E3 2010: Additional Game Impressions

Here's My quick thoughts on some additional games that were on display at E3 but not shown off during the conferences.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (3DS): The N64 classic and self proclaimed best game in the universe will be released on Nintendo's new handheld system. I never played the original game as I didn't get into the Zelda series until Wind Waker. All I've heard about this game is that its really good and the water temple is bitch, which apparently is going to be made a tad easier in this version.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Really..another Kingdom Hearts game? I love the series but they're really just stalling with the third game. We've already got a prequel coming on the PSP and two handheld titles that take place between the first and second games. Its unknown where in the timeline the game will take place in, but I'll probably play and at least the 3DS's analog nub will make the game more playable than the DS iteration of the series that came out last year.

Sonic Colors (Wii and DS): This looks like it takes what worked about the sonic levels in the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed and made them into their own game. Sonic has some power-ups to use that don't seem to impede the gameplay so is shaping up to be a pretty good title...lets just hope that Sega doesn't predictably mess this up...

Marvel vs Capcom 3 (PS3, Xbox 360): I guess this is the Vs. Capcom's series answer to Street Fighter IV. I don't play Marvel vs Capcom 2 that much but I might give this a shot when my fighting game friends get a hold of this.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 (Multiple Platforms): This is just further devaluing of the Star Wars series. The purpose of the first game's plot was to bridge the gap from the prequel series to the original movies so making a sequel to that seems kinda pointless...I did kinda like that game, so I'll check this one out in spite of my bitching...

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 (Multiple Platforms): seems to play more like the DS games than an actual continuation of the original series, but I'm intrigued by the episodic content and my fondness for the series pretty much forces me to want to download this. If I had a choice between Sonic Colors or this, I'd guess I'd go with this one.

Okamiden (DS): I still need to finish the Wii version of Okami before I can even try this, but I like what played in that game and I hope this handheld version doesn't disappoint.

Mario Vs Donkey Kong: Miniland Mayhem (DS): Sadly, this game continues the Mini Mario gameplay that second game used...I want them to go back to the Donkey Kong Arcade style gameplay from the first game.

Star Fox 64 3D (3DS): WooHoo! I love Star Fox 64 and having a portable version of it is a dream come true. I don't know what will be added to the game other than 3d effects but I hope it doesn't mess up with what made the original game.

And so E3 2010 comes to a close...

E3 2010: Nintendo Impressions

Wow...that's all I really can say about Nintendo's press conference. It truly feels like this year was an apology for the last two years of so-so and just terrible E3 showings. Nintendo rocketed back into what they do best, showing off great games. The best thing about the conference was that long dormant home console franchises are getting Wii games this year and almost every game they presented seemed worth checking out.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: So the first official Zelda game made specifically for the Wii was finally unveiled and it looked great. The graphical style seemed to combine the cel shading of Wind Waker and the more detailed Twilight Princess. The Wii Motion Plus is required to play the game and apart from a new beetle item, what they showed here was just generic Zelda gameplay, though there is a twist to typical story that has yet to revealed. The game is slated for release sometime next year.

Mario Sports Mix: Mario's sole game for the time being. After going on two proper adventures, the plumber finally takes a break and goes back to all the sports plaaying we usually have to put up with inbetween those big adventures. The difference this time is that instead of the whole game focusing on one sport, there are at least 3 sports on display: hockey, volleyball, and a second go round with basketball. The game will also release sometime next year.

Wii Party and Just Dance 2: Nintendo showed how fair they've moved from casual gamers as these were the only two games aimed directly at them during the show. From what was shown, Wii Party is just Mario Party with the Miis and Just Dance 2 is...well Just Dance 2. Neither of them were interesting but neither of them looked horrible either.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: The Golden Sun DS title that they showed off last year and haven't given any info on since has finally gotten a trailer, the subtitle of "Dark Dawn" and vague release date of this holiday season. If there's one thing that really bugged me about Nintendo's conference its was their failure to set a concrete release date for anything. Anyway, the trailer looks cool and I can't wait to try it.

Goldeneye 007: A semi remake of that popular N64 game. The only thing I know has been changed for sure is that James Bond's Pierce Brosnan appearance had been updated to that of the current James Bond: Daniel Craig. Never played the original game so this should be a treat.

Epic Mickey: This one kinda disappointed me, mainly because the pre-release screen shots and character models looked really dark and steampunk like, while the material shown to us here didn't reflect any of this. I guess that just wasn't in this portion of the game. What was shown was very straight forward platforming material and that is enough to get me a little interested in it.

Kirby's Epic Yarn: I was so happy for this game's announcement. Kirby hasn't stared in a home console platformer for over a decade (Kirby 64 was the last one). The game's art style is incredibly unique what with everything looking like strands of yarn. It also looks like Kirby's traditional vacuum ability has been altered in some fashion. I can wait to get my hands on this one this holiday.

Metroid: Other M: Some actually gameplay footage was shown in the new trailer and it still looks cool, but they didn't say anything new about the game Nintendo had had already been releasing info about the game throughout the past year. In one of the few release dates given, the game will launch August 31st.

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Retro Studios, the people behind the excellent Metroid Prime series are working a revival of the original Donkey Kong Country series. The classic team-up of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong returns and lots of elements of the previous country titles as will as Donkey Kong 64 show here. I'm looking forward to its release this holiday (so tired of that vague release date)

Nintendo 3DS: So, this is it. Nintendo's successor to the DS. its capable of 3d images without the need of those dumbass glasses. I can't really say anything about this because the problem of the showing of a device like this is I can't talk about it without playing it myself. It looks cool and the analog stick is an interesting addition (maybe Super Mario 64 DS will actually play well now) and the graphics shown off were amazing for a handheld. I want to try it out.

Kid Icarus: Uprising: Everyone's really excited for this 3DS launch title as the first title in the franchise since some game boy game released in like 1991 or something. I'm not terribly excited in it since I never played either Kid Icarus game and what I saw of the original wasn't that great. I did notice a lot of voice acting (for a handheld Nintendo game) and It the games premise seems interesting enough to give the game a shot.

So yeah, Nintendo really stepped up their game this year.

Pokemon: Soul Silver Version

I've had this since it was released back in March and though I haven't played it in while and haven't finished the true final battle as of now (hey, my team has to be at least at level 80 for that), I've done enough to form an opinion of it. Soul Silver is a remake of the Gold and Silver games released on the Game Boy Color about a decade ago. They're exactly the same as any other Pokemon game: catch some pokemon, battle some pokemon, battle an evil organization, defeat the gym leaders, and take on the league champion. The only thing Soul Silver (and it's original versions) did that no other entry in the series has yet to do was allow you to revisit the location from previous game: in this case Kanto from Pokemon Red and Blue. It's a cool feature that I wish the other games would have utilized. Visiting and battling characters from the previous games and seeing how that world has changed since then added a level of nostalgia and continuity that the newer games sorely lack. Other than that, the only other new things added to this game was some poke'walker toy that I never bothered to use. This is pretty much the strongest game in the series. It managed to take what made the series addictive and squeeze it for all it was worth. There's no doubt that the series had run it course as this is still the same damn game we've been playing for roughly 12 years. There's already a new game on the way that promises to reinvent the series, but we'll just have to wait and see if they can deliver on that statement.

Metal Slug 7

I don't understand how Metal Slug has gotten to 7 major iterations. The games are pretty damn identical to one another and each new entry is fairly worse than the one that came before it, so there isn't anything new that I have to cover here. Number seven is a change in the sense that its actually better than Metal Slug 6, but since that game was just all sorts of awful, that's not really saying much. Like the previous games, this game is about action, and lots of it. The game is split into missions that you just blast your way through and towards the end, you will encounter a boss who you have to defeat. It is your typical run-and-gun arcade style game level design. You can choose any one of the six characters, each slightly different from the others. For example, Marco starts out with a powerful handgun while Eri has more grenades. In spite of who you choose in the end, it is all about dodging bullets, killing the enemies and rescuing the POWs.

The problem with this is the same that has plagued the series more and more as it has progressed: At times, the action can get quite chaotic on screen, bullets flies from every corner of the screen, endless enemies keep appearing from the most unlikely places, and POWs crying for help from some obscure locations...this is all well and good but the chaotic action has become more than is reasonable to deal with. The early games (the first game in particular) were able to be chaotic, but it was still that rare breed of challenge that was fair, fun and balanced. Here in Slug 7, you're luckily to get anywhere without taking a shot to face or getting blown up by something you can't see. Everything just comes at you at rate that too much to react to. In the game's defense, the attacks thrown at you here are much more fair to deal with than Metal Slug 6 so at least the game is playable. Despite all this whining I'm doing, the core experience and some of the things I like about the series is still intact here and it's also nice to have a portable version of the series. It's just that its getting more apparent that the series needs to end.

Best Games of 2009

2009 was a relatively decent year in games or at least it was in terms of what I played. My lack of job meant I couldn't try out many new titles and my lack of a PS3 until just last week ensured I was unable to play the system that seemed to have the best year as far as exclusives were concerned. The Wii and 360 had almost nothing to offer in terms of big titles...well the 360 actually had two Halo games, but I have no interest in that series. There was a pretty strong showing for multi-platform releases and I guess any year that gives me a proper Mario game and a Ratchet and Clank title couldn't be all bad. Now that I've got a job and PS3 maybe I can go back and play some of the year's big releases.

Best Games of 2009

5. [Prototype] (Multi-Platform)

Though the missions get repetitive and the difficulty somewhat spirals out of control in the last few missions, this is a pretty fun open world game. The sheer variety of moves that you can unlock and preform is staggering and something as simple as traversing the city is a blast. This game is often compared to PS3 game Infamous, but since I haven't played that yet I can't really say which is the better anti-hero game, but Prototype is a solid action game.

4. Metroid Prime Trilogy (Nintendo Wii)

I wasn't sure at first whether to count this, as it sort of seems like cheating. I haven't reviewed it yet, and I'm not going to cover it as a single package. After all, it's not one game, it's three, All of which I've already played before. But even with the old content, I still got more fun out of it than most of what I played this year. Metroid Prime is still one of my favorite games of all time,. A fun shooter with a wonderful atmosphere. Metroid Prime 2 is still kind of a letdown with it overuse of backtracking, and Metroid Prime 3 makes up for the second game and is fun closure to great trilogy. Sure I'm kind of cheating, but The Metroid Prime Trilogy is the best gaming value you can get for your money this year.

3. New Super Mario Bros Wii (Nintendo Wii)

This is a pretty personal choice, as New Super Mario Bros Wii didn't do anything to push the franchise forward, it's just another solid entry in one of my favorite series. The game is kind of lazy in the sense that it doesn't have any new ideas of own, it just reuses old standbys from the series's past. The new items are fun and the co-op mode, while annoying at times is fun in a screw around with your friends way. It's not the best Mario game, but its certainly a fun one.

2. Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)

Ratchet & Clank is right up there with Mario as one of my favorite franchises, so luckily I had a friend with a PS3 who bought the game and though I didn't complete it, I was still able to play enough of it to gather my opinion of it. A Crack in Time doesn't alter the gameplay formula of the series, it just continues the run of gaming goodness that the series excels at. It had been some time since I played a new Ratchet game (2005's Deadlocked was the last for me), but I settled right into the groove as soon as the game started, blowing up everything in sight, collecting experience, and just having a fun time. I've got a PS3 now and I'm working through the earlier PS3 Ratchet entries and I must say this series is still a treat.

1. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (Nintendo DS)

And the best game of year is actually a handheld title. The Mario & Luigi series has always been a strong series and this third outing may easily be the best. The Mario RPGs have always allowed the writers to throw the Mario cast into bizarre scenarios and Bowser's Inside Story may be the most bizarre. The narrative goes in so many strange and wonderful directions and its all surprisingly funny. The combat is more involved than most RPGs on the market and getting to actually fight as King Bowser is more fun than it has any right to be. It's a very enjoyable experience I think that there should more games as unique as this.

New Super Mario Bros Wii (Review)

In a lot of ways, I'm really confused about how I feel about this game. At the very least, it's a huge improvement over the somewhat ho-hum Ds predecessor and is more suited as the proper follow-up to the classic Mario side-scrollers. The game delivers the quality I've come to expect from the main series of Mario titles. But this game also managed to reveal to me why it's took so long to have more 2-d Mario outings...they simply don't have new material anymore. This is somewhat understandable, Mario 3 and Mario World are considered to be the high point of the platforming genre (and gaming in general to some people) so it would be very hard to follow up on such nearly flawless outings as those. New Super Mario Bros Wii is basically a retread of those two games and that's not really a bad thing. Nintendo could very well keep releasing something like this every three to five years and I'd probably be satisfied, but I just wouldn't be as impressed anymore...as was the case here.

Apart from the co-op mulitplayer and the incredible final boss battle, the game doesn't do enough to stand out on it's own. Most of the game is simply filled with shout-outs to the earlier games. The Koopalings, the airships, the final battle from Mario World, the enemies roaming about on the map screen, and the criminally brief reappearance of Yoshi, these are all from earlier titles and with the exception of the Koopalings who are at least a bit harder here than in Mario World, these elements were much better when they were used nearly 20 years ago. That said, it's still nice to see some of these elements return and the new items are ten times better than ones from the Ds outing. There's a propeller suit that makes you fly, an ice flower that's the same as the fire flower...only with ice, and a penguin suit that also allows you to shoot ice and slide around. The items are still more or less tools to get the optional star coins, but they're able to function in traversing stages and attacking adversaries.

The big addition to this game is the co-op mode where two to four people work together or against each other to finish the stage. Having played through the game by myself and with two other friends, I have to say that it's much easier to play alone, but a hell of a lot more fun to play with friends. Most of the difficulty of the co-op mode comes from the other players getting in the way and otherwise disturbing the flow of the game, but it's just so damn funny to watch your friends miss a jump that you passed or toss them into a pit. My friends and I nearly died laughing and while it got a little annoying at times, we all agreed that co-op mode was amusing.
Overall, despite all my complaints, New Super Mario Bros Wii is still a solid outing for the plumber and one of the better games released this year. Apart for Mario Galaxy 2 (which appears to be nothing more than an expansion pack), I'm not sure what's next for the Mario franchise, but I'll eagerly look forward to it.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (Review)

From the very start, the newest game in the Mario & Luigi series is leaps and bounds better than the previous Partners in Time entry. The story this time around sees a mysterious virus causing the Toads in Mushroom Kingdom to become extremely fat. During a meeting to find a cure for the outbreak, Bowser storms the kingdom's castle only to be defeated by Mario. He stumbles off to a forest where a merchant sells him a strange mushroom that it gives Bowser an ability to suck up things. It also puts him temporarily under the merchant's control, which turns out to be Fawful from Superstar Saga, making a welcome reappearance. Bowser again storms the castle and swallows the brothers and everybody else up, while Fawful plots to take over the kingdom. It's a crazy story and one that is actually engaging to go through, showing us aspects of the Mario universe that have never been seen before (Bowser‘s Insides notwithstanding). The game also features some of the best humor I've ever experienced in a Mario game. Like in Superstar Saga, Fawful’s lines are pure gold and Bowser is just hilarious.

Mario & Luigi don’t really do anything new in terms of gameplay, so Bowser joins the fray as a fully playable character. This adds a completely new take on a franchise that was starting to get a little stale. A good portion of the game is spent playing as Bowser and it feels more like Mario and Luigi are supporting characters with Bowser as the star of the show. In combat, Mario and Luigi still focus on jumping and hammering, Bowser mainly attacks by punching and fire-breathing. In addition, Bowser can use his newly-acquired vacuum ability to inhale some enemies and let the Bros. deal with things. Outside of battle, the Marios have to help Bowser out in a variety of ways since they are stuck inside him. At certain points, Bowser tries pull off extraordinary feats that he would not normally be able to do. When this happens, Mario and Luigi power him up by playing a variety of mini-games and unlike the past games these are actually pretty enjoyable. One of my favorites is a recurring mini game where Bowser needs his arm muscles powered up and you have to play a rhythm-based game as Mario and Luigi where you hit balls of electricity with into the muscle tissue with your hammers.

It seems that the developers have learned from their previous mistakes, and have improved this game based on that. Partners in Time suffered from featuring enemies that simply had too much HP. Well, this time around, all the enemies' HP got toned down a bit and have their attacks boosted instead. Some of the enemies hang around a bit longer than they have any business to and a lot of enemies have attacks that are just flat out cheap and over-powered, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Partners in Time’s time wasting showdowns. It'll take around 10-15 hours to complete the game, and beyond that there's still rare items, beans, and fun side-quests to invest more time in. Overall I’d say that Bowser’s Inside Story is actually better than the original Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga in terms of quality. It’s full of laughs, entertaining gameplay and takes the best qualities of the past games, and adds new twists to them to create a very enjoyable experience that belongs in any Mario fan’s library.

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (Review)

The sequel to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga didn’t endear itself to me as well as its predecessor. In fact, I’d say it’s a noticeable step backwards. This time around Professor E. Gadd has made a time machine and Princess Peach decides to test it out. While in the past she gets attacked by Princess Shroob. Mario & Luigi then proceed to go back in time to save her and they see an alien race called the Shroobs attacking the Mushroom Kingdom of the past. Later, they meet their past selves (i.e. Baby Mario and Baby Luigi), and the four team up to save their past and present from the alien race. The story is just annoying, nothing that happens in the past directly affects the present. The baby Mario bros don’t get their minds erased or anything at the end of the game so why are the present versions unable to remember any of this? Even worse are the antagonists, the Shroob army, led by the intolerable Princess Shroob. They’re smug, annoying, cliché, and speak an unintelligible language which renders any chance for proper characterization impossible. From what I can gather, they’re just evil and want to take over the world because it’s there. The game tries to throw a plot twist at us late in the game, with a couple of hints along the way, but everything I hoped for was more interesting than the actual twist.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as the last game, only this time there are four characters to work with. The Mario team still have humorous abilities used to gain access to new areas. When traveling together, the baby bros ride piggyback on Mario & Luigi. The team is required to activate 4-person panels, throw the babies onto trampolines to discover areas above-ground, and split up to simultaneously hit switches to open up further parts of the levels. There are a few more moves, but I found myself doing these same actions over and over, and unlike Superstar Saga, the situations in which these abilities are used don’t become more challenging as the game progresses, so it gets fairly repetitive.

Despite the addition of the babies, the battle system is the same as before. The bros attack is replace with bros items. There’s a large selection of items that, like regular attacks, depend on timed button presses. These are kinda cool but tiring to pull off because of how confusing the button combinations are. Most of the items have the characters launching themselves at enemies and you have to press the right button for the right character when they appear. The timing can be too rapid and random at times, but the amount of damage these moves do is worth it. The thing that’s really bad about the battling in this game is that there are a tons of enemy encounters, and most (if not all) of the battles are very lengthy, so a ludicrous amount of time is spent in mostly simple combat. The bosses are even worse, they’re easy to conquer, but have way to much health and take an insane amount of time to defeat. I found myself completely bored in the most of the fights and practically took a nap during the final boss. Even if you're using lots of powerful items it just takes forever to deplete their large amounts of HP. Ultimately, the game feels like it was either rushed badly or the developers didn't put much effort into it. There are some moments where the humor and the gameplay manage to be on par with the original, but they’re not enough to save this mediocre RPG. There’s a new game in this series coming out this week and it looks like it could be an improvement. Here’s to wishful thinking.

Diddy Kong Racing DS (Review)

Back when it was released on the N64, Diddy Kong Racing was one of only two games that came close to reaching the addictive high quality of the Mario Kart series (the other was Crash Team Racing). The game was unique due to it's mixture of Mario 64-ish adventuring and kart racing. The game was updated for the DS in 2007 in an attempt to make a great game even better....and they failed miserably.

The basics of the game are still in place, you go around and race in cars, planes and hovercrafts to win balloons that allow you to access other races and locations, and you still have to race the boss of each world twice to get your reward. Even though you're given three different modes of transportation, none of these vehicles are particularly fun to use. The original game made excellent use of the N64's analog stick to make the controls seem more fluid and responsive. For the DS, the controls have been transferred to the D-Pad with shoulder buttons used for drifting and weapons. These controls are slightly unresponsive and sluggish at best which make racing far more of a chore than it should be. The hovercraft in particular is terrible in the controls department and makes me wonder how something like this made it through testing. This problem is slightly balanced out by the truly pathetic A.I. Most of my races were blowouts as my opponents seemed to be even worse at navigating the game's cramp and poorly designed racktracks than I was. True to any kart racer you're able to blast your foes with weapons and unlike in the recent Mario Kart games, everybody has access to all the weapons and there is no cheap over-powered weapon for the A.I to spam. This is the only thing this game has over Mario Kart, although the choice of weapons aren't as inventive.

Even worse is the needless and poor implementation of the DS's abilities. To do a boost start in a race, you have to use the stylus to rotate wheels or propeller. When driving the hovercraft, you'll be forced to blow onto the screen. It's unbelievably awkward to use the stylus to rev up the vehicle, and try to get your hands back to the regular controls when the race abruptly starts. After defeating a boss for the first time, they'll tell you to complete another set of objectives to complete an area. This challenege is a horribly designed rail shooter mini-game. With the stylus, you'll float along a race track and pop all the balloons drifting in your way. Both the popping and the aiming are done with the stylus and with many of the balloons off in all directions, you'll have to first drag the stylus to get a good viewing angle, then tap it again to bust your target. I found that one misplaced touch can foil screw you over. After that's done and the area boss is beaten again and you complete the area's trophy race challenge (racing through the same tracks...again), there is an optional third boss race. In this third encounter, any semblance of quality racing gameplay is thrown out the window. The screen switches to an overhead perspective and The D-Pad and buttons are replaced with the stylus. In order to get your vehicle to move, you'll have to use the stylus to spin a wheel in the touch screen, and then draw a path for the vehicle to follow. This fails like everything else as your kart doesn't follow the stylus path accurately and when your kart slows down, you'll have to spin the wheel again.

This game could have been good, even great. All of the element were present: a variety of playable characters and vehicles, a lot of tracks to go through, and an online multiplayer mode that's actually better than Mario Kart DS. Unfortunately, this game is marred by far too many problems to save it from its mediocrity. The controls, A.I, touch screen, and nearly everything else are poorly implemented. Instead of allowing the new features to be "enjoyed" at leisure, you're forced to endure all of them before finishing the adventure in its entirety, making the game's replayability aggravating. I highly recommend that those looking for a racer on the DS get Mario Kart instead, or if you have an N64, stick with the original Diddy Kong Racing.

New Super Mario Bros (Review)

New Super Mario Bros isn't as good as any of the older Mario games that this game acts as an homage to. As a matter of fact, I'd say that it's almost the weakest entry in the main series (Super Mario Sunshine gets the honor of weakest game). However it is a solid and pretty fun revival of the classic era of a stellar franchise. Considering that Mario's ultimate rise to fame was through 2d platforming, it's unbelievable that it took 12 years for Nintendo to revisit the concept. The basic core of the Mario games is still intact here: the running, the jumping, and the classic items are all here on display and feels like old times again. This game did well of reminding me why the series has lasted so long. Of course there are the new things that have been added to spice things up and for the most part, the results are a tad mixed. The triple jump, wall jump, and ground pound from the 3d entries have been included and are implemented extremely well. It's very fun to bounce of walls and hop like a manic through some of the stages.

The new items are the big addition and while the new powers do seem interesting, in reality... they're not. The mega mushroom is my favorite and the most fun to use even though it's really just a starman that makes you giant and grants you the ability to knock over stuff. The tiny mushroom makes Mario really small (and weak) so he can enter hidden areas or reach star coins with his heightened ability to jump...somehow. The worse item is the blue koopa shell which gives you protection when you crouch but when you run you'll start spinning out of control and most likely fall of the stage. The main problem with these items is that only exist so you can collect the optional star coins, unlike the older games where new items gave you a new way to attack and traverse the levels (well the blue shell does that...in the most ass way possible).

Something that really bugged me was how you can only save the game after beating a boss. Granted it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to reach a boss, but still...I shouldn't have to. You can use the star coins you collect in stages to open up new levels and upon doing that you can save...but it's still not the best way to go with save feature. And then for whatever reason, you unlock the ability to save anywhere after you complete the game. Haven't handheld games evolved enough to allow auto-saving after every level? Hell Super Mario Land 2 auto-saved and that was game was released 12 years prior to this. Oh...something else that annoyed me..fighting Bowser Jr twenty-something times before the end wasn't very engaging either.

New Super Mario Brothers is a decent addition to the old school Mario games of the NES and SNES era, it's definitely one of the better DS games. It retains the classic feel and gameplay that those games had, though at times it feels more like it piggybacks off of their success. If the game had been longer and more difficult and had the new items been developed better, the game would live up to the high standards of the franchise. There's gonna be a sort-of sequel on the Wii this year and it looks to be an improvement...it has Yoshi so it has to be much better than this.

Super Princess Peach (Review)

Released back in 2006, Super Princess Peach was the first 2d side-scroller that Nintendo had released in quite sometime and the game launched about 3 months before New Super Mario Bros. Despite the game's non manly appearance, Super Princess Peach is actually one of the better direct spin-offs of the Mario series. As the video game world has evolved to feature females in more active roles, it was only a matter before the Mushroom Kingdom's damsel in distress got a moment in the sun.

It is however a shame that Peach's big chance to kick some ass is spoiled by the game's weird sexist undertone. The thing that makes Peach so super is her ability to get super emotional. Through-out the game, Peach can take on four emotion-based powers: joy, rage, gloom, and calm. Joy will cause Peach to float through the air in a cyclone. Rage causes her to burst into flames and somehow makes her really heavy. Gloom causes huge tears to pour from Peach's eyes and gives her the ability to run really fast. Finally, calm restores lost health. Those abilities are the only thing that really set this game apart from a standard Mario platformer and they are very fun to use to traverse the moderately long stages. The emotion powers' applications in boss fights is pretty interesting, and it's pretty shocking to me that some of the bosses actually put up a fight....not by much, but at least they tried.

There's only 2 major gripes I have with the game. The first problem is the fact that the game is too easy. In most platforming games when you fall off the stage it results in instant death, in this game fall off the stage only cost you one health point and you have to restart that section of the level. Even when you're low on health you can use the calm ability to regain all of your health, which basically negates any real threats. The only time in the game I felt any real danger was during the final battle against Bowser, who is actually harder here than he has been in most of the recent games. The second problem I had (which is really more of an annoyance) is saving the Toads. In every level there are 3 Toads to find and rescue. Their not needed to finished the level, but it is required to save them all to fight Bowser at the end....something the game doesn't tell you until actually get there. Luckily for me, I was only missing about 5 of them, so it didn't take long to get access to the final battle.

Super Princess Peach is a very fun game even though the low difficulty keeps it from being truly engaging. The game is currently out of print making it really hard to find in stores, but if you can find it I suggest picking it up.

E3 09: Nintendo Impressions

Well...This was a pretty good improvement over last year. Sure Nintendo still had those dull, annoying as hell bragging speeches to bore us with. But Nintendo was a bit more on point to the business of telling us about the games they had coming. Nintendo had a tad more games than Microsoft that I was interested in, but I really wish they would have said a little more about some these games.

New Super Mario Bros Wii: This appears to the major triple A title for the holidays that was long rumored for past couple of months. Co-op Super Mario Bros is something that I feel was long overdue. I'm not super excited for it since this appears to be mostly the same as the Ds game and we've already seen that (plus New Super Mario Bros wasn't my favorite iteration of the series). Also why are the 3rd and 4th players both Toads? Why not Wario or Waluigi? Oh well, its Mario...I'm gonna buy it...and the co-op better be online.

Wii Sports Resorts: Really...they showed us all this game really had to offer last year, but at least it looks a bit more like full game now....Still not gonna buy it though.

Kingdom Hearts Ds: We've known about this game for a while and the press conference didn't tell us anything more than a release date (Sept. 29). I love the Kingdom Hearts series but Chain of Memories for the GBA kinda tainted my feelings for Handheld iterations of the series. But at this one isn't card based so I'll probably buy this when it releases in Sept.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: Another Ds game that we've known about for quite some time as the game has been out in Japan since February. I love the Mario & Luigi rpg games but I don't really have anything to say about this game other than it's release date which was an unannounced date in the fall...why? All they really had to do with the game was localization and Nintendo doesn't really have anything for the summer...so why wait til the fall?

Golden Sun Ds: A nice surprise announcement. The Golden Sun games on the GBA were wonderful and it was a little confusing as to why the series was absent from the DS. Well it's here now and although we were not given a date, it looks nice.

Mario Vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again: Wow more Mario stuff...I didn't care for Mario vs Donkey Kong 2. It's lemmings-like gameplay was too much of a departure for me. The one thing was cool about that game was the custom level builder which Minis March Again basically is. It's a downloadable game for the DSI which I don't have and even if I did I probably wouldn't buy it.

The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: They didn't say anything about this game other than "it's good" which wasn't enough for me. I didn't care too much for Phantom Hourglass, the last DS Zelda game, and this looks pretty similar, just with trains instead of a boat. I'm sure it will be good and it will sell well. I'll check it out...but most likely not at launch.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Wow..just wow. It was pretty much confirmed beforehand that would be a new 3d Mario title on the Wii and here it is. I was hoping that it wouldn't be another Galaxy...but who cares, the first Mario Galaxy is in my opinion one of the best games of this console generation and this seems to just be an extension of that which is fine by me. It also appears to harder than the first one which would address my only real complain against the original. Oh...and Yoshi is the game...which makes things 10 times better. The game will release in 2010...hopefully in the summer.

Metroid Other M: A new Metroid game developed by Team Ninja of all people. It's a nice change of pace from the Prime series and it'll be nice to see this as a sort of what could have been if Metroid Prime had been taken in another direction. It won't come out till next year along with Galaxy 2 so at least there are 2 big games to look forward to next year..finally.

So all in all, Nintendo did pretty well. At least they have actual games coming out this year.

Pokemon Platinum (Review)

Okay, 2 and half weeks after it's launch and I've finally completed Pokemon Platinum, the special edition of 2007's Diamond and Pearl. The game really isn't that different from D & P, which is the only negative thing I can really say about the game. Nintendo often gets a lot of criticism with their franchises for not changing the formula enough between games. While Mario and Zelda add just enough new concepts to warrant another game, Pokemon is probably the most guilty of the "never change" complaint. If you want to include all the different versions of a single pokemon game, then you could say that Nintendo has released the same game 15 times in about 10 years.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy Platinum, it's just as enjoyable now as was when started. The game adds a new area: The Distortion World, a Battle Frontier, and rearranges the order of some of the gym leaders. They also changed a lot of the opponents pokemon line-ups and their move sets. This actually makes the game a tad harder than before. Most of the pokemon fought in the game now use moves that seem to cover their weaknesses (The weak to electric type Gyarados regularly uses the move earthquake, which electric types are weak against).

Pokemon Platinum is easily the best DS Pokemon game. It doesn't have enough new material to warrant a purchase for people who played through Diamond and Pearl, but newcomers and hardcore fans will eat it up.

It's Hard To Be A Nintendo Fan

So a couple of weeks ago Nintendo released a list of about 120 games that will be released on the Wii and DS over the next few months...and it it completely pathetic. out of the 120 games on this list, I found 3 of actual interest: The Conduit, GTA Chinatown Wars, and the re-release of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (Which I missed on the Gamecube). It is worth noting that 2 games that I want, Mad World and Sonic & The Black Knight, weren't on the list possibly because at the time this list was unveiled, the 2 games were about a week from launch.

So if you count those 2 games, then the total number of Nintendo games I want has been bumped up to 5. The remaining 115 games are complete and utter garbage, even from a casual gaming perspective their list is just pure crap. The Wii and Ds started off really strong, producing top quality games for both the casual and hardcore crowds. However, since early 2008, both consoles have produce nothing but garbage for both casual and hardcore. Sure every one in while we get something great like Mario Galaxy or No More Heroes, but their just way too far apart.

Nintendo also seems to be getting incredibly lazy as well. This week marked the launch of the Wii Play Control series, a group of GameCube games revamped to take advantage of the Wii's motion-sensitive controls. Now I know I said I was getting New Play Control Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and some people think that some old Gamecube games are a perfect fit for the Wii controls, but I just think this completely ridiculous and that more time needs to put into new original ideas.

I love Nintendo, but it getting harder to support them when all they do is half ass everything. I understand the casual angle is making them embarrassingly large amounts of cash, but at the very least they could start putting some effort into even those games. But of course they know as long as give us a new Mario and Zelda game every couple of years, we'll stick around.

I've Got Pokemon Fever

It's back and in full force. I hate to say it but I decided to pick up Pokemon Platinum when it releases on the 22nd of this month and I'm pretty excited. I don't know how it happened but I suddenly got an urge to catch and battle some pokemon. I haven't had this urge since since Pokemon Diamond was released 2 years ago and before that I hadn't played a pokemon game in 5 years.

Pokemon Platinum is the basically the special edition of Pokemon Diamond with some new pokemon and brand new locations to explore and course some little tweaks here and there in the gameplay to make it work. From what I've heard and seen one of the new locations is the distortion world. It has floor-like sections floating at angles from each other. On top of that odd things like surfing down a waterfall going up is possible. This is also the place where Giratina, the game's big legendary pokemon, will be in its Origin Forme (I have no idea what that is...)

To pass the time I've been playing Pokemon Fire Red and I'm about half done with it. I'm actually glad to be getting through with this game as one of about 30 uncompleted games that I need to get to work on. If I feel the need I may post a review on Pokemon Platinum in the future.

E3 08: Nintendo Impressions

Okay so last year Nintendo kinda bombed at the their press conference. This came as a result of them spending too much time focusing on gloating over their glorious comeback and not enough time focusing on their actual games. They failed to present anything of value apart from the release dates of 3 games we wanted, and they only unveiled two games to the masses: Mario Kart and Wii Fit. This year is even worse. The main problem with this year's conference is that Nintendo seemed to just flat out ignore the hardcore games and focus entirely on the casual market. There's no Mario, Zelda, Kid Icrus, or Pikmin titles that were revealed as everyone expected and hoped, So my favortive games that were revealed for nintendo wii and ds were titles that were revealed weeks piror like Wario Land: Shake it and Kirby Super Star Deluxe. There were 4 titles that were annonunced at the actually managed to get me a little interested even though they were causal games.

Animal Crossing: Okay I haven't played the other 2 games in the series, but I think I'm ready to at least give it a try. It was the first of 2 hardcore titles revealed in the show and this one is fairly interesting because Nintendo will finally be jumping on the online voice chat band wagon with it's new Wii Speak addition. I like this because it's not a headset like X-Box Live so the parents can keep their eyes on what's going on with the kids and what they are saying, which is something the parents needs to do with their kids on X-Box Live.

It's also worth noting that around this time it was stated that teams that work on the Mario and Zelda titles are working on games right now. Could have told alittle more about these games, but nooooo... they felt it was more important to talk about the sales of Wii...NOBODY CARES!!!! everyone already knows how well the wii and ds are selling.

Wii Sports Resort: Everyone loves Wii sports so it no surprise that evryone will love this follow-up. I don't really have much to comment on with this game, but my whole family loved the oringal so I don't think I have a choice but to pick up a copy. My only concern is that the game needs to have a bit more content if I actually need to spend money on the game. The orignial was great game that we got for free and I know that I personally would not have spent the money on it if was sold apart from the console.

Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars: Okay so it's okay for nintendo to release GTA on handheld, but not on the home consoles (not that I'd want to play it, if I have to play GTA it will be on 360 or PS3), but playing GTA on the DS would been nice if has more in common with it's console brothers that the horrible top-down game boy verisons of it.

Wii Music: I've wnted this one since the launch of the Wii and was worried that it wasn't coming, but it's here now and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I Think it's a nice alterative to rock band in that sense that you won't have large drums and guitars taking up space in yuor living room.

And that's it. I, like many others, wish there were more titles from their mainstream franhises, but i understand Nintendo is still still trying to grab some of those casual gamers that are still on the fence about the Wii. However they should be a bit more wary of this, while they know that they already have the hardcore audience that owns the system for mario and smash bros, and they have done a great job keeping us happy over the last year with Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl, they need to keep these people happy to ensure that they don't jump ship.