Last Week's Games: Roll the Ball, Ultra Street Fighter 2 and Plot Depth Discussions

I’ve been playing a lot of Roll the Ball on my phone this week, as my gaming time has mostly been limited to whenever I can get a moment to sit down and do some none-work related recreation! If you don’t know from my previous coverage, it’s a puzzle game where you have to connect tiles with paths through them to roll a ball from the start of the level to the end. I downloaded it onto my phone last summer and I’ve been playing it on and off ever since.

This is a different mode entirely,
but we'll get to that...

I played through and beat Bianca level pack on Star Mode. The basic principles of this are described above; what Star Mode brings to it is that certain of the tiles have stars in them; three per level. You have to connect the two ends of the path using the tiles, and the more star tiles you use, the higher number of stars you get at the end of the level. This rarely requires much thought, as it’s usually pretty obvious what you have to do to make the path, and only becomes challenging once they start introducing star tiles in the tiles that can’t be moved – you then have to work out how to move the rest of your tiles around them. But for how much of a faff the rotation levels turned out to be, it was nice to be able to blitz through some of the levels. I proceeded to the Bravo level pack in Classic mode, where you have to create the path for the ball in as few moves as possible, with three stars given when you achieve the target number. Usually this is obvious but there are a few challenging levels in there which take a few goes to get it right – the paths are often easy to make, but doing it with maximum efficiency is a different matter entirely! I’ll be on these levels for a while.

I might have to write a review of Roll the Ball soon. I usually only do this once I’ve beaten a game, or when my time with it has reached its logical conclusion. But the time it’s going to take me to do this with Roll the Ball could potentially run in to several years; I may even have a new phone before I do! As it stands, I’ve had a go with all four variations of the level design. Nothing will be news to me now; I’ve seen all there is to see, so I might as well give it a review!

Will a Sonic Boom help against Fei Long?

I had a go with Ultra Street Fighter 2: The Final Challengers on my Switch too. This is the only game I’ve played on the Switch so far, and I’m enjoying it. Most of us have done Street Fighter 2 at some point; the addition to this game other than re-done voice-overs and graphics is that Akuma, Evil Ryu and Violent Ken are available to play from the start. I played it a lot over the Christmas break and managed to beat the game on its hardest difficulty, my favourite character being E. Honda due to his power, speed and reach. But I had another go at it recently and couldn’t even get past the first fight! Arguably I was out of practice, but it didn’t help that the game kept putting me against Fei Long, who is absolutely nails.

I also had an interesting conversation with my girlfriend Kirsty while she was playing Spyro: Reignited Trilogy on her PS4. Four out of the seven games we have for it are remakes or remasters of older games, in some cases several generations old. Kirsty was talking about the difference between Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, the nearest the PlayStation really had to mascot platformers, with regard to the plot. Crash never had much going for it in that regard but Spyro’s seemed to be fleshed out a little more. I don’t know, I never really played much of either game, but perhaps it highlights the evolution of story-driven games during the 5^th console generation. It’s worth thinking about, if only to get some insight on the level we enjoy games on these days!