Play This Set

Intro

This is a place where achievement creators (and sometimes their fans) can advertise their work and tell the community why they should play those games.

Our idea is to post up to 10 “Play This Set” per month. If you want to advertise your set (or a set you’re a big fan of), write a couple of paragraphs and send us a message (go to RAdmin page and then “Send Private Message”).

NOTE: don’t get frustrated if your article isn’t published in the next issue! If yours is not present here, it’ll probably be present in a future RANews issue.

Ni No Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage (NDS)

Game Console Genre
Ni No Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage Ni No Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage Nintendo DS Role-Playing Game

Set and Writeup by ilikepie345 ilikepie345

Ni No Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage is an RPG developed by Level-5 in collaboration with the acclaimed Studio Ghibli.

The story involves a young boy named Oliver travelling into a parallel world, aptly named Ni No Kuni, in an attempt to save his mother from the evil mage Jabou. Oliver must learn magic and solve various puzzles through the help of his magic compendium, however, he must first find more powerful wands in order to cast stronger magic. Along the way, you will encounter residents who similarly have been affected by Jabou’s magic, two of which join Oliver in his cause to save the world from Jabou’s evil.

The Game play is Pokemon meets Dragon Quest with a little bit of its own spice. The battle system utilizes positioning in order to gain slight stats boosts and to dodge enemy spells and abilities. Every enemy has a set weakness, and if the player exploits that weakness, they will gain a Power Point, and once enough points are gained, they are rewarded with a powerful spell. Another way to gain Power Points is to utilize the aforementioned positioning system to dodge an enemies attack.

The way that Pokemon comes into the mix, are the Imagens. Imagens are the “monsters” roaming around the world of Ni No Kuni, and the player can recruit any Imagen that they encounter into their own team, ala Pokemon. Given that you can use 9 Imagens at one time (and later, you gain 9 more reserve Imagens) and experience is shared with the entire party, you’re incentivized to mix and match and use as many Imagens as possible to see what works and what doesn’t.

Another aspect to Imagens is the Carry Cage, where you can give your Imagens treats to raise their stats, play with them to raise their affection with you, and even give them special gemstones for them to learn powerful new attacks!

It was unfortunate that I had to group many things together into one achievement, but that was the only way I was able to thanks to the memory. I’m a big fan of the PS3 Ni No Kuni game, having played it multiple times, but it was my first time playing the DS version while making this set. It was surprising to see the differences to the PS3 version, yet things being mostly the same.

Clockwork Knight (Saturn)

Game Console Genre
Clockwork Knight Clockwork Knight Saturn Platformer

Set and Writeup by xnaivx xnaivx

Clockwork Knight was released just a week after Saturn’s launch in Japan and was a launch title in US and Europe. It is the first Sega’s array into 32-bit platformers and boy it wanted to showcase everything their new system could bring to gamers those days. It has long rendered cutscenes which was so popular in the early days of CD. It has cool CD quality music which is far superior over it’s 16-bit contenders. It has extra colourful (sometimes maybe even too colourful) graphics with pseudo 3D rendered parts. And I think that it was the most technologically advanced platform game on any home system at the time of its release.

On the other side everybody wanted and waited something completely new and different, some brand new experience from just emerging 32-bit systems and Clockwork Knight was just another platform game. And with rendered graphics or not, it was still been there done that case. And also the game is very short and easy. I think it was the main reason that the game was never a big hit. And when I’m saying short and easy, I mean it, it’s not a figure of speech or something. That is why most achievements in the set should be done on hard difficulty. And even on hard difficulty the game is still too easy. But hey sometimes we need just a relaxed and positive experience and exactly this is what this game delivers. It is lots of fun. So for everyone who wants a simple colourful and pleasant platform game for a couple of evenings look no further than Clockwork Knight!

Superman 64 (N64)

Game Console Genre
Superman: The New Superman Aventures Superman: The New Superman Aventures Nintendo 64 Best Flying Simulator Ever

Set by Blazekickn Blazekickn and wilhitewarrior wilhitewarrior

Writeup by wilhitewarrior wilhitewarrior

Superman 64 was one of the last in a long line of classic Superman titles. Of all the fantastic superhero games out there, Clark Kent’s adventures on the Nintendo 64 stands as king. It is the greatest superhero game of all time and quite possibly one of the greatest GAMES of all time.

The timeless classic of a plot follows Superman and his friends who have been trapped in a virtual Metropolis by Lex Luthor. Some might claim that this is the stupidest plot ever because it means that nothing you do really matters, but those people are wrong. It’s genius.

The amazing game play of this game is broken up into two major parts.

  1. “Ride” stages. These are the parts most people already are aware of. Superman must fly through several rings in order to reach his destination. He has a time limit to get there and once there, he must tackle a little mini-challenge where he has to save fake people from being killed by fake enemies and fake disasters. One could ask why Superman feels the need to care about these people at all since none of them are real, and could also ask why he couldn’t just fly in a straight line to reach his destination. Well I’ll tell you why. One word. Genius.

  2. Action stages. These is where this might seem more like a traditional game but more sucky, but you’d be wrong. This is where the true brilliance of this game shines. You see, your primary obstacle here isn’t the enemies or the time limit disasters, but rather the level design, the controls, and the camera. Or perhaps you could sum all that up by saying….. The “COMPUTER”?? Eh?? It really feels like the world is working against you and makes you feel like you’re struggling against Lex Luthor’s virtual world, all the while trying to prevent it from breaking. It’s absolute genius.

If you’ve never played this masterpiece, then you owe it to yourself. Otherwise you’ll die heartbroken and filled with regret that you never attempted Superman 64.

Cool Spot (SNES)

Game Console Genre
Cool Spot Cool Spot SNES Action » Platformer » 2D

Set and Writeup by Ryudo Ryudo

Cool Spot was created by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. The weirdest (and also coolest) mascot made it to the Super Nintendo to prove his coolness.

The graphics are really amazing for a game such as this. Cool Spot has very detailed animations, and every action you take has a unique animation attached to it. Even the idle animations have a lot of variation. The levels themselves are very detailed as well and have unique designs to them. In one level you may find yourself at the beach, but in another level you’ll be thumbing down a slope, while in yet another you’ll find yourself on a moving locomotive.

In the game, Cool Spot’s friends have been captured and it’s up to Cool Spot himself to try and rescue them. The game is a pretty challenging platformer where you have to find so called ‘Cool Points’, which look like red coins floating around the levels. Once you obtain a specific amount, you can find the cage and release one of your friends. Collecting even more Cool Points gives you access to one of the 6 bonus levels available in the game. In these bonus levels your goal is to once again grab as many Cool Points as you can, but the most important thing to get here is one of letters which will spell out a 7-Up slogan: ‘UNCOLA’ in the US release of the game. In Europe however, they never really heard much of Cool Spot or this slogan, so they instead went with the developer’s name instead: ‘VIRGIN’.

This achievement set consists mostly of completing the levels, but also has some challenges involved where you have to find 100 Cool Points in each of the levels! Additionally there’s also an achievement where you have to spell out the infamous slogan previously mentioned in the review by obtaining the letters in the Bonus Levels.

Do you think you’ve got it in you to be as Cool as Spot? Be sure to play this game and do your best to complete the set!