#133 – Super Metroid

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Super Metroid is actually the last Metroid title I played, and I absolutely hated it the first time. I got stuck for hours because I didn’t figure out there was a run button, and after that I got stuck permanently when I fell down a gap and had to wall jump out, which I just could not do. This was on the Wii U Virtual Console, and it wasn’t until the game came to 3DS that I went back and finally beat it.

Never did get those Power Bombs at the top of that wall jump shaft, though! Not even with Space Jump!

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#132 – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered

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Despite loving the original Crash Bandicoot, it was quite a long time before I was willing to give another Naughty Dog game a try after Jak and Daxter turned out to be absolute rubbish…like every other PS2 era platformer that tried to recapture the magic of the N64/PS1 era platformers and failed miserably. I didn’t give Uncharted a second thought until just after the fourth game was released, and it’s all leaked out of my head at this point.

Anyways, it seems I’m in the mood to play through series of games at the moment (speaking of, at some point I need to go back to Resident Evil and play through 7 and 8…) so here’s Part 1 of 5 (skipping Golden Abyss because touch/motion controls on the Vita are the biggest nope possible) of my Uncharted series playthrough!

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#131 – Metroid: Samus Returns

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Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of MercurySteam. I have never played a MercurySteam game that I have enjoyed or thought was a worthwhile addition to the series it is a part of. This isn’t saying much of course, because they have made very few games. But I slogged my way through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow by virtue of Sir Patrick Stewart’s narration between stages alone, and how I managed to endure the sequel and the 3DS spinoff remain a hazy mystery I am better off not trying to recall. But you would think, after the disaster that was those games, they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Metroid series.

Alas, Nintendo never have made much sense.

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#130 – Metroid: Zero Mission

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I honestly didn’t think much of the original Metroid when I played it, although this was perhaps because I’d played Fusion prior to this, and going back to NES titles has always been a bit of a trial for me. Going back a little way is nice for nostalgia’s sake, but when you have no nostalgia of a title, going that far back can be quite painful. The original Metroid was painful. Zero Mission I adored though.

Yes, because of Metroid Dread, I’ll be replaying the main titles up to this point…if I can find an emulator that works be bothered to set up my Wii U I might even replay the Prime trilogy. But not Other M. I think once in a lifetime was enough for that game…

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#129 – Mass Effect 3

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It was quite a long time before I played Mass Effect after its initial release – I refused to buy the games on PS3 until the trilogy was released, and I didn’t want to buy it on my 360 because of the infamous RROD, which I was getting intermittently at the time. I kept my head down through the ending controversy (although I found the vanilla cupcake prank absolutely hilarious) and when I finally DID play it, I actually didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

This time, though…well. There’s a lot to unpack here, but maybe it’d be better to just throw away the suitcase…

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#128 – A Short Hike

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I frequently tell myself that I need to experience more indie titles, yet whenever I do this I find myself overwhelmed by choice…and sometimes underwhelmed by what I ultimately choose to try. I’ve played plenty of great indie titles, but all too often they seem to go “over my head” so to speak. Whenever the game is less about the gameplay and more about the “experience” I tend to falter, because to me the gameplay often IS the experience and it takes a very special kind of game to get me to overlook the fact that I’m not really doing anything significant.

So, let’s talk about A Short Hike I suppose.

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#126 – World’s End Club

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It is a very frustrating thing to play a game that you really want to like, but are unable to because it seems to be trying its hardest to make you put it down. This is usually through unwanted gameplay mechanics – like a stamina system that adds no value to the experience whatsoever but has been put there anyway – but occasionally it can be a fundamental flaw in the way the entire game is designed that just makes you feel like it should have been something else entirely. Like an anime. Or a pure visual novel.

Welcome to World’s End Club, the game that came out wrong.

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#125 – Mass Effect

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Mass Effect came out at a very weird time. I was unhappily stuck with an Xbox 360, because the PS3 was outrageously priced. It seemed like almost all the games I wanted were being released on that console, and I was struggling to justify having a 360 at all outside of using it as a DVD player. But I had one anyway, because I could afford it and I was going to be damned if I was going to be stuck with my last generation consoles. I wasn’t a very rational teenager, truth be told. In any event, I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to enjoy this – pretty much all I would play in those days were JRPGs – and I only played it to keep my friend quiet.

Fast-forward to now and I’m amazed I managed to wait until this long before firing up the PS4 remaster.

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#124 – The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

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I’ve been hearing about the Trails series for years now although it’s never really been on my radar, so to speak – I am by now painfully familiar with Japanese high school anime and all the tropes it encompasses, and it’s in plenty of series asides this one. Honestly, a good 80% of the nightmares I have involve being in school, why on earth would I want to relive the formulaic trauma in video game form?

Why indeed. For some reason I bought all four Cold Steel games recently. Two weeks and 37 hours later…

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