Post — Page 122

Lego Batman 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 30/07/2014 Written by deKay

I actually started this over a year ago, but I don’t seem to have made any mention of it. What happened, was that I played the first three levels in co-op with my daughter, but because it didn’t support the Wii Classic Controller I had to use the Wii Remote which is terrible for this sort of game. I wasn’t enjoying it, so I intended to play something else for a while and come back to it to play solo or when I bought a Wii U Controller Pro. Other games happened, and it got put away.
Evil_receptionist Then it came back out a few days ago, and, since I have a Wii U Controller Pro now, I thought two player was back on! Only it doesn’t support the Wii U Controller Pro. Player 2 is Remote and Nunchuk ONLY. Which is rubbish.
Thankfully, in this case, my daughter mainly just wanted to watch, so I flew through the game in single player while she was back-seat driver.

Like most Lego games, it’s a lot of fun. The voice acting is great, and the tasks and levels are suitably silly. The best bit, however, is the huge open world hub, which is even more impressive than Lego City Undercover, despite that game coming out later. Yes, Lego City is more fun and there’s more to do (and there’s traffic too), but Gotham is seemingly bigger and the loading sequences are virtually non-existent – especially in comparison. The music is lovely too, especially the Superman film theme triggering each time you take off as Superman.

As always with these titles, completing the story is just the start. I’ve still almost 200 gold bricks left to find for a start, and haven’t managed a single full minikit yet. I have found most of the red bricks though, which should make collecting enough studs to buy every character and vehicle a bit easier. Not that they cost very much in Lego Batman 2, and I was surprised at how cheap the red bricks themselves were as well – 500k or so for the 8x multiplier? I’m sure that’s been 8 million or more in other games.

Armillo (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 23/07/2014 Written by deKay

When this was shown in some eShop roundup a while back, I was only slightly interested. Since then, I was less and less interested as the screenshots I’d seen looked pretty poor and, well, I had too many other games to bother with it. However, when it was released last week (or the week before?) it was on special offer for just £4. The videos made it look a bit more impressive than the screenshots, so I thought, yeah, OK.

I was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t a fantastic game by any means, but it’s fun enough. Rolling Armillo around feels a little like games such as Kororinpa and Mercury to start with, with some Mario Galaxy “on a planetoid” inspiration. Sadly, it’s no Mario Galaxy in gameplay, although it does have a similarly huge number of ideas in one game.

Whereas Mario Galaxy’s levels were all different, with many throwaway (as in, used once) ideas that the levels were based around, Armillo’s ideas mostly feel shoehorned in. Few of them are truly bad ideas, but there are too many, with hardly any of them fully realised.

For example, there’s a powerup which turns the game into a twin-stick shooter for a few minutes. Another which makes you big to squash things. Keys to find, switches to press, buttons which duplicate your ‘dillo. Even a whole timed section in each level. There are bonus levels (some of which aren’t optional) which are side-on platformers – again with several unnecessary ideas.

It’s also pretty short, although I haven’t found all of the bonus and secret (yes, it has both) levels. There’s also a really nasty screen freezing bug which almost pauses the action for a couple of seconds – which happens at least once on most of the levels.

Perhaps with some more polish – on the bugs, the presentation, and the puzzles – and with some of the fat trimmed so fewer ideas were included but they were fully developed, this could have been great. As it is, it’s well worth £4, but it’s by no means a must-buy.

Time Gentlemen, Please (PC): COMPLETED!

Posted on 20/07/2014 Written by deKay

When I made a start on this, almost two years ago, having just finished the previous game, I didn’t expect to just stop playing. In fact, I’m not really sure why I did, but having reached what turned out to be about a third of the way through the game, I put it on pause.

Then I played it some more over the last few days, and completed it.

Like “Ben There, Dan That”, it’s utterly ridiculous and the plot is nonsensical. It’s witty, dirty and downright silly – like many of the best point and click adventure games are.

Picross e4 (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 14/07/2014 Written by deKay

I was wrong. I was expecting e4 to be even bigger than e2, and from the sheer number of puzzles it certainly looked that way. But no, it was two hours shorter. Still longer than e and e3, mind.

I think my judgement was somewhat out as I worked backwards for the main part, doing the harder puzzles first. Which meant that even though I’d only done about a quarter of the picrosses (picrii?), I’d spent two thirds of the time on them.

Not that any of this is interesting, I just thought I’d mention it. After all, there’s not much to say about a Picross game, especially after four iterations.

e5 soon please?

StreetPass Squad (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 12/07/2014 Written by deKay

A while back I bought all the additional Streetpass games, as they were in a sale and I’d done everything Streetpass Quest I & II, and the puzzle thing, had to offer. I’m glad I did too, as they’re all pretty good.

Mii Force (or rather, Streetpass Squad, as it’s called in the UK) is a shoot-‘em-up where people you Streetpass become your weapons. Although it’s very short (which is why I’ve completed it, but am nowhere near completion with the other three games), it is very playable and each level is different – some clever gimmicks, some almost puzzle sections (if you want to reach all the areas of the level for treasure), and plenty of bosses.

I did find it very easy, so it’s not exactly Cave level of shootering difficulty, but that doesn’t really matter.