Tiny Bullets (Playstation)

 

 Judging by the title, I really expected Tiny Bullets to be another one of those excellent 3D shooting games secretly hiding in the Playstation library, like Gungage and Cosmowarrior Zero. Instead, it's more of a combination of Tomb Raider's meticulous 3D platforming and Resident Evil's simple "put the item in the hole" puzzle-solving. Also, the player character looks like a babyfaced Sonic gijinka.

 

So, you play as this blue spiky kid, and you're exploring ruins and caves and such (though apparently, you're meant to be running an errand for your grandmother). There's some kind of plot involving an evil wizard and his henchmen who have cool bird-face helmets, as well as a friendly dragon and some other guy that you meet on your travels. So, you jump and climb and shimmy around, trying to get to the village where the shop selling Grandma's medicine is, and also not getting killed by monsters or evil goons or your own clumsiness.

 

The platforming itself is slow and clunky, but in a way that makes it feel deliberate and satisfying. You jump with X, and hang onto ledges by holding O. You can jump up to a ledge and hold O to grab it instead of falling back down, or you can hold O while walking off of a ledge to grab it while you drop down. You can also grab ahold of vertical poles/pipes/etc., and shimmy from side to side along them, and while hanging like this, you can swing bak and forth to do a long jump forward. I'm describing this stuff in such exhaustive detail because it's a big part of what the game entails, and it's all fun and satisfying. In fact, I do kind of wish Tiny Bullets more platforming and less puzzle-solving. And no combat.

 

The puzzle solving, as mentioned already, is Resident Evil-like in nature. Find a key to open a door. Find a fuse to turn on a machine. Put the coloured tiles in the right slots in the right order to activate the ancient secret thingy. That kind of thing. It's fine, but in a game like this where it clearly wasn't a high priority for the designers (as opposed to Resident Evil, where the puzzles clearly were a higher design priority, and are much more interesting as a result), these puzzles feel more like they're just a way of making the game consume more time, rather than entertaining challenges.

 

The combat, as has been vriefly alluded to already, is bad and even more of a chore than the puzzles. The controls for it are interesting, at least. Your weapon is a slingshot, and you hold R2 to point it, then O to shoot it. The game lets you hold L2 to look around in first person, and you can hold L2 and R2 together to aim and shoot like that, which at least is nice. You can shoot at things like gongs to activate stuff in the stages, too. The problem is that the enemies just kind of potter about, they'll probably get a hit or two in on you while you're aiming, and after a couple of shots they die. Also for some reason, despite the detailed aiming mechanics, most of the enemies don't take damage if you snipe them from a distance. Like the puzzles, the combat feels like padding, and while it's happening, you'd much rather be jumping and clambering and generally navigating the environment, and it's a shame the developers didn't concentrate more on that instead. 

 

Tiny Bullets is a game that I think, had it gotten a worldwide release, would be fondly-remembered part of a lot of childhoods. Without nostalgia, though, it can only really stand on its own, and unfortunately, the good parts (the controls and the generally great way it feels to move around in this game) are heavily overshadowed by the bad parts (the pointless puzzles and boring combat). Having said that, I do wonder how beloved it is among Japanese players. I've never seen or heard any references to it anywhere, though. 

Buccanyar! (Switch)

 A quick disclaimer first: after I'd already bought a physical copy of this game, and then played it for a week and a half, I found out that it actually has a western release (though I don't think it has a physical version), under the title Cats Away. But the Japanese version (technically) has an English translation included, that's the version I've been playing, and that's the version I'm reviewing. I assume at most, the only differences will be the name and (hopefully) the translation, but bear that in mind nonetheless.

 

Anyway, I haven't seen anyone talking about this game under either title, and when I saw it on both a list of Japanese games with included English translations and on sale for a low price on a certain Japanese second hand shop's website, I picked it up. Which turns out to have been a good idea, as this is an excellent game. It's clearly been made with a lot of passion, it's unique and fun to play, and it even has an interesting, entertaining story and even more surprising: actually funny comedy scenes that manage to shine despite a pretty bad translation (kind of reminds you of what I said about Sword and Fairy 6, doesn't it?). 

 

So what the game's actually about is nautical combat! Three sisters in a flooded world have inherited a special magic ship and a map from their dad, and as they travel around to the locations marked on the map in search of dad, they get involved in a surprisingly layered plot involving a cult trying to ressurect ancient monsters, they make a lot of friends (some of whom start out as enemies), as well as a lot of discoveries about the world, their ship, and themselves. Your part in all of this is mostly split into two parts, that can be succinctly put as the combat itself, and the background management that prepares you to survive and win that combat.

 

During the management part of the game, you sail around and visit ports. In the ports, you can take on missions (pretty much always being "go here and kill these enemies") to earn money, then spend that money on ship parts. Equipping ship parts has its whole own menu full of submenus, as it's surprisingly deep. There's a lot of different weapon types, as well as a lot of different ship designs, which eah have a different amount of spaces for putting weapons of different sizes, with some also having their own powerful bewpoke weapons built in. You also get to equip smaller boats, aircraft, and subs that can be deployed from your ship mid-battle. These are interesting too, as while most of them are just there to attack enemies, some of them will go around picking up items dropped by sunk foes, others might be fishing boats that catch fish you can sell for a little extra money, and so on. And of course, you also have to hire sailors (who are all cats, for some reason) to actually man all these guns and pilot all these little vehicles.

 

The combat itself is somewhat unique. All of your weapons just repeatedly fire and automatically aim once you've given the order to open fire, so your part in the battle is to actually control the ship itself: positioning yourself to hit the enemy better, and to avoid incoming attacks, especially the powerful special attacks that come from big boss enemies. You also decide when to deploy the aforementioned little vehicles (which then act autonomously), as well as giving commands to repair the ship, and switch between your three loadouts of weapons, depending on the circumstances. As the game goes on, you'll also get access to magic attacks, so you decide when to use those and which ones to use, too.

 

It took me a while to get into Buccanyar!, but once I did, it really got its claws into me. I've been having a ton of fun with it, and despite the poor translation, getting engrossed in its world, story, and characters. As well as being a great game on its own, it's also a nice thing to see in the wider landscape: a new(-ish) commercial game that's been made with a lot of love, that's both original and fun to play, and which doesn't have a single piece of nickel-and-diming or dark design patterns in it. It's just a great, old-fashioned, well-designed game that stands on its own. I can easily and unreservedly recommend it, and I don't think I'll get much disagreement if I say that it's exactly the kind of thing I want to see from longform-style videogames in the future: honest creativity and no scams or desperate trend-chasing.

Pocket of Horror: Lighthouse (Game Boy Color)

 This is a demake of World of Horror, a game I haven't yet played (though I'm sure I will eventually), but which drew me in simply for the novelty of being a horror game made for Game Boy Color. Because I haven't played its inspiration, I can only judge it as a game in its own right, and am unable to compare the two. 

 

It uses a few elements that it seems like a lot of the new wave of Game Boy Color games use, no matter the genre: full-screen pixel art, abstract menu-based gameplay, and tastefully restrained colour palettes. I don't know if that's because the tools being used to make these games favour them, or if it's some kind of leftover resentment from western GBC-owning kids from the olden days of never getting to play the likes of Sakura Taisen GB or Hana Yori Dango: Another Love Story in English, now driving them to make their own GBC adventures with their own fancy pixel art.

 

So, how Pocket of Horror works is that you choose one of four mysteries to investigate. Then you'll be told a little story, through full screen art, little "investigating" animations, and text. Sometimes, you'll get to choose on of two options, and sometimes you'll find yourself fighting enemies. These battles feature yet more full screen art of your foe, and you have a bunch of options to pick, such as attacking, defending, trying to restore your stamina or reason, and so on. Whenever you pick an action, a bar at the bottom of the screen fills up a little bit, and when it fills all the way, he enemy attacks. You can usually just attack wildly and kill the enemies before they do the same to you, though since I died partway through the fourth mystery, that might be a poor plan in the long term.

 

After each mystery's solved, you get a key, and all four are needed to open the way to the lighthouse, where the final mystery lies. I can't spoilt the details of that final mystery for you, because I haven't been able to survive all four mysteries. You've got three numbers to keep track of as you play: stamina, reason, and doom. Stamina and reason obviously represent your physical and mental health respectively, and if either reaches zero, it's game over. Doom, however, is more mysterious. It's a percentage that goes up or down a little bit every time you do something. It was in the mid-forties when my playthrough ended, and I'm left curious about what might happen if it gets to a full hundred.

 

This is a decent enough little game, and definitely worth a bit of your time. I'm really interested in the rennaisance that the Game Boy and Mega Drive in particular have been going through in recent years, so there'll probably be more coverage of both consoles here in the future. It's not a 100% correlation, but it's interesting that a lot of new Mega Drive games are action titles, and a lot of new Game Boy games are like this: adventures that focus on making decisions and really pushing quality of presentation above all.