PixlBit

It’s time to get rid of all that Halloween candy fat and get ready for the food onslaught of Thanksgiving and Christmas!  So I’m here to get you in shape with these game reviews!  Well, OK, not really, but please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

Knockout Home Fitness (Switch)

With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up and all that food, it may be a good time to beef up your fitness routine.  Maybe with a video game?  This exercise game takes many cues from Nintendo’s own Fitness Boxing series and adds martial arts moves, kicks, and stances into the mix.  Choose a virtual trainer and do daily routines once per day, or try exercises that are around 3 minutes in length anytime you want.  You can also track your progress on the calendar.  It’s just a lesser version of Fitness Boxing, though.  At least the publisher, XSEED, has been supportive of me since they’ve existed, so that’s nice.

Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey (PS4)

Lots of retro games this time around.  I freaking love Bubble Bobble.  And its spinoff puzzle games, Puzzle Bobble, is one of my top three favorite puzzle game series of all time alongside Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and just plain ol’ Tetris.  Puzzle Bobble is also sometimes called Bust-A-Move, by the way.  Anyway, I was really curious when I found out there was a 3-D version of Puzzle Bobble coming out, and even more excited that I got to review it!  Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey has a VR component, too, so you can play it on PSVR or Oculus.  But you don’t HAVE to have VR to enjoy it either, so it’s also playable on regular current PlayStation consoles (reviewed on PS4 here).  Unfortunately, it relies more on gimmicks than actual gameplay.  I do like that they’re calling it Puzzle Bobble and not Bust-A-Move this time around.  I always hated that second name.  Makes much less sense than the first.

Centipede: Recharged (Switch)

Even though Centipede isn’t one of my top favorite classic arcade games, I have a lot of good memories associated with it because it’s a game my dad would play a lot when we’d go to arcades as a family back in the day.  I also have a lot of respect for the game because it was co-designed by a lady programmer and was one of the first games to have a larger female fan base.  And now you can play an updated version of this classic with Centipede: Recharged.  I kind of wish they would’ve ported Centipede Chaos to the Switch instead.  This is an arcade game that I played at Dave & Busters recently.  I enjoyed it a bit more than Recharged, as it has better graphics, faster gameplay, more enemies, and even bosses!  The arcade cabinet is neat, too, because the chair stools you sit on are actually mushrooms!

Gleylancer (PS4)

There were many 2-D shooter games on the SEGA Genesis, but some of them didn’t even leave Japan.  One of those was Gleylancer, but now you can play it as a downloadable re-release on nearly every current console and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.  You know what Genesis shooter I wish they’d re-release?  Gaiares.  Man I loved that one.  Catchy music, fast gameplay, and you could take on the skills of any enemy ship, kind of like Kirby!

Boulder Dash Deluxe (Switch)

I’m such a staunch console gamer now that you might be surprised to learn that when I was a kid, I started out playing home games on computer.  Our first PC was an Apple ][+, and outside of arcades, that’s where I played most of my games until I got an Atari 5200.  One of the games I remember playing on that old computer was Boulder Dash.  It was an action puzzle game that was kind of like Dig Dug in that you dug through the earth, collecting gems while trying not to get squished by falling boulders.  And now you can revisit that classic with Boulder Dash Deluxe.  It’s really just more of the same from Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary that I reviewed last year.  It almost seems like an expansion pack in a way. But you get new levels, settings, and even stages taken directly from the classic game!  It’s available for many of today’s current consoles, PC, and mobile devices, but reviewed on Switch here.

Crisis Wing (PS4)

Crisis Wing is a 2-D vertically scrolling shooter with pixel graphics that imitate what you might’ve seen in arcades back in the late 80s and early 90s.  Although I think it’s still a brand new game, not an arcade classic.  But then, those kinds of games were a dime a dozen back then, so I can’t remember them all.  Anyway, one or two players can shoot everything that moves, while avoiding spacecraft and projectiles.  It’s all right, even if it’s about as generic as they come.

Love Colors (Switch)

Love Colors is a pixel art paint by numbers game.  Choose from several categories of pictures, including food and animals, and paint them square by square.  There are tons of pictures to paint, and even more you can buy through DLC.  I just never really understood the point to these video color programs.  If you do paint by numbers on paper, you can at least hang it up on a refrigerator, frame it, or give it to someone.  But here you can’t really do anything with it except look at it on the video screen.  I guess this might give you some craft ideas if you’re into Perler Beads or cross-stitching.

Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold‘Em (PS4)

Play Texas Hold’em poker against a group of cute anime ladies in Poker Pretty Girls Battle.  It’s about as fun as it sounds, meaning: not very.

And that’s all for now!  You should all be super buff from reading those reviews!  Thanks for reading them and posting ‘likes’ and comments!  I do appreciate it.  Later!  --Cary