Goldeneye 007 (it’s important to add the 007, apparently) was another of those games I picked up cheap from Morrisons just after Christmas. I’m not sure why I chose to play it, but I did. And it was surprisingly good. Was? Yes, because I completed it. It was quite easy and short.
Bad points first, then. The default controls (with the remote and nunchuck) are rubbish. Thankfully, I have a swanky black Classic Controller Pro, and that works much better. Secondly, Pierce Brosnan has been replaced with cardboard actor and presence-less tool Daniel Craig. He’s so useless I found myself siding with Trevelyan, and was actually a bit disappointed that I had to kill him. Oh well. Finally, the use of the smart phone to hack and photograph was woefully underutilised and could have added so much more to the game.
Thankfully, none of that was really very important, and I enjoyed pretty much the whole game despite them. Even the took-me-by-surprise QTE bits, which I really had no idea were in the game. The action was fast, I didn’t get any slowdown, and some of the levels looked utterly fantastic. Juggling soldiers with the rocket launcher on one of the final levels was amusing too. I completely forgot it was “only” a Wii game. Definitely worth the fiver I paid for it, and probably worth several times that, in fact.
I haven’t played multiplayer (partly as I know it’ll be full of cheats – all Wii games are online), but I expect it would be ACE, simply so you can shoot Daniel Craig.
Back in the day, I completed this on the GBA. But that was about 8 years ago, and it is such a good game that I really got into playing it again when I got it for free on my 3DS.
It is still excellent, and still the best Wario Ware title. Not that the others were bad – just that this one is the most pure. Or something.
Completed it today, and found it far easier than I remember it being on the GBA. I suspect that’s because part of me remembered what I was supposed to do in each game. Or I’m just a better gamer now (not true).
You know how I said it was a bit meh to start with? Well, it got a lot better and I was really getting into it. And then the final level happened. What follows is spoilers, so you may wish to look away.
The last section of the game takes place in Central Park. Which has mostly been raised into the sky. As you walk (or run) through it, bits crumble away so paths are cut off and stuff. Except that barely affected anything. There are baddies to kill, or stealth past and ignore. Then you get to a section where there are stealthed baddies, except I had a suit upgrade that negated that, and they’re stupidly easy to kill – any that got close were punched in the face, and most got stuck trying to jump up to the platform I was on so were easy pickings for my gun. I don’t think I took any damage at all.
Finally, a tunnel opens. “The final boss?” I thought, “Or a huge fight at least?”. No. Nothing. Game completed.
Like they forgot to include a whole level or something. Damp squib. Oh well.
My first completed game of 2012! Unlike Super Street Fighter IV, I didn’t class this as complete by beating the final boss as every character. Instead, I’m basing it on completing Story Mode (or Chronicle, as it’s called).
In this mode, you play through the plot of all the Dead or Alive series, one after another. Well, I say plot – it’s all a bit bizarre and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mind you, I’ve never really played Dead or Alive much previously so perhaps that’s why.
The 3DS game is fantastic. It looks amazing, and the fighting is fluid and as complex as you’d expect from “big console” beat ‘em ups. Lots of moves, combos, special moves, and techniques (blocks, throws, counters, etc.). I really enjoyed it. And not just because of the boobs and knickers. If I’d have known it was this good, I’ve have paid more for it and bought it earlier, but the £7 from Morrisons price? Bargain.
Despite enjoying the original Scribblenauts, I didn’t buy the sequel (until I saw it for a fiver in Morrisons this week) for several reasons. Firstly, the later levels on the original were too hard. Not hard to find the items you have to draw, but more hard because of the fiddly controls (mainly moving Maxwell) and trying not to knock stuff over or position things slightly wrongly. There were also a lot of platforming sections, or “peril” situations where it was all too easy for you or someone else to die inadvertently, even when you were doing things “the right way”. Not to mention that 90% of the levels could be completed using the same 4 or 5 items – usually a rope, a ladder, a helicopter, a gun and/or some meat.
This fixes pretty much all of that. The levels are now more about creating the right items, rather than how or where you use them, and there is very little in the way of platforming. Since you now have adjectives to work with as well as nouns, there’s a lot more variety too, and I spent a good half an hour or more just on the title screen, creating “giant scary radioactive zombie dinosaur” and “tiny evil dead pink cat” and stuff like that.
It’s easier than the original (although I’ve completed it there are still a third or more levels left to do so it might get harder), but importantly it was more fun, and varied, and clever and funny. The fact you can choose to now control Maxwell directly with the d-pad rather than tap-to-move improves things exponentially too.
I got this for Christmas, and it’s the main thing I’ve been playing then and all this week. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the best Mario Kart game yet. It doesn’t have the silly gimmicks of the GC and Wii games. It’s graphically better than all previous titles. It doesn’t have the big empty tracks of the N64 version. And it has a return of the coins from the GBA and SNES games. It also seems that the powerups are distributed a bit more fairly too, especially with regards to the blue shell – it’s rare to get more than a couple each race now, rather than get hit over and over and over by them.
Although I’ve played online a bit (which was fun and worked really well), I’ve mainly been playing offline, completing the Grand Prix races. Today, I won the final 150cc cup, having done 50 and 100cc previously. It seemed a bit easier than the last Mario Kart games (the Wii one) I played too, but that could be due to me carefully choosing kart customisations.
Fantastic game, and will get a lot more play from me still even though it’s “over”.
Another game series ruined by Sega. The first two Super Monkey Ball games were awesome, but they slid down to this – an overly simplified, challenge-free entry into the series. Levels have barriers or “grooves” so you don’t die. There are no tricky turns, no jumps, no difficult levels at all. In fact, I found myself finishing most worlds with more lives than I started with.
Still, it was fun. Ish. Shame it didn’t carry on with another 8 worlds that were harder, as without them it was just too short and easy.
14 hours in, and the main 198 levels are, finally, completed! There were some real head scratchers in the last few sets of puzzles, but thankfully my “tactic” of leaving a level I was finding impossible, then returning the next day, seemed to help.
Of course, there are now the 50 or so bonus levels, and untold user-made levels to work through, so it isn’t the end really.
Fantastic game, well worth the £5.40 or whatever it was, and far more fun and much longer and more playable than Sonic sodding Generations.
I was expecting to be disappointed. After all, how could I be anything but? Although if you’re set up to be disappointed and your low expectations are pretty much met, how could you actually be disappointed? Deep.
Things started out surprisingly well. Classic Sonic’s first few levels were pretty good, actually, even if they did still feel like the physics were on the wonk. Even Modern Sonic’s levels were bearable for a while, but as the game progressed things just got worse and worse. I think the breaking point was when the game proudly punched me in the face with the line “Classic Sonic can now use Homing Attack!”. Sigh.
Things were at their worst for the re-rendition of Sonic Colours, particularly for Classic Sonic, with the level being full of bottomless death pits and required homing attack-to-grab sections where the moved failed to work properly half the time.
And the end boss? Not epic like in other Sonic games – just tedious. I did have all the Chaos Emeralds though (the special stages are not only endlessly repeatable whenever you want, but laughably simple) so had Super Sonic(s) for the fight. If that makes a difference.
Sure, there have been far worse Sonic games (pretty much all of them since Sonic Adventure 2, bar the GBA and DS titles), but that isn’t really a positive thing given how bad all the others were. Poor.
There was an update to the 3DS last week which added a few features (like 3D video recording and marginally better friend list management), and as part of it there was a new Streetpass Quest II “mission” for the Mii Plaza. Hurrah!
Unfortunately, you can’t do it unless you’ve completed the first Quest twice, when I’d only done it once. So, armed with 300 play coins, I set about doing it again. Surprisingly, I managed it with “just” 240 coins used, mainly because I had a White Cat exactly when I needed one, whereas before I wasted 100+ coins waiting for one. I also had a decent strategy too, using a Purple Cat (when I had one) first to poison the enemies the maximum number of times (one for each Hero), then Orange next (if possible) to add an extra attack to each of the remaining 8 Heroes, and finally using magic on any armoured ghost when my Heroes were only Level 1.
I also got lucky with some Green magic attacks – managed to wipe a load of HP off some of the ghosts (including the final one!) while they were napping. Ace.
I mean, I was expecting to finish it, of course – but I didn’t expect to play though Sequence 5 and get to the end and have “Sequence 9 Complete” come up. Turns out I was much further through the game than I thought. Since I’ve spent about 80% of the game “off-story”, that means the main story was very, very short compared to Assassin’s Creed 2. I don’t really mind as there’s been plenty to do (and I still have lots of Lairs and Machines and some of the DLC left as well), and I’ve spent well over 20 hours on it so far, but if I were just going for the main plot I’d be a bit disappointed, I think.
Still, it was fantastic. Although I hated the end bit with Desmond. It was like that bit in Prey that I didn’t want to play all over again. Tch.
Jumped straight back in and continued sending my recruits on missions and buying up property. Aces.
I don’t know whether or not the final episode was shorter, or if the puzzles were just more obvious, but it didn’t seem to take me very long to save Hell (and by extension, the world). A very Soda Poppers (sorry, %$&* Poppers) heavy episode, but that was OK given the outcome. Is that spoilers?
I might give Sam and Max a bit of a break now though, until the next series is found cheap somewhere!
To look at this game one way, it’s just the NES game “Kirby’s Adventure” on the 3DS.
To look at this another way, it’s OH YES! “KIRBY’S ADVENTURE”! NEEEED!
Yes, I have played it many times. And yes, I have completed it almost as many times. And yes, this is just that game again. But! It’s in 3D!
Of course, it’s not in proper 3D. It’s just the fore- and background layers have been peeled in and out, so the levels have depth. And that’s it – it’s just the same otherwise. Only somehow, it feels better. Maybe it’s the super-sharp graphics, which now appear like those fancy HD remakes with redrawn hi-res graphics you get on the Xbox 360. Or maybe it’s the smoothness, with no janky NES-o-vision scrolling and busy-screen slowdown. Maybe. Whatever it is, it looks and plays fantastically, and I loved it from start to two-and-a-half-hours-later finished. Every bit of it. As always.
I still maintain Kirby’s Adventure is one of the best platformers ever made. FACT.
By far the best of the series. Unless Episode 5 beats it, of course. Loved Superball again, mainly because he’s so deadpan. The mariachis were all sorts of amaze, and the Max/Ms Bosco “relationship” was fantastic. The baby making machine, and the various possible Bosco outcomes awesome too.
And, best of all, it relied upon proper, logical puzzles instead of try everything on everything puzzles. Yay!
Thankfully, this was much better than the previous episode. By several orders of magnitude. The puzzles were far better this time around, and Jurgen is amazing. He was just like you’d expect a gay emo Euro-vampire to be.
I’m starting to notice, however, that every task in every game seems to be made up of three mini-tasks. I’m not the only one to notice, either – even Max makes a comment about it!
Nice to see Superball back too. He was one of my favourite characters from the first “series”. Way better than the irritating Soda Poppers, who – thankfully – haven’t been spotted since Episode 1 of this series. Phew!
Made a start on Episode 4 after 3 too, and it’s been even better so far!
Unfortunately, I found it a bit of a slog. I know the puzzles on previous Sam & Max games have been more than a little, uh, obtuse, but I was finding this one even more illogical than before and it took ages to get through. It also wasn’t as funny as other episodes, and although I spent longer on it due to not knowing what to do, it was actually a lot shorter in terms of number of things that needed doing. If that makes sense.
I don’t buy many XBLIGs (that’s Xbox Live Indie Games, in case you didnae know). However, this one called out to me. The main selling point? A review that stated that the entire game was DLC. “You can’t even move left, or jump, or have sound effects, until you’ve bought the DLC”.
Of course, the DLC is bought using in-game money, which you collect – platform game style – to progress. There’s some swording and (with the right DLC) some shooting, but the aim is basically to collect coins, buy expansion packs to let you progress to other areas of the map in a Metroid type way, in order to collect more coins. And so on.
It’s short, it’s easy (I don’t think you can die), and it’s very funny. The DLC in-jokes (it has horse armour) and general gaming trope mickey-taking (“Awardments”! Zombies!) are great.
That’s probably the best game I’ve played in quite a long time. So good, in fact, I’m a bit disappointed it’s all over. Well, it isn’t quite, as I immediately went back in a mopped up some achievements, bagged the last few glyphs, and started the trawl for feathers.
Luckily, being behind the times with the series, I can now pick up the follow-up, Brotherhood, for peanuts as the game after that, Revelations, is out very soon. Excellent! Sometimes living a little in the past is good
The end of the game was brilliant, but the final boss fight was unexpectedly short and easy. Very, very easy, in fact. The guy at the end of the first game was really difficult, but this guy? If you hold block you can’t get hit. At all. Oh well. At least it wasn’t frustrating.
This was up on the 3DS VC this week. I wasn’t going to get it, as I had other things to be playing, but when I hopped on to the eShop to see what else was newly available, I suddenly got the urge to play it.
An hour and a half later, I’d finished it.
I actually really enjoyed it. Sure, it’s a bit simple. Yes, it’s pretty easy (especially the bosses – if you’ve got a dinosaur to ride when you get there, they’re defeated in seconds). Indeed, it is quite repetitive with each island having a similar looking set of levels to each previous one. But I liked it.
One of the major differences between the Adventure Island games and other platformers is that you have a very strict time limit, which you can delay by collecting fruit. You can’t explore much or you’ll run out of time, so I didn’t. However, I wish I had done some more exploring, as I found a secret warp on World 6 (of 8 ) and realised I’d probably missed loads of secrets. Tch.
I’ve been playing this here and there since it came out. It’s OK, but not really a Zelda game. I mean, it has Link in it, and it has some Zelda-y puzzles, but it isn’t really Zelda. That said, I enjoyed it. Even more so once I realised I wasn’t stuck on a level because you can actually throw the other Link over the lava. Tch.
Anyway. Killed the end boss, got the credits and the minigame to collect many rupees, aaand done!
That’s right – to celebrate having completed the wonderful Catrap, I’ve visually tinkered with a shot of some of the game ending sequence. An exciting bit, I’ll sure you’ll agree. Yes.
Some of the final levels, especially the “??” level unlocked once the previous 99 were complete, were a right pain. Many were of the form of huge swathes of blocks and baddies, where removing them in the right order so others drop down in certain ways, which I find difficult as it’s hard to visualise how the level will look three, four, or 27 moves in the future. Levels where you generally just have to find a way of reaching a couple of baddies, or getting a block from A to B are far easier to plan.
But I managed it eventually, and verily, the game was won. My reward? I got to play the new Sonic Generations demo on the 360. And that is a story for another post.
Now, explain to me why Nnooo hasn’t sold eleventybrazillian copies. Why? Because nobody knows how to access WiiWare stuff on the Wii. Or even that WiiWare stuff exists. Or that their Wii can even connect to the internet. Or even that their Wii can play games that are not Wii Sports and Mario Kart.
Which is a huge shame, because games like escapeVektor exist and are AWESOME, yet only seven people know about them. Of this I tell you: Go and connect your Wii up to the internet, open up the Wii Shop, and buy escapeVektor with just 500 Wii points. JUST 500. That’s what, £3.60 or something. You’ve probably lost more than that down the back of the sofa or swallowed it as a child.
And why should you do this thing? I already told you – because it is AWESOME.
I got it. And completed it. And it was (I think I may have mentioned) AWESOME. It plays a bit like Painter, only with switches and different sorts of baddies (ones that follow a set path, others that hunt you down). Filling in “cells” (rectangles where you’ve covered all the lines that make it up) gives you bombs that can wipe out baddies that comes close to you, and filling in lines gives you a speed boost. Simple controls, simple concept, excellently designed levels, and really, really good.
I’ve still a few levels left (there’s a set of bonus levels you can unlock for owning other Nnooo titles – I’ve got Pop), some of which were skipped as I found alternative routes through the “map”, so there’s a bit more for me to do yet.
Well yeah y’see I actually completed this a while ago, and not today. Because today I played it to complete what I thought was the final game mode I’d unlocked, only to find that I’d not just played that mode already, but completed it as well.
So it was a somewhat short play session consisting of a quick load of each mode just to make sure I’d done them all, and I had. So, er, hurrah!
Then I played Kirby 64 for a bit instead. It’s not that good.
It took me a while to actually find the final remaining zone (Space Zone) as it was somewhat hidden via an exit from another level, but it was soon completed and Wario’s Castle infiltrated.
And Wario was defeated with ease. All the bosses were pretty easy, actually, and very few of the levels gave much of a challenge. Quite different to Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World, which this is a sort of portable analogue of.
It was great though, despite the easiness and slowdown. Quite impressive for a Game Boy title.
That’s it! That’s the entire set of New Vegas stories completed. Sure, there are still some sidequests, and yeah, I have a few unvisited markers on my Mojave map, but that’s pretty much the game sewn up. Aces.
I was really close to the end of Lonesome Road, needing only to work through a few rooms and then meet up with the other courier. I think perhaps fighting him was on the cards, but I talked him round and now we’re friends. Or something. There was a big fight with a load of Marked Men instead, though, and then it was over.
Of course, I still have a few warheads to find and explode, but not as many as I was expecting to have left due to the huge number just lying around the “temple” at the end. And I’ve all the Gun Runners achievements (bar one) to mop up as well, so it’s not like I’m “done” yet.
My first completed game of 2012! Unlike Super Street Fighter IV, I didn’t class this as complete by beating the final boss as every character. Instead, I’m basing it on completing Story Mode (or Chronicle, as it’s called).
