Ninja Gaiden II

Slow down there, Ryu. You'll cut someone's arm off.

Source // Moby Games

When I said that Ninja Gaiden Black killed ninja games for me (what a bastard), I didn't think it would literally kill ninja games for me, but it did. Sat next to it in the DVD case was Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360, the new and improved (again?) sequel to Ninja Gaiden. Not a v1.5, but a v2.0.

With poor Internet, playing games offline has been basically all I can do, so it's a good job I've got hundreds ready to go, physically, digitally, even those made of cardboard. I am all set for having no Internet and playing Ninja Gaiden II.

But it has been killed before it even left that DVD case...

LostWinds

Yes, even the space between those two words is lost.

We've been having a torrid time with the Internet this month, though "without the Internet" is probably a better choice of words. Do you know what you can't do without the Internet? Download video games. Do you know what you definitely can't do, even with the Internet? Download WiiWare platformer LostWinds, an artsy little game about the wind, I imagine.

Luckily, it's been ported to the PC in the decade since that original release, and it's small enough to not require hours and hours of a stable Internet connection to download. Oh, what I'd give for a stable Internet connection...

Until then, let's see if we can chill out in this game I know nothing about.

LocoRoco 2

Required listening: https://youtu.be/n2nvk9c1AyU

Back when we played Patapon, I mentioned that the PlayStation Portable had two cutesy and musical platformers and that it was the other of the two that I was more familiar with, LocoRoco. A couple of years later, the bouncy yellow blobs were back for LocoRoco 2.

While I played more LocoRoco than Patapon, I've played little of either - another error to correct at some nebulous point in the future. I get the impression the storyline won't be the important part of LocoRoco 2, though. Who needs a story when everything looks so damn adorable?

Let's get rolling and bouncing through what must be the happiest game on the PSP.

Tetris Party

Are Solo games better with more people?

Source // Nintendo

How can you tweak a classic like Tetris? Different shaped blocks? A landscape-oriented grid to fill? Special abilities and power-ups? These are just a few ideas off the top of my head, and all of them cause a little shudder because they all seem a bit naff when compared to the pure Tetris experience.

And yet developers have still tried to make some Tetris-y spin-offs work, and may well have succeeded in Tetris Party, a collection of different Tetris-based modes for a gathering of Tetris fans.

Are any of the games in here good enough to replace the O.G. itself, or is this just a neat little compilation of something to do with your mates?

Let's Tap

Let's not?

Source // Nintendo Life

"Wii" and "Gimmick". Two words that are often found together, but whether that's for a good or bad reason largely depends on who you ask.

Having not owned a Nintendo Wii in its prime, and finding no major reason to keep the batteries in the Wiimote in 2021, if you ask me, the two words have a slightly negative lean to them. A Nintendo Wii game has to be really rather special to overcome that feeling, preferably making use of the controller in a way that no other console can do.

Let's Tap goes a step further, and gets players to use the Wiimote in a way no Nintendo Wii game ever did: by not even touching the fancy motion-sensing controller at all.

Bold move? Must have worked at least well enough to warrant a look in by those who follow a 1001 must-play video games list for fun...

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

Retro Evolved Harder?

Source // Microsoft

I played Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and had a mix of ups and downs before concluding that it was entertaining for the short while I spent playing it, but had no real intentions of ever putting more time or effort into it. For what reward? A higher score? More colours?

I didn't see the point, but would a more colourful sequel in the form of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 make me think again?

Guitar Hero World Tour

When will the noise end?!

Source // Nintendo

So, Harmonix made a few Guitar Hero games, unleashing the plastic plague upon second-hand electronics stores the world over, before they swapped bands for whatever reasons and played for Rock Band, which introduced more plastic peripherals into households that really didn't need them, proving that there was - somehow - a market for this tat.

Not wishing the up-and-coming competitor to have all the fun, whoever was left in the original Guitar Hero band thought they too could pull off a microphone and drum kit and here we are: Guitar Hero World Tour.

Yes, it's got one fewer drum, but it has two more cymbals, so ner. Is that enough to get me to play it? You know the answer to that.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Wanna go bowling?

What can be said about Grand Theft Auto IV that hasn't already been said about Grand Theft Auto IV? It was the next big GTA title, the first for four years, here to show off the next generation of consoles. Everyone wanted to see what it was capable of. Could the leap from San Andreas to IV be as big as the leap from GTA2 to GTA III? Would it live up to the hype? Was the push for realism going to make or break it?

When we look back on the GTA series, it often feels like GTA IV is a bit of a forgotten child. It's grey and miserable, the streets of Liberty City grubby and soulless. Wouldn't you rather be on the sun-soaked sandy beaches of Vice City? Wouldn't the countryside of San Andreas provide a better time? Well, yes, I think I would rather spend my time in any of those settings, but if you asked me what actual GTA game I wanted to play the most, I might be tempted to say GTA IV and mean it.

I've played through the PlayStation 3 version a couple of times, but at some point in 2017, I decided that it was time to play the PC version. I grabbed some screenshots that I guess made much more sense in the moment than they do now...

Let's see what I can remember first, and then we'll have another crack at it.

Age of Empires: Mythologies

What's next? Age of Mythology: Empire?

When it came time for me to play Age of Mythology, an Age of Empires game where the stories and legends of the ancient world form the basis of inspiration for the units and gameplay, rather than the actual history of the period, I would ultimately conclude that the game was alright. Worth a play, but it was largely interchangeable with any other Age of Empires I had played before it.

But now there's another one, this time Age of Empires: Mythologies, on the Nintendo DS. Is this an Age of Empires game or an Age of Mythologies title? Is this a merging of the two? How would that even work? And on a handheld? You must be mad.

Well, I'm mad enough to take on a 1001 games list just to see if I could, and now that the Internet is finally stable enough to write something about these games, it's time to find out what on Earth is going on here.

Spelunky

We're going deeper underground.

"Death is fun", says the developer of Spelunky, a freeware Rogue-like platformer where a mysterious cave network constantly shifts beneath your feet, daring you to dive deeper underground in search of treasure, pushing your luck against spike traps, snakes, and many more ways to find yourself lacking any life.

Each time you fail - and you will fail - your entire story is dug out of the Earth, the levels replaced by something just as familiar, just as challenging, but just not the same. Do you have the persistence to learn from your mistakes and make progress into the dark unknown, or are you destined to die in the mines before your adventure really even begins?

I have a hunch on what my answer to that is, but let's find out for sure.