Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Sumez]

Aside from liking to keep the spinslash for bosses for quick kills, I usually don't worry too much about subweapons management. Almost any subweapon does what you need for quick cheesy despatching of troublesome enemies.

Only exception is that I try to keep my spinslash for around the middle section of the final stage, where ammo can be a little sparse, so I know exactly where I prefer using it for the most effective, continuous forward momentum. (primarily rocket ninjas and edge guards)

[BurlyHeart]

So I got through Mother Russia Bleeds on Normal, receiving the bad ending. It was a lot of fun, far exceeding my expectations. Along with Fight n Rage, it is one of my favorite modern beat 'em ups.

First off, this game can be crude. And violent. From Ivan's taunt (taking a shit and throwing it at enemies), to heads exploding, sexual perversions, and drug use. For me, the gameplay and attention to detail in the world setting outweighed these crass moments, but I can understand why this would put some people off the game.

The game foregoes a life system, and instead equips the player with a syringe of "nekro", which grants one of two things when used. The first strengthens and speeds up your character, useful for large swarms of enemies or some bosses. Alternatively, you can use the nekro to heal yourself and gain more health. This syringe has 3 shots, which can be refilled from (possibly?) random fallen enemies. Using nekro in the right places is important to survival. I mainly used it to grant health, outside of a couple of situations.

Buttons are assigned for punch, kick, jump, grab, short dash, use nekro (rage), use nekro (recover health), refill nekro. I was initially put off at the use of 8 buttons, but the nekro buttons are used sparingly so it doesn't interfere too much with the gameplay. A button for grab was also initially odd, but easily adapted to. This game also has no special moves - so if you get knocked down or surrounded, you better get out of there fast. I think this is a possible reason why some many think the game is too hard, but characters have plenty of speed to move around to avoid such a scenario. Proper spacing and use of throws to knock down enemies are essential, as with any good beat 'em up. Dash/run attacks are very strong, as are the use of weapons, which can include firearms or knives that can instantly kill an enemy.

The boss fights were very well done, in my opinion. They were the most enjoyable of any recent game I've played, each requiring a specific tactic to secure victory. There may be nothing new here, but it broke up the rudimentary gameplay nicely.

All in all, if you like beat 'em ups and won't get offended at the game's content, then I would definitely recommend it. Especially if you can get it on sale, like I did, for $3.

[Blinge]

Ready to get triggered? Watch this moron!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1zhhd-JrqA

EDIT: Watching this scrub play Ninja Gaiden 2-2 and stop on literally every pillar instead of continuing to move forward is literally painful. I feel my soul dying.

Fucking hell.

Been saying this for a while but anyone with a rudimentary command of English and a nice intro can be a game critic now!
I know I made angry gay sounds and scrubbed around in NG for a good long while, but i do that in every game
The feeling of leaving that behind is great.

I haven't got through the opening spiel yet and i'm already sick. Talking about nes games and "how they can improve."
really. how they can improve. fuck off.

At least the retaliation in his comment section is refreshing.

Hah, notice how he's gone through and put a heart next to anybody that agrees with him.

Jesus, how long is he going to talk about game overs being bad. How much screen time do you really have to give to this point.
We could make a bingo card about these vids.
Dark souls reference, check!

This guy makes me feel ashamed for liking Shovel Knight as much as I do.
-Breaking SK's checkpoints for gold is not 'incredible risk vs reward' It's high risk for very low reward. There's really no reason to break checkpoints other than self imposed challenge. twat.

[Sumez]

Haha yeah, Shovel Knight's checkpoint system was a fun idea, but it doesn't really work. What works is the game's NG+ where you don't get healing items, and the only checkpoint on each stage is the one before the boss. In fact, the best part about NG+ is that the ingame currency is a non-issue at that point, and you can focus on the action, which is really well made.

What the game does well is allowing the player to practice with extra checkpoints before playing the real game.

Honestly, I'm sure we've had this discussion enough in here, and I'm preaching to the choir, but it always bothers me when people start using words like "Nintendo hard", and talk about how back then all games were brutally hard.
No.
No one thought of games as "brutally hard" back then. Some games were challenging, and few were really hard. They were just video games, and being able to beat them was cool, that's what video games were about until somewhere around the mid- to end 90s where someone somewhere decided that everyone picking up a game should see them to the end just by sticking around long enough.
Even then, I dare say most games on the NES are really easy (since they are targeted towards kids), and the first time I saw someone write the term "nintendo hard" I thought it was a joke, as Nintendo's games are famously super easy.

It is so obvious that anyone making the automatic relation between 8-bit games and crazy hard challenges never actually played the games back then, but picked up "retro gaming" after the fact, and apply tendencies taken from modern video games designed to save your game along the way through a single playthrough that easily takes more than ten hours.

That doesn't mean we can't like a crazy hard challenge though :3

[blackoak]

I often wonder how much of the "Nintendo hard" perception is related to the fact that most people today play old games on suboptimal systems: dat sweet black friday 150$ 49" lcd with input lag out the ass, a laggy emulator, a laggy usb joystick, etc. That was my experience at least. Before I went down the input lag/hardware rabbit hole, I tried NES via an emulator setup, and platformers often felt unplayable. And even on a good upscaling setup with fairly minimal input lag, there were still games (like Battle Kid) which needed the responsiveness of a CRT for me to clear certain areas.

At the end of the day, most platformers are essentially timing puzzles, after all.

[BrianC]

It bugs me that even something like Duck Tales that had the reputation of being one the easier NES games, gets labelled as "Nintendo Hard". I'm under the impression that some of the misconceptions about NES difficulty came form overuse of the Game Genie and stuff like Contra's 30 lives code (it had the reputation of being a hard game even before the internet).

[WelshMegalodon]

Are there any YouTube videos that do attempt to preach the merits of arcade-style level design? You only ever seem to hear about videos that miss the point with these old games, and not ones that get them.

[FinalBaton]

Are there any YouTube videos that do attempt to preach the merits of arcade-style level design? You only ever seem to hear about videos that miss the point with these old games, and not ones that get them.

Good point! There must not be many... we never hear about those, nor come across them

[Mischief Maker]

Just picked up The Messenger tonight.

So far it's making a better impression on me than Volgarr or Shovel Knight did.

[Blinge]

Are there any YouTube videos that do attempt to preach the merits of arcade-style level design? You only ever seem to hear about videos that miss the point with these old games, and not ones that get them.

Good point! There must not be many... we never hear about those, nor come across them

Back in the day Egoraptor touched on some old school merits, iirc.
Namely in 'Sequilitis' vids for Castlevania II and Megaman series.

Can't stand the guy so I won't be re-watching to check.

[Sumez]

Egoraptor's correct observations in the Sequilitis videos is a really strange contrast to his completely failing to understand basic video game design in most of the GameGrumps videos I have seen.

[FinalBaton]

Back in the day Egoraptor touched on some old school merits, iirc.
Namely in 'Sequilitis' vids for Castlevania II and Megaman series.

Can't stand the guy so I won't be re-watching to check.

You're right, I had forgotten about those
I actually mostly agree with his points in the 4 sequelitis episodes. I watched them a couple times over the years, including recently, and I'm still on the same wavelenght. They're really a breath of fresh air on YT

I can't stand his other stuff though. Lol.
So weird that he did these 4 really good and grounded analysis/essais and then nothing...

[Skykid]

Aside from liking to keep the spinslash for bosses for quick kills, I usually don't worry too much about subweapons management. Almost any subweapon does what you need for quick cheesy despatching of troublesome enemies.

Only exception is that I try to keep my spinslash for around the middle section of the final stage, where ammo can be a little sparse, so I know exactly where I prefer using it for the most effective, continuous forward momentum. (primarily rocket ninjas and edge guards)

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was going for. My only learning curve with weaponry is getting the spinslash and keeping it with enough ammo for the boss. That entails finding all or most of the ammo and keeping it through substage 3 and not accidentally picking up a different weapon. That's where the memory biz comes in and I haven't got on top of it yet.

[FinalBaton]

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was going for. My only learning curve with weaponry is getting the spinslash and keeping it with enough ammo for the boss. That entails finding all or most of the ammo and keeping it through substage 3 and not accidentally picking up a different weapon. That's where the memory biz comes in and I haven't got on top of it yet.

You probably knew but, in case you didn't : to conserve your ammo while spinslash equipped, hold down while slashing in the air. This will do a regular attack, thus saving your ammo and still allow you to do air attacks

[Mischief Maker]

I'm up to the tower of time in The Messenger.

To be honest, the stage design feels a lot more like a Mega Man game than Ninja Gaiden.

[Blinge]

So weird that he did these 4 really good and grounded analysis/essais and then nothing...

The zelda one is swiss cheese, and obnoxious at that.
I remember getting triggered hard by it but i wasn't about to make a video response and get 5 views haha.

[FinalBaton]

The zelda one is swiss cheese, and obnoxious at that.
I remember getting triggered hard by it but i wasn't about to make a video response and get 5 views haha.

I mostly agree with his Zelda one

Well if you made a video response I'd be one of the 5 watching

[Vanguard]

I picked up The Messenger the other day since it was (and still is) 30% off at gog. The premise is that you're a ninja and you need to deliver a scroll to a distant land in order to save your village from demons. It looks like it'd be a Ninja Gaiden-esque combat-heavy game, but enemies are only a minor threat and nearly all danger comes from bottomless pits and other stage obstacles. The most important mechanic in the game is its cloudstep technique - after striking an enemy, projectile, or object in midair, you gain a midair jump. You can stay in the air indefinitely as long as you keep slashing lanterns and fireballs. It's well-executed and allows for a good amount of technical skill, especially when paired with the gliding ability you pick up early in the game. Most enemies are either minor speed bumps or cloudstep fodder and the number of enemy types feels small given the size of the game. There are bosses who can kill you a few times, but ultimately aren't very good, bad, or challenging. The Messenger's greatest flaw is that it never really expects you to think about what you need to do. The problem is never figuring out how to solve a platforming section, just pulling it off. The secrets and puzzles aren't hard to find or solve and there are upgrades you can buy that just tell you where everything is.

It's okay. I give it a B.

Ready to get triggered? Watch this moron!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1zhhd-JrqA

EDIT: Watching this scrub play Ninja Gaiden 2-2 and stop on literally every pillar instead of continuing to move forward is literally painful. I feel my soul dying.

There's a limitless number of morons and liars on the internet and the best thing is to not give them ad money by clicking on their garbage.

Ninja Gaiden, managed 4-3, after not too much work, but whooo, the game is absolutely relentless. Seems to me 1CC success is all based around sub-weapon management and knowing more importantly what not to accidentally pick up. But there's a serious amount of insanity going on with the respawns and pitfalls. I feel abused.

An item plan goes a long way, yeah. I hated the respawn system at first, but it's not bad as long as you see it as a design decision meant to be mastered rather than a design flaw that cheap shots you. The game isn't ashamed to weaponize the camera against you and you shouldn't be ashamed of weaponizing the camera yourself.

[blackoak]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on The Messenger guys. It sounds like it's worth a go sometime.

In the meantime, I just picked up a nice early Christmas present: a very cheap pvm 20m4 here in Japan... my famicom journeys shall be resuming soon.

[FinalBaton]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on The Messenger guys. It sounds like it's worth a go sometime.

In the meantime, I just picked up a nice early Christmas present: a very cheap pvm 20m4 here in Japan... my famicom journeys shall be resuming soon.

Nice I always like seeing fellow shmuppers pick up crts, for some wicked 8/16/32 bit console action. There's just something about plugging a Famicom on a cathode tube tv, hitting buttons hard on that compact li' controller and being engulfed by that glow. enjoy your new dope monitor!

I picked a PVM-1344Q locally for dirt cheap, it's an old monitor(1988) but the picture still looks really vibrant. I'll be giving it as a christmas gift to my godson, along with a SNES. He has shown interest in "Mario"

[WelshMegalodon]

Be sure to point him also to the likes of Famicom Tantei Club and Shin Megami Tensei (once he's old enough), if only to show him that such genres were not uncommon on consoles. You want the kid's gaming education to be more complete, I'm sure. Maybe Story of Llylgamyn as well?

[FinalBaton]

Well let's not throw him in the dark stuff right away now, Welsh my friend :X He shall discover that in time, on his own :X

In the mean time I will train him to become a Sidescrolling Assassin, and who knows maybe in ten years he will join us on this thread

[Sumez]

The zelda one is swiss cheese, and obnoxious at that.
I remember getting triggered hard by it but i wasn't about to make a video response and get 5 views haha.

As far as I remember, I agree with most of the Zelda one. At least I'd say you can't really argue that it's very much on point, even if you disagree with the conclusion. If we have a Zelda thread somewhere, I'd love to hear your rebuttal.
Ocarina is so stupidly overrated though, even if I can't ignore how influential it's been. It's grown in my esteem since, but when it came out I was... kinda let down by it, compared to the epic scope that was promised in A Link to the Past.

[Blinge]

No because you'll argue hard with anything I say and it'll really fuck me off.
(also i'd have to watch the video again)

Meh, the Ocarina is a product of its time.
Did any N64 game deliver that scope? Could the 64 have delivered that scope?

It's easy to ignore how much of a twat the guy is when you really love alttp and happen to agree with his points.
If the above doesn't apply, it's like listening to nails on a chalkboard.

[Sumez]

Look, I can't stand the guy, and he's usually wrong about everything. The only reason I agree with the points he's making in that video, is that he is correct about all of them.

[Skykid]

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was going for. My only learning curve with weaponry is getting the spinslash and keeping it with enough ammo for the boss. That entails finding all or most of the ammo and keeping it through substage 3 and not accidentally picking up a different weapon. That's where the memory biz comes in and I haven't got on top of it yet.

You probably knew but, in case you didn't : to conserve your ammo while spinslash equipped, hold down while slashing in the air. This will do a regular attack, thus saving your ammo and still allow you to do air attacks

No I didn't, that's a great tip, thank you!

An item plan goes a long way, yeah. I hated the respawn system at first, but it's not bad as long as you see it as a design decision meant to be mastered rather than a design flaw that cheap shots you. The game isn't ashamed to weaponize the camera against you and you shouldn't be ashamed of weaponizing the camera yourself.

It's a game held in such high regard I like to think everything about it is intentional, even though when I'm playing it I'm totally questioning whether or not is actually was, lol.

To me it seems like a game designed for future generations (us) as adults who would commit to felling it at full speed with as much aggressiveness as it puts out.

You'll need to explain about weaponising the camera though. Is that to do with making certain enemies disappear?

Ocarina is so stupidly overrated though, even if I can't ignore how influential it's been.

It's not though! Ocarina is gold standard game design; it's absolutely beautiful, if marginally imperfect. Personally, I feel like the initial start as baby Link goes on too long and throws the pacing out, but that's literally the only issue I have with it and it's a minor one. Play to the point where the time shifts and you go into the future and it just builds and builds. It's a magical piece of work and when I replayed it on the 3DS I found it didn't just match the original experience, but the small tweaks and graphical refinements made it even better.

It's godly, it can't be overrated.

[Sumez]

You'll need to explain about weaponising the camera though. Is that to do with making certain enemies disappear?

Despawning enemies is absolutely a thing. Especially with the ones that walk randomly forward and backwards, it's a really easy thing to do. I think it feels a little cheap to do it, but there are a few places in the game where it's become pretty standard for me to do it, just because I can, and because it works quite easily without killing my momentum.

[Skykid]

You'll need to explain about weaponising the camera though. Is that to do with making certain enemies disappear?

Despawning enemies is absolutely a thing. Especially with the ones that walk randomly forward and backwards, it's a really easy thing to do. I think it feels a little cheap to do it, but there are a few places in the game where it's become pretty standard for me to do it, just because I can, and because it works quite easily without killing my momentum.

Yeah, I've had it happen by chance a couple of times but I'm yet to come across a point where it's really useful or can't be overcome by brute force. I'm sure I'll find some places where I'd like it to be available though!

[Sumez]

It's not though! Ocarina is gold standard game design; it's absolutely beautiful, if marginally imperfect. Personally, I feel like the initial start as baby Link goes on too long and throws the pacing out, but that's literally the only issue I have with it and it's a minor one. Play to the point where the time shifts and you go into the future and it just builds and builds. It's a magical piece of work and when I replayed it on the 3DS I found it didn't just match the original experience, but the small tweaks and graphical refinements made it even better.

It's godly, it can't be overrated.

Ocarina of Time is a great game, still. But compared to the excellent game design throughout all of Zelda 3, I'd say this one has a bunch of much more gaping flaws, even if I still enjoyed it. Its problem isn't that it's not a good game, but that it kind of pales in comparison to its own earlier incarnation.
It's kind of weird to compare the two games because they are so different, but at the same time I think the series was transitioned extremely well into 3D, keeping a ton of familiar staples from its predecessors while giving a new twist to them when extending them into the third dimension. However, it doesn't manage to escape a lot of the common caveats.
As such, I think the sequilitis video highlights a bunch of common issues with 3D games, increased "realism", and modern game design in general, rather than stuff that's unique to Zelda 64. Personally I did enjoy walking around the world talking to people, but I can easily see why it's really not good game design in an action game, and the guard blocking the path to Death Mountain is a pretty good example.

[Sumez]

Yeah, I've had it happen by chance a couple of times but I'm yet to come across a point where it's really useful or can't be overcome by brute force. I'm sure I'll find some places where I'd like it to be available though!

Some times someone will guard an edge further ahead, while dangers come from above. If you wait for them to back off outside the screen, they will consistently despawn while being unable to respawn as long as you've moved far enough forward.
This requires stopping shortly though, so some people might see it as a newbie move. I think it's cool.

For the birds it's pretty much standard procedure, I don't even think about that as despawning. Basically, instead of fighting them, any area that allows you to press on continuously, you'll want to just dodge the birds as you move on. They will disappear behind the opposite side of the screen before being able to switch directions and swoop down on you.