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Dark Arms (Switch): COMPLETED!

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This game is one I have for the NeoGeo Pocket and I remember I enjoyed it at the time, but don’t remember much about it. Aside from you shoot baddies to get souls which upgrade your guns. Seems, now I’ve completed it on the NeoGeo Pocket Colour Selection on the Switch, that really that’s all there is to it.

OK, so not quite. There’s a story which is badly translated and makes little sense, and you don’t just have a gun, you have some other weapons which you can swap between like “a big alien arm thing” and “some sort of shield I think”. But you do just go round various areas like a graveyard and a cave and a haunted house shooting (or “big alien arming”) ghosts, demons, witches, zombies, and other evil and/or undead creatures.

There’s a day and night cycle, with different characters and foes appearing at one or the other, and because of the terrible text in the game it’s a bit tricky to understand what you need to do so you basically have to wander the whole of each area several times over both day and night to make sure you’ve done everything. This may sound tedious, and it is a little, but you have to grind to improve your weapons anyway so it’s actually not too bad.

Then, when you’ve defeated the final boss it turns out that’s not the end of the game as you have to find a load of (harmless but hidden) witches to combine them together to resurrect something which isn’t really explained. So I did that and got the One True Ending.

Dark Arms was, overall, less fun than I remember but I still enjoyed it.

Aggelos (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Or, “I can’t believe it’s not Wonder Boy”. Since it is, in almost every way, a Wonder Boy game. You’re a boy, with a sword, and you collect money and buy better armour and unlock abilities and it looks like a 16 bit Wonder Boy game and it plays like one and sounds like one.

But, it’s a bit slicker. It has a few improvements (like warps). It isn’t as impossible as Wonder Boy in Monster Land. But, it’s still good. Really good.

The plot is generic “find X items and banish the dark”, but it plays out in an explore the overworld, beat four “dungeons” sort of way (so is actually a little more like Zelda II in that respect, I suppose). There are massive bosses, silly side characters, and a pig who runs a pub who says you’re too young to drink there.

There’s no outstanding features, but it’s all well put together and enjoyable in a Metroidvania type way, and I do like games that are in the Metroidvania way,

Big Tournament Golf (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Although I don’t like golf at all, I’ve always enjoyed a good golf game. From PGA European Tour on the Amiga, which I don’t even remember buying, through Mario Gold, NES Golf, Golf Story, and so on. One of my favourites is Neo Turf Masters for the NeoGeo Pocket, which is the Other Region name for this – Big Tournament Golf.

To be enjoyable, golf games need to be simple. Choose a club, aim, press a button to swing, set power, then set accuracy. That’s it. And Big Tournament Golf does exactly this with no fuss. There are three courses, with increasing difficulty, although actually none of them are really very hard. I completed them all over a couple of weeks, coming first in the tournaments for each.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a few years since I completed the first Blaster Master Zero, because for some reason I forgot to buy the sequel. I have now rectified that and so here is my post. Like the original, it was great. Unlike the original, it was more fragmented, in that it was made up of lots of small levels (mostly separate planets) rather than a handful of large maps. It was still Metroidvania-y though, and a lot of fun with some great bosses.

The levels had plenty of variety, with one of them actually existing as two separate levels that had maps that intermingled. Each was in a different “phase”, so that was interesting and unusual.

After completing it, it was clear I got some sort of bad ending, so had to look up how to get the good ending – turns out you have to finish a handful of side missions, which then unlocks the real final boss.

Now to wait for Blaster Master Zero 3 to come down in price!

Guardians of the Galaxy (PS5): COMPLETED!

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After the reports of how terrible the Avengers game was, and how in this game you only get to play (directly) as Star-Lord, Guardians of the Galaxy went right off my radar. Then I saw some positive reviews, and a lot of people were saying that actually, it was great. And they were right.

But first, some downers. You can only play as Star-Lord, with the rest of the team effectively acting as special attacks. Every level is a linear corridor with obviously sign-posted areas where you’re attacked. The combat isn’t great, especially when it comes to the camera and lock-on. There are plenty of “get stuck in objects” bugs, and sometimes the “activate object” trigger requires far too much character repositioning before it works.

However, it’s really, really good. Mainly because of the banter between the Guardians, partly because of the ridiculous plot, somewhat because of the fantastic mostly 80s soundtrack, and a little because it, in places, looks so damn good. It’s genuinely hilarious, from Mantis calling Rocket “little fuzzy” to the Space Llama eating the ship to the ship’s fridge door constantly needing to be shut, to Drax’s reading glasses. It’s not the GotG you know from the film, or the cartoon, or even the comic, but it’s close enough to some of those things without needing to be the same. There’s recognisable ancillary characters (like Cosmo), enemies (like Fin Fang Foom) and back story, but not so similar that you know exactly where the story is going.

It’s a mid-tier third person shooter, but with so much atmosphere and such fantastic dialogue that you can forgive where it doesn’t quite hit the mark.