That's a good review. Now that I think about it, the only level I really enjoyed much in the second half of SM64 was Tiny Huge Island. It definitely starts to slog a little, but not enough to really drag the game down. It's been a long time since I've played SM64 though, perhaps I should give it another spin sometime. I imagine if I tackled it again, I'd be mainly comparing it in my mind to Banjo-Kazooie, which I found ultimately to be a lot more tedious, especially near the end of the game.
And FWIW, I've never gotten more than maybe 90 stars in SM64. I'm just not a big completionist type.
Oh, and one of my favorite things about Super Mario 64 that wasn't ever carried over into other games: The 'camera' is actually a Lakitu you control who actually follows Mario around. I love that. Have any other games personified in the camera in that sort of way? Because I can't think of any.
I don't think the games ever did after that, which is a shame. It seems like fanworks seem to like doing that, though. I thought it was cute.
But yeah, for some reason I can go for completing Sonic games sometimes, but Mario games? Nah. Too much stuff to get, and some of the requirements are ridiculous. As for the second half of the game, I agree. I don't like the second half of the game much at all. At that point, the game began to feel slightly repetitive, and some of the newer stages weren't to my liking much at all. That bit genuinely became a tad boring.
Nothing past 3 is essential anyway. 4 was a strange experiment and everything after that was outsourced to western devs who, with the exception of Shattered Memories, spent most of their time desperately trying and failing to capture the spirit of the first 3. To their credit, many of these devs did respectable enough jobs and made pretty decent games in their own right, but I think they would've been better suited to doing an original franchise or something instead. I think it speaks volumes that the best western-developed Silent Hill game is also the one that veers as far away from the 'traditional' Silent Hill formula as possible.
That's true. It's weird how it ended up being that way (nothing past 3 is worth it) given the breadth of the series and how many games there are in it. I haven't played Downpour yet so I can't speak for it, but some of the ones from 4 onwards weren't games that typically exemplified what SH was about or how the games were designed.
I mean, the latest game is a
dungeon crawler (Book of Memories), and while that's admittedly up my alley, that isn't what I come to SH for.
You just reminded me, I was listening to a bunch of old Retronauts episodes, and on one of them they noted an interesting parallel.
Hey, those are some pretty good parallels. I'm pretty sure I felt that about SM64 in the back of my mind but I didn't outright connect it like I should have.
So last years lofty tomes were all a lie? this cannot be!
Actually I sort of feel the same when it comes down to it.
Not necessarily a lie! I did feel the way I did about my soundtrack posts but I didn't feel super-strongly about either of them like I did with Skyward Sword's in 2011.
My GotY list... well, at least I prefaced that list with "please don't put stock into the rankings on this list because 2012 wasn't that great".
Sometimes it's actually better to not go for all the stars, as good as the game is there's some real stinkers in there.
- 100 coins in Dire Dire Docks because the stage is pretty bare and also kind of crummy, topped off by those tantalising coins by the area that will suck you into the castle moat.
- Speaking of a forceful return to the moat, that one winged cap stage near the end where falling out of the sky wont kill you, worse, it deposits you in the moat, have fun running back up the castle to retry!
- Blast away the wall, cryptic cannon calamity right here.
- 100 coins in Rainbow Ride, because it's Rainbow Ride, the only parts I like there are the platforming focused areas for stars 4 and 5.
I wish 3D Mario games would trim the excess stars at times, I know they love that 120 number but it leads to some blatant filler at points, and the less said about Sunshine the better here.
Hot Coldman over here was telling me to go for all of the stars in the Whatcha Been Playin' thread and I was all, "noooooope". My boredom of the later levels kind of helped me to reach the conclusion to do the bare minimum in order to complete the game, to be honest with you. 100 coins in Dire Dire Docks was really silly. And Rainbow Ride is just silly all around.
ViewtifulJC said:
Right now though, it's all about Bioshock Infinite. My expectations is that it's the second coming of Half-Life 2...surely that's reasonable, right?
You are already disappointed.
