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Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (PS5): COMPLETED!

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With the Lego game complete I had a renewed interest in playing the game it was based on. First I had a struggle trying to actually obtain it, as it wasn’t on the Playstation Store because it turns out I already had it on the PS4 when Sony gave it away a while back. So I thought I’d pay for the £10 PS5 upgrade for it but then it kept giving an error when I tried to buy it. Eventually I gave up and decided to just play the PS4 version but when I tried to load it it updated and became the PS5 version anyway. I’m sure my PS5 is haunted.

Anyway, it took a few hours to get into it because I was trying to play it like the game so many people said it was a clone of – Breath of the Wild. It isn’t. Well, superficially it is, I suppose, but actually what Zero Dawn is really like, is Assassin’s Creed. Only with big metal dinosaurs. You got all the sneaking about and using distractions and exploring weird underground bunkers with relics of an older but more technologically advanced civilisation, and you’ve got the creeping up behind people and stabbing them in the neck stuff. It’s Assassin’s Creed in Far Cry Blood Dragon World. And that’s fine.

With the majority of the plot spoiled because of Lego, albeit that was a simplified version, I sort of already knew where the reveals were going. Luckily, the path to them was fun and there were still surprises, plus it’s all just a bit more adult.

Exploring the world was enjoyable, and once I’d got used to the combat and slightly complicated weapon system, I was well into setting traps for the big robot animals and then picking off their armour before blowing up their faces. Or, even better, you get the ability to control them later in the game so you can make them fight each other and just stand nearby and watch. The Borgia Towers – sorry, bandit camps – where you have to take down loads of humans ideally without them seeing you was peak Assassin’s Creed and perhaps my favourite bit of the game. I also like the JJ Abrams blue lens flare effect you get when enemies are nearby.

My only real gripes with Horizon are the inventory management (I never had enough space for everything, so kept having to dump or sell things) and some of the world traversal (you can’t climb except in specific places), but they didn’t affect me too much. Except when I was trying to jump up a mountain because there didn’t seem to be any other way up and fell through it and died.

Rohga: Armor Force (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This is a bit of weird one. It’s mainly a side-scrolling shooter, only your big mech (or mecha? I can never remember the difference) can’t fly and at times you can move in and out of the screen which has a similar effect to flying because it’s all on a 2D plane. That’s not the only unusual thing though, as you can “build” your own robot from various parts for different weapons and legs and stuff before you play, and then you collect people (?!) which act as sort of drones. Then there’s the thing where if you get hit too many times you lose your robot for a bit and have to hoof it mech-less.

I played it in co-op which mainly caused the screen to be filled to an also chaotic level, but we had a good time. A bit of an oddity.

Metal Slug (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Yes, yes. We’ve all played Metal Slug before and own it on various compilations a hundred times over but that doesn’t stop it being good. And! This time I completed it in co-op with my daughter, which I’ve never done before.

It has horrible slowdown, which I don’t remember from any other version but apparently even in the arcade it did that. Not what you’d expect from what was, at the time, the most powerful gaming device in the world. Probably.

Doesn’t matter though because it’s great and silly and why isn’t Metal Slug 2 (or 3/4/5/6/7/8/9/X) on the Evercade yet, eh? Ridiculous.

Oh yeah, and I know the screenshot that accompanies this post is rubbish but – again – you can’t take screenshots on an Evercade so it’s from the Evercade website.

Ironclad (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Ironclad is a pretty standard side-scrolling shooter, originally for the NeoGeo but I played it on the NeoGeo Arcade Evercade cartridge. I found it a lot easier than most games in the genre, which is especially odd for an arcade game, but I’m not going to complain!

It’s got a nice weapon upgrade system, a floaty drone thingy and some interesting bosses (like a big train), but the biggest draw is the graphics. Backgrounds seem to be pre-rendered, and remind me a bit of something like OverTop. Sprites are pretty decent too, and they feel a bit like Metal Slug in art style, just zoomed out.

So yeah, it’s OK, nothing incredible but perfectly playable.

Otto’s Galactic Groove!! (Playdate): COMPLETED!

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This is one of the Playdate games that is in the Playdate Season 2 pack. It’s a rhythm game where notes scroll across the screen and you press a button when they hit the Pong-like bat on the right, and you have to move the bat up and down with the Playdate’s crank. It works well, although does remind me of how Trombone Champ’s mechanics work.

The music is good, and each “planet” you visit in the game – the aim is to collect musical essences from each – each planet has it’s own musical style like jazz or dubstep or chip tune. It’s all either original for the game, or borrowed from other Playdate games.

It’s OK. A bit short but that’s fine.