I played the reboot game of the same name almost exactly a year ago. I remember this game having significantly less fighting, and more tomb raiding than that one. Turns out my memory is correct, and thankfully so because the fighting is pretty awful here. Despite that this is a great game, it gave me a real sense of adventure trying to navigate my way around the levels.
This is the pixel remaster version of the game. I’ve completed the original version on the NES a long time ago, but this one improves it in a lot of ways. In the original if you target an enemy that another character kills in the same round you miss your attack. In this one your character will hit another enemy instead like the rest of the series. The graphics are completely redrawn, but they are still in a pixel style that keeps the spirit of the original designs.
This is the sequel to a game I played quite recently. This game I think is significantly better than the first. I was surprised just how much I enjoyed it.
This is a science fiction book by Iain M. Banks. The only book I’ve read by him before was The Wasp Factory, which despite having read it a long time ago I still think about every now and then. It has stuck with me as a particularly dark and intense read.
This is a 3d platformer made by several of the same people that created the Banjo Kazooie games on the N64. It has the same humour and style, and is really pretty funny. I particularly liked all of the characters.
This is a megadrive RPG, the third sequel to the game I played in 2018. I’ve never played II or III, but this one is apparently considered to be the best in the series. It’s set a long time after the events of the first game, where the characters in that have become legends.
This is a non-fiction book about a working class guy from London, who became a trader for Citibank. He makes a lot of money, but becomes increasingly disgusted about the inequality in the economy, and is predicting that it’s going to get progressively worse for ordinary working people.
This is a Philip K. Dick book. I’ve been a fan of his for years, but he wrote so many books that there are tons that I’ve never read. As is pretty common with his books this one deals with mental illness, and an unstable grip on reality.
This is a SNES RPG which came out very late in the system’s life, and was never released outside of Japan. I played this using a fan translation patch which itself is over twenty years old.
Here’s a summary of the things I wrote about in 2024.
This is a British cyberpunk novel, which I’m reading as this months pick for the Exeter Dystopian Novels Book Club. Structurally, the book has two narratives that end up joining together. One is the story of a character named Y, who has had her memory erased and been subjected to extensive body modifications. Not least, a third arm coming out of one of her shoulders. It turns out that she is in another dimension, one that was discovered by humanity many years ago but kept secret. This place is run by a character resembling some kind of feudel king named the Manor Lord.
This was mentioned on the Exeter Social Discord group, and it made me curious to see how well it has held up. I played the Mega Drive version, which was what I had when I was younger. I remembered it being pretty mediocre, bad but not as bad as most of the mascot or tie-in platformers of the era. That’s exactly how I found it today as well, the graphics are nice, the music is good but the actual platforming is fiddly and hit boxes are very unpredictable. It’s very short though, only five levels with a few stages each.
I think this is the first time I’ve finished this game. I’ve played it several times before on different platforms but always gave up before the end. There are only ten levels in the game, but a few of them are copies of previous levels that you go through in reverse. It’s clear that the development was rushed, because even within those levels there are sections that are copied over and over to pad out the game. The level called The Library is the one that people normally call out as having done this, but I think it is pretty common throughout the whole of the game.
This is a remake of the second Yakuza game, but it is the third game chronologically. I completed Yakuza 0 about the same time last year and very much enjoyed it, I also played the original Kiwami game years ago as well. I think this series has absolutely clicked with me now, I very much enjoyed this one.
This is a late-era SNES action RPG that was only released in Japan and the PAL regions. I live in the UK, and despite the SNES possibly being my favourite console and my love for RPGs, I never played it. It was released in December 1996, by which point I already had a PlayStation, so I imagine that’s why it slipped past me.