#ReturnoftheObraDinn is awesome. Every time I passed the #NintendoSwitch I would get lost in thoughts about the ship's crew. #completed

SteamWorld Heist II (Switch): COMPLETED!

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, the reader, to figure out what that means in terms of gameplay as the internet surely can provide. What I will talk about instead, is just how good and well balanced it all is.

Each character in your party can have different classes, weapons and skills (and you can switch between missions as to what, if you like, and “borrow” skills from other classes with the right items as well) so your team is incredibly customisable. Sometimes, it’s good to have a few short-range but powerful weapons, other times sniping with accuracy from a distance. Or maybe being able to move further, or move twice, in a turn is helpful. There’s tradeoffs between sniping being great from a log way off but you waste a turn reloading, or big explody weapons dealing lots of damage to several clustered enemies, but it’s a bit hard to aim and can damage you, or your cover. There’s a lot to think about! As characters level up you get to choose more skills too.

It’s also really addictive. Most missions are probably only 15-20 minutes long, so the urge to do just one more mission is strong. Or, you missed out some (probably unnecessary) loot in a level, so you replay it just to make sure you’ve collected everything. Or, you boat around the overworld seeking things to destroy for other bonuses and see another thing to get, explore, or beat on the map somewhere. There’s always one more thing to do.

Oh yes, the boat. You see, you have a submarine to traverse the world, and as you progress you can upgrade it with better firepower or more oxygen for underwater boating. The seas are full of enemies that need to be run from, or defeated, for fun and profit.

There’s a lot to the game but the real pull isn’t the excellent gameplay, it’s the (as always) perfectly crafted SteamWorld, er, world. The humour, the silly robot characters, the puns, and the references to other games in the series. Plus the excellent gameplay, of course.

Newly Debuted Rookie Already Completed Military Enlistment At Only 22 Years Old #Completed #Debuted #Enlistment #Military #Newly #Rookie #Years
https://kpopnewshub.com/newly-debuted-rookie-already-completed-military-enlistment-at-only-22-years-old/?fsp_sid=2100

Mega-lo-Mania (Mega Drive): COMPLETED!

Yes, this again. For the record, this time I played it on my Retroflag GPi, and I played as Scarlet (the red one). One rival managed to make it to the Mother of All Battles at the end, and they were quickly dispatched.

Catlord (Switch): COMPLETED!

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 can use to either jump over baddies or stomp them. Then there’s a shield which you turn on and off when you want (although it has a usage bar so you can’t leave it on). Oh, and you don’t have many powerups – just balls and superballs.

So yeah, it’s a different game, it’s not as good, and somehow I still got some enjoyment out of it.

Dice People (Switch): COMPLETED!

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 the screen. I think, but I’m not entirely sure, but the number on the dice determines your strength or HP or both or something. Kill baddies and they leave items and money.

You use the money to buy more dice people, and the items to unlock millions of things on the skill tree. Or rather, Massive Skill Grid. You can increase probabilities, strength, obtained item quantities, and so on here, making the next round a bit easier. Eventually you unlock enough and progress far enough to take on a boss, after which you’ve completed the game.

It’s surprisingly addictive, and more fun than I’ve made it out to appear, I assure you.

Cat Survivors (Switch): COMPLETED!

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 names in order to trick you like “Battlefields: Duty of Call” or “GTA: Car Theft Hero” or whatever. They are Bad Games and you Must Not Buy Them. No, these ones are from what I assume is a Spanish publisher called Game Nacional and the main reason they’re not great is because they’re just unpolished or a bit lacking rather than scams.

Turns out, then, that although it’s a bit wonky and generic, Cat Survivors is a playable enough Survivors-like. You’re a cat and automatically attack and, well, you already know how to play these games. Sure, other games do this better, but – apart from sometimes getting so overpowered it’s impossible to die – Cat Survivors is perfectly fine. And for 89/21p, you can’t complain too much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDmzREcsVkY

The Sword of Stone (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Searching for this online is a pain because Google thinks you’re talking about the animated film “The Sword in the Stone”, which this Game Gear game, hidden in the Evercade’s firmware, has nothing to do with. Instead of being related to that, the game is essentially a visual novel, albeit one that plays out more like an RPG.

You pick one of three characters, and then have a quest given to you. The world you all inhabit is, well, here’s the blurb:

The world of Mindevil is in danger! Begin a journey as one of the three heroes in order to put an end to the conflict between the four kingdoms. Complete all 7 chapters revealing a complex story with many branches and save the world… with a twist at the end!

So your quest plays out differently depending on which character you choose. You’re initially limited to different areas of the map each, as you have different skills that allow you to fight different types of monster blocking each route. Once you complete it with one character, you’re encouraged to do it with the other two, and you’ll see how their stories link. After completing all three, three further quests are possible by making different choices eventually unlocking a final quest where all three characters work together.

I found it a little frustrating to play, with lots of repetition and backtracking, and so much repeated dialogue it really slowed down progression. If you can get past that, though, there’s a decent little game here with some really clever gating and interwoven storylines.

Metal Slug 2 (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Another SNK cartridge (actually, two) arrived for the Evercade and since my daughter and I enjoyed playing the first Metal Slug in co-op recently, we did the same with the sequel.

Naturally, it’s more of the same. Only now you can ride camels as well as tanks, and after a few levels it becomes clear that Definitely Not Any Real Middle Eastern Military Dictator is in cahoots with actual aliens.

It still has the slowdown issues of the first game, but it’s silly fun regardless.

Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town (Switch): COMPLETED!

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 the usual Ayabe tasks of catching fish and bugs, running errands for your family and neighbours, doing a bit of gardening, and making friends with the local kids. It is never explained why there are children and pensioners in this village, but nobody inbetween (aside from one childless woman and a visiting chef) so who are the parents? And why doesn’t anyone care they’re all out after dark? Anyway, yes, your time is split doing that stuff, and also visiting Coal Town and helping out there.

It seems the mayor of Coal Town has, now the mine is running low on coal, gone a bit mad and is doing evil nefarious things which I won’t spoil. It’s your job, as a five year old so obviously best qualified, to help out and stop this happening. Which mostly involves cooking things, collecting items for an inventor, and – crucially – mine cart racing. Of course. Without giving too much away, the plot seems heavily borrowed from the Your Name anime, wrapped up in a Ghibi bow. No bad thing, though.

Unlike other games in the series, there’s no deadline for getting everything done. In previous titles, you’d have a summer, or a month, or a repeating week timeloop, but here you don’t seem to be able to run out of days. Which makes the whole thing even more laid back and relaxing than before. In fact, only the arcadey mine cart races are anything but.

So not a huge change to the formula. It’s back to mostly static (as in, not fully 3D) environments of the past after the Natsu-mon game changed it, but then I’m not sure which order the games were originally released in in Japan. It does mean a return of the “hold left to walk off the screen and enter to the left on the next screen and so walk off again immediately” issue, but it’s a minor thing.

Definitely a recommended play if you’re a fan of Ayabe’s work.

Moss Book II (Quest): COMPLETED!

I don’t know why it took me so long after completing the first Moss game to get into the second one, especially since I bought it almost immediately after reaching the end of Moss Book I. Maybe other games came along. Maybe dealing with charging and updating and wearing the VR headset was just hassle. Maybe I forgot. Who knows.

Anyway, it’s here and done now. And of my, what an experience. Book II follows on directly from the first game and is, really, more of the same. Beautiful little dioramas of action and puzzles with a cute mouse and her sword (and, later, deadly frisbees and a massive hammer). Objects you directly manipulate, creatures you can fight, or, in some cases, use to fight on your behalf.

Somehow, it’s even more beautiful than the first game. Especially when you bear in mind that I’m playing this on a Quest 2 which is the VR equivalent of a Citroen 2CV. Some of the areas are just incredible, and being in VR you can look around and even behind things with never gets old or fails to impress. There’s a massive boss later on – a blacksmith with a hammer – where the graphics and scale and VR-ness all combine to give quite the experience.

Adding additional weapons, some of which are needed for puzzles (like a dash power or a massive hammer blow), as well as some extra gimmicks like portals and walk-on-walls type gravity flipped areas mix up the formula from Book I too. There’s also a few scary and distressing sections (nothing too strong, though) which add heart to the cute.

I think I said before that I’m not a big fan of VR, but Moss (both books) makes it difficult to maintain that stance. It’s not what you’d expect from a VR game, at least, not what I would, but I’d happily play more games like this.

Explorers (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

A little Pico-8 game which I picked up from itch a while back, Explorers has you boating about a randomly generated archipelago, finding treasure, meeting other people who you can try to convince to trade with you or help you, and sometimes stealing their boats.

The aim is to complete your map, which you can do by visiting everywhere, but you can also fill it in more quickly by asking the people you meet about where they’re from or have been and they’ll draw some of it for you.

It isn’t particularly complicated, but it’s an incredible example of what you can do with Pico-8!

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Obviously the reason I started playing this is because of the absurd name. How I came to own it in the first place, however, is a mystery. Was it free on Amazon? Did I get it in one of those itch.io charity bundles? Ghosts? Who knows.

CCFWTBT is a platformer where you, as an acrobat called Belle (along with her pet bell called Chime) have to rescue her boyfriend who is kidnapped by an ex-friend. It plays out like a 8-bit title, different levels, tricky platforming, bosses, and so on. You use Chime as a sort of boomerang that can activate things but also help you reach places higher up. Getting used to Chime and how to use it took a while.

Between levels you have a map you can freely navigate, with various places to visit like an inn and a town, where characters give you side missions. Most of these involve revisiting levels once you’ve obtained extra items or abilities. This was one of the reasons that I got a strong Shantae vibe from the game, which is no bad thing. It’s not as good as games in that series, but it’s better than the vast majority of these retro-styled platformers.

I loved the cast of characters and their relationships. There’s a fun twist near the end regarding the kidnapper too (which I won’t reveal) which meant the game was a fair bit longer than I was expecting. I didn’t complete every side mission but I did a fair few of them, and (of course) completed the main game. If I didn’t have such a huge backlog of games I’d probably go back and mop up some more bits but, sigh, time, eh?

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip (Switch): COMPLETED!

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 you collect items of rubbish that you can spend on car upgrades, and find money to buy items, weapons and so on. There are missions where you have to find stuff or go places, and loads of weird characters to meet. Like the guy who is clearly burning alive on the beach but refuses to listen to you saying he’s fine until you return later to find his charred remains and nick his sunglasses. For the guy in a back alley who wants you to help him do crimes, but not really bad crimes, just middling crimes. Or the kid who fences stolen cars. Or the fast food seller who is legally bound to give you “beach fries” for free whenever you ask, which you then take home to feed your fish with. It’s all very silly.

As a game, it’s a bit flawed. The physics are a bit wonky and the collision detection is terrible. Platforming is harder than it really needs to be partly because of the camera and partly because you can’t gauge depth properly. Some of the missions are a bit too vague to understand what you need to do, and the minigames (like yoga and football) are fun for a while but tedious when you have to do them enough times to hit a quota and complete a task.

That said, it is such an absurd game it really does have to be experienced. If only for the strange squashy pets you can “make” that follow you round for seemingly no purpose.

Luigi’s Mansion (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

Nintendo were kind enough to give this GameCube game out to people who pay for the top tier of their online subscription service. Back when it originally came out – at the GameCube’s launch – it was perceived to be a disappointment. Indeed, I eschewed it in favour of Super Monkey Ball and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 because it wasn’t the follow-up to Super Mario 64 we all hoped was happening. Of course, I did eventually play it and yes, it turns out it was great after all. But still very different to a Mario game.

Another complaint levelled at it at the time was the length. Nintendo had reportedly “done some research” and found that people wanted “shorter games”. Luigi’s Mansion is, by modern standards, pretty short at about 5 or 6 hours, but that’s still plenty long enough as far as I’m concerned.

Now, some twenty-something years later, how does it stand up?

Perfectly, it turns out. Nintendo’s art still looks great now, even though it’s all 4:3 and SD and running on a toaster. The gameplay is as great as it ever was, and very little has actually aged. One thing that has, I found, is I could not longer control it with the default “invert Y” setting. Why this is, I don’t know. Maybe in time I’ll be unable to cope with anything but the definitely backwards “natural scrolling” mouse/trackpad setting that computer operating systems default to these days. Sad times if so. Anyway, with the Y setting changed I was away.

Everyone knows how to play Luigi’s Mansion – find ghosts, scan their weaknesses, suck ’em up – so I won’t spend time on that. Needless to say, it’s still fun. Luigi’s Mansion 3 obviously improved so many areas of the game (such as everything being more interactive – here Luigi just grinds up against most things going “unngh unngh oohyeah”) but the core mechanics are still sound.

One negative I have, which presumably I had originally but my diary doesn’t go back that far, is the Boo chasing. To properly complete the game you have to find 50 hidden Boos, one in most rooms, and when you do they float off and you have to suck them up. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to escape the hoover and fly through walls. Chasing them when they do this is a bit tedious, but there are some that run off to rooms that although next door, can only be accessed via a full loop of the mansion so it takes ages – especially as they tend to escape again back to where they came from.

That’s all though. Everything else is excellent.

Un Pas Fragile (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Un Pas Fragile is a short narrative game about a frog who wants to do ballet. As all frogs do, I expect. It plays out over a few days, where you leave your house, get the bus, go to ballet school, and do some ballet.

Of course, other people (er, animals) are not as accepting of your life choices as you’d like, so you get laughed at and bullied to begin with, meaning that you have to do some simple interactions with them each day to try and win them over. Then, when it comes you giving your final ballet performance in the game, your new friends (assuming you’ve made some) all make up the audience.

It’s pretty simple, but very sweet.

Pesticide Not Required (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

What if Vampire Survivors was a chop-chop, dig-dig game? As in, as well as auto-attacking swarms of enemies with increasingly more powerful weaponry, you also plant crops, mine ore and catch fish? Well, Pesticide Not Required answers that question.

As with other Survivors-type/Bullet Heaven games, there’s the usual kill things, get XP, go up levels, spend points on mostly random updates, and repeat. Only here, in order to progress, you have to buy seeds at the end of each day and plant them, keeping them watered until they’re able to be harvested. At first this is tricky as you’ve limited tillable soil area, plus you’re dealing with all the baddies, but you can unlock helpers who can plant and water on your behalf, and you’re able to purchase extra planting spots too.

This addition set of chores really changes the gameplay a fair bit, as you have to specifically go to areas of your garden as well as just avoid baddies, or you won’t progress. Is it better than Vampire Survivors? No. But it’s well worth playing. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I class it as complete because I completed every scenario in every season.

Chance’s Lucky Escape (Playdate): COMPLETED!

A silly little point and click adventure game on the games console probably least suited to the genre. Although I suppose I did play Batty Zabella so perhaps not.

According to the official Playdate podcast, Chance’s Lucky Escape picks up where a different game in the same universe – Inspector Waffles (which I’ve not played) is set. The Waffleverse? Maybe. Anyway, Chance is a dog who was supposed to be the getaway driver for the foiled crime in the Waffles game and this game is about his escape. Hence the name.

It’s pretty short, with only a few single screen locations, but it is enjoyable enough without any obscure puzzles. It’s quite funny too, and certainly impressive for a Playdate title.

Souldiers (PS5): COMPLETED!

From the name I fully expected this game to be a soulslike so just clicked nope-skip every time I saw it for sale. But then I stumbled across it on a Metroidvania Games You May Have Missed list and I re-evaluated. Then I noticed it was on sale for about three quid on PSN and so bought it.

First thing I have to say about it is that it’s HUGE. I’m used to 2D Metroidvanias for being 8-10 hours long, maybe 15 at the most, but Souldiers took me over 40 to complete. The world is made up of several large areas like a mine and a pyramid and a sky fortress and each one is about as big as a reasonably sized game by itself. In fact, if I’d completed the first area and that was the end, I’d have felt that was plenty of game, but no – it kept on going.

The plot is something about how you are one of a band of soldiers who, in the middle of a war, end up trapped in a cave. A fairy-like being appears to you and offers you an escape, but to another world. With no hope of getting out any other way, you accept and all step through a portal, ending up in what seems to be a sort of limbo that all sorts of races go to after they die.

This world is under threat though, bad thing with all the power is taking over the place, and so you volunteer to help. Which means you mostly have to do it all yourself. Sure, some of your fellow soldier and new friends help out a bit, but you know how it goes.

It’s a vast Metroidvania with each area being very different in terms of style and gimmicks. There are loads of power-ups, upgrades and secrets, some tricky bosses, and a cast of varied characters, as well as a few twists along the way. Definitely recommended to fans of the genre. Like me!

Piffle (iOS): COMPLETED!

Piffle, or more accurately, Piffle+ (it’s a free IAP-less Apple Arcade version of an IAP’d game), is a simple arcade puzzle-ish game that is a bit Breakout and a bit Peggle. You throw balls (which are cat heads) upwards at blocks, destroy as many as you can, and then they all move down a row before you have another go.

Different blocks have different properties, like they can only be hit from certain directions, or they replicate, or they capture your balls, and your balls can augmented with powers like additional strength or explosives, in the same sort of way most Match-3 games are these days. Clearly extra balls and powers were how the in-app purchases worked in the non-Apple Arcade version.

Anyway, it’s a bit mindless and isn’t exactly taxing on the puzzle muscles, but it whiled away some time.