PixlBit

Hey folks, I got some great news!  Best news I’ve had in a while.  MY MOM IS CANCER FREE!!!  She had another surgery to take out some lymph nodes, and they tested them and there is no cancer left.  So she probably won’t have to do radiation or chemo or anything like that.  You can’t imagine how relieved we all are.  So thanks for all your prayers during all this.  But don’t stop praying just yet!  She still has to heal from her surgeries and she’ll need one more reconstruction surgery from her mastectomy.  And we don’t want this or any other cancer to come back!  But we’re still glad she’ll get to start the healing process sooner.  So to celebrate, here are some game reviews I’ve written recently over at GamerDad.com.  Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

PHOGS! (PS4)

Does anyone remember the Nickelodeon cartoon CatDog?  I was a little too old for it myself when it was on TV, but my brothers liked it.  Anyway, it was a show about a creature with a talking cat head on one end and a talking dog on the other, and how they got along together despite being attached to each other inseparably.  It was pretty weird.  Well if they were ever to make a video game version of that show, PHOGS! would be about the closest thing to it!  In PHOGS!, you play as a weenie dog with two dog heads on each end.  So instead of a CatDog, it’s a DogDog.  One or two players control each head separately as you wriggle around obstacle filled 3-D worlds, solving puzzles in areas based on three things dogs like to do most: sleep, eat, and play!  I really liked this game and played it all the way through.  It’s one of the better indie games I’ve played in a while, and it has a weird Katamari feel to it.  One of the levels themes is an arcade, and you get to play all sorts of arcade style mini games in it!  So yeah, definitely the best game on this list.

Calico (Switch)

And if we have a dog game, we have to have a cat game, too, right?  Open up and run your very own cat café in a magical land in Calico.  But what is a cat café?  Well, apparently they exist in real life and are just restaurants where they let cats roam freely in it for you to watch and pet.  Sounds fun, but I can’t imagine how they keep from getting cat hair in your food!  Anyway, Calico is a laid back, relaxing kind of game that has aspects from other titles like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing.

Turrican Flashback (Switch)

I love playing and writing about classic game collections and compilations.  Usually I’m pretty knowledgeable about the games on collections because I love classic games, plus I’m old.   But the games on this particular collection, I’m not as familiar with.  Mainly because these games were more popular in Europe, and originated on computers that were more prevalent over there, like the Amiga.  The Turrican series are run and gun 2-D platformer games and they were programmed by the same guy who did The Great Giana Sisters, which has an interesting history in its own right.  Anyway, Turrican Flashback includes four games: Turrican, Turrican 2: The Final Fight, Mega Turrican and Super Turrican.

YesterMorrow (PS4)

Yui is a young girl who lives in a fantasy village with her family.  One day, during a festival celebrating the light that protects their village and the people who harness it, evil shadow beings come to invade.  They capture a bunch of the villagers, including most of Yui’s family.  Many years later, Yui is older and lives in the crumbling remnants of her town.  One day she stumbles upon living ruins with the power to send her back in time.  Now Yui must travel from the future to the past to stop the shadows and save her family in YesterMorrow.  It’s a 2-D side scrolling action adventure platformer game, and kind of reminds me of games like FEZ.  It would be a fun game if the bosses weren’t so hard!

Fruit Ninja 2 (Mobile)

While it may not have movies like Angry Birds, or TV commercials like Candy Crush, Fruit Ninja is still one of the most popular early mobile games.  You might’ve even had it for free pre-installed on your first smart phone!  I think it was one of the first mobile games I saw at PAX, and I even reviewed an educational game based on the franchise a few years ago!  I’ve even seen versions of this game in arcades!  And now it’s finally getting a sequel!  Although it really feels more like an update of the first game with more modern microtransaction practices.

Blowie (Mobile)

In Blowie, play as a little Q*bert style critter as he shoots bullets from his nose in this simple vertically scrolling shooter for mobile devices

Smashing Zoo (Mobile)

Here’s another weird freebie mobile game.  Slingshot cartoon animals into pixel sculptures of objects until they disappear.  And that’s all you do!  Use the touch screen to simulate pulling back and aiming your critter, and then let go to send it flying.  If you can shoot off a big chunk of pixels, they’ll disappear and you get extra points in the form of coins.  After you clear one pixel sculpture, which could be anything from a screwdriver, magnet, or a rainbow, you start the process over again.

TOHU (PS4)

TOHU is a point and click adventure with beautiful hand-drawn graphics.  In the game, you play as a young girl who lives on one of several ‘fish islands.’  These are giant fish that float in the sky and have buildings and stuff on their backs.  Your girl character has the ability to change into a big, strong robot, which you’ll use when you need to lift heavy objects.  Change back to the girl when you need to climb obstacles or fit through small spaces.  Unfortunately the weirdness also carries over into the game’s logic, so I was constantly using the hint feature to figure out what to do.  And even then it wasn’t always helpful.  I’ve definitely played better point and click adventures out there.

And that’s all for now!  Thanks for reading and commenting, and also for all your prayers about my mom’s cancer and recovery.  Later!  --Cary