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90: One Lukewarm Pant

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Everyone hates January, don’t they? All that nasty weather and month-long mince-pie hangover and constantly writing the previous year by mistake on anything you have to date. So, here comes one more thing about January for you to despise and detest – Episode 90 of the ugvm Podcast!

In this episode, deKay, Toby and Kendrick talk about the earth-shaking revelations that Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal brought, the excitement of Moar Doom and the rest of the Xbox Developer Event Thing, Sega being Ubisoft and letting you give all your data to them in return for… well, not much, and Dan Tedium (or something) having a radio show. For our younger listener, a radio show is like a podcast but it’s on at a specific time. PLUS! We talk about GAMES! Including:

  • Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi
  • Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
  • Freedom Wars Remastered
  • Phogs
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna: The Golden Country
  • Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band
  • Elite Dangerous
  • Indiana Jones and Metal Gear Solid V: The Great Circle
  • Hi-fi Rush

And other things. Plenty for you to hate, eh?

(Direct link here)

Intro music credits: Mark the Strong from the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle soundtrack.

Don’t forget, if you want to contact us with questions or comments for or about the show, you can email podcast@ugvm.org.uk or publicly shame us https://mas.to/@ugvmpodcast on the Mastodons.

Populous the Beginning: innovation in objectives

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I maintain that this is the best game of all time.

Having passed Bloodlust, I moved onto the next few levels: Middle Ground, Head Hunter, and Unlikely Allies. Having introduced all the mechanics by this point, the game starts to be clever with its objectives. Middle Ground is a level based around the Armageddon spell – being the first to claim it, and building up an army quickly to do so. Head Hunter is a much more varied level, with one tribe (the reds) being overly powerful and looking to obtain Armageddon before others are ready, and this means there is a key objective of getting the shaman up to the stone head before the prayers are completed. Unlikely Allies sees you having to protect the yellows – who are seemingly a lot less capable than in other levels – from red attacks, all while suffering from limited building space.

Middle Ground is probably one of the easier levels, since it’s possible to prevent others from attacking you while also protecting the centre stone head. It’s a symmetric level, and it’s advantageous to encourage the three other tribes to attack each other as a preference. I was able to build a balloon army to carry out skirmishes on the reds and greens, again laying swamps where I knew the red shaman would try to go after being reincarnated. After enough attacks on the other armies (with earthquakes doing a decent amount of damage, I called the Armageddon and won the level.

I took no chances when worshipping the centre stone head.

Unlikely Allies was tricky to start with – it takes a while to build huts and a balloon to transport the shaman, and the first attack on the yellow base was soon after starting. I concentrated on building mana for swamp spells, which I cast on the ramp up to the yellow base, and this alone meant that the red shaman died several times, helping me to grow faster. I used land bridge to block off access to my settlement from the red village (by casting it between two hills), then expanded sideways and installed fire warriors in watch towers along the coasts and on top of the ridge. I then took the fight to the red village, with fire storms and earthquakes destroying the firetraining huts and fire warriors quickly. I was half expecting a plot twist where the yellows suddenly turned on me, but that didn’t happen.

The hardest level was Head Hunter, where my village was in the centre of the other three tribes, and there was an urgency to stop the reds from gaining the Armageddon spell. The greens kept sending boats from the South, so I built a wall of watchtowers manned by fire warriors, and set up a campfire with many warriors and preachers circling. This didn’t help protect from the yellows, who kept landing on the West side, so I again set up defences there. In order to buy myself time to do this, I sent my shaman to hypnotise the red army who was in the way of the stone head, and I cast multiple swamps around the base. It turned into a bit of a war of attrition, renewing swamps and building up my village over and over again. In the end I set up multiple fire warriors in balloons overseeing the stone head, then went off to examine and decimate the yellow and green armies to stop them attacking me. It took four hours in total, reducing the sizes of other armies before I obtained and cast Armageddon myself.

The green army kept on repairing its huts, so I had to send in a ground force

I’ve now completed the four levels at the divergent point on the plan, so next I have the last two levels I can try in any order.

Pokémon Blue: completed!

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Going South seems to have been the right path, as I came across Cinnabar Island, the location of the seventh gym and also a large science laboratory and ruined house. I spent some time exploring the house, then went to the lab and had my fossil and amber studied and converted into pokémon – Kabuto and Aerodactyl. This gave me a couple of well-needed slots in the pokécentre item storage system, but I’m not sure I’ll actually find space for either of the new pokémon in my main team.

I went to Vermillion City, stopping in at my house on the way, and found that the gym leader had returned. It was Giovanni! Shock, amaze, horror. I am sure that the surprise would have had slightly more impact if I haven’t so easily defeated him twice already, and his pokémon roster was largely unchanged. His ground and rock monsters were defeated easily by Vaporeon and Zapdos, and I took the Earth Badge – completing my trophy cabinet – with little difficulty.

Greater difficulty was to come.

By the time I got Gyrados, I didn’t need it any more.

I went along routes 22 and 23, passing the guardians who checked each of the badges in my possession, until I got to the cave system known as Victory Road. Not a road, and not actually the location of victory. I battled through, with Haunter and Vaporeon doing the majority of the heavy lifting, and managed to manipulate the current in the basement to enable me to find Moltres. Tempted as I was to swap the new bird to my team, I had too much emotional connection with Charizard, and fire types aren’t actually as powerful as you’d expect. I found myself at the end of route 23 in the Indigo Plateau, and I healed up, bought a lot of revives, potions, and heals, and I set off for the Elite Four.

On Pokémon LeafGreen I managed to defeat the Elite Four, after many attempts, only to be foiled by the final battle against my rival. That was the furthest I’d ever managed to get, until I managed to complete Pokémon X. As such I was pretty anxious as I made my way into the first battle arena, and this feeling didn’t disappear since Lorelei proved herself to be a formidable foe with her water and ice monsters taking a lot of strategy to take down. Eventually, however, she fell, and the next three trainers were dispatched with comparative ease. Lance was a little tricky, with his dragon-type pokémon, but Dugtrio in particular dealt a lot of damage in each turn.

And then it was on to the champion; my rival who had beaten me to the position. I have no idea why I named him Quillum, but it mattered not. I was expecting an incredibly difficult battle, but I chose my team well so each opponent took a maximum of two hits before fainting.

I won. I beat Pokémon Blue. I saw the credits roll, I had my team entered in the hall of fame, I saw a very definite final screen before the game reset to the title screen.

Zapdos proved to be the key to victory

Of course, that’s not quite the end. I’ve only caught 70 different pokémon of the 150 available, and even if not all of them are going to be obtainable (since I have no friends with the 3DS games) there’s at least one I have my sights on …

Pokémon Blue: j’ai Articuno et Zapdos

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Going South seems to have been the right path, as I came across Cinnabar Island, the location of the seventh gym and also a large science laboratory and ruined house. I spent some time exploring the house, then went to the lab and had my fossil and amber studied and converted into pokémon – Kabuto and Aerodactyl. This gave me a couple of well-needed slots in the pokécentre item storage system, but I’m not sure I’ll actually find space for either of the new pokémon in my main team.

I then tried to head to the gym, only to find out that it was locked and the key wasn’t nearby. It was, in fact, nearby – but in the ruins of the Pokémon Mansion, evidently in an area I hadn’t found. I went exploring again, and almost by coincidence I fell off the edge of one of the upper floors and landed in an area that was otherwise inaccessible. Working through the rest of the mansion – with regular attacks by ponyta and other fiery pokémon – meant that Vaporeon was catching up with Dugtrio as being massively overpowered. I got the key, went to the gym, and Vaporeon killed everything with a mixture of surf and bubblebeam. Seven badges!

The route number to go south of Pallet Town was 21, and usually I would then assume I should be following 22 – which is a route West from Vermillion City. However that route is the path to the Elite Four, and there were parts of the map that I hadn’t explored. In particular, the power plant up in the North East corner; and routes 19 and 20 in the water along the South side. Both of these required a surfing pokémon. I decided to fly1 to Lavender Town first, to visit the power plant.

Unsurprisingly, there were hordes of electric pokémon waiting for me, which would have been scary were it not for Dugtrio, who merrily absorbed attack after attack while digging its way to victory. I collected Raichu here, because my own Pikachu seemed to be taking forever to evolve, as well as a few other electric types. At the end of the power plant I found Zapdos, who took ages to capture; I had to reduce its health slowly using normal attacks, to prevent it fainting, and then I used Weepinbell to send it to sleep to maximise capture chances. Even with a small sliver of health, paralysed and asleep, it still took multiple ultra balls to capture.

From fossilised pokémon to those who can escape even when asleep …

A level 50 Zapdos quickly replaced Pikachu in my party, particularly because it could learn fly and as such overcame one of the key weaknesses of electricity (against ground). At its next level, Zapdos learnt thunder, making it invaluable.

I then flew back down to Cinnabar Island, and set off to the East, with Zapdos and Weepinbell faring well against the water-type enemies. I came to the Seafoam Islands, and thought I needed to battle through the cave to get to the next route. Instead I found Articuno, who again put up a significant resistance to the pokéball before finally being caught. I decided not to add Articuno to my team, however, since it significantly overlapped with Vaporeon, and the quick attacks of the latter were useful for capturing.

Two of the legendary birds caught, then, and I’m not sure where I’ll find Moltres – the obvious place would be around Cinnabar Island, but it’s not there. I think my next stop needs to be the mystery eighth gym leader, in the newly reopened Vermillion City.

  1. This involved swapping one of my team members out to Fearow, who could learn fly, then swapping them back when I got to my destination. ↩︎

Phogs (PS5): COMPLETED!

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One good thing about PS++++++++++, is that in amongst all the crap games and shovelware there are a load of co-op games that are fun for me to play with my daughter. It’s because of an afternoon where we were looking for something to play together that we were trawling through the library and spotted Phogs (or possibly “PHOGS!”), and now we’ve completed it.

In many ways, this game falls into a similar category as other wonky-physics titles like Human Fall Flat and Totally Reliable Delivery Service, in that you have inaccurate control over a character and have to manipulate objects in the environment in order to progress. An additional hinderance here, however, is that each player controls either end of a double-ended dog. Imagine a sausage dog with a head at each end, Push-Me-Pull-You style, with each independently moved by each player. You can make things cosy by sharing a single controller and having a stick each, but we were fine to go with a pad apiece.

Anyway. That’s all logistics waffle – what about the game?

It’s a sort of platformy-puzzley game, where your phog has to reach a big snake at the end of each level who swallows you and moves you on to the next. In the way are gaps you have to fill, plants you have to water, items you have to collect, water spouts you have to plug, and dark areas you have to light up (or vice versa). Mostly, these are achieved by grabbing something with one or both of your phog heads. For example, there’s a watermelon patch that needs watering so the watermelon can grow and create a platform for you to progress. Nearby is a pipe with water coming out. You grab on to the pipe with one phogmouth and then the other phogmouth becomes a hose, and – since you can also stretch your phog – you can use this to reach the patch and water the watermelon.

Cooperation is absolutely key, as you can imagine, especially on the many “swing over this gap” sections, where you can grab hold of a hook (or something) with one phoghead then swing the other phoghead to the next hook and grab hold, repeating until you’ve swung all the way over. Timing is often critical so we found ourselves counting to three a lot. Thankfully, you can’t really die and if you fall off the world (which is inevitable give the wonky physics and lack of coordination) you don’t lose much progress at all.

It’s not a very long game, with us finishing it in about three hours, but we enjoyed it and the silly hats you can unlock (which do nothing except adorn a head). There’s a fair amount of variety across the four main worlds, with bosses of a sort on each. The “night and day” world has some especially clever light-and-dark, awake-and-asleep and perspective puzzles and events. The final world also has a short section where there’s a big change to the game mechanics, although I won’t spoil it. Oh, and eating all the food you find so you get phat phogs never gets old or boring.

It’s nice and colourful and mostly low stress (unlike, say, Overcooked), and we didn’t end up fighting each other or anything so that’s probably a recommendation?