It’ll probably take longer to read this post than it took me to complete the game. One Strike is a one-on-one fighting game with the sort of graphics early Game Boy Advance games had, with colour palettes to suit the very dark GBA screen. Games like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon looked hideous when blown up on a big TV via an emulator, and so does One Strike. As the name suggests, you need to strike your opponent just once …
I found out recently that there are no plans to create any more Gunvolt games. Or Blaster Master Zero games. This is a Bad Occurrence, because I very much like them both. What exactly are Inti Creates going to do instead? Anyway, this game. It’s a bit different to the previous Gunvolt game, in that you don’t play as Gunvolt. Well, not really. Instead, you play as Kirin, a sort of ninja monk who makes use of some of Gunvolt’s …
Way back when, this was one of my favourite games. The main reason being that it had a built in level editor, but the catchy music has remained in my head for decades. My copy was one of four games in a compilation, the other four being Panzerdrome (which was impossible), Tidy Tony (which was a bit like Atic Atac only rubbish), and Steelyard Blues (which I liked until many years later when I found out it was a hacked …
And that’s the pair of them. I’d never played this sequel before, but it turned out to be just as good as the first game. There have been a few quality of life tweaks, such as not needing to choose which challenges to do before you do them – now they act more like normal achievements – and some of the upgrades upgrade themselves as you use them, rather than need improved versions synthesising. The gameplay is the same as …
Not that long ago (FIVE YEARS?! WHAT) I played, enjoyed and beat the 3DS version of this. I purposefully didn’t look back at what I wrote back then until just before writing this, and a few things surprised me. Firstly, I never did get the good ending last time. This time, I did! Secondly, I had difficulties in all different places this time. For example, the “fire boss” was a walkover before, but he was one of the difficult ones …
Aside from a couple of bosses, and the “water chasing you up the tower” level (which I realised I was doing wrong – you can wall jump and fall slowly when you’re sparking), I managed to get to the penultimate level of the game without too much trouble. Then I hit a wall. A SuckySuck Bit(TM) wall. That’s right folks: a boss rush. I suppose I was expecting it. After all, Gunvolt isa follow-up of sorts to Mega Man, and Boss …
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the hardest game ever made. I played a few games online, and lost every since one by at least three goals. Not only that, but I’m incapable of finishing the second (novice!) challenge in Challenge Mode. Rubbish.
OK. First up, it’s not really football. You have a ball, and you score goals, but there the similarity ends. You have powerups, special moves (some of which let you score six goals at once!) and it’s totally insane. Anyway. I played through the tutorial section, which actually took the best part of an hour, and then dived straight into some online games. I really should have practised offline a bit, though. I played two people, both in Best of …
Mission 27 – FINAL BATTLETASTIC!! And… it was easy. Too easy. So easy, in fact, I was convinced there was going to be some surprise at the end. Well, there was, but it didn’t involve any more fighting or anything. There were two fronts. I just let Rachel get on with the second front on her own, and she did a good job of seeing it off. That allowed me to concentrate on taking over towers and stuff on the …
Marathon session on this today, whipping through several missions without breaking a sweat. Missions 23 to 26 were actually pretty easy, and I managed to S-Rank them all on my first go on each. One of them was a strange concentric ring arrangement, with a moat then a mountain range separating each “ring”. This made it hard to run supplies around the place, as there were only factories on the outer ring. There was also a volcano in the middle …
Mission 22 was easy! Daunting at first, but when you realise the enemy can’t build any new units (nor can you though), and you’re separated by a pipe, you can damage them heavily before they break through then finish them off once they make it over your side. Which is what I did. And, despite some stupid mistakes on my part (one of which lost me my battleship), I S-Ranked it! BEST.
Mission 21 was a right pain. I’ve done it now (with a rubbish B), and my final attempt (of four or five) did seem a lot easier. There are so many things to keep an eye on – the timer, until you’ve launched all the missiles, enemy infantry getting to silos before you (especially if they’re a fair way away and Black Hole are about to Tag Team you – getting two goes in one), transport ‘copters taking infantry behind …
Bah. I was doing really well, had shot all the missiles at the satellite, and had destroyed the huge cannon thing. I had even managed to make inroads towards the Black Hole base, and was generally winning. I had a small army of Blue Moon Neotanks and artillery en-route to do some damage, and a Blue Moon Battleship was providing backup and cover. And then, I got sloppy and let one Black Hole soldier through to the Blue Moon base …
With Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan out of the way, it’s time to return to Advance Wars: Dual Strike. Mission 19 was easy. Really easy. At first, it seemed impossible, as there were about 20 Oozium thingies all spread out across the map. However, that’s pretty much all that I had to contend with, and they move only one square at a time, and can’t move and attack in the same turn. So, as long as I didn’t get surrounded, it was …
Mission 18. A long narrow map, with two armies under my control – one on the bottom half of the map, one on the top – separated by a mountain range. On the far right (cloaked in Fog of War nastiness) was the Black Hole HQ. It was MUCH easier than I expected it to be, however. They did introduce another enemy unit (Oozium, which eats any ground unit in one go and is virtually indestructable), but it could only …
