So, I'm going to confess to something right away:
I was intensely worried about replaying this game, twenty years along.
I was worried about it because I'd played a bit [and got stuck] a couple of years ago. And I remembered the conversation with the Billy Goats Gruff.
Essentially, it turns the fable into a commentary on worker's rights - and that - really - says all you need to know about the first game. It's in a somewhat surreal and slightly twisted High Fantasy world. Read more
I had such high hopes for February, I really did.
I sat on Banjo Tooie, because I wanted to experience it, but I didn't want to experience it quite so close to Banjo Kazooie. I was genuinely looking forward to what Plague Knight had in store for me at the end of Shovel Knight. I wanted to delve into Simon the Sorcerer and find out if time - and my memory of that game - had treated it well. I also wanted to see if - a year on - Jazzpunk was still that spellbinding, silly experience I found it to be while watching Lucahjin play it.
You can read my gung-ho and ready post about all that here.
This tragic tale is a tale of how that all fell flat and how I ended up playing three games that weren't even on my list. Well. Kind of.
[Please Note: Some of the links in this article will take you away from Twinstiq. They have been formatted such that they will open new browser tabs.]
I've been playing video games for a very, very long time at this point. The first couple of times I stood in front of anything that resembled a game was back in 1979 or 1980. I don't recall which one it was now - might have been Asteroids. Might have been Space Invaders. All I know is that the moment my eyes took in that crude joystick and those round, red buttons of the arcade machine, I had found a kind of home. A hobby that has, so far, spanned a lifetime.
I dove headlong into that hobby.
And I played.
A lot. Read more
