It’s 2019, and the first game to be completed this year is Super Smash Bros. And by complete, I mean, the MASSIVE new single player mode – “World of Light”. In brief, this mode is a huge map with lots of fight events on it. Some are simple one-on-one brawls, some have quirks like gravity that randomly flips or after a few seconds one hit kills you, and others have a number of unusual fighters such as an army of …
I did have a longer post for this but the WordPress app swallowed it and I can’t be bothered repeating myself. What I basically said, though, is that I’d unfairly maligned Ristar for years because I didn’t like it and it wasn’t Sonic, but actually giving it time it’s not that bad at all. It’s still no Sonic, but it’s a decent enough game in its own right. EDIT: ONE YEAR LATER! I found the post the WordPress app ate. …
I have to admit, I never really played any of the Ninja Gaiden games originally. I knew they were hard, but oh my word was this hard. There’s no way in hell I’d ever get close to completing it without save states, and it is just that it is difficult – it’s a mess in terms of collision detection, and baddies that respawn if you back-track a single pixel. These two things often conspire against you, as you’re knocked back …
The Phantasy Star games are some of my very most favourite RPGs. Phantasy Star III was my first one, but I later played the original and, although it wasn’t quite the same, it was also excellent. Since those days, I’ve completed the first game several times – on the Master System originally more than once, in an emulator, and in the Game Boy Advance Phantasy Star Collection. But, loading it up briefly aside, not for over a decade. Until today. …
What does ESWAT stand for? Is it like SWAT only with an E like eBook and eLearning and eMail? Or are you supposed to say “es-what”? Who knows. But it’s certainly more interesting than the game. Yes, friends, ESWAT is a proper stinker. A clunky platform shooter with rubbish weapon selection controls and boring levels. A game that suggests, from screenshots and the first level or so, it’s a bit like Rolling Thunder (which is a great game), but disappointingly, …
The first of what will hopefully be many games completed on the Sega Mega Drive Classics collection on the Switch. I was going to play Fatal Labyrinth, but the lack of a manual and the terrible video options (which don’t affect Alex Kidd so much) put me off for now. Instead, this. The Mega Drive Alex Kidd game isn’t as good as the Master System “Miracle World” title. There. I said it. It looks prettier (although it’s still almost Master …
This came out of nowhere when announced during a Nintendo Direct a while back. Not least in that we’ve not had a Katamari game on a Nintendo console before, and the series has been pretty much dead for ages. Reroll is a remake of the original Katamari Damacy game for the PS2, upping the resolution, reducing the slowdown, making everything look a bit prettier, and removing the loading breaks between certain size increases. The result, is pretty much just perfect …
PETA’s favourite game returns for more family-friendly forced animal abuse.
A few years ago, I completed this on the Xbox 360. And now I have completed it on the Switch. As in, the NES game in the NES classics thing. It’s a decent little vertically scrolling shooter with an odd bell shooting system (shoot bells enough and they go blue, collect a blue one to speed up your ship), and I lost my ship’s arms at one point so couldn’t drop bombs. After beating the end boss the game loops …
Bulb Boy is a nice little walk-and-click adventure game and it was very cheap recently. And by nice, I mean horribly grotesque and full of demonic imagery and guts and dead things and maggots and evil spiders and a giant monster made from your own poo. There’s a story, although nothing is ever spoken or written down. It’s all gestures and speech bubbles with pictures in. Given the content of the game, that’s probably for the best. I don’t really …
My first impressions of Car Quest were, it has to be said, less than favourable. It had, as I mentioned on Twitter after my first hour’s play, a definite air of “My First Unity” game about it, not least because of the sparse, blocky environment that just screams “I can’t draw but I can sellotape geometric shapes together”. You, a car, don’t fit within this style either thematically or graphically, and it feels like a placeholder that was never replaced …
Well that was over quickly. So much so I’m a little annoyed I paid £11.99 for it, and that was an offer price! That much money for a game that offered no challenge, lasted less than an hour, and has zero replayability? At least Pan-Pan was a tenth of that. Money aside, The Gardens Between is a beautiful and clever puzzle game. Each level is a small island, and your only controls are to move forwards and backwards in time, …
Well this turned out to be disappointing. As a big fan of the original PixelJunk Monsters, this sequel with its incredibly pretty clay graphics (rather than the somewhat minimal ones seen in the first game) was a certain buy. I’d played the demo and yep – it was great. Sadly, the demo didn’t make clear the horrific loading times. Starting a level? Wait for ages. Want to restart? Wait for ages. Complete a level? Wait for ages. And I mean …
Having been on sale a number of times, and being pretty cheap already, I’d eyed up the lovely looking Pan-Pan on several previous occasions. Reviews saying it is slightly disappointing tempered my enthusiasm and so I always put my virtual cash away. Until today. And sadly, the reviews were right. Pan-Pan looks really nice, with its flat shaded, low-poly graphics and almost Pikmin-like world to explore, but it falls very short of excellent for a number of reasons. Firstly, its …
This game is, now bear with me, a pinball metroidvania adventure game set on an island where you’re an ant who also happens to be the new postman, and you collect fruit whilst taped to a ball. As soon as you arrive on the island, the god creature that oversees it is attacked and it’s up to you to find all the tribal elders who together can heal the god. Oh yes, and you’re armed with a party horn, and …
