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Super Mario Land (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Ah, who doesn’t remember the chart-topping MC Mario “Folks round here think I’m crazy, but I gotta rescue Daisy” song that was based on the music from this, slightly odd in hindsight, Game Boy Mario game? Kids, that’s who. Tch.

And it is a bit odd. Super Mario Land starts out as a seemingly normal, low resolution and black and white approximation of the NES classic, but adds different enemies and the fire flower is a bouncy ball and there are scrolling shooter levels. It isn’t a bad game, but put it next to Super Mario Land 2 and it’s like they’re not even the same console generation, let alone in the same game series.

I completed it, of course, and it was ridiculously easy. But not actually bad.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I have mentioned many times here how I do like a good (or even, a fair-to-middling) Metroidvania game. So when I discovered that the already great looking Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was such a game in that genre, I leapt on the demo and was so struck by it I did a very rare thing – I bought an actual physical copy.

It’s really good. It does all the great things Metroidvanias do, by giving you additional powers to defeat new foes and reach new, and previously unreachable, areas, eventually turning you into a walking tank. It also has excellent combat, with a huge number of sword based attacks but also a bow and arrow, a boomerang-like chakra thing, magical special attacks, and all sorts of dashes, juggles and dodges making each fight enjoyable and varied. Metroid Dread was a great game, but the combat was mostly shoot or missile or bomb, whereas here it’s much more deep and fluid.

Although not linked to any of the previous Prince of Persia games in any way, there are thematic similarities. There’s the obvious one – it’s set in Persia – but also there’s a “sands of time” thing going on. The story involves Sargon (you) and his friends chasing after a kidnapped prince into a cursed city, In this city time had gone weird, with time loops and stopped time and future, past and alternative timeline events all occurring. Sargon also manages to learn some time related skills, like slowing it or pausing it.

Despite being based in a city, there are a number of varied areas, most housing a boss of some kind. There are a few distinct areas to the city itself (including one that is at night), but also dark caves, an icy mountain, and a whole section where storm-tossed ships are frozen in time. Bosses are difficult, but all can be bested by carefully noting their attack patterns and weaknesses so they always seem fair.

I did run into a game breaking bug, however. Near the end of the game you have to reach and ring three gongs. En-route to one of these you have to fight a series of enemies and every time I killed the second one, the game crashed. It turned out to be a bug introduced in a previous update, which also affected other platforms the game was on, and to be fair Ubisoft did fix it (although it took over a week before I could continue playing). Annoying, but it didn’t make me think anything less of the game, which I loved. So much so I even went and 100%ed it after completing the story!

FAR: Changing Tides (PS5): COMPLETED!

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Remember a while back I completed a game called FAR: Lone Sails? If not you can just click that link. I refer to it because the ending of that game was a bit of a damp squib and didn’t make any sense. Turns out, this sequel is actually sort of the other half of the game and that’s why.

Whereas in Lone Sails you had a land-boat where you travel across what appears to be a dried up sea, in Changing Tides you pilot a sea-boat across what appears to be a flooded world. The game plays out in much the same way, with the same sorts of puzzles and areas you get out of your boat to do things which allow your craft to progress (like open big gates or operate cranes or something) but this time there’s more water. In parts of it, you actually become fully submersible.

The tie-in to the previous game is a bit of a spoiler, but when you get to the end of Changing Tides suddenly everything – assuming you recall the ending of Lone Sails at least – makes sense.

So the game isn’t really any better or worse than before, although they’ve fixed everything being too small a bit (it’s still a little too small, but it’s easier to make stuff out – this might be just because I played this on the PS5 not the Switch). It’s just more of the same only not quite the same as it’s a slightly different. Which is fine, I think?

Streets of Rage 4 (PS5): COMPLETED!

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Oh would you look – a PS+ monthly game that’s actually good and I don’t already own! How rare.

And yes, it is good! It’s a long awaited sequel to the original Mega Drive fighting games, if we ignore the Fighting Force game which was obviously supposed to be Streets of Rage 4 for the Saturn anyway. And even that was decades ago.

SoR4 doesn’t deviate from the previous games very much at all, really. You punch and kick through loads of baddies, most of whom are straight from the previous games, with playable characters that are, or are related to in some way, the original characters. Axel is a beefy boi now, with a beard, and Blaze has covered up a bit, but otherwise, it’s more of the same. Well, with modern graphics of course.

As she loves playing these sorts of games with me, I completed it with my daughter.

A Monster’s Expedition (Through Puzzling Expeditions) (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I maintain that I am not really a fan of sokoban type puzzle games, and yet somehow, I seem to enjoy them. Perhaps it’s just when there are crate-pushing puzzles in otherwise crate-push-free games that I don’t like?

In any case, A Monster’s Expedition was one of the ones I did enjoy. You are a monster, who navigates islands which seem to make up a sort of Museum of Humans, as there are many artefacts (sometimes amusingly mislabelled as to their purpose) to be found. The game, however, isn’t about finding the artefacts – it’s about finding a way to leave the islands completely.

To do that you have to reach a ferry, and to reach the ferry you have to complete crate-pushing puzzles on each island in order to open paths, build log bridges, or make rafts to get around. Of course, they’re not crates you have to push: they’re trees.

You can chop down trees, then push the trunks as logs. If you push them sideways, they roll until they hit something or fall in the water, and if you push them lengthways they flip up on end and then over onto their side again. These, plus the double-height trees and some rocks, make up the majority of the puzzles and they’re all about trying to get logs into certain positions on each island to progress.

It’s simple, although many of the puzzles are not. Later on, you discover a few meta-puzzles, where there’s a collection of islands to solve, but not just to allow you to move between them – you have to make way for a log that needs to traverse the islands and bridges you’ve made too, which may mean the solution you had originally may not be enough for the log as well.

A Monster’s Expedition is a nice little (well, not little – it’s bloody huge) brain-scratcher, with a bit of humour and some fiendish puzzles. Oh, and if you’ve bought the itch.io Palestinian Relief bundle, you already own it!