Articles – Page 6

Year of N64 – July – Gauntlet Legends

Unlike the last few Year of N64 games, Gauntlet Legends is one that I spent a ton of time with back in my youth. Or, at least I think that I did. Having played it through again, I’m not sure if it is quite as much of a timesink as I remembered it being.

Gauntlet Legends is essentially a reboot of the Gauntlet franchise long before reboots were a thing. The previous game, Gauntlet III: The Final Quest, came out in 1991, and Legends hit the arcades in 1998. The N64 port didn’t show up until the next year. I’ve only ever dabbled in “classic” Gauntlet games, so I don’t know how much Legends changes the formula, but it brought the franchise into the world of polygons, so that’s a big enough leap for me.

If you’ve never played Gauntlet anything, you’re missing out on a fairly entertaining multiplayer arcade experience. The game has you set up a character from a small roster of classes, then sends you on your way through a couple dozen stages, where you will collect cash and slaughter countless numbers of monsters. The goal of the game is more or less to survive and make your way to the end of each stage, but Gauntlet offers a little more than that.

Enter the “dreaded” RPG elements. You choose your character class, give them a name, and then they gain experience and level up as you play. Level ups increase your stats, and when you hit certain milestones, your character will gain special upgrades, like fancier weapons and a familiar that tags along and adds to your firepower. Each player also has their own inventory for stockpiling items, and can spend their accumulated gold on either items or stat boosts. Items can be useful, but I found that their true value was just selling them at the store so that I could buy the stat boosts instead.

The stages come in four colourful flavours: the mountain, the castle, the town, and the ice domain. Defeating the bosses of each world will unlock a pseudo-final stage in the cathedral, and when you beat that, you unlock the battlefield world. Finally, you will descend into the very depths of the underworld for the final showdown.

So there’s a fairly good variety of levels on display here. Even stages within the same world vary greatly, rather than simply having one default look and a handful of different layouts for example, the mountain world has you start at the lush base of the mountain, then as you ascend, it becomes more barren and rocky. Eventually you find your way inside and have to work your way through a cave, culminating in a stage that takes place on a set of rocky platforms and catwalks suspended above a massive pool of lava.

The stage layouts are usually fairly good too. Almost all of them have twists and turns everywhere, but the critical path is usually not too difficult to follow. It wasn’t until the ice world that the levels started to get annoyingly complex and I found myself wishing that they were about half as long. Most of the stages are huge, and the amount of enemies that populate them is staggering; it’s a wonder that this game didn’t cause the Nintendo 64 to simply melt down. As it is though, there’s not even very much lag considering how many moving objects can end up on screen at once.

While most of the items you find during your adventure are power-ups of varying effectiveness, there are three important collectibles that you need to keep your eyes open for. There are plenty of hints to their locations, but actually sussing them out can sometimes be a hassle. Obelisks are scattered around the first three worlds, and you need to find all of them in one world to unlock the next. There are a total of thirteen Rune Stones to find, and without them all, you can’t enter the final showdown.

Lastly are the boss weapons, one in each of the four main worlds. These are not strictly necessary to complete the game, but they give you a slight advantage in the boss fights. And if you’re playing solo (as I did), you need all the advantages you can find. The bosses are brutal, and when they’re focusing all of their attacks on you, the fights generally just boil down to whose HP depletes first. They aren’t fun, and a solo player will have to grind his or her butt off before they even stand a chance against a boss. This stands in stark contrast to the regular stages, where you’ll generally never have to grind levels to progress.

The final boss, however, is a bit of an exception. You have to fight him twice, and the first time, he is just as bad as the rest. It’s a very difficult fight, but he drops four superweapons when he’s defeated. If you keep one of those weapons until your second fight with him, using it will make the final battle exceedingly easy. If you don’t, it’s basically impossible to win alone. I wanted to do it the normal way at first, so I leveled up to 90 and maxed out my defense stat through the shop. Still I died. So I used the cheap way, because nuts to that.

I should mention that grinding up to level 90 did not take very long. I burned through this game in a week, and it didn’t really seem to overstay its welcome. I remember having maxed out several characters back in the day, and I suppose that it would have been much less tedious because I was actually able to play with other people. I wanted to do this playthrough with my wife, but the fact of the matter is that the control sticks on my spare N64 controllers are almost completely limp, and I really didn’t care enough to buy a new one or attempt a repair.

So there you have it. It’s not a very deep experience, but I still have a pretty strong appreciation for Gauntlet Legends. So much so, that I kind of want to track down a copy of the incredibly buggy sequel (expansion?), Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, to give that a quick playthough. I also sort of want to try out the oft-maligned Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, but it seems to be so different that it might not be worth the investment. Anyway, Gauntlet Legends was a bunch of fun while it lasted, and I can only imagine that it would go down even smoother with a friend or three to share it with.

Year of N64 – June – DOOM 64

My frame of reference for the DOOM series (I’m just going to capitalize the D from now on) exists in a time somewhere between 1994 and 2000. Doom II was one of the few full-version computer games we had back then that I was keenly interested in, and I played it was the only one. Of course, at some point, my taste for Doom and similar games (Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D, etc) waned and I moved on to newer, fancier computer games.

Doom 64 doesn’t have the greatest reputation. It’s not particularly hated or anything, but the internet’s collective opinion is that the original games are better. In the interest of finding out for sure, I made sure to play through the entirety of the Xbox port of Doom so that I could have more than faded memories to make a comparison to.

The original Doom is fantastic. It’s a simplistic game that doesn’t even let you look along the vertical axis, but it felt much more satisfying to play than most modern first-person shooters. The first two chapters are breezy fun, the third dials it up to push your abilities, and the fourth (an add-on scenario) is simply there to beat you into the ground. What’s most remarkable is that Doom feels really great to play with a controller, as opposed to the keyboard controls (sans-mouse) that I was shackled to in my youth.

Having completed the entirety of Doom for the very first time, and having enjoyed roughly 95% of it (there are some really cheap traps later on), I was riding high and expecting Doom 64 to be a similar experience.

But then it turns out that Doom 64 is poop from a butt.

My very first mistake was playing on a difficulty level that was too much for me. I had chosen “Hurt Me Plenty” on Doom, which is the default setting and equates to what the “Normal” setting would be in other games. Doom 64 phrases it differently, where the equivalent is “I Own Doom.” Sure, it’s the default difficulty, and also a statement of fact. Why would I choose any other setting?

Assuming that it is, in fact, the average difficulty setting, Doom 64 is a brutal game. I was killed twice before I was able to finish the first stage. Secret doors containing monsters open silently behind you. The Average Joe Zombie has a very accurate shot. Rooms are filled with up to eight monsters.

None of this is helped by that fact that playing similar games on an Xbox 360 controller and then an N64 controller is like going from a fork to chopsticks. I figured that all my N64 playing over the last few months would have eased me into the controller, but it turned out to be a massive source of woes for me. I blame it entirely no having used the vastly superior 360 controller immediately beforehand, and it really shows how difficult it can be to adapt to different controllers.

I need to make it very clear though, that Doom 64 lets you customize your controls any damn way you like. Every function is remappable, and you can make changes to your control scheme at any point. It’s a really handy feature, as the default control setup is kinda weird. The only downside is that custom setups aren’t saved, and you have to remap all your buttons each time you power on.

The next big gripe about Doom 64 is the general atmosphere. the graphics, for one, are much darker and more bland than in the PC games. This is to accommodate a generally more horror-focused aesthetic. Doom has always been “scary” in that it incorporates monsters and gore, but the first two PC games were more about stright-up action than trying to frighten you. Doom 64 has this all backwards. The PC games have interesting, colourful visuals, while Doom 64 is awash in browns and grays.

I do appreciate that the team tried to make the graphics more detailed (which they are!), but they killed a lot of the character in the sprites by removing most of their colours.

The sound design has also gone entirely to pot. Doom’s characteristic heavy metal MIDIs have been replaced with subdues, spooky ambiance tracks. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More importantly though, the monsters barely make any sounds unless they’re attacking you. Being able to hear monsters lurking about was a very important part of Doom; you would usually know when a monster was lurking about by the hisses and growls echoing through the halls. Now, pretty much every encounter is a surprise, and monsters will be able to sneak up behind you with no problem at all.

So after having painfully made my way through one and a half stages, I quit, took a week-long breather, and started up again on the next rung down the difficulty ladder, “Bring It On!”

Let me also take an aside here to mention that Doom 64 does not save your game. It uses passwords, which is kinda bonkers. The nice thing is that the passwords save your state (health, armor, guns/ammo) as well as which level you’re on, which is nice. If they only saved your level, it would be a massive pain in the hiney to tackle later levels with only a pistol. No saving is still a big pain though, as mid-stage saves saved me a lot of time when going through the original game. Having to restart a level from the beginning after each death is a little disheartening. I hate sounding like a spoiled brat, but that’s what I am.

Not everything about Doom 64 is bad, though. I really like a lot of the level designs, they feel a lot bigger and more ambitious than in the older games. I suppose that stands to reason though. It’s not like a lot of games get smaller and humbler with each sequel. It’s really just too bad that the designers didn’t seem to have many good ideas for traps. It seems like they decided early on that having enemies appear out of thin air behind you was going to be their bread and butter. Still, the actual architecture of the stages is usually impressive, and I enjoyed navigating and solving them.

Doom 64 features the usual Doom weaponry, including Doom II’s super (double-barreled) shotgun and the totally sweet double chainsaw. It also has a new weapon that’s unique to only this game: the Unmaker. It’s an alien-tech laser gun, which doesn’t seem all that impressive at first. However, if you take the trouble to find the secret stages, each one contains a collectible artifact that adds to the Unmaker’s power. The first one speeds up its fire rate, and the second and third give it double and triple beams respectively. Even if you only find the one artifact, the sped-up Unmaker is a pretty awesome gun, burning through even Barons of Hell like a hot knife through butter. It’s pretty great.

The monsters in Doom 64 may at fist appear to be new, but really, they’re mostly your old favourites with fancy makeovers. Some are pretty familiar, like the standard zombies and the pinkies, but you probably won’t recognize Doom 64’s imp as an imp until you’re already choking down fireballs. Cacodemons and pain elementals have likewise gotten new sprites that barely resemble their older incarnations. The one new monster is barely new at all. Nightmare imps are just translucent blue imps, with purple fireballs that fly quite a bit faster than the standard imp’s. Doom 64 does have a unique final boss, the Mother Demon. She’s ugly and can tear you apart in record time (that also works the other way around with a powered-up Unmaker), but she looks pretty dumb. Kinda like a big, fleshy bug, if you ask me.

In the end, Doom 64 is caught in a weird place. On one hand, I really like a lot of the levels. On the other hand, pretty much everything else is different in a bad way. It’s reminiscent of Doom, but it doesn’t really feel like Doom, if that makes any sense at all. There really isn’t any reason to play Doom 64. Regardless of whether you’re looking to play a Doom game or an N64 shooter, there are a handful of better choices out there. Even if you’re intent on playing through the entire Doom canon, you might be better off trying one of the fan-made PC ports. Poor Doom 64 just isn’t quite the game it should be.

Hooray, hooray, for Mega May

If you’re not a 3DS owner, you probably have no idea that last month was referred to in some circles as Mega May. Those circles being “Capcom” and “Virtual Console fans.” Obviously I place in the latter. Anyhow, Capcom made it Mega May by releasing the entire catalog of Game Boy Mega Man games through the 3DS’ Virtual Console over the course of the month. (Except for the first one, which has been on there for years already.)

It was glorious, let me tell you. But it wasn’t without its ups and downs. Of the six games released, I’d played only two, so there was a lot of new ground for me to cover here. I mean, obviously I was going to play them all. Even if I didn’t play them, there’s a certain sentimental value in having the entire catalog of classic Mega Man games all packed into a single device.

And by “sentimental” of course I mean “compulsive.”

Continue reading Hooray, hooray, for Mega May

Impressions on Nintendo’s E3 2014 Digital Event

I only ever watch Nintendo’s E3 presentations, because aside from maybe one or two specific games, I generally don’t give a flying fig about the other guys’ stuff. I always enjoy Nintendo’s shows, but to be quite frank, this year’s has got me the most excited I’ve been in a good long while. Let’s go over it point-by-point.

Oh, and here’s an embed of the full presentation, if you feel so inclined to watch it for yourself. I’ve embedded a few choice trailers later on, too.

The Presentation

The opening and a few little skits in between game-related segments were all done up Robot Chicken-style. And I don’t mean in a style reminiscent of Robot Chicken. I mean that I wouldn’t be surprised if Seth Green and company actually had a hand in creating the animated scenes. It was a dead-on likeness, and the skits used pretty much the exact same type of humour that the show is known for, albeit a little softer to keep it family-friendly.

While the internet seems to have mixed feelings about it, I personally loved it. It was much more interesting than just having Reggie and whoever else up on stage bleating about business strategy or whatever. Reggie’s part was actually pretty short, too, and his animated double stepped aside less than halfway through the show to let the games and their developers do the talking.

Super Smash Bros

The first game up was Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U. It still doesn’t have a real title, and at this point I don’t think it ever will. Whatever. That’s hardly important.

What matter is that Miis have been revealed to join the fight, and they look awesome. There are three types of Miis to choose from: Brawlers, who are bare-handed; Swordfighters, who obviously carry a sword; and Gunners, who have a really cool gun-arm. Not only can you import your Miis into the game, but you can also dress them up in a variety of hats and different costumes. Oh, and they look like they’ll be a lot of fun to play as, too.

Masahiro Sakurai talked about the game for a bit, and then showed a very quick montage of clips, which I’m sure held plenty of new info, but I haven’t gone over it to pick it apart yet. It really doesn’t matter. It’s Smash Bros. The only thing that disappoints me is that the “summer” release date of the 3DS version is October 3rd. In what crazy fantasy world is that considered summer?

At the end of the show, Palutena from the Kid Icarus franchise was also confirmed as a new fighter, with a very anime intro video. I’m not totally sold on her yet, but hey, the more the merrier, right? Her trailer also suggested that Dark Pit will be in the game in some capacity. Whether he shows up as a playable character or just an assist trophy, we don’t yet know.

It wasn’t a part of the big presentation, but a Pac-Man intro trailer showed up overnight. I’m still in a little disbelief, but really, it makes perfect sense. You’ve got Mario, Mega Man, and Sonic all in the same game already. Pac-Man fits right in there with the big names of classic gaming. Of course, Bandai-Namco is also helping develop the games, so… Pac-Man seems like he’ll be a fun fighter to use. If nothing else, he’ll be fun to watch, with all his wacky moves and goofy sound effects. His trailer also confirmed Mr. Game & Watch’s return, which is just gravy at this point.

Amiibo

Nintendo’s entry into the world of selling plastic figures as add-ons to your video games. At first they seem like an evil scheme to bilk you out of even more money, but unlike Skylanders and Disney Infinity, they don’t seem to be necessary to enjoy the full content of the games they link to. Well, not for Smash Bros, anyway.

While Nintendo has plans to launch Amiibos for a handful of different games, they only showed what the figures will do in Smash. There, they will simply contain AI fighters that you can swipe into your game. These fighters will level-up and adjust their playstyles over time, which seems like a really cool feature. I might pick up one or two because they look neat. I’m just relieved that they’re an entirely optional thing.

Yoshi’s Woolly World

I’ve been waiting for more news on this one very patiently, and the wait finally paid off! There was a pretty big feature on the game and how it was conceived, which was a pretty interesting segment. I loved Kirby’s Epic Yarn to death, and I could not be more thrilled that Yoshi is getting a similar treatment.

The thing is that Kirby’s Epic Yarn was a pretty huge deviation from the normal Kirby formula. It was an entirely unique game with a beautiful visual style. Yoshi is even prettier, but seems to be hewing pretty close to the Yoshi’s Island style of gameplay that we’re very familiar with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because Yoshi’s New Island turned out pretty darn well on that front. I would like to see Woolly World go in a different direction, but I’ll just have to put my faith in Tezuka.

I also really want a crochet Yoshi now.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker

After playing Super Mario 3D World, I found that I wanted an entire game based on the Captain Toad stages really badly. I even made a Miiverse post or two to that effect.

Not once did I ever think that Nintendo would actually make that game.

But there it is, in all its glory. You know what? Not once have I ever thought that I’d be drooling over a game starring Toad, either. But here we are. I often don’t care about Nintendo’s weird little spin-off games, but the Captain toad levels in 3D World were just so much fun that this is going to be an absolute Day One purchase. I’m still not clear on whether it’s going to be a full retail release or a smaller eShop game, but either way, “Holiday 2014” can’t come fast enough.

The Legend of Zelda Wii U

It’s not even far enough into development to have a real name yet, but God damn did the teaser look gorgeous. And it’s in-engine, too! I love the idea of making the world more open so that you can tackle challenges in whichever way you like.

What’s most immediately interesting though, is that Aonuma suggested that the character in the teaser may not be Link. After seeing it, I immediately turned to the wife and asked “Is Link a girl this time?” The character is considerably more feminine than Link has ever been. It’d be quite a neat twist if Link were a girl this time. Or if Zelda turned out to be the hero!

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

Remakes of the third generation Pokémon games. There isn’t really a lot to say about them yet, but I think I’m probably quite a bit more excited about these than most. Sapphire Version was my re-introduction to Pokémon after several years of having let the series pass me by, and I hold it quite dear to my heart because of that. Most people just seem to think that Gen III was trash though. Nuts to those guys. Gen III gave us Blaziken and Walrein and Altaria. I really like Gen III, is what I’m saying.

Also, Mega Swampert is a totally boss, Hulked-out monster. I love it!

Bayonetta 2

I had no interest in Bayonetta 2 at all until yesterday. I’ll admit that I was forcing myself to be indifferent to it because I didn’t play the first game at all. I still didn’t much care for it until they showed that the first game would be packaged in with retail copies, and that you can dress up Bayonetta as Princess Peach, Link, and Samus.

Two games for the price of one? Fun, sexy cosplay times?

This is why I only care about Nintendo’s presentations. They know how to push my buttons.

Hyrule Warriors

I’ve never played a game in the Dynasty Warriors series, and I plan to keep it that way. However, I will buy pretty much anything relating to Zelda, so I’ve been watchign this one with a keen eye. And a much keener eye now that Zelda has been confirmed to be a playable character. I honestly don’t know if I’d rather play as her or Impa, who is a major badass here. Honestly, Link just looks so plain and boring in comparison.

It might not be a big problem when the final product arrives though, as Aonuma said that the game will have tons of characters to choose from. There are four revealed now, and I’m pretty excited about what they’re still hiding up their sleeve.

Not having ever played a Warriors game of any description before, I also get the nice bonus of this being a totally new style of gameplay for me. Running around a battlefield, chopping hundreds of monsters to bits? Taking on huge Zelda bosses in a more fast-paced environment? Playing co-op with the wife? Yes, yes, and yes! Sign me up already!

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse

Kirby: Canvas Curse remains one of my most beloved games on the original DS, and I nearly blew a gasket when I saw that there’s going to be a Wii U sequel.

That same gasket then succeeded in blowing when I realized that the graphics are all done in an adorable claymation style.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

I don’t much care for how gosh-darned anime it looks, but if it’s as engrossing to play as the first Xenoblade Chronicles, I’ll gladly plug another 150 hours into this one. And the Nopon are back, so hooray!

Ugh, but seriously. It’s so freaking anime. Gross.

And I hope the final title is something a little less… dumb.

Mario Maker

It’s exactly what it sounds like. A Nintendo-sanctioned program that lets you build, share, and play your very own Mario levels. It’s really nice to see an official version after the various illegitimate PC editors, but it’s kinda sad that it only includes assets from Super Mario Bros and New Super Mario Bros. So none of the more interesting stuff. Oh well. I’m sure that assets from other games will become paid DLC, and I’m sure that I’ll be more than willing to fork over that cash when the time comes.

Splatoon

A wholly new game for Wii U, and a team-based online (third-person) shooter at that! It’s a goofy paintball game though, so it’s kid-friendly, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be any less fun. No, in fact, this is the first shooter in years that has my full attention.

The gimmick here is that you can cover the arena in you team’s colour of paint, and your avatar can turn into a squid to swim through and hide in that paint. It looks like there’s a certain level of strategy involved, and that just swimming and bouncing around the stages will be a whole lot of fun. Honestly, I think I could actually spend as much time playing this as I did Unreal Tournament. And let me tell you, I played a lot of Unreal Tournament back in the day. I think it probably still holds the record for PC game that I’ve put the most time into.

All of that was enough to take in, but there were plenty of other games that didn’t make the cut and were only seen on the show floor. Everything on 3DS that isn’t Pokémon, for example. Also a new Star Fox game and a couple new projects that Miyamoto is working on.

Immediate buzz is that Nintendo won E3 this year, and if I had seen anything from any of the competition, I’d be able to agree. If nothing else, the Wii U has a friggin’ excellent bunch of software in the pipe. Hopefully that’s what it needs to turn its lagging sales around. Mario Kart 8 was a massive shot in the arm, and a showing like this can only make things better.

Yeah, so. 2015 is going to be a pretty expensive year. If you start to see me hanging out on the streets in the seedier parts of town late at night, it’s probably because I need to bring in some extra income so that I can buy all these darned video games.

Final Fantasy: All The Boringest

I know I said before that I’m not intending to use my new tablet as a gaming device, but the fact of the matter is that it’s a new toy, and I need to put it through its paces. That and I’d kinda like to have one or two little games I can poke at for a for a few minutes before bed, or when I don’t have enough time left in my lunch break to finish another chapter in a book.

So I browsed whatever it is that they call the Android app store, to see what kind of games are popular with tablet users. As expected, it was pretty much all stuff I’ve never heard of and didn’t look interesting to me. Also there was Minecraft Pocket Edition for $7, which I’m still mulling over (I give it a couple weeks before I give in). I did try to install a free Minecraft clone just to get my fix, but apparently it’s either broken or incompatible with my device because it refused to download.

In the end, I found myself buried in a page full of pricey mobile ports of classic Final Fantasy titles. I kinda want one, but I really don’t want to pay $16. Then I noticed that one was listed as free. That game is Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. And I’ll tell you right now, that it’s not even worth your zero dollars. If I had a dime for every free mobile game I’ve said that about…

I guess it came out some time ago, but never caught my attention since, as I’ve mentioned many many times, I don’t really use my phone for games. Also it’s a freemium game and I try to stay away from those as much as possible because I hate that model more than anything. I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t want to pay for video games, but I’d much rather pay upfront than play a “free” game and then get shaken down over and over if I want to enjoy the game to its fullest. Just call it a freaking demo already!

The idea of the game is that you have a legion of little dudes based on the myriad of Final Fantasy jobs. You know, knights, monks, mages of all colours. Anyhow, you start with four, and as you level up, your squad will get bigger and bigger until you’re rocking a troupe of 32 guys. You can even bump it up to 40 if you send out a few tweets through the game. So you have this weird thing where it’s a classic FF battle screen, but your side is just swarming with party members instead of having the nice clean lineup of four or five.

The entire game is battling monsters and bosses. The way battles are fought is that you tap on your dudes and they do an attack. Then you wait for their ATB gauge to fill and then tap them again. Do this until the enemy dies. That is literally all there is. Different job do different attack animations, but they all simply attack. It’s mindless and repetitive, not even giving you the satisfaction of feeling like you’re the one who led your team to victory.

So all you do is swipe around the screen and watch as your guys just keep attacking over and over. Until they die, at least, which is often, because every guy on your team dies in a single hit from an enemy. If your team wipes, you have two options. You can wait, as one guy will regenerate every three minutes, so you can just flip over to a book and read for a bit while you wait for your team to recover. The best thing about the game is that when your squad is ready to go again, the alert sound is a little 16-bit chocobo wark.

The other way to recover your team is to use a gold hourglass, which is where things take a sharp turn for the worse. Gold hourglasses, you see, cost real dollars. And they’re only the tip of that iceberg.

While you recruit the 25 generic job class characters as you play through the game, you can also have actual legacy characters join up with you. There are a total of 35 premium characters to buy, but they cost $1.06 each and are handed out randomly. So if you want to have a cute little Rinoa sprite in your party, you might have to pay upwards of $35 before she shows up. It’s terrible.

There are also a few world packs that cost like $4 or something each, which give you a little bang for your buck, since they give you a whole new set of levels, enemies and weapons, rather than just plunking in one random character who may or may not show up in your randomly-selected party.

So if there isn’t anything to the gameplay and the microtransactions are useless and exploitative, what is the appeal of this game? Honestly, I don’t really know. The only thing close to actual FF gameplay is farming enemies for rare weapon drops. I suppose it’s trying to coast on nostalgia, but it does a pretty bad job at that. You can’t see any of the beloved characters without paying out the nose, and even the overworld maps are incredibly generic and lazy. There is a catalog of all the characters, weapons, and enemies you’ve seen that has humorous descriptions to read, but that’s really not enough.

The music is good. There’s that, I guess. It’s all from past FF games, as it should be.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking at the Final Fantasy: All The Bravest page in an app store of some sort, it’s not worth your time. I played through it (and didn’t spend a cent) and I strongly regret the time I spent with it. I could have been doing anything else and been more satisfied. I could have been playing an incomplete, poorly-controlling version of Minecraft instead. You know, that actually sounds pretty good right now…

Year of N64 – May: Quest 64

Here’s the thing. I didn’t read much in the way of games journalism back in 1998. I read Nintendo Power. Sometimes I may have seen an article or preview in a friend’s EGM or something, but the internet was still new to me. All I knew is was a place where you could find cheats and FAQs for video games, outrageous Flash cartoons on Newgrounds, and pictures of naked ladies. I didn’t really know about message boards. I didn’t read online reviews.

I know Quest 64 has a bad reputation, and I’ve read bits and pieces about it over the years. But really, the most I can tell you about why people dislike it is simply speculation, because I wasn’t there when it happened, and I might be the only person in the world who has written a retrospecitve on friggin’ Quest 64.

Continue reading Year of N64 – May: Quest 64

Picross e4 – Digital Crack

I don’t know how closely you’ve been following this series of articles, but near the end of the last one, I suggested that I would like it if picross puzzles always came in Mega flavour from then on.

I didn’t get my wish, but Picross e4 found it appropriate to place a very significant amount of its puzzles into the Mega category, so I’m pretty happy about that. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s take a few steps back and start at the start.

Picross e4 is just another game in the Picross e series. It doesn’t redefine the formula, add any spectacle, or try to pull off any other kind of dramatic thing. If you’ve played any one of the three previous games, you know what to expect as far as the general feel goes.

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The Sub-Games of Kirby: Triple Deluxe

The new Kirby game came out last Friday. It’s called Kirby: Triple Deluxe. When the title was first announced, I thought that maybe that meant it would be a sequel to Kirby Super Star, as that game was called Kirby Super Deluxe in Japan. Upon further contemplation, I realized that it’s just a hackneyed way of calling it Kirby 3D without actually calling it Kirby 3D. Bravo, Nintendo.

While it’s not a Super Star sequel, Kirby 3D is still pretty much exactly what one would want from a Kirby game. It’s adorable, the powers are a lot of fun to play with, and the bosses are elaborate and interesting. Much to my surprise, the soundtrack is terrific. I don’t know why I was so surprised by that though. Maybe because of the depressingly disappointing soundtrack in Yoshi’s New Island.

Anyway, It’s Kirby through and through. If you’ve played a [regular] Kirby game, you’ve played this. It’s a fun romp through a bunch of levels where you get to eat guys and wear fun hats. The new Hypernova ability is a lot of fun, but that’s not what really got to me. For the first time ever, I’ve been totally won over by the included mini-games. Or, as the Kirby series likes to call them, sub-games. And really, that is a better moniker, because these extra games are anything but mini.

The first, and the most immediately attractive, is Kirby Fighters. It’s multiplayer, and up to four players can choose a permanent Kirby ability, then duke it out. It’s a little bit like a tiny version of Smash Bros, but it still plays like Kirby. If that’s not immediately clear, what I mean is that the Kirbys move just like they do in the main game. There aren’t any special fighting game physics or nuances added for this mode. I stress this point because for some reason my mind expects Kirby to control the way he does in Smash Bros, but he doesn’t, and it’s a little weird at first. But still, it’s plenty of fun, and the abilities seem to be fairly balanced.

I haven’t actually played Kirby Fighters with another person yet, but I imagine that it’s got to be a good time, because the single-player mode is a lot of fun. If you play alone, there’s a fun little arcade mode where you play a sequence of seven fights against CPU players. There’s a training mode where you can set up a custom match and pound on CPU Kirbys, which is pretty much the equivalent of the multiplayer experience. With four difficulty levels and nice set of arenas that draw from past Kirby games, there’s a lot here to like.

The only thing that makes me sad about Kirby Fighters is that you only get to choose from ten abilities: Sword, Hammer, Cutter, Parasol, Archer, Ninja, Beam, Whip, Fighter, and Bomb. There are 25 abilities in the main game, and while some are cut for obvious reasons (Crash, Mike, Sleep), I cannot fathom why others (Bell, Leaf, and Spear) aren’t included. Or Wing! My beloved Wing ability got cut and I demand to know why! Heck, the new Circus power is perfectly suited for this sub-game, but it’s curiously absent, too.

What would be nice is if in the next Kirby game, there was a bigger, fuller version of Kirby Fighters. Let all of the abilities have their chance to shine, whether they’re viable contenders or not. I’m sure someone out there would be pleased as punch to try to eke out a victory with Wheel or Stone. They should even put in the cooler powers that were only in one or two games, like Mirror and Animal. I would absolutely go to town in a Kirby Fighters where I could rock an upgraded version of Kirby: Squeak Squad‘s Magic ability.

The other sub-game in Kirby 3D is Dedede’s Drum Dash, which is a fun mix of platformer and rhythm game. The idea of the game is to bounce along with Dedede to the end of the stage, only the platforms that line the way are drums. You’ll jump from drum to drum, avoiding enemies and collecting coins along the way. It’s a fairly easy game if you’re just going from start to finish, but it’s incredibly difficult if you want to get you a good score.

Dedede automatically bounces off each drum, to about the top of the bottom screen. Pressing A when you hit the drum will propel him higher, up to the top screen, and sequential jumps will go even higher, up to the very top. You have to time your bounces properly to follow the trail of coins and avoid the baddies, but it’s a lot more difficult than it looks, as you’re also trying to aim for the next drum. If you muck it up, Dedede will stumble, losing his jump power, and you’ll lose sync with the song.

You also have to press A to bang a drum along with the backbeat at the height of each jump. Not only does this bump up your score, but it also keeps you aloft for a little longer, letting you pass over large enemies and clear wide gaps. This is where I have the most trouble, because my mind cannot fathom the idea of backbeat. I was stuck forever and gave up on Rhythm Heaven because as much as I tried, I could not pass the Lockstep game, which has you alternate tapping along to the beat and backbeat. It’s not quite so bad in Dedede’s Drum Dash though, because you have a visual cue (the apex of Dedede’s jump) to go along with the musical one.

Getting it all together is tough, and takes a lot of practice, but I can already see the fruits of my labour growing. At first, my performance was atrocious, but now I’m doing okay. Earned a silver medal in the first stage, I did. Each level gives out two kinds of medals, too. The overall performance medal, from bronze through platinum, and then four special medals four each course. These special ones are for completing certain objectives, like clearing a stage quickly or collecting all the coins. Sadly, Dedede’s Drum Dash only has four stages, but mastering them will keep you busy for a very long time to come. It really helps that the game is incredibly fun and borders on addictive.

It doesn’t seem like Nintendo has any plans for it, but these sub-games could benefit greatly from DLC add-ons. Since each stage is based around a song, Dedede’s Drum Dash seems like an obvious candidate for DLC stages. Some more beginner-level stages would be nice, too, as the current offering goes from “tough” to “maddening” pretty quickly. Extra DLC abilities would be the way to go for Kirby Fighters. Hell, maybe even a few new arenas or options like an item switch.

I would readily pay a buck for an extra Dedede level or a couple new Fighters abilities. That’s an important point though: make it a buck. Plants Vs. Zombies 2 ensured that I’ll never buy any of it’s DLC by pricing it way too high. $3 for one plant? No way in Hell. Nuts to you, EA.

At the end of the day, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a wonderful package, made all the better by a couple of sub-games that are actually interesting. Both of them are fun and deep enough that they could be their own game. I mean, just look at how much I wrote about them alone! This was supposed to be a medium-length blog post, but it ended up being a whole article. And I hardly even did any senseless rambling! funny how things work out like that.

Year of N64 – April: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

I have two vivid memories in relation to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.

The first is the Easter that came after I got the game. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I received the game proper (it was likely a Christmas gift), but I do remember that on that Easter, I got the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide for it as a gift. We also went to the Royal Fork Buffet for Easter dinner that year, and I brought the guide along with me so that I could study the game and how to earn the gold medals and unlockable ships. It was also the last time I can recall enjoying the Royal Fork Buffet. Maybe the food there used to be better, maybe I just didn’t know better becaue I was a child. We may never know the truth. Also we got the PC versions of Rayman and Earthworm Jim, but I was much less interested in those.

I want to say I chose to play Rogue Squadron in April because it and Easter have a permanent link in my mind, but really I’m not that clever. It’s April’s game of the month because that’s just how things rolled out. Pure coincidence.

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Pokémon Battle Trozei

It’s been many years, and many generations of Pokémon now, that I’ve said that all I want from the franchise is one Pokémon game where you can catch them all. Of course, by that, I mean where every single monster lives in that game, and you don’t have to worry about trading up from previous games or Nintendo’s event hullabaloo to get them all.

Well, I got what I wished for, though it’s not exactly the way I imagined it would be.

Pokémon Battle Trozei is a Pokémon game where you can, in fact, catch every existing species of Pokémon without having to jump through a bunch of silly hoops. But also it’s not really a Pokémon game in the traditional sense. It’s a block-matching game in the vein of Puzzle & Dragons or Puzzlecraft.

Unlike other popular mobile block-matching games, PBT is pretty simplistic. Other games have crafting and town-building and monster-fusing and all sorts of other fancy features that serve mostly to keep you addicted. PBT whittles it down to the basic puzzle game, where you drag the little Pokémon-shaped blocks around to match them up and clear them from the field. Outside of that, the only thing you’re doing is filling up your pokédex.

It’s not just a simple Bejeweled-alike though. Granted, it does seem to be when you first start playing, but gradually, more features will open up that make Pokémon Battle Trozei stand out in the sea of samey block-matchers.

Throughout the game’s many, many levels, your goal is to catch the Pokémon that inhabit each of them. Doing this is accomplished by matching blocks, which will deal damage to the target Pokémon’s HP. Combos of successive matches with add up more damage onto an attack, and when the target’s HP is depleted, they’re caught and added to your roster.

The Pokémon don’t just sit back and take it though. They will launch an attack of their own every once in a while, depleting your HP. Stronger Pokémon can even break through into your playfield, and they’ll zoom around in there, decreasing the space that you have to play in, and knocking out any blocks that they come in contact with. When you battle a strong Pokémon, or play a level that features a larg number of the creatures, things get frantic quickly and can really come down to the wire.

Being a Pokémon game, there are a few familiar gameplay features that make their way into this puzzle game. Type-matching is still a thing that happens, and you can score super-effective hits against your foes if you use the right type. If you use a type that isn’t very effective though, damage will be decreased. Once you progress a few stages into the game, it’ll let you choose a helper Pokémon from your roster of captured monsters to bring into a stage with you. Normally, the Pokémon blocks that appear in a stage are a random selection, but the ‘mon you choose as your helper is guaranteed to show up.

Some Pokémon also have a special ability that will activate when you match them, but these seem to be very few and far between so far. About a dozen stages in, I’ve only caught three: Serperior, Emboar, and Samurott; all of which have the same ability to deal more damage when your HP is low. The tutorial also shows that matching Chanseys will heal you instead of attacking, but I haven’t seen Chansey in regular play yet.

Ditto is a special block, in that it doesn’t invoke an ability, but you can use it as a wild card. It can be matched with any other block, and even multiple different blocks at once, but they only drop in under special conditions. What those conditions are, I’m not totally certain. All I can say for sure is that they seem to show up exactly when you need them.

To keep you playing even after you’ve caught every Pokémon in a stage, your performance is ranked by how many points you earn. Getting the elusive S Rank is deceptively tough, requiring some really top-notch skills to earn. To even dream of S Ranks, you’re going to have to get good at Trozei Chance, which is activated when you match 4 blocks, and then 3 other blocks right afterward. When you’re in Trozei Chance mode, the screen gets all flashy and you only need two like blocks to get a match. If you’re good, you can clear out the entire playfield, and earn big points as well as continue your combo chain.

The game world is divided into zones, with a handful of stages within each. Burning through each stage as quickly as possible isn’t the best way to proceed though, as extra stages with special Pokémon in them will open up if you complete certain requirements. So far, those requirements seem to be exclusively “catch all the Pokémon in the previous stages,” but they might grow more diverse later on.

Early on, you unlock a special zone known as the Safari Jungle. The Pokémon in these stages change daily, and they’re much longer than any of the regular stages. Simply getting to the end of these stages before the wild Pokémon deplete your HP can be a trial in itself, but it’s a quick way to fill out your Pokémon roster.

Pokémon Battle Trozei falls into the same trap that any block puzzle game does: it’s very repetitive and can get really boring if you’re just playing to get to the end. If you’re in it more to hone your skills and earn higher scores and better ranks, it can be just as addictive as any good puzzler. What’s even nicer is that it doesn’t have all the weird features of a mobile puzzle game that distract your from the core game. Also there’s no arbitrary play limit built in to soak more cash out of you. Once you pony up the $8 to download the game, Nintendo isn’t going to hit you up for a cent more.