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As it’s Easter it makes sense to play a game about a man who is resurrected.
And that’s the best thing to say about Altered Beast. We all know what a bad game it is. It’s even worse than The Story of Thor. It hasn’t improved with time and was never any good to begin with.
I can’t be bothered writing any more about it.
The post Altered Beast (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.
Let me start this post with a couple of points. Number 1, it’s called The Story of Thor even though Mega Drive Classics calls it Beyond Oasis. I’m aware it’s called that in the US, but this is MEGA DRIVE Classics, not GENESIS Classics. Number 2, it is Not A Good Game.
Oh sure, it looks nice with its big sprites and Link to the Past-like overworld. It’s sort of clever with its four special spirits you can summon (once you’ve collected them all, at least). It also has some really impressive looking bosses. But, sadly, everything else is rubbish. The combat is woeful with only four directional attacks when eight are really needed, and it’s made worse by the terrible collision detection. The sprites being huge means screens are cramped with both a small viewport and too many baddies squashed up together. I suspect the animation suffers too, with some creatures having hardly any frames.
Your inventory is too small, and success on some parts of the game rely on having certain weapons. The problem is, you can only hold so many and each has a limited use. At least twice I needed bombs but had none, nor space to carry them even if I did, which was a pain.
Also a pain is how the spirits you can summon can only be summoned by “shooting” specific things. For the fire spirit, you have to shoot some fire, for example. Frequently, this is the basis of a puzzled and often that means either being psychic and triggering a summon when you can and bringing it along, or backtracking to where you’re able to trigger. Making use of the spirits is hit and miss too, especially when trying to get the fire one to light bonfires and torches (necessary to open doors or solve puzzles) as it wanders around with a mind of its own.
The bosses, as I said, are mostly pretty impressive. Several are as large as the screen, but most are very, very easy to beat. It’s actually swathes of minions which are the hard bits, and sometimes these appear to be infinitely regenerating and other times there’s just hundreds of them. There’s no way of telling if it’s necessary, or even possible, to defeat them all, and sometimes you need to for an important item to appear.
I’ve often seen The Story of Thor in lists of the best Mega Drive games, and I recently saw it in an article about “games for other systems that are similar to Zelda: A Link to the Past”, and it’s baffling that it’s in either of these. It’s nowhere near good, let alone “best”, and, a slight graphical nod aside, not really much like Zelda either. It’s not fit to lick Zelda’s boots.
And no, I don’t know why I played it to completion.
The post The Story of Thor (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.
I don’t think I’ve ever completed this before. But now I have.
It was actually a lot easier than I remember. Although there’s a level timer, the trick is to take your time and don’t panic. It’s only on the final level I came close to running out of time!
The post Bonanza Bros (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.
After many attempts, I finally got a win. Civilization VI is much, much harder than the previous games on the series, and seemingly much slower too making a lose late on even more frustrating.
Having lost most of my games as a result of not developing science quickly enough or paying attention to rival religions, I chose Gilgamesh as my character who boosts the former and I set about augmenting it with plenty of holy sites. That, coupled with being lucky to not have any war-like opponents, meant I could rapidly develop stuff and then have plenty of faith with which to convert everyone. Victory!
I have to say, though, that as good as Civ VI is, it’s not as good as previous versions. I approve of the hexagonal titles implemented in V, but it feels like the changes to how you develop technology and stuff has been a step back – or a step in an unwanted direction at least. The slowness of the game is a downer after the speed of Civilization Revolution, and I feel I enjoyed II and IV a lot more at the time than I did VI now.
But, none of those are on the Switch, so I can make do!
The post Civilization VI (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.
This is something I’d had my eye on for a while (nice looking pixel Metroidvania, so of course I have), and then, just when I was thinking about actually buying it a little while back, it popped up on PS+. Normally, that means it won’t get played at all, but since I’m letting my PS+ subscription expire (it’s just not worth the money now they’ve halved the number of games per month) I decided to give it a go before I can’t play it any more.
And it’s really good! It has interesting game mechanics, not least the literal mechanics of being an actual mechanic with a big wrench, looks wonderful, has a strange but enjoyable story, and is just a lot of fun to jump around in. And that’s the important thing in this sort of game – it has to be a lot of fun to jump around.
Also a big plus, is that it’s nowhere near as difficult as Hollow Knight. Sure, I love that game but it’s punishingly hard. Much too hard. So hard it’s verging on torture rather than enjoyment. But this is possible for mere mortals! It’s true that some bosses took a few attempts, but other than that, it was pretty easy and a lot more fun for that.
Aside from that “hide and seek” boss, of course. That was pants.
Anyway, here’s me playing it all:
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