The Ratings: August

Sequel month comes to a close, it was fun, we played some of the best games we have for the Podcast this month, and all of them were worth talking about. So here's how they shake out, in my opinion, compared to everything else we've played. I've bolded the games we played this month, so if you just want my additional comments on those, they should be easy to find. If you want to read everything, hit the jump and dig in.


Super Smash Bros. 10/10
Like Castlevania before it, it's going to be tough for anything to dethrone Super Smash Bros. It's the only Nintendo 64 game we've played thus far, and while I love Super Nintendo and NES games, the N64 really is my childhood. Some stuff from that era of games holds up, some of it is laughable, but Super Smash Bros. is the crown jewel, it's tough to see it going anywhere any time soon.

Castlevania 9/10
Castlevainia however, is almost the perfect game for it's time. The challenge, the theme, the controls, the music, everything is absolutely spot on. You've heard me gush about it a lot, but if you've any interest in overcoming a challenging NES game, play it!

Mega Man 2 9/10
I struggled with where to put Mega Man 2. On the episode in which we spoke about it, I talked about how I didn't think it was better than Mega Man and that it felt like it was just a continuation that was a bit weaker. Than I played "hard" mode, and the game became fun. Hard mode isn't really that much harder, a few enemies take more hits, and the boss battles feel like boss battles, but that's enough. Zach talked in that episode about how he felt like the boss battles serve no point, and on "Normal" mode I can see where he's coming from, but Hard mode made them fun and exciting, even if that wasn't Zach's protest. Speaking objectively, it's got 2 extra levels and a longer final stage, more weapons, and some platforming items. It's better than Mega Man and a fun game, even if it didn't try anything especially new.

Mega Man 9/10
Sand speaking of Mega Man, it's still good. Not quite as good as Mega Man 2, but still worth paying for and playing if you've any interest in that style of game.

The Legend of Zelda 8/10
An influence on a lot of the games we played this week, The Legend of Zelda is a fun little adventure that really feels like an adventure. You slay monster, find treasure, and rescue a princess, honestly what more could you ask for? The game's not perfect, but it's fun and worth checking out if you're a Zelda fan.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 8/10
I havn't finished Seven Stars, which is a bit of a shame. I'm close enough that I feel like I've completed the game, there's very little in the way of additional content to see, just Bowser's Castle and some bosses, and a game over that took away too much progress ended my desire for it. The game is really oddly paced, and the graphics are poor, but it's quirky and fun, and I reccomend anyone who likes RPGs give it a play through.

Gradius 8/10
Going back to difficult, skill based NES games we have Gradius. I've only played it a couple of times since the episode, and that makes the problems with it a bit more apparant. The penalty for dying is steep, so taking a break from it is a bad idea, you'll just die more and encounter the hard parts of the game. It's a fair game though, and a ton of fun if space shooters that are super hard are your thing.

Castlevainia II: Simon's Quest 7/10
I'm likely to get some flack for placing such a widely reviled game so highly in this list, but I absolutely loved Simon's Quest. It has problems, a lot of them, but they're fairly infamous, and knowing what they are ahead of time really helps to mitigate what sucks about the experience. I'm not sure what else to say about it, it's surprisingly good. If you have any interest at all in game design or game criticism, I think you should play it through, the things it does wrong are worth noting, as is how fun and satisfying the combat is despite that.

Doom 7/10
Not sure what else to say about Doom, I feel like the fun I didn't have with Doom 2 should almost bring this game down, but that's not fair to it. It's everything that's fun about the First Person Shooter genre, minus multiplayer, distilled into a raw form. Check it out.

Metroid 7/10
Metroid is a game that's ahead of its time in a lot of ways, with branching paths and optional power ups, but it lacks some crucial features like a mini-map. This all gets fixed in Super Metroid, which is a better game over all, but Metroid's still a good one to check out if you like game history, or the franchise.

Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels 7/10
I've spoken at length about how much I like the challenge in Castlevania, about how it's frustrating, but in the way that makes you just want to go again, about how it gives you plenty of lives and doesn't punish you too much for using them, and about how great you feel when you beat a level. Lost Levels does very much the same thing. So why is it not up as high as Castlevainia? Well for starters the theme. I love Mario, but it's just not as exciting as the B horror feel of Castlevainia. Then there's the difficulty, Castlevainia starts easy and provides plenty of challenges, from Medusa heads, to spike traps to Dracula. Mario is pretty much just pits, and they start out very hard. It's a good game, one I'm still playing three weeks after we assigned it, but it's not for everyone.

Super Mario Bros. 6/10
Super Mario Bros. got much closer to the 5/10 slot I want it in this month, with so many of the games being winners, not as close as I might like though. I suppose it's just a really good game, despite being simple, and that far more games went for the glory Mario had back in the day and failed than succeeded.

Super Mario Bros. 2 6/10
Super Mario Bros. 2 is very, very different from Super Mario Bros. When you consider it was originally another game entirely, that's not surprising. My co-hosts gave it a lot of credit for being something new and different, and it deserves that. It's a fun game, and a worthy successor to Mario Bros. But new and different doesn't mean everything. In the end, the game just doesn't feel as tight or interesting as Mario Bros. to me. Sure, multiple characters is cool, and it's nice that they all have different ability sets, but this leads to a few levels where characters can't progress, and Luigi is pretty clearly the best. It's still a good game over all, but there's a reason I think that more inspirtation wasn't drawn from it.

Gunstar Heroes 6/10
Gunstar Heroes is still a game I have trouble talking about. It was fun. It wasn't really anything special. That sets a sort of ill tone for everything below, doesn't it?

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 6/10
Adventure of Link is a game that's hard to gather my thoughts on. It's hard. That doesn't make it bad. It's simple. That also doesn't make it bad. It's very different from the game that came before. Again, that doesn't make it bad, and in fact, many of the systems are clever and well done. But when you add it all together, it just makes a game that's ok. One that's hard to justify spending a lot of time with when you realize just how difficult it is, when you get too many game overs, especially with how harsh those game overs are. I wish I liked the game, but I don't, not at all, and I'm glad Link to the Past borrowed little from it.

Final Fantasy 5/10
Zelda II's overworld actually reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy. If you read these columns, you know that this is a game I long to go back to, but every time I do, the abysmal run speed just drives me to something else. There's a great game here, I know it, and it's an utter shame that technical problems scare me away from it.

Super Dodge Ball 5/10
A quirky, fun little game, with multiplayer but little if any replayability. As such I havn't replayed it, and don't have much more to say on the game.

Excitebike 5/10
This game isn't very exciting either, but it has a bit of a zen quality that makes it great for playing while listening to podcasts or before bed, like Tetris. Nothing super special, but worth a look if you're interested.

Kirby's Adventure 5/10
Kirby's adventure as I've said before is just boring. It's an incredibly easy platformer. The colors are nice, and there are a lot of really cool power ups, but it's just easy to fall asleep while playing it.. and still win!

Doom 2 4/10
Like Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels, Doom 2 is just more of what came before, but a little harder. The problem, as stated before, was I felt Doom was already starting to wear out its welcome when I played the first one. I'm not a big FPS guy, one will occasionally grab my attention for a while, but it's rare, and they never hold me to them too long. Doom 2 didn't have it for more than a couple of seconds, and while I still say check out the original, I can't recommend the follow up.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors 4/10
A quircky game with a strong theme and some interesting design choices, ruined by a couple of key problems. Chief among them, the complete lack of a save system, combined with a restart at death. I really don't see the big deal when it come to Zombies Ate my Neighbors, and recommend you skip it.

Harvest Moon 4/10
I probably give this game a lot more bile than it deserves. It's fun for about 10 hours, more than quite a few of the more highly rated games. But it lasts about 30, and the part of me that wants to see things through to the end just couldn't stand that. I still stay skip it, since there are a litany of sequels that are vastly improved.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4/10
Sonic sadly didn't make it into sequel week, and he likely won't make it in for a few more months, which is a shame, I'd like to take another crack at a Sonic game, and I remember really liking Sonic 2. This game looks beautiful, but the fun bits of the game play, namely going fast, contrast with what the levels are designed to do, make you take your time to make precise jumps, so what should be a fun imaginative game is just super frustrating instead.

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja 3/10
While still at 3/10, I moved Mystical Ninja up a few games. Why? Well, it wasn't anything special, and it did have some pretty big problems, but I did enjoy it, and that's what should count in a game. It just didn't really stand out at all.

F-Zero 3/10
F-Zero is a racing game that's main feature is impressive graphics for the time. They still look pretty good today, but they're nothing special which makes recommending the game rather difficult. Play the racing game of your choice instead.

Act Raiser 3/10
Act Raiser, as I've said a hundred times before, is a game with an interesting story, a theme it wants to explore, and some really cool game mechanics. That are executed terribly. The RTS portions are overly basic and require no strategy, while the hit boxes in the platform section make it nearly unplayable. Too bad.

Bases Loaded 3/10
While impressive for how realistic it is for an NES game, Bases Loaded is just a little too hard to be fun. You shouldn't have to be a pro hitter to feel like one in a videogame, which is why this game is rated so low. That and I'm not a huge fan of sports games.

Ogre Battle 2/10
Ogre Battle has a fantastic theme and very fun progression elements, and lets you control an entire army of fantasy creatures and characters. So why is it so low? Well, the game has unfair difficulty that makes it a slog. Not especially difficult, but not at all fun, so a great concept ends up languishing here at the bottom of the bin.

Comix Zone 2/10
Speaking of mechanics and difficulty that make a game not fun, Comix Zone. Poor Comix Zone. So much could have been done with this concept. Instead, the designers were lazy, padding out a few short boring levels with fake difficulty. Skip it.

Double Dragon II The Revenge 2/10
An alright time with a friend, but uninteresting fighting and poor jumping controls combined with platformering sections makes Double Dragon II a hard thumbs down.

Double Dragon 2/10
Double Dragon. Take everything I said about Double Dragon II, remove the co-op and add horrible soul crushing music that loops way too quickly. In other words, don't play it.

Phantasy Star 1/1
And here's the inverse Super Smash Brothers. Phantasy Star was a game I'd never played, but playing some of its decendents and having heard great things, I had high expectations. I wanted to play an RPG for the podcast that would be better than Final Fantasy. What I got was much much worse. Moon logic, grinding, boring combat, impossibility to navigate, this game has it all and it's all bad. I don't see anything "beating" it soon. I hope nothing "beats" it any time soon.