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Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch): COMPLETED!

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There was no doubt that I was going to instabuy a new Mario game. It might not be a sequel to Super Mario Odyssey, but New Super Mario Bros U was one of the best Mario games, if not, actually, the best and this is the first 2D outing for Nintendo’s pipeman since that came out, so I was hyped.

All the new “wonder” effects shown in the trailer and Nintendo Direct, with crawling pipes and turning into a Goomba and bouncing on massive bubbles opened a trillion new possibilities to Nintendo’s already seemingly inexhaustible supply of one-off creative moments. Everything was so bright and slick and, well, Nintendo. The only slightly worrying thing were the talking flowers, who comment on your actions, which didn’t seem to fit, but early players confirmed you could turn them off, so it’d be fine. Right? Right?

Well, duh, obviously.

But, it isn’t quite as great as I was hoping for. Before I go on about why, I should say that a surprise delight was these talking flowers. I was sure they’d grate and annoy but no – they’re bloody genius. Turning them off removes a big ol’ chunk of personality from the game. Another thing that had been pre-levelled as a negative from folk is that veteran Mario and Chums voice artist Charles Martinet wouldn’t be voicing this game, I think the first Mario title since Mario 64 to not feature him. Thankfully, the replacement 1) isn’t Chris Pratt, and 2) isn’t very different at all so it’s fine.

So why isn’t it the Best Mario Ever? Well, mainly because it just isn’t quite there in a number of ways. It’s short, for a start, and it’s very, very easy. I know the Thing with Mario games is that the hidden levels and getting all the special coins/seeds/bonuses/exits/etc. is where the real challenge lies, but no – it’s really easy even to do that. I collected all the seeds (most levels have one for using the “Wonder” correctly, and one for completing the level) and finished all the levels without incident. Except for one of the secret levels (those levels being the Wonder equivalent to Star Road) where you have to do loads of wall jumps really quickly in time to music which constantly speeds up and one slight mistake and you die. Even that was simplified by having more lives than you can realistically lose and no penalty for losing any. Seriously, I spent the majority of the game with 90+ lives and never intentionally tried – or needed – to get more. One tricky level in the whole game? It’s for kids, mate.

There’s also a couple of new power-ups this time around. Most obvious is Elephant Mario, who can hold water in his trunk and water things, but can also smash certain blocks when needed. The other one is Bubble Mario, who, er, blows bubbles. Apart from being able to defeat baddies on the other side of walls (the bubbles pass through), and you can jump off a bubble you’ve blown, Bubble Mario offers nothing to the game and is completely unneeded for any of the levels. Elephant Mario, for all his cuteness and fatness, is a little wasted too. For the most part, both of these powers were used simply to survive an extra hit.

However! It is still a fantastic game. I bloody loved it from start to finish (even if that time was only about 8 hours) and it’s just so bouncy and damn happy and the physics of jumping is perfect in that way no other company besides Nintendo manage to get right. Even a “bad” Mario game is still better than 99.9% of other games. I still have a handful of big purple coins to get before it’ll be considered 100%d, but everything else is done, and I’ll be sad for it to end.

Pear Quest (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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If you look at the screenshot, you’ll see that everything is very small. This is not, as I discovered having spent a long time trying to change it, a bug, a zoomed out setting, or a screen resolution issue. It is, in fact, intentional. The entire “map” is visible for the duration of the game, and everything is supposed to be tiny. And, on a Steam Deck, almost impossible to discern what is going on.

But I managed it. It’s a sort of direct-control point-and-click adventure game, in that you move your little… group of pixels around the island and interact with… other groups of pixels. You pick stuff up. You solve puzzles. You do a bit of light platforming. Eventually you get the keys to open the path to the pear and “win”.

By far the hardest part of the game is just being able to see the stuff on the screen. I get Sokpop’s style choice and I expect on a 24″ monitor this would be fine, but oh boy was it eye-hurtingly tricky. Don’t let it put you off though – if you’ve the screen for it, it’s great!

Dino Game (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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It’s another Sokpop game! I love all of these so far. Dino Game is probably the least fun one so far, but it’s still good enough to be worth a play, especially since it’s so cheap and short.

You’re on an island with big brontosaurus-type dinosaurs. You need to escape via your UFO, but you can’t reach it as it’s up in the sky. If you can befriend the dinos, by feeding them what they want, however…

Look at the pink one’s widdle face.

Yes, pretty simple, short and silly. Not a bad thing though.

Garden Story (Switch): COMPLETED!

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This isn’t quite the game I was expecting. I thought it was a Stardew Valley sort of game, only with a bit more story and all the characters are fruit and veg, but it wasn’t exactly that. Graphically, it’s similar, and yes – you can plant crops – but actually, it’s the story which is the thing.

Some bad goop stuff has been taking over the water supply of the world all the flora (and some frogs and fish things) live in, and it’s your job to put it right. Until you do, no more fruit babies can be born (or something) and the various regions are, not exactly “at war”, but certainly not best mates, with each other as the bad goop stuff is making things difficult.

So off you go, helping people by smacking baddies and moving boxes from one place to another and smashing rocks and a seemingly endless supply of massive jam jars that wash up, so you can get resources to improve your tools and provide for each of the villages. You see, each day you’re given a number of (optional) tasks to complete in the village you currently reside, and when you do it ranks up the village unlocking a few more tool improvements and you earn some money.

On top of these daily tasks, there’s the story to follow, which mostly involves similar sorts of tasks but with a dungeon and a boss to beat in each village. None of these dungeons, or the bosses themselves, are very difficult. I actually found some of the enemies on the “overworld” trickier to deal with, especially when they’re in numbers.

Fix all the problems in each village, upgrade your weapon enough, chat to the right people, and you can go and beat the final boss. Which is what I did.

Garden Story is very twee, has a few frustrating control issues (more shortcuts to tools would be nice), is a bit grindy and repetitive (the same tasks come up all the time) and collision detection is on the janky side of not-quite-right, but it’s a cute little thing and on the whole I enjoyed it.

HoloCure – Save the Fans! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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In a sea of coattail riding Vampire Survivors clones, it takes something for one to stand out. HoloCure did this by being free. As in, completely free. No cost, no IAPs, no paid DLC. Free. That, and it came to my attention via a recommendation from Gaming on Linux, who I follow because apparently I’m a Linux gamer now what with the Steam Deck and all.

Anyway, the game. it’s Vampire Survivors only with anime girls and cute baddies. Apparently, all the characters you can pick are VTubers but I neither know of them nor do I care, because I’m just here for the gameplay. Which, thankfully, is excellent.

Of course, it’s very much like That Other Game. You have swarms of baddies and you attack automatically. When you kill them they leave XP capsules, and when you level up you get to select a new weapon to add to your arsenal or upgrade an existing one. Eventually you become a walking death machine, have bosses to face, and the difficulty ramps up. Same as Vampire Survivors.

The differences, aside from the characters and baddies, are pretty small. The main one is that HoloCure is properly twin-stick. You still “auto-fire” like in VS, but you can choose in which direction independently of the direction you’re moving. Levels are also shorter, generally. In VS, at 30 minutes Death comes for you and the level ends. Here, you get an end of level boss at 20 minutes, and the level only ends when you or they die, which can take some time. Most of the weapons are different to VS too, but a lot of them are just analogues. There are a few really bizarre ones though, like the potatoes that bounce around the screen.

So it’s different but the same in the ways that make it fun. What is really different is the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon-lite side-game it has going on. Outside of playing the normal levels, you have a house you can visit and furnish, with a little farm to grow crops, a pond to catch fish, and a pen to hold, er, baddies that you have hired to farm coins for you. It’s not very in depth, but once I completed the main game (as in, had successful runs on each level and unlocked all the characters) I spent an inordinate amount of time on it.

HoloCure is an absolute bargain.