it's old now though so you can almost certainly pick it up for next to nothing in a sale
safe to say I'd be all over a sequel
Archived M2K2 Forum
I'm playing Blaster Master Zero when it gets slow at work. There have been several times where the game crashes and an error screen comes up. Finally I went to the support page and it showed me how to check the rom for errors. It said that the rom was corrupted and needed to be prepared. Hoping this fixes it. Never had this happen before.
Dood Trigger™
Banjo-Kazooie is done! 100% items in 6:37.
Still a really cool game. Levels flow pretty fast, and everything's so creative and lively. I had to pretty much force myself to stop and finish the next day 'cause I just wanna keep going. It is kind of a long game though, any%-wise. You're required to collect almost everything to fight Grunty, so you might as well go for 100%. Would've loved an any% requirement closer to SM64's where you only need 70 of the 120 Stars to face Bowser at the end.
I like how there's a decent balance between platforming and collecting in BK. This is a treasure hunt game, but the way the levels are designed you're constantly timing your movement and using all your abilities to collect stuff. Unlike, say, Donkey Kong 64, where the level design is so lazy and barren that you just walk 90% of the time. The only duds in BK's arsenal IMO are the transformations, which are basically glorified keys and don't do much except look adorable. They look really adorable, though.
The levels are sooo fun and varied. And the Jiggies are (almost) never hard to get. A lot of them are just lying there, which to me is a good thing (love Tooie, but the stuff you gotta do for one miserable Jiggy is borderline insane sometimes). It's funny how BK's levels start at 15-20 minutes long and they keep getting subtly longer and longer, by only a few minutes every time, until Click Clock Wood just takes over everything and becomes its own freaking 1h30-long mini adventure. But CCW is a huge exception. That area could've been 4 hours long as far as I'm concerned. It might be the greatest level in a 3D platformer.
Still a really cool game. Levels flow pretty fast, and everything's so creative and lively. I had to pretty much force myself to stop and finish the next day 'cause I just wanna keep going. It is kind of a long game though, any%-wise. You're required to collect almost everything to fight Grunty, so you might as well go for 100%. Would've loved an any% requirement closer to SM64's where you only need 70 of the 120 Stars to face Bowser at the end.
I like how there's a decent balance between platforming and collecting in BK. This is a treasure hunt game, but the way the levels are designed you're constantly timing your movement and using all your abilities to collect stuff. Unlike, say, Donkey Kong 64, where the level design is so lazy and barren that you just walk 90% of the time. The only duds in BK's arsenal IMO are the transformations, which are basically glorified keys and don't do much except look adorable. They look really adorable, though.
The levels are sooo fun and varied. And the Jiggies are (almost) never hard to get. A lot of them are just lying there, which to me is a good thing (love Tooie, but the stuff you gotta do for one miserable Jiggy is borderline insane sometimes). It's funny how BK's levels start at 15-20 minutes long and they keep getting subtly longer and longer, by only a few minutes every time, until Click Clock Wood just takes over everything and becomes its own freaking 1h30-long mini adventure. But CCW is a huge exception. That area could've been 4 hours long as far as I'm concerned. It might be the greatest level in a 3D platformer.
I thought I'd play Bayonetta again, but not feeling very committed to it. Despite over 100 hours put into this game, there's still so much that I just don't understand about it. I don't even understand what half of the items DO, or how to use them. I also don't understand how to pull off so many of the moves even though it tells you what to do. I do it, and it doesn't work and I have zero clue as to why. This game would be so much better if it wasn't like that.
And then there's all the things I find out from looking online and think to myself 'How the hell would I EVER know that?!'
And then there's all the things I find out from looking online and think to myself 'How the hell would I EVER know that?!'
Plus I forgot all about that part where you have to fight four of those durga guys on a staircase. They attack so fast and furious, non-stop, and if you miss even one dodge it's over because you can't recover from it and they just keep pummeling you until your health is gone. I've died a dozen times and haven't even got in more than a couple of hits on any of them. It's about 20 acts into the game and until this point I only died once and it was from falling when I failed to press the button during a cutscene. This part is ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the game, as it's harder than even the final boss. I think they intended it this way, and they want you to go back and replay the first 20 acts over and over until you're powerful enough to face them? Stupid part, for sure.
Dood Trigger™
If you're having trouble with something in Bayonetta, equip Shuraba (katana), PKP. It beats everything.
Yooka-Laylee getting some pretty mediocre reviews, but everything they say in the reviews sounds exactly like what you'd expect from this kind of game... lots to collect, no map, puzzles and mini games galore. Shrug. I'm still getting it.
Yooka-Laylee getting some pretty mediocre reviews, but everything they say in the reviews sounds exactly like what you'd expect from this kind of game... lots to collect, no map, puzzles and mini games galore. Shrug. I'm still getting it.
The best I can say about any Rare minigame is that I was okay with it, which isn't a great reason to have them. Never heard anyone say that minigames are part of what they're looking for. Especially now we get so little in the way of 3D platformers, anything that isn't core gameplay better have a great reason for being there
Quote from Da Dood:
If you're having trouble with something in Bayonetta, equip Shuraba (katana), PKP. It beats everything.
Yooka-Laylee getting some pretty mediocre reviews, but everything they say in the reviews sounds exactly like what you'd expect from this kind of game... lots to collect, no map, puzzles and mini games galore. Shrug. I'm still getting it.
Yooka-Laylee getting some pretty mediocre reviews, but everything they say in the reviews sounds exactly like what you'd expect from this kind of game... lots to collect, no map, puzzles and mini games galore. Shrug. I'm still getting it.
The guy who owns a retro gaming store near where I live talked to me a lot about how the major reviews are mostly written by kids who have zero clue about how gaming has evolved. They think all games that have any kind of retro feel to them are mediocre. He said the whole industry is becoming like that. If you like old games, you're outcast by the industry, even if you like new games too. It's just like the music industry. If you say one thing about an old rock band then nobody wants anything to do with you, but if you love nothing except the shit that dominates the charts today then you're hired. It really sucks.
Dood Trigger™
No idea why, but I'm replaying Donkey Kong 64. When I hit the 6 hour mark, it said I had 31% items. That's how long it took me to 100% Banjo-Kazooie...
It's been 10 years since I played this and yep, still a game where you don't do much except walk, change characters and hit a switch. Pretty baffling that Rare can go from Banjo/GoldenEye/Killer Instinct to this. It's like they were cramming as many collectables as they could into the game to make as little creative effort as possible. There's practically no platforming, most moves are situational and the goals are obscenely unimaginative. Maybe they were saving the good ideas for Banjo-Tooie and Conker. It's a pretty clear indication of Rare's mindset at the time that the most creative area in the game - Fungi Forest - was supposed to be in Banjo-Kazooie.
One nice thing about this playthrough that I didn't know back then is that you don't have to collect everything for 101% (you "only" need 75/100 bananas per character per level), which admittedly is an enormous relief. And I found a sort of decent flow by solving Jungle Japes and Angry Aztec with all characters before I moved on. Now I'm doing one complete area per day and it's been okay. Should be done before the weekend, unless Beaver Bother lives up to its name.
Also, check out some of Cranky Kong's quotes from the manual... he usually insults the player and other characters, but this time he just trashes the game non-stop and it's hilarious:
It's been 10 years since I played this and yep, still a game where you don't do much except walk, change characters and hit a switch. Pretty baffling that Rare can go from Banjo/GoldenEye/Killer Instinct to this. It's like they were cramming as many collectables as they could into the game to make as little creative effort as possible. There's practically no platforming, most moves are situational and the goals are obscenely unimaginative. Maybe they were saving the good ideas for Banjo-Tooie and Conker. It's a pretty clear indication of Rare's mindset at the time that the most creative area in the game - Fungi Forest - was supposed to be in Banjo-Kazooie.
One nice thing about this playthrough that I didn't know back then is that you don't have to collect everything for 101% (you "only" need 75/100 bananas per character per level), which admittedly is an enormous relief. And I found a sort of decent flow by solving Jungle Japes and Angry Aztec with all characters before I moved on. Now I'm doing one complete area per day and it's been okay. Should be done before the weekend, unless Beaver Bother lives up to its name.
Also, check out some of Cranky Kong's quotes from the manual... he usually insults the player and other characters, but this time he just trashes the game non-stop and it's hilarious:
"Now don't you go asking me for a potion of gameplay, as even my genius can't rescue this game from its rightful destiny in the bargain bin."
"You'll be so busy collecting, you'll not notice the lack of gameplay."
(The items section on the manual describes all the items in the game, until this appears at the end) Scroll of Gameplay - "You can look high and low, but you won't find one of these much needed items in the game!"
The Baddies - "There's so much that's bad about this game, it's hardly necessary to have any bad guys in it at all. I just hope they don't resort to enlarging the characters on the levels and calling them bosses this time; that giant beaver was a pretty cheap trick!"
"You'll be so busy collecting, you'll not notice the lack of gameplay."
(The items section on the manual describes all the items in the game, until this appears at the end) Scroll of Gameplay - "You can look high and low, but you won't find one of these much needed items in the game!"
The Baddies - "There's so much that's bad about this game, it's hardly necessary to have any bad guys in it at all. I just hope they don't resort to enlarging the characters on the levels and calling them bosses this time; that giant beaver was a pretty cheap trick!"