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Phogs (PS5): COMPLETED!

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One good thing about PS++++++++++, is that in amongst all the crap games and shovelware there are a load of co-op games that are fun for me to play with my daughter. It’s because of an afternoon where we were looking for something to play together that we were trawling through the library and spotted Phogs (or possibly “PHOGS!”), and now we’ve completed it.

In many ways, this game falls into a similar category as other wonky-physics titles like Human Fall Flat and Totally Reliable Delivery Service, in that you have inaccurate control over a character and have to manipulate objects in the environment in order to progress. An additional hinderance here, however, is that each player controls either end of a double-ended dog. Imagine a sausage dog with a head at each end, Push-Me-Pull-You style, with each independently moved by each player. You can make things cosy by sharing a single controller and having a stick each, but we were fine to go with a pad apiece.

Anyway. That’s all logistics waffle – what about the game?

It’s a sort of platformy-puzzley game, where your phog has to reach a big snake at the end of each level who swallows you and moves you on to the next. In the way are gaps you have to fill, plants you have to water, items you have to collect, water spouts you have to plug, and dark areas you have to light up (or vice versa). Mostly, these are achieved by grabbing something with one or both of your phog heads. For example, there’s a watermelon patch that needs watering so the watermelon can grow and create a platform for you to progress. Nearby is a pipe with water coming out. You grab on to the pipe with one phogmouth and then the other phogmouth becomes a hose, and – since you can also stretch your phog – you can use this to reach the patch and water the watermelon.

Cooperation is absolutely key, as you can imagine, especially on the many “swing over this gap” sections, where you can grab hold of a hook (or something) with one phoghead then swing the other phoghead to the next hook and grab hold, repeating until you’ve swung all the way over. Timing is often critical so we found ourselves counting to three a lot. Thankfully, you can’t really die and if you fall off the world (which is inevitable give the wonky physics and lack of coordination) you don’t lose much progress at all.

It’s not a very long game, with us finishing it in about three hours, but we enjoyed it and the silly hats you can unlock (which do nothing except adorn a head). There’s a fair amount of variety across the four main worlds, with bosses of a sort on each. The “night and day” world has some especially clever light-and-dark, awake-and-asleep and perspective puzzles and events. The final world also has a short section where there’s a big change to the game mechanics, although I won’t spoil it. Oh, and eating all the food you find so you get phat phogs never gets old or boring.

It’s nice and colourful and mostly low stress (unlike, say, Overcooked), and we didn’t end up fighting each other or anything so that’s probably a recommendation?

Adventure: when the bat carries the dragon

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I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have a category for Atari 2600 games until now, but on reflection that’s because there’s not a huge amount to say about most of them. Playing through the games included on the Atari 50 compilation, most titles require little strategy or thought, instead relying on pure reflexes and quick action. The most successful games are the arcade conversions in the main, although their quality is somewhat varied – and the fact that on the compilation you have access to both the arcade original as well as the 2600 port means that the home conversion is generally a curio only.

There are, of course, exceptions. Haunted House and Adventure were much more in-depth than other games on the platform, despite their short length. I must have played through Adventure a hundred times over the past forty years, mostly in game variant 3.

  • Variant 1 is an easy introduction with a single maze and only two dragons.
  • Variant 2 expands the map with more castles, mazes, dragons and items, and also introduces the bat
  • Variant 3 is the same as variant 2, but all the items are placed in random places

The bat is possibly the most annoying part of the game. In variant 2 it starts by flying down the screen and stealing your sword, meaning you are defenceless against the roaming dragons – unless you manage to catch the bat itself in the screen to the South. My favourite strategy to minimise danger and reduce the randomness is to catch the bat, and carry it to kill the first dragon in the maze to the West of the starting position, and then hopefully the bat will then drop the sword and carry the dead dragon off and deposit it somewhere else.

The black castle always feels ominous.

It doesn’t always work like that, though. There have been occasions where the sword doesn’t kill the dragon but instead the bat grabs the live dragon and carries it off. After this you never know when you’re going to be surprised when you enter a new room. Even worse is when the bat grabs the live dragon, which then swallows you, and you are carried from screen to screen until the bat decides to deposit you somewhere.

Or, as shown in the header image of this post, the bat drops a dead dragon and steals the bridge, trapping you in a small area in the maze with no escape.

Variant 3 deals with this randomness by institutionalising it. Every item – keys, swords, dragons – is randomised at the start, and this means that you need quick reactions and a certain amount of patience to find what’s needed while avoiding the dragons. And the bat’s back as well. I will win every time when playing variants 1 and 2, but variant 3 has no guarantee of the sword being available before the dragons, and there are only a certain number of rooms you can run away to.

The game holds up remarkably well. It’s short, no doubt, but because of this it’s really replayable and fun. So many games have developed from this, but it’s still worth going back to the roots. Needless to say, I completed this, several times.

Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Note: A free code was given to me by the devs for review purposes for an upcoming episode of the ugvm Podcast. This isn’t a full review, just a record in my gaming diary. The full review will be over there anon.

A while back, I played the totally ridiculous Switch game About An Elf. It had a very unique art style and gameplay which teeters on the very definition of what gameplay is, and was baffling before you even got into the plot. Very few games leave me with a lasting impression like that, so when I saw Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band, which features the same art style because, well, it turns out it’s by the same devs and set in the same universe, there was a pang of omgneed. And here I am having completed it to tell you about it.

I’ll start with the gameplay because, frankly, that’s the only bit that makes the slightest bit of sense. Each level, or rather, episode of Miss Rosen’s TV show, you’re given a number of “packing” puzzles to complete. You have to fit things on a desk, or in a suitcase, or a box, before the time runs out. That’s easy to understand, right? It’s not quite as easy as it seems because they’re mostly real-world items with their odd shapes and sizes, and later levels add gimmicks like things that are invisible or that constantly move to make it trickier.

On it’s own, it’s no Unpacking or anything, but the rest of the game. Oh my.

So Miss Rosen is a wind-up majorette. She has a TV show where she has “adventures” each episode, and you know they’re going to be fun because she’s here! How much fun? This much fun! Quite. The “fun” mainly involves talking to bizarre people, creatures and sentient objects, and then solving the packing puzzles in order to help or defeat them as appropriate. All while assisted by a child called Dunno who wears a bandana over his mouth which completely disguises the fact that he’s really a T-Rex because obviously?

As the game goes on, you find there’s Something Bad happening, with things disappearing not only from existence, but from time itself. Then your friends disappear too. Is it the work of a magician who makes things disappear in front of your very eyes? Well, that would be too obvious, surely?

I… well. Erm.

What I really, really love about the game is the animation and art. Like About An Elf (Dam and her cat from that game make an appearance here too, actually) it’s hard to tell what is real, what is models, what is CGI, and what is your imagination because surely you can’t really be building a horse can you? Oh, you are? Righty-o. Backgrounds are filled with semi-humanoid mice that speed up and slow down. Is the sun made of plasticine or is it a woman wearing a mask? Why do all the women have hotpants on? THE CAR HAS A FACE. And WHY is the game called Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band when she doesn’t really have a marching band. Or even a band of any other sort. All important questions, none of which are answered and by the end you’re feeling bewildered and maybe a little bit sick like you’ve been on a Waltzer.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country (Switch): COMPLETED!

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If the $hlmun of hours on the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 main game and DLC wasn’t enough, then thank $deity for this prequel spin-off! Yes, more Xenoblade! Amazing.

To be cynical for a moment, it’s clear that this was likely originally supposed to be integrated in the main game. There’s a number of flashbacks to events 500 years ago, and it’s those events that are retold in full here. You could complain about it being money-grabbing to ask you to buy two things, but when you get so much damn game for your money it’s hard to. Besides, despite being much smaller than the main game (both in terms of size and length) it’s still bigger than many other full price releases and did come with all the extra stuff for the XC2 itself.

Anyway. To the game itself!

It’s the same in many ways as Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and they’ve not drastically tweaked the gameplay. You still have blades (although each character only has two and you can’t awaken an army of them), battles are pretty similar, and even one area of the game – Gormott – is here as it was before (albeit 500 years younger with no town to speak of yet). A few things have gone, like the cloud sea “tides”, which was silly and underused anyway, and salvaging. Your main character and blades now fight directly, rather than you “channelling” your blade, but this doesn’t really change the gameplay. Crafting items is now a big thing, expanding on the cooking you could do before. Finally, there’s a new addition called “Community”, where things you do for people you meet builds your reputation. It doesn’t seem to do much, though, aside from allow access to a few more missions or skills.

The plot follows Lora, who is Jin’s driver, who joins up with Addam (Mythra’s original driver) and one of Mòrag’s ancestors Hugo, driver of Brigid and Aegaeon as they try to put down Malos before he destroys the world. You know, much like in the main game. Although it’s set 500 years in the past, there are a surprising number of recurring characters, including Mikhail (as a kid). It’s interesting to see how Jin is a good guy here, before he becomes one of the Big Bads in XC2. In fact, it’s a shame that it isn’t really fully explained why Jin and Mikhail swap sides, although both are redeemed in XC2.

So really, it’s more of the (almost) same. A few changes, some new locations, and a power where you can halve your HP in return for vastly reducing the cooldown of your skills which speeds up fighting lower-level enemies greatly – a really issue in the main game and I’m thankful for here. Probably essential playing if you liked Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and probably useless to play if you haven’t played (or at least, intend on playing) that as there’d be a load of missing context. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before X comes out now? Why not?

Rain On Your Parade (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Rain On Your Parade is one of those silly arcade games that things like Donut County and Pool Panic. In this, you’re a sentient cloud who – initially – is mainly tasked with raining on things. After all, what else can a cloud do? You have to soak so many people or rust so many vehicles, that sort of thing.

Quickly things take a bit of a turn when you’re encouraged to cause chaos, set fire to stuff (you can hover over oil leaks and then rain oil), learn how to cause lightning, and so on. The game is framed within a Princess Bride style man telling a kid a bedtime story about this cloud, and he keeps adding to it to keep it interesting, so there’s the introduction of a baddie – Dr Dryspell – who wants nothing more than make everything dry.

Levels are varied, some short, some mere time or score attacks, and some pretty huge and complex. There’s quite some imagination going on (“rain” coffee into cups, get everyone covered in bird poo) but a special mention is needed to the first person shooter level, and the Legend of Zelda one for really stretching the formula. It’s also fun finding the references to other games, like Katamari, Metal Gear, and Power Wash Simulator.

Most of the levels have a number of “missions”, which usually require you to wet a certain number of things or complete the level without running out of water, and there are optional tasks, and even some optional hidden tasks, if you really want to go down the 100% complete route. There’s also a load of unlockable “costumes” for your cloud, like a frog hat and a chainsaw, and some minigames too.

Rain On Your Parade is quirky and funny, although a bit janky when it comes to things like collision detection and it even crashed on me a couple of times, but don’t let that put you off. A bit more polish would have been nice but it doesn’t detract from the ridiculous gameplay. Oh yes, and it has toilets. Five stars, would play again. Etc.