Board 8 > Dec. Game of the Month Club ft. DOOM, Guardians of Galaxy, Unpacking, and Spyro

(+) Yeah! (+)

Nominate Life is Strange: True Colors

ViolentAbacus posted...

I'll leave it up to KCF to decide

The original DOOM only had three episodes, so I'm personally fine with just beating those. Ultimate DOOM contained the extra episide.

Nominate: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

(it's currently being given away on GOG again.)

Up to chapter 8 in GotG. Still enjoying it, didn't realize the game was so long.

Nominate Hitman 2 (2018) and Among the Sleep

Support Batman

I have a few more levels left in episode 3, so Ill be finished soon. In the meantime, may as well try to continue with the Doom nominations.

Support Doom II (1994)

Which Overboard?

Overboard! (2021)

I wasn't aware there was another.

I beat Episode 2 last night, and with it comes an admission, an observation, and some thoughts to tie the two together.

The admission: I made liberal use of the ability to save (which may or may not have been in the original shareware episodes; I wouldn't know) and reload upon death towards the latter half of the episode in particular. Carrying over weapons and ammo minimized the frustration of having to try surviving the whole length of a level over and over again, but it likewise minimized the strain on my lacking skills. Someday I'll try to beat each level on its own, but not this month.

With my opinions now thoroughly discredited, the observation: Doom's sense of speed seems second to none, and that's with not much more than a sprint. Strafing the Cyberdemon at the end (which I didn't take advantage of saving to tackle) was a real highlight, forcibly freeing me from the grip of formula and the typically conservative play it fostered.

And the thoughts: The all-important adrenaline in Doom (and perhaps in FPSes in general - I don't have the experience to comment) mainly stems from the interplay of flow and challenge. I've partially disrupted that equilibrium on both ends as an attempt to ameliorate for the more severe effects my lacking skills would otherwise have. (Now I get what people refer to when they talk about playing games 'right', even if I don't necessarily agree with the concept.) Yet the game feel still shines through amidst it all, sans steep enough situational awareness and reaction time requirements to overwhelm me.

Anyways, I won't be finishing Episode 3 before the drawing, so I'll nominate Wandersong and support Doom II right now.

honestly don't worry about it - I'd say that the difficulty in most older games with quick saves are built around the assumption that you're using them (hence all the ambushes/monster closets/enemies hiding in weird places to kill you/take out a huge portion of health before you realize what's happened in a lot of the fps games of the era), and that most crotchety old pc gamers resent modern games that have save points/checkpoints instead of quick saves.

at any rate I haven't mentioned it yet, but I started spyro a while back. Though so far I've only gotten past the first boss and finished a couple stages in the second world.

TheArkOfTurus posted...

Overboard! (2021)

I wasn't aware there was another.

It wasn't even the first result when I searched it on GameFAQs. Nevertheless, it looks interesting so I'll support it assuming I have any left to use.

Nominate Paper Mario

It got some support love last time I nominated it, so might as well try again!

Ooh, I was planning in playing that soon too!

Uh, how many supports do I have left if any?

Doom beated

Finished episode 3. Will likely still do episode 4.

I'll support Paper Mario as well.

Monthly Progress
DOOM - Abacus, Paul
Guardians -
Unpacking - JONA, KCF, Ark, Abacus
Spyro - Cody, JONA, KCF

Nominations
Abacus - DOOM II, XIII, Metal Gear Rising
Ark - Overboard! (2021), Shiren the Wander
Cody - Hitman 2 (2018), Among the Sleep
Crispy - I Have No Mouth
darkx - LiS: True Colors
gameking - Death Stranding
JONA - Record of Lodoss, Paradise Killer, Devil May Cry
KCF - Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Last Campfire, Kaze and the Wild Masks, Batman: Enemy Within
Metal - Wandersong
MZero - Paper Mario

Supports
Cody - Batman, Paper Mario
darkx - Batman, Paper Mario
gameking - DOOM
JONA - Overboard
Metal - DOOM
Paul - DOOM

Drawing tomorrow

Looks like I have no support left to use for Paper Mario, so...

Remove support for Overboard! (sorry)
Support Paper Mario

Up to chapter 12 in GotG. The story has gotten very poignant. Also, Mantis is the best.

I almost forgot, but I will support Hitman 2

Last call for noms, changes, and supports

Oops, I just drew without first mentioning they were closed, not that anyone posted anything since.

Your January Games of the Month are...

Batman: The Enemy Within (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch/Android/iOS)
DOOM II (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch/iOS/Android360/PS3/GBA/Saturn/PS/Tapwave)
Hitman 2 (PC/XB1/PS4/Stadia)

Congrats to myself, Abacus, and Cody for having their games selected!

Batman is on sale for $3.74 USD for PC via Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/675260/Batman_The_Enemy_Within__The_Telltale_Series/

Batman Shadows Edition (includes first season + Enemy Within + shadows art style modes) is on sale for $7.46 USD for PC via Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12433/Telltale_Batman_Shadows_Edition/

DOOM II is on sale for $1.50 USD for PC via Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2300/DOOM_II/

DOOM II is on Game Pass for Console, PC, and Cloud

DOOM II is also on sale for $1.50 USD on XB1
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/doom-ii-classic/9plt62lrf9v7

Hitman 2 is on sale for $11.95 (standard) or $20 (Gold) USD for PC via Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/11358/HITMAN_2__Standard_Edition/
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/272966/

Hitman 2 Gold is on sale for $20 USD for PS4
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP4572-CUSA12421_00-HITMANGOLDBUNDLE

Okay, I've got Batman at least.

Awesome on Hitman 2 and DOOM II getting chosen. I'm going to try to do both of those next month, but I'll want to do Hitman 1's levels if I can since I haven't done them.

Gonna shoot for Hitman and Batman.

Batman is on sale for $3.74 USD for Xbox
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/batman-the-enemy-within-the-complete-season-episodes-1-5/c0dgrh3hk0vk

Batman Shadows Edition (includes both seasons and shadows mode) is one sale for $7.46 USD for Xbox
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/the-telltale-batman-shadows-edition/9pjm1tncgmb0

in for finishing doom 2 next month - though tbh doing 1 and 2 back to back seems a bit much since doom 2 is basically just another level pack for the first game.

Finished world 2 in Spyro.

Picked GotG back up. I'm finding Chapter 8 to be insanely difficult. 99% certain that I won't finish this game this month, which is too bad because I really wanted that point with this one.

Made it a good chunk of the way through Chapter 10 last night but not to the end.

have one stage left in world 3 and 52% completion in spyro, so I'm still on track with getting it done this month.

I worried I wouldn't manage it this month, but after an old-fashioned binge of Inferno in its entirety, Metal has beaten DOOM nary a moment too soon.

As that sentence betrays, I think id nailed the gameplay loop and general game feel to the point of practical perfection here (in the game as a whole, that is). Plus, the level design at least felt more recursive and less constrained in Episode 3 than before. What an achievement this must have been in 1993 to feel so compulsively playable even by today's standards (antiquated aspects be damned), on top of all its innovation. The post-session headaches were worth it - albeit with the crucial caveat that carrying over weapons and ammo made for a power trip more often than not. I feel like I ought to clear each level on its own someday, not to mention the bonus episode...

Finished Spyro: Year of the Dragon last night, since I had less to do in world 4 than I was expecting.

anyway I think I mentioned it a bit when Spyro 2 came up, but I can't help but think that Spyro is kind of a mildly bad series since probably a lot of western developers still hadn't gotten over trying to "beat" the rental market.

Spyro feels like the primary audience was younger children. Nothing wrong with that of course. Most of the gameplay seems pretty relaxed, making a leisurely loop around the stage accomplishing some simple task. But then in 2 and 3, Insomniac started adding a lot more random BS/difficulty spikes like the minigames which the target audience would struggle with to keep them from beating the game in a rental at the expense of making it more frustrating.

(I kind of feel similarly with the egg thieves, even in the first game, though to a lesser extent. Since they annoy me a little bit trying to steer when going at full speed for an extended periods of time, even now. They would have annoyed me even more when I was younger, since back when I was in about the same age range that Insomniac is probably trying to target with Spyro I couldn't even run/dash in games that required you to double tap the control pad to do so. >_>; Though, at least it's regular gameplay even if it kind of feels like it goes against the grain of the rest a bit.)

Yeah, despite playing a ton the last few days I'm totally not beating GotG in the next two hours. The later missions are a lot longer and harder than I expected and I'm pretty sure I've already long exceeded the HLTB time. This would've been a fantastic final game to beat in 2021. Instead it'll be my first in 2022. Knowing I've got no shot at this point I'm gonna stop for the night at the beginning of Chapter 14.

I thought multiple people were playing that game since I thought there were multiple supports for it. I guess this means that unless something changes in the next few hours, Guardians of the Galaxy will be our second ever game to have nobody beat it.

What was the other game to never be beaten?

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

I thought FF6 had nobody

Anyway I had really planned to beat it but I just got too busy with my work and performances in December and put it off until after Christmas thinking it would be a little shorter than it was.

FFVI is listed as having three people beat it

KCF0107 posted...

I thought multiple people were playing that game since I thought there were multiple supports for it. I guess this means that unless something changes in the next few hours, Guardians of the Galaxy will be our second ever game to have nobody beat it.

@Cody11533

(He posted that he beat it in the 2021 video game challenge thread, I'm assuming he just forgot to post it here? (or just wants to write more thoughts on it.))

I have beaten Guardians of the Galaxy

Forgot to post in here earlier because of the Michigan game lol. Fun game with a great story!

Also I will second that GotG is much longer than I anticipated. I was on chapter 12 today and spent most of the afternoon wrapping up the story. The individual chapters are pretty lengthy.