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Mar 10th, 2019 at 16:41:12 - Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii) |
Simple game with cute, creative art and a neat "yarn" mechanic. Instead of sucking up enemies like Kirby usually does, he tosses out yarn (like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat: "Get over here!") to unravel enemies and pull objects around. This is because in the story, Kirby has gone to yard land or something because the ultimate boss, Yin-Yarn (pun, +10 points), is turning Dream Land (Kirby's home) into yarn. It's extremely gory with blood and guts and spine ripping and everything. Oops, still thinking about Mortal Kombat. Kirby is totally kid friendly.
This kept me entertained for about 6 hours to breeze through the single-player story. You can play co-op, though I'm not exactly sure what that adds besides the joy of playing with a friend, as you can do everything alone and there don't seem to be mini-games or anything requiring two players.
Anyway, the selling point of this game is the yarn gimmick. You don't just use yarn to grab enemies, but you use it to swing from attach points, to shapeshift into cool vehicles in a lot of the levels, and to literally reconfigure parts of the level (always neat). Like I said, it's kid stuff, so it's not going to blow your mind, and it's nothing you haven't seen similarly before (usually with grappling hooks in other games), but it's cool, it's slick, it's fun, it's relaxing, and it's charming to play. Worth the purchase.
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Mar 8th, 2019 at 21:36:36 - No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Wii) |
Meh Wii game with some highs and lows.
Style. The game's got this B movie aesthetic with over-the-top sex and violence. I was into the violence, but the sex stuff was mostly jiggly boobs and stupid one-liners. The main character, Travis Touchdown, is pretty irritating too. He's supposed to have bad-boy attitude. You save the game by going into the bathroom and pooping, and when you play as a woman character, by taking a sexy shower. It feels like the game is for 12-year-old boys and I would be embarrassed to play it around anyone. The cel-shading looks great.
Combat. Fun, but overstays its welcome. The game is broken up into fights where you climb the ranks (through 50, though you probably actually play 15 or so) of fighters to make it to #1. It makes very cool use of the Wiimote and nunchuck motion controls. When you deplete an enemy's health, you do an execution by swinging the Wiimote in whatever direction pops up on screen. This decapitates, disembowels, splits in half, and chops off limbs. Wonderfully gory and slick. You can also, when enemies are stunned, get in close and do piledrivers and things, by swinging the Wiimote and nunchuck together. The combat overstays its welcome because there are some seriously long sequences fighting regular enemies on the way to bosses. One time I thought the game might have been stuck in a loop. It was like 15 minutes of wave after wave after wave.
Bosses. Fights are generally very easy. A couple of them have little tricks to figure out, and these were my favorite ones. Bosses are very weird and imaginative. A couple of my favorites were fighting the cosmonaut ("the entire fucking space program," as Travis says) and the spider-girl. The trick to the latter is to time rolls when she shoots at you so you can close in and attack her. The final boss is a rich child at the top of a tower who looks sort of like the Riddler riding in a flying car. The second phase is him bulked up looking like a super hero. The third phase is him like a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade float. Yeah, I have no idea.
Story. The story makes little sense, aside from the "climb the ranks of fighters" thing. It picks up where the previous game left off, and makes a lot of references to events and characters from the previous game. It seems that some of the bosses you fight were in the first game (or their parents or siblings were or something). Travis has a protege who you get to play a couple levels with. She's basically there to be objectified. Then there's Travis's brother, who you rescue (I forget when or how this even happens) and do a fight inside of a dream, which was weird, with some anime girl in a robot suit. There's the head of the fighters' association, a woman with more personality, but also sex appeal. Then there is this mystery woman (Travis's girlfriend from the first game?) who talks on the phone, telling someone about various enemies you will fight, and the camera only shows her mouth, breasts, legs, and up her skirt. Yikes.
Minigames. These deserve a mention also for being super weird. You can play these to earn money to purchase upgrades and new weapons (all of which seem pretty unnecessary). I upgraded my strength to like 3 of 7 and my stamina maxed 7 of 7. I did purchase two weapons, which looked like that was it. Anyway, the mini games are all like retro arcade style. In one, you have to grill steak for customers to their desired done-ness. In another you have to collect scorpions that have infested a field. If you get stung, you have to go find anti-venom. Another sees you collecting coconuts by kicking trees and catching coconuts in a basket. The minigame NPC says "I wish my wife could handle coconuts as good as you." Har har. In another, you have to collect objects from outer space, bring them back to your shuttle, and avoid asteroids. In another, you have to lay pipes to control the flow of water. The more pipe you lay (e.g., the longer route you make the water flow), the more cash you can earn. These are silly and unnecessary, an odd diversion.
Jeane. The best part of the game is your cat, Jeane. Jeane begins the game with a weight problem at like 25 pounds. You can play with her in between missions to help her lose weight. You also need to feed her food to keep her happy. But you can give her the cheap shit for $10 or supreme cat meals for $1000, which of course I purchased. The best cat minigame is giving Jeane a massage. You have to move the analog stick back and forth, up and down, clockwise, or counterclockwise as the prompt appears on screen, and Travis rubs Jean's belly accordingly. It's pretty funny and cute. Jeane now weighs about 10 pounds and is happy and healthy. Yay!
Overall, this game was easy to play. It didn't really spark joy, but was relaxing and the right kind of weird, despite its often juvenile humor and objectification of women characters, for me to enjoy clicking through. Very glad to have experienced the controls.
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Feb 24th, 2019 at 23:40:39 - Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) |
Done and done. Plowed straight through, using shortcuts and eventually not worrying about collecting optional puzzle pieces or KONG letters. Silly and fun game that reminded me of being a kid again playing old SNES Donkey Kong and other old platformers.
Donkey Kong's and Diddy Kong's (both playable characters) island has been overrun by some sentient tiki instruments, who have enslaved local fauna to do their bidding, which seems to be collecting the island's bananas, much to the chagrin of our DK heroes. Platform your way through 8 zones, defeating a boss at each one, until you beat the tiki king.
Donkey Kong can perform a handful of actions -- pounding, blowing, jumping, grabbing. Pounding is the most frequently used, and is fun because you shake the Wiimote up and down (like you're beating a drum). Pound to break things. Blow to blow things (pinwheels, dandelions, stun some enemies). Jump to platform and bonk enemies on the head. Grab to do some climbing and throw barrels. If you have Diddy Kong, who rides on Donkey Kong's shoulders, you get two additional hearts and can briefly glide after you jump. The game is significantly easier if you also have Diddy Kong, but you've got to find him in barrels and not let him die to keep him around. I recall one boss fight on a mine cart where you have to play whack-a-mole. Being able to glide lets you be much more precise about which mole to stomp on. That was one of my favorites.
The zones are fairly distinct with some unique enemies and platforming elements, especially as you get farther in the game. There is a mine (with some mine cart levels), a jungle, a factory (this was hardest), a volcano (with lots of fireballs to dodge), some cliffs, a pirate themed zone, and more. I especially enjoyed the perspective shifts when you'd get in a barrel and shoot into the background of a level, then shoot back to the foreground. A lot of the "set piece" type platforming sections were among my favorite.
Overall, the game was not difficult, although there were a couple difficulty spikes. The last boss probably took me 40 tries, but with Donkey Kong, what was once difficult becomes simple. I recall the level 5 boss, this poisonous snake-like creature that follows you around the level, which is comprised of four or five large wheels covered in grass that you can hang on. You have to climb around the moving wheels and pound a particular spot on each. This is when I learned that you can pound while hanging. I didn't realize this for a while, and spent half an hour trying to only pound the designated spot when I was on top of it. I wound up being perplexed at how I could do it in time, and decided to try pounding while hanging, which worked! I think I beat it after a few tries next.
There's plenty more to do in the game, such as playing co-op, doing speedruns, getting all the hidden puzzle pieces and tricky to grab KONG letters in each level, and unlocking something called the Golden Temple, which I've no idea how to do. But I'm satisfied just going through the silly story and moving on to the next thing. Good clean fun.
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Feb 17th, 2019 at 18:02:05 - Metroid Prime (Wii) |
Metroid Prime is a metroidvania...wait no, it's just a Metroid game. I sunk 4 hours and 42 minutes into it and completed 15%, but it feels like I've played much longer than that. In fact, I'm sure I have. Maybe 4 play sessions averaging 90-120 minutes each. So I'm not sure how it calculates time. Perhaps it doesn't count time in menus or looking at the map, in which case I believe the timer because I looked at the map SO MUCH.
Why did I look at the map so much? Because for however novel I found Metroid Prime to be (FPS platformer with Wiimote and nunchuck controls!), the backtracking is horrific. Was this normal in 2002? I can't remember. There is no quick travel. If you want to go somewhere, you have to walk there. And since this is a Metroid game, you're unlocking new abilities (weapons, suits, secondary items, etc.) that can get you past previously inaccessible areas, which means you're constantly going back through places you've been.
Making this more irritating, enemies respawn when you leave a room, even if you just go a couple rooms away. This was fine early on when the enemies were simple and avoidable, but when giant rhino ice bugs charge and shoot snowballs, or missile turrets with uncanny aim pummel you, it's demoralizing. I've already killed these missile turrets 10 times. Why are they back again? Combat isn't particularly fun. Using the Wiimote to aim was a bit floaty. Again, it felt novel for a while, but when most of the combat isn't combat you want to be engaged in (i.e., you've cleared this room 10 times before and just want to get back to a save point because it's time for bed), the small issues are magnified.
What I do love about Metroid Prime is the exploration. You're dropped on this planet, Tallon IV, and you just...go. The areas are all a bit different (e.g., ice place, fire place) and full of environmental puzzles you have to solve to get to new areas. Sometimes that involves just finding a new weapon to open a new door type, or using a new ability you got in a neat way, like using the ball boost to roll up half-pipes. Other times you have to scan symbols or other objects to reveal a clue.
Scanning was really fun. I mean, objectively, this was probably the least exciting part of the game. You put on a different visor, look around for a red square, scan it, read the text. But I usually love lore entries and monster-pedias and things in RPGs; this scratched that itch. The game's story wasn't especially riveting, and it was given out in small pieces, but the vague sci-fi narrative coupled with the environment did a lot to pull me into the world.
I decided to quit when I'd made it to a new area in the Phendrana Drifts (courtesy of a helpful hint system that seems to alert you to where you can go next if you are idling) with a big bug boss. I died, but hadn't saved it since forever before. Save points are few and far between, and if you come across a boss having not saved it, you might have in the meantime explored many new areas, found new secrets, and so on...even up to like an hour's play time (oh yeah, there goes another couple hours off the official play timer). There need to be more save points.
I have the Metroid Prime Trilogy and just tried out 2 and 3. They seem very much the same as 1 with minor UI modifications and more prologue in 3, so I think I will retire all these and get on with the other Wii and Wii U games I bought...
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