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Portal – Stuff the cake – Completed

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Finally managed to get pass the annoying platform section of level 18. Level 19 was a walk in the park compared to 18.

You get an easy boss fight sequence against Glados before you see the outside world & the end credits.

I'd still say that it is an overrated game with all the plaudits it gets I've played far better games over the last couple of years (see my top list).

On release yes it must have been something special due to it's unique gameplay style with the portals & a twist at the end but several years later I think those that have played it need to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

My fault for not playing it on release, so I am going to try with the PS4/WiiU to play the games I want during the year they have been released.

I was going to start Infamous Second Son but the WiiU will arrive next week & I won't complete in time so I'll take a look at the smaller arcade titles I have on 360/PS3 to find a shorter game. The Fallout DLC will take me longer because I will take my time and wonder around everywhere. I've still got lots of XBLA titles & PS+ freebies that I have not played.

Mass Effect 3 – Completed

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Earth is saved & I am dead !!

I went for the Synthesis ending & passed on my DNA to everyone across the galaxy.

In terms of Sci-Fi lore the trilogy has been fantastic, some gameplay elements were not ideal like the fetch & retrieve side quests but overall I would have to say it is an amazing trilogy.

It goes into my top list.

Next on the list then after much nagging from many on UGVM & RLLMUK is going to be Portal.

I've gone off iOS games for the moment so have deleted Tiny Dice Dungeon, Disco Zoo & a few others I was playing. Will just leave the turn based games like Lost Cities, Carcassonne & Disc Drivin.

I've also gone and purchased another WiiU console (WEAK) in readiness for Mario Kart 8.
Edit 3:15 - Too good to be true John Lewis have cancelled the offer.

SigCorp Holiday Special: completed!

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It seems that once the story for this little additional chapter had been completed, the developers decided they'd done enough and didn't bother to update To The Moon to link to it, or even add in any saving ability.  It's short enough to not need saving, but the fact that I didn't even know that it had been sitting on my hard drive for a few months indicates that there should have been some effort to integrate it into Steam.  Instead, I had to find the game folders on my hard drive and launch the game manually.


It's not much of a game, to be honest.  There's very little exploring to be done, and it's all very linear in giving you one task to do at a time.  To The Moon may have been similarly linear, but it didn't always feel like it.


After a brief explore of the facility, and learning that people are picketing outside, the game within a game provides a reasonable distraction, being a very basic and surreal version of the first game's story.  Piloting Neil through top-down levels, avoiding "zombievas", and collecting some of the memory triggers from River and John's story.  There was a bit of challenge here, but not much.


It was nice to see Neil and Eva again, and it's certainly renewed my interest in the next game.  I can't help but feel that it would have been better to release this at a later date though ...



Katamari Forever (PS3): COMPLETED!

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tumblr_n5dd6ic09d1svmpf2o1_1280I’ve completed this before, but only in one game mode – “Forever”. Randomly, my daughter asked me to play it again a few days ago (I didn’t even know she knew about it – she was two years old when I last put it on!) and I got a bit hooked again and played through it in Katamari Drive mode.

Which is basically the same game as before, only you move a lot faster.

This makes open levels with lots of things to collect a lot easier, and cramped levels (and those where you have to avoid certain objects) nigh on impossible. Still, I managed it and it was lots of fun because it is Katamari and Katamari is always fun and best and aces.

Lovely. Oh! And *PS3 GAME KLAXON*

Super Metroid (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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tumblr_n5g6uku1xw1svmpf2o1_1280And that’s it. Samus saved the day (although, in the end, all she saved was herself – spoilers). The game was completed in 7 hours 40 minutes, and with a collected items percentage of 79. I’m surprised it’s as low as 79%, as although I didn’t attempt to get 100%, I did search pretty much everywhere and only knowingly missed three upgrades – two missiles that I saw but couldn’t figure out how to reach, and a Reserve Tank that I never actually saw. I got all the Energy Tanks though, as I assumed the final boss would be a nightmare and I’d want as much health as possible.

Insert_Cypress_Hill_reference_here.It’s genius, then, that how much health you have is completely irrelevant to the final fight. OK, so shooting Mother Brain Inna Jar is tricky with all the Evil Party Rings of Doom, but they don’t do a lot of damage and Mother Brain herself doesn’t attack until after the jar is destroyed, and it’s at that point health is pointless.

UmYou see, she transforms into a monster thing who unleashes everything at you, and is a rocket sponge. After all my missiles, super missiles and power bombs were depleted, she fired a multicoloured beam that drained me of almost all my energy (see? It doesn’t matter how much you have), then was about to finish me off when Baby Metroid (Oh! How he’s grown! Hasn’t he just? How adorable!) returned having almost sucked me dry not ten minutes earlier before he realised I was his mum. He then latched onto Mother Brain and appropriated her essential juices, before transferring them to me, restoring my health. In the process, Mother Brain reanimated and started attacking Baby Metroid, destroying her. Aww.

Worst_baddies_everStill, I’d recovered by then, and had a new rainbow beam power thing which made short work of what was left of Mother Brain, and then (of course!) a time bomb was triggered and I had to run back to my ship very fast. The end!

Yes, I’m aware I’ve missed out a lot of stuff from between my last post and the final boss. There’s just too much good to say about the game. I loved the pacing, the music and the exploration. There’s always something great about getting a new ability in games like this, that allows you to get past a room you were scratching your head over previously. Slowly building you up to be a virtually unstoppable powerhouse with each upgrade and item.

Almost_everything___supermetroidIt may be a game from 1994 (that’s TWENTY YEARS AGO), but it hasn’t aged. The pixels are still beautiful. The gameplay is timeless. Some people said they didn’t think it’d stand up today, especially coming to it now having never played it before (which I haven’t), but they were so very wrong. If this was a new release now, it would stand up perfectly against current titles. One of the best games I’ve ever played. I’m just amazed I’d managed to miss out on it for so long.