B-LOG SLAYING: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (SNES)

Why do we have to play as teenagers?

    Here we are, ladies and gents. We are FINALLY into the "Retro Saga" (name pending) section of my backlog. As much as I love current gen games, I love retro just as much (in many cases, more). I'm hardly a historian of old games, but I have a decent amount of random knowledge, and I can get by in conversations with many people about many various game systems. However, your wealth of knowledge doesn't make you a lover of video games (or a, "gamer". Do people not like this moniker? I don't get the hate). Your love of video games makes you a lover of video games. Pretty damn simple, huh? I am specifically targeting a few games on my SNES list to get through. Namely, these are the very short games that can be beaten in one or two sittings. I actually started with Final Fight last night, but my cart was acting wonky, and I couldn't play it. Hopefully a good clean will get the job done. So I went to my back up, and a game (and television show) I used to enjoy very much as a kid: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. 

Probably shoulda cropped this (sung to "Go, go, Power Rangers")

    This was a game I rented as a kid, but I didn't really remember anything about it. I new it was a beat 'em up, and I remember enjoying it as a kid. My memories of it begin and end there. But, how could something I loved as a kid be shitty as an adult? As this is a very simple, short, game, my cons and pros list will be pretty short. I'll still break it up into what I liked and didn't like, but I will do a (very) brief overview of the levels as well (since there are essentially only five). Also, for the boss pictures, I found it easiest to pause the game to take a picture. However, the word "PAUSE" appears on the screen, and it just looks ugly for the pictures. I cropped all the boss pictures to just show them. It's a little different, but it's better than the big ugly pause screen. Let's do this shit.   

CONS:

• Very short
• Boring enemies

 

PROS:

• Good (if repetitive) gameplay
• Various platforming sections add variety to the beat 'em up formula
• Fun, challenging boss fights

    Let's just jump right in. First of all, this game is HELLA short! I beat it in three sittings, and that took just over two hours. Definitely a game you could just sit down and beat in one sitting. I mean, games like this are generally pretty short anyway, but I feel like with the Power Rangers' gallery of monsters, they could have made a few more levels and added some more monsters. I'm not sure there is a whole lot more I could really say about this. It's a two hour game, but it could be a three-or-four-hour game without much effort.
    Let's quickly talk about the enemies. Did you ever watch the show? Do you remember the clay guys they fight? The Putty Patrol? Yeah, well that is 99% of the enemies you encounter. Like the Foot Clan from Turtles In Time, they come in a variety of different colors and have various weaponry. There are grey, green, red, purple, brown, and some other shades of those colors. They brandish all sorts of weapons, including (but not limited to, because I don't have an elephant's memory here!) knives (including the throwing variety) swords, guns, and other stuff. I don't remember exactly. But the point is, they are the ONLY enemies you fight, except for a few miscellaneous robots and sentries and turrets and things like that. I suppose that was all they fought on the show (besides the big bosses), but even so, it makes for some boring-ass enemies.

    Phew! Got over those awful, intricate cons. Like I said, this game isn't a large, complex offering like most of what I've played and documented thus far. It's just a good ol' fashioned beat 'em up. Let's celebrate the positives!

    This is classic beat 'em up gameplay, and it's pretty good for what it is. You can choose between the five main characters from the show (unfortunately, no Tommy or Green/White Ranger), Trini, Billy, Kimberly, Zack, and Jason (or, the yellow, blue, pink, black, and red rangers, respectively). I only played the game as Trini, but I assume everyone plays about the same. Besides the fact that she looks strikingly like April O'Neil from the aforementioned Turtles in Time before she transforms in a Ranger, she's ordinary. She can punch, jump, do a jump attack, and she can duck (and also attack while ducking). The levels all follow a formula: you play the first part as the regular teen kid (wooh! So fun!), then the boss of the level shows up briefly, and throws some enemies at you.

Boring old April Trini O'Neil

A MIGHTY MORPHIN' POWER RANGER!

 It's here that you transform into a Power Ranger, and play the rest of the level like this. You have the same attacks as a Ranger, but you use that Ranger's signature weapon to attack, instead of fists. This gives you a boosted range, and maybe even makes you a little stronger (I have no idea about that. Would make sense though)? But, as a Ranger you get a bomb you can use. This wipes out all the enemies on screen, or severely damages a boss. You only get one, but if you use one during a level, I think they can get replenished. I only used them on bosses, so I'm not sure. At any rate, all of the fighting feels good, and it's fun. It does get repetitive, but that's more a problem with the genre, and not the game itself.
    To break up the sometimes monotonous fighting, each level (they are called "areas" in this game) has some sort of platforming sections. There's climbing in an industrial-like area, swimming through a cave (note: the swimming part actually isn't horrendous), avoiding a giant laser, and the game basically turning into a fighting game for the last two areas, among other things. It's nice to have a beat 'em up that isn't straight beat 'em up. The formula can get stale, but these small non-fighting sections are great to break everything up.
    Okay, the last thing to discuss is the boss fights. They are the exact opposite of the boring regular enemies. They are all interesting, very varied, and decently difficult (make no mistake, this is not a terribly difficult game). I'll talk about them and the levels briefly together here! Let's get 'er dun! (*kills self*)

 BONES:

He's got a fabulous cape, hat, and sword

    The first level you fight through is a park like area. Once you get to the end, you fight this lovely chap. His name is apparently Bones (I had to look up the names on Wikipedia. I haven't watched this show in a loooong time, and I remember NOTHING from it. Don't hate me guys). He has a sword, and he uses it to swing at you, and to shoot a small sonic wave along the floor at you. After you hit him enough, he explodes. His bones recollect to form a slightly new form. He loses his arms and cape. He jumps around the room, shooting fireballs. Again, hit him enough, and he explodes yet again, only for his head to continue to float around, shooting fireballs still. He'll eventually go down.

GNARLY GNOME:

Because all gnomes (Vikings?) carry rakes

 
    Can you guys even STAND how gnarly this gnome is? I mean, in all my years of looking at gnomes, this squat bastard with the ineffective-looking rake is for sure the gnarliest of them all. Ugh. Anyway, this guy is pretty easy, but he can be annoying. You fight him in a room with lots of platforms, and he likes to disappear from one and reappear on another. He can shoot a projectile, or hit you at close range. I think he has another attack (where he takes out an accordion?), but I was able to hit him before he used it. So who knows? After you smack this clown around for a while, he'll start teleporting very quickly, and he can be tough to attack, because he's very random. But after you hit him some more, he'll die.

EYE GUY:

Eye see you!

    
     This is my favorite-looking boss of the game. What can I say, I'm a sucker for eyeball monsters. This guy can be a bit tough, but he's manageable. He'll throw an endless amount of eyeballs (or Cheerios) at you. He can also jump up and try to smoosh you. He can also shoot a large blue laser from his main eye. He can do this standing or kneeling, so you have to pay attention and either duck or jump over the laser. This is the toughest part of the battle, because he will shoot a few in succession, and he'll randomly switch between standing and kneeling. After you smack him enough, he'll lose most of his eyeballs.

I feel like so many 16-bit games have eyeball bosses like this

    He'll float around like this and shoot laser balls at you. At this point, he's quite easy. Just jump and hit him enough, and he'll die. Badda bing, badda boom.

GENIE:

Dog genie?

    This guy is pretty annoying too. You fight him on top of the construction-sort of building of stage four. His real gimmick is that he has like a million attacks. He'll float four daggers that sort of home in on you. These I found to be fairly difficult to dodge. He'll throw out two saucers that will shoot energy down. These are very easy to dodge. He'll summon fireballs at the top of the screen, and they fall down. Again, very easy, just stand in between them. Finally, he'll summon three electric skeleton eels (??) from one side of the screen, and they each fly at you. The only one I found tough to dodge was the daggers one, as I mentioned. Everything else is very easy. He also teleports around, but overall he's not terribly difficult.

DARK WARRIOR:

This guy loves the color green

    Here we have the final proper boss. He is decently tough, but if you pay attention and stay moving, he's not too bad. He'll throw a smoke bomb and disappear into it, only to reappear near you. He likes to jump around a lot. He'll jump and pause in mid-air and throw a bomb directly below him. This I had a tough time dodging at first, but I learned to be more patient and alert. Otherwise, he'll swing his sword, or dash at you with it. After you hit him for a while, he'll put his sword away and take out a chain whip. This he can swing around and hit you with. He can apparently switch between this weapon and the sword until you defeat him. Once you start to understand how he moves, and realize how much he teleports, he's not very difficult. Only took me two tries.

MUTITIS:

This is what I'm talking about!

    After you beat the Dark Warrior, you are treated to a (long) cutscene of all the Rangers forming into the giant robot (I had to look up the name, the Megazord, because, again, I'm not eight anymore). The final two areas of the game are just boss battles. But the game is essentially a giant robot/monster fighting game now, and it's pretty fun. I really appreciate these final battles. They add some nice flavor to the overall game. And they are pretty fun.
    You will notice that the boss actually gets a health bar. As an aside, I HATE when bosses don't have health bars. Another discussion for another time, however. You can swing your sword as your main attack. He has some claws he can attack you with. You also have a power meter, and it gradually fills up over time. This allows you to use a number of special (projectile) attacks. The more the meter fills, the more powerful the new attack you get is. I was able to hit this clown with a fully-metered attack, and it took about 75% of his health away, so this battle was very easy. Be aware, I believe the boss can do the same. Once you use your power, the meter empties, and it has to be refilled again. It's an interesting mechanic, and I enjoy it quite a bit. Anyway, beat this big doofus, and you're onto area 7, and the final boss.

CYCLOPSIS:

The "final" showdown (don't mind that empty whisky glass)

    This is it: the final big bad monster guy. This battle starts off the same as the previous one. I can't possibly back this up with concrete facts, but this guy jumps and avoids your powerful attacks fairly frequently. Several times I had a full power meter, and I used it, only to watch the boss hop effortlessly over it. Ugh. Anyway, there isn't a whole lot to say about this. Whale on him until he has no more health! Wooh! You just beat Mighty Morphin Power Rangers! Don't you feel...
    Oh wait a second. Now just hold on... Oh no, the boss...he's not dead! *gasp*

Enjoy that golden dong

     Yup, this boss has two forms. Once you finish his first form, he turns gold and gets ALL HIS HEALTH BACK. So, hopefully you didn't take too much damage in the first part of the battle, because your health most certainly does not come back. Otherwise, he's similar to his first form. He's more aggressive I think (in general, this boss is more aggressive than Mutitis), and his power attacks can hit very hard. Also, I should mention, apparently both the bosses and your Megazord can block? Huh, who knew? Certainly not me, because I didn't fucking block once during any of these three battles. Oh well. Overall, he's not super hard, but probably still the toughest boss in the game (as he should be). Once you beat him, he dies for good. You get some silly ending, and that's that.


    And that's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for you. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun this game was. I hadn't played it since I rented it, probably close to twenty years ago. I remembered liking it back then, and I must say, it still holds up. I'm not sure if this is gonna be retro heresy, but I like it a HELL of a lot more than Final Fight, that's for sure. It's got interesting bosses, good gameplay, and some nice variety. I didn't mention it above, but the music is okay. It's not awful, but not amazing. Despite the short length and the boring enemy types, I would suggest this to all beat 'em up/Power Rangers fans.

I FIN'd the shit out of this game!

Shane Remembers... (10/31/2014)

Halloweeny!

 

 

 

Picture courtesy of wikipedia

    

RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR (PLAYSTATION)

    Another game my dad and I rented back in the day (in those days, we were both fairly obsessed with anything Resident Evil). This “my dad and I rented a game together” story ends much better (and more heart-warming!) than the Riven one from last week. This was a Saturday or Sunday, and maybe it was even rainy out, and my sister and mom were out. So, being the video game guys we were, we sat down and took turns playing through Survivor. We beat it in a few hours, in one sitting. Still probably the only time I sat down and beat a game in one sitting (minus super-short SNES games that take 30-40 minutes). I don’t remember much from the gameplay (ha, what else is new. Hopefully you guys don’t get sick of that phrase!), but it’s a great memory I have of playing a cool game with my dad.

Picture courtesy of wikipedia

    

MONSTER PARTY (NES)

    Maybe I lied a little bit when I talked about The Three Stooges being one of three games I remember playing for NES. Besides Duck Hunt (but not really Super Mario Bros., oddly), I absolutely remember playing this game. I’m almost certain we owned it, or at the very least I rented it. I only remember playing the first level, and when it turns to that “evil, blood-soaked” kind-of area, I remember that it freaked me out (I’m cautious to actually say it scared me. Can an 8-bit NES game really scare someone?). Those damn upside-down yellow legs and those weird dogs with the humanoid faces. Heeby-jeeby city! The whole game is right up my alley too (a game full of monsters!). I recently played it briefly on an emulator, and it was hard as hell. Gotta get my hands on a cart to play it authentically. 

Picture courtesy of game oldies

   

THE ADVENTURES OF DOCTOR FRANKEN (SNES)

    I totally forgot this game existed until a few years ago when I saw it featured on a Frankenstein-themed episode of Angry Video Game Nerd a few years ago. I was taken aback when I heard the Nerd say how much this game sucked. I always remember enjoying it as a wee lad (again, a game I rented a few times at least). The graphics were pretty cool, and Frankie there looked great (or so I thought. I mean, look how cool he is up there!). I remember liking the backgrounds and enemies, I think? Unfortunately, I remember very little of the actual game or gameplay. Maybe one day I gotta play this again.

Picture courtesy of amazon

    

ZOMBIES ATE MY NEIGHBORS (SNES)

    Okay, this one is cheating a little bit, because I still own this game and play it often (at least relative to all these other games). But how can I talk about Halloween/monster games and mention this one? I LOVE this game. I have ever since I played it as a young child. It appealed to me perfectly: all the cool, classic monsters (which was, and still is, a huge draw for me), the easy-to-learn gameplay, all the goddamn levels (so many!). I'm ashamed to say I have yet to actually beat this game, try as though I might in the last seventeen-or-so years. I remeber always getting to the levels in the 30's, and it would be a mad dash to try and find the one neighbor (because at this point, I only have one left alive). So I'm pretty unfamilair with the later levels, simply because I had to race through them like a maniac to find the neighbor. One day, I will sit down, and I will beat this game. While I don't have this included in my official backlog, if I can successfully beat it, I'll probably write a post about the ordeal. Final note: amazing two player game!

Picture courtesy of giantbomb

 

VIRTUAL BART (SNES)

    Okay, I'm also cheating on this one a little bit too. This isn't a Halloween themed kind of game. But gosh, it is so very difficult for me to think back and remember any others, besides what I've already listed here. Maybe I just didn't play many in my formative years? At any rate, I've included Virtual Bart here because while it may not be a Halloween game, it still gave me nightmares. Why? Well, mainly because I would always rent it, but never be able to beat it. In fact, I don't think I could really beat any of the individual sections. It was (and still is) the same with Bart's Nightmare. I'm woefully bad at both those games. This one though, I distinctly remember the tomato throwing sections, the Mad Max bike-riding section, and I wanna say a section where you have to navigate through a water tube without running into a stuck Homer. Overall, I think I like this game more than Bart's Nightmare, but neither are amazing. 

    Thanks for checking out this (mostly) Halloween-themed installment of "Shane Remembers...". Tune in next week for another amazingly awesome post (I actually already have it written, and it's scheduled to post! Easy week for me)

 

Burnt Ivory King

Closing the DLC out with another human with a sword!

    Once you make your way through the DLC, beat Aava, find  some Loyce Knights, and jump down into the Old Chaos, you're ready to fight the final boss of this Ivory King chapter. And let me say, it's a doozy. First, I'd like to discuss the interesting new mechanic that is introduced with this DLC (I think all the DLCs bring something cool to the table, whether it was the environmental puzzles of the "Sunken Crown" DLC, or the ashen idols of the "Iron King" DLC, or the Loyce Knights of this one. I'm glad From tried to do different things with each chapter). To make the final battle quite a bit easier (but don't worry, it's still aggravating and tedious), you can recruit three Loyce Knights hidden around Frozen Eleum Loyce. These three are all tough to find and the areas where they are locked away can be difficult to get through, but they really make the final battle much more manageable. 

    So, let's say you have your four Loyce Knights (you get one by default, and the other three need to be found) and you're ready to go. Well, where DO you go, exactly? Only probably one of the coolest looking places in the entire game! Once your find the Grand Cathedral and talk to the mysterious queen there (I don't recall her name, but she's the one controlling all the ice and snow (I assume), and the one that tells you to turn back right at the beginning), she'll melt some ice all throughout the DLC, and this will grant you access to new areas. One such area is directly behind the "throne room" of the Grand Cathedral. It's a round room, and the four Loyce Knights stand there, waiting for you. There's a fog gate too. Could you guess that the fog gate leads to the final boss? I mean, it looks ominous enough, right? Let's "jump on in" and find out! 

    I gave you a little hint right there! When you walk through the fog gate at the back of the Grand Cathedral, you jump down a long hole. Except "jump" is the wrong word. Immediately after you step through, you fall. And you fall for quite some time too, I might add. Sort of like the fall into the Abyss to fight the Four Kings in the first Dark Souls. Obviously when you land you don't take damage. After you and your loyal Knights fall down this long hole, you'll end up in Old Chaos. And talk about stunning! It's a large circular arena. You'll notice that there are three large doors (or portals) on the outside of the arena. You'll also notice the whole arena is surrounded by flowing lava and fire. It's quite a contrast to the blue and white snowy bullshit you've dealt with thus far. Finally, you'll notice huge, branch-like things hanging above you. They sort of look like parts of the Bed Of Chaos. Hmm. Bed Of Chaos? Old Chaos? I'm fairly sure there are some connections between the two, but I'm honestly not sure exactly what they are. It's pretty great anyway. And this whole area really looks spectacular, and it's one of my favorite areas of all the DLCs (maybe even the whole game). 

    Once you land, and after you're done marvelling at the scenery, it's time to begin this long, arduous battle. At first, three Charred Loyce Knights (they are charred black, compared to the normal silver ones that are your allies) come out of each of the large portals. You need to fight these Knights. Well, that's pretty obvious right? What DON'T you need to fight in this damn game? Vendors and NPC's I suppose. But that's beside the point. You fight these Knights, and now they keep spawning from the portals. You'll only fight six at time. I don't know if it's possible to fight more, but I only saw six. Each Knight isn't too difficult, but they are great at ganging up on you. And they will, too. They almost seem to ignore your knight allies. Which can get very frustrating, especially if you need to heal. I found healing to be difficult as well, because if you try to stop for a second, one or two of the enemy knights will smash you good. I died SEVERAL times just trying to heal.

You can see a few knights coming out of their portals.

    My basic strategy was to just run around the arena like a maniac, and try to draw one or two away from the huge gang-style fight that takes place in the middle of the arena. If you can fight one-on-one, they only take 5-6 hits to kill. Again, it can be tough to separate just one from the pack. However, as this large battle goes on, your Loyce Knight compatriots will sacrifice themselves to freeze those portals closed, so these charred knights don't infinitely spawn. As you fight, up to three of your knights will end up freezing the portals closed. Once you either freeze all three portals, or kill enough of the charred knights (in case you don't have three Loyce Knights with you to freeze the portals), a gigantic portal rises from the ground, at the end of the arena. After close to a full minute (well, maybe 30 seconds at least) of the gigantic portal rising up, the boss steps through it. 

    And guess what?? He's a human boss who wields a sword! Besides his boring appearance and similar design to several of the other DLC bosses, he's not bad. Just... uninspired. He's like a slower version of Sir Alonne. And as you guys know, I need to fight Sir Alonne again like I need a fucking flea infestation. This battle, however, ends in the strangest way I've ever seen a battle end in 4+ years playing Souls games. But probably not in a way you might expect.

Through the fire and flames

 
    Okay, so beside the fact that the Burnt King is boring to look out, he's a decent boss. The fact that you have to fight through the charred Knights first adds a new depth to the battle. I will say, it gets awfully tedious after a few times though, having to kill all those damn knights over and over again before even getting to the boss. I only died fourteen times to the boss, but I died at least ten (hell, probably more than that) more times than that just fighting all the Charred Knights. I've seen people online say that this fight is really like a giant battle, what with you, and your knights (and any summons) fighting a large group of other knights. I can agree with this partially. While it's great to see all the knights clashing and battling each other, again, it gets old after awhile. I appreciate From doing something different, and dare I say "epic" (not the frat guy, super-overused, devoid-of-all-meaning "epic". More like, "two warring bands of knights are fighting each other to the death" kind of "epic"), it just gets to be too much. 

    Boy, that paragraph didn't exactly go where I wanted to. Let's ACTUALLY talk about the fight with the Burnt Ivory King now. When he comes through the portal, he is invincible for a few seconds. After that, he's ready to attack. He has a few attacks, and they mainly consist of sword slices and thrusts. He'll come at you with various sword slashes, and he likes to jump up to slash too. He's slow anyway, but his jumping attacks seem to be especially sluggish. They are the easiest of his attacks to dodge. The name of this game is just getting the dodging timing down. At some point, he'll buff his sword (how original!!), and it'll become engulfed in a light blue light. I assume it's probably magic, but I'm not 100% sure. But his sword becomes much larger and longer. And just like with Fume Knight, Smelter Demon, and Alonne, this buffed, big sword breaks my brain. I had a much tougher time dodging this buffed sword, as opposed to his regular one. With his buffed sword, he can impale and throw you, which causes huge damage, as you can well imagine. He will also plunge his sword into the ground and cause huge icy spikes to come up in the area immediately around him. Similar to Aava's AoE attack. Now, I  believe he only does those two attacks when his sword is buffed. Good news though, at least the buff doesn't last through the whole fight. It'll run out eventually. 

    I tried this battle with three Loyce Knights, four Loyce Knights, an NPC summon, and both one and two human summons (again, along with the Knights). How did I finally best the Burnt Ivory King? Well, on my successful run, I summoned two human players. So there was a total of seven of us, and by the time we got to the Ivory King, it would be a four-on-one. We all made very quick work of the charred knights, then waited patiently for the king to come. He came, and the battle went on as normal for probably ten to fifteen seconds. I'm not sure what happened next, but the king froze (how ironic really!). As in, he just stood still and didn't move. At first I was dumbfounded. I hadn't experienced any kind of glitch like this before in a Souls game. He was being attacked by four guys, and he just stood and took it all. Didn't budge once, until his health got down to about a quarter, and he fell back slightly. But after that, he continued to remain motionless, like he was one of those guards in front of Buckingham Palace in the UK. All I could do was laugh as the four of us whaled on this still asshole. Sure, it felt cheap. Was I supposed to just quit and restart because it "wasn't a fair fight"? No, fuck that. This was probably the most fitting end I could have hoped for, in regards to this DLC. It's like the game knew how sick and tired I was of playing it, so it offered a punching bag as a branch of peace. So," Crown Of The Ivory King", thank you very much for glitching the final boss.

Blurry disco-dancing Burnt Ivory King

    I would have beaten him eventually anyway. But there is such a thing as burnout, and I've mentioned it a few times already. It's a really shitty feeling to attach to your favorite series of all time, let me tell you what. But sometimes, we just gotta stop, stand back, and just play something else for awhile. I'm gonna come back to DSII at some point. I'd really like to go through these DLCs again with a character on NG, instead of NG++, and see how much easier the bosses are. We'll see when that ever happens. 

    So, children, that's the tale I have to spin about the Burnt Ivory King. Sorry if it's not up to snuff completely, but I beat him probably two weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to write about it until right now. I've been very behind on this blog, and have spent the better part of two weeks trying to catch up. Also, sorry for the lack of pictures, and of their general qaulity. This was one of those situations where I really didn't want to waste valuable times/attempts just trying to get good pictures. So deal with it, ya clowns! At any rate, I am just about caught up with this blog. Once I do the write up for the overview of this DLC, I'll be all set. Look for that hopefully very soon (this week), and keep your eyes peeled for some retro B-LOG SLAYINGS!


Times I died: 14
Difficulty: 8/10
Rating: 6/10

BOSSES: Resident Evil Revelations

AKA Bullet sponges

 

    Since my B-LOG SLAYING post about Resident Evil: Revelations got so unwieldy and large, I decided again to dedicate a post to just bosses. However, unlike Arkham Origins, which had LOTS of boss battles, this game has only five, so this post will be significantly shorter than the Batman one. Without further rambling, let's get going!

Comms Officer (Scragdead):

He's a real stinker!

    This is the first boss you encounter, and except for the final boss, he's the most aggravating. At some point early on, you must make your way to the promenade deck. When you get there, you can hear some (or something) talking, trying to send out a distress signal. His mutated voice indicates something just ain't right, and you get a pretty good feeling you will have to fight whatever is on the other end of that mutated voice. And wouldn't you know it, you find the small locked communication room. Shoot the lock off, and you're treated to this lovely thing:

How nice

    This is the mutated comms officer. He's mostly a large, corpulent thing, with a big tubular mouth filled with teeth, and a large saw on his right hand. He still has part of his human form attached to the shoulder-area of the monster, so this is where the (semi) normal talking came from. You fight commsy in a small, cramped area that thankfully has two floors. It's a series of interconnected hallways, ledges, and stairs. Also, a never ending stream of the normal enemies pour in as well. The whole strategy is to just stay on the move. Luckily, there are large red combustible containers around, and shooting these will drop the monster to his knees for a few seconds, giving you a chance to breath and/or pump him full of lead. I achieved success here by shooting him (mainly with my shotgun) until he got close, then running off a ways, then turning and shooting some more until he got close, then I ran away again. Basically just repeat that until he is dead. Don't expend ammo on the regular enemies though. They can be run past easily enough anyway.
    As far as attacks for the comms officer go, they are pretty limited. He can hit you normally, he can lay traps that get you stuck, and if you get very close to him, he'll saw the hell out of you, killing you instantly. I died probably three or four times to this. So the name of the game really is just STAY AWAY from him. And shoot those red canisters if you get a chance. They are pretty helpful. And this will be kind of a long fight, because it takes a LOT to bring him down. I used ALL my shotgun ammo (around 20 shots) and still needed around a dozen from my handgun (and I think a few from the rifle as well). One final note: there are a few more areas where this monster pops up, but I'm not considering them boss battles. This is the only big-boy boss battle for this enemy.

Boy my screen looks awful!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Rachael:

 

 

"Hi, I'm Rachael. I like tormenting you endlessly."

    This is the second boss, but it's not a "typical" battle, compared to the other four. I briefly browsed IGN's walkthrough (not using it as an actual walkthrough, mind you), and went to their boss section. They only list four bosses under their "boss" section. Maybe this battle isn't an official boss fight, but she's a unique enemy encounter, so I'm going to include it here anyway. And you know what? It's my blog, so I'll do whatever the hell I please!
    You find her in the beginning area of the ship, the crew's quarters. You hear her murmur some creepy stuff, and see her run up stairs on the opposite side of a large window where you are. She is the (former) partner of a character named Raymond. Once you follow her up the stairs, the music gets dramatic, and she attack from around a corner. I found this part (when she jumps around the corner to attack you) genuinely scary. I knew something was coming, because, I mean, you're following her up the stairs. Even so, it caught me off guard the first time. Bravo!

Hot stuff

    As far as fighting her, it's pretty similar to the other boss encounters: just unload ammo into her. She'll eventually scurry away into the vents. Now you have to run back through all the narrow corridors of the crew's quarters while she periodically pops out of vents to attack you. There are plenty of the regular enemies as well, so it really becomes a gauntlet. There isn't a real strategy, per say, I just ran, tried to ignore the regular enemies if I could, and just shot her with my most powerful weapon (again, probably the shotgun at this point). Once you've pumped her full of enough lead, she'll "die", and you can get a lift key from her that you need. She doesn't actually die, you see. No, she is almost like this game's version of Nemesis, except way less intimidating (but she can still be scary when she suddenly pops out of nowhere), and she doesn't say "S.T.A.R.S." in that chilling way. You encounter her probably five or six more times throughout the story. Each time she can be put down or run away from. She doesn't ever have a "final fight" (not that I know of). Eventually, she just gets annoying.

 

In the throes of death

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DRAGHIGNAZZO:

Example of good dialogue

    This boss is encountered on the observation deck. You first find him riding on the glass elevator to the observation deck. He uses his big, weird hand-thing to smash the elevator and try to hurt you. All you need to do is shoot the exposed hand part (the flesh-colored thing pictured above) enough, and eventually it'll relent. Once you get to the deck, you get to fight him legitimately. Hoo boy, how fun. Also, I'd like to apologize for the pictures, they mostly suck for this guy. I took them, but never bothered to check them to see if they were good. I didn't even look at them until after I beat the game. Oh well!

Even giant mutated monsters can't get enough of steamed hot dogs from a hot dog stand

    You find this bizarrely named creature, and your first thought is probably, "this is gonna be a pain in the ass". Well, he's actually not that bad. First off, the room is quite large. It's got a bunch of stands and boxes all around, and it's absolutely CRAWLING with ammo. All the stands and stuff can be broken as well, to give you more freedom to move around. This monster is mostly shelled, and as such only has a few vulnerable parts to him. His shell is impervious to any attacks. This big bastard will constantly charge at you (with his mutated hand that he attacked the elevator with), but it's pretty easy to avoid. After he does, he'll stand still and you can shoot his exposed spots with relative ease. 

Huh?

     There really isn't a whole lot more to this battle. Dodge his charge attack, and fill him full of lead. I believe I was switching between the shotgun and machine gun at this point. For his easy difficulty, at least he looks pretty cool. This guy is probably my favorite, from an aesthetic design point at least. Let's march on to a big giant huge boss (he's large).

Really, is a caption even needed?

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MALACODA:

 

Big McLargeHuge

  

    Never mind what I just said above, this guy is my favorite looking boss in the game. I'm a sucker for gigantic bosses and the battles that come with them (which was a reason I thought Bayonetta was so cool. And the Cronos fight in God of War III? Breathtaking), and Malacoda here (really rolls off the tongue) takes the cake in that department. You first encounter him during the segment where Chris and Jessica are on the boat, manning the mini-guns, shooting those tentacles that attack from the water (I complained about the dialogue in that part in my B-LOG SLAYING post). Turns out, those tentacles are part of this bastard here. Pretty cool. The whole boss is some sort of huge whale that's been mutated, and it's being controlled by parasites (those tentacles I assume). The first part of this battle involves you just shooting the tentacles as they come towards you. The whole point of you going out to the deck in the first place was to get off the ship via a helicopter. Obviously, the heli can't land with this monstrosity eating the ship, so he hovers overhead. He drops a rocket launcher and ammo, which is integral to taking this thing out. Also, you have a four minute time limit. It's short amount of time, but if you are accurate with the rockets, it should only take about two I think. 

He's on a boat!

    After you kill enough of the parasitic monsters (IE tentacles), you'll be able to get on the helicopter. But instead of peacing the joint, they decided that, maybe letting this thing live and swim in the ocean is probably a very bad idea. The final part of the battle is very similar to the Chris/Jessica portion from before. Both Jill and Chris man the mini-guns, and you just shoot the ever-loving shit out of those tentacles. It's a little tougher, because the helicopter flies around the thing, so aiming is a bit trickier. It's still not that difficult though. And, there's no time limit this time. Eventually, shooting this thing enough will really kill it. Oh happy days!

I just thought this was a great picture

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JACK NORMAN:

The final boss (hint: he doesn't stay human for long)

  

    Here it is, ladies and gents, the final boss of Resident Evil: Revelations. And what a revelation it is! A guy that injects himself with a massive amount of the T-Abyss virus! After he talks for a while, he injects himself, and he turns into a Tyrant-looking monster. Case in point: 

Typical!

Monster penis?

    This form of him, dubbed the Ultimate Abyss, apparently, is the toughest boss in the game. As he well should be, really. This one took me three or four tries to finally beat. He starts off just teleporting around, usually right behind you. He will teleport, and he'll pause for a second, arm raised, ready to strike. If you shoot him before he does strike, he'll be knocked back and you won't take damage. After shooting him, he'll teleport and try to attack again. This first part of the battle is very easy, and can be done (once you know what you're doing) without taking damage. After this, though, it gets tougher.

Quite literally wear his heart on his sleeve* (*front pocket)

    After a few times of this, he'll start teleporting and creating a double of himself when he appears. This can be aggravating at first, but it's still pretty easy. When he teleports and reappears, you'll still get a second or two to attack, and effectively cancel his attack. So, how do you tell the difference between the real and the fake? Easy! The real one always has this purple smoke billowing from him. So, just (quickly) figure out which is the real one, and shoot him!
    Eventually, after doing this a few times, the battle gets hard and annoying. He'll teleport and come at you, but at the last second he'll disappear again, only to reappear a few steps behind where he disappeared. It's difficult to explain, really, but it's kind of like an afterimage effect. Three or four "fake" monsters will start towards you, then disappear, then finally the real one (with that purple smoke) will come at you, and he'll hit you hard if you don't shoot him first. This part is tough to get down. And of course, even though I had five herbs (and there was at least one in the room), I had to use them all. I don't think you can survive more than two attacks from him.

Teleporting

     At times, after attacking him enough, he'll fall on his knees, and his back will be available to shoot. I don't know precisely how this works, but I guess this is the prime time to shoot him. I shot him at every chance I got, not just when he fell to his knees. So I'm not sure how exactly to damage him, but I did kill him eventually. And let me tell you good folks, it took FOREVER! Well over 100 shotgun ammo was consumed. I had the magnum, which historically is the most powerful RE weapon (aside from the rocket launcher), but I mainly stuck to my very high-powered, upgraded shotgun.

    After dodging hours phantom attacks and shooting every bullet ever made into him, he'll eventually die. And that's that. He doesn't have a second form or anything like that. He knows it's his time, and he accepts it. Very nice of him, really.

See? Polite

    And that's all folks. Five boss battles. They are all pretty unique looking, and generally keep up the tradition of good RE bosses. Besides the last boss though, there isn't a hugely different strategy to kill any of these guys. It's really just: cause absurd amounts of damage into their mutated bodies. And none (again, besides the last one) are particularly difficult either. At any rate, I enjoyed them. We can successfully close the book on Revelations for now. Next up, I'm FINALLY going retro! (after two more Dark Souls II posts, of course)

Shane Remembers... (10/24/2014)

Let's race!

Picture courtesy of emuparadise

 

NEED FOR SPEED II (PLAYSTATION)

    Around the time that Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit came out, my old friend David and I were not really into racing games. But, for whatever reason, we loved Hot Pursuit (author's note: I can totally tell you the reason I loved it: it had cops that chased you. That was the reason I loved it). I remember one day I was over his house, and he had either rented or owned Need for Speed II, so we played it. There are two things I recall about the game: the first was that it was shitty. I couldn't even tell you why, really. It just sucked. The second, and much more about thing about it was the cheat codes. You could input codes to replace your current car with any number of crazy things. The two that pop into mind was a big logging truck and a T-Rex. Who wouldn't want to race down the street in a huge T-Rex? I know there were probably twenty or so more (we had some old video game magazine that had all the codes in it. Aah, the good ol' days, when cheat codes and magazines actually meant something. But, if you don't have an old video game mag, HERE is a list of those codes). That afternoon (I think it was a rainy afternoon, for those curious) was the only time we played that game, and that fucking T-Rex still sticks out to this day.

Picture courtesy of wikipedia

THE THREE STOOGES (NES)

    This is probably the only time in written video game history that this dumb game gets mentioned in the same sentence as The Legend of Zelda, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Why would a Three Stooges game get mentioned with two classics? Well, as far as I remember, this game is one of only three (those two Zeldas are the other two. Duh!) games I remember actively playing on our NES when I was a kid. I know we must have had more games, but I don't remember them. Right as I was turning old enough to fully understand what video games were all about, my family got the Super Nintendo, and I don't even think we kept our NES, quite honestly. Many of my gaming memories start with the SNES, but I have a few from its predecessor. Unfortunately, The Three Stooges is part of that memory pool. Hell, my parents still have this game, and my mom wouldn't even let me have it when I recently started (then stopped) trying to collect NES. At any rate, I only really remember the pie-throwing part and that annoying oyster-cracker part. I could never get those bastards. Hey, this game's got real staying power apparently!

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

RIVEN: THE SEQUEL TO MYST (PLAYSTATION)

    My dad and I rented this game some time again, knowing absolutely nothing at all about it. Or even Myst in general. Maybe I had heard of it? Who knows (again, those pre-internet days!). I remember it had AMAZING graphics (still does, really). Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my dad and I played it for about ten minutes, said, "this game sucks", returned it, and never bothered playing any Myst game again. As it turns out, I'm interested in playing them now, so hopefully one day I'll get to. Certainly didn't make a good impression with teen-me. 

Picture courtesy of GAMEFAQS

TOM AND JERRY (SNES)

    I don't necessarily remember being a huge fan of this cartoon as a kid. But, back then, that's just how you played video games: you went to the video store (my local one was Video Update), and you rented whatever looked cool/interesting to you. If it sucked, well that was too bad. Live and learn, better luck next time, all that jazz. I remember the factory-like level, the junkyard level, and some level where Tom is gigantic and he tries to crush you (he's behind some boxes I believe). This was one that I know I rented several times, yet I don't think I ever got very far. I think that happened a lot as a kid. I sucked at games (now I'm a n00b-slaying pro*).

Picture courtesy of Coolrom

SUPER COLUMNS (SEGA GAMEGEAR)

    We had a Sega Gamegear. I have no idea why. We never owned any other Sega console. We were always Nintendo (until Sony came along and released the immaculate Playstation). I also remember we only ever had three games for the Gamegear. We had some Spiderman game, some Sonic game, and this gem (no pun intended). I fondly remember laying on the couch, holding that gargantuan beast (while it was plugged in, no less!), and playing this game. This was the only game that ever got played at the house. Even though I played it a lot, I still really sucked at it. But, it was very fun, and that's all that matters. I've recently inquired about the whereabouts to that Gamegear, but unfortunately I don't think it's survived the sands of time.

    There it is everyone. The (very) late first installment of Shane Remembers! Look for them weekly, every Friday. 

*absolutely false. I still suck