The cowboy is back in town, along with some familiar faces, for another action packed adventure across the sketchy (literally), bandit-ridden badlands! And this time we’re rolling in a magnificent multitude of colours.
Outside of games like Super Smash Bros., games compiling different series together into one single spin-off game doesn’t happen frequently, and it’s even more rare when it’s not a fighting/racing/party type of game, but that’s exactly what we’ve got here.
Mighty Gunvolt is a platformer merging 3 different series together into a short, fast paced action game in a classic style that I’m sure most of us are familiar with. Made by Inti Creates (makers of the Mega Man Zero & ZX series, along with MM9 & 10, along with others) it takes Gunvolt from Azure Striker Gunvolt, Ekoro from a Japan exclusive game called Gal*Gun, and Beck from the upcoming Mighty No. 9. So how does this all mix together?
A game that has similar gameplay to Mega Man, Contra, and a few sprinkles of other classics is probably something that gets some of you foaming at the mouth with anticipation, and I’m pleased to say, I have found a fit for your needs! Gunman Clive is a sidescrolling, platforming action, even self admittedly ‘generic’ style game that will fulfil your classic gaming tastes, with a twist of its own flavour added in.
In 2002 (Or 2003 for us filthy peasants in Europe. — Man, that does not sound like it was 12 years ago), Kirby was back with another Adventure, this time on the relatively new GameBoy Advance. However, this Adventure was rather similar to one that Kirby had earlier in his life. Instead of being an all new game, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is a remake of Kirby’s Adventure, a rather highly acclaimed game for the NES. So how does this version compare?
Donkey Kong has returned to the Country for a second time since the SNES days, but this time it wasn’t by choice. You join as it is Donkey Kong’s birthday (or something), complete with banana cake (what else), when a snowflake makes its way in through the window to put out the candle on DK’s cake before he can blow it out. Donkey, angry that he now can’t make a wish, and the other Kongs take a look outside to see an invading army of Viking polar bears, owls, seals and penguins. Let’s not ask how Viking penguins exist, considering that they live in the South Pole.
Regardless of that, Donkey, Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky get blasted away harder than Team Rocket ever have, and the Vikings take over Donkey Kong Island, freezing it to make a new home for themselves. Donkey Kong himself manages to land in the fuselage of a wrecked plane deep in the mangroves of a faraway island, that was coincidentally carrying TVs and copies of DKCR, and he has to find his way back to DK Island to reclaim his home, and probably his banana hoard too.
Phantom Hourglass is the 2007 direct sequel to The Wind Waker, made for the Nintendo DS. Following on from the events of the previous game, Link and Tetra are traversing the ocean, when along the way they come across the Ghost Ship, and then decide that it’s a good idea to board it to find treasure. Spoilers, it’s not a good idea, Tetra is held hostage, and the Ghost Ship disappears into thin air. You join the action as Link after he is washed up on a small, tropical island…
Before I get into this more, I really don’t have anywhere to interject this so I’m putting it here, but I first played this game in 2010 I believe, and I remembered getting pretty far along before just dropping it. I checked the file out of curiosity and discovered that I must have given up in frustration after not being able to beat the 2nd to the last boss (counting the several forms of the final boss as one fight). Yeah, I made it through the last temple and gave up! Can’t imagine doing that now, I tell ya, I must’ve really not wanted to go through the Temple of the Ocean King one more time. It’s funny though, I remembered up to one boss fight as clear as crystal, then the parts I played after that I only had a very vague recollection of, as I was going through the areas. Normally my recollective memory is better than that. Perhaps I was so checked out at that point that I wasn’t paying attention enough to commit it to memory, who knows.
So anyway that’s the basic plot, and my history with the game, but how about those first impressions? Well… Graphically it’s about as impressive as a PS1 game, which is to say, it can be pretty freaking ugly. I know, it’s all the DS can handle for 3D graphics, but if this is all it can do, make a 2D sprite based game! Shit, Minish Cap looks fantastic even today, just imagine that but even more refined. *sigh*, I can dream. For the limitations I guess that it’s about all that you can expect, but the textures look horribly pixellated up close, something that they have an annoying habit of showing you. Most of the game is played from a 2D perspective, and it looks fine, if not nothing special then, but for some ungodly reason they insist on zooming in during cutscenes to show it up close, warts and all. I mean, look at link’s hair, and how a huge chunk of it doesn’t stick out from his head. Just makes it look super greasy, or something. Blah, livable, but not pleasing really.
One thing that they use a whopping three times during the whole game is a paper art style for cutscenes, and I really would’ve liked them to use that more to accentuate the story to a better degree. A little bit like Okami does it, if you’ve played that. (Side note, play it if you haven’t. I’m writing a post about that too, I absolutely adore it).
Link, with his best Crash Bandicoot impression.
Then how about the music, surely that makes up for it?? Well, there are a few pleasant tracks, but most of it is pretty bare bones to be honest, and you hear the same few tunes over and over again with little variety. Off the top of my head there’s a generic town theme, generic island theme, cave song, dungeon music, normal battle tune, boss theme (maybe they all have unique varieties? I never even noticed to be honest), and the great sea tune from Wind Waker. I’m seriously not able to think of anything else, and of those listed above, I only actively like 2 of them. There are several call backs to other games in the series during the cutscene music, but you’re not hearing that on a loop constantly as you play, so it doesn’t impact as much. Mediocre soundtrack, with a few ‘highlights’, if you even want to call them that. Nothing special.
… Well this isn’t promising so far, is it? ‘Okay, so the reason you’re playing it Lanky’, I can hear you ask, ‘is because the gameplay must make up for the above… Right?’.
Umm. Not really. The gameplay for me has the same wishy-washy feel, in that it’s not bad, but it doesn’t really excite me much. The largest problem I have is that it’s fully touch screen controlled. The only use that the buttons have are shortcuts to stop you from having to tap in the corners to open up menus. Everything else you’ll be doing with a stylus in your hand. Now, I’m old school when it comes to games, I like my fingers to be pressing buttons, it feels comfortable to me and I’m used to it. By comparison there’s a feeling is general ‘sluggishness’ with touch screen controls (and motion controls, but that conversation is for another day), like the whole pace of the game is slower because the touch screen can’t interpret fast inputs properly. Try and change direction too fast for example, and Link will swing his sword instead. Try to roll and he may also try to attack, or just not do it at all. It’s never rewarding to do something right, more like “Why didn’t you do that the first time I told you to?!”
The lack of buttons also makes the action side of the game fall flat. You can swing sideways, thrust forwards, with Link randomly deciding between the two at times, you can jump attack if Link decides that he’s standing far enough away to do it, and you can spin attack, but do it too much and you’ll get stunned from dizziness. Just… Ick, it’s not very satisfying to fight enemies unless you just pull out your bow and shoot things, honestly. Even the early boss fights suffer from that lack of intensity, there’s only like 3, maybe 4 boss fights that had any sense of urgency or panic. Maybe good for small children, but for me? Not really.
Thankfully the developers did realise this and made most of the game more puzzle based instead. The puzzles themselves are mostly self-explanatory, with very few, if any points where you’ll need to look up a walkthrough to simply beat it. Again, maybe that’s a good thing for newcomers, and maybe that’s who they decided to try to target with this game, but why make it a sequel then? Granted, you don’t need to have played The Wind Waker at all to understand what’s going on, but it’s not going to hurt either.
The largest part of the game is the Temple of the Ocean King. Located on the island that you start the game on, you’ll go through here no less than 7 times if I’m remembering correctly. You may be able to do it in 6, but they expect seven trips. Through that same dungeon. Doing mostly the same puzzles (with some shortcuts as you gain items), just going down further and further each time. If that wasn’t enough of a pain in the arse, you’re on a time limit too! The titular Phantom Hourglass gives you a certain time that you’re allowed to stay in there (you gain more hours for defeating bosses, and occasionally salvaging small amounts from the sea floor), and if it runs out… I actually have no idea. I guess that you either get teleported back to the entrance, or maybe it just a straight game over, I’ve never had it happen.
There are so-called ‘safe-zones’ where time doesn’t tick down, allowing you some breathing room to think, and it allows you to go unnoticed by the enemies, the main variants of which are unkillable, fyi. (Until way, way later on anyways). You have to tip-toe around them trying to not get spotted or else you’ll lose time from them hitting you. You also respawn at the entrance to the room, you know, to make the 13 floor dungeon take even longer. Okay, I’m ragging on it a little bit much, it’s not that bad to be fair, but again sticking with the theme, it’s certainly not really enjoyable either.
Subtle Majora’s Mask reference?
The rest of the dungeons are fine, but again, unremarkable. Not long, particularly challenging, or even varied. There’s one later on where you control two characters for a segment, which is probably the most creative they get. It’s mostly just trundle around figuring out the one way that you can go, hitting switches in certain orders, getting your new item, and having an extended tutorial on how to use it, then use your new item to beat the boss. Real paint-by-the-numbers stuff.
Even the sidequests are nothing special. Firstly, like its predecessor, this game is based on a series of islands in a vast ocean. Okay, vast is the wrong word, the DS couldn’t handle something so large, but a majority of your time will be out on a boat, especially at first. It’s not even as satisfying as sailing was, here you just draw a line on the map and the boat follows it, then you just look at the screen and shoot the occasional hazard/enemy with your cannon. I get so bored that I shoot the seagulls that follow you along. They usually don’t appreciate it. Well, the one that takes a hit gets vaporised, but the others scatter away immediately, haha. Luckily there are also warp points throughout the ocean that you can get, it’d be unbearable without them.
Speaking of drawing on the map, that is an integral part of the game. Throughout the game you get various hints on how to solve puzzles, and at almost any point, you can pull the map down and scribble what you need to on there. That’s actually one really nice feature that I wish more games could incorporate, jotting notes down without needing to do it on real paper. Now here’s my question. Why not make it a standard, button controlled game, leaving the map on the bottom screen so you can write down whatever you want, without interrupting the gameplay as much? Would’ve been so much better! There are some cool elements that they have you doing, like mapping out an entire uncharted isle for yourself, but again, it feels like some of the potential is left untapped.
But that aside, back to the sidequests. Firstly there are treasure maps throughout the game that lead to salvageable treasures on the ocean floor. Unlike Wind Waker, it’s more involved here. You control the arm as it plunges through the murky depths, avoiding Octo-mines along the way. It’s surprising when it first happens, but aside from that first time they should have cut it out completely. It’s just a time sink, and mostly for extra ship parts which are nice, but totally unnecessary. Oh, and don’t miss the chest at the bottom, because for some stupid reason, that makes you start from the top again, like this is some strange claw-machine game, played underwater.
Another main collectible in the game are gems, specifically Power, Wisdom, and Courage the cowardly dog gems. There are 20 of each, and with each group of 10 you can get an upgrade. Power ups your sword’s power, Wisdom ups your defence, and courage enables you to fire sword beams. I just leave Power on all the time, it puts flames on your sword. Flames. Not just like a decal, I mean actual, burning fire. How cool is that?!
There’s also fishing. Fishing exists. That’s about all I have to say there… Fine, I’ll carry on. It’s a nice enough mini-game, you pull back on the rod to build up strength, then reel in the fish, rinse and repeat a few yards at a time until you’ve caught the fish. Most of the time is spent in the boat trying to catch up to where the fish is on the map! They constantly move around making it hard to chase them, you have to kinda cut them off at the pass, if you know what I mean. Not easy when you need to stop and draw a new route on the map just to change course, and of course it makes it waste more of your time without actually making any progress towards anything.
Then there are the standard mini-games to do, like a shooting gallery, and a bomb shooting gallery, race-through-the-maze, etc. Ya know, typical stuff. The only thing is that you won’t be doing a lot of these because there are no heart pieces in this game, only fully heart containers. If that weren’t enough of a cut-back, there are only 16 hearts in the game, instead of your standard 20. This all leaves it feeling a little ropey on actual content, and it’s more interested in wasting your time sailing and shooting seagulls than having worthwhile stuff happen. I dunno, it’s like they realised that the DS couldn’t handle what they initially had in mind, but it was too late to completely overhaul the project, so they just settled in it having less stuff to do. Maybe since Spirit Tracks took out the sailing it has more stuff, I’ve not played it beyond the first hour, so I can’t say whether it’s better about that or not.
And then on top of that, there are just a number of upgrades that you straight up buy, which again, feels like they cheated out on making more legitimate content. It also makes this a good time to talk about money. You know how in some games it’s hard to come by? Not here! Right from the get-go you can carry (what I assume to be the maximum of) 9999 rupees. At the end of the game, I was sitting on 7600+ spare rupees, with nothing to buy, and a whole bunch of treasure and ship parts that I could’ve traded in for even more cash. Money is no object, and if you ever hit a point where you don’t have enough, you’re playing the game wrong. I’m not saying that’s bad, but do I seriously need what must’ve been ten thousand spare rupees lying about? Let me trade that to other games where money isn’t so readily available.
I suppose I haven’t mentioned customizing your ship yet. Well, like I mentioned earlier, the are ship parts in the game, 8 different types (prow, handrail, hull, chimney, anchor, cannon, wheels, and the bridge), and there are… Probably 10 or 11 different themes for each of these parts. Build up a ship consisting of several pieces from the same set and your ship gains extra hearts for its health, because for some reason the ship needed its own health system instead of just using yours. Funnily enough I actually got all of the demon parts before the end of my playthrough, so I’m went around saving the world on Satan’s ship! It brought me great pleasure to see that. There was also a way to trade ship parts via wi-fi, but all DS games have had their servers shut down, so this is no longer available. *single tear*
Just glancing through my notes to see if I’ve missed anything… Oh, there is at least one saving grace that I enjoyed, and that is some of the writing. Linebeck in particular has some awesome lines, with a little bit of slap-stick humour thrown in too. There is also a problem with the writing at the same time, which is that the text box doesn’t include a name to tell you who is speaking. Such a small oversight, but there is no way to tell when one person stops talking, and another one starts. Minorly confusing if you rush through dialogue due to being a fast reader, like I do.
That’s pretty much my thoughts. Looking over it, it sounds a lot more negative that it really is. The game is the definition of average, and I want the dictionary to have a picture of the box art next to the word. It doesn’t do anything inherently wrong at all, I can’t pick a single flaw with the way anything is executed here, it all works. Occasionally it has flashes of ‘Oh, maybe it’s going to step up a gear now’, but it just never does. I just never stopped to just take a step back and think ‘Wow’. Do you know what I mean? I will say though, not too short, not too long. The ending felt like it was in the correct place, and dragging it out any longer would’ve definitely made my impression of the game worse.
Overall, if you really, really liked The Wind Waker, and want a little side-story addition, and you wont mind the touch screen controls, I can recommend it. Or if you’re a hardcore Zelda fan who wants to experience all the main games in the series (That’s my reason for playing it), then I can somewhat recommend it. I don’t regret experiencing it, though I’m unlikely to ever play it again in the next 5 or more years, if at all, let’s put it that way. Maybe if you’re interested in getting into the series but don’t know where to start this would be good for you too. It’s pretty lax for the most part, and you’re never in doubt of what you have to do to progress, but I will say, if you are looking to do that, it’s gameplay isn’t really representative of most of the other Zelda games. (Bar Spirit Tracks, for obvious reasons.)
Well, that looks familiar… I’m going to go repair that fourth wall now. Thanks for reading!
Xeodrifter is a heavily Metroid inspired game made by Renegade Kid of Mutant Mudds fame, that is quickly becoming one of my go-to chill out games. So what is it exactly that makes it so conducive for me to play? Well, let’s start off with the initial impressions…
Graphically is pretty much the same thing as Mutant Mudds, so that’s a plus. My initial thoughts place it somewhere between Metroid 1 and Zero Mission in terms of style, it has that old retro feel, but with some amazing colour thrown in there to make it stand out. The design of your character is something that I would rather be different, but it’s inoffensive and works in the scenario, so I can’t complain much.
Normally at this point I would also make mention of the music, but to be honest with you, I get so lost in the actual gameplay that I never seem to notice it! That’s not a knock on the music at all, but it doesn’t stand out to me like most game soundtracks do. It’s certainly not bad at all, and in fact I’m going to go listen to the music on Bandcamp to get a better feel of it at some point, but right now the only tunes I can actively remember are the credits, and planet 4, both of which I really like.
So getting to that gameplay that holds my attention so greatly, Jools Watsham has openly stated that it was made with a large Super Metroid influence. Quite possibly explains why I like it so much. It’s exactly what you’d expect, side-scrolling exploration, blasting enemies and local alien-life out of existence whilst you explore around trying to find bosses that conveniently hold your next power-up to allow you to explore further.
One small thing that differentiates it from Metroid though is that the enemies do not drop health, so you have to be more careful instead of ploughing through like you don’t care about taking damage. The only times you can restore health are back on your ship, and there are enemy spawners in front of the boss doors to fill you up if you wish (They are the only enemies that do drop health). Also your ship and through boss doors will be your only check/savepoints. I don’t find it to be an issue at all, but if you get nervous and start playing like shit when you haven’t saved in 5 minutes, you may not like that so much.
If you feel like you need a reason for doing all of this, there’s a small plot too. You’re little guy is travelling along is his spaceship doing spaceship things, when it gets hit by a stray asteroid! The ship is a wreck, and its warp core crystal has been shattered. The ship turns on its radar system to get some possible locations for a suitable replacement on one of the nearby planets. It’s lucky that this happened in some kind of planetary system, isn’t it?
So you spend your time hopping between these four planets, which are not given any proper names, and are instead called Square, SquareSquare, SquareSquareSquare, and SquareSquareSquareSquare respectively. Or, you know, 1, 2, 3, & 4 to normal people. Do you ever look at a word so much that it becomes very strange looking? Nope, me neither. Square. The planets all have their own distinct feelings, so you’ll know which one you are on without even having to think about it, and it adds nice variety too. Also as a side note, planet 1 reminds of me green Brinstar, and planet 3 reminds of the the bubbly areas of Norfair.
The immediate thing I noticed when playing were the physics. Your jumping is rather floaty (again, Super Metroid), and your momentum builds up in a slightly odd feeling way. It’s hard to describe, but when you handle it you’ll notice what I mean. It kinda has a slow acceleration at first, then builds up rather quickly.
The power-ups that you’ll be grabbing are also rather familiar to Metroid veterans, with 3 of the 6 being very similar to abilities you’ll find in those. There’s a Run (Speed Booster), Rocket (vertical shinespark), and Solar Flare (Charge beam), along with a Submarine to traverse water, a Phaze ability to pass through small walls, and the most unique ability, the Plane Shift. Lifted from Mutant Mudds, the Plane Shift allows you to go into the background to do more exploring. The difference here it that you can do it at any time at the push of a button instead of being limited to the jump pads. There’s also a weird hitch with it that means that you have to jump before using it if you’re going into the background, which is a little bit strange to get used to at first.
Along with those, which are required to beat the game, there are optional health and gun upgrades strewn throughout the planets for you to find. There’s 12 of each, and some of them are very well hidden, I’m talking walking-through-walls kind of hidden. Health pick-ups are as simple as you can imagine, but the gun upgrades are where this gets interesting. There are 5 different ways to power up your blaster, and they are; bullet speed, power, rapid fire, scatter-shot, and a wave beam (once again, hello Metroid!). The upgrades that you have are not permanently locked into place once you put them somewhere, so you can change them around on the fly. Personally, I max out the power and rapid fire exclusively and ignore the other three, power and rapid fire makes for a deadly combination.
The bosses are somewhat of a dud to me. There are 7 of them, but they’re all variations of the same thing. I would have personally liked to at least have the final boss be different, but oh well, it’s not a deal-breaker. Each one adds a new attack that you can usually do something about with the last power-up that you found. The only exception to this is when they introduce the shield, which you need the Solar Flare to get rid of early, otherwise you just have to dodge it.
The game itself isn’t huge. At all. As a matter of fact, even my first time through I beat it in one sitting, probably in less that 2 hours. Now I did have an idea of where to go, and if you’re playing completely blind you’ll simply have to use your own intuition on that front, there’s no directions given to you at all. That may lengthen the game a touch, but it is still a short romp through the 4 planets to get your warp core and leave, having decimated the local ecosystems in the process. At least you didn’t just blow the planets to pieces like Samus seems to have a habit of doing.
Another thing that may make it a slightly longer experience is dying. As I mentioned before there are checkpoints before and after the bosses, but other than that, the only place to save is in your ship, so being conservative of your health is vital at times. Having just come off the back of playing Metroid Fusion, which has the same habits of killing you if you stop paying attention, I really don’t think it’s stingy at all.
Overall, like I said at the top, this is very quickly becoming one of my pick-up-and-play games to relax with on an evening, sharing the spot with Super Metroid, the NES Mega Man games, and Donkey Kong Country. Not a bad list of names to be rubbing shoulders with. Other than the lack of boss variety, I really can’t knock this game much at all, and if you can pick it up on your 3DS, or through Steam, I can very highly recommend that you do it, and have a blast.
The Minish Cap is one of those games that I’ve always seen the name of now and again, and in fact, I remember when it was first released because they had a special edition GBA SP for it too, but for some reason I never got around to checking it out. Until now that is.
And immediately upon starting it I was impressed. Firstly the graphics hit you like a rainbow coloured brick. I know that getting hit with a brick is usually unpleasant, but here it’s a good thing. The style is a mix between A Link to the Past’s 2D perspective, with The Wind Waker’s colours and designs, which really pops off the screen. I could never tire of looking at it at all.
The Wind Waker style bleeds through to the character design too, and in fact, there are several characters from other Zelda games that appear, such as Dampé, Anju, and the snot-nosed kid from Outset Island, amongst several others. Add to that some sound effects from OoT, and it all lends to a level of familiarity which immediately makes you feel more comfortable with the game from the get go.
There are also sound effects from the console games, which is a bit odd at first, but it’s all good. The sound quality is excellent, for GBA standards, and the soundtrack itself even had a bit of a nostalgic theme to my ears, despite the fact that I’d never played it before. There is just something about it that invokes images of me being a 12 year old playing it for the first time, and really relishing that atmosphere.
So how about that gameplay? Well if you’ve played and of the GameBoy games, you’ll know what’s going on here. The A and B buttons are used for your items, switch them in however you like, and with the 2 extra buttons that the GBA offers, you can use R to roll (which you’ll do a lot, just to move faster), and you use L to fuse Kinstones with people, which I’ll get to later. Having the inventory work the way it does has the same downside as the GB games, you’ll be pausing to switch items a lot, and I mean a LOT. So if that annoyed you before, it’ll still be the same here.
Of course there is one more huge mechanic of the game, and that is related to the title. A short ways into the game you’ll come across a sentient hat who calls himself Ezlo. He’s your helper/talking piece of this game, because we all know that Link has to be mute. Poor guy. Anyway, Ezlo isn’t annoying at all, and he only occasionally pops up to talk about stuff. The main benefit that he gives you is the ability to transform to a minuscule size to interact with the world in a whole new way.
You can’t just do this anywhere, you’ll need a tree stump, up-turned pot, or specially dedicated pedestal to transform, but doing so will open up heaps of places that you’d otherwise be too large to fit inside, and allows you to talk with the Minish themselves. The Minish are a species of super tiny creatures that live in Hyrule, and they try to make little miracles happen for the Hylians whenever possible. They’re also all over the place, be that in their own dedicated towns, in small caves/mushrooms out in the overworld, or even in other people’s houses.
A thing that I personally really like about being minish size is just getting to appreciate the smaller details of the world. I get the same way with Pikmin games too, I like looking around in the real world and imagining what could be going on in all these tiny places, or what everything would look like at that size. You know, that child-like sense of wonderment that we usually lose as we get older.
The actual world itself is rather small, I’d say it’s probably smaller than ALttP for example, but I’d rather it be that way instead of being too large. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly doesn’t feel cramped either, there’s the typical variety of a Zelda game, mountains, lakes/rivers, towns, open fields, graveyard, caves, etc. I really never found myself wanting more, and with the addition of the minish areas, it’s essentially larger than it looks at first glance. There is one way that it feels smaller than some other Zelda games though, and that is that there’s only 6 dungeons. If you don’t go for 100% and just blast through, your adventure will be over in almost no time at all. But it’s a GBA game, what would you expect, I guess.
Plus, if you do go for 100%, you’ll be hanging around for a longer time. Now whether doing this side stuff would actually be interesting to you is another matter, but I personally found it addictive. “Oh wait, there’s this thing I can do over here now, right?”, “Wait, what about that, can I do that yet?”, “Well I just opened that secret cave, may as well look now so I don’t forget”, etc. It definitely lead me to procrastinating some stuff in real life, I can tell you that!
The main two things that your side-questing will be composed of are Kinstone fusions, and figurine collecting. Someone, somewhere, who has completed the Wind Waker’s figurine collection is screaming, I just heard it. Thankfully it isn’t as involved here, and you shouldn’t miss any of them. Basically it works like buying trophies in SSB Melee, if you remember that. The more money you put in, the higher the chance of getting a new figurine, the difference begin that you don’t pay with Rupees, you pay with Mysterious Shells. As far as being cost effective, it’s actually best to just put in 1 at a time, even with a 10% chance, you’re on average paying 10 shells per figure.
Of course,there are two problems with that. One, it takes a long time to complete at that rate, and two, you can infinitely grind Mysterious Shells anyway, so there’s no need to be conservative with spending them. In fact, I found two ways to do it.
Like I said, the other thing you’ll spend a lot of time doing is Kinstone fusing. Kinstones are things that you find all throughout the game, in three different colours indicating their rarity, green, blue, and red. They also have 2-3 different shapes each for extra variety, and of course as it typically goes, most people want to fuse with the one type that you don’t have. It just always seems to go that way. There are 100 fusions in the game, with a whopping 10 of them actually being required, which you’ll know because they use golden pieces. Quite a few of the characters will want to fuse with you at some point, and some people are finicky about letting you know, so jump on the chance as soon as they offer it to you. The Fusions usually open up new stuff in the overworld, like secret caves, or they can make treasure chests appear, and a few other things too.
That’s all technically fluff. Moorish fluff if you have collective tendencies like I do, but fluff nonetheless. The main gameplay is your standard affair, pretty much. Everything starts out fine, then oh no, evil guy shows up! As a bonus, it’s not Ganondorf this time. As strange as it sounds, most of my favourite Zelda games coincidentally don’t have him involved, and sure enough, I enjoy this one as well.
Dungeon design is something that I thought was excellent in this game. They’re not overly confusing, at all, but they never just feel like a walk in the park, and I think that they hit the sweet spot with the difficulty. Boss designs are also cool, especially towards the end, I really found myself enjoying them a lot. And again, not too easy, not hard to figure out what to do, they’re all just right.
And speaking of dungeons, how about the items? There are some unique ones in there, like the Gust Jar and Digging Mitts, both of which had re-imagined designs in Skyward Sword, then there’s a handful from the GameBoy games, and finally your more typical arrows, bombs, etc. It’s not a huge roster of items like, oh I dunno, Twilight Princess, but what that does mean is versatility. You use the items that you do get in several ways, and the puzzles pretty much keep introducing new elements by making you combine different item uses in different ways.
Oh, and I can’t believe I haven’t talked about splitting apart yet! Another core mechanic that you get a ways into the adventure is the ability to make copies of Link to help solve puzzles. It’s okay, not overdone, but you’ll know when you have to do it because they use special floor tiles to actually split up, so you can’t do it anywhere. Most of the time it’s just pushing huge blocks out of the way, but eventually when you can split into 4 copies, they do add more interesting things.
Well, I think that just about covers everything. Overall I enjoyed my time with this game a lot, and can definitely recommend playing it if you want a generally short game of this nature to enjoy. It saves re-playing Link’s Awakening DX again for some other time, huh? ;P I wouldn’t say that it has cracked my all time favourite Zelda’s, and I certainly won’t do a 100% run again in a hurry, but it is definitely worth a look all the same.
Shadow of the Colossus, the mere sight of the name can send shivers down my spine, for various different reasons. Hopefully during this post I’ll be able to explain why, and convince anyone who hasn’t played this to give it a go. First released in 2005 for the PS2, SotC really attempted to push the system to its limits in terms of sheer scale. There really is nothing left on the table in terms of performance, in fact you could argue that it went just over the limit. But before we get to that, what is the game about?
The game opens with a cinematic scene of some rather stunning, yet bleak landscapes. There is a man riding his horse through these areas, but they are seemingly never lost, purposefully wandering to a location that few people know about, or simply wish to avoid. After coming across signs of an old civilisation, Wander had reached what he has been searching for; The Forbidden Lands. Greeted with a colossal bridge, leading to an equally colossal shrine of some sort, he and his faithful horse, Agro, make their way to fulfil their purpose for travelling to such a cut-off location.
The pair travel through the shrine to be met with a great hall. The grandiose scale not lost, as sunlight streams in from a hole in the ceiling, and from huge archways at the far end. Along the sides are 16 strange statues, all different figures, seemingly representing something. Are they something that once lived in the land, are they deity figures, or something else entirely? Upon closer inspection, they are not alone, and have brought something with them. It’s a cloth, apparently bundled around something. With the breeze you are able to see that it is in fact a person. It is also made quite clear, after Wander places her in the shrine, that she is dead. She was killed because she supposedly had a cursed fate, but there is supposed to be something in the Forbidden Lands that can revive the dead. A mysterious voice echoes through the temple, recognising Wander’s presence. This voice belongs to Dormin, some sort of omnipresence over the land, and he describes that the ancient revival ritual may be possible, if Wander does what is requested of him. Dormin explains that the idols lining the hall are representative of colossi spread throughout the land, and if Wander is capable of destroying them all, then his wish will be granted. But, he is warned, the price may be very heavy indeed.
During all this you notice how impressive the graphics are, given the limitations. But that does come at a price, and that price is called frame-rate. Holy hell is the PS2 version’s frame-rate bad! I don’t even care about it in 99% of games, even something like Ocarina of Time running at a constant 20 (I believe) isn’t anything I complain about at all. This is on an entirely new level of jerk-y, and it’s inconsistent too. Occasionally when there’s nothing to load and no big movements, it’s actually fine, and it looks awesome, but when there’s more than one thing for the game to think about it just tanks.
Does this interrupt gameplay? No, not at all, but if even I notice the frame-rate, you know it’s awful. On the upside if you are someone who cannot stand inconsistent fps in games, go get the PS3 re-release, frame-rate is pretty much perfect on that from what I remember of it. It also has the benefit of higher resolution textures, not that the PS2’s are bad at all, and it may improve load times. To be honest I don’t know all the improvements, but having played both, there’s not a huge difference, it’s mostly frame-rate and an updated physics engine, which to be honest with you, I don’t like as much. Since I went backwards to the PS2 version, I’ve not touched the HD one.
I guess another thing to mention is that the game uses bloom lighting to a ridiculous level of overkill, there’s a few spots that you can’t see anything on the horizon at all because it’s so strong. There are also “popping” issues, by which I mean low resolution versions of the landscape suddenly popping into full detailed mode as you’re riding along. Overall, this probably makes it look better in pictures rather than in motion. Maybe that’s why the frame-rate is so low, they’re just trying to make it a slide show instead.
Another thing you notice after you now start playing is the music. Or should I say, the lack of it. Music only plays in cut-scenes and colossi fights, all you’re overworld travel is ambient noise. Agro’s hooves, occasional bird noises, whistling wind, and your own thoughts. Surprisingly it’s less boring than if there was a single, anthemic tune going along with the travel like, oh I dunno, Hyrule Field or something. It sets the tone wonderfully, this isn’t a happy “We must save the world!!” type of game, we’re on a dangerous mission with moral consequences to contend with. Then when you do get to the colossi, each of the chosen songs fits the mood equally perfectly. There’s intimidation, intensity, outright terror, and even peacefulness depending on how the colossus acts. I haven’t got the room here to put every song I like, so I’ll desperately try to narrow it down to a few of my absolute favourites.
So that’s the mood it sets, but how does it feel? Well immediately if you don’t like hand-holding in games, this is for you. There’s a short tutorial on the way to the first colossus, all about climbing and moving around obstacles, once you know all that, you’re set for the game. There’s no extra abilities that you’ll get throughout the game, so other than finding out about secret techniques that they don’t tell you, which aren’t required at all, there’s no stupid extra gimmicks that they’ll throw at you, it’s all up to your ingenuity, using anything you can think of to your own advantage.
There’s a surprising amount of variety in the land too. From open plains, to lakes, forests, deserts, ancient ruins, beaches with insanely high cliff tops, and probably more that I’m not thinking of right now. Before you really know the game, you may see two points very far away from each other that look identical, but it otherwise does a solid job at making sure you don’t get too lost.
Other things to do in the overworld include hunting for glowing-tailed lizards, to (very marginally) increase your grip, and fruit to increase your maximum health. There are items in what is essentially New Game+ that help you find all of these, which you will want to do for that platinum trophy on the PS3, but if you’re feeling adventurous you can try to do it solo. I spent three hours just riding around trying to find all the fruit trees and save points once, and I don’t regret that at all, even though I missed some of both. There’s just so many little secret spots located all around the world, some of them even completely pointless, but it’s just so enjoyable to find them. I’ll never forget the first time that I found what fans call ‘ICO beach’, it’s was just so ridiculously cool to me, especially since it was reminiscent of Flamborough’s north and south beaches that we went to semi-frequently when I was younger. Walking back up those hills was a killer back then.
There’s just a lot of messing around you can do. There are hawks that you can grab on to and just take a ride with, and the same goes for fish. Just don’t fall from too high of a height, or you will die. There’s different levels of interactivity that Agro has with the landscape too, he can stop and take a drink, for example. He’s intelligent too. Jump off a cliff and whistle him, he will find his way around to your location. Plus he isn’t just a machine that will do anything, there are times when he wont cooperate, be that jumping down from high ledges, lest the poor guy breaks a leg, he will stop before colliding with a wall, or some trees, and he’ll run away if you aim your bow in his direction. Dude don’t want to get shot. He also controls wonderfully fluidly, play a Zelda game with Epona and she will feel like a truck by comparison, just stiff as a board (apparently Epona in Zelda Wii U will also be reactive like this, which should be good if they stick to it). Once you really learn all the different techniques for riding Agro, you really wont have many complaints.
That’s all fun, and I definitely advocate exploring around at some point if you do ever play this, but the real meat of the game are the colossi themselves.They slowly introduce you to different mechanics through the first two, and they are essentially tutorials without text. Learn by doing. Your first time will definitely be rough, I even knew what to do, but the execution is an extra step from how it looks. The biggest thing to get over is managing your grip, it slowly runs out over time as you hold on, and will constantly be looking for breaks to recharge it when possible. Especially when you come to a colossus’ weak point that’s somewhere that you have to cling on for dear life instead of crouching on a flat part of their bodies.
There are various different triggers to get a colossus to do what you want to progress. There are the main weak spots (glyphs), and two types of smaller trigger points. Sometimes you’ll need to work your way over to them and stab them, other times a well-aimed shot from your bow will be what you want. Then from the third fight onwards, the battlefield comes into play. Each colossus has some way of interacting with the environment that you have to capitalise on to take them down. Be that goading them into attacking and missing you, or hiding and sneaking up when they can’t see you, or pretty much anything else you can imagine. There’s a lot of cat-and-mouse, but you will end up on all sides of that equation at different times.
Pretty much no two fights are the same, and at first you’ll see bipedal colossi, four-legged colossi, and think “okay, I get it now, this is the kinda thing that we’re gonna see throughout this game”. Then comes #5, and every limit that you thought was in place is all of a sudden completely removed. Another thing that happens in that fight (not to spoil it), is that you realise not every colossus is out to get you. Instead, it just sits there looking at you from a distance. You can sit there all day and night, it will not fight you unless provoked. This is where the moral side comes into play. You can’t help but question what you’re doing, especially for what is such a selfish cause. You’re intruding on their territory, becoming a hunter, killing these majestic creatures that are otherwise just part of the landscape. All for what?
As far as content, you may initially think that there’s 16 boss fights and that’s it. Technically, yes, but there is more. For one you can continue in a New Game+, which carries over your health and grip to another playthrough. You can continually do this until you max out the stats completely, just to mess around really. There’s also a time attack mode you can access in the shrine of worship too, which as you can probably guess is a time trial style mode where you kill each colossus as quick as you can. Beat them under their respective target times and you get rewards. Different rewards are available, some of them are new weapons, others up your attack power, and some others help you find all the fruit and lizards in the overworld like I mentioned before. They’re worth doing, just to practice and get good at the game honestly, because you’ll need it for the other thing you unlock…
Hard mode. Just in case you found yourself wanting more as far as difficulty goes, they’ve got you covered. The differences? Well, you do less damage, take more damage, getting crushed is an insta-kill, your grip meter runs out faster, and 6 of colossi have extra weak points. And they sure as hell put them in some mean places, anyone who has played hard mode all the way through will cringe if I say the word “pectoral”. I have to say, once you experience hard mode, normal mode feels like a joke, and that hard mode was the actual game that was developed first. You know how some game’s hard mode feel like a pointless, overly difficult in the wrong places, and just poorly designed? Not here at all, it’s just right.
Hard mode also has a separate time attack mode for some different goodies, including a harpoon and a parachute, amongst other things. You also have the ability to change the colour of Agro once you complete the normal and time attack modes, brown for normal, white for hard mode. That white Agro is a true badge of honour.
Overall, this game is fantastic, I absolutely love it. Since first playing it at the start of 2012, I must’ve been through it like 15 times, and go through it about twice a year at least, and that’s just a natural itch that needs scratching more me, it is simply that damn great. I mean, if you’re not into boss fights, if you want a lot of talking, if you want the plot explained to you instead of the details being your own interpretation, etc, then no, you may not like it as much as I do, but I honestly think it is worth experiencing at least once even still.
Whilst I’m here, one place I can definitely recommend that you check out if you want to see some more about the game is Nomad’s blog right here: http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.co.uk/ I have spent numerous evenings wasting hours looking through all that stuff, there is just so much content about the colossi themselves, the environment, possible leftover beta elements, overall analysis, and general messing around that is just so awesome. And now that I have cracked 2400 words on one of my favourite games, even though I could probably continue talking about it all night long, I’ll leave you to go grab it, play it, and enjoy it.
Mutant Mudds is a retro styled platformer, developed by Renegade Kid, mostly known for making a bunch of small time DS/3DS games. Following that trend, at least initially, was Mutant Mudds. Released as a 3DS download, it has also been ported to PC, PSN, WiiU, and iOS, though why you’d want to play a game like this with a touch controls completely baffles me.
As mentioned, it is retro styled, though not is a way that a lot of games seem to go about it. Instead of going full 8-bit, Renegade kid went with a “12-bit” style. More refined than 8-bit, not as detailed as 16-bit. It’s a really awesome compromise honestly, if you even want to call it that, the rich colour palette and simplistic sprites really pop to make you pay attention to the screen. A great thing that stems from this is how every platform that you can stand on is instantly recognisable. You’ll never see a point where you think “Okay, now what do I have to stand on?” Before blindly jumping and hoping that something that looks like it’s in the background is actually solid. It may sound like an obvious detail to be in a video game about jumping from platform to platform over perilous dangers, but a lot of games miss the mark on that.
Another great thing is that Mutant Mudds doesn’t try too hard to emulate any old game in particular, nor does it shoe-horn as many references in as humanly possible. This stands on its own two feet, unlike a lot of retro “inspired” (read: plagiarizing) games that are out there.
Before I get to the gameplay itself, I’d like to take this time to talk about the soundtrack. It is close to phenomenal. Again, retro in style, with none of the drawbacks of limited channels, which could lead to certain sounds cutting out. If you like chiptune music at all, I can highly recommend listening to this soundtrack here: http://renegadekid.bandcamp.com/album/mutant-mudds-ost
Okay, so we’ve had old skool style, but what is the platforming like? Is it crippled by bad control like so many promising NES games, or does this go too far in the other direction where you could do everything whilst in a comatose state? Well, I can gladly say it is neither of those! It starts out gentle to get you used to your controls and some basic enemies, then slowly but surely they pile on the pressure throughout the 20 main levels, finally capping out at level 5-4. A level with extremely stringent timing, challenging enemies, and instant death waiting at every opportunity. But it’s not unfair, the game up until that point teaches you everything you need to get through it, so the burden is on your shoulders to manage everything thrown at you.
The core gameplay revolves around shooting enemies with your water gun (it makes sense, they are made of mud after all), and platforming with your (presumably) water-powered jet-pack. One unique thing that makes this game stand out is the 3 different planes that you play in. There’s the mid-ground which you usually start in, but when you reach and orange boost pad (that’s what I’m calling it), you can jump into the background or foreground, to add some extra depth to the levels. You have three hearts representing your health, lose them all and you restart at the beginning, or the checkpoint if you hit it. You can also turn checkpoints off if you want the extra challenge, but I wouldn’t personally want to do that, especially on a first time through.
Every level has 100 golden diamonds in it, used to pay Grannie for some upgrades to help you out. There’s a more powerful gun that has a longer range, and extended hover that lasts twice as long as standard, and a vertical boost, reminiscent of the rocket nozzle in Super Mario Sunshine, only without the delay. And you can still use the hover afterwards… It’s not really like SMS at all, I just thought about it when talking about all this water-powered stuff.
Collect all the Water Sprites at the end of each level, go ahead and get all the golden diamonds too, just trust me, and boom, that’s i– Wait, no? There are secret sprites in every level?! Yep, as you play along you’ll likely see a handful of V-land and G-land doors, and wonder what the hell they are. If you have the correct power-up to reach and enter one, you may have even entered one. These levels are based on the Virtual Boy and GameBoy respectively, and really help give an extra sense of nostalgia to the game, along with some extra variety. Nostalgia towards the Virtual Boy?!?! They clearly performed witchcraft there. These bonus levels don’t have diamonds, they’re just tough platforming, get to the end any way that you can think to.
Alright, finally, a congratulations from Grannie, the credits, now time to sit back and enjo– Were still not done?? Nope! There’s a special character that you unlock (if you grabbed all the golden diamonds, I believe), and 40 more levels. There’s the Ghost levels, where the main gimmick is that you can’t kill the enemies, unless you pick up a sporadically placed gun, which I refer to as the “ghost gun”. You can use this to temporarily get rid of a ghost for about 5 seconds or so. Each gun is limited to 10 shots, and they only give them to you when they’re necessary, so make it count!
On top of that, another type of door that you may have seen hidden around are the CGA-land doors. Old PC fans may now be marking out at that. You’ll need the secret character to reach these, and they are the crème de la crème of difficulty, these levels are absolutely no-holds-barred, barely any wiggle room for error. The only problem with that is that you’ve been used to the concepts that they throw at you for so long now that most of the time they aren’t an issue. Royal Mudds patrolling narrow hallways with no room to jump over them, turns from intimidation to a joke over time. It’s a minor flaw, the levels themselves really don’t feel like they could be any harder whilst still being fair, it’s just that the difficulty curve has naturally plateaued by this point.
One strange thing to mention is that the 3DS version has a timer. It’s a flat 4 minutes in every level, that resets if you die. The original version of the game had no checkpoints, they only added them in with the ghost levels if I’m remembering, so it at least made a bit of sense, but the addition of a timer in general is so pointless in a game like this. It’s a methodical type of game where the priority is to stay safe and not take damage, not blindly rush through, cross your fingers, and hope for the best, it’s only 3 hits until you die. The other versions don’t have this as far as I’m aware, so even Renegade Kid seemingly agreed with this sentiment.
Overall, I highly approve of this game. It’s available on plenty of platforms, so you’ve really got no excuse to not try it out. Go forth, and rid the world of evil mutated mud for us all! And your grannie, of course.
LankyOrangutan 