Brian Bloodaxe

There's a shop in Glasgow that a friend goes to for retro games but I want impressed when I visited. Although that was probably ten years ago now that I think about it.

In some ways I feel that the EDF games are more honest about what a videogame is than most.

Terms like "good" "bad" and "cheap shovelware" lose all meaning in the EDF franchise. I think world brothers are ones where they remade EDF with voxels.

I am loving this console. I think I’ve played more video games in the last few weeks than I have in the whole of the rest of the year.

Donkey Kong Bananza - Good and fun. Breaking stuff and clambering all over the place is great, but so far it’s not got the surprise and innovation that I found in Mario Odyssey. Which is fine, I’m still enjoying it.

Mario Kart World - Also good and fun. The ribbon tracks (rather than circuits) and having 24 karts on track might not make it a better game but they do make it distinct from MK8.

Old games! I haven’t had access to all the old game libraries before (on the Switch, I do have access to most of these on my 35XX) and it’s nice to be able to jump into some old classics whenever I feel like.

I am absolutely hooked on Wind Waker. It was always one of my favourite games but it’s been at least ten years since I last played it. It still holds up and it still looks gorgeous. The ever shifting colours of sky and sea look incredible on modern TVs.

Paper Mario - I recently wrapped up Origami King and it was so good that I thought I’d try the N64 Paper Mario. It’s quite basic in comparison but it’s still good and nice when you want something less high energy than Donkey Kong.

UFO 50 means that I have another library of games on here. And these are all new! Some of them are fucking weird. I haven’t put the time into them that I need to.

Celeste - less that £5 in the sale, I though I’d like to have it on console and I am now half way through. I have collected over 50 strawberries and I have died over 1000 times. I thought I’d have to retrain my thumbs to play it again but it looks like my muscles still remember from three years ago and I’m finding this play through much easier than that first one. (The 1000 deaths are mostly because of me trying to get some really difficult strawberries along the way). No joke, I think this might be The Best Videogame.

Talking of best, I realised the other day that almost all of my favourite games are right there on the Switch now. I bought No Man’s Sky for Switch, the Personas, Celeste, Portal 1&2, Mass Effect. All it needs is Half-Life and Earth Defence Force…

We had a fantastic session of my Reach of the Roach God campaign last night,

The PCs were moving through four connected temple/schools around a mountain which were corrupted and fighting with each other. They found a round into the heart of the mountain and decided to head in, thinking that might lead them to the source of the corruption. It did, but it also led them to a sort of wizard and before long the PCs were low on HP and one party mage was deaf and the other blind. That session ended with them all huddled on a ledge in a vertical tunnel with a handful of HP between them and the enemy wizard still out there.
I really thought that they were all going to die at the start of last night's game. I was trying to think of anyone who could come save them, but decided that would be lame. Instead I spent the day trying to think of good ways to start the second half of the campaign with a new party (I soon realized that a full TPK would actually be easier to deal with than an almost-tpk)
Anyway the session started with one player realizing/revealing that he had bangles of earth shape which he wanted to use to make hand holds to climb. Great! I hadn't thought of that. Then the Demon PC had his sticky-on-command spider rope so he was fine. The third PC rode their giant snail beast of burden and the fourth PC is a monkey. Vertical stone wall defeated.
Things got interesting again when the rock-shape bangles broke and released a fire elemental. They negotiated a fire pillar/rocket ascent and then killed him (very lucky they got away with that). Then reached the peak of the mountain and attacked the final boss from behind.
One PC did not survive the fight, the only human in the party. But then they pulled out their scroll of resurrection and brought him back as a panther.
As mid-campaign unplanned climaxes go I was pretty pleased!