9. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (SNES) - 4hrs 55mins

It's taken me 25 years but I've finally got around to seeing this through.

First off a couple of minor gripes. Kiddy Kong plays exactly like Donkey Kong (apart from the underutilised bouncing on water), his inclusion feels kinda pointless. I'd much rather have played as Dixie and DK rescuing Diddy instead. It does feel a bit odd that you only play as DK in one of the three games in the original trilogy.

Secondly, the overworld map is more free roaming than the previous games. Your not exactly gonna get lost but again for me it doesn't add enough, following the dotted lines would have been sufficient.

Now these aren't gamebreakers and the main bulk of the game is top notch stuff, but you can kinda tell RARE's top staff were busy with N64 development. Its a little samey and safe.

In 1996 the gaming World was at peak hype for the 3D evolution, and rightly so imo. This must have felt like a relic post Super Mario 64 and to be fair, it's not as good as DKC2 or Yoshi's Island, both of which released a year earlier.

Thats not to say its a bad game though, far from it, and thankfully we now live in a world where 2D games get a bit more respect than when most of us were obsessed with polygons. I was one of those so I can't say I regret passing this by in 1996, but the reality is this is a great platformer and easily one of the best of the era.

Very happy to have finally completed it, and would highly recommend to other fans of the series who it may have passed by.

8/10

My list

I don't mind it in co-op but it's a very different beast. It's less tacked on than something like Rayman Legends but it definitely doesn't always work.

I'm a couple of hours into It Takes Two with Yoss and the overall quality has really surprised me, it's a proper co-op experience for sure. It'd be too fiddly for Tilly, the bosses especially, but I'm looking forward to eventually playing it with her.

I really didn't like 3D world at all. The lady didn't like it either. Easily my least favourite Mario game by some margin. The co op is just an awful time. Put us both off ever playing it together again.

35. Narita Boy - Xbox Series S (5-6hrs)

Ultra stylish blinkers-on Metroidvania that flatters to deceive throughout.  Neon-soaked pixel art is a good look, and if it's twinned with a quality soundtrack my thumbs will stand to attention.  The audiovisual package is a big win, it's just a shame that the controls are a little off.  It plays well enough to enjoy without being worthy of significant praise.  The fighting is solid, with a good rhythm and a nice mix of enemy types, but it's polite golf clap stuff rather than standing ovation material.  The floaty jump is mitigated by a downward drop, but still feels a little wafty throughout.  Vehicle sections are mostly weak (and in one case terrible), but on the whole the bosses maintain a fairly high standard.  It's all very simple pattern learning stuff, I died plenty of times but I wouldn't call this a difficult game because everything can be learned so quickly.  The Guacamelee style colour coding didn't really work for me as it felt easier to either concentrate on patterns and dispatch the enemies normally, or use the high damage buddy powers.  

In terms of exploration there isn't much, your path is mostly linear and is chiefly made up of clearing rooms, killing bosses, finding keys and unlocking doors, and the rote rot sets in after a few hours.  I'm all for a repetitive loop if the basics are tight, but they're a wee bit wobbly for such a funnelled adventure here.  I didn't care for the story either, which is a shame as the characters are quite chatty.   

I thought this was in cruise control aiming for a nailed-on [7] for the majority of the game - I've probably made it sound worse than it is - but something snapped in the home stretch and I'm downgrading it to a hugely mean [6].  I blame the penultimate boss, which asked a bit too much given the floaty controls died with a 'fuck off then!' from me rather than a feeling that I'd passed the test with hard-learned l33tness.  

It's quite good, are really does look and sound the part, but its shortcomings are hard to swallow at times.  

10. Resident Evil 3 (PS4) - 7hrs 25mins

Does for RE3 what 2019's remake of 2 did for that.

A tad shorter than 2, but that could be seen as a positive when it comes to multiple playthroughs. Felt a bit easier too, that might be down to me having played 2 last year though.

Overall its pretty much perfect for what it is. Not quite as good as 2 though, even if the Nemesis was no where near as annoying as Mr. X.

9/10

My list

11. Sega Rally (Saturn) - 20mins

Had an urge to play this for a few weeks now. Didn't take long for the muscle memory to kick in and blast through.

Hard to rate these days. As an early 32-Bit game its still one of the best imo. It controls so well and is just so satisfying and fun to play.

The lack of content is hard to ignore though. Even by the end of its generation it was unacceptable, and there are demos these days that have more playtime.

Gonna let nostalgia win out though. The fact I would pay for a Sega Ages remake/re-release should count for something.

8/10

My list

Yeah

Great game. Pretty sure its the only MS Disney game I've played along with Castle and World on MD.

I really should get around to Quackshot.

39. Good Job - Switch (5hrs)

Eyebrow raisingly bad knockabout nepotism sim with a Metacritic average that has me questioning my own sanity.  I'm reasonably well versed in the slapdash physics types, having either completed or dabbled with Octodad, Moving Out, Phogs, Manuel Samuel, Human Fall Flat, The Stretchers and (shudder) Totally Reliable Delivery Service, to varying degrees of thumb judgement angle, but this was easily the most infuriating example of that particular sub-genre.  The fact that it's published by Nintendo makes it all the more confusing as it's precisely the sort of experience I'd imagine Mr. Miyamoto - or whoever was roped into the the Zoom call - shutting down with a brutally delivered SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT DOWN NOW.  

As the child/children of the CEO your job is to complete various tasks on themed floors of an office building while dealing with the hilarious control deficiencies.  But.....it's no fun whatsoever.  Unless your idea of fun is playing the Going Live! touch tone caterpillar game with Boglins on your hands, in which case (try to) grab it while it's down to £12.  Certain stages are so astonishingly laborious it feels like the generally positive and occasionally glowing reviews must be some sort of industry in-joke; a secret TikTok challenge after games journos had so much fun tee-heeing at their inflated Horace scores, perhaps.  For every half enjoyable job (place the WiFi boxes, guide the paint vacuum bots home) there are three tedious tasks (not the lasers!) and half a dozen reasons why even the good ones are frustrating.  Those bots that follow the paint are neat enough until they get stuck on the corner of a table and staunchly refuse to budge, or decide not to follow paint trails (you had one job...), or smash through a wall in a randomly triggered physics explosion.  I've been watching some game design docs on Youtube recently, and while that doesn't make me Johnny Expert on level construction I reckon anyone with the slightest bit of nous could have a field day deconstructing the way this game has been assembled.  Even something as basic as the way the screen splits to track the second player is broken, as one side of the split often wanders around looking for scotch mist while both characters can be seen in the other half.  Toejam & Earl got this right thirty years ago, FFFS.  And with a game this slapdash, that presumably revels in being slapdash (otherwise, Jesus Fucking Christ) the full completion requirements for most stages is a terrible decision.  Water the buds is an acceptable task, but if you've watered 39 buds and can't find the 40th for 16 minutes because everything looks like it's bloomed, that's Bad Design.  There's a colour assist mode that switches to an appealing B&W image with pertinent items colour coded, but the fact that this exists proves the devs knew the standard game has major issues.  See also: any game that has a 'reset character position' option, imo, although at least that goes with the territory to an extent.  This has one, and we had to use it loads.  We also experienced a stage where an item disappeared, leaving us with 34/35 packages delivered and no chance of success after 19 minutes of tedium.  The basic mechanics are needlessly cumbersome too.  The layouts appear to be built around dual analogue control, where you'd grab hold of items with a shoulder button and move/rotate your character to manoeuvre whatever you're holding, but instead it uses a sometimeish A button to hold onto things - often preferring to pick up something else, of course - and one analogue stick, which just isn't fit for purpose when it comes to pivoting things as you have to keep repositioning yourself to do it.  You get stuck behind things, in things, on things, under things or just randomly sit on things without the space to stand back up again, and honestly, it's the most frustrating experience I've had since videogames were still a novelty. 

When we first started playing I was quite taken with the stop motion effect on the characters in the lobby, mistakenly thinking it was a bold design choice.  Everything smoothed itself out once we entered a level though, so it turns out the visuals were just stuttering throughout the opening section.  Other than that the graphics are somewhere between serviceable and appealing.  There are only eight proper floors, so it's not over-long.  Or as some reviews might have you believe, 'doesn't outstay its welcome', which of course it does, by six or seven floors.  

That's more than enough life wasted on this game anyway.  I honestly wouldn't chase S ranks in this unless I was forced to take part in some sort of irl Saw torture challenge.  Genuinely awful for the most part, do not buy.  The Stretchers is infinitely superior, grab that for co-op funtimes instead.  Please understand. [4]

10: What The Golf (Ipad) 8/10

Really liked this goofy little thing.  I like to think Triband went into this wanting to make a good golf game and instantly got sick of it and went a bit silly.  That's probably not the case.  

WTG is full of ideas mostly based around aiming a thing at a golf flag.  It got more mileage out of that than I'd have assumed.  I don't like them all but the vast majority either made me laugh or smile.  It's laid out so that you can spend a lot of time with the game, or if you're like me and don't mind a quick run through you can do it in a couple of hours.  Lovely little game.

I'll have a look!  Cheers.

As soon as I'm done with Tsushima I'll be ready to hunt (and probably hate it, but I am ready).

12. Rastan (SMS) - 1hr 30mins

Played this for about half hour and was a bit disappointed compared the the memories, and subsequently gave up after running out of continues. It got its claws in though as I quickly went back for another go.

I'm glad I did, as overall I enjoyed it. Its still not as good as I remember it though, the controls are a tad stiff, but worse still is the jumping.

There's numerous times in the game where the normal jump won't get you out of a pit and the high jump will overshoot you to the opposing pit. There is a wall jump but coupled with the stiff controls it can turn what should be simple platforming into pad throwing frustration.

Its a shame as everything else about it is excellent. I got through to level 4-1 on my second playthrough much easier, which goes to show that overall its definitely a playable game, even if the best thing about it is its obvious inspiration for the excellent Volgarr the Viking.

Still, good stuff overall, just short of 8-Bit greatness.

7/10

My list

26. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Having played Zero Mission a couple of months back means all I've got to offer are the inevitable comparisons. Being led by the nose through a Metroid isn't exactly my cup of tea. Even though managing the player's path through a funnel gives them a chance to expand the story (ie actually having one, albeit a complete rip off of Alien) and do more interesting things with the environment. Found all the 'now go here, now do this, now do that' to be quite stifling. 

But that all fades away in the second half. The nose-leading all but stops. The funnel widens to the point where you don't notice or care where the edges are. Zero Mission manages the same rapid clip to its progression but with outstanding level design but this is a taste thing really. End of the day it's excellent. Both games I started and then spent every spare minute on until completion. It's got that full-fat, powered-up Samus, Metroid blasting action that you love. Great weapons, puzzles, dick bosses, great tunes (although again not quite touching the highs of ZM's Brinstar theme). 92%

I only got into mm games about 5 years ago but really like them now, although I've only played 2 for more than a bit (I'm no save/rewind scrub tho so it's a bit of an undertaking for me). I should dip back into them.