Didn't realise DS was such a big DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power fan

52. Metroid Dread (Switch)
It’s excellent. The movement is fluid and satisfying, the weapons, power ups and combat all work. The design of the world is top-drawer. Both in terms of how its structured and how it looks, with each new area having its own distinctive atmosphere. It takes the best elements of the best previous Metroids and gives them a new spin, feeling familiar and fresh. The new stuff they’ve brought in (nearly) all works. Everything wrong with the dev’s previous effort has been addressed. They play around with the progression format in ways you don’t expect. 

Everything is so well-balanced. The map is intimidatingly complex but completely navigable thanks to the way they push you through certain parts of it. You can get a bit lost, but not too lost. The bosses are horrendous on the first couple of goes but you learn a bit more each time until they’re straightforward and enjoyable to blast into hell. Whoever was responsible for the body-language in Samus’s animation deserves a videogame Oscar. Whatever slows you down or confuses you at first is just another puzzle to solve – whether it’s the route ahead or what the game is expecting of you or how it works. It’s sort of Fusion-like in places in pushing you around between areas but nothing like as prescriptive as that game. 

Every way in which it can go wrong has been thought about and dealt with. It has a level of care and attention and, clearly, time and space for the developer to tweak it until it’s perfect. It’s full of surprises and always stays one step ahead of the player. Usually in the form of a surprise, ambush boss or mini-boss fight. 
‘Faults’ can be separated into three categories. 
1. It’s a Metroid so I hope you like shooting walls and occasionally getting lost. I do as it happens. Every complaint under this category almost certainly applies to [insert your favourite Metroid game here].  
2. It’s a Metroid so is obviously getting compared to some total gems. Mostly it does really well but can’t compete across the board with the best parts of previous entries. i.e. is the soundtrack bad? No, it’s good. Does it stand up to some of the best videogame music ever? Well, probably not.
3. Actual things that don’t work well in the game. Which, for me, is only the Emmi sections. They’re mostly fine but can turn into a frustrating trial and error situation as you work out the route through. You can either play them as stealth sections without much in the way of enjoyable stealth mechanics. Or frantic chases that I ended up usually losing. 

So, that aside, it’s great stuff. There’s so many callbacks to previous entries, there might have been a danger of it being the videogame equivalent of a modern Rolling Stones concert. But it doesn’t just play the hits. It’s more like a Bob Dylan concert. Everything is recognizable but completely reinvented with a different tempo or arrangement, and the new stuff isn’t just there to be sat through but is actually really good in its own right (for the purposes of this analogy, you have to imagine that Bob Dylan’s voice hasn’t turned into its modern-day Dalek version).
94%
 
53. Strategery (iOS)
I think the title comes from a Bushism (as in George W.), which should give some indication of its age. Irredeemable strategy game that I’ve been playing off and on for the last decade. A brainless fiddle tool really with no real strategy to it. A randomly generated map with five different players. Each country on the map has a random allocation of pins in, which equare to how many dice you get to roll when trying to take over an adjacent section of the map. It’s shit. Probably 9 out of 10 of the generated maps have no possible way to win because your units are too spread out. So keep refreshing until you find one that seems like a winnable challenge, but not too winnable. This gets old so I delete it. Months pass. For some reason, I hanker for it again. Install. Play. Delete. Repeat. This has been happening off and on for a decade. 

I think I kicked it for a good few years at one point. Deleted again recently so thought I’d add it here. I’m determined not to reinstall it. It's better against real humans online but, as you might expect, finding a game is hard and, due it's turn-based nature, can turn into a drawn out, weeks-long saga like a postal chess match. And because most of the maps are bad, most of the games are forgone conclusions before you've even made a move. Usually one player abandons the game. Very, very occasionally, it can work as intended and be alright. 
50%  

54. Cube Composer (Web)
It’s technically a game and I have completed it. So here it is. Some little thing I stumbled across on github when researching a programming language. It (I think) is supposed to teach or perhaps demonstrate a programming concept called the map function. You choose functions from a list to get the cubes arranged into the right shape. Fun right? It’s fine. Small little puzzle thing. A couple of them I completed by accident while I was re-ordering functions and taking them out and ended up with the solution. I don’t really know what it’s for. I thought I understood how to use map but there was some really freaky stuff going on at the end so ended up far less certain than I was to begin with. Not scoring it because it’s not much of a game and wouldn't really be fair.

55. Beat Sneak Bandit (iOS)
A replay of the best iOS game. There’s so much going on it’s hard to fathom that all you’re doing is tapping the screen with one finger. It does everything right. Instantly fun to play. But mind-bendingly tricky (if you’re 100%ing the levels). It’s a puzzle game. A rhythm game. The input limitations of the device are turned into a virtue by adding layers to the puzzles.
It’s got that one more go thing down to a tee. Just great. 
93% 

Congratulations on bringing up the 52 Monkey!

43: Diablo 2 (Switch) 8/10

This holds up pretty well and translates nicely to handheld/gamepad game.  I can't say much about how it's improved or worsened in this version since I didn't play the old game but this is good in its own right.

It looks great, it has the old appealing to 14 year old boy aesthetic (ie demons with too many horns on their heads and shit like that) which is what i want to see in an action rpg like this.  It's pretty uncompromising especially as the game goes on.  Like you can learn a few tricks that will MOSTLY work all the way through but near the end I ran into a lot of buggers who I couldn't hurt at all (ie I played a a sorceress who specialised in fire magic - she was useless against enemies with fire resistance).  You're supposed to be careful with how you level up, I think.  I mostly put my points into a couple of spells.  Not a good idea.  

I do find ARPGs the most addictive of games.  There's always new gear or a new level around the corner.  This was no exception.  I don't think there's too much wrong with it (I think refilling health and mana could be handled better, and the tiny inventory is just tedious) and I feel like playing as the other characters will make for quite a different experience.  I'll definitely play again.  

44: New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe (Switch) 8/10

Hadn't played this since the Wii U launch.  It holds up fine and there's not a great deal to say about NSMB games.  Looks good, charming, fun to control.  I did think it was pretty easy for most of the game, then really hard for the last set of levels.  That probably could have been smoothed out a bit.

Noped out of Luigi U but might try again later - not sure I can be bothered getting used to the new handling.

Cheers both. This year is probably the highest number I'll ever reach. Over the past few years, I've sprinted through a lot of old 8, 16 bit and MAME roms. Still got quite a few left for the rest of the year (and I'm always going to be sprinkling retro stuff in there) but passed the big hump of unplayed stuff from that era.

I’m at my lowest ever. I think. 

Could be the workload, the Boy demanding more of my time, moving house and family duties, etc.

Movie and book consumption is low too. 

114. Jenny LeClue: Detectivu - Switch (10+hrs)

A review by Tilly

Hi, bear and badgers. Jenny is a little girl. She has to pass obstacles and paths. She goes over rocks, thorugh dark spaces and is afraid of the dark. [Edits chunk of review due to stream of consciousness spoilers]. I enjoyed it. Tim enjoyed it too. He is my dad. I think you will like it. It is a story about detectives. I especially liked the bit where a dog called Tilly gets extra special thanks in the credits. There are lots of challenging puzzles to solve. Jenny has no idea what she is doing but she has to rescue [spoilers again]. Along with Zelda Breath of the Wild and A Short Hike it is one of the best games anyone has made. I give it 10/10.

---

My take: Expertly crafted cross between The Detective's Handbook and The Ghost in the Mirror that regularly drops to a silly price in EShop sales. Don't mistake it for a budget puzzler; it's a grand and lengthy adventure with lush visuals, excellent voicework and a well crafted meta-narrative. Just about my only complaint is the fact that it all ends rather abruptly. Day one for the (confirmed) sequel for sure, perfect daddy daughter gaming. Jenny is my new poster child for hidden gems. [9]

acemuzzy wrote:

Tilly's a 10/10 reviewer IMO

There’s a YouTube channel in all of this somewhere.

I’d like to know her opinions on the single player story mode in Halo Infinite when it comes out please.

Dark Soldier wrote:

Can Tilly review Red Dead 2 please

How did you get on with it? I can't remember if I saw your take or not

The Tilly Review has made my morning.  Lovely stuff!

I just reinstalled RDR2 last night.  One of those games I find myself missing a fair bit.  Keen to just potter around over the weekend.

Strikey Sisters is worth a look too.  Co-op centric Breakout inspired minor release from the same devs that also bobs around the £2-4 mark in sales.  I like the cut of their jib.

143. Legendary Eleven - Switch

One of the many budget football games that has often called to me in sales, only for a louder voice to shout 'it'll be shit!'.  This time the price was chipped all the way down to 89p, so and even louder voice popped up with 'how bad can it be?'.  And thus, on a wet Wednesday in South East London, my journey began.  

Upon firing it up I was presented with three options - Championship Mode, Legendary Matches and Friendly Game.  After a quick look at the legendary mode (which seems to recreate historic matches with specific parameters for victory) I decided I wanted to bring the world cup home to the good people of England.  A quick butchers at the dressing room revealed that my squad consisted of 17 staunch viderlooers.  I haven't played anything like this for years, so at the very least I was expecting a cheeky approximation of existing players, The Shinning style, but instead it seemed to be rolling with big beano-to-Margate energy.  In no particular order, I would be relying on the very particular skillsets of Trevor, Steve, Paul, Chris, Bryan, Terry, David, Neil, Stevie P, Gary (DF), Peter, Gary (FW), Anthony, Carl, Dave, John and Mark to deliver the goods.  You have to adapt your style to fit the players, Ralph Rangnick once said, and Romania were about to get multiple stiff upper lips right up 'em.  Disclaimer - I failed to score for the first two games, so restarted the road to victory twice after learning most of the buttons.  A tutorial wouldn't have gone amiss.  Romania eventually made way for Germany, aka THE BIG ONE.  By that point I'd realised that shooting from a slight angle in the box invariably resulted in a goal, so I breezed past them 3-0.  Oddly, after two group stage games Germany had 6 points, despite MOTM Steve sinking them with a brace in the second game, but justice was served as they lost to Brazil in the quarters anyway.  Long story short: after topping the group I swatted Czechoslovakia, fought back from two goals down against France in a fully tumescent 3-2 semi, and cheated by reloading my save at least four times to beat a surprisingly up for it Netherlands in the final.  Despite the game not being particularly good, this was the point where I realised I needed to play more dodgy football games, so immediately hit the EShop in search of deals.  

Some information on the game itself: It's functional, to an extent.  It's not a good game by any stretch of the imagination, but with two players I expect it'd be good clean throwaway laughing-at-and-with-it fun.  You have to wind up to shoot by holding the button, which can't be changed to the proper Pro Evo configuration of square rather than circle (or whatever the Switch equivalent is), which is irritating as you'll often be tackled while generating enough power for a non pea-roller.  The standing tackle - or pickpocket button as it's possibly known - could be accurately described as the central mechanic as there's plenty of tedious possession swapping with grunts and stumbles.  You pretty much can't tap anything in because of the wind up delay/responsiveness issues, which is also annoying as the keepers usually spill everything, so it becomes a game of through balls creating enough space to unleash a shot.  Crosses aren't totally useless as pressing shoot while under a dropping ball will occasionally trigger a bicycle kick, plus there's a run button and a few skills that felt a bit too fancy-Dan for Trevor & co, so it sort of feels like a functional football game.  It also has weird super moves that seem to occur at random and pretty much always result in a goal, which is just silly (especially if the AI unleash one with their first foray forward).  Overall then, a poor effort, but one that isn't totally without merit.  It's quite satisfying to score, which helps earn it a well fought [4].

144. Football Cup 2021 - Switch

Before embarking on this particular project I asked myself the question 'how bad can they be?', but I wasn't prepared for the answer to be 'worse than you could possibly imagine'.  This one is currently £1.34, and from the EShop video appeared to be going for the aborted Dreamcast prototype look.  Until a ball was kicked I genuinely thought this might be a step up from Legendary Eleven.  My robust group of Englanders for this mission were E. Thompson, C. Harris, P. Wilson, G. Anderson, D. Thompson, R. Davis, M. Taylor, W. Thomas, P. Taylor, W. Johnson and K. Moore (C).  Could I guide a team that included a Scottish DJ, a Scottish darts player, a decathlete, a retired journeyman with 317 appearances for Stoke, two famous guitarists, another darts player and him off of Genevieve to victory in the name of St. George?  Of course I could; the actual footballing is so broken even the AI couldn't work out how to score.  Plus this one saved between matches too.

A few thoughts on the game itself: The first thing the opposition team did was boot it out of play, which set the tone really.  When I took the resulting throw in (aiming at no-one from zero options, because none of my players moved remotely close to the ball) it treated me to the 'kicks ball' sound effect as it left Ray Davis' hands, which reiterated the tone.  Player movement is beyond bizarre, as you have to steer them in curves due to their tank-like turning circles.  At first I thought it was impossible to score as the keepers saved everything, but it turned out luring them towards you in the box and then attempting a pass did the trick on the rare occasion someone managed to latch onto it.  Using this method I progressed through the group stages - playing everyone twice for some reason, win or draw - through to the quarters and semis (again, playing everyone twice) and then onto a the one-shot final against Italy before basking in the glory of the special cup lifting animation.  Some oddities I noticed along the way: the game gives zero fucks about sending opposing teams out in identical kits, there is no extra time and the penalties are designed to troll you.  

Shoot-out agony for Tilly:



In-game achievements occasionally pop up at the top of the screen, and they're all for things like 'performed five throw ons' or 'performed ten throw ons'.  There's literally no way I can accurately emphasise how awful everything is without handing you a pad to confirm it for yourself, but trust me, it's all the way bad.  [1]  On the plus side, [Peter Cunnah voice] things can only get better. 

145. League of Champions Soccer - Switch

[Hugh Grant Four Weddings best man speech voice] Or so I thought.  This is it ladies and gentlemen, all things considered the the actual worst game I've ever played.  Most of the forum thinks I play shit games anyway, and I've had theme days with mates where we'd deliberately play the worst games from various eras, but this would nonchalantly wrestle the wooden spoon from anything ever.  By this point I was so addicted to the quest for glory I paid £2.99 for it, triple my previously planned budget (NB: it's currently in the sale, so £3 is HALF PRICE).  Firstly, I couldn't pick England a this one offers club football only.  After much deliberation as Manchester United (or an approximation of) obviously weren't invited to the League of Champions whenever this came out, I settled on Barcelona before spending ages working out how to start the cup competition.  I wasn't sure what was going on for a while, but eventually twigged that pressing the pause button soft resets the game.  As the whistle blew for the first match I belatedly realised kick-off was a kind of drop ball scramble and gathered it under my spell.  I plodded down the pitch and suddenly lost my shit at the unexpected sight of the teeny tiny goals.  For the next 30-40 seconds I was treated to the wildest succession of incredibly amusing events I've seen in my adult life.  I hadn't been drinking, I hadn't been smoking, I was home alone and yet I couldn't see through tears of laughter.  Scout's honor, this tickled me in a way I haven't been tickled since the Michael Oxmall gag when I saw Hobbs & Shaw in the cinema.  My shot ricocheted off the woodwork and cannoned back upfield faster than when it left my boot.  Players started to fall over off the ball.  The crowd worked through a random medley of terrace songs that bore no relation to the on-field teams, starting with a version of You'll Never Walk Alone that never actually reached the word 'alone', with the pitch of the voices cranking up and down as the camera zoomed in and out for added lols.  I took a pot shot from 60 yards and it went in because Dortmund's keeper was milling about somewhere else.  Whoever scored ran to the touchline doing forward flips with a maximum of five frames of animation per spin.  I was absolutely finished, and despite the fact that it's worse than anything you could possibly imagine the joy injection this game gave me can't be understated.  By the second match I'd worked out that the pass button doesn't work in tandem with the directional controls, opting instead to pass to whichever player has an orange marker underneath their feet (the player controlled character is highlighted blue).  There's no point to anything really as all you ever do is slowly manoeuvre around players before picking your spot if the keeper's where he should be, or smashing it home if he's not.  Winning matches gains credits - 5 for each win - but I have no idea what they're for.  I was cruising to victory against Man City and the score jumped from 6-0 to 8-0 with my 7th goal.  There's a glitch where one of your teammates accidentally roams behind the goal, briefly giving him possession when you score before the ball is suddenly placed goal kick, which can be scrambled for like the kick-offs (warning: touching it means the ball can't go out of play again for the rest of the match and you have to wait for the full time whistle).  The players are all poly models but they snap between angles of movement when taking throw ins.  There's no such thing as headers or volleys as far as I could tell, it's all played on the deck with no AI resistance whatsoever.  At one point I tried to let the other team score, as I was winning the cup final 5-0, and it took them around three minutes to absolutely bury it from two yards.  Nothing will prepare you for how bad this game is.  Nothing.  It's so bad it doesn't even register on the games played section of my Switch profile, so on the plus side at least no-one will ever know.  Without a moment's hesitation it's a nailed on [0], but it also offered possibly the most entertainment I've ever had out of three quid.  





146. Super Arcade Soccer 2021 - Switch

An attempt to bring the likes of Dino Dino's Goal and Kick-Off to the EShop, given that it plays as a loose approximation of that format, albeit side-on with a 3D graphics engine.  This is actually a sequel to an older indie offering, so I assumed there'd be a level of iteration refinement to the proceedings.  I was kind of right, because it clearly guzzled a few gallons more milk than the previous two games in its formative years, but it's still not very good.  

Manchester United are in, so I toyed with the idea of starting a Champions Cup campaign with Devilster, as they're known in The England League, but much as I wanted to take to the field as Juan Meta I couldn't quite stomach Eshley Oyung's presence in a game purporting to be the 2021 edition, so I decided to lift the cup with England for the third time in one day.  After tending to my team slightly - I didn't want Hyrra Kena in midfield for a start - I was ready to go.  I'm probably being thick but I still can't work out who Dynna Reso is supposed to be.  Oh wait Danny Rose, the penny dropped as I typed that.  

There's no run button, which feels odd at first but kind of works as a design choice and didn't take too long to get used to.  The fact that you can pop the ball around and it goes roughly where you want it to felt glorious after the League of Champions.  The AI struggled to score and kept getting players sent off, which helped me breeze to victory.  By the time I'd progressed through the group stage and seen off Switzerland, Serbia and then France in a surprisingly relaxed final I'd warmed to it, but not to to the point where I'd actually recommend it to anyone.  The main irritants were players constantly missing a loose ball by millimetres and sailing past it rather than taking possession, keepers that don't dive in the direction you press for penalties (again) and a view that wasn't zoomed out enough to make the header button useful and a slight lack of responsiveness to the controls.  I'll probably go as high as [5] for this though, as it's another one where I can see some appeal for two players, but in all honesty it would've been average twenty years ago and it's lost few yards of pace since.  Back then it would've been £40 though, at £6 my calculations just about work out over the course of a season.  I had to have a word with myself after this one though, it wasn't a complete disaster but nothing else was on sale and it was threatening to get out of hand.

45: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (Switch) 9/10

This collection includes Street Fighter 1, the 2s, the Alphas and the 3s.  I beat each game with 1 character which was unexpectedly hard for the most part.  I had to turn the difficulty down by the time I got to SSF2T but geez there was still a bit of the old school arcade douchebaggery going on.  Luckily you have unlimited credits so you can just brute force your way through.  I don't know if the AI occasionally takes mercy on you but every once in a while you get a good run.  It doesn't like you winning too many games in a row and the SF3 boss is a true dickhead who is clearly cheating.

SF1 lives up all reports and I have nothing new to say: Hilariously bad, the gulf between it and SF2 is unfathomable, the controls don't work, everyone looks a bit silly especially Ryu in his red slippers.  It is worth playing just to see but is absolutely no fun.

All the others though are still very enjoyable, a real pleasure to control and each series looks and sounds great in its own way.  I'll always think 2 looks the snazziest and I'd love to see a Sonic Mania kind of game that takes those designs and mixes them with 3's slick animations for a new 2d SF.  

Good little package, comes with some goodies like artwork and such, I didn't really look into it though.  Wouldn't have minded the option to paly some home console versions that might have been a little friendlier towards the player, but it's good for what it is.

12. Metroid Dread Switch - 11.5 hours - [9]

Enjoyed all of it despite being quite negative when it first revealed. The movement of Samus, as others have said, is what makes the game so fun to play. Some lovely bosses to fight and really liked the structure of the game. It’s a Switch classic but not one that I’ll be revisiting.

Bloodborne next for Tilly.

It won't last long but it's a quality homage. Death's Hangover is similar but not quite as good.