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Wattam (PS4): COMPLETED!

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From the possibly damaged brain of the guy who brought you the beautiful nonsense that was Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, is Wattam. Presumably it is called Wattam because when you see it for the first time, you say “what? erm”.

The plot is that everything has exploded and gone away and you, as a lonely square mayor has to bring everything back. And you do this by making trees eat your friends and turning them into fruit, by making everyone cry using an onion, and by getting a disembodied mouth to eat everyone, turn them into poos, then you flush those poos in a toilet (which you control) and then they turn into gold poos and then you have to stack the gold poos on top of each other so they’re as tall as a giant bowling pin, then you plant an acorn and everyone holds hands and then you take your hat off and explode..

Just in case it wasn’t baffling enough, some of the characters speak Korean, Russian and Japanese.

That’s right. The game makes even less sense than Noby Noby Boy and Katamari.

It has clunky controls and a clunky camera just like its predecessors, it has bizarre music like its predecessors, and against all odds the weirdness actually means it’s a lot of fun, also like its predecessors.

Yeah, it’s yet another one of those games where you have to control giant face parts and assemble them on a giant face while the giant face runs around and you have to find various ways to fight it, including throwing tobiko sushi babies at it. A crowded genre, for sure.

The post Wattam (PS4): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Lego Builder’s Journey (iOS): COMPLETED!

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What a lovely little game this turned out to be. It’s these tiny little Lego dioramas each with a little puzzle in – get you little lego boy to the other side of the screen, or make machinery do something, or build a thing in a certain way.

It isn’t difficult, although one of the puzzles introduced a new gimmick which I completely missed so it stumped me for a while, but it’s clever and looks incredible and if you have Apple Arcade already (as against all odds, I do) then it’s free and a wonderful thing I strongly suggest you play.

This screen involves building a path for your skateboard.

The post Lego Builder’s Journey (iOS): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Assault Android Cactus+ (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Some years ago, I got Assault Android Cactus on Steam, and I played it a bit via my Steam Link. It was great, but booting my Mac into Windows and setting the Link up and everything needing updating every time I did so got old fast so it’s rare I ever bother these days. But it’s a shame because sometimes games like this just don’t get played.

Until now! The “+” version, which differs in ways I don’t know about, was very cheap on the Switch eShop last week and so I bought it. And I’m glad I did because it really is a very good twin-stick shooter. In many ways, it reminds me of the Wii reboot of Alien Storm, only a trillion times better.

Playing it on the Switch rather than via a Steam Link also meant I could play two-player co-op with my daughter. I wasn’t sure how she’d get on with twin-stick controls, but she was excellent and on many stages beat me (it’s co-op, but there’s still a score/death based competitive element). We had so much fun we completed it in pretty much one sitting.

It’s easy, right up until the final boss where I realised I’d not been paying attention to how the battery system works or even making much use of the much more power secondary weapon. Or how leaving powerups for a while before collecting them changes what they do. All of which were vital to beating the final boss, it turns out.

The post Assault Android Cactus+ (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’ve seen a lot of people praise Celeste since it came out. Many of them saying it’s the best of the “stupidly difficult platformer” genre, which is presumably also populated with games like VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy and Slime-san. But, although I’ve liked some of those games before, I wasn’t sure I wanted another. Then Celeste was on sale of nearly-free, so I got it anyway.

And it’s good. Really it is. The pixel art is nice and the story is pretty good. There are lots of different mechanics like switches and things you can bounce off and platforms that “grow” stuff that kills you. The thing was, I didn’t really enjoy it all that much.

Hard platformers are supposed to anger and frustrate you, but after each beaten screen, you’re supposed to feel a sense of achievement, or that you’ve reached a level of zen. All I got was relief I didn’t need to play that bit of the game again, and I’m not sure why.

None of the game was too hard, and I finished it with “only” 1008 deaths on the tally. Only one section properly annoyed me, but I eventually beat that and moved on, so it wasn’t the difficulty causing me to not enjoy it. I just felt I was completing it for the sake of it rather than because i wanted to.

But it isn’t a bad game at all. I just wasn’t feeling it.

The post Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED!

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No, not the same game again. You see, the game Celeste that most people know, and the one I completed already, isn’t the original Celeste. No, that’s a PICO-8 game which I’ve played before on my PocketChip handheld. I think I completed it too, but I have no record of doing so on this diary so I’ll have to assume I didn’t.

Anyway, the original game was much simpler, with no story, 8-bit style graphics, and each screen is literally just a single screen with an exit at the top. You also can’t climb walls, although you can slide slowly down them.

The game is hidden inside the “new” Celeste, so when I unlocked it, I played it. It’s much shorter, and somewhat easier, and I actually enjoyed it a fair bit more for some reason.

The post Celeste (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.