ugvm — Page 228 — the site of uk.games.video.misc

Emily is Away (Mac): COMPLETED!

Posted on 22/05/2016 Written by deKay

Emily is Away was an odd one. On one hand, it was very easy in the sense that you can’t really fail and it’s pretty short, but on the other hand it appears to be impossible to get a good ending. I’m not sure I missed anything, as I played it through a few times and although you can get different endings, none of them I’d suggest were “good”.

The game I’ve played before which is most like Emily is Away is probably the iOS game Lifeline. Whereas that played out like a Choose Your Own Adventure in real-time over a course of a few days, Emily is Away is real-time multiple choice AOL chat-alike played out one chat per year over five years.

Click to view slideshow.

You’re Emily’s friend, and you chat about music, school, college and friends. Depending on your actions, your relationship with her can be platonic, unrequited or temporarily requited (it seems), as you live apart for your college years and she ends up in a strained relationship with Brad while you offer advice from afar. Will she see your advice as interfering, helpful, or with an ulterior motive? That’s where the sometimes ambiguous multiple choice comes in.

Ultimately, all my attempts ended up with me being miserable, her being miserable, or both of us being miserable – and with us losing our friendship completely. See, no good ending. Actually, there’s an early tip-off that there’s no good ending when Emily tells you she’s really into Coldplay. That probably tells you a lot about Emily.

It was an interesting game to play, and since it’s free (or “pay what you want”, if you want) it’s definitely worth a look. Just don’t expect any sort of happy ending.

The post Emily is Away (Mac): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Star Fox Guard (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 22/05/2016 Written by deKay

Well Star Fox Guard wasn’t quite the game I was expecting. I had read it was a tower defence game, and it is, but what I didn’t know what that you have to manually activate and control the towers yourself!

In each level there’s a sort of maze, with a tower in the middle. Twelve camera turrets (which you can move about) are stationed around the maze, with all of the “feeds” shown on the TV. On the gamepad is a map of the area showing the current locations of the cameras and a radar of any enemies they’ve picked up. You tap on a camera here to make it the live camera on the TV, which you can then use to aim and shoot the baddies as they appear and head for your tower. If they reach it, it’s game over.

The baddie robots come in two classes – combat and chaos. Combat bots must be prevented from reaching the tower, whereas chaos bot try to disrupt your cameras by disabling, blocking, or even stealing them. It gets a bit frantic at times as you try to juggle all the attacks. Thankfully I had my daughter calling out the numbers of the cameras that bots appeared on!

After every three levels you get a new map, and after every three maps you get a boss level and then move onto another planet.

Star Fox Guard was quite short, but I’ve unlocked a load of extra missions now and there’s a mode where you can create a level for others to challenge (and of course, you can take on other people’s creations too) so there is still plenty to do. It’s a good game, and when I finished it I realised it sets itself up as the prequel to Star Fox Zero… which I also have!

Click to view slideshow.

The post Star Fox Guard (Wii U): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Star Fox Guard (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 22/05/2016 Written by deKay

After every three levels you get a new map, and after every three maps you get a boss level and then move onto another planet.

Click to view slideshow.

The post Star Fox Guard (Wii U): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Gauntlet 4 (MD): COMPLETED!

Posted on 18/05/2016 Written by deKay

That was excellent! I’m really, really pleased that I’d not been misremembering how great Gauntlet 4’s Quest Mode was. I had been misremembering how easy it was, however. Or was I just being extra cautious, escaping from the towers every time my health was low and I didn’t have a healing potion? Either way, I didn’t die at all. Not even on the end boss. Or the end, end boss after him.

Oh yes, I had forgotten that too. You see, once you’ve beaten all the dragons in the towers and opened up the Castle, then made your way through that, there’s a final dragon boss. He’s much the same as the other four, only he also has four crystals in front of him. You have to shoot all of these crystals in order to be able to damage the dragon as he’s invincible otherwise, and after a few seconds the crystals reactivate. Once I’d got into a steady rhythm though, he was quite simple. After that you’re given the option of escaping from the castle, or learning the secret of eternal youth. Take the first option and you have to defeat the dragon again – the end, end boss (albeit without the crystals this time) – before you can run away. Take the second option and you’re turned into the dragon and have to kill adventurers.

I consider this second option the “bad” ending, so went with the first. And that was it.

For those interested, I was Questor the Elf (I’m always the elf in Gauntlet – he’s the best character) and here are my end of game stats:

The post Gauntlet 4 (MD): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Gauntlet 4 (MD)

Posted on 15/05/2016 Written by deKay

It’s a bit good this, isn’t it? Why i’m asking you, I don’t know. You probably don’t know anyway, and I already know. In fact, it’s my third favourite Mega Drive game. At least, it was a very long time ago and when I started playing it again today for the first time in at least 15 years, I was a little apprehensive that it may have aged badly. Thankfully, I need not have worried: It’s excellent.

Oh but wait – I’m not talking about the main game here. Arcade mode is essentially just the original Gauntlet arcade game, and although that is still an absolutely fantastic thing, the main game mode for me is Quest. Quest is almost an RPG, as your hero navigates four towers with ten levels in each, finding traps to open walls and allow progress to the final floor where a dragon resides. Yes, it has boss battles. As you beat foes, you gain experience which you can spend on improving your stats (shot speed, defence, magic power, etc.), and as you collect treasure you can spend that in shops to gain better equipment (which essentially also just boosts your stats).

So far, I’ve completed the Fire and Water towers, and am about a third of the way through the Earth tower.

The post Gauntlet 4 (MD) appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.