Gaming Purchases - Augusti 2018

Augusti 7th:

A trip to the local GameStop resulted in some interesting purchases to get this month started.

PlayStation 3:
Resonance of Fate
Rise of the Argonauts
Virtua Tennis 3

PlayStation 4:
BAJA Edge of Control HD (new)
CarmaGeddoN Max Damage (new)
PlayStation 4 Camera V2
PS4 PlayStation Move Motion Controller PlayStation VR Accessory Twin Pack (new and sealed)

..and some movies from another store.

DVD:
Anchorman 2 The Legend Continues (new and sealed)
Disney Cinderella III (new and sealed)
LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Justice League Gotham City Breakout (new and sealed)
LEGO Nexo Knights Episodes 16-20 (new and sealed)

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Augusti 10th:

A couple of movies from a movie store.

DVD:
The Man With The Iron Heart (2017)
Woody Woodpecker (2017)

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Augusti 11th:

Just some non-gaming secondhand shopping finds today.

DVD:
Bästa Knattefilmerna Vol. 1 Kalle Stropp och Grodan Boll med flera (2007)
Karlsson på Taket TV-serien - Karlsson och John Blund (2002)
Karlsson på Taket TV-serien - Karlsson Dammsuger (2002)
My Little Pony Slottet Bland Molnen (2004) (5 episodes of My Little Pony 'n Friends (1986))

Building Blocks:
LEGO System 5875 Belville Hospital Ward (1994)
Sluban Girl's Dream M38-B0516 Mailing Letter

Other:
a bag of POGs

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Augusti 17th:

Just a couple of movies today.

DVD:
LEGO Jurassic World Indominus-Rex Rymning (LEGO Jurassic World The Indominus Escape, 2016)
Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2017)

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Augusti 18th:

Some secondhand finds today.

PC:
LEGO Rock Raiders

DVD:
Bakugan Gundalian Invaders Vol. 2 (2010)
Dunderklumpen! (1974)
Hacke Hackspett och hans vänner Vol. 6 (Woody Woodpecker and His Friends Vol. 6, 1940-1972)

Manga & Comics:
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 6 (paperback)
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 7 (paperback)
Hacke Hackspett (Woody Woodpecker, #10 1971)
Hacke Hackspett (Woody Woodpecker, #15 1973)
Hacke Hackspett (Woody Woodpecker, #4 1977)
Tom & Jerry (#2 1991)

LEGO:
a Bionicle figure with 4 arms (came with the manual and a cutout part of the original box)
a Hero Factory figure with handcuffs, shoulder cannon and a gun arm (came with the manual)
a wolf warrior of some sort with a double sword and a saw blade shield, possibly Hero Factory

Toys & Other:
Mighty Max, a big vampire skull with light-up glowing eyes (all figures and other detachables are missing)
a painting of two trolls on a bridge, a male troll who is fishing and a female troll who is smelling a flower, there is a crescent moon in the background
a Rubik's Cube, very smooth and easy to twist, possibly one of those that's commonly referred to as a speed cube

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Augusti 21th:

When grocery shopping I saw they had some movies on sale. I also bought the last Mountain Dew Cherry Blast they had, I hope they'll get more as it's my favorite, I'd hate if that one also is going out of production like so many other delishus sodas in the past.

DVD:
Snobben (Peanuts The Movie, 2015)
Star Wars The Force Awakens (2015)

Bluray:
Star Wars The Force Awakens (2015)

Game Purchases - Juni 2018

Juni 6th:

No gaming purchases yet, just a movie.

DVD:
Rock Dog (2017)

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Juni 8th:

A couple more movies.

DVD:
Godzilla (2014)

Bluray:
Smurfarna Den Försvunna Byn (The Smurfs Lost Village, 2017)

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Juni 14th:

Finally got some new games purchased today!

Wii:
The Simpsons Game (no manual)
Welcome to Animal Crossing: Let's go to the City

PlayStation 2:
Rollercoaster World (no manual)

PlayStation 3:
Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (no manual)

PC:
FlatOut (Medallion)

DVD:
6e Dagen (The 6th Day, 2000)
Den Onda Dockan 3 (Child's Play 3, 2001)
Fruits Basket - The Complete Series (6 Disc Exclusive Collection)
LEGO Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu Vol. 2
LEGO Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu Vol. 3
Transformers (2007)

Bluray:
Jack Frost (1996)

LEGO:
Mini Taurus (buildable board game, the yellow playable microfigure character was missing, otherwise it was complete in box)

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Juni 25th:

And a few more movies.

DVD:
Bamse och Häxans Dotter (Bamse and the Witch's Daughter, 2016)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Bilar 3 (Cars 3, 2017)
Den Stora Nötkuppen 2 (The Nut Job 2, 2017)
Dumma Mej 3 (Despicable Me 3, 2017)
Leatherface (2015)
The Emoji Movie (2017)

Bluray:
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Justice League (2017)
Sing (2016)

Now Playing - April 2018

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (Xbox 360)
This game is really getting on my nerves, problems with glitches, poor design and low quality are rearing their ugly heads too much, I may not car enough to get through this one 100% like I did multiple times in a row like I did with the two previous games. A clear step down in quality to say the least, I even enjoyed the downscaled 3DS version better as it was downscaled in good ways, it skips a lot of the problem and keeps the best stuff.
UPDATE 7 April: I beat the story mode at least, doing most of the side stuff as well but I'm not aiming for 100% of this, some side quests are just far too annoying.
UPDATE 15 April: After having unlocked a bunch of more stuff and completed most of the side quests that aren't flying or checkpoint racing I ran into one hell of a glitch where the hub worlds loaded combined, the one I was at and travelled from merged with the one I travelled to creating a whole new dimension, especially when I combined the lantern worlds with the batcave or the watchtower becuase they were not compatible with their gravity and coordinate alignment so I was running in the air and up and down walls etc, it was pure pandemonium, it actually took quite a long time before it froze from all this madness but sadly I haven't been able to recreate it again after that, it happened after I unlocked Giganta and tried to warp and switch characters, her size difference powers are most likely the catalyst but some other ingredient seems to be missing for it to happen again, I've tried with different characters, even both being Giganta, large and small combinations, but nothing has triggered it to happen again so far.
To be honest, this is the best thing this game has offered so far, in the midst of all the mediocrity it's offered this stood out and one hell of an experience, so I'd love to be able to recreate it again and learn how to trigger it manually, that'd be awesome.
Oh and also I've finally gone all the hub worlds and it's specifically the green lantern world Oa where you finally get to use all the vehicles you unlock in the game, it almost exclusively has land and air racing challenges, so it's not exactly a huge open world like Gotham was in Lego Batman 2 DC Superheroes, but it's at least something as the rest of the game virtually have no vehicles at all other than the select few side scrolling shooter levels.

Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
One mission at a time, slow and steady wins the race...? Nah I'm done for now, time for something else to make my Vita fun again, hopefully.

Justice League Task Force (Mega Drive)
The music alone is worth starting up this game for.
Still one of the most criminally underrated fighting games of the 16-bit generation and one of the most polarizingly opposite of it's Super Nintendo counterpart as on Super Nintendo this game is extremely poor and I can only recommend avoiding it entirely, yeah it's sadly that bad, handled by another developer and the result was a wildly different version that fails to be as good as the Mega Drive game in every way, shape and form.
On Mega Drive this is a must play for fighting game, DC and Mega Drive fans.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy (Entertainment System)
I really like this game, despite the design changes for this version over how the original Japanese version, Mad City, was.
It's a really cool game, reminds me of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves as it also has multiple genres of gameplay baked into it, sadly this game is overly tedious due to the increased difficulty, but the gameplay that's there is still really good, with good controls, good visuals, great music and some nice technical impressive things like digitized voice samples and screen warping effects, not bad at all for an old Entertainment System game.

Slalom (Entertainment System)
Rare sure like making potentially great games that get hindered with far too high difficulty.

Ride! Next Generation Equitation (PC)
I wanted to try one of the first horse games I got for PC, it's technically a very well made game, even if it's not my genre at all and I suck at it, at least it's better than most other horse games as this at least manages to be a professional level game for those interested in this type of thing, it's not just another low quality horse tamagotchi sim where you waste most of your time playing awful minigames like washing the horse, feeding it and literally picking up horse shit, this focuses on obstacle courses and such, the competition and actual sport, so kudos for that at least, it also look rather good with some very nicely detailed horses, environments, special effects and animations, for a 2008 PC game in this specific genre it looks very good indeed.

Night Stalker (PC)
Just running around shooting some bats, robots and the occasional spider in this very competent fan made PC port of the Intellivision classic.

Cat Pöke (PC)
Just having some fun poking cat butts.

Cat Planet (PC)
Just flying around looking for some talkative little kitties.

The Adventures of Captain Comic (PC)
I got farther than I've ever done before, that was cool, I almost feel like there's a chance I could beat the game now, I've had it since I was a kid, it was one of the first PC games I ever played, so it would've been cool to beat this one at least once.

Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation Vita)
Already knew it was gonna look bad seeing as it's a port of the 3DS version rather than a port of the HD console version, sadly, but it's still okay I guess, it could've been amazing had they just had some ACTUAL all-stars to play as, but alas it's the most generic and common ones like Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles, and a bunch of characters you never wanted and for several of them you probably never even heard or or knew where there as you probably played the better characters in the games these ones come from, like the one guy from Crazy Taxi nobody plays as, some secondary character from Jet Grind Radio Future/Jet Set Radio, a couple of monkeys from Samba de Amigo (I think, and yes they get two characters featured from that game, as if one uninteresting monkey you didn't know or want to play as wasn't enough, they gave us two, you know instead of something you'd like to play as becuase that would've been too much fun according to Sega, and we can't have fun in videogames, nope, we have to be disappointed and wishing we were playing a good game instead, that's the modern Sega way for some reason!) and fucking Alex Kidd etc., but almost none of the ones you know and love and would've actually wanted to play as are there, so yeah, thanks Sega for making it obvious why we should never buy your games when they're new and you can still make a profit from a sale, we never will, we promise.

Need for Speed Road Challenge (PC)
Not fully compatible with Windows 7 it seems, so I have to run it in software mode, it looks kinda like a low-end PSX game with an unusually choppy framerate.

V-Rally (PlayStation)
Just joyriding while winning some races.

Sega Rally Championship PC (PC)
Just joyriding for the fun of joyriding.

Now Playing - December 2017

Remember Me (Xbox 360)

Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)

Alien Storm (Mega Drive)

Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)

The Story of Thor A Successor of the Light (Mega Drive)

Justice League Task Force (Mega Drive)
A fun fighting game with some cool moves, some very nice visual effects and a fantastic soundtrack. Batman and Wonder Woman especially are a lot of fun to play as in this.

Justice League Task Force (Super Nintendo)
Basically a bad alternative to the vastly superior Mega Drive game, with uglier and simpler visuals, unresponsive controls that require specific timing to do what the AI can do instantly (cheating bastards), less content with some gameplay modes and options being absent entirely, no proper intro sequence and no cutscenes between fights in the story mode, and finally either boring and awful unfitting music for a fighting game with horrible ear piercing noises pretending to be instruments or no music at all with just boring ambient sounds, it's an awful game and should be completely avoided at all costs, go for the Mega Drive game instead and have a great time because you sure won't have one if you play this terrible Super Nintendo version.

Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
My relatively new third-party Retro-Bit 6-button controller broke while I was playing this, it's only a year or two old now but the top part of the d-pad broke straight off, the plastic that connected it in the middle underneath had given in, I glued it back and hopefully it'll hold like that for a while but once broken it's a permanent weak spot so we'll see how many games I can play before it eventually breaks again..

Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Ok so a couple days later the controller broke again and this time I tried to drill a hole through it to reinforce it with a metal screw down the middle, while also gluing it, and so far it's holding up, but I fear the plastic just isn't good enough to last very long regardless, it's a cheaply made controller, plain and simple.

WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 (Xbox 360)
Just making some custom characters, my OC Farideh, Lara Croft and Bonnie Rockwaller.

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (3DS)
Pretty good, not exactly a step up from all the other Lego games over the last decade and a half, quite literally exactly on the same level more than anything, but I guess it's what we've all come to expect at this point.
The one positive thing to note about this specific version is that they actually have realtime stencil shadows, a bit pixelated, but they're there, which is pretty impressive for a 3DS game.
Not even the port of Lego Star Wars II The Original Trilogy on PSP had that back in the day despite PSP being notably more powerful than 3DS, however, textures are far lower resolution with some very blurry ones in some places and the framerate is not as smooth or as stable.

Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
I wasn't sure if picking the emotionally distant girl over the aggressive girl was a good choice, but turns out it was, she was actually really sweet and had a magic doll made to remind her of me because she missed me so much

Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
I haven't played this in many years now, I never completed it back then and I probably won't this time either, but every step along the way counts, maybe some day I will have completed some of my now many Lego games.
I've gotten a lot farther now though, unlocked tons of new stuff and completed almost all of the Hero missions 100%, just a few things missing here and there where I need specific supervillains to do certain things in the levels to get the remaining stuff.
It's a very good game and I'm enjoying it a lot, so much in fact I've been looking into getting the two sequels, DC Superheroes and Beyond Gotham, for Xbox 360 or maybe PS3. I tried the demos for both on Xbox 360, downloaded from Xbox Live, and I really enjoyed them so I doubt I'd regret getting either or both of them in full version, sadly they're a bit pricey and hard to find, DC Superheroes has been available only once but it sold out again and that was only the PS3 version, so I'll have to keep an eye out.

Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Unimpressive, sadly. I haven't played for long but already I have a list of complaints that shouldn't have made it into the final version of the game.
The camera is no longer static and panning over areas nicely all the time making for a good solid experience from beginning to end, like in most other Lego games, instead it's far too often switched to a third person camera with some basic manual control, the problem is that it's way too zoomed in making it very hard to navigate the environment, there's also an insane amounts of up-close and personal pop-up, especially NPCs walking around, they will literally pop-up out of nowhere right next to your character, out of nowhere, and a lot of the time several NPCs will do this as the same time, like two or three of them just suddenly appear next to you as you bump into them, slowing you down in the process.
It's like they're just teleporting around like in Star Trek, but with a severe case of ADHD. It looks worse than anything else I've ever seen in regards to pop-up in videogames, far worse.
The controls are a complete waste of Vita features, the d-pad, left analog stick and touch screen all do the same thing, control your character's movement, with the analog stick doing the best job of the three and the touch screen being almost unusable as it can't turn properly, it moves forward or backward only and very poorly to the left and right, it's completely unbalanced. The touch pad on the back does nothing.
The shoulder buttons and right analog stick both control the camera, moving it left and right only, up and down on the right analog stick does nothing.
I haven't played far enough into the game to say how the controls are different when it changes modes to flying spaceships and such yet.
The minigames are overly simplistic, making the originals they're based on, like Space Invaders and Zaxxon, seem far more modern and complex by comparison.
When you get to play the action sequences with a classic Lego game static camera angle the game picks up and is much better and more fun to play.

Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
Compared to Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens this is even more of a mixed bag, while some problems that game had have been made better, some are still there and a whole list of brand new ones have been added.
The audio first of all is really poor, the voice acting sounds like it's been recorded from an old radio with an old mix onto cassette tape and then played back and recorded onto computer with a cheap headset mic. It's really bad, dare I say even worse than Remember Me? Yes, yes I do, it's worse than Remember Me, and a lot worse at that as it encompasses the entire cast of characters throughout the entire games it seems, I haven't completed it but so far it's all bad, and I'm several hours in.
The big difference is that this game has an open world where you can free roam, a chunk of New York and a carrier ship.
There are side quests and challenges scattered about and you can jump into vehicles and destroy stuff for Lego studs, the universal currency of all modern Lego games.
The controls are about identical to the previous mentioned game, with all the same shortcomings.
Visually it's a step up and a step down depending on how you see it, the characters don't animate their faces during in-game cutscenes, I don't remember now if they did or not in Force Awakens but I want to say they did. There seems to be a bit more detail and special effects present, but it's had to compare.
Overall I think I like this one a little bit more than Force Awakens, but because I don't like marvel and their characters much, nor do I like Disney's take on Star Wars, it's safe to say I'm not a huge fan of either of these two games, they're okay when the focus is on them being Lego games but when story and characters and such come into play they both drop in quality and so does my interest and patience.

Virtua Racing (Mega Drive)

Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike (Mega Drive)
Arguably the best of the original 8- and 16-bit generation Strike games and a great helicopter action game. I still prefer Red Zone, Steel Talons and LHX Attack chopper from the 16-bit generation and the Strike games on PlayStation, Saturn, N64 and PC though.
It's nice that they have on-foot missions and different helicopters to pick from during missions, I don't remember if you had that in the previous Strike games, regardless, good stuff.

F1 World Championship Edition (1993) (Mega Drive)
A great F1 game with some fast speed, scaling 2D graphics and polygonal 3D graphics.
It plays very well, it's good and responsive, if you crash into stuff you can sometimes keep going without coming to a complete stop, this was pretty rare back in the day for racing games as a vast majority would force you to see a crash animation or wait until the car or bike or whatever reset to the track before you could drive again, it still happens in this game but mostly for things that are too high to drive over, like sign posts and trees, but for all the shorter objects including the opponent cars you can hit them and get back to driving again without a full crash and reset, it has good control and handling too so for the most part you can avoid crashing altogether, there are lots of tracks to race on and it even has a turbo mode where some of the graphics are scaled down so the game can run at twice the framerate making an already fast and smooth game even faster and smoother.

F1 World Championship Edition (1995) (Mega Drive)
Same name but slightly different game, it also boasts fast speed, scaling 2D graphics, polygonal 3D graphics and lots of tracks to race on, however, it lacks a turbo mode but adds a third person camera instead so you can see your car while you race, it also has many layers of parallax scrolling for the sky and backgrounds and it has a lot more polygonal 3D objects around the tracks.
It doesn't play quite as well as it doesn't have the minor crash physics, just the regular stop and reset to track style, but it does have good controls and handling and is fast and responsive, so you won't be crashing much anyway and it still feels very good to play.
Overall I think both games are fantastic and impressive racing games for the Mega Drive, you can't go wrong with either.
I personally prefer having a third person view so this game is my favorite of the two for that reason alone, but in all other ways they are overall equals, where one is better in one way, the other is better in another way.

New York Race (PlayStation 2)
Back in the day when PS2 launched I got mine with Armored Core 2 and Zone of the Enders as my two first games of the launch lineup available, a couple of weeks later I also got my first PS2 memory card, after some time I had saved up enough to buy more games, the third game I got was Shadow of Memories, after that however I was give the option to wish for a new game that winter, and I had narrowed down my options to two games Jet Ion GP and New York Race, after much consideration I picked Jet Ion GP, thinking I'll probably get NYR not that long after. I enjoyed Jet Ion GP a lot and it remains a classic for me but I never got NYR, not until now, in December of 2017, I had only tried it on PC back in the mid 00's and liked it but I never found a copy on sale again until I now finally ordered it online. It's very nice to finally own a copy of my own and it's a good game, I would've loved to have this back then but things turned out like this and I'll have to try and enjoy it now instead, far after the hype of the brand new PS2 has long gone died off and I can only enjoy games based on how good they are objectively, no added new generation factor giving it a push.
I can gladly say though this is a very good game and I'm enjoying it pretty much as if it was new to me back then, I can usually mentally put myself back in those days and kind of forcefully add the excitement of what it was like had I played it back when it was originally released for games in general, it's not exactly like the real experience but as close as it can get, I've had plenty of practise with games for Mega Drive and other older systems over years and it's been a blast. Great games don't really age, it's just our perception of what games are like that does, thankfully I play enough old games that I can easily keep my mind fully open to older titles and enjoy them as they would've been enjoyed back when they were new, as it should be.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)

Score International Baja 1000 World Championship Off Road Racing (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre game, completely locked down with all content painstakingly unlockable one thing at a time, the bad controls making it almost unplayable and very far from even remotely enjoyable.