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August, 2018:

Review – VVVVVV (PC)

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I’m not real sure what to call this game.  VeeVeeVeeVeeVeeVee just doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.  Given the gravity based gimmick I’d say it’s more likely the name is Up Down Up Down.  Or it’s more likely a graphical representation of the game’s gimmick in a symbol form, sort of like Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.  The name may also be symbolic of the numerous instant death spikes floating around the game.  It’s multifaceted and deep…. or whatever….

Speaking of the game’s gimmick, the main thing is the quirky control method.  You only move left or right and pressing the “action” button or up or down makes the character flip up to the ceiling or down to the floor.  You use this control scheme to navigate through spike filled puzzles.  Occasionally there’s some sort of enemy, often it’ll be an ASCII style character or a word.  A lot of the game is all about timing and reflex.

There is a secondary gimmick of sorts.  The graphical design is excessively simplistic.  The load screen mimics the look of the old Commodore 64 blue screen and the graphics are intended to mimic this style of retro gaming.  It’s not quite all ASCII like say, Nethack or Dwarf Fortress but it’s pretty close.

This only serves to add to the game’s charm though, at least if you’re a Retro junkie like I am.  there also a simplistic semi retro style plot.  There’s not deep explanation, just occasionally some mostly nonsensical text and the basic premise of rescuing your 5 lost crew members.

It’s an interesting game, though it can be slightly frustratingly cheap at times.  Fortunately the frustrations wears off a bit when you account for the fact that you essentially have unlimited lives at your disposal.  There are some challenges however to trying to beat the game while dying less.  You’ll die a lot mind you, especially the first play through.  I racked up around 1000 deaths my first time through, and I actually am pretty sure i did better than many people.  Fortunately the truly cheap deaths aren’t until near the end of the game, at which point you’ll know it’s close which keeps one’s drive going.  If the whole game had been full of pointless dearly unsolvable puzzles it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

Also, while I enjoyed this game, I can see where it likely isn’t for everyone.  It’s pretty much all the same puzzle over and over in different forms.  Also the frustration of dying constantly could get old for some.  The retro graphics won’t be for everyone either.

I guess the point is, if it LOOKS enjoyable from say, screen shots, it’ll probably deliver, since the game is more or less everything you see, not much more or less.

Pokemon Go Go-tcha Band

So, I should preface a bit by saying, I am a very casual level player of Pokemon Go.  I mean maybe I am overestimating the level of most players, but I often see people talking about burning through hundreds of Pokemon and eggs and stardust to maximize this or that.  There are gyms an raids that I barely ever participate in.  My interest in Pokemon Go extends mostly to “It’s Pokemon” because it’s not really Pokemon.  It’s more, incentivized walking.  Which is also why I care about Pokemon Go, at all.  Primarily I “play” at lunch, I eat, I go walk a loop downtown outside my office.  What I really wanted to help with this, was a way to spin Pokestops and catch Pokemon, without having to carry my phone in my hand and look at my phone constantly.

Enter the Pokemon Go Plus, and in my case, the Pokemon Go-tcha band.  I had been looking at getting a PoGo+ for a while, but I had heard they were kind of flaky, and you still had to press a button to actually perform an action (catching or spinning).  Then I found the 3rd party Go-tcha band, which is identical in function to the Plus, except it auto spins and auto catches.  The Go-tcha also has an internal rechargeable batter, the PoGo+ has a replaceable battery.  After using the band for a few months, it’s not perfect, but the short of it is, it work for my needs.  It does what it proposes and works pretty well.

I have a few little gripes and there are some oddities to it, which I want to get into a bit and is the whole point of writing this, but I am 99% sure that these are all limitations put in place, intentionally or not, in Pokemon Go itself.

So a bit of an overview of what exactly the Go-tcha does, a lot of this applies to the PoGo+ as well.  Depending on the settings in the app itself and on the band, it will automatically scan the area and spin Pokestops or catch Pokemon.  It’s not an end all to auto-playing PoGo however.  The catching will throw one regular Pokeball.  That’s it.  If it catches, you get the Pokemon, if it doesn’t the Pokemon flees.  It doesn’t throw Great or Ultra balls.  This can be a little frustrating at times, I’ve been at a point where I had 100 Great and Ultra balls, but zero regular Pokeballs, which means the band does nothing.  This is a limitation of how Pokemon Go works however, the regular PoGo+ works the same way, except you have to click the button to do the throw.

The Go-tcha also has some options that can be toggled, by tapping the button, to cycle through, and holding it to toggle.  I am not sure the regular PoGo+ has these options.  The toggle-able options in order, all on/off, are Spin Pokestops, Catch Pokemon, Catch Unique Pokemon, Vibration, and Bluetooth.  You can conserve Pokeballs by either disabling the catching, or setting it to catch only Pokemon that you don’t already have.  In my testing, and this may be wrong, but it’s based on what I’ve seen, this has some limitations.  The Pokemon Go app itself seems to prioritize it’s actions, it will search for and target Pokemon then target Pokestops.  As far as I can tell, you must disable Pokemon scanning int he settings of the app itself if you want to only spin Pokestops.  I find I do maybe one walk a week with spinning only to replenish my stock of Pokeballs.  Depending on the density, it’s pretty easy to pull in 50 Pokeballs or so with 20-30 minutes of walking.

Now, like I said, turning off Pokemon scanning seems to be required, but only because of what seems to be a limitation of Pokemon Go itself.  Basically, what I have seen happen, is that the app will target the first Pokemon it sees, then stick to it, until you try to catch it with the band.  This also affects catching unique Pokemon for the same reason.  If you have the band itself set to only throw at unique Pokemon, it may catch on a Pidgey you have, while you walk past a Dratini or something that you don’t have.  Because it will get stuck on the Pidgey waiting for the band to do something.  The best use cases for the band, are to either turn off Pokemon scanning in Pokemon Go and only spin stops, or keep everything on full boar, and let it go to town.

It does keep up well in full on mode.  It targets and catches the Pokemon fast enough that it should also catch and spin Pokestops.  I also have found it works even when driving at a reasonable speed (40mph or less), often catching Pokemon that don’t even show up on the map.  Don’t play PoGo while driving kids, but if you’ve just got a Go-tcha laying in the seat next to your phone, you aren’t exactly interacting with anything.  In my experience though, the screen still has to be on, which seems to be another annoying limitation of Pokemon Go itself.  If the screen is off, it doesn’t seem to update your location, you can watch your character run to catch up once you turn the screen back on.  So when using the band you can shove your phone in your pocket, but it still has to be on, so it’s easy to bump the screen by mistake and screw things up.

There also isn’t really enough notification when you’re item bag or Pokemon bag is full.  The app simply stops catching or spinning when this happens.  It’s fairly easy to fill up as well, I find I am constantly tossing out berries.  You can of course remedy this by buying more bag space.  Once again, more of a limitation of the game than anything.  I have also had some connectivity issues which are usually resolved by resetting the app or phone, or deleting and repairing the device.  This is also a known issue with the official Pokemon Go Plus band, and it not unique to the Go-tcha.

The Go-tcha band itself has a few quirks.  It has no on/off function that I can find.  So it’s always on.  You recharge it by sticking it in a little USB cradle.  The Go-tcha itself is maybe a centimeter by a centimeter by 2 centimeters, it reminds me a lot of my old Fitbit flex.  There are no ports on it, just two little contacts for charging.  It has one touch sensitive area on one end of the display.  There are little animations that play on it as it does things.  You can buy third party bands, which is good for two reasons.  One, the band that comes with it is this speckled red white and black thing that’s ugly as hell.  Two, the band that comes with it is effectively child sized, it doesn’t fit at all around my wrist.  I just carry it in my pocket.  A word of warning on this, I have found that having other things in your pocket (like pocket change) can accidentally change the settings on the unit.  It’s best to keep it in the band, even if you aren’t wearing it because frankly, it’s easy to loose, it’s so small.

Real quick before wrapping up, I wanted to run through a bit of other little thing it does and does not do.  It will spin Gyms, but it does not battle in gyms or raids in any way.  If the bag fills up, it won’t keep spinning stops, and there isn’t any filter for say, “only keep rare items and Pokeballs”.  It only throws once at any given Pokemon, no matter how rare, and afterwards that Pokemon is gone.  So if you want a particular Pokemon, you need to play normally and manually throw balls.  Pokemon caught with the band do count towards Field Research,  if it says “Catch 3 Water Pokemon”, it doesn’t matter if you caught them with the band or manually.  Spinning stops also counts towards research.  Using the band still lets you hatch eggs, though you don’t get a notification that it’s happening.

So wrapping this up, with a little TL;DR, the band works as expected, and frankly, if you want to be able to walk and play PoGo distraction free, it’s worth picking up.  I had my doubts going in but after hem-hawing about it for months, I just bit the bullet.  I wouldn’t pay much mark up on it though, I have seen the PoGo+ for I think $30-$35 and the Gotcha for $40-$45, but both are often marked up a lot more, the prices already feel like they are pushing it for the value depending on how casual you are about playing the game.  I kind of wish it included a little more incentive like maybe the one throw Pokeballs didn’t count towards your owned balls or something.

 

 

 

Review – Mario Kart DS (NDS)

Mario Kart DS
Nintendo DS – Nintendo
1 to 8 players (4 max on WiFi)

You’d think it would be easier to review games that you like than to review games you don’t like. Trust me, it’s not. When you review a game you don’t like, you point out all its glaring flaws. You poke a few jokes at its expense, you tell everyone to avoid it, simple. The process for reviewing a good game is similar except you have to be careful to not come off like some sort of deluded fan boy. Also you have to accept that you’re likely just reiterating what others have said, even if you’ve never heard them say it.

With that said, Mario Kart DS, is THE game to own for the Nintendo DS at the moment. It takes advantage of the best features of the DS and uses them to its fullest. On the other hand, some of these features seem like cheating. Primarily, the map. A popular feature for DS games it to show an in game map on the second screen. In the past you had to buy a strategy guide, now the important part of the guide is built in. Still, a lot of racing games show a map of some sort, Mario Kart’s is just a bit more elaborate.

That’s pretty much the only bad thing I can think of with this title. I suppose the controls aren’t perfect (Stick works 100% better than a D-pad for this series) but it’s not horribly bad.

That gives us two pseudo negative remarks against it, and those are really stretching it. On with the good! One thing I really like is the reuse of old tracks. There is an entire cup series based on old tracks. Half the tracks in the game are reused. It’s really pretty neat seeing those old SNES tracks re-imagined in “real” 3D.

There is also a new battle mode in this game (note, I have not played Double Dash, it’s possible this feature is in DD). In addition to the classic “Destroy the opponent’s balloons” there is a sort of king of the hill battle royal mission where you collect stars. Getting hit causes you to loose stars and periodically the person with the least stars is dropped.

The best feature is of course, WiFi multiplayer. No more are we hampered by multiplaying within line of site. Mario Kart DS lets you play against anyone with a DS and an internet connection. The lag seems to be more or less non existent as well, though it can take a few minutes to find opponents. The implementation of the multiplayer is decent but could use a little work. Something that let you manually join and pick opponents would be nicer when it comes to playing against friends. The game does let you trade “friend codes” though and gives priority to friends also searching for games.

The only thing you can do on WiFi though is race. Playing battle mode would have been a really nice feature as I prefer it when playing Kart Multiplayer.

The game also includes a rather interesting mission mode. This is essentially a Mario Kart version of the license tests from Gran Turismo, without of course the gruelingly impossible times to beat. These challenges range from “drive through the numbered gates” to “collect XX coins” to “defeat Y number of Pokeys/Cheep Cheeps/Moles”. There are at least 6 “worlds” or sets of 8 missions with a boss battle at the end of each world. I had originally written his part of the game off as really lame but recently I’ve found that it’s a lot of fun and easy to play through.

And that’s what this game is. A lot of fun. It’s got appear for almost anyone who plays games for being “cutesy but not too so characters” and racing and well balanced fun. There is one thing Nintendo will always do well, and that’s make games. Mario in any form is a classic everyone can always enjoy and Mario Kart DS is no exception.

Review – New Super Mario Brothers (NDS)

Nintendo DS – 1 to 2 Players

Intro
What do you get when you combine an 8-bit mindset with modern technology? You get New Super Mario Brothers of course! Just about the only thing missing is the inability to move left.I’m not real sure what the idea behind the “New” in the title is though. There isn’t all that much new to this title. It’s not a remake of the NES’ Super Mario Brothers either. They could have just as easily called it say, Adventures of the Super Mario Brothers and it would have been just as relevant. It’s likely the new plays off the idea that this is the first 2D Super Mario Brothers game since Super Mario World hence what is old is new again.

Story 6/10
There’s a basic format to the story in pretty much every Mario game. Travel across several worlds, usually eight, then rescue the Princess from Bowser. It’s extremely formulaic. Still, many good games are formulaic. Mega Man, Sonic, Metal Gear. It works if there’s enough extra to make it seem different. Such si not really the cane here. It’s the same exact plot as Mario 1 in a new wrapper.Additionally, it’s not a particularly strong plot. Nintendo’s other flagship series, Zelda, tends to keep the same formulaic approach while providing a much deeper story experience. Metal Gear is another series that does this, basic concepts, new shinny experience. Even some more recent Mario games have some sort of worthwhile story going that varies the theme a bit. This story is pulled right from Mario 1, 3, and World, and others.

Graphics 8/10

The DS comes off as a portable N64, except the NDS seems to feature superior 3D graphics. That’s possibly due to the small size of the screen though. It’s hard to make out ugliness when it’s half a millimeter in size. New Super Mario Brothers, while being a 2D game, features these nice 3D graphics. Despite the 3D, many enemies still come off as just the same as their 2D counterparts. Often things get distorted during such transitions. Then again, we’ve had 3D Mario for years now.As a result, everything moves fluidly and we get lots of nice scaling effects such as those apparent with the Mega Mushroom. The engine actually seems to be a take off of the Mario 64 Engine, though I don’t have anything to suggest it actually is.

Sound 6/10
I’m probably not the best judge of sound quality on any DS title since I often play with the sound turned all the way down. Still, what I have heard is a bit mixed. Many of the sound effects are ported straight from SMB1 which is a really nice touch. On the other hand, these same old sound effects just don’t mix too well with the modern style graphics.The music in mostly underwhelming as well. I couldn’t hum one tune from the game if I had to which tells me none of it was particularly catchy or memorable.

Control/Gameplay 8/10

The game play itself only marginally feels like old school Mario. The basics are there but it completely lacks the speed. With the original Super Mario Brothers, you can easily run full speed through almost every level. New SMB requires a lot more strategy and stopping. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just one more step towards why this doesn’t feel like “New” Super Mario Brothers.Still, everything handles very solidly, even when you’re gargantuan Mega Mario. Pretty much the main exception is the Turtle Shell power up, which spins out of control so fast the power up is completely useless for regular play.

Balance 5/10

Most often the case is that a game is too difficult. This one is almost too easy. With the exception of a handful of tricky spots, there’s not much to keep this game challenging. Most levels rely on a single gimmick of some sort, once you figure out the way to thwart each gimmick, there’s not much to keep you from breezing through the level.It’s not helped that most of the gimmicks are recycled from previous Mario games, primarily Mario 3. The solution is likely something you’re already familiar with if you’ve played through previous 2D Mario games.

Replayability 7/10

This is a category solely dependant on how obsessive you are with collecting every item in a game. Specifically, the gold coins. Each level has 3 hidden gold coins that can be spent on the world map to unlock new levels and bonus mushroom houses. You can play through the game pretty quickly, but chances are you’ll miss a ton of the hidden coins and likely two entire worlds. The worlds are more likely to bring you back than the gold coins but not having every coin means you’re also going to miss out on some levels too.As you complete the game, your save files gains one of three gold stars. One star for completing the game, one star for playing every level, one star for spending all the coins. It will take you a fair amount of time to find every coin, but only a couple are truly well hidden to the point of being difficult to find.

Originality 3/10

This game is more or less selling itself on the merit of being a remake/remix of old school Super Mario Brothers game play. As such, pretty much every level comes off as being a direct rip off of some old concept. There’s very little here that’s truly new, especially in level gimmicks.So what is new. There are a couple of new Power ups. The Mega Mushroom makes you turn into “Really Big Mario” allowing you to crush pipes and walls and enemies alike. The Mega Mushroom is the most fun. The Mini Mushroom turns you into “Really Small Mario”, which lets you access tiny pipes and pass through other small tricky areas to discover secrets. The Micro Mushroom is the most useful. Then there is the Turtle Shell. Mario dons a shell that will protect him while ducking and allow him to speed along when running. The trick is that you can’t generally stop yourself while speeding along. This can make for some quick pitfalls. The Blue Shell is the most useless and lame. I believe it’s required for retrieving one of the game’s gold coins, so you’ll be force to use it at least once.Some of the bosses are nice though. Particularly the frantic Monty Mole tank battle and the Mega Manesque Super Lakitu (a boss that gave me serious Cloud Man vibes). Still, the mini boss battles against Bowser JR are very simple and repetitious and back to unoriginality, are almost straight rip offs of the old SMB3 Boom-Boom battles.

Addictiveness 10/10

This is a game you’re going to want to come back to. Even replaying the same levels trying to track down all the coins doesn’t get tiring. Most levels play fairly quickly, though they lack the full on sprintability of SMB1. Still, it’s a blast to play and it will keep you wanting to play more.

Appeal Factor 10/10

Who doesn’t love Mario? Probably the most memorable gaming icon ever created, with inly maybe Pac man rivaling Mario’s famous image. Even new gamers should be able to appreciate the simple addictiveness of smashing blocks and stomping Goombas.

Miscellaneous 7/10O

One of the best returning stars here is the Fire Flower. I don’t know about anyone else, but since the advent of Flying Mario in Mario 3 and Mario World, I never use Fire Balls. In this game you’ll rely on them religiously. In fact the complete lack of flying is really hard to get used to at first.There also Mini Games included to help with replay value but most, if not all of them are carried over directly from Super Mario 64 DS, and they were boring crap when included with that game too.

Final Scores:
Story: 6
Graphics: 8
Sound: 6
Control/Gameplay: 8
Balance: 5
Replayability: 7
Originality: 3
Addictiveness: 10
Appeal Factor: 10
Miscellaneous: 7While I feel like I’ve been a bit hard on the game, it’s still a lot of fun to play. Nothing in it is particularly new or original, but side scrolling Mario Action is always fun, and this game serves it up considerably better then Princess Peach did. Unless you absolutely hate Super Mario Brothers games, which of course means you also have no soul, you should definitely give this game a go.

Final Score 7/10