Something went wrong. Try again later

Video_Game_King

So is my status going to update soon, or will it pretend that my Twitter account hasn't existed for about a month?

36563 59080 830 928
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

I have finally beaten my 1000th game. Let us all rejoice.

By Video_Game_King 92 Comments


No Caption Provided

Donkey Kong Country 3

( Holy shit, I'm almost near the end.) I don't even know how to begin something like this. Hell, how does one begin something like this? I haven't heard of anybody beating 1000 games before, so I guess I'm the first to do it. Wait, something's off. Why didn't that sentence give me an ego boner? *gasp* This great feat is distorting reality itself! Who knows what will happen because of this? Hold on, I'm sensing something....I....like Donkey Kong Country 3 more than its predecessor? WHAT CRUEL REALITY HAVE I CREATED!? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
 
Actually, it's not all bad, as my preferences have shown. After all, it's still Donkey Kong Country, and Donkey Kong Country rules, even if it has neither Donkey nor Diddy Kong. Why aren't they in this game? Because Scientist K Rool, who was formerly Kaptain K Rool, who was formerly King K Rool, captured them. That's the first thing I like about this game: the villain's actually pretty competent. It's just a shame that he's constantly demoted (I guess there's some unwritten code that villains have to be morons). When his plans were first foiled, he captured DK, thinking that Diddy couldn't fight back. He was wrong, and learned from that lesson, leaving Dixie Kong, whom I keep calling Trixie Kong, for some reason (there isn't even a Trixie Kong), alone. What the hell is she gonna do? Wait, she has company, like how Diddy Kong had company, only instead of being an OK character, we get Kiddy Kong, the unevolved form of Bam-Bam. Honestly, I can't blame Janitor K Rool; Kiddy Kong sucks ass. All he can do is blast through certain floors, although you'll never need to do that. If you ever need to take a hit, put that little baby in the line of fire. Then you'll have Dixie Kong left, and she's actually useful, since she can hover and stuff.
 
 Oh, fucking fuck. Excuse me while I collect yet another Kong coin. Or is it Kremlin coin? I never figured that out.
 Oh, fucking fuck. Excuse me while I collect yet another Kong coin. Or is it Kremlin coin? I never figured that out.
As I probably should have explained several sentences ago, both Kiddy and Dixie have special abilities that don't come up that often. At least I don't remember them coming up that often. What I do remember frequently occurring is the overworld mechanic, which is my biggest problem with the game. What the hell does it add? It doesn't turn this into The Legend of Zelda: Monkey Princess, since progression through levels is still linear as hell, and it doesn't make the world feel any more united than it felt in previous games. All it does is force me to dick around a bit more to get to major parts of the game. Why does the game need artificial lengthening? It's already stupidly long, and adding an overworld system doesn't make things better. Hell, Rare never even bothers explaining the water levels. However, I will. Kinda. When you get to a world, for the most part, the overworld changes back to the "why isn't this in the rest of the game" level-to-level thing. Except for the water levels. These allow you to move around all you want, even though there's only one level. You have to beat this level, but it's never really explained why; the path to the next level is open, but it won't unlock until you swim through the underwater level. Again, none of this is ever explained. Thanks a lot, Rare. You introduced a major gameplay mechanic that's more useless than summons have become in modern Final Fantasy games. That's a new low. I'd like to see you top that.
 
Oh, right, there are TONS of collectibles in this game. Wait, that's not really topping an overworld. You may think it is, but admit it: it's not. If anything, all these collectibles can be pretty cool at times. You have gold bonus coins, invisible silver coins (presumably hanging out with invisible bonus bananas and the invisible pink unicorn), Kong coins, Kong letters, and probably a bunch more that I forgot. Can you blame me? I'm pretty sure that there are more collectibles in the game than there are levels, and that's including the Lost World that I never got to because I'm a lazy bastard who never 100%s a game. Still, Donkey Kong Country 3 came pretty close to achieving that, especially with the Kong coins. Once you see those soldiers in a level, you just can't leave them alone; they need a barrel up the ass. It's the closest you can come to being Brad in the Super Meat Boy Quick Look. The only major difference is that Super Meat Boy at least tells you which levels still have all the crap you forgot to collect; this is something Donkey Kong Country 3 forgot. Keep in mind that a large part of this game is collecting every little thing to get 100%. Wait, I think Rare just topped themselves. I'm not even done with this blog, so that can't be good news.
 
 Seen here is Kiddy Kong trying to be useful, for once. And failing at it.
 Seen here is Kiddy Kong trying to be useful, for once. And failing at it.
Did I mention that with bonus levels, you can essentially collect Kong letters twice? Of course, it's incredibly impractical and not worth it, since you can already collect a billion lives in the game, but I feel compelled to point out every way this game gives you lives. There are a lot of them. Not the number of ways to get lives (all I remember is collecting bananas and Kong letters, although I'm sure that there are more ways), but just the sheer number of lives the game throws at you. It gets so bad that for me, the game had to move to base-16 to save screen space, and even that was almost insufficient. However, to be fair, this is a problem that the series has been dealing with for a long time, and Donkey Kong Country 3 actually tries to fix this. There are some levels that actually managed to kick my ass, at times; if it wasn't for the baby monkey soaking up hits, I may have lost a few more lives. But as that sentence implies, and as this sentence shoves in your face, I didn't lose a lot of lives. The hardest parts of the game were the ones that didn't use lives: the boat mini-game. I'll be brief about it, since it's not that large a part of the game: it isn't that good, and you don't get a lot of reward for it.
 
OK, this is getting ridiculous. How did I manage to squeeze this much out of a relatively simple platformer? I'll try to wrap it up in this paragraph. First, the animals. Some of them are back, and while they all have some very well fleshed-out levels, for about the first half of the game, it's all about the elephant. Although you'll see signs for other animals, you probably won't play as them in those levels. Not the elephant, though. He gets a ton of levels. Hell, he even gets his own boss. Wait, the elephant's a girl? Fuck her, because I'm not talking about animals anymore. The game already has enough ideas packed into it, and I need to address each one individually. Unfortunately, that's going to be impossible, since every level has a brand new idea, all the time, forever. I'd like to catch this game repeating itself or implementing a bad idea, but it's amazing that I can't. Even when it looks like it's about to run out of ideas, when it starts throwing trees and barrels at you a lot, it gives you a snowman boss that I think formed the basis for something in Grunty's Revenge, the obscure Banjo Kazooie game that's worse than Nuts & Bolts. Why is there a snowman in a monkey game? Who gives a shit? Hell, I could sum up the entire game with that one exchange, if I wanted to. This game simply does not give a fuck, and that's why it's so awesome. It's also why this game gets the Kefka Award: because he does not give a fuck, but you still love the hell out of him. Also, transition purposes.
 

Review Synopsis

  • If you're going to have an overworld system, at least have a reason for doing so. I don't see one.
  • If you want to improve the game in any way, at least tone down the lives.
  • Then again, this game is already awesome enough on its own. Now if you'll excuse me...
 
 
 
 
 
So we all know that this shall be a momentous blog for the ages, so what video have I chosen to accompany it? A decent music video about one of the best video game villains around: Kefka. That is all.
  
  

Capcom Generations 2: Chronicles of Arthur

( This is it.) Just one more game, and I'll have reached the number 1000. Wait, the hell? This is weird. For my final game in this countdown, I have chosen a compilation of three games that, for whatever reason, does not show up in any of my searches whatsoever. It contains a bunch of cool extras and a terrifying intro (followed by a cool intro that I'm not going to link), but that's not the point. The point is that I essentially have to beat three more games to get to the top. That's right: a blog of double awesomeness! What more did you expect? Let this be a blog for the ages!

Ghosts 'n Goblins

( Of course, the race to 1000 begins with a game I didn't like to begin with.) (Oh, let me say the following: The Race to 1000 sounds like the name of a book that turned into a crap movie. Just saying.) I have some pretty good memories of this game, which I wish I could say about other games. However, while the games I want to remember are the ones I think I liked (Star Ocean, Super Mario RPG, Mega Man X2, Super Metriod, etc.), my memories of Ghosts 'n Goblins are about as good as my memory. Of course, I probably played the game years ago, so it was time for me to refresh my memories. Turns out that the game's actually pretty decent.
 
To begin with, it contains something I always love: random, unexplained insanity. You wouldn't know it with the set-up, but trust me, this game makes no sense. It begins with you and your girlfriend having a picnic, when for no reason, a demon captures her. I'd say that it was because you're in your underwear, and he's showing her what pants look like, but when Arthur puts on his clothes, his wench remains captured. Therefore, he must embark on a quest to figure out why his girlfriend was captured. So yea, this all sounds normal, but keep in mind that I haven't told you what dangers you face. Standing in your way are flying demon burritos, ogres that shoot magic death sperm, dragons that eventually just become heads (trust me, it's weirder in action), and those effing red demons. If you're going to play this game, play the version I played, because this time, the difficulty isn't trying to one-up Battletoads or Takeshi's Challenge or other random NES games. Hell, you can even select your difficulty now, which automatically makes it better than the NES version I didn't really like.
 
 Prepare to see this a lot, because, obviously, this is a hard game. (Also: there aren't a lot of screenshots for the NES version, even though it's probably the most widely played version of this game. The hell?)
 Prepare to see this a lot, because, obviously, this is a hard game. (Also: there aren't a lot of screenshots for the NES version, even though it's probably the most widely played version of this game. The hell?)
Then again, playing this game reminded me of all the reasons I didn't like the NES version. It isn't because of all the stuff that works (the controls), or the things they fixed (the overall difficulty, all your weapons actually working against all your enemies), but all the shit that they refused to fix or improve. That does not get a set of parentheses, since I have an entire paragraph for that. Where do I start? I know that this is somewhat petty of me, but where's the turbo? I want to be able to hold down a button and watch Arthur throw molotov cocktails in a drunken fury, but this game doesn't let me. Instead, I have to mash the fire button like a drinking bird filled with heroin just to destroy one sperm-shooting ogre. Keep in mind that some of the levels are STUFFED with jizz ogres, level 5 in particular. In fact, fuck level 5; that's the level where most of my complaints register. I've already covered the lack of turbo, but there's also ladders. First, you cannot defend yourself AT ALL while on a ladder. Why? Why can't I shoot while I'm on a ladder? Ghosts 'n Goblins comes from the same people who made Mega Man, a game where you can defend yourself on a ladder. In fact, if I was measuring games based on ladder mechanics, I would be more insane than I usually am. But more importantly, Mega Man and Ghosts 'n Goblins would be polar opposites. I've already told you about how you can't shoot on ladders, but there's also the fact that apparently, Jordan Mechner animated the ladder-exiting animation. This may not sound like much, but keep in mind that while you're watching the oddly detailed animation of Arthur's ass (there's no fucking way I'm linking that), the enemies have the perfect opportunity to slice said ass. Why the hell would they ever bother putting in such a useless gameplay feature?
 
Wait, I forgot that this game constantly struggles to deliver on content. First, let me get this out of the way right now: yes, you have to play through the game twice to get an ending that doesn't tell you to play the game twice. This time, instead of saying "fuck you, game, you're beaten", I actually accepted its challenge to beat it again, and noticed that NOTHING changed. It's still the same six levels, and even then, the game's desperate for crap to throw in. By the second level, its idea for a boss is to repeat the first boss twice, and the fourth level does the same with the third level boss, only without doubling. Keep in mind that there are six levels, and that the last two do the EXACT SAME THING. I mean that both ways; it repeats its bosses and shoves all two bosses you've previously seen into those levels. Oh, and if you fail to get a certain weapon by the end of the sixth level, you get sent back to the beginning of the fifth, because at this point, they were just out of ideas. Hell, just look at the weapon you need to fetch: it's a shield. It's just the spear, only with worse range. The only major difference is that it absorbs projectiles, sometimes. I'd go into detail about the other weapons, but again, they're stupidly similar to each other. You just toss them in an arc. That's it. I'm guessing that the difficulty is meant to make you forget that there isn't much to the game. It doesn't work. It only prompts me to give this game the I Wanna Be the Guy/Super Meat Boy Dual Award for Hard Platformers that Most Likely Filled Up YouTube with Bad Videos of Said Games. You know it's true. Admit it.
 

Review Synopsis

  • What a hard game, although not as hard as I remember.
  • Also, I don't remember this game being as lazy as it is.
  • Still, it's at least worth a look.
 

Ghouls 'n Ghosts

( Two games in, and things are getting a bit weird.) The first weird thing is that technically, I'm already three games into this blog. Second, I've already blogged about this game before, and from the looks of it, I used the Enter button in the blog like I used the fire button in these games. Today, I plan to rectify that mistake. Instead of seeing a bunch of tiny paragraphs, you're going to see a couple of really long paragraphs. You know, I probably should have said that the game improves on previous attempts, too, after the whole "rectify that mistake thing", but you should know by now that I'm not a fan of the Backspace key.
 
Obviously being a sequel, Ghouls 'n Ghosts takes place immediately after its predecessor, Ghosts 'n Goblins. And by "immediately", I mean 'three years." This is when the demons that haunted the princess before come back to haunt her yet again. Why did they wait three years to enact their plan? My best guess is that they got tired of waiting for Superjail to come back on the air (it's been a long time, hasn't it?), but honestly, I have no idea, and it really doesn't matter. The big issue at hand is who the hell captured the princess, as I'm kinda confused about this. The game says that Lucifer captured her, but Lucifer was just a minor boss in the first game; the big baddie was Satan. What the hell is eating up Satan's time that he can't capture princesses? He already has enough snow and beard to pass off as the Ice King. (Get used to the Adventure Time jokes; I hope to abuse the hell out of them.) However, I have also seen people call the final boss Loki. Does this mean that Norse mythology is coexisting alongside Christian mythology? Are we following Devil Survivor rules, where every religion is right, somehow? That can't be good. You know, like how Devil Survivor isn't even close to good.
 
Wait, why does the spear's charge power end up being electric armpit sweat? Who the hell designed this game? Oh, right: the guys who designed the LAST game.
Wait, why does the spear's charge power end up being electric armpit sweat? Who the hell designed this game? Oh, right: the guys who designed the LAST game.
You know what else isn't even close to good? That whole "play through the game twice" thing. You can see where I'm going with this: they brought it back, and it's slightly more complicated. Now, in addition to the weapon requirement, you need to have a certain type of armor to get the weapon. I should probably explain that you actually get two types of armor, this time: your regular-ass regular armor, and kickass-ass gold armor stolen from that one episode of Adventure Time. (I told you so.) Actually, upon reflection, one of those asses doesn't belong, since the armor doesn't add a layer of health; get hit in that crap, and you immediately get demoted to the underwear. My best guess is that since you can charge your weapons to deadly levels with this new armor, the game just decides to punish you more for failing where failure is hard to pull off. When I say that it's hard to fail, remember all the things I didn't mention. I don't know how you do that, but try. OK, fine, I'll mention them. First, you can shoot up and down, meaning those red devil things are about as deadly as pudding. Second, remember how Ghosts 'n Goblins only had four weapons, which could essentially boil down to two? This time, there are many more weapons, and they actually have differences. For example, the knife rips off Ninja Gaiden II, the fire rips off Castlevania, and the sword trades in practicality for looking cool. I know that I sound cynical about this, but I really love the weapons in this game, at least in comparison to the previous game. In fact, if I had to sum this game up, I'd say "I love it, compared to Ghosts 'n Goblins." It's like everything Ghosts 'n Goblins wishes it was, a fact that becomes extremely clear by the second level. It's just bouncy, fun music combined with sand traps and fire. It's better than it sounds.
 
You know, I probably should have ended this part of the blog a few sentences ago. However, I still have a lot to say about this game. Specifically, I have a lot to say about the flaws the game has. Hey, I dedicated a paragraph to how much I love the weapons, so it's only fair that I spend another paragraph bitching about the ladders. Yes, the ladders are back, and they're only marginally fixed. This time, there's less animation for getting off, but you still stick a bit, so what's the point? Don't trick me into thinking you've fixed the flaws; actually fix them. I still can't shoot on ladders, making me just as vulnerable as I was in the last game. The only difference is two Mega Man games. Damn it. You're not as hard as you think you are, Ghouls 'n Ghosts. You're just mildly frustrating. Your difficulty arises from the trial and error twins who try to undermine me at every step. However, I have a secret weapon on my side: a shitload of free time. Also, FAQs. FAQs destroy you and your magic men (trust me, that joke is extremely apt) who punish you for opening treasure chests. If you were actually challenging, FAQs would have no affect on you. If that was true, you'd get the Takeshi's Challenge Award, but as is, you get the Just About Any Adventure Game Award.
 

Review Synopsis

  • With all the new weapons and level mechanics, it feels like what Ghosts 'n Goblins should have been in the first place.
  • But with all the minor control issues and the "play me twice, bitch" philosophy, it feels like what Ghosts 'n Goblins was in the first place.
  • The game's better than Ghosts 'n Goblins, but that's not saying much.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

( I'm almost at the end, everybody!) Just one more game, and I will have beaten 1000 games. At first, I thought that this game was a curse, meant to keep me from my ultimate goal. However, now I realize that it is a poorly executed curse that does not keep me from my goal very efficiently. Who would have thought that the Ghosts 'n Goblins game would be easier than I thought, despite the fact that I blogged about at least two of them on this site? And who would have thought that Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, a game in the Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise, would follow the pattern created by the first game in the Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise?
 
But that's Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts for you: always doing unexpected crap. For example, the story: OK, it's pretty much the same as it was in Ghouls 'n Ghosts, which was essentially the plot for Ghosts 'n Goblins: demons capture the princess, and you must rescue her with your rugged manliness. So what makes this game so special? For once, Capcom decided to explain why these demons love capturing the princess. Spoiler: it has nothing to do with Adventure Time. Those jokes are limited to the previous part of the blog. No, this time, the demons are after the princess' bracelet. It was made by a god, or something, and the demons want it because it makes them really powerful. Of course, this is most likely a bunch of crap they made up because they don't want mortal man to know the dark truth behind their actions: they want to feel pretty. Very, very, pretty. However, the game tells you that they want it for power. It tells you this at the end of level 7. You know what else it tells you? Go ahead, guess. I'll wait. *waits* You done? What was your answer? No matter what you said, it's wrong. The right answer is this: you have to play the game all over again, only this time, with the bracelet, so YOU can feel pretty. Damn it, Capcom, I thought you were done with this! At least the original Ghosts 'n Goblins had a reason for pulling this crap: it was so starved for content that most reviewer's first impressions of the game were "anorexic." Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, on the other hand, has enough content for three Ghosts 'n Goblins. Hell, it's not even significantly harder on the second run, so what's the point? You were able to fix all the other stuff wrong with the series, but you forgot this?
 
 At first, it looks like this boss is going to rip off the dragon from Mega Man 2. However, you soon realize that it's just going to be easy.
 At first, it looks like this boss is going to rip off the dragon from Mega Man 2. However, you soon realize that it's just going to be easy.
Predictably, this is the part of the blog where I talk about all the stuff they got right. It's probably going to be even longer than the previous paragraph, since they got a lot right. Where do I start? Well, how about my biggest problem with the previous games: the jumping. In previous games, it was stiffer than rigor mortis; in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, it's exactly the same, but with a double jump. This may not sound like much, but keep in mind that it essentially allows you to change direction mid-jump. Granted, it's only once, but it makes the game MUCH easier to manage. Now the challenge (mostly) comes from you fucking up instead of the game. Of course, this is, again, assuming that there's a lot of challenge in this game. Again, it's merely been demoted to difficult, but this time, it's slightly more difficult. Most of it is for legitimate reasons, like hard jumps with no hope of recovery (that's what you get for fucking up with two jumps, you fuck up) and bosses that put up a fight before dying three seconds later, but then there's crap like not being able to shoot up or down. Why? Why did they get rid of this awesome ability from the previous game? That was an excellent addition to the series, and they got rid of it? And for what? I honestly don't see what they put in its place. Armor would be the first suggestion, but the new, green armor is just one more layer between you and the gold armor that everybody loves. Hell, you don't even get an extra layer of health. There's a shield for that, now, but attacks have to hit the shield for it to count, and there's more of you that the shield doesn't cover than there is that is covered.
 
Ignoring the confusing sentence on which I ended, I'm going to spend the rest of this part of the blog trying to figure out all the good things that justify the lack of shooting in all directions. Well, there's some pretty cool music that makes full use of the SNES. I'd link you to it, but I already did in the Ghosts 'n Goblins part, so enjoy this video. So yea, this game takes full advantage of the SNES, ranging from stupid (the intro cutscene) to "actually pretty cool" (that video I linked). The "actually pretty cool" stuff is limited to the levels that try some new, innovative stuff. Wait, why am I saying "limited?" This game is FULL of new, innovative stuff, like a medieval Donkey Kong Country 3. Sure, some of that stuff was ripped from the previous game, but two things: it doesn't do it too often, and, hey, it worked in Ghouls 'n Ghosts, didn't it? Wait, I finally understand why it didn't have directional shots: this game is too good for stuff like that. Sure, it has its share of problems (those fucking ladders), but not only won't you give a shit, but you'll love not giving a shit. It's definitely the best that the Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise has to offer, unless I end up playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3, maybe. But until that possible time, I give this game the Edmund Hillary Award for Reaching its Peak. I know, lame award, but how else would I say that this is the best Ghosts 'n Goblins game without sounding stupid? Oh....shit.....uh.....

Review Synopsis

  • While you're still quite fucked on ladders, you can at least double jump the other way, now. Huzzahs are in order.
  • What it lacks in weapon flexibility, it more than makes up for in level creativity.
  • I'd say that it's at the difficulty at which it wants to be, but the bosses would gloriously undermine me if I did that.
It is done.

No Caption Provided


No Caption Provided


No Caption Provided


No Caption Provided

( I've done it.) I have finally beaten 1000 games. Some may have doubted me along the way, but look at what I have achieved. (Oh, and I'm aware of Unknown_Pleasure's departure from the site, so keep in mind that I originally made that picture at the end of November, back when he was still here.) So, of course, the obvious question arises: what now? Well, in order to answer that, I have to set the atmosphere. *transforms into Alvis* Renegade Ego's going on a bit of a hiatus. There's the music. Of course, I can already sense your questions, because my spies are relaying that information to me as I type this. "Why now?', you ask. Well, the timing just felt right. "Why are you taking a break?", you demand of me. That would spoil the fun, wouldn't it? "Is this the end of Renegade Ego?" What the hell are you talking about? Of course it isn't! Just think of this as the end of Renegade Ego: Season 1. When I come back for Season 2, you're going to see a bunch of new stuff, like a Dragon Ball drummer boy, a giant mutated Satan Claus, and a brutal takeover of Canada. Wait, those are other Season 2s, aren't they? Well, my Season 2's gonna be as awesome as those, hopefully. So, as my Season 1 finale (I'm really running this season thing into the ground, aren't I?), let us look back on the highlights from my blogs here. It's going to be a long reflection.
 
And so ends Season 1 of Renegade Ego. Sucks that I had to end it with a clip show. I'd post the elements of my banner design, and stuff, but I don't want anybody writing knock-off Renegade Egos. I've already seen it, even if I was extremely late to the party.
92 Comments
Load Comments