ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

Street Fighter Alpha (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Anyone would think I’d recently bought both the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection pack and the Capcom Fighting Collection pack on the Switch eShop for super cheap recently or something. And if they thunk that, they’d be thunking right because I have.

Now, I’ve said before that Street Fighter Alpha 2 is my favourite Street Fighter game (and, probably, my favourite one-on-one fighting game of all time), but that doesn’t mean I don’t like Street Fighter Alpha, er, One. It doesn’t have as many characters, it doesn’t have as many moves, and it doesn’t have quite as much flash and sparkle, but it still has Sir Kenneth “Ken” Masters and he’s still the best of all the animals.

Naturally, I whipped through the game pretty quick. Not that I’m really good at it or anything despite how much I love the Alpha games, but probably because the default difficulty is pretty low? I don’t actually know as I didn’t check, but it seemed a fair bit easier than I remember from last time I played it.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Yes, it isn’t the best two player competitive blocks-in-wells based puzzle game (that would be Puyo Puyo), but you can’t not like Super Puzzle Fighter with it’s super-deformed Capcom fighters and just the sheer absurdity of it.

The aim I much like other similar games – match up blocks and send them over to the other player’s well to fill it up a bit and bugger up their plans. Each character has a special pattern of blocks that, when you form them, unleashes hell on the opponent. In my playthrough, I found creating these patterns were literally impossible and also, completely unnecessary. But it doesn’t matter, it was all fun anyway, although a lot easier than I remember.

And yes, I played as Ken. Obviously.

Vampire Savior (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

No, not the horde-based twin stick only one stick sort of shooter. That’s Vampire Survivors, even though I keep getting the two names mixed up. No, this is the Capcom 1-on-1 fighting game from the late 90s heyday of Capcom 1-on-1 fighting games. There was a cheap bundle of bundles (a bundle^2, if you like) on the eShop recently where you could get Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection together for less money than either collection had ever been on sale for individually. Ah, gwan then.

Vampire Savior (the lack of a U is making me queasy), or Darkstalkers 3, depending on region, is a CPS2 based game, much like Street Fighter Alpha and X-Men: Children of the Atom, so it has big ol’ sprites and loads of animation. The fighters are generally based on monsters like a mummy, a vampire, and a Definitely Not Frankenstein’s Monster.

I played as newcomer-to-the-series Baby Bonnie Hood, who absolutely isn’t supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood, and has a machine gun and a dog. It was silly fun.

Metroid Zero Mission (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?

It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.

The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.

What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.

Metroid Zero Mission (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?

It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.

The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.

What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.