2. Sayonara Wild Hearts (PC) - 2 hours

Fun little semi rhythm game crossed with a bit of an on rail shooter.Extremely fun with a graphic style that I really dig. 
Gameplay is good though frustrating in places where if you don't absolutely KNOW the stage , you have no chance of collecting the hearts properly. I know it's to encourage replay but there's so many games now I doubt I ever will.
Stages are nice and short though, so perfect for having that quick 10 minute blast of a few stages.

Great graphics, awesome soundtrack for a solid [8]

3. Cloudpunk (PC) - 8 hours

Let me start by saying that this is possibly my favourite world to be aimlessly wandering around of any game ever. They absolutely NAILED the Blade Runner feel. From the look of the city (Voxel style but it really works) to the soundtrack that absolutely evoked Vangelis. Definitely worth a play, but be aware there's not a whole heap of choices to be made in the gameplay. For that it has to be only an [8]

Re-entry. 

25. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)
First played last year, when I gave it a [9]. The summary of that review was that it was very good but structured in a way I just didn't want a Mario game to be. I let my daughter play it after I'd completed it and she loved going round all the worlds and meeting the characters. But Covid has destroyed my solo gaming time and this is all my daughter wants to play. So we started from scratch and I helped her do the bits with the baddies while she farted round climbing trees, being the various creatures, finding burrows for them to sleep in, finding 'food' (coins and moons) for them to eat, going to find other creatures for playdates, a million different imaginative uses of the open-world set up. I don't think I've ever been so absorbed by a game as she is with this. Maybe Skyrim or Vice City. Where you can turn it on and just get lost in that world. She's found moons I would never have found because I'm not going to spend twenty minutes messing around playing pekaboo with Goombas and then stumbling across one in a tiny corner. We're 600+ moons deep now. I'm ready to move on and I've been trying to find her a decent subsititute game. A GTA game for a kid with funny characters, wonderful mechanics, the absence of constant threat or a time limit. I'm pretty sure that game doesn't exist or it doesn't meet the quality threshold needed to keep her interest. Maybe BoTW but that's too intense for her at this stage. She'll like 3D World when I eventually get her onto that but it won't have the same emergent fun for her as this. Odyssey is a completely unique game. 

Super Mario World is my #1 game and will be forever. And it's really because I remember how good it was at the time, how much I loved it. I also fondly remember Space Harrier, Outrun and some other fairly ropey Master System games because of all the nice memories of playing them with my Dad and my brother. Odyssey will be both these things for her, wrapped up in one. It's a firm [10] now, a forever game for me. If I can get her playing something else, then I might make it to number 26.

Fwiw I thought mine was too young for BotW but she absolutely one million percent loved it, even more so than Odyssey.

Tilly's favourite bit was announcing that she'd sold 'everything'. Including armour sets. Pretty much rolling around laughing about it. There's not even an apple left on her profile.

68. Slayaway Camp - Switch (roughly 5hrs)

Acquired as the gooseberry on a three game 'Blood & Guts' pack that's intended to shift in sales (it launched at something like 85% off and I'd be amazed if anyone in the entire world ever intentionally pays £40 for it).  I grabbed the pack for (the superjank) Slain, with the added bonus of (the excellent) Super Blood Hockey, but Slayaway Camp is probably the best of the bunch, certainly in single player.  Who knew? 

It's a single screen puzzle game where you kill victims with turn based sliding from point to point in scenes inspired by classic slasher flicks.  Anyone who's played Hitman Go will know roughly what to expect.  Killing all the campers opens the exit.  You can rewind every move, and doing so is key to gradually solving the often specific routes through each stage.  Each episode is framed as a videotape movie, and the credits start to roll if you fail.  Graphics are basically 'gore Minecraft', but they have a charm.  The real attraction is the actual puzzling though, it's a very well designed game.  It doesn't throw vast amounts of systems at you but fresh ideas appear steadily as you progress and your actions have plenty of knock on effects that can lead to quite deep brain busters with a real sense of accomplishment when you succeed.  You can buy a hint or a solution for each level and it doesn't penalise you for being dim.  Which is great, as I needed the full solution numerous times.  

Recommended for fans of Sudoku, maybe?  It's a [7] for my tastes, but a very strong one, and I reckon that might sneak up to an [8] for the bigger brain puzzle types?  @acemuzzy or @jonb.  It sells for £2ish as a standalone sale title on Switch, so they probably pay you to buy it on Steam.  Very pleasantly surprised by it.  

I meant Soduku (working towards a single solution via process of elimination?) but by the looks of it Sokoban would've been a better reference point.

Edit: My entire knowledge or Soduku is based on that video where the guy gleefully sloves a good one and a terribly depressing debate at work about whether or not it's 'maths'.

Yup looks like a case of either one would do you there, same format.

monkey wrote:

Re-entry. 

25. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)
First played last year, when I gave it a [9]. The summary of that review was that it was very good but structured in a way I just didn't want a Mario game to be. I let my daughter play it after I'd completed it and she loved going round all the worlds and meeting the characters. But Covid has destroyed my solo gaming time and this is all my daughter wants to play. So we started from scratch and I helped her do the bits with the baddies while she farted round climbing trees, being the various creatures, finding burrows for them to sleep in, finding 'food' (coins and moons) for them to eat, going to find other creatures for playdates, a million different imaginative uses of the open-world set up. I don't think I've ever been so absorbed by a game as she is with this. Maybe Skyrim or Vice City. Where you can turn it on and just get lost in that world. She's found moons I would never have found because I'm not going to spend twenty minutes messing around playing pekaboo with Goombas and then stumbling across one in a tiny corner. We're 600+ moons deep now. I'm ready to move on and I've been trying to find her a decent subsititute game. A GTA game for a kid with funny characters, wonderful mechanics, the absence of constant threat or a time limit. I'm pretty sure that game doesn't exist or it doesn't meet the quality threshold needed to keep her interest. Maybe BoTW but that's too intense for her at this stage. She'll like 3D World when I eventually get her onto that but it won't have the same emergent fun for her as this. Odyssey is a completely unique game. 

Super Mario World is my #1 game and will be forever. And it's really because I remember how good it was at the time, how much I loved it. I also fondly remember Space Harrier, Outrun and some other fairly ropey Master System games because of all the nice memories of playing them with my Dad and my brother. Odyssey will be both these things for her, wrapped up in one. It's a firm [10] now, a forever game for me. If I can get her playing something else, then I might make it to number 26.

Maybe Lego city undercover next? It's a hoot, and has some good inventive puzzles in it.

regmcfly wrote:

monkey wrote:

Re-entry.  25. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) First played last year, when I gave it a [9]. The summary of that review was that it was very good but structured in a way I just didn't want a Mario game to be. I let my daughter play it after I'd completed it and she loved going round all the worlds and meeting the characters. But Covid has destroyed my solo gaming time and this is all my daughter wants to play. So we started from scratch and I helped her do the bits with the baddies while she farted round climbing trees, being the various creatures, finding burrows for them to sleep in, finding 'food' (coins and moons) for them to eat, going to find other creatures for playdates, a million different imaginative uses of the open-world set up. I don't think I've ever been so absorbed by a game as she is with this. Maybe Skyrim or Vice City. Where you can turn it on and just get lost in that world. She's found moons I would never have found because I'm not going to spend twenty minutes messing around playing pekaboo with Goombas and then stumbling across one in a tiny corner. We're 600+ moons deep now. I'm ready to move on and I've been trying to find her a decent subsititute game. A GTA game for a kid with funny characters, wonderful mechanics, the absence of constant threat or a time limit. I'm pretty sure that game doesn't exist or it doesn't meet the quality threshold needed to keep her interest. Maybe BoTW but that's too intense for her at this stage. She'll like 3D World when I eventually get her onto that but it won't have the same emergent fun for her as this. Odyssey is a completely unique game.  Super Mario World is my #1 game and will be forever. And it's really because I remember how good it was at the time, how much I loved it. I also fondly remember Space Harrier, Outrun and some other fairly ropey Master System games because of all the nice memories of playing them with my Dad and my brother. Odyssey will be both these things for her, wrapped up in one. It's a firm [10] now, a forever game for me. If I can get her playing something else, then I might make it to number 26.

Maybe Lego city undercover next? It's a hoot, and has some good inventive puzzles in it.

This does look good. I think we'll give it a try. Cheers.

69. Strikey Sisters - Switch (3hrs)

Very good brick breaker with bosses and a story.  Don't worry, the cut-scenes can be skipped.  Something about a lost cat.  Play in either one player or co-op, tackling standard stages (break all blocks) or boss stages (deplete a big nasty's energy bar).  Enemies will pop with a weapon drop of varying usefulness that floats down the screen to be collected or avoided.  These include bombs, double ball power ups and suchlike.  It's a fun game, especially in co-op; everything works well, although what it offers is admittedly limited.  It's a perennial sale title and half price (£4ish) bags you a bargain imo.  It's got a nice look - reminiscent of Twinkle Tale to an extent - with some decent retro style tunes, plus the snippets of sampled speech are fun, particularly the bosses that shout "ice ice ice, baby!" and "you can't touch this".  Won't set anyone's world alight but it's a quality lo-fi indie effort and would be very fondly remembered if it had been a genuine SNES release.  [7]

35: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (PS2 ROM) - 5/10

I've been pining for this game for a while - as is often the case, it was a good nostalgic kick for a couple of hours but I got pretty sick of it before long.

It was one of those games that I hadn't played in 15+ years, it is only available on PS2 and was difficult to emulate on PC.  I've toss up buying a second hand PS2 and a copy over the last couple of years but I never found a good deal.  Plus, I would have ended up buying all the old games I remember liking, and those I wanted... I spend enough on gaming as it is!  Was too much of a rabbit hole to contemplate!

But now it can be emulated decently on a modest PC!  And... yeah, it's just okay.  I like the action-rpg format of fast paced battles for loot, money and exp, but the fights themselves are kinda rubbish.  My character, the magic elf lady, was a glass pea shooter for the duration; getting killed so easily and doing bugger all damage.  Assumed she'd start weak and become a beast as the game went on, but no she was just weak.  This resulted in me kiting single enemies away from the others and running around in circles to avoid being hit.  It got old.  Maybe I did something wrong, I don't know.  

Mostly just a game of its time with generic looking long levels and bad checkpoints and no autosaving.  Some enemies look fantastic though, especially the scary giant spiders who look a bit too real at times (not when they're getting stuck in a doorway obviously).  As an aside - even though the character models look quite dated, the barwench you are immediately introduced to has wobble physics for her giant boobs, as was the style of the time.

I remember the case cover well from the EB/GAME days.

Haha yep, that’s the line I was thinking of!

@Moot There was definitely a bit of buzz about it (Metacritic has it at 87, including a 100 from FHM!  “Shave off the beard, throw away the sandals, the RPG has grown up.”)

Remember lending my copy to a couple of mates who co-op’d it; they weren’t playing video games much at the time but absolutely loved it.  In hindsight, it turns out you were right all along!  It’s pretty average.

71. Astral Chain - Switch (16hrs)

Good grief.  There's usually a point where enough is enough with systems in play for this sort of thing, and of course this gleefully nitro-boosts past it and over the horizon.   It never seems content to rest on its yanny's and opts to chuck more and moar at the player in an attempt to incessantly up the ante.  Against all odds it works, for the most part, but while it's an accomplished game in many ways it repeatedly trips over its own ambition.  With so much going on it's a marvel that so much of it sticks though, which is no mean feat.  The base combat is standard Platinum - remove the bells and whistles and the actual combat would play a lot like like everything from Bayonetta to Ninja Turtles.  It's the multiple layers on top that separate this from the rest.  Wrapping enemies in legion chains is satisfying, as is the tried and tested hack/slash & timed dodge stuff of course, and while there's a touch of fiddliness to almost everything it's definitely a game that wants you to learn its intricacies rather than go through the motions.  You can pummel your way through on the standard 'casual' difficulty if that's your thing (hello), but the default settings are clearly intended to ease you in as constant prompts remind the player that upping it gives you the intended experience.  I'm more inclined to get through rather than git gud with most 3D titles, but having got a good feel for the combat by the end (and after watching a few Youtube vids) it's obvious that the skill ceiling is sky high.  I'd still maintain that Platinum don't do ultra size beastie battles particularly well, but the small to not-quite-massive opponents are mostly great fun to dispatch. 

I considered a longer review highlighting the numerous faults, wrote myself some bullet points and everything - the often disastrous camera being the biggest problem of a long list, and does anyone like fail state 3D stealth sections in action games? - but I've had a long day (during which I narrowly escaped redundancy, again) and can't be bothered.  It's a decent game that's a bit too hyperactive for its own good and probably could've done with a few legs being lopped off the spider diagram at the ideas stage, but it's a ride worth taking nonetheless. Scrapes an [8], believe it or not.

Jettisoned genres is a weird thing.  I was the same with scrolling beat 'em ups, which I ditched for vs fighters (as a MD owner we had Streets of Rage 2 long* before SFII:SCE).  These days I'm well up for clearing the streets again, but fightmans can fuck off.  I was also massively into RPGs for a brief period, from 1995-1997 maybe.  Shining the Holy Ark and Final Fantasy VII in the same year?  What a time to be alive.  Can't stand them now.   

*Felt looong at the time, was probably the blink of an eye in hindsight.