you...although Japan went nuts for "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen" which (for all of you who are not Kitsunebi, since he's the one who exposed me to that bit of aural agony) is literally about a guy who discovers he has a pen, a pineapple, an apple, and what happens when he tries to combine them, so clearly there's no accounting for taste over there either.

*huggles*
Areala

[te72]

Man, feeling the 90's up in here all of a sudden haha!

 

Blood: I recall playing one of these games at a friend's house in about 1996 or so. "Whaddya gonna do, BLEED on me?" For a kid in his early teens back then, the gorier the shooter, the better, and Blood had the stuff in buckets. Good times!

 

Type O Negative: Was quite aware of when Steele died. I was a really big fan of theirs starting in high school. There is a certain quality of their music that requires a very dark sense of humor to appreciate. The song, "Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity and its Dire Consequences" is quite a lot of fun if you're of the right mindset to laugh at that sort of situation. I still listen to their "Least Worst Of..." album a few times a year.

 

On a whole though, I think Areala is probably right, they're perhaps an acquired taste.

 

Chumbawumba on the other hand... I got sick of that song after hearing it about 400 times when it first came out, but when I hear it now, I can definitely appreciate it more than I did as a kid. Something about life experiences and whatnot haha.

 

As for music just to annoy someone else... I can't say I ever did that. I did buy a couple albums to play, loudly, in my car, while slowly driving through grocery store parking lots. All in the name of cheese factor and getting that, "WTF?" look from people. Notably, Iron Maiden's Best of the Beast, I thought they would be a cheesey 80's hair metal band. Little did I know, man, little did I know... Turns out, they're a really good band. Did the same thing with Billy Idol. Bought it as a joke, and turned out to really like it.

 

I'm more the type of person to introduce you to music I like that you may not have heard of. One of the more surprising discoveries was a band called Straylight Run. They only put out a couple albums, I would really recommend their first one. Hard to pin any particular sound on them, maybe that's what I like.

 

Also, Authority Zero. If you don't know who they are, PLEASE look them up. I've been listening to these guys for nearly 20 years now, going back to when they were just another local band in the Phoenix valley. Without hyping them up too much, I can genuinely say they made their sound by taking influences from the Offspring and Sublime. Weird as that may sound, it really does work well together.

[kitsunebi]

7 hours ago, Areala said:

If you want music to annoy other people, I have plenty of recommendations I can give. Joan Osborne had a hit single in the 90's called "One of Us" that is simultaneously catchy and annoying as hell. Meredith Brooks did the same with a song called "Bitch", and so did Merril Bainbridge with "Mouth". And if Faith Hill's "This Kiss" doesn't make the rest of your friends want to destroy your stereo, you have better friends than I do.

I also know of no one else besides myself who loves Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper" album,
 

So basically what you've done here is list a bunch of music that no one would admit to liking, but would instigate huge sing-a-longs if they came on at karaoke.

[te72]

20 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

So basically what you've done here is list a bunch of music that no one would admit to liking, but would instigate huge sing-a-longs if they came on at karaoke.

Preferably at a bowling alley. What? It's what I was doing when these songs came out... can we throw in some Oasis while we're at it?

[Areala]

On 5/26/2017 at 4:32 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

So basically what you've done here is list a bunch of music that no one would admit to liking, but would instigate huge sing-a-longs if they came on at karaoke.

Yes, and I'll never pretend differently.

*huggles*
Areala

[Areala]

9 hours ago, te72 said:

Preferably at a bowling alley. What? It's what I was doing when these songs came out... can we throw in some Oasis while we're at it?

Totally!

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

I'm sometimes glad for Cobain that he didn't live to see the late 90s.

[te72]

Curious why that is Kitsunebi? I thought the late 90's were pretty solid, music wise. Then again, that was the period of my life where I was discovering rock music beyond the classics mom played while cleaning house when I was a kid...

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, te72 said:

Curious why that is Kitsunebi? I thought the late 90's were pretty solid, music wise. Then again, that was the period of my life where I was discovering rock music beyond the classics mom played while cleaning house when I was a kid...

If I have to explain it, I'd likely end up hurting someone's feelings.  Don't get me wrong, there was still some excellent music coming out, and if you came of age (musically) during that time, then of course you'd be partial to it.  Suffice it to say though, from what I know of Kurt and his tastes (Kurt/Nirvana was my high school obsession), he wouldn't have been a fan of most of it - not of the music, but even moreso, not of the aesthetics/attitudes/philosophies of most of the popular rock bands emerging at that time.  I'd suspect the majority of the 2000s and its nu-metal/pop punk/emo would have been disappointing to him as well, until perhaps the re-emergence of indie-rock became a thriving scene again.

Don't take any of this personally.  It was all prompted by that Smash Mouth video Areala posted.  Is there anyone who can look at that guy and his band and think that the world of rock was made more respectable by their presence? 

[te72]

Ahh, I can totally get where you're coming from there. The world of music seems to be cyclical, if you ask me. What was cheesy 20 or 30 years ago, is new and fresh again today. Perhaps if Kurt had lived as long as we have, he might have come to understand that, although I doubt (as you do) that he ever would have embraced any of it. Perhaps the alt / indie rock scene may have become all the things that Kurt hated about the industry. Money has a way of corrupting innocence and art alike.

 

That said, I wouldn't doubt that a lot of the music in the second half of the 90's turned out the way it did BECAUSE of Nirvana. Some bands leave a mark on their scene, Nirvana was the stone that most others left their mark on.

 

No worries about hurting feelings, we all have our tastes, and what we as individuals love, entire crowds are disgusted or put off by.   As for Smash Mouth, I seem to recall liking their Fu Manchu album, whatever was the prior album to the one that All Star was on. I remember hearing that for the first time and thinking, "THIS is what Smash Mouth is becoming???"

[Areala]

Food for thought:

Nickelback is to the 00's-era music scene what Nirvana was to the 90's-era music scene.

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, Areala said:

Food for thought:

Nickelback is to the 00's-era music scene what Nirvana was to the 90's-era music scene.

*huggles*
Areala

That's a bit unfair.  Surely the 2000s weren't that bad.  And you're overlooking one big difference: people still like Nirvana.

Seriously, though, Nirvana happened along at just the right time and changed the course of the entire industry in a way that probably hasn't been seen since.  No way did Nickelback have that kind of impact.