dead-ly house

i got a copy of the house of the dead 2 and 3 return completely randomly, and not being big on light-gun shooters in general i didn’t play the game for quite awhile. (in case you don’t know, the game’s a wiimake of two games that were apparently popular in the arcade but which i’d never encountered previously.) i was looking for a co-op game to play with the significant other, and so even though neither of us are even into zombies that much i thought it might be fun.

and actually, it was fun. at first we alternated between HotD2 and HotD3, but it didn’t take long to find out that HotD2 is significantly harder, so we ended up focusing on HotD3. the game is set up so that as you play the game more, you unlock settings that give you more continues and more life, as well as additional difficulty options. there’s a cap on the maximum number of continues you can choose (9), and continues are shared between the players. my SO, being a n00b, used up the majority of the continues so that even on “very easy” we had trouble getting to the end. a classic example of a game with a co-op mode that doesn’t take into account the players’ differing levels of ability, but when i beat the game twice on very easy on my own it unlocked unlimited continues for HotD3; so then we played through it one more time to beat it together. teamwork, awww.

i enjoyed HotD3 overall. the dialogue is intentionally cheesy and entertaining, and the enemies are amusing, and the graphics aren’t anything flashy and don’t feel too dated. the main problem i have with the gameplay is that the bulk of the game is fairly mindlessly easy, but the boss levels are suddenly much harder, even once you’ve learned the patterns. (even with all my playthroughs i was never able to fully master the sloth boss. alas.)

comparing it to HotD2, from my experience (and i think most people agree) the latter is definitely superior. the branching paths in HotD2 keep the game feeling fresh, and saving civilians adds to the gameplay’s variety. having to sit down and master all the boss fights made me reluctant to try to beat the game, though, so i didn’t bother. i did some of the training exercises for variety, which provided a nice change of pace. the wii version of HotD2 has a new mode to enhance the original arcade mode: in the new mode you can use a couple of powerups to compensate for the limited number of continues, but i didn’t end up exploring those options very much. the main complaint about the package as a whole seems to be that both games only offer up limited continues (for example, in this review at 1up), but i don’t have a problem with that, assuming that HotD2 provides the same mechanism to unlock unlimited continues, i.e. by beating the game a couple of times on any difficulty level, including very easy. the effort makes the victory that much sweeter. haha.

last thing: i tried the wii zapper, and i liked the stability it added to my aim, although i wasn’t completely satisfied with the weight of it, or the feel of the trigger. for light gun games that don’t use the nunchuk the wii zapper is certainly not ideal. at some point i’ll try nyko’s wii perfect shot gun, which seems to have gotten good reviews.

in any case, the house of the dead 2 and 3 return was a surprisingly good release and is certainly recommended, even though HotD3 is fairly shallow and mindless. the wii release has also gotten me interested in the series as a whole. not enough to run out and get the wii’s followup, the house of the dead: overkill, but i’m definitely going to pick up the pinball of the dead and i’m definitely going to track down a copy of the typing of the dead. eventually!

dead-ly links in da house:
- entry at wikipedia
- a glowing review at videogamecritic.net
- entry at metacritic

HotD3-specific links:
- FAQ of the xbox version: includes a fair number of the quotes from the game, including the classic, “a security guard? you gotta be kidding!”
- entry at wikipedia: has info on the four endings

majora unmasked

so the loooong game that was taking me forever to finish was the much-discussed the legend of zelda: majora’s mask. in a complete coincidence i finished the game after some marathon sessions shortly after the game was released this week to commemorate the 300th release on the virtual console.

due to the game’s release there’s been tons of discussion about it online these days. despite its reuse of much of the design of ocarina of time, the game is as much a black sheep of the zelda series as zelda II: the adventure of link was. the game is noted for being darker in tone than the rest of the series, with the disaster of the moon crashing into the earth always looming literally overhead. the central game mechanic, in which you replay the same three days over and over again, a la the classic movie groundhog day, is amazingly innovative, even almost 9 years later. the game hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves, perhaps partly because of its unusual mechanics, but also perhaps it was a bit ahead of its time. hopefully now it will reach a broader audience who can appreciate what a great game it is.

and what a great game it is! i’ve been enjoying my progression through the zelda series, but after i finished ocarina, zelda fatigue was threatening to set in. luckily this game provided a real breath of fresh air and in fact it’s joined my list of “favorite games of all time”. this isn’t to say it’s without its flaws, though. one of the main complaints people have about it is that the time limit sometimes makes you repeat extended sequences of actions, which can be frustrating to say the least. and even outside of the time limit there are some places where the game sets you up so that it’s highly likely that you’ll have to repeat a section because you didn’t complete it on the right day. in my case the problem with the repetitions was compounded by the fact that either my N64 or my expansion pak is buggy, because when i zipped through areas the way i usually do the game would freeze. once i got used to slowing down and letting the camera catch up with me i was usually fine, though, although there were still way too many occasions where i’d have to redo whole sections even beyond what a normal playthrough of the game would entail. extremely frustrating, but the game was definitely worth slogging through that issue and any other quibbles i might have with the game.

in addition to the completely absorbing and fresh central game mechanic, there’s also a more complex story than usual that unfolds well. it seems that the game’s designers made a conscious effort to make the characters come alive. in this interview from nintendo power tezuka, one of the supervisors of the game says:

There were a number of characters in Ocarina of Time that we wanted to describe more fully. We didn’t have the means to do it in Ocarina, but in Majora’s Mask we do because players have the opportunity to meet every character in the game and learn more about them.

in response to the question “Is there anything you weren’t able to accomplish in Ocarina of Time that you have included in Majora’s Mask?” miyamoto adds:

Yes. In fact, that is why we’ve decided to base the game on the three-day intervals. This allows gamers to see characters as they go through their daily routines in more detail. Depending on which time of day you visit a particular character, he or she will be doing different things.

one of the things i really appreciated about the game was how well the side quests are integrated into the game. a lot of the side quests involve the characters you’re constantly running into in the town, which serves as the home base. so while you’re preparing for the next part of the main quest, it’s almost impossible not to become curious about what’s going on with these other characters, and before you know it you’re deeply involved in trying to help them with their problems. also, because of the time mechanic there are many times where you’re forced to wait around for a particular time of day, so in those cases the side quests and the mini-games, like the shooting gallery, become ideal ways to pass the time (assuming that you don’t get sucked into them and lose track of time as i repeatedly did). in fact, because of the game’s design i ended up doing way more sidequests than i usually do. also, the sidequests where you have to find and collect useless tokens (in this game, as in ocarina, they’re golden skulltulas) are contained in two skulltula houses instead of scattered all over the game map, and i completed both of those as well.

well, not much else to say without getting into the details of the game and spoiling some of the surprises. but let it suffice to say that there hasn’t been a game that has sucked me in so completely in quite a while, as my significant other will attest. a flawed masterpiece, but one that i highly recommend every gamer should experience. (oh, and in case you were wondering, when you beat the game, the game automatically saves so that you keep anything you accomplished in the last 3-day time period you played.)

links unmasked!
- if you’re looking for additional basic info about the game here’s a good review at vc.nintendolife.com.
- there are tons of great zelda sites that have tons of info about the game. zeldadungeon.net is a good one and has tons of screenshots.
- the official site has a good bare-bones FAQ if you get stuck and want to minimize spoilers. if you’re looking for an in-depth walkthrough this one on gamefaqs is pretty good.
- text dump at zeldalegends.net
- video of some cool easter eggs on youtube. and here’s a cool reference to star fox in the game that someone noticed that may or may not have been intentional. also, zeldainformer.com has a pretty good succinct list of easter eggs.
- funny majora-related comic at brawl in the family
- just for fun, here’s a zelda 64 caramelldansen video featuring characters from ocarina and majora
- some majora wallpapers at zeldauniverse.net
- majora seems to inspire a fair amount of discussion and debate. zeldainformer.com has some interesting essays, including “The Tribe That Vanished from Legend” that speculates on the identity of the happy mask salesman, and “The Message of Majora’s Mask” that explores many aspects of the game that you may not have pondered very closely.
- this company first4figures.com was selling collectible figures of the skull kid and fierce deity link, but it looks like they’ve sold out (unsurprisingly).
- entry at wikipedia

went! fought! ouendaned

elite beat agents was the game that tipped me over the edge and caused me to finally buy a DS, and i wasn’t disappointed: it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time, and ever since then i’ve been hankering to play the original japanese version, osu! tatakae! ouendan (i.e. go! fight! cheer) and its sequel.

ouendan is certainly an import-friendly game (and now that i think about it, i think it’s the first import game i’ve officially completed), and i thoroughly enjoyed getting to re-experience the series’ unique and totally awesome gameplay with completely different stories and songs. (i also enjoyed the character design, which is by the same artist as EBA, atsushi saito.) there are a number of other small differences between the two games, and in some ways it’s a bit surprising that i so preferred EBA to the original. part of it is no doubt due to the language barrier, but in general the situations and characters in ouendan seemed just less wacky and off the wall overall. the songs throw enough curves that even an EBA vet like myself will have to spend some time getting to the highest level of difficulty, and not knowing any of the songs except one added to the challenge (although i’d only known a bit more than half the songs in EBA). incidentally, if anyone’s wondering, the one song i did know in ouendan was “linda linda”, originally by the blue hearts, which is featured in a pretty rad japanese movie called linda linda linda. the one major drawback in ouendan compared to EBA is that at the hardest difficulty level the markers appear for what seems to be a shorter amount of time than in EBA, thus requiring much more memorization, which i find to be a fairly cheap way of adding “difficulty”. so all in all this doesn’t surpass EBA in my affections, but i’m still definitely looking forward to playing ouendan 2, and of course i’m still hoping for the day we get a US sequel to EBA.

cheer-ful links:
- crackedrabbitgaming.com has a great fansite including links to original versions of the songs, screenshot translations of the menus, and a page of trivia
- the official website is in japanese, but it includes some rad wallpapers and interviews with the developers that google translate might be able to help out with but isn’t working for me at the moment.
- gamefaqs has a few good FAQs including translations of almost all the game text and the japanese lyrics to all the songs and their english translations
- interview with iNiS co-founder and game designer keiichi yano
- entry at wikipedia

now you’re playin’ with nintendo power

i’m still trying to finish a long game (not to mention two others that i’m halfway through), but i thought i’d throw up a quick post saying that finally, after years and years of waiting for the day to come, i’ve finally subscribed to nintendo power. i’ve been a long-time fan of the magazine ever since i got a sample copy of the very first issue waaaaaay back when, but i never could seem to bring myself to actually subscribe to it, especially in this day ‘n age when in terms of being up to date the printed form can’t even begin to compete with the speed of digital news. but NP has always been more than just news, and ever since i became a renewed nintendo fanboy with my own income i’d been thinking about subscribing. so yesterday when i saw that amazon was having a promotion on magazines it was just too much to resist. through the end of june it’s $10 off a subscription or renewal, which ends up being $10 for 1 year or $25 for two. here’s the link if anyone’s interested.

there’s a lot of good stuff to say about the magazine. for a while now i’ve been reading through stacks of back issues i’ve gotten off of ebay, some from the earliest NES days and some from as recently as last year, and the magazine has certainly evolved. in its current form it’s clearly as much geared to adult gamers (rather more so, actually) as to kids, as opposed to the original incarnation which had a humongous font. there’s a lot of retro love in the modern version as well, which is always appreciated. i’d been noticing on metacritic that the scores and reviews i tend to agee with most often are from NP, and the staff have been so on the same wavelength as i am in terms of being a nintendo fanboy but still able to be insightful in their criticisms of the big N that for me paying to read the full reviews in NP easily outweighs reading the reviews off of a site like IGN for free. they’re still close enough to nintendo that they get unique interviews/information, and i’ve been really enjoying such regular features as “power profiles” which are interviews with luminaries in video game history, and “playback” which spotlights lesser-known retro titles. i also have to say that i really enjoy the magazine as a medium: i really like being able to dip into the magazine at my leisure in various physical locations, all of which are far away from a computer screen. maybe the younger crowd lacks the appreciation of the non-digital world, but for this old-timer i’m glad i finally made the leap back to the realm of physical media. haha.

nintendo power-ful links:
- the official site which lately has been including the table of contents of the current issue and some excerpts
- i’ve come across a lot of great links to the older issue, including. this fan page that indexes games that have been featured in issues #1-100 and includes the top 5 games featured in the “power charts” for a lot of the issues.
- this index at retromags.com used to have a lot more information on the contents of individual issues, but it looks like a lot of it has been removed, perhaps to be added back in later. in any case it still has nice-sized scans of all the covers.
- retromags also has tons of downloads of old issues of NP (issues that are 10 years or older). sweeeeet.
- entry at wikipedia

nintendogs: too doggoned cute!

at times being a nintendo fanboy has pushed me to some ridiculous places. in this particular instance, to playing that best-selling video game of all time (let me repeat that, of all time), nintendogs. in particular i played nintendogs: lab and friends. one of my main motivations was just to see what all the hype was about, but one of the other main reasons is because the video game god himself miyamoto worked on it (as general producer).

i don’t have too many insecurities about my manhood, but although it generally seems acceptable in polite society to admit to playing the animal crossing games, admitting to playing nintendogs is a bit of a step. where will this slippery slope of casual game playing i’ve started on end?? but actually i was kind of surprised at how much i enjoyed playing nintendogs, despite the game being much more shallow than animal crossing. it’s far from being the most interesting or entertaining game i’ve ever played, but as with my experience with animal crossing: wild world last year, the game quickly became a relaxing part of my daily routine … that is, until i got to the master and championship levels of the competitions and had to focus on training my cute li’l pooches to become ruthless killing machines that would mash their rivals into pulps of fur. muhahaha. once i mastered all the competitions, though, i had little desire to train up more dogs, so i put it aside.

from a gameplay perspective there was a lot i enjoyed. as one of the earlier DS releases it makes good use of all of the DS’s capabilities, with more of a focus on the voice recognition than any other DS game i’ve played. the voice recognition for the most part works reasonably well, although i was annoyed that i had to retrain my pups on several commands that seemed to stop working, presumably because i’d inadvertently changed the distance i was usually holding the DS from my mouth or something. this of course set me back in the obedience challenges (tragic, i know).

the game’s pacing is generally good, with your puppy becoming able to take longer walks and score higher in competitions (earning you more money to buy more items and house decors). you also accumulate “trainer points” which enable you to unlock more dog breeds. once you’ve beaten all the competitions there’s less replayability (even with all the useless items you can collect), so that although it’s true that all the variations of the games include every breed, gaining enough trainer points to do so becomes a long and monotonous process and i doubt many have done so. if you have friends to wifi with who have other versions of the game you can get the breeds you don’t have that they do, however.

the designers have done a pretty good job of bringing the pups to life. i was hesitant about getting a second dog and dividing my attention between two needy leeches, but it expanded the gameplay much more than i thought it would: my second dog’s personality was quite different from the first (calm as opposed to hyper) and their interactions were entertaining to watch. i’m somewhat interested in seeing how much the personalities of a 3rd or 4th dog would add to the overall experience, and at some point i’ll probably pick this up again. but for now my shiba inu (named “pixel” by my bemused significant other) and my mini schnauzer have been cryogenically frozen in their cartridge until i power it up again. (although because of the game’s internal clock they’re probably starved and dirty and have already run away.) and even though it’s only been a few days since i’ve stopped playing i already miss them! awwww …

tail-waggin’ links:
- a great, comprehensive FAQ at gamefaqs including info on the unlockables, version-exclusive items, and advanced tricks
- guide at 1up
- english version of japanese widget where you can make a map of the town on your cartridge to determine where you might find unlabelled items on your walk
- entry at wikipedia