Favorite, Keep, Uninstall, Delete: Cleaning Out the Collection 1

So here’s something I knew I’d eventually have to do. As I’ve said multiple times before, I have a massive Steam collection, with games of all sizes, accumulated through Humble Bundle, Steam bundles, games that used to be in my wishlist, or stuff I just saw and decided I wanted.

The advantage is that I’ll never run out of stuff to play for years. The disadvantage is that I am running out of space on my computer. Choices have to be made. Stuff has to go. It’s unfortunate, as I’ve been deleting most games I disliked, and in spite of that I still need more space. On Steam, a game stays in your collection if you uninstall it, and you have to manually delete it from your collection through Steam’s Help section, if you really don’t want it anymore. Meanwhile, there are games that you wouldn’t get rid of, no matter how big they are.

I have four choices that can combine in various ways:

-Favorite: 25% of the current selection. These are the games I would never, ever delete, I love them too much.

-Keep: The games I don’t like enough to set as my Favorites, but that I don’t yet feel like deleting or uninstalling. Will make up approximately 50% of the selection.

-Uninstall: Games that, for a reason or another, I will decide to uninstall. Doesn’t mean I’ll delete them from my collection – I keep them around in case I suddenly decide I’d like to play them again someday. No limit for this one, but I should try to keep it below 50%. These can be found in every other category: Every deleted game will have obviously been uninstalled, while I may also uninstall games Favorited or Kept in order to free space, the idea being that I can access them again later.

-Delete: The games that I just don’t have enough of an interest in; stuff that will not only be uninstalled, but removed entirely from my collection. Many of these aren’t bad games per se, sometimes they’re just the games I would like to keep, but won’t because I really need space. Sometimes, these can just be games that I’ve played to and through, and don’t feel the need to keep as I have done everything that could be done in them – so those games aren’t bad, just finished. These should be about 25% of the selection.

You won’t see the process because it’s probably boring and repetitive, but in my reflection, I judged each game on four points: Its file size, how much time I spent playing it, my original opinion of the game and whether it has changed or not, and the odds of me replaying that game someday. The file size may be a good reason to uninstall a game that may still be too good to completely delete, as an example.

Steam Pack 8

Once again, as usual, I am getting rid of the clutter in my collection by discussing multiple games at once! And this time, five games, because… I gotta speed up. Yeah, with a bundle I bought recently, I now have over 300 games… I need to get more stuff done, quicker, faster. Alright, let’s get to it right away!

3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures Deluxe

Price: 9.99$ USD

For some reason, I almost always pick Hector.

All that’s missing to this title is a Super, a 64, and an Electric Boogaloo at the end. It does say everything, though: Wanako Games brought to us in 2006 a mini-golf game in the purest tradition of the sport, which means extremely creative courses and plenty of gimmicks. And hey, it’s a video game, so they can allow themselves some very odd challenges.

You pick one of four characters (two guys, two girls), and are then sent on one of three sets of levels. The first two sets of 18 holes are split in three environments: A Western world, a circus area, and space! Six holes for each environment, which lets you see some pretty impressive courses. You wouldn’t be getting stuff this fancy at your local mini-golf place!

Some power-ups make your ball jump, another sets it on fire,
another turns the hole into a vacuum, and one other removes
one of your strokes. One... makes your ball bigger, that's useless.

Yes, you have to send your ball at the planetoid.
Hm, didn't know The Little Prince renovated Asteroid
B612 into a golf course.

The developers for this one took every opportunity to turn this into a proper video game. It has power-ups: Some will set your ball on fire. Some will allow it to jump once (very useful, if not mandatory, on some courses). Some levels have power-ups that will turn the hole into a vacuum, so that your ball will be pulled into it if you sent it there during the short timespan in which the effect is active. The courses have various special tricks made by the terrain, whether it’s the ducks passing by on a circus course, or a whack-a-mole, while the space levels have a lot of gravity-based tricks, such as that level taking place on a sphere and the hole is at the bottom of the sphere, opposite of where you start. All pretty clever stuff, a lot of creativity went there.

Who the Heck puts scorpions on a mini-golf course?
Who lets them interact with the ball?

Oh, and because this is a video game, the western levels have enemies, the circus levels sometimes play with randomness, and the space levels have a lot of hazards. All of which is intended to slow you down, but fear not – you can accomplish a Hole-In-One on every hole in the game. Each level has a secret strategy that you can use so that your ball will get all the way from the start to the hole in a single stroke. You can spend a long time studying each hole to look for the trick. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s more difficult – and sometimes the secret defies all logic or requires great precision.

The circus levels involve a lot of bizarre, carnival
mini-golf layouts. Some levels reference the popular
carnival games as well.

Into the serpent!

The final course is unlocked as soon as you start playing, though it’s definitely harder than the other two: The Lost Island Tournament, another 18-holes course with very tough levels.

I found myself greatly enjoying this one. It can be tricky, but overall the difficulty is just right (outside of a few particularly enraging levels). Much of the challenge is to reach the #1 spot in the competition, by completing each level in less strokes than your opponents, although there aren’t difficulty levels for the opponents so they can be pretty tough to beat during one game, easy during another… Speaking of which, the game works in local multiplayer mode, so you can play with friends at home and have fun with three more players! (Some people wished it worked in online multiplayer mode, though, and I can understand that.)

This all looks quite decent!

Paradise Cove? This doesn't look too much like
Paradise.

If I do have a point of criticism, it may be that the game lets you choose the direction and power of your swings, but can’t let you angle your shots using the club. Some levels are also very hard or overdo it when it comes to hazards (especially in the Lost Islands Tournament), and losing your ball adds one more stroke to your card, so it can be infuriating at times. There's also a few issues from time to time, as if a glitch or two hadn't been ironed out, but aside from making you miss a shot once in a blue moon, it doesn't affect gameplay too much. Still, for a 2006 game, it looks decent, plays well, and is great fun. Feel free to give it a try!

Floating Point

Price: Free

If you were looking for a free, relaxing puzzle game, this might be it. This game by Suspicious Developments is very simple in design, with soothing music, a little floating ball and a few squares scattered around.

Look at the purdy colors!

The only thing you need to do here is to point at a block, and the ball will get pulled towards it thanks to a line, like a grapple hook. It’ll then either gain speed or rise slowly. If it’s stopped in its trajectory by another block, the ball will spin around that block till it’s free to continue on its way. You can also right-click to “unhook” the floating point from its current destination, which will make it go in the direction it’s headed, with physics applying. For, you see, this is basically a physics puzzle game. Half of each level is above water, with the ball falling due to gravity, while the other half is underwater, causing the ball to rise to the surface.

The score is directly influenced by the ball’s speed, as you have to collect red bars growing out of multiple blocks in the area. They change in size based on the ball’s speed; taller when faster, smaller when slower. The taller that bar is, the more points it gives, so the best way to rack up a high score is to keep the ball going very quickly.

The ball follows the trajectory it wants to follow.
Don't hang on to the same cube for too long.

The whole path taken by the ball glows a bright white
when the level has been completed. Now you can see
how much you moved around.

There isn’t really an end to this game, as far as I know – you can try to reach for the highest score, and that’s about it. There aren’t special modes to try either, nor are there difficulty settings. However! You can freely customise the game using the customisation menu, changing every single major element of the gameplay and physics (such as the retract speed, the density, the size of the level… and so on). This would give the game an infinite replayability, but since it never really changes, it might not make a huge difference.

There’s not much else for this one – a decent relaxing puzzle game, which can keep your interest for an hour, maybe longer, with a lot of customisation options. Not much variety, but that’s okay. It’s a small game. Check it out!

Splatter – Blood Red Edition

Price: 9.99$ USD

Also known as Splatter – Zombie Apocalypse, this game developed by Dreamworlds is a top-down shooter about zombies. That’s been a trend, and most zombie games on Steam have been of poor quality, so I was expecting the worst. This... was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn’t call it amazing, but it went above my (admittedly low) expectations.

Come to think of it, I really CAN'T remember the name of
this game's protagonist.

Meet Gruff Gun-Ho Snarky Manly Protagonist #148 as his day takes a turn into horror and a zombie apocalypse begins. This guy would have been more at home in a film noir. Because he is defined by his willingness to shoot at stuff, he grabs a gun and goes to town on the zombies, making his way around. He isn’t alone in this adventure, even if he wished he’d be. There are options from time to time that can change the results of the story, as well. Early on you can hand over guns to a looter and they will, in return, help you back. You can choose to kill that looter instead, if you think you can face alone the armies of undead out there.

I guess the zombies are a lot easier to see when they're
moving - and so, easier to fight.
Damn, this is dark.

Funny, I thought people stuck together even more now
that they were trying to survive together- oh, you meant
the zombified people. Right.

There are other times where you’re helping other survivors, like that time you’re put in the back of a car with a machine gun and have to save the car by killing the incoming hordes. You can also save a woman from loads of monstrous giant worms, and she’ll take you to a survivor camp, where you can either leave as soon as you come in, or help them fortify their defenses and kill some monster bugs before you leave. And from there, your journey is far from over.

You have the standard fare from a shooting game: Collect money and ammo, upgrade the weapons to last longer in the struggle. Collect weapons, too, of course. You can also change the difficulty setting (Harmless, Normal, Nasty… or Maniac). There are even side-quests that involve collecting pieces of a golden gun. So we go from Walking Dead to… James Bond??

I don't think that's how guns are assembled.

Shout-out to the bit where you can mow down an entire horde
with a combine harvester.
This deserves to be in a movie.

Get swarmed by monsters, throw flares, and always be wary of the dark – most of the areas in this game are bathed in darkness. It’s kind of the point, but it can be disorienting at times, since a lot of obstacles aren’t clear and, sometimes, the zombies are good at sneaking up on you in the dark. It’s a small point of criticism, although I suppose it was one of the stylistic choices they took so I can’t complain too much. The game is fully voiced and has subtitles (though there are some mistakes in the text, but that’s a minor issue). None of the characters really stand out (not even the protagonist) and the story follows all the beats of the usual zombie outbreak, hardly ever deviating from the usual tropes associated to the genre until the end where something more technological seems to be after our hero. Ultimately, in spite of a slight lack of things to make it unique, the game plays much better than you’d expect it to, outside of a few cursor-based issues (moving out of the screen will de-center the crosshair from the mouse cursor). The difficulty settings make the game worth replaying.

Oh, and also, there are different achievements for the
different options. So this game is worth replaying if you
seek out achievements.

My only other point of criticism is that, for some reason, buying this game will add all of its soundtracks and sound collection to your Steam music library, all in different folders (including tracks less than a second long), and it takes up way too much room. I might not keep this game after I’ve beaten it once, but it’s certainly better than I hoped.

Tabletop Simulator

Price: 14.99$ USD

It’s kind of difficult to discuss something like Tabletop Simulator, mostly because it’s not the base product itself that matters; it’s what you do with it. This game opens a world of possibilities, as long as you enjoy tabletop games and have a number of friends who, too, enjoy them. And that they have some time to play then with you.

Can you play chess for a full hour?
That's an achievement. I'm not joking.

Tabletop Simulator, from Berzerk Studios, is a pretty basic concept: You got that table. Prepare a game, invite people (or join a server), start playing. The base game offers a few options for a single player, like the automatic creation of a puzzle out of a picture on your computer. Chess, checkers, dominoes, cards, dice, RPG figurines… it’s all possible. But that’s not all. Of course, you’re expected to know the rules of the game you’re playing, as they’re not set into the simulator; only the tools to play the game are. You can also buy and download DLCs for various other famous tabletop games. Can’t find your favorite game in the DLC? Maybe someone has custom-built it in the Steam Workshop! Most of the stuff found there is kinda crappy, but some are very well-done replicas of various great tabletop games. Still nothing? If you’ve got the knowledge, you can build it yourself and make it available to everyone else!

Hell yes, Red Dragon Inn!

Personally, I’ve had an awesome time playing games like Red Dragon Inn or Betrayal at House on the Hill through this simulator. I also liked trying out some of the simpler games that only require cards, as it’s possible to hide your stuff from everyone else using designated areas. In fact, when you make a game through the Workshop, you can create all the items needed for the game and you can even select the kind of table needed for it, as well as any areas that each player can see or keep secret from everyone else.

NIC FLIP!

Then, of course, there’s a plethora of options for each player. Not so much to make your game, but to do random stuff in the middle of a game; wanna flip the table? If the game’s admin didn’t lock the table, you can! Draw or paint on the table, make lines, flick stuff off of it… For long I’ve wanted to do that without hurting my fingers in the process! Chain things up, type text on the table, do a bunch of other things… You can write a message to everyone else… in fact, you can even make items with text areas, which is useful for a game that requires players to write things for others to see.

Looks fun, let's try it!

The system takes some time getting used to as you can flip items, move them around, do plenty of other things. You can do almost anything, as long as you find out how. Unfortunately, most of the potential with this simulator is when you play with friends. Otherwise, it’s kinda boring and bland. There’s only so much you can do when you’re playing by yourself, it’s not exactly the way to enjoy, uh, 99% of all board games. On top of that, if a game isn’t available in the base game or as official DLC, and you can only find it in the workshop, it can be of poor quality. But overall, the simulator offers all the options that were to be expected from its base function of letting you play board games online, and even offers some more. I do recommend it, as long as you have the time and friends to play these games with. You might even make new discoveries that encourage you to buy the physical copies, if you’ve got friends you can see in person.

You Have To Win The Game

Price: Free

And you can! It’s tough as balls, but you can!

This retro Metroidvania by Minor Key Games seems fairly basic, in that you only need to retrieve a few abilities in order to make your way to the end – but it’s a lot more complex than it looks. The story? There’s not really a story here, just go through this maze of caves and find your way out! Of course, you can’t go very far without the necessary abilities.

Wait, haven't I already started the game...?

I'm a psychic! I foresaw myself die a couple dozen times
in this area as soon as I reached it. 

Not that you start with “abilities”, per se, outside of running and jumping. Even then, at first all you can do is seek out special spheres that will materialize blue and purple platforms all over the place, letting you access new ledges. Then you can double jump. And later, you can wall-jump, which becomes not only necessary, but vital to master to reach the end. As a matter of fact, you’re thrown directly into difficult territory as soon as you get that ability, having to stick to moving vertical platforms in order to go back to the main area. Thankfully the checkpoints are very frequent, as some areas are just insane – I remember that zone where you have to stick to sides of platforms, because the entire top of these platforms is made of spikes – and the screen beneath is also entirely made of spikes aside from a mirror that takes you back to a much earlier area. Yes, there are some teleporters around here, in mirror form. Not that they’re that common, mind you.

There are also bosses in this game, but you have no means of fighting.
Just dodge the storm of bullets.

- R - ...you sure it's the right magic word?

Reaching the final areas involves coming back almost completely to the start, which involves unthinkable gymnastics of climbing walls with the latest ability. Throughout the journey, the walls often bear writings about a “magic word”, who has it, who doesn’t, but it’s not entirely clear what the word is. Yet, you gotta figure it out, as it’s needed to beat the game. The final area takes you to the end of the game – that is, a mirror with “LOSE” written over it, and if you do go inside it and touch the crystal ball, you lose and have to start everything over. You have to go into a different mirror, which takes you to 26 lettered mirrors, and you write the magic word (Spoiler alert: It’s “SUPER”), then come back to the LOSE Mirror, which has been turned into a WIN mirror. Reaching the crystal ball there makes you win the game.

One of the nastiest tricks the game pulls is a series of ultra-hard rooms
that you have to start all over again if you use the left exit. No, really.
As for the protagonist, you can see it flashing, struck by the bat
at the top of this image.

Then you find out that in order to get 100% completion, not only do you need to find all the rooms in this maze, but also get all of the money bags… one of which is located in the LOSE room, so you are forced to play through the game twice.

The game is extremely hard, even with all the checkpoints scattered around. In contrast, the art style is very simple, reminding one of the older computer games of the Commodore era. The game itself takes place on a screen inside your screen, probably to bring to mind the old computers. The design lies on four colors: White, black, blue and… pinkish purple? I dunno. The lack of a story means that you only need to focus on the gameplay. And since you’re a one hit point wonder, you can be sure to die a lot.

NOPE

This game is also available in a few different modes, all to test your abilities. The main game is available in Extra Spicy mode, which is a higher difficulty level. And if you want a limited number of lives to make things harder, you can find and unlock two additional options: The ‘Playable Cat DLC’ (not actually a DLC, you unlock it by finding a special area in the game), which gives you nine lives, no more, to complete your task. And if that’s not hard enough for you, there’s the YOLO Mode in which all the checkpoints are removed and you have only one life to complete the whole game.

This game is free, so go try it out if you think you’d like it. You Have To Win The Game’s developers recently released an updated version, called Super Win The Game, with updated graphics and an actual story. It’s in my collection; which means I’ll be reviewing it someday…

And that’s it for this Steam Pack. Boy, I really went overboard with 5 reviews. Oh well, if it allows you to discover new games you like…

Next week, a Top 12!

Surgeon Simulator

See this guy? That’s you now. Actually, no, you’re worse.

We're having some bloody good fun around here!

There are some gimmick games on Steam that are a lot of fun. They’re usually all about putting you in silly situations or impairing your abilities, after which you can go wild and do whatever you want, once you've byspassed those limitations. I reviewed one such game last year: Goat Simulator. Hm, come to think of it, a lot of those games are simulators… Which brings me to today’s game: Surgeon Simulator. A game that begs to be played with an overpriced virtual reality headset and, very importantly, no medical studies whatsoever. I don't have a VR headset, but I do lack medical studies - so I should be fine.

Bossa Studios UK brings to us the perfect game if you love bloodied, gory black comedy – and as weird as it may sound, I am in that category. Hey, there’s a reason I have the Final Destination films among my favorite guilty pleasures. I just look at the Steam achievements for this game, and I’m already laughing my ass off.

No anesthetics; Nigel does things
the old way. He whistles a lullaby
to put his patient to sleep.

Will I even be able to remove the cloth from the patient?

You are now Nigel Burke, disembodied hand and arm moving around and pretending to be a person. Or rather, you’re the person attached to that hand and arm, but nobody cares about him. All that matters is that you’ve got a single hand to do everything, and you have to rely on your extremely poor skills, sheer clumsiness, and no other hand whatsoever in order to complete procedures that are way too complex and risky. Nigel is such a butterfingers, he can barely grab stuff without making a mess… and now he’s playing into people’s entrails! What’s next, he’s gonna carve his initials on the organs he’s transplanting? He’s a blunder, but he’s not crazy, come on. (And before you laugh at this, I’ll let you know that this actually happened – here’s the link to the article. Yes, someone actually did that. Reality is worse than fiction, yadda yadda.)

Just a D score? I'm never going to get out of medical school
with this!
...What do you mean, I'm already out of medical school?

Game Dev Tycoon

Have you ever wanted to create your own game studio? If you’re a gamer, the thought had to go through your head at least once. Have you ever wanted to make your games, based on the genres you love, for the consoles you love? Or maybe you wished you were a developer back in the olden days of the video game industry, making games for the retro consoles you still love? Hey, it’s alright, we’ve all had those dreams. Especially for those of us who saw the start of home gaming and wished today’s industry was more like it was back then. Less cutthroat, less dependent on insane budgets and less greedy with new ways to make more cash, like with microtransactions and lootboxes. That’s alright, the industry is a bit crap at the moment, especially on the AAA side of things (which might be why I mostly play indie games lately).

However! Would you like to play yourself as a young developer, growing a studio throughout the history of the gaming industry, with all the attention to detail when it comes to the consoles, their rivalries, their market shares, the genres that work well and not-so-well on them, the target audience options, the dozens of possible topics, and see your games being either hailed as masterpieces, seen as average, or torn to shreds by reviews, all while you manage your budget, create new engines, research the newest developments of the industry, and try to survive in a market that grows more and more competitive by the year?

Phew! If your answer is “…Huh?”, I’m sorry, that question was really way too long. If the answer is yes, welcome to Game Dev Tycoon. If it’s no… well, give it a try anyway. Released in 2013, Game Dev Tycoon is the creation of Greenheart Games, who really “get it” when it comes to understanding gamers. They even give you an achievement if you name your in-game company Greenheart Games! Or if you name one of your projects Game Dev Tycoon. Well, okay, it’s not all perfect, but they’re improving!

The game starts in the simplest of studios: An average Joe or Jane, making games in his or her garage, on an oldie computer, with… Okay, either they had the budget for a car that favored cool looks over performance, or this new game developer’s family name is Brown and they’ve got an uncle named Emmett.

Retrospective 2017

(I know it's a little late to post this, but I didn't have time to work on it after the year had started. Still, January 6th is rather early into the year.)

As usual, it’s time to say goodbye to the past year, and welcome the new one with open arms. I wish, to every single one of you, a 2018 filled with happiness and peace. May your businesses grow, may you spend quality time with your relatives, and may you make great gaming discoveries. More than anything else, I wish you a 2018 with plenty of good news. We all need that.

Lately, if a year seems to be going well for me, it’s on a personal level. I watch the yearly retrospectives on the political and cultural level and it’s sometimes pretty grim. Americans have spent a year already with their new President. The #MeToo hashtag has made a difference as accusations of sexual misconduct rolled by, targeting dozens of famous actors, directors, editors, musicians… We’re seeing society changing. And my wish is that it keeps on changing for the better in 2018. Victims standing up against their aggressors. People fighting injustice en masse. People helping others, any way they can. Letting cats and dogs live together… and actually get them to get along! Even the impossible is possible!

But that’s my idealist side speaking. I know change doesn’t happen overnight, the same way one can’t lose weight by getting a gym membership and going there once, to never go back. It takes time for society to improve. As for me? I prefer not to make promises that I can’t keep, but I do my best to accomplish them whenever possible.

On the personal side, 2017 was one of the best years of my life. Thirty minutes into the year, I caught a shiny Pokémon in Pokémon Sun, which was almost symbolic of a year of good luck. Then at the end of March I got a job, working night shifts at a gas station. It led to a few time management issues, as I was still adamant on writing my reviews for the blog in spite of my work/sleep schedule. You try writing 2000, sometimes 4000, words a week when you spend your nights at work and your days in bed. Sleeping. Wished I was luckier than that, but hey, I still have time to live and play games.

I went to the United States, took a plane alone – quite an achievement when I literally never took a plane to go anywhere before – and went to a convention where I met a bunch of friends I made over the Internet. Which convention was it? Does it matter? It was friggin’ awesome, as conventions are supposed to be.

But enough of that! I mean, I can’t be spending this whole article talking about myself! So now, let’s jump into the lists where I’ll be talking about… my blog! Boy, what a difference that makes! When it comes to reviews, Planned All Along has been very busy. Tons of reviews, some short, some long – seriously though, I had a lot of long reviews this year, which is kinda surprising considering my schedule. This year, I also reviewed my last Nintendo DS game, making it another milestone accomplished – and I still have plenty of Wii and 3DS titles in my library, not counting the 300+ games on Steam. To start this look at the last 365 days on this blog, first here’s some fun data.

Q.U.B.E. (+Director's Cut)

Tetris is simple, it just keeps on
going faster.

Puzzle games aren’t usually the kind where much is to be said: There’s a concept, then there’s a couple dozen levels based around this concept, usually with progression and an increasing difficulty level… This is achieved usually by changing the number of variables, or by combining multiple puzzle mechanics together, to force the player to juggle their brain cells and make connections between the elements, in order to figure out the solution.

Q.U.B.E., like most puzzle games, is simple enough that I could just talk about it in a Steam Pack – and after playing it for a while, it IS simple enough to be discussed there. However, the original has been removed from Steam, replaced by the Director’s Cut, which adds a lot of new elements. So I figured it would be good to talk about both games in the same article.

It's voxellic!
...That didn't make sense.

These two games – if we can even call them two different games – follow the idea of a puzzle game to a T. I felt it was fairer to discuss the first Q.U.B.E., and then talk about its Director’s Cut. Speaking of, I like Director’s Cuts. In movies, they sometimes add scenes that were missing from the theatrical release for time. Those scenes would sometimes explain things that were poorly explained in the original – but it can also lead to scenes being made longer for no good reason. A Director’s Cut of a video game takes that concept and rolls with it. They take the original game and improve on it, adding plot details (whenever necessary), new modes and gameplay aspects. Sometimes, even new levels or secrets!

Whoa... what did I do last night... All I remember is a 40-ounce,
a feather boa, a ticket to dog races and a crowbar...
And goddamn Despacito in my head for some reason.

Q.U.B.E. stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion. You are a character in first-person view, with only your arms showing, covered in a weird suit with white dots on your hand and fingers that often change color. You fall down into this weird place made almost entirely out of white cubes. Featureless walls, aside from the cubes. There’s a few black cubes here and there to mark your progression… and then you find colored cubes.

The Disney Afternoon Collection (Part 4)

Intro / DuckTales

Chip’n’Dale / TaleSpin

Darkwing Duck / DuckTales 2

Chip’n’Dale 2 / Conclusion

(Before we start... I want to wish everyone a happy new year. May your 2018 be better than your 2017! And if your 2017 was great... then, may your 2018 be even better!)

Chip’n Dale Rescue Rangers 2

This game starts as Chip and Dale learn through a news report of a bomb threat in a restaurant located downtown. They decide to go investigate. As soon as they leave, the news report continues, announcing Fat Cat’s escape from prison…

First thing you notice: The game has animated cutscenes, not only text with still images. Some effort went in this!

Boxes! Boxes boxes boxes... BOXES!

Second thing: As with any sequel, the controls are a little different. Now, Chip or Dale can even throw items diagonally. This is bound to be useful at some point, right? One downside is that, now, if you want to throw a crate near the floor, to hit an enemy’s bottom, you can’t shoot until the chipmunk is hidden inside the box. I suppose that made the previous game too easy! Once again, you only means of defence is to pick up boxes and throw them around. I suppose the steel boxes were OP, because they’re mysteriously absent outside of rare instances where you must cross a bed of spikes to reach the next platform.

DIAGONAL TOSS, MOFO!

Oh, I just love going into sewers... always makes for
pleasant levels... bleh, it stinks down here!

In the original Chip’n Dale, there were two levels you could skip. Here, none. But that’s okay, it’s about the same length anyway. The levels are once again split in sections, so you restart at the beginning of the section you died in instead of restarting the whole level (unless you get a Game Over and use a continue, which takes you back to the start of the level). The flowers from the original have been replaced by RR symbols, for Rescue Rangers, and the stars are almost absent – since this time around, stars are clear 1-Ups. You can collect up to 99 RR symbols in a level, because that’s where the counter ends. In the first, each time you collected 100, the counter went back to 0 and you gained an extra life after a level. Here, once you get 50, you gain a larger RR emblem, which stacks wth the previous ones earned. The use for those is never explained in the game, but I noticed that once you had collected enough of those, you gained extra hearts for your life bar, going from 3 to 4, and then 5. So, you know, the game at least stays fair by giving you more HP for the upcoming levels… It’s also very easy to reach 50 RR symbols in a level (note that they all respawn if you die). You can only get one larger RR emblem per level, too – since the counter ends at 99, you can’t get to 100, which would give you two emblems.

Ready to go again!

The next thing you notice is the difficulty level. Much like in Darkwing Duck, many enemies here take more than one hit to go down – and many others have effective means of defending themselves against the crates you throw at them. We even get enemies disguised as crates in the first level! You don’t expect this kind of trick so early into the game! Indeed, I personally believe this game is harder than the previous one. However, it’s merciful: Three lives each time, three continues. That should give you a chance to learn the game. And thank God for that!

You gotta wait till this guy spawns a rock before you can
properly hurt it. Even there, you gotta strike before it
vanishes.

The levels are tricky, but so are the bosses! You know how, in the first Chip’n Dale game, you always had a red ball to throw at the boss, from the start, and you could always pick it up again instantly? Yeah, they got rid of that. Instead, all bosses must be killed by the crates and blocks that either fall onto the field or are summoned by said bosses. The first, Water Rabbit, must be killed with crates that fall from the top of the screen. Did I mention that this takes place in a giant dishwasher, and the water currents drag you and the boxes downwards? It keeps going, too: The second boss, a flying cat (BatCat?), throws rocks that must be picked up and thrown back at it. A ghost summons rocks, a wrecking ball on a machine hits the ground to produce blocks… You get the idea. Also, unlike the original, most bosses here actually freaking move around the screen. NOW that’s some difficulty! I mean, I don’t like when things are too hard, but when they’re too easy it’s no fun either. The bosses here are harder, and that’s good! Many of them are pretty long to beat, though, since you must rely on blocks summoned by the boss or the field.

I have to make this bomb blow in this robot's face!
...Or else, it's gonna blow up in MY face!

The final boss, in particular, is very difficult. It’s a robot version of Fat Cat, and it has many different attacks. Its main move is to rise and disappear at the top of the screen, drop a bomb, and fall down shortly afterwards. You have to pick up the bomb and throw it at the boss… but only when it reaches the 0 of its 3-second countdown! For, you see, getting hit by the bomb won’t harm it, only the explosion will. And it has about 10 Hit Points, with some attacks that are easy to avoid, some that are predictable due to their telegraphing… and, for some reason, one that causes the game to lag a bit when it happens, but it’s not too bad. Once the Fat Cat robot is broken, we get a final cutscene in which we learn that Fat Cat escaped, but since we’ve laid waste to his primary base of operations, the Rescue Rangers should be able to deal with him soon. The end!

Yeah… that’s it. I’m a bit disappointed as a Steam achievement about beating this game said “Return Fat Cat to the slammer”, and that doesn’t even happen. Oh well!

Chip'n Dale 2 has a lot of tricky platforming section, as well
as devilish sections like this one.

I’m a bit torn on this one. While the graphics and music are still very good, a staple of all Capcom Disney titles in this collection, I have a few criticisms about the controls and system this time around. The difficulty level has increased, but the game as a whole is still fair – I’d even say it’s more creative than the first in that it tries to think up good reasons for crates and other blocks to appear during boss battles, sometimes with unique twists. They did away with the apples and the bombs from the original, kept in the steel blocks (which appear only twice), and the red balls appear only during the bonus game at the end of a level (in which it’s a lot trickier to get an extra life than it was in the first CnD game). The increase in Hit Points is also welcome, considering the rising difficulty of the later levels.

Big cogs everywhere? What is this, Great Mouse Detective?

The controls still work fine, and I’m glad that we can now throw diagonally upwards (that would have been useful before!). However, some changes to the system annoy me, like the clear delay needed before Chip or Dale can throw a crate at ground level. They absolutely have to be hiding in the crate before throwing it that way, which is annoying when you’re trying to kill enemies smaller than the chipmunks. The game also makes frequent use of moving platforms, like treadmills in the final level, or spinning cogs in a clock tower level (in my opinion, the most annoying of them all). The NES graphics can do wonder, but sometimes you can’t tell the direction in which a cog is spinning until you jump on it. And, well, sometimes you get tossed off the platform and to your doom (since the game scrolls only forward and there are many sections where Chip or Dale is going upwards, with the bottom of the screen turning into a deadly pit). Also, the RR enblems should have been explained better.

All in all, a very good game, some good improvements, although I’m not sure I like it more than the original. It’s pretty good, definitely not a bad game, but I don’t see it as quite as good as some others in this collection.

Conclusion

Can you make it into the Top 10?
Because I sure as Hell can't.

Well, that was quite a ride! To properly do this review, I had to beat each game in each available mode.

I started with the Boss Rush Mode, since it was the shorter one and it would give me a chance to try out the controls before getting into the various games. Playing on a keyboard isn’t the same as using a USB NES controller. To its credit, this mode pits you against all the bosses in each game, although it’s always in the same order (either the order of progression or the order of difficulty).

Got 4 Hit Points here because it's the normal Play mode.
In Boss Battles, you gotta survive with 3.
Might as well give up. Or maybe not.

There’s also a little problem with this mode, when it comes to games where you can get extra hit points: It’s not consistent with these. In Chip’n Dale 2, you almost instantly get extra hit points, up to 5, as you progress. And you start the Boss Rush mode with these 5 Hit Points. In both DuckTales games, the additional HP are either found or bought. And as a result, you go through the Boss Rush mode with only 3 HP the whole time. Yes, even against the freaking golem in DuckTales 2. Good luck! It’s a bit of a problem, though if you know the bosses you can defeat them with relative ease (after all, the point of Boss Rush is to speedrun through them and get a low end time).

The Play option is just that: Play the game as it was meant to be played back when it was on the NES… with a slight difference. You can Rewind your playthrough (usually with the Q button) for any major mistake you made, allowing you as many tries as you want – which, okay, I suppose that’s a nifty feature for young players who are discovering these games, or for people who just want a less-effort playthrough. Just go through the levels, rewind if necessary, beat the game. There’s one achievement for each, and you don’t lose the achievement if you rewind.

The Time Attack mode is where it gets tough: Once again, you play through the whole game (including menus and cutscenes, but it ends as soon as the final boss is defeated). This time, however, rewinding is not allowed, and the timer never stops unless you leave the game and restart (or pause the Disney Afternoon Collection, not the single NES game). The timer doesn’t start over if you get a complete, no-Continues-left Game Over, either. But don’t worry, the achievements are actually very easy to get, as long as you can beat these games in less than 2 hours each. Many of them can be beaten in a third of that time, with enough skill and luck.

If you devote about twenty hours to this game, you should go through the whole collection relatively easily and collect every achievement (including the one in which you must beat any game without rewinding). The collection of achievements is pretty basic, really - a little too basic and simplistic, in fact. It’s a weird point of criticism to have, but I have it. (I’ll say more later).

"I am the bat with fake wings that hookshots at
fixtures in the night! I am... Darkwing Duck!"

There isn’t much to say about the Collection itself. It’s great that it features all of the musical tracks from the six titles you can play here, and I also like the Gallery – it also offers loads of information you might not know about the production and content of these games. However, it seems to be quite unequal in the presentation of bonus content, as though there was more to show about the more famous titles. I would have liked to read more trivia about DuckTales 2, as an example. Then again, if there’s little to say about one of these games, I guess it makes sense that they wouldn’t be discussed as much.

A final thing about the achievements: There could have been a few, more special ones outside f the obvious stuff. Here’s a few I can think of:

-Beat a game that has Continues without using any;

-Get the best ending on either DuckTales game;

-Get the worst ending;

-Beat Chip’n Dale 1 without skipping any levels;

-Find every secret million-dollar treasure in DuckTales 1 and 2;

-Buy all of the upgrades in TaleSpin;

-Beat any final boss without getting hit once.

But really, that’s just a minor point of criticism. All in all, this collection is awesome, and if you’ve ever owned any of these classic titles, or wanted to own any of these classic titles, or played DuckTales Remastered and want to try the original one… Seriously, whichever the reason you give yourself to get this game, you really should. The Disney Afternoon Collection is amazing. Worth the price you pay for it!

Next week… something different!