Okay, I guess saying just that is really not doing this game justice, since there’s actually a lot to say about it. Its original game design philosophy is something to be commended and that’s what I want to talk about here.

So read on!

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Date of Release: November 13th 2011
Platforms: Nintendo 3DS

Genre: 3D platformer
Rated E for Everyone

A 3D side-scroller?

Okay, so this is fairly standard Mario fare: Peach gets kidnapped and you have to travel through 8 worlds to find Bowser, beat him up and save the princess. Each world features 5 levels (+1 boss level), all in the format of a standard jump and stomp Mario platformer. This is where it gets interesting.

You see, this IS a 3D Mario in the veins of 64/Sunshine/Galaxy, but there’s something very unique about it. I’ll try my best to explain, but at worst you can just buy the game and experience it for yourself… While the game IS a standard Mario 3D Platformer, the levels are designed in such a way that it feels more like a 2D side-scroller. It’s just the way the enemy placement is thought out, and how the various obstacles work that give it more of an “obstacle course” feel that you get from side-scrollers than most 3D platformers which tend to more often be about exploration rather than straight out platforming. A lot of the action takes place in more side-scrolling settings, but there’s almost always options to go in any direction for shortcuts/alternate paths and such. Even the more “exploration based” levels have that side-scrolling feel to them due to smart enemy/trap placement (with an exception or 2), as well as requiring precise jumps. It all has a very unique feel compared to other Mario games… Yeah, I guess it is a bit hard to explain, but it does have a very unique gameplay design.

Mario nostalgia

I will never hide my mildly fanboy-ish attitude when it comes to Mario. I really can’t, because Mario games were a big part of my growth as a gamer, with Super Mario Bros being probably my first game (or at least the first game I remember playing), and every successive “main” Mario game being amongst my favorites. Other than a couple spin-offs and the CD-i game, Mario games have mostly been high-quality (yes, even the american Super Mario Bros 2), and every one of the main series Mario games are still very replayable now, barely showing their age. As with every modern Mario release, this game will tug at your nostalgia nerves. Old music, old enemies (Boom Boom makes a reappearance!), old power-ups making a comeback in a big way (Tanooki suit for the first time since SMB3? Yes please). It forces you to revisit old Mario memories…. and fuck, it works! Anyways, on to the normally scheduled review.

Presentation

The game takes a very… Super Mario Galaxy take for its basic look. All the levels other than underground, mansion and Bower Castle levels take place high in the sky, where you’ll be running and jumping along various floating platforms.You’re never clearly on the ground like in other Mario games, the bottomless hole you can fall in is made quite clear. I think it’s an interesting look and it makes everything look open. The underground levels look nice too, with their (generally) side-scrolling nature and hidden paths and items (while they look side-scrolling ,they aren’t, which I find is what makes them interesting).

Technically, the graphics are great. Everything looks really nice, the textures are good quality, nothing to complain about here. I’d say it’s very close to Super Mario Galaxy level, just… a bit less due to the tiny screen on the 3DS. I’ve come to accept this though: The 3DS screen, partly due to the 3D and the relatively low resolution, will always have aliasing problems. It’s easy to ignore, but there are times when you’ll clearly see that the edge of objects are super pixelated (moreso for Mario than any other object in the game I find). Yes it’s annoying, but it’s a very easy detail to get over when the game is fun to play.

Sound-wise… It’s Mario. There’s a good amount of recycling here, with a lot of older music and sound effects. Basically nothing out of place for a Mario game. It’s good, nothing to add.

Gameplay

The gameplay is fantastic. As previously mentioned, it controls something akin to other 3D Mario games. Running around and jumping feels great, stomping on stuff is good. You have most of the Super Mario 64 moves here (sideflip, backflip, long jump, ground pound) but no double/triple jump strangely enough, and the backflip is triggered by crouching and charging it up ALA Super Mario Bros 2(US version). The goal of every level is simple: get to the end without losing all your lives (note: You’ll never lose all your lives unless you’re really bad at games… in general). You’ll find a flagpole at the end of every level signifying the end, and a way to jump to the highest part of said flagpole (for extra lives!).

As always Mario has a few power-ups. Making a long-awaited return is the Tanooki Suit. It enables you to swing your tail around for an attack, and also glide in the air (the flying function was removed, partly because it would make the game way too easy). It’s very fun to use, though it does make some platforming segments a bit too easy. There are actually 2 versions of this, one which enables you to transform into a statue to become immune to damage for a limited time. You have the fireflower, as always. I love bouncing the flame on walls to hit enemies that are behind barricades with it. Finally there’s the boomerang… flower? It gives you a costume similar to the Hammer costume in SMB3, but instead you throw boomerangs, which you can use to hit enemies or grab far-away objects (similar to Zelda). Overall these are pretty fun to use.

Difficulty/Content

This game is actually stupidly easy. Let’s just forget the fact that you can gather up over 1000 lives in about 5 minutes in the second level using one of the koopa shells, this game is really easy. While it features amazing level design, said level design will not challenge you much. As an example, I died around 8 times on my first playthrough of the main game. The jumps are generally easy, and the enemy/trap placement, while really cool, is never really that tough. But that’s obviously not all there is to the game.

After finishing the main quest, you gain access to the “Special” worlds. There’s 8 of those with 5 levels each (+1 boss level), and there’s a final level in addition to that once you’re done completing both the normal and special levels 100% (including playing through them all with Luigi). The levels in those 8 worlds constitute of re-made levels from the main games with tougher enemy placement, tougher/faster traps, and crazy gimmicks (such as giving you a super-short time limit with the only way to increase it being killing goombas, or a shadow Mario that follows you around to try and kill you). The game actually gets pretty hard at this point. Sure, you’re never in any danger of game over (the game not only has the infinite lives trick in level 1-2, but it gives away 1-ups like crazy so you’ll be well over 100 lives by the time you reach the special worlds), but some of the levels WILL frustrate you and actually challenge you quite a bit with really evil enemy placement and complicated to navigate traps.

I think it’s a good balance really. And it does end up having tons of content (96 levels, each with 3 star coins to pick up and having to get the top of the flagpole in each), and overall a good amount of gameplay even if you don’t plan on 100%ing everything.

3D

Just a quick blurb on it. It looks very nice. That’s… about it… I mean, there’s some moments where the 3D definitely helped me with platforming, but nothing really major. There’s a few moments with clever use of 3D, but they’re very few and very far between. It’s nice, but it’s not required. There’s an option to have “deeper” 3D, which you can toggle by pressing up or down on the d-pad. It’s pretty good, though some people who tried the game told me they saw it blurrier with the “deeper” setting on (not a problem with me though). Overall I think that reviewers have been blowing this way out of proportion. It’s nice, but it’s not game-changing, not anywhere near close to that.

Overall

It’s by far the best game out now on the 3DS. Nothing more to say here. If you have a 3DS and you don’t already have this, you have to remedy this now.

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Ah the Sonic cylce: see the game’s reveal trailer, get excited thinking “finally, THIS is the game that will make Sonic be good again”, see some gameplay videos and think “this doesn’t look too bad!” and then play the game and realize it’s terrible as always. It happened with every Sonic game. EVEN Black Knight where they gave Sonic a sword had a lot of people thinking that it would be the game to revive Sonic.

Well, before actually playing the game, I was planning on coming into this review saying “Hey guys, this new Sonic games is bad as usual, don’t buy it, ‘k?”. But somehow I can’t do that, because then I’d be lying.

Read on and see what Generations did right with the Sonic franchise… FINALLY!

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: November 1st 2011 (November 3rd for Steam)
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC (Steam version reviewed)

Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Rated E for Everyone

Overall feel

So the story goes as follow: some beast is blasting through time and space destroying everything in its path and taking Sonic’s friends prisoner in time. So Sonic has to save them. At the same time Sonic is dealing with that same monster that’s ravaging space and time… Oh, and by that I mean Sonic from the Genesis day. So you have 2 Sonics from different time periods fighting for a common goal, each with his own levels and gameplay style. The actual plot is actually NOT completely cringe-worthy like in other modern Sonic games. I couldn’t survive a whole Sonic Colors cinematic for example, while the cinematics here were at least bearable, and even really good in some cases (see: the cinematics before Metal Sonic and Shadow).

Generations is a game that pays tribute to everything Sonic. And I truly mean everything. This not only has levels from (well, more like “inspired by”, since they’re not exactly the same) Sonic 1, 2, 3&K, Adventure, Adventure 2, Heroes, 2006, Unleashed and Colors, but references to just about every Sonic game. There’s the kickass Toxic Caves music from Sonic Spinball and probably music from most Sonic games overall, the Chaotix are here (sadly no Chaotix-insipired level…. they have 2 Sonics to work with, so why not?), Blaze is here, Silver is here, you have Metal Sonic and Shadow… Not much of Sonic video game lore was forgotten here (seemingly no cartoon/comic references though, so no Princess Sally), though I will say Big the Cat seems to be missing… not that anyone really cares about him.

If you’re a Sonic fan, you’re gonna be in for a cool trip. But even then, this whole tribute to Sonic wouldn’t be any good if the gameplay sucked so…. There are 2 gameplay styles here. Fully side-scrolling levels with old-school Sonic in the style of the Genesis games, and levels that play like more recent Sonic games with some side-scrolling segments and some exploration/3D moments, so let’s talk about that!

Retro Sonic gameplay

Remember Sonic 2 on the Genesis? Yeah, this is just about what you’re getting here. As I and many other people have said for a long time, Sonic is not about speed, it’s about momentum and trying to maintain that momentum through properly timed jumps and spin dashes to avoid slower-moving segments of a level. This game pretty much nails this idea when it comes to the retro Sonic levels, with different paths depending on your performance. As far as I’ve seen, the physics are pretty much spot-on here, it really feels like Genesis Sonic (though, again, I just play the game, unlike the people who, instead of playing Sonic 4, tried to find problems with the physics that don’t exists in normal play… but from my experience there doesn’t seem to be the imaginary problems people had with Sonic 4). What’s cool is that all the levels truly have that retro Sonic feel to them, even the ones that take place in levels from modern Sonic games. City Escape has these cool segments with a truck trying to stomp you, Crisis City uses firestorms to change the horizontal momentum… it’s all well thought out. One enhancement that I quite enjoy here is the fact that the spin dash is now assigned to its own button (you can do it by crouching and using the jump button, but you don’t need to), making spin dashing a lot faster and easy to do at a moment’s notice.

Long story short: Retro Sonic levels=really good.

Modern Sonic gameplay

I’ll be brutally honest here: Sonic games on console have SUCKED since Adventure 2 (other than Sonic 4 which kicked ass), and the major culprit is the fact that is just feels like it plays itself without you really needing to do too much to finish levels. It’s just “Hold forward, win”. It reached its worst with Sonic Colors, where you could literally button-mash the homing attack to beat bosses.

Here, it keeps a similar gameplay style, with some side-scrolling segments and some “behind Sonic” segments. It actually plays a lot like Colors in general… But, for some reason, it doesn’t suck! Yeah, it just feels a lot less “I’m playing myself” than Colors did. There’s honest to goodness obstacles this time around, the jumps and boosts and homing attacks feel like you’re more in control (though movement when you’re not running is still a bit of a hassle, it’s not much of a problem when you’re going full-speed, which should be ALL THE TIME anyways). It’s not like in Colors when you can just keep the boost on and finish a level, here you actually have to do some platforming of your own. Crazy I know. It’s like they actually DESIGNED LEVELS, which is something modern devs tend to not really do anymore. It helps that the jumping in side-scrolling segments is a bit less floaty than in Colors and more precise.

It’s also super-exciting. I won’t spoil it, but the “modern” version of City Escape, while it does have some parts that are taken straight out of Adventure 2, is mostly original, and features an insanely awesome bit at the end that always has me go “OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT… WTF WAS THAT”. The levels have some parts that just get the adrenaline pumping not just because of the action on-screen, but because the game isn’t just playing itself though those parts, it actually requires YOU to do the awesome things you see on screen without relying on something stupid like QTEs or just plain watching.

My only complaint here is that drifting is super-tough to control properly, and doing a homing attack in side-scrolling segments pretty much stops your horizontal movement altogether (they should have implemented the homing attack from Sonic 4 instead).

Long story short: they took the basic of Colors, and made it not suck. These levels are actually FUN, differently from my expectations.

Content

There’s 9 levels, each with 2 acts (one for each Sonic). Each act has 5 or so red rings which unlock extra stuff like music and artwork. There’s 7 boss battles (4 story-based battles inspired by old bosses, but with new gimmicks and 3 boss battles featuring “Sonic clones” Metal Sonic, Shadow and Silver) strewn within that (you HAVE to do the 6 first to get to the final boss)… Not sure why some reviewers said that there’s only 2 boss battles when that’s clearly false though… Each level has 5 challenge levels for each Sonic, so that’s 90 challenge levels total. And each of those unlocks a bell, which will unleash a music note which you must catch to get either artwork or music. Each of those boss battles and acts and challenge levels rank you for time, or time+ring number+performance, with a maximum ranking of S. So, basically, there’s a shitload of content (as in I’m over 10 hours into the game and I’m only halfway through the content, and that’s without S-ranking everything).

I especially enjoy the challenge stages. A few of them are just time trials, but some will add stuff to the level, like more platform or blocks to make you take certain paths, or tons of enemies to make the way to the goal tougher, or just different layouts overall. Some will give you skills (such as shields for retro Sonic or boost-increases for modern Sonic), others will make you have to work with/against one of Sonic’s friends (sadly you cannot murder Cream the Rabbit). These levels are REALLY fun (with a couple exceptions).

Also, just a quick mention of Skills. Basically, you get 100 points, and you can use those points to equip skills (which you buy from the Skill shop). For example, you can get better underwater movement for both Sonics, increased speed for modern Sonic or shields for Retro Sonic (including bubble, flame and lightning shields from the Genesis games, which you get a few that you can activate when you want), and some other stuff. It’s not required, but it can make some levels easier, or make certain gameplay elements more forgiving (like making the rings stay longer when you get hit).

Difficulty

Okay, not really a “bad stuff” part, but this game is rather easy. You can buy lives, which are super cheap, and losing them all just makes you restart the level you’re at, with 5 lives. This game DOES have honestly hard parts and it will kill you from time to time, but I think the difficulty is a little bit on the low side overall. There’s a few cheap deaths on modern Sonic levels due to the controls going all herp derp on you, but not enough so that it makes the game worse. There are also times where you’ll spin dash or boost at the wrong time, making you miss a spring or jump you HAVE to use to go further, but that’s your fault if you do that, so I really don’t mind that at all.

One thing I DO appreciate is that the first thing the game does is ask if you want the retarded tutorial thingies popping up all the time. So you can have the game telling you how to jump or whatever, and tell you “hey, there’s a hole there” OR you can just remove that stuff and figure out how to do things yourself like normal people. I think it’s considerate of Sega to realize that not all gamers are idiots that need to have everything told to them.

Bad stuff

Not much to mention here actually. I’m serious. So the final boss is kinda lame. The rendition of the City Escape song on the retro Sonic side is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard (but the fact that you can change the music to anything in the game that you’ve unlocked mostly negates that problem. My other problem is Planet Wisp… The level is fine, no problem here, but the implementation of the Wisps here STILL sucks. Not as much as in Colors, and that’s mostly because there’s only 2 Wisps (the rocket, which was the only one that wasn’t completely terrible in Colors, and the spiky ball wisp which is super hard to control properly). Oh, and there’s minor glitches, like getting stuck in moments where the game is supposed to be taking control for a moment (there’s this one spiral ramp in Green Hill Zone where sometimes Sonic will just get stuck and you’ll have to restart the level). Not a big problem.

Another minor issue I had is just something on my end… I’m playing the Steam version (using my PS3 controller configured as a 360 controller, which controls SUPER well by the way, I suggest it since the Steam version is uber cheap), and there’s a few moments when I get major slowdown even though I have a good computer (Chemical Plant when there’s certain water effects, and Speed Highway when multiple of those police enemies sound off at the same time), not sure if it’s something in the configs, but it’s not a HUGE problem.

Overall

Sonic Generations is great. There, I said it. It’s super fun to play, there’s tons of content, it has the kickass Toxic Caves song from Sonic Spinball (I love Sonic Spinball……. what?), it’s a badass tribute to everything Sonic and it just feels great. I didn’t think it would surpass Sonic 4 (the only other good Sonic game of this generation), but it did by FAR. Declaring it the best Sonic game yet might be a bit much, but I will say that it’s stiff competition at the very least.

It’s a well-designed game with some actual thought put behind it and…. well… fuck, it’s great. And the Steam version is only 30$, so… yeah, pick it up and stuff! And if you’re European, get the Collectors Edition, it looks amazing!

(Note: You may have realized that I didn’t talk about the graphics. That would be because I forgot about it, and now I don’t really care about writing a blurb about them… I’ll just say “they look great” and leave it at that *thumbs up*)

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I was quite hyped for this, so… does it hold up to the hype? It’s been fairly well spoken for by now, but I just want to give my own perspective on it since opinions have been all over the place.

Is it the return of Kirby that people have been wanting for so long? Read on and see!

Developer: HAL Labs
Publisher: Nintendo
Date of Release: October 24th 2011
Platforms: Nintendo Wii

Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10 (E10+? what?)

Presentation

This game looks lovely. It doesn’t have a unique style like Kirby’s Epic Yarn, nor does it really have the polish and technical prowess of Donkey Kong Country Returns, but it really does look great. It’s super colorful, the characters and enemies look great, and, as you go further in the game, the backgrounds become more and more awesome, and there’s a large variety of locales with different looks. Most importantly, you’ll never have trouble seeing what’s in the background and what’s stuff you can jump on/have to avoid, and there’s no framerate drops, so there’s really nothing bad to say about this game graphically.

As far as audio goes, the game sounds fantastic as well. There’s a lot of recycling when it comes to sound effects, it IS Kirby after all, but the sounds are a bit better than their original counterparts (like hammer hits and Kirby’s usual sucking sound). The music is always fun and lively. It definitely gets more tense as you near the climax of the game, but it has that Kirby style. And there’s some remixed tracks too, Nothing wrong here.

Gameplay

It plays like Kirby! Big surprise, huh? While Kirby’s Epic Yarn went for a fairly different gameplay style than standard Kirby games, Return to Dreamland goes back to the series’ more conventional mechanics. Now you’re sucking up enemies and stealing their powers, and, in similar fashion to recent GBA/DS Kirby games and Kirby Super Star, each power comes with a variety of moves. Otherwise you have other Kirby basics like floating and sliding. The basic goal is to get to the end of every level and, after completing all levels in a world, to fight that world’s boss, rinse and repeat until the end. It’s fairly straightforward in its basics, and the level designs are also very straightforward (but generally fun since they try to mix things up with different traps and enemies), but it breaks the monotony by having you find Energy Spheres in each level. It’s not required, but it’s fun. Some require to solve puzzles and find hidden doors to reach them, some are out in the open but out of reach without the right power so it’s always interesting to get to them.

As for powers, there’s a few new ones, like Whip, Water and Spear, and a lot of oldies. One nice thing here is that all the old abilities have been slightly revamped. For example, stone, which was fairly useless before, now has an uppercut attack, making it at least viable to finish levels with, and also a stronger but slower stomp attack if you want to deal extra damage. A more notable example is that the Plasma and Spark abilities from previous games were combined into Spark, and it actually works really well. In total there’s 23 powers you can use and each of them has some uses, either in the games puzzles (using a certain ability’s special power to reach switches or bomb blocks) or in battle. I haven’t found any powers that I genuinely didn’t enjoy using, so that’s a plus for me.

In addition to normal abilities, you get Super abilities, which only come at certain points in the game. Those abilities have large destructive power, or are required for solving puzzles. You get those powers for a limited time, and, at the end of those segments, you’ll find a special area where you have no powers to go through it (you have to go fast because a wall of insta-death is chasing after you), which leads to a mini-boss battle for 2 energy spheres. The super-powers just feel superfluous, it seems like they could have just kept normal gameplay for those segments and hide the secret area or something… though I will say I enjoy the use of super powers in 2 of the boss battles.

An important feature here is the ability to play up to 4 people at the same time. This is really fun. Each player gets to choose a character who has a permanent power (Metaknight has Sword, Waddle Dee has Spear and King Dedede has Hammer), or a different-colored Kirby. It’s drop-in/drop-out at any time, so if someone is tired of playing, he can just drop-out without even pausing the action on-screen. It does make it pretty much impossible to die since more than one player on screen pretty much blows through everything, but it’s still a fun addition. Oh, and as soon as you’re playing with more than one player, the second player can change to any character when he wants, so it can make some puzzle-solving a whole lot easier since you can just switch to other characters when you want to.

Difficulty

One common complaint about this game is the difficulty. And I will say: It’s really easy. I mean, I died about 5 times through the main game (and the game hands out extra lives like crazy, moreso in multiplayer). But, then again, Kirby games are always easy on their normal mode, and the basic gameplay is loads of fun so it doesn’t very much matter how hard it is. And then there’s the fact that there’s an Extra mode, which is unlocked when you finish the main game.

The Extra mode gives you half the normal health which is already a huge boost in difficulty (while I didn’t DIE a lot in the normal difficulty, I sure got hit a lot) and it makes all the mini-bosses stronger, makes all the bosses stronger, and adds an extra final boss (so far I haven’t found any glaring differences with the normal enemies, but I may be wrong). So basically it goes from insanely easy to moderate difficulty. Oh and you can always challenge yourself and try to get all the energy spheres (in both the main game and extra mode), that’s bound to take a bit of work… OH and some powers have a “challenge” room where you have to use that power’s skills to get as many coins as possible while getting hit as little as possible and killing enemies as fast as possible in the shortest time as possible to get a high score… good luck getting the best medals in all of those. Oh and there’s an arena, which should be relatively challenging depending on how many healing items you get access to (I haven’t tried it yet), and a True Arena that includes the powered-up bosses from extra mode and a secret final boss.

Yeah, the difficulty complaint is a bit overblown, since it’s clear that there’s a good amount of content and actual difficulty if you look beyond the game’s first level (which some reviewers seemingly haven’t). Clearly the main game was made with younger players in mind, but the Extra mode, energy spheres, challenge rooms and arenas will probably be able to challenge Kirby veterans at least a little.

Overall

I like this very much. It’s pretty much Kirby doing what he’s best at. It’s not the BEST Kirby game out there though (it’s pretty hard to compete against the sheer amount of content/replay value/awesome of Super Star) and the gameplay isn’t the MOST solid in the series (*points to Super Star again*), but it’s a very top-notch Kirby experience. It’s good for newcomers of the series, especially kids since it’s not really hard, and Kirby fans will love it too, especially for the extra content.

It’s good! A very fun single-player game, and an entertaining multiplayer experience as well (especially with the 2 mini-games that I didn’t mention).

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1. It’s a movie tie-in for a children’s (and for children at heart) film.
2. It’s a 10$ downloadable game that’s a movie-tie in, thus it’s low budget and most people will think it sucks due to that.
3. It’s a boxing game.

Real Steel is based on a movie that I haven’t seen and probably won’t see until/if I rent the DVD/Blu-Ray. When I saw this on the PSN store, I almost ignored it but saw that there was a demo so I gave it a chance anyways. The moment I saw the “Yuke’s” logo in the start-up, I was expecting a lame game, since they’re the guys who make the crappy UFC Undisputed games. And then, after playing, I bought the game…

So read on and see what the game is like!

Developer: Yuke’s
Publisher: Yuke’s
Date of Release: October 18th 2011
Platforms: XBLA, PSN (PSN version reviewed)

Genre: Boxing
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Gameplay

The gameplay is very reminiscent of the Fight Night series (and surprisingly/thankfully not much of the UFC series). The controls are very simplified though. Compared to Fight Night’s huge variety of punches you can do with modifier buttons and the right analog stick+various button pressses, here you have on jab button for each fist and one stronger punch button for each fist, with changes to the punches depending on the direction you press to do it. You can assign up to 4 special punches as well, each to one of the face buttons, which you can do by holding R1 and pressing that button). Some tech moves are unblockable (meaning you HAVE to avoid it) and others are destruction moves (cause major damage to body parts or outright destroys them), while others are just stronger punches. On the defensiveside you can sway with L2+the analog stick, which is useless as far as I’ve tried, you have dashes in any direction with L1 which are by far the best way to avoid punches, and you can block with R2 (pressing it at the exact moment an attack would hit you does a parry, which leaves the opponent open to attacks for a moment). It’s actually very easy to play, the controls aren’t too complicated to adapt to, especially if you’ve played Fight Night before hand.

As far as actual gameplay goes, well, it’s boxing, but with robots. It uses robot designs from the movie, but your own robot is completely new and customizable (more on that later). I don’t think I have to explain what boxing is… So to get to the specifics, each punch removes some of the robot’s “full health” and a larger chunk of health that will regenerate over-time (similar to red health in the MvC games). The lower the health, the more likely the robot is to get knocked down (it’s automatic knock down if you get it down to 0). If a robot is not getting hit, he’ll regenerate some of this “red health”. In addition to health, you have a “power charge” meter. Punching and dashing will take away some of that power and, if your meter runs dry, your robot will stagger for a few moments, leaving him open to attack, and will remain in a weakened state (less defense, slower and weaker punches) until the power meter refills (punching while in that state slows down the regeneration and you cannot dash either). This gives good strategy snice you can’t just mash the opponents to death.

Another way to beat your opponents is to do something you won’t usually see in boxing games: by ripping their head off. You see, each body part other than the legs here are prone to damage separate from the normal health bar. You see your robot’s damage in the UI. When a body part gets lower in damage it changes color. Orange means that a destruction attack, or even just a storng punch, can knock that part off. You can lose an arm or 2 (I think the match is an instant loss if you lose both arms, though that actually has yet to happen to me), or a solid blow to the head can knock it off as well (resulting in a KO). I’m actually not sure if you can just rip out the body section of a robot, though it does have its own HP as well. You have to be careful with those arms though since, if you lose one of them, tech attacks are completely disabled.

The weak link here is getting knocked down. To get up, you have to spin the left analog stick to fill up a meter then press a face button (each button has its own meter) to fill up that button’s meter (said meter goes down over-time, by the way). Fill up each button’s meter before the 10-count and you’ll get up… I REALLY hate this system. It’s nearly impossible to get back up if you get knocked down twice in a round (though the opponent’s robot can sometimes get up easily if you knock them down 3-4 times in the same round (there’s no 3 knock-down rule in effect)). Maybe I’m doing this wrong, but I really hate this system.

Oh, and a minor annoyance: there’s invisible walls so you can’t get too far away from your opponent. You can’t  go to, say, one end of the ring while the opponent is at the other.

Customization/Grinding

A VERY LARGE part of this game is grinding. You get money when fighting other robots (you get money either way, but obviously more when you win, and sometimes extra parts or repair kits when you win). After each battle, it’s highly suggested to repair your robot (costs about 2000$ per battle from what I’ve experienced, less if you really kick the crap out of your opponent, and you can repair some parts for free with repair kits(1 part per repair kit)), and, with the left-over money, you can save up to buy parts for your robot. Different heads, bodies, left and right arms, left and right fists, legs, core parts (generator, motherboard, fluids for the hydraulic systems) can all be equipped on your robot. Each part affects different stats (core HP, sub HP(HP for that particular part), defense, durability, mobility, punch speed, attack power, movement speed, power charge, power recovery, health recovery, weight, energy use, and a couple more). The stronger you make your robot, the better chance you stand in higher ranks/online.

The grinding part comes partly from having to make money to buy better parts, but also from the fact that enemies get much stronger than you really fast. To get better parts for your robot, you obviously need money, which goes up fairly slowly and goes down really fast when you buy stuff. So a lot of the time you’ll just be re-fighting old opponents for cash and experience. Ah yes, the experience. The “problem” here is that you get a certain TYPE of experience depending on your actions. Dodging properly (and sometimes pulling off fast combos) gets you speed experience. Hitting the opponent effectively gives you offense experience. Guarding/parrying gives you guard experience. Knocking an opponent down gives you performance experience. Destroying body parts or at least damaging them heavily gives you destruction experience. Getting enough experience of each type will give you levels of that particular type. Here’s the weird part though: that experience does NOT make you or your robot stronger directly. Instead, getting more experience gives you access to locked equipment in the shop (so, even if you can see equipment in the shop, you can’t buy it until you’re leveled up enough). Each part has its own level requirement, so you have to work hard on getting those points up (For example, one may ask you to have 12 offense, 14 speed, 13 guard, 10 destructive and 11 performance, and if you’re low on one, you can’t buy the part). From what I’ve seen, Guard and speed were the tougher ones to build up at first, butI figured that fighting the scrapbot will make it easier to grind those up (just block/evade for whole rounds). Offense is actually the one that builds up slower. Also, most equipment is completely locked until you reach certain points in the “campaign”.

So you’ll be spending a LOT of time getting those levels up and gaining enough money to buy parts for your robot. It’s really quite a big grind. Some people might hold it against the game. I personally don’t, but I would understand if you do.

“The Catch”

This is actually a fairly high-quality release for a 10$ game, so what’s the catch? Well, the store has 2 options: a standard store where you use cash won from battles, and another “DLC” store where you can buy parts with actual money (and, from what I’ve seen, without level requirements). Each part is 2$, and you can buy a whole robot for 10$ (basically getting all the parts in it for half price). You can also buy money and repair kits. THIS is the catch in the game. You CAN totally ignore it, that’s what I’m doing, but if you’re willing to waste your money, you can get some of the best parts, or extra in-game money, without even playing the game. That certainly makes the game much easier though, and much less grindy (a robot with a “power level” of 6000 will walk over anything for a while in the “campaign” without even having a chance to lose). I think this option is a bit stupid, but frankly it’s not affecting my enjoyment of the game, so I won’t hold it against the game.

Presentation

There’s one aspect of the presentation that really annoys me: there’s no commentator! Frankly, the game sounds a bit bland overall, and adding an announcer or 2 would definitely liven it up. Otherwise, it’s what you’d expect: the robot models look fine but nowhere near as good as the same robots in the movie obviously (at least from what I’ve seen in trailers). The sound is metal pounding on metal, nothing really out of the ordinary here. Despite this being a 10$ game, there aren’t any glaring graphical problems or obvious “we had to cut back on this” parts, it’s just a few months of development more shy of full disc release quality.

Overall

Real Steel was a huge surprise for me. I mean, how often do you find a very good and very cheap downloadable game BASED ON A KIDS MOVIE? I have no clue how this happened, but there it is, probably the only good movie licensed game on an HD console this generation (I’m not counting Ghostbusters since that’s more like a sequel to the movies than a movie-based game), and it’s a cheap 10$ DLC game. Congrats, Yuke’s, con-fucking-grats.

The game has fun boxing gameplay with simple controls (it may have less depth than Fight Night Round 4, but that doesn’t make it less fun), lots of customizing, it looks quite good considering it’s a 10$ game that actually takes very little space on the hard drive. The grinding may be a drawback to some people, but I frankly didn’t mind. The presentation lacks polish (no commentator, what?), but that’s understandable for a low-budget game. My only really big problem with the game is how you get up from getting knocked down (I counter that problem by not getting knocked down as much as I can, even sacrificing an arm if need be).

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, definitely check it out.

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But then I figured that Star Fox 64, while quite popular in its own time, is currently pretty much only know for “Do a barrel roll!” and “Can’t let you do that, Star Fox!”, basically just being a cheap meme machine. So… what the heck, let’s review it!

Developer: Q Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Date of Release: September 9th 2011
Platforms: Nintendo 3DS

Genre: Rail Shooter
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Presentation

This being a remake of the N64 classic, you’re obviously getting a graphical boost. This, however, is a MASSIVE boost compared to OoT3D. Don’t get me wrong, OoT3D looked a LOT better than the original OoT, but this is at a whole other level. The models for enemy ships and background and special effects have tons of added quality for textures and poly-count and such, but they’re also a whole lot more detailed. Ships will have minor design elements and details and lights and gizmos added to them that they never had in the N64 version. This just looks insanely good, it’s almost like playing an HD remake. SF64 was already one of the more graphically impressive N64 games (IMO), but this goes to a much higher level.

Another change is the music. It uses the same tunes, but they’re completely remade, and it sounds awesome. Star Fox 64 happens to have a very memorable soundtrack, and this version ups the ante with orchestrated tracks. Very nice. Also in regards to sound, all the lines of dialogue were re-recorded. As far as I can tell they got the same voice actors from SF64, but now we have a better recording quality, and minor changes in tone and inflection on some lines. Not bad changes, at all. And I like that the character portraits(which look better) appear on the bottom screen during communications.

Oh and the 3D. It’s amazing here. The effect is more subtle at times (in space levels especially), but it looks great. Probably my favorite use of 3D on the 3DS yet.

New stuff

As for other changes… The battle mode seems to have been completely changed, and there’s a score attack mode now (which is just replaying the game’s levels, great to practice for high scores). For the main game, you have 2 choices: 3DS mode and Nintendo 64 mode. The 3DS mode includes modified controls in regards to aiming/movement (the reticule is a bit slower to center on the arwing’s screen position) and motion-control options (which I didn’t really like myself, but they don’t actually seem that bad). I’ve seen mentions of the game being easier in 3DS mode as well, but I haven’t found any evidence of that on my own. The N64 mode has the exact same aiming as the N64 version, and apparently the same difficulty. I don’t find the differences huge beyond the aiming working differently, but it gives you more medals to find (and I’m guessing you get expert mode in both of these, but I can’t confirm until I get all the medals… missing a few right now).

Gameplay

Star Fox 64 is a badass rail-shooter. You fly around in space shooting stuff! You get points for every kill, and boss battles at the end of every level, and the bosses are almost all interesting, with different attacks and patterns. You have a few attack options: lasers, bombs and charged lasers. Bombs cause major damage, and charged lasers lock on and give you extra points if you kill multiple enemies (or kill a single enemy by no hitting it directly with the charge shot).

The controls are solid. You can easily boost, brake, make sharper turns with the shoulder buttons, special moves with boost or brake with directions and of course BARREL ROLLS! Aiming and movement is smooth and easy to control. No problems here whatsoever, the controls work great on the 3DS.

An interesting thing here is that most levels have multiple paths, some depending on how fast you finish them, some on actual things you have to do in the level to unlock different paths, others have to do wiht how you fight the bosses. It’s one of the things that will draw you back to the game, along with medals. Getting a certain score on each level gets you medals, which, when you get them all, unlocks expert mode.

Not much to add here. Perfect gameplay.

Overall

Star Fox 64 remains as one of the most fun games to play ever. Star Fox 64 3D is the same game, but it looks and sounds better. If you don’t have the N64 version, pick this up. There’s no way around it, this game is amazing, a must-.

There’s HUGE replay value, since there’s a lot of secrets to find (don’t read FAQs, find them all yourself, otherwise you’re doing yourself a big disservice), but also because, while the game is INSANELY FUN, it’s also very short unless you’re not really good at it, so it’s a game you can very easily play in short bursts. And then there’s the whole “trying to beat your high score” element. I’ve played this game over a hundred times as a kid, and I’m expecting a few more hundreds now.

Buy it!

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Even after playing the demo, I wasn’t fully sure what to expect so… read on and see if I ended up enjoying it or not!

Developer: Ignition Entertainment
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Date of Release: August 16th 2011
Platforms: PS3, 360 (PS3 version reviewed)

Genre: Action
Rated T for Teen

Presentation

Let’s start with this… El Shaddai is a beautiful game. There’s an insanely large variety of graphical styles and designs through the game. A lot of abstract looks and just strange color palettes and visual effects. And none of it ever feels out of place. It feels natural when you go from largely abstract areas with floating platforms (with cute marshmallowy creatures frolicking around) to, say, a futuristic Tron-like city where you ride a motorcycle and fight robots. It’s all very pretty and colorful for the most part.

Story

Major low point here: the story makes just about no sense. There’s various cinematics that just seem out of place and don’t really amount to anything, and the actual story just doesn’t make any effort in making you understand what exactly is going on. Basically… you’re Enoch (for the most part) and you’re going to fight/purify/whatever the fallen angels (Azazel, Ezekiel, Armaros, etc.), while simultaneously preventing the world from being destroyed by cuddly white creatures (the Nephilim). There’s a lot of random moments, very few of the characters are introduced at all or even have a personality. Sometimes you’ll find tidbits of text that will attempt to explain some things, or give extra backstory, but it’s rather tedious to find and their info generally tells you nothing useful. Overall… not a big fan of the way the story is presented. Maybe other people will be able to enjoy the very ambiguous story-telling here, but I really didn’t care for it.
Oh and if you want an accurate depiction of the mythology found in the original Book of Enoch, forget about it; here you have Lucifel, wearing modern clothing, talking to God on his cellphone (not that I’ve read the Book of Enoch, but let’s just say that it’s clear that they took a lot of liberties here).

And the story, once or twice, completely hinders the gameplay, like that 40 minute (or so) long segment where you’re doing nothing other than watch cinematics and making Enoch walk forward while the archangels (I think) are talking to you. There’s some boring fights in-between some of that, but it just gets tiring.

Gameplay

After playing the demo, I was expecting El Shaddai to be THE big hack n’ slash/beat ‘em up/action game of the year, as Bayonetta was last year. While not completely wrong, it is a little bit underwhelming. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The gameplay in El Shaddai is fairly simple. Kill a few dudes, get to the next place where you’ll be killing dudes, continue doing that until you get to a boss battle, rinse and repeat. The controls also happen to be super simple. Square and Triangle attack (both do the same thing, so choose whichever button you’re more comfortable with), X and Circle jump, L1 purifies your weapon or steal the weapons from knocked-out enemies and R1 guards.

Attacking seems overly simple at first, especially since there’s only one attack button. But it can get fairly intricate. Just mashing the button will pop out standard combos. If you delay your button press, the next attack will be a guard breaker, useful for those blocking enemies (they block a lot). Holding the button enables you to charge a counter attack, which gives you “super armor” so you can hit enemies even if they’re attacking. Holding the R1 button and pressing the attack button launches a special attack (changes depending on the weapon). You have the same types of inputs in the air as well. So you end up with a fairly good variety of attacks. Holding R1 and pressing the jump button with a direction executes a sort of dodge move, with each weapon having its own dodge (the gale’s dodge is the only one that can be used in the air, it goes further, and it does slight damage, for example).

You have 3 weapons to choose from here: The arc is basically a sword, the gale is a series of… things… that float close to you and rocket towards enemies when you attack (being mostly a range weapon) and the veil is a pair of super-strong gauntlets that transform into a big shield. Each weapon is strong against another, and has different properties for its attacks. You can also fight unarmed (as it’s possible for your weapon to get broken), but it’s not terribly good (and most enemies that have a chance of destroying your weapons are bosses, where enemy-carrying wisps will frequently appear anyways). Almost all the enemies you meet in the game will have weapons. The interesting thing here is that, if you knock them around enough, you can take their weapon, making them weaker and you’ll end up with a fully purified weapon as well. Knowing when to switch weapons is a pretty important element here, due to the weaknesses. Also, every time you hit and enemies, your weapon becomes less “pure”, causing less damage, so you have to find the right time in battle to purify the weapon.

One mildly annoying element here is that you can’t die. When you lose all your armor (you lose it parts at a time as you get hit) and then get hit again, you’ll get knocked out and die, but, if you mash buttons, you’ll come back to life with some of your armor being recovered. As you keep on dying your button-mashing will become less effective, making it possible to actually die, but you have to get “killed” like 6 times in a row before that happens. So it kinda feels like you’re invincible while playing through the game.

The game is broken up in 2 gameplay style. There’s the standard 3D action game as I’ve described already, and there’s 2D platforming segments. The 2D segments are… pretty amusing, but I feel that they drag on for way too long, and the level design starts repeating itself. The platforming is rarely challenging, but there are interesting elements and level designs here, like having to ride on nephilim and such.

One last thing I could mention here is the random boss fights. At “random” points in the game (not actually random, just… out of nowhere, with really no reason), you’ll just be walking around and suddenly get sent to a battle against one of the fallen angels… I never really got the point of that, since you can never beat them in those “random” encounters, it just serves to knock out a few of your armor parts before continuing the story it seems.

Overall

El Shaddai is a very beautiful game, but also one that presents its story in a mostly non-sensical way, making it hard to understand what’s going on (if anything at all is happening… I frankly can’t tell). On the gameplay side, this is quite fun to play. Despite only having one attack button, you can pull of a fairly large variety of moves to fit any situation but… after a while you do start just repeating the same attack patterns over and over… There’s very little reason that they couldn’t put in a second attack button and more varied enemies, you know?

I’d suggest renting this first. It may be one of the best action games of the sort this year (though frankly I’d put Splatterhouse above it), but it’s nothing really special as I was hoping.

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I sort of reluctantly bought it when it came out, and… well, read on to see what I thought about it! (This should be quick)

Publisher: SQUARE ENIX Co., LTD.
Date of Release: August 30th 2011
Platforms: PS3 (PSN)

Genre: Action
Rated T for Teen

Presentation

The presentation takes a very simplistic approach, going more or less for a 3D version of the original game (while keeping the side-scrolling point of view). You character sports a rockin’ blond pompadour, everything that’s not human looks like blocks,you have the color-coded doors from the original… This admittedly doesn’t look really great, but it does great in regards to showing the player what’s going on, and that’s what really matters, regardless of the game. And it’s not horrible to look at, it does look nice just… decidedly average.

There’s not a whole lot of music in the game, just a couple tunes, nothing really great. Each enemy and gun has a sound effect, but it’s all very basic. It’s never annoying, but it’s never really memorable or terribly interesting. It’s just… there.

Gameplay

The gameplay here takes the basic idea from the arcade original, but it actually improves on the original by quite a bit. The controls are nearly identical to the first, with a shoot and a jump button, with pressing up taking care of just about everything else. The thing is that the controls here are super smooth, so you never have trouble moving around. The goal of every level is to get all the documents in the part of the building you’re in (marked with red doors) and get to the exit, where you use escalators and elevators (thus the title) to get to different floors.

Of course, enemies are here to try and stop you. You can shoot them, hide behing a door and smack them with the door by opening it strongly (you can only go in blue or red doors), shoot lights on the ceiling to have them fall on enemies, any explosions will kill them (even from rockets and bombs that they shoot) and finally there’s the elevators, that you can use to squish the enemies with (which I never manage to do).

One interesting element here is that most level sets will introduce new gameplay elements or enemies, with the difficulty increasing at every level. Some levels will introduce stronger soldiers, or sneaky enemies that place bombs, or robots, and place them in more and more difficult positions for every level. This makes the level design genuinely interesting.

And it’s tough too. In every level you can die as many times as you want, but you do have a time limit, and dying too much will lead to you not having enough time to complete the level. You have multiple grades for each level: bronze is when you complete it, silver is when you get a certain score (you get points for finishing levels quickly, for each kill, and there’s bonuses for stealth and pacifism… and of course you lose 5000 points for every death you got in the level), and gold is when you accomplish a certain objective in addition to getting the required score. Getting high in the leaderboards will be super tough.

Overall

I actually really like this. It feels like this is how Elevator Action should have played from the start. The smooth control and ever-increasing challenge make this a super fun experience. The leaderboard will be hard to conquer for even the most hardcore of the hardcore. Overall, really good stuff.
Oh and it includes the original if… you like that. And multiplayer, but I didn’t try that…. yeah.

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So yesterday/today, the first batch of free games was released (the 10 NES games), and I’ll give my impressions on each. Nothing big, just quick blurbs on each game. I’ll make this super quick!

Donkey Kong Jr.
This is a very fun arcade classic. The NES version is almost identical to the original Arcade version. The gameplay is solid and really challenging. Some even consider it better than the original Donkey Kong arcade game (though I don’t). It is a score-based game so it might not interest some people, but it’s a solid game.

Balloon Fight
Who doesn’t like Joust? Balloon Fight is an original take on Joust, with balloons instead of birds and various obstacles and traps in each level (and be careful of the water, a giant fish may eat you!). This game is REALLY fun. It’s also a lot about the score, but there’s still a lot of levels here and the gameplay is great. And the game has the ” Balloon Trip” mode which involves going through the level and picking up balloons, avoiding floating orbs of lightning, it’s really fun.

Ice Climber
An under-appreciated classic. It’s not an insanely hard game, and it does features slightly unwieldy controls, but climbing to the top with increasingly tough level design and platforms, it’s really fun. May be better in 2 player for some people, but that’s currently not an option.

Wrecking Crew
I don’t really like this game. I can see what they’re going for here, but I don’t enjoy the gameplay. Just destroy all the objects while avoiding enemies and go to the next level. It’s really not as fun as it could have been IMO. I know that some people love it though, so give it a try.

NES Open Tournament Golf
It’s golf! Actually, at first I thought they meant it was Golf, the crappy black box golf game, but this actually turns out to be a better game than that.
It’s actually really hard to hit the ball. After aligning your shot, choosing your spin and choosing your club, you have to press A to start your swing, press a again to actually swing, and press A near the white bar in the power meter to hit the ball… This actually turns out being really tough. I think this is a solid game if you enjoy golf, but it’s hard.

Yoshi
I LOVE this game…. in 2 player. Playing it alone it gets dull really fast though. But as a competitive game, this is actually really fun. Too bad there’s no 2-player option yet (apparently it’s gonna update to enable 2-player play later on). It’s a very unique tetris-inspired game, but it’s not really that fun in single-player.

Super Mario Bros.
This game is awesome. But I don’t need to tell you that, you already know it. It’s still as fun now as it was when it came out.

Metroid
I… am not a huge fan of the original Metroid actually. Partly because I’m not a big fan of drawing out my own maps. The actual gameplay is really good, exploring the huge maps in search of bosses and upgrades to your beam/health/missiles is all great fun. If you either have good enough memory to know where you went before, or if you don’t mind drawing your map while playing, you will have a lot of fun with this game (or you can go the cheap route and get a map online, but that makes the game boring). Metroid is definitely a classic, though it pales in comparison to some of its sequels (Super Metroid especially). It’s still very nice to see how the series started, and it is one of the most revolutionary games in the history of video games, it had a lot of “firsts” in the gaming industry (including but not limited to the whole “Samus is a chick?” thing)

The Legend of Zelda
An amazing adventure game. It doesn’t give you too many hints as to what to do and where to go, but a bit of exploring and experimenting will fairly easily enable you to find the right way (I could finish this game when I was a kid, surely anyone who considers themselves “seasoned gamers” will have no problem playing this). A fun thing is that, in certain cases, you don’t have to play all the dungeons in order. And there’s a much harder second quest once you finish the game. I loved it as a kid, and I still love it now. Solid gameplay, great puzzles, overall great game.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
This game gets a bad rep, and I will say this: it’s completely unwarranted. This game is amazingly fun. The side-scrolling segments features really smooth and fun gameplay (moreso when you get the down-thrust), the exploration/puzzle aspect when it comes to finding out where to go next is great (and there’s always an NPC somewhere who will tell you something useful somewhere… EVEN the “I am Error” guy, why do people ignore that you actually need to remember where he lives later on in the game?), the leveling is actually great (and makes this the first and only RPG in the Zelda franchise), and it’s a huge challenge. A lot of the challenge comes from the outright cryptic puzzles (yay for the internet) and some of it comes from really tough levels and bosses. You will probably hit a wall as far as difficulty goes once you reach Death Mountain early in the game, but that’s nothing a bit of grinding (or practice) won’t solve.
Overall though, this game is great, with its only “flaw” being “it’s different from other Zelda games”. (Note: there are no invisible enemies in the early parts of the game as so many people have been claiming, you just don’t see them because you’re in a dark cave…. duh)
Zelda 2 is somehow considered a black sheep in Nintendo’s legacy, but it should be viewed as a classic. Play it now! … Oh and the music is all sorts of amazing.

Overall

Not a terrible selection, far from that. Mario, Metroid and the 2 Zeldas are amazing, but the other choices aren’t half bad either (though not for everyone since not everyone likes score-based games even if the gameplay is great). I also find that they look great on the 3DS, I have no idea what people are talking about when they say it’s too small.

I think there could have been better choices of first-party Nintendo NES games, like Kid Icarus, Kirby’s Adventure and Star Tropics, but what we have here is still not bad at all. But I will say I’m more excited for the GBA games since I already have all these NES games.

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So read on and see if Bastion was worth the hype! (this will be a shorty)

Developer: Supergiant Games
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (Which means Bastion is NOT an indie game as so many people are claiming)
Date of Release: August 16th 2011
Platforms: PC, XBLA (PC version reviewed)

Genre: Action-RPG
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Gameplay

Bastion’s gameplay is fairly simple. Choose a level (one or 2 choices), go in, kill everything, find whatever you were looking for (the levels are linear so no real effort is required on this end), exit the level, rinse and repeat. The game flow is very simple and it works well. If you’re tried of just going to standard levels and killing enemies, there are challenge rooms for each weapon, with prizes depending on how well you perform. The controls are customizable, so you can play however you want (I’m guessing that using a controller is the best way to go, though keyboard+mouse works relatively well as well).

Fighting enemies is also really simple. You have 3 attack buttons, with one weapon assigned to 2 of them and a special skill assigned to the third (you can change weapons and skills in the armory). Each weapon and skill only has one or 2 attacks (some enable you to hold the button for a different attack). The War Machete will only attack with a quick slash right in front of you, and holding the attack button for the War Machete will enable you to throw it. Ranged weapons each have different kinds of targeting, shooting speed and reloading speed (as far as I know there’s only one “melee” weapon where reloading is an issue). So fighting is a matter of selecting the skills and weapons you prefer, or sometimes choosing the right weapon for each situation. In addition to weapons, you can use a shield to block attacks and you have a dodge move to roll away form attacks. So the fighting turns out being… pretty fun. Very simplistic, yes, but fast-paced and challenging nonetheless.

Other than fighting, there really isn’t much here. Puzzle-solving/speed/accuracy tests are relegated to the separate weapon challenges, which give you items and skills as rewards if you do well. There’s also a survival room that opens up in the Bastion when you pick up a certain item. In the Bastion itself, every time you finish a level and get a core or shard you can either build something or upgrade a building. The armory enables you to switch your weapons and skills, the forge let’s you upgrade stuff, the Distillery enables you to insert liquor in slots (you get one slot at each level up) that increases your stats, the memorial gives you challenges, the lost-and-found is a store and the shrine let’s you power-up enemies to increase the experience and souls for every kill. So there’s still some customization and content within the Bastion that definitely enhance the game.

Presentation/Story

The story is very well presented. This takes places quickly after something called the Calamity happened, and most people didn’t survive it. The actual story isn’t really on the forefront here, You get no actual dialogue with other characters, and no real interactions with anyone, and I actually really like that. Instead you have a really solid voice actor (who is one of the characters you meet in the Bastion) narrating everything, no matter what’s happening, and saying weird random stuff throughout, may the Kid be fighting enemies or seeing the petrified remains of people. The narration is pretty much perfect, and is the main thing you’ll be hearing through the game. When you talk about items to characters, or see anything in the levels, the voice will constantly have something to say, and it actually never gets annoying, and, if you pay attention to it at all times, you’ll get some good tidbits of backstory, which builds a really solid view of what the world may have been like before the Calamity.

Visually, the game looks pretty nice. There’s a lot of repetition here, with a lot of levels looking the same, or at least very similar, but it’s all very nicely drawn and pretty original, with the scenery appearing in front of you as you walk around. No problems here.

Overall

Bastion is a fairly solid game. The story is nice while not being too intrusive, the gameplay is simple yet rock-solid, the leveling is simple but it works well and it looks nice. It’s a game that doesn’t try too hard, and that’s all for the best. Some people will probably find that the game lacks variety and it may be a bit too simple for some, but I didn’t have a problem with that.

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I don’t frequently go into the “Indie Game” isle of my local downloadable game service, but this is one that caught my eye.

A classic-style console/JRPG with not-so-serious stories and 8/16-bit graphics? That’s fairly interesting. Now I was originally planning on reviewing both games separately, but Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII are nearly identical, so I’ll be mixing them up here.

Read on and see if your 3$ is worth spending!

Developer: Zeboyd Games
Publisher: Zeboyd Games
Date of Release: July 13th 2011
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360 Indie Games

Genre: RPG

Gameplay

The gameplay is reminiscent to old Dragon Warrior games. Explore the overworld map to find towns and dungeons, do a few side-quest-ish things and get to the next dungeons and towns to progress through the story. You have the option to run on any given map, which should be the basic option but you have to hold a button which can get annoying. Each city and most dungeons will have NPCs, chests and/or stores to find out more about the story and upgrade your equipment.

Each character that joins you in your journey will have his own set of equipment, and his own set of skills and spells. Some will be more damage-oriented, others will go for status effects, some are more magic-oriented and others are more physical. Fairly standard classic JRPG fare.

The combat is very much like dragon quest. Non-animated enemies on a static background (or a black background in Breath of Death’s case), life and MP bars at the top of the screen for your party, and you select all of your party members’ moves before every turn starts. You have a few standard options: Attack, defend, skills, magic and potion. As you hit enemies, you have a combo meter that goes up. As far as I can tell the only time this will go down is if you use a skill or magic spell that has the combo break attribute, but I’m pretty sure there may be a few monsters with combo-breaking attacks. In addition to the basic actions, characters can unite and use attacks together. It takes MP from both characters, but these attacks (And sometimes these are buffs) are pretty powerful.

Leveling up is fairly simple on the surface: get enough EXP, level up. When you level up you get an HP and MP increase, but stats don’t go up. Instead, you’re given 2 choices. Each level has a different set of choices. Sometimes it’s 2 sets of stats (so you can make your characters more specialized in magic or strength, or get some extra HP/MP), or 2 different skills or magic spells. Generally the skill choices are going to be similar skills/spells, but with different effects or MP consumption. This allows for fairly simplistic but still fairly interesting character customization.

After every battle, you will regain all your HP, and a bit of MP. At first I thought it would make the game too easy, but really it’s for balancing… Unless you grind a lot, these games are really hard. Even normal battles can kick your ass easily if you’re not careful, so healing you after every battle isn’t really cheap, it just makes it possible for you to survive, especially since MP is scarce and potions are scarce. Save points also enable you to heal your MP (inns are free and serve the same function as save points), but there are very few of them in dungeons. If you die at any time (and you WILL die), you have to restart from your last save.

Overall the gameplay works great and is fun all the way through.

Presentation

The graphics are semi-16-bit style, looking a lot like Dragon Quest 5 (the SNES version), but with bigger and more pixelated sprites. I actually think they emulate the style perfectly, and overall look very nice. It’s bright and colorful so I’m happy about it. The character portraits are a bit lame though, they’re hand-drawn, but not very well and the coloring is a bit cheap…. add a bit of shading in there!

The music uses real instruments. It does try to emulate a classic RPG style, but it ends up not being terribly interesting to listen to. But it’s never terrible/grating so there’s nothing to really complain about here, but it could have been more memorable at least.

It’s a parody!

I actually really like the story and characters here. It’s all a big parody, with random jokes “mocking” the genre or referencing older games. Breath of Death features a silent protagonist… but you always see what he thinks. Sadly there’s a character that can read minds, making this idea mostly pointless, but it’s still funny that he never actually talks. Cthulhu Saves the World explores the story of Cthulhu getting powered down, and having to become a hero to regain his powers, and you’ll find him talking/arguing with the game’s narrator all the time about whether he’s a hero or not. Both stories are fairly simple “save the world” fare… though Breath of Death is set in a world filed with undead people, including your party (which includes a skeleton, a ghost, a vampire and a zombie in it), and CStW is more about Cthulhu attempting to save the world so he can destroy it, but they’re both pretty interesting (if not a bit ridiculous) anyways.

Differences

Cthulhu Saves the World is a sort of sequel to Breath of Death VII. It (originally) came out after, and contains a few enhancements. CStW shares most gameplay elements with BoD7, but with a few changes. First…. well it’s a whole lot harder. Unless you grind like crazy, the game will be pretty merciless. BoD7 had a few tough moments, but CStW is hard throughout. A big change here is that you can warp to previous cities, making travelling a bit easier. Another huge change is that you actually get more than 4 party members, so you can switch between them and make your own party. Another small change here is that the battle screen has a background here… nothing major.

Overall

Both Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World are well worth the price of entry… which is super cheap anyways, as you can get both on steam in a double pack for 3$. They’re not terribly long games, clocking at not a lot more than 5 hours each, but they’re fun, and they have good replay value due to difficulty levels and challenges (including a score attack mode).

So, if you want fun and simple RPGs that you can play quickly, this pack is a great choice.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Simple
- Fast-paced
- Fun
- Funny
- Super cheap

Cons
- Hum……. Nothing really…

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