Yes, absolutely taking the Japanese dating visual novel genre and tying it up with KFC was a sensible idea. Especially when the aim is to romance the big man Sanders himself. Only what’s this? He’s a young man with a fashionable goatee, and doesn’t look like a bad guy from Dukes of Hazzard? As a game, being a visual novel, it’s pretty limited. There are a few choices you get to make, most of which don’t seem to have much …
Funny story. About nine months ago, Ian Higton, one of Eurogamer’s video guys blocked me on Twitter because he posted a video that had the wrong aspect ratio and I tweeted #stopaspectratioabuse at him. Fair enough, but it’s a valid crusade. It’s also not like there’s anything else going on in the world that is a bigger cause to work with anyway. But then last week, Ian needed my help. But he’d blocked me! Oh noes! He was after scans …
Being a horrible goose is the best. And oh what a horrible goose you can be. I mean, you can’t kill anyone or anything (at least, I couldn’t when I tried), but you can make everyone’s life hell for a bit by stealing their stuff, breaking their stuff, and using their stuff to cause them stress and and upset. You’d be upset too if a goose chucked your lunch in a lake, or took a stool away from you just …
I started this about a month ago, but totally forgot I was playing it. Then I realised that Untitled Goose Game and Link’s Awakening were out tomorrow and I remembered I had some unfinished stuff to do first. Turns out I was very near the end anyway. Bertram Fiddle is a point and click adventure game set in Victorian London, complete with mutton chops and Sherlock Holmes and a murder with a severed head as a clue. Bertram himself is …
Probably my favourite side scrolling beat ’em up of all time is the Scott Pilgrim Vs The World game on the Xbox 360. Although I still have it on my console, it has now been delisted, so can’t be bought any more. What I liked about it, aside from bloody everything, is the upgrades and food items you could buy – just like in the NES River City Ransom game it is clearly a Scott Pilgrim themed homage to. So …
When I came to post the previous post on my blog, I found that my host’s recent upgrade to PHP 7.3 broke what seemed like everything. Turns out it’s just one plugin – Crayon Syntax Highlighter, which is really useful for styling code in posts. Unfortunately, the developer hasn’t updated his plugin in three years or so, and it seems to be changes to how regex is used that has broken it. You may get the same error I did: …
We’ve all been there. Setting up a new machine and giving it a 20GB hard drive because it’ll literally only need 4GB ever and then, two years later, it’s somehow full and won’t boot. Unlike Windows based guests on Hyper-V, which can have their drives resized easily by the Hyper-V tools, Linux guests are a little different. You can certainly resize the disk image in the same way (turn the VM off, choose Edit Disk, and then Expand), but Linux …
When I bought the Shenmue I&II pack, my intention was to play them just before Shenmue III came out. Only, I didn’t start II right after I because III had been delayed. Fast forward a bit and the actual release of Shenmue III is suddenly almost here, and I hadn’t started II! So I did that. As I mentioned when I played Shenmue I around this time last year, I didn’t remember Shenmue II as well as the first game, …
I thought I’d completed the Master System version of this a few months ago, but it turns out it was actually May last year. How time flies! This version is the Sega Ages remaster of the original arcade version, which I’d expected to be virtually the same as the Master System on (albeit with better graphics), and although it was very similar the differences still threw me. For a start, it’s a lot harder. Like, several difficulty levels harder. This …
I have always maintained that the best Burnout, is Burnout Paradise. And I was slightly concerned going into this that perhaps my memory is faulty and maybe the eleven years that have passed since I played the original version on the Xbox 360 have not been kind. I needn’t have worried – it’s still excellent. However, the passage of time has still had an effect. The main thing being that the massive open world map doesn’t feel massive any more. …
It’s another picross game! But this one is different! And isn’t by Jupiter! Sure, it’s still picross. PictoQuest adds light RPG elements to the formula though, with items and powerups and baddies to “fight” by completing rows and columns in the grids. Which all sounds perfect, until I completed it and realised I’d totally ignored absolutely everything to do with the RPG stuff as it’s entirely unnecessary and does nothing. Sure, perhaps if you’re very, very, very slow completing the …
Yes, it’s another Lego game. Which means that it’s the same as all the other Lego games, right? Well, no actually. In several important ways. Of course, the basic gameplay is mostly unchanged. You go around a level, solve little puzzles and generally smash everything you come across, but this game (and it’s possible the Lego Incredibles and Lego DC Super Villains do the same – I’ve yet to play them) is more open world and far less linear than …
As I got closer to the end of this game, I realised that I’d almost certainly never completed it. I recognised every level up until the 7th one (in the cave), and then have vague memories of a castle, but I think the castle memory may even have come from the Mega Drive Alex Kidd game. I also realised why I don’t think I’ve completed it. There are a few tricky sections (the one near the end with the spikes …
A lot has been said about how terrible the Switch version of Bloodstained is compared to the other platforms it’s available for. Low quality graphics, 30fps not 60, longer loading times, and so on. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I don’t actually care. It’s the version I wanted, and short of being broken (and it’s not) it doesn’t matter to me about the rest. And I was right, as it’s pretty much a perfect Castlevania game and I enjoyed it very …
