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Touch My Katamari (Vita): COMPLETED!

Posted on 28/03/2015 Written by deKay

In a sale a few months ago, Touch My Katamari dropped to about £18. I was very tempted to buy it but the only thing stopping me was a full Vita memory card. By the time my 64GB card arrived, it wasn’t on sale any more and I’d a billion other things to play anyway.

This week, I spotted it for £3.29 on PSN, and, with my credit I’d bought for 20% discount, nabbed it for around £2.60. Bargain!

Or so it seemed. As it happens, there’s not much more than £2.60’s worth of content there. Only 8 levels, including the tutorial, and none of them are as large or as long as those in previous Katamari titles. Sure, there’s free DLC (8 more levels, each a separate download, although numbered 1 to 9 with number 5 missing), but it isn’t really free. You can download it for free, of course, but can you play it? No. You can’t unless you then pay 10 “fan damacy” (one of the in-game currencies) to do so. Fan damacy can be obtaining in the game, appearing as a character to roll up, but after completing the game and then replaying the entire game then playing some more, I’d found three. Leaving another SEVENTY SEVEN to find.

Lets just assume, that somehow, I managed to find 20 of them in total. That will take forever at the current rate, but pretend I hit my head or something and I play the entire game through another 12 to 15 times, in order to do this. That still leaves 60 fan damacy needed to play what I’ve already downloaded. Luckily for Bandai Namco, you can buy fan damacy with real money. Unfortunately for the player, 60 fan damacy will cost more than £16. So much for free DLC. It’s crap like this that made me stop playing the iOS version.

What about the actual game then. Is it any cop? You’ll be glad to hear that, despite the above and the shortness, yes – it is. It’s not as good as Katamari Forever or Beautiful Katamari, and it suffers from lower powered hardware as levels are smaller and prone to slowdown. The touchscreen (or back panel, if you prefer) gimmick to flatten or stretch your katamari is completely useless, and outside of the tutorial isn’t required at all. In fact, it’s sometimes a hinderance as wandering fingers on the back of the Vita sometimes reshape the ball when you don’t want it to. The Vita itself doesn’t really work well controlling it in general, as I kept finding myself tilting the console back all the time due to the way you have to hold it, to facilitate pushing up on both sticks 99% of the time, and to prevent accidental ball squashage.

The music isn’t as good as previous titles either, consisting of very quiet tracks, some of which appear to be easy listening slowjams of earlier tracks. None are catchy and some are barely audible.

There’s a lot of criticism for so many parts of the game, but ultimately it’s Katamari, and for £2.60 I can’t really complain too strongly. Short, not as good as previous games in the series, but still fun.

Mighty Switch Force 2 (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 15/03/2015 Written by deKay

It’s been a long time since I played the 3DS original, but I did always intend to buy the sequel. At £1.25 instead of the usual £5 in this week’s sale, there was no excuse. The only difficulty was choosing whether to get the 3DS version or the Wii U one. I went 3DS for the 3D effect, which really does make a useful difference.

I’m glad I did, as well. It’s even better than the first game. The water hose replaces the gun, and makes for more varied platforming (you now have to douse fires and clean mud blocks to progress) and some better puzzles (using tubes to direct water, and three coloured “locking” blocks), and there’s now a baby on each level you have to rescue. Well, I say rescue – you kick it off the screen.

Other than that, it’s the same as before – same controls, same ideas, seemingly same speech samples, mostly the same baddies. It is, however, a lot easier than before. I never got stuck, and only dies three times in the entire game – and not at all on the final level or the end of game boss. I had found the final level on the first game overly difficult and frustrating, but the last level on the sequel is one of the easiest in the game. It still has the “rhythmic auto depth switch” the previous Mighty Switch Force had late in the game, but it’s far, far easier.

I’ve a couple of babies to go back and collect, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to replay the game to beat the par times for each level. That would be nuts as even on levels where I feel I’ve been pretty quick, I’ve taken three times as long as I could have done.

3D Shinobi III (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 14/03/2015 Written by deKay

What a great game. It’s hard, but not as hard as Revenge of Shinobi, it has some satisfying platforming sections, and the music is fantastic. The 3D adds very little, but that’s not really important.

I only had a few minor complaints. One was that doing the double-jump somersault should have been easier to pull off, especially since some of the later parts of the game rely on it so much. Second was the level where you go through doors and some of them take you back to earlier in the level, meaning you have to traverse the same bits again taking pot luck as to whether you’ll progress or go backwards.

Finally, there’s the end boss. Oh my was he hard. I thought I’d nailed it when I started flying-kicking him, but then he countered with some sort of rage move which hits me, or a few dragon punches. He took so many attempts, and when I did manage to kill him, I was down to one bar of health and he was about to hit me!

Well worth a purchase, especially as it’s half price at the moment.

3D Altered Beast (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 12/03/2015 Written by deKay

WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE!

Or, even better, stay dead and buried. Why on earth did Sega think that porting the Megadrive version (not even the arcade version!) of this infamously terrible game to the 3DS? Or even to any other console? Nobody, absolutely nobody at all, wanted it, liked it originally, or is ever going to buy it.

Er, except that I did, of course. Um.

In my defence, I did only get it because it was half price. And because… er, nope. That’s the only reason. I’ve bought worse for more money, I’m sure. No, I know that’s not helping.

So, the game then. It’s the same as it ever was with some minor 3D parallax layering. It’s still rubbish, it’s still easy, and it’s still possible to complete in under 15 minutes. Which I did. And, since I did, you don’t need to. Hurrah!

3D Outrun (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 12/03/2015 Written by deKay

Long awaited by many, 3D Outrun finally found its way onto the European eShop today, and I had to buy it instantly. It’s a superb conversion, actually improving on the original arcade game by making it widescreen and 60fps (not that I can tell it’s not 30fps any more – I’m fps-blind) and most importantly, 3D.

It’s hard to express just how fantastic the 3D effect is. It was great in 3D Afterburner II and 3D Space Harrier, but in 3D Outrun it is truly astounding, especially on stages with road furniture on both sides and bridging over the road. You really feel like you’re in a tunnel. It’s incredible, and adds to the feeling of speed too.

This version also adds two extra music tracks. Neither are as good as Magical Sound Shower, but then, that’s a near impossible task. They’re at least as good as Splash Wave and Passing Breeze though, and it’s hard to think they were not originally in the arcade version they sound so well suited.

As the title of the post suggests, yes, I’ve completed it already. It isn’t a long game, and it’s a bit easier than I recall the arcade version being, but it is still so much fun to play. I ran through it five times (plus a few more where I ran out of time) reaching each of the five goals. Each one unlocks a “car tune-up”, such as better cornering or a higher top speed, and using these changes the colour of your car. It does feel a little odd to be driving a yellow or purple not-Ferarri (actually, the car seems to be an Armani now – no, really, look at the logo), it has to be said.

Excellent game and impossible to play without a massive grin. Especially if you pick Magical Sound Shower on the radio.