Moving day

19 years.  I started this gaming diary 19 years ago, because I wanted to write something. It's fair to say there have been ups and downs in my writing frequency.  It's time for a big change now, though - after a few years of procrastination I'm moving this over to Wordpress.

Blogger has been fine, but there are some limitations that I'm not going to overlook any more.  As I've included more and more screenshots in my posts, the lack of a gallery function has annoyed, and the interaction between my Google account and Blogger files has annoyed me.  It's time for a move.

I won't be updating this blog any more.  See you on the other side.

Metroid Prime Remastered: completed!

The very first time I ever posted to this blog, back in 2005, was to talk about Metroid Prime.  Reading back, my writing skills were a little lacking, with the post being almost entirely descriptive.  It appears that that was my second time of playing the game; the first time I'd got to a "plant boss" which I couldn't defeat, whereas the second time I progressed past this for a couple of hours.  Assuming that the plant boss was Flaahgra, that means that I'd hardly touched the game either time; I'd have managed to explore most of the Chozo Ruins, maybe, but probably barely got to Magmoor Caverns. It's all speculation; I can't remember 19 years ago.

It's all academic now in any case.  About a year ago, Nintendo released an updated version of Metroid Prime for the Switch, and I've been playing through it over the last month.  The game structure itself is identical, but it's had a major graphical revamp and (more importantly) controls have been adjusted.  One thing I did recall about the Gamecube game was the difficulty I had in controlling Samus, not so much in terms of movement but in terms of looking around and finding enemies or points of interest.  The new game allows you to use classic controls, but having tried these against the standard dual stick controls, there's a night and day difference.  I was able to get Samus to do what I wanted, and also look around to see what to do next.

And it was certainly worth looking around.  The original game was known as being good looking on the Gamecube, but this remaster has had a huge amount of effort poured into it which makes the world look astounding.  There's so much detail to see and interact with; at times it seems a shame that the visor obscures your view a little so you lose some of the magnificence.

All the areas you explore are made of small rooms; there are no expansive vistas here.  This is fortunate, given that you need to retrace your steps many times over as you unlock new doors and abilities; somehow they have made the world seem small yet simultaneously very expansive.  This is helped by the variety in the levels - what my son would refer to as biomes - with snow and lava settings giving a diversity to the visuals.

What was interesting was seeing this very modern game with a slightly anachronistic structure.  Defined save points, signposted boss battles, secret pickups and upgrades - after the freedom afforded in Breath of the Wild and other open world games, this seemed quite old fashioned ... yet this was at times to its benefit, with genuine tension arising from exploring the world and trying to find the next save room.

Everything was cleverly designed.  Enemies are varied and require different techniques to defeat (or, as you progress through the game, avoid and run past).  Platforming and traversal, particularly in the morph ball, had a lot of thought put into it, especially the mazes on magnetic rails.  When fighting a boss, I knew there was a way of avoiding attacks - even if I couldn't actually do it consistently.

There are endless clever touches and one-off events.  I particularly liked the room which held a hologram of the solar system.

Looking at this was pretty tense, because each time I scanned something new I thought enemies were about to attack.  Tension was quite thick throughout the game, partially caused by the save system, but also because the enemies - particularly metroids - were generally quite unpredictable.  I'm not a huge fan of scary games, but this just landed on the right side for me.

The scanning mechanic was a bit tiresome.  Having to make sure you scan everything in order to get 100% completion, quickly became unrealistic after I forgot to scan one of the earlier bosses.  That's probably a good thing, as otherwise I imagine I would have become quite obsessed, and a final number of 99% is probably worse than the 91% I ended up with.  I also didn't find all the upgrades.  Going by the HUD at the end, I estimate that there was one energy pack I didn't find, and there must have been quite a few missile and power bomb expansions left unfound.  I am also assuming [and I don't want to know otherwise] that there weren't map stations (to reveal unexplored rooms) in every region, since I only found them in three.

It's taken me 20 years or 19 years or four weeks, depending on your starting point, but I have completed the game.  I didn't have much of an issue with any of the normal enemies, and faltered at only a couple of the bosses.  The omega pirate took a few attempts before I realised that he was recharging his health from time to time.  Meta Ridley just took far too long to kill.  The first time I got to the core of Metroid Prime I had a single energy tank remaining, and died before I worked out how to do any damage.  Otherwise, the difficulty was pitched exactly right to make it challenging but not disheartening.

Now to wait for the remaster of the second game.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD: completed!

At least my thoughts have been consistent.  The top tweet is eleven years after the bottom.

Having bought Twilight Princess alongside my Wii on launch day in December 2006, but then being captivated by other games (and with a general desire to not play the game until Kieron and John were going to do so as well), I didn't get around to actually playing it until 2011, after I finally gave up on my friends' lackadaisical attitude to Zelda gaming.  As I was more active here at the time, you can read several posts about my progress then, where I completed the forest temple, was whisked away to the twilight, had trouble with controlling Wolf Link, met Midna, and scouted for the three parts of the Fused Shadow.  I seemingly got as far as the temple at the bottom of Lake Hylia, including defeating the boss, before giving up.

Giving up? I don't think it was a conscious decision. Instead, Mario Kart 7 was released, I was also playing a Layton game, and other stuff just seemed to grab me instead. I always intended to go back, but I never did.

Skip forward a decade, and I realise that I bought a copy of Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U when it was cheap somewhere, I have no big story game on the go, and I quite fancy crossing this off my list - particularly because I was bought Skyward Sword HD for the Switch for my birthday and I'd like to play that sometime.  So, rather than resurrecting my old save and complaining about being lost, I unwrap the new game and start it.

After a few hours I remember why I lost interest in the early days of my first playthrough. It's just a little dull to start with, meeting people around the village, fishing, running down narrow corridors between areas. There is some interest when children are captured ...

... but the muted (brown, C64-like) colour palette does its best to dissuade this interest. And then you get to the twilight, which (as my tweets above show) I found pretty difficult to progress through.

And yet I did.

I remembered very little about my original playthrough other than chasing monkeys through a forest and the aesthetic.  I suspect that this is largely due to the relatively generic nature of the world; the art direction isn't as recognisable as Breath of the Wild, for example.  It wasn't until I was many hours in that I started to remember my routes through places; but those many hours became more and more exciting as I progressed.  It was clear to me that the story of Midna and the story of Zelda were somehow intertwined, but it wasn't until I met up with the scary-floating-faces crew that things became clear.

Midna is probably the best thing about the game, and having her constant companionship and annoyances throughout the story meant that the end was quite affecting.  Having traversed through Hyrule, back and forth to collect hearts and rupees and equipment and whatnot, there was a definite shift in the endgame once you travel to the skies and then to meet Ganon.  On the way there's a few non-surprises ...

And then once you get to Ganon, it's a pretty standard big boss Zelda game fight, with a few tricks with Midna and Zelda and unexpected but expected changes.  You know you're coming to the final fight when you come across a room full of chests.

Midna doesn't like Ganondorf, by the way.

And then the end of the game.  I think I've mentioned before about the final blow in the Wind Waker, and how no other Zelda game has quite met it - but this came close.  After taunting and attacking and generally making those I cared about suffer, it was nice to make Ganondorf wear a new brooch.

It isn't the best Zelda game.  It's not even the best Zelda game on the Gamecube.  But it is a Zelda game, in the classical form, and the dungeons are well designed, and the characters are (mostly) distinctive and fun, and the puzzles and equipment is intuitive and challenging, and the story is a bit rubbish but you want to see the end of it, and the enemies are enjoyable to fight, and ... it's good.  Overall it went on a little too long, even if the story did take some interesting twists and turns, and the oppressive nature is a huge barrier to enjoyment.  But it's good.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: completed!

It has been a long time since I have written on this blog, and that is largely down to one game - Breath of the Wild.

I completed this last November, after around 160 hours of playing.  I would frequently turn the game on with every intention of heading for the next waypoint, but then get distracted by a side quest as I passed some stables.  I'd notice something odd from the top of a mountain; I'd see an opportunity to fight a few enemies to collect some loot; I'd notice a shooting star in the sky and chase it.

The freedom that game gives you - even allowing you to jump straight to the end boss once you're out of the initial area - is a great strength but also a possible weakness.  I didn't want the game to end, knowing there was so much left to see (I had found 112 of the 120 shrines by the end), and it was only with a significant mental push that I finally went to meet with Ganon.

And even that went wrong.  I hadn't appreciated that journeying to Ganon would involve a long trek through the grounds of Hyrule Castle, and my route took me into a library where I found some recipes that someone in Riverside Stable had asked me for.  So, of course, I had to return there before going back in to the castle.

The interior was a masterpiece of artistic design.  What would a castle look like after being neglected for a hundred years, used as a home for monsters? 

Dark, dingy and claustrophobic.  Even getting outside didn't help, since the drifting ashes in the air and hiding guardians meant the atmosphere remained tense.  I used my gale powers to drift ever higher, and entered the tower from a top window, leading to a nervous descent inside.  I needn't have worried; Ganon had become complacent.

So, if I completed this back in November, why have I not written about it until now?  Partially because I have been playing other things on my commute, but partially because I couldn't find the words to do this game justice.  It has been hailed as one of the greatest games of all time, and I cannot argue with that.  Many people have written far more eloquently than I would be able to, and yet no article has fully captured just how amazing it is.

It's daft to give up a blog like this because of a perception of language inadequacy, though.  So instead I'll sum Breath of the Wild up in a single word, before moving on.

Breathless.

Gravity Rush: completed!

(First drafted 27 February 2017)

It was pretty straightforward from the underground section back to the top; the greatest difficulty I had was interpreting the map of the underground system, with one mission causing real problems until I realised the flower at the North of the map was actually an actual island.

I'd completed many sidequests before this point, and as a result when I got back up there was little to do except progress to the end of the game.  There was an odd bit where I was transported to some sort of virtual world, and then tying up a story where I found out that an old couple had died ...

... but my biggest concern was where all the children from underground had disappeared to.  I was expecting them all to suddenly appear at the end boss and help out, but I won't spoil what actually happened other than to remark how frustrating yet beautiful the last sections of the game were.

Maybe the extended break in the middle of the game did it some good in that I never felt the story was outstaying its welcome - there are a large number of time challenges and so on that I've not completed, but I have no desire to do so.

It does pose me with a conundrum, though.  I would (now) happily pay for this game given the amount of enjoyment I got out of it, but I doubt I would have bought it before playing it - the only reason I did get to play it was that it was given away free.  It seems I will have to work out a better way to discover games that I will like.

Assassin's Creed III: completed!

To be honest, the feeling of being overwhelmed by choice never really left me, and I spent many hours wandering around the American countryside chasing nothing in particular.  After the initial twist in the story, and the urgency created by the village being burnt to the ground, there was no real impetus to hurry through the game - not helped by the fact that your main enemy keeps on cropping up and you keep on having to watch cutscenes where you aren't allowed to kill them.

And then you have to team up with your dad, who's a bad guy, and you know that at some point he's going to die.  You just know it.

So I once again found myself distracted by parts of the game which weren't actually necessary in terms of storyline, but in many cases were more fun.  The sailing being a prime example.

Controlling a ship to chase down pirates or the British was great fun in the main, and even though half the screen was blocked from view by your ship which has a turning circle radius of several hundred miles, it still felt like you were in control.  Yes, it feels like you're battling your ship as well as the enemy, but I imagine it is far more responsive than a real boat.

I also spent some time looking for trinkets, exploring the wilderness, and sneaking around forts.  Not trying to complete any of these in particular, mind, given the lack of achievements and trophies, but rather seeing where they took me.  And after playing for a while they took me to some very strange places indeed.

I started to be followed around by a large spherical mess of polygons.  It blocked my view, shifted itself around the screen from time to time, and was a pain in the arse.  So I quit and restarted from the previous save.

Which then made me into a large spherical mess of polygons.

Restarting again seemed to work fine, until characters and items started to clip through each other - like this horse mounting a second hay wagon.  This was the most amusing bug of all, watching people floating along the top of crowds.

Anyway, we can't mess around for ever.  Returning back to the main story, I followed the path to track down Charles Lee, which led to long battles with the patriot army (helped by my assassin colleagues), and then a chase through a burning ship.  In the end, finally, he got what was coming to him.

It's not as bad a game as some have said.  Connor is certainly less likable than Ezio, but the story had some good turns in the first half the game.  It just feels like it goes on too long, and you miss many opportunities to finish the story because you are taken out of control during the cutscenes - the Connor in the cutscenes was a very different character to the Connor in the rest of the game.

A side story next.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: completed!

Unlike the first game, I have previously completed the 8-bit Sonic 2, although on the Game Gear which made it rather more tricky.  The first boss, for example, rolls balls down a slope in an effort to hit Sonic, and on the Master System you have plenty of time to react, whereas the Game Gear's limited window means balls appear all too suddenly.

On the Mega Drive, there was a clear progression to the second game.  You lost some of the pureness of the platforming, yes, and the spin dash meant that there were fewer momentum-based puzzles, but the variety in stages, brightened colour palette, and more imaginative boss battles meant that Sonic 2 was definitely the better game.  On the Master System, I'm not sure that's the case.

At the time, it probably was.  Sonic's abilities have increased massively, with vehicles, the ability to skip across water, and hidden routes.  The problem is that when revisiting it many years later, a lot of this just seems a bit gimmicky.

It is almost as if the game's coders were more interested in seeing what they could cram in to create set pieces, and hide stuff away, that they forgot to make the main linear route in the game as good as it could have been.

That's not to say it's a bad game; far from it.  There are some objective improvements, like the way that Sonic can recapture at least one ring after being hit, and the controls are a little tightened up - even if only marginally (I had to go back and play Sonics 1 and 2 in quick succession to tell the difference).  Also, like the Mega Drive games, the added variety and colour in stages is welcome, even without the gimmicky bits.

No, it makes no sense to me how Sonic can float in a bubble.

It's a game that sits well in a list of "best Master System games", and maybe near the bottom of a "best platform games ever" list.  But to pretend it's as good as the Mega Drive games is just wrong.

For a start, the best games ever should never have a section in them which can only be accomplished by trial and error - and yet in the last few stages, Sonic 2 expects you to memorise a sequence of directional presses to move you along the correct pipes, which you can only work out by constantly going wrong, since the direction of the entrance and the overall direction of the pipe are not connected.  This led to many deaths (and many lost rings).

Good game, would mostly recommend.

Sonic the Hedgehog: completed!

Do you know what? I'd never actually completed the first Sonic game on the Master System, before now.  I could have sworn I had, but beyond the first few zones I realised that it was uncharted territory; I'm not sure I've ever even beaten the Jungle Zone boss.

Sonic on the Master System is a great game.  It's not as good as the first Mega Drive game, and Sonic's movement is a little floaty and imprecise, but the levels are designed well around the character and movement.  There are some big changes to gameplay, such as the ability to collect rings after you've been hit, and the collision detection seems a little off as well.

The levels are similar, but not identical to the Mega Drive game.  The fist two levels - Green Hill and Bridge - are a bit too samey, but after that the scenery changes, sometimes aping the Mega Drive's levels (with very close similarity to the Labyrinth Zone and the Scrap Brain Zone), and sometimes with a completely separate feel (the Jungle Zone has never been revisited, as far as I'm aware).

The special stages on the Mega Drive were where the hardware was used to maximum effect, and it's here that the Master System is a bit of a let down.  Built around different coloured springs, but with the game moving a little too fast to be able to judge where you're landing, this felt too much like a random mess - more so than the Spring Yard Zone or Casino Night Zone, and even more so than Sonic Spinball.

Some of the bosses seemed overly simplistic, while some were a little more tricky.   The Jungle Zone boss was one of the more tricky ones, but not because of his movements, more the slightly clunky jump that Sonic had from the angled platforms at each end.

 Some of the later stages worked really well, particularly those that forced Sonic to slow down - maybe belying the fact that the Master System wasn't built for Sonic's usual speed.  With a slower tempo, the level design was massively changed with many more rates ad hidden parts, and the jumps made more difficult.  Lightning flashed around the level making Sonic wait for it to clear.  This was, perhaps, my favourite level - the Sky Base Zone had some similarity at times to the Wing Fortress Zone at times.

And it all ended with a pretty disappointing boss fight.  Standing on the far left of the screen, as below, nothing could hit Sonic, meaning he could just wait for the electric barrier to drop and dash over to hit the glass tube.  A few hits later, and he was down.

No, I didn't collect all the chaos emeralds.  Yes, I probably will one day.  Yes, I'm counting this as completed.

Assassin's Creed Bloodlines: completed!

While still bogged down in the quest to avoid quests in ACIII, and with a newly-charged Vita downloading games I had purchased on the webstore and forgotten about, I came across Assassin's Creed Bloodlines, a PSP game I bought for about £2 in a sale a while ago.  Set between the original AC and ACII, it got middling reviews at the time of release, and I can understand why - on first impressions, it's trying to be a fully-fledged AC game, and releasing alongside the amazing ACII won't have done it any favours.

But step back from it for a bit and you realise that it's actually far better than it appears.  Gone are the open, sprawling maps, replaced with small, discrete areas.  Gone are the countless distractions, and the missions are a lot shorter (albeit often with multiple parts).  Unlike the original game, Bloodlines is far more linear, not requiring multiple side missions before approaching the main target.  This is a game designed for mobile playing, where there is no requirement for you to remember your objectives for hours on end.  It may be driven by the limitations of the hardware, but the result works really well.

That's not to say there aren't frustrations.  The combat is a bit clunky, especially going straight from ACIII, and the camera frequently served to frustrate this by hiding the person attacking.  It is very easy to win the fights, simply by holding the right trigger (the block button) and countering, with a few exceptions of boss battles.  The combat serves only as an annoyance, and I was frequently trying my best to avoid it by sneaking around the scenery.  This didn't always work, particularly when I accidentally jumped off a ledge onto a guard's head - and there's no air assassination here.

What was more annoying was when there was no alternative but to fight.  After each boss battle, he area was swamped with soldiers who would attack before I could run away.  In addition, there were often soldiers standing guard outside the entrance to key rooms, and without the distraction tools available in later games I just had to massacre them.

I may be going a little overboard though.  The combat was a minor annoyance, and the game anything but.  There was a reasonably involved story, with Altaïr searching for the Templar archive where they keep lots of exciting mystery stuff.  He tracks it down to Cyprus, which is where the game is set.  Throughout the game, Maria (who has a very modern middle-class English accent) is slowly won over to the Assassins, as she sees what the Templars plan.  There's enough tension to keep playing.

But it's not a long game. It's taken me a couple of weeks of commuting to finish it, and that includes a lot of unnecessary battles and diversions.  Easily worth £2 though.

Assassin's Creed Revelations: completed!

I actually completed this a while ago, but it's taken me ages to get around to writing about it - and getting the screenshots off my capture box.  Plus, you know, there were some after-game parts I wanted to get around to, including an achievement for catching the taxman which occurs once in a blue moon.  I may write about those separately.

The main game first, then.  The storyline, pulling together the missing parts of Altäir's life with the later years of Ezio, was probably the most coherent yet, although the modern-day parts, with Desmond in some sort of coma, were less successful.  The story missions seemed more varied and tighter than in previous games, but the amount of extraneous guff seemed too high - the tower defence games and constant need to send assassins to the Mediterranean were not optional enough and felt entirely superfluous.

The city of Constantinople wasn't as interesting as Rome, partially due to a lack of countryside and ancient ruins.  There was possibly more variety in buildings, but I found myself constantly having the refer to the map to work out where I was, whereas navigating Brotherhood's city was second nature by the time I finished the game.  The poor draw distance from viewpoints didn't help.

Having said that, the game on the ground is stunning to look at, and I enjoyed the parkour more than before, largely due to the hookblade which allows you to make large jumps with little fear of damage. I noticed I played the game slightly differently as well - making more use of the hiding places and running from enemies, rather than simply engaging in the fight until they were all dead.

The one weak point in the story was the involvement of Sofia Sartor, who came across as naïve and hopeless at several points throughout the game.  Her kidnapping was a cliche too far.  It wasn't made clear why she was so interested in Ezio's books, and the limited involvement the two of them had didn't establish any sort of relationship.  Ezio continued to ignore her and hide away throughout, which makes the idea that there would have been any sort of romance extremely unlikely.

But she helped him find random books, so that's alright.

The end credits went on for hours, over a dull background of the destroyed animus hub.  Which was then rebuilt, so you could continue to play and find stuff.

Which I did.