I wish Umihara Kawase was a linear action game with proper graphics.
undamned wrote:zinger wrote:Septentrion is also a must-try. Totally unique experience!
Wow, never heard of that! Looks like it borrows from Taito's Cameltry (aka "On the Ball"). And for you who can't get enough of that style, "Koro Koro Post Nin" on the PS1 is similar.
-ud
It's nothing like Cameltry. Think of James Cameron's Titanic and everything in it that happened after the boat started sinking. The sense of anxiousness and stress you get from water flowing in, the electricity in certain sections of the ship suddenly being cut, and having to adapt to the entire goddamn interior rotating 360 degrees, is not only totally unique but also
incredibly exciting! There seems to be an
endless amount of rooms to visit and every now and then you meet passengers or crew members to speak to (for instance, if you go to the wine cellar you'll find a bunch of waiters who have given up on surviving and are trying to get themselves drunk), which adds tons to the realism and the sense of being lost and beyond hope. As if that wasn't enough there are also several different scenarios you can play out, depending on which character you chose the starting point of the game and the story is totally different. Due to lack of time I feel like I haven't even begun exploring the vastness of this game yet, but it's what I'll spend my christmas holiday doing (after that I'll probably continue playing Clock Tower which is by the same developer)
BIL wrote:Anyone have experience with the SFC Goemon games (the action RPG ones)? Seeing Rainbow Bell Adventure cited reminds me that they're in the purgatory of my "ROMs to try" list along with it. Don't care about the town roaming aspect at all (would just FAQ 'em), more wondering if the sidescrolling is worthwhile or just fluff. Presentation seems customarily beautiful as per the Konami of yore
The first Goemon game has great atmosphere but is very gimmicky. The town sections take up a lot of time (just randomly entering houses and saving up money for shit), are terribly boring and destroys what probably could have been a cool albeit simple platformer otherwise. I gave up on the sequel pretty fast since it seemed to have the same gimmicky approach to the action with simple mechanics. Nice presentation though. They're probably best enjoyed if you play around in them them casually with a friend. Overrated!
Rainbow Bell Adventure is terrible. There are tons of cool moves and the appearance of the levels have an obstacle course-like touch to them, so I expected it to be a cool arcade-ish scoring game with room for pulling of Alien Soldier-esque stunts. Stage design is just incredibly bad though so you never get to use all those moves in any kind of satisfying way, and since the stages are layed out as obstacle courses they're not very immersive from an aesthetical perspective either.