Revenge of the Hand: MacDaddy Mike's playthrough topic part 2

I still think it'd be cool if you got something extra for beating the bosses in the order of the...err, you know, the Song of Healing or whatever. I forget what it's called now.

Pick one or all.

And no video.

I had no expectations for this game (probably because everyone hates it) and I actually didn't find it to be too bad. It's a crappy game, sure, but I'd rather replay this than the first game. And I still need to play CV III. Soon.

I heard about it here:

As for CV3, that was a tough but fun game. I only played it once and I can't even remember if I beat it or not, so that might be something I'd revisit in the future.

I'll give it its incredibly catchy soundtrack:

...but this game is downright stupid. I had it recommended to me because its style is similar to Ninja Gaiden, but whereas Ninja Gaiden was fast-paced and tested your reflexes, this game unfairly limits you against opponents that are practically unstoppable. The first two stages were alright, but stage three introduces these jumping guys that can clear the entire screen in half a second and take three hits from your subweapons to kill, and they have you fight more than one at a time later in the level. As if that's bad enough, the platforming gets pixel-perfect later in the level, and then they start introducing these tanks that can hit you with their fireballs before they're even on-screen, take FOUR hits to kill with your strongest subweapon, stun with every hit, and with Batman's slow speed in this game it's practically impossible to dodge two of its fireballs in a row.

And then I get to the boss, this guy who fires a super-fast sonic-boom-type weapon that you have to wall jump to dodge, but then he'll just jump across the room to the height of the ceiling where he'll hit you even if you've dodged the sonic boom. He's got a ton of health and you're always out of subweapons by the time you even get to the boss, and the only way I was able to beat him was some glitch where he thought I was stuck in the corner and kept facing in that direction and attacking while I was standing right next to him laying on the fists.

Every time I've seen someone talk about this game I hear that it's "tough, but awesome", but I'm not finding anything to like about this game at all...aside from its soundtrack. The difficulty is completely cheap because everything--I'm not kidding, here, EVERYTHING in the game moves faster than you, and your subweapon ammo runs out way too quick. The game could have been a little more balanced if there were subweapon ammo drops scattered around the levels like in Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania's candlesticks, but that still doesn't excuse Batman's sluggish control.

This game blows. I'm going to play some Castlevania 3.
---
Attractive people love Mac's playthrough videos ~ Reliable Internet Personality
http://www.youtube.com/user/MacDaddyMike

I think the real challenge in this game comes from having to think on your feet, as a lot of the stage effects in this game deal with putting some sort of forced "time limit" to your movements. There's one where the screen rises, there's one where the screen falls, there's a couple of areas where the floor crumbles or outright falls beneath your feet. My advice? Take Alucard.

At the first path choice they just happen to give you a choice between two of my favorite tracks in the game, "Clocktower" and "Mad Forest", and I went with Clocktower first and eventually ran into Grant...who's not very good. Or at least I don't know how to use him. They make you backtrack out of the Clocktower with him and there are a lot of areas where he's actually very useful, but after that I didn't really encounter any areas in the following stages where his wall-climbing did me any good, and he sucks as an attacker. Once I got Alucard, it became easy to avoid most of the stage effects and just skip ahead, including one area where you have to ascend on falling blocks that stack on each other. That would have been hell to play through, but instead I just turned into a bat and flew to the top.

I played this game in a mix of how I played Ninja Gaiden and the Super Star Wars games, actually, in that I decided to take things slowly and think about where enemies were coming from and I held on to my best weapon for as long as possible. With lvl 3 Cross, any boss should be afraid of you. I was actually surprised to beat Death in a matter of seconds with the Cross and before he even got to hit me, but then it turned out he had a second form that was immune to subweapons, but it had an easy pattern to get down. I think my toughest fight was against a boss where you have to fight three mini-bosses right after one another, but I still beat it in my first try.

I had never reached the final level or boss before, but I saw him in videos by the AVGN or the GT Retrospective, so I knew what I was in for. The first form only got off one hit on me because I rushed him with the triple-Cross, and his second form was easy enough to dodge. His final form did massive damage but, again, was fairly easy to dodge. He only hit me once, I think.

All in all, super fun game, and not all that frustrating as I expected it. I still think it has the best soundtrack of the CV series, maybe next to Portrait of Ruin. I've seen people (cough, sci) say that CV4's is the best, but I hate pretty much every track in that game except for stage one.

It's now just occurred to me that I've never actually played Castlevania 1, though. Hmm.
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Super Return of the Jedi - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

I'm not joking. I just killed Dracula and I haven't died throughout the entire game. Maybe it's because I just came off of playing CV3, a much more difficult and frustrating game, and maybe it's because I grew up on NES gameplay, but I found this to be mostly a walk in the park.

I took things slow and that was that. Once I figured out that you could find item powerups in the wall, I got my Cross to lvl 3 as I did in CV3 and then went through the rest of the game really slowly, making sure that I didn't pick up any other subweapons to replace it. I found the wall chicken whenever I could, though most of the time I was picking it up while already at full health, 'cause I had a really easy time dodging enemies or getting the timing down for them. Those hunchback guys could have been annoying if you had to duck to kill them, but nah. And those dragon-skull towers that shoot fireballs at you might have been difficult if they a) didn't have an easy pattern to get down and b) didn't die instantly when you hit them with the Cross.

I didn't even need strategy when I was fighting the bosses, mostly. I just wailed on them with the Cross and they died before I did. Hell, the fight with the Frankenstein monster and the little jumping dude, I didn't even know who I was supposed to be attacking. I just kept using the Cross and it stunned the jumping guy and eventually the fight just ended--I'm still not sure who you're supposed to target in that boss fight.

Level 4 was the toughest and the closest I came to dying. I'd seen the infamous corridor leading up to Death before in the AVGN video, and I just rushed it and spammed the Cross and jumped when I needed to. I entered at full health and I got hit twice by Medusa heads (I didn't even get hit by the knights at all), so I went into the Death fight with half health. It was pretty easy to dodge Death and his sickles were all taken care of by my Crosses that I kept using, and he only hit me once throughout the fight, though that still took off a quarter of my health.

I imagine the first section of level 5 would have been difficult--the one with the giant bats--if you actually attempted to fight them, but I just ran past and they weren't able to keep up or hit me at all. I used the same trick that I used in CV3 for the Dracula fight, going up and down the stairs to stock up on hearts, and I had seen clips of the fight on AVGN and the GT Retrospective, as mentioned before, so I knew what to expect. Again, I just jumped and timed my Crosses well enough to take out all of Dracula's fireballs, and then I did the same when he went into his second form. I guess I got lucky 'cause Monster!Drac always did a high jump when I wanted him to, giving me ample time to run underneath him and spam my Crosses again. I entered the final fight with about 3/4 health, and I got hit once by Human!Drac and once by Monster!Drac.

So, uh, yeah. That was easy. I really wish I had recorded myself playing, but I bet focusing on commentary would have made me screw up more than once. I just played the game carefully and I didn't have much trouble with it at all.
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Super Return of the Jedi - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

I wish I would have thought about that back when I was playing. That's the stage I got stuck on.

Also, I don't know who you've been talking to about Batman. I don't recall hearing anything good about the game at all and I remember trying it for a few minutes before declaring it sucked.

I did just finally beat it, though I've been playing this game for the past week and it's been a painful run. I must've gotten over twenty game-overs, but while you do have unlimited continues, they don't actually refill your ammo when you continue, so if you were out of subweapon ammo and stuck at the start of a really tough section (like the opening of stage three or stage four), you're screwed. That was the case for me, and I must have gotten six or seven game-overs just on the first few seconds of those stages.

It's actually a short game, otherwise, at least in terms of content. The game feels like an eternity because it's so freakin' cheap, and there's actually a part at the bottom of stage four where you absolutely have to take damage to continue. There are also some really tricky jumps in stage five where you have to jump perfectly to not get hit by the gears, but I somehow nailed both of those jumps on my first try. I also got a lot better at attacking while wall-jumping, so that entire ascent wasn't too bad.

There's a crappy mini-boss right before you fight the Joker (yeah, 'cause that makes sense), but thankfully if you get game-over and continue you don't have to fight the mini-boss again--but you still have to replay the last stage. Joker's a *****, but I found that if you stand so that the tip of his gun is right in your face, you won't take damage from his shot and you avoid his lightning bolts that he summons, so once I got the distance down I actually beat him with over half of my health left.

The ending is so very un-Batman-like. He grabs the Joker and says "I know you killed my parents, now you will dance with the devil in the pale moonlight" and then throws him off the ****ing roof. Uh, that's not right.

Either way, **** this game. The soundtrack is excellent and the gameplay had some good ideas, but all of those ideas were executed piss-poor and the game is horribly unbalanced throughout. Do not recommend, and will not ever play again.

I'll try Castlevania again, carefully. I tend to drop down holes (by getting hit near them). I guess playing carefully makes a world of difference, meaning you keep power-ups.

Oh, and I finished Super Return of the Jedi.

Part 6 - http://youtu.be/qo3Ocs1lDpE
Part 7 - http://youtu.be/BUq3cJb4ttI

I've been sitting on these for a couple of days now, but I really wanted to move on so I figured I'd just release both at once. I've just been itching to get started on Uncharted Waters, and I'll likely be starting that today, so I'm wrapping this up, leaving the videos up for anyone to catch up as need be.

I do a fairly good wrap-up at the end of Part 7, so I won't repeat anything said there, or at least will try to. SRotJ is definitely still a super-fun game and one that I would recommend to anyone who appreciates either the Star Wars universe or action platformers in general, and its difficulty is more accessible than the other two Super Star Wars games. Every time I play one of these I wish that JVC could come back and make similar games based on the Prequel Trilogy, as I can only imagine what awesome bosses and character styles they could incorporate into the game (play as Jar Jar Binks!).

As I did with all of the games I made videos for, I went back and played SRotJ again after producing the last video, this time playing on Jedi difficulty. In SSW I couldn't beat the first level on Jedi difficulty, and in SESB I couldn't get myself off of Hoth, but this game I was able to beat on Jedi difficulty with only ONE game-over. What makes it all the more heart-breaking was that the game-over was on the very last stage and I ended up beating it with my very next try. If you watch the end of my LP you'll probably be wondering why I had so much more trouble with the last level, but know that you take a lot more damage in Jedi difficulty with every screw up, so my flying had to be pixel-perfect at some points to make it all the way through.

I chatted with Chris about the game a couple of days ago, and we reminisced about our first time playing it and how much trouble we had with the last level. This game is right up both of our alleys and just to get a taste of it I played the first two levels of the Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (SNES) the other day. It's very much in the same style as the Super Star Wars games, but with a few tweaks, and with just as much difficulty. I got game-over on the second level and decided that Chris absolutely had to play this game, so the next time he's in town or I'm in his town we're going to try and run through it together. I look forward to that. Maybe once I get good at this game I'll make an LP of it as well.

Besides Donkey Kong Country, this is the game in my "Back of My Hand" playthrough that I haven't played in the longest time, though whereas I avoided playing DKC because I didn't particularly like that game, I absolutely lived and breathed this game when I was younger. If you look at my backloggery page, you'll find that I actually describe it as being known like "the back of my hand", so it pretty much inspired this topic altogether. So why has it been so long? Because I only had it for PC and owned it on floppy-freakin'-disk, and it didn't run on anything past Windows 98. As soon as we upgraded our computer, I was unable to play the game, and I didn't actually know it had a SNES version until earlier last year, and I always thought it was a different game than the PC version. 'Looks not to be the case.

I've never played Uncharted Waters, the first (though I've not heard anything good about it), so I can't comment on it much, but New Horizons is a trade-and-exploration-based RPG based in 16th-century Europe with multiple story campaigns all focusing on different areas of gameplay. Depending on which story you choose you have a different primary objective, but each one has a ton of freedom for you to play it through pretty much however you like. You get to buy or build your own ships (or eventually your own fleet, all of which you get to name), manage your own crew, explore the world looking for artifacts or treasures, engage in ship-based combat or sword-fighting, as well as accepting a variety of side-quests. I practically learned all of my geographical knowledge of the planet from this game.

So there are three main game types and six playable characters, all with their own stories and set of objectives, and I'll just outline them here: there's Otto Baynes, Royal Knight of the British Empire, and his job is to take down the Spanish fleet, so his gameplay revolves mostly around combat; likewise there's Catalina Erantzo, a Spanish pirate who's looking to avenge the deaths of her brother and lover (not the same guy, to clarify), so her gameplay is similar to Otto's; there's Ernst Von Bohr, Dutch cartographer, whose mission is to make a detailed map of the New World, so his gameplay revolves around exploration; there's Pietro Conti, Italian adventurer, whose gameplay revolves mostly around exploration, treasure-hunting, and trading; then there's Ali Vezas, Turkish merchant, whose gameplay is mostly about trading and earning the dough; and there's who many would consider the "main character", Joao Franco (I have no idea how to pronounce that), Portugese nobleman and adventurer, and his story mixes up all the other types of gameplay.

Depending on what characters you choose, you encounter other of the main characters throughout your own story. Some of them only run into each other a few times (I remember Ernst and Pietro not having many encounters with the other characters), some are more directly intertwined (you can imagine that Otto and Catalina run into each other a lot) and in Joao's story you actually encounter every one of the playable characters, which also adds to Joao's "main character" status.
---
Attractive people love Mac's playthrough videos ~ Reliable Internet Personality
http://www.youtube.com/user/MacDaddyMike