Unravelling the mystery – A Pokemon spin-off review

When I comes to Pokemon spin-offs I’m usually very uncertain about whether I will enjoy them or not. I’ve been a fan (well far more obsessed) of the Pokemon main series since the original Red & Blue. Being a fan I’ve usually jumped at the chance of owning/playing spin offs to get more of the critters I love. The mystery dungeon collaborations have certain been the biggest of the ‘hit and miss’ titles in my opinion. The general idea behind them sounds great (for a fan). You are a Pokemon! You get to take on other Pokemon first hand completing quests. I mean you don’t get a huge choice of which Pokemon you get to play as for the adventure, but it still should be fun right?

For some reason I’ve just never really enjoyed previous titles in the series before. I’m not sure if it is just the repetitiveness of the missions at hand or the lack of character (both in choice available or the ‘behind the bar visuals’). All these reasons had me fixed that I wouldn’t jump at getting the latest title in series ‘Gates to Infinity’ at launch, but as always screenshots/videos broke my resolve. So what do I think of it after playing through it these last few weeks?

The story:

The game starts off with you (a human, hopefully you are) being brought into the Pokemon world summoned by a mysterious voice to help save the populous. After hurtling from the sky (unexplainably surviving the fall) you blurredly see a reflection of yourself and then offered the choice of five Pokemon as to who you want to be. A friendly Pokemon is drawn to your crash site and again you choose from the remaining list of four as to who he will be.

Basically after this set up to the game’s story there’s a large amount of building up ‘Paradise’. Paradise is a large plot of land you and your friendly partner Pokemon own and expand throughout the game. Parts of the story are initially driven along by your need to find certain Pokemon to help you build things in Paradise. A few of them come along quite willingly, but others will be slightly dubious (often on the verge of being villains) and require a bit of fightin’ before they’ll join you.

Later boss battles certainly challenge your team’s resolve

When the game gets back into the swing of the main story though you’re kept away from being able to expand Paradise. One major story event kept me stuck out in dungeons for a good few hours. The whole while I kept thinking to myself ‘It would be really nice if I could go back to my town and build some more stuff now’. The main reason behind this thinking was that the story isn’t particularly one of the game’s strong points. It is aimed at younger audience and it often shows as Pokemon characters seem to state the obvious quite a bit and there’s a fair few recaps of important things to job the player’s memory. The weird thing though was the fact there’s quite a big plot twist at a certain point of the story that cleverly caught me out. All through the game up until that point I just assumed what I saw was what was going to happen, so I feel I should give the story some credit there.

In all the main story lasts a good fifth teen to twenty hours, but the game easily delivers far more depth if you want to see Paradise develop to its fullest. There’s a whole host of side quests to take on and DLC available through the eshop to keep any human trapped in a Pokemon’s body happy for ages.

Gameplay:

The game is quite an interesting turn on the usual Pokemon formula. Creatures earn experience, level up and learn new moves just like they do in the main games. The problem I seemed to find though was you can only control the Pokemon you choose to play as (at the beginning of the game). So many times during dungeon encounters I found myself wondering why my fire type partner didn’t use a fire type move on a grass/bug/ice/steel type. It doesn’t matter too much though as although there are the same weaknesses/resistances they don’t generally cut your attack’s power down even when it shouldn’t be effective. This leads on to another minor fault though. There isn’t really a need to build up a tactical team of critters (I’ve used the phrase Pokemon more than I thought I would). Instead concentrating on heavy hitters with corner/room ranged attacks usually wins the day. I choose Snivy as my Pokemon (damn I said it again!) and the most tactical thing I did with him was to learn/use Giga drain against almost everything I encountered (as it heals Snivy every time he uses it, it was especially useful against a certain final boss). A lack of tactical thinking doesn’t exactly let the game down, but it would’ve been nicer to think out moves/squad types more as opposed to constantly hitting your heaviest attacks button.

Creature rooms are a genuine nightmare at times.

I actually think the only real annoyance in the game for me was the fact you don’t have any kind of control over your partner (the one you choose at the start). You don’t really have any control over any of the other members of your team really, but they don’t matter quite as much as your partner. You see there’s an annoying rule within the game that if you partner (or you) faint during a dungeon/boss battle you automatically fail and are returned to the last check point area (which sometimes can be about seven floors away from where you were in a dungeon/from a boss encounter). Your character fainting sometimes happens from enemies landing critical hits on you, but you can move your character away from danger (although not on the final boss). Your partner relentlessly stands against any foe until either he or it faints. Meaning most of the time you are having to waste your attack turn to heal him up (if you are keeping a close enough eye on his health bar). A simple command to make your partner back away from danger would be an absolute god send in later dungeons.

Sum up:

I may have been pointing out a fair few negatives within the game’s mechanics, but over all I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. Even at the points where I felt certain story related dungeons were dragging on a bit too long I somehow felt compelled to carry on. The characters look great and some conversations between certain Pocket Monsters (changing it up a little there) are genuinely funny (namely Herdier’s Scottish accent in text form). Not being a fan of these particular spin offs in the past I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this title. It’s by no means perfect, but for any Pokemon fans out there it is quite a nice distraction until X & Y later in the year.

Score: 3.8/5

All roads lead to E3

We’ve arrived at that glorious time of wonder. That magical time of year where we (as gamers) are showered with the promise of new games to look forward to (and often obsess about) in the coming Months. Yes E3 is rolling around again and with the recent reveals of both the PS4 and Xbox one there’s a whole lot to be excited about this year.

Nintendo Direct broadcasts often reveal a whole host of new games and the E3 one has a lot to live up to.

Nintendo have a special Nintendo Direct broadcast staged for the 11^th of June to show off some of their big titles for both the WiiU and 3DS. There’s already a list of games confirmed for the special event at E3 (in place of the standard conference other publishers are holding) including big names such as The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart U and the name 3D Mario game. Hopefully these titles will also be given good air time on the Direct broadcasts to leave Nintendo fans (especially me) salivating at the good times ahead. There’s also going to be the first indications of the new Smash bros game (for WiiU and 3DS). No one is quite sure if this means screen shots, video or gameplay at the moment as there hasn’t been a great amount of detail as to how far into development the games are yet. Rest assured though is there is sufficient data on the titles I will probably drop into an excitement overload induced coma.

Smash bros and Mario aside though fans are really hoping there will be some big surprises in store from E3/the Nintendo Direct. Series such as Starfox, F-Zero and Metroid have been overlooked by Nintendo since the Gamecube era. Many gamers have been crying out for new titles in some of Nintendo’s best loved franchises for years and now with Miiverse they’ve been able to share their love/ideas with Nintendo fans across the world. Mario games are great fun, but hopefully we’ll be treated to something a little more diverse from this year’s Nintendo offerings.

Elsewhere during E3 we shall hopefully see a great deal more on Microsoft and Sony’s new consoles. RangerDave has already shared with you all what we know from the console reveals, but E3 should give us a greater indication of what games we can look forward to on these powerful new beasts. So far we’ve seen Sony showing off some footage of the new Killzone game and (new IP) Knack. Both of which look rather stunning. Hopefully there should be more information on these titles as well as a host of other surprises in store. From a Sony standpoint of Playstation exclusive titles a new Little Big Planet or Uncharted game might really get fans pumped up for the console’s launch (apparently later in the year). Sony should also be looking to explain more aspects of the PS4 during their conference as so far there are a details of what the machine can do that potential customers are unsure of.

Microsoft have got their console unveil out of the way and with the timer at the end of that presentation counting down from twenty days’ time there should hopefully be an explosion of game announced when it hits zero. The compliant many people seemed to have with the Xbox one reveal was that they didn’t talk enough about the games. Sure the presentation was set out to explain the new features of a brand new console, but yes I do agree there probably should have been a few more titles talked about. Thankfully their next presentation should be aimed at showing off new titles and what they’ll look like (hopefully without constantly skipping back the TV mode). There’s rumour going around at the moment that a Crackdown icon was visible during the console reveal (on the screen in the background). Hopefully this points to one of the big exclusives Microsoft hope to launch within the first year of the console’s lifespan.

We’ve seen some of the games planned for PS4, but what other nuggets can we look forward to?

My general concern with Microsoft though is that most of their exclusive content on the Xbox 360 over the last year (or so) has been timed exclusive content from third parties with very little in terms of big exclusive franchises. Halo 4 was an absolute classic, but Gears of War judgment felt like a really rushed title for the sake of being a void filler exclusive. Hopefully the promise of exclusive games on the Xbox one will live up to expectations and we should see a return to form on many existing franchises as well as some new IPs.

Well it certainly looks like we’ve all got a lot to look forward to in the next weeks. Hopefully there will be something for everyone to enjoy. What are you most looking forward to hearing about this E3? Anything dream predictions that you would like to see revealed/come true? Please share your thoughts with us.

Scribble me this – TBD in the EU

If you live in the USA or Australia (or have given in and imported it) you’ve probably experienced the joys of Scribblenauts Unlimited on the WiiU or 3DS. The game launched alongside the WiiU system in these respective territories and for some reason was later scheduled for much later release for the EU market. Understandable in a way due to the need to translate so many words for a number of different languages. So we sat and waited patiently for the end of February in order to enjoy Maxwell’s latest brand of puzzle solving adventure. The weeks rolled by and soon enough we were in sight of release day. The Miiverse community had been filling up with eager gamers drooling at the prospect of throwing jetpacks and dinosaurs into inappropriate situations. Magazines and websites ran reviews leaving us salivating at the prospect of creation, but all of dreams were set to shatter.

The WiiU version hosts a collection of exclusive Nintendo characters.

The game was apparently pulled from shelves (at least from the stores that had received stock) and all traces of a release date were cleared from sites. Press statements came out from Nintendo claiming that a ‘game breaking bug’ was present and that all copies needed to be pulled until the problem had been fixed. Similar statements were also (and have been constantly reused) from 5^th cell (the developers) and Warner Games. The over whelming problem I have with this statement is how was the game released in two other territories with a ‘game breaking bug’? Surely by now there would have actually been some form of reaction from American/Australian gamers that their game had been corrupted, but no. The Miiverse community and the official Scribblenauts Facebook page are usually filled with ecstatic gamers singing the game’s praises and showing off their wonderful creations. Salt in the wounds?

If there truly was a bug that needed fixing surely in three months (since the apparent release date) there would be some word on how they were progressing with the problem. It seems quite insane though that all copies of the game were completely recalled from store shelves and most likely hauled into an emergency incinerator because of a bug. Bugs/glitches appear in games quite a lot these days and many big name titles are often seen getting first day patches (and beyond) to counter them. Why go through all the trouble of making and shipping thousands of copies just to have them

In Scribblenauts your imagination is the limit, well unless you live in the EU.

collect dust somewhere?

Another reason that seems to be making the rounds across social media is that 5^th cell are facing legal action for the inclusion of ‘Nyan cat’ within the game and Nintendo don’t want to get ‘caught up in the problem’. Again surely a patch or some quick work could remove said character quite painlessly. The team is still working on the Scribblenauts franchise as only last week it was announced Unmasked would be coming out on the WiiU and 3DS later this year (most likely only in America/Australia again). It would be nice to get closure on whether the EU will ever see the release of Unlimited or not though. It was set to break a bleak dry spell of releases when it was aimed at the end February and many WiiU owners here are desperate to get their hands on it. If only I had Maxwell’s magic notepad. Then I could just write ‘EU release of Scribblenauts Unlimited’ and do everyone here a big favour.

Fire Emblem Awakening – Tips for success

The brand new Fire Emblem finally launched in the EU just over a week ago and has received a host of stellar reviews across the board. For many this will probably be the first time they’ve tried a game in the franchise and although there are easy modes to aid beginners I would like to offer some helpful tips and tricks I’ve found throughout my time playing.

A real life saver

Fire Emblem is well known for its perma death mechanics in that once a character dies, they are gone for good. You won’t want any of your characters to die (because of the stories and abilities they’ll gain later on), but sometimes you might make a mistake judging an enemy’s movements or they might get a lucky critical hit on you. The easiest way to combat this is to save before you start every chapter/encounter. With a constant back-up of your progress even if a beloved comrade croaks you can just hit the ‘HOME’ button on the 3DS and reload the game to try the chapter again. It can be annoying if you have spent an hour playing through a battle only to reload, but at least you can hang onto every character this way.

Yes Sir Mime, hitting the HOME button can help save your characters.

A life changing experience

This Fire Emblem brings back the world map system from Sacred Stones (on the GBA, fantastic game if you get chance to play it). On the world map screen you’ll see enemies (Risen) appearing on areas you’ve already finished chapters on. Engaging these enemies is a great source of experience for characters, relationships and weapon skills. There is also an item you can buy from stores (you can visit completed chapters to go to shops and buy items) that forces Risen to appear on the current location you are standing on. This means you can start off ‘farming’ earlier levels for the weakest members of your army and then work your way up the chapters to fight increasingly stronger foes. Personally I found chapter 11 to be a particularly helpful area to strengthen my forces. There’s a good number of enemies that appear each time, they’re not too powerful and you can easily place your desired unit(s) on defence increasing forts to help them battle the monsters.

Relationships:

Getting characters to fight partnered up or next to each other in battle increases their relationship statuses. The higher the relationship status the better the chance that the units will protect each other in battle as well as help each other attack enemies. Getting a selected male and female character to marry each other offers the best stat boosts when they work together and also opens up (when you get to a certain point in the game) side missions to gain even more recruits.

When characters get closer they will marry and form strong combat boosting bonds

Stick with ‘em:

Certain characters may appear to be very weak when you first encounter them. You can choose to ignore them, but every unit has the potential for greatness. Using the Risen encounter farming method you can raise all your character to level 20 quite easily. Then you can ‘class change’ them using a master seal to get the most out of their stats.

Shop till you drop:

Shops are very useful in Fire Emblem as they let you keep your army in weapons etc. Once a weapon/spell book breaks it is gone so you need to keep an eye on all your character’s equipment. Every level in the game has a different shop you can visit after completion of the chapter. It is a good idea to travel around the map and look for which place has the wares you need. A character you are training up will often require bronze equipment (or any rank E goods). Once they’ve increased their skills with their selected items you’ll be able to buy and equip them with higher ranked gear that will greatly increase the damage they can do to enemies.

Shops are also crucial for purchasing enough master seals to get all of your characters to their higher classes as well as second seals for changing them to a completely different type of class. Also if you have the spotpass data activated and lots of goods you don’t need you can sell items to earn enough money to buy the characters that appear via spotpass. Although they can’t interact with any of the main game characters they are all classic Fire Emblem characters which fans of the series will want in their army.

Hopefully these tips should help you on your way to defeating your foes and restoring peace to the lands. Hope you are all enjoying the game as much as I am…. If that’s possible haha.

Well Tharjia I’m not that devoted to Fire Emblem, only a little off though.

New Smash Bros – Hopes and predictions

As you’ve probably guessed from many of our previous posts here at SirMime we’re all big Smash Bros fans. The hours of beating each other senseless throughout the series have only wet our appetites for what is in store in the next instalments. There’s been no real information from Nintendo yet. They say that there’ll be some screenshots and information during this year’s E3, but for now let me share with you my hopes for the 3DS/WiiU version.

Characters

Rumours have been circulating that brawl’s character list was about as large as they’re planning to go with the series. This suggests that there won’t be many new characters or even that they may replace certain members of the roster. Obviously (for me) I hope Wolf doesn’t get taken out of the mix as I loved his Fox/Falco move set with the added power/weight to take on virtually anyone. Every member of the team has their own favourite that they wouldn’t want taken out either, so hopefully (for all our sakes) there won’t be too many previous character gutted for the list.

Mewtwo was always my favourite of the playable Pokemon

The mighty Wolf Squaring off against his rival Fox

From previous changes to characters in the series I would like to see a return of Mewtwo over Lucario. I don’t really have anything against Lucario, I just preferred Mewtwo weight/movement and his ‘evil laugh’ taunt. He had more character about him, although Lucario did have the amazing power increase to current damage taken ratio.

The Fire Emblem characters seem to change around in each title. From Melee to Brawl there was Marth and Roy to Marth and Ike. Marth plays pretty much the same in both versions and Roy/Ike both fill a heavy/powerful character although they handle slightly differently (Ike is much more sluggish). I would love for the next title to see Lady Lyndis or Eirika from one of the GBA games. Lyndis did appear as an assist trophy character in Brawl so it would be nice to see her become a fully-fledged character. I’d imagine her (them) to a lighter, faster fire emblem character than Marth making using your counter move a very risky strategy (with big rewards for pulling it off).

Lyndis was an assist trophy last time, now it is her chance to become a character

As for Lucas and Ness I would like to see Lucas taken out if they needed to remove characters from the bill. I think they are too similar to both be in the new games especially if they are going to make cut backs. Maybe a more unique character from the Mother series would a nice change with a different move set to Ness (also it’d be nice to have a Mother game released over here on the virtual console so us Europeans can actually experience one).

For me first entirely new character prediction I’m going to go with (drum roll) Miis. Miis have featured as characters in quite a number of games now. They had only been introduced at the Wii’s launch so there probably wasn’t the opportunity to incorporate them into the previous game, but now it’s their time to shine. There’s quite a wealth of games to choose their moves list from now including Mario kart/Tennis, Wii sports/sports resort, Pilot wings and streetpass quest. I can easily imagine you will be able to select your own Mii to fight in game and use moves like sword swings, magic, tennis racket beatings and maybe even boxing glove punches. With the amount of multiplayer games they’ve appeared in now and the fact WiiU and 3DS both use Miis I would be very surprised if they didn’t appear as characters.

I think I’ve got it… Layton as a character!!

Another character that seems highly likely to join the cast is the gentleman detective himself Layton. The sheer popularity of his series and the fans’ love for him as character puts him firmly in line for a new comer (plus again Layton games had only really started appearing in the west at the time of the last game). I’m unsure as to how Layton would attack his enemies. Maybe he could throw hint coins for a mild projectile as well as maybe using Luke in a similar way to Peach using Toad (as a counter).

At any rate I’m sure he would have quite an interested move set to fit in with his puzzle solving ways.

Well these are some of my character predictions. I would love to know if you like the sound of any of them as well as who you’d like to see appear/return for the next game.

Uniqueness for uniqueness sake – Porting to the feature filled devices

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the selection of games available for some of the newer devices on the market. New handhelds such as the 3DS and Vita as well as Nintendo’s latest home console the WiiU are all very feature heavy. The principle behind each device to enable ‘new ways to play’ bit it via touch screen, motion control or the added display of an extra screen. Many games designed for exclusively for these devices showcase such features excellently, but does the availability of extra features scare off some developers from bringing their games to the systems?

Let us look at the Vita first of all. Now the Vita has had a good selection of exclusive games that fully take into account the use of touch/motion control. Games such as Frobisher says excel at showcasing the use of every feature the handheld has to offer and others like Gravity Rush allow the game to be played via motion control (if you want to). The trouble really is thinking that every game for the Vita needs to fully integrate such control methods. As I mentioned just Gravity Rush does allow you to use motion controls, but most of the time I would end up using the trusty old analogue sticks to guide Kat on her adventure. Sometimes (especially with a handheld) it’s very difficult to attempt playing a game that requires either constant moving of the system or (in Uncharted’s case) perfect balance of the device (there’s nothing more annoying than trying to cross a tree over a giant chasm while you (the player) are being jolted around on the train).

The Vita is also quite an interesting handheld as it serves as a mobile device for playing a good number of PSN titles. I think this has been quite a good move for SONY after the Vita’s quite hefty dry spell of exclusive titles. A good number of PSN titles are much more suited to the handheld’s ‘journey to work’ or ‘break-time’ time allowances allowing the player to have quick bursts of play time without the constant worry of ‘will I be able to make it to a check point in time’ hanging over them. Clever Beans’ excellent When Vikings Attack has seen me through many lunch hours. It is simple, fun and extremely addictive all whist only requiring the use of one analogue stick and three face buttons. The games don’t need complicated controls for the sake of using the handheld’s features. The game just needs to be a fun game.

When Vikings Attack: A few buttons bring a whole lot of fun

I’m not saying that all games for the 3DS/Vita shouldn’t make use of touch screen/motion controls, but they should be used sparingly. A great game with touch/motion control is absolutely magical, but you always know when you are playing a game where it feels forced into the development process.

Moving on from the handhelds now and onto the WiiU. Being the owner of a WiiU (as well as the other consoles) I’ve hand to sit through quite a draught of games up until recently. Nintendo’s titles are coming up on the horizon (which is a very exciting prospect), but I must say th

e third party support has been hmmmm let’s say lacklustre.

Time and time again over the past few months I’ve seen the same headlines of games ‘skipping’ the console. This is usually either followed by the development team saying they ‘had the game running on the WiiU and were forced to pull out by the publishers’ or the better line of ‘we’d release it for the WiiU if you knew how we could use the Gamepad uniquely for our game’. The first line I can understand (although it doesn’t mean it’s not annoying still). Publishers see the numbers and don’t feel they’d make a return on the release. The second line however eludes me. I can’t understand how you can turn down releasing a quality title because you can’t think of a novelty to add into it. Sure the WiiU’s Gamepad screen is a major part of the console, but at the same time many people who own it might not also own a PS3/Xbox360. I’m pretty sure they’d gladly leap at the chance to play the game with or without some means of a Gamepad feature.

The WiiU is crying out for more games from third party developers while the big Nintendo games loom on the horizon

I’ve heard this line being used for the lack of a Borderlands 2 and a Tomb Raider WiiU release and the only thing I could think of whilst reading them was ‘surely just a map would do, if you really had to have something?’

I understand the demands of releasing some many different games on so many different formats these days. The PS3 and the Xbox 360 also have their wider markets of consumers already set up and waiting, but at the end of the day chances have to be taken to move games onto other systems at some point. I imagine/hope the new Xbox and PS4 will probably have a much smaller uncertainty period for cross release or where does the games industry go from here?

I choose you! Pokemon X/Y

In case you missed it yesterday the internet essentially exploded with news of a new generation of Pokemon games. Last week there was an announcement of an announcement taking place on 08/01/13 which led to wipe spread rumors and hopefull guessing as to what would be unleashed. From the video that was shown (below) I can safely say that my hopes were topped ten fold.

Last year’s Black/White 2 weren’t exactly a step forward for the series. Being the first direct generation sequel was one thing, but there wasn’t really anything hugely unique to the games. Not to say they weren’t enjoyable, as any Poke-maniac worth his/her salt grabbed hold of copies in order to get their fix of training monsters. I for one just felt that since the 3DS had been out for around two years, playing a DS Pokemon on the 3DS felt slightly redundent. I wanted to see what a 3DS Pokemon game could be like.

The trailer opens showing the new male trainer looking at himself in the mirror. The camera angle now looking at him from (roughly) the side as opposed to the usual ‘God viewing down’ angle of previous games. With the fresh new means of viewing the world around you there seems to be a stunning amount of extra detail to be seen. Large town settings, lush meadows/forests and a mansion backdrop fill the one and half minutes of game footage. Each backdrop looking crisp, new and definately something that the previous Nintendo handhelds wouldn’t be able to handle. Everything in this trailer fulfills the Poke-maniac’s dream of a 3D Pokemon albiet not on a home console.

As you can see from the comparison screenshot (left) the detail of the individual Pokemon sprites in battle have been greatly altered. In Black/White 2 Pokemon were still fairly loosely animated sprites that stood in place during battles only to twitch/shrug every so often. From the X/Y trailer the Pokemon on show seem to jump around, lunge at their foes and generally seem to throw off the shackles of inanimacy.

Speaking about the Pokemon in the trailer let’s move onto the starter Pokemon. They’re generally the point of topic amongst excited Poke-fans and for good reason. They’re the first critters you get your hands on in every Pokemon game and most likely they’ll be with you throughout your adventures. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing which adorable creature they’ll start off. Some down to appearance, others will always pick the same elemental type every generation. At the end of the day it’s which ever one you want to play hundreds of hours with.

As always the starter Pokemon fall into the Rock,Paper,Scissors elemental camps of Grass,Fire and Water and you can expect your rival to choose which ever is better against you (as is tradition). Anyway here are the pictures/names of the little chaps.

 

 

 

 

So far Fennekin seems to be the most popular out of the three, from what I’ve seen on social networks and forums. Hopefully the other two will become more popular when their respective evolutions are announced/shown.

I’ll be running frequent updates on all the Pokemon X/Y news I can gather. So keep your eyes on the site for further details on the run up to the game’s world-wide October release.

Metroid Blast

On Saturday I followed Nintendo’s Wii U UK tour to the Bullring in Birmingham. I was looking forward to re-playing some of the NintendoLand attractions that I’d tried at the EuroGamer expo (at the end of September), but I was greatly surprised. The Wii Us on the stands no longer contained mere demos, they were in-fact the full games. Now after two Months of going Wii U ‘cold turkey’ I’ve been watching many videos on YouTube of the extra attractions on offer in NintendoLand. The most drool inducing of these was of course Metroid Blast.

Basically Metroid Blast is the most in depth attraction in NintendoLand offering three different game modes to play (one co-op, two verses).

The co-op mode:

In this arena mode (for up to 5 players) the aim to defeat waves of enemies. The player with the gamepad takes control of Samus’s ship and (up to) four players with Wii remotes/nunchucks play as Samus style Miis. Controlling the ship with the gamepad is both fluid and easy using both thumbsticks (to elevate/descend, thruster left/right) as well as gyro controls (to turn and aim). The right trigger is used to fire and can either be tapped quickly or held to perform a charged shot. The early stages of the game are easy for the ship pilot as most enemies are strictly ground based. This is probably to give you a chance to get to grips with the controls before taking on harder foes.

The Samus Miis on the other hand are thrown into the thick of the action. Alien creatures crawl along the floor towards them quickly, but luckily their controls are very simple to learn. Walking around is done via the nunchucks thumbstick and aiming is a case of holding the A button and (carefully) turning your Wii remote towards the beasts. Firing is performed from either tapping B (for a quick shot) or (again) holding B for a charged shot. Samus pl

ayers can also grapple onto the ship or various markers from aiming and pressing B. Also certain areas allow you quick lifts to higher areas from being in morph ball mode, which is activated from holding down the Z button.

Trying both sides in this mode I can say that it’s great fun and simple to ‘pick up and play’. I look forward to seeing what the later stages are like and how hard the challenges/foes will be.

The verses modes:

You’ve got a choice if you want to duke it out with your friends. Do you want a land vs air game or an all out Samus deathmatch? The land vs air is a five player game using the gamepad and sees the ship trying to take on the four ground based characters. The ship is faster and nimble, but the Miis on the ground outnumber you and hide under cover from you. As far I could see from the options menu you could change the amount of starting lives and/or time limit to allow a longer match if you wanted. At any rate it seemed good fun and especially satisfying if when you’re on the ground team you can take down the ship.

The other verses game only allows four players using Wii remotes/nunchucks, but sets up a more level game of just shoot the other guy. I didn’t get chance to play this mode much, but it did seem a fun take on a shooter deathmatch. In all Metroid Blast shows great promise for both the Metroid franchise and what other shooters have in-store for the Wii U. I’m very excited for the end of the Month now to get back to playing it again.

Heroes of Ruin (3DS) – Review

The 3DS was blessed a few months back with the arrival of it’s first (original) RPG Heroes of Ruin. The game is your standard top down style RPG, but can the 3DS deliver a good experience?

Background:

The game’s story is much like many others of the genre. Basic, a means to an end. Some great mythical creature that once helped save and re-shape the world in times of choas has fallen under some form of spell/curse that has sent him to sleep. Since he doesn’t own an alarm clock many adventurers have saught to try and wake the creature from his slumber. This is where your character comes in. You’re one of four classes/races sent from your chosen point of origin to awaken the creature. Your ship gets caught up in both a storm and a monster attack and leaves you on a beach. Where your journey/the game begins.

Characters/Classes:

As with any RPG worth it’s salt HoR has four different classes to choose from. The class you pick is all about how you want to play the game. Do you want to be Elf character with magical powers, but with low defence? Or the a brutish power house that lets his fists do the talking? Me being me, I picked the Elf mage. She’s a fairly quick character with many skills (unlocked in her ‘skill tree’) that allow her to do great area damage and heal herself. The healing is very crucial as (is always the case) the magic user has a very low defence compared to the other classes and, until you find some of the better armour in the game she’ll be losing most of her HP if she gets hit by a monster. That being said HoR has an ace up it’s sleeve compared to some other handheld RPGS. You don’t have to ‘go it alone’. The game allows for four player parties either in local or online play. You can drop in and out of other players games and keep the loot and, more importantly the experience you’ve earned in their game. It certainly makes a welcome retreat from some other RPGs I’ve played on the DS where it’s you against the world.

Game experience:

I must say for a 3DS game HoR looks stunning. Sure the characters may look slightly jagged, but you consider all the smooth animations, all the equipment changes and some of the more hectic dungeon fights Nintendo’s handheld does an amazing job to keep everything going and look great doing it. Another thing that really shocked me was the fact there are character voices. Most games on the 3DS still have characters making mild noises, but in HoR your character will actually deliver a line every so often after defeating a monster. It’s not every character in the game verbally delivering their dialoge, but I certainly thought it was impressive how clearly my Elf shouted ‘Never mess with a sorcerer!’ after striking the final blow on a killer land shark.

The game plays very well with slight uses of the touch screen controls. Basically you can use the face buttons to use your assigned skills or just tap the symbols on the touch screen to cast your powers. I usually went for the button commands, but every so often it felt easier to quickly tap the screen (usually on the brink of death, needing to heal quickly). The touch screen is also used towards equiping items and choosing what stats and skills you want to raise when you level up. Although again you can use the buttons if you wish, but I did find it easier to just click arrows and skills instead of mashing the D-pag and pressing A.

Value for Money:

As with any good RPG HoR has a huge story line to run through with many side quests on the way. It depends how much you’re willing to put into it. You can run through the game once to finish the story, which will still take sometime. Or you could try to complete the endless amount of daily/weekly challenges posted up to earn special items. Run through the game with friends and strangers alike. Maybe even try out another character class after raising your original one to it’s peak. There are literally hundreds of hours worth of game time to be had if your lust for RPGs is up to the challenge.

Verdit:

Heroes of Ruin has set a very high standard for RPGs on the 3DS. It’s fun, fluid and shows that the handheld can run an extensive multiplayer game very efficiently. If you enjoy your top down dungeon crawlers and own a 3DS you’ll love every minute of this game.

Score: 4.8/5

 

Mario Tennis Open – review

The Mario sports titles are a constant lodger in the ‘house of Nintendo’. Every console has their fair share, with the plumber appearing in everything from golf to football. The tennis titles though have always been a firm favourite of mine (with Karting being the highest form of Mario genre jumping). I’ve tried the tennis games on every Nintendo console I’ve every owned and often found them to be one of the more ‘entertaining’ titles to play with friends. The 3DS title when announced brought me great joy, but with it announced along side other titles such as Animal Crossing and Luigi’s mansion that weren’t given release dates I feared I wouldn’t see the game for a long time.

The release date was announced, came around rather quickly and much to my delight I had the game purchased/secured into my handheld. Switching the game on I was amazed at the quality of the characters and courts. They are all stunningly animated and detailed with characters dancing around for taunts and throwing their arms into the air to serve and swing. Speaking of characters, there’s quite a wealth on offer including the usual suspects i.e. Mario, Bowser, Luigi and Yoshi etc. (From completing challenges you can unlock an extra four, but I won’t ruin the surprise). They all fall into a number of different classes that change how you play. For example Bowser is a ‘Power’ class and spends most of his time near the net hitting heavy lobs at the opponent, whereas Boo is a ‘tricky’ class and plays off extremely curved shots to throw off his challenger. Switching between classes isn’t too difficult as you’ll no doubt want to start each character off from the first cup. Which could probably be completed with your eyes closed it’s that easy. From there you move up in difficulty and once you’ve finished the four initial cups (as the same character) they’ll turn ‘pro’ giving you access to even harder challenges. I made note of having to be the same character just then as there are rewards given to you through completing certain objectives within the game, and a couple of them involve turning certain numbers of characters ‘pro’. These rewards although not necessary do add an ‘achievement/trophy’ factor to the whole game. Making you want to go back and earn the illusive costume pieces.

The tournament cups get you into Mario Tennis Open, but the mini game challenges will keep you coming back for more. These four different game types will test your every skill from keeping up relays to pin point accuracy. They range from a simple relay game against an AI opponent that the further you go, the more panels will vanish on the opponent’s side leaving you to carefully plan where to hit (and what shot type). A game of keep away against the AI while trying to stop the piranha plants from spitting ink on your screen. Ring shot teams you up with an AI to see how many rings you can hit through in a certain time, but the cream of the mini games is…. The Super Mario Bros mode. You basically play on a court overlooking a giant screen with the classic game playing on it. You have to hit the ball to beat enemies and collect coins as Mario runs towards the ‘end flag’. This mode is so full of classic Nintendo charm you won’t be able to stop playing it to try and get better scores.

Multiplayer wise, Mario Tennis Open offers some good fun. There’s the ability to play with and against friends across the world or in the same room as well as the streetpass features. Basically when you pass someone their Mii character is available for you to play a match against and also play ring shot with. There’s reward challenges for both so you’ll probably want to take your 3DS about to get a hold of some new Miis. The Miis themselves are also a great feature to the new generation Tennis game in that you can be a character in the game! You can also buy clothing/equipment from the store with in-game currency (earned through cup matches etc.) and also equip the reward gear (from the challenges). Each item of clothing/equipment has a different stat, so you can make your character play however you want him/her to. Although saying that there’s always the option of going for what looks nicer.

To sum up Mario Tennis Open has definitely filled the void of 3DS games (for the time being). Challenges, mini-games and multiplayer will probably keep you going for a very long time. The other advantage is that the game is very time limit friendly in that you can play for five minutes or hours on end and still have the same fun of the sport.

Score: 4.2/5 – Congrats Mario! You’ve served up another ACE!