Category: Video Games

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

You’re going to have to bear with me, internet. I want to talk about Monster Hunter again.

Let’s begin with the basics. The Monster Hunter series is all about fighting giant beasts, and is pretty much a game built around hectic, exciting boss battles. Yes, it includes some smaller enemies too, but they’re like the basil on the tomato soup that is the rest of the game: they add a little flavour, but aren’t what you came for. You’re there to bring down huge, fearsome beasts and then turn them into pants. It’s even more fun when you’re doing it with your friends, so much so that it’s the only video game that I actually have a desire to play with people online.

Victory in Monster Hunter requires what I call the Three P’s: preparation, patience, and practice. It’s not a game for people who can’t be arsed to earn their victory. There is no coasting in Monster Hunter, and there is no easy mode. If you’re going to win, you need to make sure you know what you’re doing. Triple-checking your supplies before you head out on a hunt isn’t just helpful, it’s nearly required. You need to study your enemy’s movement and attack patterns to find weaknesses and openings. Familiarity with the terrain in each map is just as important as being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen weapon. Long story short: Monster Hunter requires a huge investment of time and effort on the player’s part, and that’s what I love most about it.

Most games, especially those of the current generation, you can just turn on and play if you’ve got even a basic knowledge of video games. Monster Hunter is not at all like that. If you boot up a Monster Hunter game and expect to get just another action game, you’ll be eating a healthy serving of humble pie in no time. These are complicated games, and you need to take the time to learn them before you’ll get anywhere. Each game starts with a rather lengthy tutorial in your basic survival skills like item gathering, meat cooking, and small monster slaughter before you even get a whiff of a real hunt. While these might seem like boring little subsystems that aren’t so important that they need to be forced on you, it turns out that they are absolutely essential.

Continue reading Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: September 2013

Welcome, good reader, to a new thing that I want to be doing each month. I’m calling it Monthend Video Game Wrap-up, and it’s basically just going to be a snapshot of what I’ve been up to in the world of video games over the course of each month. Why? I dunno. Same reason that I put anything on this blog, I guess: to keep a cheap record of stuff I do and think.

Okay fine, I’ll admit it. This is all just a big excuse for me to make a banner. It’s one of those odd little things that I really love doing, and I can’t really be bothered to make them for common blog posts. Also I guess since it’s going to be a big thing I’ll make a section for it on the Features page.

~ Now Playing ~

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (Wii U) – I played through WW only twice on Gamecube, but it’s still one of my favourite Zeldas. People seem to be pretty split on the graphical changes, and I am firmly in the “I love them” camp. The swift sail changes the pace of the game from “pretty slow” to “not as slow” which is nice, but what really I appreciate is the improved Picto Box. It’s making completing the Nintendo Gallery seem less like the most horrible, tedious task ever and more like something that’s actually pretty fun! I’m about halfway through the game, just entering the Earth Temple.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: September 2013

What is life like, if not a hurricane?

If you’re into video games at all, it’s very important that you go and buy yourself some DuckTales Remastered as soon as possible. It’s currently available on something you own (Wii U, PC, PS3), so you’ve got no excuses. Do it.

Okay, so you need a little more convincing? Let’s start with the first thing you’ll notice: the spectacular soundtrack. I’m not even exaggerating here; the DuckTales R soundtrack needs to be on iTunes yesterday so that I can be listening to it at all time. Made up mostly of remixes of the original game’s soundtrack, DuckTales R’s music puts pretty much every other retro release’s tunes to shame. It certainly helps that the original soundtrack was pretty damn amazing to begin with, but the arrangements take it to a whole new level.

The title screen music, an instrumental arrangement of the DuckTales theme, is so good that I left the game sitting on the title screen, plugged my headphones into the Wii U gamepad, and just listened to it over and over while I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf for a while. Sound crazy? You won’t think so once you’ve listened to it. Don’t even get me started on the Moon remix. Ducktales R’s soundtrack goes all the way past “memorable” into “infectious.”

The visual style is interesting, and the best thing I can say about it is that it features Wayforward’s beautiful spritework galore. Unfortunately, those sprites live in a 3D world, which is a mish-mash that I’ve never really cared for. I’d much prefer 2D stages as well, but whatever. It looks good, and that’s all that matters.

It’s probably important for me to note that the game is kinda tough. Like, not unbearably tough, but probably enough that you’re going to see the game over screen a few times. Of course, you could always just do like me and play on the Easy Mode For Babies difficulty, and just soak up all the goodness that the game has to offer. I’ll move up to tougher levels eventually, but on my first run, the goal was just to experience the game.

I also chose easy because I’ve never really played the original games on the NES, so I was going in more or less blind. I knew what the game would be like, because I’ve watched at least one video LP of the original, but that was ages ago and this is a pretty different game. The core mechanics of using Scrooge’s cane as a pogo-stick and golf club are the exact same and super fun, but I’m,fairly sure that the levels have been slightly reorganized, with new “modern video game” events speckled throughout each one. Like a fight atop a biplane, and a treasure hunt for a bunch of coins that function as an overcomplicated key. They’re all pretty well in the spirit of the game, so none of the additions feel clumsily shoehorned in. They’re integrated so well, in fact, that if I hadn’t done any research I wouldn’t know which parts are new.

Ducktales Remastered is not universally praised, however. It’s kind of a shame, but I think a lot of people were just expecting too much, or something completely different. There is a pretty vocal group of critics complaining that it’s too hard, but those people are just Stupid Whiny Babies. And then there are the people who are complaining about the cutscenes.

Yes, Ducktales Remastered has cutscenes. And they are glorious. They are fully-voiced by the original actors from DuckTales, and they are pretty darn funny. They make each level of the game seem more like an episode of the cartoon. Yet people are dercying them, and how hard it is to skip them. Wait, what? Yeah. You need to press two buttons to skip cutscenes, and this is a real thing that real people are complaining about. I love the interent as a tool for information and communication, but damn has it made people into whiny, entitled… well, tools. Or maybe they were like that before and you just didn’t ahve to hear ’em.

Anyway, DuckTales Remastered = Good Times, and is totally worth the slightly-higher-than-I-had-expected price tag. Honestly though, $15 is pretty good. If they’d put this in a box you know it’d be double that at least. I’d call that a bargain. Maybe not the best I ever had though.

The end is NIER

If this image is familiar to you, it likely means that you’ve played and completed NIER. Hats off to you, friend. If you haven’t, I recommend that you head out to your local used games store and get your bad self a copy of this gem. I just wish my phone could take a better picture of the TV screen, because the title is super blurry and there’s supposed to be a flower in that spotlight.

NIER, for the uninitiated, is an action RPG released way, way back in 2010. And it is magnificent. It’s not a long game, but I’ve now spent roughly 60 hours with it, and a good many of those were well spent. I’ve done everything there is to do in the game, and only have a single achievement left to earn, which is for beating it in under 15 hours. Should be a piece of cake, since I can do the entire second half of it in under two.

Anyway, what makes NIER such a great game is not necessarily the gameplay, but everything that is wrapped around it. The basic story is that of a father searching for a cure for his daughter’s mortal illness. Right there you’ve got a story that I care to see through to the end. But there are many twists and turns along the way. There are no less than half a dozen story events that will leave you stunned, staring slack-jawed at the screen wondering if what you saw really just happened. It’s the only game in recent memory where events in a cutscene have made me sit up straight and shout in disbelief and/or terror.

I won’t mince words, NIER isn’t afraid to be cruel. The main characters are pretty great and have terrific voice actors, and you will grow to like them. Which adds so much more emotional weight when awful things start to happen to them.  And that may shy you away, but think about how many video games elicit a true emotional response from you. How many have actually made you hurt for their characters? Not many, I’m guessing. It gets downright depressing, but it’s absolutely a story worth seeing through. You can go read a plot summary if you’re lazy, but nothing even compares to witnessing the events play out firsthand.

What’s really great is that there are four endings to the game, and unlike most games with alternate endings, each one builds onto the last, giving more details and slightly changing the final outcome. There are also a ton of additional little scenes added throughout the game once you’ve gotten ending A which will shatter every preconception you’ve had about what’s going on in its world. When you boot up NIER, you’re starting down one of the absolute best video game stories that you’ll ever experience.

That’s not to say that the gameplay should be overlooked! By all means, it’s a pretty competent game. NIER was developed by Cavia Inc, who have a reputation for filling their games with bullcrap and trollign players to no end, but an average playthrough of NIER is kind enough to the player. It’s only when you go off the rails and decide to earn 100% that it gets to the point of unbearable garbage. So much so, in fact, that I learned how to hack Xbox 360 game saves just to save myself hours days of grinding for rare drops.

If you just play through to experience to core game though, it’s pretty delightful. It’s a third-person action game, and feels a little like a looser Zelda with no Z-targeting system. And then there are a few rather dramatic gameplay shifts here and there just to throw you off. One early part of the quest requires you to play the fishing mini-game, which is actually pretty fun, and another portion is presented entirely as a… well, I don’t really want to spoil too much. It’s not as refined as it could be, but I certainly had no complaints about the actual playing part of the game.

My introduction to Nier was a Let’s Play, and I quit reading less than a third of the way through because I knew that I needed to experience the rest for myself. It was definitely the right thing to do. While my time with NIER is almost over, it’s been a great run and now my job is to get other people to play it and see the light for themsleves. This is one that’s going to stay in my collection and most likely see frequent replays.

Oh, and the soundtrack is The Balls. I bought it on iTunes, but feel bad because it’s so great that I feel like I should have a physical copy.

Another note, NIER doesn’t stop with mature subject matter in the story. There is so much blood, and also constant cussing from a certain character who walks around in some very skimpy lingerie. So, maybe keep it away from the kids. If that’s an issue for you.

Diamonds in the rough – Picross e2

When Picross e came out back in June, I was absolutely ecstatic. I didn’t even know that the game existed, so when I saw it in the weekly 3DS eShop release list, I was pretty blown away. Being at work, I had to wait an absolutely grueling six or seven hours before I was able to get home to purchase the thing in a frenzy of picross fandom. At least, as much of a frenzy as one can get into when downloading a picross video game.

Having burned through the game’s 150-ish puzzles by the time the weekend was up, I would have been severely disappointed if I’d bought anything but a picross game. I’ll forgive picross all of its shortcomings because it’s picross and I am hopelessly in love with picross. As it is, I was only slightly perturbed that my joy had been cut short just as it was reaching a fever pitch. It didn’t last long, but I’d say I got my eight bucks’ worth.

And then at the end of July, I was blindsided again by the launch of Picross e2. Though I did know it existed and that it was on the way, I had no idea that it would show up so soon. Again, I was forced to sit at my desk for hours, running down the clock until I could get home and download me a whole new batch of puzzles. There really need to be more unsecured wifi networks around here.

Continue reading Diamonds in the rough – Picross e2

A fishy situation

I’ve been trying to focus on writing articles lately, and I think it’s been working out well enough. I published five of the things in just under a month, and I don’t feel like quality even took a hit for the increased pace. Not that I’d set the quality bar very high to begin with.

That said, I think that the article blitz is over. There are still a few in the works, in various states of completion, but I don’t have any sort of set time frame for finishing and launching them. I’ll probably write a thing about Picross e2 next week, since that’ll likely be what I do this weekend. Will there be enough material for a whole second article? Who knows? Not I.

Anyway, the reason I logged into WordPress is mostly to put into words my bewilderment at my own incompetence. What incompetence, you ask? My total inability to fish in Animal Crossing: New Leaf with the sound turned off. Weird, I know. As someone who has endlessly talked up how much time he spends fishing in that game, it’s striking to me how bad I am at it without the audio cue.

If you’ve never played Animal Crossing, here’s how it works: You equip a fishing rod, walk up to the water, and press the A button to cast. If there’s a fish swimming around (represented by a black shadow), it may notice your lure and start nibbling at it. It’ll swim up to the lure up to five times, making little “tick” sound effects, each time with a random chance of actually biting. When a fish does bite, your bobber is pulled underwater and a big “bloop” sound effect plays. Depending on the rarity of the fish, you have about second or less to press the A button again to land the fish.

Sounds really easy, but you’ve gotta have a pretty good reflex, especially with the rarer fish. The problem, it seems, is that while I can generally land fish pretty well while the sound is turned on, I just can’t do it without the audio cue. I was playing on the bus this morning while listening to Retronauts and couldn’t catch a fish to save my life. Compounding the issue were the facts that it was early in the morning and raining, which are both conditions that rarer fish will appear under. So not only was I unable to catch anything more than a few worthless barbel steed, but I was most likely missing out on some rare catches too (rare fish usually sell for lots of cash).

Oh well. It’s mostly just interesting (to me) that I respond faster to aural than visual cues. I would never have thought this, because my hearing isn’t exactly great to begin with. And that ends my little ramble for today.

The more things change

Show of hands, who remembers Video & Arcade Top 10? Hm?

Yeah, so there’s exactly two YouTube channels dedicated to uploading episodes of the old game show, with 15 and 9 episodes available. The second one seems to be a copy though, as it’s only got one episode that the other doesn’t. But that’s besides the point.

I’ve been watching these episodes because reliving my childhood is what I do best. It’s kind of funny the sense of wonder and excitement that I feel while watching the show. It’s like I can recall how the world used to seem so amazing, and how I’d get so excited just to watch a game show with maby a minute worth of clips from a video game I’d like to play. Now I’m a grumpy old man, and nothing is quite as wonderful as it used to be, but man oh man, is there a lot to love about V&A Top 10.

If for some reason you don’t know what V&A Top 10 is, it’s a game show that ran back in the nineties (fom ’91 to… 2006! Holy crap!) that featured a quartet of kids playing video games in hopes of winning said video games. Of course, only the first place kid would win a copy of the game (as well as some other swag, like a watch). Places two to four would get comparatively crappy consolation prizes, like the Donkey Kong shampoo and bubble bath pictured above.

The stakes had never been higher.

One of the most entertaining parts of the show is watching the kids’ faces as they pay the games. Sure, you can get that same picture-in-picture feature on youTube let’s play videos, but it’s so different on V&A. These kids are focused. They are driven. This is the most important thing they will ever do with their lives, and if they fail, they will forever be shamed. They just look so serious when they’re playing; it’s totally adorbs. And then when one of ’em loses a life? You can feel the agony.

Winners are usually decided by how many points or items each player has, but one episode in particular caught my attention. In this episode, the kids were playing Donkey Kong Country 3, and the winning condition was to have the most bananas when time runs out. What? If you’re not familiar, bananas are to Donkey Kong Country as coins are to Super Mario: collecting 100 will give you an extra life and cycle the counter. So, the savvy player would collect 99 bananas and then just sit there until time runs out and he wins. Your average kid will go for that 100th banana, though, and his life will be thoroughly ruined when his counter cycles back to zero.

I guess maybe there are other factors playing into how the winner is decided, but you’ll notice that it’s unlikely if you’re paying attention. The hosts have little to no actual knowledge of the video games they’re going on about. All their story synopses and protips are coming right off of Nintendo-branded cue cards. Hell, the hosts make huge mistakes that no gamer worth his or her salt would ever make. Like calling ROB 64 (from Star Fox 64) R-O-8-6-4, or pronouncing the “chaos” in Chaos Emerald as “kay-oh.” Aceptable pronounciation errors to the common man, but “Oh my God what a poseur” moments for gamer nerds like me.

On that same episode, a new group of kids were wrangled in to play some Kirby Super Star, and maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but I didn’t hear any winning conditions announced at all. Doesn’t help that A) KSS has no point system, and B) the kids were playing different games; there was at least one playing The Great Cave Offensive while the rest were on Spring Breeze or possibly Dyna Blade.

Of course I didn’t give two craps about all that back when I was a kid. No, I was content just to watch a TV show about Nintendo games. And that was probably the real intent of the show. Back in the pre-internet era, it was the only way to see any game footage outside of actually playing a video game. I know that it sold at leat a couple games to me that I wouldn’t have been overly interested in otherwise. So good on you, Video & Arcade Top 10.

I really have no idea what the whole “Top 10” bit was all about, as there was never a Top 10 anything on the show. They did do a few countdowns, but the Top 5 was for what the most popular laserdiscs (!) were at the time, and then a Top 3 of video games. And I have no idea how the games were selected either. Who would rank Turok: Dinosaur Hunter second on any list? And how in God’s name did it beat out A Link to the Past? Man, the nineties were strange times indeed.

And that about concludes everything I wanted to say about that. I was considering padding this out and calling it a full article, but then decided against it. Why? I’m lazy. That’s literally it.

Canada Day 2013

Canada Day is a pretty important day for me. Not because I’m some sort of super-patriot or anything, but rather just because I thrive on traditions and nostalgia. Seriously, I’m fairly dependent on doing the same things over and over forever because they’re safe and comfortable. I’m fully aware of this, and I wouldn’t ever want to change it about me. Who needs excitement and variety when you can just enjoy the things you already know that you love?

That said, anyone who knows me will have a pretty good idea of where I am and what I’m doing at any given time during the Canada Day weekend. Or, at least one day of the Canada Day weekend. It rolls out a little differently each year, but all the pieces are usually the same. That said, I still feel compelled to write about my Canada Day adventure because it’s one of my favourite days of the year. It even beats out my birthday now that I’m old and don’t get presents any more.

This year was the biggest Canada Day change-up in, oh, probably the last six years or so. The obvious change, of course, being 2008 when my wife and I started dating. That was also the year that my grandparents sold their cottage and moved to the city, which may have changed Canada Day more than anything. Important because that was the year my family stopped doing the usual Canada Day stuff, but luckily the tradition lives on because my wife’s family has always attended the same festivities that mine used to.

Oh, and the images are clickable if you want to see bigger versions. Though why you’d want to see a super-sized version of the crack through my windshield or crappy pictures of fireworks is beyond me.

Continue reading Canada Day 2013

My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One of my most favoritest games, and indeed the Super Nintendo game I’ve gone back to the most often (with Super Mario World coming in close second), is Kirby Super Star. If you aren’t from North America, you may know it as “Kirby’s Fun Pak” or maybe even “Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe”, but it’s always been Kirby Super Star to me.

Released in 1996, I absorbed as much of the game as possible through Nintendo Power, and made damn sure that my parents knew that I had to own this game. It was featured in the August ’96 issue (#87), and I’m pretty sure that was the most excruciating month of my parents’ lives, because I was nothing short of obsessed with the game and the idea of getting it for my birthday. Unfortunately, being nine years old, I probably didn’t understand the concept of release dates, and it actually released almost two weeks after my birthday. I don’t recall exactly how or when I finally obtained it, but I’ll assume that I saved all the birthday money I got that year for it.

Anyway, I have a frothing love for this game that will never be quelled, and even though I have the updated DS port, Kirby Super Star Ultra, I’ve only ever played through it once and always go back to the SNES original to get my fix. Why? I don’t know. The remake is absolutely better, and even more jam-packed with Kirby goodness, but the original has a strange, nostalgic appeal that I simply cannot deny.

The greatest tragedy of this website here is that in the 10+ years I’ve been running it, I’ve never played proper tribute to the game. So that’s what I intend to do. I could simply go the modern route and do a video Let’s Play of it, but I’m kind of tired of doing those at the moment. Also I’ve lent my PS2 controller to a friend and would have to play with the keyboard. And you don’t want to hear me bangin’ on the keys throughout a whole video series, now do you? (I’ll probably do it one day but that day is not today.)

Continue reading My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One slice is not enough! – Picross e

Picross e is Nintendo doing a very good job of teasing me and the scores of other picross fans out there.

Released on the 3DS eShop (explaining the lowercase “e” in the title) just over a week ago, Picross e is easy bait for us picross fans. It’s only $6, and having a digital Picross game on my 3DS is like a most wonderful dream come true. It’s even more appealing than DSiWare’s Brain Age Express: Sudoku.

There are two things I need to get out of the way before I talk about the game proper, and the first of those is that I am an absolute picross maniac. This is very important for you to know, so that you can balance this review against my unstoppable bias. I love picross, and have spent many,many hours playing the various Nintendo-produced picross video games into the ground  It is my first true love, and the one truism you can apply to me is that I will always buy the new picross game.

The second thing you should probably know is what exactly a picross is. Picross is a puzzle game where you’ve got a grid of squares with a bunch of numbers around the edge, and your goal is to chisel out the correct squares to make a picture. The numbers are indicative of how many target squares are in each row and column, but don’t say exactly where they are. So you have to use the powers of logic to deduce which squares you need to chisel. I’ve probably explained this somewhere on this website before, but it’s probably best to make sure; picross isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it should be.

Continue reading One slice is not enough! – Picross e