The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

Freedom isn’t a very common feature in games, not really. You may get told that a game has a map the size of Idaho and you have the freedom to wander over it and get up to all manner of shenanigans, but really you’ll find there are invisible and not so invisible barriers stopping you along the way. Either so you follow a story, or to avoid you dying in a stupidly hard bit right at the beginning or because allowing for every permutation of player behaviour is bloody hard.

Look at poor old Horizon Zero Dawn. Released the same week as Breath Of The Wild it featured a gorgeous game world, a compelling story and robot dinosaurs, and yet it was ruined because of Zelda. I played a bit of Horizon, then Zelda, then back to Horizon. Sadly, on return I just got frustrated. Aloy had limitations that Link didn’t. She couldn’t step over waist high boulders, she had to take the long way round, she lacked freedom.

At any other time, Horizon would have been a favourite game of mine, a glorious, polished AAA game, but Breath Of The Wild shone uncomfortable light on its restrictions and made me long for Aloy to have learned from Link.

In Breath Of The Wild you ‘have’ to do three things. Activate the tower on the Great Plateau, get your runes & paraglider, and beat Ganon. Everything else is optional.

There are plenty of things that will help make the game easier, or distract you, or make you smile, or grin, or yelp with delight. There are things that will make you gnash your teeth, run away, turn the console off and take deep breaths. There are plenty of things across a huge map that may be of comparable size to an American state.

But Breath Of The Wild doesn’t really care if you do them or not.

There’s few icons on the available map unless you want to pepper it with markers. It will fill in names of locations you visit and you’ll get fast travel points if you want to, but there are no clusters of icons showing different types of diversions. I played Mad Max after Breath Of The Wild, seeing its map fill up with missions and races and things just made me feep weary, not keen to explore.

In Breath Of The Wild you find things by going to look for things. You might not know what you’ll find, but you can be sure you’ll find something. There are routes, there are quests, there are signs to help you find stuff, but if you want to, you can ignore everything and just wander through nature.

Freedom comes with consequences of course. In the real world I have a pretty large degree of freedom, however it’s often in my best interest to stay within some guidelines. I could spend all of my money on Lego, not go to work and break the law. But I’d soon find myself without somewhere to live, massively in debt, quite hungry and eventually locked up. I could exercise free speech by being a twat to everyone, but then there’s a decent chance of becoming a social pariah or getting punched in the face.

In Breath Of The Wild, you could just run straight to Ganon after getting off the Great Plateau, but you’ll face the consequences of it being pretty difficult. Speed runners have been doing it and doing it well, but I’m much less skilled than them. So I exercised my freedom in the game to go and do almost everything else before heading to beat Ganon. The effect is much like every other game that funnels you through missions to power you up until you can take on the final challenge, except this time it was absolutely my choice as to how much I did or didn’t do. Although a consequence of this was finding the final battle to be ridiculously easy.

Additionally to this freedom of choice, Breath Of The Wild offers freedom of movement. Games have been progressing through the stage of “you see that mountain? You can go there” for some time now, but with Breath Of The Wild, they’ve stripped away the barriers between the player and getting there.

Link can climb on almost any surface, the places he can’t climb are so infrequent that you could say any surface and be mathematically correct within a fantastic degree of accuracy. This means if there’s something in the distance you like the look of, you can pretty much go in a straight line to see it.

It might not seem much, but it’s transformative. To free the player from the restrictions of navigating the scenery is revelatory. There’s one restriction in how much stamina Link has, but that can be expanded or worked around with potions or food, or just stopping halfway up for a breather.

Being able to climb up anything around you opens the game world up in the same way Super Mario 64 opened up the third dimension for Mario to wander in. No longer does Link have to move left to right through fixed paths from one dungeon to the next, instead he can climb over, under, around and through the world and Nintendo will have got there first and put something worth travelling for.

Of course, once you get up to the top of a mountain, there’s the tedious walk down again. I know this, I’ve been up Snowdon and Kilimanjaro. It’s a long trek back over stuff you’ve already seen when you want a bath. Link, the lucky sod, can just fling himself off the cliff and take the quick route down.

That essential item, the paraglider, perfectly complements his climbing. What goes up, must come down, so make it easy and fun to do so. You have the freedom to trudge down or to glide through the sky with a delirious rush of exhilaration. While you drift like a leaf on the wind, you’ll no doubt spot something interesting to glide over to and the game continues to push you to explore with tempting curiosities.

A lot of games give players different toys for use in their worlds, but often they’re things that you use in specific places when and where the game wants you to use them. It gives the player a feeling of having something useful but really you’re simply selecting “yes, I would like to pass this obstacle”. In Breath Of The Wild, things are a lot more freeform. In shrines there are a few points where you might have to freeze water to make a column of ice to open a gate, or use stasis to stop a spinning platform to cross it. But outside these specific puzzles it’s a very different story.

Using a few simple tools and a handful of rules to simulate real world physics, Breath Of The Wild can create amazing pieces of gameplay which might be a scripted set piece in other games but are just things that happen because you tried in this one.

Twitter has been great for seeing things like this. Nintendo added a share function for 30 seconds of video from the game. I’ve seen people surfing on tree trunks they’ve launched across the map, a huge enemie smacking a different huge enemie with a tree it had uprooted to attack Link, back flipping off a catapulted slab to one shot a Guardian, Cuccos (Zelda’s infamously irritable chickens) used offensively by luring enemies to attack them.

These unexpected events encourage the player to keep exploring, you can’t be certain what will happen when you get over the next hill, but you will have a good idea that it’ll be worth it.

Fortunately what happens in Breath Of The Wild is its own reward because unlike previous Zelda games you’re not going to be getting brilliant stuff in treasure chests that’ll open up new things to do. From the four initial shrines you will have the main tools for your adventure. You’ll pick up a lot of weapons along the way, but very few will stay with you and there are no dungeon specific items like you may be used to.

In Breath Of The Wild weapons degrade and break. I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t like this but personally I think it’s a great system. I think we’ve all played games before where we’ve stuck with a favoured weapon and ignored everything else picked up after. A lot of this is because you’ve had more practice with the earlier weapons you get and later on games get more difficult so it’s riskier to try to get the hang of something new.

By breaking your weapons, Breath Of The Wild forces you to adapt, often mid fight. You can switch quickly between weapons and if your weapon is about to break you can throw it and deal double damage as a last hurrah. If you’re not careful, you might end up with a selection poorly suited to what you’re up against, but there’s plenty of ways to avoid this. You can steal enemies’ weapons, store your favourites in your house, repair a select few, buy new ones, or just pick things up while wandering around.

Even these fragile weapons can be multi functional. There are puzzles that require connecting electrical circuits, if you can’t be bothered working out the solution, just whack a bunch of metal swords between the connections and it’ll work. You can use your magnetic rune to steer any metal weapon towards an enemy and attract lightning to it in a storm. Breath Of The Wild rewards experimentation within its systems.

I do wish some of the traditional Zelda items were in the game though. I would like a hookshot as it’d work superbly with the climbing and paraglider. I’d also quite like more convoluted dungeons. The shrines are nice mini dungeons (very mini) but the divine beasts don’t hold a candle to the best dungeons Zelda has had to offer. The lack of particularly complex dungeons is Breath Of The Wild’s biggest weakness. Incidentally, look on YouTube for Boss Keys, a series by Mark Brown about the dungeons in Zelda games. It’s a fascinating look about what does and doesn’t work in Zelda dungeons.

Breath Of The Wild is quite a radical departure from what has been a fairly predictable formula from Zelda games since Ocarina Of Time. But with its freedom of movement and amazing capacity for emergent gameplay, it offers the most expansive open world I’ve ever played. So many games promise a sandbox experience, but Breath Of The Wild is the first where I’ve really felt free to explore and do as I want.

I’m not sure where Nintendo will go next with Zelda, but the last time they had such a seismic shift in the game series it was Ocarina Of Time. If Breath Of The Wild can be followed up with an equivalent to Majora’s Mask then we will see something very special indeed.

Nintendo Switch hands on event

Today I got to go play on the Switch thanks to Nintendo and their support for the StreetPass community.

We got on a coach in Warrington and were greeted by other StreetPass communities, picking up more along the way. Eventually around lunchtime we arrived at the Hammersmith Apollo and thankfully very swift moving queues.

Once in we went through a corridor with classic Nintendo consoles, looking a little red light district like.

We had a small wait before we got down among the games, but it wasn’t long before we got a chance to see what the Switch could do. Sadly because it is Zelda, I didn’t get to play Breath Of The Wild because the queues were lengthy and persistent. Nor did I get to play Splatoon 2, but my friends who did were all very positive.

The first game I did get to play was 1, 2 Switch. Specifically the milk game.

Each Switch console comes with two joy-con controllers either side of the screen. These can be detached and used independently and this is what 1, 2 Switch does.

In Milk you’re simulating milking a cow. You hold the controller in your fist, your fingers against the little shoulder buttons. You then mimic the action of pulling an udder and try and produce more milk than the other player.

This is as ridiculous as it sounds. You’re encouraged not to look at the TV, rather maintain eye contact with your opponent.

The majority of 1, 2 Switch seems based on not looking at the TV. There’s a quick draw mode which is just as you’d imagine. There’s a samurai game where one player swipes a sword down and the other ‘catches’ it by clapping their hands over their joy-con.

A safe cracker game helps demonstrate the new HD rumble capability as you try and feel for the combination, but the reao star of 1, 2 Switch involves guessing balls.

Holding the controller in your palm you would swear there are balls rolling around inside it. It’s like you can feel them running along the inside of it as you tilt it. The game asks you to guess how many you can feel inside there.

Once the answer is revealed you will see the balls in a transparent box on the screen. Moving the controller around and watching the balls move really cements the feedback from the controller. The nuance available is remarkable and probably has to be felt to appreciate. I can’t wait to see how this will be used in future games.

The next game I played was Snipperclips. It’s a co-op game where you control colourful shapes with legs. If you overlap the other player you can cut that overlap out of the other player’s shape. By doing this you either fill in a silhouette or manipulate various objects, like getting a ball in a basket or popping some balloons. It looks huge amounts of fun.

Next I played Arms. This is a bit of an odd game to explain. Nintendo describe it as combining fighting and shooting. You control characters with telescopic arms and different sorts of weapons on the ends. Using the joy-con, one in each hand, you have to physically making punching motions to attack. Tilting the controllers moves you around and lends curve to your attacks. There’s a block, a grab, a special flurry attack and other nuances that slip by when playing at events like this.

I like the look of Arms and enjoyed playing it, but I want to wait and see what depth there’ll be for the single player before I’ll decide to buy it or not. 

I played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe four times primarily because the queue was quite short, but also because it offered a wide range of control options.

I played it with the joy-con in a wheel accessory and the screen on the table using a stand. I played it with a pro controller on a TV and I played it with the joy-con attached to the screen like a handheld device.

Each method of control was absolutely fine. With the joy-con being so small you might think they’d be hard to play with, but it was fine. The best thing about playing Mario Kart this way was seeing how utterly amazing the screen is.

The Switch’s screen is a thing of beauty, clear and vibrant and wonderful. I played split screen Mario Kart just on the screen and it was fantastic. The promise of console multiplayer on the go is realised with this screen.

As for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe itself, I’ve yet to see a compelling reason to buy it again after the Wii U version. There’ll presumably be extra tracks, but until there’s more information I’m not in a rush for it.

I got to briefly play Ultra Streetfighter 2, Super Bomberman R and Fast RMX. All were much as you might expect it to be. Probably not much help, but if you’ve played previous games in the respective series then you already know what’s in store.

The main reason I wanted to go to this event was to try the hardware out. The Switch is a curious piece of hardware, being able to act as a home console and as a portable. I didn’t get a chance to see the transition from being docked to being portable but I did see it working perfectly well in both states.

The HD Rumble could really make a difference to how a game feels when playing it. I sincerely hope developers outside of just Nintendo put it to good use.

The launch software line up is fairly anemic, as if often the case with console launches. I’ll be getting one because I know Nintendo will make brilliant games for it, whether it’ll avoid the same fate as the Wii U and it’s dwindling third party support remains to be seen.

I strongly urge anyone to try out the Switch if they can, you might just be converted.

Games 22-26/21 (Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS and iOS)

So I managed to beat the target I set for myself to complete 21 games this year. Rather than do individual posts for the remainder, I’ll cram them all in to one post and pretend like I planned to finish it off on New Year’s Eve.

I actually won my copy of Hue on Twitter, retweeting works folks. I’m very glad I got to play it. Hue is a cross between Runbow and Metroid.

You play Hue, a black and white boy in a two dimensional world. His mother has vanished after experimenting with colours. Hue gains the ability to change the colour of the background which allows him to bypass any object of the same colour. So when he comes across a rockslide of blue rocks, one quick switch of the background and he can walk through as though they’re not there.

As the game advances you pick up more colours which lets you explore further areas, piecing together what’s happened to your mum.

There are some ingenious puzzles in the game, some requiring reasonable platforming skills. There are collectibles hidden around the levels in the form of flasks. I haven’t collected all of these so I can’t tell you if it’s worth getting them all.

It’s not a massive game, but I did enjoy the colour changing mechanic which can be appreciated more than in its frantic form that you find in Runbow.

Dear Esther is the poster child for walking simulators. Those games which have scorn heaped upon them for ‘not being games’ as they have little in the way of interactive elements and you walk from one point to another to uncover a story.

While I can partially see the points moany gamers make, they are still definitely games and still definitely worthwhile.

Dear Esther sees you on a Hebridean island, walking your way to a radio mast. The narrator retells various incidents from his life as you navigate around the island, slowly revealing who your character is an what happened to him and his wife.

The atmosphere of the game is amazing, the combination of the narration, the music and the beautiful scenery all conspire to give a tremendous sense of isolation.

You might not interact with anything, you may be moving quite slowly, but Dear Esther will draw you in to compel you to find out how it ends.

This edition also comes with optional commentary and it’s well worth replaying the game just for what the creators have to say about the game. I gained a greater appreciation of the story and the island from listening to the commentary.

I can understand it won’t be to everyone’s taste but I think you should give it a chance and not dismiss it out of hand.

I have played every Paper Mario game. I have completed no Paper Mario game until now. Paper Mario Colour Splash is the first Paper Mario title that I’ve seen through to the end.

Every Paper Mario game seems to have some new machanic about it which will antagonise the fans of the previous games. Colour Splash (I’m keeping the u in colour, you can’t stop me) seems to have annoyed more fans than usual.

In Paper Mario games you attack enemies in a turn based manner and get bonuses for good timings of button pressing. Colour Splash is no different, but you have to fling cards from the Wii U’s GamePad up to the main screen to do anything. Vaguely like Sticker Star on the 3DS.

Most of the cards need painting first, Mario has to collect paint to do this, but it was rare I’d find myself running out. You can make it quicker in the options, but even then, card use is a bit of a faff, particularly if playing in off TV mode.

But the game itself keeps up the Paper Mario tradition of a very clever script. There is a real focus on Toads in this game, but their is a wide range of characterisation for such identical looking mushroom folk.

There’s much less in the way of RPG elements in this game. Mario levels up but it doesn’t have a dramatic effect and you don’t have different sidekicks to upgrade along the way. The best bit about your progress is being able to take out weaker enemies without going in to a proper battle.

The game is fantastic to look at. Everything is made of paper or cardboard and feels like you could recreate it at home. There are special Thing cards where a photorealistic item creates an utterly ludicrous situation which causes massive damage to enemies, or needs to be used to defeat a boss.

Paper Mario Colour Splash is huge amounts of fun, a simply joyous experience.

It’s hardly surprising that with Pokémon’s 20th anniversary this year, they’d make sure there was a new entry to main game series. I chose Pokémon Moon over Sun for no particular reason other than you have to pick one.

The Alola region is the new setting for this generation of Pokémon and is based on Hawaii. As such you travel around a bunch of islands and most people are wearing shorts. Instead of the usual gym structure of the previous games, you take on island trials instead. It still comes down to beating someone else’s Pokémon, but it feels slightly different.

There are various refinements, including replacing the need for HMs like Cut ot Surf with Ride Pokémon who you can call on whenever you need to navigate across the water, or break some rocks or so on.

I wasn’t particularly won over by any of the new characters, Lillie in particular was annoying as she spent the whole story worrying about absolutely everything. But I like a lot of the new Pokémon and the new Alolan forms of the original Pokémon.

I’m looking forward to them adding Pokémon Bank compatability so I can transfer over my previously complete Pokédex and go back to be smug.

Finally comes Super Mario Run the first time Nintendo have put their games on mobiles since Pokémon Go is technically Game Freak and Niantic and Miitomo is less a game than an excruciating experience.

If you go on the app store right now you can see how devalued the mobile gaming market is, with review after review of people moaning about paying £8 for a Mario game.

It should be noted Super Mario Run has no microtransactions in it, so you pay £8 and you have everything, but this is apparently abhorrent to people playing on iOS. Possibly the problem comes from Nintendo giving players a chance to play the first three levels as a demo then paying as an in app purchase instead of just paying upfront. I do feel the negative reviews are wholly unjustified.

Nintendo games have always been about precise controls which is why they’ve never particularly seemed suitable for mobile devices. A virtual control stick is almost always terrible and certainly wouldn’t suit the pixel perfect control most Mario games require. So Nintendo changed how you control Mario for Run.

In the game, Mario automatically runs right, he’ll stop when he hits a wall or a pause block, but otherwise he keeps on going. Tapping the screen makes Mario jump, hold it down longer and he’ll jump higher. There are more tricks up the plumber’s sleeve but all are achieved with just tapping the screen.

He’ll hop over Goombas instead of dying immediately too, tap when Mario is vaulting over them and he’ll leap off them, squishing them in the process.

The main game in Run has 24 levels and you will probably get through them quite quickly. When doing so you’ll start to feel the game is less like a platformer and more like a rhythm action game. If you tap away in the right rhythm, Mario will perform remarkable feats, miss a few beats and he’ll plummet to his doom.

Each level has five coloured coins, the first bunch are easy to nab. By the time it comes to collecting the black coins, Super Mario Run feels like a puzzle game, you eye up the environment and try to figure out what path will get you to that elusive final coin. Grabbing all the coins unlocks bonus levels which are extremely challenging, the black coin bonus level reminds me of Super Meat Boy.

The other mode in the game is the Toad Rally. You play remixed versions of the main levels which only end when the time runs out. In this mode you compete against someone else’s attempt at that level. The player with the most coins at the end wins and gains Toads. You get bonuses for performing acrobatic feats through the level, so if you are particularly dextrous you’re more likely to win.

Winning nets you Toads which allows you to build things in your own Mushroom Kingdom, this includes houses which unlock different characters to play as.

Toad Rally is an excellent example of ‘flow’ in a video game, when you get in the zone and your actions have seamless flow as you hop, skip and jump your way perfectly through obstacles, the ghost of your opponent lagging behind as you nail your rhythm perfectly.

Alternatively you keep messing up a simple jump and plummet repeatedly to your doom, losing by hundreds, or it disconnects because of a communication error and you lose Toads through no fault of your own.

Super Mario Run is absolutely worth £8 and a strong start for Nintendo’s mobile endeavours.

Game 21/21 Box Box Boy! (3DS)

The most unlikely amiibo to have been made so far seems to be Qbby, the titular star of Box Boy! and its sequels. Qbby is a square with eyes and spindly legs, hardly the first thing you’d think to make in to a plastic figure.

I’m not entirely sure if Box Box Boy! should actually be BoxBoxBoy! or even BoxBox Boy! and it seems to have a different name in America anyway. I’m hoping Goodbye! BoxBoy!, the third game which will accompany the Qbby amiibo will be called Box Box Box Boy! So it can be Box³ Boy! as cubed jokes about boxes are always funny.

Always.

Now you’ve stopped laughing uncontrollably, I should probably talk about the game.

BBB (I’m not typing the name over and over) is a puzzle game where your square protagonist can push out a series of blocks. They can remain attached to his body or snapped off and moved around. If you stay attached to the blocks you can retract them back in to yourself or hook them on somewhere and pull yourself to the attached block.

This sequel gives you a chance to make two sets of blocks at a time instead of relying on just one.

Qbby uses these various block abilities to traverse various dangerous environments and reach the door at the end. Along the way each stage has crowns to collect, these disappear after using a certain number of blocks so you have to work efficiently if you want to get them all.

You’ll find lasers, spikes, drops, conveyor belts, weird spiky creatures that open locks, pressure pads and the usual sort of things that get chucked in puzzle games. It does get quite head scratchy in its difficulty, but there is a useful hint system for when you get particularly stuck.

As you beat levels you’ll earn currency to buy new outfits, music or little Qbby comics. Beating levels will also rescue various other block people who I think are Qbby’s family but could just be random members of the same species.

I think a lot of people may be put off the Box Boy games because the graphics are very simple, straight lines in mostly black and white don’t make for fantastic screenshots. But Qbby’s adventures are great fun and will definitely stretch your grey matter, particularly if you want to get all the crowns.

There’s a lot of charm in these games and the sequel adds interesting variations to the original. They’re well worth your time and by the end you’ll probably see why people are looking forward to getting a white cube amiibo.

Game 20/21 Abzû (Playstation 4)

Hey, do you remember Journey? Course you do, you read about it here http://wp.me/p1ok5W-4N and then immediately went out and bought it/replayed it.

Anyway, Journey’s art director went off and made his own game studio and they made Abzû and then everyone went on about how it was Journey under water. Except it isn’t really.

There are similarities. Vague plot described by environmental storytelling about nature vs machines, relaxing gameplay with no fear of death, Austin Wintory providing a beautiful score, lovely graphics and so on.

But Abzû didn’t really grip me the same way Journey has. I don’t find myself with the urge to replay it when I mention the game unlike Journey. But this is probably unfair on Abzû, I should say what it is rather than what it isn’t.

You spend the game swimming around various fishy locations. You can activate more fish in these places by finding specific points that can be activated and new species will tumble out of them. You can hang on to larger fish and get a lift around, or sit on a statue and meditate which lets you switch between  individual fish and watch them get on with their fishy business.

It reminded me of Endless Ocean but without the missions. It is a gorgeous looking game and very relaxing. But it’s just missing a little something to make it exceptional. You’re probably best waiting for it to be on sale.

Game 19/21 Hatoful Boyfriend (PC)

I am absolutely not going to do this game justice.

I played it quite some time ago, for not very long at all and now I only have vague recollections of my experience. But then it’s a pretty odd game so I may have failed to do it justice even if I knew it inside and out.

So, my vaguely recalled time with the game is as follows.

Hatoful Boyfriend is one of those visual novel games that Japan seems to produce with an ease akin to breathing. Only it’s pretty odd even by Japanese standards.

You start at a school, new kid finding your feet, so far, so generic. The school is populated by birds. The pupils, the teachers, all birds.

I’m not sure if you’re a bird or not, I don’t think I saw myself, I’m not even sure if I was playing a girl or if it’s an all gay school. See, all the birds you meet seem to want to date you, or appear haughty until you win them over anyway.

You do get an option to see the characters as birds or as typical Manga boys with fabulous hair. I picked the bird option because if I’m playing a dating sim where I’m seducing a bird I want to see what kind of pigeon I’m getting in to.

The guy/bird I ended up with had a dying mother and it was a bit maudlin. I think because I chose to go to more maths classes than PE. Obviously we formed a bond of love that will never die, whatever his name was.

Maybe when I leave a fat ball out in the feeder, I will think of him and wonder how these birds are going to lessons.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to date outside of your species (assuming you’re not a dove that can use the Internet somehow) then give Hatoful Boyfriend a go. If you worry about dating virtual birds, then, I dunno, avoid parks. You sound like you’ve got some issues.

Game 18/21 Inside (Xbox One)

Did you play Limbo? 

If you can’t remember, you probably didn’t. It was a very moody black and white game where a boy with white eyes makes his way through what may be purgatory and avoids a huge spider thing and various other horrors.

Go and play it, it’s great.

Inside is the next game from the people who made Limbo. This time they brought a little colour, but not much. They kept the scary oppressive atmosphere though and once again you’re pretty likely to see the boy you’re controlling meet a hideous end at various times.

It’s hard to talk about Inside without also talking about the ending (the first ending anyway, there’s a second hidden one in a cornfield). But I really don’t want to spoil the ending as it’s a really left field turn of events.

So, the rest of the game. You’re in a very gloomy, but quite pretty, totalitarian state. There are men with dogs hunting you, lines of people forced in to huge factories for mysterious purposes. There are zombie like people that you can control with special helmet things and wraith like underwater girls who will scare the crap out of you.

It’s possible there’s been an alien invasion, certainly there’s machinery around which doesn’t seem particularly human. Inside is crammed with ambiguity so you can probably make up your own story as to what’s happened. But if you do chat with someone about it, make sure they’ve seen the end first.

I’m not sure if Inside will stay with me as long as Limbo, I think the move away from a more stylised look and towards realism might have lessened some of the impact of the frequently graphic consequences. But there are many parts of the game which haunted me for weeks after.

If you enjoyed Limbo then you need to give Inside a go. If you haven’t played Limbo then you can get both of them together on sale on Xbox Live currently. Go try them.

Game 17/21 Kirby Planet Robobot (3DS)

The Kirby games have always been easy. Presumably they’re designed as a starting point for kids to get to grips with platform games before moving on to the harder stuff like Mario.

Planet Robobot is no different. You can die if you don’t put much effort in, but you’ll largely be untroubled by challenge unless you’re trying the additional modes.

But it really doesn’t matter at all.

Kirby games are also always filled with an abundance of charm. Everything about the game seems intent on making you smile.

The main new gimmick is the large mechs you can stick Kirby in. These are generally limited to certain areas of levels and are largely just used to solve puzzles. But they’re enormous fun.

Just like Kirby’s ability to take on an enemy’s power, your robobot can also assimilate new weapons. It’s fun to try out the different types of attacks, I like the big swords and the flamethrower options.

Kirby has a bewildering array of different hats to try on for his various copy abilities. You can even find his Smash Bros moveset in the game hidden away as a special power up.

There’s a lot of content to the game too. Even after you’ve beaten the main game and found and the secrets, there are a bunch of bonus modes and even some enjoyable multiplayer options.

Amiibo support gives you various abilities and costumes if you use the Robobot specific figures.

Kirby Planet Robobot reminds me a lot of Smash Bros with the amount of content it chucks at you. It can be simple if you want it to be, but it’ll also last you a long time if you look for everything it has to offer.

Game 16/21 Doom (Xbox One)

None of my blog entries in the challenge have been all that topical for obvious reasons. By the time I finish the game then get around to writing about it, there’s little chance I’ll be channelling the zeitgeist.

But not this time! 

You see, this week Bethesda decided to tell everyone they’re not going to bother sending advance copies of their games to reviewers because of reasons that are definitely not about trying to hold on to as many preorders as possible, nope, it’s all about the consumer and stuff, getting reviews of games is detrimental to the experience and such and we don’t really need to know if a game is crap or is riddled with bugs before it comes out . Nosiree bob.

Anyway, they didn’t bother sending copies of Doom out early enough for reviewers and had very little in the way of chances for people to try the game before release . Generally this is a Bad Sign. It’s usually what publishers do when the game has turned out to be lousy but they’d like to sell some games before anyone realises.

Fortunately in the case of Doom, that wasn’t the case and it turned out to be a good game. Naturally with the rest of Bethesda’s output, you’re best off waiting to find out after release whether their new policy is hiding a multiple of sins.

Anyway, on to happier things, invading hordes of demons from the bowels of hell. Yay!

I remember playing Doom on shareware discs back in the olden days of my 386 computer. That wonderful soundtrack, creepy demon noises, the secrets and graphics. I never played Doom 3 because of the generally muted reviews, but with this new game I was very keen from what I’d seen prerelease.

One of the things I like the most about this game is its pace. A lot of modern first person shooters want you to be wary, pace yourself, check the corners and creep your way through. Doom encourages you, rewards you, for running in guns blazing, leaping around and leaves bits of demons dropping around you like meaty rain.

You see new Doom has glory kills, hurt the particular hellspawn sufficiently and they’ll glow a little, get in close, click the right button and you’ll finish it off in a manner that Mortal Konbat would be proud of.

The game is suffused with secrets too. There are challenges to finish on each level, little bobble head guys and brilliantly, levels from the original game hidden behind secret doors.

The weapons are immensely satisfying. Each of them can be upgraded to puree demons quicker or plaster them over a wider range of the landscape. The BFG makes a return, but it says something about the other weapons that I didn’t just rely on that whenever I had ammo for it.

There’s a vaguely interesting story about corporate greed and draining energy from hell. Realistically though, that’s just a way of getting you to the next bloodbath.

There’s a multiplayer mode to, but well, ummmm. Yeah. Whereas the main game keeps things roughly old school, multiplayer takes cues from Call Of Duty and its ilk with loadouts and whatnot. For me this doesn’t work that well for Doom’s gamestyle.

I would have preferred something like Unreal Tournament III. Doom is fast paced and would work better with maps that have the weapons are pick ups instead of something you pick before starting.

Stick with the single player game and you’ll have plenty of fun. Hopefully any future game Bethesda doesn’t fancy gamers seeing a review for before release will turn out as well as Doom.

Game 15/21 Uncharted 4 (PS4)

When I saw the original Pirates Of The Caribbean film, I thought “hey, this is like they’ve turned The Secret Of Monkey Island” in to a film. When I first played Uncharted, I thought “hey, this is like they’ve turned Indiana Jones in to a game”

Of course, Indiana Jones has had many actual games, but the Uncharted games have been better at being Indy than all the ‘proper’ games.

The fourth game in the series (fifth if you want to count the Vita spin off) see Nathan Drake’s hitherto unmentioned brother turn up, apparently having not died in a prison break out that you get to play in one of many flashbacks.

Naturally he wants Nate to go find a treasure that will involve much trotting around the globe and a series of booby traps that would make The Goonies envious.

The most obvious thing to mention with Uncharted 4 is just how stunningly gorgeous it looks. Those folks at Naughty Dog have a real knack for squeezing pretty stuff out of Playstation hardware. There’s vista after vista of stunning views and creepy ruins. Even wandering Drake’s attic is gorgeous.

Just when you think your eyes have been treated as well as they possibly could be, Uncharted drops a nifty set piece and suddenly your pupils are dilating to try and cram in as much spectacle as they can take. In summary, the graphics are quite good.

Of course my eternal criticism of the Uncharted games is the way nice guy Nathan guns down hundreds of people during his adventures. There are blood thirsty psychopaths with smaller body counts than everyman Drake. Come to think of it, the baddies in the Uncharted games are often shown as private armies and such, but they don’t do anywhere near as much killing as Nathan does.

There’s a trophy in the game that acknowledges this disparity between character and actions, but admitting your game does something stupid isn’t the same as fixing it. At least it’s not as bad as Bioshock Infinite where I spent the whole game thinking it would be much better if I didn’t have to kill anyone.

Fortunately the characters continue to be people you’d quite like to spend time with if they were real. There are many moments of quiet in between the treasure hunting escapades where they get to behave like actual humans. You get to enjoy general conversation while driving around Madagascar and while it’s not as involved as Oxenfree’s conversion system, it is quite natural, allowing for interruptions in the conversational flow that lend verisimilitude.

I am a sucker for ruined stuff, ancient secrets, hidden mechanisms and the sort of constructions that seem suspiciously elaborate. In this game you are exploring the best of what a bunch of pirates with a big budget and many imaginative architects could muster.

It is utterly preposterous for most of the game. There are traps that once triggered effectively destroy themselves and most of the surrounding area. This doesn’t seem the most practical of approaches since any prospective thieves just need to turn up second when everything has been triggered.

But Uncharted is all about suspending disbelief and enjoying the ride. It is enormous fun and a must play for anyone that likes The Goonies, Indiana Jones or stuff that involves secret treasures of some sort.

If you keep your eyes peeled during one section of the game, you may just find a delightful reference to a mighty pirate with a monkey as his symbol…