4colorrebellion

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
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famicomdojo

Sean helps Simon Belmont resurrect Dracula to end his curse once and for all.

The original Castlevania is a classic, but there were many variations across different consoles. The NES version focused more on arcade-style gameplay, but the MSX experience was quite different. When creating a sequel, Konami took more from the latter. Rather than knock down abilities and weaponry when injured, Simon Belmont can now collect items and upgrade weapons at shops, which will persist even after enough failures that a continue is needed. There are NPCs, towns, and other locales that can be revisited throughout the game, as opposed to the strictly linear progression of the NES predecessor. In fact, this more RPG-like system is quite a bit like another maligned sequel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link!

Sean has chosen Castlevania II: Simon's Quest as the first Producers Pick "Honorable Mention", plucked from the poll of January 2024. The game feels topical, given our recent experience with the Zelda II enhanced remake, and how the changes to that game have brought the two more in line. Also, both games were Sean's favorites as a kid, and the first titles he got along with his first NES back in 1989. 35 years later, it's time to see what he remembers about playing this game!

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What a terrible night to have a curse!

castlevania ii: simon's quest simon's quest nes konami nintendo
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famicomdojo

Does this sleeper GameCube hit still hold up over 20 years later for fans of Lovecraftian horror?

Eternal Darkness is an episodic action adventure game driven by a central story, as opposed to traditional horror like Resident Evil, and is heavily inspired by the stories of HP Lovecraft to attempt to portray beings beyond human comprehension and the existential horrors that ensue. In fact, it has more in common with survival games like The Last of Us, except with magic and spells instead of guns, knives, and bricks (although there are arrows) - with the important distinction that none of the many protagonists are expected to survive, calling into doubt the fate of the main character Alex. Think of it more like Lovecraft Country.

While there is the occasional jump scare that you might see in a horror film, handled cleverly by the player's control of the camera versus a director, the games biggest contribution to any genre comes in the form of "Sanity effects" as the player witnesses the horrors around them and test their mental fortitude. Not only do these affect the characters in the game, but many of the best effects are aimed at the player, with bugs crawling all over the screen, fake save file errors, or false endings claiming the rest of the game will pick up in (the sadly non-existent) Eternal Darkness 2. This "Sanity" system was re-used for Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, the GameCube port of the original Metal Gear Solid PlayStation classic.

Also for fans of actual multiple endings, each playthrough can be dominated by an archnemesis and minions that are stealthily selected at the beginning of the game, and only by playing through it three times for each of these choices will the final, real ending be revealed. The different emphasis for each choice also lends to a coloration (no pun intended) of the entire playthrough experience, and for me was intriguing enough to, of the course of a several years, return to this game with enthusiasm each time.

Now a classic in its own right, Sean returns to Eternal Darkness 22 years later to see if it still holds up in the world of HDTV.

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Deep into that darkness peering…

eternal darkness gamecube nintendo
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famicomdojo

Sean Plays Zelda II Enhanced Remake (PC)

Ever since playing the original NES and Famicom versions, Sean has been convinced that this game is ripe for a Link's Awakening style re-imagining. While there are many ways to go about this without fundamentally altering the mechanics, Hoverbat's take is elegant in its simplicity. Well, it looks simple, anyway; this is the work of a true artist.

Join us as we play through as much as we can, and point out all of the amazing differences!

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Who else thinks Zelda II is long overdue for a remake?

zelda ii zelda legend of zelda the legend of zelda nes nintendo
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famicomdojo

At Famicom Dojo we’re all about the preservation of video games.  As interesting and fun as the console ports of arcade games can be, none of those ports has truly replicated the arcade controls or aspect ratio of the original games, plus there are almost always other small or technical details that don’t make the jump.

With Arcade Archives games, this gap is lessened or eliminated entirely, and the built-in options to allow you to rotate your display to best mimic the arcade experience and maximize the real estate of your Nintendo Switch, or even your TV if you’re able to change its orientation!  For those who want a simpler solution, an after-market stand like the HORI PlayStand will get you most of the way there.

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4CR Plays - Asterigos: Curse of the Stars

The trailer for Acme Game Studios’ debut offering, Asterigos: Curse of the Stars really stood out. The game’s combination of bold cartoony characters and sprawling Greco-Roman inspired locations wrapped up in some kind of action-RPG package looked right up my alley. Though the game can sometimes be its own worst enemy, it’s only a quality-of-life patch away from being excellent and on release day the developers were already posting plans to address specific issues players had pointed out, so I’ve no doubt the kinks will be worked out.

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Asterigos stars Hilda, a young warrior from Anbari’s Northwind Legion, on a mission in a strange land to locate the rest of her legion, lost after being sent to find a cure for a mysterious curse afflicting their king. Aphes has been under a curse called Asterigos for 1000 years. Its citizens have been stuck. No one ages, they’ve all turned purple, and they must consume a mystical element, starite, in order to stay sane. Worst of all Anbari’s king has been afflicted, after acquiring a rare relic. With the Northwind legion missing, Hilda has to dive headlong into the thousand year long history of Asterigos to find her lost comrades, cure the king, and ultimately save the people of Aphes from themselves.

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Gameplay consists of exploration, combat, and leveling up, all of which is very solid. The exploration and combat controls are fluid, there are all sorts of interesting skills to learn and lots of enemy types to fight. It even features a “story” (easy) difficulty for people like me who don’t much care for the nuances of parrying or boss fights at all. Exploring Aphes is mostly a smooth experience; climbable surfaces are marked, and the controls are really good, but falling into a bottomless pit (which is easy to do when sprinting around the levels) results in respawning to a checkpoint with all the enemies also respawning, rather than simply taking health and resetting player location, as most modern games do. It’s very annoying and another quality-of-life improvement that I’d like to see.

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The game’s visual style is very striking, well realized, and cohesive. The characters and locations are colorful, bold, and cartoony making the game stand out from similar games. It’s also much tamer than many similar action games, having only a “Teen” ESRB rating. The style becomes especially interesting in light of the tone getting considerably darker as the game progresses, while the bold cartoony style remains consistent.

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There are some technical issues, though, that hamper the style and gameplay somewhat. The game seems to render at 1080p on PS5 and enemy frame rates inexplicably scale down when they’re far away, so hopefully that can be patched. Up close, combat animations look great, and most of the running and jumping looks really fluid but a few of the character “emotes” while in conversations look straight out of a 2000s free-to-play RPG and Hilda’s jog animation is distractingly odd.

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Though Asterigos’s story is technically “save the world,” it’s a foreign “world” about which the main character knows almost nothing that needs saving, and it works really well. There is a wealth of backstory to discover, the main narrative twists and turns, and the cast of characters are interesting and surprisingly multidimensional. In order to really dive into the world, though, you have to hunt through levels for scraps of paper and talk to everyone.

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Doing so reveals not only the history of Aphes, but leads to side quests and character upgrades along the way. Unfortunately, the need to dive into conversations isn’t well explained and side quest-related dialog is mixed in with general conversations with no indicators to tell you which characters to talk to, which dialog options to choose for side quests, or if a character has anything new, and quest-relevant to say. It’s part of the biggest problem with the game; It’s almost impossible to track side quests, to the point where, near the end of the game, I had to abandon some.

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The idea seems to be to reflect Hilda’s lack of knowledge of Aphes in the gameplay, which is initially really novel. There is no map, Hilda keeps track of everything in a journal of sketches and writing, and fast travel is gradually introduced, forcing the player to explore and begin to understand Aphes’ geography before being able to teleport everywhere. It’s very rewarding to stumble upon a new area in a labyrinthine quarter of Aphes. However, what Hilda writes in the journal is largely useless for actual quest tracking, the game features no quest log, and characters won’t repeat dialog lines telling you where to go so you end up needlessly traipsing through levels over and over again trying to figure out where a certain important item is used. This has no effect on the main quest, though, which is clearly tracked for the whole game, but completionists will get annoyed and should probably wait for a few patches.

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Asterigos: Curse of the stars is a bit rough at present and it may seem like I’m down on it. That’s partly because it’s so close to being great that the annoyances really grate, because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the game, and most of it is novel and excellent. Once the developers improve side quest tracking and clean up a few technical issues, it’ll be pretty close to an essential play!

A copy of Asterigos: Curse of the Stars was provided for this review.

4cr Plays - Freshly Frosted (PS4)

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Hi. Anybody still out there? It’s been a minute, eh? Life happens, and suddenly it has been quite some time since the last post.

However, sometimes, just when the world is getting to be too much, a metaphorical hand descends from the clouds with a wonderfully wholesome, addictive puzzle game for you to get lost in for a few days. In this case, that game is Freshly Frosted - a sugar and pastel-filled puzzle game about topping and delivering donuts.

I’ve been sucked into the game recently, and you get to hear all about it.

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4cr Plays - Faraday Protocol (Switch)

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Faraday Protocol is a first-person puzzle game centered around an archeologist, Raug Zeekon, from the planet Cunor. Raug has been sent to investigate a mysterious signal. Shortly after arriving at a set of mysterious pyramids - called OPIS - Raug stumbles on the “Bia Tool” - a gun that can absorb and expel energy. He must use this tool to navigate a series of increasingly-complex circuit-based puzzles and to uncover the secrets of the OPIS complex.

I sat down with the Switch version of Faraday Protocol. Read on for my impressions.

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video game review Faraday Protocol nintendo switch switch eshop greg4cr puzzle games

4cr Plays - Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (Switch)

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I’ve always had a soft spot for the Sam & Max series - point & click adventure games about a canine detective and his best pal, a megalomaniacal rabbity thing. I played the original, part of the legendary LucasArts lineup of the 90s, over and over again. Then, when Telltale Games brought back the duo as the stars of three “seasons” of episodic games, the episodes became part of a ritual where my future wife and I would sit around a CRT computer screen on Friday nights and play through them. I have really fond memories of playing each episode as they came out.

After Telltale closed down a couple of years back, a group of former developers - under the banner of Skunkape Games - bought the rights to the original games. These developers have been working to release all three seasons on modern systems, with a huge range of improvements to the controls, graphics, and audio. The remastered first season, Sam & Max Save the World, was release last winter - where it made the first winter of lockdown a tiny bit more bearable.

Now, one year later, the second season - Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space - has been released on PC, Xbox, and Switch. I have spent some time with the Switch release. Read on for my impressions.

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video game review sam & max beyond time and space telltale skunkape switch adventure game greg4cr