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. You’ve actually caught me most of the way through the first night of Wrestlemania, which happened in Las Vegas time so I was long-since tucked up in bed! I’m not going to spoil anything in case you’re reading this when it first appeared, and are remotely interested, and haven’t caught up yet, but if you’re a fan you’ll know the buildup has been underwhelming to say the least. In fact, I’ve been watching these things since the beginning back in the mid-eighties, and I can’t remember a worse one! That said, it’s easy to get caught up in the spectacle again, and the wrestling itself has been alright so far. Still don’t like the whole two night thing though, almost as much as I still don’t like the whole two sets of belts for everything either! All about the money though, I suppose, and this lot in charge now certainly know all about that. Anyway, let’s get into some games…

I recently bought F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin for PlayStation 3 on a whim – it was going cheap and I seemed to remember having a good time with a rented copy of the original F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) when it first came out in 2007, not long after I got my PS3. This sequel came in 2009, and once again mixes first-person shooting and psychological horror, with you playing as a special forces operative on an extraction mission that goes wrong when a psychic shockwave devastates the city and draws him under the growing influence of the super-psychic young female entity behind it. What follows is a post-apocalyptic world of disturbing visions, secret experiments, J-horror nightmares, mysterious paramilitaries, and some very cool mechs to help you take them down! All the same, as an FPS it’s a seven out of ten – combat feels good, and there’s loads of weapons, reasonably intelligent (if not massively varied) enemies, and it’s generally a lot of fun, albeit without breaking any boundaries. The supernatural creepiness soon starts to elevate it though, and it’s just so polished too, from the exquisitely detailed and impressively destructible environments to its superb sound design, and combined with an increasingly engaging (but consistently big and dumb) narrative, ends up being far more than the sum of its parts. Doesn’t outstay its welcome either, ramping everything up nicely towards a suitably dread-filled and desperate – if slightly abrupt – scary old climax. Really nice time overall, and I’m definitely up for looking out for the next one now, and maybe my own copy of the first game too!

Back in 1981, there was no escaping Nintendo’s pioneering, influential and downright iconic Donkey Kong, who also pretty much prevented them going under after Shigeru Miyamoto was told to come up with something to repurpose a load of unsold Radar Scope cabinets in the absence of the Popeye license they really wanted! While my memories of the orange clamshell Game & Watch and its literally dozens of home computer clones from the next few years are probably stronger nowadays (mainly down to Crazy Kong on the VIC-20, the second game I ever bought), I’ll never forget the magic of seeing that invincibility hammer in action at the time! It’s weird to think that given pretty much everything was new back then, that was what stuck, but it really was magical! Since then, there haven’t been many times over the past forty-five years when I haven’t had some version of Donkey Kong or the other on the go, but since 2018 it’s been the original and best, care of its Arcade Archives release on Switch (as indicated by their typically boring “wallpaper” in the image above), which includes “early” (maybe slightly easier) and “later” (bug-fixed) versions as well as the international one, with its arguably better-flowing stage order. Whichever you go for though (which is generally random for me), while it wasn’t quite the very first platform game, it was the first to let you jump, which you do a lot over the game’s four stages, as you guide pre-Mario Mario up a construction site of girders and ladders and rolling barrels, then (in whatever order) around a danger-filled, multi-level conveyor belt, up and down elevators and over tricky gaps avoiding bouncing springs, and finally dodging dancing flames to remove eight rivets holding the structure Donkey Kong is perched on top of to bring it crashing down so you can be reunited with your girlfriend Pauline, before doing it all over again. It’s simple, it’s fiendish and it’s perfectly balanced, with timeless presentation to match its timelessly addictive scoring mechanics. And whacking a barrel with your wildly swinging hammer for the brief time it lasts will never get old!

I must admit, it was the Game Boy Zelda vibe that first got me to download the demo of Cassette Boy on Xbox when it appeared on there (and elsewhere) the other week, but it was the “does something exist if you’re not looking at it?” mechanic that then didn’t take very long at all to convince me to buy the full game! It’s a kind of perspective-puzzle, action-RPG-lite that might lack the sophistication of the aforementioned Zelda, or, indeed, that of another obvious inspiration, Fez, but it more than makes up for it in accessibility and simply giving you a fun time, as you rotate a 2D pixel-styled 3D world to make obstacles disappear and new paths to emerge as you try to uncover the mystery of the vanished moon… Awkward switch you need to keep pressed down to get through a gate across the screen? Spin the screen around so it’s hidden behind a tree and therefore doesn’t exist anymore, meaning you can let go and problem solved! Or maybe there’s a big monster you couldn’t hope to beat with your puny sword blocking a passageway. Make it side-on so the monster’s behind the passage wall, and that’s not there anymore either. You can use this left and right rotation – effortlessly located on two shoulder buttons – to power things up as well, by holding them down for an extended rotation, like for raising a platform or firing a cannon at a boss. These are nicely done when you come across them too, mixing straightforward puzzling with some running around and a bit of brute force, and altogether it’s just a great looking, beautiful sounding and generally relaxed and enjoyable modern-retro time! 

The complete opposite of Resident Evil 5, in fact, which I’m still playing for some reason and still haven’t finished because any excuse not to! I covered it here last week if you’re really that interested though! I reckon that’s about it for this week otherwise though. In case you missed it last Wednesday, do check out my deep-dive into Solaris, a galaxy-spanning space epic that simply should not be possible on an Atari 2600… And is also my favourite game on there! Anyway, take a look at that if you haven’t already, and I will see you here again for more of this stuff next Sunday. Have a good one! 

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