WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE! Or, even better, stay dead and buried. Why on earth did Sega think that porting the Megadrive version (not even the arcade version!) of this infamously terrible game to the 3DS? Or even to any other console? Nobody, absolutely nobody at all, wanted it, liked it originally, or is ever going to buy it. Er, except that I did, of course. Um. In my defence, I did only get it because it was half price. And …
Long awaited by many, 3D Outrun finally found its way onto the European eShop today, and I had to buy it instantly. It’s a superb conversion, actually improving on the original arcade game by making it widescreen and 60fps (not that I can tell it’s not 30fps any more – I’m fps-blind) and most importantly, 3D. It’s hard to express just how fantastic the 3D effect is. It was great in 3D Afterburner II and 3D Space Harrier, but in …
Through various deals and sales, I managed to pick this up for just £1.44 today. I’ll buy any old crap at that sort of price, but a few people warned me against it, saying it wasn’t even worth it for free. Pff to them, I thought. I can decide myself. But what the hell did I just buy? A walking around a pixelated island in some sort of dream simulator? I don’t know. I started off in the see just …
This was a surprise. It looked a bit rubbish, and some of the reviews suggested it was average at best, but it’s actually a really good fun platformer, with a novel jump mechanic. You have a gun which you can use to both shoot baddies and switches, but also use the recoil to jump and boost. The levels have walls to blast through, electricity beams to avoid (and slip through when they turn off temporarily), bounce plates, portals, conveyors, and …
I renewed my PS+ subscription and upgraded my (full) PS3 hard drive, so picked this up for a rental. Thought I’d give it a try as I’d heard good things, but had no idea what it was about or the type of game it was. As it turned out, it was a sort of platform puzzler where the events of the game are actually some sort of dream (or something) metaphor, where the main character has what appears to be …
Oh 360. It’s been a while. Certainly since I completed anything on you, anyway. How unloved you are these days. But, since Ubisoft failed to release Rogue on the Wii U, I was left with little choice. And it’s a shame, because much as I hate the recent boating bits in recent Assassin’s Creed games, they’re made much more bearable (especially in the ludicrous “boat stealth” sections) by being able to use the Wii U gamepad’s massive map. In fact, …
You know when you stumble into the eShop and you’ve credit in your account and you see a game you’d been intending to get for a while but haven’t because you’ve loads of other games to play and you “accidentally” buy it? That. Shantae is a gorgeous looking GBC platformer, with some fantastic sprites and animation layered on top of a pretty hard platformer. It’s essentially a Metroidvania, where you enter labyrinths (which have several puzzle elements) to both rescue …
A few years ago, I stopped (with rare exceptions) playing games on my iPhone. The App Store had become swamped with F2P games with IAPs and other abbreviations, and even “traditional” games had been drugged with mechanisms designed to only allow play if you keep buying gold, or gems, or whatever for ridiculous prices. “Sonic had run out of jumps! Buy 10 jumps for £2.99?”. No. And yet here is Nintendo, perhaps the last bastion of proper games, releasing a …
While my 360 was on, I thought I might as well make a start on this. I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy it, as I knew there was a lot more boating, like there was in Black Flag, and I’m not keen on the idea of being a Templar who used to be an Assassin either – although I do have a theory about that, which I’ll mention in a minute. I’m only half way through …
Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve completed an Xbox 360 game. In fact, bar the odd bit of Minecraft, I’ve barely touched it in ages. Today my daughter wanted to play a Turtles game, so I picked this. It’s the original arcade game from 1989, although I did complete it almost eight years ago. Blimey. Was the 360 even around that long ago? This time was in co-op, obviously, and I found it easier than I remember. Sure, a billion …
That was quick! I am aware that most of the time you’d spend with a golf game like this would be in multiplayer, or the online tournaments, or (in this case) the extra courses that don’t play a part of the “story mode”, but I didn’t expect to have licked all three course contests in just a few days. In fact, I won the first and second contests on my first attempts, although the Mountain Course proved trickier and I …
You know that thing you do where you completely forget you own a Vita? It’s pretty easy to do, as it is somewhat forgettable. Well, I did that. I was sat wracking my brains, trying to remember which games I’d started fairly recently but not finished, and all I could come up with were a few 3DS and Wii U games. I was convinced there were more than that. And of course there were – I’d forgotten about my Vita. …
You may think that this is a somewhat short game. Eight short levels and it’s over. Right? How long can it possibly take to complete? Almost EIGHT HOURS. That’s how long. Oh yes, it was hard. Especially Level 3, for some reason, but even with the difficulty I still managed to reach the final boss at the end of the game in around an hour and a half. In fact, aside from losing a couple of lives, I beat 5/6ths …
No, I hadn’t started this already and no, I didn’t return to another previously started game having finished off Shovel Knight. Just shut up, OK? Shut up. I was rearranging the icons on my Wii U home screen. Like on my 3DS, I have to have them arranged in an OCD friendly manner, where games I’m currently playing or haven’t completed sit on the first screen, and games I have completed or aren’t likely to play any time soon are …
Alright, alright, calm down. I know what I said. I know I was trying to work through my already-started-games backlog before making a start on my bought-but-unplayed backlog. I’m sorry. I have no excuses. But… what a game to break these plans with. From start to finish, Shovel Knight was a proper joy to play. The fantastically drawn pixel art, the outlandish characters (top of which is the half-trout, half-apple Troupple and his amazing dance routine), the comedy dialogue, a …
