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Portal 2 Co-op (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Why yes, I did decide to play Portal 2 after Portal. And yes, I have played Portal 2 before. But! I haven’t played this Portal 2 before. I shall explain.

What I’d never realised before, is that co-op mode in Portal 2 is not Portal 2 with two players. No, it’s a completely separate game. Different levels, different plot, different player character(s), just all set in the same world as Lonely Boi Portal 2. With two players at the same time.

With two players, you get two pairs of portals. Although they’re not linked (so player 1’s two portals operate independently to player 2’s), they can be entered by either player. What this means, is that the level puzzles aren’t just twice as complicated, they’re exponentially more complicated to solve. That, and you absolutely must work more closely as a team than any other game I’ve ever played before. Yes, even more so than something like Overcooked, where one player can pick up the slack for the other – you can’t so that here.

To illustrate this, I present A Video.

And that was a pretty simple example.

I played through the game with my daughter, and coming up with solutions together was great. There’s a fantastic “point at somewhere and the other player will see the marker” feature, which is invaluable for “put a portal right there” moments. It certainly meant less marker pen on the TV, anyway. There are also a number of useless but fun emotes the two robots (Atlas and P-Body) you play as can perform, like dances and high-fives, and you can’t not play something like this without accidentally on purpose pushing, or portalling, your co-op partner into the acid or ineffectually shooting them over and over with your portal gun for no reason whatsoever.

An added complication with two players was that because you have two players, often the solution to get one player to the goal doesn’t match the solution for the second player, meaning that we needed two solutions much of the time. Things were made somewhat harder for us because, somehow, we started the game by playing through Area 6 without realising, and that’s the final set of levels in the game and certainly the most difficult. A bit of a baptism by fire, really, but it did mean we were absolute pros when it came to playing Area 1 immediately afterwards.

Such a great game, and also a massive shame there’s no follow up. More co-op games like this please.

Portal (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It has been a while. I’ve often thought about playing through Portal again, especially since I have it on Steam and so could play it on my Steam Deck. So, naturally, I bought it for the Switch. To be fair, it was a bundle of Portal and Portal 2, and it was on sale for under £3. And you can’t own the same game on too many platforms.

Although it looks a little dated now, perhaps not as much as it would otherwise thanks to the graphic style and mostly “plain” areas, Portal still holds up really well as both clever and a game that makes you feel clever for solving the puzzles. I still remembered the overall plot, but had almost completely forgotten each level’s puzzles so in some ways it felt like playing a new Portal game. Which is nice.

It’s still funny, the cake is still a lie (or not), and I very much enjoyed it. Again.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Donkey Kong ’94 on the Game Boy is one of my favourite platformers. After the first four levels, which are the same as the original Donkey Kong arcade game, it becomes this massive puzzle platformer with a very agile Mario up against Donkey Kong. Mario vs. Donkey Kong, the Game Boy Advance sequel, was also great, but it introduced levels with mini Mario toys in it that you have to help to the exit in a very Troddlers/Krusty’s Super Fun House sort of way. I didn’t enjoy those as much, but the majority of the levels are in the “original” style so it was fine.

Later follow-ups focus almost entirely on these mini Mario type levels and I lost interest in the series. While I’d love a new one just like Donkey Kong ’94, that isn’t happening so I took a punt on this – a remake of the GBA game. And, as it turns out, it’s bloody good.

Of course, it’s pretty much the same game as it was before, only with extra polish on the graphics. It was too long ago that I played the GBA version to remember how the puzzles were solved, so it’s nearly new to me anyway.

If you’ve never played any in this Mario spin-off series, then the purpose of each small level is to firstly get to the key and drop it into a keyhole, followed by another short level where you have to rescue a mini Mario toy. Puzzles come in the form of coloured switches that make platforms, barrier and ladders appear (or disappear), conveyor belts, lasers, and various enemies you have to avoid or make use of as steps. Mario has various jumps and backflips and can handstand so feels really athletic. Not quite Mario 64, but fun to throw around the screen. The gameplay remains intact from the GBA game, but added cut scenes and improved music help make it feel like a new game.

Now Nintendo, make another one only without the mini Marios. Thanks xx.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age (Switch): COMPLETED!

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With the original Golden Sun ending on a cliff-hanger, and The Lost Age carrying on directly from it (or rather, from slightly before the end of the first game), I didn’t really have a choice but to start it immediately afterwards. Well, not quite immediately, as you can transfer your saved game from the first game to the follow-up but this required half an hour of password input and correction.

Not that you see the benefit of the password for some 30+ hours of gameplay, because you don’t start as the same characters. Instead, you take on the role of one of the antagonists of the first game, Felix. He’s not really bad, and was assisting the real bad guys under extreme duress, but his goal is still the same if for a different reason: to light the lighthouses. Of which there are two remaining after the original title, if you recall.

The basic gameplay remains the same as the original, and in terms of art, music, and even most of the baddies encountered, there’s not much different here. It’s very clear that both games were planned to be a single game but then for Reasons (cartridge size, development deadlines, MONEY, whatever) it was split in two, Sonic 3 & Knuckles style. What is new includes a couple of new characters for your party, some additional “magic” moves (like being able to make ropes span gaps), and – much later in the game – boating.

Yes, at some point in the story you gain access to a ship, which lets you travel most of the world by sea, docking at beaches and (I didn’t realise for a long time until I did it by accident) sailing up rivers. Later still, your ship gets the ability to fly allowing access to even more areas although you can’t fly over cliffs, trees or mountains so you still have to initiate “flying over land” from a river or beach.

Dungeons and towers are similar to the first game, although I found them generally more puzzle-focussed than before. I also found it less obvious where, on the overworld, I was supposed to go next. It is, especially once the boat gets involved, a less linear game, but it’s harder to discern exactly where the next sensible location to visit would be. That is part of the reason why I took about 40 hours to complete The Lost Age, compared to about 20 for the original, but the game is obviously far bigger anyway. The map is larger, there’s more to do, and you seem to spend much more time back-tracking and revisiting towns than you did before.

The final boss was an imposing three headed dragon, who could attach sometimes four times in one round. That sounds tricky, but actually, a combination of “heal everyone” Alchemy and the odd djinn heal/buff/defend every turn and actually, it was easy. I made much more use of djinn this time around (spoiler: the saved game transfer pulls in those you found previously once your party is bolstered somewhat in the later part of the game, so you end up with loads), mainly in the form of Massive Summons for bosses.

With the full game, as both parts are, complete, I can say it is still fantastic. I don’t think I ever got round to The Lost Age when it first came out (I bought it, but Other Things were played), so I’ve come to this after playing more modern JRPGs and can say it still holds up well. There’s no point playing The Lost Age without the first game though, so you really need to treat it as a single massive adventure.

Golden Sun (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Many years ago, so long ago that my Gaming Diary didn’t even exist, I played Golden Sun on my Game Boy Advance. It was great. At least, I remember it being great, but I remember very little about the actual events in the game. I recall the catastrophe at the start, and the village you’re in, and that your friend goes missing and it turns out later on he’s working with (under duress) the bad guys. I remember there was a lighthouse. And I remember the djinn – sort of like little dragons – you can find and add to your character to buff your stats, give you new moves, and unleash on baddies. Mainly I remember them because they were in Shining The Holy Ark on the Sega Saturn though, not that they were in Golden Sun.

With very little remembered of the game, it was almost like playing an entirely new Camelot RPG just with the odd sensation that it was all a bit familiar. But being able to replay a great RPG, especially one from the likes of Camelot (who were the late 90s/early 2000s kings of the genre) without knowing everything is a Fine Thing Indeed.

Off I went then, with my guy Isaac and his chums, through the usual overworlds and dungeons and towns and, yes, lighthouses (there are two, or three, sort of) fighting random battles and watching the numbers go up as a charming story unfolds.

Being a GBA game with really detailed 32 bit sprite graphics (with loads of Mode-7 type backgrounds and maps), it looks amazing on a tiny handheld screen but blown up to fifty imperial inches it feels really messy. Older games, like those on the SNES and earlier, seem to come out OK at that size, probably due to less cluttered backgrounds and more obvious sprite edge definition, but here there are too many colours and too few pixels and it becomes hard to see what things are. Until, for some reason, it doesn’t. I struggled for a while, trying the (limited) screen rendering options, but got used to it and actually, it’s fine.

I don’t remember how hard the game was when I played it before, but I found it very easy this time through. Well, in terms of the actual fights and so on, anyway. Perhaps it’s because I did plenty of levelling up, or maybe I was just cautious, or I completed most of the side quests or something. The final boss battle was a walkover. What was difficult, however, was knowing what to do next. Even chatting to everyone in the towns (as is de rigour for JRPGs) didn’t always make it clear where I was supposed to go next, at least in terms of direction. I was nudged towards a new town or dungeon via the dialogue, but very rarely was it made clear where I might find such a place, so much wandering ensued. Perhaps another reason why I levelled up a lot, I suppose.

What I’d also forgotten about the game is how it ends. Because, well, it sort of doesn’t. You beat the boss, there’s an event, and then it’s straight into the sequel to actually finish off the story. Only two of the four lighthouses the game tells you need to be (or shouldn’t be, depending who you ask) lighting are in Golden Sun. A bit of an anti-climax and seemingly hurried end, if you were not aware of the follow-up title, Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Which, luckily, appeared on the Switch Game Boy Advance service at the same time as Golden Sun. Phew, eh?