Well. I haven’t felt like writing too much recently. Maybe I’ve been a bit more active in posting on DKVine, so that takes away from this blog. Ooh, tension! Anyways I haven’t played too many games so that’s ok.
I did finish, or rather complete, Banjo-Kazooie. I was rather hard on SM64 when comparing them earlier, and I’d like to give it a bit more credit. In building a nice world that’s fun to explore, with a variety of things to do, B-K has the clear lead. However, in terms of pure platforming challenge/variety, SM64 is technically superior. By technically I mean as a technicality, because the physics and controls of SM65 are slippery and loose as hell, which undermines the focus on platforming. Ironically, the most interesting stages of SM64 in this respect are the abstract ones like the Bowser stages. They lose on immersion but win on runny jumpy stuff. Mario also has a lot more jumping and mobility moves, as opposed to Banjo’s moves which give him varied abilities for attacking, mobility, situational things, etc. It’s just a different focus of the game.
My opinion may have softened slightly on SM64, but I still feel it was poorly executed and inferior to other games that came after. Yup. So how about them Banjos?
Banjo-Kazooie got hard in the last few stages. Anyone who’s played it will tend to shudder at the thought of Rusty Bucket Bay’s engine room, or climbing Click Clock Wood’s tree. I had a few deaths on those levels, which are especially frustrating in the middle of a 100% level run. But oh man, completing it after all was very satisfying. There were even some late bits I didn’t remember! I know I never got 100% before, so I feel good, I feel superior to young me. Heh.
I didn’t want to do a full review of the game, because as you may have read in my last update, it might be hard to not slavishly gobber all over the game. I feel a bit more objective about it, but just thinking about it I’m having trouble being really critical. It’s funny because I can be critical about say DKC2, which I like better. Besides, what hasn’t been said about Banjo-Kazooie at this point? On that note, after I finished I watched a complete 100% TAS run (tool-assisted speedrun) which was incredible. Check this out. In 2 hours. Not many glitches used either, just a lot of frame-perfect jumping stuff that’s just impressive.
Apart from that I’ve played a fair bit of Spirit Tracks, but it’s just digressing & sidequesting, not much to report. I finally figured out those stupid portals. You just blow your whistle! I feel dumb. That was probably explained but I forgot. I also have the manual but eh. I also started Banjo-Tooie and I’m about halfway through but I might save that for a longer write-up, and do some comparisons to Kazooie. I will say though that especially on a second playthrough (which this is), the SuperBanjo cheat to speed you up is essential. The worlds are so big!
I think that’s it for now. Been busy recently so yeah. Probably there’ll be a lot more next time. I have holidays coming up so I foresee a lot of game time for little old me. So long for now. Oh I forgot to rhyme, in honour of Grunty. Eh. Oh!
We just had the 15th anniversary,
of the wonderful game Banjo-Kazooie.
I played the whole thing before I knew,
that its birthday should have compelled me to!
It’s been a nice week, a bit busy at times. And my lady went away to Melbourne for a meeting. A lonely night. Didn’t have time for a bachelor night of video games though, because it was bible study night. I have done some gaming though, and I’m going to tell you about it. You don’t have to read it, but I’m sure going to write it.
Spirit Tracks had stalled a little after the Water Temple, but I pushed through the Sand Temple, so now I have all the items including the Bow of Light, all the Songs and the better sword, so now I can do some sidequesting! Yay! The game’s fairly easy so I didn’t feel I needed sidequest help, and now I’ll be able to do it all. Thing is, I still really don’t understand how the warp gates work. Oh well train travel doesn’t take too long and there’s plenty of rocks to shoot on the way. I was expecting buying new train parts to increase my speed or something, but they didn’t. Seems pointless.
My completion of Lego Harry Potter 1 on iOS is imminent! I got 100% of items and stuff today, I just want to get the last few Game Centre achievements. The final level I had to do, the Chamber of Secrets, made me tear my hair out as I ran into a few little bugs and crashes that made me restart the level all over, after going through most of it and getting all the items. Very frustrating, and I have to do it again for an achievement. By far the worst level for bugs and stuff, the rest of the game is not too bad. Plus apparently the game doesn’t support multitasking, or at least it takes all my memory, so I lost another half of the same level again. Bleh.
Speaking of bleh, guess what I beat in three days? That’s right, Super Mario 64. How’d you guess? I’m playing all 5 of my 64 3D platformers in order—well, an order I made up, anyway. Roughly it’s the evolution/destabilisation of the genre, kinda. Hard to explain. This is my plan: Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. That’s that generation right there. It’s up to you to decide where the peak is, but BFD being last is fitting as it’s a deconstruction/parody of the genre at that point. DK64 should probably be between Kazooie and Tooie, but I wanted those two back-to-back.
So SM64. Ugh. I just, just don’t get how it’s lauded so highly, why it’s the top of so many lists. The game is argh, it’s awkward, it’s barebones, it’s frustrating. A glorified tech demo. It has it’s good points I’ll admit, some good platforming at times and long-jumping around is fun. Exploring and collecting is still inherently fun. But the game is just so flawed. And I’m not giving it a free pass like so many do because “it was the first” or “it’s a pioneer” or something. Structurally, the engine, the presentation, there are problems here.
So I’m not saying I didn’t have a good time, but it was constantly tempered by the game’s shortcomings. Because I know what came later, I’ve played those other 4 games I mentioned and seen how they improved on it at such a basic level. I don’t care if they wouldn’t have gotten made without it, the same excuse will not make me enjoy the original Legend of Zelda either. It doesn’t change the game itself to say that it’s foundational, without also being an exemplary example of the genre (which other games can claim). This is all just my opinion, of course.
A funny side effect of playing it though, is that it made Galaxy seem better in hindsight. I still had problems with that too, it shouldn’t have aped the design of SM64 so slavishly (at least it seemed that way to my overly critical eye). But the comparison makes Galaxy seem a lot more developed and polished. So that was weird. Makes me sad that they didn’t continue developing the concept. Look at the new 3D Mario just announced, 3D World. It’s a translation of 2D gameplay to a 3D space. I’ll take my now “retro” collectathons, thanks. I won’t say any more about it, it’s not worth a full review (ooh, ouch!).
So I’ve soothed myself by starting Banjo-Kazooie, and am now 3 worlds in (100%ed them). It’s a joy. I don’t have to tell you how great this game is. Oh wait, maybe I do. The music is lovely and sets the mood well, transitions smoothly and is super catchy. The play control is excellent, you never have trouble just navigating. The worlds are very well crafted, and feel naturalistic but also present interesting challenges to the player (well it’s been a bit easy so far, but it gets harder). And it’s just full of personality! All the items talk to you, every character is either charmingly cute or charmingly snarky, the worlds are colourful and unique. God, listen to me. Blowing this game’s trumpet. It’s fun, ok?
Well, moving on. I finished Yoshi’s Island on the GBA. I managed to show my wife the last boss, which I always found to be the most impressive single part of the game, and the ending. Great stuff. Now playing the extra levels, which are almost all new to me. I think I played the Poochy one before, but it’s hard to say. It’s very similar to the Looooooong Cave, but shorter, so yeah. This run I mainly played quickly to get through the levels, since I’d just played them on the SNES. So I’ll have to do some extra collection later to unlock the other extra levels. They’re wacky, they got to go all-out with designing more crazy levels since they’re optional. At times they remind me of Yoshi’s Island DS because they’re also quite hard at times.
Yeah that’s about it right now. I did buy a few new games, just little ones. The way things are it’ll be a while before I play them. Bean’s Quest for iOS, it was on Good Game a while back and is $1, Marvel vs Capcom 2 for iOS was on a $1 special. I wanted to play as Mega Man/Roll, despite not liking fighting games, and especially not Street Fighter. Eh it was $1. Also the local pawn shop was having a sale, but the only thing I was remotely interested in was Viva Pinata DS. Cheap so I took the chance, I’m curious to see Rare’s only semi-successful new IP after the Microsoft buyout. At the same time I got Pokemon + Nobunaga’s Ambition for my wife, and she’s having a blast with it so far. Makes me feel good to see that.
Well it’s not exciting but that’s my gaming life. Thanks for reading!
Very busy week. Seems like I’ve been spending more time looking at E3 stuff than playing games. My impressions over all are pretty similar to most people, I think. Microsoft was awful and the Xbone looks like a bad thing for gamers. Sony was boring as those two usually are but had some impressive rebuttals to Microsoft. Nintendo was perplexing (3D Mario and Mario Kart 8 look pretty but the gameplay and other choices are questionable), mind-blowingly exciting in parts (Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Smash Bros trailer including Mega Man!), and covering old ground in other parts (third party and indie stuff, and their other games).
I am so happy about Smash and new DK, but I keep getting more disappointed with Wind Waker HD. No new OR restored content, Tingle Tuner removed and replaced by an admittedly interesting implementation of Miiverse. It seems like the only thing they added were new item button options and a “go fast” button on the ship. You really need more than that to make the Triforce quest not boring to people (I didn’t mind it, I liked the ship). The Tingle thing was the last straw to me. There you are with all these control schemes and one has a screen on it, just like the GBA! You show the GBA-GCN connection in the trailer! Then you just cut the whole thing out to tack on a feature you can access any time with the Home button. In its original form, the Tingle Tuner was an interesting way to get a second player involved for an “asymmetric” experience. Well Nintendo, isn’t that your magic Wii U word? Ridiculous. That turned me off, and I think not restoring the content they planned but had to scrap for development constraints in the original will lose others. And rightly so, what’s the point of a remake if you remove content? All the other Zelda remakes have had an extra dungeon or a Master Quest (except BS Zelda, which was actually smaller, but the graphics were leagues better). Anyway enough Zelda ranting.
So excitement! Donkey Kong looks simply amazing, and I squee’d like a fangirl when I saw Dixie. Other details like the level archetypes, the cool new baddies, just how nice it looks, and the coup of securing David Wise for music are making it shape up to be a must-have for me. For the baddies, the worst case was getting Tikis back, we all wanted Kremlings back, but this third option is intriguing. A rumoured fourth character is also cause for speculation and interest. Another great piece of news about this is Miyamoto’s supposed lack of involvement! Great stuff! Keep your meddling hands off, Shiggy! In case you don’t know, he enforced the weakest mechanic of DKCR, the blowing. He also ruined Sticker Star :’(
And Smash. What can I say, I knew I was going to get both versions even before I knew anything about it. Mega Man is the best news, even if the reveal was spoiled by the Wii U’s eShop front page, which is where I went to watch the Direct. I’m drinking in every little detail that leaks out, and loving it.
I don’t think I need to say anything about all dem Mario games. That’s what the masses are drooling over, I just think they look bland. Good thing for Peach to be playable again, but why Blue Toad not proper Toad? Sigh. Dream Team looks good, still haven’t decided about that one.
I approve of the strategy Nintendo has been easing into, with regular Directs instead of blowing a massive load once a year. So E3 will get less relevant, to me anyway. But enough E3 rubbish. What have I had time to play?
Since I haven’t written in a couple weeks, a few things actually. Did I mention I finished Doodle God? And I’ve completely sworn off Rockman Xover, haven’t touched it since. So on my phone I’ve opened up Lego Harry Potter 1 again to complete it (it’s quite easy once you’ve unlocked the automatic spell caster thing). Good times, the handheld games seem to be a little more baked than the console ones. Having said that, I have fallen through the world several times and had a few crashes. Ok I guess they’re not too different. ;)
Since my SNES died, I tried emulating Yoshi’s Island to check how hard those Super FX graphics are to emulate (rumoured to be the reason YI is not on the VC). Turns out Snes9X handles it perfectly, Nintendo is just lazy. I did notice it seemed to run fast, then I realised I was emulating the 60Hz American version, rather than the 50Hz Pal one I was used to. No big deal though. I then went though the GBA remake, also emulated. If you recall, I got to the second-last boss before the SNES stopped, so I still had a bit of game to go. Plus the Advance version has a new set of secret levels, and I don’t think I ever originally unlocked the first set on the SNES version (too hard for my childish skills). It’s inferior in a few ways. First, the sound effects they added (voices for Yoshi and Shy Guys) sound out of place, and others are modified and lack the impact of the original. Second and more importantly, the screen is much smaller while the sprites are the same size, which is a huge bummer. It’s harder to see hazards or items you need to get, you can’t take in the environments as much, it’s a very claustrophobic experience. But hey it’s Yoshi’s Island, the quality shows through and I really want to get to those extra levels.
On the console front, me and the wife started a new co-operative game. Lord of the Rings: War in the North got our attention as a sidestory to the main events of the books/movies. It interests me as an example of the Western action-RPG genre that is so big now, and also as a local two-player game whose difficulty can be toned down, in addition to the lore and universe stuff. It’s really good for both of us, me being kinda new to the type of game and my wife being, well, “not a gamer” per se. We’re playing on easy and both loving it. Setting up a game is tricky and unintuitive but the menus in the game are quite good. The gameplay is pretty standard I think, but that LOTR touch makes it engaging. The cutscenes are quite uncanny, in the “Uncanny Valley” sense, but at least I can give my guy a sweet mustache and customise his hairdo. (I’m the ranger btw, Everbloom is the elf mage). It’s one of the things the PS3 has allowed me to enjoy, which I appreciate. You can’t be a Nintendo fanboy forever (well, you can, but I found some other things that are good too).
And that’s about it. I’ve got some posts on game series and lore and fan theories and stuff in the works, as well as some scanlations ticking over in the background. So er, expect posts in the future on this blog. Thanks for reading!
I already posted once this week, but some more things cropped up and I just couldn’t wait! Firstly, I beat Twilight Princess. I’ll talk more about that in a bigger post but I will say something about how I finished. I got through the disjointed final boss battle not long before having to leave the house. Consequently I had to pause the Wii (Home button) while the final cutscene was playing. Then I got home too late to watch it, so had to leave the Wii on like that all night. I started it again in the morning but only had a little time before work so had to pause again. So the Wii was on, paused during this cutscene for over 24 hours. I found it amusing. But now that’s done, and I did all the sidequests too so I can move onto something else.
I’ve been forgetting to play Rayman for a few days this week. Well, I made up for it today and also found out the range on the WiiU Gamepad. The big thing was you know, you could play games on the toilet or in bed by carrying this thing away, depending on your house size and walls. Well, those factors in my particular apartment mean it loses connection if I take it to bed. It took me a long time to figure this out, apparently I’ve never tried til now. It got all choppy too.
I have now totally given up on that horrible Rockman Xover. The real final straw was when a sudden prompt splashed up to seemingly get an instant stat increase for premium currency. It’s that awfully cynical game design that makes the game broken and unplayable unless you pony up cash. Not the right way to do the freemium model. But lots of people have talked about that so the important thing to me is that I kicked the habit. Who knows what I’ll do with this freed up time?
Well, one thing I tried was Angry Birds Friends. I’ve played and loved all the Angry Birds iOS apps. There’s lots more web apps and flash versions and stuff but I’ve covered the main bases. Generally, I found Space a big let down but loved Star Wars. The Seasons updates tend to be the best. So this one gives you a small set of levels each week and encourages competition with your Facebook friends. Problem is none of my FB friends play it. The other problem is the friends sidebar and the power-ups menu slam down into your playing area each time you attempt a level, including restarts. This is distracting, obnoxious and gets in the way both of the playing area and of the fast-paced experience of Angry Birds that involves trying again quickly when you mess up. The power-ups thing is a larger problem that has spread through all of the versions of this game: it’s the freemium model again, insidiously trying to suck money from casual gamers. Hey, buy these things to make the game super-easy! Buy some more now! I find it offensive, and it’s becoming so widespread in so many games. DESPAIR
Ah well there’s still cool games that you can just buy and play, like Spirit Tracks. I just beat the Fire Temple, I’m kicking through the plot and saving all the sidequesting for later. Woo!
Oh yeah, I’ll just talk a bit about board games. I’ve been to two separate board game nights in two days. One was unexpected but both were fun. The first one I didn’t know the majority of the people but managed to have a fun game of Dominion with the people I did know. I had vague memories of that from my uni days playing games at the Spot with my Spot friends. That’s where my Milo name really stuck. Good times. Then I played 7 Wonders with the people I didn’t know and managed to win quite well despite it being my first time. Only got those two games in between pizza and going to the wrong end of town initially due to faulty directions.
Second board game night was shorter, a last minute change of plan after some domestic disturbance (misbehaving baby) had left our hosts unprepared for the usual bible study. Also we were down a few people, so we put it off for a week and played Cranium and King of Tokyo. We love Jesus but we also love board games (although this is the first time this has happened, usually we love Jesus more ;) ). Cranium is a normal people’s board game, ie. I’ve played it a lot with my family. Our hosts are the aficianado type though, with the German games and all, but for some reason we went for that and it was fun. Boys vs. Girls. Afterwards, we learnt King of Tokyo which is an odd but fun little game where you play as Kaiju type monsters destroying Tokyo. It was designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering, a game I am very familiar with. He’s a good game designer apparently. This one was good too, like Yahtzee but with a ton of mechanics added on. It somehow manages to stay simple and engaging though.
So that was video & board game talk. Hey if Idle Thumbs can get away with talking so much about board games, so can I.
Hi everybody! I’ll get the sad stuff out of the way first: this week my SNES bit the dust. My beloved childhood friend, this dusty old console. It was a little unreliable even then and these past few weeks getting it to start has been touch and go. I figured out to wedge that wedding invitiation in the cartrdige slot to ensure contact, but now, for some reason, it seems to have died entirely. I was booting up Yoshi’s Island in the evening (after playing it a while during the day) to show my wife the Raphael the Raven fight (very memorable), and it just futzed out. On the title screen the sounds started making low groanings and repeated watery sounds. I reset to find that all three save files had been wiped. After that, repeated resets just gave a black screen, freezes on the title screen, or a garbled green mess.
I guess the poor thing’s time has come. I still hadn’t got a chance to play multiplayer Tetris & Dr Mario one last time. I take solace in the knowledge that SNES games are oh so easy to emulate. I think we have that pretty much perfect now, and it also allows you to find the best version of the game from different regions and revisions, and apply mods if need be. There’s no hardware or controller issues either as the control scheme is so simple and digital. I still feel a sense of loss, though.
So what else has been going on? Well, I’m nearly done with Twilight Princess. Yesterday I clocked the Palace of Twilight and the Cave of Ordeals. And I’m powering through Spirit Tracks too. I think there’s some interesting comparisons to be made there. Perhaps later, but for now I will say I like the currency system of Spirit Tracks much better. Finding random different tresures around the world is more fun and satisfying than just rupees everywhere. Especially since I quickly reached the maximum rupees in TP, whereas in ST there’s also a lot to spend them on, with quiver upgrades, heart containers, potions (which I use more often in that game), more minigames, etc. Too often in TP I find myself opening a chest, having to put the rupees back because my wallet’s full, then equipping the Magic Armour for 10 seconds to drain my rupees, because I don’t want to leave unopened chests. That’s not good.
I haven’t played too much else due to a staff retreat that took a lot of my weekend. I tried to play Spirit Tracks on the way there on the bus, but there was so much background noise that the microphone was constantly triggering, and I was up to a bit with heavy microphone use and flute playing. So I had to stop. I’m also reading the first volume of Akira Himekawa’s Ocarina of Time manga adaptation, thanks to an awesome birthday present of the Himekawa manga box set—10 volumes of Zelda manga in English. So great!
Really struggling with titles here. Oh well. Kind of a slow week too, but there were a few big highlights. I was occupied for some of the time with seeing friends and family, so that was nice. In terms of games it was more of the regulars such as Rayman and the same iOS distractions.
However, I did coax the SNES into life several times to play one of my all-time favourites, Yoshi’s Island. I think the supertitle is stupid and misleading so I never use it. It holds up. I do notice some slowdown now and then, some frames dropping that I’m sure I never did before. The level design and so forth is something that I’m also more aware of as a mature gamer with analytical skills, and it’s really good in those terms. (I’m also following along in my playthrough with Reed’s (or Rodanguirus’s) excellent analyses on nintendo3dsdaily.com.) References to other Mario games are also there, while as a child this was pretty much my first Mario game without that context. I still loved it then and I love it now. It’s a similar feeling to my BC Kid experience, my muscles remember everything. Playing the game for me is literally child’s play. It’s one of the reasons the DS sequel was fun for me, familiar mechanics but new levels and harder overall. And while that sequel was somewhat lacking in execution, this is very polished.
An amusing side effect of me playing this game is a large wedding invitation sticking out of my console. You see, the plastic is a bit loose on the old thing and the cartridge isn’t always in contact with the, er, contacts on the interior necessary for the thing to function. So it has to be wedged forward slightly to ensure it works, necessitating a physical card stuck behind the cart. I might try this for future games too, might not need so much blowing and reinserting.
So that’s fun and I’d really like for my wife to see why these games I loved are great. Perhaps nostalgia is too big a part, or maybe she’s not enough of a gamer, but she’s not too interested. Can’t blame her really. I’m not one of those people who gets annoyed if people don’t like the same things I like. But I do like to show her anyway.
Speaking of that, and something I forgot to mention last week, we did find a game that we love playing together. We regularly play Little Inferno and Royal Envoy 2 on her iPad, and also Puzzle Agent until we finished it. This week we were having a go at Botanicula, which has such a great atmosphere. From the makers of Samorost and Machinarium, which I think I played with her help. This time she initiated it and controlled it for the most part, with me looking on and making suggestions, etc. It’s really the way adventure games were meant to be played, or it seems like it. Many of the challenges are not skill-based, so it works. Often adventure games do seem to include arcadey segments, and this was no exception. That was my time to shine.
So the game looks and sounds fantastic. It’s chock full of unique, weird little characters that you briefly interact with. Some let you progress, some just do a weird thing and you move on. The sound design is adorable and really imaginative, with all sorts of quirky musical and sound effects. I’m coming up with lots of adjectives here to say that it’s a really imaginative indie game, basically. As for the game, it’s a point and click adventure game. Very similar to their previous ones I mentioned earlier, especially Samorost. Your character is a party of 5 little plant people, like a seed and a mushroom and stuff, each with their own skills. You just click around and stuff happens. It’s great! It’s got a rich world and a recognisable story which is told completely non-verbally. Anyway it’s very compelling and it was gratifying to be able to play it together.
What else… I started playing Spirit Tracks. The latest Zelda game, apart from that silly Wii one. Just kidding, I’m sure Skyward Sword is great! Spirit Tracks is… quite different to most Zelda games, which is a good thing. The DS games are like a totally different thing, not 2D Zelda, not 3D Zelda. Completely touchscreen controlled, which is well executed I think. The dungeons are quite short, and have a few large rooms instead of many small rooms. The enemies have started getting more interesting and the items are cool too, although I’m glad I have the boomerang now and don’t have to keep blowing all the time, it was making me dizzy. I thought the game itself would be short, but I had a peek at some stuff on the Internet and was excited to find there was more to the game than I thought, I think it will start opening out a lot more soon.
It’s just great to see the formula shaken up a bit. Zelda as a series is quite rigidly formulaic, so it’s the standout games I love the most, like Majora’s Mask. Twilight Princess is good too as I’m playing it, who knows what hindsight will bring though. Having said that, this game apparently closely follows the formula established by the other DS game, Phantom Hourglass. But I haven’t played that and there are only two, plus this one apparently does it a lot better. Anyway I really like being in that Zelda world but having a whole new way to interact with it, by tapping things and the trains and all that. The setting started out a little boring actually, with the empty-feeling castle and town, but I really warmed to it once I found the Anouki guys in the snow area, they were well written and I liked the forced interaction. I also look forward to meeting people in other lands, such as the Gorons, and fleshing out this world of New Hyrule in my mind.
Well that’ll do for this week. I seem to have followed my plans from last week pretty well, but I kinda forgot about Run That Town and I didn’t have my friend over, I met him somewhere else. Didn’t make any TP progress either but that’s life. Oh and I still haven’t given up on Rockman Xover completely. Oh well.
I almost wrote weekly update, but I don’t want to commit to any sort of schedule. I played some great games this past week though, so I wanted to talk about them.
Finishing Metroid Prime 3 freed up some console time, but I couldn’t not go straight back to Twilight Princess which I had dropped. Just before the Wii online shutdown was announced, I was really looking forward to doing some fishing, and filling out my fish logbook and Hena’s aquarium. Oh, if I’d only known. Good guides were hard to come by but it didn’t take long at all to get all the commoner fish. I’d already slogged through the trial of Rollgoal to get the frog lure, and I wanted to use that to catch the Hylian Loach rather than resorting to the Sinking Lure. It was one of those situations where I just tried and tried, for over half an hour, then the next day had another go and knocked it over on my third try. Catching the Loach fry with the bobber was then really easy once I found out that they can be found reliably in the Kakariko Graveyard. So all in all it was pretty good, except for the initial long fight with that damn Loach.
Having then completed all the sidequest stuff except the Poes (got all the bugs, sword skills, inventory upgrades, etc) I entered the Cave of Ordeals. Got most of the way through then discovered I arbitrarily needed the Double Clawshot. Frustrating, they should let you attempt it with your skillz and not require the items. So I got on with the plot and went to the City in the Sky. Very cool dungeon, nowhere near the level of the Mansion in my personal esteem though. Having just played MP3, it really reminded me of Skytown, Elysia. Not just the floating city thing but the structure, the Spinner mechanisms, the inhabitants wandering around (in this case chicken people instead of clockwork robots). So yeah, now I have the Mirror of Twilight, I guess I’ll see what the Twilight Realm is like.
To my shock, I realised yesterday that I’d forgotten about Rayman for a couple of days. I guess since I reached the fourth level of Awesomeness, unlocking the Extreme Weekly Challenge (and thus having no content left to unlock) my interest dropped off a bit. It’s still awesomely fun, but by now I’ve identified the types of challeneges they set, and which ones I am super into and which ones are not as interesting. I feel I’ve gotten a great deal out of it, hopefully I can keep playing for a while.
Speaking of games I play continuously, I’m very very close to putting Rockman Xover down again. Almost all of my current rotation of cards are maxed out at level 50, and I’m still almost no closer to beating some bosses. They just introduced a new mechanic that would change the whole way you upgrade cards to get better, meaning a lot of wasted effort and more grinding needed. It’s a good excuse to stop, I think, although I may wait until World 7 is released first (probably won’t be able to beat it).
Also, Doodle God stopped being intuitive when I got a massive amount of elements. Now the only way to play is use a hint and try to do that. It’s valid, I think. I had a go with Tentacle Wars on iOS, it’s a variant of Galcon basically. It was addictive and very fun, until it started just getting too hard. Didn’t take me long to hit my ceiling, but I had to delete it after attempting a level multiple times and the result feeling random.
Speaking of iPhone games, just last night me and Everbloom discovered that (Australians take note) the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had made a city-planning game that used actual census data. So you pick a postcode, then experience what it’s like to plan new buildings and stuff for the suburb based on the demographics and demand, which are pulled from actual population data. It’s a super-well made game. Like, extremely smooth and professional, looks fantastic. Can’t figure out who made it, if it was internally developed or contracted but man, a lot of companies could learn some lessons from this game. Also it’s fun, it’s educational, and it’s narrated by Shaun Micallef! And it’s free! Good stuff. Oh it’s called Run My Town.
Oh yeah and on the weekend I fired up the Super Nintendo that I’d brought up here. It’s exactly as I remember it, sometimes it just doesn’t start, you blow on the cartridge even though that probably does nothing, you hold it in while you turn it on, it takes a couple tries. I had a quick go with Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Racing, just as boring as ever. Checked my save file on DKC2 was still there, but I’d just played it on VC recently. Actually the first thing I did was went straight to Super BC Kid.
Super BC Kid (AKA Super PC Genjin or Super Bonk… seriously three franchise names for three regions? GAH) was the fourth in Hudson’s popular series that had started in the previous generation. Despite being a mascot for the PC Engine, the little caveman had quickly made the jump to cross-platform as well, appearing on the Famicom and Game Boy. This game was one of the several platformers we had, and I just remembered every level layout perfectly. They were a bit smaller than I remembered actually… My superior gaming skillz got me through much quicker than I ever did in childhood—this game has no save or password function. You have to complete it in one sitting. This marathon nature means we very rarely got to the end back then, either because of dying or parent-enforced stoppage. This time it took me about two hours to clock it, although I pretty much avoided all the bonus stages, as they were unnecessary and slowed down the game (I find this a frequent thing in older games, such as all the Mario ones and DKC1).
I had a blast, the nostalgia and wackiness, the old muscle memory, even some bits I would exclaim “I don’t remember this!”. The second-last boss gave me a particularly bad time, had lots of trouble there. The final one is also an appropriately gruelling test of skill, but didn’t feel as unfair as the second-last. I got through the final platforming challenge super-easily though, with spikes emerging from walls you have to climb, which as a child was very frustration-inducing. It was a great time. The setpieces and settings were really bizarre and entertaining, the type of thing that children just accept but adults go “what??”. So that was cool.
Oh yeah and N was updated after a lot of work to version 2.0 by Metanet Software. During Uni I got a ton of mileage out of that game. The player doesn’t work on my current computer as it’s PPC only and now Macs are all Intel, so I played a fair bit of that. So good, pure platforming and so hard but so satisfying. Yesterday after realising I’d been trying the same level for half an hour, I had to quit though. My hands had all cramped up. Can’t wait for N++ to come out so I can buy it and support those guys. I really enjoy those kinds of games: I got all the way through I Wanna Be The Guy (to my shame, I never beat the Guy), I loved Super Meat Boy except that it kept crashing on my computer, so then I loved Meat Boy until I found my save deleted. Rayman Origins hits that same feel sometimes too, which is great because up til then it was something more indie developers did. Mario is certainly nothing like it (stupid Mario).
Well I think that’s it for now. Hopefully I can wrap up Twilight Princess in the next couple of weeks, and I can get started properly on Spirit Tracks. More Rayman, start Yoshi’s Island on my old SNES, more Run My Town. That’s my plan, we’ll see how that goes. Got a friend hopefully visiting this weekend, I’m planning on a Nintendo Land sesh like I did with my bro. Ok, tata.
After getting a bit tired with my very long reviews, and having to wait until finishing a game to do one, I decided to write more shorter posts. Actually I was inspired by starting listening to a new gaming podcast (Midnight Resistance), and hearing their “what have you played this week” segment. Not really unique to them but I thought: “That sounds fun, I should do that too”.
So this is the first new format post, I’ll probably keep the reviews as well. I don’t know what to call this kind of post yet, I’ll work that out. But enough meta-blogging, let’s do some blogging!
I didn’t mention this in my Metroid Prime 3 review, but I got one (1) reply to all my various queries for PAL Friend Voucher trading. Slicer1000 was a very nice trading partner. Friendly, reliable, and I got my credits so yay! Apparently there were plans on the Gamefaqs board to make a save file with the 15 credits that you can download, so that you’ll be able to unlock the stuff even after NIntendo switches off WiiConnect24. I also realised, thanks to my lovely wife everbloom, that I was doing it the sucker’s way, and that I could transfer my save to the WiiU by SD card, then send myself the vouchers to the Wii. 1) Good point, but 2) it was fun to do it the way they intended, even if the intended way is annoying. What I mean is seeking out other people who love the game enough to unlock the bonus content, using the features of the console (creaky and underutilised as they are), connecting with other gamers. Kind of like this blog, in a way.
Anyway that was cool, but since Rayman Legends Challenges App came out, that has hooked me in completely. At the moment that’s the majority of my console gaming time, while Prime Hunters continued for handheld gaming time. Every day I’m on there, at least until I get a trophy. The one downside to seeing friends and family in my hometown this weekend was missing three days of challenges. It’s so much fun! An issue I see is that it’s maybe not a relevant representation of what the actual game will be like, which the included demo levels are. But what it is doing is very well executed and very addictive (see that Internet, I said “addictive"—"addicting” is not a word). It’s just a great example of what you can do with the WiiU, with the Gamepad controls, the online stuff with NNID friends, etc. It’s super smooth, very finely tuned, looks like a great successor to Origins while fixing some of the issues that game had. Plus, it’s got me to use my WiiU which had been looking a little sad. Now my PS3 looks sad! You can’t win.
Since Rayman has me logging on everyday, I’ve been using the other features more as a consequence. I’ve made friends with everyone on DKVine who’s posted their NNID, I’ve been checking the shop for new releases (eve though I don’t buy any—got enough games for now, thank you), and I’ve been checking out the Miiverse. It’s pretty cool, if a little slow and the interface is a little clunky. Social stuff has never been my strong suit (my friends can tell you that), so I don’t use the thing for that. My favourite part of Miiverse is looking at Juliusaurus’s awesome cool art. Seriously, go check him out. It’s on browsers now. Here you go: https://miiverse.nintendo.net/users/Juliusaurus. The quality of that drawing and the breadth of Nintendo fandom there is breathtaking.
So I mentioned console gaming time and handheld gaming time, but there’s also mobile gaming time around here. I use my iPhone a fair bit for games, although to my regret I have a lot of “proper” games on there that I often pass over for the more casual, throwaway ones. For instance, this week instead of playing Lego Harry Potter 2, Ghost Trick, Carmageddon, or Mega Man X, I fired up Doodle God after its update and had some fun combining elements to make new ones. I finished it a while ago but there’s new stuff now, also at some point I restored my iPhone from a backup and consequently lost a lot of save data. Stupid developers store it in the wrong places, and stupid backup doesn’t backup the right subfolders. Anyway I’ve also been playing my secret shame game, Rockman Xover. Every day. It’s so bad, but I can’t stop! Fortunately, the spell was partially broken recently when I read some comments on how the game becomes impossible after a while unless you buy special items for real money. I think I’m at that point now, and also it revealed to me just how much of a cynical, money-grubbing, dirty-feeling, in-app-purchase-powered free-to-play it is. Think if Zynga made a Rockman game. I hope to give it up soon.
Oh and I had a huge windfall this weekend as a result of said family visit. I managed to convince my brother to let me take away our childhood gaming consoles, our SNES and N64, which to be fair were sitting in a bag in the corner of a room so I don’t think anyone’s going to miss them. I’ve mentioned before how the SNES was the one time my parents got into gaming beyond Freecell and Words with Friends. We played a lot of Tetris & Dr. Mario in the day. Point is, they don’t play anymore and neither does anyone else so I took them to cement my place as a Ninty fanboy. It’s also a good place to play Yoshi’s Island as it was never given the VC treatment. Laziness, I say. But yeah once I work out the connections and stuff I can bring back some sweet childhood memories, and now we have more storage space under the bed to stash them in as well! I’m very happy to have these pieces of history here.
And that’s that so I hope you enjoyed this new format post, I’ll be back soon with some comic news! EDIT: oh the comic stuff posted from my queue before this post, so er yeah it’s below this one now!
An emergency has rather cropped up. As you may recall, I had finished Metroid Prime 2 recently and was having a break before starting 3. I’m interchanging Metroid and Zelda, with Twilight Princess for console while I play Hunters on the DS. I then planned to go onto Spirit Tracks on DS, and play something else on console, possibly Prime 3. The news that Nintendo is squashing most of the Wii’s online functionality has forced a different plan on me. I need to find the Friend Vouchers in Prime 3 so I can trade them for Green Tokens, before Wii Connect 24 is disabled, or else I will never ever be able to unlock all the content in the game (image galleries and the like). To make this more difficult, I need to find someone in the same region as me to trade the vouchers with who either hasn’t already traded them or is spoofing them for the benefit of others. I’m planning on going to Gamefaqs for that one; if you happen to be an Australian reading this with 15 unused Prime 3 Friend Vouchers, contact me! I’ll have them hopefully soon. I’m not sure what other regions are compatible; most Australian Wii stuff seems to be fine with all of Europe, or at least the UK. So that could work too.
So, tomorrow I hasten my plans, put both Twilight Princess and Hunters on hold for now and focus on Prime 3. Fortuitous timing, as I have just started a two-week holiday. As I work in a school (not a teacher), I get all school holidays off. It’s sweet. But it looks like I’ll be gaming hard for a little while; I don’t know exactly how long I’ll have to play to get these vouchers. I should also have time to start the next comic scanlation I’m planning on, though. It’s a Yoshi’s Island comic and looks kinda fun, but I’m waiting on word from my translation buddy.
Hm. I haven’t done many ordinary “update”-type blog posts. How about some feedback? Should I do them more often?
…And I was looking forward to some fishing in TP. I just unlocked the frog lure after an absolutely gruelling session of Rollgoal. Agh. Oh well.
