Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@BeerIsAwesome No shame in the "save scum" approach, buddy. It's why all the best retro compilations have save states and rewind features! You still earned those emeralds!

I'm sorely tempted to check out Sonic P-06 for myself, too. I'll defend the original release with my dying breath, but it's still an unfinished game, and just because I know how to avoid its broken bits doesn't mean that they shouldn't get fixed. If that's the way you can experience it, then do so!

Well, you know you're a "proper" Sonic fan when you're willing to endure any and all rough edges!

@RogerRoger I've played Sonic 06 enough times to consider myself at least knowledgeable, so it's not like I'm just diving in like a noob. Perhaps when I've finished this Sonic quest ten years from now, I'll fire it up after the last Sonic game I end up playing (Sonic Frontiers 3?). But for now, I'm happy skipping it. Or at least I might when I've beaten the half dozen games I've got before it. 🙃

@nessisonett I feel the same way after having played the game for several hours now: it's an enjoyable experience overall despite some difficulty spikes. Some puzzles are just so out of place and some fights were a bit confusing given that enemies would constantly spawn for a fairly long time. Rewinding is a cool feature, especially when given that it's easy to mess up the platforming. I don't like though that you're always getting spoiled of what's coming up ahead at every save point.

@Kidfried I actually own pretty much all games so I'm definitely going to play them eventually. I think I'll play them in release order, even if Forgotten Sands takes place after Sands of Time. I'd rather see how the series evolves mechanically across each entry, so I'm definitely looking forward to giving the HD era games a go. From what I've seen of Prince of Persia 2008 though, it looks pretty interesting. I'll give it a shot and see what I think of it!

@nessisonett @Kidfried Out of curiosity since you guys have played Prince of Persia, are you interested in the upcoming 2D game? Personally, I think it looks cool and since it's a Metroidvania, I absolutely want to play it!

@LtSarge Yeah, the new one looks like a great time, and Ubisoft have made some really good platformers over the years so I do think the smaller scope of a Metroidvania will suit them. It’ll be perfect for the Switch.

Started playing Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on Wii U. It's been some time since I finished The Sacred Stones on GBA and I've been in the mood for some FE, so I decided to start up the last retro FE game in my collection. I've played it for a couple of hours now and it's been a lot of fun. The game feels more simple compared to the previous ones I've played, which doesn't come as a surprise since it's a remake of the first game. Moreover, I think it's very cool to finally get to play the game that stars Marth. I'm looking forward to experiencing the rest of the game!

After about 30 hours of Final Fantasy 16... I'd just had enough, honestly. I think I have like forty percent of that game left and I... just can't take any more. Because of this, I picked back up from where I left off with Star Trek Resurgence. This fell by the wayside to games like FF16 and Diablo IV. Feel kinda bad that I shelfed it honestly, as once I reoriented myself with what was going on, I found a spark really got lit in myself which had been so missing when playing through FF16.

It isn't exactly fun to play necessarily, but I like Telltale style games and I’m just generally a sucker for any game that gives you choice, even if in most games it is all pretty fake. Bolt a loot system or a dialogue tree onto any mediocre video game and I’m probably gonna score it like two scores higher than anyone else will. But give me a dialogue system where I felt like my choices genuinely mattered like they do in Resurgence? Oh baby, I'm feasting.

This makes it almost like the inversion of FF16 for me, FF16 is inarguably way more fun to play in the moment to moment, but it serves as a reminder that at least for my tastes no amount of mechanical proficiency will be enough for me when it is basically holding up a game alone. However, when a game is kinda jank like Resurgence most definitely is, my tolerance for that jank is far greater as long as I am as engaged with the story and characters, as I am in Resurgence.

Would I have been as engaged if I was just passively watching the cutscenes play out like I was in Final Fantasy 16? Probably not, honestly. I think it maybe shows the industry under appreciates how much something like a strong narrative choice system can add to a game, I'd argue far more than a flashy combat system can.

But different strokes for different folks, as they say.

@LtSarge "I'd rather see how the series evolves mechanically across each entry" I am curious what you'll think of each. The series' development is kind of weird, and reception for the games after Sands of Time have been all over the place. Keep me updated.

Also, I think the new game looks good. My first introduction to Prince of Persia was the first 2D game. Not because I'm that old (not getting any younger either though haha), but because I once got a disc with a lot of retro games on them (there were a lot of those collection discs back then) and that was one of them.

Anyway, yeah, so it'll nice for the series to get back to 2d after so long. And I love 2d games in general, so this game feels made for me. I don't know how I feel about the art style, which reminds me of Fortnite, but the game does like a labor of love. I can't wait!

@RogerRoger Sonic Advance 2 finished, bad ending and without unlocking the final boss or the secret character that is Amy. I wasn't willing to do the damn special stages 28 times. Self aware Sega calling Cream's chao by the name of Cheese, because you can cheese the game with those two!

Liked that game. It reminds me of Sonic Chaos for whatever reason. Up next Sonic Advance 3, though I may just make a casual stop off at Sonic Battle and Sonic Pinball Party.

Edit: Couple hours later, it appears I have beaten Sonic Pinball party! I'm pretty sure the platinum I got for the Pinball Heroes PSP classic took about the same amount of time.

@BeerIsAwesome Holy heck, Pinball Party is a short game!

As much as I adore Advance 2 (that soundtrack...) you're right to walk away before it tests your patience with those Special Stages. Yeah, I'm always surprised when I give Cream & Cheese a try, because they make a mockery of the boss battles in particular! Which is handy, given how tough some of those "chase" bosses can be. Bold to make 'em all follow the same design template, but still.

Sonic Battle is one of a small handful of games I've left incomplete over the years. There's a specific point in Knux's story where things get unfairly difficult, Knux gets ganged up on, and I just have to abandon my playthrough before I crush my DS Lite in my hands.

So, best of luck with that, then! Unless you've played and completed it before...?

@RogerRoger Yeah, Pinball Party is literally 5 rounds of pinball that make up the story, and that's it! I've not played Sonic Battle before, and I'm not especially familiar with it, but google tells me it's a little bit of a grindfest, so I may just play that one a little more casually, or when I'm between Sonic games. I've given it a few minutes of my time, and it seems fun enough. Next up, Advance 3!

Started playing MadWorld on Wii U. After finishing up Prince of Persia, I've been craving a new game and I was in a mood to play something short but sweet from my Wii backlog. I've played through the first level and it's such a fun game! Another good example of how much fun the games on the Wii were thanks to the motion controls, which work great with this game. I also had no idea that PlatinumGames developed this game, which is cool! Looking forward to playing more of it.

@LtSarge That’s a banger of a game, I honestly forget just how many great one-off third party titles there were on the Wii.

@LtSarge Oh very cool that have picked up Mad World. I remembered the game very clearly (played it back in the days). Its a little bit sad that the game have not got more attention then it have... It would be so very cool to see a remake. Unfortunately it does not seem as PlatinumGames does a lot of remakes.. Its also a little bit of a shame in a way that MadWorld is only available on Wii and Wii U. Would be nice to see the game available on more platforms so more people could try it out although I guess it will unfortunately not happen..

@nessisonett Very true. I played through Red Steel 2 last year, which is one of the best games with motion controls on Wii in my opinion. Still got some more promising third-party titles on Wii to play, such as the Trauma Center games, Epic Mickey, Rabbids Go Home and Zack & Wiki to name a few.

@oliverp Yeah I only know that the protagonist shows up in the crossover title Anarchy Reigns, which I sadly sold my copy of. That one also seemed like a decent game. But yeah, MadWorld definitely seems like one of PlatinumGames' more creative titles. It truly feels like the Wii brought out the creative side of developers back then among all the same-y games we got at the time.

Hopefully more Wii titles get re-released, at the very least on Switch. No More Heroes 1 and 2 are good examples that it works to bring over old Wii titles to a modern platform.

@RogerRoger That's a wrap on Sonic Advance 3, and with the exception of Sonic Battle, that's it for all the games I can emulate. Everything after this I have on a native console, and those I don't, I won't be emulating. I'm pretty sure I'm not losing out by not playing Sonic Boom on the Wii U 😅. GameFAQs is a lifesaver for locating the chao!

Sonic Adventure 2 is up next, followed by the PS2 games - Sonic Heroes, Shadow The Hedgehog and the two Riders games. After Shadow, this is where everything gets linear, so I don't have to repeat the games over and over again in order to get unlocks.

A few sprays of compressed air and my Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller feels good as new. I was playing the Rock Band games cause I was always more of a Guitar Hero fan and it’s been really good, a surprisingly decent tracklist minus Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl, a contender for the worst song of all time. Just having a bit of a nightmare with Enter Sandman, and haven’t played the game in a while so The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again was a crampfest due to being like 9 minutes long 😂

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC. I wasn't sure if my PC would even be able to run it, but thankfully it runs surprisingly well. It even coped with the rift-hopping set-piece, with only a tiny split-second of buffering between rifts. My PC does have an SSD, though the CPU is slightly worse than what's specified in their minimum specs, and the GPU is only slightly above their minimum.

I'm very happy with this. It was the current gen exclusive that I was most eager to play, and now I've got the means to play it.

As for the game itself, it's great so far. The gameplay is fun, and they appear to have done their magic in terms of story and humour. The visuals are also brilliant. I am playing with the lowest display settings and 1080p, but the parade section still looked phenomenal. I'm surprised that game graphics could look that good on my PC.

@BeerIsAwesome You're making steady progress! What did you think of Advance 3 in the end? Since you were emulating, did you enable save states for the final zones, or was the difficulty okay for you? I'm average-to-good at Sonic games, but always struggle with Chaos Angel Zone!

After my previous reply, I'm considering giving Sonic Battle another shot. Not sure how far I'll make it, but am gonna charge up my DS Lite tomorrow. Wish me luck!

If it all goes wrong, I'll join you in replaying the Riders games. I adore them, more than I should.

@RogerRoger Finally got to continue Star Trek: Resurgence for a bit. Up until Jara and Tylas are hiding in the cave chamber watching the Hotari almost do something to the Alydian. The storyline is getting good for sure now, though I acknowledge I've been playing through it slowly. I also like to take my time with these games and pace them like I would a TV show by playing just around an hour at a time. So far this game has given me great points to take breaks at where I would imagine actual episodes ending!

What I really came here to say though, is that I connected my playthrough to an account to see the choice percentages and I'm shocked by how low some of mine are. I'm used to being the person who is usually in the vast majority with most of my decisions, but here there's stuff even in the single digits. Notably, I was one of the 23% who followed Westbrook's advice to use the deflector pulse early in the game. Because of this, our interaction after the medical bay where he was ashamed of his behaviour and I rebuked it sarcastically which he felt was warranted... was only seen by apparently 3% of players. Crazy! The other very low one just happened this last hour where Carter catches Miranda doing the unauthorised transfer and I accused her of lying and called to send her to the brig. Only 5% of players had this exact scenario happen. It really shows that this is a game where choices actually do matter, which is honestly such a satisfying feeling.

In general I seem to be playing Carter quite differently than most since other choices with him are also within the 20-30% range. For example the conversation with Westbrook while they're flying, only 16% apparently left the conversation with Westbrook enjoying it and feeling like Carter was smart, pragmatic and content. Only 28% shared Edsilar's suspicions of Miranda when they first encounter her after landing. And in terms of the biggest choice on his path so far, I chose to descend back into the ship first with the energy wave leaving Edsilar permanently scarred. Also in the minority with 38%. With Jara my percentages are generally more 50/50, with the exception of making Solano impressed with her intellect and approach to the cave mission while debriefing after returning from Hotari Prime. That one is at just 22%.

Sorry for the long rant with all the statistics, but I'm an absolute nerd when it comes to this. I love seeing my choices and the amount of people who had the same experience! I'd love to know if you had a completely different choice/situation from any of the ones I mentioned. Normally I would google myself what the other options are, but with this game being so heavily branching I figure it's a better idea to leave it alone to not get myself spoiled!

@RogerRoger I liked it more than I thought I would. But again, Amy Rose-tinted-glasses, so I think anything Sonic is amazing. The fact I have never played a Sonic Boom game may have something to do with it! I did have save states, but only at certain points. I'm not going to save every time I hit a boss, but rather at the beginning, and if I die I quick load. That's about it really. The special stages reminded me of Triple Trouble, but they were a pain to even manage to get to (GameFAQs once again with the save).

I have been on-off playing Sonic Battle whilst watching the ESA Marathon on Twitch. Thankfully Windows lets me have two windows side by side these days, pun not intended. I've yet to figure out a number of things in the game, but that's on me.

I would say that one thing Sonic has never faltered at is racing games. I've got Adventure 2, Heroes and Shadow before I get on the Riders games. Looking forward to playing them both. Sadly I don't have a 360 and Kinect, so I won't be playing the third one.