jp
Home Talks and Slides My GameLog Research and Projects Publications Resume Teaching
Back  //   GameBreadth Project  //   Game Ontology Project  //   GameLog

Zubo (3DS)

Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
I started playing this game on Friday 10 July, 2015  //  I stopped playing this game on: Thursday 16 July, 2015
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

July 16, 2015 05:24:09 PM
I got past that last little hiccup (though I had to blow A LOT into the microphone...multiple blasts before it suddenly worked?). Anyways, I wandered on a little bit, fought a few more Zombos and have a pretty decent sense of how the game works. Each Zubo you find has different abilities and there is some fair amount of variety there (e.g. attack active enemy, attack enemy you pick, stun enemy, heal, attack all enemies, buff, etc.). I'm sure I'd run into more variations, but for now I think I'm done.

The game should probably be a hit with my kids though - it has the right sense of humor (and some of the moves/attacks are quite funny and animated in interesting ways, one is a spoof on Jackson's Thriller!).


July 15, 2015 05:23:06 PM
I've been playing some more in fits and starts and the navigation is starting to get a bit annoying. I also reached a point where I thought I was stuck (bug) but it might not be the case. I found an item before I was tasked with collecting it and I thought I might have gotten into a "can't finish the mission" problem. It turns out there's an area I hadn't entered because I wasn't aware I should blow into the mic to pass through... a bit annoying really.

I'm still enjoying the combat system though I wonder if I've hit a sort of negative feedback loop. I'm collecting fewer healing items than the damage I take in a fight which means I either suck at the game OR that there's some sort of rest/heal functionality I'm not aware of. Otherwise I'll end up in a point where I can't defeat baddies and have no way to heal up either.


July 10, 2015 05:19:16 PM
Ok, this game is odd/weird but maybe interesting? It's a 3D 3rd person game where you fight zombos using the zubos you've met and befriended. The camera is really close in so it's really hard to see what's around you in the environment. That hasn't been an issue yet because the world is quite linear.

The combat system is kind of interesting. It's basically a beat-matching combat system that's tied to an attack power. So, each zubo has different attack powers (abilities, I should say). They all have different effects (e.g. heal a bit, do more damage) and when you select one you have to beat-match a rapidly shrinking silhouette that lines up with a silhouette of the zombo. Each type of attack has a different pattern and number of "matches" you have to make. Depending on how well you do on each match, a little bar fills up at the bottom increasing the amount of damage you do and/or unlocking "power pills" that are used as currency to pay to use better/special attacks in battle.

It's interesting and I'm not sure how much depth or variation I'll run into eventually, but for now I'm intrigued.


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria