Spent the weekend with some friends at my sister's place. We had some down time, and I'd brought the PS4 for Jackbox games, so I sat down and played some Magicka. Our friends thought it was pretty cool, so the three of us went through the first half of the game on normal, then the second half on hard, and then the first half on hard to round off the whole hard-mode experience
This was the first time I'd played Magicka 2 multiplayer, and it really holds up to the single player experience. 4-player mode has some pretty ludicrous amounts of enemies at times, it felt, but so does 3-player mode (just not to quite the same extent). 2-players felt the most player-tilted in terms of number of enemies Vs. how strong you as two separate entities are, but that may just be down to which levels we 2/3/4-player'ed respectively (depending on who was awake at the time :P ). Hard mode REALLY don't fuck around. You can get through normal mode fairly comfortably without regarding mechanics like shields or weapon enchantments too heavily, but DAMN do you really gotta think with everything you have on hard mode. The game REALLY wants to kill you, and it tells you exactly how it's gonna do it (you can see exactly what modifiers hard mode and BANANAS!? (very hard) mode impact on the game. I also feel like some encounters have more enemies in them, but that may just be my imagination. Still loads of fun though. It really forces you to think strategically, and not just go in beams-blazing. I cannot imagine doing hard-mode in single player with how damn hard some of the hard-mode bosses are. BANANAS!? mode is like literally twice as difficult as hard mode, so I cannot imagine playing through that in any capacity ever XP As a side note, perhaps it's just nastolgia talking, but I still liked the jokes in Magicka 1 better than this one. Magicka 2's main story is a little better nuanced (for what that's worth), but Magicka 1's story campaign modes really beat it out in terms of flavor (I don't think there have been any mission DLC's for Magicka 2 ;_;). Verdict: Still Very Recommended. It's a fantastic game to play with people who are familiar with gaming. If you have an evening with the lads, this is a great one to crack out to see just how coordinated you are at action games.
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After thoroughly enjoying Planet Robobot earlier this year, my interest in the other 3DS Kirby game was thoroughly peaked. It's not quiiiite as good as Robobot, but it's still a damn fine game. For reference I got all the sunstones in the Kirby mode.
King Dedede has been kidnapped by scary sky invaders, and it's up to Kirby to rescue him! There are a lot of references to older Kirby games in this. Partly because the key-chain collectables you can get are all sprite art from all the other platforming Kirby games, but also in terms of enemies and powers. One thing I really appreciated was all the old, crappy powers that they made good. Powers that i avoided like the plague back in Super Star Ultra like Bird and Ninja are now actually good and fun to use. Circus is still a bit fiddly, but the new Beetle power kicks mad ass and is a great joy to use. The game is pretty easy, but it's always fun. The level design is impeccable HAL work as usual, and the game controls perfectly. The Hypernova gimmick stages aren't quite as fun as Robobot's mech segments from a mechanics and gameplay perspective, but they're much better than the mega-power sections from Return to Dreamland: For all intents and purposes, this is basically a single-player game made with a lot of the RtD assets and improves on that games ideas in basically every way, sans a co-op campaign mode. Especially the "Three Little Waddle Dees" segment made me laugh far more than perhaps it should have X3 The presentation is fantastic. This is a damn pretty 3DS game, and they the 3D Kirby aesthetic looking as stellar as ever. The music is fucking fantastic. Kirby games always have great music, but this might be my favorite Kirby music yet. Tons of funky remixes of old tracks that make me love 'em all over again. The bosses are well designed, and they all have at least two phases (some of which are pretty damn tough). Kirby's health bar is really generously huge, or at least you don't take a lot of damage, really. Especially with the later bosses, their patterns are so tough to take advantage of at time, I found it much easier to just ditch my power and fight them old school-style because of how mobile they were. The final boss especially has a million forms and is fucking epic shit that gives a very satisfying ending to the experience. Verdict: Highly Recommended. It's not quite as good as Robobot, but you can easily pick it up for well under half the price of that nowadays, and it's a fantastic Kirby game for that price. A kind of love letter to the many Kirbys before it, this is another fantastic entry in the series, even if it will come off as a bit easy for most Kirby veterans. I think it was Exhumy Senpai a few weeks back who mentioned in some thread that he was interested in how this game was but no one had played it. WELL NOW I HAVE, and I return to spread the word of it's thinguses. Docomodake is the mascot of the Japanese mobile phone provider NTT docomo. For reference, he apparently exists in a similar space culturally to Domo-kun over there (although clearly not here). This is a puzzle platformer starring him. It's a budget game (I recall it retailing new at $20), but it's a quite competent one.
Docomodake works by going through levels to collect treasure and get to the end goal. The treasure is completely optional, and only exists to increase the rank achieved on that respective stage. There are 7 worlds (one after the credits) with 8 stage a piece. (For reference, I did not do the post-credits world, as I really wasn't enjoying the game enough). You break down Docomodake into smaller units of himself, and can move these smaller Docos around with the stylus to do things like push switches, turn into rocks to throw at enemies, and stack into ladders for your main Doco to climb. It's almost like a very simple Pikmin in that regard, but that feels like a very generous comparison. The stage design is adequate. There's never anything mind blowingly good or awful either way, and some of the puzzles to get certain treasure without blocking it off for yourself are actually reasonably tricky. It didn't take me long after a quick observation to figure most of them out, but if you're just mindlessly walking forward you're bound to miss stuff. If you're trying to get everything, I would personally say that is the most satisfying way to play the game as an adult, but a child would probably enjoy just getting through the stages. It's a fairly good babby's first puzzle game, I suppose (like for a 5-10 year old). Verdict: Okay, but not Recommended. It's a decent enough puzzle game on DS, but puzzle platfomers like this or better are a dime a dozen on a platform like Steam. It's a fine game, but nothing worth writing home about. And so ends my journey to play through the recent Mario titles I own but hadn't yet played/beaten. It took me a little while to get into it, but it's definitely the best example of Mario in that style up to that point. It took me a little over 16 hours, and I got all 120 stars (but didn't attempt any of the green ones because ain't no one got time for that).
The level design reminds me of a Kirby game, to be honest. Kirby Mass Attack specifically. One of the things I love about that game is that EVERY level feels really different from any other. Mario Galaxy 2's 48-ish Galaxies have a very similar effect of each stage trying to be very different from another, and it succeeds greatly. As a kind of prototype to Mario 3D World, I suppose, most levels only have 2 or maybe 3 stars as opposed to the 3+ so many in Mario Galaxy 1 had. Many new power ups involving both just Mario and the new Yoshi to diversify the levels even further. The difficulty curve is just right. The beginning of the game is a little too easy for my liking, but especially once you get to world 4 and 5 those levels are brutal. The comet levels especially are freaking insane in worlds 6 and 7. Granted not quite as hard as the first game, which had 2 stars I could never quite get. Perhaps I'm just better at games now than a decade ago when I was 11 The controls are top notch, as usual, and Mario controls very well. There was only one point where Yoshi didn't quite do his flutter jump even though I'd told him to, and occasionally wall jumping wouldn't quite cooperate with me how I wanted it to. There was also one level (Flipsville) where you go upside down frequently and the control during that is very unintuitive, I felt. Verdict: Very Recommended. If Mario 3D World didn't quite do it for you, then this is another fantastic dose of just about as good Mario platformy goodness. This is only single player though, so I do still have to recommend 3D World over this. It was definitely the top of Nintendo 3D platformers at the time though, to be sure. And so I've finished the other Vita reimagining of a DS Tales game. The first RPG entirely in Japanese I've finished as well! Neither Innocence nor it's reimagining were released in the West, so Japanese was the only option without pirating the DS version. It wasn't my least favorite Tales game, but it's certainly no great loss we never saw it in the West.
The story is kinda fundamentally not that great. The main cast of six characters (as well as several NPC's) all have past lives whose memories influence their actions. The main problem is that these past emotions and memories conflict with the characters' normal aspirations and personalities. It all made for a very strangely dissonant feel to the otherwise well-written characters that never really clicked for me. The end villain was fairly well constructed, and it wasn't my least favorite villain in a Tales game, but this has certainly been my least favorite overarching plot in a Tales game. It is worth noting, however, that just as Hearts used several narrative ideas that would be improved upon in Graces, Innocence uses several ideas that are improved upon in Vesperia, so that was an interesting tidbit to notice. I'd still say Hearts and Graces have more similarities than Innocence and Vesperia, but it's still interesting. As a final note on the story, I will mention that this is the only Tales entry I've played where the macsot character (think Teddy from Persona 4, Cat things in Monster Hunter, the Cheagle from Tales of the Abyss, basically just a cute fluffy character they can make toys of easily who isn't a human) actively annoyed me, so that's something else to consider. The combat and leveling system are fairly similar to Hearts R in many ways. The leveling is done independently, but skill points earned in battle can be spent on "styles" (skills, basically) in a big style-grid, and you unlock more stuff as you do certain sidequests and as the story progresses. I thought it was okay, but a smidgen more confusing than it really needed to be (in good ol' Tales fashion). I think I preferred Hearts R's system to this though. The content added for the reimagining compared to the DS version is fairly significant. Two new party members bring the total up to 8, and they're both fairly well written into the story. It's a little clear they've been tacked on after the fact given that they don't have any really big stakes in the story, but it never feels like they're just absent from any given event and they make their presence worthwhile. The new Vulcan weapons are also a fun diversion that give you a new 2nd ultimate arte, which was another cool feature. Just like in Hearts R, there're characters from other games (in this case from Hearts and Xillia) as the final encounters to fight in the arena, but they are WAY harder than in Hearts. They're significantly harder than the final boss, I'd say, in Innocence R, where they're far easier than that in Hearts R. Also some Tri-Verse areas to do in the post-game (I think you actually have to do them in new game +, which is a little lame) which are crazy difficult but give some new backstory to the added party members, but I didn't try those. Verdict: Recommended for Series Veterans. There are so many other very well done, not to mention domestically released, Tales games out there that I find it difficult to recommend one I didn't enjoy quite as much to just anyone. For anyone itching for more Tales who has enjoyed entries in the series since Abyss, though, I'd say this is a fine thing to give a whirl. It's not bad by any means, just not quite up to the standard of others in the series. Didn't wanna put away the Wii U quite yet, so I picked up another short-ish game I've had for a while. I did all of the crystal thingies and secret challenges in the main 3 episodes and all the bonus levels up to the endurence mummy one, at which point I called uncle because my fingers were getting tired from holding down the run button. (Fun note, I didn't know there was a run button until after I beat the game, so if any of you were wondering if you can totally 100% the main campaign without running, the answer is yes ).
It's the Toad mini-game from Mario 3D World but it's own game! It's actually a really great puzzle game. There's a lot of care and detail put into each tiny level, and getting through the main 62 will certainly take you a while. Then if you aren't done, there are some really punishing extra levels you unlock afterward that you can suffer with . The difficulty curve is great. The game is never too hard, but also always keeps pushing you a little bit further. There are some attention to detail things that blew my mind. For example, you have a headlamp you can turn off with X, and I thought it was just a flavor thing. Turns out, it actually affects enemies' awareness of you! In dark levels, enemies like Shy Guys or Goombas won't notice you nearly as easily if you keep it off, which can be a real life saver. Little things like that made me really like this game. Verdict: Highly recommended. It's a fantastic puzzle platformer with all the quality you'd expect from Nintendo. Definitely worth a go through if you can find it for like $20 like I did. While I have technically completed Pikmin before, I've never actually gotten all 30 parts, nor have I ever beaten it on the Wii before, so I'm not counting this as a repeat. The Wii version isn't the best way to play these games, but they're still really fun regardless. I imagine it's a LOT harder to do a deathless run on the Wii version though (mostly because you can't direct the troop's direction and the way you wanna throw them in different directions (the L-analog stick and the C-stick are both bound to your pointer)). It took me 17 days to beat it, and one of those days was literally carrying the piggy bank another couple inches to the rocket because I just baaaarely couldn't do The Final Trial all in one day.
It's been longer than I thought since I last played Pikmin, because I honestly didn't remember it being so short! I beat it in just 4 or 5 hours, as each day is like 15 minutes. I think I'm getting a little better at the multitasking parts of the game. I would let half of the troop start building a bridge or knocking down a wall while I let the other half come with me to fight some stuff or whatnot (and usually die horribly to bulbears). Commenting a bit more on the Wii port, it's pretty good. There was only one time where I noticed any significant dip in framerate. It also seems like the Pikmin don't group up together nearly as much as they do when you used the C-stick on the Gamecube version, but maybe that's just me remembering 2 more than 1. The one good thing about the Wii port that you literally can't do in the Gamecube one is call Pikmin from veeeery far away, since you can only throw Pikmin so far, but you can whistle to them from anywhere you can reach the pointer with, so that's nice. Verdict: Recommended. I'd still recommend the Gamecube version over this purely for ease-of-control reasons, but it's still a fun, short game. It's a nice stepping stone to the better 2 and 3, which feel more like fully fleshed out games than this, in retrospect. Pikmin 1 didn't quite scratch my Pikmin itch as much as I wanted it to, so I sat down and played through Pikmin 3 between last night and today. The only thing I knew about this game going in is that I remembered hearing it was a little short. Compared to the dungeon crawling epic that is Pikmin 2, then yes, I suppose that's true, but I think this game was just as long as it needed to be. I collected all the fruit and it took me 36 days and about 18-ish real time hours.
This game controls totally left-handed with the Wii U tablet and with the right hand manning the stylus. Granted, plaything through the whole thing in one sitting did a bit of a number on my wrist, but I'm just gonna hope that feels better by morning XP. I'm not sure I like it better than the Gamecube controls, but I like it better than the Wiimote+numchuk controls. The only thing you can't do is direct your hoard in a direction like you can with the C-stick in the Gamecube games. Although you DO have a dodge roll you can get and activate with left and right on the D-pad which is pretty freaking sweet. Using the stylus to aim isn't an exact science, at least if you wanna play with the TV + tablet instead of just the tablet, but you get used to it pretty quick. The graphics are BEAUTIFUL. This is one of my favorite looking games of last (this?) generation. All of the landscapes are beautifully detailed with tons of graphical detail and vibrant colors. The monsters look fantastic, and the really big ones are always a joy to even see just because of how oddball they are and fluidly they move. The level design is proper quality as well, as it always encourages you to inspect all of your surroundings to find dat fruit. Three main party members as well as a "Go To" feature on your map allows for some serious multi-tasking if you're up for it, and there are some decidedly more fiendishly hidden fruit that will require tactical use of all three members each wielding Pikmin of their own. The combat is Pikmin as usual, more or less, but the world bosses are GREAT. One of my favorite parts of the game. This is the best the Pikmin themselves have ever been balanced, in my opinion. The two new types, rock and flying, replace the old types of purple and white, and have fantastic utility to both of them in that the flying can handle flying enemies easier, and rocks don't cling to things but do damage on impact as well as breaking enemy carapaces. Add in the exploration utility of things like the normal 3 (and yellows which are good at digging now and not nearly as useless as they used to be), and this is definitely one of the best designed games in the series. Verdict: Highly recommended. A lot of care and detail went into this game, and it shows. It's a great adventure you can get through in a day or two, but it's a damn fun and memorable one. Definitely worth a try if you liked either of the other games even a little Heard some raving about this on the Podquisition podcast last week, and they really sold it to me. Add that in with how I was able to get it for just over 20 bucks at the local resale store in the middle of last week. HOoooly crap was it worth it. For the record it took me about 40 or 50 hours to get through it on normal mode. I did every main and side mission along with the Zodiac Killer DLC. I also did not play the multiplayer at all, as it didn't interest me (and I also don't have PS plus, but things like getting invaded and bounty hunted are still things even if you don't pay for online (but you can turn them off like I did really easy)).
These GTA-style game has been done so well before that newer entries in this genre live and die by their theme and story telling. Watchdogs 1 had the theme, but fell SO hard on the storytelling part (or so I've been told). The sequel seems to have learned from all the complaints about the first game and really made a quality sequel. The theme and narrative this time along goes for a much more Saints Row 3-style approach, and it's much to the game's benefit. It never reaches quite that level of 4th wall breaking or insanity, but it's somewhere between Watchdogs 1 and Saints Row 3. I have some minor complaints about the pacing of the story, but that's a potential problem in any game like this. There's also one main character who kiiinda feels like they were thrown in near the end of the writing phase given all of the story content they just don't feature in for some reason, but that's a minor complaint. The story itself was really well told, though. There's also A LOT of really surprisingly well implemented representation of various minority groups, which I also greatly appreciated. Not enough games seem to have that now a days. The dialogue is so nerdy and silly. It gave me a very Saints Row feel in that regard. There were many a goof that had me in stitches laughing. The characters are all very vibrant, unique, and funny. MUCH more so when compared to the boring pile of tar that was the first game's protagonist. The gameplay is somewhere between GTA and Infamous, which I suuuper dug. There are no control points around the city like in Saints Row or Infamous, but instead missions you can do to progress the story (or just side stories) a lot like GTA. However, like Infamous, as you do things you can earn XP to level up and gain skill points to put into a tech tree. You can even find these level-up points scattered around the map in places a lot like Infamous. Honestly I had tons of fun in the 20-ish hours I spent JUST wandering around the map looking for goodies. San Francisco looks amazing, and it was just so much fun to drive around and see all the sights. The gameplay is very GTA V-ish, but a bit closer to Saints Row. Markus also feels like he controls a lot tighter than the "more realistic" movement of the GTA V characters. You can climb up buildings a lot, but you're no Cole Mcgrath: Your climbing skils are much more like that of a normal fairly fit guy. It's got gunplay like Saints Row/GTA but your hacking powers feel a lot like Infamous, which is why I use those two games as a comparison to this one so often. You also have a little flying drone and a jumping RC car-thing which you can use for doing anything from distracting enemies, to setting up traps to stealthing past enemies. I played the game mostly stealthily, as it felt more appropriate for the narrative (and my play-style because I don't aim well on a controller), but there are a time or two where you're forced to take things very head-on with action. Using the RC-car and drone in tandem to set up traps and to activate cars and bombs to fuck with people just never got old though. It was always such a refreshing puzzle in a new location: It's a really well crafted stealth game in that regard, though it can be played actiony as well. I did a lot of the non-story repeatable missions (which you can do online co-op in but I did solo) just because I loved that stuff so much. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you like GTA-style open-world-in-a-city games, you will definitely like Watchdogs 2. Perhaps you won't adore it as much as I did, but this is definitely one of my favorite games I've played in this genre, right up there with Saints Row 3 and Infamous 2. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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