Pokémon X: breezing through the gyms

Still playing this, but I feel my pokémon may be too powered up now since I've taken the last two gyms with one-hit-kills, and I struggle to capture any wild pokémon without making them faint.  I may need to try to rush through the story a bit.

I have settled on a great team though:

• Delphox, now level 54, with fire moves
• Blastoise, level 51, with surf and strength
• Pidgeot, level 51, a variety of flying and dragon moves
• Pikachu, level 50, electrified up
• Amaura, level 48, with ice and fighting moves
• Lucario, level 46, with ghost and fighting

I've grown a bit too attached to them all, which doesn't bode well for finding legendaries ...

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: a great witch arises

You know, this game was keeping my attention, but unfortunately Pokémon X intervened and took up the cartridge slot in the 3DS - and, of course, there was the perennial issue with the 3DS of picross games.  With the launch of the new Phoenix Wright game on the eShop, however, I thought I ought to go back to the Layton crossover and try to finish it.

When I last played, I had just defended Espella in court and she had been subsequently accused of not being just a witch, but the great witch.  And so I went off to examine the town for clues, solving puzzles along the way.  I searched for, and found, a cat, running into the High Inquisitor along the way.  Layton was summoned to the storyteller.  Wright went to see Espella, and then to the scene of a murder three months previous.

The storyteller appeared flummoxed on how Layton and Luke had appeared in the town; he hadn't written them into the story.  He was keen to write them out, though.

He hinted that he was going to kill Wright, so Layton sped over to the alchemist's house, where the murder had taken place.  It wasn't Wright that was cursed though; Layton has been turned into a golden statue.

Statue?  No, it's Layton.

So, off to court now to prove that Maya - the only one in the room with Wright when the witches appeared and cast the curse - isn't a witch herself.

Pokémon X: I may have the Rumble Badge

There was a bit of mucking about in Shalour City, running back and forth to the Tower of Mastery and the gym.  I was anticipating a long slog up the tower, similar to the ghost towers of other games, but after winning the gym badge and being told to go back up the tower, in fact it was a simple slope to the top.  There I was given a Lucario with mega evolution.  Mega evolution seems to make your pokémon change colour a bit and become stupidly overpowered.

Lucario in hand, I left the city and started to travel East, but in real life I got off the train and some time over night my 3DS ran out of battery.   I can't remember when I saved.  I hope I don't have to repeat the gym, although beating the fighting trainers only required one of my pokémon - Vivillon, who could one-hit-kill with a Psybeam.

Pokémon X: lost in Reflection Cave

I've not written about Pokémon X before, and yet have fifteen hours logged to it.  Partially that's because I've been rather lazy with my gaming diary, and partially that's because Nintendo have prevented you from posting screenshots to Miiverse, which in turn means I can't post them here.

Anyway.  I don't have a great record with pokémon games.  I have played Yellow, Sapphire, LeafGreen, Pearl, Black, and now X.  I have never completed one; I have reached the Elite Four on the first four games listed, and on Pearl I managed to beat them - only to get defeated by a champion and sent back to the beginning.

Yet I keep getting drawn back in.  Maybe it's that I love the beginning game - exploring the map, catching pokémon and filling up the pokédex.  The gyms to start with are generally easy, and the main problem you can have is being too powerful, with a team who just KO any rare wild pokémon instead of letting you catch them.

And so it has been the case with Pokémon X, except the game seems to be progressing a lot slower than previous iterations.  I have played for 15 hours, and have only cleared two gyms.  The journeys between gyms are not only longer - multiple long routes each time - but also contain more sidequests and distractions.  It feels a bit Assassins-Creed-ish.  I am trying to ignore anything not important, outside of the usual pokémon collecting and levelling, but I fear that I may end up with an underpowered team.  We shall see.

I've just arrived in Shalour City, where I believe there is a new gym.  People are talking of a strange tower, though, so I suspect I may investigate that first ...

Pokémon Picross: you are not allowed to have too much fun

I am nearly done with Picross e3, which will mean a purchase of Picross e4 in the near future.  In the meantime, though, I was pointed the way of Pokémon Picross, a free-to-play 3DS game which uses the same mechanics as the e* games but with puzzle solutions based around Pokémon.  Obviously.

It's not quite the same.  The backend is the most different - rather than just selecting from a menu, there's a sort of story attached, where you have to travel from area to area, solving the puzzles and collecting picrites.  You get a certain number of picrites for solving puzzles, but also for meeting various conditions - enabling certain powerups, meeting the time limit, and so on.

Powerups are another difference.  You can equip a certain number of pokémon, who will then give you things like a random row reveal, freezing time, or showing you where moves exist - like in the e* games, with blue colours.  To be honest, I don't really use these - except you are forced to do so in order to get the maximum number of picrites.  It would make more sense if you got more for not using powerups ...

But maybe not from a financial point of view.  Your powerups can only be used a certain number of times before needing to be recharged - basically, they're out of action for an hour or so.  You can always pay picrites to recharge them quicker.  You have to pay a certain number of picrites to access the next area, but there aren't enough in the puzzles themselves so you have to do the daily challenges - earning a few each day.  Or you can just buy picrites for real money,

So everything seems to be geared up to get you to spend picrites.  It feels like you're constantly being badgered to give the game more money, or wait for another day or another week before you're allowed to have any more fun.  Have lots of fun!  But only a certain amount each day!

The odd thing is that there's an option to buy a bundle of picrites which are unlimited, which would effectively make the game a standard pay-for title.  But I resent paying for that, and instead am chipping away at the daily challenges in order to open Area 4.  I think it may be because even when using a virtual currency, buying things in-game always stresses me, so I don't like the backend structure of a game that's based around that.

Finally, an exercise for the reader.  I had trouble with this - where is the valid move?  It took me 20 minutes to find it, but there is indeed a definite place to go.

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: off to a land of magic

I found it difficult to understand, when I first heard about this crossover game, how they would meld together the long-form deduction of the Phoenix Wright games with the staccato unrelated puzzle form of the Layton games.  I needn't have worried, since the development team evidently didn't either - they have, instead, divided the game into chapters, and so far these run alternately between the two game styles.

The overall story is quite fantastical, which fits to an extent with the Layton games but is a departure from the Wright stories (even taking into account spirit medium visions and so on).  It starts off quite normally, in London, with some nice tie backs to previous games in both series.

However, both sets of characters have now been transported to a town which appears to have its fate decided by a storyteller.  Phoenix and Maya appear to be bakers, but they have taken on the job of defending a character in the courts anyway.

The court cases seem a little weaker and less humorous than the Wright games; the puzzles and overworld exploration are less detailed than the Layton games.  Indeed, it feels at times that the game is relying on drawing from past references a little too much.

And that's a problem, because this is a clear example where a game can work as a marketing tool, trying to sell the Wright game format to the millions who have only played Layton on their DSs.  More interesting cases and obvious links to the puzzles would have done that.

Maybe it'll improve.  I've only just finished the first legal case in Labyrinthia, which ended with a gory execution by fire.  I shall have to hope it keeps my attention.

Alleyway: completed

I remember always wanting to buy Alleyway, as it had an exciting cover evoking memories of Super Breakout, but at the time I didn't have a Game Boy.  By the time I got a handheld of my own (excluding my Mum's Game Gear, that would be the Game Boy Colour I bought on launch day from WH Smith in Bristol, just before I caught the coach back to London for the weekend) Alleyway was old news, a relic from a simpler time.

Simple it is.  I finally got a copy for free through the Club Nintendo stars catalogue last month, and I've been playing through it since.  Being able to suspend and resume play is a luxury that the original didn't have, but even with that it's disturbing how easy it is.

I did appreciate the way that levels were varied, with static levels followed by the same levels with progressing blocks, and the same levels with blocks scrolling across the screen.  I found the powerups to be pleasantly understated and useful.  I liked the bonus levels that popped up where the blocks didn't stop your bat and you just had to clear them in the time limit.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that on my first playthrough of the game, I completed it with seven lives left.  I'd have been a bit annoyed about that if I had bought it for £30 back when it first came out.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D: completed!

It's a while since I wrote about this, but I have continued to play it regularly.  Back in June I had finished three of the four temples, and had one more to go.  But before I did that, I wanted to try and do some of the sidequests, since my Bombers' Notebook was full of rumours and half-complete quests.  That's what I've been doing for the past two months.

I've reformed frog choirs.  I've cleansed souls.  I've freed postmen from their duties.  I've found bits of fairies and forged swords.  I've cleared out dungeons and helped facilitate arranged marriages.  And I've tried, as best I can, to make everyone happy.  I had to use an online guide for a few bits and pieces - particularly the long marriage back-and-forth - but I wanted to clear as much as I could because I'm unlikely to replay the game.

It's difficult to be happy when you have a huge moon over your head, threatening to kill you in three days. In the end, I had completed most of the sidequests and moved to the last dungeon.  It wasn't nice.

This bit, in particular, was annoying.  You had to charge up a mirror, then run into its beam of light and charge up another mirror using the shield, and then run into that new beam of light and shine it into the door.  Not easy on a moving train, where motion control makes the beam wiggle everywhere.

The end boss was difficult but fun.  Putting on the giant's mask, it was just a case of jumping out of the way of a flying centipede and thumping it over and over.  Last dungeon done, all giants freed, and off to confront the Skull Kid.

He went up to the moon.

I wasn't expecting the moon to be so lush and verdant.  This seemed to be a bit of a dream, meeting children dressed in boss masks, who played hide and seek sending me into little dungeons and puzzles.  They took all my masks from me.  In the end I found a child wearing Majora's mask sitting under the tree, who gave me the Fierce Deity mask and started the boss battle.

And that was really, really easy.  I can see how it could be difficult normally, but wearing the Fierce Deity mask made me effectively invulnerable and able to hit the mask's various forms without having the sneak around everywhere.

Mask defeated, evil vanquished, moon then disintegrates and I worry that I have chaos on the world with no tides and unbalanced gravity.  Evidently not; the part starts and I leave, galloping through the forest.

Luigi wasn't happy.

Not just completed, but 100% completed with everything seen and everything done.  A superb game.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D: getting used to the time sickness

Hello again!

I have been playing things, you know.  I've been playing a bit of Heavy Rain, and some Cities Skylines.  I've completed Peggle Blast again, and played a few levels of Two Dots.  I've made a little progress in a second story of 80 Days, and caught a few big ones in Sega Bass Fishing.

But most of all I've been playing Majora's Mask.

I said I'd write more when I'd worked out how the game works.  I sort of have, although there are still things that I don't know how to do.  On the first day, a little boy or girl wearing a fox mask runs to the postbox, and I haven't worked out how to talk to them. Postboxes are a mystery too.  Is there a reasons for the workmen in the town square?

But outside Clock Town it's a little more straightforward.  The game seems to be neatly divided into a core story (make it through the dungeons and gather the giants to stop the moon) and side quests (make others happy and gather information).  There are some of the latter which change into the former - such as finding Epona which allows you to access the ocean - but otherwise it's clear what is optional.

Not that it really matters.  I've been trying to do everything, following the hints in the notebook to find where I can get all the optional masks and heart pieces.  I've fished, I've thrown bombs at targets, I've taken photographs, and I've jumped around islands.

The game is magnificent, and the amount of detail crammed into the cartridge is astounding.  Look at the Gamecube in the background!
 

I've just completed the temple in the sea, and the giants have told me there is one more.  Before I go off there, though, I've got a frog choir to find.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D

I've started this, and got through the first three-day cycle.  I will write more when I have worked out how the game works better, but for now let's just say it's excellent.

Another World: completed!

I continued to play this on the 3DS for convenience.  I was quite close to the end, it seems - after fighting my way past a group of guards, assisted by releasing animals that attacked them, I was escorted to a big tank thing which was then repeatedly attacked, and I had to prod at various buttons to fire my escape pod into a public bath. 

I then ran away from the shooters, following my friend, before falling down a hole and being saved by an enemy.  Why he didn't let me drop I have no idea.  He kicked me over and was about to kill me when buddy intervened, leading to a big fist fight.  I crawled over to the control panel ... very slowly ... then killed the baddie as he walked towards me.

I teleported up through the ceiling, and was initially worried by the big bird thing until I realised it was the way out.

Hooray!

Another World: trial and error

As a game, it's aged.  The controls are a little rigid, with fixed jump lengths and the same button used for shooting and running.  The updated graphics, in cut scenes especially, look a bit flat and lifeless.  The difficulty level means that you are never far from a death, often from something you couldn't see coming.  I've no idea if the original game had chapter saves, but if it didn't it would have been almost impossible.

But it's a fantastic experience.  the story has really pulled me in, despite the lack of words and signposts.  Transported to a new world, captured and thrown in jail, then after escaping and making a friend, constantly hunted down.  I want to make it to the end to see whether I can escape, but some sections are proving pretty difficult.

It took me ages to work out that I had to shoot this rock to give myself a path back up.  It took me even longer to realise that I had to make it through the screens to the right of this one, past the falling rocks, in order to  shoot out a wall which then stopped the level flooding in the wrong place.  There was nothing indicating what you have to do, more an immediate death if you did it wrong.

Actually, there was one thing indicating the correct direction.  The game has hidden checkpoints you trigger if you do something in the wrong order.  If you die and start in a different place to the last 300 attempts, you know you've made progress.

There are some minor visual clues as well.  After fighting past a couple of guards I found this room.

 I'd previously been killed multiple times by a guard in a room with these lights hanging from the ceiling.  The shadow at the bottom of these balls moves across and stops directly under the big one, which you can shoot.  Do it right, and you hear something cry out ... and then later you find this.

I have no idea how far I am through the game now.  I've been swimming in an area I think I flooded earlier, and have helped my alien friend get through a corridor - but he's disappeared again.  There was a room at the end of a corridor which was instant death every time I entered it, but when swimming I found a power line and I hope that's done something about that.  We shall see.

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: completed!

How remiss of me; I don't seem to have posted about this as yet ...

This has been lodged in my 3DS for a couple of months now, and I've been working my way through it bit by bit.  In a way I'm glad this is the last of the traditional Layton games, since towards the end I was getting rather bored, finding the shoehorning of puzzles to random conversations a little too tenuous, and dreading having to backtrack over everything just to collect the puzzles.  In fact, I went to explore the world a bit before going to the final location, and then as I set off there I was told that more puzzles had arrived and I had to do it all over again.  Annoying.

Another case of doing things all over again arose a few times from the battery running out on my 3DS.  I wasn't saving the game that often, instead just closing the lid on the 3DS at the end of my commute and opening it the next time I got on a train.  Battery death meant I had to repeat a large part of the jungle section, and also a number of the mini games.

So, anyway.  The story was fantastical, as always, which sits at odds from the pretend real-world setting.  Once the game opened up options of where to go, and I left London, I was concerned that it may be just a little too big - though that wasn't an issue in the end, with most of the other places having a limited number of scenes.  Flying around in an airship certainly makes a change from trudging through endless screens of red dots.

Towards the end of the story, however, I found myself getting much more engaged.  Uncovering the phoenix was possibly the turning point, but discovering the true identities of Hershal and Descole cemented this as a clever tale.  The enemy from the last few games became someone I cared about.

And after this twist, I was gripped until I finished the story.

It still dragged on, though.  I wanted to solve the puzzles that would get me to the end, but at the same time I had a compulsion to go and examine everything in the world to see if there was anything hidden.  I got to the point of no return a few times and each time I was unsure whether to proceed.

Once I did, there was a fair bit of the story to complete, including a classic game where i had to take the last coin.  Always go second.

None of the final puzzles caused me problems, and after I completed the game I had five puzzles missing from the index, which I looked up on a guide to see where they were located.  Completion Stage 1.

The mini games in this were a bit hit and miss.  The dressing up one was largely pointless until you finished the game, since you needed to collect items of clothing throughout.  The squirrel one was OK but a bit dull.  The blooming gardens one was tricky and unrewarding - I felt like I was getting to the end either by luck or brute force.

Still those were done to reach Completion Stage 2.  They opened up the challenges - fifteen harder puzzles.  I finished those, leading to Completion Stage 3.  And now all I have left are the daily puzzles, which are still being released bit by bit.  I've done about 150 of those, I think - again, I'd have done more if my battery hadn't died more than once.

999: completed!

It was the good ending - I had managed to fulfil all the requirements through the story (more by luck than judgement, I fear), so I found out about the experiments of the past, the identity of Zero, the way that bracelets worked, and the truth behind the multiple doors marked with a 9.  If you're going to play this yourself, don't read any further.

999: fourth time through

Each time I've played the game, I've chosen a different route, and have now completed three games in which Junpei was killed.  The first, he was stabbed in the back.  The second, he discovered a note in a safe which meant that he discovered the true identity of Ace, was told that Zero had lost the game, and then was knocked out by a gas grenade - I suspect he was killed after that.  The third, he discovered a submarine, then found everyone else dead before being killed himself.  Each time I've learnt more about my compatriots, the the extent that now, on my fourth playthrough, where I seem to have chosen some good doors to go through, I can piece together exactly what happened nine years ago and who everyone is.  I think I'm close to the end of the game, and the amount of extra material I've had to go through on this playthrough indicates this might be the good ending.  I hope so - I'm not sure I can face another playthrough.

999: it's like a novel

I've reached the end of the story, but I've not reached the end of the game.  Let's rewind a bit.

999 (with a full subtitle of 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors) is an adventure game, with the core gameplay being based around exploration and puzzle solving to escape rooms.  However, there's not a huge amount of exploration available to the player - instead, the main character (Junpei) explores the ship along with his new-found acquaintances, and the player is informed of this through reams of text.  At times, this is almost like a non-interactive version of an interactive novel ... a novel, then.

What surprised me was how well the text is written.  It could pass for a professional story, with appropriate descriptive language and varied vocabulary.  There are a few occasions where the wording felt slightly off, but each character had their own voice and mannerisms, which led to an accomplished narration.  It's sad that this should be a surprise, but there are precious few games with as much attention paid to their script.

So, having reached the end of the story, I've completed the game, surely?  No.  One of the limited interactive elements of the game is the choice of which doors to go through at three key points in the game.  I ended the last game with Junpei being stabbed in the back, and have since restarted.  Annoyingly, while I can skip through the text, I still need to solve the puzzles again in areas that I've been through before.  But each playthrough should give more information about the characters, and I understand there are six potential endings.  I'm not sure I'll collect them all, but the game is significantly quicker to play the second time around, so I'll see what else I find.

Picross e2: ah, that's what it is

There's far too much I want to write about, but I have very little time in which to do so.

I want to post about From Dust, which I played the demo of years ago and loved, and then a couple of nights ago I played the full game after buying it in a sale and found it rather pedestrian (though I didn't play it for long enough, I suspect).

I want to post about Super Mario Bros Deluxe, which I got free for registering a NNID on the 3DS.  I can't believe I fully completed this on the GBC; the viewing distance is awful and requires many leaps of faith.

I want to post about Frobisher Says, which is an amazing Wario Ware type game on the PSV Vita.  I will post about that one day.

I want to post about Everybody's Golf, which has been consuming my commutes.

I want to post about Ecolibrium, which is similar to Little Deviants in that it doesn't allow you to play a portable system while travelling.  About ten minutes into the game, it requires you to turn the console around 180° to look behind you.  When sitting on the train, that's not happening.  I've not turned it on since.

I could take some time on my commute to post about these, of course, but unfortunately I realised I've not completed Picross e2 yet, and so am working on that.  Some of the resulting pictures are pretty tenuous, to say the least.  I manage to complete around five puzzles a day, so it probably won't last me that long ... but then there's Picross e3 ...

Edge: clunky rolling

Edge is a game that really benefits from physical controls.  I tried it on a friend's iPhone and found that it was tricky to control, and I felt I was always fighting against the game to get the block where I wanted it to go.  On top of the control issues, it felt clunky and unresponsive.  It wasn't fun.

With a proper control stick, though, it's a joy.  It still feels clunky, but with the veil of control issues stripped away it's clear that this is a design decision, with the cube having its own momentum issues as it rolls from one side to another.  It takes time to move the cube, and you have to consider this when playing.

I bought this initially for the Wii U, but because it was cheap at the time I have bought it again for the 3DS, since it's not the most taxing of games (although I have noticed a few framerate problems on the handheld).  I'm far more likely to make progress on the 3DS; each of the levels may only take a few minutes to complete, but it looks as if there are over a hundred of them, and I think later levels may get much larger.

The game relies more on spatial puzzle solving than reflexes and speed, which suits me well.  However, there are occasions where you need to be quick and accurate - one section in particular in an early level sees you traversing a section full of collapsing tiles, and you need to follow the exact path in order to not paint yourself into a corner.  That relies on precise movements and timing - and took me several attempts even using proper controls.  The below level had a conveyor belt section in it, with tiles disappearing from the back and moving to the front - again requiring precision.

I suspect some of the later levels might get tricky - some of the last levels I played (around level 25) were getting difficult, with a need to balance the cube on the edge of a moving block - but it's a solid game which was a bargain at under £2 for each format.

If the game had been £5 for both in the first place, I'd have paid that immediately.  It makes no sense to have to buy things twice, once on the Wii U and once on the 3DS.  A conversion fee, maybe - charge an extra £1 to have it on one format if you have it on the other.  It's one of my main complaints about the Virtual Console service; I'd have spent a huge amount in there if I could have the games both on the Wii U and the 3DS.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: Turnabout Reclaimed: completed!

Let's just deconstruct that headline.  I've completed the game!  The game in question is the additional case for the 3DS Phoenix Wright game; this additional downloadable case was called 'Turnabout Reclaimed'.  It involved two court cases, in fact, first defending an orca from a murder charge, and then defending her trainer.  In that second court case, I called the orca as a witness.

Yes, an orca.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: completed!

There's not too much I can say about case 5 without spoiling it completely, but there were some pretty large twists which helped segue case 4 into case 5 and then turn case 5 on its head halfway through.  Really well scripted and thought out, though the quality of the translation dropped a few times.  That being said, there were some excellent lines and situations.

And I didn't get a screenshot, but Athena's line of "The court will note that this is different from the selective hearing men are so good at!" made me laugh a lot.  I particularly enjoyed the references to older games in the series, such as the ladder and stepladder specification.

But now it's over, and there'll be a wait for the next game.

Or not, because there's a brand new case available on the eShop! Huzzah!