I aborted an attempt to play Pony Island on my Mac a few years ago, as you have to press the left and right mouse buttons at the same time at some point, and with a Mac mouse you can’t do that. I had a PC mouse I could have plugged in instead, but I also had eleventybillion other games that didn’t require that sort of effort, so it got shelved. Until now! Sure, the Steam Deck actually has no …
What a lovely blue skies game this was. It wasn’t the open-world, post apocalyptic Kirby the trailers and pre-release media made out though, as it sticks to the same level structure as most of the classic Kirby titles, but it looks amazing and is a lot of fun. And is so, so easy! I completed the entire game, including the post-ending extra hard content, without dying at all. Or even coming close to dying. Or, a handful of bosses aside, …
Set in the same universe as Summer in Mara, Deiland starts out as superficially similar – chop down trees, smash rocks, grow crops – but set on a tiny planet instead of a big sea. There’s no exploration, and you only have a couple of small areas of other planets you can travel to as the story progresses, and also unlike Summer in Mara, there’s combat. Every so often, baddies will spawn on your little planet and you have to …
Well, there was no way I could not play the sequel after the first game, was there? Especially since they’re both so cheap! Isoland is, as expected, more of the same. A different island to the first game, but the story is linked. The main difference here, though, is there’s a time-travel element which affects some of the puzzles. Other than that, it’s the usual Cottongame point and click stuff with tile-slidey/combination-findy puzzle elements. Also like the first game, you …
Ages ago, I played a graphical adventure game called Mr Pumpkin Adventure. It was good, but very, very bizarre. Isoland is by the same guy and is also very bizarre, although perhaps not quite so much. You begin on an island, and although it seems your job might be to figure out where everyone has gone, in fact you mainly just discover the presence of aliens, and find clues and items to crack codes to open areas or activate things. …
I got this with some of my Club Nintendo stars. RIP Club Nintendo, by the way. I struggled with what to spend them on before they expired, and of the number I had left Wario Land 3 was the only one I didn’t already have on either my 3DS or Wii U that I hadn’t already completed. I do have it on the Game Boy Colour, but never finished it. About three levels in, I realised something was amiss. Not …
It’s the only C64-exclusive game I can ever remember being any good. Admittedly, I only ever had it as a demo from some Commodore magazine cover tape, but still. And it is pretty good, yes. I’m not a fan of the up-to-jump mechanism so often favoured in computer (as opposed to console) games, especially when it leaves a fire button free and unused as here (well, except when you want to jump down a level, but that just makes the …
The pirates are amazing. They’re all dead, and as a result are skeletons. And they act all hard and they’re not scared of anything, until a dog appears, anyway… So found may way into their hideout, did some mundane tasks for them (including killing cockroaches), and then beat up their boss. I found a load of “swag” too, although I’m not really sure what to do with it yet – it just sort of sits in my loft. Oh, and …
Still working through Story Mode on this. It seems a lot easier than I recall, but then, I haven’t reached the bloody hard biking bit yet. I’m dreading that, as I’m sure I almost exploded with actual rage last time. So today, I walked the Vans competition, got Iggy locked up, joined Skate Club (the first rule about Skate Club, is you don’t talk about Skate Club), impressed Tony Alva, wrecked the Big Wheel, and reached the Oil Rig via …
Carried on from where I left off yesterday. I spent most of my time wandering around finding new bits for the Skate Ranch, including some velvet ropes, a shark’s head, and a big dome thing. Unlocked some new areas on the way, and had to do some board, bike and graffiti “missions” for the local “cholo” gang, The Black Widows. Had to get myself a tattoo as well, so as to fit in with them. After that, and some skating …
With the original Golden Sun ending on a cliff-hanger, and The Lost Age carrying on directly from it (or rather, from slightly before the end of the first game), I didn’t really have a choice but to start it immediately afterwards. Well, not quite immediately, as you can transfer your saved game from the first game to the follow-up but this required half an hour of password input and correction. Not that you see the benefit of the password for …
One question I’m sure you often ask yourself, is what would a point and click adventure game animated by Terry Gilliam look like? It’s something I’ve certainly pondered hundreds of times, and now there’s a conclusive answer: The Procession to Calvary. Mechanically, it’s “just another adventure game” in the style of Monkey Island or Sam & Max. The humour is veering that way too, via Monty Python. But graphically, it’s like nothing else I’ve ever played. You see, all the …
I do wonder sometimes what it is that makes me decide to play certain games. I’d cast a rough eye over reviews of Biomutant around the time it came out and it seemed to be an average open world adventure/explorey game, so ignored it. It’s now on PS+ (or possibly PS++ or PS+++: It’s hard to tell these days) and I downloaded it for reasons unknown, then started to play it. After picking the fur colours for my… rat? Meerkat? …
Post Length Warning! I’ve become a little hooked on OpenAI’s ChatGTP. It’s a text-based response AI, which converses with you but can also be asked to create things. Like magic, it’s able to conjure up stuff you ask for. So I’ve asked it a lot: “Write an episode of Cheers where Norm is a zombie”, “Explain particle physics to a four year old”, “Tell a story like Three Billy Goats Gruff only the goats are successful women and the troll …
