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Blaster Master Zero (Switch): COMPLETED!

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You know my post from a couple of days ago where I said I was going to concentrate on a couple of games from the Christmas Game Pile? Well, I ignored that and started – and completed – Blaster Master Zero instead.

I’d previously played the demo and quite enjoyed it, but not enough to actually buy it. However, I later learned two important things about it:

  1. It was made by the same people as Mighty Gunvolt Burst
  2. It’s a Metroidvania

So that was me sold, and as it was cheap recently, it was purchased. And it’s excellent.

You navigate your surprisingly nimble jumping tank around various areas, which in true Metroidvania style have sections you can’t reach until upgrades are found. Sometimes, you have to hop out and proceed on foot, often entering rooms where the action becomes more overhead. You can run around the main levels without your tank too, but you’re hopelessly underpowered and even a pretty short drop kills you instantly.

There are loads of bosses to contend with, most of them in these on foot areas, although they’re all very easy. Even more so once I noticed you could change your weapon style in a Mega Man sort of way. Ice baddies are no match for your flamethrower, and bosses that consist of many parts (or waves of smaller baddies) can be damaged all together with a spark attack.

Click to view slideshow.

Poorly tying it all together is a crazy plot involving an android, a frog and a load of mutants, but that’s not really important. What is important, is how much fun it is upgrading your tank, reaching new parts of old levels, playing Colour In The Map, and simply exploring. I’ve beaten the end boss, but I suspect there’s more to do here since there are bits of the map as yet unvisited, a number of caves that were too dark to see in (so I left them), and the ending wasn’t as positive as perhaps it could have been.

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Battlefield 1 (PS4) – Completed

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Off to a good start on the 52 game challenge, Battlefield 1 completed. Some of the campaign missions were difficult especially The Runner missions where I was playing that section wrong and trying to kill the enemies on route when you simply had to leggit!!

Really enjoyed the Tank & Plane missions.

Next game is Telltale's The Walking Dead New Frontier.

Stardew Valley (Switch): COMPLETED!

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In theory, Stardew Valley could go on forever. However, it gets to a stage where there’s very little left to achieve and so, fun aside, no point in carrying on. I’m not quite where I would want to stop playing just yet, but I do feel that after 120 hours (count ’em) it’s finished.

I’ve achieved most of the achievements, unlocked Qi’s casino, shipped every item, got married (to Emily), finished the Community Centre, broken into the witch’s house for the wizard, unlocked the sewer, reached the bottom of the mine, made (in total) over 4 million gold, reached level 10 in all the stats, and maximised my relationship with almost everyone 1.

So yeah, it’s completed.

Until they release the two player mode update, and then I’m back in, I expect.

Notes:

  1. bar Elliot and Sebastian – Elliot won’t talk to me, Sebastian is a misery ↩

The post Stardew Valley (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Splatoon 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I am fully aware that the main point of Splatoon 2 is the online component. In fact, I’m sure – like I was with the first game – that the single player mode exists simply because Nintendo has a “Single Player Mode” box that needs ticking somewhere.

But – again, like the first game – the single player mode is excellent and sorely overlooked by so many. In Splatoon 2 it also acts as a fantastic tutorial for the different weapons in the main, er, online game.

It plays out across five themed worlds, with each containing 6 or so levels. They’re inventive platforming, shooting, or puzzle based challenges – up there with 3D Mario games in many respects. A number of types of enemies, giant rolling balls, car wash rollers of ink, invisible platforms, hidden items – it has it all. At the end of each world there’s a big boss battle.

Generally, I found the levels themselves more difficult than those in the original Splatoon, but the bosses were far, far easier. Which is good, actually – some were too hard before.

So it’s short, it’s fun, and it could quite easily exist as a game in its own right. But now, I think I should play online a bit.

 

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Gorogoa (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s pretty hard to describe Gorogoa. When I originally read a review, it sounded like a cross between The Witness and Yellow, both games I liked so it prompted me to buy it.

But it isn’t like those. Or it sort of is. Like The Witness, there are environments to manipulate to solve depth-busting puzzles. Shapes to match up, find, or merge. Sometimes you can remove a layer of a vista to create a second scene to work with, and it’s here it very much diverges from The Witness.

Like Yellow, it’s not clear how you achieve your goal, but there’s a puzzle to each chapter solved with slightly guided tapping. Beyond that, it’s not Yellow any more either.

The screenshots don’t explain or do it justice, and it’s not about when everything is in motion either. Perhaps an early example will help? OK, so there’s a bit where you have two doors, one diagonal from the other. They’re shut, and a boy needs to go in the lower one to reach the upper one.

In another scene, there’s a pair of doors in a similar layout with open doors and steps joining them. If you overlay these doors over the first set of doors, the scenes “flatten”, like layers in Photoshop, creating a way forward.

But that’s just the start. There are puzzles within puzzles within puzzles. Sometimes two vistas have separate puzzles that when solved create a solution to a joint puzzle. Which is part of another puzzle. It’s puzzles all the way down.

And it made me feel very clever. And there’s a lot to be said for games that do that.

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