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Jun 14th, 2011 at 15:08:44 - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) |
Burned through Super Mario Galaxy in just a few days. I had no intention of doing this, but since this is easily, easily one of the best games I've ever played, I didn't want to put it down. Why is SMG so awesome?
For starters, it is so awesome because I didn't expect it to be so awesome. I didn't have low expectations, but can I say I thought it would be 'just another Mario game?' As in, of course it'll be fun, collect all the stars, have some nice platforming, forget about it after I'm done. Maybe because I haven't played a Mario game all the way through since Super Mario 3, haha. Oh wait, and Paper Mario, on what was it, Gamecube? And of course MarioKart and Mario Party, but those don't count. Anyway, SMG blew my expectations out of the water. I had no idea a Mario game could do the things this one did, and it uses the Wii hardware oh so well.
It's so HAPPY. The colors are bright, the characters are all cute and whimsical, and it's all about collecting stars in order to power this house so that it can fly to the center of the galaxy so Mario can save Peach from Bowser. In the process, you and your Toads, Lumas, Mother, and Luigi discover a bunch of other galaxies that are SO CREATIVE. I cannot convey how amazing the level designs are.
In SMG, Mario can, with different costumes, shoot fireballs, become a bee and fly, become a ghost and go invisible, walk on water and ice skate. He also has a cool spinning attack/jump higher move, his signature ground pound, and a few various types of jump, including wall jumping a la Prince of Persia. With all these moves, Mario can get to every nook and cranny of the levels, where there is sure to be coins, star bits, 1-ups, secret stars, etc. Stuff is hidden everywhere. You will never find it all. And every time you die, it's all back again. The major pick-ups in the game are coins, which restore life and are your 'score,' a totally pointless thing except for showing off and competing with friends, and star bits, which you feed Hungry Lumas.
You pick up star bits with the Wiimote. There's a Luma (your cursor) that you fling around the screen to pick them up. It works so well and I feel really coordinated after playing the game. I didn't know which hand to use for which controller at first and it felt awkward, but I settled on right hand Wiimote, left hand joystick, and got the hang of it with some practice. So I'd be running with my left hand in one direction, and moving the Wiimote all around the screen in other directions picking up star bits. And always shaking the Wiimote to spin. It's cool how players have to learn to coordinate their hands. Mouse and keyboard this is not.
Enemies are fun and varied. Boss battles are also extremely fun, easy to figure out, and varied. I was worried that the game would be too easy, but it's not! You can make it easy by only doing what you have to, or there is the option that you put on yourself to try to collect that hard-to-reach coin or figure out the puzzle in this secret area to get a star, or whatever.
In addition to the main story, which you can complete once you've collected 60 stars (at this point, I still had almost 2 whole universes left to play through!), there are numerous other challenges to extend play. There are 120 stars total (I think), and I aim to collect all I can because the game is just that good that I want to keep playing it. Different types of comets will enter the atmospheres of galaxies, and these types change the galaxies in certain ways. One type is a Cosmic Comet where you have to race a clone Mario through a level and beat him to the star. Another is a Fast-Foe Comet where all the enemies and moving terrain is sped up. Another makes you beat a speed run. Another (which makes the bosses super intense) is called a Daredevil Comet and you have to fight the last boss of the galaxy with 1 HP. Can't take any damage! And after beating the game, there is a purple comet where you have to collect 100 purple coins to get a star. I've only done two of them so far. The first was real easy and the second was nice and challenging, took probably 20 minutes to get it. These comets all add a ton of challenging replay value to these great levels. Totally glad to play through all these variations of the same levels (regular version, comet version, looking specifically for a hidden star, etc.) There's also something called the Trial Galaxies that I need one more hidden star to unlock, but that sounds intriguing too.
To switch topics to the story and characters again, why does Bowser kidnap Peach? He doesn't need her for anything. He's not interested in her romantically. He just always has to kidnap Peach, be Mario's arch-nemesis. But why does Mario even care? He's not a prince. Where is the prince anyway? If Peach is a princess, who is the prince? She and Mario aren't romantically involved either. And how does Bowser go about creating universes and controlling dark matter? Does he have a Ph.D in applied astro-physics? Bowser used to just hide Peach away in castles. Now he's playing god. What'll he do next time? And is this game a commentary on evolution? It definitely espouses evolutionary galaxy formation. Does Mama represent a creator? Were the writers influenced by Carl Sagan's books? So many questions, so little answers!
And that's Super Mario Galaxy. Incredible game really. Will continue getting the rest of the stars and enjoy doing it.
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Jun 13th, 2011 at 06:36:46 - Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PS2) |
Same as Max Payne, I feel I should write a blurb since I spent an hour with this as well. I've no doubt this game will be awesome with a second player, so I shall set about finding a willing partner. Single-player though, it's obviously got potential, but the teammate AI is useless, and they NEED to be useful. At one point I had Skywalker and Obi Wan. I had to reassemble a bridge (hold a button on sparkly lego parts in the environment and characters can build) while fending off attacks from some creatures, forget the name, on Tatooine. Well, I can only do one thing myself, either shoot creatures to defend the builder, or do the building. Unfortunately my teammate wouldn't build, and sucked at shooting enemies. If I shoot enemies, nothing gets built, and if I try to build, I get shot and interrupted because my AI teammate sucks. So it took me 10 minutes to build this stupid bridge. With another person it would have been so much smoother. "Hey, I'll build, you shoot."
There's a lot to destroy, which is fun. If it looks like you can shoot it, shoot it, and it explodes into shiny lego bits! You collect them for something, probably building a ship or characters or upgrading later on. Playing through the original Star Wars films (or just the first part of IV so far) is pretty cool, especially Lego-ized. The little lego characters are so cute. Darth Vader is still menacing though.
So, I think I should have a Star Wars movie extravaganza and invite a bunch of people over for an original trilogy marathon, then play the game with someone later. Good excuse to watch movies. Could be fun.
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Jun 13th, 2011 at 06:25:37 - Max Payne (PS2) |
I figure I should write up a quick note on this, since I did play it about an hour. I remember watching friends play Max Payne years ago and remember all the praise it received when it came out. I always wanted to play through it myself, so bought a copy for PS2 last year. How excited was I to finally try it out! How disappointed was I when I realized it's all but unplayable on PS2! I had no idea it was like a port of a port on PS2. The frame rate is horrible, which also could be the newer big TV too, I dunno, but it makes it so I can't play. Aiming is really hard. The cursor makes huge jumps with the slightest tap of the joystick. Movement is really choppy and sluggish.
But the game is so intriguing! I can tell it would be fun, if only I could play! It's a total 'badass cop' kind of thing, Max being out to avenge the murder of his wife and son. It's told in graphic novel-style scenes. It's dark and foreboding. I'll have to look on GoG or somewhere to find this on PC.
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Jun 13th, 2011 at 06:13:33 - Viewtiful Joe 2 (PS2) |
Pretty much finished this yesterday. I played the first Viewtiful Joe some years ago and this one was exactly like I remember the other one being, except you have two characters (Joe and his girlfriend, Sylvia) to swap between. I almost exclusively used Joe except when I needed Sylvia for a puzzle or for enemies I needed to keep range from.
Viewtiful Joe started off really fun, then just got kinda tedious. I started the game on Adult setting, as opposed to Kids. Apparently this isn't Easy/Normal or even Normal/Hard, but Hard/WTF are you thinking. After playing through almost 2 levels and finding the last boss of level 2 impossible on WTF are you thinking mode, I started the game over on Kids. In Kids mode you have about double the HP, and I'm not sure if bosses/enemies have less health/hit softer. But double HP really helps!
The gimmick of Viewtiful Joe is that you can play with time. Your moves include: Slow Speed, Zoom In, Mach Speed (Joe only), and Triple Take (repeats an action 3 times; Sylvia only). Use these in combination with punches and kicks, and basically take out wave after wave after wave of increasingly annoying enemies. Boss fights are fun, punishing for sure, but forces you to adapt, which I like, although sadly I couldn't hack it at the end, got tired of trying and whatnot, and just YouTubed the last boss after I tried him a few times.
The one thing I really liked about Viewtiful Joe 2 were the puzzles. I don't remember many puzzles in the first game, but this one had a lot, and you had to think and use your powers to solve them. Many also involved some tricky platforming, which I liked less than the thinking, but again, forced me to learn and perform, and I can't say it wasn't rewarding. A couple didn't make any sense, and there's no way I would have guessed the solution without a walkthrough, but most I could figure out after a while.
Level 6 was particularly stupid. In it, you have to re-fight every prior boss. Why? I dunno. I already killed those bosses. I don't want to fight them again. Viewtiful Joe also recycled mini-bosses like nobody's business. Another thing that sucks about this game is the voice quality. They were going for some sort of stereotypical cinema announcer type voice effect for everything, but it sounded like they recorded in a box with echo effects on. I couldn't understand hardly anything the bosses said. That made the story seem more pointless than it was (evil villain steals some Oscars; go find them all). That's why I ended up being frustrated and just skipping the effort of the final boss. I didn't care at all by then, and had gotten tired of Mach Speed + Zoom In + Kick/Punch over and over.
VJ2 could have done a much better job incorporating both Joe and Sylvia into the gameplay, especially by giving them more unique powers. The only difference between them that I could tell was Joe can use Mach Speed and resist fire vs Sylvia can do Triple Takes and resist electricity. And Sylvia shoots a lazer gun. A couple early puzzles hinted at the potential here for character-swapping. For example, at one point there were 3 torches that needed to be lit. You light torches by taking Joe into Mach Speed, and he gets on fire when he attacks real fast. So attack the torch and light it. Then since there's 3 of them, the first goes out when you hit the second one. The solution then is to get Joe, light him on fire, switch to Sylvia (she stays lit on fire), then Triple Take kick the torches, lighting all 3 simultaneously. It was smart. There were a few like that in the early levels, but none later.
I also found a fun glitch that let me get infinite Viewtifuls (points to spend on upgrading abilities), so I exploited that and upgraded everything by level 4 or 5 (of 7). That's Viewtiful Joe. It's fast, it's fun for a while until it gets repetitive, but there's not a lot for me to care about there.
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