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Super Mario Odyssey: back to the sand

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I got Mario Odyssey shortly after it launched – there was some special deal at The Game Collection, I seem to recall – and I played it for a bit. However, at the time I was still deep into Breath of the Wild, and the more expansive and cohesive nature of Odyssey (compared to the more discrete levels of Mario 64, or Mario Galaxy, say) meant that it felt just a little too similar to a large story game for me to keep going at it. Of course, by the time I finished Breath of the Wild – many months later – Odyssey was buried deep at the bottom of the backlog pile. I’ve taken it to various places in the Switch case, but have never been tempted to put the cartridge back in.

Until yesterday, when I was travelling up to London, and realised that the Donkey Kong Bananza cartridge had helpfully been taken out of my Switch 2, replaced with Pokémon Sword. Edward seems to have multiple Pokémon games on the go at any one time, including multiple instances of the same game across different Switch consoles; he makes use of the fact that Pokémon is one of the few games that doesn’t work over the cloud synchronisation service on NSO, and plays on his Switch Lite, my old Switch, and my Switch 2.

Anyway, this is a very longwinded introduction to say that I was planning on playing a platformer, but I didn’t have the game I planned to play, so played Odyssey instead.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. I appeared in the desert, outside the Mexican-inspired village, and tried to work out what I should be doing; luckily the words “The Hole in the Desert” had been shown as the level loaded, and a big light shown from a hole under a large inverted pyramid. Did I make that thing float? I can’t remember.

Why does it have to be so slippery this far underground?

Anyway, after a lot of faffing around with bit and pieces in the level, including finding another moon in a crate which I had to steer a Bullet Bill to hit, as well as experimenting with the controls, I jumped down the hole and traversed the icy platforms underneath, until I reached a boss battle. It didn’t take me too long to work out what to do. The boss comprised a giant floating head and two floating hands, which attacked by trying to hit me, or clap with me in the middle. When one punched the floor, after jumping out the way, I threw my cap at it and possessed it, which then meant I could steer it around and punch the boss in his face with his own hand.

“Stop hitting yourself!”

Overall I added a few more moons to my total, taking me over the number I need to travel to the next area – and I also found a wibbly painting which allowed me to teleport to the metro area early (but only to a very small platform, with no way of getting anywhere else. The temptation is to stay, to find more moons that may be hidden away, but if I do that I know I’ll never progress. Next time I play – hopefully with less than an eight-year gap – I’ll move on.

Out Run GB: a valiant effort

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I previously wrote about Hero GP, a fun little Game Boy Colour game I bought which is pretty difficult given its speed. I have played it on occasion since, since it’s ideal for a very short play session (which can turn into a much longer one with just one more go). The maker of that game has wondered “what if OutRun came to the Game Boy Color?”, and despite his misspellings of both “Out Run” and “Colour”, it’s a valid question. Luckily, he has answered it.

Yes, there are limitations. No branching paths, limited roadside furniture, blocky cars. But it feels like Out Run, with undulating tracks and traffic getting in the way, and if you hit another car or a tree with enough force, the car somersaults in the classic advert for seat belt wearing.

It feels slower than Hero GP, which is probably a good thing given the tighter feel to the track space. The controls are very precise, other than the brake which seems to have too much of an effect. Hitting other cars slows you down a little too much, meaning that two hits is almost enough to mean you fail the first stage, whereas that’s not usually the case until the second stage at least – depending on DIP switch settings, of course. It’s a very accomplished bit of coding, and while it can’t be released commercially for obvious reasons, I hope that Sega keep it available as a curio – it’s free to play from the link above.

Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp: blasting through

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AW1+2RC is a compilation of the first two Advance Wars games (not the first games in the series, mind – Famicom Wars and Game Boy Wars hold that honour) with new graphics, the war room separated out into a combined section, and a few niceties added to make the game run a bit smoother. It also has a ‘casual’ mode which I seem to have been enrolled on, even though I answered “no” when asked if this was my first time playing Advance Wars.

As a result I am powering through the levels, getting S and the occasional A rank. The most difficult level I’ve found so far was against Kanbei, when his heavy units were obliterating my army; I realised a few turns too late that he had left the South of the map undefended, which is where his HQ was; it took me a couple of turns to send an infantry unit along and capture it, meaning I won the level but with a much reduced score.

Mario Kart 7: back online

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With the help of the Pretendo network, I’ve managed to have a few games of this online over the past week or so, as well as doing some more time trials. The lobbies aren’t full, but any stretch, but even when there’s only three people in a race the catch up algorithms mean that it’s fun to compete. On a couple of occasions there was one player who knew glitches on levels which meant they won easily, but they never stayed online for long. I won only a couple of races, but my ranking has slightly improved from 1000 so the game thinks I’m doing OK.

Coming from Mario Kart World, the 3DS isn’t that comfortable to hold, and I keep forgetting that I need to hold the shoulder button down in order to train a shell or banana behind me. There were a couple of times I wished I could have a feather to jump a gap, and I got very confused in Shy Guy Bazaar where the World version of the track is just a little bit different. Still, this is a great game.

In 150cc the game still feels pretty unfair, but in time trial it’s amazingly tense

Wreckfest: this isn’t a PC game

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So why is it crashing as if is one?

Unfortunately the debug menu option doesn’t work, and instead it just quits the game. I’ve tried deleting and redownloading, and I get the same error, which means it might be an issue with a locally stored save file or update file or something. Pretty frustrating.