Dcubed

YES!! You can choose the classic Monster Hunter Language for the voices!!! WOOHOO!!!

ESHOP IS BACK UP!!! DOWNLOADING NOW!!

eShop is megadead right now lol. Come on Nintendo!! Fix your mess!! I need the demo!!

The problem isn’t that they’re reusing engines and assets. The problem is that their internal production output has plummeted, despite the reuse of engines and assets. Take away the Wii/Wii U derived games and there is almost nothing to play on the damn thing! Switch doesn’t have much to offer if you’ve played all of these ports/remakes to death before.

Extra videos Gonna be a LONG 15 hours to wait for that demo!

Yo! Monster riding looks sick! Edit: Demo is out today, as expected.

Oh. You have NO idea mate... You have literally seen the entirety of Ultra Smash’s content in less than 5 minutes Calling it a skeleton of a game is bloody charitable! That thing is like a 0.3 Alpha version release!

What you also really need to take into account is that all of the bolded games are clearly built on top of their Wii U counterparts; reusing their engines and art assets heavily, to the point where they are glorified ports with added content moreso than true sequels. And in the case of MT Aces especially? That is literally the finished version of Ultra Smash, which was shoved out the door blatantly unfinished. So it's not really a new game. Age of Calamity and Origami King get a pass though; even though they’re reusing BOTW's/Color Splash’s art assets, they’re very different games to BOTW/Color Splash (or even the original Hyrule Warriors).

One of the definitions of flimsy is "made of inferior materials and workmanship". That suits the gamepad to a tee. I was meaning more or less that if feels cheap. But it literally isn't made of inferior materials? It might not be stylish, but it's certainly made of quality material & craftsmanship. The reason why the Gamepad is so bulky and expensive is because they invested a lot of the Wii U console's manufacturing costs on making it sturdy, reliable and using quality parts (including it's WiFi Direct chip; which was cutting edge tech for 2012) Now the Joy-Cons. They are the literal polar opposite of the Gamepad! They're stylish, but shoddily made; with some of the worst quality bluetooth chips I have ever seen in a commercial device from this century!

Well I don't hold them, because I have a pro controller. They still have a more solid build quality than the gamepad; that thing was flimsy, lightweight plastic with a low resolution screen - compare it to the feel of the Switch itself and you can't go back. The Wii U Gamepad is a lot of things, but flimsy isn’t one of them. That thing is made of pure nintendium!

To be fair, you really dodged a bullet with FF6 PS1! That version is godawful! FF6 SNES (FF3 US) is still the best version you can get till this day, so well done on that one. Thankfully the Switch versions of FF7-9 are really solid now; now that they have had the kinks worked out. I'd actually recommend them over the PS1 versions now; if only for the really nice speed up feature (and the portability of course). The PS4/PC versions still have a few bugs that haven't been fixed yet (though have now been corrected in the Switch versions). Bare in mind that FF4 SNES (FF2 US) is not a great version of FF4, since it was heavily censored, heavily cut down in terms of difficulty and even gameplay features with its original release. It certainly has a unique charm about it, but I would really recommend getting your hands on FF4 for PSP (the best currently available version) or GBA (Only the EU release; the US one is super buggy, EU one isn't perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the broken US GBA version!). Avoid the 3D DS remake of FF4, it's a very different game and not as good as the original 2D one. Otherwise? You can't really go wrong with any HD version of FF10/10-2 or FF12; so long as it is not the PS3 version of FF10. So basically, this is the list of ideal versions to get... FF1: GBA FF2: GBA FF3: PSP/PC (either will do - both have improved loading times over the DS version) FF4: PSP (If you can't get it, then the next best one is GBA; but ONLY the European release) FF5: GBA FF6: SNES FF7: Switch FF8: Switch FF9: Switch FF10 & 10-2: Switch or PS4 FF12: Switch or Xbox (Switch is portable, Xbox runs at 60FPS) FF13 & The Sequels: Xbox (specifically when played on Xbox One X/Series X) FF15: Xbox (specifically when played on Xbox One X/Series X)

Unless he wants to play FF2, FF3 and FF5 in Japanese? He'll have to get the remakes of those instead (in which case I'd reccommend FF2 GBA, FF3 PSP/PC and FF5 GBA).

I don’t think Nintendo will be buying any of their smaller Japanese partners. The only reason why they would buy is if Sony were threatening to steal them away from Nintendo; and I really doubt that Sony would attempt to buy the likes of Greezo (who own no IP and whose staff would up and leave immediately if Sony attempted a hostile takeover). Koei-Tecmo are at risk though. I could see Sony going for them... (I don’t think that Sony could afford any other major Japanese publisher). And they also have valuable IP to go along with them. Losing them would be a big blow to Nintendo EPD’s production capacity... Level 5 are also a potential acquisition target from Sony, but I doubt that Nintendo would buy them. If they wanted their artists and programmers, they could just headhunt the talent directly and not saddle themselves with huge amounts of debt. Make no mistake. Nintendo bought NLG as a defensive measure. They know that the acquisition endgame has begun in the west.

Err... I’ve only completed 2 single player games that were actually released this year (Paper Mario: The Origami King and Shantae & The Seven Sirens). So... I guess Animal Crossing New Horizons has to win by default? If I could count Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light? I’d pick that one. Amazing that I can finally officially play it in English! It’s great! Otherwise? Wow! This has REALLY been a shit year outside of remakes & ports huh?

Hey! Go back in time and read my 2020 catchup post!

It might not be 2020 anymore, but that doesn’t mean that it’s too late for me to play catchup. So here we go! A Link to The Past/Super Metroid Randomiser Why not both! @Glen-i and I finally played through this masterpiece of a smooshing of masterpieces! And it was AMAZING! This is our game of the year (if indeed it was eligible for such an award), and was an absolute riot from start to finish! It’s one of those fever dreams that you couldn’t imagine actually working on real hardware for real, and yet it does! It’s Magic! Way better than a crappy level 1 sword! So how does this insane mashup actually work in practice? I’m glad you asked! Depending on the ruleset you choose in the randomiser, you are tasked with completing both games (i.e, Kill Ganon and Kill Mother Brain), and all of the items in both games are spread across Hyrule AND Zebes. This means that you could find a set of Super Missiles in ALTTP’s Eastern Palace, or Link’s sword in the depths of Norfair (This actually happened to us, meaning that we spent a good chunk of Link’s adventure with no sword!). Specific rooms in Zebes and Hyrule become warps that act as a link between worlds, and saves can be made in either game (both games are saved simultaneously; making the experience seamless). There is an incredible amount of customisation available to you when setting up the randomiser, and the settings allow for a seed that does not require glitches or any advanced speedrunner tech; making the game very approachable to anyone who is familiar with both games. Not gonna lie, would rather have gotten the High-Jump Boots here This turns both games into a huge scavenger hunt, where you desperately search for anything that will allow you to get past each game’s respective roadblocks. It’s a test of your knowledge of both games and a test of your ingenuity in figuring out ways to get past enemies and parts of each game without the items that you would normally have at that point in the game. Massive amounts of fun and laughs were had, as we struggled to find anything that would help us, and as we desperately made use of bushes and pots to kill enemies in ALTTP! Cheers were had when we found Samus’s Speedbooster & Wave Beam, and cries of despondence had when we found yet another set of 5 rupees after killing Kraid! Absolutely massive fun all the way through. If you ever get the opportunity to play this? DO IT! Metroid Prime: Randomiser (Gamecube version) Hot off the heels of the ALTTP/SM randomiser, I jumped into the Metroid Prime Randomiser! Like with the previous randomiser, there’s a large variety of settings that you can tinker with to tailor the experience to your liking; making this randomiser pretty approachable for most people familiar with the original game. First item I got was the Plasma Beam, that was nice! No kidding Olivia! Hilariously, the second item I found was the Grapple Beam… but it was at the top of the upper platform in the main area of Chozo Ruins, tantalisingly out of reach for most of the game… The Phazon suit followed shortly after, followed by missiles (conveniently placed in the place that you normally get them… is this even randomised!?). Of course, the Varia Suit would be one of the last things I would end up getting, necessitating a Hell Run through Magmoor Caverns to progress through the game. One particularly hilarious moment occurred when I went in to get the item that occupied the space that the Ice Beam normally takes up… (It turned out to be a set of missiles), when I forgot that the game ends up locking the white coloured door as soon as you get the “Ice Beam”… Making it impossible to escape the room! (Remember kids… Save often. Save your sanity!). Unlike with the ALTTP/SM randomiser, it turns out that Metroid Prime isn’t as kind with randomisation, as it turns out that there are lots of places you can get softlocked; especially before you get the morph ball Bombs (You REALLY start to miss the Spring Ball here as you get permanently stuck in crevices and holes without the Bombs you need to get you out of them!). Bit unfortunate, but it’s all part of the fun; so long as you have a bit of patience for experimentation and failure. It’s not as easy as Wario makes it look Overall it was a real fun time. It’s not as polished an experience as the incredible ALTTP/SM randomiser, but it does a great job of making a game you’ve played to death feel fresh and new again! Soul Blazer Soul Blazer is Actraiser 2 (the REAL Actraiser 2; not that trash bearing Actraiser’s name!); I mean this both figuratively and literally. The gameplay structure is remarkably similar; as it is split between action stages and city-building ish sections. However, each portion of the gameplay isn’t hard demarcated like they are in Actraiser; but rather you will find that parts of the town will reappear as you progress through the action stages, and you have to jump back and forth between the two in order to complete each action stage. Thematically, Soul Blazer is also remarkably similar to its forebearer. You are basically a messenger of God who is tasked with descending from the heavens to purify each portion of the world, by exorcising demons and restoring the populace of each town (If you’ve ever played Actraiser, you could easily be fooled into thinking that I’ve just described that game!). Of course, unlike Actraiser, Soul Blazer features a top-down perspective; with core action gameplay that is more reminiscent of Ys, but with the sword swinging combat of 2D Zelda. The combat gameplay feels good, if a bit clunky in places; not that dissimilar from the early Ys games. The town gameplay follows your typical RPG gameplay of talking to townsfolk and solving puzzles/fetch quests etc. While the core gameplay loop is fun, it does become very repetitive very quickly; with not all that much variety found between stages. Actraiser had varied & interesting action stages, with increasing complexity & hazards introduced into the simulation gameplay; however, Soul Blazer ends up feeling a bit one note all throughout. One part of Soul Blazer that stands out though is the surprisingly good localisation! Well beyond the standard that you would expect from 1992; with a script that put the likes of Squaresoft to absolute shame. Good Plan There’s a sense of levity and weirdness that permeates throughout the game too. Despite the gameplay feeling somewhat repetitive, I still found myself enjoying going to each new town and seeing the weird characters and little vignettes that each place offered. Don’t have to put up with your husband’s rambling? That’s every wife’s dream! Overall, you can tell that this game was developed on a smaller budget than Actraiser; clearly reusing its engine and art assets (hilariously, the little 7 year old boy you play as makes the same manly grunting sounds as The Master from Actraiser!). As a result, the gameplay doesn’t feel as fleshed out and polished as its predecessor, but I still enjoyed my time with the game. If you ever get round to playing it? I’d recommend playing it in short bursts to reduce the feeling of repetition. Metroid Zero Mission: Randomiser I was in a Metroid mood and decided to jump straight into the MZM randomiser after Metroid Prime. I’m sure you all know the score by now about how these randomisers work… however, I was not prepared for just how strict the scripting is with this game. Unfortunately, Zero Mission doesn’t play as nicely with randomisation as I was expecting; as scripting still plays out as it does in the vanilla game. As a result, randomisation can make for a frustrating experience, as it becomes very difficult to make progress without resorting to advanced tricks. Particularly, navigation can be infuriating without the Power Grip; which I didn’t get until well into the run. Oh how I wish that was my first item… There’s also a very nasty softlock that can completely ruin your save file if you decide to venture into Chozodia early (which you can do as soon as you get the Power Bombs). Go there without your regular bomb and you cannot leave unless you are lucky enough to find them. Save your game here and aren’t lucky enough to find them? You’re completely stuffed and are left with no choice but to re-roll the seed and start over. Figuratively, this was my experience with the MZM randomiser Overall, this was a harsh lesson that taught me that not every game is well suited to randomisation. Donkey Kong Country: Pacifist Mode This is a dumb mod of Donkey Kong Country where you are not allowed to kill any enemies. If you harm any Kremlings? You get hurt instead! This was surprisingly fun! Considering how the game really encourages you to kill baddies, especially to gain speed? This mod actively encourages you to play in a very different way to your regular garden variety DKC! But wait, I hear you say. How the hell do you get past the bosses? Surely you still have to kill them? Right!? WRONG! Shouldn’t have tried jumping on him, you gnawty monkey! Every boss has been turned into a timed survival challenge, where you simply have to survive for an allotted time; by which, the boss will simply just get fed up and give up. It’s simple and effective. Anyway, it’s dumb, it’s really funny, and it’s a fun way to replay DKC in a bit of a different way. You monster The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Randomiser Me and @Glen-i played through this randomiser masterpiece earlier on this year; and you can get a detailed breakdown of our experience with it in his previous post here. Ocarina of Time makes for a fantastic randomiser game! This randomiser is extremely mature and features a huge bevy of options, married with highly polished logic, dialogue manipulation (Gossip Stones have been repurposed to provide hints to item locations, making the Mask of Truth actually really useful!) and some fantastic QoL additions, including permanent mapping of the Ocarina and the Iron/Hover Boots to the D-Pad (ALA OoT 3D!) as well as fast block pushing & climbing! They even managed to combine vanilla OoT with OoT Master Quest dungeons! It’s a shockingly well made randomiser that completely transforms the way you play the game! All of the various cutscenes & scripting are manipulated in fantastic ways that play into the way that items are randomised; you’ll find yourself purposely finding ways to trigger specific cutscenes in order to get items that are normally associated with them. You will find yourself scrounging for every possible way to break the game that you can think of in order to find more items that allow you to make progress. You’ll laugh and cry as you find yet another single green rupee in a Big Chest! Absolutely amazing experience, loved every moment! Paper Mario: The Origami King Click me to see my review on the main site Shantae & The Seven Sirens Click me to see my review on the main site Advance Wars (Normal & Advance Campaign) I love Advance Wars. You love Advance Wars. We all love Advance Wars. Quite possibly the best GBA game, topped only perhaps by its own sequel, the series’ western debut blew the doors open for turn based strategy fans. No other series quite manages to marry the complexity of a strategy game with such accessibility and charm. This game is pure digital crack, and does for the GBA, what Tetris did for the original Gameboy. The map design is exquisite, the music is outstanding, the gameplay (mostly) well balanced, the strategic gameplay both fast & snappy and oceans deep, the cartoony visuals super charming and the dialogue hilarious and lovable. It’s just such a complete package, and such a ridiculously tremendous leap over Super Famicom Wars (to the point that it literally includes the entirety of SFW’s maps as bonus content!) that I am happy to point to this and its sequel as the definitive GBA experience. Fair statement there Sami It had been a good few years since I last played the game, so I went ahead and completed both the standard AND the Advance campaigns. Oh man… I completely forgot just how much of a crazy difficulty spike the Advance campaign really is! The standard campaign ends up just feeling like an extended tutorial by comparison! Each map becomes an absolute war of attrition, with just the smallest of changes (be it the introduction of Fog of War, or the addition of a few more units on the enemy side); it really is a testament to just how deep the core gameplay is, and how well designed each map is, that such small tweaks (on the surface) can make such an absolutely tremendous difference to the gameplay experience! If you can beat this guy? Consider yourself a tactical genius! It was an absolute joy to go through this game again. Though it is worth mentioning that it does suffer from some balance issues (Max in particular is ridiculously OP in this game!), that would go on to be rectified in the sequel (and perhaps made worse in the insane Everything & Kitchen Sink DS sequel), it is still an utterly superb strategy game. Nintendo. PLEASE bring this series back already! New Super Mario Bros Wii Welcome to the best 2D Mario game ever made! I’ve always maintained that NSMB Wii is the best 2D Mario game and after revisiting it? I stick by that statement. No other Mario game before or since has managed to present such depth, variety, novelty and pacing with its level design as in NSMB Wii. This game proves, more than any other Mario game, that quality level design is king when it comes to making a platform game. This game was designed in response to people’s continued complaints that Nintendo’s games had become too easy; and in response to the lacklustre level design as seen in the original NSMB. Miyamoto and Tezuka returned to the trenches to get stuck into designing the actual levels themselves and it really shows! The pacing is absolutely pitch perfect, no part of this game feels like it drags on; not even the autoscrolling sections! (which is a real feat!). Every single level introduces something new and novel to the series, while steadily building on what you have seen before. And each level encourages equal parts exploration and white knuckle speedrunning. Most importantly though? This game has bite! Welcome to level 1-3! NSMB Wii does not piss about. It is not afraid to kick your arse and it is not afraid to make you sweat! It’s brill! And it’s all thanks to the introduction of the industry changing Super Guide feature; the virtual equivalent of passing the controller to your older brother/sister to get you past “the hard bit” of each level. Assist Modes are commonplace these days, but NSMB Wii was the first to do it! I haven’t even touched upon the sublime 4 player mode, but I have to; even though I did this runthrough in single player. Quite frankly, this game does not get the credit it deserves for being equally as fun in single player as in 4 player multiplayer; the sheer feat they accomplished with the level design to accommodate this, cannot be understated! After playing through NSMB Wii again? Going back to NSMB U feels like a sad joke in comparison. That game’s level design is fucking LIMP in comparison and the game is not even in the same league as its Wii predecessor. The fact that people keep bigging up NSMB U as the superior game (purely because it runs in HD) drives me completely insane! But yeah, rant over, back to NSMB Wii. The gameplay physics are, of course, spot on as you’d expect from a Mario game. But really, I need to bring up something that NSMB Wii introduced in particular; the absolutely amazing mid-air spin move! The sheer amount of gameplay depth this innocuous little move offers is absolutely unreal! On the surface it seems really simple, it effectively just increases your air time, but the way it breaks your fall? Absolutely game changing! And the way that it hijacks a natural implication for novice players to jerk their controller in response to the game? What an absolutely genius addition! It is a massive tool for speedrunners and for just granting an extra level of control while playing. I can’t sing its praises enough! Revisiting the game though? I had forgotten just how cool the boss encounters are in this game! While they still follow the standard, simple formula of Mario bosses, they’re surprisingly novel and interesting; requiring you to think on your feet. Mario bosses are usually nothing special, but the bosses here are a clear step up from the bosses in every other 2D Mario game, and it’s a shame that they never really matched the design of the Koopaling fights here ever again afterwards. Though Mario & Luigi seem more interested in the cake than the Koopalings to be honest This is the best 2D Mario game, and replaying it only solidifies that in my mind. Long live the Penguin Suit! The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Randomiser Here we go again! Another one that me and @Glen-i played through, and another one that we had an absolute riot of a time with! @Glen-i has already provided a play-by-play breakdown of our experience with this seed here, but here’s a breakdown of just a few of my favourite moments from this run… Being stuck without a sword and having no choice but to fight Bokoblins & Wizrobes on platforms by throwing pots at them! Finally getting access into the Wind Temple… and not having any keys needed to get anywhere! Getting the Mirror Shield right near the start of the game, getting excited and soon realising that we couldn’t actually really do anything with it! Putting off going to the Forbidden Woods for as long as possible because we didn’t have a sword… meaning that being caught by morphs would be an instant softlock for us! Finding the Light Arrows… allowing us to delete almost every enemy from existence! Finding all five Tingle Statues before finding any sort of reliable weapon! Probably not worth buying… Given that The Wind Waker is actually an open world game, it makes for an amazing randomiser experience! You are plonked onto a random island in the sea, with naught but a sail, and the entire world is opened up to you from the start (The game basically starts after the point where you have visited Hyrule for the first time). Do whatever it takes to find the 8 pieces of the Triforce and the two Master Sword upgrades (along with other smaller items you need to get to Ganon), and off you go! DEFINITELY worth buying! Just brilliant, brilliant fun! Sadly we had a few technical problems for a while, trying to get it up and running on a real Gamecube; but eventually we figured out a way to (mostly) stop the game from crashing on the ol’ Cube, and had an absolute blast! Conker: Live & Reloaded So I got my fancy shmancy shiny new Xbox Series X. What’s the first thing I do with it? Why, I use it to play old tat of course! I love Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but I had never actually fully played through the Xbox remake before. I knew that lots of things had been changed & altered, and I was never a fan of the remade visuals. So I was apprehensive going in, but also really curious to experience a favourite of mine in a wholly different light. First thing that struck me is that, like the N64 original, the game is a technical masterpiece on the original Xbox. The visuals hold up remarkably well in 4k and I could absolutely believe that it was an Xbox 360 game if I didn’t know better! That being said though? I still don’t feel that the art befits Conker’s BFD at all. I much prefer how the N64 original looks. Half the point of Conker’s BFD was how it was supposed to represent a fairy tale gone bad, juxtaposing the bright, colourful & cartoony visuals with mature content. With the switch to a more realistic style? That juxtaposition is lost; and its just not as funny & charming as the original as a result. You probably already know about the censorship. Yeah, it’s here, and it really sucks. The worst part is that the additional censorship feels completely arbitrary, with seemingly random swear words bleeped out without rhyme or reason. It does end up taking away from the comedy. What’s even worse than that though is the changes made to the subtitles. For some utterly bizarre reason, the developers decided to change the original text boxes (which were timed to match the voice clips) and replace the static speech bubbles with scrolling text; text that runs ahead of the voice clips and spoils the punchline before you hear it. It sounds like a minor thing, but it really does spoil the comedic timing that made the original N64 game such a riot. Not gonna shit you, he’s completely ruined here The gameplay changes also feel really arbitrary and utterly bizarre! For some strange reason, the designers thought it would be a good idea to chuck in a load of these jerks (see below) absolutely everywhere throughout the game! Hi. I’m here for no reason whatsoever Combat was never a focus of Conker’s gameplay outside of boss battles & the It’s War chapter; so quite why these idiots are scattered all around the game now is absolutely beyond me! They end up being really annoying and just slow down the pace of the game (especially since they’re all dispatched in exactly the same boring way and require SIX HITS to kill!). There are also some other minor changes made here and there to the level design; mostly to make things easier (the infamous Worm section with the lighthouse in the main hub now has extensions to the cliff that make them trivial to get around now, for instance). The original game was notorious for being pretty bloody hard, so your opinion of these changes will likely vary. Personally? I thought that the difficulty of the original game was just fine, and the difficulty spikes in service of the comedy; so naturally, I am not overly enthused by these changes really. Other things just feel kinda arbitrary, like the Van Helsing costume in Spooky; which just ends up appearing randomly in a cutscene with no fanfare and then disappearing completely randomly at the end. Or the removal of the Naughty/Nice sign in the opening cutscene; the game just has lots of weird, little changes like that. However, that being said? It does still feel like Conker’s BFD at the end of the day. Everything that was great about the gameplay of the original is still great here; and there’s even a few additions that are welcome, like the anus cam when you play as the bat (yes, really!). Though I don’t feel that many of the changes made to this remake were ultimately for the better, the majority of what made the N64 original so beloved are still intact here. His bollocks are still big and still polished to the Nth degree Overall? I walked away from this remake feeling like it is generally still Conker’s BFD, and that’s a very good thing. It is undoubtedly the inferior version of the game, and I would never choose it over the N64 original, but it’s not a horrible version of the game and it was fun to re-experience the game in a fresh way. Kameo: Elements of Power Like Conker Live & Reloaded, I had played this game before, but never to completion. So here was my chance to rectify this shortfall. Kameo gets off to a fantastic start, with a bombastic opening that has you storming a castle with a huge war going on around you. For 2005? The visuals are stunning, the epic orchestral score sets an exciting tone and the gameplay appears varied & interesting; setting up strong expectations for an exciting Zelda esc action adventure. This feeling does not last long however, as you are soon stripped of your abilities and lumbered with a sluggish start without much gameplay variety going on. The pacing never really recovers from this point onwards unfortunately and the game ends up feeling like a bit of a slog throughout. Kameo sports a lot of promising mechanics. Each Elemental Warrior comes equipped with bespoke mechanics that make each of them feel unique. Some are more combat focused than others, but all of the Elemental Warriors have both combat & puzzle related actions. Likewise, the action adventure gameplay style brings forth images of Pokemon Meets Zelda and conjures all sorts of exciting gameplay possibilities. The Great Deku Tree is sporting a cool new hair doo Sadly the level and enemy design never really brings out the best of the promising gameplay mechanics on offer however. It’s overly linear, features very limited interactivity, lacks in meaningful exploration and feels confused when it does try to be more open. The game is also woefully lacking in enemy variety, with the same set of trolls appearing from start to finish, and the few varieties that do appear never really end up taking full advantage of the full range of Elemental Warriors on offer. The Elemental Warriors themselves also range from useful to awkward in combat; as a result, you will most likely just end up sticking with the same 2 or 3 throughout most of the game’s combat sequences, since the game never really encourages or rewards you for experimentation. There are some great mechanics in place, but the game doesn’t seem to quite know what it wants to be; and doesn’t really know how to make the most of what it has here. This confusion also extends to the game’s overall tone; which seems to want to be deathly serious, while also whimsical & fun. Kameo: Elements of Power suffers from an identity crisis that really reflects its troubled & protracted development cycle; leaving you with shades of a promising game that never ends up coming together. Its confused tone also robs the game of memorable characters, music and set pieces; as everything ends up devolving into a big gelatinous gloop. It’s all very bombastic, but it just lacks substance. Gotta Catch ‘em All! Overall, Kameo ends up being the perennial example of a completely average game. It has exceptional elements, but they never really come together to make a great game because the underlying level, enemy combat and puzzle design is just not strong enough to make proper use of these mechanics. Grabbed by the Ghoulies Now here’s a rare example of a Rare game I had never played before. Of course, its reputation is pretty dire; constantly maligned as The Death of Rare Itself. But just how true is this? Does it really deserve its poor reputation? I’m not gonna waste your time too much here, I actually really enjoyed this game! But now allow me to waste your time with my thoughts on this little gem of a game. Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a hilariously titled classic Beat ‘em Up. Think Streets of Rage meets Luigi’s Mansion and you’re on the right lines. It is a very simple game where you travel from room to room in an entirely linear fashion and beat the snot out of everything you find. The control scheme however is pretty novel; eschewing your typical range of button controlled punches & kicks in favour of a directional auto combat system that is controlled instead with the right analog stick! Your character has a range of punches, kicks, elbows and nad smashing moves that are activated with repeated combos activated by hitting the right stick in the direction of the ghoulie. Sounds terrible on paper, but actually works very well in practice! The core gameplay is simple and approachable; and true, the core combat isn’t exactly what I would consider to be Bayonetta calibre in terms of depth. But that’s not the game’s focus; instead, each room is about crowd control, and the simple controls make it easy to direct your attacks without a complicated targeting system. It’s an elegant solution to a problem that plagued hack n’ slashers of the era. What really sells the combat though is the excellent animation and sound design that makes each impact feel… impactful! Kicking enemies while they’re down and watching them fly across the room never becomes anything less than hilarious, especially when coupled with a hilariously cartoonish scream, brilliantly voiced by drunken Rare staff members. Quite possibly, the best Skeleton Nad Kicking Simulator ever made Now Beat ‘em Ups always tend to universally suffer from a lack of variety in the gameplay. No matter how fun the basic action of wailing on foes might be? It’s not often that a Beat ‘em Up doesn’t run out of steam before the end and doesn’t suffer from inherently repetitive gameplay… Surprisingly, that’s not the case here with Ghoulies! There is an excellent variety of enemies, far more than your typical Beat ‘em Up (More than 20!), but that’s not what allows the game to buck the trend. No, it is the Challenge system that is the real star of the show here! Almost every single room you go into presents you with specific challenges that must be overcome before the door to the next room is opened up for you. These can range from killing all the enemies, to killing only certain enemies, to not getting hit once, to having time limits to complete the room, to having to use certain weapons, and many more. If you’ve ever played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you might be familiar with this concept, as that game had a similar idea with its Judge system (and both games came out within about 6 months of each other to boot! Who copied who I wonder…). Failure to complete a specific challenge will summon The Reaper, who will spawn into the room, chase you down and will kill you instantly with a touch of his finger; so you really don’t want to fall afoul of him! Now, on their own these challenges add some much needed spice to the core gameplay, but they offer so much more when the game starts combining challenges together! Oh, and there’s even more variety to come… … as it turns out, Ghoulies actually features an emergent gameplay system that is more than a little reminiscent of Hitman and Breath of the Wild! Yes, really! It has a surprisingly sophisticated enemy in-fighting system, a fire spreading system, and a variety of power up items and associated status effects that can be spread around and abused to skirt around the various challenge rules! To take one of my favourite examples I came across… One room in particular had me faced with the following challenges… Kill 10 enemies Kill enemies by only using your bare hands Kill enemies by only using weapons Now, no doubt you’ve realised something. This room is impossible to complete. The latter two challenges directly contradict each other, and as such, hitting any enemy in any way will inevitably summon The Grim Reaper. So what can we do here? The answer: Make the enemies accidentally hit each other, have them start in-fighting and have them kill each other for you! Another favourite of mine? A simple challenge where you are tasked with killing just a single mummy, without killing any other Ghoulie in the room. Sounds simple right? But no! Mummies are invincible unless you can set them on fire… but there is no fire in the room and no weapons or anything you can use to set them on fire in this room… All you have are your fists and a bunch of non-fiery weapons. What can you do? The answer? Purposely fail the challenge by killing the Skeleton in the room, summon The Reaper, have The Reaper follow you around the room with his finger pointed out to kill you and have him accidentally touch the Mummy to kill it! And yes, this actually worked! Don’t fear The Reaper if you know what you’re doing This emergent gameplay system keeps the game feeling fresh all the way throughout its running time. A truly Rare feat for a classic Beat ‘em Up! Like you’d also expect from a classic Rare game, it’s also filled with fantastic Grant Kirkhope music and oodles of British humour. From the slapstick enemies to Fiddlesworth’s fiddlerisms (Rub my Radish!), there’s no shortage of subtle innuendos and sniggers to be had throughout your time with the game. The visuals have also aged incredibly well, translating marvellously to a full 1080p/60FPS presentation in the Rare Replay remaster! If there’s anything to ding the game’s presentation for however? It’s the kind budget looking and sorta ropey cutscenes. They’re all presented in el-cheapo comic book fashion with limited animation; but much like with Bayonetta 1&2 (which used a similar trick), the game manages to makes the most of the obviously limited budget with great use of the very limited animations that are afforded to it. Beat em’ Ups were a tough sell in the early 2000s. A relic of a bygone era; and surely the last thing that people were asking from Rare when they made their grand exodus from their former partners at Nintendo. And make no mistake, this is most definitely a classic beat ‘em up; far from the grand adventures that Xbox owners were clamouring for from the studio that brought us Donkey Kong Country and Banjo Kazooie, as is proudly displayed on the box art. Cooper is terrified at the prospect of having to make the jump from Nintendo to Microsoft I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this game. It was a great time all the way through! I even went back and found all of the hidden Bonus Books! It’s a very simple game that makes fantastic use of a small budget and lots of little great ideas. In many ways, it’s the exact opposite of Kameo; while that game had all the budget in the world, it could never manage to rise above mediocrity because it just never managed to make use of what it had. Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a fantastic example of how to make the most of very little, and is easily the best game that Rare ever made following the Microsoft buyout. If it had released on the Gamecube back in the day? It would’ve been much more fondly remembered for what it is, instead of what it isn’t. Phew! That was a LOT to get through! Bloody hell! That was half a Thesis! So that’s 2020 all wrapped up now. I’m now currently playing through NSMB2 (Nearly finished), Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light (About halfway through and am absolutely loving it so far!), Superman 64 (UGH!), Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (UUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!), Hotel Mario (Way better than you think!) and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (AWWWWW YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!!). Hopefully I’ll be able to get out my thoughts on those a bit quicker than I managed with my 2020 games; so keep your eyes out on the 2021 thread! And with that…

In for the inevitable Wolf Link and Ametarasu costumes for your Palamute

So the demo comes out in two days? Gotcha.

YES!!!! FUCK YES!!!!!!!!!!!! About damn time!!! This was LONG overdue! With Microsoft and Sony now kickstarting the Acquisition Endgame, this needed to happen ASAP, before there was any risk of NLG getting bought out. Now. Nintendo. Stop being stupid and buy out Koei-Tecmo before someone else does and you lose another key co-development partner (You don't want another Namco on your hands now, do you?). Probably should buy out Game Freak and Good Feel as well. HAL and IS are probably safe though.

It’s Mindblow Monday! So here’s a fun little nugget of info that will change the way that you view this game’s NPCs forever... That’s right! All of the NPCs in the game are Miis!

That’s actually not a bad time for your first time through! Pretty impressive! I did 101% it as a kid (and it definitely took me way longer than that), but I would never willingly do it again!

Anywho, I need to post my thoughts on what I’ve been playing throughout 2020. Though I have been radio silent all year, I have actually managed to complete some games amazingly enough! Will probably be posting them tomorrow when I’m off work.

Lockdown must really be getting to you if you managed that! You poor, poor soul...

Do want to play this at some point. The standard combat Yakuza games bore me to tears, but the RPG gameplay looks pretty solid here! Will likely end up waiting for it to either come down in price or to hit Gamepass though.

Yup. Doom Eternal and Tetris Effect are the good shit