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Forza Horizon: completed!

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As I said before, an excellent game.  So much so that it became my go-to racing game, and I've been working through it at a pretty steady pace.  About half-way through I got a little bored, and took a bit of a break (from racing games in general, apart from Mario Kart 8), but once I returned I was compelled to complete the game.

And let's be clear, there's a lot of game to complete.  As well as the overall career, where you get points from doing well in races and earn wristbands to unlock more races, you get to race against the tournament's stars, compete in street races, do PR stunts, and compete in absurd 'showcase' events where you race fighter planes and hot air balloons.  And on top of that you can get achievements for driving on every road, finding advertising signs, doing races again and competing against Xbox Live friends ...

And I've done it all.  I've actually won every race, both official and unofficial.  I've taken photos, got skill chains, increased my car collection to about 30ish, have around 4million credits in the bank.  I've even bought a Land Rover, a Mini and a Beetle so that Nicholas can play with them in free roam.

And I've just ordered Forza Horizon 2, because I've heard it's even better.

Peggle Blast – Shooting Pegs again

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I've been looking for something to play on the iPhone since completing Motorsport Manager & Xevious suggested Peggle Blast.

It's a free download with in-app purchases but I've not hit any paywalls yet. Some of the levels are tough & you will need a few attempts to get pass let alone three stars.

The screenshot to the left shows an amazing score I got on level 51, currently I'm on level 58 after being stuck on level 57 for quite a few days.

There is a health timer which controls how many times you can try a level but that does not bother me much I usually only get enough time for one attempt on a level.

Best of all is 'Ode to Joy' when completing a level.
Also thanks to Nick for the new logo on the blog.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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PullbloxFirst up, here’s a massive spoiler I don’t mind giving away: Captain Toad is actually the prequel to Super Mario 3D World. I mean, everyone knows it’s a spinoff based on the Captain Toad levels from 3D World, but the end sequence of Captain Toad actually shows how it’s a prequel, what with Toad returning from his adventure then setting off to the Sprixie Kingdom after green stars. Who knew?

Donkey_KongCaptain Toad is pretty much just more levels like those Toad levels in 3D World. They’re more complex, there’s a hell of a lot more of them, they’re more varied and more clever, but you can see where they come from quite clearly. Toad sets out to collect a star on each level, solving puzzles to get there and optionally collecting three (sometimes hidden) gems in each. Well, I say optionally – you need some, but not all of them, to unlock some of the levels. You don’t appear to get anything for collecting all of them in the entire game though, which was a bit odd.

ROARToad is useless in a fight, and can’t jump, so most of the enemies need to be avoided or beaten in other ways. You can throw things at them, or drop onto them from a platform, or use other baddies to take them out for you, which totally changes how you play compared to Mario games. It looks like a Mario game, sounds like a Mario game, but really doesn’t play much like one. Even some of the levels look like those Mario plays through in 3D World (in fact, some even ARE from 3D World), but with a  different set of skills, the route to the end is not the same.

Woo_woo__All_aboard_Like 3D World (and Mario 64, Mario Galaxy, and so on), there are fresh game ideas galore, and many are used just once. If only other game designers had half the skill in coming up with ideas. Even those Mario clichés seen before are used differently here.

It’s pretty easy, although each level has an additional target (such as don’t get hit, find a hidden mushroom, collect a number of coins) most of which I’ve missed so far. Part of the reason for missing them is that you don’t know what they are until after you’ve completed the level, so unless you obtain them accidentally, you have to replay the level. Not that replaying levels is a chore – you don’t need to re-collect gems, so you can avoid some of the puzzles, and each level is pretty short.

Yay_In addition to all three “episodes”, I’ve also completed everything currently unlocked in the bonus section – levels from 3D World, the Toad Brigade levels (repeated levels where you have to find the rest of your troop and take them all to the star), and the Mummy Me chase levels – although the bonus level “book” is still far from full, so I expect there are more bonus levels if I complete all the level targets.

Captain Toad is quite short, quite easy, and very, very lovely.

The Unfinished Swan (PS3): COMPLETED!

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That was both different to, and shorter than, I was expecting. I’ll admit, I’d not read much about The Unfinished Swan, so knew very little outside of “you throw paint on walls”. Turns out that’s just the first ten minutes of the game and the entirely white walls/floor/everything premise is mostly ditched afterwards.

Instead, you get water to spray around, vines to grow, dark areas to brighten, blocks to build, and so on. It’s surprisingly varied with each particular skill lasting only ten or fifteen minutes before you move onto the next one. Yeah, I was done in 90 minutes. I was expecting at least another hour.

Not that there was anything wrong with that length of game, of course. It’s full of more cleverness than most 20+ hour games, and the story, which is fairytale in nature, is good. The reveal at the end was quite unexpected too.

80 Days: 89 days

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It's been a while.  I've been playing a fair bit - progressing in 200cc grands prix in Mario Kart 8, getting the gold wristband in Forza Horizon, pootling around the world in Majora's Mask.  I've completed Peggle Blast and found that I am hopeless at Worms Reloaded.  Maybe at some point I'll write more, particularly since I have a draft post on the last of those half done.

But what I wish to talk about today is 80 Days.  It's an iPad game, although it can be played on a phone if you really must.  It's a text adventure with trading and route planning, based loosely around the Jules Verne novel but with a great deal of artistic licence thrown in.  Your primary objective is to get around the world in 80 days, but if you fail (as I have done) you simply restart but with knowledge over what may happen.  There are hundreds of routes to choose from and the world seems to be based on a random seed meaning that no two games will be the same.

I started well, travelling through France and Germany, then up to Scandinavia.  Unfortunately routes to Russia were limited and I ended up having to travel back down through Turkey and the Middle East to India, arriving in Japan at around day 45.  Not too bad, but my journey across the Pacific (a direct boat to San Francisco) was interrupted by a storm, and we lost a number of days heading down to Hawaii instead.  I led a mutiny to get the boat to depart for the US West coast immediately, but travelling across America took a long time and on day 80 I was aboard a paddle steamer, just after it had exploded.  No oceanic transportation from New Orleans meant a slow trek up the coast to New York.


It felt a huge anticlimax, and this made me realise just how exciting the game had become.  Every time plans went wrong, or I arrived at a city with no clear path forwards, I was feeling genuinely anxious.  I remember watching Michael Palin's second travelling series Pole to Pole, and feeling that without the time constraints of Around the World in Eighty Days it felt a little pedestrian.  Here again I could see the deadline creating the tension.




A game like this needs to have good writing and a clear visual style, and 80 Days has both.  It's a testament to its quality that as soon as I'd arrived in London I was ready to set sail again.  On my second journey I managed to make good time across Europe and Russia, until on day 23 I was thrown into a Russian military jail.


Let's hope I can continue at this pace.