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Cybernoid (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This week, the next two Evercade cartridges arrived. Cybernoid is on the new C64 cart, and I was a big fan of the original (albeit on the Spectrum) so it’s the first thing I started up. Thankfully, the Commodore version is very similar to the Spectrum one, although with more muted colours and a different ship design.

It’s still a pretty good game, although it’s very easy to die due to the random nature of some of the spawns. For example, baddies spawn at the edge of the screen – the same edge you need to exit by – and so frequently they’ll appear in the same spot you occupy, killing you. The random bullet frequency from some turrets can mean timing nipping between them is based on luck rather than judgment too.

Another spanner in the works is special attacks. You’re given a number of things like mines, bouncy bombs and so on, some of which are required to hit destructible blocks above or below you as your cannon only shoots horizontally. But you only have a limited number of uses of each, meaning you can end up in a room with no way to progress, no way to return, and no enemies to shoot (as killing them sometimes drops refills). Very frustrating, and means that you end up never using any special attacks except for in the situations where you can’t otherwise progress.

And it is very hard.

Other than all those things though, I very much enjoyed playing it again after all this time. It’s one of those games that just loops infinitely, so after about 4 loops through the game I’m claiming “done”.

Kid Chameleon (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a while, but with it recently popping up on the Switch Online service, I gave it another go. This time, I’d remembered how damn difficult it was, but even so, a few later levels (especially one which was an autoscroller) are properly brutal.

Yes, I used save states. You have to, and not even because it is difficult – it’s just so, so long and there aren’t any built-in save options or passwords or anything. All you can do is make use of a cheat where you skip from level 2 to the end boss. I did that, obviously, but then started again and played it properly.

It still stands up pretty well today. Collision detection is a bit hit and miss (oho!), and the music is mostly dire, but the platforming and the hat powers you get are both fun. All the baddies that shout DIE! at you a lot is also funny.

71: Uncomfortable With My Inner Child

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“Welcome to Episode 71”, said the creepy man at the gate in the torn and dirty mouse suit, between puffs on his dogeared cigarette. “Enjoy your stay”.

In this episode, deKay, Kendrick, Zo and John/Choobs discuss the death of Lenovo’s gaming telephone line (as in, a line of gaming telephones, not a telephone line you use for gaming), Someone Has Bought A PS5, and deKay tells everyone about his visit to Norfolk’s Premier Video Gaming Expo, OLL23. Plus, some games! That is after all why you came. Lots of games actually. Kendrick has been on a bit of a spree.

  • Diablo IV Early Beta
  • Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves
  • Duskers
  • Life is Strange: True Colo(u)rs
  • Control
  • Konami Arcade Advanced
  • Konami Classics Arcade Hits
  • Dinosaur King
  • Ener-G Dance Squad
  • Ener-G Gym Rockets
  • Ener-G Horse Riders
  • Imagine Ballet Star
  • Imagine Ice Champions
  • Like a Dragon Ishin
  • Ryu Ga Gotoku Ishin
  • Ryu Ga Gotoku Ishin (er, again)
  • Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan
  • Disneyland Adventures
  • The Procession to Calvary
  • Sackboy: A Big Adventure
  • Kimono Cats
  • Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist

Phew, eh? Strap in for a 90 minute teardown of DS Horse Game! Also, some questions answered and the usual nonsense.

(Direct link here)

Intro music credits: Zeebra/Bushido, from Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan.

Don’t forget, if you want to contact us with questions or comments for or about the show, you can email podcast@ugvm.org.uk or publicly shame us @ugvmpodcast on the Twittors, and https://mas.to/@ugvmpodcast on the Mastodons.

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I do like me a Gunvolt. Luminous Avenger iX plays a little differently, being a spin-off, and this sequel continues that way, but the Mega Man-ish roots are still there and as platform shooters go, the series is probably my favourite.

iX 2 involves yer boy Copen and some of his chums getting sucked into a parallel dimension where humans have died out and robots guard a huge tower. For story based reasons, the mission is to scale this tower (which helpfully has different biomes on each floor, in order to facilitate the genre tropes of ice/fire/jungle/etc. worlds), beat the bosses, nick their weapons (each of which is a weakness for another boss), and somehow return home.

Or, you ignore all that and have fun jumping and shooting and using loads of bizarre weapons.

Unlike all the other Gunvolt and Gunvolt-adjacent games, this one was a total breeze. Normally, the bosses at least would require many, many attempts, but here I stormed through the entire game with nary a death, and although the final boss took an age to defeat (perhaps I didn’t find the right weapon to beast it), it wasn’t difficult. Most of this was probably down to the addition of a power that lets you heal whenever you want, as often as you want, which is unlocked from the start. I suspect using this may lower your score, but I’m not score-attacking the game so I used it with impunity. Which, actually, wasn’t even all that often.

Luminous Avenger iX 2 is probably a weaker game than iX 1 in many ways – easier, shorter, less interesting story, forgettable bosses, and so on, but it’s still tremendous fun.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5): COMPLETED!

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I talked about this a lot more on the ugvm Podcast, but for those who don’t listen (who even are you?), here’s a written account instead.

Firstly, I want to point how how bad I thought the Little Big Planet games are. As toyboxes, as creation tools – they’re great. Clunky, but great. As actual platformers? Awful. Some really great ideas, totally ruined by stupid controls and physics and wonkiness. For this reason, I never even looked at Sackboy: A Big Adventure, which took away the good bit of the series (makin’ stuff) and left the bad bit (jumping about). PS+ thrust it upon me, however, so I thought I could at least have a peek.

And I’m so, so glad I did because it is glorious. By binning the construction, they’ve concentrated on the platforming and they absolutely nailed it. The physics feels right! The levels don’t feel bodged into existence! It’s fun, it’s cute, it’s inventive and it’s brilliant. Seems all they needed to do was completely remove the entire point of the series. Who knew?

I played through it in co-op with my daughter, which was another revelation. In LBP, “co-op” was misused. No matter how much you wanted and tried to work together, invariably you’d end up in each other’s way, grabbing them by mistake, causing death and being left behind and making the game unnecessarily harder. Here, it’s real proper co-op, where a second player is an asset not an obstacle. You can throw them to reach bonuses and secrets, take down baddies quicker, and zip through areas that need lots of button/switch/object manipulation. Two player improves the experience rather than causes frustration.

The levels themselves are varied and feel so much like Nintendo platformers it’s uncanny. You know the thing about Super Mario Galaxy where they bombard you with ideas that are often one-and-done and never used again, but there are so, so many of them? This feels like that. In fact, if you were to replace Sackboy with Kirby or Yoshi, this could very easily be a Nintendo platformer. Yes, that’s high praise – because Sony platformers are generally terrible. Between this and Astrobot on the PS5, my mind is being changed.

Oh, and it has Dawn French in it and you can slap each other. What more do you want?