Category: Video Games

If I could do it again I’d probably do it the same

I haven’t owned Wii Fit Plus for even six hours yet, and I’m already smitten with it. I haven’t even played any of the new games, which are mostly what I bought it for. You might think that I’ve finally snapped, but wait a couple paragraphs before you pass judgement.

The original Wii Fit was a neat little application that definitely made me want to work out a little and improve my overall health, but it was very directionless. My only real goal, besides making sure to play every once in a while, was to achieve a number of Fit Credits at the end of the day that ended in a 5 or a 0, to keep my tally even. Having to choose a few random exercises a day was not super-motivating, as it didn’t really give me a great idea of what I was even working toward. To that end, my goal of playing every day or two quickly fell flat, and I only picked it up for a handful of days at a time every couple months.

Where Wii Fit Plus really shines is not in all the fancy new screens or games or that wonderful feeling of playing a new game for the first time (though that was really nice!), but rather that it lets you customize a workout of your own that you can easily repeat each day to target specific parts of your body. The game even has a reasonably-sized selection of pre-made workout routines that only take a couple minutes to complete and make it easy to figure out what you want to use the game for. This alone is worth the $20 expansion pack. Also nice is that the game imports all of your Wii Fit data so that you don’t have to start from scratch. This was kind of a no-brainer, but we’ve seen many games omit much more obvious/necessary features.

This is not only great for giving yourself a focused goal, but it also makes the game a million times more convenient. Making a workout routine saves a huge amount of time by not forcing you to navigate the menus every time you do something. Not to mention you don’t have to sit and consider what you want to do next. That was my biggest issue. I could never decide what yoga pose/workout/game I wanted to do once I was finished with my rhythmic boxing.

In other gaming news, I finished Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story last week, and could not have been more satisfied. The battles seem to last a little longer than I’m totally comfortable with, but they never got tedious or boring, as the active battle system forces you to be on your toes and paying attention at all times. And now that I’m done with that, it’s back to burning my way through Final Fantasy VIII, which I think I’ve definitely broken.

Now that I’ve taken the time to really obsess over the mechanics of the game, my characters are much more powerful than they probably should be. When I got the Tonberry King GF on my first run through the game several years ago, it was an extremely long and dangerous process, but this time it was… really easy. The King, with his hundreds of thousands of HPs, stood against me for over half an hour last time, but this time I struck him down in about ten minutes. Funny what a few years and a lot of experimentation with the junction system can do for you. Of course, this miraculous victory was also a product of hours of grinding to max out my strongest magics and earning enemy cards which I could refine into useful and/or rare items. But I totally broke it and now the game is mine to simply coast to the end of. Also, that’s exactly why I wanted to replay the game in the first place, so yeah. I’m awesome.

Consumer Whore – Act III

So when I was in Fargo (again) with the folks a couple weekends ago, I made sure we made a mandatory stop at the local Toys R Us. I was actually on the hunt for the 25th anniversary re-release of the original Ninja Turtles toys, but all they had were Bebop, Rocksteady and Splinter. I only want the four turtles, but I think we all know that once I get them, I won’t be able to stop until I have the whole collection, as evidenced by the similar situation below:

While my hunt for Ninja Turtles was largely unsuccessful, I did spy the second round of Street Fighter figures. I mulled over them for a good twenty minutes, and decided that it would be best to get them there since they were considerably cheaper there (even with exchange). It was also a gamble whether we’d see them in my store or not, but of course the next week they came in. Still, having Guile, Chun-Li and Akuma hanging around makes my room feel a bit cooler. At least to me. I know the woman isn’t overly thrilled about them…

On the upside, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up releases tomorrow, and pre-release impressions have been pretty good so far! After the whole Mutant Melee debacle, I’m still a little weary about it, but it looks like Ubisoft has been trying really hard, and their game would have to be really atrocious to top Konami’s weaksauce offering.

Bye-bye Beardy

Yeah, so I’m not dead. Again. Been a while since I did the whole blogging thing, and it so seemed like I was getting back into it last month… oh well. I’ve been SUPER-busy over the last week or so anyway, between trips and work and socials and all that other junk, I’ve barely had any time to play video games, nevermind blog!

Luckily, I did have Wednesday to myself, so I spent a good eight or so hours engrossing myself in Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, which is fantastic. Possibly even better than the original M&L, which I intend to play as soon as I’m done with the new one here. I played Partners in Time again a couple moths ago, and I still feel that it lacks something. It just didn’t have the heart of the original.

Also, I’m interviewing for a new awesome possum(bly) job next week, and because I don’t want to look like a ragamuffin, I shaved off my seven-week strong facial hair. I like to think that things could have gone better, but realy, it was an awful beard. The ‘stache didn’t change much from the picture I took at three weeks, maybe just thickened a timy bit. As for the beard, it remained entirely under my face, and grew to about half an inch in length, which effectively looked quite literally like chin pubes. It never grew onto my cheeks, so it was a shabby chinbeard at the very best. And now my face is all smoothie-like.

I even tried just shaving out the middle first, hoping that it would turn into Wolverine chops, but it was really just the same mess without the middle, and hence was not worth taking a picture of.

There’s plenty more to talk about too! But that will have to come in later bloggity posts, because I don’t want to cram everything in all at once! Then there would be an even worse blog deficit. And I most certainly don’t want to end up in the middle of some kind of blog recession. However that would work.

You know it fees right

I’ve been playing mostly old games lately, in not only a vain attempt to save some money, but also in a terrible fit of nostalgia. Playing through Wario Land 4 on a proper GBA is infinitely more enjoyable than playing it on a PC, and I’ve discovered that maybe Final Fantasy 8 is a lot easier than I remember it. I was probably just doing it wrong before. However, my summer mission to finish Final Fantasy Tactics has ground to a halt. Turns out grinding for hours upon hours can remove the fun from even the best games.

Anyway, all the new games I’ve been playing over the past couple of months (aside from Wii Sports Resort) have been via Wii or DSiWare. The one that’s really stolen my heart though, is Art Style: PiCTOBiTS. Possibly because of my overactive nostalgia gland.

PiCTOBiTS is a falling-block puzzle game, almost like a backwards version of Tetris, where you get to move around the fallen blocks and try to make lines in the air. Of course, the term “lines” is a little too general. Any line, rectangle or square of four or more like-coloured bits will vanish off the bottom screen, and pop up to the top one, and therein lies the point of the game.

As the falling bits are vanquished from your bottom screen, they move up top, and fill in a blank slate to create a beloved classic Nintendo character (or characters, in some cases). While the round does end after the portrait is completed, it’s still very much a high-score game, keeping records of both your top time and score for each stage. Of course, there are ceilings to how high your scores and how low your times can get, but the sheer fun of the game is more than enough to keep you coming back for more.

There are 30 stages total, 15 of which you can freely play in sequential order, unlocking the next by finishing the round you’re on. The next 15 are acquired at your whim by using the coins you earn. These “Dark Stages” are notably harder, some almost completely overwhelming. I’ve only finished up to the 9th Dark Stage myself, afraid of what will happen to me if I tread any farther.

I found PiCTOBiTS less than amazing when I started playing it, but as I got better and learned to chain my lines, the game became exponentially more fun. The one-step-at-a-time renditions of classic Nintendo themes are also a great reason to come back to the over and over again. The only little quibble I have is that the stylus is not always the most accurate tool, and oftentimes (especially when you need to move fast), you’ll find yourself carrying and placing bits you never meant to pick up and/or put down, which usually spells instant doom in the harder stages.

PiCTOBiTS is easily the most worthwhile game currently available on DSiWare. Aside from the mostly great Art Style: Boxlife, nothing else on the service even comes close to piquing my interest. I’ll admit that even PiCTOBiTS and Boxlife were lucky shots in the dark that I probably would never have even tried had I not gotten the 1000 DSi Points used to purchase them for free. But alas! They are wonderful! And all should rejoice at the release of a puzzle game I can really get into!

PANAMA!

I know it’s a bit wierd that I might show such enthusiasm for a Guitar Hero game after (mostly) politely snubbing the last one to be released, but have you seen the track list for Guitar Hero: Van Halen yet? I was mostly on the fence before, but then I saw the tracks. It has “Panama” and “Jump”, so I’m absolutely there. “Unchained” doesn’t hurt either.

What’s really got me excited however, are the songs that aren’t by Van Halen. Any Judas Priest is welcome, but another go at “Painkiller” has got me dancing in my seat, and the fact that I finally get some more Queen is icing on the cake. I also greatly appreciate “Pain” and “Space Truckin'”. I’ve got to say that it’s really a great overall selection of filler music. Yes, we’ll always have to put up with a few shoddy choices like Fountains of Wayne and Weezer (and why is Lenny Kravitz here? Activision, can you please make one Guitar Hero game without Lenny Kravitz? Please?), but it far surpasses GH: Aerosmith’s meh-tastic choices and GH: Metallica’s a-bit-too-metal-for-my-tastes track list.

Take the chains off, take ’em offa my heart

It should need no mentioning that I bought Wii Sports Resort on Sunday. My girlfriend and I played it almost literally all day. If there hadn’t been a party going on in my house that night, we probably would have clocked in over eight hours. The different sports range from frustrating to awesome, so it’s a bit of a hodgepodge, but what it does right, it does with flair. Swordplay and Archery are the top contenders in fun, and the Island Flyover has sucked up more of my time over the last three days than anything else. Even Bowling, which has gained no superficial improvements since the original Wii Sports, has become awesome because the Wii MotionPlus device makes it a hundred times more playable (I always used to curve left, now I can play a half-decent game).

So my words be damned, because we took videos! The first is of the practice area in the Power Cruising event, and was more or less just a test to see how well the woman’s camera would capture on-screen stuff. The next two are levels one and three in the Swordplay Showdown event (played by Steph and me, respectively), which is possibly the most addictive mini-game ever.

TE Hits the Road: Fargo ’09

Hi all! Yeah, it’s yet another article about the once-again yearly trip I take down to Fargo/Grand Forks. I say once-again because there was a stretch in there for a few years where we didn’t go at all, but for the last three years, it’s been an essential part of summer. The only difference is that now, instead of going down with my family, it’s me and the woman. There are pros and cons for both parties, but I don’t really care who I go with. The Fargo/Grand Forks trip is the only summer staple I still have left, so I’m holding onto it as tight as I can.

That aside, I’ve decided that this year I’m just going to mash up all the pictures I took instead of trying to do anything more inspired with them. No categories, no long-winded stories, no character commentary. Nope. Just going to put them on the page and make some quick notes where I deem necessary.

Also there are tons of pictures,. Enjoy 😉

This is a cake. This is what Stephanie and I ate for breakfast. Actually I had a bowl of Reese Puffs cereal beforehand because she was taking a really long time to get to my house. But yeah, cake for breakfast. Woo!

We struck a deal before we left that she would drive there, and I would drive home. I wasn’t told until we’d arrived at the hotel, but apparently I had been voted to drive everywhere while we were in Fargo.

GPS. Lifesaver.

I bought a huge jawbreaker on a stick at the Duty-Free. It’s been ages since I’d had one of these bad boys, and I felt it was absolutely necessary. My mission was to finish it by the time we got home. I did one better and finished it before we were even back in Canada. The passport is there for scale.

She opted for the jawbreaker’s smaller cousin, the cherry Jelly Belly sucker.

I think I might have had a better chance of getting in here when I used to come down with my family. The girlfriend seems wholly opposed to entering a restaurant so garishly decorated. But we went to TGI Friday’s, so I don’t know. Maybe she’s got a fear of aliens?

I feel it’s important to mention that I used that baby pool to its full extent.

Our facilities. This is the most interesting photo ever.

Aah! Too much sunlight!

“Take one of me on the couch!”

“Now take one of me on the bed!”

See? TGI Friday’s. Hard on the eyes though it my be, no trip to the United States is complete without a stop in either here or Chili’s. I wish Canadian chains or those that extended into Canada knew how to make such wonderful fries.

Dear God! Six years with this camera and still I take blurry pictures! I’m a horribly lazy photographer.

So good.

Also awesome, but far less new to me.

For years, I’ve refused to believe that this DVD exists. Well ,outside Amazon, anyway. But I found it! I really found it! Now I can’t say Hot Topic never did anything for me.

More crap I bought. Teenage Zombies was ten bucks, and the rest I consider to be things absolutely essential for me to own. I was hunting Friday the 13th and American Dad Vol 4, but Ghostbusters Vol 1 came out of nowhere and made me the happiest girl in the world.

Like the trip to Fargo itself, no summer is complete without a small tub of Americone Dream.

TGI Friday’s was having a two-for-one burger day, and I had ordered a burger for dinner, so they gave me this second one to take home. I ate it that night and forcefully regretted eating two giant cheese-slathered burgers in one night. A task a younger me would ahve faced with aplomb.

The main dresser on our first morning. It’s covered in crap we bought and other such things. The Playstation 2 is there because I hate overpaying for movies I don’t really want to watch and every time I bring my DVD player I forget the remote.

Seriously. You’d think I would know how to take a not-blurry picture by now.

I usually grab a jug of Hawaiian puch on my southernly adventures, only this time I picked the “light” version. Trying to watch those calories…

West Acres mall. It’s huge, and wonderful. It’s probably the best mall ever. It’s not a lot better than Winnipeg’s biggest mall, but I only get to go there like once a year and I don’t get bored of it. Also I looooove Mrs. Fields’ cookies.

We went to the Lone Star Texas Grill on our second night. We’d never been there, but were pleasantly surprised. The steak I had was excellent (especially since I hadn’t had a steak for several weeks at that point), and there was a pail of peanuts on the table to keep me busy while we were waiting for the food to come.

That evening we ventured over into downtown Fargo, and on our way back, we ended up accidentally driving through some sort of classic car show-off night. Don’t know for sure what was going down, but we took a bunch of pictures.

I used the Fargo onion to determine that we were going the right way on the way back into the hotel/shopping part of the city.

I guess it’s just out of habit that I keep taking pictures of the Fargo TRU. We didn’t go in this year, but it looked just as sad as ever on the outside.

All packed up! I don’t subscribe to Nintendo Power anymore, but I felt like picking up an issue for old time’s sake. This one was the perfect candidate, because the only things I really want to read about are the new Mario & Luigi game and Wii Sports Resort.

This is how many towels we used over the course of two days.

I’m going to miss that wonderful continental breakfast buffet. It’s really the highlight of all my best hotel stays.

On our way home we stopped in Grand Forks to investigate the Columbia Mall among other shops. It’s just as boring as ever, if not moreso because they don’t even have the cookie place in the food court anymore.

Evidence that she does eat.

There was a completely random mailbox on the side of the road nearl Kohl’s. I felt that I should capture its soul incase it disappears between now and next year.

This makeup is all blurry! Let’s go somewhere else.

I bought these movies at Best Buy. Zombie Strippers is pretty hilarious, Zombie Diaries was disturbing, and Trailer Park of Terror-though I expected the most from it-was merely okay.

No, I did not buy Friady the 13th twice. I don’t know how it got into this picture. On the other hand, Jason X was five bucks and was the last missing piece in my collection, and the Elm Street four-pack was $10 and completed its own collection. Mallrats I couldn’t understand why I didn’t already own.

We hit Rock 30 games on the second night, and I picked these up there. I have no idea why in God’s name I had sold Donkey Kong, as it is one of the greatest original Game Boy games ever, and FF8 I own on PC, but would rather play through my PS2. I will not say how much I paid for either of these items. I will say that one was just a little more expensive than it should have been, and the other was hideously overpriced. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

And that’s pretty much it. Following in the general spirit of this “article”, I really don’t have much more to wrap up with, so I’ll leave it at that.

~FIN

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

If you ask the average consumer whether they preferred the Guitar Hero or Rock Band franchise, most would likely be curious what’s to prefer, since they’re both pretty much the same game at this point. If you asked someone very into gaming, however, the clear cut winner would be Rock Band nine times out of ten.

The game structure remains similar enough in both series that it won’t influence anyone’s opinions too heavily; what it really comes down to is how each game is sold. In the case of Rock Band, you either buy the Rock Band or Rock Band 2 game disc, and then it’s up to you to download extra music from the music store to enlarge your library as you see fit. On the other hand, Activision’s plan for Guitar Hero is to throw as many discs at us poor schlubs as possible, and offer very little in the way of DLC.

The big difference here is that with Rock Band, you get to choose which songs are added to your game, and you won’t have to pay for half-a-disc worth of songs you’re indifferent to or flat-out hate. Guitar Hero, on the other hand, forces you to buy the songs they want you to play. It’s a damn shame, but the franchise that started a revolution in music gaming has been poorly marketed and left behind the trend to the point where it’s starting to be passed over by people who are addicted to the genre. Myself included. Actually, it sounds a lot like Nintendo’s life story. Only I don’t see a Wii-sized comeback in Guitar Hero’s future.

With Activision flooding the market with “Hero”-branded games, it’s getting hard to keep up with all of them. I’ve purposefully neglected to buy two titles already, and I don’t see myself too interested in buying any of the upcoming games (with the exception Guitar Hero: Van Halen, obviously). The one GH game that I was very excited about, however, was Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. It may seem a bit redundant for me to want the “greatest Hits” version of a game series that I’ve been ragging on for being stale and overused, but I have a very good reason: these are the songs I want to play.

GH: Smash Hits contains a handful of the most popular tracks from all the GH series games that came before World Tour. This is important to me because these are the songs I played and obsessed over while I was still smitten with the genre. Only now they aren’t covers anymore. It brings back a ton of memories and while it follows the trend of running the Guitar Hero name into the ground, it’s got a few redeeming qualities that I’m very much enjoying.

The most obvious change, and the main reason of the game’s existence (other than another udder on Activision’s cash cow), is that all the songs can now be played with a full band, rather than being restricted to guitar and bass, or in the case of GH1 songs, guitar only. This alone does not add nearly enough value to justify my purchase, as I bought the Wii version, and I rarely do any multiplayering on my Wii. Also I do not own Wii drums and do not plan on buying any. What does add the value is that all the note charts have been mostly re-written, making use of all the new GH gimmicks like the slide bar sections and the open note on bass. Most songs are also a Hell of a lot harder, and these changes make the game seem fresh and adds a new challenge to songs I’d long since mastered. The only song that’s noticeably easier is ironically enough Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”, which is now entirely possible to play through thanks to the slide bar sections.

The other little things that I really love are that the game finally provides a star meter. It was always a pain in the ass playing songs over and over, but never knowing exactly how far away you were from earning that fifth star. The game also lets you choose from any song right at the start of the game when you choose quickplay mode. It’s not something I would have ever benefited from, as I always blaze through career mode before touching anything else, but it’s a super-nice feature for casual players and people who just bought it and want to get the most out of it at a party they’re having that night. I dunno. Little things matter.

The career mode structure is also very nice. It’s back to the set list format, rather than World Tour‘s me-too gig setup. You unlock new sets by earning so many stars, and new sets unlock very, very quickly. Therefore, you can usually skip right to the songs you want to play without having to pick through too much of the other material. The only exception is the final set, which unlocks after you’ve played all the encore songs. But those are all the super-difficult songs anyway, and I doubt you want to play the new version of “Play With Me” without a nice, long warm-up anyway. (read: it’s very hard!)

I’d also like to make a little side note here, where must admit that I’ve forgotten how much fun it is to play these guitar-based games just for the sake of playing them. The last few I’ve been playing on the 360, and it’s really just become entirely about the achievements. Playing this on Wii has rekindled a lot of feelings of love for the actual gameplay, rather than the chase for arbitrary virtual medals. Just sayin’.

There are a couple of gripes I have with the game though. While the songs that Activision picked make an excellent roster of playable songs, the game only offers 40-some songs. This is essentially Guitar Hero’s Greatest Hits album, and everyone knows that the standard hits album is much longer than a band’s standard albums. There are 86 songs in World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 will have 85. We should have gotten at least 60 in Smash Hits (the entire GH1 soundtrack wouldn’t have been a bad idea). Also, there are no bonus songs! You earn money through career mode, but all it’s used for is bland clothing options. Get Ready 2 Rokk and Decontrol were probably my most-played tracks on GH1, so I’m very upset to see that no bonus songs from any of the GH games have been included. I expected Monkey Steals The Peach’s “Guitar Hero” at the very, very least.

But everything else aside, I really just bought Smash Hits because Guitar Hero doesn’t have a lag calibration option and nobody’s re-released it. All I really want is to play the first Guitar Hero game. That’s it. But I guess the fourteen tracks they provided here will be more than enough. I got what I really pined for-“Killer Queen”, “More Than a Feeling”, “Take it Off”, “Godzilla” and “Unsung”- but I sure do miss “Crossroads”, “Spanish Castle Magic”, “Texas Flood” and “Frankenstein”. Also, how could they possibly say this is the best of Guitar Hero music and have not included “Iron Man”. That’s like the biggest song ever. not a personal favourite, really, but it’s insanely well-known. Fuck, I think I’m just going to go play GH1 for a while, lag or not. I love those songs so much…

I am the Taco King!

The woman and I took the yearly trip down to Fargo last Wednesday afternoon, and stayed until Friday night. It was a pretty paint-by-numbers expedition, but there were a few highlights. For one, we explored a bit farther than the shopping/hotel part of the city and checked out downtown Fargo a bit. It was actually pretty cool. We saw some interesting shops, a liberry, and we even got stuck in the middle of some kind of classic car show. It was a ton of fun, and of course, there was a ton of shopping to be had.

She’s been absolutely picture-crazy ever since she got a camera for her birthday, and I felt I needed to compete during this trip. I took a big handful of photos over the course of the two-and-a-half days, and my original intent was to take compelling pictures of strange, wonderful, or curious things and make an awesome gallery of intrigue. However, most of them ended up being of all the things I normally take pictures of. And my girlfriend. There are lots of her. Because, you know. Overall, I’d say her gallery wins. If only because it’s a lot bigger (though it should be noted that she wasn’t stuck with a crappy 16MB memory stick).

That gallery, while much more tepid than I’d hoped it would be, will be posted later this week. Today, I want to talk about the single video game I purchased during the trip: Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys. Yeah, it’s one of those Ninjabread Man scenarios where the title and theme seemed so awesome that I couldn’t resist. Fortunately, Teenage Zombies was only half the price of Ninjabread Man. Also, it isn’t horrible.

Developed by InLight Entertainment (who have apparently made a grand total of three games), Teenage Zombies is at first highly reminiscent of Super NES game The Lost Vikings. It’s a platform-puzzler which gives you three characters with unique abilities that will help you conquer your environments. Yeah. To be completely honest, if someone had told me about this game and compared it to The Lost Vikings, but with zombies, I would have ran out and bought it a year ago. The sad truth however, is that this game is not nearly as brilliant as its seventeen-years-older cousin.

I don’t want to be too harsh on TZ though, as it is a pretty fun game, and I expected much, much less for $10. The biggest complaint I have is that unlike its Nordic counterpart, TZ has you hot-swapping between zombies. The Lost Vikings had all three characters on-screen at once, and you’d often have to combine their skills to overcome the trickier puzzles. Hitting L or R to replace zombies when one isn’t doing the trick isn’t as satisfying as teaming them up would be. The levels are still pretty clever, requiring almost constant switching of zombies. The first few chapters will seem like a breeze, but about halfway through the game I found myself dying several times before making it to the next checkpoint. And it never really felt cheap or dull either. The game is constantly giving you new power-ups, but very rarely tells you when, where, or in what order you need to use them.

The biggest problem I have with the game is that it’s a bit light on enemies. There are rats, and brains. A couple different types of brains, but nothing radically different. I suppose it’s more of a boon that combat is simple though, because what is there is a bit rough. Attack animations are slow, and most of the time you can only hit one enemy at a time, regardless of how many are within your range. Sometimes your hits don’t even connect at all. The other thing I have a minor complaint about are the stylus mini-games. They’re boring and (almost) frustrating to control. Fortunately, you’re only forced to play each once, and you can move on regardless of your performance. The one mini-game that is fun is the one where you put a zombie back together by dragging his parts around. It’s really simple, but a neat distraction.

Overall, I’ve got to say that Teenage Zombies was a pretty good buy. For $10 anyway. It’s soaked up a few hours of my life, and I don’t regret spending either the money or the time on it. The gameplay itself is a bit repetitive, but fun enough to keep you going until you get to the end, and that’s really the prize itself. The cutscenes are hilarious, and the banter between the Big Brain and his No. 1 is entertaining enough to give players reason to keep plodding through to the end, even when you have to restart a level five or six times until you hit the right combination of powers. Definitely worth a look.