May 19, 2015
[Review] The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS)

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Like many gamers, I’ve held Majora’s Mask on something of a pedestal. I’d borrowed it from a friend back in the day and got all the masks. Revisiting it now it holds up; a true classic, and this is most likely the definitive version. It just didn’t quite fulfil the high view it had been built up to.

In fact, playing it now made me retroactively appreciate Ocarina of Time a little more. I can’t say that MM is strictly superior to its predecessor; it’s very purposefully doing something different, which is especially great in the Zelda series. Of course, it’s divisive: such criticisms as the 3-day system breaking the pace or feeling, when in fact I feel it is fundamental to the pace and mood of this particular game. Or that it’s too short, whereas I appreciate a more compact experience from time to time (I certainly don’t want something that drags like Skyward Sword).

You can’t look at this game critically without considering its origins as a rush job, reusing assets from Ocarina to meet a deadline. The way they twisted it makes this work very well for the story though, especially if you’re familiar with the prequel. Termina can feel very unsettling with its old faces in new roles, and said roles are much richer for the most part.

To elaborate, the minor characters and your interactions with them are deeper due to the sidequest system and the day cycle which gives them routines and events. There are less major characters with emotional impact like the Sages though; and perhaps intentionally, using your transformations and masks often acts as a barrier between Link and other people—I’m thinking especially of how Zoras and Gorons will actively mistake you for Mikau and Darmani when transformed. This gives a melancholy feel to proceedings since you know they’re actually dead.

So there is an emotional depth to the game, and I felt very driven to complete my final cycle after I’d got the Fierce Deity mask “perfectly”, Groundhog Day style. What a great movie. Anyway, I pulled it off for the most part: clearing the dungeons a second time is very quick due to boss warps. I especially wanted to finish the Romani Ranch and Anju sidequests while I was at it; I skipped Kafei’s final task though because he’s a selfish prat and if his pride is too much to go to Anju that’s his own damn fault. Sorry, I’ve got opinions. I’ve also got headcanons that the Hero of Time returns to Termina in his adult years and marries Cremia.

Ahem. As an evolution and expansion on Ocarina, MM is pretty much perfect, much better than Ura Zelda would have been. It’s also great as a Zelda series experiment. Maybe not a great jumping on point though. The additions to this version are also great; the improved Bomber’s notebook, all the little tweaks, the fishing holes. Of course, there’s too many rare fish which makes completion a bit of a chore, and the Zora swimming is severely nerfed. But overall, super nice game. One moon out of one.

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: the legend of zelda the legend of zelda: majora's mask 3d the legend of zelda: majora's mask review nintendo ead grezzo 3ds 
October 26, 2014
[Review] Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)

Hyrule Warriors will be tricky to review. For now, I’ll say I love it. Smash 3DS… I think I’ll wait for the Wii U and do them together. In the meantime then, and before Pokemon comes along, here’s a review for this old and better off forgotten game.

How the Zelda series ever got off the ground I’ll never know. Even at the time, I think Zelda 2 was seen as a misstep. I feel that Zelda 1 was not much fun, but its highly anticipated sequel not only is less fun, but has completely different core gameplay. A jump button, a mix of overhead adventure map with very little interactivity and sidescrolling action stages, a collection of magic spells, an experience bar, random encounters. It sounds like some generic other Famicom game, not Zelda.

I don’t find it surprising that this blend of Final Fantasy and early Castlevania was not followed up on in the rest of the series. The sidescrolling gameplay was used sparingly again in main titles, but was the core of the game only in the most obscure and disregarded titles: the Zelda Game & Watch, and the first two CD-i games: Link, the Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. It just feels out of place.

This holds true for many other aspects too; the music is largely forgettable, except for the Temple theme and even that has only just been reused in the main series, having found prominence in Smash Bros. Smash is also the only place to use the upward and downward thrusts from this game, fitting well enough there. The game looks ugly and many of its characters and settings have fallen into the landfill of history. About half the enemies will never be seen again or are quite different reinterpretations of existing ones.

It’s not just that the elements of the game feel wrong for Zelda; they are badly executed in the game itself. Enemy behaviour is either punishingly unforgiving or laughably exploitable. There is little vertical interaction. Objectives are extremely unclear, and the temples are so mazelike as to require an external map (Nintendo Power’s Player’s Guide is recommended, along with Zelda Dungeon’s walkthrough for things to do outside temples). The game script (and the manual!) are typical NES gibberish. The seams between overworld and sidescrolling section break the feel. The control and momentum… just don’t feel good. Oh and there are lives, and they don’t respawn, ever.

Enough rambling, though. Should you play this game? Nah. I mean, you could try it out, but in this era this style has been done so much better, and like I mentioned, this is a bit of a black sheep of the Zelda series. Beyond one boss, Dark Link, and the town names showing up as the Sages’ names in Ocarina, it doesn’t have much lasting impact on the series. I’ve seen it has its defenders, but I found it pretty lacking in fun. Big thumbs down from me.

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Filed under: gaming review zelda zelda 2 nes nintendo ead 
October 9, 2014
[Review] Link’s Crossbow Training (Wii)

While Skyward Sword left a bad taste in my mouth, Hyrule Warriors made everything yummy and nice. A review for that will be coming later, but in the meantime I had a nice little palate cleanser with the budget arcade shooting spin-off Link’s Crossbow Training.

You know Nintendo. They make a peripheral, have one good idea for it, use it in exactly one game and then it collects dust in your cupboard while a few third parties make lackluster attempts to use it as well. Meet the Wii Zapper, an attachment that slots your Wii Remote and Nunchuck into a frame that makes it like holding a machine gun. Or indeed, a crossbow. Of course, being long past the age of peripherals at this point, I couldn’t just pick one up; nor would I need to. This game was in a hundred bargain bins, and I can tell you works perfectly fine without the Zapper.

The remote itself is all you need; the Zapper I feel would merely make it easier to stabilise. But adjusting the sensitivity down is sufficient to make the game playable. I even got a platinum medal in one stage! smug Seriously though, it feels like the kind of game the Wii Remote was made for. Of course, I wouldn’t have bothered with it if it hadn’t been part of the Zelda series.

Playing Skyward Sword made me appreciate Twilight Princess more. This game reuses assets exclusively to Twilight Princess to be a sort of gaiden, or sidestory, to that game (even though it doesn’t really have a story as such). It’s like a tour of different locations and setpieces, fighting a variety of enemies from that world. Therefore I really appreciated seeing all those elements, it’s like a short reminder of all the fun things that happened in TP. There’s no Twilight Palace unfortunately, but hey-ho. That’s what we have Hyrule Warriors for.

So I said budget before. I cleared the whole game in an hour. Mostly bronze medals, but I’ve never been much of a score-chaser; it’s unlikely I’ll try very hard to top myself. But for the $2.50 I paid for it, I think to myself: I’ve spent more than that playing some shooters in arcades, but this one was more resonant with me, and now it’s on my shelf next to Twilight Princess. So if, like me, you have fond memories of that game, you might get a kick out of it.

Oh by the way, if you do play it, some advice: combos are very important. You can shoot jars and stuff without breaking your combo, but if you’re going for good scores, be accurate. On the other hand, you get bonus points for hitting all targets for the objective in some levels. So try it both ways. I got a great score in the final stage, but I had to do it again because I didn’t actually manage to beat Stallord. Had to get that closure.

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(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: gaming zelda link's crossbow training wii nintendo ead review 
September 14, 2014
[Review] Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)

Well, let’s get this over with. I hope now that the immense hype has died down after a few years, we can look back on this as on the whole a pretty mediocre Zelda game. That’s what I feel anyway. I mentioned in my long-ago Twilight Princess review that I chose the older game over the new hotness, and having now played both I think I made the right decision. I like Twilight Princess more.

That’s not to say that Skyward Sword wasn’t fun, nice to look at, and had inventive ideas to bring to the Zelda formula. But the flaws and niggles stack up, and the plot wasn’t very engaging to me.

First, let’s talk about the “level design”. There’s not really an overworld, just mini-areas that bring some dungeon-like puzzle solving to themed locations. But then there’s dungeons as well, so I ended up just feeling like an aspect of the Zelda experience was missing without large areas to explore. They were memorable, but partially because of all the backtracking you have to do. I even had to go through an already-completed dungeon a second time as part of the plot, which I resented. You also end up with less overall variety in locations with only three or four themes.

Another aspect that lacked variety in a significant way was the enemies. You end up with essentially palette swaps of bats, blobs, and bokoblins in the three major zones, which got seriously boring. Not that Zelda hasn’t done that before, but it seemed to lack very much beyond them.

I also dreaded fights, and here’s a big sticking point of the game in general: the motion controls made it hard to enjoy. The game relies heavily on the gimmick of the Motion Plus, which is fine I guess, but what they were demanding of the player I don’t feel the hardware was capable of pulling off, or at least how I was using it. Having to point in menus and dialogue was annoying but passable, and aiming things worked pretty well, but any time a precision flick was required the whole thing fell down. Which is a huge problem because so much combat, and certain puzzles, demand you swing the sword in a specific direction at the right time. The precision required was often difficult to do, which caused frustration to me, the player.

This principle extends to other things too: you cannot reliably do maneuvers you intended to, such as doing a vertical spin attack instead of horizeontal, or the awful swimming. But the swimming is modelled after the flying, so let’s talk about that. I hate the flying. They’re going for a Wind Waker thing with a large sky/sea, with islands. Except the islands in SS are inconsequential but for a handful, it’s totally disconnected from the land portions, and controlling the flying is not relaxing or fun like sailing, it’s painful to the wrist and causes anxiety. And for that matter, why is there an impenetrable cloud layer under Skyloft but everywhere on the ground has BLUE SKIES?

There’s a few of these aspects that they’ve taken from past games. The Silent Realms are also pretty shamelessly ripped from Twilight Princess’s bug hunt sections, but I don’t mind so much since they expanded the concept into a stealth-type mode and it’s quite fun. It is yet more backtracking over the same areas though, but it works because you use the knowledge of the layout but they change some things around.

New things include the stamina meter, which I’m conflicted on. On one hand, running is cool, but on the other it depletes from normal activities like climbing and depletes too quickly, with no possibility of upgrade. So you feel constantly forced to travel below the “optimal” speed, all the while with a big green thing on screen and an irritating alarm sound.

Speaking of irritating things that get in the way, let’s talk about Fi. Lots of people complain about all the companions, but I liked Navi ok and loved Midna. This time, things don’t turn out well. Her text is too slow and unspeedable. She pops up way too often to point out very obvious things. She could have been interesting as the spirit of the Master Sword, but her fakey “robotic” demeanour is extremely obnoxious to read. And would my criticism be invalid if I had an adverse reaction to a robotic, subservient, young girl wearing stockings who refers to you as “Master”?

This brings me to my next niggle. There’s just a few elements that seem too distinctly Japanese for Zelda, which I’ve always felt inhabited its own distinct fantasy world, like the dragons’ attire or the vocalisations. I’m trying not to seem racist, but it just took me out a little. As I alluded to with Fi, I also struggled to accept the anime-style cliches that are rife (I always hated starting in a “high school” environment. The characterisation of most of the main characters left me cold and bored, and many of the side characters were too “stock”-feeling—I especially had no feeling for Link or Zelda, and hence lacked some motivation, especially as you find out more about their roles. On the other hand, like many people I warmed up to Groose quickly and enjoyed his scenes immensely.

The other races in the game were also lackluster. There’s, what, two Gorons? They were fine, but the moles were just off, the jellyfish were bad and too few. The Kikwi were ok though, and the robots were fine. And I like how they made humans a rare occurrence, but you don’t get a whole lot of meaningful interaction with any minor characters. Thinking back on it the areas were cohesive enough, but maybe I just miss towns.

As a synthesis of Zelda elements, it’s quite good, with recent advancements such as bug collecting and treasure improved on. It also has some nice new things, such as equipment upgrading and managing your inventory. The dungeons are also pretty good, with interesting themes. The bosses though sucked, partly because of the sword difficulties I mentioned, and partly because of the repeated boring Ghirahim fights that take the place of real bosses. I may have still been having counter-reactions to the hype though, seeing the whole thing as a bit up itself (they even mention the 25th anniversary in the text of the game). Also too much tutorials.

I hope I made myself clear about the anime thing. I’m just tired of the tropes and cliches, and I thought Zelda was a little more, well, its own thing. You know? Eh, sometimes I’m glad I don’t have too many followers, who could get super mad about my super controversial opinions. I don’t want to cause an Internet Scene™ after all. Anyway I’m glad that this was another case of borrowing a game from a friend that I was hesitant to splurge money on for myself. Because it’s fine, it’s even pretty good, but I’ll just say it’s not near the top of my “Zelda favs” list. I just want to think that I hadn’t decided that place before playing it—I think I gave it a fair chance. And why are Link and Zelda’s eyes so big? Ahem. Thanks for reading.

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(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: review zelda zelda: skyward sword wii nintendo ead 
September 5, 2014
[Review] Mario Kart DS (DS)

Well, Mario Kart. What can I say? I haven’t played one since 64, but obviously it’s the hotness. I don’t particularly care to pursue it, but hearing again that DS had a Mission Mode (during discussions of Mario Kart 8’s shortcomings) prompted me to borrow it from my brother. No, I wouldn’t buy the thing!

You could say I’m in the Diddy Kong Racing camp. I just like my games to have a little more depth, and since I’m your basic antisocial nerd, the multiplayer components of most games are lost on me. As it turns out, I found MKDS’s missions to be quite cool, especially when you have a boss fight against Super Mario 64 DS’s bosses.

It’s also the most crossover-y Mario Kart, which appealed to me (not counting the Arcade ones with their Pacmans and Tamagotchis and drums, but pretty awful gameplay, or MK8’s not-yet-available DLC; I’ve written off that game already). I guess when you get right down to it, R.O.B. and the Blue Falcon don’t amount to much, but… well, I’ve already undercut my point, but to be fair, I played this game before the DLC thing.

It wasn’t exactly a full experience borrowing it like this: my bro had already unlocked most stuff. I just tried to see all the content, and do the missions. It was fine. Seeing how much better his times were on some missions took me right back to childhood competitions. And considering also I haven’t played one since 64, overall it was a somewhat nostalgic experience.

I’m putting my foot down now though: no matter the fancy graphics and lighting effects, no matter how many weirdo characters they add, I’m not buying a Mario Kart until that mission mode comes back, or at least some other single-player options. I absolutely did not buy into the MK8 hype, and I feel a bit of a minority in my position to want more from the franchise. Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina most certainly did not help. Enough whining though, I’ve got more games to play. Now should I play Konami Krazy Racers, or a Crash Team Racing? Maybe I’ll fire up the old Nokia emulator for Rayman Kart.

12:00pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpvIwu1Q1roRt
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: review mario kart mario kart ds nintendo ead ds 
June 4, 2014
[Review] Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

Ah, Zelda. I’ve been playing them since Ocarina, of course. The three “big” entry point games for those of my generation are the original, Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time. Unfortunately in the style of Nintendo at the moment, everything seems to be jamming on the nostalgia button HARD. Obviously this game leans very very heavily on LttP, which predates my own entry point. In fact I played LttP a few years after Ocarina, but it’s not “my” Zelda game, if you get me.

Consequently I don’t have the blind rush of giddy nostalgia juices for this game. Looking objectively at it though, I can say that it’s a very good game and I enjoyed it. I just feel weird playing it, because it’s so heavily based on a game I don’t have such a personal connection to, and indeed have only played once. There’s some lipservice to other games in the canon, but they’re a bit tacked on and feel out of place. Basically what I’m saying is it feels like the wrong way to do nostalgia.

Anyways the few improvements to the LttP formula, like having main character counterparts in the Dark World, having individualised Sages, shaking up the item acquisition and dungeoning, are very good decisions. Generally it’s good at giving you the things you need and want but still being challenging. Well, I say challenging because some rooms, tasks, and dungeons were tricky moment-to-moment but overall it’s an easy game.

It might just be my super skills, but I never died, and I always had boatloads of rupees. I never got lost or stuck, because there’s lots to do, which is a good thing. Not a good thing is the balance, although I have said the same about other Zelda games, and maybe Hero mode would have suited me better. It’s just that the things people have been saying about the risk and reward of the item system ring false to me, because I rented everything straight away, never died to have them taken, and just sunk rupees steadily into buying the items so I could upgrade them. Not very risky, and the rupees kept flowing in so when I’d bought everything it went straight to 9999 and I’m like “what now?”. So I bought a golden bee.

Anyway I had a great time finding all the things, collecting stuff and getting mightier. I liked interacting with NPCs, but ultimately that was pretty shallow and although the writing was good, it wasn’t a more personable experience than your standard Zelda game, and worse than several of them. I liked the Sages being people from the world that you’d met, but that’s ripped straight from Ocarina and like that game (and to a lesser extent, Wind Waker) they are removed from the world by the plot, making it a more dull place.

I didn’t want to get this game at first because it seemed like just another Zelda game, and that’s not what I wanted. But my lovely wife bought it for me, and so I had to play it. At which point I realised that playing just another Zelda game was something I could get behind. Especially when it’s as fun, addictive, and accessible as this one. Not exactly groundbreaking but it had some cool new features that will apparently inform the future direction of the series. I think they could stand to shake up more aspects of the experience (after all, Majora’s Mask is one of my faves) but this installment is perfectly solid. Yep.

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Filed under: review zelda zelda: a link between worlds nintendo ead 3ds 
March 19, 2014
[Review] Super Mario Sunshine (GCN)

Hrm. Well, I played it. I’m going to have to be a Negative Nancy again.

I like Super Mario World. I just want to get that out there, although I admit it’s probably mostly nostalgia. But it seems every Mario platformer I play leaves me stone cold. (Yoshi’s Island is not a Mario game. It’s a Yoshi game. A spin-off with distinct art style and mechanics. Ahem) The Galaxies were fun but didn’t have lasting appeal for me and in retrospect seemed flawed. Mario 64 is of course a glorified tech demo™. The 2D platformers are uniformly lacking in imagination, from the NES ones to the “New” ones. (I know everyone likes to suck up to Mario 24/7, so please read “solely in the opinion of a jaded gamer” after my every declaration. Thank you, Mario fans.)

I thought Sunshine would be the one to turn it around. Everything I’ve heard is that it’s the black sheep of the family, it’s divisive, it stands out too much. This seemed like a good idea to me. People have praised the world and atmosphere, qualities I value. I also like the extra interaction with the environment that FLUDD, the new core mechanic, affords.

Unfortunately I have to say that in terms of structure and design it’s way too similar to the ironclad blueprint that SM64 apparently laid down. I was expecting a world, but each level is segregated by magic portals. Why make the theme so homogenous when everything is so cut off? I expected a bit of plot focus, but there’s pretty much three cutscenes with atrocious voice acting (Bowser sounds like a Muppet). Peach was standing around talking to me for the first ten minutes: what a boon! But no, she got kidnapped again. Sigh.

I just couldn’t see past the obvious similarities, the mission structure. Sure, there’s lots of NPCs but they don’t really have anything to say and actually talking to them is stupidly awkward (too many functions mapped to the same buttons, and it’s very finicky for certain things like talking). I guess you could say I had expectations, but it fell short on all of them. However, at least it tried these things like plot and making a world, unlike other Mario games. The execution was just poor, and everything else is just the same as always.

So these elements that make it stand out to some degree were so flawed as to become drawbacks: the plot is dumb and the voices ear-bleeding. The world doesn’t have the variety that Galaxy or even 64 manages to achieve. It also has so many other missteps that I began to see why it was so widely disliked. The camera’s bad, many mechanics are poorly introduced and barely used, like Yoshi and fruits, and the different FLUDD nozzles. Swimming sucks. The enemies are both ugly and not effectively used. They removed the long jump, while making the slide slow you down more often than speed you up (due to collisions), and the camera focus button makes you ground pound in the air, which I inadvertently activated too often. The levels are too small and repetitive with many missions in the same area, doing similar things.

One of the few good points that stuck with me while playing was the dynamic that having FLUDD around enabled. Traversal was fun, using the hover nozzle to get some hang time or maneuever. Sideflipping then hovering was extensively used in my playthrough and felt good. It’s too bad the other nozzles were so bad and replaced the good one. And then many of the secret stages take away FLUDD altogether, negating the advantage this game has and replacing it with basic wonky platforming in very unforgiving stages. They also negated the ambition of world-building. You can’t have it both ways.

It seems the game has a lot of ideas jammed into it, but very few of them are followed through on and they just aren’t done well. Some do work, like having Bowser Jr. recur as Shadow Mario or having you clean up an area (I found pleasure in that, although I found aiming the normal nozzle awkward).

I dunno, my expectations were too high here and although Sunshine tried a few nice things, like a greater character focus and a consistent setting, those baby steps didn’t make it to the level that other 3D platformers already had such as Banjo-Kazooie, while the flaws make it not reach the gameplay level of other 3D Mario games. So it’s stuck between the two extremes, not quite as good as either. And subjectively, I simply didn’t have fun with it overall, and that’s the most damning thing. I’m proud to be a Mario hater (trololol) and this didn’t turn me around, but if you like Mario I don’t know if you would like this (assuming you haven’t played it and made up your mind already). It’s probably worth a go, especially for the bargain basement price I found it at.

Halfway through this review I found that my favourite Australian Nintendo site, Vooks.net, had done a podcast critique of Sunshine. I’m only halfway through it, but I agree with what they say so far. Check it out too, why not?

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Filed under: review gcn nintendo ead mario super mario sunshine 
February 26, 2013
Animal Crossing (GCN)

A while ago, out of the blue, a friend presented me with the original Animal Crossing (ok, it’s not actually the original, as it’s the third of four versions of Animal Forest for the Japanese N64… long story). She’d found it in the course of her work at the op shop (that’s the thrift store for you Yanks) and set it aside for me, as a renowned game nerd. I was pleasantly surprised but actually had no interest in the game really.

Seems callous to say that, but it seemed a little pointless to me. I finally booted it up this year, for one reason: to unlock the playable NES games that you could buy for your house. This was partly to stick it to Nintendo’s overpriced and under-featured Virtual Console, as I had essentially got this game for free (my friend paid $5), scoring more than 10 NES games which would cost quite a lot if I lost my mind and bought them for my Wii.

But then, as I’ve mentioned before, a funny thing happened. I named my town and myself, I moved in. I took on a debt to Tom Nook and set about paying it off. I endeavoured to earn more money to upgrade my house, to make room for all the NES games (the basic house can’t contain them all), by doing jobs for villagers and finding things to sell. And somewhere along the way, I became hooked.

I found myself playing the game every day, and forgetting all about the NES games. Eventually I remembered them and, as I’ve chronicled, was disappointed. But for over a month, I played almost every day and got a lot out of it. I found the game charming and compelling. The simplicity of it made it very accessible to me, it was just easy to boot it up after work and mooch around the village for a bit.

For those who don’t know, Animal Crossing is a kind of “life simulation” game, where you directly control a single avatar and do various tasks in an environment with no specific goal. Like the Sims, but with cute cartoon animals and stuff. There’s a lot of calendar and time-based events too (it’s all real-time).

Getting to know each villager, discovering new ones moving in, witnessing some random events, fishing and digging up fossils. It was fun just living in this simple community, and I developed a routine for each day. The goals of upgrading my house and Tom Nook’s store kept me motivated.

After a while, I began to lose that motivation, especially after I learned that the store couldn’t be further upgraded without another player visiting. This kind of mechanic in games is very frustrating for a “Forever Alone” such as myself. I also got all the NES games (all the Universal Code ones, anyway), and fit them in my house, so that motivation was gone too. Collecting stuff was fun, but the general lack of Nintendo-related memoribilia compared to later games left me with little desire for continuing that (I fortunately got Kafei’s shirt very early and loved it, got the Master Sword too).

I also felt that I was reaching the limits of what the game had to offer me. Perpetual winter was getting me down, and the way the villagers seemed to not have any sort of continous relationship to me made the social interactions seem hollow. I’d found almost all the fossils, and bugs weren’t showing up for another few months. I unlocked the extra bridge, and experienced New Years. I felt like I wasn’t getting much further, so I stopped.

I feel that the game was too simplistic, a little barebones. I feel that the sequels may have the added features to keep it compelling longer, to get me to the next holidays, but there wasn’t much to this. However, those later games don’t have the killer feature of NES games (which I think is genuinely cool, aside from the emulation video output issues I had). Even the later Animal Forest e+ release Japan got had some extra features that sounded cool, and playing a game with e-Reader support always makes me feel like I’m getting a compromised experience. Not to mention the Island, reachable via GCN-GBA link cable (cursed peripherals I don’t have!). Oh and the whole not having friends thing (at least not ones who own this game).

Having said all that though, for that one month I had heaps of fun with this. Plus now I know about the series, it helps me get stuff other people say and references in Smash Bros or NIntendo Land. I hope to play games from every Nintendo series eventually, a very nebulous goal at this stage that I may act on more purposefully one day. Yeah so it was fun but a little simplistic. I’m not planning on getting New Leaf or whatever it’ll be called here (can’t count on NOE) but I think the evolutions developed between then and now could make it a much more compelling game (although I don’t like the less chibi body shapes).

I give this game 1 month out of 12. Oh yeah and it got annoying running around trying to find villagers for errands, sometimes I swear they were hiding from me. Thanks much for reading, chimp!

Wife’s comment: It was ok for a while but got very repetitive. Finding the balls, ah!

8:14pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpvIwuf1pwCJ
Filed under: review nintendo gcn animal crossing nintendo ead 
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