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Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch): COMPLETED!

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There was no doubt that I was going to instabuy a new Mario game. It might not be a sequel to Super Mario Odyssey, but New Super Mario Bros U was one of the best Mario games, if not, actually, the best and this is the first 2D outing for Nintendo’s pipeman since that came out, so I was hyped.

All the new “wonder” effects shown in the trailer and Nintendo Direct, with crawling pipes and turning into a Goomba and bouncing on massive bubbles opened a trillion new possibilities to Nintendo’s already seemingly inexhaustible supply of one-off creative moments. Everything was so bright and slick and, well, Nintendo. The only slightly worrying thing were the talking flowers, who comment on your actions, which didn’t seem to fit, but early players confirmed you could turn them off, so it’d be fine. Right? Right?

Well, duh, obviously.

But, it isn’t quite as great as I was hoping for. Before I go on about why, I should say that a surprise delight was these talking flowers. I was sure they’d grate and annoy but no – they’re bloody genius. Turning them off removes a big ol’ chunk of personality from the game. Another thing that had been pre-levelled as a negative from folk is that veteran Mario and Chums voice artist Charles Martinet wouldn’t be voicing this game, I think the first Mario title since Mario 64 to not feature him. Thankfully, the replacement 1) isn’t Chris Pratt, and 2) isn’t very different at all so it’s fine.

So why isn’t it the Best Mario Ever? Well, mainly because it just isn’t quite there in a number of ways. It’s short, for a start, and it’s very, very easy. I know the Thing with Mario games is that the hidden levels and getting all the special coins/seeds/bonuses/exits/etc. is where the real challenge lies, but no – it’s really easy even to do that. I collected all the seeds (most levels have one for using the “Wonder” correctly, and one for completing the level) and finished all the levels without incident. Except for one of the secret levels (those levels being the Wonder equivalent to Star Road) where you have to do loads of wall jumps really quickly in time to music which constantly speeds up and one slight mistake and you die. Even that was simplified by having more lives than you can realistically lose and no penalty for losing any. Seriously, I spent the majority of the game with 90+ lives and never intentionally tried – or needed – to get more. One tricky level in the whole game? It’s for kids, mate.

There’s also a couple of new power-ups this time around. Most obvious is Elephant Mario, who can hold water in his trunk and water things, but can also smash certain blocks when needed. The other one is Bubble Mario, who, er, blows bubbles. Apart from being able to defeat baddies on the other side of walls (the bubbles pass through), and you can jump off a bubble you’ve blown, Bubble Mario offers nothing to the game and is completely unneeded for any of the levels. Elephant Mario, for all his cuteness and fatness, is a little wasted too. For the most part, both of these powers were used simply to survive an extra hit.

However! It is still a fantastic game. I bloody loved it from start to finish (even if that time was only about 8 hours) and it’s just so bouncy and damn happy and the physics of jumping is perfect in that way no other company besides Nintendo manage to get right. Even a “bad” Mario game is still better than 99.9% of other games. I still have a handful of big purple coins to get before it’ll be considered 100%d, but everything else is done, and I’ll be sad for it to end.

Garden Story (Switch): COMPLETED!

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This isn’t quite the game I was expecting. I thought it was a Stardew Valley sort of game, only with a bit more story and all the characters are fruit and veg, but it wasn’t exactly that. Graphically, it’s similar, and yes – you can plant crops – but actually, it’s the story which is the thing.

Some bad goop stuff has been taking over the water supply of the world all the flora (and some frogs and fish things) live in, and it’s your job to put it right. Until you do, no more fruit babies can be born (or something) and the various regions are, not exactly “at war”, but certainly not best mates, with each other as the bad goop stuff is making things difficult.

So off you go, helping people by smacking baddies and moving boxes from one place to another and smashing rocks and a seemingly endless supply of massive jam jars that wash up, so you can get resources to improve your tools and provide for each of the villages. You see, each day you’re given a number of (optional) tasks to complete in the village you currently reside, and when you do it ranks up the village unlocking a few more tool improvements and you earn some money.

On top of these daily tasks, there’s the story to follow, which mostly involves similar sorts of tasks but with a dungeon and a boss to beat in each village. None of these dungeons, or the bosses themselves, are very difficult. I actually found some of the enemies on the “overworld” trickier to deal with, especially when they’re in numbers.

Fix all the problems in each village, upgrade your weapon enough, chat to the right people, and you can go and beat the final boss. Which is what I did.

Garden Story is very twee, has a few frustrating control issues (more shortcuts to tools would be nice), is a bit grindy and repetitive (the same tasks come up all the time) and collision detection is on the janky side of not-quite-right, but it’s a cute little thing and on the whole I enjoyed it.

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech (Switch): COMPLETED!

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As a fan of the SteamWorld games, I’ve no idea why it took me more than three years to get round to buying this, let alone actually playing it. Maybe because it’s an RPG I though I’d need a run up? Anyway, here we are, late to the party.

My first impression was “Oh no, what have I bought”. You see, I knew SteamWorld Quest was an RPG but I didn’t know it was a card-based RPG. And I don’t like card based RPGs. In fact, every other card based RPG I’ve ever played (Lost Kingdoms and Baten Kaitos come to mind immediately) I’ve given up on because I just couldn’t enjoy the combat. You can imagine my disappointment when I realised this was another one of those.

I stuck with it, hoping that unlike all the others, it would click. That the SteamWorld world was enough to get me past the gameplay. And you know what? It did click! And I really got into it!

Now, I didn’t get very deep into card deck strategy or some of the more complex card types. I hoped that wouldn’t be necessary, and as it happens, it mostly wasn’t. The deck I ended up with was much the same deck I started with, albeit with different quantities of some cards, upgraded cards, and a few replaced, but by and large I stuck with the originals. You see, it isn’t actually that difficult a game, and I never lost a single battle. In fact, my characters only died two or three times and I managed to revive them. Furthermore, when I unlocked the two final characters I went back to redo some of the early chapters of the game again, on a harder difficulty level hoping that would level them up quicker, but forgot to change the difficulty back again afterwards. I actually completed most of the game on the hardest setting by accident.

I should probably mention the game itself. The plot is about a wannabe hero, Armilly, who worships Gilgamech, a hero from the past. Today’s heroes, though, are an elitist club who would rather play golf than actually do heroing (and are a bunch of cowards anyway), and won’t let Armilly join their guild. Then, Bad Things happen, all the “heroes” are kidnapped, and Armilly and friends set off to save them. Which kickstarts a larger adventure involving Gilgamech himself, who now thinks his heroic deeds have been forgotten and so he’s decided to resurrect an old evil so he can defeat it again and regain his kudos. And yes, that goes a bit sideways.

Gameplay is a mixture of walking round areas smashing weeds and crates and trying to get a hit in on baddies when you see them, and then a normal RPG battle (with randomly drawn cards) when you do. Some cards require a number of points in order to play them, whereas other cards generate points. Each round you can – points permitting – play up to three cards, with each having varying effects like you’d expect from an RPG, such as healing, physical damage, elemental damage, status effects, and so on. If you manage to play three cards for the same member of your party in one round, then they trigger a special extra (fixed) card. I expected it to be frustrating that the cards I want never came up when I needed them, but actually, if you’re flexible you can work round it and you can discard and re-draw up to two cards each round anyway, so it wasn’t often an issue. Plus, as I said, it’s a pretty easy game so even if you can’t play any cards in a round it’s not the end of the world.

As RPGs go, it’s not a particularly long game. I think I beat the final boss after about 18 hours. I unlocked New Game+, but to be honest I don’t think I’ll be giving it a go. As much as I did enjoy the game despite my dislike for card mechanic role playing games in general, it isn’t something I really want to spend a lot more time with. Not when I’ve got *gestures at pile of shame* anyway.

Oh, but I am VERY excited about SteamWorld Build. I played the demo a while ago and it’s fantastic.

A Castle Full of Cats (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A while back I played A Building Full of Cats, to which this is a follow-up. For the most part, it’s more of the same – find hidden cats in a number of cluttered rooms – only here there’s some curse or something which means that the cats are often bat-cats, mummy-cats, vampire-cats, skeleton-cats, or Cthulu-cats.

There’s also a plot, items besides cats (like keys) that you need to find to open up other areas, secret rooms, and even a boss battle against a very Castlevania inspired Vampire Cat. Cat-stlevania?

As before, it’s not especially challenging, although you do need to be very observant and frequently need to zoom in as much as possible – some cats are tiny! The new features are fun and add a bit more to the proceedings, and it was a nice little time-waster for very little money.

We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’m a bit torn on this game. On the one hand, it’s Katamari so is automatically fantastic and fun and relaxing and nonsensical. But on the other hand, it could have been so much better.

A few years ago, the original Katamari Damacy got a Reroll remake on modern consoles, and with it they fixed some of the niggles of the original, like loading times (and mid-level loading), slowdown, and made it all smoother and higher resolution and prettier. Then they “rerolled” the sequel and you’d expect the same care and polish this time around, right? Well, no. Loading is reduced a bit (but mid-level loads are back), it doesn’t seem to be higher resolution, and the slowdown is awful – although perhaps not as bad as it was on the PS2, granted.

Then they’ve added the “Royal Reverie” extra levels, where you play as the King when he was the Prince, but they’re not really new levels, they’re just five existing levels with alterative goals.

So as I said, I’m torn. I really enjoyed it but it isn’t a patch on the polish shown in Katamari Damacy Reroll, and ends up coming out like a cheap port rather than a improved remake.