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Pang (Arcade): COMPLETED!

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It required all of the credits, which, if I’d not been playing it on RetroPie would have meant re-mortgaging the house, but I completed it. Boy are some of those final few levels hard.

Pang is always a go-to game in the arcades for me. That, Pac-Land, Rampage, TMNT, Street Fighter II, Mappy, Out Run. I never got very far on a single credit in the past. Perhaps level 10 if I was very lucky.

But now, I’ve done it. Life goals, and all that eh?

The post Pang (Arcade): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Monthly Update – Household Chores

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I played an April Fools on UGVM (facebook group) saying I have given up gaming, it's never going to happen but I may have some weekends like the one just gone where I do not get time to play the PS4 but mobile gaming will always give me a few minutes of fun.

It's a welcome return to Capitals which has finally been fixed, I was getting constant crashes when starting a new game.

Managed to get the Baby Dragon up to Lvl 5 in Clash Royale but still hovering around the 2750 trophy mark.

Tiny Rails has had another update with a Mexico & Central America area unlocked.

Ran out of pokeballs so had to do quite a bit of pokestop visits to top-up & I managed to catch a Vulpix which was loitering outside my house yesterday. With the time change & sunny days I expect quite a few trips to the local park with the kids to catch Pokemon.

The usual Carcassonne & Lost Cities complete the mobile gaming. Not touched the iPad much for gaming so have not gotten any further in Crashlands.



Good news on the PS4 front, I managed to finish off World of Final Fantasy, in the end I was way too over-leveled for the last boss fight & it was a breeze.



I've started going through the PS+ collection of games to enjoy some of the smaller titles on offer & have started with Tiny Troopers which is a top-down action shooter, you can level up the soldiers by completing missions but if they die in combat you either lose them or have to use medals to revive. It is a simple game & nothing too difficult but I like the character style & it's fun.


I did not purchase Mass Effect Andromeda in the end, the poor reviews put me off, the game obviously needs some more months to fix the various issues but was obviously rushed to release. I will wait on that & pick up later in the year.

Persona 5 is another game I want to enjoy but not purchasing anything at the moment, need to play what I already have on the shelf. I could not go from one JRPG to another so Final Fantasy 15 will have to wait, Abbas is playing XCOM2.

So I went back to have a quick look at my sell pile & decided to give Watch_Dogs 2 a try, gave myself an hour & to my surprise it was very enjoyable, you get to access to some new toys like a RC Car & Drone. There are lot's of side quests including taking selfies to go along with the beefier main missions. There is a lot of profanity in the game which is far too excessive but I enjoy the challenge of the main missions & trying to complete them by stealth.

I'm hoping with the Easter break to play quite a bit of this if I don't get distracted by Destiny of course!



Destiny 2 has been announced & I have pre-ordered the digital edition, September 8th Day 1 !

On that note, until next month keep on gaming.

Assassin’s Creed III: completed!

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To be honest, the feeling of being overwhelmed by choice never really left me, and I spent many hours wandering around the American countryside chasing nothing in particular.  After the initial twist in the story, and the urgency created by the village being burnt to the ground, there was no real impetus to hurry through the game - not helped by the fact that your main enemy keeps on cropping up and you keep on having to watch cutscenes where you aren't allowed to kill them.

And then you have to team up with your dad, who's a bad guy, and you know that at some point he's going to die.  You just know it.

So I once again found myself distracted by parts of the game which weren't actually necessary in terms of storyline, but in many cases were more fun.  The sailing being a prime example.


Controlling a ship to chase down pirates or the British was great fun in the main, and even though half the screen was blocked from view by your ship which has a turning circle radius of several hundred miles, it still felt like you were in control.  Yes, it feels like you're battling your ship as well as the enemy, but I imagine it is far more responsive than a real boat.


I also spent some time looking for trinkets, exploring the wilderness, and sneaking around forts.  Not trying to complete any of these in particular, mind, given the lack of achievements and trophies, but rather seeing where they took me.  And after playing for a while they took me to some very strange places indeed.



I started to be followed around by a large spherical mess of polygons.  It blocked my view, shifted itself around the screen from time to time, and was a pain in the arse.  So I quit and restarted from the previous save.



Which then made me into a large spherical mess of polygons.


Restarting again seemed to work fine, until characters and items started to clip through each other - like this horse mounting a second hay wagon.  This was the most amusing bug of all, watching people floating along the top of crowds.

Anyway, we can't mess around for ever.  Returning back to the main story, I followed the path to track down Charles Lee, which led to long battles with the patriot army (helped by my assassin colleagues), and then a chase through a burning ship.  In the end, finally, he got what was coming to him.


It's not as bad a game as some have said.  Connor is certainly less likable than Ezio, but the story had some good turns in the first half the game.  It just feels like it goes on too long, and you miss many opportunities to finish the story because you are taken out of control during the cutscenes - the Connor in the cutscenes was a very different character to the Connor in the rest of the game.

A side story next.

Assassin’s Creed III: completed!

Posted on Written by

To be honest, the feeling of being overwhelmed by choice never really left me, and I spent many hours wandering around the American countryside chasing nothing in particular.  After the initial twist in the story, and the urgency created by the village being burnt to the ground, there was no real impetus to hurry through the game - not helped by the fact that your main enemy keeps on cropping up and you keep on having to watch cutscenes where you aren't allowed to kill them.

And then you have to team up with your dad, who's a bad guy, and you know that at some point he's going to die.  You just know it.

So I once again found myself distracted by parts of the game which weren't actually necessary in terms of storyline, but in many cases were more fun.  The sailing being a prime example.


Controlling a ship to chase down pirates or the British was great fun in the main, and even though half the screen was blocked from view by your ship which has a turning circle radius of several hundred miles, it still felt like you were in control.  Yes, it feels like you're battling your ship as well as the enemy, but I imagine it is far more responsive than a real boat.


I also spent some time looking for trinkets, exploring the wilderness, and sneaking around forts.  Not trying to complete any of these in particular, mind, given the lack of achievements and trophies, but rather seeing where they took me.  And after playing for a while they took me to some very strange places indeed.



I started to be followed around by a large spherical mess of polygons.  It blocked my view, shifted itself around the screen from time to time, and was a pain in the arse.  So I quit and restarted from the previous save.



Which then made me into a large spherical mess of polygons.


Restarting again seemed to work fine, until characters and items started to clip through each other - like this horse mounting a second hay wagon.  This was the most amusing bug of all, watching people floating along the top of crowds.

Anyway, we can't mess around for ever.  Returning back to the main story, I followed the path to track down Charles Lee, which led to long battles with the patriot army (helped by my assassin colleagues), and then a chase through a burning ship.  In the end, finally, he got what was coming to him.


It's not as bad a game as some have said.  Connor is certainly less likable than Ezio, but the story had some good turns in the first half the game.  It just feels like it goes on too long, and you miss many opportunities to finish the story because you are taken out of control during the cutscenes - the Connor in the cutscenes was a very different character to the Connor in the rest of the game.

A side story next.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Two big firsts with this game. The first first, is that it’s my first completed Switch game. The second first, is that it’s my first completed 3D Zelda game. Well, aside from HYRULE WARRIORS, but that isn’t a “traditional” Zelda game.

That being said, neither is Breath of the Wild. It has Zelda lore, Zelda themes, Zelda music… but nothing about the gameplay is actual Zelda. This game is all about traversal, exploration, survival. There are no dungeons. You obtain all the “special weapons” (“runes”, here) within the first couple of hours play, rather than en-route to each boss. There’s no sequence to follow, as, in fact, it’s perfectly possible to legitimately skip virtually the entire story and literally just walk up to the final boss and beat him.

breath of the wild

This is not Zelda.

But, for me, that’s a great thing. I’ve always liked the idea of the 3D Zelda games. I enjoyed, for a time, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but never enough to ever finish them. I’d get bored or annoyed and just leave them incomplete. Breath of the Wild had me hooked the entire time, and I think it’s because of the major changes to the formula.

A few times, while playing, I thought “this isn’t fun”. In Twilight Princess, my options were stop playing, or force my way through it. Here, I could go and do something else instead and come back later. Much later, in the case of the iguana beast: I disabled it, went off to find some more weapons, then came back thirty hours later to carry on playing. Turns out it was a walkover.

After which I took on the bird beast, who was also a walkover, and emboldened by these two victories I decided to take on Ganon.

Who was also a walkover. Which was slightly disappointing. I was expecting it to be near impossible, and sure, I had some great armour and 16 hearts, but I only took one heart damage. One! And I still can’t parry properly!

Now the important question: Is this the best game ever? No. It’s a great game, certainly, but it still has issues. Is it the best Zelda game ever? Again, no. A Link Between Worlds and Hyrule Warriors are both better – Hyrule Warriors is more fun, ALBW is more focussed. But Breath of the Wild is wonderful, and has given me faith for the 3D Zelda series and Nintendo’s other series’ too – if they can shake up Zelda this much and come out with a winner, just imagine Metroid or Kid Icarus.

The post The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.