king of the ring with wii sports

for my latest “get off the couch” game i decided to revisit the original wii sports, a game that, due to the success of wii, has ended up being one of the best-selling video games of all time and in the 8 years since its release has become something of a classic. when i’d sat down with the game about five years ago (!) (figuratively speaking, since then as now i’d actually spent most of my time playing the game standing up) i’d spent most of my time playing the three tennis training games and hadn’t actually spent much time with the other four sports. this time around the first tennis training game was still my default activity (although, sadly, i never did quite make it to the platinum ranking), and it’s kind of surprising how just compelling and addictive that one minigame is. the pace of it is somewhat frustrating in that the serves alternate between groups of them being close to vs. far from the net, and returning balls close to the net can require some luck. but the thwack of each hit you return with your virtual tennis racket is extremely satisfying, and it’s easy to get into a zen-like state of returning serve after serve after serve. i was happy to find that tennis was enjoyable as i remembered (and my forehand definitely improved as well, haha).

although i would’ve been perfectly happy playing just that one tennis training game, i did spend about half my time playing around with the other four sports, mostly via their training modes. i didn’t spend much time with baseball since swinging the bat felt rather too similar to tennis, and try as i might i still haven’t developed the right knack to do well in bowling, although i did feel i was slowly (veeeeery slowly) improving. golf was pretty fun, although it seemed much more about trial and error than developing any skills and it was rather slow paced, so in the end i spent most of my non-tennis wii sports time playing boxing.

my initial experience with boxing left me frustrated and thinking that the game was completely broken, but eventually i figured out how the game wants you to hold the controllers (i.e. up to your chest, and tilting down to punch instead of punching straight forward). i also had to unlearn what wii fit taught me about directing my mii character, as instead of leaning your weight from side to side this game requires you to tilt the controllers to the right or to the left to dodge. once i figured all that out everything worked pretty well and was quite enjoyable, and i actually earned two gold medals (whoo!)–and burned a few calories in the process. 🙂

in my previous post about the game i reflected on how magical wii sports seemed when it first came out, and although the novelty may have worn off, it’s somewhat surprising how much fun the game still is today. this game is practically synonymous with the wii console itself since they were released together, and back in 2006 it represented something new and fresh and inclusive: that graphics don’t matter, and that even simplistic, “family friendly” gameplay can be tremendous fun. once again nintendo made creating fun experiences look completely effortless, and wii sports‘ and wii’s impact is still felt today, and will continue to be felt far into the future. the impact of the game and the solid, timeless gameplay led me to bump this up from my original rating and add it to my “greatest games of all time” list. although i’ll be playing its wii u remake before i get back to this one, i’m sure when i come back to it years from now the original will be as enjoyable as it is today.

become king of the ring with these wii sports links:
– the entry at strategywiki.org is still a good source of the list of training mode medal requirements
– review at nintendolife.com
– somewhat surprisingly the official site for the game is still up
– entry at wikipedia

Advertisement

big-screen mini-games with warioware D.I.Y. showcase and game & wario

even though i’d recently “finished” warioware D.I.Y., i was so close to finishing up the 9 games of the warioware series that i went ahead and played through warioware D.I.Y. showcase on wiiware and game & wario on wii u.

first off, warioware D.I.Y. showcase does exactly what it sets out to do, which is provide a way for you to take your warioware D.I.Y. creations from your DS and view them on your TV via your wii. the touchscreen controls are replaced by moving the wiimote’s cursor and pressing its main button, and although these controls make things more difficult because it takes more time to move the cursor on wii than the stylus on the DS, overall the change in input works fine. games look pretty good in the transition from DS to TV, and the wiiware title also includes about half as many micro-games as the DS game (featuring the characters who were left out of the DS game, including more retro games thanks to 18-volt), all of which can be imported back to the DS game for use in making your own micro-games, and a small set of comics and songs. while nintendo had wi-fi support for this title you could also download new micro-games, but otherwise there’s not a whole lot to do and the $8 price tag does feel a bit on the high side. still, for fans of the DS title this would be a nice complement, and the warioware formula is surprisingly strong, as there are quite a few micro-games included that are as funny and memorable as any that have come before.

D.I.Y. showcase may have been pretty basic, but game & wario feels like a real step back. almost completely eschewing the series’ formula to date (i.e. an onslaught of micro-games to conquer), this game focuses on mini-games, pretty much none of which are that much fun. each mini-game has multiple levels, but only beating the first level is required to unlock the next mini-game. this keeps things moving along, but the mini-games themselves aren’t interesting enough to even warrant the extra levels. it’s pretty sad that i found i didn’t even want to play through all the levels, few as there were, and that unlocking each mini-game just resulted in another stab of disappointment instead of excitement. in their review nintendolife commented that one of the games felt “like it’s all been done before on mobile devices”, but i felt that way about pretty much all of them. many of the games felt like the developers were really straining to justify the wii u’s gamepad, and in that sense felt like nintendo land, which i found to be similarly tedious and also more like a series of tech demos than a gaming experience. my affection for the warioware cast was the main thing that kept me even remotely engaged, and the only other memorable experiences were the virtual toys whose wacky humor fans of the series should be familiar with; “gamer”, the mini-game that actually revisits the typical warioware formula (including some hilarious variations of familiar micro-games from the past) but with the added trickiness of having to hide the gamepad when your character’s mom is nearby; and the miiverse sketching game, which is basically a pictionary-type drawing game where you can select from other people’s prompts and then view others’ responses alongside your own.

it’s too bad that the most-recent two entries of the warioware series are so middling compared to the brilliance of the first titles, but i have hope that nintendo and intelligent systems will be able to turn things around from here. in the meantime i’ll be taking a look back at the series before too long, and will be looking forward to revisiting some of my favorites in the series.

big-screen warioware D.I.Y. showcase link:
– entry at mariowiki.com

big-screen game & wario links:
– miiverse community
– official site, includes wallpapers
– parody kickstarter promo for the game, includes a ringtone
– tips from nintendo UK

super pac-man: saving the world one ghost at a time

in honor of pac-man joining the smash bros. roster, i thought i’d dust off my copy of the wii namco compilation, namco museum megamix (i’d played xevious a couple of years ago) and chow down on some tasty ghosts. that compilation doesn’t include ms. pac-man, which wasn’t actually developed by namco and thus, despite its enduring popularity, tends to be less acknowledged by them in general. so instead i ended up playing super pac-man (released to arcades in late 1982).

i’d heard of super pac-man, but its availability has been somewhat spotty over the years and it wasn’t until namco museum remix and namco museum megamix that it became more readily available. at its core the game is much the same as the original pac-man in that you’ll be chomping everything in sight and avoiding ghosts until you get a power pellet, at which point the tables turn and you try to chase them down to rack up points. super pac-man adds a new twist in that some munchables are locked behind doors, and you have to nab keys located in regular spots on the board in order to unlock them. a “super” pellet transforms ol’ pac into the eponymous “super pac-man” who not only becomes big and can “fly” over ghosts and burst through doors without a key, but he can also zoom around the board by holding down a button while steering as usual. there’s also a bonus level every four boards which is the same as a regular board except there are no ghosts, you have constant super power, and there’s a time limit.

i should preface my analysis of the game by saying that ms. pac-man was one of the games i made a beeline for at my local chuck e. cheese’s growing up and that i owned the original NES version of pac-man, and so although i’m not anywhere near a competitive player, i’m not a casual player either. i enjoyed the change of pace of super pac-man, and it was interesting to see how even though the board remains the same, the layout can feel quite different based on which doors are open and which are closed. the game becomes increasingly harder by making it so that keys open doors that are located far away from them, which does help add variety.

as someone who grew up playing pac-man and ms. pac-man the problem, though, is that this game doesn’t really let you get settled into a groove. in pac-man seeing the same board over and over again got a bit tiresome, but ms. pac-man has four boards which provides a good amount of variety. there’s no way of just looking at a board in super pac-man and knowing which doors the keys will unlock, which is good for variety but bad for getting into the zone. with more time i’m sure you could learn that board # X corresponds to configuration Y and i suppose eventually i would be able to adjust to having to spend every moment reacting on the fly, but in the end i just felt like the changes gave the game a new feel that just wasn’t as much fun. (compare to pac-man arrangement from 1996, which i quite enjoyed.) the wii remote controller worked fine, although the D-pad didn’t allow the really precise movements the game required: next time i’ll have to try using the nunchuk or wii classic controllers instead. last thing: as with other games on the compilation, the version of the game in namco museum megamix offers a stage select, which is great to have.

save the world with these super pac-man links:
– entry at wikipedia
– entry at strategywiki.org, includes a run-down of ports of the game
– table of games included in each of the various namco compilations
– apparently there was a pac-man board game by milton bradley. weird! the pac-man wikia has more info.

simian villainy returns in donkey kong 3

i played through donkey kong jr. earlier this year, and i finally filled in a gap in my video game experience by playing through the often-ignored follow-up, donkey kong 3 on NES. those two NES versions, along with the NES version of the first donkey kong game were all based on arcade releases, and they were all released at the same time in north america (june 1986).

although DK jr. has vague similarities to the first donkey kong game, the same can’t be said for this release. as has often been noted, in those early days carbon-copy sequels weren’t churned out with nearly the same alacrity as nowadays, and i came to DK3 with very little previous knowledge outside of seeing a screenshot or two. the first two games are platformers with an emphasis on running and jumping, but i was surprised to find out that DK3 is actually more of a shoot ’em up.

there’s a lot of interesting gameplay packed into the single-screen arcade experience. the setup is that DK has invaded “stanley the bugman”‘s greenhouse, and stanley, armed only with his trusty bug spray, has to get rid of DK and exterminate the bugs in order to save his plants. the player has to juggle several objectives at once: spray DK enough times to make sure he doesn’t descend far enough to attack stanley himself (thus losing a turn) (stanley can use his bug spray to push DK up off the screen and to the next level in every first and second level of a cycle, and get his head stuck in a beehive in every third level); spray individual bugs that fly around, each with unique behaviors; spray worms that crawl along and can’t be defeated but will pause if hit, often impeding progress; and in a mechanic somewhat similar to defender, make sure none of the bugs make off with any of the five plants, which provide bonus points if they’re saved. once per turn there’s also a can of super spray, the game’s equivalent of an uzi, that basically gives you a free pass through the next couple of levels.

in terms of the pace the game is pretty typical old-school arcade style in that there are only three levels and they loop pretty much infinitely. this game does introduce new enemies at various points, providing slightly more of a progression than some of the other games which increase difficulty by just adding more and faster enemies. like other classic nintendo NES games of the time, there’s a harder mode (“game B”) that can be selected from the start screen, and an alternating two-player mode.

as for the game itself, at first i found it completely foreign (nintendo has very rarely explored the the shooter genre), but after a while i enjoyed the game for what it is. the different bug types are easy to identify and are satisfying to defeat, and having to both manage DK and save the plants from the bugs makes the game feel more dynamic. stanley has more ability than the ship in galaga since he can not only run back and forth, but also move up and down a couple of levels vertically. the game has the usual bright and cheery nintendo exterior, and the game overall doesn’t have significant drawbacks. the first two stages are very similar while the third stage is too easy in comparison, and many times you can just jump in and defeat DK quickly. if you don’t manage to do that you end up spending a lot of time on the more challenging (and thus more fun) gameplay of dodging and defeating bugs, which would seem like a downside, but defeating all the bugs in a stage nets you more points overall, so for an arcade game it’s a reasonable design. (apparently in the arcade version starting with level 160 the game starts repeating only the first (and hardest) stage, although it’s not clear if this is intentional or what happens on the NES version.)

all in all i enjoyed it overall, and the game provides a fairly satisfying, if somewhat uneven, amount of challenge and fun. i wouldn’t say it’s become a great favorite, but it’s an interesting curio in nintendo’s catalog and should be more interesting to fans of shooters, classic arcade gameplay, and/or the donkey kong series, but i imagine most others would find this to be too old-school to spend much time with.

check out these villainous simian donkey kong 3 links:
– miiverse community
– nintendolife has reviewed the wii, 3DS, and wii u virtual console releases of the game. the 3DS VC review is the most positive of the three.
– entry at strategywiki.org, which includes a guide and descriptions of all the enemies as well as differences between the arcade and NES versions.
– the entry at mariowiki.com has much the same information but a few more tidbits
– entry on wikipedia

just dancin’ to michael jackson: the experience on wii

i played through just dance 2 a couple of years ago to see what the hype was all about, and had been somewhat surprised at how enjoyable it was overall. there have been a plethora of sequels and spin-offs since then, and rather than move on to the numbered sequel, instead i tried out michael jackson: the experience on wii next. on wii the game came in two editions, the difference being that the limited edition included an extra track and apparently a replica of jacko’s famous sequined glove, and i believe was only originally available at walmart (walmart = boo! hiss!).

anyway, although i’m far from a huge MJ fan, i definitely respect his multiple talents (i hadn’t realized that he’d written most of his own songs) and his long career. the game does a pretty decent job of paying tribute via a range of tracks that include some of his earliest and latest work, although it immediately becomes clear that the game is really just an artist-specific just dance game (apparently the first of its kind, and the game was followed up by black eyed peas and ABBA releases). the visuals do a pretty good job of recalling the original music videos via MJ’s avatar and the backgrounds, although i have to say one of the things that really disturbed me was seeing MJ on screen performing choreography that he wouldn’t have been caught dead doing: i don’t think MJ would ever have had to resort to doing the running man or jazzy broadway moves. as would be expected, the choreography is most successful for the songs where MJ danced a lot in the accompanying music video. in those cases the choreography in the game is generally simplified, “inspired by”, and more repetitive versions of the barrage of complicated movements in MJ’s actual video, and works reasonably well in terms of the game experience. the songs that have completely made up choreography are much less believable, esp. since the movements often don’t shy away from rehashing choreography from just dance 2. i’m guessing the average player prob. won’t mind it as much as i did, and in any case the dancing fulfilled my main goal, which was to spend part of my video game time off of the couch and moving around.

as with just dance 2 the game provides a surprisingly decent amount of movement, although i’m not sure i would call it a “workout”. also as with just dance 2, since the motion detection is via the wii remote there’s an emphasis on arm movements in the choreography, although, again, there are plenty of foot movements that are essentially optional that help keep you interested on repeated plays. as with just dance 2 the movement recognition can be a little capricious, but oftentimes it’s not too hard to figure out how the game wants you to be doing a particular dance move. and also like just dance 2 you can have friends join in (some of the songs include different choreography with duet or back-up dancer roles) and scoring is fairly incidental to the gameplay, although this game does include unlockable extras in the form of clips from MJ’s music videos and video clips where dance instructors walk you through choreography that’s actually from the music videos. all in all no huge surprises in this game, but i found it to be enjoyable overall and won’t mind dipping into the just dance series again in the future.

just dance with these michael jackson: the experience links:
– review at nintendolife.com
– i’m surprised that the game has a low score on metacritic since at its core the game is pretty much the same as the just dance games. maybe MJ fans are more demanding than the average video game reviewer?
– entry on wikipedia. apparently the xbox 360 version (which used kinect) has completely different choreography. i checked out a couple of videos of that version on youtube and it looks even more simplified than the wii choreography which to me seems like it would be fairly boring, although that version got better reviews.

successful sin and punishment: star successor

one of the great things about the virtual console service that debuted on wii is the chance to play rare titles that are hard to obtain, perhaps the most satisfying of which are the hitherto previously import only titles. the original sin and punishment for N64 was one such title: despite having english voice acting in its original release it was never released outside japan on the N64. i played that title about two years ago on the wii’s virtual console, and although i enjoyed it at that time i noted that unlike the N64, the wii, with its pointer controls, seemed absolutely made for this type of on rails, light-gun-style gameplay. i have no idea how well the original game sold, but a sequel, titled sin and punishment: star successor, was released for wii in 2009. the virtual console of the first game came just two years before the release of its sequel so it’s unlikely that the response to the virtual console release prompted the sequel: it’s more likely that the original was released to hype the international release of the sequel. regardless of how they made it to our shores, i and many others were happy to get a chance to try both games, not least because they were developed by treasure, a company who i have come to count on to deliver consistently solid action titles, often with shooter elements.

sin and punishment 2 improves on the original release in several key ways, the most obvious being the pointer controls. in the original game you used the main control stick to move your character but had to aim your reticule with the second control stick (although on the original N64 controller you had to use the yellow arrow buttons), but in this game you just point to where you want to shoot. this def. doesn’t make the game overly easy, as the game is packed full of boss fights (which i now recognize as being a treasure hallmark), which require varying ratios of dexterity versus powers of observation. even getting to the boss fights takes some strategizing as well as skill: as in the original your character has the option of shooting or using her/his blade for close attacks (for example, to reflect a missile back to her/his opponent), or dodging by doing a quick roll in any direction (incidentally, the controls were subsequently echoed in the flying sections of kid icarus: uprising). on top of a decent length for the normal-mode campaign (howlongtobeat.com estimates it at 6 hours) the game has easy and hard difficulty levels, online leaderboards (although taken offline earlier this year), and two characters with different shooting abilities (charge shot or lock on to multiple targets). in order to achieve the highest scores you’ll need to keep track of the game’s hidden achievements which take the the form of medals that appear due to certain unspecified conditions (see this link for what seems to be a comprehensive list).

although kotaku ranks the game as one of the best of the wii’s library, i just couldn’t bring myself to add the game to my list of greats, despite greatly enjoying the majority of my playthrough (on normal). the game’s story is fairly nonsensical, but not nearly as hard to follow as the original (reading the instruction manual gives you a lot of the context that is otherwise missing from the game). the graphics are pretty good for the wii (esp. given all the action happening onscreen) and i don’t remember there being significant amounts of slowdown. the game has some fantastic over-the-top moments of awesomeness and at its best it throws you scene after scene of unique scenarios that all work within the game’s mechanics, but there are definitely some stages and boss fights that pale in comparison so much that they cause the overall experience to suffer and really lose a lot of momentum. the beginning in particular is quite slow, although that could almost be forgiven as it eases the player into the experience. but the game also revisits set pieces from the original, which i found somewhat disappointing, and if i hadn’t played the original i may have held this one in higher esteem. unlimited continues definitely improve the overall experience, although the two-player mode is pretty lame (basically the second player just gets to act as an off-screen shooter and point to add his/her firepower to the first player’s). the boss battles are generally satisfying, although you should keep in mind that you should always try using your sword attack to clear an area or reflect projectiles back to the enemies.

all in all this was definitely one of the top games i’ve played thus far this year as well as one of my highest-ranked wii games, but its occasional dips in awesomeness prevented me from giving it full marks. no telling if we’ll ever see a sequel, but i for one would be psyched to have one. fortunately there are still plenty of other treasure games for me to try out in the meantime.

some successful sin and punishment: star successor links:
– nintendolife gave the game a 9. gonintendo.com gave it similarly high marks.
– entry at wikipedia
– info on a few unlockables at gamefaqs. for info on the variants, see this thread.
– iwata asks entry
– info on the game’s “true” ending (from completing the hard mode; will only mean anything to people who played the first game)

under the microscope with flow and art style: rotozoa

flow	art style: rotozoa

thatgamecompany has gotten loads of acclaim for their 2012 PSN game journey, so i thought i’d see what they hype was all about and start with their first game, flow, originally released online as a USC grad student project in flash. the game is stylish to be sure, and the gameplay is easy to understand: direct a snake-like microscopic organism and eat other creatures to expand your body. the gameplay is simple and a runthrough of the main experience can be completed in less than an hour. i got bored in a fraction of that time, though, and i agree with gamespot’s review of the PSN version which said it lacked “a lasting gameplay experience” and that “the aesthetics clearly take precedence over all else” and that “not everyone is going to have interest in spending money on a game that’s equivalent to an attractive screen saver you can steer”. although i’m all for “artsy” video games, i wasn’t particularly taken with this one, although i liked the concept of ascending and descending layers (like floors of a building) in order to reach the goal. i’m pretty surprised that they stretched the original flash game to a PSN title that pretty much just seems to add tilt controls and new creatures to play as (and of course, a slew of achievements of varying degrees of pointlessness), but even more surprising is that that version has 4.5 stars (user rated) on the PSN page and a price tag of $6. the reviews on metacritic give perhaps a better sense of the range of reactions, but for my part i find myself wishing there was more substance as opposed to just pure style.

i actually played the game several months ago, but thought it was too short to devote a whole post to. for completely different reasons i played through the bulk of art style: rotozoa (aka art style: penta tentacles). i’ve been documenting my gradual survey of the series, although up to now i’ve been playing mostly puzzle games on my DSi XL. rotozoa is a wiiware release, and unlike the other games in the series i’ve played is an action/arcade game rather than a puzzle game.

from far away the game looks somewhat similar to flow (and i’m def. just one of many who has noted it) in that you’re a little microscopic organism feeding on smaller creatures and growing in size. in the main mode of rotozoa it’s your tentacles that are growing, though, and the game starts with you having to grow two different-colored tentacles to a certain length, with the ability to both move your little organism and rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise. the higher levels increase your tentacles to three, four, and finally five (each a different color), and the behaviors of the creatures you’re feeding on (“goobugs”) get increasingly difficult to manage so that at the highest levels the goobugs intentionally try to hit you from the side opposite to their matching color tentacle.

as can be expected from being a part of art style series, the game glows with its clean, cool aesthetic. the visuals are eye-catching although a little on the simple side (although understandable given that it’s a wiiware release), and the music is suitably hypnotic. the game is more like the classic video game snake (which according to wikipedia has roots that go even further back) than flow in that the longer your tentacles get the harder it is to match the right tentacle with the right colored goobug. although the gameplay itself is fairly worthwhile, i didn’t find it to be nearly as addictive as the puzzle games in the series. i was never that big on snake type games anyway, although this game probably beats out the other snake-like game i played recently, the “square” mode of maboshi’s arcade, another wiiware title. the game is easy to get into, but at higher levels starts to fall into the “more frustrating than fun” category, and getting the “all complete” achievement for each level (no damage and no special moves) looks like by all accounts to be a lesson in self-masochism. still, there’s a decent variety of modes, and the gameplay is pretty solid for people looking to tackle a challenge that requires precision and patience. overall this is an example of a game that combines style with substance and doesn’t sacrifice gameplay for aesthetics.

get under the microscope with these art style: rotozoa links:
– glowing review at nintendolife.com
– entry at wikipedia
– some info on unlocking the second and third sets of credits

maximizing the mini-games of wii fit plus

it’s been almost two years since i posted about wii fit, but i’ve been playing its successor, wii fit plus weekly for more than six months now and have 4-star ranked the majority of the new balance activities, so am going to be setting it aside for now. the game turned out to be more worthwhile than you might expect given the similarities of the titles. along with some streamlining (you can now create your own custom workout by putting exercises and activities in a sequence with no breaks in between) which i didn’t bother spending much time with, the game includes a surprisingly rich range of new balance mini-games: 12 are brand new and three are harder versions of mini-games from the original edition. there’s a lot of variety in the new mini-games, and more than that the good folks at nintendo (bless ’em) as usual didn’t just churn out a second money-maker with trivial additions, but added a new emphasis to this iteration: the new mini-games purposely try to make use of both the wii remote and the balance board, in an effort to stimulate the brain as well as the body. for the most part this works extremely well, and i appreciated how the new mini-games had a different feel.

as with the original, spending hours trying to get the top rank in a mini-game is much more worthwhile when you have the added side effect of getting some exercise (although the amount it actually qualifies as “exercise” is no doubt still debatable). i was certainly more there for the games than the exercise, so i didn’t focus much on the yoga or strength-training activities (which are pretty much all the same from the original anyway), but i dipped into them fairly regularly and the lure of trying to get a 4-star rank was almost as strong as with the balance mini-games. other than the new mini-games and some added info such as estimates of the intensity of each activity and the number of calories burned there wasn’t much new in terms of presentation or features, but as an expanded edition of the original this was much more essential than i expected and certainly worth putting some time into it.

oddly enough, this game hasn’t been made completely obsolete by its successor, wii fit u for wii u due to that game removing a significant number of activities from the first two games. it’s not clear why nintendo choose to do so, but in any case i’m sure i’ll be revisiting this game to nab a few more of those 4-star ranks… eventually!

maximize these wii fit plus links:
– official site
– i had linked to this in my post on wii fit, but it’s interesting to compare the average amount of time played for each game (1 hour 13 minutes per session for wii fit plus!)
– iwata asks interview
– review at nintendolife
– the wikipedia entry includes a listing of the new activities

watching paint dry at my pokemon ranch

one more filler game. i’ve had my pokemon ranch (a wiiware title) for a while now, and feel like i’ve experienced pretty much everything the title has to offer. i came in with very low expectations, but got the game anyway since i’m a completist and there’s also the added lure of getting pokemon with unique moves or abilities via special trades within the game. as you probably already know, the “game”, such as it is, is mainly just a way to store pokemon from your diamond and pearl games, although you can watch pokemon and miis interact in pretty minimal and simplistic ways. more than one reviewer has had a similar reaction as myself and nintendolife, who described it as being “a service for storing and obtaining various Pokémon that doubles as a screensaver while you’re playing Diamond/Pearl”. with diamond and pearl having long been made obsolete by newer entries (and the games weren’t among my favorite in the series anyway) the game has less value than before, and the uniqueness of the art style, such as it is, has also been lost due to the similarly underwhelming pokemon rumble series, which also debuted on wiiware and reused the same blocky pokemon models. added to that, the game had offered special event pokemon in japan and an update to make the game compatible with pokemon platinum, features that were never released elsewhere. so out of the box the game already has a lot of drawbacks to it nowadays.

still, it’s mildly entertaining to watch the pokemon and miis wander around and smile at each other. it’s sort of like a virtual aquarium: nothing much really happens, but the effect is somewhat relaxing. i’ve gotten in the habit of firing it up whenever i turn on my wii for some other reason just to see what new pokemon haley has brought to the ranch, and i’ll probably continue to do so in order to eventually get that ever-elusive mew (which is only made available after the ranch has a whopping 999 ‘mon). limited even for what it is (the main bummer being that the game requires you to withdraw pokemon to the same game card they came from), it’s hard to fault the game for being what it is. still, $10 for a screensaver is probably more than most people would be willing to pony up. the contemporary tool, pokemon bank, has the disadvantage of a $5 yearly charge but the advantage of permanent cloud storage across current gen and future gen game saves, for what that’s worth.

watch these my pokemon ranch links dry:
– entry at bulbapedia, with a page with details on hayley’s trades and the list of club look-see members
– an entertaining account of the game from someone with an unusual fondness for screensavers

bit.trip runner trips up

two wiiware games in a row! although in this case i actually played the wii version of bit.trip runner, as it appears in the wii compilation bit.trip complete. anyway, the game and the bit.trip series in general got tons of acclaim when they were released, and being wiiware exclusives certainly didn’t hurt (although they’ve since been made available on wii as previously mentioned, as well as 3DS and steam).

i was a bit leery of bit.trip runner since mobile phones are full of completely disposable “endless runner” games (one of which i tried out a few years ago). i’m not even sure how that genre got big, but in any case i like the bit.trip series’ retro, atari-era-inspired aesthetic in general, and i was hoping that bit.trip runner‘s emphasis on rhythm and music would help ameliorate the main problems with the genre.

which (to start a new paragraph), it doesn’t, unfortunately. the problem of the genre falls squarely under my main gameplay gripe, which is “try and die” gameplay. in this regard bit.trip runner is as big a culprit as any game, and as with most endless runner games it emphasizes memorization rather than fast reflexes (although you’ll need both). the aesthetics kept me engaged for a decent amount of time, though, and i soldiered through all of the first world, including what has become the notorious level of the game, 1-11 (one of the longest in the game, i believe). the boss level was particularly egregious in terms of requiring rote memorization over “skill”, and after playing through most of the second world (of three) i lost patience and had to put the game aside. by that time the game’s charms (namely, the music, aesthetics, and simplicity of the gameplay) had been far, far outweighed by the downsides, including levels that are too repetitive and overly busy visual effects and backgrounds that make it difficult to tell what exactly you’re supposed to be avoiding. not having any checkpoints doesn’t help things either. (from the reviews on metacritic it looks like i’m not completely in a minority in this opinion, although sean aaron from nintendolife gave the game a perfect 10.) but the clincher was realizing that getting through the game wasn’t going to be at all a question of brain power but rather just sinking time into trial and error over and over and over again. now, not being a stranger to old-school gaming i don’t mind a challenge as long as i consider it to be “fair”, but once blatant “try and die” gameplay rears its ugly head i quickly lose any interest in being a completionist.

so, a disappointment overall, although the soundtrack is pretty rockin’. i’ve already dipped into the sequel (with the lengthy title bit.trip presents runner2: future legend of rhythm alien) and aside from the glossier visuals, more stages (and presumably a more gradual learning curve), the usual pointless achievements, and the addition of a checkpoint at the middle of every stage, it feels pretty much identical to the original. so i doubt i’ll be playing through much more of that any time soon, although i’m cautiously optimistic about trying more from the original set of bit.trip games.

don’t trip up over these bit.trip runner links:
– official site
– set of videos of perfects of every stage, from nintendaan, of gonintendo fame
– entry on wikipedia
– entry on steam, including achievements
– entry at howlongtobeat.com