I platinumed Sonic Frontiers a couple of weeks ago! I looked at the achievements and realised I could totally unlock all of them, so I did!
I've nearly platinumed Sonic Forces as well, going to try and finish it off tonight! The remaining ones want you to build avatars of every race and get the top rank of all of them, which is a grind, but I discovered if you do a daily mission and get half an hour of a 3x multiplayer, it slices the amount of grinding to like a quarter, so I'm waiting until midnight so I can quickly finish off the rest of the missions.
I've also beaten War Gods on Nintendo 64, which is a game that takes 10 minutes to beat if you're good, but still!
I just got the platinum trophy and also 100%ed Episode Shadow. Got all achievements and S ranking on the 3 levels it has! Now to move onto something else
I just got my copy of Spongebob Squarepants: Cosmic Shake, so I finished off Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated and got every achievement.
Somehow, I feel like the game just sort of ended prematurely. I remember seeing the credits and thinking "... that's it?". The achievements are also glitched, and had to start another game to finish off the rest, which was a bit of a pain but it's done now.
Was otherwise a fun game! I should also look into trying the movie game, because I've been told that's like a more linear BFBB.
For now, though, onto Cosmic Shake!
I beat Sniper Elite V2 and Clockwork Knight the other day.
Snipe Elite V2 is of course a classic, and a super satisfying game! I did have some issues with the game, though. Mainly that there were no quicksaves and sometimes checkpoints were very sparse, which led to a lot of frustration. Also you couldn't check your character's heart rate while not aiming down a scope. Not a huge deal, but was inconvenient considering knowing whether or not you can "empty your lung" at a certain moment can be crucial.
I started Sniper Elite 3, and thankfully, it seems to have addressed both of these issues and added other useful stuff like how visible you would be, like if you're in a shadow or among objects/tall grass. Also, it has quicksaves! Praise the lord!
Clockwork Knight was a very fun game, but the lack of a save system almost killed it for me. I had to rely on a level select code to keep my progress, because I just don't have the time to do it all in one sitting. It wasn't even a decent way to do so, because it only lets you start at the beginning of each room, rather than the actual level. Also if you wanted to go back to the final boss, you have to enter an additional long-ass code!
The game released in 1995, on a system with a built in memory, they had no excuse!
Anyway, speaking of Bosses, one thing I remember in-particularly about the game was just how fun the bosses were! Legit they're probably the best bosses I've ever faced in any game! The end boss in-particular was great!
I hope the sequel fixed the lack of saving, but not that I'll ever know, because the game is extortionately expensive, at least in PAL regions! I do have a demo, and it was what got me to get the first game, but obviously, demos don't save data.
The end credits song was great, though! Almost made the entire thing worth it!
I just 100%ed Croc, or at least I think I did. I got all of the Gobbos and puzzle pieces and the game still says 90% by the final boss, and there’s nothing else to collect.
EDIT: Saw The Completionist’s video on it. Turns out I did beat it 100%, it’s just for some reason the Saturn version doesn’t tell you so in the end like it does on PS1.
I thought it was a great game! It really sucks that it and Tomb Raider (and Burning Rangers, if you count that) were pretty much the only proper 3D platformers the Saturn got, because I think the 3D controller would work really well with them, and I think Croc shows the Saturn can handle them no problem!
That said, the game had its problems. The port overall is very good, and is almost 1:1 with the PS1 original, but there are some sections, like maybe single digits from my playthrough, where the game slowed to a crawl.
The game also has some issues with jumping. I can forgive the tank controls, because the game was in development before Mario 64 was released and Tomb Raider was pretty much their only point of reference, but if you try to jump off the ledge, sometimes it just eats your input, and you fall to your death.
That kind of problem was solved in 2D platformers for years, so how it didn’t cross their minds to fix this is beyond me.
There was also one level inparticular that was hell, and that is 4-6. Fuck this level! It consists of ice blocks that rotate, one side is flat, the other with spikes, and they flip 180 in a rhythm. Problem is the mechanics just doesn’t feel very suited to the game at all, and I’ve constantly had bullshit deaths. I’ve legit died here more times than any other level put together! Luckily I managed to find a way to grind for lives before then!
Now onto positives, the game is insanely cute and has a really pleasing aesthetic to it, the music is really good if a bit repetitive, and it was interesting seeing the mechanics they implemented to make the whole tank control thing as bearable as possible. It still hasn’t aged well, but points for trying!
If you can put up with the outdated controls, I would definitely recommend it!
Beat Tomb Raider on Saturn. I can’t believe I sat on this game for years, because it was so much fun! The PAL Saturn version isn’t well optimised and there’s some content missing due to being rushed, but it was still perfectly playable and I had a great time with it!
Now I’m playing through the recently released Unfinished Business. It’s only 4 levels long, so I’ll probably make another post here soon enough.
Completed Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business 100%. The 4 levels were definitely challenging, and pretty long. The 4th and final level in-particular was very difficult and took me several tries to get it. Also accidentally used a shortcut to skip like a quarter of level 3, so that was interesting.
Dunno what I’m going to play next, maybe Die Hard Trilogy to be in line with the Christmas spirit? I think my Saturn stint is coming to an end, but it’s been quite a journey!
Got a working 3DO and played through Immercenary, a game I have always wanted to play, and I wasn’t disappointed! The game was pretty gripping, and it makes grinding surprisingly fun and rewarding. I usually hate games that make me grind, but this game was an exception.
They clearly put a lot of thought into the game’s universe, as the characters you interact with give you a lot of lore and the manual has practically an entire bible of backstory.
That said, the game is buggy. Sometimes buildings don’t load in properly, and crashes sometimes. You can also only go down to rank 59 in the western releases, as the only enemies that spawn when you reach that can’t rank you any further down, but by then you’re already powerful enough to beat the final boss, so not a huge deal. Can’t be too hard on them, given such an ambitious game was made by 5 people, who I don’t think have ever worked on a game before or since!
The Japanese version apparently fixes these bugs, but of course everything is in Japanese, and I feel not understanding the people or text takes away half of the experience.
But overall, I would definitely recommend it!
I finally beat Die Hard with a Vengeance in Die Hard Trilogy. I beat 1 and 2 years ago, but never managed to complete 3, so went back to do so.
I ended up cheating, but just to get unlimited lives, because lives are an archiac concept from arcades that have no place in consoles. (And I will die on this hill! Fite me!)
Luckily, the Saturn version (and only the Saturn version) has one code to enter at the copyright screen and it enables a cheat menu on all games.
Seeing what you have to do to achieve the same results on PS1 and PC makes me glad I chose the Saturn version, but I digress.
The game must have been very impressive for the time, with its big city environments while running at a fairly decent framerate. It almost feels like a primitive Driver. It’s also the only game in the Trilogy to use the 3D Saturn controller, for some reason.
However, the game is very rough! When you collide with anything, you bounce back. Well, when I say bounce, I mean you teleport back a meter or so, and this can be chained if you collide with multiple things.
This probably happens because you can’t reverse the car! How they managed to forget such a basic feature that has existed in any games with wheels since the dawn of time I’ll never know.
The story everyone goes by with this game is that Probe was originally going to make this a standalone game based on the third movie, but for some reason or another, became a compilation of 3 games. Given that 3 is the roughest of the compilation by far, I find that hard to believe.
The objective is to go around the levels getting to bombs before they blow everything up, these bombs can take the form of several static objects or moving vehicles.
Navigation is simple enough. You follow an arrow to the current bomb, but you have things like dumptrucks and pileups getting in the way, I guess like the movie. Also like the movie, you can summon ambulances to clear up the traffic for you, you do this via a pickup.
Speaking of pickups, the best way to get around is to follow them in the game as they show you the best route. These pickups can be points, extra time, turbos, extra lives and the aforementioned ambulance summoning.
The difficulty curve is fine, but it gets very difficult near the end, hence it took me this long to beat it.
One nifty feature they added were buttons dedicated to turning 90 degrees, which is especially useful in the manhattan levels. Another interesting feature is if you go in first person mode and you run over someone, you get blood on the windshield which is wiped off with the windscreen wipers.
Overall, though, like the movie it’s based on, it’s the weakest of the trilogy, but can still be fun in its own way. I would recommend Die Hard Trilogy regardless, on any system it’s on!