ugvm — Page 15 — the site of uk.games.video.misc

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch)

Posted on 20/04/2025 Written by deKay

I went back after completing the main story, as there was still A Lot To Do. Not least completing the story unlocks two more Heroes – the Queens of Agnus and Keves themselves – but also because I had loads of other side missions and stuff I wanted to look into.

There’s quite a lot more exposition on how the world of Aionios came to be, as well as more backstory on both the main characters and all of the Heroes. Completing quests for your characters also eventually leads to them “ascending”, which unlocks more CP levels for them and some bonuses.

There’s a Nopon you meet fairly early on in the game who tells you to come back once you’ve completed the game, so I did that and he wanted stories of my adventures. Each completed story unlocks something – mostly cosmetic items and skins of characters from earlier Xenoblade games – and to complete them generally means 100%ing something. One I thought I’d go for was to unlock everything on everyone’s Interlink skill trees. To do this requires a lot of SP, and the only ways to get SP are by exploring the world (new areas unlock SP), opening containers (which might contain some), beating big ol’ baddies, and completing quests. Ascension quests unlock 10 SP each upon completion, and were the main things left for me to do, so I focussed on them. Oh boy.

Valdi, the young engineer commander of one of the Colonies, has a quest which involves collecting loads of items. Some are very rare. And only seem to come out of the item generators. Sometimes. I spent probably two whole hours on this tiny bit of one part of one of hundreds of quests, eventually completing it when the RNG Gods allowed it. That gave me enough SP to unlock the final bit of an Interlink tree, which in turn let me go and see the Nopon to get my prize. Only, it turns out, that I’d already got the same “prize” by scanning an Amiibo months ago. Angry? I nearly exploded.

I did, however, mop up some more stuff afterwards until I was satisfied I’d managed to rinse as much information and entertainment as I could out of the game, and with 130 hours on the clock, I called it a day.

Fantastic game. I see the remaster of Xenoblade Chronicles X is out now too, but as it has no ties to the 1, 2 or 3 (bar a single character cameo in a secret mode in XC2), I feel sad I won’t see any more of this amazing world. Or rather, set of worlds. Xenoblade 4 soon please and thanks?

Buzzled: picross times three

Posted on 17/04/2025 Written by Xexyz

In Buzzled, every hexagon space is either yellow or black. Each has a number. Each row has a sum of some of those numbers, coloured yellow or black. You have to work out which hexagons should be yellow (or black) to lead to the correct sum.

So, for example, on the bottom-left row here, you can see that only one of the 1s can be coloured yellow, and anything greater than a 1 should be black. The 5 on the far right side must be black, since that column has a maximum sum of 4 in yellow. The top-left row, not yet filled in in this screenshot, can only be configured in one way, with the 2 being yellow and all others being black.

It’s similar to picross in a way, but with a different labelling convention and a need for more complex sums.

This screenshot is of the ‘expert’ level; I completed it in 9 minutes 17 seconds. There’s also a ‘mini’ and a ‘classic’ mode, with smaller grids. And there’s a ‘master’ mode, where you are instead just told the number of hexagons that need to be a certain colour. I’ve not quite worked out the maths behind that one yet.

You can play Buzzled at https://puzzmallow.com/buzzled – and you can try Collections and Quickflip while you’re there.

PolyTrack: try try again

Posted on 16/04/2025 Written by Xexyz

PolyTrack is a Trackmania tribute – almost identical gameplay mechanics, but with digital controls, simplified driving model, and a very stripped-back graphical style. It’s even simpler than Virtua Racing in many ways, with the car having a polygon count almost in the single digits. This simplicity means that it runs incredibly smoothly, even in-browser at https://kodub.itch.io/polytrack.

Much like Trackmania, the courses are short but deceptively tricky to complete. There are (usually) a few checkpoints throughout the course, and you can restart from those if you want – but the time does not reset, meaning that if you want to log a decent score you’ll need to restart from the beginning, again and again and again.

The physics seem very internally consistent, although it can be hard to judge when you’re racing on the wall or the ceiling, with only the downforce (upforce?) on your car keeping you aloft. As you work through the courses, there are some that are a bit overly complicated in terms of finding the route – especially the tower at the end of the Summer series, where you climb up high through various ramps and half-pipes, and then have to drive done the wall outside (made more complicated by the fact the camera doesn’t snap to the back of your car, so it’s effectively reversed on the way down). I have completed all the default courses, but some of the “community courses” are just a bit too obscure or long-winded.

You can watch ghosts of anyone on the leaderboard, and race against them. I came nowhere near.

Again like Trackmania, there’s a course designer. There’s a way to import and export designs (as well as game progress) through text. Here’s a fun, easy course from me.

PolyTrack14pdHKH1dCCCGAGefS7oY1usPABPlg5auY3ZKg5aUTDx6Xft1Vvnnz5Vl3K2wXsHnmmy5mE4QkHIUrAz8AmmbPOCA23BEJHisWgcn5fKmqxFKqiQoZ7C2fNmpsPzO7aAzyfvMuujFyVthpgbZSciWNEfl4peLPbpiaW01hckpss8EzpFt4i27ZmK55TvH3bAjQvth7TjtDzVo3aA9eNSNphJTd2peTd9zlodrqGLiIk51jiF93CuZXgPzUixNaNqFdDJUfckej1P6P0lEGvQmoPsXDfCleCc7HvKXryrj37lfuRWX4zqQ4hSjbuuyY5b1uFQ4I5qCeLQjGMWi

Hero GP: 6000 mph

Posted on 14/04/2025 Written by Xexyz

Hero GP is a brand new Game Boy Colo(u)r game, released via itch.io for download to play in any emulators but also able to be used on a GBC itself via a flashcart or on an Analogue Pocket. It is obviously inspired by Hang On, but the constraints of the GBC make the game more streamlined, with more immediate controls and with a simpler game structure. Within a few minutes of buying the game you’ll be at the end of the first track, possibly even doing well enough to unlock the second.

And possibly not. Despite the console’s limitations, this game is fast. This doesn’t show too much in terms of following the track – it’s a very standard 8-bit style single straightish road where the curves just simply nudge you along in the opposite direction a bit – but instead in terms of avoiding your opponents. As you ride along, you will see another rider appear ahead of you, and you’d better get out the way because you shoot past them in less than a second. There’s no speed indicated on the display, but if feels as if your opponents are going about 10 mph, and you’re going 1000.

This disparity in speeds does reveal the stark cheating of the AI, with you catching up to bikes near the end of the course who are going half your speed, and so should never have the lead that they are enjoying. Some of the frontrunners are, at least, going a bit faster than the gold-coloured mopeds who seem to be reversing, but none of them have anything like your speed.

There is one possible exception. I’ve played through 22 races, and never have managed better than a second place; I’ve never seen the rider in first. A single collision in a race seems to mean you’ll not win; luckily a second place is good enough to unlock the next stage.

The levels are all visually distinct, and through an emulator the saturation seems quite harsh – but I suspect this is an attempt to make the game look polished on actual hardware.

It’s a fun game, technically impressive, and the races are short enough to give it an addictive edge. I recommend it.

Densetsu no Stafy: spin spin spin

Posted on 11/04/2025 Written by Xexyz

When renewing my subscription to Nintendo Online it was only marginally more to upgrade to the expansion pass, which has given my sons access to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, will provide me with upgrades for Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch 2, and also gives me access to the N64, GBA and MD libraries. Tempted as I was to immediately start playing through Streets of Rage 2 again, I instead had a look for anything new and interesting. The first thing in the GBA list was a Japanese exclusive game, with a picture of a star on the cover, and a title which reads 伝説のスタフィー. Some research after playing indicates that this is Starfy, although that’s his Westernised name from the fourth game in the series, and a more literal translation is Staffy or Stafy. I knew none of this to start with, and so he became known as “Mr Spinny”.

In fact, he can’t spin at first, and his moveset is restricted to just swimming around and jumping out the water. I’m sure the Japanese introductory screen gave some idea what I had to do, but I went into this blind, and wandered around for ages until I found a big crab, who I naturally avoided. Having run out of anything else to do, I tried to swim past the crab and found that he gave me some more instructions (no idea what) and then let me past. I swam around more, found some random junk (a teapot, a big shell, something like that), and eventually returned to the crab who seemed pleased to have his junk back. I had to find other stuff, he showed me new moves (which I only understood from the A, B and D-pad buttons in the text, and then experimenting afterwards), and then eventually I found a big yellow clamshell who, I think, asked me to do the same thing. I had to explore lots, go through many doors, use my new spinny move to defeat fish and crab enemies, and after lots of getting lost I finally found a boss.

Stafy is OK to control, though his attack move is a bit woolly and he has a little too much momentum in water.

There was nothing tricky in this first level, including the boss who was in a big spiky shell but who didn’t seem to attack at all. The most difficult part is just keeping track of which door leads to where. All through the first level there were big scary orange face blocks, which I never worked out how to get rid of (other blocks could be destroyed once I got the spinny move), and I assumed I’d be able to go back to clear them after getting a new move, but after defeating the boss I’ve now moved onto a new level, seemingly alongside a whale.

Stafy looks like he’s not happy at being interrupted.

I thought it might help to understand some of the Japanese text, and tried to use Google Translate’s camera function. That really didn’t help a lot at all.