Reviews

Review – Nintendo Game & Watch Collection (NDS)

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I posted a photo of this game once I finally managed to acquire it to Flickr and it received the comment question “Is it worth it?”. You see, Game & Watch isn’t your standard Nintendo DS game, it can only be acquired (in the US) through the Club Nintendo Points promotional system. If you’re unfamiliar with how this works, most Nintendo titles on DS and Wii comes with little slips that include a code. When you register the game on the Club Nintendo website, you get points. I’m not positive but I think it’s something like 40 points per game. In order to redeem the Game & Watch Collection, you need 800 points, or like 20 games. There are other ways to get points such as followup surveys or Virtual console titles (worth less) but for the most part you’re looking at owning at around 20 games for a Nintendo console to get the points needed to get this one title. To make matters slightly more complicated, there is a second Game & Watch Collection available as well as a bunch of other nifty Nintendo themed merchandise.

I’ve been saving for this cart for like 2-3 years now. My personal opinion is that an actual playable game is “worth more” than some novelty cards. The issue really here is that the game itself isn’t much more than a novelty on it’s own. In the time it’d take you to play a round of Solitaire with the Mario Playing Cards, you’ll probably have maxed out the enjoyment that can be had from the Game & Watch Collection. It’s pretty much as advertised, a DS version of the classic handheld versions of Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House.

I’ll touch on each of these games here however, in order of what I would consider to be best to worst.

Donkey Kong

Not quite the same Donkey Kong one might think of from the arcades but it’s more or less the same concept. Climb up some sloped platforms while jumping over barrels to knock the big ape from the top of the building. Keep in mind, this game follows the LCD Handheld age game mechanics. That is, your movement is limited to maybe 20 static positions on the screen. This makes the game more about timing than anything. The screen “refreshes” ever half second or so, so all movement has to be timed around this sequence. You can move your little man faster than the refresh but timing for jumping over barrels centers on this mechanic.

I rank it highest if only because it’s got the most engrossing gameplay without being overly demanding and based on luck (see Oil Panic).

Oil Panic

I commented previously in the Donkey Kong section about overly complex and based on luck. The object of Oil Panic is to catch drops of oil as they fall from the ceiling in a bucket. Your bucket can only hold 3 drips however so occasionally you have to dump the bucket out the window to a guy waiting below. The catch is that the guy below moved back and forth from the left tot he right window. This can be mildly irritating as the whole thing is timed to the LCD style switching of screens. Since the guy below can take 2-3 turns to get to one side or the other, this can lead to some mild frustration as drops fall and you have to wait for the guy to move to one side or the other. So like i said, lucky timing.

Green House

I’m ranking this game the lowest for it’s generally overall simplicity and kind of lameness. Basically, you have 4 plants to protect from bugs, one in each corner. You move your guy around the screen spraying the bugs with bug spray as they approach your plants. That’s pretty much the entire scope of the game and it’s about as exciting as described.

Overall these three games do do a decent representation of recreating the look and feel of the older LCD handhelds. There are static color backdrops that would have been permanent overlays and the only moving graphics involve the black LCD bits that move from pre determined blocks on a timed interval. It’s not a real time move. This is one bit of disappointment with these titles. It seems like it would have been simple to add a modern real time element and keep the same graphical feel, especially as a “bonus” feature. Basically the original style game and an “updated” version. I imagine part of the decision not to do this was that these are free(ish) and so they wanted to save costs.

My other major disappointment with this series is the game selection. Possibly if I were more familiar with the Game and Watch games I’d understand better why they chose these three titles. Maybe they were the first three, maybe they were the most popular back in the day. Personally, I’d have preferred a selection based on more modern titles. I’m pretty sure there are both Mario and Zelda games in the Game and Watch series. Seeing these titles recreated on a modern system and being able to play what is part of two of Nintendo’s most popular flagship series of games would have been much more enjoyable all around. At least they would have had more novelty for being Mario and Zelda.

Review – Movie – Coraline

Sep 20th, 2010

by Ramen Junkie.

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It’s a little hard to describe this movie without mentioning Alice in Wonderland. So I’ll just get it out of the way. This is more or less Alice in Wonderland meets Nightmare Before Christmas. Not surprising on the latter part since it’s done by the same guy who did Nightmare Before Christmas.

With this comparison out of the way, the genre that best describes it would be “Children’s horror” I suppose. It’s actually rather creepy in many parts, especially in the final third or so of the film. It’s also the final third where things feel like they fall apart slightly in the plot. It’s not terrible but it becomes fairly “set em up and knock em down” predictable. Also there were several comments made by the characters encouraging Coraline to continue that made me feel like I was watching someone play a video game, the worst being something like “You’ve found the first item but there are two more to collect!”.

The climax also feels like it drags on a bit with it’s repeated series of predicable encounters.

The build up is exceptional though, which is probably part of why the climax felt like a let down. Coraline’s trips through her perfect alternate dimension become increasingly eerie and as we eventually learn there’s certainly nothing truly perfect in this paradise. There’s also a lot of good closure and explanation behind a lot of the wonderment of the film, which generally just adds to my enjoyment of it. Bizarre for the sake of bizarre is one thing that annoys me in these sorts of films. Even if it only makes sense in the context of the fictional world, it at least makes sense.

Anyway, the only plot point that does sort of bug me really is the way Coraline’s parents seem to treat her like total shit at the beginning of the movie then of course turn their tune by the end. It’s a bit crucial to the plot though so it’s almost a necessary loophole of sorts.

Also there is a bit of question as to why sometimes there is a brick wall behind the secret tunnel door the plot revolves around and sometimes there’s not.

These are generally just nitpicks though. This movie is genuinely good quality all around and worth viewing if you like films that are pretty solidly good, though not necessarily spectacularly amazing.

Review – Movie – Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Aug 14th, 2010

by Ramen Junkie.

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I generally like to avoid giving away too many spoilers for anything new so I’ll break this review in half so to speak. I’ll preface this a bit with my thoughts and feelings before going into this movie.

Based on almost no evidence, the original thought was “Hey look, it’s River City Ransom the Movie”. These character all come off the way Kunio and company would if they were live action players in a film with a plot slightly deeper than “Fight across the city to rescue your girlfriend’. In addition to the seemingly gratuitous River City Ransom influence, there were other obvious general Video game references at work here. This movie seemed to be one right up my alley though no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get my expectations to actually go up much more than “this will probably end up being ok but mostly annoying.

I realized later that part of this reason is that I don’t really care for the lead actor, Michael Cera. He’s just not overly compelling to look at and comes off as if he’s about to burst into tears at any moment because someone is being a puppy in front of him.

That’s the best way to say it really.

Thankfully, this film ultimately does deliver a pretty good if not somewhat random story. When I say random” i mean the good sort of random. The kind where it’s random in that it’s reasonably original in concept, and less so in that it’s all over the place with no explanation. In fact, other than the completely outlandish fight scenes, which there are many, this film’s plot would still flow decently and stands coherently on it’s own. I guess what I’m saying is, nothing ever seems to happen “just for the sake of happening”, which is often a pit fall of hipster stylized films such as this one. Everything ultimately has a purpose.

So the quick plot in a nutshell. Scott Pilgrim meets the literal girl of his dreams and does his goofy best to court her. He then discovers that in order to date her, he must battle, to the death, each of her seven previous “Ex-es”. The base issue i have here is that Ramona is general aloof and mysterious and there is actually not as much given into her background as I’d like. This brings up the issues involved with the idea of “adapted from a book/graphic novel/comic.”

Due to interest generated by this movie, before seeing it, I’d been reading through the books. I’m through book 2 out of 6. The plot line follows pretty closely with the plot of the books I’ve read up until around the end of book 2. It quickly becomes apparent that somewhere someone realized that they would never fit all of the 6 volumes into one manageable film. Liberties with the plot start showing up and even though I’m not familiar with the entire plot (yet) it’s fairly clear more and more chunks are chopped out as the show moves along. Especially considering that the halfway point of the movie’s run time roughly corresponds with the end of book 2, that is, only one third of the way through the overall actual plot. I’ll touch on a few details later in the spoiler section later. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but by the end things feel a little rushed.

The climax sequence probably also isn’t helped if another factor I heard is true either. It’s my understanding that the 6th book wasn’t quite finished when the movie was in production. This means the end is slightly different than the book. i personally don’t have a problem with this however the overall feel and dialogue of the climax and ending sequence does feel slightly “off” from the tone of the rest of the film. It’s not a game breaking feel, and it may just be a result of the books being put out over like a 6 year period but it just felt slightly more… big budget Hollywood than the rest of the movie.

Speaking of big budget feel, Scott Pilgrim is loaded with some fantastic special effects. It’s all very subtle through and meant to mimic the feel of a comic book. The last film i remember seeing that really FELT like a comic book was Ang Lee’s Hulk. Not the one with Edward Norton, the other one that no one seemed to like. It does make for some slightly odd scene transitions but it works well for flowing time across multiple periods and locations. It also works well for conveying the force and power behind various actions.

Like when the band plays it’s music and there’s these little waves of energy flying from the instruments. Speaking of music, this film is has a lot of it. It’s all pretty decent thankfully and it’s often central to the plot. Scott Pilgrim is a member of the band Sex Bob-Om, a reference to Mario Brothers. This band and it’s members is directly involve in the activity of something like 5 of the 7 Evil Exes generally through the Toronto Battle of the Bands contest.

As for a generalized review, the movie pretty much delivers as expected and promised in every way possible. If you’ve seen the trailer and said “oh wow, that looks fun/interesting/good” chances are you’ll be satisfied with the experience. If you’ve seen it and said “That looks like some hipster indie wanna-be nerd trash flick”, you probably won’t like it. I will say that I though it looked “ok” based on the trailer and pre knowledge and ended up being satisfactorily surprised at how good it ended up being. On the other hand, someone like my wife, who will get almost zero of the “subtle video game jokes” and generally doesn’t like kooky action filled ironic comedies, probably wouldn’t care for it.

So if you’re not interested in a bit of spoiler related notes, I’ll let ol’ Scott here send you packing.

These will be fairly free flowing here… If i come up with something really good after finishing the books I’ll probably just update this list….

Before all else I want to throw in how hilariously awesomely fan wankish it is that the people who get killed explode into coins River City Ransom style. I prefaced this review with how this looked like “river City Ransom the Movie’ and i had no idea this would actually happen (ok, i didn’t know before I saw it in the book but still). Speaking of the book and RCR, there’s also a scene where Scott is effectively dreaming about living the game in his past and rescuing some girl from Simon on the roof of River City High.

Firstly, Secondly, the video game references were fairly numerous and the effects often had the simulation of Fighting Game style graphics. Most obvious is the appearance of the word “VS” on the screen just before any fight actually started. I found myself heavily anticipating the final VS appearance between Scott and Gideon. It didn’t come at first but it was later shown why (Hey, i got an extra guy!) Basically, the real fight hadn’t happened yet.

Then there was the REAL final VS between Scott and Nega-Scott. I can say i knew there wouldn’t be a real fight here. it wouldn’t have fit with the tone flowing at the moment at all, this is something the film seemed to control very well.

I also was rather surprised and not surprised when it came down to Ramona VS Roxie instead of Scott VS Roxie. i almost pulled a hokey “Stand up and cheer” move in the theater.

Speaking of Ramona VS, in at least one occasion, we get Knives vs Ramona before the climax. This was completely cut and seems like it could have made a decent addition since it would have helped set up Knives’ appearance during the climax better.

As for Knives in the Climax. I actually was really REALLY disappointed that Scott didn’t pick knives over Ramona in the end. Frankly, despite the hassle everyone gave Scott over Knives, she seems to genuinely give a shit about him while Ramona doesn’t seem to care at all, about anyone.

Basically, Scott really should have just told Ramona adieu but he’s realized that it’ll never work out and stuck with Knives.

Review – Movie – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Sep 26th, 2009

by Ramen Junkie.

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NOTE: I was originally going to make one long review with a spoiler filled section of bitching following this segment. Unfortunately due to the somewhat random and incoherent nature of the plot, the spoiler filled section became very random and incoherent. In the interest of making some level of observations, I’m going to go with the non spoiler filled section here and sort out the rest later for a second post.

Ok, Revenge of the Fallen. Transformers 2. In case you missed it, my Transformers 1 review can be found here.

This movie is certainly an action flick. Lots of running and shooting and explosions. Still, it’s based on a kid’s property and is made to push toys so there isn’t much blood or gore. Ok, not much blood or HUMAN gore. Several of the robot death scenes are actually kind of gory, particularly the final one. If you’re making your robots fluid and organic, it makes their deaths a bit more organic than say, the Power Rangers get shot and sparks fly.

Also, as I mentioned,t his is a movie based on a kids property so there is of course lots of swearing. I don’t think there were any F-Bombs but there were several “Shits” and a lot of “Asses”. Speaking of Asses. The Transformers Universe is also populated solely by women who are all “The Hotz”. Sam’s college dorm room apparently is on the all hot girls floor because other than his roommate I don’t recall seeing any other males on the floor. Though in a later scene Sam screams like a little girl and then proceeds to get called a girl by Megan “The Fox” Fox. Considering all of the suggested Gay/Bi jokes/overtones concerning Sam’s roommate, it’s likely that they are in fact not in a Coed dorm but simply assumed to be girls and placed appropriately.

Anyway.

This is supposed to be the short non spoiler part. The movie is large and violent and slightly confusing. It has several irritating plot holes. It’s made “for kids” but is not particularly appropriate for them. At the same time it’s slightly embarrassing to watch for anyone who is older than say, 25. Basically, the ideal target for this flick is High School Kids and Frat boys, though there was a surprisingly large number of chicks in the 4 sold out theaters, many of which were NOT “drug along by their boyfriends”. If you loved the first film, you’ll probably like this. The plot continues the first movie’s plot reasonably well, which is a plus. This movie will own the box office even though it’s slightly crummy. I imagine with repeated viewing I’ll grow to hate it as much as I hate it’s predecessor.

If you were hoping for better characterization for the bots you’re going to be massively disappointed. The cons are even MORE confusing in this film as they die and come back to life and all seem to be in 3 or 4 places AT ONCE. Also we see the unexplained return of Blackout (who supposedly is now named Grindor*) and in at least once scene Bonecrusher drives by. If you don’t remember who Bonecrusher and Blackout are then that’s no surprise since Bonecrusher had maybe 60 seconds of screen time and Blackout maybe 5 minutes in the first film.

* According to the toy but never named in the movie

There are plenty of new bots and several returning old bots. The new Autobots include Arcee, Skids, Mudflap, and Sideswipe. Someone told me after the fact that a bot I mistook for Ironhide at the very end of the movie was Jolt though I don’t remember him showing up ANYWHERE else. Skids and Mudflap get a reasonable amount of character, assuming by reasonably you mean “They are black… ish…” though they look very “rednecky”. Arcee and company never say anything and mostly just zip around shooting things. I think Sideways gets one line in the entire film with is one less than Jazz got in the first film.

The Cons, as mentioned get the worse end of the stick. Sideways isn’t named ever and has less screen time than Bonerusher got in the first film (50% of his screen time is shown int he movie’s trailer, the other 50% in the Preview clip we got involving Sideswipe). The Constructicons seem to be everywhere all at once including merged and unmerged. They way over use the whole “falling from space” gimmick which makes it seem like there are even more of them.

Even Bumblebee, who was the costar of the first film does almost nothing here. He drives Sam around, he drives Sam and friends around, he drives Sam’s parents around. Basically he drives people from place to place a lot and stands around in the background. Then there is Optimus Prime, who is supposed to be the leader of the Autobots but spends next to zero time around them. Basically he’s been watching a ton fo Rambo between this and the first movie, he pretty much always fights his battles solo.

The real starring bot of this film is probably Starscream. Starscream gets a lot of fleshing out and Megatron somewhat along side him. Sure, neither are quite exact replicas of their older counterparts but they don’t need to be. I accept that this movie is it’s own deal, I don’t expect everything to be “like it was”. What I do expect is that I should give a crap about these people. Hell even if they blow off the cons I’d love it if the Autobots were more than just a band of Red Shirts.

To wrap this up. This film has me very torn. Is it a “good movie”? It depends on your definition of good. Does good mean a perfect Transformers homage and experience? Then no, this movie sucks. Does good mean intriguing plot and deep characters? Then, once again, no, this movie sucks. Does good mean an action packed popcorn flick that had lots of explosions and shooting? Then yeah, this movie is excellent. Just be sure to screen it before letting your kids watch. If you were offended by things like the Masturbation talk and pissing scene of the first film then don’t bother with this as it contains that and more.

Review – Kirby Super Star Ultra (NDS)

Feb 5th, 2009

by Ramen Junkie.

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A few months ago, I put out a request to my friends online to recommend some DS games. The key was, I felt that I was stuck in a rut and I wanted something different that I wouldn’t likely even consider normally.

After several good suggestions, I decided on Kirby Super Star Ultra. I’ve played Kirby’s Dreamland and Kirby’s Adventure many years ago and I’m pretty sure they were alright. I have this unnatural love for Kirby’s Pokemon clone Jigglypuff. It was a platform game, something I generally enjoy a lot. I ended up picking it up. Ok, gambling on a title like this can end up being a bust but having a $25 gift card to cut the cost helped a lot.

Basically, going into this, I had very little idea of what it would be. I knew Kirby was a big pink ball who eats things an that the back of the package was pushing some sort of “multi character buddy system”.

As it turns out, this game is a game of Mini Games. Not really Mini games in the WarioWare sense but Mini games in the Super Mario Allstars sense. That is, each game is effectively a shortish but full independent game of it’s own. The initial offering is 6 games, only one of which i unlocked from the start. As you complete other games, more games unlock. These games are all rated on a star based difficulty ranging from something like one star to many stars.

For people who are unaware. The basic premise of Kirby is that Kirby will eat anything and everything, including enemies. If you eat certain enemies, you can also choose to gain their abilities. For example, eating a knight will let you wield a sword. Eating a guy with a jetpack will give you a jetpack and the ability to dash. Kirby’s natural abilities are limited to eating and puffing himself up in order to fly. This game also lets you eject any ability once you’ve absorbed and create a helper. That same knight ability an become a knight who will battle along side you.

Since this game has several separate games I’ll discuss each one shortly in a bit of detail. They all contain the same general play mechanics but each tends to have a gimmick of it’s own.

So I started off with Spring Breeze, the first available game. Turns out this game is a remake of the original Kirby’s Dream land. Actually I had my suspicions that this game was the Super Mario Allstars of Kirby and all of the included games were in fact older Kirby games. Turns out I was half correct. Further research revealed that this game is in fact a remake of a previous Super NES game, though it includes a decent amount of new content.

Back to Spring Breeze. It’s a basic stage based platformer with bosses at the end of each stage. It will also give you an instant feeling of “buyers remorse” upon completion. Spring Breeze is ridiculously short and ridiculously easy.

Which brings up my first real complaint about this game as a whole. It’s easy. It’s extremely easy. Now granted, I’ve played a ton of platform games and being really good at something as comparably unforgiving as Super Mario Brothers makes this a cakewalk by default but this game tends to be too easy for it’s own good. One of the last games to be unlocked with like ten stars ended up being one of the easiest overall.

The point is, don’t pick this game up expecting a challenge unless you’re a pretty novice level gamer. That doesn’t make it any less fun really, it’s just means difficulty level is not a selling point at all on this title.

Anyway, like I said, buyer’s remorse. You just now get the feeling that you’ve spent 30 bucks on a game that contains 6 games you’ll complete in 15 minutes each. Kind of a gyp. This problem will be amplified when you play the second game (in order of difficulty level).

Gourmet Race is the second game. It’s a 3 stage race against King Dedede to eat as much as you can. It almost feels like it should be in the mini games section. There is exactly one “trick” needed to win this game easily and there are no enemies. I played this game

Thankfully, things pick up a bit by the third game, Dyna Blade. This game is another stage based game only this time the game’s four stages are laid out in a world map fashion. This time the stages are longer than in Spring Breeze and the difficulty is actually noticeably (slightly) higher.

Things heat up finally with The Great Cave Offensive. This came consists of a large continuous mazelike level consisting of several themed areas. The object is to travel through the cave and collect all 60 treasures hidden within (15 in each area). Some of the treasures are obvious and easy to find. Others require you to traverse far corners and carry particular equipment and/or helpers in order to acquire them. Still a few are obvious but require a bit of ingenuity in order to get past a particular trap. Probably the most difficult to figure out is one that is guarded by a strong wind.

Each area also includes a boss. The bosses are fun to fight as they provide some difficult and it’s really irritating that they don’t return when you revisit the maze in order to collect more treasure. Fortunately for anyone who enjoys the bosses, all of them start repeating a lot from this point on in the overall Kirby Super Star Ultra experience.

The treasures also add a bit of fun, many of them reference other Nintendo games with items such as the Master Sword and Captain Falcon’s Helmet.

The next game is Revenge of the MetaKnight, another stage based platform game of course. This one adds a critical element, time. Each stage has a quickly diminishing time limit in which to complete the stage. This time limit is part of the plot which gives it even more urgency. You must quickly fight through the MetaKnight’s ship and bring it down before it can cause any mayhem.

This time element makes this game rather fun and intense with one complaint. There is a lot of text based plot unfolding around you as you rush through the stages. The enemy leaders go on about how Kirby is storming the various areas and crack some jokes here and there. Unfortunately the urgency of what’s going on on screen means you’ll end up missing lot of this plot.

The sixth game to be unlocked is Milky Way Wishes. This is another world map style game in the spirit of Dyna Blade. The difference is you can play any of the stages from the start and you’ll need to revisit them several times as well. This game differs from your standard Kirby game. Instead of eating enemies and gaining their powers, you must find “Deluxe Ability” power ups. This allows you to use any power at any time. This makes this game the easiest of all. Most of the time in the other games, the problem is finding the enemy you want to be to make things easy. With this, you have all of your powers available all of the time.

These are the 6 core games. After these you unlock an additional 5 games, though these tend to be variations on previous games as opposed to wholly new ones. For example, Revenge of the King is essentially a remake of Spring Breeze with increased difficulty and a few new part added. The three games, Arena, Helper to Hero, and True Arena, are all variations on the theme of “Fight every boss in order without dying.”

The best of these final unlocked games, and possibly the best game on the cart is Meta Knightmare Ultra. This game has5 stages however each stage consists of each of the previous game’s levels all lumped together. For example Stage 1 is Spring breeze, Stage 2 is Dyna Blade, etc.

The difference is, instead of Kirby, you play as Meta Knight. Meta Knight doesn’t absorb abilities from enemies like Kirby, instead killing enemies fills a power meter. This Power meters alows you to use on of four abilities built in. You can summon a helper knight, increase your movement speed, heal your HP, or unleash a super attack.

The issue is though that you generally will use the pattern “summon a new knight if it dies, heal as needed, otherwise save all energy to hit the bosses with 1-2 special attacks which will always kill them.” The Special attack really is a bit overpowered.

Some of the stages are also a bit more difficult as Metaknight. Particularly anything that requires you to say, fly around lava. Metaknight’s flight ability is much more jerky than Kirby’s and it can make some areas quite tricky.

There are also a handful of completely forgettable mini games that can be played.

Another really fun aspect of this game is the campiness. I’m not quite sure if it’s intentional or not either. The descriptions for everything are kooky with lots of weird emphasis. There is also a hilarious RPG style boss where you take turns with it making attacks and when defeated gives experience. This experience does things like increases your puffiness and cuteness and the game points out that these stats don’t really mean anything.

Ultimately, this game is a hard one to wrap up. Really any sort of recommendation depends on what you want from a game. This is certainly a fun decent game but it’s likely not going to be something anyone who considers themselves “hardcore” will want to play. It has no difficulty and there isn’t much of a learning curve. It does make a decent distraction and would likely appeal to someone who likes games like Mario a lot. On the other hand, the oddity surrounding the game and it’s random almost pointless jumble of plot lines may confuse and irritate more casual gamers. There isn’t any sort of cohesion between the plots of the various games. Still, it’s fun to play, which is really what counts in the end.