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The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

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tumblr_n0ags1xhol1svmpf2o1_400I’m done.

Well, OK. So I haven’t done Hero Mode yet, but for this playthrough, I’m done. I’ve done everything. Every dungeon finished, every weapon obtained and upgraded, every maiamai rescued, every treasure found, and every item counter (rupees, monster parts, hearts, etc.) maxxed out. Everything. All done.

And in just 23 hours too. I didn’t want it end so soon!

Titan Souls (Web): COMPLETED!

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Titan_Souls_EndIs this a first? As in, a web-based (well, Flash) game that I’ve completed? Sort of. I mean, I’ve completed Cookie Clicker and Clicking Bad, but they’re not really proper games (are they?). Does this count as a proper game?

Yes. I think it does. OK then.

Titan Souls is, it appears, a purposefully terribly-named 2D top-down mini version of Shadow of the Colossus. Only with just four Colossi. And your only weapon is a single arrow you have to retrieve after you use it. And each colossus only takes two hits to kill (well, one to wake them up, one to kill them). And you don’t climb them.

OK, so not a lot like Shadow of the Colossus – or Attack on Titan or Dark Souls after both of which it is named.

But it’s hard, and fun for the time it takes to complete, which isn’t long despite how hard it is, and the end of game boss is very clever indeed. I did a little squeal when I realised the trick to it.

Want to play it? It’s here and free.

Gauntlet: generally boring

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Some games don't age well, unfortunately. Moreover, some games just don't suit certain settings in the first place, and age makes it ever more evident.  Playing Gauntlet last night, I felt that it should have stayed in the arcade, as the constant draining of health and difficulty in dispatching enemies feels odd when there's nobody waiting to have the next go on the machine.

In the end I just decided to clear an achievement for getting the highest score on the leaderboard.  This meant getting above 8000 on a single life.  By warping to level four, I found I could stand in a corridor and kill all the enemies spawning around a corner; after a while the walls changed to exits and I could kill even more in the level.  Not the most fun thing ever, though.


The Typing of the Dead Overkill: trying to touch type

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I played the original Tying of the Dead quite a lot, both on the Dreamcast and the PC.  The Dreamcast version was a bit of a faff, since it was a US import which therefore required a boot disc and crossed fingers, and you could never be sure it wasn't going to corrupt your VMU.  The PC game was more accessible, except I never really had a gaming PC that could do it justice.  I still have the disc, somewhere.

When I heard that The House of the Dead Overkill was to get the same treatment, I was a little excited.  When I learnt that it had just been released on Steam around five minutes later, I was more excited and went to download it.  It's not like me to buy something without seeing any reviews or impressions from trusted sources, but, well, it's The Typing of the Dead.  I was glad that I bought it even before I started to play, after I learnt of the game's troubled development and eventual rescue.

Firstly, the bad news.  Unlike the first TotD game, which was based on The House of the Dead 2, the characters aren't wearing Dreamcasts on their backs with a bizarre keyboard lap tray.  Instead, the graphics are completely unchanged, which means that they must be using incredibly bizarre guns.

The core gameplay remains the same, though.  Zombies appear and shamble towards you; you must type the word that appears next to them.  As soon as you do so, they are killed.  Kill them before they kill you, and all is rosy.



This would all be fine if I was a decent touch typist.  I'm not - despite me being able to type entire sentences of reports without looking at the keyboard, it appears that as soon as it's no longer about economics, I need to see which letters I'm hitting.  And this then causes issues, because I can't see when new zombies appear, I can't see which ones are running towards me rather than ambling, I can't see when something is thrown and I need to press a single key quickly.

There is a mechanic in the game where if an enemy starts to approach you faster, you can cancel your current word by pressing backspace, and start the new word.  Guess what I need to do in order to hit backspace?  Look at the keyboard.

I made a conscious effort to look at the screen.  My accuracy dropped right down, but all the time I was typing normal words my keyboard mashing was working OK.  But then this happened:


And it wasn't just phalanges.  As soon as I was having to type single letters in order to spell the word, my typing rhythm disappeared and I started to panic.

Having said that, I got through the first chapter fine, before leaving it for now.  I will be back, though - just maybe after getting a better keyboard.  Or a Mac version.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS): COMPLETED!

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Zelda-EndBoss1Yeah Hilda. You tell me a gooood story. I’m all ears. And not just because I’m an elf thing. Aha.

That’s it then – final dungeon done, final final dungeon done, end boss beaten. What a fantastic game. It’s just so perfect in almost every single way, and somehow manages to improve on the Zelda formula by getting rid of most of the linearity, by upping the pacing, and by making it somehow feel both very different and exactly the same as every other Zelda title. Yes, I know that sounds impossible.

The only thing that’s even slightly negative about the game that I can say is how easy it is. It’s very, very easy. It’s by far the easiest Zelda game and probably one of the easiest “big” games I’ve ever played. There’s simply very little challenge at all at any point. In fact, look:

ZeldaStatsThey’re my End Of Game stats. See how many times I was defeated? None. Not only that, but at no point was I ever even nearly close to dying. Not even in the “seems too difficult to do that early on” Ice Ruins dungeon. Of the seven main dungeons (which you can do in any order), I did the Ice Ruins second. I expected that the game would somehow ramp up the difficulty somehow (harder or more enemies, perhaps) as you progressed through the game, but it doesn’t. So, after completing the Ice Ruins I found that I’d done the hardest bit of the game (which even then wasn’t especially tricky) right near the start and it was plain sailing from then on. Even the end boss, which I faced before I’d even finished “tooling up” with all the best gear, was a complete walkover.

However, this is not a problem. It took away none of the fun and I still loved every minute. I’m even returning to it to get the remaining items and 100% it. It’s the best Zelda game since Oracle of Ages/Seasons. FACT.