I recently had two heavily Zelda-inspired games come up on my Goozex queue back-to-back, and here are my brief thoughts on the two.1

3D Dot Game Heroes

3D Dot Game Heroes is very much a new take on The Legend Of Zelda. As in, Zelda One. It has some Link To The Past elements, like a somewhat three-dimensional overworld, but it’s basically Zelda One. The game looks really pretty, which you can see in the YouTube video below. It was neat at first, but I had only played about two or three hours before I just got tired of playing it. It didn’t help that I wasn’t saving frequently and lost about an hour’s worth of progress due to a game-crashing bug. After that, I just decided I had better things to do with my time and stopped playing. My advice: if your really looking for a new take on a retro, 8-bit style game, then check out the 3D Dot Game Heroes; otherwise, just watch the video below to satisfy you’re curiosity about the art style, and pass on actually playing the game.

Darksiders

In contrast to 3D Dot Game Heroes, Darksiders is more inspired by the 3D Zelda games. There are dungeons and an inventory system and an overworld that is gradually opened up as you get items that allow you get to new areas. You even have a horse! However, the story, the combat, and the art style is much more influenced by God Of War and Devil May Cry. It was a very nice mix, and a very well done game. I enjoyed it a lot and completed it. (Well, I didn’t go back and beat it on hard, but I got all the items and maxed out all my weapons.) Suffice it to say, I recommend the game to anyone who likes the 3D Zelda games and would like to see a more violent, adult take on the formula. You can see a gameplay clip in the YouTube video below.

Hard to believe it, but tomorrow marks three years since Emma was born. She had a Cat in the Hat themed birthday party. A few pictures have been posted!

Also, she got a functional digital camera. Except, whenever I see the camera, it makes me a little uneasy. I think it is going to hop at me sideways. I have the urge to fire a missile at it. What is he talking about, you ask yourself? The camera bears an uncanny resemblance to a Dessgeega!

See what I’m talking about?

I finished Donkey Kong Country Returns a few weeks ago and I thought I’d share a few thoughts. Overall, it’s really really good. The most notable thing about it is the difficulty. When a patent filed by Shigeru Miyamoto was discovered a few years ago, describing a system where the game would help players get past tough parts, it was pretty harshly mocked by the gaming community. Since then, the feature has come to be known as “Superguide” and it has been included in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and now Donkey Kong Country Returns1. The last two in particular have shown that the feature doesn’t result in super-easy games aimed at the lowest common denominator. The effect has actually been pretty much the opposite—Nintendo has been able to make really challenging games that they can still market to a broader audience. So getting back to DKCR: the game is really challenging. But it’s not challenging in the same way that NES games were, throwing things at you just for the point of killing you. In those games, when you fail you usually feel like the game was designed in a way that was bad or just unfair. In DKCR (or SMG2 for that matter) when you fail it is usually your own fault. I’m not sure I articulated that well enough. I guess what I’m trying to say is the game didn’t feel cheap. EXCEPT...

The bosses were universally awful. Just the worst. I find it hard to believe that these are the same guys who did boss design in the Metroid Prime games.

The Rocket Barrel stages were also awful. The whole control mechanism felt like it was introduced late in the dev cycle and just didn’t get enough testing and tweaking. The worst example was level 4-5: Crowded Cavern. I died something like sixty times in that level.

Another thing that was nice about this game was that I could play it when Emma was in the room. (Most of the other games I have played lately focus on creative murder, which is inappropriate for 2-year-olds.) One of Emma’s favorite things to do was see the “monkey house” in the very first level. And this is something too cute not to share.

I just celebrated my thirtieth Christmas1, which turned out to be my first white Christmas. It was quite magical—it started snowing around 9:30 am on Christmas day, while we were in the middle of opening presents, and it didn’t let up until about noon the next day. It snowed continuously and consistently, but never very hard, which created the softest snow I can remember. I’m sure it would make for great skiing.2 With the exception of not getting to see some of my relatives because of the weather, I’d rate this as one of the best Christmases of my life.

I have several pictures from our white Christmas in Newton, which are split into two albums: outdoor pictures and indoor pictures. While I was at it I also uploaded another set of photos from Thanksgiving that I still hadn’t loaded from my camera.

An interesting thing that happened is that my youngest brother, Jake, got the same present for Christmas this year that my other brother and I received for Christmas when he was about four weeks old: an NES. Well, technically, it is an NES-compatible device, that plays all the old NES cartridges.3 We had lots of fun playing the old games—I think we put in a good six hours over two days playing two-player Dr. Mario. We’re a lot more evenly matched in skill now than we were as kids, which makes it a lot more fun. We also broke out Duck Hunt, and Jake taught Emma how to play. Here, watch a video of it (and you might notice the snowfall outside too):

It’s really a testament to how timeless Nintendo’s old games are.

Over the years, I have reduced pretty significantly the number of reviews that I post on this blog. Mainly, this is because I don’t think I’m particularly good at reviewing things, and there are certainly plenty of people who are far better at it than me. But a few people have asked me specifically about Metroid: Other M, so here goes.

Metroid: Other M is my least favorite Metroid game.

I take that back, Metroid Prime: Hunters still holds that distinction. But I don’t really consider Hunters a Metroid proper, if you will. I think of it more as a side project that is only slightly more Metroid-y than Metroid Prime Pinball.

But back to Other M. The writing in the game is as bad as the writing in the title. (I’m still not even sure who or what the “other M” actually is.) They made Samus into a weak, emotionally fragile two-year-old in an adult’s body. I mean, we’re talking about intergalactic bounty hunter Samus frickin’ Aran here! After everything she’s been through, you’re going to tell me she takes orders from people? That she ever hesitates when she has a shot at a bad guy?

Also, cutscenes with the cybersuit on? She can make some or all of her suit dissolve at will, so why not at least take the helmet off during cut scenes when there is no danger? It looks ridiculous, like if you saw Tom Brady walking around Wal-Mart in full football uniform—cleats, pads, and helmet. It also makes it so you usually can’t tell if Samus’s lips are moving, so you don’t know if what she’s saying is dialog or internal monologue (she narrates her thoughts throughout, sometimes even in the middle of a conversation with other people).

I’ve heard the combat praised, but it seemed to mainly consist of running around waiting for your charge beam to charge, while constantly tapping the d-pad (tapping the d-pad when an enemy attacks will dodge the attack). I get the feeling that Team Ninja originally wanted it to be more difficult, but Nintendo told them to scale it back a notch. (These are the people who made the notoriously difficult Ninja Gaiden, after all.)

The game also eliminates most of the sense of exploration by telling you exactly where you must go, and locking the doors that don’t lead that way. To make it worse, it feels like there is a boss or miniboss about every fourth room. It’s not until the very end of the game that the doors are actually unlocked and you are free to explore. Sorry, Team Ninja, but that’s just not Metroid.

The departure from the series that annoyed me the most, however, was something seemingly minor that I didn’t see discussed in any reviews: enemies do not drop energy pellets. It is especially annoying early on, when you don’t have much health and some enemies can take over half your energy in one hit. You have a checkpoint at every boss or miniboss, and if you die you start over right there, so it’s not that big of a deal. But I’d prefer shooting little enemies or projectiles during the boss battle to pick up extra energy, rather than dying and starting over.

All that being said, it’s not a bad game. It’s just not that good either.

Disclaimer: I am someone with the Metroid item collect music as my ringtone. I may be teh bias.

Those of you who don’t follow video game news too closely may not be aware of Heavy Rain.  It’s a game I’ve been following for some time, and every new trailer that is released makes me even more excited about it.  Calling it a “game” is even a bit of a stretch, it truly is more like an interactive movie.  Kind of like a really sophisticated “choose your own adventure” book.  Below is a video that was released this week that gives a really good overview of what the game will be like.  (It was aimed at a Japanese audience, hence the Japanese subtitles, but everything except the game dialog is in English.)  The basic idea is that there are four characters that you control through the course of the game, and they all end up investigating a serial killer (the “origami killer”).  I like the idea (which is discussed in the movie below) that you can’t truly mess up.  No matter what happens, you can keep playing and just deal with the consequences.  Even if all four characters end up getting killed, there is an ending to the story for that situation.

Anyway, the game won’t be finished until sometime next year, so I don’t want to give too much praise to a game just because of a clever concept.  That said, I totally dig the concept.

Also, this video is over nine minutes long.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Every so often, the popular answer on an Everybody Votes1 poll surprises me.  Here is one example from a few weeks ago:

Is this really what the majority of people think about how a series with prequels should be viewed?  I imagine there is some portion of the population that didn’t understand the question and thought “well I don’t know anything about Star Wars but why would you watch them out of order”, and chose the “I, II, III, IV, V, VI” answer—inadvertently choosing the “watch them out of order” answer!  But as popular as Star Wars is, I doubt this could account for that many people.  The question also doesn’t specify whether the numbers correspond to episodes, which could have confused some people.

If this is really what most people think, though, then I guess that would explain why the The Chronicles Of Narnia compilations inevitably feature the books out of order, with The Magician’s Nephew first (even though it ruins the book to read it first!).  But I can’t imagine, for example, a compilation of the Metal Gear Solid games featuring Metal Gear Solid 3 as the first game, even though the MGS3 story takes place thirty years before the others, and the MGS4 story picks up right where MGS2 left off.  Of course I said the same thing about the Star Wars movies last year, when I was talking about the Narnia books....

I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.  It happens sometimes.  Anyone care to weigh in with a good reason why someone approaching a series of movies/books/video games/whatever would want to start with the prequels first?  Or maybe you want to weigh in to tell me you agree with me.  That’d be cool too.

PS: I think another problem with the question is that neither answer was the correct answer.  The correct answer is “IV, V, VI, II, III.”  Episode One is unwatchable garbage.  Two and Three are just garbage, but they aren’t unwatchable.  Episode Five is still the best.

I wanted to add two more points to last month’s Netflix vs. Blockbuster post.  First, Blockbuster allows you to continue to access your account and modify your queue even after you have cancelled your membership.  This is nice for me, because it means I can add movies as they come out in theaters, rather than sitting down next May and trying to remember every movie from the last year that I wanted to see.  With Netflix, you get nothing but a message telling you how to come back.

Second, Blockbuster announced in February that they would integrate games into their service, on a trial basis, and hopefully roll out the service by the second half of the year.  Apparently the trials didn’t go so well, because we’re almost halfway through the second half of this year and they haven’t mentioned games at all.  It would have been a very convient Netflix+GameFly type of service (speaking of which, if those two companies merged, wouldn’t that be cool?).  But I’ve since found Goozex (which I might blog about some day) to provide me with a fresh and cheap supply of video games.  And it’s not like Netflix offers video games either, so neither service has an advantage here.

A few weeks ago I finished playing Shadow of the Colossus.  Since the game is three and a half years old, I’m not going to talk about it too much.  The game consists solely of 16 boss battles, in which you defeat colossi that are often hundreds of feet tall.  But the interesting thing about the game is that you start to sympathize with the colossi.  The only reason you are killing these things is because some god told you he would bring your dead girlfriend back to life if you would do it.  But no justification beyond that is ever given.  The colossi are not terrorizing villagers or anything like that.  In fact, they keep to themselves in a land devoid of human life, and they’ve certainly never done anything to you.  And, with the exception of the final colossus, none of them even appear to be attacking you for any reason other than self defense.  In one case, you must even shoot a colossus with an arrow in order to make it wake up!  As I was playing the game, I had the thought that this must be similar to bullfighting.  I mean, the bull has never done anything to the matador, yet the matador provokes him and stabs him with swords, ultimately delivering a final blow in a weak spot (between the shoulder blades, I think).  This is quite similar to what happens in Shadow of the Colossus.  And the game has a satisfying ending which I won’t spoil.

If you follow games at all, you’ve probably heard the praises of this game over and over.  So I’m not going to continue repeating things that have probably already been said in much better words by much better writers than myself.

This is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/hot_new_video_game_consists

It’s a satirical news story from The Onion, about a video game called “Close Range.”  I would summarize it more, but I think it’ll be funnier for you if I don’t.