Xexyz

Box Boy: completed!

Posted on 21/12/2024 Written by Xexyz

I only had a few levels left indeed, and in the end they weren’t that tricky – the most difficult part of the game was timing jumps when making platforms disappear.

As I mentioned before, there are various challenge levels to complete, and I will probably give those a go in the near future, but the game’s length was pretty perfect for a handheld title; the way that new concepts were introduced and then virtually discarded after that set of levels led to my interest staying high throughout. It could have been good for the last level to be an extended one with all types of challenge included, but maybe that’s to come in the additional worlds.

There are three more games in the series: two on the 3DS and one on the Switch. I’ll play them all. One day.

Box Boy: constant adaptation

Posted on 20/12/2024 Written by Xexyz

Box Boy is a simple platform puzzle game, with a simple visual style, and simple sound design. Yet despite its appearances, at times it’s anything but simple to complete.

You play as a square. You can make a certain number of other squares come out of you, chained in any direction (although the first one can’t go straight down), and you can use these to hook onto other platforms, push yourself across gaps, or press remote buttons. You can detach yourself from the blocks you create, though if you then try to create more the prior ones disappear. If any block is resting on a surface, you can transport to that other block along the chain you have built.

It is all relatively simple for the first few levels, and indeed I was getting to the point where I couldn’t really imagine any more puzzles with this basic setup. Each level is relatively short and defined how many boxes you can grow, and there are one or two crowns to collect as you progress through the level which disappear if you create too many boxes before getting to them. I was able to collect all crowns, if not on the first time through the level, then on the second.

But then the game starts introducing new concepts – one in each new world – and you have to learn the game all over. Switches to open doors, spikes, enemies (who helpfully activate things and disappear if you guide them to the right place), conveyor belts, and rows of blocks which disappear if you fill the gaps. Variety was very much appreciated.

I only have a few more levels to go, though I can see there are some added challenges to complete, plus lots of outfits to unlock somehow. I have a feeling the sequels may be more of a pull.

Pokémon Blue: wild ZUBAT appeared!

Posted on 12/12/2024 Written by Xexyz

The start of Pokémon Blue¹ is pretty slow. After the first couple of set-pieces, where you choose a starter and fetch the pokédex, you are left to go forth into the world, with only the route numbers to guide you. The paths are winding and specifically designed to make you walk through long grass, meaning that you will encounter many wild pokémon along the way. Unfortunately for the first hour or so they are all of one of three or four types, and it gets a little dull when the fifteenth caterpie is dispatched with a single hit from Charmander. Trainers along the way offer some variety but they all have similar pokémon, again, and give very little reward. By the time you get to Pewter City, you’re desperate for just a bit of challenge.

Having chosen Charmander at the start, I got it. Brock’s gym is of ground and rock types, and Charmander’s attacks did little. Luckily I had already caught Spearow and Nidoran so I had some variety, but my first attempt at Brock’s underling saw all my team of six (which also included Pidgey, Metapod and another Caterpie) being defeated. Before trying again, I went to the South of the city and wandered around in a patch of grass for around 150 hours, battling hundreds of level 3 and 4 pidgeys, caterpies, and rattatas. The time was not spent in vain, however, as Metapod evolved into Butterfree, with the confusion move, and Spearow and Charmander all jumped up several levels. Of course, this being a Generation 1 pokémon game, there was no EXP Share, so all this levelling had to be done by having Metapod in the first slot of my team and manually changing away from it as the first move.

I also caught a Pikachu, who quickly replaced Caterpie in the party, and I spent some time with him levelling up as well. Pikachu is nowhere near as cute in this first game as he later came to be; he is a little chubby.

I’m playing using the black and white option rather than grey and green, because sometimes authenticity can go too far.

With a team of level 15 pokémon, I went to Brock and beat him with health to spare; Butterfree performed admirably. And then I departed Pewter City to travel along Route 3, and on to Mt Moon. In the caves on the way to Cerulean City, I encountered approximately 32,649 zubats, with them appearing every few steps along the way. Each and every one was defeated with Pikachu’s thundershock move, as demonstrated in the header image of this post; occasionally they would get an attack in first which drained a point or two of Pikachu’s health. By the time I made it through the mountain, picking up a fossil and defeating Team Rocket on the way, Pikachu was at level 18 and other members of the party were trailing behind.

I may need to do some more grinding before I go to meet Misty.

Before the 3DS store closed I bought a number of games, which I am only just getting around to playing. I have both Blue and Silver lined up, to hopefully complete for the first time. I played Yellow back when that was first released (or close to then) and I believe I got as far as the Elite Four before giving up. ︎

Turbo Golf Racing: Par 4wd

Posted on 05/12/2024 Written by Xexyz

After the success of Rocket League, I’m surprised there’s not been more of a glut of car-based sports. Rocket League itself included modes based on ice hockey and basketball, but the objectives there are pretty much the same – get the object into the goal. It’s taken quite some time for a completely different sport to arrive, and Turbo Golf Racing seeks to do what its name describes – inject a golf game with turbos and racing. The cars look similar in some way to the Rocket League roster, though with large bumpers on the front. The relative size of car and ball is familiar. The speeds you drive, with the possibility of jumping and boosting, are very close, but not exactly the same. You’d be forgiven for assuming this was by Psyonix.

But the driving model isn’t exactly the same, and after having played the PS4 version of Rocket League for over 400 hours, and the Xbox and Switch versions for significant time on top, the differences are just enough to cause me issues. There’s no double jump, for a start, and I have tried numerous times to jump sideways into a ball to nudge it into the hole only to find myself boosting forwards and away from where I need to be. There’s also a different way to get height on the ball when driving – in TGR you need to hold up on the analogue stick to hit the ball upwards, whereas in RL you’d aim your car nose down to get the same effect.

That’s not to say it’s uncontrollable – it’s just a little different. I’ve spent most of my time in the race mode, where you try to get your ball into the hole as quickly as possible, with seven others doing the same. Ordinarily you cannot interact with their balls (or, indeed, them) but there are powerups you can collect such as missiles and ice beams which cause them to lose control. Otherwise it’s almost like a single-player game, with ghosts flying around you. The golf mode, where you have to get the ball into the hole with as few touches as possible, is a completely different pace.

The courses are colourful and well designed.

It’s a fun game. Unfortunately it’s full of microtransactions and a focus on cosmetics, learning from the very worst practices of Epic – another way in which it’s like Rocket League. I’ll be content with my purple basic car for now, than you very much; it’s not as if I see anything other than the back of it most of the time.

Afterburner Complete: the downside of digital controls

Posted on 22/11/2024 Written by Xexyz

It’s not just horizontal side-scrolling shooters that I’m hopeless at. Afterburner Complete is an excellent conversion of the arcade game, and one of the games that I’ve played many times on my actual 32X. It’s colourful, it’s fast and smooth, it has great music. I am rubbish at it.

Part of this is down to the digital controls, I’m sure. There’s no nuance on how you move, you have to throw the plane all over the screen to avoid missiles but this means that it’s really difficult to target any of the enemy planes. On Afterburner Climax the controls are much more precise, with the aiming reticule being more delicately balanced, and I feel so much more in control.

I set the number of lives to the maximum, and I managed to get as far as level 8, but I found the shift in focus to avoiding obstacles – the canyon walls and the radio masts – to be beyond me. No matter how quickly I reacted, even with the plane’s speed set to the minimum, I ended up crashing multiple times. I have no idea why I couldn’t just fly a little bit higher.