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Bomber Crew: flying low

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This has sat on my Xbox for ages, after I saw Matt playing it once on a stream, and I have finally got around to playing it. It takes cues from FTL, I think, but is structured around shorter missions and a roguelike framework where you can build up your crew and plane capabilities but at any point can lose them and restart. You control the seven members of your plane crew: setting navigation points; tagging enemies for the gunners to shoot at; getting the engineer to run around fixing parts of the plane which have malfunctioned or been shot to pieces; deploying bombs or taking recon photos.

It’s a constant juggle to make sure that the guns have ammo, there’s someone available to fire forwards while the bombardier is crawling into his space and opening the doors, and seven hundred other things are ongoing. The first few missions are relatively easy – drop some supplies to a downed Spitfire pilot with a few enemies buzzing around, or bomb some installations near the coast, all of which can be done at low level – but I’ve now progressed to the point where the installations I am trying to attack are surrounded by flak artillery, so I have to fly at a higher level, meaning my crew need thermal wear and oxygen supplies … oh, and I have to peer through clouds to see the bombing targets. In addition, missions are interrupted by other emergencies – needing to shoot down a V2 rocket, a battle with a German ace – meaning that it’s increasingly difficult to get home safe.

There are two main views – exterior and interior – and I always seem to be in the wrong one

It’s the difficulty and excitement that has kept my interest up. Completing missions and getting home safely is difficult, and there have been multiple time when my plane has limped home on two engines, with my engineer frantically putting out fires and my radio operator administering first aid to a gunner who is lying on the floor bleeding. I am slightly cheating at the game in that every time it looks as if I’m going to crash and burn, I’m quitting the game and restarting missions, rather than just accepting defeat and starting afresh with a new crew – but I’ve made peace with that, in that it means I’m actually enjoying it rather than being afraid to actually take off. The financial constraints feel artificial anyway – I’m pretty sure that in WWII the bomber crews weren’t charged to upgrade their engines based on them earning money in previous missions.

Bomber Crew: flying low

Posted on Written by

This has sat on my Xbox for ages, after I saw Matt playing it once on a stream, and I have finally got around to playing it. It takes cues from FTL, I think, but is structured around shorter missions and a roguelike framework where you can build up your crew and plane capabilities but at any point can lose them and restart. You control the seven members of your plane crew: setting navigation points; tagging enemies for the gunners to shoot at; getting the engineer to run around fixing parts of the plane which have malfunctioned or been shot to pieces; deploying bombs or taking recon photos.

It’s a constant juggle to make sure that the guns have ammo, there’s someone available to fire forwards while the bombardier is crawling into his space and opening the doors, and seven hundred other things are ongoing. The first few missions are relatively easy – drop some supplies to a downed Spitfire pilot with a few enemies buzzing around, or bomb some installations near the coast, all of which can be done at low level – but I’ve now progressed to the point where the installations I am trying to attack are surrounded by flak artillery, so I have to fly at a higher level, meaning my crew need thermal wear and oxygen supplies … oh, and I have to peer through clouds to see the bombing targets. In addition, missions are interrupted by other emergencies – needing to shoot down a V2 rocket, a battle with a German ace – meaning that it’s increasingly difficult to get home safe.

There are two main views – exterior and interior – and I always seem to be in the wrong one

It’s the difficulty and excitement that has kept my interest up. Completing missions and getting home safely is difficult, and there have been multiple time when my plane has limped home on two engines, with my engineer frantically putting out fires and my radio operator administering first aid to a gunner who is lying on the floor bleeding. I am slightly cheating at the game in that every time it looks as if I’m going to crash and burn, I’m quitting the game and restarting missions, rather than just accepting defeat and starting afresh with a new crew – but I’ve made peace with that, in that it means I’m actually enjoying it rather than being afraid to actually take off. The financial constraints feel artificial anyway – I’m pretty sure that in WWII the bomber crews weren’t charged to upgrade their engines based on them earning money in previous missions.

Dadish 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Almost everything I said about the first game applies here. It’s pretty much just new levels for the same game, with some added space physics for one of the worlds.

It’s clearly the same engine and same graphics, but if it ain’t broke, right?

Dadish (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’d seen this game get gradually cheap and cheaper on the eShop but never bit, until two sequels came out and were bundled together and then reduced. Look, cheap things come to those who wait.

Dadish – a radish who is a dad, obviously – has to navigate a load of platforming challenges to save his many, many kids. You can jump, and double jump, and that’s it, but there are a good variety of levels and gimmicks with usual platform game features like spikes, springs and moving platforms.

There’s nothing outstanding here, but it is a solid, well made game with some really funny conversations between Dadish and both his kids and the characters you meet. Levels are tricky but never frustrating, and unlike the thousand other games on the eShop that are superficially similar, it nails the physics and collision detection which are essential to the genre but broken so often.

Now onto the sequel!

Yoku’s Island Express: completed!

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I have been playing Yoku on and off for a couple of years, on both the Switch and the Xbox One, and while I have a great time while playing it it’s not something I have ever been urged to continue. Whenever I’ve turned a console on, something else has appealed more. Then, on a 13-hour flight to Malaysia, the friendly pinball icon shone brightly, and I played through the rest of the game.

Yoku is a pinball platform adventure game. There’s no jump button; instead you play as an ant who is pushing around a big white ball, which can be fired off pinball flippers and bumpers to get to new areas. Colleting fruit allows new flippers to be unlocked, and you frequently find defined arenas in which you must carry out specific tasks such as unlocking a new door, or knocking out bungs from water spouts, or closing hatches to allow mined materials to pass through. You must go back and forth across the world, talking to people and taking things to them, trying to discover about the enemy who has attacked the island’s gods.

The locations are varied and distinct, despite being on a single island.

Maybe it was this going back and forth which put me off the game a little; the traversal feels just a little slow, with Yoku ambling along and then various pinball routes feeling as if they just get in the way. There are some abilities that are unlocked, including the ability to diver under the water, and to grab hold of purple flowers and swing around them, and occasionally I would spend a significant time trying to get past a certain blockage not realising I needed another ability.

And yet, when I played it for a long period, particularly with few other distractions, it really clicked. Opening the beeline – a fast travel network around the island – helped, but more than anything it was familiarity with the locations and a memory of how to get through them quickly. I delivered some overdue parcels, I helped rescue a spiderling, I found lots of little wicker people (but not enough to make a giant egg hatch). And I played through the story, collecting up the elders of the island, and then helping with the ceremony to cure the massive god in the background. A big plot twist later, I defeated the final boss, and the credits rolled.

Yes, you can carry on playing after the credits …

There are a few things that remain outstanding – there was a large icicle above a lake which I couldn’t break (with someone nearby hinting I needed someone to help me), I’ve not filled up all mailboxes around the island yet. I might return to this on the Xbox and complete it there, with all the side quests as well. It was a lovely game.