Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars… Battlefront games are usually third- or first-person shooters, but this DS conversion by n-Space is, well, you can see in the screenshot. I gather that the “proper” version of this game on PSP has a ton of customisation and stuff, but this one is much more streamlined. Or to put it another way, so simplistic as to be dull a lot of the time. There are four classes to choose from, as well as the bonus Jedi class, so at least you have options, but combat is generally very easy.
You’re either moving from room to room blowing up small groups of enemies, or just mowing down incoming waves. Spaceship levels break it up but are even more mindless, with only X and Y axis movement, and even worse are the turret sections or speeder bike-type bits. Boss fights are also spammable with the right class. Multiplayer is a focus of these games, and that mode has potential as a party game, but I didn’t have any human opponents and the Wi-fi connection is gone.
So the gameplay is no great shakes, but I still liked the game. The campaign mode has an enjoyable story spanning the whole saga and beyond, with chapters set in the Clone Wars, the original trilogy, and the OG EU New Republic era. You get to interact with major characters from the movie, as well as Rahm Kota from off of the Force Unleashed, which pleased me. I liked the plot, a tale of two Jedi clone brothers who choose different paths and end up clashing over many years, and your character X2 has a nice arc over the events.
Experimenting with the different classes and weapons was pretty cool, and once you unlock your Jedi powers I had fun using them in addition to the other classes. The gameplay works at least, even if it’s a little shaky at times. But overall the game feels very “Star Wars”, whatever that means. But maybe the PSP version would be a better way to experience the game and story… who knows!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Katamari’s concept is so elemental and fun that any game that uses it is bound to provide a good time, to me at least. This was no different but it seems held back by the limitations of the platform. The controls aren’t perfect and there’s not a whole heap of variety, but it maintains the core mechanics and delivers a charming package.
I’ve previously played just the PS3′s Katamari Forever, which has lots of content and many wild types of levels. Unfortunately its default puts an irritating visual filter over gameplay. That’s not a problem here, but you have other issues due to the PSP hardware. For one, you don’t get two thumbsticks for movement. In the Japanese and PAL versions you apparently don’t even get one, using the D-pad and the face buttons as a second D-pad, which is awkward at best. I was fortunate enough to pick up the American release which enables you to use the PSP’s thumbstick in place of the D-pad. It helps, but then you lose symmetry…
Compared to Forever, there’s also a lot more same-y levels. Sure each one asks you to prioritise certain types of objects, but I didn’t feel motivated to change my strategy around that, or even able to work it into my play most of the time. A lot of them are also in the same environments and the same methods work each time. The 5 optional special levels change it up nicely, but I wish there were more of them. You also have more loading times and breaks during gameplay, but that might be unfair for comparison since Forever seems to be the first game in the series to iron that out, on a much more powerful machine.
Basically I think playing Forever earlier has ruined me for the older games. It’s too bad because this is otherwise pretty solid. It’s as charming as any Katamari game can be; the conceit this time is not the King ruining the cosmos but just one group of islands. Animals then turn up to request different kinds of katamaris to replace them. Running around the home base island is fun, as each animal you help starts populating it. The music is a very strong set, with quirky hits from the first game (whose soundtrack I have partaken in many times) and others I hadn’t heard.
Hang on. Do I need to explain Katamari? You can absorb things smaller than you to get bigger, with the scale going from the tabletop to continental. You roll a ball around with a complicated control scheme; moving around is your only real action. The world is a delightfully Japanese low-poly wonderland set to an eclectic mix of tunes. It’s all capped off by a sense of wackiness that is a real joy to experience. These components are the Katamari formula that this game shares, and why I loved it. It’s just a shame the content seems lacking, at least after playing Forever (not to mention the multiplayer mode I couldn’t access on my e-1000).
I broke in my new PSP with one of the old tried and tested Lego games. The PSP is an odd beast, like a mini PS3 with a small viewing angle, strange (for a handheld) disc access noises, and, for this game at least, annoying loading times on startup. For nobody’s interest, I chose the e-1000 model, the newest “budget” model with supposedly the best screen but no Internet and mono-only speaker, and the same faster processor of the other slim models. The tradeoffs are worthwhile for the price, I feel. The shape of the thing did cause me hand cramps in extended play sessions.
I spent much of my time with this game wondering if this was an upscaled port of the DS version, or a downscaled port of the console version. Since it’s a very early instalment in the Lego series, the lines are more blurred than they are these days. I still don’t have a definitive answer (because I didn’t do any research)! But whichever, it was still a nice bit of fluff.
Despite a limited character roster, there’s a fairly robust lineup of villains, rotating for each chapter. I liked the mirrored structure, where the heroes (only Batman and Robin in their different suits in story mode) have a Batcave hub, and the villains roam Arkham Asylum; the villain levels also take place in approximately the same locations, showing their setup and mayhem previous to being taken down by the good guys. It’s a fun story conceit.
Being an early Lego game, it keeps things simple with menus rather than large open worlds, straightforward tasks, and grunts-and-gestures cutscenes rather than a fully voiced script. Having played so many Lego games now, this was almost a nostalgic throwback in a way. Refreshing. And I only had one crash my whole time.
The Avatar games are an interesting example of a developer iterating their design over the course of a series. I discovered that Halfbrick, in going from their first Avatar game on GBA to their second, streamlined their game and made it more action-focused, trimming RPG elements. Turns out THQ Australia did a similar thing for their second console entry.
The game is now shifted in a co-operative action-platformer direction. There’s still an experience bar but levelling up is simpler, and there are no persistent items besides collectible health potions. They seem to have strived to make the game more accessible and child-friendly, and as a result it can come across as simplistic at times. Fortunately there are improvements, such as much nicer looking and better animated cutscene models, and a slightly deeper combat system with button combos for different moves; fights still amount to mashing though.
A concern with this game is it simply rehashing the plot of Book 2 instead of telling its own story. This is somewhat mollified by having unique dialogue and a rearranged story; for example, the Fire Nation drill attack is foreshadowed heavily and serves as a motivation and the climax of the game (this is the same as the DS game). This adjustment at least added interest to how they would tell the story. Plus there were weird additions like the Omashu governor being an expert firebender, or having Jet, Iroh, and even Momo as playable characters on certain stages (Momo has the ability to throw cabbages at will!). There’s also plot added to the swamp with the Fire Nation dumping waste there, and Jet helping you clean it up (revealing in the process that after the Freedom Fighters disbanded they started helping Earth Kingdom refugees, much like the Kyoshi Warriors).
The real problem with the game, and my co-op buddy’s main complaint, was the motion controls. Characters’ ranged attacks would trigger accidentally, and “focus move” spots required specific fiddly motions that were a pain to get right. The PS2 and Xbox360 versions would obviously avoid this problem.
Being always on the lookout for anything adaptations can add to the universe, I can report that enemies in the game included some kind of warty beaver-rat in various sizes, found in the swamp and Omashu sewer, as well as giant spiders. The Library of Wan Shi Tong also had to include fights, so now there are statues that come to life and can bend fire and earth.
This game has potential but it’s hampered by being overly easy and by its frustrating motion controls. There’s still interest for Avatar fans but in this case the contest between the console version and the DS version is closer, and the GBA one loses out. The console one is a little shorter and probably a better overall package, though (but not having played the DS one for a long time, my memory’s a little hazy).
I’ve encountered a roadblock in terms of Avatar games. When I opened the case for The Burning Earth on Wii that I bought ages ago, I found a disc for the first game had been sold to me by mistake. And it was too scratched up to work! So while a new copy wings its way to me, I played the GBA version.
It was a bit of a letdown. I completed it in only a couple of hours—it’s the shortest game on the list so far. Like the other Halfbrick games, you use bending and other abilities for both puzzles and combat. And like the Into the Inferno game in particular, the characters are paired up in different combinations (or sometimes solo) in different levels. In this case, the puzzles, combat, and action-y segments are pretty segmented; you’re either doing one or the other, and moving on linearly, a quite plain structure.
This time, the game is built around a scoring system. Presumably this is to encourage replays of its short length. The upper left number is your score, which also acts as health and is restored by defeating enemies. Beating a string of bad guys (only ever the same three types of Fire Nation soldiers, besides the boss fights) also gives a combo bonus, to encourage proper use of your bending abilities. It’s a fairly complex and neat little system. The upper right is a bonus, which ticks down over time and is filled up by collecting jars in the levels, providing the occasional reward for doing something extra or risky.
The sprites, following the previous game, are adorable, and the environments are drawn beautifully. The weakness of the game is that it’s simply retelling the story of Book 2, but severely cut down. It doesn’t have the novelty of the first game’s new plot, and it’s so fast-paced that you have to be familiar with the show to really get it. It does have the advantage of showing Zuko’s side of the story as well, which the DS version was unable to do. What I look for in adaptations are things they’re able to add to the story or world, but the only thing I noticed that wasn’t an adaptation from the show was a reuse of the armadillo wolves from the previous game; they’re used for puzzles rather than combat, which is amusing.
The characters’ abilities are translated to game mechanics in interesting ways, but the score-chasing structure is just something that doesn’t grab me. Despite the aesthetic strengths of the game, I find myself preferring the DS version in this case. Of course, both cover different content, with the desert and Ba Sing Se omitted here but present on DS, and Zuko and Iroh levels here. It’s just so short though, only 7 levels and one of those is more like a minigame. After playing all of Halfbrick’s other games in the series, this was underwhelming to me.
A while ago I chose between this game and Spirit Tracks, its sequel. I reasoned that they would have refined any niggles in their experimental control system for the sequel. Having now finally played both, the main difference is they changed how the roll works; it is annoying to pull off in this game, but barely ever used so it’s not a big deal. On the whole I enjoyed this first game a lot more.
Phantom Hourglass is an early first-party DS game, so it goes all-out with mandatory touch screen controls, using the microphone, etc. It works fairly smoothly, and apart from some overlap between moving, interacting, and attacking (not to mention forgetting that blowing the microphone was a valid input from time to time) I had no problem controlling Link; this time I knew from the beginning that the shoulder buttons were used for items, which I discovered halfway through Spirit Tracks. Oh, I just remembered the final battle which dumps a symbol-drawing thing out of nowhere. Had to watch a video for how to do that. Apart from the gimmicks, the double screens are used excellently, with gameplay and maps, the ability to make notes on your maps, and both being used during certain boss battles for an epic feel.
The story is a direct continuation of Wind Waker, but the cast is all new apart from Link and Tetra. It’s this generation’s Link’s Awakening really, with an existing Link entering a sort of alternate world governed by a whale deity (although you only find this out at the end). Having it carry on the story from another game is nice, and the new characters are ace, especially Linebeck. His bickering with fairy companion Ciela are a great source of humour and personality, and travelling with them in the ship has a great adventurous feel. This is helped by the ability to upgrade and customise the ship, although it gets tedious to be “rewarded” with duplicate ship parts as the game progresses.
Speaking of rewards, the Spirit Gems are a good idea; your fairy companions can be upgraded, affecting your abilities, by finding these collectibles. Unlike Spirit Tracks, I was motivated enough to obtain them all, and all the Heart Containers. But why, what’s the difference? It might be as simple as the ship being more fun to control than the train. It’s freeing to be able to sail anywhere at any time: open seas adventure to uncharted islands. ST has Zelda as a main companion character, which is a huge plus; but the party of Link, the earnest Ciela, and the loveable scoundrel Linebeck made for a better dynamic.
PH has a fishing minigame, which earns it points from me. This was strangely missing from Wind Waker. Treasure salvaging returns, but there’s a minigame attached to that as well. Overall the game feels like a mini Wind Waker, with a smaller world and streamlined mechanics for the control scheme and format, but with additions and expansions in some areas. I think the ending undermines it slightly but the game is well executed, there’s lots to do, and it’s very endearing. If you’re going to pick only one of the DS entries as I did long ago, choose this one.
It’s another Picross game. The distribution method for it is the main story, with it being made available with the launch of Nintendo’s new loyalty program and costing not money but points gained through engagement with Nintendo’s services and apps. But that’s big time news fodder, let’s talk about the game.
The presentation is like a traditional “e-series” Picross game as opposed to Pokemon Picross, but with fantasy-ish themed UI, and backgrounds and music ripped from Twilight Princess. The puzzles represent characters, items, or scenes from the game, and it’s quite nice to see Oocoo or Midna as a solution; it’s been so long since franchise themed Picross puzzles have been a thing.
Perhaps because it doesn’t cost any real money, this is a much smaller offering than any of the “e” games. It has only 3 pages of puzzles compared to, say, e6’s 10. This is much like Japan’s Club Nintendo Picross. Like e6 though (and indeed Pokemon Picross) the pixel images are recycled for normal and Mega modes, which is a bit of a letdown with so few images. There’s also 1 Micross image, and the scene it presents isn’t super impressive.
There’s been one minor change to the controls that had a significant impact on my ability to play and enjoy the game. In all previous Picross iterations, the stylus controls primarily involve you holding up or down on the D-pad (or X and B) to engage the fill or erase function respectively while the button is held. In this one, the buttons instead toggle the fill or erase mode when they’re pressed once. This makes it much harder to slip into a groove, as you have to constantly check or remind yourself what mode you’re in (null mode is also useful for pondering your next move or counting). Having the stylus state tied directly to the current action or inaction of my off hand made for a much smoother and more intuitive experience, and I’m very disappointed by this change. I hope it doesn’t continue to future instalments or can at least be changed as a setting.
But apart from the inexplicable change to the controls and “dearth of content” as they say, it’s easy to recommend this game. It’s not terribly hard to get the necessary points through My Nintendo, but WarioWare Touched may present better value all the same. However, the exclusive nature of this game and the quite well-done Twilight Princess theming make it a pleasing bonus for Nintendo loyalists. Plus it has Midna as a tutorial guide, which is fun and makes this totally canon to the Zelda series. Trust me.
