WackerJr

Glad I wasn’t the only one surprised by that! Before checking, I’d just assumed that they would’ve been available in smaller numbers due to the dreadful Wii U sales so the sale prices would’ve been pretty good, so I was painfully disappointed.

I still need to finish my 2024 write-ups, but in the meantime, to join in the fun: • Chrono Trigger DS - I finally got around to starting this in 2024. It’s taken me a while to get into, but it’s definitely been worth sticking with. Should be finished soon. • Final Fantasy 7 - thanks to everyone who advised me to play the original version (or at least the one on Switch). I’ll be playing this classic for the first time this year I hope. • Super Mario Wonder - I love my Mario platformers & surprised myself I haven’t played this yet! • Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - I put off buying this so I could get it as a Christmas present 😀. • Astro Bot - looking forward to playing this. • Uncharted 2 - playing through the Uncharted series with my wife. • Astral Chain - it’s spent way too long in my backlog. • Tales of Monkey Island - retro time! Used to love the MI games and I haven’t yet played this or Return to MI yet. • Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D - the adverts for the upcoming Switch remake’s reminded me I haven’t yet played this & I have it on 3DS. • The Great Ace Attorney - Enough time’s passed since playing the Phoenix Wright games to return to some courtroom drama! I managed to sell the majority of my Wii and Wii U games last year and it was quite satisfying. I’m debating what to do with my load of N64, GameBoy and DS games next and thinking I might try to sell these this year too. I’m finally realising that I’m never realistically going back to the majority of them.

Ok, I realise I still need to write up a few of the games I’ve played in recent months before everyone’s moved onto the 2025 thread. Sackboy (PS5) I wish there were more games like this. A lengthy 3D platformer that’s serviceable in single-player, but really comes into its own when played alongside others. I played the majority of this with my wife and we had a blast traversing the textile levels. Playing as LittleBigPlanet’s woolly protagonist, everything from your own character to the enemies themselves looked lovely and hand-made. The platforming itself wasn’t revolutionary, but did everything well. Linear with plenty of items and secrets hidden just off the path. You primarily have the ability to jump, slap, roll and throw, which allow for neat tricks in co-op such as having to throw a team-mate onto another platform in order to get to out-of-reach items. In our case this lead to many laugh-out-loud instances where one of us was ‘accidentally’ (or so it was claimed) thrown off an edge to our doom. Enough levels also gave us a specific skill or item just for that level, such as shurikens or a rope to latch and swing on certain surfaces. It gave enough variety to keep us entertained. Essentially you just had to reach the end of each level, but each levels was sprinkled with heaps of orbs that could collected along the way. These vary between those that count towards your ranking come the end and those that grant you outfits for your avatar. There are plenty of outfits and also help to distinguish who’s who when the action heats up on screen. When played in co-op it also tells you who collected the most, and the winner of each level gets their photo taken too (which ultimately turns into which other player can sabatage it the most!). I found some of the best levels were the ones played out to licenced music, such as Uptown Funk or Toxic, with the action often lining up with the tune. A little like Rayman’s musical levels, but not so strict in missing a beat forcing you to die. I tried it in single-player and it was ok, but really does excel and want you to play co-operatively, with some levels only available to play with multiple players. It did get a little harder later on too, so while in co-op you all share the same stack of lives, I feel a younger or inexperienced player will enjoy the early levels but will only get so far (or at least that was the experience I had watching my daughter play with her grandparents). As I said at the beginning, I wish there were more decent co-op platformers out there, as this was a lot of fun and something we enjoyed playing together. Link to my 60-second review

I don’t know why that was so compelling, but I enjoyed that & admittedly never realised much of that about the MM dog race.

I don’t know why that was so compelling, but I enjoyed that & admittedly never realised much of that about the MM dog race.

Wow I learned pretty quickly that I couldn’t trust NOM reviews, although it was mainly biased towards Nintendo-published games, but that one seems bizarre even by their standards! Glad you got to play it @Cube to clarify how shocking it really was and relieved that I’ve never had to! 😂

Well that wasn’t on my bingo card! What is it, 28 years after the original? I wonder if they’ll copy the ridiculousness of the original and concerned about whether they can recapture the popularity of it. Saying that, I’ll still be watching this regardless! 😄

Watched it for the first time as our Christmas Eve movie last night. It was good & our daughter loved it too! Merry Christmas everyone! We’ve just made it to my wife’s family for the day. Surprised at how much traffic was on the road today! Whatever you’re doing, have a fabulous day everyone!

Was it last year The Game Awards were criticised a little for not recognising the growing number of layoffs? I might be misremembering that…. Nice to see this being rectified this year and Satvat comes across very well and likeable.

My wife and I really enjoyed It Takes Two so looking forward to this one.

Spyro Reignited (PS4) Having played Crash Bandicoot and not really enjoying it, I ventured into more PS1-era platforming by giving Spyro a try. I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed this a lot more! I played through all three games in chronological order. The platforming was pretty standard, but I can imagine being incredibly impressed if I’d played this on PS1. It’s no Mario 64, but the item collecting and platforming are perfectly playable. As Spyro you’re tasked with collecting the abundance of gems hidden throughout each level. While ultimately the levels are quite linear in the route needed to reach the exit, they’ve been designed with plenty of opportunity to explore just off the main route. It is necessary to explore everywhere in order to locate every hidden gem. Thankfully Spyro has a dragonfly companion who points in the direction of the nearest gem, which alleviates some frustration as some are sneakily tucked away in orifices I wouldn’t initially have thought to have explored. Spyro’s basic controls involve jumping, with the ability to float a little, and blasting fire from his mouth to defeat enemies (he is a dragon after all!). The games are enhanced by the bulky animated characters and enemies that ooze with personality. One of my favourite moments is knocking rock monsters into lava, at which point they look at you forlornly and wave farewell before exploding! The trilogy increases in quality from the first to the third game. Frustrations in the first get actioned in the second and third, and while the gameplay doesn’t really change between them, there are just enough tweaks to iron out issues and give more structure to levels (for instance, each level of the 2nd game introduces a character to help, which is then the main goal of that particular level). In the first game you were also finding other dragons to rescue and they’d also give tips when rescued. 90% of these were completely pointless though! It would often be a tip on how to use one of Spyro’s abilities, but you’d often have to have actually used it to rescue the dragon in the first place! It’s almost used mockingly that they tell you how to defeat the enemy guarding them, having already spent time working out how to defeat them to carry out the rescue in the first! Imagine if after getting past Bowser in world 1-4 of Super Mario Bros and the Toad telling you that you could jump on the axe at the end of the level!?? The developers know this too as Spyro even references this later on! As is common in early 3D platformers the difficulty is pretty variable. It’s ok for the most-part and certainly doesn’t cause Crash Bandicoot levels of frustration, but there are some points, such as the early flying challenges and most of the first games over-reliance on chase sequences, where the difficulty unexpectedly spikes. In all games the camera being so close to Spyro causes some of this. I think my expectations were a little too low going into this, and everything impressed me more than I expected it too. For me, the gameplay still holds up today and the coat of paint it’s been given highlights the personality and charm the characters have been designed with. A good remaster. (Link to my 60-second video review: Link)

I get the line right just a fraction of the time and for a split second I thought I’d nailed it! 😂. I didn’t realise until watching it back how my Mii briefly turned to look at you in a despairing “look what you’ve done” expression! I couldn’t help laughing to myself at the time either!

I hadn’t really twigged this game before. As a brief game and someone who’s never played P.T. I’m actually interested in what ‘Platform 8’ is like. Has anyone played the prequel ‘Exit 8’ and is it worth trying?

Oh I’m intrigued by this now. I’d admittedly not heard about these. I see they’re both visual novels and I loved the Zero Escape series. How do these compare to them?

Thanks all. That was good fun tonight, even though I was terrible! 😂