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Fallout 3 (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I did so love Fallout 3 when it came out. I completed it, did all the DLC, got pretty much all the achievements and milked it for everything it had to offer. So why has it taken me so long to replay it? Well, it was so big that doing that again was a bit off-putting. But then, Epic gave it away for free and I now have a Steam Deck to play it on, so I thought, why not? Handheld Fallout 3? Which I can play without worrying about how I’m affecting the story because I’ve already done the story? Sold. Well, not sold because it was free, like I said.

So in I went. Considering how old the game is (14 years old? What?!) it still looks pretty incredible. Part of this is probably due to being able to whack up the detail to max on the Deck, and part of it is probably just how impressive it is that Fallout 3 is now on a handheld. Thing of dreams, that is.

I do want to make one note about it on the Deck, however. Because it is an Epic game (and possibly because it had Games for Windows Live surgically extracted from it), it’s a bit crashy. Or rather, very, very crashy. Almost all of the crashes I attributed to Epic signing me out about once an hour, causing it to quit every time that happened. There were also a few “things are really busy” (read: giblets everywhere) freezes, which could be that I’m running a Windows game under Proton. Thankfully, though, I saved frequently and the loading times – even running from an SD card – are almost zero. That in itself is a game-changer, as Fallout 3 on the 360 was really, really slow to load (especially when “checking DLC”) but here you can’t even read the text on the loading screens before they vanish. Incredible.

As for how my play went, well, it didn’t go as planned. You see, I intended to just be a right bastard, murder everyone, steal everything, blow up Megaton – the lot. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Aside from the stealing. I did that a lot. I’m not sure it was the morality of killing everyone that made me stop, much as I’d like to claim that, it was more my concern that taking that route would close off quests, make the game harder, and require more ammo than I really wanted to waste. I’m practical, if not moral.

Unlike on the 360, I didn’t complete every single mission, and the only DLC I completed was the post-main-story Brotherhood of Steel one (Broken Steel?), mainly because I have other games to play and I’d already applied about 50 of my precious hours to this as it was, and I’d done it all before. However, I did find some stuff I’d not found previously! For example (spoilers, sorry), at the end of the main game you have to choose to either send the Brotherhood woman into the reactor to flip switches and die from radiation, or bravely sacrifice yourself in the same way. What I didn’t realise, was that if you have Fawkes, the intelligent Super Mutant you saved earlier, as you companion, you can send him in instead, and – being a mutant – he’s immune to the radiation so nobody has to die. Hurrah!

I know many people say that New Vegas is far superior to Fallout 3, and I’d agree to a point, but Fallout 3 is still amazing. The world, the humour and the combat are all amazing even after all this time. But, I can check for myself because Amazon just gave Fallout New Vegas away for free so guess what I’ve just installed on my Deck?

Oh, and I forget to mention! Toilets! So! Many! Toilets!

Shadow Complex: Remastered (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Back when this came out on Xbox Live Arcade (remember that?), I played through it over and over. I completed, and in fact, 100%ed, every single difficulty setting and then maxed out my level. I loved it, not least because it’s a Metroidvania, but back then the term wasn’t so widely known or used.

I have no idea what is actually “remastered” here. It seems identical to the original, so unless my memory is playing tricks the only real difference is the platform I’m playing it on. Actually, I’ve installed Heroic on my Steam Deck to let me play Epic Store games, and Shadow Complex was free on there years ago, hence why I have it. It’s great on the Steam Deck too, with the fact that (even in remastered form) it’s pretty old now meaning I can knock all the quality sliders up full and it still not even wheeze.

Shooting the windows won’t help.

This is all waffle though, as I have said nothing about the game. Well, you’re a guy who ends up in a terrorist base “by accident” (spoilers: it wasn’t an accident) and while trying to rescue his captured girlfriend from the baddies gets caught up trying to stop them from beginning an attack on the US, finding upgrades and – eventually – a super suit along the way.

The game has a handful of “into the screen” shooty bits too.

Like all good Metroidvania games (and school Geography lessons) there’s plenty of map colouring-in, giant bosses, tricky platforming, hidden areas, places you can’t get to until you’ve unlocked skills and items, and it’s really, really good. The acting in it suffers a bit from overly macho nonsense and hasn’t aged well, but the traversal and shootybangbang stuff is still incredible.

Garden Tails (iPad): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it’s the same damn game as Zoo Keeper World and Simon’s Cat and Puppy Blast and 50% of the games on the App Store, but it’s polished and cute and as it’s on Apple Arcade has no IAPs or wait times or other nonsense that gets in the way of, you know, just matching three things and clearing the board of whatever it is that needs clearing.

And sometimes, that’s all you want. Simple, pretty, puzzle fun.

Blaster Master Zero 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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The end of the trilogy! Jason finds himself in jail and Eve, his support droid Metal Attacker co-pilot slash creepy love interest is now queen of the mutants and poses a threat to the safety of the universe or something. It sort of makes sense if you concentrate really hard on the in-game dialogue but actually it just means more jumpy-tank fun across two separate dimensions.

It’s back to being mostly set in the one “world”, unlike the galaxy hopping adventure of the second game, but it still has a lot of variety, And, a number of returning bosses, which seems a little lazy but it’s fine really. You get some new powers, access to several types of on-foot weaponry from the beginning, and the “other” dimension is an eye bleedingly pink assault, but the core gameplay remains unchanged. Which is great because the core gameplay is the best.

There’s supposedly a “bad” ending, which I didn’t get as I somehow figured out the way to trigger the good ending (unlike the last game, you don’t have to Collect All The Things – just press the right button combo at the right time), which (spoiler) resulted in Jason and Eve being reunited, somehow having babies, and those babies being sent to Earth to be looked after by one of Jason’s ex-enemies.

Or something. Frankly, it’s utter nonsense. But doesn’t matter in the slightest.

It’s a bit of a shame I’ve finished the series now, as it means there’s no more to come. Unless they start a new trilogy of course!

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (PS5): COMPLETED!

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I’m a fan of the EDF games, with their Massive Ants and Massive Wasps and Massive Robots and Massive Space Ships. I was intrigued by this, Minecraft-y looking entry into the series, but the problem with EDF games is they cost money and don’t often drop to Super Cheap, so I never got round to buying it. And I still haven’t, because it appeared on PS+!

I thought the only real difference between this and the others in the series was the graphics, but actually, there’s a bigger change. You see, you don’t control just one person, you control a squad of four, swapping between them with the d-pad. Instead of collecting billions of weapons, of which you used to be able to wield two, each of your team has just one weapon. But! Because you have four of them, you essentially have four weapons, albeit they’re a bit trickier to swap between and some of them may get “killed”.

As you play through the game, you find and rescue more “brothers” and “sisters”, each of whom is a terrible stereotype of the country they supposedly represent. You can then use these in your squad, and each type has different attributes (like speed and armour) and a special skill (like being able to fly for a bit, having a dash-dodge move, or grenades) so choosing a good combination of both characters and weapons for your team is essential. Well, actually it doesn’t make a lot of difference most of the time and I tended to stick with a couple with long range and a couple with short range weapons.

The rest of the game is, broadly, same as it ever was only in Super Bright Colour Vision and with stupid hyperactive chat instead of the usual morose “we’re all gonna die”/weirdly upbeat “we are the valiant infantry” of the grey-brown entries in the series. You still have ants and spiders, you still have Hectors and Erginus, you still have tanks and a huge cargo robot you can ride, it’s just a bit more jolly and blocky. Also, it was really smooth with no slowdown, which is unusual for EDF but probably because this was the “simpler” game, and on a PS5.

As before, I played through the game with my daughter in co-op, which actually meant we had two squads of four! It’s a lot of fun, but we found it a bit short compared to the “proper” games, and I also missed the “collect all the green weapons crates and red armour crates” which don’t exist here. Well, the red ones just heal your team now. Still, can’t complain when we enjoyed it so much anyway, and it didn’t cost us anything to play.