Short, apart from the absolutely NAILS final level (with surprise boss!), but utterly glorious. It’s something different to any other platformer I’ve played, yet feels like a load of old 16 bit games like Metal Slug and stuff. Fantastic, and well worth £5.40 of anyone’s money.
Yes, the original Super Mario Bros. Yes, I’ve completed it before. Lots of times. But I’d not completed it for a while (how did it get harder?!) and certainly not on the 3DS, where I’d barely played it. So today I completed it. And very lovely, and hard, it was too.
This is not the time or the place to bring up that I said I wasn’t going to buy it. Nor is it the time or the place to say I played and completed the 3DS version, which was pants, already. All it is sufficient to do is say this: Mistakes Were Made. Let us begin with how rubbish the 360 version is. Let us say how many times I ran through walls or fell through the floor and died. This many …
And it was AWESOME. Many people complained that it wasn’t a proper follow up to Mario 64, with big open worlds and a world “hub”. Some people complained that it wasn’t a proper 2D Mario game, like New Super Mario Bros. And some people complained it was basically just Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3D. Pff to them all. They’ve clearly not played it, for if they had, they’d realise it doesn’t matter. It’s a new Mario game, close enough …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Well, I wasn’t expecting that. 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 …
