The Quest Log

My partner and I decided that it was finally time to dig out the PS2 and get it running again, which, as anyone who's tried getting this 20+ year-old piece of hardware working after sitting in a garage, is never just as simple as plugging it in. After getting the right adapters, memory cards and replacing a controller that had completely swapped it's face button inputs (weird I know), we finally heard that glorious PS2 startup sound and it felt like heaven.

The reward for this was Super Bust-A-Move 2, also known as Puzzle Bobble. It's such a simple yet enticing loop, aim, bounce off the wall, match, and watch half the board dissolve. Alongside the previous log of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Read it if you haven't!) Battle mode turns this into the most competitive thing in our house at the moment. It's simple, bright, and the perfect "one more round" game before someone (me) becomes too tilted to continue with the losses. The PS2 is staying plugged in, and I'm not sure our TV will survive it.

I'll just come out and say it: I'm a Tetris addict. Always have been. If there's a version of Tetris on a device I own, I've played it far longer than any sane person should. So a game that mashes Tetris together with Puyo Puyo, SEGA's colourful blob-matching puzzler, was always going to get its hooks in me. The story mode is fine and very charming, but let's be honest, that's not why any of us are here.

Battle mode is where Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 really shines. Stacking a perfect tower, waiting for that line piece (yes I know the correct term is I-piece, shush), then launching four lines of garbage at your opponent never stops being satisfying. And then there's Swap mode, where the game flips between Tetris and Puyo mid-match, and my brain has to switch gears fast enough to keep my board alive. It's frantic, it's loud, and it's easily the most fun I've had shouting at a puzzle game in years. My only complaint is that I still can't chain Puyos to save my life, but don't worry SEGA, it's not you, it's me.

Vintage Story wants you to work for it, quite literally. It's not as simple as punching a tree to then turn into a wooden pickaxe that you'll use for 2 seconds until the next upgrade, like other block-adjacent games. You get a rock, and you chip away at that rock with another rock until it becomes a slightly more useful rock. Then spend an evening forming clay pots pixel by pixel in your fashionable pressed-dirt hut because you'd like somewhere to store your flax before winter comes and kills you. On paper, this is pure tedium for tedium's sake. In practice, it's a beautiful time-sync where you look away from your desktop and it's suddenly 10pm and you're hammering copper into a chisel with a genuine sense of pride, before promptly scalding yourself as you forgot to put tongs in your off-hand.

The trick is the tedium always points at something tangable. Your world will become something you are attached to as you've put in geniune time and effort to create your little village, and every step is progress to something greater to show off to your friends. I highly recommend getting a group together, giving yourselves distinct roles in the community and working towards making an living, breathing town full of workshops, farms, fauna and dead Bowtorns. This game will bounce anyone looking for something easy, but I see that as a feature that plays in this games greatest strength, progression.

Those drifters better leave me alone while I'm trying to get gravel, mind.

An idle game has taken up enough of my time to deserve a log, I thought this would never happen. To clarify, I am a college lecturer (thats UK College, not US College), and Melvor Idle Lives on my phone. This in turn has resulted in the death of my free time. 15 minutes between lessons? Time to fish. Sat in the staff room having lunch? I can chop some trees. It's one of those rare mobile games that never demands attention via pop-ups or premium currency, it just quietly asks to be checked on, and the checking is the killer.

It's the old-school RuneScape with the running-around chopped off, leaving nothing but the satisfaciton of watching your skills go up. There's something enormously thrilling about knowing that while I'm delivering content on game design, a tiny version of me is out there mining mithril on my behalf (hell, he's doing it while I write this very log!)

The Master Collection Vol. 2 arriving to shelves finally gave me the perfect excuse to start the whole snake saga again, which is a bit like buying some brand new boots and immediately going to the shops in your slippers. This series totally earns it though. Kojima set off to make a game that feels like a classic spy thriller, alongside a sandbox stealth experience all on hardware that struggles to draw corridors without warping the walls. This should have been a project that doesn't stand the test of time, but honestly? It absolutely does, is some of it clunkly? Yes. Am I defending the clunk? Also yes.

The bosses are what really survive the years. Every single one is a puzzle dunked in unforgettable personality and extremely cheesy quotes, and half of them would rather cheat than fight you properly. Pyscho Mantis (Pyscho Mantis?) is still the bar when it comes to bosses in this series. I've known about the controller port my entire life, and I still grinned like an idiot when it happened.

I've been waiting for Big Walk to release ever since the reveal trailer dropped around two years ago now. Seriously, this game had me hooked, lined and sinkered ever since I laid eyes upon those... ducks?... emus?... weird avian thingys. Let me tell you, it lives up to the hype and then some. We got Big Walk on release day and spent around 20 hours hiking around the hillsides, making sure every challenge was completed before we put it down. Honestly, I think there was only one puzzle I didn't completely like, and it was mainly due to tackling it in an obtuse manner.

The atmosphere of this game is perfect. The environments and lighting are stunning, to the point where you can easily enjoy getting lost in the forests for hours. There's actually a minimal amount of non-diegetic music, which surprised me. All the tunes come out of a little radio, but it makes vibing out a choice, and a fun one at that. I do wish the day-night cycle was a tiny bit longer on either end, but that's just me nitpicking.

I implore you to go and buy this game if you have the people to play it with. It is contending for my GOTY, and I've only had it in my hands for about a week. Big Walk is going to be one of those games that becomes more of a tool for people to relax and hang out with the people they care about, and it handles that in spades.

Oh yeah, and the ending made me cry too... so it's got that going for it.

Spelunky is my personal "granddaddy of roguelikes". Granted, my friends and I are absolutely terrible at it, but these games are endlessly addicting that even if it's the 15th time you've landed on spikes and ended a 40 minute run, you'll still come climbing back up that rope for more torturous fun. I actually used to use Spelunky as a case study for some of my old Game Dev classes I taught, and I highly recommend the "Boss Fight Book" on the development of this wonderful game.

Anyhow..Spelunky 2 takes everything that I adore about the orginal and gives it a new coat of paint. It's one of those perfect sequels that highlight and enhance everything the original brought to the table. That pesky shopkeeper may always hate me, but it's a love hate relationship. Promise...

I tend to keep my distance from first-person shooters. Something about the motor control needed to actually hit your targets is something I've never been particularly good at. Ask anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a team with me in any modern shooter. Trust me.

This makes it all the more bizarre that Echo Point Nova hooked (sorry for the pun) me the way it did. There must be something about skating around, using RPGs and wind blasts to launch myself into the stratosphere, then pulling off a 920 in slow motion while quick-scoping a robot knight that really speaks to me on a personal level.

I'm still a fair way from 100%, but this will be one of the few games that earns the title of "podcast game", something I can happily throw on while listening to an episode in the background. A prestige all of its own, I'm sure.

I am convinced that the designers of this game actively hated children. Donkey Kong Country has the perfect cheerful presentation, letting you imagine all these cute animals heading off on a fun little quest to save their bananas, before immediately pulling back the curtain and showing you Donkey Kong's favourite finger disguised as game balance. Despite this, I can't get enough of the DKC series. The controls are some of the tightest in the platforming genre, the collectables are enticing enough to make you fully learn and master each stage, and there's a reason this soundtrack has got millions of views on YouTube. Want to know why I think so many people love this game? Simple: I'm 80% certain this game started its life as some kind of psychological warfare conducted by Rare.

The Katamari series holds a record for me, and it's an odd one. Over the years, I've been gifted a bunch of plushies, posters, clothing, and knick-knacks, but Katamari was the first video game series that I actively sought out merchandise for and purchased with my own money. Of course, Katamari is one of those games that's just niche enough that having someone point out my cousin-covered T-shirt will actively make my day a little brighter, knowing that this cute, charming little game has found its way into so many people's hearts.

I'll admit, simulation games aren't a genre I have a lot of expertise in. I've done my fair share of Euro Trucking, don't get me wrong, but it's a vibe I've always struggled to fully connect with. That being said, I've always had a soft spot for SimCity. Watching your dinky little town grow into a hustlin' and bustlin' megalopolis, all while that sweet jazz blesses your eardrums, is one of the most relaxing feelings you can have in a game. It's incredibly easy to let the minutes turn into hours as you manage housing needs, build public services, and make sure all your advisers are reminding you what an ultra-cool mayor "Sir Stinksalot" truly is.

My neighbours really do need to stop asking to store their trash here, though. Coolville deserves better than that.

OutRun 2 is my go-to arcade game. Whenever I find myself in the rare occurrence of being at an actual arcade, I always locate the OutRun machine and spend most of my money on it. There's something about this classic that no other racing game before or since has managed to match. Coast 2 Coast includes all of that arcadey goodness from the original release, while adding a bunch of new stages and bringing a career mode as well. This game is in desperate need of a modern release, as I doubt many people want to go through the hassle of getting it set up on modern machines using bizarre GitHub pages and YouTube tutorials (I mean, it didn't stop me though, as having this beauty of a game easily available is almost too much power.)

Right, let me paint a picture for you...

It's my first time teaching. I've got a class full of anti-social teenagers that don't want to talk to each other. Some are staring out the window, some are whispering about pubs after class, and a few are totally being "discrete" playing CoolMathGames. I need to get them all engaged with a single activity. Ideally, talking together. As a group.

That is exactly what WarioWare Inc. was built for, and if you give me a few paragraphs, I'll tell you why.