Misc. Brawlers That Didn't Make the Cut.

(yes, I realise I used an image from the SEGA game "My Hero" but I used it because it looks super generic.  Which describes many of the following games well.)

Continuing my series of brawler flashback reviews, here are the rest of the games on my list that didn't neatly fit into any of the previous categories. 

This post will cover these remaining games:

• Bad Dudes VS Dragon Ninja
• Double Dragon
• Double Dragon II
• Ninja Combat
• Sailor Moon
• The combat Tribes
• Ninja Warriors
• Ninja Warriors Again
• Crude Busters
• Under Cover Cops

SEGA Brawlers that Didn't Make the Cut

 

So in my series of games stemming from my experience with Brawlers, I'm gonna bang on about the Brawlers from SEGA that didn't make the cut. 

Also for brevity's sake, games that I played on SEGA hardware (arcade, master system, Megadrive, Saturn etc etc) will be included here.  So a game not made by SEGA, but I mainly experienced on a SEGA machine is here.

Awwright?  All right! 

The list:

• Alien Storm
• Altered Beast
• Die Hard Arcade
• Guardian Heroes
• Nekketsu Oyako
• Pu Li Ru La
• Spiderman: The video game
• SOR 3
• The Crow
• The Crows, Battle action

Tets plays: Fatal Frame II - Part 1 of ??

 So after plaowing through Soul Reaver, kinda plodding through Defiance and Blood Omen Two, and smashing through Jedi Fallen Order, I decided I would give a game a try that I have been thinking about for a long time:

Fatal Frame (series).  I did some googling and general impressions are that 2 is the better of the lot, so I decided to go with this one.  I'm generally not into survival games, I dislike weapon management games intensely so Resident Evil never really grabbed me and  I feel that jump scares are just cheap.

I did thoroughly enjoy Silent Hill 1, 2 and 3 however.  The disturbing surreal nature of those game did tickle my fancy a lot.    I had read that many publications seemed to rank Fatal Frame 2 as the scariest game ever.  Whether this was at the time, or what, I dunno, but I have started it.

Here are my thoughts:

Tets Plays Star Wars Jedi Fallen order

 

Chilling on mah couch.

I like me some light sabre swinging action and would love a game like The Witcher, but Star Wars-y.  Is this the one?

Revisiting LOK Soul Reaver

 

When I was in the peak of my gaming time, a lovely little game captured my imagination and I really, really liked it.  That game was Soul Reaver.  It played somewhat like Tomb Raider, but had a connection to the action-RPG of Legacy Of Kain: Blood Omen(BO), a cool, edgy vampire story.  

Soul Reaver played very differently to BO, but the voice acting of the main characters, was incredible.  The main Characters being Raziel (your guy), The Elder God and Kain.  Their efforts raised what was a fairly simple premise of betrayal and revenge to something much more epic than it had any right to be.

Development was shaky and the game ended up having a lot of stuff cut from it and a "To Be Continued..." ending.  Which is something I always hate.  Nevertheless, I did play it on PS1, and then again on Dreamcast.  The series did this a bunch of times and the story continues over 5 games and is very convoluted as there is time travel and changing of the future and shenanigans going on all over the place.  Even after I finished the final game, I was still fairly unsure of the plot... Who was the main bad guy and what their motivation was to ruin the land of Nosgoth and destroy the Vampire race etc etc.  

The games are:

• LOK: Blood Omen
• Soul Reaver
• Soul Reaver 2
• LOK: Blood Omen 2
• LOK: Defiance

I suspect that there was of course a delay between game releases, would have allowed for me to forget parts of the story which would have added to my confusion.

Toys & Games of 2024

Normally I separate games and toys on these lists, BUT 2024 has been a pretty lean year for me gaming wise.  Sure I bagged a fenrir for my Sega Saturn which was a worthwhile purchase, but since it has opened up many games, I am in two minds as to whether to include them here.  Mainly because I can't remember the ones I played.  And despite having amasse a rather nice collection, I find myself spending all my time playing the translation of Grandia on it.

Konami Brawlers That Didn't Make the Cut.

You know, I remember a day when I used to see the Konami logo and hear the little tune and immediately think to myself:

Oh yeah, good times are coming baby

Rocket Knights, Tiny Toons, Sunset Riders (in the arcades), Contra and a bunch of others.  It was a mark of quality.  Now though.... Let's move on shall we?

So continuing on with my Brawlers list, I will add in Konami games here.  They made a fair few and initially this was going to be a post about why the Turtles games didn't make it, but I decided to broaden the spectrum for reasons which will soon be very clear.

AquaShooters! 12 Kit build

 

Well, for something different, I thought I would go through my building process of these little Gachapon Aqua shooters figures which I have been somewhat enamoured with the past few years.  For a 500 yen roll, you'll find yourself blessed with either a kit action figure, to be assembled, or some kind of weapon set, also to be assembled.

Admittedly, like the GashaponQuest  items, it feels kind of crap if you just do a single roll and just get a a weapon set, which is exactly what happened to me on my first try when I discovered these super late only to find the weapons were the only two left in the machine. Sigh.  Oh well moving on.

I'll be building the Aquashooters! 12 series Izumi Motohashi, the one that took me longest to get (I think)... I went a bit overboard with these guys and I think I got the whole set a lot earlier than I thought.

Moving on, let's build a figure! (and weapons!)

Capcom Brawlers that Didn't Make the Cut.

 

So as a bit of a continuation from my Brawlers Top 10 post, I assume there might be some readers that wonder why certain games didn't quite make the cut.

Which I can totally understand.  Often these top 10 kind of things are highly personal and many people have many reasons for preferring one over another.  

Therefore, I am going to do some follow-up posts on popular games that I suspect many people would include in their top 10s and give a little explanation on my thoughts about them and why they didn't make the cut.

Naturally, in the Brawler and Fighter genres, CAPCOM is pretty well known.  Heck in my top 10, CAPCOM made 4 out of the 10, so that must say something!  So todays post is about CAPCOM brawlers that didn't tickle my fancy.

Beat 'em Ups; A top 10

I’ve played many, many games over the years and I often find myself attracted to 2 main types, the good old platformer and Beat Em Ups.  I’ve recently been referring to Beat Em Ups as "Brawlers" as I’ve never really liked their genre definition.  “Fighting game” doesn’t fit, as something like Virtua Fighter, DOA and Street fighter all fit into that mix and are very different.  A few years ago I was introduced to the term “Belt scrollers” which is just a stupid term; people defended it as the characters often travelled along the screen as if they were on a conveyor belt and they had the ability to move left/right and up down in the playing field.  Yeh? Well guess what, Zaxxon does that, 1942 too, it's just a vertical conveyor belt, Paperboy,  the list goes on and on.  Essentially it doesn’t describe the game play at all, just the movement of the screen and therefore something like Kung-Fu master nor Altered Beast fit in that classification.

So here I will refer to them as Brawlers, as I think it fits well indicating the often chaotic nature of their gameplay and the fact that you can often punch more than one enemy at a time.

Firstly though, I have to remind myself about the brawlers I have played over the years.  I am sure I am missing some, but after scrolling through a few lists, these are the ones I have played enough to be confident I have a pretty solid idea of what is going on in them:

Alien Storm	Ninja Combat NEOGEO
Alien VS Predator	PuliRuLa
Altered Beast	Red Heat
Bad Dudes VS Dragon Ninja	Sailor Moon (arcade game)
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs	Spiderman: The Video Game
Capt America and the avengers	Streets of rage 1,2,3,4
Capt Commando	Target Renegade
Comix Zone (on reflection, this doesn't fit)	Tenchi WO Karau II (Warriors of Fate)
D&D 1,2	The Combat Tribes
Die hard Arcade	The Crow
Double Dragon C64	The Crows, Battle action
Double Dragon II (NES)	The Ninja Warriors (+ Again)
Dynamite DUx (C64)	The Punisher
Final fight 1,2,3	The Simpsons
Golden Axe 1,2,3	TMNT arcade 1
GA Revenge Of Death Adder	TMNT Hyperstone Heist
Guardian Heroes	TMNT Shredders revenge
**I'm sure I've missed some**	TMNT Turtles in time
King of Dragons	Two Crude Dudes (CrudeBusters)
Knights of the Round	Under cover cops
Mighty Final Fight	Vendetta (Arcade Game)
Nekketsu Oyako	Xmen (konami arcade game)

A lot of the games above I've probably played on multiple formats, such as Double Dragon, Final Fight and even Golden Axe, so I have tried to avoid doing that because:

1. The list would be way too long.

2. For my purposes it is unneeded, because if a particular version is in my top 10, I will state so.

3. I probably can't remember them all.

So, due to popular demand (heh) here I am with a nice little list of my top 10 Brawlers on various platforms that I have played over the years.  

God Of War 4 Completed

 I had to go back and check this, did I post about this game's experience when I started?  Not in and individual post, but I did start in my yearly gaming post.

So, now that it's done, what's the final verdict?

A resounding "meh, it was all right."

Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon - Finished

 Oh boyoboyoboy.

I was not terribly impressed with this DLC when I last posted about it. It was half arsed, to put it nicely... My main gripe was about the controls and shitty writing.  Well, they gave an update (yay) which fixed up most of the controls (yay) but not much they could do about the writing.  Seriously, the main story was so much better.

So with the controls fixed, I decided to get back into it and found things a little bit better. There is still much frustration though.

Gaming Shenanigans of 2023

So the end of the year means, here I am trying to consolidate shit into some kind of organisation, for whom exactly?  Anyone really.

2021 is here

2022 is here

 Woo, what an odd year for gaming it was for me.  I've spent a lot of time playing stuff on my PS3, which has been a lot of fun.

(Toys of the year are here)

I do have a very definite game of the year though.

So let's start with that then hey, just to get it out of the way.

Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon, so far

 

Back in my list of games for 2022, I listed Sonic Frontiers as my game of the year, and I stand by that.  I really did enjoy it.  It was not perfect, but the gameplay was fun, the story made sense and the characters acted like you would expect them too.  Plus Knuckles wasn't portrayed as a dumbarse.  

However in typical SEGA fashion, it was obvious that the game was rushed and things didn't quite seem finished.  Ignoring the technical issues like pop-in and the weird juxtaposition of cartoon characters and real world looking er, world, it was very bad at explaining mechanics and gameplay bits n pieces.

However after a year, we have the "Final Horizon" update for it, which really makes things fit together well.

Ha ha ha ha, I lie, it does not do that.

At all.

I have 4 main complaints where I think the game manages to mess up:

1. The story
2. The controls
3. The platforming
4. The difficulty

Beware spoilers (for the DLC)

Replaying Sonic Adventure 2

 So after my pushing through and reliving the joys of Sonic Adventure DX on my PS3, I discovered there is a version of Adventure 2 on the PS3 as well.  Blow me down says I, might as well try and get a bit of that action.

With some messing about, I did eventually have it ready for play.  So, how did it go?

Mad Max on the PS4, some musings.

This here is a review of the PS4 version of the Mad Max game.  When I first became aware of the game, I had a feeling it would be something I would like.  Recently I've been playing a lot of sandbox games and have played them quite extensively.

The Arkham series and their simple combat and stealth mechanics started it off I guess and that spread into the Shadow/War of Mordor, Just Cause games and to the Witcher 3.  Which are pretty much the majority of the "big" games I've been spending my time on.

At the time of release(2015), I think was playing a lot of Just Cause(maybe).  I remember seeing articles about Max and thinking that it looks fun, but thought I would be reaching the end of my tether for Batman Arkham style sandbox games.  I was also still playing Red Dead Redemption as well.

Reviews were ok saying it was standard fare and I felt satisfied with my decision to not bother with it.  I have always enjoyed the world of Mad Max and absolutely loved the movie Fury Road; it's such a simple premise but done very well and expands the Max lore quite nicely, but felt no strong urge to get the game that was released the same time.  The Mad Max game has little to do with Fury Road, but theoretically is set before it.

So eventually (2021) I see a tweet stating that the Mad Max is cracking a 5.99 price and I just so happened to have that amount hanging around on my long untouched PSN account. So I grabbed it.

Sonic Adventure DX on the PS3 review

Okay, I was going to save this for my yearly summary, but it ended up being a bit too long, so I've decided to make it a whole post.

Sonic Adventure DX on Playstation 3, a review.

Revisiting Tenchu Part 2-A Thoughts on Wrath of Heaven

 Good time of day ladies and gentlethings, now that my fun with Shadow Assassins on the PSP has been had, I've ventured back to the Tenchu game I am second-most-familiar with (the first being PS1's Stealth Assassins); Tenchu Wrath of Heaven (WOH).

This is another Tenchu game I played a lot of. Quite a lot of in fact.  When I was younger I managed to Grandmaster each level with each character.  I can't remember if I bothered with all three map set ups, unlikely methinks though.

I started this one a while ago and got distracted by the PSP Shadow Assassins, so now I'm back and thought I'd put in and update thoughts, especially since I'm not that close to finishing it.

Revisiting Tenchu Part 1- Thoughts on Shadow Assassins

 

A while ago I decided my new laptop must be able t handle a PS2 emulator and so I got one. Then I hunted down my favourite games and thought I'd replay some of them.  The first one I looks for was Tenchu Wrath of Heaven and I've been going through that enjoying it quite a bit.

Then with the usual casual research I do looking into things, I decided that I should have another crack at Shadow Assassins, the Tenchu that came out on the Wii and PSP.  Now I have this on the Wii, but at the moment, no Wii.  However, being a fan of the PSP and still having some unfinished games  on that, I decided to grab the PSP version so then I can avoid the waggle controls of the Wii.  Let's see how this goes shall we?

Gaming for the year of 2021

So in the vein of my toys of 2021 (in draft, but my games post finished sooner), I briefly want to talk about games that I have acquired over the course of the year.  "Modern games" which I use the term loosely as I often buy games that are years old when cheap have been relatively few.

Retro games - ie games for my Saturn were looking rather thing until a certain point in which I got rather excited and went nuts.  Most games I'll play at least briefly when I get them, so can comment on everything. Let's do it

First off derp Modern games

- and this will consist of Nintendo Switch/PlayStation 3/4 games.  It'll be interesting to see if Sony bust out the hours you spent on a game list again this year.  Last time it was many many on Shadow of Mordor/War.  My Nintendo Switch lists my most played game.... as.... the YouTube app.  And yes, it's handy to watch YouTube through without having to slap up the tv to the internet etc.  I don't even watch that much YouTube Or so I thought...

Anyhoo, click the jump to progress to the info