A while back, I played the demo of this and enjoyed it enough to stick it on my wishlist until it went on sale. Eventually, it did! While it might not look like anything special, and there are a million late-90s style 3D platformers around, what this has that most of the others don’t is a properly controllable character. As in, the jumping and “steering” physics and controls feel right. You know how on the Super NES, Mario in Super …
And here it is! Party House is one of the games on UFO 50. The idea is, on each level, you are hosting a house party and every time you open the door a random guest from a pool of guests turns up. Each guest has a different effect on the party, however, and that’s where it gets hard. So to start with, your house can only hold 5 guests. Some guests increase the popularity of the party (which, each …
UFO 50 is presented to you as a collection of 50 games from an 80s game development company called UFOSoft, for their three computer systems called the LX-I, LX-II and LX-III. The thing is, UFOSoft never existed, the games never came out in the 80s, and the LX series of computers aren’t real. It’s all a lie. Except that there are actually 50 games here. All full games, fully realised, and they all could have plausibly existed in the 1980s …
While I was playing Cat Survivors, I was convinced it was actually the same game as Catlord that I’d played a year or two ago. I mean, they’re both cat-based Survivors games that were peanuts on the eShop. Turns out they’re not the same game. Catlord was a freebie from No Gravity Games, and although it does have a cat and is a Survivors game, it plays somewhat differently. Firstly, it’s harder. Secondly, you have a jump button that you …
Dice People is a stand-out game in that Game Nacional bundle. It’s a bit better put together, but also, it seems to be a unique type of game. Unless there’s another similar one I’ve not heard of – you tell me. You buy dice people, each of which are wizards or fighters or whatever and so attack in different ways. You then “roll” them into a playfield, which plays out a bit like a Tower Defence game as baddies swarm …
There was a ridiculous bundle deal on the Switch eShop last week where you could get 21 games for 89p. Of course, they’re not going to be good games, are they? In fact, I already had several of them from a similar bundle last year so knew the quality I was going to be getting. That said, they’re not all shovelware. So much of the eShop is full of terrible games that are clones of “real” games and have similar …
It may have taken a while for me to finally get round to playing SteamWorld Heist II, but when it – and all the other SteamWorld games – were reduced in a massive eShop sale I was reminded it was the only SW game I hadn’t completed. And now, it isn’t. Like the first game, it’s a 2D, side-on, turn based strategy game. In that respect it’s more of the same as the original, and I’ll leave it to you, …
I do like a Kaz Ayabe game. I’ve played a few recently, including the previous Shin chan tie-in. They’re all set in sleepy Japanese villages where very little happens and this one is the same. However! Shin chan’s dog, Shiro, wanders off and finds a mysterious train that take him (and, when he is led there, Shin chan) to Coal Town – a mining town that nobody in the village seems to have heard of. Your days are split between …
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a silly little game where you, a bored child left with your uncle while your parents have gone on summer holiday (leaving you behind to go to summer school because you’re bad or stupid or something), decide to get a driving licence, a car, and then modify it so you can drive off into space. Obviously. And just LOOK at the art style. Look at it. It plays out as an open world game where …
On the ugvm Podcast a number of months ago, Choobs spoke about Unicorn Overlord at length and the idea of battles within battles really appealed so I put it on a wishlist. I’ve now had the game for months but on a later episode of the same podcast, Kendrick dissed it and that put me off a bit so it got moved down the pile until I picked it out a couple of weeks ago. Well, Choobs was right and …
It’s Mr Driller only on the Game Boy Advance, only on the Switch. It’s missing the many game types and variations from later games in the series like Drill Land, but it’s the same gameplay and just as much fun as it ever was. But hoo is it hard. The constant worry that you should just dash for the end rather than try to grab some air, or vice versa, when you’re low on oxygen. The all-to-easy way to miscalculate …
A silly point and click game where you’re a gritty noir-ish hard-boiled detective? And you’re a duck? Sold. Aside from being a duck, you’re every cliche known to the character. Your apartment is your office, you have no money, you’re going through a divorce, you seem to have a drinking problem – a full house. Desperate for work, you take on a job for an anonymous person who wants you to investigate a lunch theft from the staff kitchen in …
There is nothing to say about Jupiter’s Picross series that I haven’t already said. There’s not much new here that hasn’t been done before, it’s just more brain-wrinkling and relaxing (at the same time, somehow) picross puzzles. One thing I would like, perhaps, is fewer of the 5×5, 10×10 and even 15×15 puzzles, and more of the 40×30 ones. There are only a handful here, and you only get them if you have save data from previous games in the …
And that’s it. I’ve officially run out of Xenoblade to play. In about a year and a half I’ve completed the entire series of games in some sort of obsessive newfan flurry of activity. Why did I sleep on this series for so long? It’s bloody great. Anyway, I’ve said a lot about the three numbered games in the series, and I have to say I was a little worried coming to X because I’d heard it wasn’t quite the …
No, I don’t know why I played this either. It wasn’t that great, with very flickery graphics, was very short, and did nothing much other games (even at the time of original release) hadn’t already done far better. Probably a miracle it managed as well as it did on the Game Boy hardware, although, I suspect, impossible to see on the original device’s blurry screen – it’s bad enough on the telly – but still average at best.
