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Flock: completed!

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I haven’t written about it for a while, but I had been playing Flock in small chunks since I started it back in December, until I reached a bit where I couldn’t quite parse the instructions. Having identified and charmed the Emperor Cosmot and the Cloaked Rustic, the forests were unveiled and I explored, including the giant mushrooms of the Skyfish Caverns. There weren’t many skyfish there, save the occasional Barbeled, but there was a large cave with ominous noises coming from within.

My aunt hinted, after a while, that the occupant of the cave needed an audience, and so I should find five crystal sprugs – but searching the nearby pools with crystals surrounding them gave me only two. Frustrated, I decided to explore the world more and try to find other species that I hadn’t yet found – leading to a male painted skyfish, a dappled baffin, and a slumbering rustic – and eventually I noticed more crystal pools in the swamp area in the middle of the map. Three more crystal pools, in fact, each holding another crystal sprug.

Sprugs collected, I went back to the cave and a giant skyfish emerged, which I named as the Encrusted Skyfish as it was covered with (what look like) barnacles. This then meant the final areas of the map opened, and I went exploring again. I found a fifth sheep, the final family of animals (the burbots hiding on the ground), and realised that I didn’t yet have the drupe whistle so started to search the meadows for it. I found it, charmed a few drupes, and then on grazing another meadow I found a burgling bewl who had stolen my aunt’s feeding bag. I had to chase it down and charm it, then on returning the feeding bag to the starting area the credits rolled. Game completed.

Not quite, though. Up to this point I had played for about 10 hours, and I hadn’t grown tired of the game mechanics, so I decided to fill out the creature guide and become a master of as many different families as I could. I’d already charmed quite a few cosmets, and that bar filled up quite quickly. I loved exploring, listening to hints from the researchers on where to find the last few creatures, and then tracking another male painted skyfish through the landscape until he met a female. The ability to fill feeding stations to attract some of the last few entries was very useful – and I’m glad I didn’t try to fill this out before rolling the credits.

At the very very end, when I was going back and forth finding the last few skyfish to charm, it started to wear a little thin. But the flowing movement still charmed me, and I was spurred on by the fact that the game is leaving Game Pass in a few days so I didn’t want to leave it incomplete. By all measures, that’s not the case now. Credits rolled, creature guide complete, mastery of everything, all achievements unlocked.

Mario Smash Football: a forgotten gem

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Recently added to the Switch Online service, Mario Smash Football is a five-a-side game with … adjusted … rules. You play in an arena with an electric barrier around, meaning the ball can’t go out. You can, and are encouraged to, barge your opponents out the way, or knock them over with powerful shots, or knock them out of action temporarily with Mario-Kart-type items. Your team consists of the main character (from a roster of nine) plus a crocodile in goal and three identical helpers (such as three toads, or three birdos), and while any of them can pass and shoot, if you are controlling the main character and hold the shoot button for long enough, you can do a special move which has more of a chance of going in.

I had this on the GameCube and enjoyed it; I had the followup on the Wii (Mario Strikers Charged Football) but never played that too much, probably due to the plethora of Wii and Xbox 360 games I acquired around that time. It still plays very well, if a little rough around the edges, and I’ve completed the first two cups (coming in first place, but not winning every game). I am much more likely to play this on the Switch (2) than on the GameCube, though, simply because it’ll always be available when I want it.

Mario Kart World: completed!

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Hah. As if. And yet, I’ve seen the credits, unlocked the special cup, and have gold trophies displayed for all grands prix and knockout tours. This was done on the medium difficulty. By all my usual metrics, I’ve completed the game.

But Mario Kart’s not like that, and Mario Kart World is doubly not like that. The real game in Mario Kart appears at 150cc, the hardest difficulty level, when not only does your kart travel faster (to the extent that you might, shock, need to use the brake sometimes) but enemies are much more unfair, both in terms of driving ability and item use. In 150cc, I’ve completed four of the grands prix in first place, but never with three stars (which are awarded for being first in each of the four races) – I’ve come close, but a combination of blue shell, red shell and lightning on the final stretch meant I was overtaken by a couple of opponents before crossing the line. The controller survived, just.

See, credits.

The course design is superb. I was wondering how they would build on the last few iterations – which introduced the jump boosts in Wii, flying in 7, and anti-gravity in 8 – since having to include all those elements would get a bit restrictive. Anti-gravity has gone (except in one specific case), and in its place they’ve put in rail grinding and wall riding, allowing for some clever alternative routes and reimagining of older tracks. I’ve noted tracks from the SNES, Gamecube, DS, Wii, and 3DS games, though some are quite different; however, you don’t get to lap around the tracks that much since the races in the grand prix mode include a race to get to the stadium. There are a few occasions where, in order for this to be a single coherent world, the roads to the courses are a bit straight and – almost – boring, but at higher difficulties the threat of blue shells means you never relax.

After the 96 courses of the Switch game (with the booster pack), this game could end up feeling small, but the variety of courses should keep me going for a while yet. I’ve hardly done anything in the free roam mode, where you find challenges and medallions and can experiment with alternative routes, and I’ve only spent one evening online (where my best position was 3rd, and my worst was … 22nd). And I haven’t even worked out how time trial really works in terms of ghosts and friends.

Spoilers: there is a rainbow road

And, finally, multiplayer. On Fathers’ Day I spent two hours playing with Nicholas and Edward, through a number of grands prix and knockout tours. We unlocked loads of costumes, and I won, most of the time. Mario Kart n00bs.

Dordogne: competed!

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One of the disadvantages of the proliferation of games that are available, through Game Pass, and PS+, and the Switch Online service, and the thousand-odd games sitting on shelves and in boxes and on the internal storage of the Wii and Wii U and 3DS and Xbox 360 and PS3 and Switch and Playdate and PS Vita and N-Gage and … anyway, one of the disadvantages is that there is always something new to discover, something new to play. I will spend some time, maybe a couple of days, with an utterly charming game, but then something new will come along and I’ll put it back on the “to be completed” list. Or worse still, I’ll forget to do even that. For some games, that will be the end of the story. For others, they will get a reprieve – often spurred by me reading a retrospective piece in Edge, or being recommended the game by a friend, or (as is the case with Dordogne) facing the possibility of losing access to the game due to it being removed from Game Pass.

Which is a long way of saying I went back to the game, last played last June, and I completed it.

The artwork remained stunning until the end of the game, especially the underwater section.

The story was, in the end, a lot harder-hitting than I was expecting, with young Mimi uncovering arguments between her father and late grandfather, and older Mimi finally finding the reason that she was never allowed to see her grandmother again. Towards the end of the game there was an affecting exposition of delayed grief, and rekindling of missed connections. The text harassment from her father segued into concern from her mother and a sense of regret. It was a surprisingly complex relationship.

Definitely worth playing, and I then spent a little time going back through the story to collect stickers, words, put together new scrapbook pages, and complete one of the rhythm games more effectively (a top tip for that – don’t use your mouse, use your trackpad).

Test Drive Unlimited: a quieter Horizon Festival

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I found TDU in a box in the loft a couple of weeks ago, and since I now have a new Xbox 360 set up (replacing my old one which didn’t have HDMI output) so can play games which are not compatible with the Xbox One, I thought I’d revisit the game. Unfortunately my save wasn’t in the cloud, and wasn’t transferred while I had both consoles set up, so I needed to start from the beginning. Looking at my page on TrueAchievements, that’s not a huge issue, since my previous playtime (in 2007 and 2011) saw me get to the point of owning four cars and two houses, as well as getting ten gold trophies. I’ve already surpassed that on my new save.

At the time, TDU was a revelation – an open world to drive around, and enter races and time trials and other events at certain locations. As a concept, it’s very similar to the Forza Horizon games, but it feels a lot more sparse, without things to find in the world and with emptier roads. The scenery is pretty similar across the island (one of the Hawai’i islands), although as I’ve been driving I’m starting to notice some landmarks. I feel as if I’m fighting the car more than in the Forza games though; the driving model is a bit less forgiving, and the lack of a rewind function means it feels more difficult than it actually is.