Yasawas

Steamworld Dig on 3DS. I'm not using that word but it's a bit like those Metroid or Castlevania games where you unlock powers to reach the previously inaccessible and explore and so on except you're a cute wee robot man with a pickaxe. It's excellent.

Any news if this is retail or eShop only? Please be retail. This StreetPass relay update is sweet, I got nine today and it was only a normal workday. So happy I'm not going to have to hang around outside dank games shops and think about going to anime conventions to be competitive in the tricky end stages of Mii Force.

This was so nearly a Quitters Club entry. Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D (3DS) - I wanted a basic, old-school 2D platformer and that's exactly what you get here. Despite the obvious lack of Rare involvement this does a hell of a job of recreating what I loved about the series back in the 90s with just the same mix of collecting things, varied and inventive level design and mercilessly difficult platforming action. I thought it was just me being out of practice at first but I'm pretty sure this game is really hard in places, to unlock everything including the bonus extra world at the end would easily take me longer than the Demon's Souls platinum did so I'll sate myself for now by having seen the credit roll and maybe dip back into it another time. It's almost a perfect example of the genre, the only complaint I have with it is the controls, specifically the roll button which you need to evade sometimes which is not always as responsive as you need it to be. Better than waggling a Wiimote to be sure but a bit too fussy at times which led to some infuriating deaths, particularly on the last boss. Those aside, this was a whole lot better than I expected.

I've started playing Donkey Kong Country Returns as I was looking for a basic 2D platform romp and it's probably brilliant. I'm dying a lot which I'm still not sure whether to attribute to me being shite or it being legitimately tricky but it definitely feels like a DKC game and I keep coming back to it so it's doing something right. Looks fantastic too. I don't think I've ever StreetPassed anyone who was playing it which makes me wonder if it's kind of slipped through the net a bit, ditto Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros. which I picked up today and have seen precisely one person playing. So much good stuff on 3DS right now.

A couple of wee belters. Ghost Trick (DS) - Lovely-looking puzzley adventurey game where bad things happen, so you rewind time and then manipulate objects in very minor ways to change the outcome. It's very trial-and-error but because it's all about rewinding time, and the puzzles themselves never last more than a few minutes with only a limited number of things you can interact with, that isn't as tedious as it sounds. Press a switch, move a hat, light a candle - see what happens and figure out how you can use it to stop a truck ploughing through the window of a restaurant and killing three people. It's also got a far better story than it has any need to, is genuinely funny, and has tons of great graphical touches and animations. The first time you meet Cabanela is an experience to remember forever. Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS) - Never really fancied this but bought it off the back of universal praise and it was in a "buy 3, get 1 free" promotion Nintendo ran in Europe a few months ago. I don't know what I thought this was now but if someone had just told me it's the Advance Wars guys doing a game that's a bit like Advance Wars but also an RPG then I'd have got in there a bit sooner. Starts off really simply then continually introduces new mechanics to eventually become quite a deep (for me, anyway) strategy game, and the story stuff, while not great, is strong enough to have you caring about the wee guys you're moving around on the map, especially if you have permadeath on like I did. Later levels get a bit too reliant on the enemy calling in reinforcements for my liking and after 30 hours I was ready for the end but I'm still pleased to see just how much optional side-content is in there as I imagine I'll come back to it at some point, maybe doing a casual playthrough to see how it would have turned out differently had I not let certain units die. And I let a lot of those boys die.

I can't play Hotline Miami on it very well but if you've got a PS3 then it comes with that version too and the saves are shared between both using a magic "cloud" so that's handy. I love that they're bringing all these indie games to it as I only have an ancient MacBook with no mouse and would never get a shot of them otherwise, all hail Shahid Ahmad. Also Everybody's Golf on the Vita is the best seven quid I've spent on a game this year.

More free games from Nintendo, for Europeans at least. Slowly making amends for an entire childhood of shitty PAL conversions. Buy any three of these by the 30th of June, register them and get a download code for a fourth free. If you've already registered one it still counts. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Nintendo 3DS Version) Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate Luigi's Mansion 2 Fire Emblem: Awakening Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity Animal Crossing: New Leaf LEGO CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Misc-/Nintendo-3DS-So-Many-Games-Promotion/Overview/Overview-750393.html

I don't like all that touching the OS makes you do, you can enable the hardware controls for it under Settings -> System -> Control with buttons if you like.

It is indeed. I've been switching back and forth but I've put more time in on the Vita version (you know that buying it gets you both versions anyway, yes?), it doesn't lose anything on the smaller screen.

Ha! I kind of preferred the penultimate ending in all honesty but it was very well done regardless. You'll appreciate how well VLR improves on the formula too now as it basically does the same thing, only bigger and better and without you having to do some of the same puzzles three or four times which were the biggest complaints I had with 999. I just finished Bioshock Infinite and didn't really like it. I had and still have read nothing about the game and don't really want to so am unsure what the general consensus is but for me it was a phenomenal three hours followed by an increasing tedious seven more. Had they replaced difficulty settings with an option to set the volume of combat one wanted to experience I would've preferred it hugely but then I don't play FPSes beyond this series so what the hell do I know, maybe people are into this.

Persona 4 Golden (Vita) - First JRPG I've ever completed, that. They really solved every problem I've ever had with them before, making it very accessible, and chucked in some great characters, dialogue, music, plot and combat system while they were at it. I got stuck at one boss about three or four dungeons in and thought this might end up being another I'd never see the end of but unless you make a total arse of absolutely everything I don't think it's ever that difficult to find a way to progress. That boss was also the one time I had to look up a tactic on the internet as well which I'm surprised about because as I got into my stride with levelling and fusing and so on it became more apparent that I could've used my first few months more wisely but it doesn't punish you for that thankfully. So good! I have no idea what to do now. I might even watch that animation.

All purchasers of an XL in Europe up to the middle of January got one of five free games including Layton and Mario 3D Land, pleased to hear other regions are getting something similar.

That's exactly how I felt with the original Dead Space. I loved playing it but I found it so draining that even though I was off work at the time and had hours to devote to it if I'd wanted, I could only manage a chapter a day which equated to about an hour for me. Great game though, except for that last level and those terrible asteroid bits. I got the first sequel from PS+ while ago and put an hour into it but didn't enjoy it at all.

For 999 I would personally say go in blind for a couple of playthroughs then refer to a spoiler-free chart showing you the decisions you need to make to engineer the other endings. That's the way I did it. It's easy to see where your decisions branch off for the first couple of endings (there are six in total) but some of the others require you to make some decisions that may not be obvious. In VLR they've actually included a tree in the in-game menu that shows what you chose in the past and where it got you so this isn't a problem. Which is nice as according to the box there are twenty-four endings.

I made the jump from DS Lite straight to 3DS XL and felt similarly underwhelmed by the feel of the hardware at first but I've come to love it now. The D-pad on the Lite is perfect though, I do miss that fellow.

You can automate it, but it's a bit unintuitive. You go in through the Content Manager app - > Online Storage then on the game list click the wee "i" on the right and tick the "Upload Automatically" box. You need to leave it in sleep mode and (I think) be on the home screen for it to upload your saves but that mode uses very little power from my experience. Mine uploads overnight but I'm not sure if this is a standard thing or if it's borrowing the setting from my PS3 where I have it set to upload at 4am every day, I can't see an option on the Vita to specify an actual time.

I'm pretty sure it does have it. For the benefit of anyone getting this on PS+ - don't save in a puzzle room, navigate back out to a novel section to save and you'll be fine. This will make sense once you start playing and the game is definitely worth the trouble. April is the first month PS+ has really burned me having already bought Okami (in more expensive hard copy form too!), The Cave and VLR but I'm glad more Vita owners will get to play what is for me the best game on the system by far.

Resident Evil Director's Cut and Resident Evil 2 (both scenarios). I don't know what brought this on but I had a hankering to play through the main RE series last month so picked these up. I'd played varying amounts of 1, 2, 3 and CV but never finished any of them for a number of reasons so I've been sorting that our over the last week. They're clunky as fuck and absolutely brilliant. The first one takes place in one of the worst designed areas I can remember seeing in a game - a big mansion full of nonsensical corridors and turns that go nowhere which is genuinely distracting in its madness, it also has the absolute worst voice acting I've ever heard and the abysmal controls and combat the series was famous for pre-RE4. It does however have atmosphere and charm and while the puzzles are daft they're logical and never difficult so every time you load the game up you'll get a bit farther, it's six or so hours of exploration and constant progress which I appreciated very much. Surprisingly enjoyable. The second is more of the same but a bit more polished. I remember the game coming on two discs but never knew why but it seems that you have one for Leon and Claire, the two playable characters, and once you complete the game with one you continue the save with the other disc, playing through the same timeline from the perspective of the other. It's an interesting idea and I was really surprised how much additional content there was in the second scenario I played - it's not just the exact same locations as I had suspected, adding quite a few new ones and some new bosses and weapons and NPCs. A good start to my RE marathon then. And I'm delighted to see that RE3, the one I'm on now, is the one to introduce the 180 degree quick turn as the lack of that in the first two is the most frustrating thing about revisiting them.

I bought one of these at the end of January mainly due to having a PS+ sub already as it seemed like a pretty sweet deal and - it is! I also still play PS1 games and never had a PSP so there's plenty I'm looking forward to even with the barren Vita release schedule. Little Big Planet Vita is my favourite game in the series somehow and the only one I've bothered to complete, the two PS3 games were charming for a while but didn't hold my attention for long. Everybody's Golf is Everybody's Golf and worth the £7 or so it cost, Motorstorm RC was a ludicrous bargain at about £2 the other week (includes the PS3 version and has automatically synced saves) and Virtue's Last Reward is probably my game of 2012 that I've only just played. Just bought Persona 4 last week and Europe is getting Metal Gear HD Collection with PS+ in March and that's pretty welcome too. I really don't have a bad thing to say about it other than the ludicrous cost of the proprietary memory cards but if you can stomach that then it's a worthwhile purchase for those with PS+ subs at the moment, and the amount of well-regarded indie titles that Sony seem determined to bring to the platform in the near future give me some hope it might not be dead before year end after all.

This isn't very spoily but a bunch of people are playing it for the first time here so I won't take any chances. I feel a little ashamed of myself for not being able to keep to the schedule but on the other hand, and quite happily, this seems to be the way I naturally play games now - start one then finish it, then start another - rather than the buy lots, start lots and finish none I have been guilty of for the last few years. It might be the subconscious influence of watching a lot of Game Center CX recently. Shadow of the Colossus (PS3) -

Ha, that would require a degree of organisation I do not have. Also it would eat into my colossus-killing time I really didn't mean to but I've got a bit carried away and have done eight now. If anyone's doing this in the agreed-upon fashion and found the first one a little underwhelming I assure it gets significantly more whelming pretty quickly.

I did not enjoy Lords of Shadow but I do remember a boss fight early on in a frozen lake that was very Shadow of the Colossusesque and was the closest I came to having fun in the couple of hours I spent with it. I got a little carried away with this game the other night and inadvertently slew three colossi, I really like it. I might start a separate save to keep up with the general pace as I'm finding it hard to stay away.

Since I last posted in this thread I have finished 999 twice and am close to a third, it is a good game.

Hmm. I had a lovely cup of tea while I watched the intro and really enjoyed it, I'm a sucker for this type of setting though. I shot something that I guess was fruit out of a tree and picked it up but I didn't notice it doing anything, does it serve a purpose? Also, do all the colossi exist in the world at the same time or only the next one I'm going after?

I've had two - one about five months after launch which was the first time I saw one available on Amazon which I really tried to like and then sold after about a year of buying disappointing games, and then another last year because it was cheap, there was a new Zelda coming out and I figured I'd like to be able to play my previous Virtual Console purchases again too. Oh. It's the most disappointing console I've ever owned. I adored the Gamecube before it and the success of the DS made me think that the lack of power might play to its strengths, taking it out of competition with the others and with the introduction of a unique control method giving us new gameplay experiences. It didn't really work out that way. I was thinking about it recently and I honestly don't think there's 10 Wii games I'd pay money for. From a personal standpoint: + Aesthetically a wonderful looking bit of kit, feels solid and reliable. + Virtual Console! I think Mario 64 was available at UK launch with a handful of other greats and I was very excited about the prospect of back-catalogue stuff being playable through a crisp component connection without having to faff about with old consoles. + Super Mario Galaxy. Just astonishingly Nintendo. Full of invention and so much fun. - Abysmal online functionality. Mario Kart Wii was a fine game I thought, and I fondly remember some great games online with friends over some pretty robust netcode considering there were player there from all over the globe. But Friend Codes? Come on. And over five years after the Wii they would launch the 3DS which still has them, albeit tied to console rather than game. Insanity. - This kind of ties in with the above but one of the nice things about Live, PSN, Steam and a number of successful services which sells you digital products is that your purchases are tied to a central account and can be redownloaded when you like in a lot of cases, or at least retrieved in special circumstances under others. All Wii purchases are tied to a device which as a consumer only ensures I will spend less money on your service as I have no idea if I'll be able to get my games back if it gets stolen or breaks. They still do this on the 3DS. I have no idea why. They have the most glittering back catalogue in gaming and seemingly no clue how to sell it to us again. - The games. They just weren't there for me. With the exception of Mario Galaxy I found nothing on the Wii that matched the standard of my favourite GameCube titles - Wind Waker (hey, I like it!), Killer 7, Ikaruga, Chibi-Robo, F-Zero GX, Viewtiful Joe, MGS: Twin Snakes, Pikmin, Paper Mario and the best game - Resident Evil 4. I know there's a few I haven't played that I might like (Donkey Kong, Kirby's Epic Yarn looks delightful) but realistically I can't see me ever getting round to them now.