The StreetPass function is one of my favourite features of the 3DS. Essentially, what it does is wirelessly collect information from fellow 3DS owners that you pass on the street, which is then used to do different things in games. StreetPass Garden is one of a few games which was specifically built around the StreetPass feature. I was drawn to this game because idea of building a garden with StreetPass seemed like something which would be relaxing and rewarding.

The game’s story is that your Mii has moved to a new town where everybody is very interested in gardening. Your goal is to become a Gardening Master and you do that by growing lots of different types of flower. Along the way, you are aided by a helpful man named Mr. Mendel.

At the start of your game, you’re given a seed, which will grow into a flower. The seed grows a little each time it is watered and the Mii of each person you StreetPass will appear in the game, ready to water your plant. Each Mii holds a flower of their own (which is either the plant held by the Mii in that person’s own copy of the game, or randomly generated, if they don’t have it) and when they water your plant, it cross-pollinates with your plant. As the plant grows, you also collect seeds to grow new flowers.

The aim of the game is then to grow every type of flower and, if you are dedicated enough, to grow every colour variation of every type of flower. At first, it can be quite fun and you’ll look forward to seeing what will grow each time. Every type of plant featured in the game is fictitious, which makes things a little more interesting, I think. They included very weird looking “Phantom Plants” too which are fun to collect.

The problem is, that by the end of the game, it gets really difficult to get the last few flowers. You will need to StreetPass a lot of people (or use a lot of Play Coins) in order to get all of those plants. Playing the game each day started to get a bit boring, because I knew I had very slim chances of growing anything new.

Beyond the simple growing of plants, you can also decorate your garden. You can put in the plants that you’ve grown or you can sell those plants to be garden ornaments or new pots. It adds a nice level of customisation and other players can view your garden too (and you can view there’s.) Plus, there are missions where you have to grow a plant based on guidelines.

Overall, while StreetPass Garden was quite nice in some ways, it didn’t appeal to me to quite the same extent as the others. Getting all the plants was tiring and, while other StreetPass games gave quite a good pay-off if you got everything, after doing so in StreetPass Garden, I didn’t feel that it had been worth it. It’s certainly not bad, but it’s one of the less good StreetPass games.

Rating: 6.6/10

Sabreman is essentially the mascot of Ultimate Play the Game (a.k.a. early Rare Ltd.) and when I played his first game, Sabre Wulf I was very impressed. Sure it had noticeably aged, but it was really good for its time and it was still fun for me to play (from a modern perspective.) I was very excited to continue playing through the series and went into the sequel, Underwurlde, with very high hopes. But perhaps I set those hopes too high because, sadly, I was disappointed.

While the first game had a sort of top down view and allowed you to move in four different directions to explore the jungle, the sequel has a side-scrolling form of gameplay (except, loading new screens, instead of scrolling.) It’s a very primitive form of the “Metroidvania” game and, in it, Sabreman is trying to escape from the Underwurlde which, spoiler alert, he was teleported to at the end of the last game. In theory, it could have been just as good as its prequel.

The problem is that the physics are really weird. Sabreman can only do very limited jumps (hops of exact distances in certain directions) and he bounces all over the place if he hits anything. This includes walls, platforms and, most annoyingly, enemies. While enemies in most games will hurt or kill you, in Underwurlde they push you and so going anywhere becomes very annoying. You only die if you get pushed down large chasms and end up falling down a great distance.

You can defend yourself though! Now, as it’s Sabreman, you’d think that he’d have his trusty sabre, like he did in the previous game, but nope. This time, he fires projectiles – throwing knives, slinging rocks etc. But, for some reason, he just throws them erratically in the direction that he’s facing. There’s no aiming or anything like that, which means he’ll sometimes miss enemies who are right in front of him.

On the subject of those chasms that I mentioned earlier, getting up and down them is really annoying too. Sabreman fastens a rope to the ceiling of the cave and slowly lowers himself down, but the enemies keep coming and can knock him down (killing him) and sometimes giant stalactites will randomly fall on him too (also killing him.) And how do you climb back up these chasms? Why you wait for bubbles to come out of craters and then ride them up, of course! But look out for the hundreds of flying enemies which will try and push you off…

I feel like it could have been a good game. Exploring the Underwurlde to find and destroy three guardian monsters so that you can escape is a great concept for a game… It was just executed so poorly (in part, due to the limitations of the time.) After how much I liked the first game, this felt like a let down and I only recommend it to the most dedicated of Rare fans.

Rating: 5/10