Ahhh, I like getting awful licensed games for cheap. I love Philip Pullman’s books but haven’t seen the movie adaptation on which this game is based. Still, that won’t stop me! Basically this is a cheap, clumsy licensed game from a software house that specialises in cheap licensed games.
Clumsy is the word that kept returning to me while playing. The platforming, the stealth, the combat, the alethiometer minigame; none of it is particularly accomplished, or fun. There’s also technical problems: slowdown is frequent, especially when your viewpoint is split between two characters.
To elaborate, the game is a sidescroller where you play as Lyra, a young girl with a special destiny. She’s a bit frail but can grab ledges and pull levers and stuff; her gameplay is supplemented by puzzles or combat involving her dæmon Pan. Pan can switch between different animal forms; you can unlock extra forms as collectibles, which I think are mostly aesthetic but I only ever found two. In his forms, Pan can fly, dig, fight, etc. You also meet the bear Iorek eventually, and his sections are mostly just lazily beating up waves of bad guys. There is some strategy in combat; soldiers are sometimes accompanied by their dæmons and targeting one will bring them both down.
You can have two of the characters active at a time, and it’s a nice idea to switch between them based on their skills. But key word: clumsy. It’s often a requirement to run up to the second character and give them a “follow” command, lest ye backtrack repeatedly. Controls are unintuitive. The gameplay possibilities are interesting but not executed super well.
There’s also levels that take the form of dialogue trees. Sometimes this will include interludes of using the alethiometer to divine the truth or find the right response. It’s a good way of including this key plot component into the gameplay and involving the player in the story. It’s too bad that the game either forces backtracking and scouring levels to find collectibles which tell you the meaning of symbols and how to draw them in the touch screen minigame thing, or else looking up the solutions online (which is what I did).
On the one hand, I like encouraging a player to get invested and search out these things in the corners of the game. But on the other, I wasn’t having much fun playing it so I just wanted to get to the end. And that’s the Golden Compass DS. It does an OK job portraying the world and characters in game form, but it’s not a good game. Sorry.
To remind you, I’m still playing as many Avatar games as I can. This is in the lineage of the previous console games in terms of the developer, THQ Studio Oz/Australia, but represents a change of style. Needless to say, it’s based on M. Night Shyamalan’s controversial movie adaptation of Book 1, so it’s got the realistic visual style—the world design was a strength of the movie, not that it shows through terribly well here. Compared to Into the Inferno, it’s now a single player campaign (co-op is available in a separate optional arena mode), split between Aang and Zuko. Even more than the DS version, Zuko is portrayed as the main character: he narrates the stylish 2D cutscenes, his levels begin and end the game, the menu screen is a view of his shipboard quarters’ desk. I like this take given his role in the series, and again Dev Patel was one of the things the film had going for it.
Gameplay is a mix of combat and platforming/physics puzzles, with an over-the shoulder perspective. I got vibes of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, partly due to Aang’s ability to airbend physics objects to move and throw them, including enemies. The game is structured strangely, cutting down even more from the film’s truncation of the story. There are four environments: Zuko’s ship (a displaced flash-forward to the pirate attack, and Aang’s initial capture), the Northern Air Temple (the site of the Blue Spirit sequence in the film), caves beneath the North Pole city, and the Siege of the North. You alternate levels each as Zuko (or the Blue Spirit) and Aang. Zuko occasionally has to deal with a first-person Time Crisis-style shooter section, strangely enough.
As usual I’m looking for ways in which the game expands on the film/show, and there’s a few. The first thing you notice is that again the film’s restrictions on firebending have been lifted to facilitate gameplay; Zuko shoots fireblasts all day long like nobody’s business, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. (Aang also kills animals, which is a bit sketchy.) We have a Fire Nation tractor/tank thing as a boss at one point, which is interesting because you never actually see smaller military mechanisms like that in the film. Um, there’s Air Shells in the temple that amplify air currents for Aang to ride on? So that’s weird. The biggest thing would be the abandoned Water Tribe mines in the North, in the large cave system that is mostly previously unseen. They’ve been overrun here by a swarm of what are called “spider-crabs”—although the young have beetle-like wings—which spit goop at you. They range from cat-size to Shelob-size. Apart from this, there’s some small indication of content that was cut from the film in the unlockable concept art, such as the Kyoshi Warriors who otherwise are not in the game.
It pleased me that the voice actors from the film return; well, Zuko, Aang, and Zhao do anyway. Most exposition is covered by Dev Patel’s narrated cutscenes and Sokka and Katara have very limited appearances… I don’t think they’re even modelled in the game’s engine, only in cutscenes. The game doesn’t feel like it’s presenting the story super effectively… and the gameplay could be described as passable… at least the in-game achievement system gives some replay value…? The concept art is good in theory but mostly not worth it. Beating up Fire Nation and Water Tribe soldiers, bugs, and pirates can be fun but repetitive. It’s a far different experience from the DS game but even with that version’s brevity it covers more material of the story than this Wii version does (they share the 2D cutscenes by the way). The sad thing is it does show an improvement in the console lineage, if only in polish and mechanics, but that doesn’t save it from mediocrity. Ho hum.
Moving on with Castlevania games, I played the version of SotN which is unlockable on the PSP’s Dracula X Chronicles. This is a pretty faithful port of the PS1 original, but with improvements to performance/frame rate, a redone English script and voice acting, and the addition of Maria mode (a better one than the Saturn version).
Symphony of the Night is widely regarded as a great game and it started the “Metroidvania/Igavania” subgenre within the series, with a 2D open world-type experience, with levelling up and loot and all that good stuff. It was pretty great and just as smooth to play and satisfying to clear as the three DS instalments that I’ve played; however, I enjoyed those later games more than this.
There are intangible and possibly subjective tweaks that have been made over the years, such as balancing: I found almost half the game overly easy, even without grinding levels. There are conveniences like the DS’s second screen being used to persistently display the map, or selectable destinations in warp rooms. And I had the feeling playing this that it was cluttered with systems I didn’t feel the need to use, like the two-hand system or the spells that use complicated inputs. I often had an overabundance of hearts, and although I like familiars following me around they didn’t seem that useful. There’s also little variety in the different weapons you find; overall I was unprepared for how many improvements I perceived to have been made to the sequels.
The classic twist in this game is the inverted castle, which opens up if you fulfil the right conditions. This is a neat idea with potential, but the design of the castle made it unnecessarily hard to traverse the inverted version; the superjump maneuver was needed too often, and while I understand that castles really aren’t designed for you to get around them upside-down it made it less fun.
As always there are some bonus modes; Richter is more versatile than in Rondo of Blood but still sluggish. Maria was delightful to play as again, with challenge coming from her low damage output that needs to be offset by using her animal companions. I’ll note here that being a direct sequel to Rondo a few years later works in its favour, and not just in reusing enemy sprites; continuing the story with the same characters is fun and reintroducing Alucard makes for a great dynamic between the three as well as Shaft, Dracula, and Death.
So for the most part the game is built to the high standards expected of the best Castlevania games. But I think they managed to do better as they went on. Sorry fans.
I have lots of good memories of playing the co-op campaign of Halo 2 with my brothers. I’m not really happy with how most of these drawings turned out though. Alien anatomy, miniature humans, and some of the colour choices are really hard! And there’s no way I was going to try drawing the Gravemind.
Master Chief/John-117, Cortana, Sergeant Avery Johnson, Commander Miranda Keyes, the Arbiter/Thel ‘Vadam, 343 Guilty Spark, the Prophet of Truth, Tartarus
Into the Inferno is much like its console predecessor, Burning Earth. It’s still a basic 3D action-platformer that follows the plot of the show, more or less (a lot is cut out; amusingly, it flashes back to Crossroads of Destiny, the events of which didn’t actually happen in the last game). One difference is the addition of a currency which acts as a reward system in levels for breaking things and beating enemies, and unlocks art and game-changing extras. The bending system has been overhauled; instead of a tacked-on and finicky contextual motion control, it’s a lot more integrated into gameplay with Wiimote pointing to both solve environmental puzzles and aid in combat. Also it’s shorter.
The game is obviously intended for co-op, as I found when in solo play battles dragged on, and deaths resulted in instant return to checkpoints, rather than the respawns enabled in co-op. It’s certainly less difficult and frustrating when playing with a buddy, although my wife didn’t enjoy it too much.
It’s definitely the best game of the three, although it doesn’t have the unique plot of the game released for Book 1. I liked improvements such as a neat world map (that has you flying on Appa above a stylised map as seen in the show’s intro), which allows you to replay levels at any time to find missing collectibles. Long overdue; the Book 2 game on DS and GBA allowed this. There’s also a glider minigame set around a small group of islands which isn’t bad.
As a fan of the source materials, once again I was looking for ways that this would expand on the world of the show. Unfortunately there’s not much going on. Enemies are merely barely-different kinds of Fire Nation soldiers (albeit including the female variant introduced in Book 3 of the show), and hog monkeys as always. There’s one or two setpieces that are slightly expanded from the show, and a large previously-unseen portion of the Western Air Temple that’s apparently specifically designed for secret Avatar training, or something.
Mostly I was amused to see how they truncated the story, such as Zuko immediately joining the party on the Day of Black Sun. Amusement turned to disappointment at the brief and very lame final boss battle, throwing puddles of water at an Ozai with simple patterns on top of a small rock plateau. Completely failed to capture the epic feel of the show’s finale, and even the denouement was underwhelming. Oh well. At least you get some decent voicework from the show’s cast, including Sokka catchphrases and a Zach Tyler Eisen who is obviously ageing out of his youthful Aang voice by the time the game was recorded! That was fun to hear. Pick up the game if you want to see a hallucinatory samurai Momo give you tutorial hints, or if you want to idly airbend a beachball. Oh and being a combat-heavy game Sokka actually makes decent use of his space sword, I appreciated that!
Playing the Dracula X Collection on the PSP, it’s a really nice set of companion games going from Rondo of Blood to Symphony of the Night. So here’s the goodie team and the baddie team, with a mix of designs from both games. I even threw in Victoria Fortescue from the Japanese pachinko game based on Rondo of Blood! (It’s execrable but hey, new characters for the headcanon.)
Alucard, Richter Belmont, Maria Renard, Victoria Fortescue, Death, Dracula, Shaft
Once again, my wife and I have played another Lego game. I’ll make this quick! I think the superhero genre is a great fit for these games; lots of brightly coloured weirdoes with different powers. Flight especially is a game-changer, breaking level design but also allowing the vast hub world first seen in Lego Batman 2. This game’s New York is much brighter than Gotham, to its benefit. The Wii U is a great platform too, allowing both players a full-width screen to play on; however, we did come to appreciate the improved frame-rate that comes with putting both players on the TV, and traded between two screens in the hub and split-screen in the levels.
The game does a reasonable job with showing a variety of locations in the Marvel universe (from what I know of it, anyway). And I do love having a cast of the Avengers, Spiderman, the X-Men, and the Fantastic 4 all together, as they should be. This also allows a good range of villains for a classic EVIL TEAM UP. I just wish, again, that they spent more time playtesting and fixing bugs. We had more softlocks and hard crashes than ever before. Apart from that though, one of the better Lego games, with lots of good ideas from the big hub to the bonus mini-levels, to good use of different character abilities. Not awkwardly splicing in dialogue from movies is good too.
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles was high on my list of PSP gems. Primarily a remake of the PC Engine game into 3D graphics, it’s known for having one of the best unlockables of all time: the PS1 classic Symphony of the Night, tweaked with a new script and other improvements. I’ll get to that later, but to play it I had to get through the main feature.
In 2D Castlevania land, I haven’t had much experience with the older stage-based style. I prefer the free-roaming RPG ones, but even with my preferences this game won me over. Eventually. To get to the point of appreciation and satisfaction, I had to learn, and death was my teacher. Literally in some cases, because you fight the Grim Reaper. Yes, it was difficult, but mastering the controls and finding the secrets turned out to be fun and rewarding.
I also enjoyed the game much more after unlocking Maria, the second playable character. She’s faster than the sluggish Richter, can nimbly double jump and slide, and has more versatile weapons. I also had to understand the game’s structure: I was expecting to do whole runs of the game, but a portable-friendly stage select can easily take you to any point to find the hidden levels and optional bosses, and you can change character at any time.
I may still prefer the open-world freedom and self-paced experience of the later games, but Rondo is a great example of how a game’s design can deliver a focused, challenging, and fun experience; all of which is more or less identical in this remake to the 1993 original. For what it’s worth, of the 2(!) linear Castlevanias I’ve played, this is the best! Also, check out the Castlevania 4koma I translated; there’s officially translated ones for this game too, linked in that post.
Some fine Internet citizen has digitised the Super Mario Bros. movie novelisation into eBook form! Check out their release list too for other game-related novels that they’ve converted. Like the Mario or Zelda books that have unique stories but draw from Super Mario RPG and Ocarina of Time respectively.
Moving through my PSP stack, I got a hit of nostalgia from this smashy crashy racing game. It was released on the same day as Burnout Revenge, which we owned on our old Xbox. This means it shares a soundtrack (containing several tracks I quite like), but as it turns out Revenge was the one with new features, while this one apparently is a sort of compilation of content from the first three games.
As a result, while the core game is still pretty fun and exciting, it was lacking features or modes that I missed, such as traffic checking or the improvements to Crash mode. Still, this instalment’s conversion to the PSP is well done, and the game is well suited to the handheld for quick bursts of play, with a variety of race types: some focused on speed, some on wrecking rival racers.
It can get frustrating as the difficulty ramps up and gold medals become harder to get. Also you’ve got something of the tacky EA brashness to contend with. But it’s solid arcadey destructive car stuff. Just avoid the DS version, from what I’ve heard.
After drawing 64 and Melee, I wanted to have a go at my favourite in the series. This game holds lots of memories for me and the roster is pretty great. I’m happy with how this turned out too, my process is improving! Don’t expect a pixel art of Smash 4 though, ever.
Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, Wario, Link, Toon Link, Zelda, Sheik, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Lucario, Jigglypuff, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Charizard, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Samus, Zero Suit Samus, Ness, Lucas, Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede, Fox, Falco, Wolf, Captain Falcon, Ice Climbers, R.O.B., Olimar, Pit, Mr. Game & Watch, Marth, Ike, Snake, Sonic
I borrowed the original two LBP games for PS3, and found that while they can’t stand up to the great 2D platformers in terms of mechanics, at least they’re fun enough with their charming handcrafted aesthetic, cute little setpieces, and a decent selection of reworked licensed music. The PSP version, a unique game in its own right, manages to effectively capture all these things and feels like, well, the real thing. It’s effectively a level pack and fits right in despite not being made by Media Molecule.
Of course, a major focus of the game is on the level creation and sharing… features that I didn’t make much use of on console and was unable to use on my e-1000 model PSP. Nor was I able to access my costumes and junk from my console play. Ah well, taking it purely as a small set of levels, it was fine; seeing what mild challenge would come next, dressing up my character, travelling the world to each new stereotyped location. Relaxing.
Sackboy/Sackperson is the closest thing Sony has to a kid-friendly mascot, and you can tell from these games that there’s at least some passion and love that goes into them. It’s too bad the platforming is so floaty and imprecise; the momentum works weirdly and you don’t always get the outcome you expect from a jump. Also I really am getting over the pretentious Stephen Fry narration. But anyway, this shouldn’t be overlooked as part of the LBP canon; it’s just as worthy as its console siblings.
The Star Fox series has had a broad and rich cast of characters. These goofy animal people are fun and I wanted to celebrate the whole cast of good guys, past, present, and future, and their shared history. I’m trying not to slag off Zero’s obnoxious rebooting too much—oops. Anyway although I’ve done some of these characters before it’s always fun to try out different outfits. Not pictured: the unnamed sheep from one of the Star Fox 2 builds. Sorry sheep.
Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi (Command’s Star Falco ending), Peppy Hare (Command, General outfit), Slippy Toad (Adventures), ROB 64, Fara Phoenix, Saru (from a Star Fox 2 early build), Miyu, Fay, Krystal (Assault), Bill Grey (Command), Tricky (Assault), Katt Monroe (Command), Amanda, Lucy Hare, Marcus McCloud (Command’s next generation ending), Peppy’s unnamed grandaughter (ditto), Slippy and Amanda’s unnamed son (ditto), James McCloud (Command), Wolf O’Donnell (Brawl), Leon Powalski, Panther Caroso (Command), Dash Bowman
This is my take on the expanded Metroid timeline. The main games in chronological order, adaptations of those events presented above, and other related works and appearances below, placed according to which game they draw inspiration from.
There’s some fuzziness of course, around M2 and Super especially. Or like how the Valiant comics are probably set before the first game. But I wanted to keep the layout simple.
This is probably the most extensive shopping work I’ve done, and I’m pleased with it. Bonus points if you can identify the background.
