The console may be a car crash, but woolly Yoshi’s on cruise control

Yoshi’s Woolly World (2015)

It’s funny how a game can remind you of a particular time in your life. Some of the best nappies I ever wore came when I’d used to play Super Mario Kart, particularly when I’d turn our Super Nintendo on at full volume at 2 o’clock in the morning, awaking my brother with one hell of a start.

Then, at some point in the late 90s, I got some sort of horrific abscess in my mouth. Perhaps to placate me and my disgusting swollen mouth , my parents bought me GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64, which famously featured an abscess-afflicted Pierce Brosnan on the front cover. Well, OK, it was just a strange photo, but it’s funny how these things stuck with you. Funnier still how violent games like that make for a great childhood.

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tedious intro, which made me start to worry. But the game recovers well, despite its

Zelda Twilight Princess

Legend of Zelda, The: Twilight Princess (2006)

Who’d be a professional game reviewer? It seems like it’d be jolly good fun, fun enough for me to do in my spare time. The problem, as always, is the legions of online complainers who think they know better. Case in point, the remakes of Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald being given a 7.8 by IGN, with a snappy negative bullet point of “too much water”. Maybe that’s correct, but I thought the remakes were excellent. Presumably the nine billion Pokémon fans worldwide though so too, because they’ve been ripping into IGN for that one ever since.

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Nintendo blast open-world gaming’s eardrums with a double-necked Flying V

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Legend of Zelda, The: Breath of the Wild (2017) NOTX

Can a man get away with crying? Especially in front of his girlfriend. Men are often being told they should feel able to open up about their emotions, but I wonder. Am I now emasculated for life? Forever to be dismissed as a blubbing wreck with no bottle? Will even the children point and laugh at me? I’ll have to buy a muscle-suit and wear it at all times just to counteract that event, maybe with three smokes in my mouth too.

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How would Bokoblins and Gorons have done in World War I?

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Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (2018)

The other day I was reading about World War 1 casualties in the final days of the conflict, and bloody hellfire. It was the old Hundred Days Offensive, that frightful last rush where the British front decided “Bugger to it all, chaps. Let’s bloody well finish the Gerrys,” to which the French faction gave a hearty “on hohn hohn” laugh and squealed, “Formidable!”

The Germans caught wind of this plan, and for three months they all ran at each other and drove tanks at each other until Germany finally cried for mercy. The net result? Over two million marked casualties. Many were captured, but the majority were killed, and all in the length of a summer’s holiday from school. With numbers like that, you can’t even imagine the face of a typical British or French or German or Austro-Hungarian fighting man, too young to be on a battlefield, but too old not to fight for his country. That nutter Stalin was right, it really is just a statistic.

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We don’t need new games anymore – remake Uniracers and you’ll send us home singing

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Legend of Zelda, The: The Wind Waker HD (2013)

An awful long time ago, I did a write-up on Wind Waker GameCube, or more accurately a 5,000 word dissertation. It was fairly stuffy, and in it I mostly spoke about how the graphics actually added a nice bit of whimsy and the story and plot was pleasant when you met big bad Ganon, but crucially some pilchard left a few dungeons out.

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Sakurai may have 100,000 demands, but all I ever needed was the Duck Hunt dog

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Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014)

I’m always having to refute toilet graffiti, random WhatsApp messages and shouted street insults about me being some sort of Nintendo fanboy. But even I couldn’t help but delightfully squee like a constipated swine when Nintendo brought out an interesting new fighter for the Nintendo 64, featuring Nintendo characters, stages and items, all wrapped up into one veritable hit-parade of Japaneseness. A surprise birthday present from Nintendo to me, that’s what my old friend Shigsy told me via fax at the time.

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I could have been an ace pilot if only my yoke pointed the right way

star-fox-zeroStar Fox Zero (2016)

Time for you to hear about yet another one of my amazing feats: yes, I am a bona fide aviator. I don’t mean I talk about tangos and foxtrots (outside of the local dance hall) and I don’t wear the silly goggles and all that, but I have flown an actual plane. That is, I had the proper pilot next to me, telling me absolutely what not to do and occasionally helping me furiously wipe the carpet of sweat off my brow, but I did assume control of the thing for a whole thirty seconds. And I was cacking it for every one of those thirty seconds.

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The Wii U is everything the Volkswagen Golf isn’t

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Wii U (2012)

It’s more trouble in paradise for me, readers – the old motor vehicle is giving me some issues again. Listen, you can tell just by looking at my car that I don’t ask for much out of a vehicle. In particular, pay attention to the moss growing on the windows and the pet mouse colony I have living in there. My old Polo is going to be entering its 19th year now that we’ve stumbled into 2018 – but now some cracks are beginning to show in the hardware. 

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It’s all fun and games until there’s a Blue Shell inbound

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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017)

Yes, it’s another remastered/redux/rehashed game this week. I know, I know, it’s rather stale isn’t it? But nothing could be considered stale about the Wii U’s Mario Kart 8, or its newer, more refined little brother, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the delightful Switch. Ah, the Switch. What a machine, eh? When I saw its revealed specs, I had it down as a dud in waiting. You know, 32GB storage space, seemingly poor battery life, still underpowered in comparison to the Sony and MicroSoft juggernauts – all of the same pitfalls that made the Wii U the most unimpressive doorstop you ever saw.

Continue reading “It’s all fun and games until there’s a Blue Shell inbound”