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Kimono Cats (iPhone): COMPLETED!

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Kimono Cats is a very bad game.

That’s it. That’s the post.

Oh, you want a reason? Tch. Don’t you trust me? Ridiculous. Fine. Reasoning:

You know those terrible mobile telephone games where you can only progress if you grind the same repetitive tasks over and over again, for no real reward, unless you pay for in-game currency with real-world money? Well, this is one of those games, only without any of the real-world money purchases, because it’s on Apple Arcade. It still has the grind though. And the repetitive tasks. But cats, so it’s great, right? No.

My first issue is with the name of the game. It’s called Kimono Cats because there are two cats on a date at a natsu-matsuri festival wearing kimono because NO WAIT! You wear yukata to a natsu-matsuri festival. Already I’m annoyed.

Then there’s the date itself. You see, you’re the boy cat and you’re trying to impress the girl cat by walking seventy squillion billion miles along the world’s longest row of festival stalls, cramming food in her face and playing stupid games, hoping for a kiss and a cuddle as you build up a Heart Meter and a Money Meter. Let’s just skip over the fact you’re buying affection here and so either your boy cat is is predatory or your girl cat is toxic, and go straight to the WHY THE HELL IS IT SO LONG. There are 15 levels of walking and each takes longer than the last to fill the money meter up with something like 20-odd hours required in total.

And finally (of the things I’m going to mention because I’ve already written too much), it’s so. Damn. Boring. You throw darts up at moving balloons, each one containing something to entertain, feed, or disrespect your girl cat with. You have a limited number of darts, but you can get more by tediously metal detecting or playing daily to get bonus ones, or by visiting the sticker-book-like villages of other players to hopefully get them to send you more darts. You have your own village which you fill with buildings and objects you unlock from the games, shop and other tasks, but the main purpose of the games is to fill the meters. Burst the right balloon and you can play a game where you “throw” balls at a target. Or try to “catch” some goldfish. Or stab apples. Or other things which are no fun to play even once, let along the hundred and hundreds of times you have to in order to progress.

For once, I think I’d have preferred a version of the game WITH in-app purchases. Or, you know, I should have stopped playing?

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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What was obviously an April Fool, not least because of the release date, it turned out that The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was, in fact, a real actual game that genuinely exists. And was free on Steam. Who wouldn’t want to play a game where Sonic the Hedgehog is murdered?

Minor spoiler (because obviously, c’mon): Sonic wasn’t murdered.

In this mostly visual novel game, it’s Amy’s birthday and, as you do for such events, a murder-mystery-onna-train party has been organised. All her friends are assigned roles, and then OH NOES, Sonic is murdered. It’s up to you, as Generic Furry Train Guard Person Thing, and Tails, as Designated Detective, to follow the clues, interrogate the suspects, and find the “killer”. Only there’s a PLOT TWIST because Sonic may have actually been murdered after all FO’ REALS.

Minor spoiler (because obviously, c’mon): Sonic wasn’t murdered.

Each time you want to question a Chum of Sonic (not a euphemism), you have to play a mini-game where you’d do what Sonic would do in this situation – collect rings. These are simple isometric versions of a sort of Sonic free-runner, where you have to get a number of rings and avoid holes and other traps. Ironically for a Sonic game, these Sonic bits are the worst bit of the game, as they’re so tedious and (in the later ones at least) rely on memorising the hazards.

In all, it’s a stupid premise, mostly well executed, quite funny, and it demands to be played.

Figment (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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From the outside, Figment looks like the sort of game I’d really want to play (and, of course, is why I did). Interesting graphics style, the promise of puzzles, some weird story about being in a person’s subconscious, great voice acting. All of those are true. But, it’s just so, so dull and tedious.

The main issue is the puzzles are often of a disguised Sokoban nature. You have to flip a switch to activate a thing, but you have to do another thing first, then you have to unflick it and move and then do another thing then go all the way back to the start and flick it again before you can access something. In a game like Zelda, these are fun. Here, it’s just slow and annoying. There’s also less disguised Sokoban type puzzles, with actual things to push and pull in the right order. Just boring. There’s an awful lot of the same thing as well – you always need a battery or a handle, it’s always the other side of a puzzle, it’s always needed to get to the next bit. For a game literally set in an imagination, there’s not much on show in terms of item use variety.

Then there’s the combat. It’s not difficult, it’s just clumsy, imprecise and doesn’t really seem to fit with the rest of the game. You’re often in a confined space when attacked, and you don’t have many moves and move too slowly to effectively dodge and counter. I also found the perspective sometimes screwed up my depth perception.

It isn’t all bad. The graphics are lovely and the voices and range of accents and silly comments are to be applauded. I also enjoyed it enough to play to the end and it did improve when you get to the “steampunk robot train” bits later on, it was just somewhat disappointing and uninteresting for much of the rest.

Vostok Inc (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Apparently, it was more than FIVE YEARS AGO that I last played and completed this. That’s not possible. The Switch itself is only 18 months old, right?

Well, Toby off of the ugvm Podcast mentioned he’d started playing it recently, and that reminded me what a great game it was, and so here we are.

I won’t go into all the details of the game itself because I did that last time. What I will say, however, is that on this playthrough I struggled to get started. You see, there’s no main menu on the start screen, so you just go straight into your last save. Which was from five years ago, on level 51, with the game completed. It took a while to find the setting to New Game+ it (which only carries over your achievements) – they’re in the options if you’ve arrived here via Google struggling to find it yourself – but then I was away.

This time, I didn’t finish it until I was well into the 70s in terms of level. And had more money than it seemed practical to spend. Not sure how that happened.

Bionic Commando (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever played the NES version of this before, and my understanding is that it’s very different. Perhaps you can even jump in that? You can’t in this, the original arcade version, in any case. (EDIT: You can’t jump in the NES version either. Curious.)

So, as I’m finding with these Capcom arcade games on the Evercade EXP, Bionic Commando is another money-eater. There’s no way in hell you’re supposed to be able to finish this without dying more times than numbers exist for – you just have to keep feeding it (virtual) coins. Well, after the first level or so anyway, as until then it’s probably possible.

The gameplay is a bit hit and miss. You can’t jump, so can only traverse by shooting out your bionic arm to grapple platforms and then pull yourself up or over. Problem is, baddies keep getting in the way. And some of the gaps are almost impossible to get into the right place for. And the responsiveness and collision detection appear to be all over the place. But just keep those e-10p pieces coming and eventually you’ll get to the end, like I did.

Not a great game, it has to be said. Was it ever?