What I'm Playing (Volume 95): Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 5

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 5 (phew) is a game for the PSP based on the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's manga/anime and the collectible card game. The game features a standard duel based on the official rules of the card game, with a few small tweaks, but also has many of your favorite (?) characters from the show available as partners and duel opponents.

Now, I'll admit that I did watch this spin-off several years ago, and remember precious little about it. I absolutely loved, however, the mechanics that the show introduced into the game, and specifically loved the concept of synchro summoning, which the show focus on to a great extent. These synchro summons added a level of strategic depth, variety of deck building, and ability to overcome a stacked board to a game that was remarkably momentum based. Before the introduction of these quick summon monsters, it was pretty tough to take back a strong board, but now you have a host of new options to help to turn the tide and win against the odds.

When I think about this game, I think about it in tandem with its counterpart on the DS, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's World Championship 2011: Over the Nexus (phew). The focus in this game is definitely more on dueling, and significantly less on story. From the beginning, you have access to a half decent deck, and just wander around dueling people. The more you duel against them, the more you build their affection, and as their affection reaches higher levels, you'll be able to participate in little cutscenes with them, along with a single tag duel to advance their story. This gives you a remarkably open experience, but also a frustratingly difficult one, at times. Your basic deck really can't hang with the higher level opponents, which makes a more linear approach, like in the DS game, a bit better. In that one, you go through a rote series of increasingly difficult duels, following an original story featuring the characters from the show. It also is a bit more friendly to beginners, as the shop in the DS game sells structure decks which are increasingly unlocked as you complete the story, while the shop here only sells booster packs.

There are a few nice things about this game compared to the DS version, however. It's been a while since I played that one, so I believe all of this is accurate, but it may be slightly off. First, there are significantly more cards and dueling opponents in this one, likely due to the increased space possible on a UMD compared to the DS cartridges. Second, there are a ton more animations in this game for the monsters and duelists, giving it a feel more similar to that of the show. It also skips the stupid minigame in which you must ride your motorcycle, which hewed a little bit to close to the show's hyper dramatic hook of dueling while also racing motorcycles (yawn).

I would have hoped that the game would have a bit better AI, given the increased power of the PSP and the storage capacity of the UMDs, but it still struggles at times. To be sure, the card game is hyper complex, and no AI could probably replicate the experience of dueling a human, particularly with the dozens of different deck archetypes and tactics for victory. Usually, the AI will make the "right" play, but only after a long time of thinking. This is exacerbated when the AI is playing against more defensive or stall tactics, as the AI could sometimes take upwards of 5 minutes just to take a single turn against my Exodia deck, which relies on stalling the opponent while also attempting to draw all 5 pieces of a monster from the deck, at which point you win automatically. Sometimes these lags were at times in which actions were very simple. For example, if I have a card out on the field that prevents you from attacking, and you can't remove that card, play any monsters and traps/spells you want on the field and end your turn. There were times in which the AI would think for 5 minutes, and then just end their turn without doing anything. This, functionally speaking, completely ruined playing any kind of stall decks in the game.

The game's mechanics are also frightfully strange to someone who hasn't played this series before. I picked story mode, and was basically given no story. No one explained to me what I was supposed to do, or how I was supposed to do it. Fortunately there were good resources online to guide me in the right direction, but the approach of the DS game was significantly better.

And yet, I really enjoyed this game! The basic mechanics of the card game are awesome. You have tons of cards to choose from and tons of strategies to play. The addition of a Destiny Draw feature (allows you to pick a specific card if you're on the brink of defeat) makes it feel more like you're actually a character in the show who can feel the Heart of the Cards and draw the card you need for victory. There are so many opponents to duel, and so many tactics to face, that fans of the card game will enjoy themselves for many, many hours. I'm above 70 hours already, and have completed the main story for the main character, but am just loving having someone to duel against, even if they are slow and sometimes stupid.

So, I think that for newbies to the game, they should probably focus on Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's World Championship 2011: Over the Nexus on the DS. But for seasoned pros who want a new dueling experience, this game gives you most of what you could want, without having to buy real cards, shuffle them, swap out actual cards from your deck, etc. It's not a good video game, but it is a good card game, and for me, that matters more. I'll give it a 7.0/10.

I've already teased my next handheld game, although I'm frankly still going to be playing this one until I get bored. See you back soon for a console game I've been working very hard on!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 94): Terra Battle

Oh boy. It's been a long layoff for me as I've been working through some longer games lately. I'll be hard pressed to make my 50 games goal by the end of the year, but I think I'll make it, as I've got this one complete as well as 3 more nearing completion, with 13 days left to go. I still need 4 to go after this one, so I'll have to crush the remaining three and then tackle a short one for the 50th, but I think I can be creative and find one.

Anyway, Terra Battle is, a mobile phone game that I've finally completed several years after it launched in 2014. I took several years' worth of breaks from it, and came back to start from the beginning three months ago, and due to some changes in the game, I was finally able to get over the hump this time.

Terra Battle has many of the hallmarks of mobile games, including daily login bonuses, chance based "draws" to obtain new heroes, and a far easier path for those who are willing to drop real world cash to augment their team. The combat system is extremely fun, as you control your characters on a grid, and must slide them around the grid to reposition your allies around an enemy to attack them. Each character has certain abilities that trigger according to a certain probability, and the more you use those abilities, the higher likelihood there is that your abilities will trigger in the future. This is accomplished through a "skill boost" mechanic, in which each ability use has it's own probabilistic chance to increase the likelihood of that character using any skill by .1%. That's all pretty confusing, so here's an example:

Character X has a 50% chance of using Megasword, and an 11% skill boost, meaning that each battle that character enters has a 61% chance of using Megasword. The more that character uses skills, the better chance of triggering a skill boost, increasing that global 11% to 11.1%. 

Terra Battle is, thus, delightfully grindy. Your characters will grow stronger in tiny increments, but once you trade them out for other characters, you will find yourself really missing those gradual boosts. As you build skill boost, your characters will use more abilities over time, thus increasing the rate at which you build skills. This gradualist mechanic plays itself out over tons of different mechanics in the game, and really rewards you burning time and energy into the game (or, the cynic would say, rewards those who pay real cash to build their team artificially). I personally loved the grind, but also found it wonderful that they have tweaked the game in many ways recently to make character recruitment and development far more reliable.

For example, you now can recruit two premium characters per day for free, whereas before it would take weeks to recruit two premium characters. Each character costs 5 energy, and you'll be lucky to build 5 energy/week. You also now get one free energy a day, ensuring a more reliable stream of premium characters entering your roster.

You also have full access to all of the hunting grounds, whereas before access to these was restricted by the day or time. Before, if you needed to train a character that was between levels 40 and 50, and the Metal Zone 4 and higher wouldn't be open for three hours, tough luck! Now, all zones are open all the time, which encourages players to spend more time in the game, and also allows you to build your team when you have time, as opposed to scheduling your play around the game's schedule.

The game was developed by former Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, and also features a soundtrack by my favorite video game composer of all time, Nobuo Uematsu, also of Final Fantasy fame. I have to confess that I never listened to the soundtrack, as I never use audio on mobile games, but given his renown, I have no doubt but that it is excellent.

Terra Battle was extremely addicting and fun at launch, and is even better now. It still feels a bit "pay-to-win", but I was able to start from ground zero and complete the main campaign in roughly three delightful months, so I'd recommend you pick it up as well, particularly as it's free. It's even more imperative you do so now, as the ill-designed and ill-fated Terra Battle 2  has already closed its servers, and the original has shuttered servers in several countries already. Jump in now, or you'll really miss out on an excellent gaming experience that I really treasure. I'll give it a 9.0/10.

Up next on the handheld section of What I'm Playing is a fun game that I've burned over 60 hours into already. Here's a teaser below:

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 93): Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

I'd been craving another turn through a Castlevania game, but didn't have any left to play that I hadn't completed, other than the two sequels on NES. But I had a handheld slot open rather than a home slot, with way more games in the home backlog than handheld, so I manned up, bought a (very expensive) copy of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and dug in.

The game is a direct sequel to my beloved Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the GBA. You again control Soma, possessor of the ability to absorb the souls of monsters and use them, and the potential heir apparent to Dracula as the foretold Dark Lord. You must fight your way through enemies and thwart their attempts to subdue you and force Dracula's soul to take over your body, saving the day in the process.

The game is extremely similar to it's predecessor, with a few little wrinkles allowed by the hardware improvements from the GBA to the DS. The first, best, and most important is that the map now always displays, a titanic improvement. Playing a Castlevania game in the Igarashi era typically featured a lot of toggling back and forth between play and the map, an essential process that admittedly gets tiring after a while. Having the second screen upon which a map can always be displayed, however, is just flat out awesome. You also have a few new buttons to play with, allowing X to be used to switch sets of equipment, allowing you to prepare multiple loadouts for boss fight, and the A is now used to perform special attacks specific to your weapon. I frankly didn't use the A button much, but the ability to switch gear on the fly was really nice, and kept you from breaking up boss fights to root through your inventory to swap out souls and equipment as needed. You also have some limited touch screen interactions, with one ability that requires you to touch blocks on the screen to open up paths, and a magic seal system. This system requires you to draw increasingly elaborate magical seals on your touch screen to seal up enemy bosses after you've depleted all of their health. Fail in your input, and the boss returns to life, so you'd better be ready to draw these seals correctly! I'm not a huge fan of touch screen gaming, and it definitely feels like the touch screen was intentionally lightly used, so I'm mostly fine with this. But I did think that the magic seal system had some more unused potential to it. I wonder what would have happened with a system like Lost Magic's, in which you could open up the rune interface at will, and used it to cast spells similar to how you could use button inputs in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Or if you could have used the same idea to unlock certain secrets within the castle. But I'd rather games use a touch interface too lightly than too much, so this was fine, if slightly disappointing.

The graphics are nearly identical, with a little bit of extra DS polish. The DS and GBA are remarkably similar in terms of graphical output in any case, so a lack of a big jump isn't too surprising, and the original looked excellent to start with. There were a few really striking moments that showed off the hardware improvement, including one excellent sequence in which you blast a boss through the floor, and fall down level after level of a tower, shattering floors all the way down. I don't think this was possible on the old hardware, and there are definitely a few examples of improvements like this.

I have to confess that I barely listened to the soundtrack at all, so I can't report on it. What I heard was good, and in keeping with the good quality I expect from the series, so I can't say it was a negative.

The game again suffers from some unclear game design due to the exploratory nature of the series. There were several points where I simply had no clue what to do or where to go, and I shudder to think of how I would have gotten through this game in a pre-GameFAQs era. Fortunately it was released in 2005, so it never existed at that point, but I do like it when games of any era can be soldiered through without outside help, and this one fell short a few times.

There's definitely not a ton of innovations here, and I don't mind that, but I did feel like they could have done a bit more with the formula. Like Mega Man, I love the formula, so I don't mind the marginal changes between Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 6, but for someone who isn't a huge fan, there's not a ton of reasons to pick this one up on top of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

This is a fun game, and a solid member of the Castlevania franchise. I really enjoyed my trek through another creepy castle, and would definitely recommend this one to all Castlevania fans, and people who just love fun games with good mechanics. I'll give it a 9.0/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a nice quick hitter I need to clear out the remaining 4 games to hit 50 for the year. Here's a quick teaser below:

  

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 92): Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2

Sports games are one of my all time favorite genres of video games, and I've probably spent more time playing them than any other genre. The top 5 in terms of total time spent are probably sports, RPG, RTS, platformers, and fighting. But my guess is that sports is number one by a narrow edge due to the countless hours I've spent playing Madden, NCAA Football, MLB: The Show, and several other titles. It's funny to me that more "hardcore gamers" seem a bit dismissive towards sports games as a genre, and I think it's largely due to the fact that a substantial portion of these people do not enjoy playing or watching sports in general. But sports games are among the first video games ever made, and some of the most common, for a very simple reason. They have an easily identifiable and defined set of rules that reduces the amount of creativity necessary to come up with a compelling user experience, and they are also geared towards allowing multiple players.

Of all of the sports which have been translated to video game form, I think the most consistently excellent sport is golf. My favorite sports game ever is MLB: The Show, but pretty much every golf game across time and platform has been at least good since Golf for the NES. One reason is that almost all golf games now use motion controls or the three click system created in Golf, and these controls just work fantastically to represent the essentials of golf in a video format. The other reason is that golf itself, as a sport, works incredibly well across a ton of platforms and at any level of visual sophistication. There's no defense in golf, which always makes games like football difficult to represent on screen. Tackling mechanics never quite look right in these games, and it's too easy to find exploitable plays and tactics to rig the game in your favor at any difficulty setting. It also has a pretty simple physics notion (wind, uphills, downhills, and slope of the green) that are easily understood and easily simulated, far more so than the random nature of hitting the ball in, say, a baseball game. Golf also lends itself well to playing with friends due to the fact that hotseat golf works really well, making golf work well on everything from a personal computer to a PS4 with any number of controllers and players. There are so many good golf games, from Golf to NES Open Tournament Golf to Mario Golf to Hot Shots Golf to golfing in Wii Sports to Tiger Wooods PGA Tour that it's difficult to find one that is objectively a bad game. Some of these games are better than others, with Mario Golf being the best ever, in my opinion, but there are at least 5 excellent golf franchises throughout history, and very few bad ones.

I've been hankering to play a golf game, and to try out a new one, so I recently purchased Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 to give it a go, and found myself, yet again, enjoying the core mechanics of the three click golf system. If you're not familiar with the series, it has a few differentiators compared to it's competitors. You play as a roster of original characters who have cartoony appearances and freakishly huge hands.

Good luck finding some golf gloves with those trash can lids

 

You can also customize your characters with bizarre accessories to make them, well, unique. So, if you want to eschew a traditional golf cart for a hot rod, be their guest! Or if you want to change out your club for a rubber squeaky mallet, have at it! Want your character to wear a speedo on the golf course? Your dreams have come true! Did you ever want to pick a samurai themed character and dress him up as a french maid? Go for it!

 

The mechanics of the game, despite the quirky touches, are remarkably similar to Golf, as has been the case for about 30 years of golf video game history (don't fix what isn't broken). And they really work, with two primary elements missing that have been included in the Mario Golf series. First, when you load up for your first shot, you get a question mark for wind speed, which is just stupid. You can't measure the wind speed before your drive? This makes for frequently frustrating experiences in which you tee up, aim your shot perfectly assuming a 3-4 mile an hour wind, and it's actually 1 mph, resulting in you landing in the bunker.

Second, you can't use any sliders to adjust your target with your clubs, making short yardage situations in which you have to hit out of a bunker onto the fairway extremely tough. This game really could have used that feature.

The game is also missing a compelling single player mode that curves in terms of difficulty appropriately. Single player mode ends up just doing "challenges" that are just doing a nine hole tournament or match play contest to unlock new items. Once you've unlocked enough items, you are then allowed to challenge the next opponent, who you can play as once you've defeated him. This gets extremely grindy, as you can unlock a maximum of two items per challenge, and at the higher levels you'll need to unlock upwards of 15 items to even be given a shot at the next unlockable character. There are really two successful kinds of single player modes in golf games, the first being a traditional campaign in which you have to bring your selected character through a PGA Tour season/whatever the story was in Mario Golf: Advanced Tour, and the second being a more streamlined approach in which you can subsequently attempt to unlock characters at will, as in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. This felt way too grindy to me, although the golfing was fun for several days, so I didn't mind too much. It would have also felt better if the courses/competition scaled better, as I absolutely stomped every opponent for almost all of the challengers, and then got to courses on which I couldn't shoot better than a +5 in 9 holes seemingly all at once. The wind and adjustable shot difficulties simply made it too difficult to navigate these extremely difficulty holes, particularly when you factor in that at higher levels, many of the challenges will feature special rules like adding an extra shot for landing in the bunker or rough.

Despite my preference for the more polished Mario Golf series, I had a tremendous amount of fun hitting the links, again. This is a silly facade placed onto a flawed, but fun game. If you like golf games, and who doesn't, you'll get plenty of enjoyment out of this very cheap game. I'll give it an 8.0/10.

I have no clue what's coming next for handhelds. I've really tapped out a lot of my collection I have to play through due to my increased time for handhelds relative to home consoles, so I may need to purchase another game here. Check back in for a true surprise once I settle on a choice.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 91): Lego Marvel's Avengers

It was a Lego weekend at my house! Lego Marvel's Avengers is the second Lego game set in the Marvel universe, although it's definitely not a sequel to the sublime Lego Marvel Super Heroes, my personal favorite game in the series. The game follows, quite directly, the plots from the first two Avengers films, and also includes side missions based on other films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The approach is mostly the same as always, although the game does add on a few new wrinkles. These may have been added between Lego Batman 3 and Lego Marvel's Avengers, as I haven't played the other games in between as of yet. The single biggest change was a new focus on special attacks for the characters. In older games, you mostly wander around mashing a single attack button, but you can now press "o" to trigger a special attack, killing an enemy in a more cinematic style. This is cool at first, but quickly becomes a crutch making combat too easy. It also is constantly irritating, as the "o" button does a ton of other stuff, which means you'll frequently trigger special attacks when you'd rather pull a lever, or vice versa. They should have assigned it to a different button, or better yet, have unlocked this ability once you've killed several guys in a row or built up a meter of some sort. It'd be like if the arcade game X-Men had and unlimited amount of super moves-it completely breaks the game's difficulty level.

The other big change is that they now are using audio samples from the films themselves, rather than original voice acting, as in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, or the mumbling from the earliest Lego games. If I prefer the mumbling to the original voice acting, the audio samples are exploring the 7th circle of hell. It completely saps all of the charm and originality from the game, and is basically just like watching the movie, along with pretty pathetic attempts at humor. It seems that every joke in the game revolves around the characters drinking smoothies at inopportune times. Haha. Bring back the old style! The direct copying of the films in mission form also makes the game's plot feel stale and predictable, which is lame.

So I really didn't care for any of the new additions. The missions themselves are also more cinematic and focused on big boss battles than on the simple puzzle solving of the earlier games, which just doesn't make much sense to me. But that's the direction they're going, and have been for a while, so I guess I just have to deal with it.

The music is very good, having been taken from the excellent scores of the first two movies.

They thankfully brought back big hub worlds, and this time they've taken the approach of having several of them, rather than one big one. I like the one big world approach better, but this does give you the chance to explore some cool areas from the films and Marvel Universe, including Asgard and Sokovia.

I feel like a broke record, but these bugs. Holy cow. This one may have been the buggiest one yet, which drives me insane in an error where you can patch things up post-launch.

In short, don't play this one unless you're a huge fan of the films, Marvel comics, or Lego games in general. There are much better selections from the catalogue for you to enjoy. I'll give it a 7.0/10.

I think I'll be splitting my time between two games from here on out, as platforms become available, so here are two teasers. Older games I've already teased may trickle in here, too.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 90): Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4

I had an excellent and relaxing weekend at home, and got to play a ton of video games with/without my kids, so I actually finished up 2 new games! This helps me to stay in striking distance of my goal of fifty new completions for the year, as I'm now up to 45, with another likely completion by the end of the week. This means I can take a leisurely stroll through the remaining 4 games in the last two months, so I may undertake another long RPG in that time. It seems all that's left in my queue is long RPGs, so it's about time I get clearing out some of them.

One of the games I cleared out was Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, another Lego game from Traveller's Tales. I finished up the sequel first, as my son wanted to play that one, but I finally got around to clearing out this one over the weekend. As usual, I immediately began collecting tons of trinkets following the completion of the game, however, so I'd imagine I'll still be playing this one for another week or two after this to get my platinum trophy. This review is for the PS4 version, released as part of a compilation for PS4 in 2016.

The gameplay you're familiar with is all here, and just as excellent as ever. It definitely has a more early Lego game feel to it, which I love. There's a lot more focus on simple combat and puzzle solving, and a lot less on absurdly huge setpieces, boss battles, and cinematic backgrounds, which I really appreciate. There are a few irritating retro touches to this one that are silly, especially given that the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 doesn't have them! The primary one is the unwieldliness of the build spell, which needs to be switched to to build anything. In the sequel, again, in the same collection, you just need to press "o" at any time to build, but here you'll need to cycle through your spells again, and again, and again to pop back and forth between a spell and the build command. This gets irritating really quickly.

The game is, in typical Lego game fashion, incredibly buggy. There are so many times when you'll get stuck somewhere, something won't build or destroy correctly, or numerous other problems. I really wish they'd play test these more extensively, or release patches, or something, but they release these seemingly twice a year now, so something has to give. Anyway, I've come to expect this, but I do wish at least one game would come out that wasn't plagued by an unusually buggy experience relative to other modern games.

The experience of exploring Hogwarts is, again, unbelievably fun. Like in the middle Lego Titles (characterized by this game up until Lego Marvel Super Heroes or so in my mental calculus), exploring the hub world will give you incredible amounts of value while also keeping the simple missions structure of the older Lego games. Hogwarts winds endlessly in a manner that is completely in keeping with the book's description of the castle, and figuring out where you are in the castle and how to get to where you want to go is half of the fun.

The music is taken primarily from John Williams' scores from the first two movies, and is, as is typical of his work, phenomenal. This is the single biggest edge for this game over the sequel, as the sequel has the middling music from the 5-8th movies. Seven and eight have excellent soundtracks, but it felt like they primarily picked tracks from 5 and 6, which is a big mistake.

The humor here is just fantastic, and is the biggest thing missing from the newest games. Introducing voice acting was, in my opinion, a big mistake, as it destroyed one of the characteristic charms of the series, and reduced the difficulty of making jokes. Tying your hand behind your back and still being funny was one of the best things about the older Lego games, and I really wish that they would bring back the mumbling Legos. It would also reduce production costs!

I really love this game, although I'd probably give a small edge to the sequel in terms of quality. They needed to iron out a few of the kinks here, but this was a wonderful first run at capturing the Harry Potter experience in the typical Lego format. It needed bug fixes and a few quality of life improvements, and it's not the type of immersive and precise game that makes for a critics' darling. But it's fun to play with family, and fun for fans of Harry Potter, so I'd definitely recommend it. I'll give it an 8.7/10.

I've already teased the next game to be feature here, so stay tuned!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 89): Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

I'm. Finally. Done. I finished Final Fantasy IV: The After Years yesterday, and my two plus month odyssey through the world of Cecil and company is finally done. The game has a convoluted history to it. It originally came out in Japan as a mobile game, and was later ported and localized to America as episodic content for the Wii as part of its digital only WiiWare line. I played this one on the Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection compilation released on PSP a few years after that. The game follows the adventures of Cecil and his friends, along with a few new characters, in the years following Final Fantasy IV.

The game uses the basic structure of Final Fantasy IV's mechanics, and reuses a lot of the assets from the game. The two new additions are the moon system, which alters the relative strengths of four classes of abilities (attack, white magic, black magic, and skills-think jump, pray, etc.) depending on the cycle of the moon. As you complete battles, or whenever you rest, the moon will advance a cycle, altering the strength of your party. So if you have a predominantly physical party, battling will be extremely difficult during the phase in which physical attacks are weakest. Conversely, the moon cycles will also affect the strength of your opponents, meaning that picking the appropriate time for fighting a given boss is important. The other big change is the inclusion of band attacks, which are more or less like double techs in Chrono Trigger, only there are way more of them due to the increased number of playable characters. The big difference is that rather than learning them organically once you have the requisite abilities for both characters, you now have to experiment by testing out combinations of abilities, and seeing if they result in a band. From that point on, the band will be accessible, and costs MP to perform.

The moon cycles idea was a really cool one, but was ultimately botched. Basically it ended up being a mechanic which you mostly built a balanced party, ignored, and dealt with along the way, altering the cycle of the moon only when faced with a really tough boss. There were just so many directions they could have gone with this idea that I really regret. They could have made it a system a bit like Final Fantasy X, in which party members could freely pop into and out of battle to take advantage of a particular strength or weakness of enemies as well as the phase of the moon. Or they could have made it so that the phase of the moon alters the tides, changing the landscape of the world and unlocking new areas to explore depending on the level of the water. Or they could have included a new ability that allowed you to skip a turn, but manipulate the cycle of the moon to turn a battle. Take, for example, a boss structure like in Final Fantasy XIII, when bosses are changing up their weaknesses and strengths to fit a more physical or magical style. You could have used this mechanic to allow you to attack strategically, weaving the moon's phases to take advantage of your foe's current status. But it ends up just languishing and being an irritant when your physical attacks do 1/2 as much damage, making random encounters take forever, or when you fight off against that super powerful magical boss and he one shots you to start the level. I liked the idea, but, like most of this game, the execution was very lazy and adhered too closely to the structure of Final Fantasy IV.

The bands didn't really strike me as very fun, because it basically required you just experimenting constantly to find new ones. I frankly didn't do this at all, and never used bands. If you're into mining games for lots of possibilities, I guess this could be fun, as there are hundreds of bands to discover.

 Speaking of lazy, holy heck this story. Stop me if you've heard this one before. There's a moon that's ominous. Kain isn't acting like himself. The king of Baron isn't acting like himself. Baron's being overly aggressive towards its enemies. Someone gets desert fever and needs a sand pearl. A character must shed his dark past to tap into his holy powers. We need to travel to the moon to save the day. We have to get through the magnetic cavern without our metallic gear. And this is just a small taste of the amount of narrative that's rehashed from the previous game.

This would all be okish fan service if everything else about the game wasn't exactly the same. There are very few new enemy sprites. The world map is basically identical. There are only a handful of new locations to explore. Basically every boss you fight throughout the game is just another boss, recolored, from Final Fantasy IV.

The basic structure of the game, as adapted from the episodic WiiWare, is that you have to go through each character's story first, and then you enjoy (maybe) a longer story with all of the characters together. The first part is definitely the best part of the game, as at least you have some dungeons to explore, can get some new (sort of) narrative, and enjoy seeing what your favorite characters are up to. But they make you sit through adventures with even the most marginal and useless characters from Final Fantasy IV. There are a ton of dull tales with everyone's favorite spoony bard, Edward, traversing a mountain alone with a white mage, and a whole lot of other hair pulling experiences. The new characters are all completely dull, do nothing superior to the original cast, and are a complete waste of time, except for Cecil's son Ceodore, who I actually liked quite a bit.

Somehow, the second half of the game is even worse. At least there is some original content in the first half, but the second half is literally just a single 20 floor dungeon that forces you to fight nearly every boss from Final Fantasy IV, along with an elite selection of bosses from Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy V, and Final Fantasy VI. Always wanted to face your team of heroes from Final Fantasy IV against Ultros? No? TOO BAD. This game should have been renamed Final Fantasy IV: Boss Rush Mode. It would have been significantly more accurate.

The music is fantastic, although there are no new tunes that aren't in the original game that I can detect. Uematsu can do no wrong, so move along.

The graphics are the same redone style as in the rest of the collection, although the WiiWare and mobile game versions had graphics closer to the original. I think I prefer the original, but it's not a huge deal.

This is a cash in, plain and simple. It's just narrow minded greed, and no one should make the mistake I did and buy it. At least I didn't go for the WiiWare version, which would have cost an astounding $34. It makes me shake to think that buying it on the Wii was once a goal. I got it the PSP version for a much more reasonable price, and at least got a copy of the tremendous Final Fantasy IV as part of the bargain. Please don't play this game. I'll give it a 3/10, even worse than the previous worst game of the reTROview universe, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. For one of my favorite game series ever, Final Fantasy is really littering the bottom of my review distribution at the moment.

Anyway, I had to pick up a game that was going to make me happy for my next handheld experience, as this one annoyed me even more than the bomb I mention in the last paragraph and the dreadful Project X Zone. So I went with a beloved genre that I haven't visited in a while, and early returns are a tremendous amount of joy. Here's a teaser.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 88): Gunbird 2

Gunbird 2 is a 1998 vertically scrolling shooter originally released in the arcade, and later to the Sega Dreamcast. I was fortunate enough that the game was ported to the Nintendo Switch, as a CIB copy for Dreamcast costs over 80 dollars!!! Dreamcast people loooove their shooters. I'd been in the mood to play a shooter over the last few months, so after I got my Switch, I perused some of the titles, narrowed it down between Aerofighters 2 and Gunbird 2 thanks to an excellent Metal Jesus video detailing shooters on the Switch, and ended up picking Gunbird 2 due to the fact that I'd already played through Aerofighters exhaustively back in my emulatin' days.

The game has a pretty standard look and feel for arcade shooters of the time, with anime style graphics, goofy characters, and a cheesy story. You play as a witch, a turbaned Indian on a flying carpet, a giant robot, a vampire, a samurai (hidden character), or a teenaged tech wizard as you weave through bullets, blast the enemies, and save the day. You must find some stuff that can be mixed into a potion, but only at the North Pole, and have a wish granted. Along the way you must combat an extremely chesty lass named the Pirate Queen along the way.

None of this silliness works apart from the gameplay, so how does this game feel? It's really excellent. The controls are spot on, the mechanics feel great, and Gunbird 2 brings a few additional toys to the shooter table. As a note, I don't know a ton about shooters, so some of the things I'll say here may have been innovated in other games (or even in Gunbird, which I haven't played), but I've never seen them before. First is the existence of a melee attack, which is totally unique. This attack is extremely powerful, and can do as much damage as holding down the fire button for probably 5 uninterrupted seconds, which can cut down boss fights tremendously. It, however, comes with the strategic downside that you need to get up close and personal with enemies to melee them, resulting in a high risk, high reward element to the gameplay. This requires that you memorize the boss patterns to find a time when you can slide up to the top of the screen, melee, and retreat to safely, and will really reward skilled and repeat play by the player.

The other fun and original introduction is the use of coins for points. Plenty of shooters have currency that are more or less solely for the purposes of inflating your score, but Gunbird 2 takes a unique approach in which the coins spin around, and vary in points depending on which position the coin is in when you claim them. When the coin is facing you directly and shining, they're worth 2 thousand points, while other positions are worth less and less. This really rewards the skilled player who can simultaneously dodge hundreds of bullets while also nabbing those coins at the exact right time to maximize their points.

The game is definitely not a bullet hell shooter, but it's very challenging, and there are a few points in which you'll be weaving back and forth like you would in a bullet hell. The difficulty level is pretty fair, with tons of different difficulty levels from which to choose.

The soundtrack is pretty poor, to be honest. There are a few tracks that stick in your head, but for the most part, the soundtrack is dull.

I feel like more could have been done to differentiate the characters. It seems like you're either a spread firing character with a hit everything bomb, or a focusing firing character with a straight line bomb. Ho hum. With six separate characters, it feels like they could have come up with some more creative ideas, such as a character who relied more heavily on melee attacks (maybe killing 5 enemies with melees gives this character a shield that guards from one attack) or one who has a strong burst of fire, but then weakens over time until he's given a break to build back up his power.

The goofiness of this game also definitely puts it in a certain niche, even apart from the genre. You have to be super into goofy Japanese humor to find the story anything but offputting, and would probably enjoy more straight vertical shooters like 1942 if you don't. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and will definitely pick it back up from time to time when I'm itching for some good old fashioned shooting action (I think I may actually give it another run through today). I'll give it an 8.0/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is (likely) another collaboration with my boy that we've been working on for a while. Here's a teaser below...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 87): Super Mario Odyssey

I finally scratched off the biggest item from my "list" (now down to 13 pages long after a VERY good September/October of game hunting on Craigslist/OfferUp/Facebook) and picked up a Nintendo Switch. I got Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Psikyo's Gunbird 2 to fill out my library to start, and finished up Super Mario Odyssey after a week or so of playing (just the story, not collecting all of the moons). Now, back for the second day in a row, I'll review Mario's newest outing.

The game follows in the direct lineage of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine ostensibly, with gameplay revolving around Mario exploring large levels and collecting shiny items (Power Moons in this game) in order to unlock new levels in which to collect more shiny items until you finally unlock the final level, in which you show down with Bowser to rescue Princess Peach. Yawn.

NO! While the basic mechanics of the game follow a similar path to its two predecessors, it innovates on the structure in creative ways to make an entirely new experience in the Mario 3-dimensional universe. The first, and most significant change in structure is that Super Mario Odyssey mostly does away with what I'll call the "instanced" version of Mario, in which he is in a level to collect one shiny item, and once he completes it, he has to start all over again with a different item in mind. In Super Mario Odyssey, moons are far more plentiful and naturally occurring (there are 999 in the game!), and your path to getting them all is completely up to you. Upon finding one, you merely continue to explore the level you're on from the spot at which you found the last one, and simply have to find new nooks and crannies of each level to gather enough Moons to power your ship enough to reach a new level (I also love that there's an actual purpose put to collecting the moons, rather than simply slapping a number on a door and collecting them to hit the number).

The second change is Mario's biggest innovation in control, his new hat, Cappy. Cappy is a creepy devil which is capable of allowing Mario to occupy the body of other characters and utilize their powers to reach Moons which would be impossible to collect without their assistance. For example, Mario can now become a mustachioed T-Rex, destroying everything in his path, or a tank capable of shooting enemies and destroying obstacles. Cappy unlocks a whole new suite of abilities that open up the world of Mario to control schemes and possibilities that never existed before, spreading open the world vertically, horizontally, and underwater in ways that are very creative. Each new creature you find to possess is delightful in its own way, and some creatures even have a use in conquering boss battles, making it essential that you master all of the small intricacies of using their powers. Cappy is easily the high point of the game for me, and makes this a Mario experience unlike any you've experienced in the past.

The graphics are beyond excellent. It continues the basic look and feel of Mario games to date, but adds a polish to them that's only really matched by Mario Kart 8. Of course, adding polish to a racing game is really easy (just look at how gorgeous early racers like F-Zero and Gran Turismo look even today), so matching that level of polish across 10+ enormous levels is staggering.

The music is also excellent, with a ton of great tracks fitting for each level. They also have different variations of the tracks for the different versions of the stage, with one version playing while the city is darkened, and another for after you turn the lights on, for example. They also have little 8-bit sections in each level that turn the theme of the level into an 8-bit version, which absolutely delighted little ol' TRO.

Speaking of the 8-bit sections, Super Mario Odyssey has a ton of homages to where Mario has been, even while he joyfully leaps into the future. The 8-bit sections are extremely fun, but also at times work in some new variations on the 2D platformer, with stages that wrap around 3D walls and changing levels of gravity that spin Mario upside down. Another great example is the level based on Super Mario Sunshine, which has a creature in it that approximates the F.L.U.D.D. machine (albeit with much better controls. There are also tons of different costumes documenting Nintendo's history, allowing Mario to dress up like Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Diddy Kong, and the builder outfit from Super Mario Maker.

It's difficult to find something to complain about this game. It really is the first console game that has had me completely immersed long after I usually tire of a game since Super Mario Maker, but may even have captivated me as much as Mass Effect. I know I have 8 games yet to finish to hit my 50 game goal by the end of the year, but I just don't care. I'm having a tremendous amount of fun exploring the worlds and trying to unlock as many moons as I can, and I'm not going to let my need to clear out games rob me of the pure joy of playing a truly excellent video game. If I had one complaint, it's that some of the controls are walled off behind motion controls, which always irritates me. I'm fine with including motion controls, but I just wish there would be some way for me to do the same with a traditional control scheme. But again, I'm splitting hairs here. Super Mario Odyssey is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, and is up there in the pantheon of perfect 10 Mario games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. It's a must play, for everyone. 10/10

Up next I take a whirl through Psikyo's Gunbird 2, a Switch game that's right up my alley! No teaser, so I'll just put a picture below.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 86): New Super Luigi U

Back again after a long layoff! It's been crazy around the house and at work lately, so I've both slowed down in my gaming, and in my free time to do some reviews, so the days of 5 posts a week are loooong gone. But I'll review games as I complete them and have time, so here's the next installment!

After completing the extremely fun New Super Mario Bros. U, I shifted to playing the DLC content for the game, New Super Luigi U. Since it got a separate retail release in some regions, I don't mind including it as a full game release. It's certainly more deserving than Final Fantasy IV Interlude...

Anyway, New Super Luigi U operates on the same engine as New Super Mario Bros. U, but includes 80 brand new levels and an all new playable character, Nabbit. I didn't play as Nabbit, so I have no clue how he plays. But I did play through the game with Luigi, some I have a basic idea for how the game plays.

The core focus of this game is taking the mechanics of New Super Mario Bros. U, speeding up the levels, and making them way shorter. As a result, you'll need to dash through each of these levels as quickly as possible (you will definitely run out of time more than 10 times throughout your playthrough), which is really tough, especially due to the increased difficulty of the levels. I absolutely LOVED this new focus! I adore difficult platformers, and this game felt perfect in terms of the challenge it provides. It also really increased the difficulty of collecting all of the hidden coins on each level, with a significantly reduced ability to poke around in each level. As a result, it makes finding these items feel even more rewarding than in the original.

The mechanics and controls are again perfect, with no issues. It's a testament to the level of detail which Nintendo gives its games that the levels were tailor made to fit Luigi's more floaty physics and stronger momentum.

The game does feel like it could have had a bit more original material. All of the music is the same, all of the bosses are the same, and all of the world maps are the same. While you get a ton of new levels, it does feel like introducing a new boss or two would have been a nice way to produce value for those who purchased this as DLC (note-I have no clue how much it costs as DLC as I got the double pack on one physical disc-I'd say 9.99 would be more than fair). The original music, maps, and bosses were all great though, so this is just a small knock here.

In all, I absolutely loved running through this game. It is a great add on to the New Super Mario Bros. U canon, and one of the best DLC I have ever played. I'd highly recommend it to anyone. I'll give it a 9.0/10.

Up next is a game that I was beyond excited to sink my teeth into. I've already finished it, so check back in in the next few days and hopefully I'll get time to review this one!

-TRO

 

What I'm Playing (Volume 85): Final Fantasy IV Interlude

Huge layoff and I'm back with a whimper! I've been craving to take a quick run through Final Fantasy IV (my introduction to the Final Fantasy series as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicle collection on PS1), so I booted up my copy of Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection on PSP and ran it through. After finishing it up, I figured I may as well finish up Cecil and company's adventures, so I played through Final Fantasy IV Interlude and am currently working on Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

Boy, is Final Fantasy IV ever important, and it's actually still really fun! I had psychically depressed it in the rankings in my mind due to how much I truly love other games in the series, especially V, VI, VII, and X. My preference in the Final Fantasy series is always for games that permit you to customize your characters and truly role play, and IV is really light on these elements, particularly in comparison to the game changing customization possible in III (which is really a dreadful game). But the storytelling is still phenomenal, as is the world to explore, and you can just see the titanic leaps forward in character development and battle mechanics that are present in every game after IV. So, I really loved my time in IV, and moved expectantly on to the next game in the series, Final Fantasy IV Interlude.

Calling this a game is a bit disingenuous, and it requires a bit of explanation of what's going on in this collection. Final Fantasy IV is the same old game as always, with a fresh coat of paint and a garish new remixed soundtrack. Fortunately, you can play the old soundtrack, which you can do immediately. Unfortunately, you can't revert to the original visuals, which I would have preferred. They're not horrible, though. Then you have Final Fantasy IV Interlude, which is a tiny little game that explains some of the events in between Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. I'll explain a bit more about the third game when I review it. The game I'm reviewing here takes probably less than 2 hours, which feels a bit cheap, but I did review DuckTales, The Little Mermaid, and Super Mario Land, all of which were much shorter, so I'll count it, and shamelessly pad my stats a bit (I just had a baby, my completions are slowing down, and I desperately need to get to 50 this year! Give a guy a break!).

Anyway, there's not a ton to review here. It's an RPG. It's in the Final Fantasy IV universe. It's got the exact same music and places to explore. It's done in 2 hours, and is less an homage to the original than a hackneyed repeat of a ton of tropes from the original. Don't play it, unless you really, really like Final Fantasy IV and just can't do without knowing what happens after you rescue the world from the Lunarian nightmares. I'll give this a 5.0/10, purely for the glorious glow that was left hanging around after completing Final Fantasy IV.

Up next on the handheld section of What I'm Playing is Final Fantasy IV: The After Years!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 84): Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lego Batman is one of my favorite modern games. The hook of the game is excellent, with my favorite superhero in the driver's seat, along with tons of cleverly designed levels, hidden secrets around every corner, an absolutely delightful soundtrack derived from the films, and an excellent opportunity for cooperative play across all ages. It was an absolute throwaway game I was given by my brother in law, and my son and I spent hours and hours exploring the levels in Gotham City.

Lego Batman 2 came along and upped the ante, although it doesn't have quite the same place in my heart. It did away with the unspeakably charming nonsensical voice acting, diluting the cleverness of the humor in the game significantly. It added layer upon layer of depth to the game, however, introducing a giant Gotham City to explore, vehicles to use, countless new characters, and, most importantly, the ability to split your screen during cooperative play-fixing the single biggest weakness with Lego Batman.

After completing the first two games in the series, my son and I purchased the third in the series to play, but got mired down. A big part of this is that my son became enamored with Minecraft, and rarely wants to play any other video game. The other part is that after the delightful experiences spent with Lego Batman, Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Lego Harry Potter, and our personal favorite Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham just doesn't feel quite as special.

 

But we finally finished it while home taking care of the new baby (spend time with your older kids when you have a baby, it's really important!), and I'm here to review it for all of you.

The biggest problem with this game is that it just doesn't feel like a Batman game in the way the other two did. While the plot loosely revolves around Batman, it's actually a Justice League game in every sense. You're fighting the bad Lanterns/Braniac (find a solo Batman movie/comic arc where he does this), there's no Gotham City to explore, and the aesthetic is far brighter than a Batman story. The other two games had a marked Batman feel to them, and this one just doesn't. It plays much more similarly to the ensemble Lego Marvel Super Heroes, but lacks a lot of the charm and polish that that brilliant title had.

 

The controls are again kind of slippery and interacting with the environment can be really challenging. You'll find yourself falling off cliffs, getting stuck in weird locations, being unable to determine which things can be broken and which can't, and going to wrong direction while attempting to fight enemies.

 

The music is good, again, although if I never hear that Wonder Woman theme song (which plays when she flies) again, I'll be very grateful.

 

There are tons of collectibles to be had here, but it's greatly missing out on the big hub world to explore. Trolling New York City, Gotham City, and Hogwarts for secrets is one of the absolute best things about my preferred Lego games, and this Lego game has the least amount of that experience of all of them, which is really strange.

 

The biggest problem I have with the Lego games is how buggy they are, and this one is no exception. I had to restart several levels because I got stuck due to bugs, and this was incredibly annoying. Someone at Traveller's Tales really needs to fix the bugs in these games, and this is particularly onerous as they now have the ability to patch them!

In some ways, as the games have grown more and more complex, they've also gotten worse. The levels in particular are just so packed with pre-rendered environments that it kind of misses out on the charm of the original Lego games, and I wish they'd go back to a more simple presentation. It doesn't really fill like you're occupying a world built out of Legos, and that's kind of sad. The levels are also far more complex than before, which makes them much more challenging to play cooperatively with younger children. Now that there's 20 different powers spread across hundreds of characters (a conservative estimate), it's really difficult to consider who all you need to use to clear out different obstacles, particularly when Batman and Robin now have many power suits each, with full access to those suits.

 

The free play change was also irritating to me. In the Lego games, once you complete a level with the given characters, you're free to revisit the level with any characters you choose. In previous games, however, you had access to a selected slate of characters that you could quickly cycle through, in addition to being able to pull up the full character select screen and get the specific one you want. In this one, however, you no long have that limited slate, making switching characters a truly lengthy affair, every time.

To be clear, this isn't a bad game. I have high expectations for my Lego games, and this one just fell short pretty much across the board. I definitely can't recommend it, though, as there are literally over 5 better Lego games to choose from. If you clear out some of the older classics and need some more Lego action, this will scratch some of the itch for you. But I really do want a new, high quality, Lego game. Maybe Lego Avengers and Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, both sitting on my shelf at home, will do it? I guess we'll see at some point! I'll give this game a 7.5/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a another well anticipated experience for me, see teaser below:

 

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 83): New Super Mario Bros. U

In my head I keep games in roughly two categories, the trailblazers and the polishers. Trailblazers attempt to move genres forward by leaps and bounds, break existing norms of how games are made, and establish new norms and traditions moving forward. Good examples of this kind of game would be Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Final Fantasy IV, Wolfenstein 3D, and Grand Theft Auto 3.

I love a good trailblazer, and really appreciate them for what they are. But the games to which I generally keep returning are the polishers, or the games that come after the trailblazers, clean up the ashes in their wake, and fix the problems that are inherent in creating things from scratch. Donkey Kong is great, but I'd rather play Super Mario Bros. Pac-Man is great, but I'd rather play Ms. Pac-Man. Final Fantasy IV is great, but give me Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy VI any day of the week. Wolfenstein 3D is fantastic, but I'd much rather play Doom. Grand Theft Auto 3 is extremely fun, but I'll play Grand Theft Auto 5 instead, thanks.

New Super Mario Bros. U finds itself in this polisher/iterator framework, and does a very nice job of it. It explicitly adheres to the formula laid down in Super Mario Bros. 3, and doesn't try to fix anything or take any huge risks. It just says to itself, "let's make 85 great levels and let the kids have fun." And that's exactly what it does.

The graphics for the game are very nice. They're cutesy and colorful, everything you'd want to see in a Mario game. The music is really good, and follows the basic formula of the soundtrack of Super Mario World, which features basically the same song written in different keys/instrumentation to fit each world or stage variation.

The controls are absolutely perfect, which is the hallmark of every successful Mario game.

When the game does take a few little risks and introduces new features, they're truly awesome. The new flying squirrel suit is (gulp) my favorite flying mechanic in any Mario game, ever. There are little levels in which you have to chase a thief down in a level, requiring you to not slow down at all, but sprint through each level to try to catch them. These levels are very fun, and getting the item he's stolen is a nice reward layered on top of the endorphin rush that chasing him provides. The penguin suit in the game is probably my favorite Mario power up every, and the fact that it was only really used in one level disgusts me.

As mentioned before, the levels are the real draw of this game. There are a ton of really inventive and interesting levels, and using your imagination to explore each to find every little secret is a ton of fun. The level design is excellent, and that will keep you engaged to the very end.

The difficulty level of the game was a bit too low for me, although not so low that I didn't enjoy it. I finished with well over 90 lives, but there's also just a ton of opportunities to get lives, so I didn't feel like I skated through the game, but rather that the game was engineered to give you plenty of chances to spend time in each level.

The game represents an even smaller jump in design than other polishers in the Mario franchise, including my beloved Super Mario World, so it'd be difficult to give it full marks. But it sets a goal for itself, and accomplishes it in delightful fashion. I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone. I'll give it a 9.4/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is another game I recently finished up with my son. Check back (hopefully) tomorrow for another review!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 82): The Little Mermaid

I always like to clear out super old members of the backlog, and of all of the games I owned for the NES as a kid, the only ones left this year for me to finish were Punch-Out!! and The Little Mermaid. My collection of NES Games wasn't that big back then (Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Gyromite, Punch-Out!!, The Little Mermaid, The Legend of Zelda, Bases Loaded, Duck Hunt, Jordan vs. Bird, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Tecmo Super Bowl), so clearing out my NES backlog has been relatively simple compared to, say, completing my nightmarish PS1 backlog. I'll be working on that one for years.

So I found myself up late one night letting my wife sleep while I monitored our fussy new baby, and decided to take a spin through The Little Mermaid. I actually have quite fond memories of this game as a child involving playing through the game several times with a friend visiting from out of town. We managed to make it to the end boss battle against Ursula, but died and lost our will to carry on.

The Little Mermaid is actually set after the events of the movie. In the game, Ursula hatches another dastardly plot, necessitating Ariel to turn back into a mermaid to rescue her undersea friends from danger. Ariel is equipped with her trademark tail bubble blowing attack (seriously) and can even flop around on land if you can get up there. The genre of the game is a little weird, but it's kind of like Castlevania underwater (this is just the best I can do, I'm sure there's a better comparison), in that you can find upgrades for your attacks, and must make your way through a fairly linear stage to reach an end boss, complete it, and move on to the next stage. You can upgrade Ariel's bubbles to make them stronger and have longer range, and these upgrades are hidden in chests that require you to expose yourself to additional danger to attain them.

The graphics for the game are colorful and delightful, and it's honestly one of the better looking NES games out there. It definitely eschews the more muted and dull tones of a Castlevania in favor of a more colorful experience like that of Mega Man, which isn't surprising as the game was developed by Capcom. The boss sprites in particular are huge and very detailed, and are one of the high points of the game.

The music is really good, featuring some adaptations of music from the movie along with some original tunes that just work. Capcom basically always nailed the music of Disney games on the NES, and while it's not as good as any of the Mega Man games or DuckTales, it gets the job done and is quite nice.

The controls for the game are a bit slippery and don't quite feel right. It's difficult to get Ariel to turn on a dime, and throwing enemies and objects around to knock open chests can be an exercise in futility. Fortunately, the game's difficulty is so low that you have plenty of chances to work around the supbar controls, so it doesn't hurt as much as the clunky controls in a game like Castlevania.

The level designs are pretty dull. You basically follow a hallway to a boss, and there's very little interaction with the environment along the way. You can basically make it through the game while killing no enemies other than the bosses, which is a bit boring. The one shining part of the level design is the placement of chests, which contain upgrades to your bubble attacks. Some of the chests are fake, containing nothing, so experimenting with the use of your limited resources necessary to open the chests would give this game more replay value than your standard NES platformer/action game.

The boss battles, however, are quite fun and interactive, and it makes me wonder what could have been done had more focus been placed on combat throughout the game. The bosses are your basic pattern recognition style common in Capcom games like Mega Man and DuckTales, but are stripped down and far more simple, which is a fun change of pace for a game in a crushingly difficult era.

The difficulty of the game is delightfully perfect for a casual playthrough or for children, and this is definitely a nice entry game for kids wanting to get into retro gaming. It looks great, sounds nice, features an identifiable character, and will actually allow them to make some progress in the game. I'm definitely going to introduce this one to my daughters, and I suspect it'll be the first game one of them truly beats on her own, given her love of the movie and the ease of the game. It's nice for there to be a niche in this genre for a simple game for children, and it shouldn't be judged based on an expectation that it will be "Nintendo hard".

This game isn't perfect, and it's not an NES classic. But it is fun, and it serves a purpose that's kind of hard to find on the console. I'd definitely recommend this game as a fun, relaxing playthrough, or as a training ground for kids interested in learning more about playing retro games. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

I still haven't cleared out all of my teasers yet, so I'm going to save my next teaser until after the next review. I still have 3 games that I've completed and not reviewed yet, and I hope to have them all reviewed by the end of the week here on reTROview.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 81): Skylanders: Swap Force

Skylanders: Swap Force is a game in the popular Skylanders series which I played through with my son recently. Skylanders is a series of action games which has the unique hook that you need to have action figures of the characters in real life in order to use those characters in the game. Each game ships out with two Skylanders to encourage cooperative play and to start your collection, and the games are definitely beatable with only those two characters. However, along the way, you will find certain areas with secrets barred to you that necessitate having a wide range of Skylanders, encouraging you to buy more of the figures to be able to explore more of the worlds.

The use of the figures in the game is both clever and rather diabolical. Once one of your characters is dead, you can't use that character again for the remainder of the mission. While the game isn't hard, it's definitely oriented towards kids, and kids suck at video games. As such, having a big collection can be critical for a kid being able to clear some of the more difficult levels, and collecting the figures can be fun and addicting on its own! Each character has its own level and abilities, and the characters improve in the game by using them more, helping you to feel like you're making good progress by using your favorites. Each character has their own feel to them that makes it feel rewarding to collect new Skylanders, so you're not just buying extra lives by purchasing the figures.

I love that you can use older Skylanders in each newer game, as you don't need to buy all new Skylanders to have a chance to beat the games. However, each new generation gets new abilities that unlock fun new parts of the game, so it definitely becomes a money pit if you're interested in trying to complete the games entirely. For example, Skylanders: Swap Force introduces the idea that you can now separate each character into a top and bottom half, and mix and match those characters to create your own unique characters. So you can have the bomb throwing fire guy up top, enabling you to wreak havok with your bombs, while having the octopus leg guy on bottom, enabling you to squirt ink all over the place.

The gameplay is pretty fun and simple. Each character has a few basic attacks that are easy to execute, and breaking objects and killing enemies yields money you can use to upgrade your characters, experience, and various secrets that improve your Skylanders at large, give extra equipment for them, or unlock new special moves for each individual Skylander. You navigate across the level, jumping across platforms, solving simple puzzles, and crushing your foes, who have a simple pattern of battle that makes the game good for playing with kids.

The story is silly kids fare, but they have legitimate voice actors that bring some goofy humor that will be appealing to both kids and adults.

The music is fine, but the sound effects are actually very good, with plenty of explosions, chimes, and sounds to communicate clearly what's going on on screen.

The controls are generally good, with the Skylanders doing what you ask them to.

The most frustrating thing about the game, by far, is the fact that you're tethered together with your coop partner, which makes it extremely difficult to navigate some of the platforming elements. This is similar to my main complaint about the otherwise brilliant Lego Batman, which takes what should be an enjoyable coop experience and will frequently degrade it to a shouting match while you and your son/daughter/fellow human are running opposite directions, getting nowhere, and begging the other person to come your way.

The game is definitely also geared towards kids with addictive personalities, so be forewarned. Collecting all of the Skylanders, particularly while they're new, is a prohibitively expensive experience. I'd estimate that gearing out to complete a new Skylanders game to 100% would probably cost north of $250, and that may be conservative. We restrict my son to spending his money only on older titles, and I'll frequently grab him big lots of Skylanders on craigslist, and this is definitely the way to go. We've spent less than $100 on three Skylanders games and more than 50 figures using this route, so don't get into chasing the newest Skylanders unless you have deep pockets, and even if you do, just realize that all the old stuff will be discounted at least 60% once the newest one has released, and that teaching your children patience is its own reward! I, for the record, would have been 100% in on Skylanders as a kid, but I'm grateful that I have a little bit of seasoned wisdom and budgeting experience to help guide my son down a path that won't bankrupt his poor parents or spend all of his birthday/Christmas money!

Anyway, I enjoyed Skylanders: Swap Force quite a bit, and definitely recommend it for parents with kids in the 5-12 range. Be smart about your money and this can be a fun collecting/gaming experience for the whole family! I'll give it an 8.6/10.

I've already teased two games that I haven't reviewed yet, so I'll hold off another teaser here. Check back next week for another few reviews!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 80): God of War

 


I'm now back from an extremely long hiatus due to the birth of my son, and have several completed games in the can to crank out over the next few weeks. Follower of this blog, rejoice!

No, this isn't a late review of the newest entrant into the God of War series, published in 2018. This is an extremely late review of the first game in the series, which I began for the first time back in high school, and have finally completed as of last month.

I have zero remembrance of why I purchased God of War to begin with. It may have been due to the press coverage around the game, as I was a devoted reader of whatever gaming magazines my friend would bring to school with him. It may have been ads on TV or the internet. It may have been the TOTALLY ADULT look and feel to the box and all of the promised content under "rated M for mature". In any case, I somehow attained a copy without my parents knowing it, and loved the game. I was the only of my friends that had it, and I spent at least one happy week of a summer in high school driving to my friend's house every day to play through the campaign with him, but I got stuck at some point and never finished it, as I did with most games back in my youth. I've had a copy for years ever since acquiring a shiny new copy of the game for PS3 as part of God of War Saga, but hadn't played it at all. I was driven to play it again after release of the newest game, which I'll buy at some point, but it brought back good memories of playing it and I felt like clearing out some more of my extremely dated backlog.

I was nervous about diving in, admittedly. I now have 5 kids, so finding time to play this game with that many little eyes around was difficult. I was also worried that some of the luster would have gone out of the game with time, as the premier push towards the game for me at the time of its release was the mature content and the extremely polished graphics. Extremely bloody and adult themed stuff is no longer the forbidden fruit it used to be, so I was worried that the game may not have aged well in my eyes.

And it's certainly true that some of the shock value/technical polish has definitely gone out of the game over time. Some of that, however, is just due to my remembering the content itself, which made it less shocking. I'm certain that plenty of the stuff in this game would still be delightfully gory today had this game been released in 2018, but it didn't shock me the way I was shocked in 2005. It also felt like some of the sexual content was placed early in the game to get buy-in from teenage boys testing the game out in a rental or borrowing it from their friends, and sells a bill of goods that's largely exaggerated based on the rest of the game. The game still looks graphically fine, and actually looks like an excellent PS2 game. But that's what it is, so the graphical quality was excellent in my book

Some of the approach could have been improved, however, particularly with camera design. The camera is always fixed depending on your location, which is certainly one way to handle cameras, as long as your choices of angle are appropriate for the situation, and the player has enough time to adjust to changing camera angles. In God of War, the camera is a key player in the game, as it intentionally attempts to mimic a cinematic feel to the game that was really unheard of in 2005. The camera artfully zooms in and out on important features, soars to new heights when appropriate, and is generally very good and innovative, particularly for the time. There are plenty of instances, however, when the camera will jerk to a new angle so suddenly that you'll end up heading the wrong direction, back into the previously scripted angle, and this is a very disorienting experience which really takes you out of the cinematic feel of the game. It also killed me several times.

The story is pretty engaging. The game is set in Greek mythology, and follows the journey of Kratos, servant of the God of War Ares, as our hero attempts to enact justice on Ares at the direction of the other gods for a mysterious wrong that is uncovered throughout the story. The cutscenes are all well animated, the voice acting is very good, particularly for the time period, and the basic plot points are well explained and revealed logically throughout the course of the game.

Much of my memory of the game, however, lied to me. This game was actually far better, as a game, than I remember it being. The combat is just flat out excellent, with a fun and rewarding combo system requiring skillful twitchy button mashing that always feels good. Combat is also culminated with frequent quick time events that yield tremendously savage and gory finishers, with big accompanying rewards in terms of health and magic drops, as well as souls to upgrade your weapons and abilities. The bosses are huge and fun for the most part (except for the end boss), and I had an absolute blast taking them down, but wish there were more (there are only three real bosses in the game, I believe). There are also very cleverly designed puzzles in the game that are difficult, but solvable, and that yield good rewards upon completion.

I felt like the system by which Kratos levels up wasn't great. The upgrades take forever to save up for, and just don't feel that rewarding, to be honest. Each additional level improves you marginally, adds a few bells and whistles, but is mostly unremarkable. You finally feel the cumulative impact of your upgrades when you're walking back to face the final boss at the end, and are forced to chew through earlier enemies along the way, but other than that, you don't really feel like you're getting stronger along the way.

The platforming is also a bit clunky, suffering the same fate as many similar games from the era. Judging Kratos' location can be difficult mid jump, particularly in the dark and shadowy world he frequents. Fortunately, check points are frequent, so it never feels crushing when you die during a poorly aimed jump, but it's still frustrating.

The game was nearly the perfect length, and definitely doesn't overstay its welcome. I cleared it in slightly over 8 hours, which was excellent. Despite the short length, it manages to pack in several memorable areas to explore, including the Temple of Pandora, one of the most cleverly designed dungeons I have played through in any game, ever.

All in all, God of War was far better than my memories let on, as I was definitely looking at it through the lens of a worldly wise 30 year old rather than an 18 year old craving some more mature entertainment. If you let the savage veneer of the game blind you to the finely crafted experience that lies beneath, I truly believe that you're missing out on one of the great games on the PS2. I'd recommend it to adults capable of spending some time with the game and enjoying its substantial charms, despite a few flaws. I'll give it a 9.2/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I've been looking forward to playing for a long time, teaser below...

-TRO