Picross

The last few weeks I've been depressingly busy with stuff and finding time for any real meaningful gaming sessions has been tough.  With what time I can squeeze in I've been playing Persona 5 which I can't share with you guys so I've had to horde that experience all to myself.  However, if I didn't find time to game at least a little bit in a 24 hour period I might go insane and that's when Picross came to the rescue.

I discovered Picross a few weeks ago in my local bar on a weekend.  That seems like a weird place to discover a video game but it's a video game bar where there are systems on the counter and games for days, it's a great place I'll do a post on it one day soon.  Anyway, I'm just sat having a drink but the dude next to me is playing Picross and usually I'm not drawn to puzzle games but for some reason I couldn't stop watching him play it.  Eventually I ask him to explain to me what's going on and after the evening was done I got curious and gave it a try myself the next day.  Well I was fucking hooked since it's incredibly easy to understand and yet still manages to be quite challenging.

The idea is simple, you get rows and columns of numbers and those numbers tell you how many filled in squares there are on that line.  If there are multiple numbers in the column it means that there is a space between the filled in areas and using nothing but these numbers you must uncover a picture on the grid.  The game on Gameboy and SNES has you trying to figure out these puzzles within 30 minutes and hitting an incorrect space causes you to lose time.  As you go on the grids get bigger and bigger which of course means the puzzles get harder and harder.

It's just an incredibly relaxing game to play and the challenge never really feels stressful.  Despite the timer going in the background as long as you take your time to work it out it's never really an issue but in the instances where mistakes are made and you really do end up battling the clock you get quite an intense experience. 


There are a pretty large number of Picross games.  There's the original game boy game and the sequel to that on the Super Nintendo.  There's also Picross 3D on the DS and a sequel to that on the 3DS which I'm told are very good and the extra dimension adds a good amount of extra challenge.  There's also a number of free Picross games on mobile too so if you wanted to give it a try then these might be a good place to start too.  There's even a fucking Final Fantasy Picross RPG for mobile called Pictologica where you solve small Picross puzzles in order to make your party of heroes attack stuff.

There's probably a bunch of other games I don't know about too but that should be enough to get you started.  Give it a try, it's fun, addictive and can be played in very small and quick bursts which means that even if your schedule is fucked you can squeeze in a quick puzzle here and there.

A Tetris Movie?!

Tetris is one of those games that everyone and their dog knows about.  It's one of those games that is almost synonymous with the word "gaming".  Even people who generally dislike video games can get a good kick out of dropping blocks into neat lines for points.  It's simple, fun, puzzle gaming bliss.  

So while I'm doing my usual morning routine of wasting time on the internet I come across some strange news that there is a Tetris movie in development.  Now I understand why people may attempt to make movie adaptations of other games since they have a story to work with but Tetris? Not much to go on there for a film.  

Ah, but wait of course!  Tetris and its development has a sort of rich history. Originally developed by Alexey Pajitnov as a means of testing hardware for the Moscow centre of Computer Science, things got a bit complicated with licensing rights and publishing thanks to the Soviet Union.  With that in mind there is actually a decent idea for a sort of documovie about the history of one of gamings biggest and most beloved titles. 

But it's not about that is it.....? 

Information on this movie is proving to be a little hard to come by but from what I can tell so far it's going to be a 3 part sci-fi epic.  I can't even begin to imagine the levels of retardation that are going to come out of this movie, I'm expecting something on the same level as Pixels at this point.  

Maybe they were inspired by this image from the Amiga version 

But even then fuck knows what they are gonna do with that.  It'll be a standard space story but every time the ships engines fail the engineer has to get 100 line in Tetris? 

Sort of hoping the project falls through and it goes away so this buffoonery can go away. 

Castlevania Legends

Well I've had a rather busy few days, so posts have been a bit thin on the ground.  Luckily, all the stuff happening didn't prevent me from playing video games and I managed to blast through Casltevania Legends last night.

Castlevania Legends was the third original game boy Castlevania and is probably the best one, but that isn't really saying much when you think about how much ass the other two games suck.  The game is standard gameboy castlevania stuff with lots of whipping and jumping and all the crap you've come to expect from classic castlevania.

There is a major difference in this game though, there are no sub weapons.  Well, there are but you don't find them in candles and stuff like you did in basically every other game, you have to earn them Megaman style from the bosses.  This sounds pretty cool but the only spell worth a shit in the whole game is the time stop, and you get that in the first fucking level.

The game also has this "burning mode" feature, where you get a massive movement speed buff and become invincible for a limited amount of time.  You can only do it once per life/level but if you know your going to have trouble with a section you can just kill yourself and then burning mode through it since the game is nice enough to give you unlimited continues.

Castlevania Legends is not a bad game by any stretch, it's just a bit boring.  It doesn't do anything truly offensive or bullshit in anyway and it doesn't stand out either.  Probably the most forgettable game in the series, but worth a try at least once.

Castlevania Series Run: Castlevania 2: Belmont's Revenge

God, when I first learned that there was a Castlevania 2 for the gameboy, my heart sank a bit.  If you remember a long time ago, I covered Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest and I thought if this game was anything like that one, I'd be in for a long, boring, slog of a game.

Luckily I was totally wrong and the game is actually quite good, or at least a damn sight better than the first Gameboy Castlevania.  In case anyone was wondering, this game is NOTHING like Castlevania 2 on NES and it's the same side-scrolling goodness that we know and love from classic Casltevania. 

It is basically more of the first game, but the gameplay has been refined so that it's now actually playable instead of being a mess of bad controls and shit level design.  On top of that, they decided to bring back a couple of the sub weapon from the main console games.  That said, not all of them are present, we only get the Holy Water and the Axe, but they are welcome additions and are extremely useful.

The graphics are also a lot better too, gone is Belmont's gammy leg and the enemies look a lot more interesting, and the hit boxes have also been sorted out a bit, so it's a lot easier to tell when you are hitting something and when you are getting hit.

This is not to say that the game is free of bullshit.

Fuck this room

Some rooms near the end of the game are practically impossible to get through without taking a hit or 2 and Dracula, and the boss just before Dracula have some pretty stupid attack patterns that make them more frustrating than actually challenging.

That said, it's a pretty fun game, not as good as the main series games obviously, but at the time it would have been a good little side attraction for on the go vampire hunting.

Castlevania Series Run: The Castlevania Adventure

It's only when one plays the Castlevania series back to back that you notice just how polarising the quality of the games are between entries.  This is a series that has games like Symphony of the Night, which are fucking classics, and then shit like Dracula X (SNES) which is just garbage.  Unfortunately, The Castlevania Adventure is one for the kak pile.

For anyone who isn't familiar with this one, it was the first Gameboy Castlevania game to be released.  It featured 4 levels, no sub weapons and some of the most annoying controls ever.  The controls are especially bad because they feel sticky, and I'm not just talking about the delay between the button being pressed and the whip coming out, it feels way worse than that in that kind of way that's hard to describe unless you play it for youself.  What is especially bad is how there is now way to jump foward unless you are already moving, and given some of the jumps the game expects you to do, this is super annoying.

I don't want to rag on the graphics for this game, especially with it being a gameboy game, but the stance Belmont has while you are not moving just looks strange.

I mean look at it, his back leg looks like it has some kind of disease or something.  But like I said, I'm not going to criticise a game this old for it's lack of anatomical accuracy.

Generally it's not very good, but it's still more fun that Dracula X on the Super Nintendo