La-Mulana
La Mulana is…. an unfortunate game. It is very interesting and has a lot of potential, but it commits many gaming sins that can’t be overlooked. This is a NES era kind of game that is designed to force you to use some kind of guide when playing it (think castlevania 2). If you respond to this, don’t just say ‘the game is supposed to be hard’. Dark Souls is my favorite game; I know the difference between a game that is difficult because it’s designed well, and a game that is difficult because it is designed badly.
– Real player with 160.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 2D Retro Games.
Do I recommend this game?
No. You can read the reviews and decide for yourself whether you think you’ll be able to stomach it, otherwise I see little value in trying to play it for simple reasons such as liking the art, or metroidvanias, or puzzles, or because a lot of people say it’s amazing.
Something I’ve noticed while playing La-Mulana is that an overwhelming majority of modern (and not-so-modern) games have quite some of the so-called “handholding” in some shape or form. This includes games being touted as having nearly no handholding such as Dark Souls (I’m sorry, I need to draw comparisons simply because other people probably draw them but for the wrong reasons, and it’s a good difficult game that is similar but also incredibly different).
– Real player with 129.7 hrs in game
GODS Remastered
1. What is Gods, but a wonderful pile of pixels and secrets?
The original Gods is very clearly a child of its time and thus a somewhat typical Euro-platformer, originally at home on Amiga, Atari and such, but also DOS, Mega Drive and SNES (the latter one is the one I owned and enjoyed as a child). It’s somewhat clunky at times, enemies can occasionally spawn right inside of you, it is in some places possible to get stuck. So it’s obviously not as polished as the best Japanese platformers were back in the days, but it has its own strengths. In fact, Gods is quite unique (even among Euro platformers) for its plethora of secrets hidden in just about every nook and cranny. You are invited to experiment with its many switches, with your timing, with certain enemies and so on. Combat is also somewhat special in that most enemies are triggered in certain spots, so your first playthrough will have you advance carefully, fearing what might come ahead, while later runs have you blaze through, grabbing treasures and swiftly kill most baddies, giving it all a nice learning curve.
– Real player with 21.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best 2D Platformer Games.
Gods was one of my favourite games back in the day. I would sit at Amiga 500+ which was connected to a 32 inch TV with a curved glass screen and play for hours. I have to admit that at the time, copying games and swapping them with mates was the way you got new games.
So my first copy of Gods was actually given to me by Alan Powell at a company called Swan Glenn where we made headboards together.
The game was brutally difficult and became so hard that by level 2 it was almost impossible to play. The rumour was that it was copy protection and only original games worked after level 2. I succumbed and headed to Electronics Boutique in the centre of Bristol and came home with my newly purchased product. It was cold and wet and on the way home I read the manual. It was quite thick considering the game was a platformer but either way, it made my excitement grow.
– Real player with 17.7 hrs in game
A Boy and His Blob
I never played the original, so I express no nostalgia bias when I say…. If you value your time and money, do not play this game.
The charming graphics hide an unforgiving game with unresponsive controls and terrible level design. A Boy and His Blob is far, far, too long, also. The first level fools you into believing innocent fun is afoot. Don’t be deceived. There’s a reason players aren’t completing most of the available achievements: This game is brutal and unforgiving… and not in the “Raiden” shoot-em-up type of way. Further, This game is boring - brutally boring, and progressing through each level is a chore you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. In many of the levels it’s impossible to see where you’re going until you’re dead - a hallmark of awful level design. The challenge stages take the wretched level design to 11, and make you start over from the beginning of the level.
– Real player with 41.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best 2D Family Friendly Games.
I remember renting the original “A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia” NES game in 1990. It was cute, but ultimately frustrating, from what I recall. However, the premise (i.e., feeding a blob jelly beans in order to have him transform) was great – so great, in fact, that the premise was retained but everything else was discarded for the 2009 remake on the Wii. “Remake” isn’t quite right; as movies have done of late, the new “A Boy and His Blob” was a reimagining. The PC version on Steam is a port of the 2009 version, not the original NES version. History lesson over.
– Real player with 26.9 hrs in game
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Bionic Commando was a decent enough arcade action game, when it debuted in 1987. Cartoonish, tricky, demanding, full of genuinely vexing little obstacles here and there. Its NES port, technically a sequel to the arcade game, remains the gold standard “home version that clobbered its arcade counterpart” in my book, adding many more stages, many more enemies and obstacles, and some genuinely hair-bristling cruel and unforgiving claw-swinging physics challenges that made you feel really accomplished when you finally cleared them. Bionic Commando was the first NES game I finished, partly due to being a very late arrival to the NES world, but partly also because it was the first game I owned to seem, frankly, as though its unfolding story justified the work involved. I felt like I’d really accomplished something, the day I finally arrived at that endscreen with Joe’s signature.
– Real player with 48.0 hrs in game
Easily one of the best games of the PS3/360 era and from back when Capcom was willing to experiment both with new IPs and with their wide library of existing IPs to the point of reviving old forgotten franchises such as Bionic Commando and Dark Void (With varying results overall) and also from a time where they outsourced a lot of their projects to North American and European companies (In this case, the game was developed by GRIN. A company which eventually transformed into OVERKILL and went on to develop PAYDAY: The Heist on the same engine as this game).
– Real player with 35.2 hrs in game
Pharao Reloaded
I love this game. Of course it has not the pace or the graphics or sounds of modern games but the charme of the original ones which it’s a remake of. I played the original on my dad’s computer 30 years ago and never finished the forth pyramid. It was so damn hard. And this one is hard too g. I like the improvements the developer added like the hierogylphs around the playfield which are decoration only. But the spider is a tough new enemy and the two new potions fit in well.
The first two levels are rather relaxing, there are just ghosts and mummies as wandering enemies but the third level and above becomes tough really quick.
– Real player with 123.9 hrs in game
A great entertaining Maze Game.
I don’t know the original Pharao or Fred, but I started playing Pharao Reloaded since a friend recommended it to me.
At first, I was not really happy due to the “original not so smooth graphic and weird sound” but with the new graphic and sound modes, I really started to enjoy it. It’s nice if you just want to relax a bit and as soon as you start a level, you definitely want to finish it (I gave up once, where I ended up in the same dead end three times, due to my not available skill) :)
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Broken Sword: Director’s Cut
I played the original Broken Sword for the PS1 back near when it first came out and was absolutely addicted to finishing it. I loved it and felt it fully deserved the acclaim it received. In the years since, I’ve played it through again a few times although more for the nostalgia and amusing dialogue - alas, I could always remember the path through the game, so it didn’t present any further challenge. So finding out there was a Director’s Cut seemed brilliant. More Broken Sword!
Having now done so, my feelings are unfortunately leaning to the negative. But there was a mix of good and bad. Here in my opinion what was done right:
– Real player with 23.5 hrs in game
How can an American’s vacation in Paris go wrong? especially when all he planned on doing is visiting the Eiffel tower, buying a small figurine of it, and stopping at the first cafe he spots that have an attractive waitress working in it??
well, not if the whole cafe gets blown up and he miraculously survives the explosive just to find out that he always wanted to play detective… and here is his chance!
a wannabe detective and a Journalist meet one another by pure luck or a twist of fate not knowing what they are dealing with whatsoever or that they are going to look behind the curtains which no one is supposed to look behind. and one could argue that it’s the best part of the game, how things evolve from nothing to a multi-layers complex narrative that starts with a clown’s red nose and ends in the Syrian desert or at the end of the world, West.
– Real player with 20.7 hrs in game
R-Type Dimensions EX
Teominious’s Gaming Greats Part 1: R-Type Dimensions EX
While I cannot speak as to how common it is for one to remember things that happened at age-just-above-two, I can say with 100% confidence that this series has been with me for as long as I can remember. Specifically, I walked into the living room of our small, Flagstaff Arizonan apartment, roving about as toddlers do. That day, though, something different, and new caught my eye; sitting on the sofa was a new game, a PSOne jewel case with uniquely-fonted letters on a black background simply reading “R-Types”.
– Real player with 28.5 hrs in game
What is it?
A faithful conversion (and optional audiovisual remaster) of the classic R-Type and R-Type II arcade horizontal SHMUP games. You may have played conversions of these games on home consoles in the past, which may have varied in their content or difficulty depending on the versions you played. These are the arcade originals, with an optional remaster mode that can be switched to and from on the fly at the touch of a button.
Pros
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Excellent, faithful ports.
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Optional audiovisual remaster that you can switch to or from at the touch of a button.
– Real player with 8.4 hrs in game
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap was originally made for the Sega Master System and ported to the Game Gear and Turbo Grafx-16. It involved the main character, Wonder Boy, fresh from his last adventure getting cursed by a dragon’s curse and then roaming the land to try to fix that curse.
It also was a fantastic game that rivaled entries like Metroid and allowed players to return to areas they had been in before to find new rooms with abilities earned over time. It was essentially a predecessor to what would be known as a Metroidvania.
– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game
This is how people make an HD Remake of a old game. No crappy graphics, no 90’s radio quality music.
This game is awesome! I guess the saga is one of the first Metroidvania games to exist, playing it feels a bit like playing a platformer Zelda game, but without puzzles to waste your time, you can explore, fight monsters, challenge bosses, aswell as look for secrets. Why didn’t I met this game before? Where have this been all my life? (Probably it’s Monica’s fault…)
This game doesn’t force you to grind so you can buy equipment, or at least not that much, some equipments you need to go killing monsters so you be able to buy them, but still, the game doesn’t make you waste hours killing the same monster for coins to buy your equipment (unless you want to get a certain equipment that is supposed to be acquired way later in the game).
– Real player with 25.7 hrs in game
Gekido Kintaro’s Revenge
Gekido Kintaro’s Revenge is an okay Beat ‘em up game, so it’s time for the story.
After stopping the evil Kintaro, our hero Tetsuo returns to his sensei’s house were all is quiet for a year. But soon his sensei feels a dark, ominous and evil presence returning, he sends Tetsuo to a faraway farming village outside the city to see what it is.
Now let’s talk about the likes. The game play was simple, but fun. Some of the enemies were cool looking. Game was not too hard and the cutscenes were nice to look at. Survive mode in the game was okay.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
I was craving a simple beat ‘em up and the colorful retro graphics of Gekido caught my eye. I have to say I sure am glad it wasn’t more expensive as I frankly hate this game. The stages and enemies were designed to make every death feel incredibly cheap and infuriating. Every trap is guaranteed to hit until you know their exact placement ahead of time, and even then it’s a toss as they appear just off the screen so you often can not be precise enough. Both the enemy AI and your own combos tend to place you overlapping an enemy sprite, rendering you incapable of striking that specific enemy regardless of the direction you’re facing, while the said enemy has no issue striking you. The jumps are imprecise and will leave you wondering whether you should keep trying or if the gap really is just too big. The hit boxes on some objects make absolutely no sense (a falling rock will hurt you even though it misses by a half an inch on the screen), and the game even has a habit of forgetting to let you move after you clear the screen of all enemies making you restart the stage. Do yourself a favor and replay Streets of Rage 4 instead if you need a simple but properly made game.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX+
This game is absolutely bonkers, in a good way though.
PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+ is like normal PAC-MAN, only the map is rotated 90 degrees, there are tons of ghosts instead of just 4, and it’s a race to eat as many dots, food and ghosts as possible before the timer runs out.
The game is split into several boards with different structures, dot and ghost positioning, and paths to follow. None of them really feel any harder than the others, but they’re all difficult in their own way. The DLC boards are a fun addition, but I wouldn’t recommend you buy them separately from the game, since it’s cheaper to buy the full Big Eater pack and just get all of it at once.
– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game
Hello Everyone,
It is time to munch, chomp, and manoeuvre your way through another series of mazes with Bandai Namco’s notorious pelt eating ghost munching spherical maze racer, Pacman in “PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+”. This game is not your original Pacman but a new fast pace version that will keep you on the edge of your seat every step of the way.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ is an arcade score attack game that takes its inspiration from the original Pelt Muncher that was first released in 1981. This time around though Pac-man has been turned into a speed run crushing dynamo taking on hoards of ghost that are determined to get in your way as you try to climb to the top of the leader. With that being said, lets begin talking about the gameplay.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game