[EVENT] The Sonic Stadium 52 Game Challenge 2024! - The Knuckles Week Special Challenge is Active! Join it now for special prizes! Weekly Check-In prize: Sonic Advance Profile Gift

[Emperor Robrainiac]

So! What better way to start off this challenge with a game that ended up becoming a very pleasant surprise for me?

Xenoblade was a game I had been interested in since it first came out for the wii, as I was a little more into JRPGs during that time... but as I grew older, a little more impatient, and wary with what I buy, I have to admit, looking at the combat from videos and images really scared me off as the hud really gave off sensory overload. So I ended up forgetting about it despite being interested in the world. I know a good friend of mine said the gameplay reminded him of World of Warcraft, but that was a game I had never played before, so I admit I wasn't very convinced

Eventually, I ended up buying this game when I found a gift card that hadn't been used yet. After hearing a few more friends talk about how fun it was I figured "Eh, why not?"

I gotta say... I was surprised how fast I picked up on the combat when playing the opening segment. I literally went "Huh, okay, I dig this." while playing. It was a lot smoother than I expected, the basic attack being automated and while you move around the enemies and selecting special moves while you do so. There is a lot to take in and the game has a ton of tutorials and descriptions as to how to do certain mechanics, so I could see how it could take some time for it to click for some... but surprisingly, I was able to learn pretty quick. I guess to paraphrase of the game's main protagonist Shulk, I was really feeling it. sorry couldnt resist

I thought the the setting of the game is incrediblly unique, taking place on the dead body of a god, the main characters were very likeable (Yes, I even liked Riki, I thought he was adorable lmao), the story kept me interested and the ending which reveals how how the world came to be was something I did not expect. Future Connected was a nice post game thing as well, and it gave some closure Melia's (One of your party members) story, and it was nice seeing more of her and Shulk before I move on to the next game.

But overall, I had an excellent time with it, it nice to progress to see where the story goes while also sometimes just spending a day doing sidequests... yeah, most of them were pretty fetchquesty, but some days it'd be fun just to sit back on a lazy day and take in the world. Very glad I decided to bite the bullet and give this a try.

I'll probably get started on Xenoblade 2, but I may juggle it with a few other games so I don't get too burnt on JRPGs lol.

[Endoian]

I have a question, please answer me, do Sonic mobile games also count or only the console ones? I hope they do count, like Sonic 1, 2, cd, 4 episode 2

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 minutes ago, Endoian said:

I have a question, please answer me, do Sonic mobile games also count or only the console ones? I hope they do count, like Sonic 1, 2, cd, 4 episode 2

If it's a actual game that has a start and end, then it counts. Sonic Dash doesn't count because it's a endless runner, whilst Sonic Dream Team counts since you can finish and beat it.

The games you listed are all regular Sonic games, so they count.

[Endoian]

41 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Si es un juego real que tiene un comienzo y un final, entonces cuenta. Sonic Dash no cuenta porque es un corredor sin fin, mientras que Sonic Dream Team cuenta porque puedes terminarlo y vencerlo.

Los juegos que enumeraste son todos juegos normales de Sonic, por lo que cuentan.

Thanks you

[starryknight]

january 18th - finished and 100%'d secret of the swamp and tangle tower :) these were both so fun to play through and only took about 2-3 hours each, definitely recommend if you enjoy puzzle/mystery games! if the achievement screenshots aren't proof enough, please let me know so i can attach images of the save files, i just didn't want the post to be too cluttered with images. 

[Endoian]

Hello, I hope the Sonic Stadium team is well, I want to make my first check-in (I hope it still counts please), I want to start my 52 game challenge, with a classic game that I love, Sonic the Hedhehog (Genesis). Wish me luck guys .Take care everyone .

 

 

 

 

[Winston]

I knew I said BioShock was probably gonna be my first, but wanted to start off with some NES games, primarily one I've been wanting to beat for a while and started late last year. 

GAME #1 - Punch-Out!! (NES) - 100% COMPLETED

I couldn't find anything else to do in this game, so I assume it's like a Mega Man situation, where once you just beat all the bosses it's over. There's no credits in this game from what I'm aware of, just the Mr. Dream dialogue and the 'The End' screen.

This was an incredibly tough game though, even with modern day features like save states, which really saved me from having to enter in long passwords to get back to where I was when I would re-enter the game. Punch-Out, to me, is still a pretty good game. It's hard, yeah, and maybe even a little unfair at points, but something about it always pulls me in and I think it's the rhythm of this game.

There's a saying online I think that Punch-Out isn't really a fighting game, and I agree. It's more of a rhythm game, because once you get a boss pattern down and get into the rhythm, it's incredibly satisfying to pull off victories. I do think the game is a little unfair, because it's like impossible for the challengers to ever get counted out. I'm sure it happens, but I always have to get good enough to do triple knock-outs in a match in order to pull off a victory. There's also the end, where after three matches, Mario the Corrupt Referee puts his hand up and nearly always declares the challenger the winner. Maybe I just suck but still, no wonder Mario isn't back in the Wii game with those kinda calls. Over-all, a satisfying game to complete but frustrating all the same.

GAME #2 - Double Dragon (NES) - 100% COMPLETED

Another game that I couldn't find any completion measures outside of just beating the game. There is a fighting mode, but there's no reward for fighting as every opponent from what I could tell. 

There's no credits for this one, not even a THE END screen. The game just shows you kissing your girlfriend and then cuts to the title screen again. It's really funny too because the room she's in there is like in some kind-of ancient temple behind like a door with a skull on it, and yet it has like a sofa and apparently a pet living there with her. 

This game is pretty frustrating, honestly. There's only a couple missions, but dear god, those last two are really bad. They're difficult, endless amounts of enemies, former bosses you fought as regular enemies now, and vague with what you need to do. The third mission had me running the same path, and I thought if I kept moving forward, the level would eventually end. But no, the game randomly decided to make you head into a random cave. The first two missions is typical beat-em up, left to right. The third mission then throws in the curveball of if you don't know to enter this one particular cave an enemy comes out of, you'll just keep repeating the same cycle of enemies for all of eternity, or until the time runs out.

It's cryptic, and also for some reason has platforming. Mind you, this is the NES, where you have two buttons and this is a beat-em up. A is punch, B is kick. There is no jump button, unless you press A and B at the same time in which you do a jump kick, but once you're in the air, there's no controlling where you go. Better hope you got that angle right or else you're falling into a pit to your death. No idea why they wanted weird platforming in this. The later enemies also become sponges for attacks, you just punch them endlessly forever and hope you kill them before they kill you. 

The game may be a classic to some, but at most, it's mediocre to me. There certainly are worse games on the NES though, by far.

But yeah, those are my first two games. I'm currently working on Mario Wonder since I never got around to it even though I've owned it for a while, BioShock, and I'll see if I can end up doing Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. Might do a few more NES games too, like Mario 2. 

 

[Covskin]

I don't see myself getting anywhere near 52 in a year, I'll be happy wth a solid double-digit total That said, number one for the year is Return to Monkey Island. Standard completion only (didn't get all achievements).

Spoiler

 

And hoo boy, I got mixed feelings on this one. Spoiler tag isn't only for the photo.

I played the original back in 91 or 92 and the sequel not long after. The others in the series I got near immediately. Return though, I waited. I wanted that physical edition, and it took nearly a year for Limited Run to deliver. I finally got a Switch on Black Friday and after Mario Odyssey I knew this would need full attention. I forced myself to take it slow, to savour a game 30 years in the making (kind of).

Its...good? Not great.

Its funny but not hilarious. Puzzles are decent but overly streamlined, a couple of times I imagined much more complicated solutions than what was actually required. Only Part 4 really approaches the scale of scenarios like SMI Parts 1 & 3, MI2 Parts 1 & 2 or CMI Parts 2 & 4. Environments are nice but I never warmed up to the character artwork. Voice acting is great, I enjoyed the fan service.  The new characters were all dull, and Elaine seemed stripped of her personality.

I don't mind the plot though. Having played Thimbleweed Park and followed Ron Gilbert's blog, as soon as I caught on to the not-so-subtle theme and messaging I could tell where the ending was going. The most prevalent theory following MI2's ending being Guybrush being a kid with an active imagination, this game ending in a similar but different fashion made sense. I don't mind the multiple endings, they all feel very Ron.

Return sits low on my ranking of the series as it stands. I haven't played Tales since the original release so can't really compare but I'd go MI2, SMI, CMI, EMI then I suppose a tie between TMI and RMI. I don't regret playing it, and I'm sure I will again! As the game itself discusses, could anything really have lived up to expectation? Just enjoy the adventure.

 

I promise I won't write so much about the other games I play this year, just needed somewhere to write my feelings out haha.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, Covskin said:

I don't see myself getting anywhere near 52 in a year, I'll be happy wth a solid double-digit total That said, number one for the year is Return to Monkey Island. Standard completion only (didn't get all achievements).

  Hide contents

 

And hoo boy, I got mixed feelings on this one. Spoiler tag isn't only for the photo.

I played the original back in 91 or 92 and the sequel not long after. The others in the series I got near immediately. Return though, I waited. I wanted that physical edition, and it took nearly a year for Limited Run to deliver. I finally got a Switch on Black Friday and after Mario Odyssey I knew this would need full attention. I forced myself to take it slow, to savour a game 30 years in the making (kind of).

Its...good? Not great.

Its funny but not hilarious. Puzzles are decent but overly streamlined, a couple of times I imagined much more complicated solutions than what was actually required. Only Part 4 really approaches the scale of scenarios like SMI Parts 1 & 3, MI2 Parts 1 & 2 or CMI Parts 2 & 4. Environments are nice but I never warmed up to the character artwork. Voice acting is great, I enjoyed the fan service.  The new characters were all dull, and Elaine seemed stripped of her personality.

I don't mind the plot though. Having played Thimbleweed Park and followed Ron Gilbert's blog, as soon as I caught on to the not-so-subtle theme and messaging I could tell where the ending was going. The most prevalent theory following MI2's ending being Guybrush being a kid with an active imagination, this game ending in a similar but different fashion made sense. I don't mind the multiple endings, they all feel very Ron.

Return sits low on my ranking of the series as it stands. I haven't played Tales since the original release so can't really compare but I'd go MI2, SMI, CMI, EMI then I suppose a tie between TMI and RMI. I don't regret playing it, and I'm sure I will again! As the game itself discusses, could anything really have lived up to expectation? Just enjoy the adventure.

 

I promise I won't write so much about the other games I play this year, just needed somewhere to write my feelings out haha.

 

I don’t often get the chance to discuss Monkey Island around here, so I’ll take the chance lol. Personally, I still really love Tales, and was greatly disappointed with Return. I’m always happy to get a new adventure in this universe, and hearing Guybrush again gives me life (his VA is just wonderful), but a lot of Return rubs me the wrong way. Like Ron feeling half-hearted about a lot of aspects. 

Stuff like Elaine getting pushed to the background and frankly losing all sense of her personality, LeChuck having lost a lot of his threatening personality, and the plot points of Tales just vanishing despite the game still being in continuity with Guybrush having Episode 3 come up as a recurring story for a puzzle. Like, say what you will about Tales, but Tales pulls some ballsy moves with how it developed the relationship between Guybrush, Elaine, and LeChuck, and especially LeChuck gutting Guybrush in the end of Episode 4, really cementing how much of a evil scumbag he was after all.

I can’t say I don’t appreciate what message Return is trying to go for. But so much of it falls flat for me. Elaine condones Guybrush’s destructive actions and acts like a disappointed parent rather than being the usual voice of reason she normally is, and I do think there’s a legit story to be mined that the Secret of Monkey Island never truly mattered, especially for all the damage and trouble Guybrush causes, and I love the idea of the ending with a happily content Guybrush reminiscing on his life and enjoying the journey, but still.

For all the hype behind the ending, all we really got was a bad retread of Monkey Island 2’s ending that was just as anticlimactic as it was way back when. If the angle was at least showing how it wasn’t worth it anymore and Guybrush had to put a end to the cycle, it’d be one thing. I could have even taken a ending where it doesn’t end with a final confrontation with him and LeChuck, since they had the pieces in place to show LeChuck and the other villain would destroy themselves going for the secret.

But the fact it just stops is what annoys me. It doesn’t even feel anti climatic, it feels hollow and lazy. Like Ron just outright couldn’t be bothered to figure out how Guybrush goes from obsessive over the secret back to the endpoint, so it’s just easier to half ass Monkey Island 2’s ending again and do a poetic message about growing old. 

I feel that’s Return’s biggest problem to me. I love the Monkey Island series, even if I’m not a traditional fan since Tales was my first game and I hold a special place for it. But even compared to the non Gilbert games like Escape, I feel like Return’s atmosphere feels distinctly off. Like, Guybrush is a lot more dickish and a lot of characters are just bizarrely off even comparing them to Monkey Island 1 and 2. It comes off really weird because MI2 Guybrush is meant to be the character at his worse, before he gets punished for buying into his hype and being so self-destructive, yet Return tries to not skip a beat despite 3 additional games of development, games which Ron kept into canon. 

I don’t know. I really loved the game on first play, but I think I was in the honeymoon period and was snapped out as soon as the ending hit and I realised this series I loved was about to take another impromptu hiatus and another kinda anti climatic ending, and since then, I’ve done a full replay of the game last year and more about it just feels off to me. Even Tales still feels distinctly Monkey Island, and the characters feel on point imo.

[Covskin]

We could very easily derail this haha.

Ron had said for years if he ever got a chance to do another Monkey Island, he would follow on from MI2 and make what he called MI3a. I think that's partly why I'm not so bothered about how the plot mostly ignores the other games, even when it references them. I totally get why that would be so frustrating though, especially for fans who weren't aware of those declarations. There aren't many franchises where I would look up interviews with creators like I did for Monkey Island and Ron and I wouldn't want to get blindsided like that.

Total agreement with Elaine and the lack of a climax. To compare it with MI2, I've always found the Dinky Island catacombs intense and the ending blew my mind with how it would be followed up on (poor sweet naive 6 year old me). RMI ends on a meta joke/puzzle about copy protection for SMI which mechanically felt similar to the final puzzle in Broken Sword 2 and as you say, suddenly stops. It wasn't as egregious as Thimbleweed Park but not far off.

[WorksOfMagic]

Okay, another day, another game finished. This time, Super Mario 64, played through the 3D All Stars collection, using the NSO N64 controller. While technically my third playthrough on the collection, this was my first time using the NSO controller. Started playing on boxing day of last year, and while I had to get used to the controller, I can safely say that after almost a full month of use, this controller is quite comfortable, and well suited for the game.

The game has its issues especially in the latter half of the game (looking at you Rainbow Ride), but overall, it's a great game and a cult classic anyone should give a try.

[Tornado]

On 1/17/2024 at 11:39 AM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

We’re being lenient enough that if a game was started in 2023, but is now finished in 2024, it’ll count for finished credit, and same if it was started in 2023, and then 100% completed, it’ll count for both finished and completed credit.

We want most games to be started fresh this year of course, but we still want to make the event fun, so we’re trying not to be super strict here.

What if I started my game save in 2001, hadn't played it since 2010 when my first PS3 blew up, picked that game save back up on the 4th of this month because I've been killing time at work during the down season and finished it 100% on Wednesday:

 

In my defense, if you're not familiar with the Shutokō Battle series, this is the fucking Rosetta Stone of a walkthrough you need to have on hand at all times to 100% this game that was a glorified Dreamcast port released 1 month before Gran Turismo 3. It took me probably 50 hours in the past two weeks to finish it (there's been a lot of down time at work since the New Year).

[Ryannumber1gamer]

22 minutes ago, Tornado said:

What if I started my game save in 2001, hadn't played it since 2010 when my first PS3 blew up, picked that game save back up on the 4th of this month because I've been killing time at work during the down season and finished it 100% on Wednesday:

 

In my defense, if you're not familiar with the Shutokō Battle series, this is the fucking Rosetta Stone of a walkthrough you need to have on hand at all times to 100% this game that was a glorified Dreamcast port released 1 month before Gran Turismo 3. It took me probably 50 hours in the past two weeks to finish it (there's been a lot of down time at work since the New Year).

I'll just go with yes due to the 50 hours part, and the the fact it's being done on a emulator. Throwing 50 hours at a game for 100% seems like more than enough time put in to give it a pass, even if it's such a early save file. 

[Tornado]

that wasn't a funny response at all

[Endoian]

Juego 1.- Sonic The Hedgehog (16 bits) Sega Genesis complete, I finished it in less than 2 hours, I'm ready for the next game next week, good luck another players :)

[Maria.Sosori]

1/19/24 - Beat Goodnight Meowmie 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 hour ago, Maria.Sosori said:

1/19/24 - Beat Goodnight Meowmie 

Just to verify - is this just a finished game, or 100% completed?

[Endoian]

3 hours ago, Endoian said:

Juego 1.- Sonic The Hedgeh og (16 bits) Sega Genesis completo, lo terminé en menos de 2 horas, estoy listo para el próximo juego la próxima semana, buena suerte otros jugadores :)

And yes it's 100% complete

[Maria.Sosori]

3 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Just to verify - is this just a finished game, or 100% completed?

If you mean by me just finishing, yes I just "beat" it. As for it being finished, it is that as well. 

[fia]

Finished Child of Eden. Time for Rez next.

Edited January 20 by fia

[WorksOfMagic]

Another game finished. This time it's Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (1992), played on REV02 through Sonic Classics.

Had an enjoyable time, and while in some ways, I do think it improves on some aspects from Sonic 1, I think it also takes a few steps backwards, especially with some of the level design and the dreaded special stages with their god awful draw distance.

Still a good game, but that I'd recommend either trying out through the 2013 mobile remake either on Sega Forever, Decomp, or Origins, or by checking out Sonic 2 Absolute, which are games that are on my list of games to complete, but that's a story for another day.

[SuperSonicFan Gui]

I completed 100% of sonic generations with all S rank, red star rings, achievements, music, arts, characters and all items from the shop

[Starry Skydancer]

Starry Skydancer swoops in

Game 1 of 52: NiGHTS into Dreams

Post 3

Claris's level 2: Mystic forest

The hybridisation of forest and urban elements is nice. Running out of interesting things to say but that's' what I get for reporting on every level.

There are some unused collectable tokens hidden away in NiGHTS into Dreams that resemble NiGHTS in different forms, I'm quite curious about those.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: All of the weekly check-ins have now been added to the site's community calendar! You can now check the calendar throughout the year to see the full line-up of Profile Gifts that we're giving away every week, and set reminders so that the site will automatically send you a reminder notification for when a brand new weekly check-in starts!

https://www.sonicstadium.org/events/ - Check through the full calendar for the full-line up of 50 weekly check-in!

Below: The event for next week's check-in!

 

[castell-neath]

So, being as the 3DS has been dusted off, I decided to revist Rush. A great game and the egg salamander is still a great boss

Edited January 20 by castell-neath