Format: Gameboy
Release date: 1996
You might have heard of Pokémon. I can’t quite believe that date. 1996!? Holy crap. 21 years ago, apparently, I got well into this strange Japanese game about collecting made-up animals, stuffing them into balls and training them to fight each other. Yeah, the entire notion of Pokémon sounds horrific in this world of PETA and tofu, but as a game concept, it’s utter genius. Enjoyed by my entire generation as kids, we then grew up and got obsessed all over again in Pokémon Go!
But Pokémon Go gets tedious quickly because there isn’t really much meat to the game. The original Red and Blue versions (and consequently every other Pokémon game since then because they all follow the same blueprint), featured a coming of age story about a boy or girl setting out into the world to become the very best, like no one ever was… Red will always be my favourite because Charizard.
I still remember walking into Professor Oak’s lab, and him offering me the 3 starter Pokémon to choose from – Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander. There wasn’t really any choice for me though because Charizard. After choosing my starter, Professor Oak asked if I wanted to give him a nickname. I thought why not, and amusingly called my beloved Charmander FIREMAN, in capital letters and everything. I didn’t realise that this name would actually be used every single time my prized Pokémon was referenced. So whenever I sent him out to battle, it shouted at me, “FIREMAN! I choose you!” And the worst part was it even kept the bloody name after it had evolved into Charmeleon and Charizard. Also, I taught him Cut without fully understanding that he could never unlearn it. So my single greatest Pokémon, the one I have put more effort into training than any other, even to this day, is my awesome but fucking stupidly named Charizard, who knows Cut instead of Fireblast, and is called FIREMAN.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
I’m currently enjoying getting down and dirty with nature. Taming dinosaurs in Ark: Survival evolved is exciting and frustrating in equal measure. Exciting because I’m taming friggin dinosaurs. Frustrating because bigger dinosaurs keep eating them… And when I’m not playing that, I’m exploring the freezing mountains in Rise of the Tomb Raider – seriously, I have never felt so cold playing a videogame. It’s the way Lara hugs herself in the chill wind as the snow clings to her jacket. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve seen in a long time.
Last night I finished Firewatch. It’s a first-person mystery game, being rudely dubbed a ‘walking simulator’ by some of the reviews I’ve seen elsewhere. While it’s true, the game has you fulfilling various tasks in a forest in which you navigate solely by hiking, that description completely ignores the beautifully told story and the reason you are there at all. Having completed it, I want to recommend it to everyone because it’s fantastic. I also would say that the less you know the better, so don’t read the rest of this review, just go and get it.
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
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