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Axiom Verge 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I do love a good metroidvania, and I’ve played a fair few in the last year or so, and the original Axiom Verge was a great metroidvania. It’ll come a no surprise, then, that I pounced on Axiom Verge 2 the second I was able to get it from the eShop, and here I am telling you I’ve completed it.

And not just completed, but 100%ed – all items, all the map, everything. Which is a sign of a fantastic game in this genre, as far as I’m concerned.

Axiom Verge 2 isn’t really a sequel to the first game, as it’s more of a tangental story that is linked but separate for the most part. It does away with the “glitch” mechanics of the original, but replaces them with a sort of subspace, low res, corruption of the main world that you can slip in and out of in a similar way to how the two worlds work in Link to the Past. This lets you reach areas which would otherwise be blocked, by sort of skipping round them via a fourth dimension.

The plot is complicated, and references worlds that are linked, different civilisations on at least three of these worlds (one of which is Earth), but it’s interesting if difficult to get your head round. I recall the first game had a similar plot complexity and I’m sure recalling that better would shine more light here, but actually, you can mostly ignore it without detriment.

It’s the gameplay that really shines here, and Axiom Verge 2 eschews the normal combat-filled exploration of the game type with the scales tilted far more in favour of exploring than smacking stuff. In fact, you don’t really have much in the way of ranged weapons like before, and every boss in the game (bar one, I think) can be ignored entirely unless you’re after 100% completion. There are even more pacifistic ways of taking down foes too, as you’re able to hack most of them and turn them off, slow them down, or even turn them against each other.

You have to be this spiderbot thing when you’re in the Breach low-res areas.

Exploration is rewarding, both in terms of eureka moments when a puzzle is solved or an obtuse route is discovered, as well as a new power-up or upgrade is collected. I’m one for colouring in all of the map in these games and there’s a great map to fill in here. In fact, unlike other metroidvania games, the map itself is like a very small set of thumbnails of each location, rather than just a blank box.

And the music! Thomas Happ created some bizarre but incredible tracks for the first game and he’s managed the same here. It’s incredibly atmospheric, and the scratchy chiptunes for the “breach” areas are superb too, matching the low resolution aesthetic perfectly.

Someone broke some stuff then.

One of my favourite games this year, for sure.

Wonder Boy – Asha in Monster World (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A long, long time ago, I played about 15 minutes of the original Mega Drive version of this game in a local game shop. It was all in Japanese but I liked the look of it. Not quite as long ago, but still over a decade ago, Sega released the first English translated version of it as part of a Wonder Boy pack on Xbox Live Arcade. I bought it, but never played it.

Then this came along. A remake of Monster World IV, with new graphics and save system, on the Switch. And, if you bought the special edition physical game card you got the original game (translated) included on the card for free. Bargain, right? Sure, it looked a bit like a 2000s Flash game, but after the fantastic remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, and the excellent Monster Boy, it’ll be great anyway, yeah?

Well, not really. It hasn’t aged well.

Firstly, I should say that once you’re actually playing it, the graphics aren’t nearly as bad as they look in screenshots. They’re not quite right, but they’re fine. What is more of a problem is that the levels (it’s not open world like the other related games I mentioned) are just… boring. Each is themed as per every 1990s platformer, but they’re sparse. You walk along, fight one simple enemy, then walk along and fight another. Sometimes you might have to fight two. A couple of times, there were three. But there’s a lot of walking around doing very little.

Some parts of the levels are like mazes that have loads of near-identical areas, loop round themselves if you take a wrong turn (or have to backtrack), and these artificially lengthen the game. Especially the bits you have to retread as the baddies are all gone, so you get long, empty walks.

Another issue is the “2.5D” layering the levels, and the hub town especially, employ. At various points, you can step into or out of the screen into a different horizontal plane. It’s been used a lot in other games, but here it seems mostly pointless as it’s underused and forced as part of your route rather than a way to find secrets. It makes the mazes needlessly more confusing, especially on the mountain level.

You get a companion who is a flying ball/dragon/bird thing part way into the game which acts as a double-jump and glide replacement, which makes you seem much more nimble and the platforming becomes more fun, only (spoilers) the game then nerfs him before taking him away completely later on.

Good points include the music, which is excellent, and Asha’s animation (especially the ridiculous bum-wiggle she does when opening a chest), which is much better than most of the rest of the characters and baddies. The “Persian” theme, however, just serves to prompt comparison with the Shantae games, and most games don’t have a hope in hell competing with their animation. You can also save your progress wherever you like, rather than at the badly spaced, often missable, and far too infrequent Save Sages of the Mega Drive version. They’re still here, but are now pointless.

In all, I’m pretty disappointed with Asha in Monster World. I did have some fun, and I did enjoy it enough to finish it without it being a slog, but it is a game that despite the new paint and trousers, is still stuck in the past. It was an also-ran compared to the others in the series even back then though, so I can’t complain too much.

Minecraft Dungeons (Switch): COMPLETED!

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When you pay for the Switch Online service, every so often they give you the full, complete versions of retail games for free – for a few days. Then they stop working. This week, they let you download and play Minecraft Dungeons, and my daughter and I completed it before our free trial was up.

That’s not to say it’s short, although it’s nowhere near as long as I expected (partly because two large additional areas are walled off behind DLC payments), it’s just we played it a lot in a short amount of time.

Although it looks like Minecraft, and has a lot of the same creatures and sound effects, Minecraft Dungeons is actually more like Diablo. You take on a series of isometric levels, killing loads of baddies, getting better loot, and making Numbers Go Up. It’s much more simplistic than Diablo, and it doesn’t have anywhere near as much content, variety, or items to collect as Diablo III, but it’s also more suitable for kids and there’s literally no learning curve just to figure out the character and weapon upgrade system.

It’s also a lot easier. The only time we had any problems is when we started a level that was waaaaay above our current player level. Sure, when you complete it there’s a much harder New Game+, and yes, for most levels you can pick a higher recommended player level than your current one, but that seems to make it impossible rather than “harder”.

We did enjoy it a lot though, and if I’d have known it was as good as it was beforehand, I’d probably have ended up buying it. However, if you’re going to, I’d recommend the PlayStation or Xbox versions instead of the Switch if jerky, stuttering framerates are likely to offend – the Switch version is full of it. Not enough to put me off, but that’s mainly because I wasn’t paying for it.

New Super Lucky’s Tale (Switch): COMPLETED!

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New Super Lucky’s Tale is no Mario 64 or Yooka-Laylee. It’s a nice little (mostly) 3D platformer in that style, however, but without the acrobatics and inventiveness of the former and with none of the fancy moves and humour of that latter. It’s a very pared down experience in many ways, especially compared to those, but actually, it was a pleasant surprise.

It doesn’t do a lot – you collect things and jump around and there are odd characters to talk to and levels within themed worlds, but it’s still fun and it looks nice in its own cartoony art style. Sometimes jumping is tricky in 3D, and there seem to be more 2D levels than I’d prefer, but I enjoyed it from start to finish. I understand this a remake of a game called Super Lucky’s Tale which came out a few years earlier and had a number of issues which this fixed, although I’ve not played that to compare.