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 …
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 …
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 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 …
Yes, I’ve returned to another incomplete game to finish it off. Technically, I had already completed it, but I’d not managed to finish Special Mode which is unlocked after reaching the end of Arcade Mode. I’d had a couple of attempts, but failed. Unlike Arcade Mode, you can’t restart from any previously reached stage on Special Mode – you have to start from the beginning each time. Annoyingly, I’d reached the final stage on one of my attempts, then lost …
And that’s it! By the end it got pretty easy, as I realised that you only really need to make weapons for the main characters and fob off the NPCs with whatever you have in stock that most closely fits their request. The final hour or two was mainly waiting. Each main customer came in one at a time, wanted “the ultimate weapon” to defeat the Evil Lord, and then came back a little later after I’d forged it. For …
I do like a bit of Picross. Considering it’s a puzzle game that requires thought, I can lose hours to it by switching my brain off. Seriously – the puzzles complete themselves after a while. It’s like a reflex or something. Picross e5 is exactly like Picross e4, so if you’ve played that you know what to expect here. The only slight surprise is that they’ve managed to squeeze some extra pixels out of the bottom screen and throw you …
A lot of things, it seems. I’ve had a glut of new games over the last month and I’ve been playing each for a short time. I’ve yet to settle down and just work on one or two, so I’ve not made much progress in each. So here’s a list, in no particular order: Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition (Vita) My subscription to PS+ was autorenewed before I could cancel it (the whole service got DDOS’d and I couldn’t log …
Some games can’t be described in great detail otherwise you’d give away plot spoilers. I can’t really mention anything about The Starship Damrey at all for the same reason. Even in its opening dialogue, it tells you that you’re going in blind. Nothing is explained. Not even the controls, let alone what you’re supposed to do. So I don’t want to ruin anything. What I will say, is that this is a good story, with some light game-y sections, and …
I may have completed the story in this, but that was at around the 27 hour mark. Which, considering I’ve just scurried past 42 hours, was some time ago. As I’ve mentioned before, there are loads of side quests, but I’ve still hardly touched them. Instead, I’ve been changing Life and choosing different careers to master. After playing the story as a Paladin, which, as I suspected, worked out well in terms of fighting things, I decided on a complete …
And so it came to pass that my first completed game in the grand old year of 2015, was Fantasy Life. Do not be of the mind that just because I got it for Christmas, it’s somewhat short. No, somehow in just over a week I’ve crammed more than 27 hours into it. In fact, since my last post about it just 5 days have passed and 25 hours of game have been played. And that’s just on one of the …
Fantasy Life (3DS) It’s like 8 RPGs in one! I chose my first life to be a Paladin, applying the logic that any combat required in the other lives may benefit from my skills as a trained killer. Or something. I’m not very far in, only a couple of hours, but I’m already engrossed in the seemingly endless number of sidequests (which, unlike most RPGs, actually affect your progression in the game in a big way), and the game is …
It’s a been a little while since I posted, so a round-up of recent gaming adventures… Hyrule Warriors (Wii U) Almost 50 hours have been spent on this now. It’s such an addictive game, and considering how few level maps there are (maybe 10?) there’s so much actual game content and variety. With loads of weapons still to unlock, and several characters still mostly unused, never mind a yet-to-be-started Master Quest mode, there’s a lot left to do. Most recently, …
On the one hand, this is a perfectly serviceable Metroidvania style game with meaty Batman Arkham type combat and a story to follow on from the Arkham Origins game. On the other hand, it’s a 2D game that tries to fit into a 3D space, with the plane you’re on frequently changing and disorientating you, and a map that serves to confuse as much as direct. Detective Mode returns, but is rarely sufficient to show where to go or what …
