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Tag: nintendo

  • Starship Defense [aka Starship Patrol](Q-Games, 2009)

    Starship Defense [aka Starship Patrol](Q-Games, 2009)

    Developed/Published by: Q-Games / Nintendo
    Released: December 18th, 2009
    Completed: 15th April, 2015
    Completion: Finished all 30 levels, 16 perfects.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    I feel like I’ve talked about tower defence here already, but apparently I haven’t. Must have been on Twitter, then.

    Here’s my thoughts on tower defence games: I have a “they’re hypnotically… ok”/hate relationship with them? They’ve got a loop that is undeniably compelling—build a thing, watch it perform, did it work? Repeat—but they also (often) have a problem that comes with that: if you don’t know what the thing you are building is supposed to do exactly, you’re going to be annoyed as you watch it fail. Also because the games tend to have multiple waves, unless you’ve been building for future waves—in a way that will feel sub-optimal for earlier waves, likely—you can get wiped out towards the end in a way that can feel somewhat annoying.

    These problems are definitely apparent in Starship Defense! I picked it up in a “god, apparently I have all these Nintendo points on my DSi” splurge right before Club Nintendo ended in the hope it would raise some more Club Nintendo points (I think it got me 10) and because I’ve generally been interested in Q-Games’ output on Nintendo systems. I had managed to forget totally that I hated Pixeljunk Monsters (their earlier tower defence) and didn’t really like Trajectile (or at least, I tired of it quickly.)

    Anyway. Starship Defense looks nice—it’s almost a pencil-on-paper look, but not quite. Maybe they just thought it was too dull when they did it with black space. And I like the feel of the top screen being a Galaxian-like formation of baddies. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t crazy about the tower defence. You only get a glimpse of the route enemies will take right before they start to take it, and it makes planning for future waves difficult. Enemies are split up into two kinds, normal and stealth (stealth being the “flying” enemies you usually get in other tower defence games) and there are only three weapons that can attack stealth enemies, only one of which is cheap/immediately available, and it’s weak and unsuited for attacking other enemies, so you need to know exactly when and how to combat the stealth waves.

    (This is problematic, because there are several special, expensive weapons you will never use because it only makes sense to use the one most powerful weapon that damages both stealth and normal enemies. I beat the game, generally, using only 4 of 8 weapons.)

    I suppose tower defence games are for people who want to replay levels to get a perfect—in some respects my criticism of Starship Defense is personal. I’d much rather be playing a game where I’d be able to change tactics on the fly or have enough information, in advance, that mistakes would be my fault rather than the fault of ignorance. I don’t find it fun to replay a level where I’ve “solved” a bunch of waves to get to the wave where I should have done something different, and the game even discourages tactics changes (destroying a weapon costs energy, so you can’t switch a weapon’s position without, generally, paying double.)

    Starship Defense still offers that pride, however. Pride of having a really nice, weapon-loaded ship, and seeing it get to work. And it’s only got 30 levels, so it’s a nice “hit” of tower defence if that’s what you’re looking for?

    Will I ever play it again? Nah. And I hope this reminds me not to play a tower defence game again unless it does something really, really different.

    Final Thought: It’s slightly disappointing this didn’t take more cues from vertically scrolling shooters, with enemies flying in Galaxian formations, or the player placing fighters that can only move left/right in rows? There’s probably something there!

  • Wario Ware D.I.Y. (Nintendo, 2009)

    Wario Ware D.I.Y. (Nintendo, 2009)

    Developed/Published by: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo SPD / Nintendo
    Released: 29th April, 2009
    Completed: 10th February, 2015
    Completion: Finished all the Nintendo-developed Wario Ware games and read all the 4-koma!
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    Aye, so… I actually started this in, like… March 2014, because that was around when Nintendo had announced it was closing the servers for a whole raft of Nintendo DS and Wii games, and this was one of them. I was all “oh no! I’ll need to download all of those good levels people made and save them to my cart!”

    However, turns out that while my Nintendo DSi will connect to my router, a lot of these (all?) of the Nintendo DS games don’t actually use the on-system wi-fi connection (or something?) and so couldn’t actually connect to my modern router. I could have faffed about with my router settings, but I wasn’t actually bothered, so I forgot all about it after finishing Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (which I finished, ok, shut up.)

    Without the ability to upload levels I’ll be honest I didn’t actually bother my arse trying out the level creation stuff, and anyway that’s my actual job so fuck that for a game of soldiers. And without the ability to download levels, I was stuck with the pre-installed ones, which, much like Wario Ware: Touched! all use the touch screen, so they’re crap compared to the brilliant ones on the GBA. Totally forgettable and dull.

    But at least there aren’t too many of them! The best thing about Wario Ware D.I.Y. is, however, the weird inclusion of loads of 4-koma. If you’re not familiar, 4-koma are a very Japanese style of four panel comic strip, usually super absurdist and often quite wordy compared to your usual, western style of three panel comic strip. These are great. They’re all super funny and you have to unlock them by playing Wario Ware D.I.Y. every day, which sucks, but it’s something to return to, which I did every time I remembered, which, apparently, was rarely, because it nearly took me a full year.

    However, the 150-odd 4-koma were worth every penny, even if nothing else about this is particularly good post server shut down.

    Will I ever play it again? Nope.

    Final Thought: A brand-new game idea!

  • Tomodachi Life (Nintendo, 2013)

    Tomodachi Life (Nintendo, 2013)

    Developed/Published by: Nintendo SPD / Nintendo
    Released: 18th April, 2013
    Completed: 3rd February, 2015
    Completion: Unlocked all the places on the island, I guess?
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    I went home for Christmas this year—as I am wont to do—and before I went a read a funny tweet by my, yours and everybody’s beardy pal Brandon “tha B-dogg” Boyer, where he said “I’ve been playing Tomodachi Life for 7 months & no one has ever even expressed vague interest in dating my Mii and it’s incomprehensibly sad.”

    Now, I’m sure most of you took from that “ha ha, his Mii is such a sad bastard” and went on with your life, but I went “Christ, he’s played it for seven months? I should really give this a go after all.”

    It’s weird, because I was so, so, so excited for Tomodachi Life when it was announced. If you watch the early trailers, it seems so incredibly full of potential. Like it’s just going to be super, super hilarious and fun to play.

    But then people I knew got it, and they were all like “no, this is quite boring, actually” and put it down after a few hours, maybe a few days. So I just didn’t bother to try it.

    And now I have! Trading it off with Fantasy Life in the ol’ 3DS slot. I dutifully checked in on my wee Mii society, every day… except I realised a couple of days ago that I haven’t even looked at it in nearly a month. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t playing it. It was so uncompelling that my brain just, more or less, erased Tomodachi Life from my memory.

    So I guess I have to say I’m done with it.

    “But wait!” you ask. “What is Tomodachi Life?”

    Well, my confused friend, it’s a video game where you put all your wee pals on an island, with personalities that sorta correspond to the Myers-Brigg types (I think) that you sort out yourself, and wait for the magic to happen.

    What this means is that you click on the apartment they live in, and they say something like “I’m hungry” so you give them a crème brûlée. Or they tell you someone they want to be friends with, or they’re asleep, or they give you something like a bath set so you can watch them bathe (uhh…) You can also decorate their apartments and dress them up, that sort of thing. But mostly, the game is “click on apartment, resolve need, click on other apartment.”

    Occasionally they do stuff! like have funny dreams, or interact with other Miis in a silly way. It’s cute, but in that way where you go “heh.”

    The problem with Tomodachi Life is that the interaction with the game is so stupefyingly repetitive and uninteresting. It led me into this long thought on why EA had never just straight up done a Sims game with Miis, which then reminded me they’d actually done a game called “MySims” which was Mii-like but not actually Miis. What’s up with that? I’m going to say it’s corporate hubris, because when I think of Tomodachi Life but instead it’s, you know, a basic “The Sims” with Miis, and it’s got a lot of the wackiness of this, it seems like a real winner. Like something that would actually be good. Stupid corporate hubris!

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually glad that they went out of their way to localise this game. But it seems like there’s something cultural about this game that doesn’t translate, and it’s the (likely stereotypical) idea that Japanese people aren’t very open in public, so seeing friends and loved ones acting crazy is really, really wild. I feel like I remember someone describing the game as analogous to a Japanese variety show, and that sounds spot on. It doesn’t translate because seeing people do strange things just isn’t enough—as in The Sims series, we need context to make it really hit home, as being openly silly isn’t transgressive or shocking in the same way.

    Anyway, Tomodachi Life is bad, and I don’t know why tha B-dogg has played it for seven months. It’s joining that ignoble list of games where I’m straight up deleting my saves. Sorry, wee dopplegangers of my pals.

    Will I ever play it again? No, but I still hope they make (and localise) sequels.

    Final Thought: tha B-dogg, in my game, successfully dated Nikki, the wee lassie who used to be the mascot for Swapnote. So he can have some success… with fictional characters, in someone else’s copy of the game.

  • Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Good-Feel, 2010)

    Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Good-Feel, 2010)

    Developed/Published by: Good-Feel / Nintendo
    Released: October 17th, 2010
    Completed: 28th November, 2014
    Completion: Finished all the levels. Didn’t 100% collect everything or anything, but close (cannae be arsed to boot it up to find out exactly how close.)
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    Do you like Starbucks? I really don’t. In fact, I go absolutely out of my way to not use Starbucks. I hate it when I’m at, say, an airport, and the only way I can get a hot tea is from a Starbucks. I mean, look at that, I’ve written “hot tea” there because I’ve gotten so used to being beaten down by Americanisations from places like Starbucks that I don’t just say tea. Thing is, it’s not like Starbucks is that bad. It’s bland, and competent. It’s really, when you get down to it, not offensive.

    You might want to guess here where I’m going with this, but Kirby’s Epic Yarn isn’t Starbucks. No. What Kirby’s Epic Yarn is like is… well, imagine a person who loves Starbucks, right? They love it. And so they decides to start their own coffee place, very much based on Starbucks. Their coffee shop attempts to have Starbucks-style coffee, Starbucks-style music, Starbucks-style decor. But, by virtue of being made from the sweat of an individual, it doesn’t come out quite that way. The coffee is a little more interesting. The music is some interesting jazz. And the decor has a really cute, handmade feel. This person hasn’t got anything wrong, they’ve just made something much more personal, more “real” despite basing their design on something bland, corporate and forgettable.

    It’s the kind of place that you’d go—hell, I’d go—and I wouldn’t hate it, you know? I’d appreciate the cute touches that they put in. The cushions, or the art. I’d find myself having a perfectly pleasant time there. None of that edge of irritation that Starbucks engenders—where it’s so bland, you feel annoyed that it’s been calculated to not annoy you.

    But I’d, without really thinking about it, not bother to go back.

    That’s Kirby’s Epic Yarn. It’s cute, full of lovely touches. Genuinely sweet, really. But the core… well it’s just another forgettable 2D platformer, isn’t it? If you’re going to put all this effort into making something lovely, please don’t base it on a Starbucks.

    Will I ever play it again? Nope. And this goes on the sad pile of “Nintendo games I won’t keep” which is rare indeed.

    Final Thought: I honestly thought Jeff and Casey Time had taken music from this game. I was pretty sure they’d lifted one of the tracks… maybe Lava Landing? (which is amazing, give it a listen!) but it turns out that it’s an original piece of music, The Infinite Tea Time. Also amazing but really nothing like Lava Landing. This is therefore proof I, and you, should watch Jeff and Casey Time again because it was really good and it’s clearly been too long.

  • Steel Diver (Nintendo, 2011)

    Steel Diver (Nintendo, 2011)

    Developed/Published by: Nintendo EAD Group No. 5, Vitei / Nintendo
    Released: March 27th, 2011
    Completed: 2nd November, 2014
    Completion: I finished all the missions. Didn’t bother my arse with the time trials or anything like that.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    I’ve taken a while to write this one because I felt that if I sat down and wrote my little… well, whatever it is these are, reviews, or journal entries or summat, right away, I’d just be going fucking mental here. Because this is one of those stupid games where it’s a total breeze right until the end, where the final boss is just totally stupidly hard for no particularly good reason, and you just end up wanting to snap your god damn 3DS in half, hold it tightly in one hand, fly to Japan and then shove it right up the arse of the director of the game (in this case, Takaya Imamura.) Now, I don’t know where Takaya Imamura lives exactly and he apparently produced F-Zero GX, so that would, probably, be a bit of an overreaction. However, I’ve noticed that Nintendo really, really love stupid difficulty spikes in their second/third tier releases (Super Princess Peach, for some reason, really sticks out in my mind… it was years ago I played it and I still want to fly to Japan and shove a broken DS up at least one arse) so I suppose I should be used to this by now.

    Anyway. Steel Diver was a weird launch game for the 3DS that no one liked, in fact, no one liked it so much that I bought it for three dollars. Three dollars sealed. Seemed like a bargain, I thought. After all, on the back of the box it looks like a cute little sub sim thing! I think I bought Pilotwings Resort for about a fiver at the same time and that was delightful, just delightful, so how bad could Steel Diver be? (Let’s forget about the boss, for a minute.)

    It’s bad. It’s bad because it, in classic “we have this input form, we have to use it” style that you’d have thought Nintendo would have been over by the time of the 3DS, you control it totally through the touch screen. Which turns a submarine sim into a game that’s entirely about choosing to either move the slider that’s “depth” or the one that’s “speed.”

    Sometimes you have to fire torpedoes! But mostly you’re trying to make sure you don’t bump into things by going “erk, going to fast, have to slow down” or “crap, the sea floor is going up, have to raise depth.”

    It’s stupefying. Brilliantly, the game is designed so you never actually have to fight enemy subs (just go past them, there’s no reason to fight them, no score or points or anything) which I guess is “realistic” but sure does make them seem pointless. And when you do have to get into a fight, using the stylus to push some sliders slowly and fire torpedoes… it’s like using the 3DS stylus to get good bits of jam out of a mouldy jam jar. A tedious and lamentable thing to find yourself doing.

    Honestly. Steel Diver isn’t a game super worthy of rage. Because you shouldn’t be getting to the point where you’re fighting the last boss. Just about as far as you should go is opening it to get the Club Nintendo code and then closing the box again forever.

    Will I ever play it again? ha ha ha ha [begins to choke on own mirth]

    Final Thought: Y’all ever play that Radar Mission? Steel Diver is someone at Nintendo going “hey remember we released a sub game for the Game Boy when it came out? That was a good idea, lets do it again.” Steel Diver even comes with a weird, off-brand Battleships-a-like that you can play with another 3DS owner, but you don’t want to do that because it’s the equivalent of asking a friend if they want to sit in a ditch and eat bogies with you.

  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Intelligent Systems, 2008)

    Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Intelligent Systems, 2008)

    Developed/Published by: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo SPD Group No.2 / Nintendo
    Released: February 16, 2009
    Completed: 10th March, 2014
    Completion: Got all the way to the final level, gave up and watched the ending on YouTube.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    It happened! Yes, this is a rare occurrence—admittedly one that’s more usual with Japanese games of an RPG or strategy persuasion, of which this is all of the above—but here’s a game where I got to the end boss, clunked against it without any acceptable way to progress, said “fuck that” to reloading an earlier save and grinding or some other tiresome solution, and just watched the ending on YouTube.

    And I was so proud of that time I toughed it out and beat the end boss of the original Persona, too.

    It’s sort of a shame! Because there was this… well, I’ll be honest and admit it was brief, but there was this brief period where I was sort of into Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. In fact I was thinking “heck, everyone likes Fire Emblem: Awakening so much, and this is actually ok, so I’ll probably play it some time.”

    Now? I doubt that. Because nothing dredges up all the mistakes a game has made than a bad ending. So let’s discussing!

    Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is the DS remake of the very first game in the Fire Emblem series, which made it feel like a pretty good place to start (especially as it’s the introduction of Marth, the first Fire Emblem character that was seen outside of Japan, albeit in a Smash Bros. title.) Unfortunately, it’s obvious that as a Famicom game originally, the first Fire Emblem was pretty basic. All the things it seems people mention about this series, like characters talking to each other in missions, are missing here. That of course shouldn’t be a problem, because the strategy core—very similar to Advance Wars—should be what you care about, right?

    Hmm. There’s a quirk! And if you’re familiar with the series, you know it already: if a character dies, they die forever. This is clearly intended to give weight to the strategy, but sadly, it doesn’t really work. You aren’t going to care about the characters, you care about how much you’ve levelled them up, and while the game does feed you new characters quite consistently—obviously to shore up your forces—you are never going to want to use them because they are never going to be better than a character that’s been with you for a while.

    So what this means is that you’re going to grind up your characters to get them to the point where it’s going to be hard for them to die (to the point, likely, where the Advance Wars-style “lances beat swords, etc.” rock paper scissors aspect become totally pointless.) Which means doing what I did, which is carefully sending your favourite characters into the arenas that are found on certain levels, and repeatedly fighting until they’re over-levelled.

    It’s boring! But, and here’s the but: once I’d over-levelled them just enough, the game became pleasantly strategic. It wasn’t an Advance Wars, no (I thought the graphics were ok, too, then I saw how beautiful the GBA Fire Emblem animations were recently and that took the shine off a bit) but it was fine. I can’t begin to imagine how unpleasantly hard the game would be if you were letting units die noble deaths or not abusing the arena, however.

    Or maybe I can! If Marth dies it’s game over, so I hadn’t been using him on the front lines, and he was woefully under-levelled by the end. The final boss? Well… The only person who can use the ultimate boss-killing weapon is Marth. Who would die after one hit, while my other once over-levelled heroes were barely able to keep on top of the constant reinforcements. So I should actually have never stopped grinding at some point earlier, removing all the strategy/challenge from the majority of the game just so I could finish the final, ludicrously unbalanced level. Great.

    Will I ever play it again? No.

    Final Thought: Pretty sure I could get lots of responses here about how I could have used a particular other character to kill the boss, or do some particular combo, or whatever. Or maybe to promise me that Awakening, with the ability to turn off permadeath, is worth playing. It’s too late, folks!