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Streets of Rage 4 (PS5): COMPLETED!

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Oh would you look – a PS+ monthly game that’s actually good and I don’t already own! How rare.

And yes, it is good! It’s a long awaited sequel to the original Mega Drive fighting games, if we ignore the Fighting Force game which was obviously supposed to be Streets of Rage 4 for the Saturn anyway. And even that was decades ago.

SoR4 doesn’t deviate from the previous games very much at all, really. You punch and kick through loads of baddies, most of whom are straight from the previous games, with playable characters that are, or are related to in some way, the original characters. Axel is a beefy boi now, with a beard, and Blaze has covered up a bit, but otherwise, it’s more of the same. Well, with modern graphics of course.

As she loves playing these sorts of games with me, I completed it with my daughter.

Pokémon X: completed!

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The little diversion saw me travelling through fields of flowers and encountering a large number of new pokémon, meaning that I depleted my stocks of all types of pokéballs while travelling through the flora. I also met a couple of trainers with a massive unit of a pokémon. I finally found Wulfric, the eighth gym leader, frolicking in the meadow, and convinced him to return to his responsibilities in the ice world. Was it finally time to battle for the final badge?

Yes, it was. Now, I have mentioned before that I felt I might have spent a little too long on side quests, and as a result my pokémon were feeling a little overpowered as I took down gym leaders with one hit. Since that point my core team has changed little, with the main exception being Xerneus replacing Pikachu. This meant that I no longer had any electric pokémon – or even any electric moves – which is very much unprecedented in the way I’ve played pokémon games before. Electric moves are often quite powerful and have potential to cause paralysis, which has been beneficial many times in the past. They are also strong against water pokémon – and when the first opponent in the Snowbelle City gym sent out Cloyster I was starting to regret the change.

I needn’t have. Every other pokémon in the gym was an ice type, meaning that Delphox could generally dispatch them immediately, and as the availability of fire moves waned then Lucario’s fighting moves substituted. All gym trainers, plus Wulfric, were defeated very quickly.

And with that, I was invited to go to the Pokémon League. Getting there was possibly the most difficult part of the game, with a very long trek up victory road against high-level trainers and powerful pokémon. I had to travel back to Snowbelle City twice to revive and heal all my pokémon, before finally reaching the next pokécentre. This was conveniently located outside the Pokémon League building, and so refreshed and revived I went in.

In other pokémon games I have struggled a lot at this point. In Leaf Green I got to the Elite Four and managed to beat three of them before losing, more than once – and in the end I moved on to other games. In Sapphire I was so discouraged by my Leaf Green experiences that when I got to the Pokémon League my team felt far too underpowered to even attempt battles, and I ended up wandering off to do other things instead, never returning. In Pearl I managed to beat the Elite Four, only to get beaten by the champion afterwards. This has always been the climax of the game, and I have never got past it.

The entrance to the League, and the settings for the Elite Four battles was certainly impressive, with the Four themselves having a great deal of personality. I was told that they had their own specialisms – water, fire, dragon and steel, and I prepared for which of my pokémon should be first out in each case. By now most of my team was up to the high seventies, with the exceptions of Lucario and Xerneus who were a few levels lower. I reviewed my moves; I shifted around my pokémon, and then, with trepidation, I entered.

I needn’t have been so worried. Sure, most of the opposing pokémon posed some threat, with few instant defeats, but I beat all four at the first time of asking. Xerneus’s dragon-type move was invaluable against the dragons, but even other pokémon took off large amounts of health. Blastoise was a monster in the fire battles. The most difficult was the water champion, since I no longer had Pikachu – but I managed to adapt.

Then heal up, check the order, and it’s off to see the champion.

This wasn’t an easy battle. The champion, Diantha, had a large variety of pokémon, some of which I hadn’t seen before and so I was unaware the best way to face them. Luckily I had Edward looking over my shoulder, who told me, for example, that Gourgeist is a ghost/grass type and so I should use fire moves against it, and Tyrantrum is rock-type so would be dispatched with ease by Blastoise’s hydro pump. After defeating five of her pokémon, I had four still standing, and I threw out Lucario to use the mega evolution as a finale. That worked very well indeed.

Yes, I forgot to turn the 3D off when taking that screenshot.

There’s still a lot to do, of course. I recall seeing someone blocking me from a cave in the winding woods, saying it was only for champions. There are many waterfalls to go up. There are many black entries in the pokédex. But I’ve seen the credits roll, and so I can finally say I’ve completed the story in a pokémon game.

Worms: stupidity kills

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For some unknown reason I have the Playstation version of Worms registered on my account, and so when looking over potential reasons to upgrade Playstation Plus I noticed I was able to download it to the PS4. And so I did.

I’ve not played the Playstation version before as far as I’m aware, but I put many hours into the Mega Drive version and also played the original Amiga game at Kevin’s house several times. There’s not a huge amount of difference, to be honest – the Playstation has some pretty cringy FMV segments, where the worms use a different art style to in-game – but the options and game types and presentation is all very familiar. I tried to set up a StOGS team, but fell at the second hurdle when I was told there was already a worm called “John” – part of the Beatles, of course. My team ended up being Timbo, Kieron1, Johnno, and Hiscock.

I chose initially to play against teams where the AI was set as “poor”. This was a mistake, because rather than making the game easier it seems as if the AI was programmed to use up airstrikes and teleportation in the first couple of goes, meaning that I often found that members of my team were killed before I even got a chance to move them.

Moving to compete against other teams, more average in skill, actually made the game easier. I wasn’t that easy to work out which ones to choose, mind – the only place the AI level is noted is in the team editor, and they’re not listed in order of difficulty, so you have to go as if to edit the teams, make a note on which to compete against, and then back out to the menu.

The game still works well, and benefits from a lack of bloat which later games have introduced – there is a focussed and tight selection of weapons here, making weapon drops genuinely exciting. I may suggest we play this next time we have an in-person games day.

It’s almost worth it for the logo nostalgia alone.

Pokémon X: just leave me alone

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Time to go and get the last gym badge, then? No.

Professor Sycamore asked me to meet him in the next town, so I travelled on Route 18 to meet him. At which point he battled me. As you do. Bear him easily, of course, with my Delphox’s flamethrower coming in very handy. Luckily there was no side quest introduced at this point, so I went off to find the next city.

It was a bit of a winding path, through swamps and across bridges. And just as I arrived on the last bridge, my friends turned up. Were they here to support me, to encourage me, to journey with me?

Of course not.

Friends defeated, I went into the next city only to find that the gym leader isn’t there. Another little diversion ahead.

Pokémon X: j’ai Xerneas

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I fly to Lumiose City and wander around looking for signs of Lysandre. Eventually someone hints to me that he likes red and he owns a café which is red, all while standing next to a red café. On entering the shop the two assistants are probably the worst people ever at keeping secrets, and they give away there’s a secret entrance to the underground lair. Down I go, fighting away red-dressed fools, until I find a floor with random arrows that send you spinning in a certain direction until you hit a wall.

I hate rooms which have random arrows that send you spinning in a certain direction until you hit a wall. Particularly when you can’t see the full room and so everything has to be done by trial and error.

I discovered Team Flare’s ultimate plans, to use a weapon that would kill all people and pokémon other than themselves, because … something about overpopulation and scarce resources. This weapon was a thousand years old and had been hidden in plain sight for years. There was another story about a man called AZ who saved his pokémon by sacrificing many others, but that seemed a bit unrelated. I was given the choice of a blue button or an orange button to press – one would launch the weapon, the other wouldn’t.

I chose blue.

In the end it didn’t matter because they decided to launch the weapon anyway, so I set off to stop them in another secret lair underneath Geosenge Town, which has now been largely destroyed by a big crystal appearing in the centre. It turns out that the ultimate weapon was being powered by a thousand-year old pokémon, who I released after beating Team Flare. It then attacked me.

This pokémon was Xerneas, the cover star of the game and the X-shaped legendary creature. They1 were only level 50 and most of my team was at level 62 or above. Luckily I’d saved just before the battle. Double luckily, my first hit with Aurorus took them down to about 10% health, and I caught them on my next move with an ultra ball. A bit of an anti-climax!

I immediately added Xerneas to my team, displacing Pikachu, and then Lysandre decided he wasn’t going to give up and demanded another battle. I one-hit-killed everything he threw at me, including a mega-evolved gyrados2 which didn’t last long against my mega-evolved Lucario. After that he finally gave up.

Everyone was very happy, and it felt like the end of the game – but, of course, for a pokémon trainer saving the world is just one side quest encountered on the way to the Pokémon League.

Yes, we can indeed. Back to Anistar City.

  1. Xerneus appears to be neither male nor female, so I’m using the generic “them”. ↩︎
  2. I don’t give my pokémon names, so my pikachu is called Pikachu, and my gyrados is called Gyrados, but other people don’t own Gyrados, they just own a gyrados. ↩︎