At first glance, Summer in Mara would appear to be a Wind Waker clone, but in fact it’s only really similar in terms of graphics and there’s a load of islands you travel between via a little boat. Actually, it’s much closer to something like Harvest Moon, with a bit of farming, some crafting, and a lot of fetch quests. There’s no peril, danger, time limits or any chance of death – just a nice little story about an orphan …
I thought I’d actually completed this about a month ago, except it seems that just reaching the end isn’t enough. You have to reach the end ten times. Anyway, I’ve done that now. Hades is a roguelite action game, where you, as Zagreus, Hades’ son, must escape from hell and find your mother on the surface. You die a lot along the way, which takes you back to the start, but slowly your skills improve both by getting permanent buffs …
The Neo Geo Pocket fighting games are such good fun. They might all be the same, more or less, but they’re fun. Even in single player. I completed this a few years ago, but I recently bought the Neo Geo Pocket collection for the Switch so I’ve been playing the games on there a bit. This is the first one of them I’ve completed, and I did it as Yuri for a change.
New Spider-Man, same game. Well, that’s a little unfair. Miles is a bit different to Peter in a few ways. Notably, he has a “venom” power which lets him do smash attacks, and he also has far fewer gadgets, but actually the only bit difference is the plot. Set soon after Spider-Man, it opens with a fight with Rhino (with the help of Peter), before you take over New York patrols while Peter leaves the country for reasons related to …
Silver Sable returns to New York to deal with Hammerhead nicking all her tech gear, and he’s now basically a massive robot too. But of course, I beat him and finished this last lot of DLC.
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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? …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
