completed

deKay · 20/07/2025

And that’s it. I’ve officially run out of Xenoblade to play. In about a year and a half I’ve completed the entire series of games in some sort of obsessive newfan flurry of activity. Why did I sleep on this series for so long? It’s bloody great.

Anyway, I’ve said a lot about the three numbered games in the series, and I have to say I was a little worried coming to X because I’d heard it wasn’t quite the same, didn’t exist in the same chronology, and was originally the second game released so might not have the graphics, controls and gameplay improvements the series gained over time. So, how was it?

The first thing to address is how it fits into the series, because despite all the internet fora saying it doesn’t, it bloody does. I mentioned in the writeup of the Xenoblade 3 DLC that X is referenced there quite explicitly, but it’s not hard to see that the event that caused the creation of the worlds of 1, 2 and 3 is (or at least, could be) the same event that causes the mass exodus of humans from Earth, setting up the plot for Xenoblade X. Two alien races are fighting over Earth, which then blows up, and you are one of an ark of survivors (perhaps the only ark that made it) that escaped only to crash on a planet called Mira. A planet which, somehow, has Nopon. Curious. Plus, in chapter 13, the events of Xenoblades 1 and 2 are directly referenced.

The second thing is the gameplay. In terms of basic combat mechanics, Xenoblade X is very similar to Xenoblade 1, with the attack moves laid out across the bottom of the screen, each with cooldowns, and so on. However, it’s vastly more complex, as you can tweak your skills, arts, weapons, armour and (later) your big mech-like “Skell” to the nth degree with items similar to the weapon gems in the original game, only now you can gem up everything. And add more gem slots. I read a while back that the developers wanted to use X1 as a basic for the gameplay here, but make the focus of the game the combat rather than the plot, and it shows.

Because, you see, the plot isn’t fantastic. Well, it’s fantastic in the old sense of the word, but it’s a bit poo compared to X1/2/3. You crash on this planet, your ship has become a small city, and you have to find other parts of the ship that broke off in order to ensure the continued survival of the human race. Only you do very little actual hunting for the parts, and you get the “main” missing part right near the end of the main game without really working too hard for it. No, instead the game consists of more side quests (some of which, although classed as side quests aren’t actually optional) than probably the other three games put together mainly as a way of getting you to level up so you can progress the story. The day to day stuff, these quests, exploration, chats with NPCs and asides with your teammates are great, but the over-arching plot isn’t amazing.

Graphically, it’s bump up from the original Wii U version of the game. In addition to that, I’m playing it on the Switch 2 which although doesn’t do anything specifically to the graphics, it does make the framerate rock solid (something that wasn’t the case with the other games on the Switch 1) and some of the sunrises and sunsets look absolutely incredible, so I do wonder if there’s some upscaling or smoothing or something going on.

The main differences in the game come down to the setting, the addition of Skells, the number of possible characters in your party (something like 16 are possible, with four in your party at any one time), the music (which is more rock, guitar and rap – some of it sounds very Sonic Adventure 2 Pumpkin Hill), and a thing where you put probes into the world map.

This latter feature splits the map of Mira up into hexagons, with some of them suitable places to plant a probe. You obtain different types from quests and loot, and they can mine (miranium, used to make weapons and weapon mods) or generate money, every hour or so. Or, later on, buff your attack, defence, and so on in the region they’re planted. You can swap round your probes (for a small fee) when you want, and you get bonuses for probes of the same type placed next to each other. There are a few side missions that challenge you to arrange them in a way so as to generate large amounts of miranium or money in a single “cycle”. It’s diverting, and reminds me of the business/empire building side stories of the Yakuza games.

In all, I really did enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles X. There’s nothing really wrong with it but it just didn’t entertain me and push me to reveal the “truth” of the story in the same way the other games did. The combat is satisfying, and generally quicker and more flexible than in 1/2/3, it looks great, sounds great, and is a lot of fun, but there’s just something missing. Maybe it’s the characters, as your main character is generally mute (although you can choose his/her “combat calls” voice from a number of actors, include those from other games in the series) and almost everyone has a boring American accent. No Welsh catgirls or aussie pirates here. Two of the other alien races – the Prone and the Ma-non have horrible pitch-shifted voices too. Maybe it’s missing something else. I can’t quite explain it.

That said, it’s still better than 95% of other games. It’s just the worst Xenoblade, is all.

Now what? There’s no Xenoblade 4 or X2 on the (known) horizon. Boo.

Xexyz · 11/07/2025

I haven’t written about it for a while, but I had been playing Flock in small chunks since I started it back in December, until I reached a bit where I couldn’t quite parse the instructions. Having identified and charmed the Emperor Cosmot and the Cloaked Rustic, the forests were unveiled and I explored, including the giant mushrooms of the Skyfish Caverns. There weren’t many skyfish there, save the occasional Barbeled, but there was a large cave with ominous noises coming from within.

My aunt hinted, after a while, that the occupant of the cave needed an audience, and so I should find five crystal sprugs – but searching the nearby pools with crystals surrounding them gave me only two. Frustrated, I decided to explore the world more and try to find other species that I hadn’t yet found – leading to a male painted skyfish, a dappled baffin, and a slumbering rustic – and eventually I noticed more crystal pools in the swamp area in the middle of the map. Three more crystal pools, in fact, each holding another crystal sprug.

Sprugs collected, I went back to the cave and a giant skyfish emerged, which I named as the Encrusted Skyfish as it was covered with (what look like) barnacles. This then meant the final areas of the map opened, and I went exploring again. I found a fifth sheep, the final family of animals (the burbots hiding on the ground), and realised that I didn’t yet have the drupe whistle so started to search the meadows for it. I found it, charmed a few drupes, and then on grazing another meadow I found a burgling bewl who had stolen my aunt’s feeding bag. I had to chase it down and charm it, then on returning the feeding bag to the starting area the credits rolled. Game completed.

Not quite, though. Up to this point I had played for about 10 hours, and I hadn’t grown tired of the game mechanics, so I decided to fill out the creature guide and become a master of as many different families as I could. I’d already charmed quite a few cosmets, and that bar filled up quite quickly. I loved exploring, listening to hints from the researchers on where to find the last few creatures, and then tracking another male painted skyfish through the landscape until he met a female. The ability to fill feeding stations to attract some of the last few entries was very useful – and I’m glad I didn’t try to fill this out before rolling the credits.

At the very very end, when I was going back and forth finding the last few skyfish to charm, it started to wear a little thin. But the flowing movement still charmed me, and I was spurred on by the fact that the game is leaving Game Pass in a few days so I didn’t want to leave it incomplete. By all measures, that’s not the case now. Credits rolled, creature guide complete, mastery of everything, all achievements unlocked.

gospvg · 09/07/2025

Play

Ghostwire Tokyo (PS5)

You can fight the supernatural with Wind, Water or Fire attacks, but I like the stealth approach with the bow. It does have mild jump scares, but overall, it's fun to explore Tokyo. I also like there are lots of pets in the game.

Like A Dragon Ishin (PS5) (Completed)

I enjoyed this very much; always a good feeling playing a RGG game, and the Wild Dancer style is so much fun.

Balatro (PS5) (Completed)

I'm done with this, I've completed as many decks as I can It's an addictive game, and I've spent enough hours with it already.

Backlog

Shopping

Added more purchases to my backlog! in Atomfall, Like A Dragon Pirate Yakuza, Tiny Tina Wonderlands & Claire Obscur.

Want

I enjoyed the many not E3 showcases and added more games to my wishlist.

Bin

I need to stop buying more games, although I am at least playing on a regular basis.

deKay · 20/06/2025

As I have a Netflix subscription, I get access to a number of games on iOS as a bonus. Most of them are shovelware nonsense. Some are tie-ins with Netflix shows like Squid Game or Queen’s Gambit. Some, are “indie hits” like Kentucky Route Zero. Some fit into more than one of these categories.

Word Trails is probably shovelware. It’s one of $hlmun games which litter the App Store that are effectively identical, and when you see the screenshots you’ll realise you’ve seen a hundred variants of it already, often as an advert in some other shovelware game. So I played it almost daily for two whole years and finally completed it. All 6070 levels.

Some people have asked me, “deKay. You’re a man with an extensive knowledge of games and you know what is good and what is bad in the gaming sphere. You have played many strange and unusual games, often eschewing the popular and mainstream for the niche and unusual. With that in mind, why the hell are you playing some ostensibly IAP-based, albeit with the IAPs removed for Netflix, tosh like this when you yourself frequently say telephone games are not games and don’t deserve your time or eyeballs?”. And to those people I say “Because it’s there”.

Now, readers of my diary will remember when I played many hundreds of levels of a dreadful iOS based, Doctor Who themed hidden object game which falls into a similar category as this and you may wonder why I’d put myself through something like that again. Word Trails at least requires a little bit of intelligence to play, even if it’s just as dull, but it’s just a Boring Boggle Clone.

The idea is to make words using the letters in the “wheel” at the bottom of the screen. Find all the words to fit in the puzzle, and you move on to the next level. That’s it – the whole game. 6070 times. You can, if you like, do a bonus puzzle each day where you do the same thing but have to try and do the words in a specific order. Manage that, and you get points which eventually unlock pictures of and related text about animals or mountains or something. Worst way to use an Encyclopaedia Britannica ever. Sometimes, in the main puzzles, you unlock gold squares or jigsaw pieces which eventually complete some other puzzle or list of items at, say, a beach, but there’s literally no reason to do this. You get some (in-game) currency, which is totally unnecessary because they’ve ripped all the IAPs out.

Quickly, I found that although the “longest word” was rarely the same (although sometimes I did get the same two or three puzzles repeated in a row), the same combinations of letters came up very frequently. For example, if AEMT are in the list, I could immediately tick off MATE, TEAM, TAME, MEAT. When you’ve done this 3035 times out of 6070, the already very samey game becomes even more samey. The game will add “allowed” words that aren’t on the board to a bonus pot for more currency when it fills up.

To make things wonderfully inconsistent and stupid, sometimes there’s a word you’ve never heard of which turns out to be an archaic legal term. Sometimes you can use both the UK and US spellings of words (like COLOR and COLOUR), sometimes you can’t (like it allows MOULD but not MOLD). Sometimes it seems to allow a word but then in a different puzzle it won’t. And, for some reason, it won’t ever allow the word ROTA, but will allow ROTAS. Actually, plurals themselves are irritatingly facile and when I found the long seven letter word is just one of the six letter words with an S on the end a little piece of me died each time.

Oh, and some rude words it allows, but only as bonus words, not as words on the actual puzzle. Some, it won’t allow at all. There also seem to be an unexpected number of religious words – mainly Christian, relating to church objects or processes – that are allowed, but although BIBLE is possible, neither KORAN or QURAN is allowed. Hmm.

So, should you play this game? Absolutely not. But, it did kill some time for a few minutes in my day. For TWO YEARS.

Xexyz · 15/06/2025

Hah. As if. And yet, I’ve seen the credits, unlocked the special cup, and have gold trophies displayed for all grands prix and knockout tours. This was done on the medium difficulty. By all my usual metrics, I’ve completed the game.

But Mario Kart’s not like that, and Mario Kart World is doubly not like that. The real game in Mario Kart appears at 150cc, the hardest difficulty level, when not only does your kart travel faster (to the extent that you might, shock, need to use the brake sometimes) but enemies are much more unfair, both in terms of driving ability and item use. In 150cc, I’ve completed four of the grands prix in first place, but never with three stars (which are awarded for being first in each of the four races) – I’ve come close, but a combination of blue shell, red shell and lightning on the final stretch meant I was overtaken by a couple of opponents before crossing the line. The controller survived, just.

The course design is superb. I was wondering how they would build on the last few iterations – which introduced the jump boosts in Wii, flying in 7, and anti-gravity in 8 – since having to include all those elements would get a bit restrictive. Anti-gravity has gone (except in one specific case), and in its place they’ve put in rail grinding and wall riding, allowing for some clever alternative routes and reimagining of older tracks. I’ve noted tracks from the SNES, Gamecube, DS, Wii, and 3DS games, though some are quite different; however, you don’t get to lap around the tracks that much since the races in the grand prix mode include a race to get to the stadium. There are a few occasions where, in order for this to be a single coherent world, the roads to the courses are a bit straight and – almost – boring, but at higher difficulties the threat of blue shells means you never relax.

After the 96 courses of the Switch game (with the booster pack), this game could end up feeling small, but the variety of courses should keep me going for a while yet. I’ve hardly done anything in the free roam mode, where you find challenges and medallions and can experiment with alternative routes, and I’ve only spent one evening online (where my best position was 3rd, and my worst was … 22nd). And I haven’t even worked out how time trial really works in terms of ghosts and friends.

And, finally, multiplayer. On Fathers’ Day I spent two hours playing with Nicholas and Edward, through a number of grands prix and knockout tours. We unlocked loads of costumes, and I won, most of the time. Mario Kart n00bs.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (Switch): COMPLETED!

Flock: completed!

July 2025 – It’s too hot to play video games!

Word Trails (iOS): COMPLETED!

Mario Kart World: completed!