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Unpacking (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 11/06/2022 Written by deKay

What I was expecting from this game: a sort of Tetris puzzle game where you have to fit items into a room. What I was not expecting: a putting-things-away simulator with an unwritten, non-verbal story about the life of a woman.

Told over a number of years across various different houses, you unpack your belongings as you move in. Over time, you acquire (and lose) new hobbies, tastes and relationships, but this is only explained by the objects in the houses.

There’s a small amount of “make every fit”, and some stuff will only go in certain places, but it isn’t tricky and there’s no penalty or stress. It’s just a nice little time waster with a surprise story.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Diary, switch

Unpacking (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 11/06/2022 Written by deKay

What I was expecting from this game: a sort of Tetris puzzle game where you have to fit items into a room. What I was not expecting: a putting-things-away simulator with an unwritten, non-verbal story about the life of a woman.

Told over a number of years across various different houses, you unpack your belongings as you move in. Over time, you acquire (and lose) new hobbies, tastes and relationships, but this is only explained by the objects in the houses.

There’s a small amount of “make every fit”, and some stuff will only go in certain places, but it isn’t tricky and there’s no penalty or stress. It’s just a nice little time waster with a surprise story.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Diary, switch

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/06/2022 Written by deKay

What a lovely blue skies game this was. It wasn’t the open-world, post apocalyptic Kirby the trailers and pre-release media made out though, as it sticks to the same level structure as most of the classic Kirby titles, but it looks amazing and is a lot of fun.

And is so, so easy! I completed the entire game, including the post-ending extra hard content, without dying at all. Or even coming close to dying. Or, a handful of bosses aside, even paying attention to my energy bar. But then, Kirby games have never been anything even approaching difficult so that’s not really the point.

The point, is that they’re so joyful and quirky and have unusual (to other games) mechanics. Here, you have the standard “suck up enemies to steal their powers” of previous games, but they’ve added Mouthful Mode where you try to suck up large objects like vending machines and cars but they get a bit stuck, although do provide you with some extra temporary skills. The car can smash through things, the big fan can be used to propel a boat, the cone can break through cracked floors, etc.

Your normal powers can be upgraded too. There are short challenge levels that task you with completing them in a certain time, or with a certain power, and these give you special stars which you can spend on the upgrades. It makes the powers deal more damage and so on, but also changes how they look. You don’t actually need any of these upgrades, but they’re nice to have.

In short (and the game is pretty short) it’s a bright and happy Nintendo platformer with charm and cute things and – most importantly – it’s really fun.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Diary, kirby, switch

Picross S Mega Drive & Master System Edition (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 01/06/2022 Written by deKay

Yes, it’s another of Jupiter’s excellent but nearly identical Picross games! Only this one is slightly different as each puzzle is a pixel graphic straight from a Sega Mega Drive or Master System game! But you guessed that from the title.

Not that it really matters because I literally don’t care what the pictures actually are, but it was a bit disappointing that so many of them were just faces of characters from games. Nowhere near as many items, logos, weapons, scenery parts, etc. as I’d hoped for. Also, the music is so, so irritating. The Alex Kidd music, on a loop, for over half an hour? No thanks. And why Passing Breeze from Out Run when Magical Sound Shower exists? Madness.

Can you tell that it’s Knuckles yet?

Thankfully, you can put “soothing arcade sounds” on instead. So I did that.

Oh, and completion time? About 30 hours.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Diary, Master System, Mega Drive, picross, switch

Ghostwire Toyko (PS5): COMPLETED!

Posted on 29/05/2022 Written by deKay

There’s a song by Puffy AmiYumi called Planet Tokyo. I mention this not because it has anything to do with the game, but every time I see the title “Ghostwire Tokyo” I read it in the same tune. Yes, I know you probably have no idea what I’m on about.

I went into the game itself pretty blind. I’d glanced over a couple of reviews and read some game-content-free comments on how good it was, but I think I was expecting something a little different to what I got. The initial Yakuza vibe, of Tokyo streets and neon signs and tiny bars and vending machines everywhere wore off quickly when it was clear this was more more explorey than that, much less person-filled, and with combat closer to something approaching Bioshock than a first person shooter or a fighty punchmans game.

The story, with hopefully spoiler avoidance, centres around Akito, a man who is seemingly killed at the same time as almost everyone else in Tokyo has been raptured and replaced with ghosts, spirits and yōkai. Akito is then posessed by KK, the ghost of an ex-police officer (and not the dog from Animal Crossing) who imbues you with spirit powers. Most of the other spirits are literally just hanging around waiting for you to “save” them by sucking them into paper dolls which you then release into phoneboxes because, well, it’s never made completely clear. Much of the game is, or at least, is if you’re going for 100% completion, collecting these souls and in some ways doing so feels a bit like the orb collection in Crackdown, but the actual story involves almost none of this.

Instead, you’re tasked with reaching torii gates (the big red arches in front of Japanese shrines and temples) to “cleanse” them. This clears out the nearby poisonous fog and allows you to reach additional areas of the map. There are various fog-filled places on this map you go to as part of the plot, so clearing the fog is essential to get there, but if you’re just following the story you’ll only have unlocked about 25% of the city by the time you reach the credits, so fog clearance is another expansive extra-curricular activity should you want it.

On your travels, you’ll come across baddies in the form of headless schoolkids, salarymen with umbrellas, banshees, and other zombie-like creatures who you can dispatch with your unlockable elemental powers of wind (the most effective), water (which seems to do literally nothing) and fire (which does a lot of damage to a wide area but your “ammo” is very limited). “Shoot” them enough, and they expose their “core” and you can lasso this with your ghost wire spirit rope thing, yank it out, and they die. Or die more. Or again? I don’t know how it works. There are also boss fights, most of which you’re warped to some sort of broken dreamworld which acts as a way of drastically reducing the game’s required polygon output (I assume) but play out a little differently to normal fights. They reminded me of boss battles in some of the older Lego games, actually.

As pretty much everyone has vacated Tokyo mysteriously, leaving behind clothes, phones and shopping bags, the streets are eerily empty (aside from the spirits). Very little street furniture is interactive, and most shops, stairs, doors and so on are inaccessible in that Shenmue type way that reminds you it’s a video game. It means it’s a bit spooky, but it also feels a bit unfinished. Combat is also a bit vague but repetitive. However, it’s still fun. The plot unravels some mysteries, there’s some great sequences where reality goes sideways, and there are loads of bizarre side-missions where you catch yōkai or feed dogs or collect toys and artworks and stuff to sell to floating cats that now run the shops in the absence of people. I loved all the Japanese and Shintō lore and imagery, and although just a façade of a real place, Ghostwire Tokyo is wonderful to wander round – surprise attacks by fat men with brollies notwithstanding – and a fascinating, if a little shallow, game.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, Diary, ps5

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