Anyone who describes themselves as a gamer, or even those who read a lot of books, collect DVDs (remember them?) or are avid fans of various other arts, know about The Backlog. It is, as a gamer at least, a list of games that have been bought (or acquired – most games are “free” these days) under the full intent to play, but for whatever reason are Pushed on the stack and have not yet reached Pop. Why these games …
With the original Golden Sun ending on a cliff-hanger, and The Lost Age carrying on directly from it (or rather, from slightly before the end of the first game), I didn’t really have a choice but to start it immediately afterwards. Well, not quite immediately, as you can transfer your saved game from the first game to the follow-up but this required half an hour of password input and correction. Not that you see the benefit of the password for …
It’s been a while since I went cold turkey on Animal Crossing, so I thought I’d inject a bit of something similar when this came up on sale on the Switch eShop. Apparently it’s the first Doraemon game to be officially localised for the West, but it’s also a Story of Seasons (née Harvest Moon) crossover title. How that robot cat/farming game amalgamation works is like this: The plot is about Noby, Doraemon and chums being magically sent back in …
Pikmin is, essentially, Nintendo’s take on the real-time strategy format, only you direct little carrot creatures to fetch and carry and multiply and stuff, rather than build tanks and so on. There are different colours of Pikmin which have different strengths and skills, and there are baddies to fight who all want to eat them. Pikmin 4 doesn’t deviate too much from this, but it is just so much more relaxing than the other games in the series. In the …
Before I start on the game itself, I wish to lodge a complaint. It isn’t about the game itself, and doesn’t affect the game itself, but it is something important and also something I’ve taken issue with before. Dude, Where Is My Beer? is rated PEGI 3. Right here on the Nintendo eShop: PEGI 3 essentially means suitable for all, and isn’t actually that common as any mild language, violence (even cartoon violence), skimpy clothing or most sorts of peril …
From the outside, Figment looks like the sort of game I’d really want to play (and, of course, is why I did). Interesting graphics style, the promise of puzzles, some weird story about being in a person’s subconscious, great voice acting. All of those are true. But, it’s just so, so dull and tedious. The main issue is the puzzles are often of a disguised Sokoban nature. You have to flip a switch to activate a thing, but you have …
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 …
Alligator New York, the setting for this game, is like Real New York only everyone is an alligator instead of a human being. If I were an alligator, I’d probably struggle to wear human clothes, drive human cars, and use human tools, but apparently instead of alligator things, human things work just fine. And alligators can have moustaches and hair? Of course. As a mysterious alligator, decked out in a 1920s Speakeasy-going suit, you’re convinced by paranoid young alligator Pat …
A rare (these days!) post about a game I’m playing but have not yet completed! So I’ve very much enjoyed recent, as in, 3DS onwards, Pokémon games. Partly because I’ve played them all while my daughter plays the other game (Violet, this time) and we sort of race to the end. Naturally, I win. This time around there has been more than usual in the way of complaints about the game. Mainly to do with bugs and performance issues, and …
This looked like a lovely wee game when I saw it appear on the Switch eShop, so because I’m morally against paying full price for anything these days I put it on my wish list in the hope of a sale. And then, it appeared on PS+, saving me even more money! It’s a unique looking, black and white 2D characters in a 3D world game with a hand-drawn style, which is why it originally stood out to me. For …
I aborted an attempt to play Pony Island on my Mac a few years ago, as you have to press the left and right mouse buttons at the same time at some point, and with a Mac mouse you can’t do that. I had a PC mouse I could have plugged in instead, but I also had eleventybillion other games that didn’t require that sort of effort, so it got shelved. Until now! Sure, the Steam Deck actually has no …
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 …
It’s been a long time since a Lego game came out. This one is (yet another) Star Wars themed one, which re-treads a lot of ground from previous Lego Star Wars games due to the fact they’re based on the same films. They are, however, all new levels, and the most recent two films have never been developed into a Lego game either, so that’s OK. It’s also a “new engine”, “rewritten from the ground up” or something, so you …
I used to play Echo Bazaar, an online web-based story RPG thing from Failbetter games, ages ago. Before it was renamed as Fallen London, which is also the setting of the game. It was good, although you really needed to pay for extra moves and features to get the most out of it. I’m against IAPs as a rule so kind of fell off it. I did love the Lovecraft/Pratchett crossover vibe of the world though, and so Sunless Sea …
