Spider-Man: Remastered: The City that Never Sleeps: Turf Wars (PS5): COMPLETED!

Although it is sort of its own story, this chapter continues on from the previous DLC. The Maggia are getting more dangerous what with Hammerhead nicking all the high tech Sable weaponry and outfitting himself with some impressive armour. There’s a new set of Screwball challenges too.

Haven Park (Switch): COMPLETED!

Haven Park is a twee little game (and I mean that in a good way) about a bird who takes over the running of a set of run down campsites out in the countryside. It’s very similar in feel to A Short Hike, but with more interaction and a different emphasis. It involves collecting resources, like wood, to build appealing camping areas, which are then populated with visitors. Some of these have additional requests, and there are a few areas …

Spider-Man: Remastered: The City that Never Sleeps: The Heist (PS5): COMPLETED!

That’s more colons than a tin of cheap dog food. I won’t go into the mechanics of this DLC chapter as they’re the same as in the main game, but the story is much more low-key than what went before. It follows the return of Black Cat and how the Maggia (definitely not the Mafia) are resurging into Manhattan to fill the void left by Kingpin’s incarceration and how one of the Maggia family dons, Hammerhead, is trying to seize …

Spider-Man: Remastered (PS5): COMPLETED!

The most important thing in any Spider-Man game is the web swinging. What’s the point of being Spider-Man without it? Sure, he could swing in some of the 2D 8 and 16-bit platformers, but when the Gamecube-era Spider-Man 2 game came out the freedom of 3D traversal round New York was a massive wow. The rest of that game… not so much. Well, much time has passed since then and this, the PS5-improved version of the PS4 exclusive, is very …

Little Big Planet 3 (PS4): COMPLETED!

I don’t know where I got this. PS+, perhaps? I certainly would never have bought it what with not really liking the first game. Oh sure, it was clever and it looked pretty and you could make your own levels, but they forgot to make it controllable and fun and the physics are all over the place and the moving in and out of the screen is hit and miss. But they’ll have fixed that two sequels later, right? Right? …

Ichidant-R (Switch): COMPLETED!

When this came out, I played and completed it almost immediately. But, as I was looking for a two player game to play with my daughter – and that was a while back – I thought it’d be good to play again. And it was! It’s a very different game when you’re playing it with someone, as it’s both competitive and co-op at the same time. You have to complete each mini-game to progress, but only one of you actually …

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (Evercade): COMPLETED!

You know something? I’ve never been a big fan of Double Dragon. Sure, it’s OK. And yes, it’s one of the first arcade games I ever completed in an arcade (well, in a shed in a field), I don’t understand the reverence. It doesn’t have the fun of TMNT, or the style of Streets of Rage, or the depth of River City Ransom. But here we are. The main reason for playing it was because my daughter wanted another two …

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond (Switch): COMPLETED!

Once more it was time to play a digital cock-fighting game! I mean, that’s basically what it is, right? With a plot, of course. A plot which is the same in every single Pokémon game: evil organisation (usually with a non-evil front) want to capture Pokémon for $reason so they can get Ultimate Power or something. All while your 10 year old avatar is rapidly rising from having a single feeble creature to being King Of All Pokémon Trainers and …

Wizard Fire (Evercade): COMPLETED!

The sequel to Gate of Doom, apparently. Well, it’s obvious when you play but not so much from the titles of the games. Although they’re called Dark Seal and Dark Seal II in some regions so I suppose that makes sense. It also doesn’t say “I’m the wizard!” any more, which instantly loses it a million points. It is a bit better in terms of clunky-flickeryness, and the magic system is improved: Previously it seemed random which effect you’d get …

Gate of Doom (Evercade): COMPLETED!

“I’m the wizard!” it shouts as you choose to be the wizard when you start the game. Stupid, but it stuck in our house. I wasn’t the wizard though, my daughter was. I was the knight. In this scrolling fighting game, not completely unlike Golden Axe or Gauntlet III, each character has different skills but as you die one hell of a lot regardless it doesn’t really matter that much. Yes, it’s a coin-muncher but as it’s on the Evercade …

Tumblepop (Evercade): COMPLETED!

I’d never played this before, but it’s a nice little arcade game in a similar style to Parasol Stars or Super Snow Bros – a single screen two player game where you clear out baddies by sucking them up into your hoover and then spitting them out before they escape. It’s not very hard, nor is it very long, but it was fun and had some nice big bosses. It was probably made easier as I played it in co-op …

Castlevania: Bloodlines (Switch): COMPLETED!

Just in case I was misremembering that this was one of the good linear Castlevania games, and my thoughts on Vampire’s Kiss were based on warped memories, I decided to give this a go. It’s on the Switch Online Mega Drive collection too so it wasn’t difficult figuring out a way of running it. And, I was completely right. It is so much better than Vampire’s Kiss it makes that game look like a dodgy c-tier “Dracula’s Castle” knock-off and …

Puyo Puyo (Switch): COMPLETED!

Yes, it’s essentially the same game as Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, which I completed a couple of days ago. But this one has cute Japanese character voices and cuter graphics and no stupid fake Sonic enemies. Other than that, though, it was no different to play. I didn’t find the end boss as difficult, but that’s probably luck and/or practice rather than it being easier than the Sonic reskin.

M.U.S.H.A. (Switch): COMPLETED!

Until this appeared on the Switch Online Mega Drive collection thing, I’d never realised that “MUSHA”, “Aleste”, and “Musha Aleste” are the same game. I’d never played any of them before, either. It’s a vertically scrolling shooter with big robots and great music and impressive graphics. And it’s hard. And I completed it, eventually. The bosses were, mostly, much easier than some bits of the actually levels, it turned out. Aside from the “final”[ref]Spoiler: it’s not final.[/ref] one with the …