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Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A silly point and click game where you’re a gritty noir-ish hard-boiled detective? And you’re a duck? Sold.

Aside from being a duck, you’re every cliche known to the character. Your apartment is your office, you have no money, you’re going through a divorce, you seem to have a drinking problem – a full house.

Desperate for work, you take on a job for an anonymous person who wants you to investigate a lunch theft from the staff kitchen in the offices of a bus company. By making deducktions (no, really) where you link characters and evidence to fill in gaps in sentences, based on the information you’ve found or gotten out of the workers. It soon becomes clear that there’s a bit more going on than someone nicking food from the fridge, when there’s evidence of smuggling and even a kidnapping.

Good things about the game include the comedy style (and duck puns) and how the character you think might be the suspect keeps changing, as everyone seems to have some sort of grudge or problem with at least one other person involved. On the down side, it’s an incredibly short game. I was expecting several cases to solve, whereas there’s really only one (well, three crimes, but they’re all the same case and you solve them together). There’s also a puzzle I just didn’t get, involving a safe combination, which I brute forced in the end but even after looking up a solution later it still doesn’t make sense.

Still, if I see the sequel (beakquel?) cheap, I’ll probably buy it.

Viewfinder (PS5): COMPLETED!

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This is one of those puzzle games that makes you feel very clever. Not quite as clever as The Witness, perhaps, or Superliminal, which this feels a bit like.

The premise is that in a future where climate change has broken everything, you’ve been put in a VR machine within which some clever people in the past supposedly found a fix for the planet but it was never put in place. You have to find out what it is. It’s sort of like wandering round a shared Mind Palace or something.

What it actually is, because that’s just the framing gimmick, is a series of first person levels where the aim is to reach a device that lets you move on to the next bit. Only it’s always out of reach or needs power or is behind a wall or has a missing cable or is sound activated but the sound-making-device is too far away.

You solve these puzzles initially by making use of photographs you find. These 2D pictures create a 3D object of the photo when used, so for example, you have to get from one platform to another but there’s a big gap. If you stand in the right place, and hold up the photo of a bridge you found nearby in just the right way that it looks like the bridge fills the gap, then magically it does fill the gap.

Later on, you get a camera with which to make your own photos, and various other things – like batteries, a photocopier, pieces of pictures you have to line up, and walls of a certain colour that can’t be photographed (or “printed over” with a photograph) complicate things.

It’s not especially long, but it has plenty of clever ideas along the way. I also appreciated some of the trophies. They reward for trying to do stupid things. For example, there’s a bit where you need three batteries to power an exit, but you only have one battery. Naturally, you take a photo of the battery and then that photo gives you a second battery. My mind then thought… wait. I’ve more shots left on this camera. Took a photo of both batteries, then all four batteries and so on. Got to 32 or 64 batteries and a trophy popped. Amazing.

Roguecraft DX (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This is an isometric Amiga-based little roguelike on the Evercade, which is an update to the Commodore 64-based Rogue64, which was a free hidden game on the Evercade. There’s nothing especially new or special about it, but it’s polished and looks really nice. It’s simple enough – randomised dungeons with baddies that generally get harder as you do deeper in, potions (most of them with random-for-that-run effects), health to maintain, and so on.

You can start with one of three classes – Warrior, Rogue and Wizard, which also act as the difficulty levels. I’ve completed it as a Warrior, but not managed it with the other two yet. And I very much enjoyed it.

Oh, and the “craft” in Roguecraft is referencing Lovecraft, not crafting. Of which there is none.

Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

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I’ve a mixed history with Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong 64 I loved, for a while, until it became clear it was a nightmare of repetition and collecting. Donkey Kong ’94, for the Game Boy, is one of my favourite platformers. I hated all the Super NES Donkey Kong Country games with their stupid pre-rendered graphics and terrible physics and collision detection. The evolution of those for the 3DS and Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns was better, and I completed it, but it wasn’t amazing (aside from looking really nice on the 3DS). I passed on Tropical Freeze because it was more of the same (and, unlike Returns, wasn’t free). But now, mainly because of a dearth of Switch 2 specific games and a super cheap 50% off deal because I bought the Japanese version from Amazon, Donkey Kong Bananza is mine.

Well, it was mine for a few hours but then I had to lend it to my child for a few months because she needed it apparently. Eventually it came back.

My first impressions were not very good. The purple colour scheme just felt weird. The “digging” mechanic, where you can destroy almost all of the environment, didn’t make any sense in a Donkey Kong game, and there just seemed like there was too much to dig. After a couple of hours, I had started to warm to it and by the end, was totally taken by New Design Donkey Kong and the Canon Bursting Addition of Little Pauline. If you ignore everything that doesn’t make sense, then it’s a lot of fun.

Levels are varied, with many reminding me of bits of Mario 64. There’s loads to do, with each huge area (or layer, as the game calls them – you’re slowly digging down to the planet’s core) already full of missions, quests or jobs to do and then having a number of, mostly hidden, challenge doors that include tricky platforming, puzzles, and taking on enemies in a range of environments. You also gain skills, mainly in the form of animal transformations, which can let you reach previously inaccessible areas within levels you’ve already done, so it’s a bit Metroidvania-y in that way. Minor upgrades in the form of purchasable clothing are also available, to buff your attacks, elemental defences, and give you more time in your transformed states.

Controls were tricky at first, mainly because Nintendo have moved the jump button to A when B, or even Y is much more common. The reason is to that X, Y and B can be used to “dig” (or rather, punch) up, forward and down respectively. I did still keep pressing the wrong shoulder buttons even at the end of the game too, so never really got completely used to them.

The gameplay is great though. Punching through everything is actually pretty addictive, even if the rewards for doing so are minimal. You very quickly rack up more gold – the main currency in the game – than you can ever spend. Other things you find, like bananas and fossils are of more use but are rarer. Once you get the upgrade which lets you see where various treasures are buried, it lets you focus on the important stuff so you don’t randomly punch everywhere. Except, of course, I did anyway. Enemies are mostly dispatched by either punching them, or throwing stuff at them (you can rip up chunks of ground to do this) but some are unfazed by “softer” material or need a specific type of rock to expose their weak points first, so there’s sometimes some strategy to the combat rather than button mashing.

The animal transformations feel a bit under-utilised, partly as you rarely need them and partly because they could have just been extra abilities rather than a whole added on mechanism. They’re a bit fiddly to swap to as well, and your time as them is limited, so sometimes – where it was possible – I’d just do it the “hard” way as Normal Ape to save the hassle. It’s also a bit weird having an animal become an ape-snake or ape-zebra hybrid. Video games, eh?

So, not the best early-new-console release, but far better than I was expecting given my history with Donkey Kong games. My main take away from the game is, however, that it clearly wasn’t a Donkey Kong game when they had the idea and mechanics in place, and then needed to fit it to an existing Nintendo character. Nintendo do this a lot and, in this case, it seems to have paid off.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate: nintendogs in the way

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I am not good at Smash Bros. I can beat many people, but that is because they are less good, not because I am in any way competent. At Edward’s birthday party some of his friends were asking to play Smash Bros, and we put on a seven-player game, with everyone else on one team and me on the other. I lost, but only just.

It was more balanced when I had a couple of people on my team who had played Smash once before, all up to the point where a giant (ninten)dog jumped up to the screen just as I was starting to fall off the side – and so I couldn’t see where to boost to. Stupid dog.