Category: Mario

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – November 2016

Hey. November. It’s cold outside now. All the more reason to stay inside all the time and play video games. Except when it’s not and I go outside to play Pokémon Go.

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Pokémon Sun (3DS) – FINALLY. I haven’t been so excited about a game since Smash 4. And you know I’m not kidding because I tore through that sucker in only a week. Also, have you seen Crabominable yet??

crabominable

Heaven Island (PC) – A VR walking simulator MMO. Note that I do not own a VR device, so half the experience was lost on me. But I still wandered around until I’d picked up enough apples and seashells to claim all of the “achievements.”

You Deserve (PC) – I think I would have liked this horror adventure a little more if it had run a little bit smoother. It pushed my PC a little harder than it really needed to. Oh, and also it’s got jumpscares placed in seemingly random spots just for the sake of cheap jumpscares. I put up lots more words about it yesterday.

Wario Land 2 (GBC) – I was itching for a replay, so that’s what I did. Considered taking the secret route to complete the game in five levels, but opted to go for good ol’ 100% in the end. I like Wario Land 2 that much.

Paper Mario: Color Splash (WiiU) – Quite a divisive game, though personally, I think it’s incredible. It’s not really much like the N64 or GameCube Paper Marios, but at the same time, it kind of is? Also, it’s super pretty and maybe the funniest game I’ve ever played. If I have one complaint to lobby against it, it’s that they spelled “colour” wrong.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – November 2016

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – October 2016

Every October (and even in late September), I get so excited about Halloween, and intend to play a bunch of spooky games to celebrate. And that… doesn’t usually pan out. Was 2016 any different? Read on to find out!

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FNAF: Sister Location (PC) – If you don’t count the RPG spinoff, this is the first FNAF game I’ve really gotten into. And it’s spectacular. While it is not quite as terrifying as its older brothers, Sister Location is still Spooky As Heck.

Year Walk (WiiU) – I’ve been itching to replay this for months, telling myself “wait for Halloween” and finally the time came! It’s a really great adventure with clever puzzles and a neat twist halfway through. Turns out that you can clear it in well under an hour, but still, it’s Pretty Darn Spooky.

Pokémon Pearl (DS) – While I have a team that’s half spooky-looking Pokémon (Misdreavus, Crobat, and Luxray), and the bad guys want to basically destroy the universe, Pokémon is simply Not Spooky.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force (3DS) – A regular Metroid game could definitely be considered spooky, but with Federation Force’s focus on action and teamwork, it falls just short of the bar. Not Spooky, but a very solid game otherwise.

Picross 3D Round 2 (3DS) – Decidedly Not Spooky. In fact, it may be the least spooky game on the list, with its relaxing atmosphere and lack of any sort of conflict.

Final Fantasy VIII (PC) – There are a number of creepy monsters and witches in this game, but overall, I’d have to say that it’s Not Spooky. The hammy characters and colourful graphics just don’t lend themselves well to creating a frightful atmosphere.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – October 2016

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – May 2016

I’ve been trying real hard to focus on one game per system at a time over the last few months, but I’m failing at every turn. It seems like I’m constantly getting distracted by something else, be it new or half-complete. Anyway, May was a huge step in the right direction, with a greater number of finished games than “in progress” games for this first time since… maybe it’s just the first time ever? Of course, I had to throw some (admittedly hefty) demos in there to make the grade, so maybe it’s moot.

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Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (WiiU) – It feels wrong to say it for some reason, but I think Twilight Princess is one of my favourite Zeldas. I think the only thing that I truly dislike about it is the stupid canoe minigame. The forced-wolf sections in the first half of the game do feel a bit like unnecessary padding, but even those don’t really bother me all that much. I even like the “acres and acres of nothing” Hyrule Field.

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Bravely Default (3DS) – I decided, now that the sequel is out, that I’ve been putting this off for too long. So I beat it. Then I wrote too many words about it. What I didn’t write there is that the final boss seemed rally cheap and annoying on my first try, but then once I knew his tricks, I stomped him into the ground with very little trouble.

Bravely Second: The Ballad of the Three Cavaliers (3DS) – Officially, it’s just the demo for Bravely Second, but it’s got a unique scenario and took me about seven hours to beat. I thought that I was burned out on Bravely, but this demo really hooked me and I just may splurge on Second in the near future.

The Park (PC) – I bought this immediately after someone suggested to me that it was a Five Night’s at Freddy’s clone. That is not the case at all. It’s a still a spooky game, but it is a walking simulator instead of a security guard simulator and there are zero killer animatronics. I was still pleased, because the story was pretty good. Unfortunately, my PC could just barely run it, so the choppiness kind of ruined the mood.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 – Episode 3 (PC) – Surprisingly, this game has one of the least terrible sewer levels ever. Well, design-wise. Technically, the water was too fancy, which made the computer so unhappy and slowed everything down to a crawl, and made the game very difficult to play. Otherwise, it had a cool factory explosion and a great boss fight.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 – Episode 4 (PC) – A surprisingly brief chapter for Claire and Moira, then the longest chapter in the game for Barry and Natalia. It was really great, though, and had a pretty decent final boss. I can tell you right now that I will be replaying this one many times.

Pocket Card Jockey Demo (3DS) – A game about horse racing, in which you race horses by playing a variation of solitaire that I am not familiar with. It’s a lot of fun, but truth be told, I don’t think I’m going to buy it. It’s deceptively deep, and that’s not really what I’m looking for.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade (360) – Decided to play it a bit because I have been jonesing for some old-school TMNT action for months now. I didn’t actually finish it, but I was at the second-last stage and I would have finished it if I’d had more time. But I did get the fix that I needed. Close enough.

~ Now Playing ~

Monster Hunter Explore (iOS) – Do you remember Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting? I thought it was a passable way to get a MonHun fix in a pinch, but Explore is so much better. Its plays much more like normal Monster Hunter, just pared down for the mobile audience. It’s still not completely fulfilling, but it’s certainly a good deal of fun.

Hyrule Warriors Legends (3DS) -I took a long break from this to finish off Bravely Default and the Bravely Second demo, and now I’m neck deep in Zelda Musou again. I’ve finally finished the Great Sea adventure map to 100% completion, at least.

Final Fantasy VII (PC) – Yep, this happened. For whatever reason, this time around I feel like I’m seeing a lot of things that remind me of Super Mario RPG. Also whenever anything silly or funny happens I think about how joyless the remake will be and it makes me sad.

Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge (WiiU) – I wrote enough words about this already.

Lost Reavers (WiiU) – A free, online loot-’em-up of sorts. It’s not especially good, but I’ve put in several hours because… well, I’m not sure why I kept it up. I guess it’s fairly fun, despite feeling like a C-tier game from a couple generations ago. Probably because it’s a multiplayer game that is 100% cooperative. That’s a big draw for me.

Dark Souls (360) – Yeah I’m playing this again. New Game+ is, well, hard. Which is the opposite of what I normally expect from NG+. Oh, Dark Souls. Played up to the point of defeating Quelaag, not sure how far I’m ultimately going to take this run.

The poor, worthless cube

Nintendo released a “free-to-play” game on both Wii U and 3DS last week. That game is Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge. I put free-to-play in quotations there because while the software can be downloaded at no cost, you can’t actually do anything but stare at the title screen without an amiibo figure. Womp-womp.

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Scanning an amiibo gives you a little wind-up version of the character you scanned to play the game with. As long as that character is from either the Mario or Donkey Kong family. Also Wario doesn’t count for whatever reason. If you scan any other amiibo, you get to play as a little cube robot named Mini Spek. For reasons that I will get into right away, you don’t want to be Mini Spek.

You can see above that the amiibo I scanned is named Barky. It’s my Wolf Link amiibo. I think it’s a good name. Also my Bowser amiibo’s name is Mittens.

When you scan a Mario character amiibo, you get a fancy little robot toy with a special ability. For example, Mini Mario can do wall jumps, Mini Peach can hover over short gaps, and Mini Bowser Jr can cross over spikes unharmed. These special abilities can be used to collect amiibo tokens scattered about the stages and enter special character-specific doors.

The doors unlock small worlds off the main path, which essentially means that you’re limited to about 11 stages if you don’t have the correct amiibos. Mini Spek is completely unable to enter (or even reach) the character doors, as he has no abilities whatsoever. His game will be over before you know it. Stages unlocked by Mario amiibos account for more than half the game, and nearly all of it when you consider that amiibo tokens unlock the Star World stages.

That sounds pretty bad, yeah? What’s even worse is that the gameplay is actually really fun, so you’d better already have those amiibos, because that’s some really expense DLC if you’re comparing content to dollars spent (an amiibo figure costs $15.99). And if you don’t want to collect those Mario amiibos? You might as well just skip this game. The stages you can play with Mini Spek are good, but ultimately they just made me hungry for more.

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Each stage is a little puzzle where you have to get your toy character to the door at the end. You have a certain number of items, like girders and trampolines, to move around the stage to avoid obstacles, and there are coins scattered about to bump up your score. Imagine Lemmings, except you manipulate the environment instead of the character. Figuring out the path to the exit is usually easy enough, but collecting all the coins and finishing the stage fast enough will earn you a trophy, and that takes a little more finesse.

It’s really too bad that Amiibo Challenge is shackled to amiibos, but I suppose that was never intended as a surprise. It is right in the name, after all. The upside is that if you don’t want to spend $160 on amiibos to get all that this game offers, Mario vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars (available as a cross-buy on Wii U and 3DS) has the exact same gameplay at a much lower cost. So I think I’ll probably check that out, because like I said, Amiibo Challenge has really only just whet my appetite for this kind of puzzle game.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – March 2016

If February was defined by Pokémania, then March was defined by… also Pokémania (and to a lesser extent, Zelda mania). Eh, what can I say? I really love Pokémon, and there’s been a lot going on with the franchise these days.

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Pokémon Yellow Version (GB) – Playing through this one again was a very welcome blast of nostalgia, and also a little frustration at trying to remember how the mechanics used to work back in Gen 1. Running the game with a team of monsters I’d usually never use was a great way to make it feel fresh again. Hooray for Flareon!

Splatoon (WiiU) – Finally bothered to just hone my focus and complete the single-player mode. It was an absolute blast, and the final boss was something else entirely. I’m seriously hoping that they release another campaign some day, even if it’s just a little eShop title.

Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai (3DS) – Replayed the game in “mirror world” mode, which I guess is just the same levels you already played but reversed? While I may not be as hype for it as I was when it originally released, I still think it’s a solid little platformer.

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (GC) – I was testing out some Gamecube games to see which save files on my giant memory card had been corrupted, and popped in Mega Man Anniversary Collection. The save was still good, and somehow I ended up playing through this one. I mean, just one story path as Bass, but that’s still a cleared game, right?

New Super Mario Bros 2 (3DS) – I’ve been wanting to replay this for months now, but always had some other major 3DS game on the go. With Paper Jam and Pokémon Yellow done and dusted, there was no longer any reason not to jump into it. The twist is that this time I played about half the game in co-op mode, which is super fun.

Shovel Knight (3DS) – Do I really need to justify another Shovel Knight run to you? I think I’ve made it pretty clear already that it’s my favourite game.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – March 2016

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – February 2016

I don’t know anymore, you know? I sort of force these intros to the monthend posts, but are they really necessary? I mean, mostly I just want something in there to break up the post title and “Game Over” heading. So I suppose that this silly rambling has done exactly what I needed it to.

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Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU) – Finally finished it, after 125 solid hours of wandering and cutting down wildlife (also, being cut down by said wildlife). The ending was a little… I dunno, bland, after the crazy ending to the previous Xenoblade. I didn’t think it was as mind-rendingly stupid as most do, but it certainly wasn’t anything to write about. Definitely gonna keep playing this one for a while.

Goosebumps (PC) – Played it again to rack up a few more cheevos. My first run took almost three hours, but as it turns out, you can finish it in well under 20 minutes if you know what to do. Neat!

Mega Man 9 (Wii) – You might be surprised to learn that I have never beaten this game before. It’s just so unrelentingly difficult! But I finally soldiered through, and I can now say that I’ve beaten all of the traditional Mega Man games. The Wily 2 and 3 bosses were utterly ridiculous, especially compared to how easy the Wily Machine is.

New Super Mario Bros Wii (WiiU) – Played through it again with a friend and her daughter. That was certainly not how I had expected to spend Valentine’s Day.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (3DS) – I really like this game, and trying to 100% it would probably just make me hate it. So I took my acceptable completion rate and marched right into the final boss’ lair. That was an awesome fight. Not terribly original, but cool as heck.

Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure (3DS) – I sometimes with that Dr Mario didn’t end after 20 levels, but there’s really nowhere to go after the jar is filled completely with viruses. An hour well spent, at any rate.

The Legend of Dark Witch 2 (3DS) – I quite liked the first game, which was some godless amalgam of Mega Man, Gradius, and Anime. This is basically the same, but with more stages and the difficulty toned way down. Recommended, but not as heartily as the first.

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Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – January 2016

Another year, another pile of Steam games that I will never play. thanks, Humble Bundle!

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Tengami (Wii U) – I guess it’s what the kids call a “walking simulator” because that’s most of the game. Also you sometimes solve puzzles. They’re mostly pretty easy, but still satisfying. What really makes it special is the beautiful pop-up book aesthetic and pretty music. It only lasts for about an hour, but it’s a nice hour.

Goosebumps (PC) – I wouldn’t have bought this if it hadn’t been in a bundle for $2. And the Ryan in that timeline lived a lesser life, because Goosebumps is quite an enjoyable little point-and-click adventure. Some minor annoyances, like a “puzzle” that literally just makes you wait and lawn gnome jumpscares, but otherwise a perfect example of how to do this kind of game correctly.

Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (3DS) – Soloed most of the game on my lunch hours because I don’t make time for 3DS at home. It’s actually not horrible to play alone, and it’s almost encouraged by the awful players I usually meet online. I’ve beaten the game, but I’m going to go back and do all the extra challenges to get the true ending… eventually.

Minecraft: Story Mode – The Order of the Stone (WiiU) – Boy, that’s a mouthful. Anyway, it’s Telltale’s adventure series based in Minecraft. The last time I played a Telltale game was Sam & Max Season 1, and this is markedly different than that. Story Mode is a lot less interactive; it’s more like a film where you make a choice once in a while. But it’s still entertaining, so who am I to complain?

FNAF World (PC) – I was so happy that finally a FNAF game was made that I would actually be able to play. Even if it is an overly cutesy RPG with a hyperactive battle system. There’s a little more to it going on under the hood, being a FNaF game and all, and I’m eager to start reading all the crazy internet theories about the game’s mysteries. Except there may not be because the game was pulled from Steam for being half-baked. Oops! I still played it and made my way to the “bad” ending. Probably will play it again.

~ Now Playing ~

Pokémon Picross (3DS) – If you pay for it, it’s the best picross game. If you try to get by on the Free-to-Play model… you’re gonna have a bad time. Anyway, it has certainly slaked my thirst for themed picross, which is really all that I needed. I’m slowly working though the Alt-World mode, in which every puzzle is presented in the Mega Picross format.

Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU) – Still plugging away at this giant beast. It’s such a wonderful world, I don’t really want it to end. Then again, I suppose it won’t, because it’s like 500 hours worth of content. I’ve done up to Chapter 11 in the main story.

Fallout 4 (PC) – Trying to build and furnish a house in this game is kind of a nightmare. But, you know, it’s Fallout, so at least the rest of the game is good. Having no level cap is great. I love not having to worry that I put my points in the wrong skills.

FAST Racing NEO (WiiU) – They really aren’t kidding. This gam is fast with a capital everything. It’s one of those wonderful and rare arcade racers that I actually enjoy, even though I’m not really very good. Even the novice championship is giving me troubles. I’ve gotten gold trophies on the first two circuits, bronze on the third, and didn’t even place on the fourth.

Dragon Warrior Monsters (GBC) – I was assessing the Game Boys I own (not that many, really) and plugged this in to see if my Game Boy Color was working. It was, and now I’m stuck falling down this rabbit hole again. Only up to Rank F in the arena so far.

The Deadly Tower of Monsters (PC) – Framed as the DVD of a old mid-twentieth century sci-fi movie, with director’s commentary and cheesy special effects to match. I’m fairly certain that it was made specifically for me. I’m about halfway up the tower, but I have no idea what that means in terms of actual game progression.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (3DS) – I was toying with the idea of not buying this, at least not right away. Who did I think I was kidding? At least it’s been really good so far. Fusing the M&L and Paper Mario worlds was a great idea, and cutting out most of the forced tutorials was the best idea. At current, I’m in the desert area.

Shovel Knight (WiiU) – Got the Shovel Knight amiibo this month, which changes the way you play the game a fair bit. Also it allows for two-player mode, so that’s pretty ballin’. Any excuse to play more Shovel Knight is a good one.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – November 2015

I don’t know. I don’t have a lot to say about November. There weren’t many game releases this month (that I could afford, because PS4s are expensive), so I just got to start picking at all the stuff I bought in October.

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Yoshi’s Woolly World (WiiU) – An absolutely terrific game in every way. It’s beautiful, it has a soundtrack to die for, and it’s just a really great Yoshi game. Easily rivals the original in terms of quality. Please note that even though it’s the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen, it can be downright brutal. Especially the bonus stages. *shudder* I look forward to continuing to play it to see all the extra goodies it has to offer.

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Undertale (PC) – I finally picked it up again and made it past the tutorial. OH. Now I understand why people love this game so much. It is absolutely brimming with charm, and really that’s all you need to get my seal of approval. I also like the “battle” system, despite there being hardly any actual battling in my pacifist run.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – November 2015