Xexyz

Super Mario World: completed!

Posted on 06/02/2026 Written by Xexyz

I didn’t get lost again, but that was largely because the game’s designers had finished messing around with the world map and everything was fairly linear from that point. I did find a couple of extra exits on Chocolate Island, but maintaining my aim of ignoring the red blinking markers and just pushing through to the end, I finished off Wendy and progressed through the shipwreck down to Bowser’s hidden valley, previously submerged beneath the suspicious big empty sea in the middle of the map.

I was expecting the Valley of Bowser to be more difficult, in fact, but actually the levels themselves didn’t present much of a challenge. There was one annoying level where the big moles kept getting in the way and I couldn’t find the way out the level, meaning I died a couple of time running out of time, but one I realised that I could go out and get a Yoshi, and then eat the moles, things became easier.

What was tricky was the final boss battle, and I felt I was fighting against the controls much more than in the rest of the game. To defeat Bowser you had to attack him from above, and the only way you could do that was to jump on one of the clockwork bomb things he was throwing down to stun it, grab it, and then throw it up so that it would land on Bowser’s head as he swung his ship back around. Obviously, this had to be done while avoiding the other clockwork bomb things and his ship.

Still, it only took me a couple of goes, and then I saw the credits, meaning that the game is completed. Sure, it’s not completed completed, since there are a lot of secret exits I’ve not found, and I believe there’s a star world somewhere to be discovered. I’ll park it here, much as I did with Galaxy and 64 and Odyssey, and plan to come back to it one day soon.

Super Mario World: lost in chocolate

Posted on 30/01/2026 Written by Xexyz

I have got further than ever before, but that’s not saying much. I own Super Mario World on multiple systems – SNES, GBA, Wii, Wii U, 3DS – as well as having emulated it on the Raspberry Pi, the iMac, and (shh) my work laptop. I have played the start of it many times over, knowing to go left at the first map screen and turn on the yellow switch, then progressing right up the map to Donut Plains. I know about the secret exit in Donut Plains 2 to get to the green switch palace. I have, very often, given up at the ghost house in Donut Plains because I just hate the way the enemies move and the need for constant vigilance.

Not this time, though. Playing on the Switch (and then the Switch 2), I pushed through, and found new life beyond the ghosts in Vanilla Dome, Twin Bridges, and then the Forest of Illusion. And at this point it became really annoying.

In an effort to actually finish the game, I tried to ignore the red blinking dots that told me there were alternative exits to the levels. I went straight through each level, to the obvious end, making progress. And then in the Forest of Illusion, taking the obvious exit no longer worked; I ended up going around the overworld map in circles. I did find a secret exit in Forest of Illusion 1, but that just took me to the ghost house which I had already accessed from Forest of Illusion 3. The ghost house exit took me to FoI4, and then the exit from there went back to FoI2. I was frustrated for ages until I found the secret exit from FoI3 which was hidden in a pipe I was sure I’d been down multiple times before, just before the normal end of the level.

Keeping a Yoshi seems to make life a lot easier.

Through Roy’s castle, and onto Chocolate Island. I was doing fine until Chocolate Island 3, when I found that the exit led me into a loop which took me back to Chocolate Island 3. I explored CI2 for ages, because there was a sign at the start indicating that if I collected a certain number of coins or finished at a certain time I would get a different exit, but no amount of experimenting gave that result. There didn’t look as if there could be a secret path leading from the ghost house or CI1. And then, met with a facepalm, I realised that the arrows at the end of CI3 were pointing to the right, showing me where I had to go. I rode Yoshi along, swallowed the blue koopa to give me wings, and then made my way over to the other secret exit.

I’ve left it at CI4, which has a lot of diagonal platforms to slide down. Hopefully I won’t get lost again.

Viewfinder: completed!

Posted on 26/01/2026 Written by Xexyz

World four turned out to be quite long and complex, and the overall tone of the game turned much darker. Many of the level foundations became purple and grey, which could not be destroyed by laying photographs or photographed themselves. What seemed to be a restriction actually quickly became another puzzle, where (for example) a photo of a battery inside a purple cage could be placed as just the battery. Where walls were made of standard material but floors were made of purple, the walls could be vanished with the application of a photo of the sky, leaving a clear path through. I struggled a fair bit with a couple of the levels, before I suddenly realised an obvious solution.

And then onto World 5, where the story became more ominous and the mood ever darker. Cait the cat didn’t want me to find the weather device. Bits of building and objects just hung in the air, with gravity seemingly forgotten. Levels became ever more complex and foreboding. At one point I went back to the first World to explore a bit and find the collectible ducks, just for a break.

One of the more freaky things about the last World is the timed camera, which allows you to run around and take a photo of yourself. Remember in Portal, at the start of the game, when you place a portal and then can see yourself running into it, through the other portal? Imagine that, but instead of seeing a human character you see a mess of interference lines which vaguely take the shape of a person. Placing that photo instantly teleports you to the location of your silhouette, and you need to make sure you have multiple copies if you need to teleport out again.

Even with the rewind function, floating stuff gives me vertigo and a fear of falling off the edge

And then the final level, which suddenly introduced a time limit and required all the different skills that had been present throughout the game. In the end the time limit was more than enough to complete tasks, but working out how to do them was more of a challenge. I think it took me five attempts, before I finally found the science experiment and departed from the simulation.

Really fun as a game, and it certainly didn’t overstay its time; as with all the best games, it introduced new mechanics regularly and only used them a few times before assuming they were now just part of the repertoire.

Viewfinder: petting the cat

Posted on 05/01/2026 Written by Xexyz

Viewfinder caught my eye when it was first demonstrated, with the ability to take photos and walk into them, and clever world manipulation. When it came out it was £20, and that seemed a little expensive for the technical sandbox I imagined it to be. Towards the end of last year it was free on PS+, and given away on the Epic Game Store, and now, having played it, I can see that I was wrong: it is not just a technical sandbox, it was not too expensive, and a lot of the game doesn’t have you wandering around with a camera taking photos.

Indeed, you don’t get a camera of your own until World 3 (of 5); initially you are reliant on picking up photos (or other pictures), and then later you can use photocopiers and cameras which are fixed in place. All have a limited number of uses; once you place a picture in the world it is no longer yours and instead becomes the level itself, and photocopiers and cameras have limited film or paper. In some ways I was disappointed that there wasn’t a more free mode, where you could experiment with multiple photos and building your own platforms without a set objective. Maybe that is yet to come, or maybe that just wouldn’t work – my PS4 has already crashed twice in levels where I’ve been dealing with many different photos.

I’ve completed World 3 now, and on to World 4. The game focuses on small, restricted puzzles, and there are times when I feel like I’ve brute forced my way through rather than settling on a clever obscure solution. Maybe that’s just my perception. There is a story, which is rather hard to follow, but it seems that the levels you explore have been built inside this simulation, which in turn has been built inside a laboratory that you visit a couple of times. And you’re searching for a weather manipulator? Not sure why that’s in the simulation. The most important thing is that the only inhabitant of the simulated world is an artificial cat, and, when it’s not talking to you, you can walk up to it and pet it. When you do, it purrs, and the controller vibrates.

That’s worth the £20 by itself.

The Crew Motorfest: on the horizon

Posted on 15/12/2025 Written by Xexyz

The new Crew game has joined Game Pass, so I thought I’d give it a go. At first it felt like I was playing Forza Horizon 2, but after a while it felt more like Forza Horizon 4. It’s just so familiar, but with a slightly worse driving model, and more unlikeable characters in longer cut scenes. I’ve still got a third of FH4 and most of FH5 to complete, but maybe I’ll get around to trying this some day – through probably they’ll turn the servers off before I do.