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Mars After Midnight (Playdate): COMPLETED!

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Lucas Pope, the developer of this game, has a reputation for making weird experimental games. But they’re also good. I’ll admit, however, that apart from some time on Papers, Please (I lost my save I think, following a reinstall or something) and the demo of Return of the Obra Dinn (which I fully intended to get the full version of but for some reason never did), I’ve not really experienced them. Until now!

Hyped as a possible killer-app for the silly little cranking handheld, Mars After Midnight sets you up as an alien guidance counsellor on Mars, who, along with their robot sidekick/slave/helper runs night classes for various other aliens with issues. Issues such as, they have cracked skulls, or are cyclopseses with anger issues, or they flinch or something. All Serious Issues.

So you organise these sessions, by advertising in the right areas of town, and make them successful by providing the best refreshments. Then, aliens turn up at the door and you have to screen them to ensure they’re suitable for the session you have running. For example, you can use an x-ray machine to see if they have a cracked skull, or can surprise them to see if they flinch. If they match, in they come, help themselves to food or drink (which you then usually have to tidy up because aliens are messy, it seems), and if you’ve done everything right, they’ll leave you a tip.

Eventually, you need use this money to buy a ticket to leave Mars, but you also need to spend it on equipment (like the x-ray machine) and refreshments, so it’s a long process.

It isn’t especially hard, and although it is superficially similar to Papers, Please it has a very different vibe. The crank controls are mostly just for opening and closing the door hatch and cleaning the food table, so nothing too tricky. There’s a surprising variety in the different counselling sessions and “detection” requirements, with one of my favourites being the one where you have to translate what the aliens are saying using a phrasebook.

Definitely worth a play, and was worth dusting off my sadly neglected Playdate for.

Block Droppin (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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A simple Game Boy puzzle game where you match three or more shapes to get points. Matching more than three triggers special blocks that erase a whole column, row, or shape from the grid. If you’ve played a match three game, ever, then you know the deal.

Arcade mode is, it seems, endless, but there is a Puzzle Mode where you have to get rid of so many of each type of block in a maximum number of moves, and it’s this mode that I completed.

It isn’t tricky, and I’d have liked a lot more levels, but it’s fine.

Half-Life: completed!

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I turned god mode on.

I lasted for quite a while without it, making my way through Lambda Core and restarting the reactor, but as I died for the 452nd time making my way up through teleporters, and eventually being transported to the alien world of Xen, it wasn’t fun any more. I was saving almost every five seconds, and dying as regularly. I have no idea how I would have completed the game without cheating; I feel that the more toxic side of the Internet would be shouting at this point that I shouldn’t have the enjoyment of completing it unless I GOT GUD. That wasn’t going to happen.

Enjoyment of completing it? Yes, especially since once I’d turned on God mode I abandoned my overly cautious approach and ran at enemies with abandon. Big hunter-type aliens? Shotgun! Smaller green electricity aliens? Shotgun! Very big spider with obvious glowing suspended stomach? Shotgun!

The game still wasn’t easy. The platforming was still not precise enough to do what I wanted every time, so I found myself falling into pits or off the side of a cliff; this time I didn’t die, though, I just sat there choking in the acid fumes, or landing on an invisible platform way beyond the game’s usual physics box, until I reloaded the last save. One particular section had me very confused for a long time until I realised that you had to jump on top of (what I presumed were deadly) alien aircraft that were traversing the level. The move to Xen meant that I was no longer playing through a coherent whole level bound by geography, but rather a number of small arenas connected by teleporters. The wonder of the game was significantly diminished.

And then the final boss, who threw out teleporters to get rid of me, which took me to places where I had to undertake more annoying platforming to get back; I didn’t cheat to get more ammo but I cam close a few times because of my ineptitude in aiming while jumping and moving. Having to jump up high, and then shoot downwards into the boss’s head, was very difficult indeed, until I realised that I could open the head then jump over on top of it, then just unload the gamma ray type gun at my feet over and over again. It was even easier when the head closed and trapped me inside, where I could continue to fire.

The move to Xen also loses some of the colour of the facility, which is a shame.

So, the big evil alien in Xen died, and the shady government man met me and offered me a job. Either I took the job, or he would send me off to die. Obviously I decided to take the job, but on the way to the door I managed to get stuck in the edge of the scenery and timed out, so I was teleported to many many enemies, all of whom failed to kill me because I had god mode on.

Does Half-Life hold up today? Mostly, yes; it tells its story well without the need for immersion-breaking cut-scenes and dialogue. The combat is difficult but can be overcome with some good strategy, even if the first time you enter a room it takes a bit of trial and error. Issues with controls are very much on my side rather than the fault of the game. The difficulty gets too high for me towards the end, particularly with soldiers with rocket launchers and big aliens firing bullets that can go around corners. Xen is a bit of a disappointment, moving away from a contiguous geographic location to a series of disparate rooms. I’m glad I finally got around to finishing it, even though I had to cheat to do so without getting completely bored of doing the same thing over and over.

He is unimpressed that I can’t get to the door.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Sadly not the full Metroidvania experience I was expecting (the reason it ended up on my wishlist in the first place, following a review), Momodora still feels like one. Creepy town with a creepy castle, a curse, a map to explore, and pixel graphics? It certainly has the look of one.

What’s missing is all the extra powers that open up new areas. Sure, there are some, but very few. That means it is more a standard explorey platformer, hence my disappointment, but luckily it was still good!

Apart from the ending. I got a bad ending after defeating the final boss, but there was no explanation why it happened and seemingly no exposition as I was playing that it was possible. After that, I returned to the game and found a couple of extra things I’d missed and that allowed me to get the good ending, but it took some extensive exploring without really knowing what I was looking for, or where to look.

Apparently this Momodora is the third game in a series of (currently) four games. The first two are mostly lost to the winds, and the fourth came out fairly recently. I might pick it up if it’s cheap.

River City Girls 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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My daughter and I were big fans of the original River City Girls so the sequel was sat on my wishlist for ages waiting for a bit sale. That came around, and we played it through together.

It’s more of the same, really. A side-scrolling, semi-open-world beat-em-up with RPG elements set in the world of Kunio-kun/River City Ransom and made by Wayforward, just like the first game. It has a great cartoon style, loads of in-jokes (with both River City adjacent links, like Double Dragon and Crash And The Boys, and Wayforward properties like Mighty Switch Force) and satisfying and upgradable combat.

As it’s set in the same city as the first game, many locations are back – like school and shopping centre) although they have been modified so aren’t a complete copy-and-paste. There are plenty of new areas though. Similarly, there are both returning and new characters, although I don’t think most of the new ones are as good as the ones in the original. Also returning is another soundtrack from Megan McDuffee, which is also excellent.

The plot is mostly concerned with revenge on the Girls taking down the bad guy in the last game, although there are a couple of twists.

Gameplay-wise there are a few tweaks to improve stuff from before. Shop purchases work slightly differently, and there’s seemingly a lot more money available with which to buy them. The game seems easier too, meaning less death (which causes both progress and money loss).

It’s not all improvements though, sadly. Loading times are particularly bad, but also there are a number of bugs like items getting stuck out of reach, sound cutting out, and a few full crashes. Nothing major because of frequent save points but annoying nonetheless. Some of the new areas, like the overdone game trope of the “forest maze”, aren’t great either, and I’m sure there’s more backtracking this time round too, hindered by the aforementioned loading times.

That said, the fun, humour and style of the game massively outweigh the issues. It’s maybe not quite as enjoyable as the original, but doesn’t miss it by much.