Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

And that’s the pair of them. I’d never played this sequel before, but it turned out to be just as good as the first game. There have been a few quality of life tweaks, such as not needing to choose which challenges to do before you do them – now they act more like normal achievements – and some of the upgrades upgrade themselves as you use them, rather than need improved versions synthesising. The gameplay is the same as …

Bury Me My Love (Switch): COMPLETED!

Bury Me My Love is an interactive story, told through the medium of phone text messages, about a Syrian refugee called Nour trying to reach somewhere safe in Europe. You’re her husband, Majd, and you have to offer advice and support as she gets turned away from transport, borders and hotels, followed, trapped in refugee camps, left with nowhere to sleep, and potentially killed on the way. It’s based on real life experiences, and it’s a powerful story. Along the …

Azure Striker Gunvolt (Switch): COMPLETED!

Not that long ago (FIVE YEARS?! WHAT) I played, enjoyed and beat the 3DS version of this. I purposefully didn’t look back at what I wrote back then until just before writing this, and a few things surprised me. Firstly, I never did get the good ending last time. This time, I did! Secondly, I had difficulties in all different places this time. For example, the “fire boss” was a walkover before, but he was one of the difficult ones …

Whipseey and the Lost Atlas (Switch): COMPLETED!

With a passing glance, Whipseey looks an awful lot like a Kirby game. In fact, even holding your eye for a time, it still looks an awful lot like a Kirby game. It also sounds not dissimilar to a Kirby game. But it is not a clone of a Kirby game. In fact, it plays a bit more like the old Castlevania games, albeit with cute Kirby/not Kirby graphics and music. This is due to your main character, who has …

Mom Hid My Game! (Switch): COMPLETED!

Despite the hideous title, I’d seen this on the eShop frequently and thought it was silly enough to buy when I saw it cheap enough. And then it was cheap enough, so, well, here we are. It’s a hidden object game, only there’s only really one hidden object on each level – your Generic Handheld Gaming Device – which your mum has placed somewhere. You can rarely just pick it up, though, as there are things to avoid clicking on …

Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is very much a return to the first game, rather than the multiple small mansion structure of the 3DS second game in the series. Not that the second game was bad, but it works better as one big mansion. Or rather, one big hotel as it is here. Each floor is themed, with a boss ghost that fits into that theme, and the aim is to beat the bosses to get the lift buttons to allow you …

Diablo III (Switch): COMPLETED!

My favourite Diablo game is Heroes of Ruin on the 3DS. This is mainly because it’s my only previously played Diablo game. Of course, Heroes of Ruin isn’t really a Diablo game, because having Diablo on a handheld device would be ridiculous. UNTIL NOW. Well, until about a year or more ago when Diablo III came out for the Switch. I wanted it, but I always seemed to have other games on the go and kept forgetting to pick it …

Milkmaid of the Milky Way (Switch): COMPLETED!

Imagine if Another World was a point-and-click adventure game about a milkmaid in space, and all the dialogue was in rhyming couplets. Well, that’s Milkmaid of the Milky Way. It’s only a couple of hours long, but tells the story of how a struggling milkmaid has her cows abducted by aliens (as aliens are wont to do) one night and then manages to get aboard their spaceship to try and rescue them. The puzzles are mostly straightforward, with the exception …

One Strike (Switch): COMPLETED!

It’ll probably take longer to read this post than it took me to complete the game. One Strike is a one-on-one fighting game with the sort of graphics early Game Boy Advance games had, with colour palettes to suit the very dark GBA screen. Games like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon looked hideous when blown up on a big TV via an emulator, and so does One Strike. As the name suggests, you need to strike your opponent just once …

Assault Android Cactus+ (Switch): COMPLETED!

Some years ago, I got Assault Android Cactus on Steam, and I played it a bit via my Steam Link. It was great, but booting my Mac into Windows and setting the Link up and everything needing updating every time I did so got old fast so it’s rare I ever bother these days. But it’s a shame because sometimes games like this just don’t get played. Until now! The “+” version, which differs in ways I don’t know about, …

Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED!

No, not the same game again. You see, the game Celeste that most people know, and the one I completed already, isn’t the original Celeste. No, that’s a PICO-8 game which I’ve played before on my PocketChip handheld. I think I completed it too, but I have no record of doing so on this diary so I’ll have to assume I didn’t. Anyway, the original game was much simpler, with no story, 8-bit style graphics, and each screen is literally …

Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED!

I’ve seen a lot of people praise Celeste since it came out. Many of them saying it’s the best of the “stupidly difficult platformer” genre, which is presumably also populated with games like VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy and Slime-san. But, although I’ve liked some of those games before, I wasn’t sure I wanted another. Then Celeste was on sale of nearly-free, so I got it anyway. And it’s good. Really it is. The pixel art is nice and the story …

Pokémon Sword (Switch): COMPLETED!

It’s another Pokémon game, and yes, it’s very much like all the others. In fact, it’s probably more like the slightly older games, like X and Y, rather than Sun and Moon as it returns to the gym setup those games had and Sun/Moon ditched. What is different, is that there’s a new Wild Area, er, area. This massive (for a pokémon game) part of the map is full of wild pokémon which change depending on where in the area …

Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Switch): COMPLETED!

You know what? It’s actually pretty good. I assumed, due to the dismal sales and very little game news fanfare, that Starlink was rubbish, but in fact it was a lot of fun. Coming out just after the death of Plastic Game Tat (Lego Dimensions, Disney Infinity, Skylanders) was a bad first impression, but I picked up the Switch starter kit with physical Star Fox ship (which is obviously Switch exclusive and adds a bit to the story) for just …

Hyper Sentinel (Switch): COMPLETED!

I’ll be honest, shooters are not really my bag, and I was never a fan of Uridium, which this is clearly a modern(ish) update of. Sure, there are shooters I do like, and I’m a fairly recent convert to the Church of Fantasy Zone, but I’m just making my stance clear. I bought Hyper Sentinel because it code me about three pence. And that’s not even an exaggeration – it was 9 cents on the US eShop, and I had …