I knew the Formidable Oak was to be the last level, but I wasn’t expecting quite how different it would be. Travelling to the top of the tree, I found Olimar being tended to by a strange gold being. This was, of course, the boss battle; I jumped into the clearing, and faced up to the newly-grown golden blob.

I had come prepared with a varied party – 20 of each pikmin. In the end, this wasn’t needed, because after a short pounding with red and rock pikmin, the golden blob died and dissolved into the ground. This was probably the easiest boss in the game. So, let’s get Olimar back to the Drake and we can set off home.

Of course not. Nintendo don’t do things like that. The final boss is always the most difficult bit. As soon as I’d entered the tunnel off the tree platform, I was ambushed by the golden blob again – who then started to chase me. I had to get pikmin to carry Olimar behind us, while I navigated a labyrinth of enemies and hazards.

This seemed to go on forever, and on the first day I lost a large number of pikmin (about 40!) to enemies I wasn’t expecting. The golden blob also kept catching up with me, and each time it did I had to attack it to release Olimar anew. However, I realised after a short time that there were things I could do to make the path to the exit easier on subsequent runs – pushing down ramps, lowering bridges, even exploding a barrier right next to the start – and so on the third day I had a quick, clear run through the inside of the tree.

With that done, a final boss battle took its toll on my army – I’m ashamed to say it took me far too long to realise I had to attack the cubes it sent out with the appropriate elemental pikmin – and for the first time in the game I noticed that the crew were also taking a little damage. With only 45 pikmin left in my party, and all but one yellow pikmin having been drowned when I threw them into a ball of water by mistake, the golden blob fell for the last time.

Pikmin games are always relatively short, and that adds to their charm – having completed this I am tempted to try again, with a shorter time and fewer lost souls. I was never particularly careful with my pikmin, as I knew I always had many in reserve, and most boss battles were won not on strategy but on pure strength. Every one of those 400 deaths was probably preventable.

But before that, there are some side stories to play, and other missions to investigate. Maybe in the future.

I have now lost count of the number of times I’ve played through Portal. The last time I posted about it, back in 2010, I said I’d completed it on four platforms; by now I must have completed it multiple times on each of those, and additional platforms since. This latest completion is due to the Portal collection (both games) being cheap on Switch, and the desire to try playing through Portal 2 on a convenient platform. But I couldn’t let the first game just sit there.

I actually played through the game twice, the second time listening to the developer commentary – I meant to only do this for the first couple of levels, but each time a new level started I could see the speech bubbles hanging temptingly close. It is still magnificent, with its short length adding to its genius. But I’ve said all that before.

What I found interesting this time, following so close to my completion of Metroid Prime Remastered, and also various other games over the past couple of years, is how the boss battle in Portal was so clearly signposted. As you enter, one of GlaDOS’s orbs falls to the ground and before you are in any danger you have to incinerate it. Once that’s done, you know that you will have to do that again, and you can see where the orbs are, and it’s very soon after that you realise how to get them after some of GlaDOS’s commentary hints at the rockets. Even with the one-hit-kill nature of Portal’s gameplay, it’s easy to both understand what to do, and also to do it.

This is in contrast to some of the bosses in Metroid Prime, for example. The last boss, in particular, had no signposting on how to damage it, until I accidentally stood on some of the deposited goo and realised that the HUD now read “hypermode” (or similar). The Omega Pirate killed me many times until I realised that missiles dealt huge amounts of damage. Thinking back to Sonic on the Mega Drive, bosses often required a little trial and error before you worked out how to hit them consistently.

As I’ve grown older I think that the signposting is appreciated – but the challenge of Metroid Prime came as a welcome surprise, and the bosses in the Zelda games are an appropriate crescendo – plus the minor bosses across the worlds of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, optional as they are, are a great focal point for adventure.