Back again for my regular Sunday roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both. And after several weeks with not much of interest to report outside of gaming, here I am in Seattle, watching my son and his college football (soccer) team more or less clinching their regional championship! We’ve only just arrived, so apart from our favourite restaurant, spending too much money in the Sub Pop store, and hanging out in the very cool Pike Place Market, that’s about it so far, but hopefully plenty more to come over the next week and a bit as we gad around the Pacific Northwest and bits of Canada between more matches. I managed to squeeze in a few games into before we left too…

Also managed to squeeze the last bit of life out of Xbox Game Pass before my cancellation kicks in tomorrow, following the recent 50% price hike, starting with Ninja Gaiden 4! I had a great time with its 2D side-scrolling pixel-art counterpart, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, when it arrived a couple of months ago (see here), but now we’re back to the fast-paced 3D hack ‘n slash ultra-violence the series evolved into, and I’ll say from the outset that while it didn’t grab me the same way, it is very good, and is definitely the most fun I’ve had with anything like it for a long time. Which is entirely down to the combat. Which is blooming marvellous! It’s fast-paced, ultra-fluid, totally ridiculous and stylish as hell, not that the latter will get you far because what you’re up against isn’t just equal to everything you’ve got, but can quickly become overwhelming too! There are plenty of weapons and specials and upgrades and unlocks to power you through though, and no end of tweaks to both difficulty and various mechanics available, so as rough as the supposedly “normal” difficulty gets (and what’s beyond is just insane), there’s still the same level of exhilaration in there for everyone. And the same crazy kills to enjoy! The story is as irrelevant as ever but involves a young ninja (under the watchful eye of series hero Ryu Hayabusa), a tech-witch with massive boobs, and yet another demonic attack on near-future Tokyo, set against its cyberpunk cityscapes, decaying nods to the past and a few supernatural surprises, although you have more than likely seen it all before, if not necessarily as cool as it looks here! Similar for the bosses, and most of the enemies in general, but it moves great and I was really impressed by some very atmospheric lighting and environmental effects as well. And I loved the soundtrack – kind of synthy-industrial with a bit of traditional Japanese instrumentation that’s so energetic. Which is a nice single word summary of the game itself, so apart from reconfirming I’ve had a really good time with this, I think we’ll leave it there! 

I’ve had Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga kicking around on my Xbox ever since it arrived on Game Pass almost three years ago, and should really have played it before now, given my history with every aspect of it, but about four hours saw me through the original saga, and that’s all I ever really wanted out of it! It originally released earlier in 2022, and let’s you play through the nine standalone episodes making up the the three mainline trilogies, starting with your choice of The Phantom Menace, A New Hope or The Force Awakens. And while I’m not going to get snooty about about the other films because I’ve always enjoyed them too, the original, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was more than my fill of Lego anything in one go! Which also goes for all the exploration, masses of character unlocks and huge replay value on offer here alongside what’s necessarily a truncated narrative in general, but with extended set-pieces that aren’t necessarily cannon to give you a bit more gameplay on top. For example, at the start of The Empire Strikes Back, you’ll be Han Solo with a forgettable partner (for co-op reasons I guess) out on the frozen wastelands of Hoth looking for Luke, but to find him you’ll need find a load of locator beacons and (lightly) exploring and puzzling your way to getting them working first. Plenty of trademark liberties with the characters themselves too, mostly in aid of the trademark humour always front and centre in these games, but they’re all wonderfully recognisable in a very stylised way. That applies to all the locations you know and love too, from the Death Star to Endor, which reminds me, you’ve got speeder-bike chases, and the Millennium Falcon to pilot, and all those capital ships are as epic in scale as you could wish for. And all the dream Lego sets you could wish for too! As you’d also expect, it’s a very polished game, with presentation as authentic to Lego as it is the subject matter. Or vice versa! Combat is alright and there’s plenty of variety in it, with loads to smash up and sometimes build, while progression through locations, as well as through multi-stage puzzles, is relatively well signposted. Does soon get repetitive though, especially when you’re not ten-years old, but no complaints and I’m glad I finally got to play it and have my fill! 

We’ll finish with Double Fine’s Keeper, which launched onto Xbox Game Pass last week, and looks like it’s going to be the last game I finish on the service for the time being at least as well. It’s a wordless walking simulator, built around the relationship between a lost seabird and a decaying lighthouse, which has mysteriously come to life decades or centuries after humanity has somehow been wiped out, but that mystery is just the tip of an increasingly surreal and psychedelic iceberg. And although I was none the wiser when the credits rolled about five hours later, the journey was a very enjoyable one despite not having a clue where it had taken me! Speaking of journeys, or maybe Journey and also Ico to be precise, we’re in that ballpark, and there are times it comes close too, but you’re going to have to experience those yourself because for something with such a silent narrative, it would be very easy to spoil! Regardless, you travel a very linear path, and it really is a delightful one, dropping you into a huge melting-pot of absolutely stunning and richly atmospheric vistas, all of which applies to the soundtrack too, while the variety of biomes you traverse is entirely reflected (often literally!) in increasingly imaginative and expansive puzzles. You’ll be manipulating objects, the environment, space, time and logic itself, and the scope just keeps getting bigger and bigger, to the point of staying just the right side of frustration later on. The sense of scale towards the end is genuinely marvellous, and even though it was never as emotionally engaging as I think it was intended to be, over the course of two evenings it had me gripped from start to finish and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re still hanging around on Game Pass.

That’s all quite the swansong for my own subscription, although I’ve probably got far fewer regrets about cancelling it than some of the folks at Microsoft have about what they’ve done! It’s a shame though, because like a lot of stuff I’ve discovered on there, I’d have never spent any of the £300 per year I’ve now got to spend on buying games rather than renting them on these. Plenty more fish in the sea though (including the brilliant Ball x Pit from last week which I did stump up for), and I do seem to have an enormous PS2 and PS3 backlog to tackle! A sizeable PSP one too, which I might just have brought on holiday with me, so more on that next Sunday, assuming I’ve not fallen foul of Bigfoot, and then I’m not too seasick on the ferry to Vancouver in a few days, which is when I was planning on writing about it! In the meantime, my Halloween special is already primed and ready to go next Wednesday, and this year I’m finally looking at a game I’ve had my evil eye on for over 40 years, so I hope you’ll join me in Discovering Sorcery on Amstrad CPC! See you then!

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