ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

Once Upon A Katamari (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

It seems like forever since there was a new Katamari game. Aside from that incredibly hard iOS one that was free on Apple Arcade, of course, but that doesn’t count.

Running out of ideas for new things to roll up and places to do said rolling up, Namco Bandai Namco (Bandai) BandaiNamco have decided to use time travel in this iteration, with the King of All Cosmos taking The Prince across various stereotypical time periods and locations as Cave Man Times, Ancient Greece, and The Wild West, so you can roll up guys in togas and dinosaurs and pirate ships and stuff. Does it make a difference? Not really. It’s just an envelope for the levels to live in.

The rest of the game is exactly as you’d expect, and, I’d wager, want. It’s certainly what I’d want anyway. Loads of things to roll up so you get progressively bigger, with levels where you have to roll to an exact size, or avoid rolling up specific things (like the reprise of Cow or Bear from an earlier title), or roll things up while you constantly move forwards. Or roll up a person into food items to make them fat. Or become a sponge and spread water across a desert. You know, standard stuff.

And it’s as good as it ever was. I’m slightly disappointed there’s no Switch 2 update for it, ideally to get rid of the (to be fair, mercifully short) mid-level loading pauses, but it’s fine. I coped with the PSP game so I can cope here.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

What seems like a very, very long time ago, I played the original Mario + Rabbids (apparently it’s “Mario Plus Rabbids” not “Mario And Rabbids”, which sounds clumsy) on the Switch and it was great and I was well up for the sequel when it arrived. But, like many other things, it got forgotten and I never got round to buying it. Until it was so cheap on the eShop recently that it was basically free. And I mean this in a “it was about £5 instead of £50” way of being “nearly free”, rather than Kotaku’s thinly veiled adverts for “nearly free” Macbooks that are $899 instead of $999 or something. Yes, those adverts annoy me so much I’ve deleted Kotaku from my RSS reader. Yes, I still use an RSS reader.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sparks of Hope. In most ways, it’s more of the same not-quite XCom of the original, only this time it blends Rabbids with Mario Galaxy’s characters, mashing Rabbids with Lumas to make Sparks, which essentially give you extra abilities you can use in battles.

I’m also pretty sure the game no longer uses a proper grid-based movement system. I mean, it is still effectively grid-based but feels like it isn’t, with movement ranges being shown as circular areas and freedom to move whereever in that you like. You do, however, “snap” to a sort of grid, and cover like rocks and crates are still noticeably square, so it’s a bit fake. Outside of the battles, the overworld feels much less grid-like though, except many puzzles there involve moving things in rectangular areas.

Other than those changes, and some new characters and tweaks to moves and rules, it’s more of the same. Battles seem a bit quicker, although some of that could be the quicker load times on the Switch 2, and the game seemed a lot easier. So much easier that I don’t actually recall losing a single fight. Doesn’t really matter though, because it’s fun – especially when you manage to chain attacks like tackles, movement sensor reactions, and making baddies bounce into the air so they move and get shot all in one turn, obliterating even difficult foes.

Also, Rabbid Peach channelling Mean Girls is great.

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

I have a soft spot for games by Chibig. I like how they’re all set in the same universe, often with recurring characters (like Mûn). Probably the biggest game of theirs was Summer in Mara, a sort of Wind Waker-ish, Harvest Moon-lite adventure. Most of their games are of slightly different genres too.

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a sort of arcade adventure. It’s set on an island, at the top of which is a witch, whom you want to train you up but she immediately throws you off her mountain and you have to make your way back up by completing tasks for the locals to earn enough to repair your broomstick to the point where it can fly high enough.

Basically, you run (and fly, a bit) round the island collecting and delivering things. Most items you deliver need to stay dry and undamaged, so you can’t slam into rocks or take a swim, but (a few items aside) it’s not too tricky. The draw is in the characters and interactions, which Chibig do very well.

There are a handful of puzzles, and the odd bit of difficult traversal, but it’s mostly laid back and stressless. The island has a number of secrets to discover and exploring every inch of it is fun. There are a few character-related side stories too, like the relationship between the two fishermen or the unruly children of an artist who has lost his mojo, which (naturally) you get involved in and try to resolve.

Another joyous blue-skies game in the series.

Castaway (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Yes, it does look a lot like a Game Boy Colour Zelda game. It feels a bit like one too, not least because you have a sword and a hookshot and there are block pushing puzzles just like in Link’s Awakening. Only it’s only an hour or two long and there are only really three short dungeons.

Which is fine. It was enjoyable and tight and all that.

Once completed, however, you get access to a roguelike dungeon mode, where you have 50 small rooms with increasingly difficult baddies and traps to get past, with random upgrades every time you’ve collected enough XP. A run here will be maybe 45 minutes or so, and it’s great. I completed this too, but it did take about 10 or 12 runs to do so. Tip: the seemingly useless pickaxe upgrades should not be ignored (like I kept doing) as they make the final boss much easier.

The Fairyland Story (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

This is one of the games on the recent Taito cartridge for the Evercade. I’m not 100% on the timings, but it feels very much like a precursor to Bubble Bobble – loads of single screen platforming, baddies to destroy, a particularly nasty baddie that appears if you take too long, and so on. It isn’t anywhere near as much fun as Bubble Bobble though.

The main issue I had is that often, especially on later levels, some of the baddies are really difficult to reach, especially without accidentally colliding with them and dying. There’s a level right near the end – level 95, I think – where the screen is sort of split in two and if you’re playing single player (like I was) then you can’t physically get from the left side of the screen to the right side. I can demonstrate with this screenshot from StrategyWiki:

You’re the witchy looking woman in red. The issue is that there’s no way to do a “small” jump to get over the four blocks at the bottom without jumping too high and ending up on the platform above. Except… there is. Thanks to a web search and a very old post on GameFAQs, I found that if you tap jump and then immediately tap right, then providing you’re standing in the right place, you can do a tiny jump. Get the timings or length of tap wrong and you don’t, so even if you know how it’s still nearly impossible. Literally nowhere in the game does it say this either directly or indirectly. Nowhere else in the game is it necessary. How arcade gamers in the 1980s without GameFAQs managed this I have no idea.

You can also see in that screenshot that neither of the baddies are actually reachable even if you do this. You have to coax them out by climbing higher up the screen than them. Which is a pain.

So, it’s not a great game. I completed it mainly because I’d started so I had to finish, but there are far better single screen arcade games like this out there. Still, if it wasn’t for the mistakes of The Fairyland Story maybe we wouldn’t have Bubble Bobble.