deKay

The Witness (PS4)

Posted on 17/04/2016 Written by deKay

Never has a game made me feel so damn clever. But on the other hand, it frequently made me feel incredibly stupid. “But of course!” I’d facepalm myself “It’s so obvious now I’ve spent twenty minutes staring at it”.

The Witness is not the game I thought it was going to be. When I heard it was about walking round a beautiful island finding puzzles to solve, I expected a variety of puzzles. I didn’t read much about the game because I wanted to discover everything myself, which I frequently do (currently on media blackout: Firewatch and No Man’s Sky) but I wish I had done in this case. Why? Because all the puzzles are the same.

Apparently there are 650-odd of them, and they’re all grid based puzzles like some sort of cerebral Painter game. As you work through them, different rules occur, like you have to collect all the dots on the lines, or make certain shapes in the grid. Later, more complex rules occur like you have to separate some grid boxes into pairs based on colour, or the route you take through the grid is based on something abstract in the world around the grid itself (like a pattern in the trees, or shadows falling on a surface). Ultimately though, every single puzzle is a grid where you have to get from the start to the finish in one single, non-overlapping line paying attention to the rules the various shapes and symbols on the grid dictate.

Solve puzzles to open doors, activate switches, enable more puzzles (this is the most frequent outcome) or ultimately, I think, fire lasers at the peak of the island’s mountain. There are 7 or 8 lasers to be found, if the locked panels each opens are to be believed, with one laser in each area of the island. I currently have three activated. These areas are home to mainly a single set of rules for the puzzles found there, with different rules in each area, with some overlap.

How you find the rules is quite clever. You’re given some very simple puzzles to begin with that are almost impossible to do incorrectly. A succession of these, with slightly increasing difficulty, teaches you what the rule is actually enforcing, without ever explicitly telling you. Sort of like how The Rosetta Stone language course works.

Some of the more abstract puzzles are incredibly clever, using the landscape and structures to make up areas you have to “pretend” are a grid. There’s one puzzle I’m especially proud of myself for solving in a sort of Japanese temple where you have to open and close shutters. It was genius, and it made me feel like a genius for getting it.

Despite my disappointment it isn’t the game I was expecting (although I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting), I’m enjoying it a great deal. I’ve found some proper head-scratchers which have caused me to leave an area and tackle a different one, and I’ve spent a large amount of time looking for “circle and a line” shapes in the shadows, rocks and even sky of the island as these are particularly pleasing to spot and activate, so even the single premise hasn’t been too repetitive. I just hope I’m not going to get stuck on a puzzle forever preventing me from finishing the game. It’s a constant worry.

Statues are everywhere. Some are clues. This is a dog.

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Psycho Fox (MS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 10/04/2016 Written by deKay

I’d completely forgotten how easy the bosses were in Psycho Fox. In fact, I’d completely forgotten anything about the bosses at all, and I wasn’t even 100% sure there were any! Admittedly, much of the rest of the game is quite difficult (mainly because of so many leaps of faith or baddies that appear too quickly to react to), but the bosses? Complete walkovers.

That said, because I’m awesome and somehow managed to remember the locations of two warps despite not having played the game in probably 20 years or more, I actually skipped all bar two of them – the tigery one and the end of game boss.

Click to view slideshow.

I’d also forgotten just how many lives there are to collect, finishing the game with more than twenty – and I didn’t even get any in the after level bonus game! One part of the final level actually has three lives in eggs right next to each other. It probably helped that I managed to take the highest routes in most of the levels as that’s where most of them lurk.

It surprised me how good the game still is after all this time. The jumping takes a while to get used to (you jump very high, but not very far at all unless you take a run-up) and you’re a bit skiddy, but apart from that and the very old school rule of the game not scrolling left, it was still excellent and holds up well.

I think I’d like to give Kid Kool on the NES a go next. It’s a very similar game by the same team, and I’ve never played it.

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My Nintendo Picross – The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 09/04/2016 Written by deKay

Gasp. No that really is the name of the game. It’s an eShop download that is available for free if you pick up enough Platinum points in Nintendo’s new “My Nintendo” service. If you jumped on Miitomo right away you should have enough by now so you’ve no reason not to get it.

From the verbose game title, you should know what to expect. A Picross e game (it’s by Jupiter) only themed around Twilight Princess. There are 45 puzzles (repeated as Mega Picross puzzles, which is cheating a bit I suppose) and a pretty large Micross to solve in this package, which is roughly half the size of most Picross e titles in terms of content. Indeed, it took me just shy of 8 hours to complete everything.

Sure, it’s smaller, but it’s also free. And properly free as well, not like that Pokémon Picross nonsense from a while back – no game ruining IAPs here, thankfully – just lots of lovely Picross puzzles.

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Hyrule Warriors Legends (3DS)

Posted on 08/04/2016 Written by deKay

I made an incredible discovery. After Cia’s story in Legend Mode (which was just the same as in the Wii U version), there’s an extension to the original main story! I suppose if I’d paid more attention to the game when it was announced I’d have realised this, but since I was going to buy it anyway I didn’t think to.

What is important about this new set of story levels, is not that there are new characters (Tetra and King Boaty McBoatface) as I knew about those, but that there are TWO new maps! Two! I didn’t even realise there was one! On top of that, they come with a new secondary weapon – the hammer – and several new enemies. And Phantom Ganon as the end boss, who you need to fight by batting back the energy balls he throws at you. It’s excellent.

So I finished all that off, and then did some more Adventure Mode.

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Broforce (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/04/2016 Written by deKay

The aesthetic of Broforce really appealed to me, with all its pixelly loveliness and explosions and stuff. Apart from having lots of things to shoot and almost completely destructible levels, and of course having a pile of action hero parody characters, that was about as much as I knew. I was going to happily pay money for it on PSN and then they made it a free PS+ rental. Bargain.

The first few levels were more or less what I was expecting. Overly patriotic soldiers dropped into various levels full of terrorists, rescuing other patriot soldiers as you shoot your way through to the end. And this was great. Then, it slowly became less about shooting and started requiring some thought. Traps meant you couldn’t just rush in. Some enemies needed taking out in specific ways. If you blow up some areas it causes the roof to collapse in, and so on. Sure, there was still a lot of shooting, but it was changing.

After a while, other enemies started appearing which changed things again. Not least the aliens later on in the game, which – like in the film – bleed acid which eats away at the levels (and you). Later still, the undead start attacking and eventually demons and all sorts are added to the mix. I think what I’m saying, is that the game is constantly changing and you have to adapt your methods a bit as you progress.

That said, it always remains mostly a platform shooter, and a very good one at that, but the main game mechanic causes problems. You see, every time you die, or rescue a Bro, your character changes to a randomly unlocked Bro. They all have similar running and jumping abilities (with a few differences), but they have wildly different weapon sets. Some have long range guns, some short. Some fire rapidly, some have a blast range, others have kickback. MacBrover only has TNT and no actual gun, making him tricky to use for much of the game (but incredibly useful in some circumstances), and Mr Anderbro has no weapons but his (very powerful) fists. What this means is that two Bros in the same situation won’t be usable in the same way, and some of the bosses in particular are virtual impossible with certain Bros. Which would be fine, but you can never choose which Bro you’re going to be!

Thankfully, levels are short and many have a mid-way restart point in case you does completely. If one Bro fails you, next time you might get someone more suitable. You rarely end up frustrated as a result.

At least not with regards to Bro selection, anyway. Bugs, on the other hand, were almost game killers. Before a recent patch, there was a particularly nasty one where about a second into each level, your Bro stopped responding to inputs for around another second. This made at least two levels virtually impossible, as you needed to react immediately – and couldn’t. After two or three patches this bug was eventually removed, instead being replaced with a new one where between levels and sometimes between restarts (which used to be instant) the game appears to hang on a black screen, sometimes for over a minute. This new bug isn’t game-breaking like the previous one, but it does annoy, especially if you have to wait ages between restarts on a difficult mission.

There are also performance issues, in particular when the screen is busy with lots of enemies and explosions, meaning some levels play out almost entirely in slow motion, the final boss in particular. It didn’t bother me too much, but you’d think a PS4 would be able to handle a 2D platformer a little better.

The final few levels provided another annoyance. All of the other missions are made up of about 5 levels each, after which you get a boss, and then return to the map screen. The last mission, however, seemed to have three times as many with no way to save the game. As a result, the last 90 minutes of the game needed to be played in one single sitting. If I’d have known, I’d have done it another time rather than have to stay up late just so I didn’t have to play it all again. The final boss also suffered from Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Cliché #3 – having to kill him over and over in various forms until he was finally dead.

From what I’ve written you may think I’m being largely negative about Broforce, but in fact I really enjoyed it. It has faults and isn’t perfect, but I still love the style and the gameplay and with hindsight I certainly would have bought it. I certainly suggest you do.

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