A couple of completions, but mostly a return to various games I’ve played hundreds of hours of before.
Games completed this month
Sonic Origins Plus – Nintendo Switch
Finished the campaign mode, excellent fun, and a really good way to play these games. I might go and play some of the extra games, but it is still a shame that the included bonus games are all Game Gear versions, when there are much better Master System versions of some of them which would have been more playable.
Tetris Forever – SteamDeck
I’ve fallen down a Tetris hole recently, as you’ll see from some of the other stuff I’ve been playing. This collection is from Digital Eclipse, the same people who brought us the Atari 50 Collection and Llamaoft: The Jeff Minter Story releases. This follows a similar setup, lots of documentary footage and various media accompanying a fairly comprehensive collection of games. You can just dip into any game, but like those other releases, the best way to play it is following the curated timeline. This way it flows like an interactive documentary, where you can sample the games as they are appearing in the history. I very much enjoyed doing that again with this one, but I think I’ll still be dropping in to play the new Tetris Time Warp game too.
Games played during April
Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Edition – PS5
I’m not playing quite so often now, but have made a bit more progress. I stumbled across the “Explorer Rune” which I didn’t know about before. Basically uncovers the full map when you hit a certain percentage of exploration in a zone. Speeds things up a bit!
Zool Redimensioned – PS5
Haven’t spent a lot of time with this, but I did fire it up and clear the first three worlds. It’s not amazing but I do like how fast it plays and I did always think Zool was a cool character, even if his games weren’t the best.
Mario Kart World – Switch 2
This has found a new lease of life now I’ve finally started playing the Knockout mode. The game as a whole is still a disappointment for various reasons, but playing the online Knockout is some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a Mario Kart game so all is (mostly) forgiven. At least the system also has Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to make up for the shortcomings.
The Quarry – PS5
We continue to make slow progress with this, it’s a good game just have to be in the mood for it. Also we can only play at night, obviously.
Tetris 99 – Switch 2
Of course I’ve been playing Tetris again so this has been taking my life over once more. Still haven’t managed the elusive Tetris Royale, my best remains placing 2nd a couple of times. Sadly I doubt I’m likely to manage it now as the people still playing it are pretty good!
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 – PS5
Continued the Tetris run with this, realised I had barely touched the campaign so I have been back on that. Sadly I might have hit a wall about 60% in, as I still suck at Puyo Puyo and I’m stuck on a challenging versus battle against the CPU. I may persist.
April Pickups
Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster – Nintendo Switch
Picked this up as my next JRPG to play, mostly because people keep banging on about it so I figured I should at least see what the fuss was about. It did annoy me immediately though, as there is no Switch 2 edition physical, and no way to upgrade the Switch 1 game to Switch 2. Knowing I’d want to trade it in when I finish (or bounce off) the games, I needed the physical release, so I’ve got the slightly poorer quality Switch 1 version to play on my Switch 2. I can’t imagine it makes much difference, but still annoying.
Puzzle Bobble / Bust-a-Move 2X & 3 S-Tribute – Switch 2
Awful title aside, this is a great retro release. Containing the Saturn versions of Puzzle Bobble 2 and 3, and was on sale for ยฃ5. Yes of course I’ve played these games to death, have them on my Saturn and the arcade versions on my cab. However, both those things are in storage and I wanted to play.
*There are no links to Amazon in this post and probably won’t be going forward. When I can be bothered I’m going to remove the old ones and burn my affiliates account.