Having run short of new Picross games to play *cough Western gamers should really have been allowed access to Club Nintendo Picross and Club Nintendo Picross Plus cough* I turned to the past to satisfy my burning desire for picture crossword puzzles. Jupiter’s very first offering in their long-running series (now 23 strong by my count) is a barebones affair, mostly 15x15 puzzles on a tiny monochrome screen.
Quick roundup of minigolf games that I’ve tried out with my brother recently. We found all the real-life courses in our city, then turned to the virtual world. A trend that applies to most of them was that too much content is locked behind single-player progression, or skilful mastery of the games. This makes them bad party games, which is what a mini golf simulation should be.
My expectation for n-Space’s accompanying handheld port to Activision’s Eurocom’s Albert R. Broccoli’s Goldeneye 007 was that it would somehow be more like the N64 classic that this reboot was trading on nostalgia for. Turns out it was, but only a little bit. A combination of the lower technical specs of the DS that forced chunky models and simple level layouts, and perhaps a few intentional design choices here and there (such as displaying health and armour in the curved bar form, even if there’s no longer a watch aesthetic to contextualise it and it still regenerates anyway) made this portable port at least feel a smidge more like I was back in the good old days.
I regret not giving this game a chance when it first came out. No, I didn’t sign the petition for Nintendo to scrap it and make a real Metroid game (which was a real, and very stupid petition). I didn’t lament the art style or Samus not being the focus. In fact I was in favour of Tanabe’s justification that it would expand the universe of the series. My issue was more that with Splatoon still on everyone’s lips, and Tri Force Heroes being around the same time, that Nintendo was just releasing too dang many multiplayer games.
I do feel guiltily like an entitled fan that it took this E3’s announcement of two new Metroid games to prompt me to reevaluate this maligned title. But I’m glad I did. More than the other two multiplayer games I mentioned, a solo player can have a perfectly good time with this, and as far as I’m concerned Next Level games have done a spot-on job making this feel right; it feels Prime. Even with chibified characters and working as part of a Federation team and having a locked-down mission format, it fits.
More than the previous Prime handheld game, Hunters, they’ve also made the game fit the portable format. Breaking it up into missions with briefings and loadout customisation in between works for the 3DS and it works for multiplayer. The missions’ objectives and setpieces have pleasing variety. As you progress you learn more about the three planets in the Bermuda system, and become more powerful not through acquiring upgrades and abilities but by collecting and improving randomised perks, and becoming more familiar with the limited sub-weapons that are provided. The scoring system is also addictive, although to get the best results there’s only one right answer for each mission; I wished for more leeway or options. Some exploration is encouraged but at odds with this, speed is demanded for good scores.
Every part of the game works in single player, but obviously it was designed for teams of up to four. I was fortunate to have a play session with one and then two friends (thanks Gibbon and Sun-Wukong), and had a blast. Playing with friends really does improve the experience, with plenty of opportunities to work together… as long as you have some external voice chat client like Discord!
As a way to revisit the Prime universe, the game acts as a refreshing antidote to Other M’s brazen, sour, profligate boondoggle. I would have appreciated more fleshing out of the faceless characters involved or a central villain, but the pirates were a credible threat and having Samus flitting around being awesome was an amusing and welcome addition—especially when *spoilers* (she gets brainwashed, although the fight with her is disappointing as she’s in morph ball the whole time). The idea of the Space Pirates embiggening themselves and you fighting back with big ol’ mechs is a jolly novelty, but you don’t always get this sense of scale in the levels so it was occasionally jarring.
Federation Force is absolutely a worthy Metroid game… as a spin-off. I hope it can be accepted as such, seeing as the franchise has been promoted to “not actually dead”. The planets you explore are well themed and have interesting backstories and designs. The core gameplay is very different to other Metroid games, yes, but the way the game world is constructed and the attention to detail make it feel very much like a Metroid Prime game. The control scheme is also decent, and even the small amount of motion control is well-implemented. As for Blast Ball, I didn’t really enjoy it at all, but it’s a neat little extra I suppose. Give Federation Force a chance!
Tenkaichi 3 has a reputation for having the largest roster of playable characters of any Dragon Ball game. Er, not counting the card-based smartphone one. It’s not intending to be a world-class fighting or action game but it does succeed at being a “Dragon Ball simulator”, making you feel like you’re playing the show. The strength of the game is in its breadth of content, not its depth.
Well. During my scathing review of the DS version of this game, I speculated multiple times on how superior the PSP version would surely have to be. Turns out… I was completely right! I was amazed at how much better this game was on its lead platform.
Every one of my complaints in the DS game was addressed on PSP: Rianna and Zeeo are in fact developed better through animations and voice acting; they felt more believable as a team. Their abilities are more useful, and fun. Level design is more dynamic; there’s a bit more of a combat focus but this version pulls it off well and irritating touchscreen minigames are completely absent!
I was so impressed with this game in comparison to the miserable DS port that I enjoyed it very much, even engaging better with the story as well. The question I’m having more trouble answering is: is it a good game in its own right? The controls can be clunky, and the shooting is not amazing. But I think the buddy gameplay with all of Rianna and Zeeo’s separate possible actions, not to mention combo attacks, makes up for this and adds enough depth so that it ends up feeling like a decent enough handheld action game. Plus it’s a neat little Star Wars side-story that fits well in the universe. I must reiterate: absolutely avoid the DS version. This one is pretty good.
Guess what! Another Picross game came out, and I played it. This one’s quite good, it’s got Micross puzzles and 20x15s, in fact in terms of quantity of content it’s basically the same as e6. Along with the “shared pictures between Picross and Mega Picross modes” thing. However, this time individual puzzles have medals for not using hints (got em all, bucko), and there’s a new speculation feature that lets you use a temporary third kind of mark for squares. Some puzzles were even hard enough that I used it once or twice!
Essentially it is more of the same, but that’s just peachy for me! I will say that the subject matter of the pictures was perhaps more interesting than usual, with some fun structures, actions, or mythological creatures portrayed. I won’t be at all upset to see a Picross e8 come along. Actually, no, give me Club Nintendo Picross and Club Nintendo Picross + or give me death you chinless hoopleheads!
More Lego! Like with Lego Star Wars recently, it can feel quaint to go back to the old days, but we also tend to miss features like splitscreen. The game is decent, it’s up to the standard, although character choice can feel limiting due to the nature of the films. Speaking of which, my co-op partner/wife had not seen the films, so this was her first exposure to these stories. Imagine! As a result the game didn’t have quite the impact it should, and I had to explain lots of things.
Due to the swashbuckling nature and down-to-earth abilities of the characters, this game feels most like Lego Pirates of the Caribbean if I had to compare it, but once again with this earlier game there were less bugs and crashes than we had with others. It also made me realise that while Temple of Doom may not be the best of the films in a lot of ways, it has the best setpieces which made for the best game levels.
I hate the need to preface this, but this game has had some amount of backlash and negativity. Having been exposed to that, I hope I haven’t become defensive about it. But I think I’m being honest and true when I say that Yooka-Laylee was a transportive experience that felt great to play, made me smile and feel like a kid again.
Here’s three quickies I did not finish, for various reasons. Yes I’ve played games other than Zelda in the past month! A bit.
Let’s make this quick. BotW is good, yes, but I have criticisms. There’s clunky systems, not enough variety in content such as enemy types, and a frustratingly underdeveloped plot. That didn’t stop me playing it for a month straight and loving every minute, though.
After Ecco 1 I was hoping the difficulty would be toned down for the sequel. There’s still intensely punishing levels, autoscrollers, instant death traps, etc. And they didn’t learn their lesson of adding checkpoints as the original game’s CD edition did; they made a new kind of checkpoint glyph but it’s only in two levels. Even so, it is a little easier to get through and stands as a worthy sequel with many new and fun kinds of challenges throughout.
As before, you play as a dolphin in a 2D sidescroller setting, and you use your dolphin skills of aquatic movement and sonar to interact with your oceanic environment. Again as before, things get weird quickly as you are contacted by your descendant and taken to the future, then the present, then a dark alternate future, and finally you stop the alien menace from the first game from colonising Earth. There’s even an unexpected epilogue chapter that revisits Atlantis from the first game and wraps up the story with some appropriately trippy and expectation-confounding exposition.
All the while you’re treated to the kind of New-Age aesthetics that made the first game so appealing. At times you feel like you’re swimming through a Yes album cover, and the soundtrack shifts from mellow to hard prog rock stylings. I played the Mega Drive version; the CD port has a new Redbook soundtrack, but I wanted to give Sega’s hardware the chance to wow me with an effective use of its sound chip after hearing other games’ farty, flat tunes; I’m glad to say it didn’t disappoint. (The only other addition for the CD release are some FMVs that retell the first game, so it’s not essential to play that version this time around.)
This sequel expands on the formula of the first game, introducing many new kinds of challenges and mechanics. Not all of them work; the transformations are interesting breaks but less fun than playing as a dolphin, there are some very long fetch quest levels, the early high-flying water tube levels are tediously difficult to get right, and the 3D scrolling transition segments are unnecessary. But most of the time you’re playing a slightly improved Ecco 1, and then there’s great new stuff like the anti-gravity mechanised tubes of the dark future. Small touches like the ability to flop on land or the powerful all-around sonar attack make life easier too.
As with the first game, I played the 8-bit conversion as well. The Game Gear port got a wide distribution, but the technically superior Master System port (the larger screen is greatly to be preferred) was made only for the Brazilian market, since the console remained relevant there for many years after fading in the rest of the world. So I played in Portugese, which is not ideal but I played it alongside the 16-bit version so I didn’t feel I missed any plot. It’s an odd duck; many of the more memorable setpieces could not make the conversion to the less powerful engine, so there’s some reused content from the first game to make up for it, and of course block-pushing puzzles return. It retains some small improvements such as the health clams refilling your air as well, and key glyphs changing colour when activating (these were in Ecco 1 SMS too but I didn’t mention them!). But anyway the clams aren’t in the 16-bit sequel… getting off track here… All the same comments I made for Ecco 1 8-bit apply here, but more is lost in the conversion and strangely enough the order of some bits is all mixed around. More so than the first game, this port can be skipped but it’s still a fun curiosity.
On the surface Ecco 2 doesn’t seem like it was necessary, but it really was a joy to deepen the world of this little dolphin and the overwhelming strangeness of his life, and to revisit the mechanics and see them improved and built on. The story is more complex, which is a good and bad thing as it becomes confusing but also makes the evil aliens more sympathetic. It also jumps into the strangeness more rapidly, whereas I liked the gradually unfolding sci-fi craziness of the first game. But if you bought into the first game even a little bit (play the CD version), then you absolutely should play the sequel as well.
I’m so immersed in DK, I don’t know where to start with this review… I treasure the experience of playing this game co-op with my bro on the Wii, but playing the port was strictly solo. Perhaps this helped me focus on the game itself more, and appreciate it. Or perhaps time has allowed the criticisms and expectations I observed in the fan community to settle, so that I can look at it calmly.
Either way, this is a great port of a great game. The 3DS can’t do all the Wii can, so it doesn’t look quite as good; aliasing and a lower frame rate are noticeable compromises. Having the option to play the game with traditional button controls is appreciated though, as the Wii required waggling for common actions. Playing it portably is also a novel convenience. The biggest advantage of this version though is the new extra levels, which stack up well with the rest of the game and reflect favourably on Monster Games (please commission them to make more games Nintendo, and don’t waste them on ports!).
I found myself missing features from Tropical Freeze while playing this, such as extra health by default on minecarts and rocket barrels, or David fricking Wise (or not having the stupid Miyamoto-mandated blowing mechanic). But while Tropical Freeze is an amazing game, it was built squarely on this very solid foundation. This does mean that they share common awkwardnesses like the inventory system, but they also share the fantastic design of top-tier, modern, 2D platforming experiences. This game is really good! It should have had a Nintendo Selects re-release in PAL territories by now!! I’m still not sure this port was really necessary but if it has to exist, then it’s worth playing!!!
Let’s be up front: don’t play this game. As with Battlefront Elite Squadron, I suspect that the more powerful and feature-rich PSP version was the lead platform and the superior game, although apparently the critics don’t agree. There are good ideas here, but executed so poorly that it’s hard to appreciate them.
Despite lingering bad blood between me and the Force Unleashed 2, I actually enjoyed this DS conversion better than the DS demake of the first game. It’s still got the problems common to the whole project; small scope, dumb plot, etc. But rather than making a pale imitation of the base game, LucasArts Singapore instead took a new perspective, like, literally, because it’s, like, a sidescroller.
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