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03/01 - Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
08/01 - Need for Speed: Carbon
12/01 - Devil May Cry (Normal)
15/01 - Devil May Cry 2 (Normal/Dante)
26/01 - Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
08/02 - Dishonored
18/02 - Deus Ex: The Fall
23/02 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Normal/Dante/Free Style)
26/02 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Normal/Vergil)
28/02 - Horizon Chase Turbo
Generally a really fun and characterful little game but with minor issues that do mar the experience a bit. It's a pretty impressive homage to the old 2D sprite scaling racing games, yet using 3D graphics. But somehow it captures the look and feel of them impressively. At first that was a bit jarring to me, not really ever having got on with those sorts of games, but I got used to it after a while. It does have a strange false sense of depth, but at the same time also a really thrilling sense of speed to it. Although funnily that meant I found this game played far better in handheld mode on the Switch, where I played pretty much all of it. It moves too fast, with corners coming up too quickly and sharply to really see properly on a big screen. It needs to be smaller just to be able to understand what you're looking it. Speaking of look, it's a quite pretty game, with great use of colour, and a clean low detail style which still has a lot of personality. It's got a pretty catchy soundtrack too.
But there was one thing that really got on my nerves playing, and that was how it deals with colliding with opponents. It can be pretty punishing with the way it bonks you off course and slows you down when it happens. But a lot of the time, you can't really avoid it, as you're driving through the pack on tight turns. Other times you'll get punished when they hit in to you too. And it has this tendency for opponents ahead of you to gradually block you as you approach them from behind, which makes judging how to pass them a vague gamble sometimes, and on some occasions just impossible if you're on one of the narrower tracks. Also driving on tracks set at night were not particularly fun, as you practically can't see where the track is on a lot of them.
28/02 - EQQO
I saw this pop up on the eShop a few days ago and it piqued my interest, and it was pretty cheap too so I gave it a shot. It's a short adventure game about guiding a blind child as they carry a giant magical egg on a journey to and through an ancient temple. It's a very simple game with basic mechanics and story, but it's enjoyable for what it is. One interesting twist is that you don't control the child directly, and instead you play as the narrator of the story giving him directions. I guess that means this counts as a "second person" game in a way. Aesthetically it's quite nice. Again, very simple, but it's got some atmospheric backdrops that are helped by the fixed camera angles meaning it can have more control over composition. But it does have this strangely aggressive depth of field effect that can really get in the way sometimes, blurring everything on screen. Also this is a game clearly designed for touch devices, so using a controller made for a pretty unwieldy time. But the thing is, it does still have touch controls, and I did try them, yet they're even worse. Also there are a couple of puzzles which are awkward because they require you to interact with some object, but will only let you do it from a specific camera angle, even if you can clearly see it in another. Occasionally there's some dodgy pathfinding too. But anyway, not a bad way to spend less than a fiver I suppose.