deKay's Lofi Gaming

Gaming Diary

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Or is it “Sonic the Hedgehog & Knuckles 3”? Either way, Sonic Origins stitches the two games together as $deity intended to make one massive game. And yes, I completed it with all the Chaos Emeralds (and the Super Emeralds). It’s great, because of course it is. However, there’s something wrong – very wrong – in this version. You see, it’s pretty well known that Michael Jackson was somehow involved in the creation of some of the music tracks in …

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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They made a VERY IMPORTANT change to Sonic 2 on this Sonic Origins compilation. In the original, after getting all the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic has the ability to turn into Super Sonic once he collects 50 rings. Sorry, that might be a spoiler. Super Sonic moves even faster, jumps higher, and is invincible (except for being crushed or falling off the bottom of the screen), but as his rings count down as you use him, you have to constantly collect …

Sonic CD (Switch): COMPLETED!

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And onto the next! Sonic CD was always the black sheep of the 16-bit Sonic games, what with changing the gameplay and returning to a graphics style more like Sonic 1 even though it came out after Sonic 2 (in the UK at least). Levels don’t feel as well organised as the other games, with scenery overlapping and areas messy with seemingly random item positioning – partly due to being able to travel into the past and future and so …

Sonic the Hedgehog (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Well, would you look at that. I bought yet another copy of Sonic the Hedgehog. I now have it three times on my Switch, in various guises. This time, it’s because I bought Sonic Origins, that remastered collection of Mega Drive (and Mega CD) Sonic games where they are reworked to fit into widescreen properly and a few things have been tweaked. The original, unmodified, versions are on here too, but I’ve played them before so I went for the …

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch)

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And that’s that done again. This time, I played through picking Claude, the guy on the yellow team, as he sits somewhere between the “eradicate all the Church and their allies for no reason” of Edelgard and “defend the Church at all costs” of Dimitri. He wants shut of the Church (they are too influential, or something), but doesn’t really want to be at war and certainly doesn’t want to destroy the blue army. Of course, it just means more …

Kirby’s Dream Land (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I always forget that in this, the very first Kirby game, Kirby’s well known basic power of inhaling in baddies and copying their abilities doesn’t exist. Well, he can suck them in, but he can’t gain powers from doing so. It’s also very easy. As in, I didn’t die. You can avoid a load of things by just flying over them or sucking them up, and there’s health pickups everywhere, so it’s only really the bosses that provide any sort …

WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Nintendo added a load of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games to their online subscription service this week, and although I’m hyped to get to play through The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap I’m leaving that until I’m done with Fire Emblem Warriors. In the meantime, however, I thought I’d play this. It’s… very easy, isn’t it? Have I really remembered how to play every single minigame, accurately and with skill, from 20 years ago? To the point …

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch)

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Completed again. After finishing it with Edelgard’s Empire and being baffled by the logic of her decisions, I decided to New Game+ it and play through as Hufflepuff (or Faerghus Kingdom or whatever Dimitri’s blue lot are called). New Game+ carries over all your character levels, weapons, base facility unlocks and so on, so any characters that overlap between Red and Blue, plus Shez, were all incredibly overpowered to start with. Well, not quite to start with, as for the …

Squiggle Drop (iPad): COMPLETED!

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Squiggle Drop is a simple idea but done in such a way to make you feel monumentally stupid. The idea is that you draw a shape, which then (usually) drops down onto some objects and, hopefully, completes a task. So you might have a button that needs pressing, so you draw a brick and drop it on. Or there’s a chasm for a car to cross, so you draw a bridge. Things are somewhat more complicated when you need to …

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Although I don’t really have any affinity for Fire Emblem, that hasn’t put me off getting hooked by series spinoffs in the past – Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and the first Fire Emblem Warriors are two of my favourite games, but the old strategy titles I could take or leave. Not because they’re bad, just because they’re not Advance Wars and permadeath (which I know can be turned off these days) is scary. Three Hopes is a musou Warriors-style reimagining …

Hue Flowing (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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This is a very simple platformer concept: explore, collect icons that allow you one additional air jump, then reach the area you can only get to once you’ve collected them all. But, it’s the way it is presented that is absolutely beautiful. The area you explore is blank, but as you move around you sort of slosh watercolour paint everywhere to colour it in. Like, if de Blob and The Unfinished Swan had a 2D platformer baby. You can wall …

Cave Buster (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Cave Buster is a short retro-style platformer which perhaps could be classed as a Metroidvania if it was a bit longer. You get a few upgrades that let you reach other areas, but there aren’t many areas (or many upgrades) so it doesn’t feel like you get to use them enough to consider it as that sort of game. It is fun while it lasts, however. I’m assuming it was the result of a Game Jam or something, with the …

Songbird Symphony (Switch): COMPLETED!

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You know, I’ve often wondered what Guitar Hero would be like if it was a cute platformer full of birds. Well, actually I never have. But clearly, someone did because here it is. Songbird Symphony stars Birb, a little bird of unknown origin, who sets out to find his family and where he came from. This involves some Metroidvania-lite platforming but instead of unlocking new skills to reach new areas, you unlock new musical notes which you tweet at locked …

About An Elf (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It was only a few days ago when I was saying about playing baffling games, and, well, here’s another one! About An Elf is somewhere between a visual novel and an RPG, where you play an elf trying to rediscover Elftopia or something. The plot is nonsense and, frankly, not what you’re going to be focussing on if you play it because that art style. Are the characters real people dressed up? Are they CGI? Models? Some combination of all …

Time on Frog Island (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Seems that “cosy” is an actual genre these days, and Time on Frog Island pretty much fits in that box – there’s no chance of death, no real time limits (a couple of A-B time trials aside), and seemingly no way to fail. The story follows you, a sailor who, having lost his wife (her having turned into a plant or something?) has shipwrecked on Frog Island. So called, because of all the frogs wot live there. And a toad. …