Ranking of UFO 50
Well the idea here is to A) post this new link to see if my RSS updates properly and B) maybe play some UFO 50 when that comes out idk. I broadly like Jeff Gerstmann's Ranking of NES and I did watch his Ranking of Action 52 so, figured it might be a fun project.
work in progress
Barbuta (1982)
I see they are really committing to the bit by having the first game be a completely impenetrable puzzle platformer where you move at a snail's pace. Having played Metroid, I went left first and ended up not being able to do shit. Once I made it back to the first screen and went right I got crushed by falling blocks. I also cannot believe the skull erases all your lives.
I feel like I got fairly far in; I made it up to the candy vendor. You move SO fucking slow.
Bug Hunter (1983)
How dare they curse me with a deckbuilder roguelike! HERE!
On my very first run I got caught in a bug whereupon using the Bombard skill in conjunction with a "makes all bugs detonate on hit" ability, the bugs just kept exploding indefinitely and the game softlocked. I wonder if that's an actual oversight or a like, emulation of the kinds of dumb oversights that would have been in games of this era. I suppose materially those are the same thing.
Ninpek (1983)
This one really reminds me of Capcom's SonSon. I've never been good at this kind of game and I'm not about to start now; I guess I'm just old. There are so many bullets! I'm not good at dodging! I'm not a fan of score attack games in the first place!
Paint Chase (1983)
There's always something satisfying about filling in colors, I think. I remember playing a fair amount of Bomberman Generations on Gamecube with my brother and his friends and we would always pick the "territory control" mode rather than just straight up deathmatch. I made it to level 10 on my first go.
Magic Garden (1984)
Took me a few runs to figure out this was basically Snake, and then took me another few runs to figure out how I was meant to actually score. The terrain effect is pretty interesting because you're always trying to manage the length of your trail rather than simply getting it as big as possible, since any followers outside of the score zone become evil... but you can get possibly even more points off them with the potion if you're well positioned.
Mortol (1984)
This feels like the kind of game that would be in the Top 10 of a Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam Roundup; even I'm not sure myself if that's a compliment or a put-down. I'm really ambivalent on the way lives carry over between stages, because if you end up in a shitty situation the way to fix it might be to just replay the entire game but better. I guess that's just how old games were though.
Velgress (1984)
Downwell but UP. Feels nice and snappy but I'm really coming to understand that I'm not into score attack games. I got to the third biome but man this ain't no joke.
Planet Zoldath (1984)
I guess this is kind of like Toejam & Earl? You're wandering a randomly generated alien planet looking for map pieces, collecting tools, and trading resources. I'm not sure there's actually a way to tell whether an alien type is hostile or not before you touch it.
Attactics (1984)
This is a neat auto tactics game. It gets really tough once the opponent starts getting big bonuses to how many units they get. I can see myself quickly getting back to this one when I'm not trying to entertain my friends on stream.
Devilition (1984)
The way this modulates its balance with your ever-growing number of villagers both raising the difficulty by giving you fewer spaces and lowering it by letting you leave more demons alive is really neat. Almost got it.
Kick Club (1984)
I wish I could destroy bullets by kicking the ball into them. Otherwise, eh. Score attack still doesn't really do it for me. The sports theming is cute enough but I don't think I got far enough in to hit anything that I might call a "twist".
Avianos (1985)
Really trimmed down 4X type game. I feel like the play is to focus on the Ancestor who can add blessings to the others, since then you can ramp the rest up quick, but you might end up with a deficit of other resources if you do that. I've always been a simplistic "make a death ball of units and charge in" kind of strategy player anyway.
The List
- Avianos
- Attactics
- Devilition
- Bug Hunter
- Mortol
- Paint Chase
- Velgress
- Barbuta
- Planet Zoldath
- Magic Garden
- Kick Club
- Ninpek