Just for a bit, to try and get a higher score on Refuelled Mode. Which I did – around 300,000, in fact. That netted me an achievement for 250,000, and I also got the Squidport Pacifist achievement too. That score also bumped me up my friend’s leaderboard two places, only to be knocked down two again instantly by people playing at the same time but doing better than I did. Hate!
So Mr SomethingWitty thinks he can waltz on in and blow my Retro mode score away, does he? Oh yes, he did. Bah. But! I managed to get 42,000-ish on the same mode – some 2,000 points higher than his, putting me 110th in the world and top of my friends list. For now.
Today’s new XBLA game was this – a remake of the 1983 Spectrum game, which also includes the 1983 Spectrum game! First up was a go on “Refuelled” mode (the new version). It’s very much like the Jetpac of old, just with new graphics, some power-ups and smart-bombs. Thankfully, this just makes it feel like a very late sequel, rather than a new game hiding under the banner of a classic retro game (see: Sabrewulf for the GBA – urgh). …
It may have taken a while for me to finally get round to playing SteamWorld Heist II, but when it – and all the other SteamWorld games – were reduced in a massive eShop sale I was reminded it was the only SW game I hadn’t completed. And now, it isn’t. Like the first game, it’s a 2D, side-on, turn based strategy game. In that respect it’s more of the same as the original, and I’ll leave it to you, …
I do like a Kaz Ayabe game. I’ve played a few recently, including the previous Shin chan tie-in. They’re all set in sleepy Japanese villages where very little happens and this one is the same. However! Shin chan’s dog, Shiro, wanders off and finds a mysterious train that take him (and, when he is led there, Shin chan) to Coal Town – a mining town that nobody in the village seems to have heard of. Your days are split between …
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a silly little game where you, a bored child left with your uncle while your parents have gone on summer holiday (leaving you behind to go to summer school because you’re bad or stupid or something), decide to get a driving licence, a car, and then modify it so you can drive off into space. Obviously. And just LOOK at the art style. Look at it. It plays out as an open world game where …
What if Vampire Survivors was a chop-chop, dig-dig game? As in, as well as auto-attacking swarms of enemies with increasingly more powerful weaponry, you also plant crops, mine ore and catch fish? Well, Pesticide Not Required answers that question. As with other Survivors-type/Bullet Heaven games, there’s the usual kill things, get XP, go up levels, spend points on mostly random updates, and repeat. Only here, in order to progress, you have to buy seeds at the end of each day …
From the name I fully expected this game to be a soulslike so just clicked nope-skip every time I saw it for sale. But then I stumbled across it on a Metroidvania Games You May Have Missed list and I re-evaluated. Then I noticed it was on sale for about three quid on PSN and so bought it. First thing I have to say about it is that it’s HUGE. I’m used to 2D Metroidvanias for being 8-10 hours long, …
It’s Mr Driller only on the Game Boy Advance, only on the Switch. It’s missing the many game types and variations from later games in the series like Drill Land, but it’s the same gameplay and just as much fun as it ever was. But hoo is it hard. The constant worry that you should just dash for the end rather than try to grab some air, or vice versa, when you’re low on oxygen. The all-to-easy way to miscalculate …
There is nothing to say about Jupiter’s Picross series that I haven’t already said. There’s not much new here that hasn’t been done before, it’s just more brain-wrinkling and relaxing (at the same time, somehow) picross puzzles. One thing I would like, perhaps, is fewer of the 5×5, 10×10 and even 15×15 puzzles, and more of the 40×30 ones. There are only a handful here, and you only get them if you have save data from previous games in the …
After finishing Xenoblade Chronicles X, I was at a loss as to what to play next. I didn’t fancy another 125+ hour epic, so had a flick through what I had installed, and came across Night in the Woods. I’d looked at it before but hadn’t realised I owned it (well, PS+ rented it anyway), and I found it was only a few hours long, so here we are. It starts with you, an anthropomorphic cat coming back to her …
And that’s it. I’ve officially run out of Xenoblade to play. In about a year and a half I’ve completed the entire series of games in some sort of obsessive newfan flurry of activity. Why did I sleep on this series for so long? It’s bloody great. Anyway, I’ve said a lot about the three numbered games in the series, and I have to say I was a little worried coming to X because I’d heard it wasn’t quite the …
As I have a Netflix subscription, I get access to a number of games on iOS as a bonus. Most of them are shovelware nonsense. Some are tie-ins with Netflix shows like Squid Game or Queen’s Gambit. Some, are “indie hits” like Kentucky Route Zero. Some fit into more than one of these categories. Word Trails is probably shovelware. It’s one of $hlmun games which litter the App Store that are effectively identical, and when you see the screenshots you’ll …
Season Two of the Playdate games have started arriving, and the first one I worked through is this lovely little archaeology title, where you dig down and find bones and… well, you do that a lot. It reminds me a lot of SteamWorld Dig, although it isn’t a platformer and has (almost) no combat, but progression is similar. The deeper you dig, the more energy it takes to dig, so you buy upgrades (with money earned from things you’ve dug …
I’ve always loved this game. It’s the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong, also sometimes referred to as “Donkey Kong ’94”. I talked about it more last time I played it, which I thought was maybe three years ago but it turns out it was FOURTEEN years ago. Cripes. This time, I played it on the Switch’s Game Boy game service thingy, but it’s just the same game as it ever was before. It’s still really slick, and plays well …
