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Streets of Rage 4 (PS5): COMPLETED!

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Oh would you look – a PS+ monthly game that’s actually good and I don’t already own! How rare.

And yes, it is good! It’s a long awaited sequel to the original Mega Drive fighting games, if we ignore the Fighting Force game which was obviously supposed to be Streets of Rage 4 for the Saturn anyway. And even that was decades ago.

SoR4 doesn’t deviate from the previous games very much at all, really. You punch and kick through loads of baddies, most of whom are straight from the previous games, with playable characters that are, or are related to in some way, the original characters. Axel is a beefy boi now, with a beard, and Blaze has covered up a bit, but otherwise, it’s more of the same. Well, with modern graphics of course.

As she loves playing these sorts of games with me, I completed it with my daughter.

Pokémon X: completed!

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The little diversion saw me travelling through fields of flowers and encountering a large number of new pokémon, meaning that I depleted my stocks of all types of pokéballs while travelling through the flora. I also met a couple of trainers with a massive unit of a pokémon. I finally found Wulfric, the eighth gym leader, frolicking in the meadow, and convinced him to return to his responsibilities in the ice world. Was it finally time to battle for the final badge?

Yes, it was. Now, I have mentioned before that I felt I might have spent a little too long on side quests, and as a result my pokémon were feeling a little overpowered as I took down gym leaders with one hit. Since that point my core team has changed little, with the main exception being Xerneus replacing Pikachu. This meant that I no longer had any electric pokémon – or even any electric moves – which is very much unprecedented in the way I’ve played pokémon games before. Electric moves are often quite powerful and have potential to cause paralysis, which has been beneficial many times in the past. They are also strong against water pokémon – and when the first opponent in the Snowbelle City gym sent out Cloyster I was starting to regret the change.

I needn’t have. Every other pokémon in the gym was an ice type, meaning that Delphox could generally dispatch them immediately, and as the availability of fire moves waned then Lucario’s fighting moves substituted. All gym trainers, plus Wulfric, were defeated very quickly.

And with that, I was invited to go to the Pokémon League. Getting there was possibly the most difficult part of the game, with a very long trek up victory road against high-level trainers and powerful pokémon. I had to travel back to Snowbelle City twice to revive and heal all my pokémon, before finally reaching the next pokécentre. This was conveniently located outside the Pokémon League building, and so refreshed and revived I went in.

In other pokémon games I have struggled a lot at this point. In Leaf Green I got to the Elite Four and managed to beat three of them before losing, more than once – and in the end I moved on to other games. In Sapphire I was so discouraged by my Leaf Green experiences that when I got to the Pokémon League my team felt far too underpowered to even attempt battles, and I ended up wandering off to do other things instead, never returning. In Pearl I managed to beat the Elite Four, only to get beaten by the champion afterwards. This has always been the climax of the game, and I have never got past it.

The entrance to the League, and the settings for the Elite Four battles was certainly impressive, with the Four themselves having a great deal of personality. I was told that they had their own specialisms – water, fire, dragon and steel, and I prepared for which of my pokémon should be first out in each case. By now most of my team was up to the high seventies, with the exceptions of Lucario and Xerneus who were a few levels lower. I reviewed my moves; I shifted around my pokémon, and then, with trepidation, I entered.

I needn’t have been so worried. Sure, most of the opposing pokémon posed some threat, with few instant defeats, but I beat all four at the first time of asking. Xerneus’s dragon-type move was invaluable against the dragons, but even other pokémon took off large amounts of health. Blastoise was a monster in the fire battles. The most difficult was the water champion, since I no longer had Pikachu – but I managed to adapt.

Then heal up, check the order, and it’s off to see the champion.

This wasn’t an easy battle. The champion, Diantha, had a large variety of pokémon, some of which I hadn’t seen before and so I was unaware the best way to face them. Luckily I had Edward looking over my shoulder, who told me, for example, that Gourgeist is a ghost/grass type and so I should use fire moves against it, and Tyrantrum is rock-type so would be dispatched with ease by Blastoise’s hydro pump. After defeating five of her pokémon, I had four still standing, and I threw out Lucario to use the mega evolution as a finale. That worked very well indeed.

Yes, I forgot to turn the 3D off when taking that screenshot.

There’s still a lot to do, of course. I recall seeing someone blocking me from a cave in the winding woods, saying it was only for champions. There are many waterfalls to go up. There are many black entries in the pokédex. But I’ve seen the credits roll, and so I can finally say I’ve completed the story in a pokémon game.

Little Kitty Big City: completed!

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There was an update, and there’s a definite improvement to control responsiveness and general collision detection. It’s still a bit fiddly at times and sometime it just doesn’t respond to button presses – particularly when trying to pull items around – but overall it’s much more playable.

The overarching story – of having fallen down from your cosy perch, and having to make your way back up the building – provided enough impetus to make me want to seek out new abilities and areas. I met a tanooki who transported me 2 metres into a bin, but this indicated that there may be more teleportation in the future. I found a beetle who’d dropped his phone in concrete, who needed a new one – that unlocked photo mode. I found a chameleon who is particularly bad at hiding. I found sparkling areas which allowed me to take a nap. I found a worried duck who’d lost his ducklings, and he game me a useful map. Eventually I found a fish which I ate, which gave me the ability to climb ivy for a short way.

The map showed me where the other fish were. I suddenly became very interested in finding fish.

Each of the fish required a little puzzle. In the shop, I had to find some way to distract the shopkeeper before jumping into the fridge and wolfing the fish down. On a roof garden, I had to turn off a hose to prevent the fish’s owner spraying me. Each fish I ate gave me more stamina to climb. After collecting all the fish, I knew I could make it to the top of the building, and back home.

Of course, I didn’t do that immediately. I found a few more hats, and explored the world some more. I spent ages trying to find a clever way into a fenced-off area on the edge of the map, before noticing there was a little gap between the fence and the wall (left below); I also spent ages trying to catch a bird with a ring around its neck, who’d land in a specific spot but fly off almost immediately (right below).

But it was time to climb. The journey up the tower was largely uneventful, although I did get lost in the scaffolding a couple of times. With four stamina bars I had just about enough to climb onto an air conditioning unit near the top, and then I was home.

The ending was very sweet – being given a collar, congratulations by the crow, and then another nap on the windowsill.

I can jump down again to complete missions, find more hats, and steal more smartphones before dropping them in puddles. I need to find two more rubber ducks to throw in the pond, and another football and goal combination, among other side missions. For now, though, this is completed.

A Monster’s Expedition (Through Puzzling Expeditions) (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I maintain that I am not really a fan of sokoban type puzzle games, and yet somehow, I seem to enjoy them. Perhaps it’s just when there are crate-pushing puzzles in otherwise crate-push-free games that I don’t like?

In any case, A Monster’s Expedition was one of the ones I did enjoy. You are a monster, who navigates islands which seem to make up a sort of Museum of Humans, as there are many artefacts (sometimes amusingly mislabelled as to their purpose) to be found. The game, however, isn’t about finding the artefacts – it’s about finding a way to leave the islands completely.

To do that you have to reach a ferry, and to reach the ferry you have to complete crate-pushing puzzles on each island in order to open paths, build log bridges, or make rafts to get around. Of course, they’re not crates you have to push: they’re trees.

You can chop down trees, then push the trunks as logs. If you push them sideways, they roll until they hit something or fall in the water, and if you push them lengthways they flip up on end and then over onto their side again. These, plus the double-height trees and some rocks, make up the majority of the puzzles and they’re all about trying to get logs into certain positions on each island to progress.

It’s simple, although many of the puzzles are not. Later on, you discover a few meta-puzzles, where there’s a collection of islands to solve, but not just to allow you to move between them – you have to make way for a log that needs to traverse the islands and bridges you’ve made too, which may mean the solution you had originally may not be enough for the log as well.

A Monster’s Expedition is a nice little (well, not little – it’s bloody huge) brain-scratcher, with a bit of humour and some fiendish puzzles. Oh, and if you’ve bought the itch.io Palestinian Relief bundle, you already own it!

Rise of the Tomb Raider: completed!

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I decided to play on. Ammo was a little depleted, but I had plenty of materials to craft arrows, and I was sure that soldiers would provide me with plenty of bullets. In fact, as I arrived atop the tower, I saw multiple ammo drops in any case, and started to run towards them.

I didn’t get there before the cutscene started. I am not averse to big end battles, as they can set the end of a game nicely. I don’t like huge difficulty spikes, and I don’t like when the skills required for the boss are completely different to those in the game as a whole. To a minor extent, these both applied here. Konstantin appeared in a helicopter, guns blazing, trying to get rid of Lara. Luckily Sofia was still at the trebuchet; unluckily she was unable to hit the moving helicopter. Instead, in a massive nod to realism, after she fired a blazing barrel towards the helicopter, I had to shoot that barrel when it was nearby, causing an explosion that rocked the flying menace. And I had to do that three times, because we all know that helicopters can survive two explosions. And between the helicopter’s appearances, the Deathless Dumbos and Trinity Tosspots all swarmed around the structure trying to kill me.

Luckily I soon found ways to avoid them – running away to an outer ledge, shooting the burning trays over the tops of their heads, and using poison and exploding arrows. It was intense, though, and I was glad to see the helicopter finally on fire and about to crash.

Into me. Into the tower. Oh dear.

So I end up in a burning room with Konstantin, who has obviously survived the crash, taking all my weapons. I have to avoid his machine gun fire and grenades, while running around finding tin cans to craft into explosives and then hitting him with my ice pick. Luckily there were some clear instructions on what I needed to do.

Eventually he submitted to multiple stab wounds, and I took my stuff back from him. And then he begged me to not leave him to die. I had a choice – there was the symbol over his head indicating a kill, but instead I just walked away.

And then the building collapsed on him anyway. Oh well.

Off to the Chamber of Souls to find the Divine Source, and there I find Ana who is desperate not to die. She has the Source, there is a fair amount of back-and-forth, the Deathless Dimwits appear in force and everything is going to be awful. Until Lara lifts up the Source over her head and smashes it. The Deathless become Dead, but so does Jacob, and everything is a bit sad. Game complete.

All being completed, I travel back to the geothermal springs valley to tidy up some loose ends, and hear some interesting post-game conversations. I may return at some point to find the secrets I missed, and complete the side missions left over, but this feels like a good time to stop.