So I’ve been pretty busy over here. Yeah I’m on holidays so lots of gaming happening. I want to talk about all of it, but most of it’s not interesting. Oh well, gonna do it anyway.
I finished Spirit Tracks. Expect more about that later. The second-last phase of the final boss was super frustrating, and you don’t want your game experience to have a sour note right at the end. I think I’ll try and finish Mario & Luigi 3, in hopes of one day playing Dream Team, but before I did that I cleared out a few demoes I’d been downloading from the Store (haven’t been any for a while though).
Fractured Soul demo was fun, maybe a little slow-paced but as it went on it started throwing stuff at you more quickly and it became frantic. I like how it made you think in a completely different way. Basically you switch between the top and bottom screens and your actions are mirrored but the rooms are different. Lots of potential for puzzles and action. It was a little simplistic and drab but that’s kind of what it was going for. I won’t buy it but that’s because I buy barely any games. Keep that in mind.
I also tried the Sega Racing 2 demo for 3DS. It’s the same demo as the console one, and everything else seems the same too in terms of content. The problem is, if you set yourself up as equivalent, the glaring imbalance in execution is going to shine through. What I mean is, it’s a very much cut-down console port, and those don’t look good. I also had some framerate issues, which is not a good look in a demo. This thing is supposed to be selling the game to me (previous comments on austerity notwithstanding). Not impressed. Kinda reminds me of the Rayman Origins demo, which is a very inferior package of the same content on console.
Next, iPhone stuff! I played through Random Heroes 2 then deleted it. It was ok, only small improvements from the original. Good little run&gun time-waster. I also appreciated the cameo appearance of a few characters from the developer’s other game, and another indie game. One day I’ll write a post about the Indie Game Universe, I like it. I got my mum into Letterpress after everyone else has given up on it, as is the case with most of these social word/drawing games.
The trial bit of Layton Brothers Mystery Room has convinced me to get the full thing: despite the Layton license being tacked on (the Prof’s not there… so far) it’s cheap, similar to Ace Attorney I assume (that demo’s next on my list) but not supporting Capcom, and fun with good characters. Plants vs Zombies 2 got a soft launch in my country, so I’ve been playing it. Some nice new features, but also as you’d expect some pretty blatant and cynical microtransaction stuff. They hide it well at first, but when your plant list has slots taking up room with plants locked behind real money paywalls, it starts feeling pushy. And after finishing the whole original twice, I can’t find the enthusiasm.
After 100%-ing Banjo-Tooie, I took a step back in terms of release dates and started DK64. Hmm. Well, I’ll save more thoughts for another time, but so far it’s actually pretty enjoyable. It has strengths and weaknesses: eg, poor writing but fun animations, lots of collectibles is good (debatably) but colour-coding them gets tedious. It’s no Banjo, but it has its own character.
I felt like some Smash Bros. 1-player action, so I played Melee a bit the other day. And just today, I did something I thought I would never do. I played Brawl online. The lag was pretty bad, but it was actually good because I had a video stream of and text chat with some of the other players, so we could get reactions and stuff. It’s because I was watching the Metroid Headquarters anniversary charity livestream all weekend, and after they finished all the Metroid games, they played some other games and just kept streaming. Getting the chatters and watchers involved was fun. I even won 2 out of 3 matches! Good times. Weird experience, interacting with relative strangers in such a direct way from across the world.
But I also interacted with people in the same room as me! I know right! I had a good friend over one night, and we played Nintendo Land since he hadn’t used a Wii U before. Plus, it’s just a good party game really. Then I played it again when I went to a new friend’s house. This inspired me again, and I even played it by myself and with my wife the next day, and cleared some things I couldn’t before. It’s quite charming and once you get used to replaying challenges, you can have a lot of fun. It also challenges your skill in a way that seems more suited to old-skool Nintendo than the Touch Generation Nintendo. But there’s still some Super Guide for babies, which was honestly welcome at times. It just has a lot of range though.
Ok I think I got it all out. I’ve had so many differing game experiences over the past couple of weeks that I just had to spit some words onto a pixel. I don’t feel I’ve done much justice to them but that’s why no-one pays me for this. Ok, pip pip.
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!
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.
