Yes, I have a Steam Deck. And you know what? It’s actually great. I was sure it’d be horrible and clunky and just a bit wrong, but actually, it isn’t. Well, OK, it is still a bit clunky. To show off the ten trillion different sticks, buttons, pads, flaps, twiddles, surfaces and touchybits that the Steam Deck packs to ensure there’s a workable control method for just about every game you can throw at it, Valve created a free game …
After the travesty that was Kirby 64, I thought I’d play this on the SNES service on the Switch. It’s been ages since I last did (and even then it was in Japanese), and I’d forgotten – and been tainted by 64 – just how good it looked. In fact, it’s probably the best looking SNES game. How did they go from this to that? Unpossible. I haven’t collected everything on every level, and I’ve not done all of the …
I had no idea there were bad Kirby games. Certainly, Kirby Air Ride and Kirby Not Smash Bros Because It’s Only Kirby in Different Colours Clash aren’t amazing, but they’re inoffensive and not really proper Kirby games. But Kirby 64 is bad. And not in a 1980s way. Considering that it came out after Mario 64, and is a much simpler game being only 2D (well, 2.5D really), how is it that this looks terrible? It’s worse than the NES …
Another PS+ free rental, but a game I’ve nearly bought more than once elsewhere and actually own on PC (but I don’t have my Steam Deck yet to play it on!). Minit’s “thing” is that it’s a Zelda-ish game only you die every sixty seconds. Or sooner. And then you start again. However, some things are persistent and you do reach respawn points and open shortcuts so dying isn’t really an inconvenience. There’s a plot about having to go into …
With PS+ Premium comes a huge number of games you can “borrow”. A few of those are titles I was eyeing up to buy on the Switch, so I suppose I’ve saved a bit of money now I’ve got them on my PlayStation “for free”. I Am Dead is one of those. It’s a hidden object game with a story and some quirks. Firstly, you’re dead (but then you surely guessed that from the title), and with the help of …
No, I have no idea why I played this either. It’s one of the games on the somewhat hit-and-miss Pac-Man Museum+ collection and although it’s not really bad, there’s nothing special about it. Not least because the USP of “stroking” Pac-Man with your Nintendo DS stylus in order to twang him around the levels is totally lost. That’s said, I did enjoy most of it, aside from a couple of later levels where there are some nasty jumps-in-3D with no …
Just in case I’d not had enough Metroidvania games, I bought another one. Only this one is underwater! Which means you constantly have to look for oxygen, and being attacked drains your oxygen, and jetting around drains your oxygen, and you move slowly and you have a harpoon. And at one point you gain use of a hovercraft cowfish shaped submarine which means you don’t need oxygen when in it, and – more importantly – you can survive deeper water. …
In case you were thinking this was like a Game Boy version of Stardew Valley, then you’re right. It is. Only very, very cut down. Well, maybe cut down is wrong. Streamlined? Slimmed down? As in that game, you inherit a run-down farm (an orchard, in this case – albeit one with only one tree), meet people, grow crops (well, just apples), do a bit of fishing, complete some quests, chat to a ghost, and so on. Only instead of …
Well look at this – it’s another Metroidvania game that I’m playing. Only this one is based on a series of Japanese books (I think!) and looks a lot like Touhou Luna Nights. Not least because it’s running on seemingly the same engine and is by the same team. And it’s really good! Whereas Touhou Luna Nights “borrowed” the bullet grazing mechanic from the Touhou shooters, in Deedlit there’s a Radiant Silvergun-style colour swap system, where you flick between fire …
What I was expecting from this game: a sort of Tetris puzzle game where you have to fit items into a room. What I was not expecting: a putting-things-away simulator with an unwritten, non-verbal story about the life of a woman. Told over a number of years across various different houses, you unpack your belongings as you move in. Over time, you acquire (and lose) new hobbies, tastes and relationships, but this is only explained by the objects in the …
What a lovely blue skies game this was. It wasn’t the open-world, post apocalyptic Kirby the trailers and pre-release media made out though, as it sticks to the same level structure as most of the classic Kirby titles, but it looks amazing and is a lot of fun. And is so, so easy! I completed the entire game, including the post-ending extra hard content, without dying at all. Or even coming close to dying. Or, a handful of bosses aside, …
Yes, it’s another of Jupiter’s excellent but nearly identical Picross games! Only this one is slightly different as each puzzle is a pixel graphic straight from a Sega Mega Drive or Master System game! But you guessed that from the title. Not that it really matters because I literally don’t care what the pictures actually are, but it was a bit disappointing that so many of them were just faces of characters from games. Nowhere near as many items, logos, …
There’s a song by Puffy AmiYumi called Planet Tokyo. I mention this not because it has anything to do with the game, but every time I see the title “Ghostwire Tokyo” I read it in the same tune. Yes, I know you probably have no idea what I’m on about. I went into the game itself pretty blind. I’d glanced over a couple of reviews and read some game-content-free comments on how good it was, but I think I was …
A short, simple, Super Mario Bros style platformer which is neither difficult nor exciting. It just… is. You jump on heads and collect things and reach the end of the level, and it has “doodled” graphics, which would be nice but on the Evercade’s little screen they’re a bit small and you can’t tell what most things actually are. It’s fine?
A while back I played that Zuma clone Sparkle 2, and it was pretty good. Well, I recently got a free trial of PSNow to preview what the upcoming PS+ changes might be like, and the original Sparkle was on there and so I gave it a go. The only real difference between this and Sparkle 2 is that in that game you have the launcher in a fixed point but can rotate 360 degrees and shoot balls that way …
