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Super Mario Odyssey: completed!

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It seems a little contrived to say it’s completed, really, since I can see that there are over half the moons I am yet to discover, and the game is still throwing new ideas at me each time I play. However, Peach has been rescued, Bowser is defeated, and the world is a better place. I stopped the wedding, which I hasten to add wouldn’t have been legally binding in any case as Peach was not entering it of her own free will. I’ve seen the credits. I have explored the Moon, and I have travelled back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

The inside of Peach’s castle is a clever nod to Super Mario 64, although many of the doors are missing (and my daughter was disappointed we couldn’t go upstairs to see where she sleeps). I have found a number of other rooms around the kingdom, which again look similar to the rooms from SM64, which enable me to fight the bosses again, but I haven’t because I’m more interested in finding new stuff.

I had travelled between previous worlds a fair bit, exploring and finding hidden moons, before deciding to go to Bowser’s kingdom to finish the game – only to find I was diverted to a ruined kingdom, and it turns out that Bowser’s palace wasn’t the end point in any case. I played through the last few areas over the course of contiguous days, not wanting to stop until the story was complete; and then I had to keep playing, to find out what Peach was up to, to talk to Toadette, and to see what those silvery cubes were all about. It turns out that they’ve roughly doubled the size of the game after the credits roll – and I’ve not even been to the dark side of the Moon yet.

I very rarely engage in character dress-up in games, but Mario’s outfits are fun to experiment with – and you need to get changed to access some moons, as well as seeing the 2D representations

With that rush to finish, I’ve taken a bit of a step back in terms of playing the game, because I want it to last a bit longer. A fantastic game, which looks even more amazing on the Switch 2.

Sonic CD: chasing the generators

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I had some questions before, and I have now answered them.

  • Do I need to travel to the future after destroying the machine in the past, or is it sufficient to just explode the generator? No, you don’t need to travel to the future; you can finish the act in the past, and you’re still told you created a good future. However, if you can travel to the future (through two future lampposts in sequence) there are no enemies in the way of you getting to the end.
  • Do I need to create good futures for both acts, and if so do I then have to fight the boss? Yes, you have to create good futures for both acts, and if you do then the third act takes place in the good future – but you still have to fight the boss.

I know this, because I have spent quite some time exploring levels and working out where to time travel, where the robot generators are, and planning routes to get there; I’ve now managed it on the first five Zones, and have at least located the generator in the present on Stardust Speedway Act 1 (though I have no idea how to get to it, and this is a rare example of a 16-bit Sonic level being pretty poorly designed). Luckily I’ve built up a stock of about 25 lives, and it’s fairly easy to collect 100 rings to gain another, since I keep running out of time when exploring.

I have often thought of Sonic CD as intimidating, because I thought you needed to get everything perfect. Back in 2011 I threw caution to the wind, and played through the game on the Xbox 360, not trying for the good ending but just hoping to get to the end. It was relatively easy to do that, though levels were sometimes a bit disorderly and prevented a fluid run throughout. The race with Metal Sonic was particularly difficult.

Having plugged in my PS3 (because I wanted to test a copy of Crashed that I found), I saw Sonic CD on the list of installed games, and immediately got the sense of being overwhelmed again, because having completed the bad ending I felt I would need to try for the good one. Back in the 1990s I had time to devote to a game, and to this day I have a complete picture of all levels from Sonic 1 and 2 in my mind, crowding out information which might actually be useful. That came from playing the games over and over; by the time I got my Mega CD from Pink Planet in Bristol, I had many other things to be doing.

But in recent months I find myself wanting to spend time dedicated to specific games again, hence returning to Mario Odyssey, playing through GTA3 and Vice City, and progressing through Wreckfest. Taking time to appreciate a game in its entirety – exactly what has been holding me back from Sonic CD.

So I’ve been taking my time, exploring levels, working out routes to take, where to find time travel posts and then build up speed, trying to find the machines in the past. It’s been a very different experience, very unlike other Sonic games, but it’s been very enjoyable. I fear I may need to resort to looking at some level maps, though, if I don’t work out how to destroy the generator on Stardust Speedway soon.

Oh, and the special stages are still pretty rubbish.

Headhunter: forget about amnesia

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When Headhunter came out on the Dreamcast, it was when the format was dying and games were being reduced to silly prices in HMV. This was good news for my collection and my wallet, with many £5 games filling up my shelves. It was not good for the games themselves, since I had such an abundance of choice that I would not commit more than an hour or so to anything in particular. Even the more expensive games, like Headhunter, which I bought through some misguided platform loyalty, saw little playtime. I remember playing Headhunter on the Dreamcast for a little while, but during one of the early riding sections I get my bike stuck in the scenery and lost a significant amount of progress, and after that I’m not sure I ever returned.

Until now. When I was in York a couple of years ago I found a copy of Headhunter on the PS2 for £3 in an excellent retro games shop, and this makes it a lot easier to play through my TV, given the backwards compatibility of my PS3. Of course, that got put on the shelf on my return, and has only just resurfaced.

It feels limited by modern standards, of course. The opening escape, and then the VR section, are well structured, but they are very linear. The story is very hackneyed, with the old staple plot of amnesia explaining why you, as one of the world’s top headhunters, need to be told how to crouch behind a crate. I obtained a motorbike, on loan, and was told I had to travel somewhere in order to get my licence. A licence for headhunting? Not sure, but I obtained my C licence after a few tries through the VR simulator, and then I took the opportunity to explore the city a little. You can’t go far, but there is some freedom, and in the days before GTA III this felt amazing.

Super Mario Odyssey: a variety of treats

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The game is so expansive in its scope that it’s hard to know what to write. With Breath of the Wild, and then also Tears of the Kingdom, the game felt huge because of the size of the world, the enormity of the task, and the freedom you had to approach it how you wanted. Breath of the Wild actually prevented me from posting on here for a bit. Odyssey is different – the worlds are smaller and disconnected, the tasks are short and targeted. It feels ideal for a handheld game in many respects, where you can turn it on, explore for a bit and find a couple of moons, and then put your Switch back in the bag as your train arrives at Charing Cross. Yet it also works as a large open world, where everywhere in sight has something that makes you think there’s something new to do, and very often there is.

I’ve been to the city, and formed a band – the 2D sections here were fantastic. I’ve been to a pink kingdom where they make stew. I’ve been back to revisit worlds I passed by quickly before, looking for new moons. There are a few staples in each world – the note paths, the tower of goombas – but even these have idiosyncrasies to vary the game. There are so many ideas packed into every area that I cannot even choose what to highlight.

I have around 350 moons now, and have opened Bowser’s Kingdom. I can’t quite bring myself to go there, though, because it feels too final – I don’t want the game to end, and even though I know I’ll be able to carry on moon hunting afterwards, the fact that some of my lists are barely half full makes me want to skulk around the existing levels just a bit more.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: packages, police, and pootling

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Back in April, when I completed Vice City, I posited that I might try playing San Andreas in “a few months”. It has now been a few months, and I’m not playing it. I have a bit of a mental blocker on that game, partially around the setting, but also because I remember when it was released that there were countless reviews evangelising the detail they’d gone into, with you needing to regularly work out to keep fit, and eat healthily, and so on. It sounded too involved, and even if that’s not the case, it’s prevented me from playing it.

And so I went back to Vice City, to finish off side missions and collect stuff.

My first objective was to collect the hidden packages. Throughout playing the game, I’d found just over fifty of them, but the other forty were evidently too well hidden. I used a map guide to travel around the city and find them, and eventually I came to the end of the list … and still only had 95. I had to retrace my steps, eventually realising that I mist have failed to save at some point after collecting packages in the airport, because there were five of them still sitting there.

Collecting all the packages unlocked a military helicopter at the South end of the first island, so I spent some time flying around and blowing stuff up, including the annoying planes carrying banners over the city. I got a nice big wanted level, which I then got rid of by landing on the roof of my mansion and running in to change my clothes.

I then bought the car showroom, and found all the cars required by its clients, including the ice cream truck and pizza delivery bike. The biggest issue I had on this was with the games in Little Haiti, who all hate me for some reason and blew up two of their gang cars when I tried to steal them.

Sometimes it’s fun to just watch other people’s chaos. Security guards and gang members like to shoot at each other, and then when the ambulance turns up the paramedics can get caught in the crossfire.

And then I went to the Malibu Club and tried to complete the missions there. I got stuck here before – there’s a mission where you have to break someone out of the police station, and I was being shot to pieces as soon as I entered. It’s a lot easier if you go in without a gun in your hand, and then run straight into the locket room to get a police uniform on. Once you open the cells, they still try to kill you – but I had a fast car parked outside, and a route to a pay and spray planned, so I managed to finish that … only to get stuck on another mission where you have to race someone through the city, with the police trying to ram you (and not him) off the road.

I’m nearly done with this now.