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Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Many, many years ago, I played a game called Pocket Monsters Green on my Personal Computer using a Game Boy Emulator.  I have now, essentially, just completed it.

Of course, this isn’t the same Pocket Monsters Green. It’s actually more Pocket Monsters Yellow, the modified version that came with Pikachu, only with the more familiar western “Pokémon” branding, and all the modern stylings and conveniences the yoof of today enjoy and appreciate. Yes, it’s many steps forward from the Game Boy title from last century, but it’s actually many steps back from more recent Pokémon games.

Lapras giving me the side-eye.

For starters, being a re-imagining of the first title in the series, there are only the original set of 151 monsters in your pocket. This also means it’s a straightforward and already known story. Then there’s the loss of actually catching them properly: Previously you’d battle a wild beastie until it was almost out of HP, then you’d use a pokeball on them. Now, the mechanic is borrowed from popular telephone distraction app Pokémon GO!, with a “throw” of the joycon approximating a finger swipe. But guess what?

High-fiving Dave, my eevee, is amazing.

It’s fine. It’s all fine. I only missed these things for about ten minutes, and once I had an eevee on my head I was won over. These changes, and others (like not needing a specific Pokémon for world-usable moves, such as surf) streamline the game and speed up the grind. Progress through the game is swift, and as a result I’d beaten the final trainer in under 27 hours. That’s quick, for a game in this series. I’m torn as to whether that in itself is a problem, because of course it’s short, but there’s a lot of post-game content to get through too that makes up for it. All the rest of the creatures to enslave, for one, and a load of new expert cockfighters have sprung up and need defeating too.

Elite Four? Wiped on the floor, more like.

Pokémon: Let’s Go! is a hybrid. It’s a simpler game than the “main” series, designed to pull users of the mobile game over (clearly proven by their close
interoperability – you can even pull your Pokémon over from your phone). It’s more in-depth and complex than the phone game though, adding a world, story and characters appropriated from the original Pokémon Yellow. It’s trying to be accessible to everyone without coming across as too cut-down for the full-fat game fans or too elaborate for the casual phone-prodders. Somehow, against the odds, I think it manages to occupy a sweetspot. Certainly, I could see what was “missing”, but I don’t miss it. I would have enjoyed a new story, but I’m not upset it’s a retelling. The lack of excitement for new areas and monsters discovery is tempered with reminiscence. Like someone remade your favourite slippers only now they have wheels and can toast bread.

Krusty the Clown’s decapitated head looks horrified as a dead Snorlax is found washed up.

The post Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

TwinBee (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A few years ago, I completed this on the Xbox 360. And now I have completed it on the Switch. As in, the NES game in the NES classics thing.

It’s a decent little vertically scrolling shooter with an odd bell shooting system (shoot bells enough and they go blue, collect a blue one to speed up your ship), and I lost my ship’s arms at one point so couldn’t drop bombs.

After beating the end boss the game loops back to the start, so no credits as such. Still, done.

The post TwinBee (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

TwinBee (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

A few years ago, I completed this on the Xbox 360. And now I have completed it on the Switch. As in, the NES game in the NES classics thing.

It’s a decent little vertically scrolling shooter with an odd bell shooting system (shoot bells enough and they go blue, collect a blue one to speed up your ship), and I lost my ship’s arms at one point so couldn’t drop bombs.

After beating the end boss the game loops back to the start, so no credits as such. Still, done.

The post TwinBee (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Bulb Boy (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Bulb Boy is a nice little walk-and-click adventure game and it was very cheap recently. And by nice, I mean horribly grotesque and full of demonic imagery and guts and dead things and maggots and evil spiders and a giant monster made from your own poo.

There’s a story, although nothing is ever spoken or written down. It’s all gestures and speech bubbles with pictures in. Given the content of the game, that’s probably for the best. I don’t really want to understand fully why there is a giant headless turkey “pecking” about in the kitchen.

I mean, just look at the screenshots.

It’s only a couple of hours long, but I certainly enjoyed it. The puzzles were never too clever or too obtuse, and the sections where you had to navigate hazards provided variety. In fact, the only real complaint I can make is that when you die and your little lightbulb head is horrifically mutilated in some way, it takes just a bit too long to restart. Oh, and I came across a bug where I put an egg in a place and it was supposed to pop out another place and it didn’t, so I had to reload. Aside from those, though – recommended. Just wash your hands afterwards.

The post Bulb Boy (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Car Quest (Switch): COMPLETED!

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My first impressions of Car Quest were, it has to be said, less than favourable. It had, as I mentioned on Twitter after my first hour’s play, a definite air of “My First Unity” game about it, not least because of the sparse, blocky environment that just screams “I can’t draw but I can sellotape geometric shapes together”. You, a car, don’t fit within this style either thematically or graphically, and it feels like a placeholder that was never replaced with a giant marble or something that matches the rest of the game.

Blocktacular! You’ve successfully written the first paragraph of your Car Quest diary post!

I can’t really say my second impressions were much better. The basic aim is, you see, to drive your car through this blocky world, finding rotating shapes known as artefacts. Each one opens a new route or area in the world, invariably as far away from your current position as possible so as to artificially extend the length of the game. As you drive around, you collect batteries, which you need to open portals to other areas and so the game is lengthened further as you collect these – which require no skill, just time.

Well done for informing the reader about elements of the game! Some parts of the game require artefacts, and others require time consuming item collection.

My third impressions? Well, near the end of my first hour I hit something new. Puzzles. Things to push around, tiles to drive over quickly in sequence. Clever driving stunts. More started happening – a level with a night and day warp, which raises a water level to ad a new dimension to the puzzles. Some sheep to herd. Timed sections, a maze, and more. Slowly, the game was becoming more.

Over time you may notice new features added to the levels! Like a maze! Or some sheep to herd! It’s blocking incredible.

In terms of gameplay, I was actually starting to enjoy it. The plain graphical style actually started working. I still couldn’t figure out exactly why you were a car, and how Lord Blockstar – who is King, despite being a Lord – the transparent floating head WHO NEVER SHUTS UP managed to convince you to help repair his world by doing all these things.

I do tend to state the obvious. In fact, in the game, I even tell you I state the obvious.

Every time you collect an artefact, of which there are approximately seven zillion, Blockstar tells you you’ve just collected and artefact. And, after opening a new area (which the camera pans to in order to show you’ve opened a new area), Blockstar tells you you’ve opened a new area. And when it’s obvious where to go next, he tells you where to go next. All. The. Sodding. Time. It’s maddening. And then there are all his puns, many of which are block or brick related and they hurt. 

You’ve just finished reading that paragraph but there’s another paragraph to read next!

Car Quest isn’t a difficult game either. In fact, there are only really two difficult things: forgetting where to go next (even if you’re shown, then told by Blockstar, it’s too easy to get disorientated on the map – not least because everything looks the same), and not knowing if you’re doing something not quite right, or aren’t supposed to be doing it yet.

I get the feeling you’re going to sum up the game for the reader now.

To sum up, Car Quest is an oddity. It’s not very well designed, it’s not short of problems, it has too much unnecessary to-ing and fro-ing and the damn lordking guy needs gagging. The car physics don’t feel right, and there being a car not a ball or similar instead doesn’t make any sense. The world of Blocktaria is just too abstract and plain and bizarre. It shouldn’t work and I’d be giving it a 1/5 and telling you not to play it.

But. BUT. Give it an hour or two. I know that’s a big ask. But do that. Play it. Ignore the “college game design project” feel to it and just let it happen. Something clicks, and even though you can see it shouldn’t work, it’s actually fun. A sort of guilty pleasure. And as you groan at yet another “blockcredible” or a 14th loop of the main world to collect yet more batteries, you’ll realise that somehow, you’re enjoying it. It’s not blocktacular, but it’s certainly blockisfactory.

The post Car Quest (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.