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Shadow Complex: Remastered (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Back when this came out on Xbox Live Arcade (remember that?), I played through it over and over. I completed, and in fact, 100%ed, every single difficulty setting and then maxed out my level. I loved it, not least because it’s a Metroidvania, but back then the term wasn’t so widely known or used.

I have no idea what is actually “remastered” here. It seems identical to the original, so unless my memory is playing tricks the only real difference is the platform I’m playing it on. Actually, I’ve installed Heroic on my Steam Deck to let me play Epic Store games, and Shadow Complex was free on there years ago, hence why I have it. It’s great on the Steam Deck too, with the fact that (even in remastered form) it’s pretty old now meaning I can knock all the quality sliders up full and it still not even wheeze.

Shooting the windows won’t help.

This is all waffle though, as I have said nothing about the game. Well, you’re a guy who ends up in a terrorist base “by accident” (spoilers: it wasn’t an accident) and while trying to rescue his captured girlfriend from the baddies gets caught up trying to stop them from beginning an attack on the US, finding upgrades and – eventually – a super suit along the way.

The game has a handful of “into the screen” shooty bits too.

Like all good Metroidvania games (and school Geography lessons) there’s plenty of map colouring-in, giant bosses, tricky platforming, hidden areas, places you can’t get to until you’ve unlocked skills and items, and it’s really, really good. The acting in it suffers a bit from overly macho nonsense and hasn’t aged well, but the traversal and shootybangbang stuff is still incredible.

Garden Tails (iPad): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it’s the same damn game as Zoo Keeper World and Simon’s Cat and Puppy Blast and 50% of the games on the App Store, but it’s polished and cute and as it’s on Apple Arcade has no IAPs or wait times or other nonsense that gets in the way of, you know, just matching three things and clearing the board of whatever it is that needs clearing.

And sometimes, that’s all you want. Simple, pretty, puzzle fun.

Blaster Master Zero 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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The end of the trilogy! Jason finds himself in jail and Eve, his support droid Metal Attacker co-pilot slash creepy love interest is now queen of the mutants and poses a threat to the safety of the universe or something. It sort of makes sense if you concentrate really hard on the in-game dialogue but actually it just means more jumpy-tank fun across two separate dimensions.

It’s back to being mostly set in the one “world”, unlike the galaxy hopping adventure of the second game, but it still has a lot of variety, And, a number of returning bosses, which seems a little lazy but it’s fine really. You get some new powers, access to several types of on-foot weaponry from the beginning, and the “other” dimension is an eye bleedingly pink assault, but the core gameplay remains unchanged. Which is great because the core gameplay is the best.

There’s supposedly a “bad” ending, which I didn’t get as I somehow figured out the way to trigger the good ending (unlike the last game, you don’t have to Collect All The Things – just press the right button combo at the right time), which (spoiler) resulted in Jason and Eve being reunited, somehow having babies, and those babies being sent to Earth to be looked after by one of Jason’s ex-enemies.

Or something. Frankly, it’s utter nonsense. But doesn’t matter in the slightest.

It’s a bit of a shame I’ve finished the series now, as it means there’s no more to come. Unless they start a new trilogy of course!

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (PS5): COMPLETED!

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I’m a fan of the EDF games, with their Massive Ants and Massive Wasps and Massive Robots and Massive Space Ships. I was intrigued by this, Minecraft-y looking entry into the series, but the problem with EDF games is they cost money and don’t often drop to Super Cheap, so I never got round to buying it. And I still haven’t, because it appeared on PS+!

I thought the only real difference between this and the others in the series was the graphics, but actually, there’s a bigger change. You see, you don’t control just one person, you control a squad of four, swapping between them with the d-pad. Instead of collecting billions of weapons, of which you used to be able to wield two, each of your team has just one weapon. But! Because you have four of them, you essentially have four weapons, albeit they’re a bit trickier to swap between and some of them may get “killed”.

As you play through the game, you find and rescue more “brothers” and “sisters”, each of whom is a terrible stereotype of the country they supposedly represent. You can then use these in your squad, and each type has different attributes (like speed and armour) and a special skill (like being able to fly for a bit, having a dash-dodge move, or grenades) so choosing a good combination of both characters and weapons for your team is essential. Well, actually it doesn’t make a lot of difference most of the time and I tended to stick with a couple with long range and a couple with short range weapons.

The rest of the game is, broadly, same as it ever was only in Super Bright Colour Vision and with stupid hyperactive chat instead of the usual morose “we’re all gonna die”/weirdly upbeat “we are the valiant infantry” of the grey-brown entries in the series. You still have ants and spiders, you still have Hectors and Erginus, you still have tanks and a huge cargo robot you can ride, it’s just a bit more jolly and blocky. Also, it was really smooth with no slowdown, which is unusual for EDF but probably because this was the “simpler” game, and on a PS5.

As before, I played through the game with my daughter in co-op, which actually meant we had two squads of four! It’s a lot of fun, but we found it a bit short compared to the “proper” games, and I also missed the “collect all the green weapons crates and red armour crates” which don’t exist here. Well, the red ones just heal your team now. Still, can’t complain when we enjoyed it so much anyway, and it didn’t cost us anything to play.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD: completed!

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Having bought Twilight Princess alongside my Wii on launch day in December 2006, but then being captivated by other games (and with a general desire to not play the game until Kieron and John were going to do so as well), I didn’t get around to actually playing it until 2011, after I finally gave up on my friends’ lackadaisical attitude to Zelda gaming.  As I was more active here at the time, you can read several posts about my progress then, where I completed the forest temple, was whisked away to the twilight, had trouble with controlling Wolf Link, met Midna, and scouted for the three parts of the Fused Shadow.  I seemingly got as far as the temple at the bottom of Lake Hylia, including defeating the boss, before giving up.

Giving up? I don’t think it was a conscious decision. Instead, Mario Kart 7 was released, I was also playing a Layton game, and other stuff just seemed to grab me instead. I always intended to go back, but I never did.

Skip forward a decade, and I realise that I bought a copy of Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U when it was cheap somewhere, I have no big story game on the go, and I quite fancy crossing this off my list – particularly because I was bought Skyward Sword HD for the Switch for my birthday and I’d like to play that sometime.  So, rather than resurrecting my old save and complaining about being lost, I unwrap the new game and start it.

After a few hours I remember why I lost interest in the early days of my first playthrough. It’s just a little dull to start with, meeting people around the village, fishing, running down narrow corridors between areas. There is some interest when children are captured …

… but the muted (brown, C64-like) colour palette does its best to dissuade this interest. And then you get to the twilight, which (as my tweets above show) I found pretty difficult to progress through.

And yet I did.

At least my thoughts have been consistent.  The top tweet is eleven years after the bottom.

I remembered very little about my original playthrough other than chasing monkeys through a forest and the aesthetic.  I suspect that this is largely due to the relatively generic nature of the world; the art direction isn’t as recognisable as Breath of the Wild, for example.  It wasn’t until I was many hours in that I started to remember my routes through places; but those many hours became more and more exciting as I progressed.  It was clear to me that the story of Midna and the story of Zelda were somehow intertwined, but it wasn’t until I met up with the scary-floating-faces crew that things became clear.

Midna is probably the best thing about the game, and having her constant companionship and annoyances throughout the story meant that the end was quite affecting.  Having traversed through Hyrule, back and forth to collect hearts and rupees and equipment and whatnot, there was a definite shift in the endgame once you travel to the skies and then to meet Ganon.  On the way there’s a few non-surprises …

And then once you get to Ganon, it’s a pretty standard big boss Zelda game fight, with a few tricks with Midna and Zelda and unexpected but expected changes.  You know you’re coming to the final fight when you come across a room full of chests.

Midna doesn’t like Ganondorf, by the way.

And then the end of the game.  I think I’ve mentioned before about the final blow in the Wind Waker, and how no other Zelda game has quite met it – but this came close.  After taunting and attacking and generally making those I cared about suffer, it was nice to make Ganondorf wear a new brooch.

It isn’t the best Zelda game.  It’s not even the best Zelda game on the Gamecube.  But it is a Zelda game, in the classical form, and the dungeons are well designed, and the characters are (mostly) distinctive and fun, and the puzzles and equipment is intuitive and challenging, and the story is a bit rubbish but you want to see the end of it, and the enemies are enjoyable to fight, and … it’s good.  Overall it went on a little too long, even if the story did take some interesting twists and turns, and the oppressive nature is a huge barrier to enjoyment.  But it’s good.