Well, I already beat it. Last night, in fact.
For those not in the know, Balloon Fight is a simple action game where you fly around and beat people up. Both you and enemy fighters are held aloft by balloons - you get two, they get one, but they have the luxury of being able to re-inflate them if they land on something solid. At this point you can deliver them a sweet flying kick to remove them from the stage. The other way of killin' dudes is letting them drop into the water, where they will either drown or get eaten by a gigantic fish.
Controls are heavily momentum-based, and there are essentially only three inputs: left, right and flap. The game doesn't give you any time to get used to this, so you'll probably get dunked a few times before you start a decent run through the game. The levels loop after 12, which I got past a number of times, so I call this mode beaten. Two-player play is available, but it's simply a cooperative version of this mode.
There is also another mode, called Balloon Trip. This is a simple side-scroller (which goes to the left, for some reason) with lots of lightning bolts to avoid and balloons to pick up, usually in precarious places. After a couple of tries I managed to grab all the balloons, so there's not much else to do!
Fun, short game. Decent difficulty, not much aggravation. Worth being called a classic.
My next game is Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land. I've played the original a bit.
Sunday, 14 February 2016
Saturday, 13 February 2016
#1: Phantasy Star Portable
Well, one game has fallen to my mighty thumbs so far this year: Phantasy Star Portable. It styles itself as a sequel to Phantasy Star Universe, picking up the plot 3 months later, but it almost exclusively uses resources from that game, so the experience is very similar indeed. The plot is even basically the same, what with a looming threat from SEED and the planetary representatives being jerks about letting the Guardians do their jobs.
Stepping back a bit, PSU is essentially a revisit of Phantasy Star Online, one of the first graphical MMOs. PSO is an offshoot of the long-running Phantasy Star series, the first title being a party-based dungeon crawler on the Master System. From the beginning, it has stood out with its female protagonists, high-tech setting and singular visual style. It has also produced some excellent soundtracks, several of which grace my media library.
The first four games are standard JRPG fare, but Online created full-3D (slightly) randomly generated environments, and also introduced MMO-standard grinding/farming mechanics. Despite this, it can still be played in single-player mode with a definitive 'credit roll' ending; this lets you replay the game on a higher difficulty setting, similar to Diablo II. The fact that you can use the same character off- and on-line meant that hacking was a huge problem, leading to many revisions of the game being released on various consoles. It was probably one of the Dreamcast's most popular games, keeping it going longer than it might have otherwise.
I played as a Newman Hunter at first, giving myself a rather unlikely hair/skin colour combination as is my wont. My experience with PSU so far led me to focusing on melee weapons, as spells and ranged weapons really don't benefit from Universe's (slightly) more complex combat. The different weapon types (of which there many) have reasonably different feels, making the choice meaningful; there is a 'palette' of six weapons you can freely switch between in battle, though if you're quick with the game menu, you could swap in even more during combat if you really wanted to. My favourite part of this system is that you are able to put melee weapons in your right hand and ranged weapons in your left, allowing for quite a bit of customisation. Portable adds (I think?) Mags which fill up the ranged slot, either providing cover fire automatically or being a decent launchpad for spells if you're not otherwise a spell-focused class.
As soon as I hit Hunter level 7, I changed to Fighmaster, which essentially just a better Hunter, able to wield several S-class weapons. Unfortunately, the only one I found was a Mag that only Rangers could equip. This appeared to be a set drop in the final area, because I got several of them.
Difficulty was usually low, though some bosses were much, much harder than their surrounding dungeon. De Rol Le made an appearance (first in PSO) and it fully took an hour to beat him, because this incarnation lets you hit him even less than the original one did. The final boss blew me away so quickly in my initial attempt that I just knew it would be impossible without grinding. Over the next 3 hours I gained 8 levels and a couple of equipment upgrades, and this was JUST enough... the final boss gauntlet (3 forms, essentially) left me with only 6 of 30 healing items, and no Scape Dolls (instant resurrect if you die).
Overall, a decent game, but if you've already played Phantasy Star Universe, there isn't much to see. The soundtrack and graphics are both essentially the same, just of lower quality.
My next game (picked by my beautiful assistant) is, uh... Balloon Fight. Maybe this one won't need 3 hours of grinding.
Stepping back a bit, PSU is essentially a revisit of Phantasy Star Online, one of the first graphical MMOs. PSO is an offshoot of the long-running Phantasy Star series, the first title being a party-based dungeon crawler on the Master System. From the beginning, it has stood out with its female protagonists, high-tech setting and singular visual style. It has also produced some excellent soundtracks, several of which grace my media library.
The first four games are standard JRPG fare, but Online created full-3D (slightly) randomly generated environments, and also introduced MMO-standard grinding/farming mechanics. Despite this, it can still be played in single-player mode with a definitive 'credit roll' ending; this lets you replay the game on a higher difficulty setting, similar to Diablo II. The fact that you can use the same character off- and on-line meant that hacking was a huge problem, leading to many revisions of the game being released on various consoles. It was probably one of the Dreamcast's most popular games, keeping it going longer than it might have otherwise.
I played as a Newman Hunter at first, giving myself a rather unlikely hair/skin colour combination as is my wont. My experience with PSU so far led me to focusing on melee weapons, as spells and ranged weapons really don't benefit from Universe's (slightly) more complex combat. The different weapon types (of which there many) have reasonably different feels, making the choice meaningful; there is a 'palette' of six weapons you can freely switch between in battle, though if you're quick with the game menu, you could swap in even more during combat if you really wanted to. My favourite part of this system is that you are able to put melee weapons in your right hand and ranged weapons in your left, allowing for quite a bit of customisation. Portable adds (I think?) Mags which fill up the ranged slot, either providing cover fire automatically or being a decent launchpad for spells if you're not otherwise a spell-focused class.
As soon as I hit Hunter level 7, I changed to Fighmaster, which essentially just a better Hunter, able to wield several S-class weapons. Unfortunately, the only one I found was a Mag that only Rangers could equip. This appeared to be a set drop in the final area, because I got several of them.
Difficulty was usually low, though some bosses were much, much harder than their surrounding dungeon. De Rol Le made an appearance (first in PSO) and it fully took an hour to beat him, because this incarnation lets you hit him even less than the original one did. The final boss blew me away so quickly in my initial attempt that I just knew it would be impossible without grinding. Over the next 3 hours I gained 8 levels and a couple of equipment upgrades, and this was JUST enough... the final boss gauntlet (3 forms, essentially) left me with only 6 of 30 healing items, and no Scape Dolls (instant resurrect if you die).
Overall, a decent game, but if you've already played Phantasy Star Universe, there isn't much to see. The soundtrack and graphics are both essentially the same, just of lower quality.
My next game (picked by my beautiful assistant) is, uh... Balloon Fight. Maybe this one won't need 3 hours of grinding.
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Enoch!
So, let's look at those 'resolutions' again.
Watch as few video game streams as possible
Fairly successful on this. Generally I've been watching while eating, so I couldn't have really been doing anything else, or when I'm waiting for something else to happen. There are a few games/people I like to support by watching, such as Shining Force, which keep me coming back to Twitch.
Play no League of Legends
Check.
Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
Not done any of this yet. I'm not really sure how to pick a first game, among other issues.
Update: Emily picked Phantasy Star Portable as my first game to beat this year.
Record and submit a speedrun or two
I have been streaming speedrun attempts at El Shaddai, which has been coming along nicely. It still needs plenty of work before it becomes good enough to submit to SDA, but I feel like I do occasionally play well.
Create a working prototype of a strategy game
No work on this so far this year.
Re-build and re-style my website
I've made a few notes, but other than the gaming page, nothing to show.
Watch as few video game streams as possible
Fairly successful on this. Generally I've been watching while eating, so I couldn't have really been doing anything else, or when I'm waiting for something else to happen. There are a few games/people I like to support by watching, such as Shining Force, which keep me coming back to Twitch.
Play no League of Legends
Check.
Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
Not done any of this yet. I'm not really sure how to pick a first game, among other issues.
Update: Emily picked Phantasy Star Portable as my first game to beat this year.
Record and submit a speedrun or two
I have been streaming speedrun attempts at El Shaddai, which has been coming along nicely. It still needs plenty of work before it becomes good enough to submit to SDA, but I feel like I do occasionally play well.
Create a working prototype of a strategy game
No work on this so far this year.
Re-build and re-style my website
I've made a few notes, but other than the gaming page, nothing to show.
Sunday, 3 January 2016
Lag.Gaming
In light of what I said about making sure I actually play games this year, I've set up a simple tracking page on my website which will be useful once I start in earnest. The idea is to track progress in each game and give links to VODs. If I need some more information later, it's easy to add to.
Monday, 14 December 2015
Twenty Sixteen
Looking ahead slightly, I want to do things a little differently next year.
I realise that the amount of time I spend watching video game streams, particularly League of Legends, is excessive. In fact, I think League in general is a huge time sink that doesn't provide me with all that much benefit; I enjoy the game (playing and watching), but it's just too much of an involvement necessary to get better, and I have so many other things to do that I can't justify it any more.
I have many ongoing projects that would benefit from more attention. The most obvious is my ever-growing collection of video games. It doesn't make any sense to continue buying them when I have over a thousand yet to beat, many hundreds of which I haven't even started! I'd also like to get back into streaming regularly, and this seems like the most obvious way to do it.
Speedrunning still appeals to me, however disillusioned I am with Speed Demos Archive and Games Done Quick. I have a few runs at various stages of completion, and it would make me feel like a better gamer to research them further or actually finish them. Occasionally people have also let me know that they're interested in the games I've picked up, so it would be some entertainment for them, too.
There's also two large programming projects; the strategy game I'm working on with some help from Emily, and a new website. The game is nowhere near done; it has much engine development but little content yet, and it's not possible to play a full battle so far. It needs many, many hours of work to be usable and a couple of multiples of that to be good. I probably won't be able to finish it in a year, but I could put a large dent in the needed work. This would also help me improve as a programmer, adding the ability to appreciate projects of greater scope.
A new website has been something on my mind for a long time. My current site doesn't really show off what I know about HTML and JavaScript, so it would be neat to revisit it as a showcase alone. The functionality is what I really want to improve... I've been putting more and more focus on it being a decent repository of video game information, and to that end it keeps track of game prices, collection data and now I'm starting on linking games together that share characters. I want to take this to another level and make it possible to define collections of games by certain companies, or about certain events in history, and so on. This time I want to design the website properly from the beginning, leaving enough room for extension but not relying on a hodge-podge of techniques.
So, to recap:
I realise that the amount of time I spend watching video game streams, particularly League of Legends, is excessive. In fact, I think League in general is a huge time sink that doesn't provide me with all that much benefit; I enjoy the game (playing and watching), but it's just too much of an involvement necessary to get better, and I have so many other things to do that I can't justify it any more.
I have many ongoing projects that would benefit from more attention. The most obvious is my ever-growing collection of video games. It doesn't make any sense to continue buying them when I have over a thousand yet to beat, many hundreds of which I haven't even started! I'd also like to get back into streaming regularly, and this seems like the most obvious way to do it.
Speedrunning still appeals to me, however disillusioned I am with Speed Demos Archive and Games Done Quick. I have a few runs at various stages of completion, and it would make me feel like a better gamer to research them further or actually finish them. Occasionally people have also let me know that they're interested in the games I've picked up, so it would be some entertainment for them, too.
There's also two large programming projects; the strategy game I'm working on with some help from Emily, and a new website. The game is nowhere near done; it has much engine development but little content yet, and it's not possible to play a full battle so far. It needs many, many hours of work to be usable and a couple of multiples of that to be good. I probably won't be able to finish it in a year, but I could put a large dent in the needed work. This would also help me improve as a programmer, adding the ability to appreciate projects of greater scope.
A new website has been something on my mind for a long time. My current site doesn't really show off what I know about HTML and JavaScript, so it would be neat to revisit it as a showcase alone. The functionality is what I really want to improve... I've been putting more and more focus on it being a decent repository of video game information, and to that end it keeps track of game prices, collection data and now I'm starting on linking games together that share characters. I want to take this to another level and make it possible to define collections of games by certain companies, or about certain events in history, and so on. This time I want to design the website properly from the beginning, leaving enough room for extension but not relying on a hodge-podge of techniques.
So, to recap:
- Watch as few video game streams as possible
- Play no League of Legends
- Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
- Record and submit a speedrun or two
- Create a working prototype of a strategy game
- Re-build and re-style my website
That's enough for a year.
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
More
Well, I guess the other presents arrived!
Another book; Love Songs of Early China, a translation and commentary of some very old poetry indeed. I'm primarily interested in this because of the linguistic angle, but the poetry might be interesting too. :D For some reason, the book has no entry on GoodReads, so I've added one.
For a while now, we've had this annoying issue with the PS3 where it refuses to play some of the PS1 Classic titles I've bought from the UK PSN store. To that end, we now have a PlayStation TV! And... they still don't work, because for some reason many PAL PS1 titles don't support the PSTV. Argh. Well, at least now I have a way of playing Vita games! The memory card just arrived today, so it's time to download everything that it'll play, I guess.
Another book; Love Songs of Early China, a translation and commentary of some very old poetry indeed. I'm primarily interested in this because of the linguistic angle, but the poetry might be interesting too. :D For some reason, the book has no entry on GoodReads, so I've added one.
For a while now, we've had this annoying issue with the PS3 where it refuses to play some of the PS1 Classic titles I've bought from the UK PSN store. To that end, we now have a PlayStation TV! And... they still don't work, because for some reason many PAL PS1 titles don't support the PSTV. Argh. Well, at least now I have a way of playing Vita games! The memory card just arrived today, so it's time to download everything that it'll play, I guess.
Insignificant Birthdays
Good morning! It's the day after my 29th birthday and I'm suffering from the tail end of a cold, so let's do this. I'm reliably informed that not all of my presents have arrived yet, but I already have plenty to talk about.
As many already know, the past couple of weeks I've been playing Destiny because Emily was kind enough to buy the Digital Collector's Edition for me. My experience with it so far has been quite positive; there have been a few connection issues but nothing to serious. I've since beaten all the main story missions for each expansion and enjoyed the whole thing. Coming in, I knew it was some mix of FPS and MMO, so I expected something like Planetside. However, PvP is strictly opt-in and not very emphasized, so it's really more like Borderlands. In fact, the game is so heavily like Borderlands it makes me wonder if some of the development crew was shared. Maps are reused ruthlessly, guns and gear are semi-randomly generated, the missions are structured the same way, there's a skill tree for each class (well, Destiny has subclasses), the overall atmosphere is grim but there's a fair bit of humour, PvP sucks... I'm sure there's more. Nevertheless, definitely a fun game with some decent challenge (haven't done a Raid yet) and excellent web/app support. Recommended if you like Halo and Borderlands.
My other "present" so far consists of almost the entire Malazan book series. I randomly found the first novel in a Waterstones a couple of weeks ago, and now I have 14 of them. My interest in them was sparked by Chester Bolingbroke, so hopefully he's a good judge of taste. They're pretty long, even for epic fantasy novels, so I'm settled in for the long haul. I'll probably bring a few to America on our next trip.
As many already know, the past couple of weeks I've been playing Destiny because Emily was kind enough to buy the Digital Collector's Edition for me. My experience with it so far has been quite positive; there have been a few connection issues but nothing to serious. I've since beaten all the main story missions for each expansion and enjoyed the whole thing. Coming in, I knew it was some mix of FPS and MMO, so I expected something like Planetside. However, PvP is strictly opt-in and not very emphasized, so it's really more like Borderlands. In fact, the game is so heavily like Borderlands it makes me wonder if some of the development crew was shared. Maps are reused ruthlessly, guns and gear are semi-randomly generated, the missions are structured the same way, there's a skill tree for each class (well, Destiny has subclasses), the overall atmosphere is grim but there's a fair bit of humour, PvP sucks... I'm sure there's more. Nevertheless, definitely a fun game with some decent challenge (haven't done a Raid yet) and excellent web/app support. Recommended if you like Halo and Borderlands.
My other "present" so far consists of almost the entire Malazan book series. I randomly found the first novel in a Waterstones a couple of weeks ago, and now I have 14 of them. My interest in them was sparked by Chester Bolingbroke, so hopefully he's a good judge of taste. They're pretty long, even for epic fantasy novels, so I'm settled in for the long haul. I'll probably bring a few to America on our next trip.
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