If there’s anyone out there born in the last 30-years that didn’t love the Where’s Waldo books as a kid, raise your hand and I’ll be over to drive a stake through your heart shortly, since you clearly have no soul. The Waldo books tested our wits, didn’t bother making us read a bunch of tedious words, and were filled with all sorts of hidden filth and insanity for the eagle eyed 9-year-old to discover.

Boobs, guys in suits of armor, striped weirdos…the Waldo books had it all.

So yeah, the books were pretty fantastic. The numerous attempts at Waldo videogames? Not so much. The latest company to take a crack at doing right by Waldo in video game form is Ubisoft, who took some time off from developing Party Babyz 3 to bring us Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey. Could this be the first Waldo game worth searching for?

1) Story/Modes

Believe it or not there’s almost, sort-of, kinda a plot to be found here. The Wizard Whitebeard tasks Waldo with finding 12-scrolls in order to discover the truth about himself. The answer is actually weirder than you might expect (and no, it has nothing to do with Waldo being an international drug mule as I initially suspected). The tale is presented using an absolute bare minimum of flash though, with most of the story being told using plain white scrolling text on a black background. Clearly weaving an engaging yarn was dead last on the list of things the developers were concerned with.

In terms of modes, you get the main single player quest and that’s it, although it does allow you to go back and replay challenges to better your score.

Story Rating: Poor

2) Graphics

One of the most glaring shortcomings of previous Waldo games was that they all tried to replace Martin Handford’s distinctive designs with generic pixel art. Handford is actually a much better cartoonist than he’s often given credit for, and any game not featuring his work is pretty much doomed from the get go.

Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey is based on the book of the same name first published 20-years ago, with the game’s visuals being lifted directly from it. The developers infuse things with a little extra life by adding funny little intros and animating select characters within each scene. That said, the game still consists of mostly static imagery, but that’s an acceptable price to pay for authenticity.

Graphics Rating: Very Good

3) Sound

I was pleasantly surprised to discover each of the game’s 12-stages was accompanied by it’s own unique tune, some of which were actually kind of catchy. Not bad considering most developers of budget games think randomly jabbing six notes on a Casio keyboard than looping that for the duration of the game is all that’s required of them. Wizard Whitebeard also blurts out a few lines here and there, and I’m not sure if it’s the voice acting’s fault, or if it’s just poor compression that’s to blame, but usually it sounds like ol’ Whitebeard forgot to put his teeth in.

Sound Rating: Very Good

4) Control and Gameplay

You view the current scene one small section at a time on the bottom DS screen, with you being able to change which bit you’re viewing by either sliding the stylus across the screen, or using the d-pad (which is the option I preferred). Once you’ve found what you’re looking for it’s a simple matter of tapping it with the stylus. It all works about as well as can be expected considering you’re searching a scene originally spread over two large book pages using a 3-inch DS screen. A huge amount of the appeal of the Waldo books was just drinking in the insane amount of detail poured over each double-page spread, and a lot of that is lost when you’re only able to look at the picture one bite-sized chunk at a time. I don’t blame the developers, they did what they could, this simply isn’t the ideal platform for Waldo.

Speaking of whom–I remember when Waldo was a lone wolf. A perpetually grinning striped weirdo wandering obliviously around the planet and through time itself without a care in the world, but apparently these days there’s a whole cast of Waldo characters. Waldo’s now burdened with a Wario-esque nemesis (actually Waldo’s enemy Odlaw predates Wario by a year) a dog, and even a girlfriend Wenda (who resembles Waldo to a somewhat disturbing degree). All Waldo needs is a stripy shirt wearing baby and mistress and his descent into domestic drudgery will be complete.

Anyways, these characters provide extra challenges for each scene. There’s Wanda’s picture find, Woof’s find-the-differences game, and Odlaw’s “hunt down a million little black and yellow critters I spread across the scene” challenge. These add some extra replay time, but really only Woof’s game feels unique.

One final nitpick; in order to give people who owned the original book a new challenge, the developers moved Waldo’s location in each scene. A good idea in theory, but it seems as though they couldn’t get Handford to actually touch up the pages. Waldo’s always frozen in the exact same pose and often looks like he’s simply been superimposed on the scene rather than integrated into it. It makes finding Waldo, the most entertaining part of the original books, very easy and somewhat unsatisfying.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Above Average

5) Replayability

It will take you around 4 or 5 hours to play through The Fantastic Journey’s twelve stages (I imagine the kids the game is intended for may take even longer), which actually isn’t that bad for a budget DS title. If you’re really serious about your Waldo, you can also go back and try to get higher star ratings on each challenge.

Replayability Rating: Decent

6) Balance

As I already mentioned, the somewhat clumsy way the developers went about moving Waldo to a new location in each scene made finding him far easier than in the original books, and that’s not the only way challenge has been compromised. When you select a character or item to look for the game will highlight the general area you should search, so you’re rarely required to investigate more than maybe 20% of the scene at a time. Beyond that, the way the DS game is played just makes things fundamentally easier. Viewing one small zoomed-in area at a time makes it almost impossible to miss what you’re looking for, to the point where finding things becomes a test of patience rather than observational skill.

What little challenge is left in the game is pretty much obliterated by the fact that the developers decided they needed to include a hint system on top of everything else. Back in my day we found Waldo without any hints…while walking to school uphill in the snow with wild dogs biting at our bare frostbitten feet. Built character.

Balance Rating: Mediocre

7) Originality

Pretty much everything about the game is directly lifted from a 20-year old book. The only thing original about The Fantastic Journey is that it’s the first Where’s Waldo? game not to be completely awful.

Originality Rating: Poor

8) Addictiveness

The Fantastic Journey did a decent job of keeping me hunting and poking. Most of that credit goes to Handford’s excellent illustrations, which remain entertaining even on the low-res DS screen.

Addictiveness Rating: Enjoyable

9) Appeal Factor

There’s no denying the appeal of the Waldo character, but with that said, I have to say I’m really not sure who this game is supposed to be for. Waldo fans almost certainly already own The Fantastic Journey in book form considering it’s probably the most popular entry in the series. I suppose you could give the game to kids who haven’t yet discovered the wacky world of Waldo, but why not just buy them the book? Its cheaper and whole Waldo concept simply works better on paper. You have to admire the developer’s faithfulness to the source material, but in sticking so close to the original book they’ve sort of painted themselves into a corner.

Appeal Factor Rating: Mediocre

10) Miscellaneous

I’m glad to say, Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey is still as totally bizarre as I remember it being. Creepy fire shooting monks, red dwarves battling bright yellow Asian stereotypes, it’s all in there. I may not be crazy about some of the decisions the developers made, but the source material will always be near and dear to my heart.

Miscellaneous Rating: Very Good

The Scores
Story/Modes: Poor
Graphics: Very Good
Sound: Very Good
Control and Gameplay: Above Average
Replayability: Decent
Balance: Mediocre
Originality: Poor
Addictiveness: Enjoyable
Appeal Factor: Mediocre
Miscellaneous: Very Good

Final Score: Above Average Game

Short Attention Span Summary

Is Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey the best Waldo game I’ve ever played by leaps and bounds? Yes. Is it extremely loyal to the Martin Handford’s classic book of the same name? Yes. Should you buy it? Well, that’s a question not so easily answered. For the most part the developers have done well within the limitations imposed on them, but the DS just isn’t well suited to Waldo, and ultimately the game doesn’t offer anything that the original book doesn’t do better. The DS version of The Fantastic Journey is an oddity; a well designed game whose existence is ultimately completely pointless. Time for this one to blend in with the bargain bin.
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Despite being a fan of tactical RPG series such as Shining Force, Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle, I surprisingly haven’t much explored the world of Nippon Ichi. Oh sure, like any curious strategy fan I’ve dabbled with Disgaea, but I wouldn’t know a La Pucelle from a Makai Kingdom (jeez, NIS games are murder on Word’s spellchecker). So it was with a fair amount of anticipation that I truly dove into my first NIS strategy game with Phantom Brave: We Meet Again, the revamped Wii version of the 2005 PS2 game. So, should you brave Phantom Brave? Read on to find out (and sorry about that pun).

1) Story/Modes

The main character in our story is Marona, a young girl whose parents were killed shortly after she was born. Marona is now a Chroma (basically a bounty hunter of sorts) who has the ability to see ghosts or “phantoms,” which brings us to Ash, the other main character. Ash is a phantom who knew Marona’s parents in life, and swore to them before they died that he’d watch over her. Apparently this “watching over her” involves allowing her to travel around the world fighting murderous monsters. Go figure.

It’s an interesting setup, but it’s not particularly well told. The game basically drops you into the midst of the proceedings without explaining much. What’s a Chroma? How did Marona develop this relationship with phantoms? What, exactly, happened to her parents? Most of this is explained eventually, but initially it’s all quite confusing. Instead of being hooked, you spend your time wondering if you somehow missed a cutscene where all these terms they’re throwing around were explained.

The story unfolds in an episodic format and for quite a while there isn’t much in the way of an overarching plot. Marona and Ash have an adventure here, an adventure there, and there’s a lengthy bit of time devoted to Marona becoming friends with a wheelchair bound girl named Castille that feels like pure padding. Eventually a more solid plot comes into focus, but it’s nothing that special. The evil entity that killed Marona’s parents is back to threaten the world you see. Power needed to face the big baddie is gathered, characters make noble sacrifices and so on. Pretty textbook stuff.

Ultimately the story’s fatal flaw is that I simply never found myself caring much about Marona or Ash. Their personalities never seemed to run deeper than what you’d see on a typical bad Saturday morning anime series.

Phantom Brave: We Meet Again also includes an entirely new quest to play called “Another Marona”. I actually liked the story for this second quest more than that of the original game. There’s less directionless diddling around in the beginning, with the story kicking off in a pretty ballsy way. That said, even after playing through two full adventures with them, I still didn’t care much about Marona or Ash.

Story Rating: Decent

2) Graphics

This is not a good-looking game. The battlefields, which you’ll be spending most of your time looking at, combine dated 3D backgrounds with blocky low-res 2D sprites. The backgrounds are, without exaggeration, almost N64-level, to the point where it negatively effects gameplay. The battlefield in a good tactical RPG should be as clean, sharp and easy to read as possible, and unfortunately the backgrounds in Phantom Brave are often a chunky, blurry mess. The characters are well designed and animate well enough, but the sprites are inexcusably low-res. I’ve downloaded SNES games off the Virtual Console with sprites less blocky.

The one redeeming visual aspect of the game are the pre-rendered backdrops during cutscenes. These are actually detailed and look super sharp even on a big HDTV, which begs the question, why does the rest of the game have to look like it was constructed with Legos or smeared with Vaseline?

Graphics Rating: Bad

3) Sound

As bad as the game’s visuals are, Phantom Brave’s excellent music almost redeems the game’s presentation all on it’s own. The tunes are catchy, and perfectly capture the usually upbeat vibe of the game. The voice work is also solid, although I found Marona’s voice a bit grating. We get it, she’s cute, she doesn’t need to sound like a chipmunk that just inhaled an entire tank of helium.

Sound Rating: Great

4) Control and Gameplay

There are few video game genres as stubbornly conservative as the tactical RPG. Most games in the genre play very similarly, with only minor tweaks to the well-established template separating one tactical RPG series from the other. So the fact that Phantom Brave actually throws a lot of new ideas at the wall comes as a welcome surprise, but unfortunately the implementation many of these ideas leaves something to be desired.

Each stage begins with only your main character Marona on the battlefield, as she’s the only member of your army that’s actually, you know, alive. The rest of your crew consists of phantoms that Marona has to bind or “confine” to various objects littered around the map. Once confined to an object the character will appear on screen replacing it. The type of object your character is confined to will determine the stat bonuses it gets. Generally speaking, characters that specialize in physical attacks should be bound to sturdy objects like pine trees and rocks, while magic users should be confined to flowers or fruit trees. These objects are scattered all around the map, meaning you can’t just hide Marona in a corner like you can with your leader in other tactical RPGs. Instead, you’re forced to move her around to take advantage of all the confining possibilities.

Another important aspect to take into account is that each spirit can only be summoned for a brief period of time, usually three to five turns. This applies to everybody, even your most powerful characters. Once those turns are up, they’ll revert back to a rock or patch of weeds, and you can only summon them once per battle. This is where most of the strategy in Phantom Brave comes from. You have be very careful about when and where you unleash your characters, or you’ll get to the end of a battle and find you only have under leveled dud characters left to finish the enemy off. This time limit certainly forces you to think, but honestly it doesn’t make the game any more fun than the typical tactical RPG. A lot of the satisfaction in these games comes from building up your favorite characters, and only being about to use them for a few turns each battle just feels like a buzzkill.

Finally Phantom Brave also does away with the traditional tactical RPG grid system. This is the most immediately obvious change to the status quo, but it’s also the least interesting in terms of strategy. Instead of a grid your characters can move anywhere within a circular area surrounding them, which initially feels freeing, but the charm eventually wears off. To me, a good tactical RPG should feel like a well-played game of chess. The movement circles around your characters are simply too large, allowing most characters to cross the entire battlefield in only a few turns. The precise movement and strategy of a Fire Emblem or Ogre Battle is replaced with characters running from one side of the map, to the other and back again. It just feels sloppy, which really characterizes a lot of the gameplay in Phantom Brave.

Your enemies usually don’t exhibit much in the way of intelligent strategy or AI. Their primary mode of attack is to simply surround and swarm your characters, and once you get two or three of your characters surrounded by half a dozen enemies, things get irritating fast. Just trying to target a specific enemy can be a real source of frustration (one which isn’t helped by the unclear visuals). There are all sorts of weird oddities and quirks to the gameplay that only serves to make things more annoying. Sometimes, for no reason the game bothers to explain, you simply won’t be able to target certain enemies at all, your characters can be knocked off the edge of the map and lost for the remainder of the battle, and, in a completely absurd addition, you may even encounter bouncy floors that will bounce your character out of bounds. Is this a game of strategy or Smash Bros?

In between battles you can return home to Phantom Island, where you can summon new characters and manage your army. The phantoms you summon are all generic. You are given no option to change their apearance or do much to alter their abilities, so you never become particularly attached to any of them, like you would in say a Fire Emblem or Shining Force game. Some of your characters serve an extra role on the island, such as the merchant who sells weapons or the healer that resurrects characters defeated in battles. Annoyingly though, all the characters you want to use in battle, as well as all their weapons, have to be represented on your island, which is quite small and quickly becomes cluttered. In order to use the services of say, the healer or the blacksmith you actually have to go up and talk to them, but when your island is packed with a confusing mass of 30 different characters, you’ll wish you could just choose them from a dropdown menu. Managing your army just feels inneficient and unweildy.

As for controls, the developers give you plenty of options (Wiimote and nunchuck, Wiimote only, Classic controller, Gamecube controller) but didn’t bother to make use of any of the Wii’s unique abilities. No pointer control here folks, just impercise d-pad or analog stick movement for you.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Mediocre

5) Replayability

This being a Nippon Ichi title, there’s a huge amount to do for those who get truly immersed in the game. You can play through the main quest and the added “Another Marona” quest in around 30 – 40 hours if you stay focused, but if you want to get the bulk of the unlockables you’ll probably have to spend two or three times that amount of time with the game.

Replayability Rating: Amazing

6) Balance

For the most part Phantom Brave hovers at a nice comfortable level of difficulty, with occasional spikes – usually during important boss battles. Unfortunately all too often you can clear a difficult battle simply by leveling your characters up in randomly generated dungeons, rather than having to devise a winning strategy.

Balance Rating: Good

7) Originality

Like I said before, for the most part the tactical RPG genre takes to change about as well as Rush Limbaugh. So while confinement, character time limits and gridless movement aren’t really that earth shattering, they still represent a pretty big leap for this type of game.

Originality Rating: Very Good

8) Addictiveness

I usually found Phantom Brave’s issues starting to weigh on me after playing through only a couple battles. I had to persevere in order to finish the game for review, but if that weren’t the case I probably wouldn’t play the game for more than half-an-hour at a time.

Addictiveness Rating: Mediocre

9) Appeal Factor

This game’s decrepit visuals and quirky, difficult to grasp gameplay aren’t exactly going to grab the average Wii gamer. Hardcore tactical RPG fans might give it a chance, but the changes to the status quo are just as likely to put them off as entice them, and besides, a lot of hardcore tactical RPG fans probably already played this game five years ago on the PS2.

Appeal Factor Rating: Poor

10) Miscellaneous

Phantom Brave: We Meet Again comes with a bonus art disc, the contents of which you can see in about 5 to 10 minutes. The art is nice enough, but most of it is fairly low res, and the disc only works in your PC. It just seems odd to have a disc come in a Wii box that can’t actually be used in your Wii.

Miscellaneous Rating: Above Average

The Scores
Story/Modes: Decent
Graphics: Bad
Sound: Great
Control and Gameplay: Mediocre
Replayability: Amazing
Balance: Good
Originality: Very Good
Addictiveness: Mediocre
Appeal Factor: Poor
Miscellaneous: Above Average

Final Score: Above Average Game

Short Attention Span Summary

Phantom Brave is an interesting experiment, but not a completely successful one in this reviewer’s opinion. Nippon Ichi gets points for originality for doing away with grids and introducing the confinement system, but rarely do these changes actually make the game more fun than your typical tactical RPG. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a good rule to live by, and while playing Phantom Brave I often found myself yearning for the more refined gameplay of a Fire Emblem or Ogre Battle. In a rare case for a remake and/or port, the people I’d recommend this game to most are those who have already played the original. If you liked the original version of the game back in 2004, you’ll find a meaty amount of new content added to the Wii incarnation (the “Another Marona” mode is essentially a full-on second quest). For everyone else, proceed with caution, and give it a rent first. You’ll barely make a dent in the game in a weekend, but you’ll get an idea of whether this new take on the tactical RPG is for you.
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Actual photograph of me reviewing Rock N’ Roll Climber. Also pictured: My bandmates waiting for their turn.

1) Story/Modes

Rock n’ Roll Climber delivers a whopping two modes, Challenge and Free Climb. Challenge has you trying to complete a series of climbs within a time limit, and Free Climb is the same thing without the time limits (for those of you tired of all that damn stressful challenge fouling up your games). There are a decent handful of courses to climb, but in the end it doesn’t add up to much content. The fact that the game only costs 8 bucks softens the blow a bit, but there have been other 8-dollar (or cheaper) WiiWare games that have offered a lot more than this.

Story Rating: Poor

2) Graphics

This game’s about as visually appealing as a bikini car wash at a leper colony. It’s not like this game required grandiose, complex environments; all they needed to pull off was a cliff and a person to climb it, but no matter how low you set the bar, sometimes people will still find a way trip over it. The cliff looks nothing like anything you’d see in real life; it’s nothing but a flat grey wall with spitball-like blobs attached to it.

The character models are even worse. Both have neglected to, you know, bring along any rock climbing equipment on their rock climbing expedition, opting instead to scale sheer cliffs in their street clothes, and what street clothes! The guy is so dorky you’ll long for the day when TV makers introduce wedgie-vision, and the girl looks like she buys her clothes at K-mart while dreaming of the day she can afford Hot Topic. Absolutely no effort has gone into attempting realistic animations; instead each of your character’s limbs moves completely independently, giving your the character the look of a marionette manipulated by 5-year-old.

Actually one of the less ridiculous poses you’ll get yourself into.

Graphics Rating: Worthless

3) Sound

Given the overall quality of this game, it seems somehow fitting that during many of your climbs the only thing you’ll hear is crickets loudly chirping. Yes that’s right, a game called Rock N’ Roll Climber has almost no music to speak of in it. Your reward for successfully completing a climb is a less than 5-second guitar riff that sounds like it was lifted from a mid-90s Genesis game. That’s it. The soundtrack of Rock N’ Roll Climber in its entirety. Astounding.

Hopefully this doesn’t become a trend. I’m not really looking forward to playing along to the sounds of wind gently rustling over the prairies in Rock Band 3, or having the action in Brutal Legend accompanied by soothing whale songs.

Sound Rating: Worthless

4) Control and Gameplay

The concept behind Rock N’ Roll Climber is a simple one: you have to climb up a cliff covered with obvious foot and handholds and get to the top. That’s it. The complexity comes from the game’s control scheme.

You hold the Wiimote and Nunchuk out in front of you in a vertical position and hold down the B and Z buttons to grip onto the wall. In order to grab a new handhold, you release either the Z button on the nunchuck or the B button on the Wiimote to let go of your current hold, then tilt the Wiimote or ‘chuk in the direction of the new handhold you want and, hopefully, your character will reach toward it. Controlling your character’s legs is ideally done with the balance board. You shift your weight to one side of the board to make your climber lift their opposite foot, leaning forward will make your climber straighten our their legs once they’re secured to a foothold, and leaning your weight back will make your character bend their legs. You can play without the balance board if you want, but I don’t recommend it, as you still have to control both your arms and legs, except now they’ll all be confusingly mapped to the Wiimote and Nunchuck.

If this control scheme sounds rather baffling, it’s because it is. Nintendo has always claimed that motion controls make games more intuitive and accessible, but Rock N’ Roll Climber is the exact opposite. It took me over 20-minutes to get a hang of the game on even the most fundamental level. My character was like a spider on the inside of a wet toilet bowl; it’d feebly struggle and contort, but never actually make any progress. Eventually I got the hang of things, but even then progress is meticulous, slow, and kind of exhausting. The game never really changes either, aside from the addition loose or slippery handholds added in later courses, and these really just serve to make the game more annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, there are flashes where the game is almost fun. Where you can see what the designers were going for. Unfortunately, the game ultimately comes off as a rough and unfinished tech demo, which needed about a half-dozen more layers polish before being released.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Mediocre

5) Replayability

About halfway through the first climb I knew I had made a horrible mistake downloading this thing. If you decide to stick it out and play through all the courses you might get a couple hours out of this game. Trust me, you won’t be back after that.

Replayability Rating: Bad

6) Balance

This game is the worst kind of frustrating in that the challenge doesn’t come from the course design. These cliffs should be fairly easy to navigate. No, it’s the wonky controls that hinder your progress. Worse, since you’re using your whole body to control the game you don’t even have the luxury of throwing the controller against the wall in frustration. Well, unless you’re the masochistic type.

Balance Rating: Mediocre

7) Originality

Hey, it’s time to actually say something nice about the game! Don’t get used to this. Rock climbing is relatively unexplored territory for video games, and the control scheme used is certainly ambitious and unique, even if it doesn’t work that well. There’s nothing quite like Rock N’ Roll Climber out there, and honestly, I hope there never is again.

Originality Rating: Good

8) Addictiveness

You know that feeling when you order an expensive dinner in a restaurant, take that first bite, realize you should have ordered something else, and suddenly that meal you were looking forward to a minute ago has transformed into a mountainous pile of food you dread having to finish? That’s Rock N’ Roll Climber, except my meal lasted a few hours, required me to stand on a balance board contorting like a spaz, and then I had to write a 1500 word essay about my experience afterwards.

Addictiveness Rating: Worthless

9) Appeal Factor

Well, it’s published by Nintendo. Granted, it may be the worst thing they’ve ever published, but their name being attached is all a small handful of people will need. Pity the Nintendo fanatic.

Appeal Factor Rating: Dreadful

10) Miscellaneous

Listen Nintendo, I know there’s a strong temptation to help an old friend out when they’re down. Trust me, I’ve let my share of old friends sleep on my couch. I know you and Giles Goddard had some good times in the past, but when he shows up on your doorstep with a game this terrible and you go ahead and publish it anyways, you’re only enabling him.

Miscellaneous Rating: Worthless

The Scores
Story/Modes: Poor
Graphics: Worthless
Sound: Worthless
Control and Gameplay: Mediocre
Replayability: Bad
Balance: Mediocre
Originality: Good
Addictiveness: Worthless
Appeal Factor: Dreadful
Miscellaneous: Worthless
Final Score: Bad Game

Short Attention Span Summary:

Given the names involved in development and the publisher, this game is a shockingly lousy effort. Rock N’ Roll Climber is a baffling combination of obtuse convoluted controls, dull course design, hideous presentation, and all the genuine rock n’ roll spirit of an episode of Dora the Explorer. If you’re wondering why Nintendo of America is doing their best to make sure nobody even notices this game has come out, well, now you know.
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The NES version of Punch-Out!! is, in my humble opinion, one of the very few truly perfect games ever made. I’m not saying it’s necessarily the best game ever, as there are other games I would rate more highly based on innovation or pure ambition, but as far as a game completely achieving what it set out to be, few games can match up to Punch-Out!! on the NES.

It’s because of this I’ve always been torn over the possible revival of the series. I mean, new Punch-Out!! (okay, no more typing those exclamation points) sounds great, but really, how do you improve a perfect game? How do you modernize Punch-Out without ruining the formula? Even Super Punch-Out, with only minor tweaks made to the classic gameplay, still ended up being a disappointment in the eyes of many fans. Bringing Punch-Out to a new generation of gamers would have been no small task for any developer; let’s see if Next Level Games was up to the challenge.

1) Story/Modes

The story for the new Wii version of Punch-Out is the same as it’s always been; a simple tale of the underdog triumphing over impossible odds, and really, what more do you need? The developers of this title have added some color to the basic story, with well-produced cutscenes detailing Little Mac’s training, and short slide-show “movies” that introduce, and give some background information on all your opponents. For those who delve far enough into the game there’s even a nice little, almost bittersweet ending movie that seems to serve as the capper to Little Mac’s illustrious career. I’m sure if this game proves successful Mac will come out of retirement yet again, but it’s still a cool moment for longtime fans of the series.

As far as modes are concerned, it really depends what standard you’re judging by. Compared to past Punch-Out titles, this game is packed with content, with three variations of Career mode, an Exhibition mode and multiplayer. On the other hand, if you compare it to more realistic sim-oriented boxing games like EA’s Fight Night series, the selection of modes starts to look pretty anemic. Personally I was pleased with the options available, but those new to the series may find themselves wondering where some of the content went.

Story Rating: Enjoyable

2) Graphics

It’s hard to compare Punch-Out to the likes of Metroid Prime 3, or Mario Galaxy, as those games are so much larger and more ambitious than this game, but in it’s own limited way Punch-Out is by far one of the best looking games on the Wii. Mac, his opponent, and a darkened arena; that’s all that’s ever on screen at once, but within those narrow confines the guys at Next Level Games have polished things to a glossy shine. They tossed out the generic anime style of Super Punch-Out in honor of a slick western style, similar to what you might see in modern hand drawn Disney cartoon. Fittingly given the new visual style, the game features some absolutely fantastic animation, which characters sporting hilarious over-the-top attacks and taunts, as well as all manner of subtle ticks and expressions. Whether it be Super Macho Man flexing his ass cheeks at you, or Bear Hugger frolicking with his pet squirrel, just watching your opponent’s antics is almost half the fun. Everything’s been given more of a cinematic treatment as well, with fancy camera angels, slo-mo and lighting used to give knockouts and dramatic moments more impact. It’s clear Next Level sunk a huge amount of effort into these visuals.

Graphics Rating: Amazing

3) Sound

The NES version of Punch-Out featured the best main theme of the 8-bit era. No arguing you. This is a fact. That tune was a major part of the elusive Punch-Out appeal, so I’m glad to report that Punch-Out Wii features a pretty kick-ass new version of the theme. It’s impossible not to get pumped-up once those horns start wailing. You also get 14-different wacky remixes of the theme, one for each one of your opponents in the game. Piston Hondo has a stereotypically Asian sounding version, Von Kaiser’s sounds like something you’d hear playing as the Germans march into Poland, and so on.

One surprise, considering this is a Nintendo game, is that Punch-Out also contains a ton of voice acting. Mac himself is the typical strong, silent Nintendo protagonist, but all your opponents blather away before and after fights (often in their native tongue) and Doc Louis is a regular chatty Cathy. The voice work is well recorded for the most part, and really adds nicely to the game’s humor.

Sound Rating: Classic

4) Control and Gameplay

While it seems impossible to me, the reality is, due to the series’ 15-year absence, we’re now living in a world where most gamers haven’t played a Punch-Out game. Well, for those new to the series expecting a modern boxing game along the lines of Fight Night, you’re in for surprise. Your abilities are extremely limited; you can dodge left, right, back or block, throw left or right body shots, and left or right jabs to the head. You’ll also occasionally earn a star by hitting an opponent at a specific time, which allows you to throw a single powerful star uppercut. That’s all there is to it. No fancy combos or maneuvers, no half dozen bars and gauges on screen. Your opponents have no AI to speak of; they instead follow set patterns, and simply throwing random punches at them will quickly get you blocked and counterpunched into oblivion. You have to wait for very specific openings to get your shots in.

Next Level Games haven’t messed with things, and while it’s very limited, the formula is still surprisingly fun here in the year 2009. While most boxing and wrestling video games quickly become repetitive once you learn how to exploit the basic AI all the fighters use, Punch-Out forces you to play intelligently. Every boxer is a unique puzzle and discovering their secrets, learning their nuances and then finally knocking them out is hugely satisfying. Most of the boxers in this game appeared on the NES or SNES and retain familiar weaknesses, but they’ve also been significantly tweaked, and once you beat the game you’ll unlock Title Defense mode, which mixes things up even further. The characters in Title Defense all have new looks, completely different patterns and the weaknesses that you’ve been exploiting since the 80s are now gone. It may seem like little has changed in the Wii version of Punch-Out at first glance, but there’s a ton of new fun lurking under the surface.

As for controls, you can either play with the Wiimote alone, the Wiimote and nunchuck or the Wiimote, nunchuck and balance board. Your control style can be swapped at any time, it’s simply a matter of plugging/unplugging the nunchuck or turning on/off the balance board. The Wiimote and nunchuck controls have been kept simple and actually work quite well. Next Level Games didn’t try to do Wii Sports boxing, instead you simply gesture with the Wiimote and nunchuck to punch right or left, with dodging, and switching between body and head shots handled with the analog stick. Yes, punching is a bit slower with this method, but Punch-Out isn’t really about fast punching, it’s about fast dodging. If you dodge your opponent correctly they’ll leave themselves open plenty long enough for you deal some damage with the motion controls. Really the only problem with the motion controls is they will wear your arms out after a while; most people will switch to playing with the Wiimote on it’s side NES-style after a while just to avoid having a their arms drop off. Oh, and the balance board controls are pretty much useless, but hey, are you really surprised by that?

Control and Gameplay Rating: Classic

5) Replayability

A lot of early previews/reviews made somewhat alarming claims that Punch-Out, a 60-dollar game, could be beaten in around an hour. Don’t believe it. It’s just typical chest beating by “professional” game journalists who haven’t put behind them the days when exaggerating their gaming ability to their fellow losers helped make them feel better about never having touched a boob or bought pants without an elastic waistband.

Most players will probably take 2 – 4 hours to play through career mode the first time, at which point they’ll unlock Title Defense mode which is much more difficult, and if they can beat that there’s “Last Stand” mode to tackle. It probably took me around 15 – 20 hours to completely play through career mode, and this is from someone who’s been playing Punch-Out for 20 years. Add to that a ton of achievement-style challenges to take on in Exhibition mode and the fairly entertaining multiplayer mode and you’ve got yourself a game that’s going to last you a helluva lot longer than an hour.

Replayability Rating: Great

6) Balance

Fear not Punch-Out fans, your beloved series has not been stricken with casual-itis. First time through career mode you’ll notice the challenge level has been leveled a bit. The final Major Circuit guys aren’t as crushingly difficult as they were in the NES game, but some of the earlier fighters have actually been toughened up. Don’t look too shocked as former pushovers like Great Tiger and Don Flamenco give you a run for your money. Almost anyone, with persistence, will be able to beat career mode at least once, but Title Defense mode is purely for the old-school hardcore Punch-Out fan (the Title Defense version of Bald Bull could mop the canvas with Mike Tyson). The game may be a little too hard for the soccer mom demographic, but serious gamers should be pleased.

Balance Rating: Great

7) Originality

Next Level Games didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with this one. The game play, characters and storyline are all familiar, although new patterns for the boxers, new single player modes and multiplayer mix things up enough to keep this section from being a total failure.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8) Addictiveness

Punch-Out is king of “okay, just one more try” gameplay. What exactly about these games keeps me crawling back, thumbs throbbing, for more abuse I don’t know, but I think I need an intervention.

Addictiveness Rating: Unparalleled

9) Appeal Factor

During the series 15-year absence Punch-Out has developed into quite the little pop culture juggernaut. Little Mac, Doc, Glass Joe and the rest are almost right up there with Mario and Zelda in the pantheon of recognizable Nintendo characters. Hell my grandpa recognized the characters when a Punch-Out commercial hit when we were watching TV. Nintendo has done their usual somewhat half-assed job of promoting the game, but once the word starts to spread I predict fairly big things.

Appeal Factor Rating: Great

10) Miscellaneous

Soooo yeah, the Punch-Out games? Horribly horribly racist. In a loveable cuddly sort of way of course. A lot of people were concerned, with good reason, that Punch-Out would lose some of it’s unique, uh, color in today’s PC world.

Well I’m happy to report that Punch-Out for the Wii not only retains its trademark stereotypes, but they’re actually worse than ever. Great Tiger isn’t just a turban-wearing magician anymore; he’s a goddamn genie who rides a magic carpet to the ring. Punching Piston Honda makes sushi dance around his head. Oh, and wait until you fight new character Disco Kid…he’s fabulous. How they’re getting away with all this in 2009 I have no idea.

Miscellaneous Rating: Amazing

The Scores
Story/Modes: Enjoyable
Graphics: Amazing
Sound: Classic
Control and Gameplay: Classic
Replayability: Great
Balance: Great
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Unparalleled
Appeal Factor: Great
Miscellaneous: Amazing
Final Score: Incredible Game

Short Attention Span Summary
Punch-Out for the Wii is a remake. Yes, I know Nintendo isn’t identifying it as such, but it really is. If you’re expecting the game to radically reinvent the series you’re in for a disappointment, but accept it for what it is, that being one of the best remakes ever made, and you’ll have a blast. Next Level Games have perfectly captured everything that made the NES version of Punch-Out such an enduring classic, while at the same time making everything bigger, brighter, deeper, more varied and just plain more fun. As long as you’re not afraid of getting your butt kicked a few (or a few dozen) times, this game is a must have.
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You sure do you loveable cliche. Now let’s review your latest game!

1) Modes

Well, you have the ability to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers, if you can believe it. Also you can decorate your garden or dress Mama up in various cute outfits (which, honestly, is a bit creepy now that I think of it). It’s actually not a terrible selection of stuff to do for a casual game, but they could have done a lot more.

Gardening Mama feels like it should have been a new mode for the next Cooking Mama game. “Grow your own produce then use it in your cooking!” Instead it’s forced to stand on it’s own, and it feels like something is missing from the experience.

Story Rating: Mediocre

2) Graphics

The game’s graphics are 2D, simple and without much flare or style. Mama and the other characters are appealing, but their animation is so limited that they don’t really come to life. Gardening Mama’s graphics get the job done and not much more.

Graphics Rating: Decent

3) Sound

Gardening Mama’s music is sub-Muzak level blandness. Hey Mama developers, I realize this is a casual game, but believe it or not, girls and old people like music too. No really, they do! You won’t scare them if you put some of it in your game.

Of course the most memorable audio aspect of any Mama game is Mama herself, who shouts encouragement at you in her borderline offensive stereotypical Japanese accent. Problem is, unlike the Wii games where Mama is a regular chatterbox, there are only a small handful of voice clips in Gardening Mama, which are repeated ad nauseum. Cute turns to grating when you’re hearing the same clip for the 200th time in 2-hours.

Sound Rating: Mediocre

4) Control and Gameplay

Okay, so growing a flower or piece of produce in Gardening Mama is broken down into a series of steps, which in turn are broken down further into a series of minigames, and really this is one of the main problems with the game. Everything is overly drawn out. Simply growing an apple or flower may take seven or eight steps, and each one of those steps may require you to play anywhere up to six or seven minigames. By the time you finally get your apple you’ve long since ceased caring.

Although perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. The minigames themselves are actually fairly fun, with the touchscreen controls working quite well for the most part. Problem is, the game does a poor job of explaining what you’re supposed to be doing in any given minigame. A bunch of arrows and indicators appear on screen giving you the general gist, but often it will still take you a couple tries to figure out what’s going on. Really, the only way to get a handle on things is to play each minigame in “Practice” mode once or twice first, which just makes a drawn out process even lengthier. Even after playing certain games many times you may still find certain subtleties elude you. What the heck is the point of having Mama sitting up on the top screen all the time if she’s not going to do anything useful, like providing instructions on how to play the game?

The truth is, I think letting Mama loose in the garden was a flawed idea on a fundamental level. Cooking is an immediate, visceral experience that involves a lot of different processes that translate well to touchscreen or motion controls. Gardening, on the other hand, is a long-term activity that requires a lot of repetition and patience. I’m not saying gardening isn’t satisfying, personally I’d rather dig in the dirt than make dinner, but it’s simply not an activity that lends itself to gaming as well as cooking.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Mediocre

5) Replayability

There’s actually quite a long list of things to grow and unlock in Gardening Mama, and if you wanted to get it all you could spend a solid amount of time with the game. Whether you’ll have the patience is another story. After only a couple hours of playing I found the experience quite repetitive, with minor variations of the same minigames being thrown at me time and time again. I soldiered on for a few more hours, but I couldn’t imagine bothering to unlock every trinket available.

Replayability Rating: Decent

6) Balance

It’s almost impossible to fail in Gardening Mama. Heck, for all I know it is impossible to fail, because I never did. Even when I badly botched a step, screwing up multiple minigames because I didn’t bother to try them in Practice mode first I still ended up with a bronze medal.

Of course what you want are those shiny gold medals, but while simply succeeding in Gardening Mama is exceedingly easy, getting golds is often unfairly difficult. Getting a gold medal on a step requires that you score a perfect 100% on every one of its minigames. When certain steps involve seven or eight minigames, some of which are poorly explained or feature somewhat wonky controls, getting a gold medal can become an exercise in frustration.

Balance Rating: Bad

7) Originality

Well, I suppose there aren’t a whole lot of gardening video games out there, but let’s be real, this is just Cooking Mama in a new setting. Mama’s still wears her apron and everything. I mean, come on.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8) Addictiveness

If I didn’t have to play this game for review it probably wouldn’t have held my attention for much longer than 15-minutes at a time.

Addictiveness Rating: Poor

9) Appeal Factor

The Cooking Mama games have sold over 7 million copies worldwide. No, that’s not a typo. For whatever reason Mama has herself quite the little cult of followers, and I’m sure this game will sell fairly well too. Will people take to gardening the same way they did to cooking though? I have my doubts.

Appeal Factor Rating: Good

10) Miscellaneous

Gardening Mama has a few multiplayer minigames, but they’re only local multiplayer, not online, which is actually getting to be somewhat of a rarity for a DS game these days. Just one of many lazy moves by the Mama developers.

Miscellaneous Rating: Mediocre

The Scores
Story/Modes: Mediocre
Graphics: Decent
Sound: Mediocre
Control and Gameplay: Mediocre
Replayability: Decent
Balance: Bad
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Poor
Appeal Factor: Good
Miscellaneous: Mediocre
Final Score: Mediocre Game

Short Attention Span Summary
The original Cooking Mama was a charming, unique game, but we’re now on our fifth “Mama” game in three years and she unfortunately remains stubbornly stuck in her ways. Gardening Mama represents a lateral move for the series, plunking the character in a new setting rather than addressing long-nagging issues or adding any depth to the experience. Actually, calling it a lateral move might be too generous; it’s arguably a step down from previous games, as gardening simply doesn’t translate to video games as well as cooking. Even fans of the series may find this Mama hard to love.
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Okay, let’s review Opoona. What the hell’s an Opoona you ask? Well, it’s an RPG with a somewhat unfortunate name, starring characters who do battle with their balls. Not ringing a bell? I’ll forgive you for not knowing what it is since the game’s been a pretty massive flop, only selling around 40,000 copies worldwide since its release over a year ago.

So why the heck did I buy an old, unpopular game with a vaguely filthy sounding name anyways? Well for one, the game goes for 20 bucks new these days (assuming you can actually find a copy). Secondly, the game is developed by ArtePiazza, the company behind the recent DS Dragon Quest remakes I’ve been gushing over lately, so surely it couldn’t be all bad. Could it?

1) Story
The star of the game, Opoona, is a young child and a member of an overly adorable race of aliens tasked with defending the universe. You and your family are on a vacation, when your spaceship malfunctions under mysterious circumstances causing you to crash land on the planet of Landroll, which is populated by a futuristic human-like society. You’re separated from your siblings, your parents (imaginatively named Mameena and Dadeena) are injured in the crash and it’s up to you make your way in the world and bring your family back together happy and healthy.

That’s your set up, and for quite a while that’s all you get. You’ll get little snippets of information and meet characters who will be important later, but it isn’t until about halfway through the game that these threads start to tie together into a real plot. Even then the story remains a fairly simple affair (although there are a couple decent twists). The focus here isn’t on the overarching plot, but on relationships you build with individuals, and watching their various small dramas play out. The overall storyline may not be exactly epic, but those who really delve into Landroll will find a world that’s actually exceptionally deep and complex.

Unfortunately it’s all undermined a bit by a mediocre translation. While I commend Koei for bringing this strange little game to North America at all, the publisher isn’t really known for handling RPGs, or well, the quality of their translations in general. It’s certainly not terrible. Any old codgers who lived through the 8 and 16-bit eras have seen much worse, but there are occasional grammatical errors, moments of awkward phrasing and most of the humor has been steamrolled out of the script. The story would be in the good to very good range with a better translation.

Story Rating: Enjoyable

2) Graphics
Unfortunately Opoona’s graphics are going to immediately turn-off around 90% of prospective players (and based on the scores the game’s picked up, that includes pro-reviewers). Obviously Opoona and his family are simple in the extreme, and that can be chalked up to intentional stylization, but where things get ugly is with the human-like NPCs, which look like something you might have seen on the N64. Aside from being a bit sharper, that’s not an exaggeration.

The environments are thankfully an improvement, in that they look like Dreamcast rather than N64 quality. The environments do occasionally impress though. The main thing they have going for them is an impressive sense of size and scale; climbing to a high point in one of the domes and being able to see the whole city down below you is pretty impressive. Some of the later areas such as the fairy forest and underwater dungeon are actually quite pretty too, although you have to play through a number of somewhat bland earlier areas before you’re rewarded with them.

All in all, while the game isn’t a technical masterpiece, it’s not without its charm and I’d rate it higher if it looked as clean and nice as it does in the official Koei screenshots. Unfortunately it doesn’t. The game doesn’t support widescreen or 480p and there’s a real problem with jaggies, especially on an HD TV. A lot of the appeal of the intentionally simplified character designs are lost when your main character’s a mess of jaggies and stray pixels.

Graphics Rating: Mediocre

3) Sound
Opoona’s soundtrack is the work of Hitoshi Sakimoto, the legendary game composer behind everything from Gauntlet, to all the Ogre games, to Final Fantasy XII. I won’t over exaggerate and say this is his best work, but the quality of Opoona’s music is so far and above its visuals that they almost seem to be from a different game. The songs mix modern electronic music with lots of strings and classical sounds, and while not every track is a gem, some of them are strikingly beautiful.

Sound effects on the other hand are solid, and the game is completely devoid of any voicework. This didn’t bother me much as Opoona is such a strange little bugger it would be almost impossible to find a voice that would really fit. I imagine if they tried he and his family probably would’ve ended up sounding like the Toads from the Mario games or something, and that’s something nobody wants to listen to for 30 hours.

Sound Rating: Incredible

4) Control and Gameplay
Koei describes Opoona as a “Lifestyle RPG”, which, I suppose, is about as accurate a description as any, since you spend as much time hanging around in the game’s large cities (referred to as “domes”) as you do hacking through dungeons. While in the domes your main goal is to collect occupational licenses, which range from your main Ranger license to more exotic ones like Fortuneteller, TV Dance Sensation or Master of the Ukulele. Once you have a license completing certain jobs will allow you to trade it in for a higher ranking license, which in turn gives you access to more jobs and so on. Collecting new licenses and completing jobs not only nets you stat bonuses and cash rewards, but also opens up new areas to explore, making certain licenses integral to progressing in the game. Want to poke around the television station? Better get a Star license first. Need a ride on a cuddly dolphin’s back to get into a certain dungeon? Better get that Seamaster license.

Connected to the license system is the Friend system. You’ll be able to make friends with a number of different characters, and increasing your friendship level by completing tasks for them, or simply by talking to them a lot, is almost as essential to getting by on Landroll as collecting licenses. Opening up some areas and getting certain items can require navigating quite a tangled web of different jobs and interrelated friendships, but that complexity is largely what brings Opoona’s world to life.

Yes, there’s also a more traditional side to Opoona as well, in which you’ll find yourself navigating dungeons and taking part in random battles (yes, they stuck with random battles unfortunately). The dungeons are pretty simple with little in the way of puzzle solving or even any serious exploration required for the most part. You’re usually stuck to a fairly confined path, which will branch occasionally, but never to the point of becoming particularly complex.

The battle system on the other hand is far more inspired. Upon entering battle you’ll likely notice how streamlined things are, with you only being given the option to attack, use an item or use magic (referred to a “Force” in Opoona). Even the almost universal RPG options to defend or flee from battle have been removed.

Opoona (and later his siblings) attack enemies using the balls floating above their heads, which are called Bonbons (ain’t that just precious?) Pulling the analog stick in any direction will charge your Bonbon and releasing it will fire it off at the enemy. Sounds simple, but there’s actually some depth to it. The longer you charge up your Bonbon, the faster it will fly, and the more damage it will do, but it will also take longer for you to recharge leaving your vulnerable. Opoona’s battles also take place in real time (enemies won’t even stop attacking as you navigate menus) so timing is important. Fire off your Bonbon too early or late and you may miss an enemy altogether, but if you time things right you may nail them just as they’re getting ready to attack, cutting them off (which is basically your only form of defense in the game). There’s more still, as pushing different directions on the analog stick will allow you to hook your Bonbon left or right or throw an underhand shot, which you’ll need to do to hit the weak spots of some shielded or flying enemies.

By comparison, using Items or Force abilities is pretty standard stuff, although you have to time things properly and choose what you want quickly since, as already mentioned, the bad guys can beat on you even as you’re selecting your healing potion or fire attack from the menu. One final strange wrinkle; every battle in Opoona has a time limit (of usually 2 minutes) and if you don’t finish your opponent off in that time, you lose. Back to your last save point. This may sound harsh, but Opoona’s battles go by in a flash, often taking no more than 5 seconds, so you’ll almost never go over the limit. Overall the battle system is unique, fast and far more action oriented than most JRPGs without ever feeling like a hackfest (I’m looking at you Tales games).

Finally let’s briefly touch on controls. Prior to its release the most hyped aspect of Opoona was your ability to control the game using only the nunchuck. Woooooo! Of course anyone who’s picked up a Wii controller knows this is a rather silly “feature” since the nunchuck has to be plugged into the Wiimote to work in the first place. Furthermore for most folks you’re either stuck playing with only with your weak left-hand, which feels awkward, or switching the nunchuck to your right hand, which also feels awkward after years of always manipulating the analog stick with your left hand. Thankfully all the functions crammed onto the nunchuck are also mapped to the Wiimote and playing with both the nunchuck and Wiimote feels just fine. Even better, the game supports the classic controller, which feels best of all. Somehow playing RPGs with a SNES-esque controller just feels right, ya know?

Control and Gameplay Rating: Great

5) Replayability
Don’t let the Fischer-Price exterior fool you, this is a deep game with a main quest that will take you around 30-hours to complete (and that’s only if you manage to stay fairly focused). Folks who want to max out all their friendships and get all the job licenses could potentially spend double that time.

Replayability Rating: Amazing

6) Balance
Opoona is, for the most part, a pretty easy game. You’ll blow through the vast majority of battles, but the opposite is also true. If you find yourself out of your league you may find your party crushed within about 10 or 15-seconds, which can be frustrating, particularly when it’s a boss at an end of a dungeon that offed you.

Thankfully ArtePiazza has learned a thing or two working on the Dragon Quest series. As in the DQ games, dying isn’t really “Game Over”. Instead you’re simply taken back to the last place you saved, with all the items and experience you collected still intact. In fact the punishment for dying in Opoona is even less strict than in Dragon Quest; in Opoona only a small fee is extracted from you when your party is defeated (as opposed to having half you gold taken). Just as in Dragon Quest, being able to keep your experience means there’s rarely any need for leveling, your characters increase in power naturally as you take multiple runs at a dungeon.

Balance Rating: Good

7) Originality
You’ve never played another RPG quite like Opoona, and if it’s success (or lack thereof) is any indication, you’ll probably never get the chance again. While a fairly traditional JRPG in some ways, it stands out in a genre where most developers think changing the hairstyle of their stock brooding effeminate teenage protagonist passes as originality.

Originality Rating: Great

8) Addictiveness
I found this game pretty damn engrossing, even when it was driving me freakin’ nuts. Finishing certain jobs or pumping up some friendships can be a bit mind-numbing to say the least, and yet there I was in front of my TV until 3 in the morning trying to complete them. If you give it a chance, and are able to ignore some of its idiosyncrasies, the deep, involving world of Opoona just might draw you in too.

Addictiveness Rating: Incredible

9) Appeal Factor
The writing’s pretty much already on the wall for this category since, as already mentioned, the game’s only managed to sell around 40 thousand copies worldwide. In many ways Opoona is a very old-school design. The game isn’t packed with distracting cut scenes or a lavish story, you’re pretty much set free to explore the world and figure out the game’s mechanics on your own, sometimes without a lot of guidance. That’s something a lot of old-school RPG fans will be familiar with, but will these old geezers tolerate the cutesy presentation? It definitely hit a sweet spot for me as I dig both old-school RPGs, and social sims like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, but I realize that’s a pretty slim niche.

Appeal Factor Rating: Mediocre

10) Miscellaneous

Good God I’ve been rambling on about this game for too long. Can I stop now? Please?

What more is there to say? This is a game where a child with a candy floating over his head can become friends with a woman who wears a thong wherever she goes by becoming the greatest breakdancer in the galaxy. Does that sound like the kind of game you’d like to play? Well, does it? Of course it does. Now let’s wrap this up.

Miscellaneous Rating: Classic

The Scores
Story/Modes: Enjoyable
Graphics: Mediocre
Sound: Incredible
Control and Gameplay: Great
Replayability: Amazing
Balance: Good
Originality: Great
Addictiveness: Incredible
Appeal Factor: Mediocre
Miscellaneous: Classic
Final Score: Great Game

Short Attention Span Summary
Opoona is not always an easy game to like. It’s ugly, it’s weird, it’s sometimes obtuse. That said, if you give it a chance, you’ll find a game that’s also unique, absorbing, surprisingly deep and just plain endearing. It’s a game that’s built on a solid traditional JRPG foundation, yet there’ll probably never be anything quite like it again. As of now, it’s probably still the best RPG on the Wii, and with it selling for dirt-cheap these days, RPG fans don’t have much to lose. Give this poor breakdancing alien a home.
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1) Story

On the surface all Dragon Quest plots are pretty much the same. You’re a mute male protagonist who either is, or is looking for, a “chosen one” who prophecy says must do battle with the ancient evil that’s threatening the world. Dragon Quest V is no different, but the art of a good Dragon Quest storyline is in the telling, not the plot itself.

Every DQ game since IV takes a unique approach to telling essentially the same archetypal fantasy storyline. In the case of V, you follow a single character across several generations, starting with him as a 6-year-old child, then as a young man, then as an older man with children of his own. It’s essentially the same technique used in Phantasy Star III, but everything Sega did wrong in that game is done oh-so-right here. Whereas it was largely a shallow gimmick in PSIII, resulting in a slew of generic characters differentiated only by their hairstyle, Dragon Quest V’s multigenerational storyline brings an impressive depth and humanity to it’s cast. So often RPGs focus on grand themes, or shocking events, but while they’re busy staging huge battles or blowing up planets, the little things are lost sight of. It’s the human moments that we can all relate to that actually bond us with a story and it’s characters, and this game is chock full of them. From your young character faithfully following the dad he reveres, to marrying your childhood sweetheart, to seeing your first children born, this game gets it’s hooks in you. Also, since you actually care about the characters the requisite handful of deaths, twists and betrayals actually have a real effect on you. This is some masterful storytelling on Yuji Horii’s part.

I suppose I should also address the fact that there’s been some whining amongst fans about the translation. Not that the game is inaccurate or sloppy, but simply that certain things have been tweaked or added (Names have been changed, various European “accents” added to some character’s dialogue and so on.). Since this is the first official English translation of the game ever though, this means the complainers would have to fall into one of two camps.

1) Those who have played the game in its original Japanese. If you’re in this camp and are pissed over a handful of name changes, well you clearly don’t know the difference between straight translation and localization. It’s a good idea to educate yourself before you make a fuss over something. You’ll find that 99% of games that go from Japan to the US have undergone similar changes.

2) Those who have only played unauthorized fan translations and are angry that this version doesn’t match up to what a 16-year old kid with a Japanese-English dictionary wrote in his mother’s basement. If you’re in this group, well honestly, get a freakin’ life.

Modes Rating: Unparalleled

2) Graphics

On a technical level Dragon Quest V’s visuals are pretty much identical to those of Dragon Quest IV on the DS before it, which of course makes sense since ArtePiazza is remaking DQIV through VI for the DS all in one go. That said, it can’t be denied that a bit of the “specialness” of a sequel is taken away when much of it looks exactly the same as its predecessor.

Which isn’t to say this is a bad looking game; it has its charms. Graphically it’s comparable to Dragon Quest VII for the PS1, with the overworld and dungeons being done in simple 3D and characters and monsters being 2D sprites. DQV may not throw around a huge number of polygons, but the world is varied and, in it’s own way, quite detailed, and the hand-drawn monster sprites during battles look fantastic. In fact I’d go so far as to say this might be the best translation of Akira Toriyama’s unique art into video game form I’ve seen. Yes, even better than the technically much superior Dragon Quest VIII. Toriyama’s character designs just don’t translate into 3D that well, they’re meant to stay flat, and these sharp, wonderfully animated sprites are just the ticket.

Also, while this game may use the same engine as DQIV, its visuals are more ambitious and varied overall, and as a bonus the occasional slowdown that cropped up in IV has been cleaned up for V. A very solid, if not quite stunning, visual package.

Graphics Rating: Good

3) Sound

Koichi Sugiyama’s score for the game is predictably excellent. Granted the game reuses a lot of tunes from past titles, but then a Dragon Quest game without the classic Overture or Battle Theme would be like a Star Wars movie without the Imperial March or porn without 80s synthesizers in the background. It’s just not the same man. Fantastic music, fun retro sound effects, and the lack of voice work isn’t really missed (it’s not like it would really be feasible on a non-disc based system anyways).

Sound Rating: Incredible

4) Control and Gameplay

All the Dragon Quest games tend to stick close to the basic Japanese RPG template (which they created). You visit towns, buy equipment and collect information on where to go next, then hack into various dungeons engaging in countless turn based battles. It may sound somewhat bland, but the fun is found in the details. The world you explore really feels alive, with no two dungeons or towns being alike, and while the battle system is a simple affair only giving you the options to attack, defend, use magic or use items, the pace is brisk enough and the enemies are varied enough in design and tactics that battling rarely feels like a drag. Dragon Quest doesn’t need the overly complicated battle systems and gimmicks that most modern RPGs hide behind; the focus is instead on polishing the basics to a glossy shine.

The one major addition that DQV brings to the table is the ability to recruit many of the monsters you encounter to your party. Now before you accuse this game of ripping off Pokemon, realize Dragon Quest V came out around 3-years before Pokemon Red & Blue, and in many ways its monster recruiting system is still more advanced than anything Pokemon has ever done. The monsters that join you act as full-fledged party members that gain a whole long list of spells as they level up (as opposed to only being able to use 4), can be equipped with a full compliment of armor and weapons and you’re free to mix and match regular human characters and monsters as you wish (Unlike Pokemon where you’re restricted to only using critters with no personality to speak of.).

Control-wise the game ignores the stylus and is controlled entirely with the buttons, which I won’t complain about, particularly since the last DS RPG I played was the hand destroying Magical Starsign (which I found in a bargain bin for 5 bucks).

Control and Gameplay Rating: Amazing

5) Replayability

This game serves up a good mid-length quest for an RPG, which should take you around 25 – 30 hours to beat. Add in the requisite handful of side quests, the “gotta catch ‘em all” appeal of the monster collecting, and draw of playing through again so you can choose a different wife and you have a pretty damn meaty experience for 40-bucks.

Replayability Rating: Incredible

6) Balance

Right from the beginning the Dragon Quest games have been designed to be subtly more accessible than most other JRPGs. DQV is certainly no pushover, enemies can be tough and you will die, but a number of design decisions take the edge off. Dungeons are usually rather short and focused on solving a handful of puzzles rather than wandering around endless mazes, and dying in Dragon Quest isn’t “Game Over”, you’re simply transported to the last church you saved at with half your money gone, but with all your treasure, experience and progress you made before you were defeated left intact. Using the experience points and knowledge of the dungeon you gained on your first attempt, you can usually get through it on your 2nd try without having to do any of the tedious leveling most RPGs force on you. Dragon Quest V removes most of the grind without feeling patronizing.

Balance Rating: Unparalleled

7) Originality

This is a tough category when it comes to remakes. Obviously a remake isn’t going to bring much new to the table, but what about the original game’s innovations? The original SNES game gave us the brilliant monster recruiting system that went on to influence the most popular RPG series of all time! Surely indirectly leading to the creation of Pikachu counts for something, am I right Lucard? I guess we’ll just call this one down the middle.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8) Addictiveness

I usually don’t play handheld games for more than about half-an-hour at a time. It doesn’t really matter how good they are, I just can’t stare at those tiny screens for too long. This game on the other hand often held me rapt for 3 or 4 hours straight. My writing schedule for other websites was shot all to hell because I couldn’t put this damn thing down. So yeah, I’d say it qualifies as pretty damn addictive.

Addictiveness Rating: Amazing

9) Appeal Factor

For whatever reason North Americans don’t really care much for Dragon Quest (A major reason likely being that they haven’t got to play DQV up until now). Square Enix isn’t doing much to raise the hype factor either with its low-key promotion of a game whose arrival should be, in theory at least, a pretty big deal.

Also I wonder, will the fact this game hasn’t been released here before help or hurt it? Will people be more likely to buy DQV than DQIV because it’s a “new” game (as far as Americans are concerned) or will it flop without nostalgia to fuel sales? It will be interesting to see.

Appeal Factor Rating: Decent

10) Miscellaneous

I’m pretty much just glad to see this game finally hit Western shores. Square Enix knew this game’s American sales would only be a tiny fraction of what it sold in Japan, but it went through the trouble of translating it anyways. There tends to be a lot of Squuenix bashing around here, but there’s some good in their black hearts after all.

They also added a handful of little extras to the DS version of this game over and above the PS2 remake it was based on. Most notably there’s now a new 3rd girl you can marry. Giving a guy extra tail to chase is always appreciated.

Miscellaneous Rating: Unparalleled

The Scores
Story/Modes: Unparalleled
Graphics: Good
Sound: Incredible
Control and Gameplay: Amazing
Replayability: Incredible
Balance: Unparalleled
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Amazing
Appeal Factor: Decent
Miscellaneous: Unparalleled

Final Score: Incredible Game

Short Attention Span Summary

This game really deserves more hype than it’s getting. After playing through Dragon Quest V I feel confident calling it a lost RPG classic, the equal of giants of the 16-bit era like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star IV (in fact I’d consider it better than at least one of those games). Unless you completely hate RPGs this game absolutely needs to be in your DS as soon as possible, plain and simple.
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1) Story

Dawn of the New World is a relative rarity for a Japanese RPG; a direct sequel. Most JRPG series reset everything with each new installment, tossing out only a handful of references and cameos from past games for the sake of continuity. DotNW (which we’ll call it from now on to save me from carpal tunnel) on the other hand takes place only 2 years after the events of the original game, with nearly every important place and character reappearing. This approach has benefits and drawbacks; the diehard Symphonia fans will eat it up, but it could be a barrier to new fans. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t strictly need to have played the first game to follow along, but you’ll definitely miss a lot of references and there isn’t a whole lot of effort put into reintroducing old characters (it’s simply assumed you already know and care about them).

Not every character is a repeat though, as the game’s three main characters are all new. In the last game Lloyd Irving and his pals brought the twin worlds of Sylvarant and Tethe’alla together as one, but while that may sound gosh-darned inspiring on paper, there have been some complications since. The combined world is going through radical climate changes as a result and it turns out the Sylvaranti and Tethe’allan people don’t much care for sharing a world and have gone to war with one another. You step into the role of Emil, a boy who seemingly witnessed Lloyd, hero to the world, leading a massacre that destroyed his hometown and cost his parents their lives. Bent on revenge, Emil sets out on a quest to bring Lloyd to justice with standard-issue cute anime girl Marta, and Tenebrae, a cat-like Centurion spirit, by his side.

The notion that the last game’s happy ending wasn’t so happy after all is an interesting setup, giving hope that this story will perhaps transcend the standard JRPG “good vs. evil” plot, but unfortunately it never quite lives up to it’s early promise. They never manage to truly sell the idea that Lloyd may have actually gone bad, and ultimately that thread is dropped fairly early on in the game. DotNW also suffers from a problem the first game had, that being they basically tried to stretch a 20-hour storyline over a 30-to-40 hour game. The result is there are far too many twists, turns and distractions interrupting the flow, resulting in somewhat muddled storytelling. The main character Emil is rather flawed as well as the writers give him a split personality, with one half being somewhat timid and weak and the other being harsh and aggressive (they’re opposites, clever huh?) Problem is, in order to contrast to two sides Emil’s “normal” personality is far too wussy (the guy’s whiny even by JRPG standards, which is saying something). I suspect Marta on the other hand will be the new character Symphonia fans really embrace, if only because she’s written to be every nerd’s wet dream (she’s a cute, inexperienced girl who for no particularly good reason desperately wants to get in the emo lead character’s pants).

Surprisingly if there’s one aspect of this game’s writing that definitely one-ups the original Symphonia it’s the little optional support-conversations that pop up from fairly frequently. It really seems as though the writers got bored and just had their way with these things, because this time around they’re actually pretty funny and at times just downright strange (plus they’re actually voice acted this time around). They were skippable last time, but worth checking out in the sequel.

Modes Rating: Good

2) Graphics

Namco Bandai certainly believes in recycling, as a majority of the environments in the game are reused from the first Symphonia (a trick they pulled with Baten Kaitos Origins for the Gamecube as well). The original game wasn’t exactly a visual masterpiece even by 2004 standards, and these backgrounds have not improved with age. Thankfully the character and enemy models have received a significant boost. The bland cell-shading and super-deformed style of the original, which seemed out of place to me in a game filled with death and sexual innuendo, has given way to more detailed, more realistically proportioned characters (basically the characters now match the artwork on the box and in the anime cut scenes). Namco also thankfully made use of motion capture for this title, replacing the repetitive, robotic animation of the first game (in fact characters in this game often move better than those in the much higher budget Tales of Vesperia for the 360).

Graphics Rating: Good

3) Sound

Tales games have traditionally lacked the truly memorable scores and rousing anthems of other RPGs, instead going for a more laidback approach musically. The music in DotNW doesn’t deviate from this tradition (in fact Namco goes green yet again, recycling much of the first game’s music). The game’s score is pleasant enough and sets the right mood, but you probably won’t be left humming it after you turn off your Wii.

Based on my perusal of a couple Symphonia fan forums, it seems there’s a fair amount of controversy about DotNW’s voice acting. Basically in order to save a bit of money, Namco Bandai decided to go with non-union voice actors for this game, meaning most of the original cast had to be replaced. While a lot of the ‘Phonia fanboys are mortally offended by this, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I actually prefer the new voice actors (for the most part). They’ve certainly upped the volume of voice acting, with probably almost twice as much voice work as the previous game (aside from talking to random scrubs in town, basically every conversation is now voiced).

Sound Rating: Very Good

4) Control and Gameplay

If you’ve never played a “Tales” game before, they stick pretty close to the standard JRPG template. You visit cities, chat to folks, discover what your next mission is then hack through a dungeon, solving puzzles and killing monsters until you find the MacGuffin you were looking for, then it’s off to a new town to repeat the process. The Tales series unique claim to fame is it’s battle system, which basically combines RPG and brawler elements. DotNW’s specific variation on this system is called, no-joke, the “Flex Range Element Enhanced Linear Motion Battle System”. To put it in non-ridiculous terms, you can have four characters enter battle at once with you only directly controlling one of them. You can set the other 3 characters to follow various general orders (focus on attacking, healing, defending and so on), your flesh-and-blood friends can pick up a Wiimote and control them, or you can simply switch which character you’re directly controlling if you don’t trust your buddies or the computer AI to do the right thing.

New to the DotNW battle system is a greater range of motion, allowing you to attack enemies from all sides, the ability to change the battlefield’s elemental alignment (which will make attacks of the same elemental alignment more powerful) and most significantly, you can now capture monsters and use them in your party just like in a certain very popular Nintendo RPG series Namco swears they’re not ripping off. The reality though is that most of this depth doesn’t need to be mastered and most battles come down to simply slashing the crap out of enemies with Emil or Lloyd while occasionally casting healing or offensive spells with you magic wielding characters. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, DotNW’s battles are certainly less tedious than a lot of turn-based RPGs, but the depth is missed after a while.

Dungeons are well designed, with a smattering of Zelda-esque puzzles keeping things interesting and there are enough sidequests and mingames hidden in towns that they feel worthy of exploration. Control-wise everything works just fine. The motion controls in battle get a bit tiresome after a while, but you aren’t required to use them.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Good

5) Replayability

This is a good mid-length RPG with a main quest that took me around 35-hours to complete. There’s plenty to keep you busy after that point as well (side quests, optional dungeons, collecting all the monsters, multiple endings, ogling Sheena’s boobs). Much like the original, those who really get into it could sink well over 50-hours into the game.

Replayability Rating: Incredible

6) Balance

This game’s difficulty curve is the reverse of what you’d expect it to be, with the first 3rd of the game probably being the most difficult due to your underpowered party having to rely largely on captured monsters for support. That said, the game never really becomes overly difficult (or easy for that matter). It maintains a pretty consistent level of mild challenge throughout, with the early game being only marginally more difficult than the rest.

Balance Rating: Enjoyable

7) Originality

The game’s only major addition is to blatantly rip-off the most popular RPG series of all time. DotNW does not exactly get a gold star for originality.

Originality Rating: Poor

8) Addictiveness

DotNW generally did a good job of keeping my attention, although at times the game’s insistence on weighing you down with twists, fetch quests and distractions instead of just getting on with the damn story wore on my patience.

Addictiveness Rating: Enjoyable

9) Appeal Factor

Namco Bandai seem to be putting a lot less effort into promoting this game than they did with the first one, and most mainstream reviews have not been kind. This is a game for the fans first and foremost and they’ll gobble it up, but it’s very unlikely it will have the legs of the original Symphonia.

Appeal Factor Rating: Above Average

10) Miscellaneous

Namco were kind of enough to add a few things to the game as it made it’s way to North America. In addition to a greater range of motion controls, American gamers can pop a Gamecube memory card with a Symphonia save on it into their Wii and get some bonus items for DotNW. Small additions, but apprecitated nonetheless.

Miscellaneous Rating: Above Average

The Scores
Story/Modes: Good
Graphics: Good
Sound: Very Good
Control and Gameplay: Good
Replayability: Incredible
Balance: Enjoyable
Originality: Poor
Addictiveness: Enjoyable
Appeal Factor: Above Average
Miscellaneous: Above Average
Final Score: Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a good game, but it’s also a disappointing one. Namco could have built on the success and fan following of the first game, created a true A-level sequel and built this into a real franchise. Instead they took the shortsighted approach, producing a quick, low-budget sequel designed to appeal largely to fans only. Now if you are one of those fans then don’t hesitate to buy this game, the same solid foundation is there and you’re bound to get a big kick out of seeing all your favorite characters back again (which is an opportunity fans of most other JRPG series never get). For people who didn’t play or like the first Symphonia, I know it’s been a long haul waiting for Wii RPG worth buying, but there are actually a number of promising under-the-radar Wii RPGs coming stateside in 2009 such as Little King’s Story, Rune Factory Frontier and Fragile, so you may want to be a bit more cautious about picking this one up.
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Animal Genius, Animal Paradise, Animal Paradise 2, Animalz Marine Zoo, Catz, Championship Pony, Dogz, Dogz: Happy House, Dolphin Island, GoPets, GoPets: Vacation Island, Tigerz, Hamsterz Life, Puppy Luv, Puppy Luv: Spa and Resort, Horsez, Horse Life, Imagine: Animal Doctor, Littlest Pet Shop: Garden, Littlest Pet Shop: Jungle, Littlest Pet Shop: Winter, Love Cat Life, My Best Friends: Cats and Dogs, My Animal Centre in Australia, My Horse and Me, My Pet Dolphin, My Pet Hotel 2, My Riding Stables, Pawly Pets: My Pet Hotel, Pawly Pets: My Vet Practice, Paws & Claws Pet Resort, Paws & Claws Pet Vet, Paws and Claws Pet Vet 2, Paws and Claws: Dogs & Cats Best Friend, Pet Adoption Center, Pet Pals: Animal Doctor, Pet Shop, Petz Bunnyz, Petz Dogz Fashion, Petz Rescue Endangered Paradise, Petz Rescue Ocean Patrols, Petz Rescue Wildlife Vet, Petz Wild Animals: Dolphinz, Petz Wild Animals: Tigerz, Petz: Catz 2, Petz: Dogz 2, Petz: Hamsterz 2, Petz: Hamsterz Life 2, Petz: Horsez 2, Pocket Pets, Pony Friends, Pony Friends: Mini Breeds Edition, Pony LUV, Puppy Luv: Spa & Resort, Puppy Palace, Purr Pals, Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals

…and I’m sure I missed a few dozen. Anyways, into this fray steps Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer. Could it possibly measure up to other DS pet sim gems like Petz Dogz Fashion and Pony LUV? LET’S FIND OUT!!!

1) Modes

You only get the one main mode in which you’re tasked with solving the behavioral problems of a series of different dogs. There are a fair number of different activities involved in this (walking, rollerblading, playing, feeding and more) but if you’re hoping for a mode where you can just interact with the dogs freely you’re not going to find it here.

Modes Rating: Decent

2) Graphics

Surprisingly this game is pretty darn good looking. The dogs themselves aren’t as aw-gawrsh cute as the ones in Nintendogs, but the backgrounds are actually significantly better. The puppies in Nintendogs seemed to exist in an eerie ghost world with the draw distance only extending a few feet around the puppy and walks consisted of a slideshow-like series of sterile backgrounds. Dog Whisperer’s backgrounds on the other hand are far more detailed and walks feature some of the best 3D visuals I’ve seen on the DS (at least on a technical level). Plus this Latin charmer is always flashing his pearly whites at you from the top screen…

He’ll whisper to your dog, then to your pants.

Graphics Rating: Great

3) Sound

The music is simple, upbeat stuff and there’s plenty of realistic sounding barking and yipping, but the highlight is that the game actually contains a surprising amount of voice work, with Cesar Millan himself almost constantly piping up to give advice, encouragement or spout off random slogans.

Sound Rating: Decent

4) Control and Gameplay

Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer may not be exactly what you were expecting. It isn’t just another game providing virtual animal petting for little girls and people living joyless lives, it’s actually an educational tool of sorts that tries, and largely succeeds, in creating a game based on proper dog training techniques.

The game presents you with 40 “cases” in which a dog is exhibiting some sort of objectionable behavior that you have to correct. Once you diagnose the problem you have to go through 3 steps to fix it. First is exercise in which you either walk or rollerblade with the dog, next you address the problem itself (obsession, fixation, separation anxiety or fears) and finally you finish by either feeding or playing with the dog. In every one of the steps you have to keep an eye on the dog’s “calm” and “submissive” meters, with your goal being to reduce the dog to a calm-submissive state of mind. You do this through a series of mini-games, but these games aren’t merely random screen tapping, they actually mirror real-life training exercises. For instance the mini-game that deals with obsession has you approach the dog gradually (approach too fast and the dog will run off with the object it’s obsessing over) then once you get close enough you have to correct the dog whenever it turns to obsess over the item and give it affection when it pays attention to you instead of the object. The mini-game is set up in such a way as it could actually help a person dealing with a misbehaving canine in real life.

The controls are almost entirely touch screen based, and work just fine. My one complaint is that the mic isn’t used much. I choose to take the title of this game entirely literally and if this game gets a sequel I demand you be able to actually whisper to the dogs through the mic.

Psst, hey…stop eating your own poop.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Good

5) Replayability

Okay, so far this review has been pretty positive, but unfortunately this is where this dog breaks its leash, takes a dump on the floor and humps the neighbor’s Chihuahua. There are basically 8 different activities this game lets you engage in (walking, rollerblading, dealing with obsession, fixation, separation anxiety or fears, feeding, catch, fetch and hide and seek) and once you’ve done all these things there’s nothing new to see. Every case just requires a different combination of these 8 activities with no real variation or increase in difficulty. After 30 minutes you’ll have seen all this game has to offer and by the hour mark you’ll be stone bored.

Replayability Rating: Awful

6) Balance

This game never really gets any harder; once you know how to properly play a training mini-game you can essentially perform it perfectly every time. Later cases simply require a greater number of steps to complete making them merely tedious rather than challenging.

Balance Rating: Bad

7) Originality

While on the surface this may seem to be yet another creatively bankrupt Nintendogs cash-in (and let’s be real, to a certain extent it is) I do have to give Ubisoft some credit for trying to do something a bit different. By taking a more educational rather than shallow “look at the cute fuzzy thing!” approach they have set themselves above most of the pet sims stinking up the DS section of your local game store.

Originality Rating: Above Average

8) Addictiveness

I probably spent longer reading this game’s manual than I did being entertained by the game itself.

Addictiveness Rating: Awful

9) Appeal Factor

Just look at the game’s cover image again. Combine the dashing picture of Cesar (complete with angelic glow emanating from behind him) and not one, not two, but 3 cute doggies and you’ve got a game that’s sure to sell half-a-million copies at least.

Appeal Factor Rating: Above Average

10) Miscellaneous

In addition to the mini-games being based on real training exercises the game also contains the “Cesarpedia”. No, it doesn’t teach you how to combine vodka with Clamato juice; it’s a neat little collection of Cesar Millan’s dog training wisdom. It doesn’t really add much to the gameplay, but it’s a nice touch.

Miscellaneous Rating: Decent

The Scores
Story/Modes: Decent
Graphics: Great
Sound: Decent
Control and Gameplay: Good
Replayability: Awful
Balance: Bad
Originality: Above Average
Addictiveness: Awful
Appeal Factor: Above Average
Miscellaneous: Decent
Final Score: Mediocre Game

Short Attention Span Summary
Despite the low score, I can’t really say I disliked Dog Whisperer. In fact I would even recommend it as a rental to someone who’s having trouble with their dog as I think it could be genuinely useful in its training. It’s just not much of a game, and certainly nowhere near full-featured or deep enough to be worth 30 bucks.
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So obviously I was very happy when I learned that Telltale (A company largely made up of former LucasArts employees) had managed to get their hands back on Steve Purcell’s Sam and Max license and would be producing a new series of games staring the loquacious dog and rabbity-thing duo. I must admit, being a stodgy old technophobe (I dictate my reviews to one of several buxom personal assistants) I didn’t really keep up with the series as it came out in episodic form. Now that they’ve been collected and released in comforting old-fashioned boxed form for the Wii I’ve been able to tackle all 6 episodes. Was my youthful LucasArts fandom rekindled, or was Sam and Max: Season One just another of life’s little disappointments? Read on!

1) Story

While Sam and Max isn’t the first series to try its hand at episodic gaming, it’s the first to really embrace the format. This isn’t just a longer story chunked up into smaller pieces, it’s actually structured like a TV show with 6 episodes that tell self-contained stories, yet at the same time are tied together through reoccurring characters and a season-long story arc. It’s a format that TV writers have milked successfully for decades and it’s about time someone tried it out in videogame form.

Of course nobody wants to hear me babble about story structure. This is a Sam and Max game; you want to know if it’s funny. Well, they answer is yeah, usually (Particularly by the video game industry’s slack standards). The humor does get a bit overwrought at times, with Sam and Max launching into their witty repartee anytime you click on any insignificant item. Really guys, we don’t need 30 seconds of snappy one-liners every time Sam examines a trashcan or discarded donut box. That said, there are some real dialogue gems to be found and at it’s best Sam and Max: Season One resembles one of those slightly unhinged and subtly subversive kids cartoons that were surprisingly common in the early 90s (think “The Tick”, “Ren and Stimpy” or heck, Sam and Max’s own Saturday morning cartoon).

Modes Rating: Great

2) Graphics

Unfortunately Sam and Max have suffered a bit of a visual downgrade in their move from PC to Wii. The environments remain detailed, with most of those precious polygons intact, and the characters are still well designed and animated, but unfortunately textures have not fared as well. Now I realize the Wii isn’t a high-def machine and thus a decrease in quality was to be expected, but whoever was in charge of porting the game got a bit overzealous, as at times you can spot downright N64-ish looking textures lurking in some backgrounds. The Wii may not be a powerhouse, but anyone who’s played Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3 knows it’s capable of better texture-work than what you get here.

In addition to sometimes blurry textures, the frequent brief freezes that crop up when the game is loading dialogue that were an issue with the PC version have made the move over, and as an exclusive for Wii owners you also get some new slowdown as well (particularly during the driving sequences). So no, the game hasn’t made the smoothest of transitions visually, but it still has a nice cartoony aesthetic and as long as the camera isn’t zoomed in too far it still looks like a fairly close approximation of the PC game. It doesn’t look bad, it just could have looked better.

Graphics Rating: Decent

3) Sound

Sam and Max: Season One features a nice jazzy soundtrack and probably more spoken dialogue than any other game on the Wii (hell, maybe more than any game published on the Nintendo console ever). The voice acting is generally quite good; nobody will win any Oscars here, but it’s at the level of a well-done Saturday morning cartoon. Despite the general high quality though, I do have to say this…whoever does the voices for the Soda Poppers needs to be shot. Granted, these characters are supposed to be annoying (at least I hope they are), but whoever did their voices takes things into nails-on-a-chalkboard intolerable territory. Skip the Popper’s dialogue though and it’s all gravy.

Sound Rating: Great

4) Control and Gameplay

I must say I was quite surprised by just how much this resembled a classic LucasArts title as, a few extra polygons aside, this felt like something that could have been pulled from a time-capsule marked “1998” along with a stack of Chumbawamba CDs and Bill Clinton cigar jokes. This is both a good and bad thing (although the good definitely outweighs the bad).

The former LucasArts guys’ ability to create endearing characters and lively memorable worlds has endured fully intact. The puzzles are well designed as well, with solutions that are amusingly off-kilter but at the same time still follow a certain twisted logic. Thankfully there’s also some effort to move beyond simple “insert dongle A into slot B” style puzzle solving, with each episode presenting you with at least one challenge that’s more involved. For instance, Episode One has you manipulating your own dreams and Episode Two has you taking part in a number of wacky TV show parodies.

Oh the flip side, the game is at times frustratingly vague about what you’re supposed to do, and the developers are not shy about making you repeat certain snippets of gameplay ad nauseam until you get them right (I let out more than a few disgruntled sighs trying to figure the exact sequence of actions needed to get through the “Midtown Cowboys” segment in Episode 2). There are also the already mentioned frequent brief freezes when dialogue is loading and Sam’s movement around the environment tends to be somewhat slow and awkward.

Finally on a good note, while the graphics didn’t fare so well in the transition, the folks porting the game nailed the controls. The pointer works great as a stand-in for the mouse and clicking around the environments is just as comfortable as it was on the PC.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Great

5) Replayability

While each episode is only around three hours long, when you add them together you find yourself with a game that’s close to 20 hours, which is fairly impressive considering games that only last around five hours are common to the genre. The developers didn’t add any extra incentives to encourage extra playthroughs, but the fact that you can choose to play any episode in any order you want makes it a lot easier and less burdensome to replay your favorite parts of the game than it would be if you had to go through the whole 20-hour story again. By adventure game standards the Sam and Max is a good value.

Replayability Rating: Great

6) Balance

I didn’t find myself stuck and/or frustrated by this game nearly as often as with a lot of other adventure games. Some would say it’s because the game’s easy, and maybe it is a bit on the easy side, but it never felt dumb or insultingly simplistic. While a few particularly hardened adventure fanatics may scoff at the level of difficulty, for most gamers Sam and Max: Season One strikes a good balance between accessibility and challenge.

Balance Rating: Very Good

7) Originality

While the game’s point-and-click adventure mechanics are very by the book, that’s not to say no creativity has gone into this game. The story is twisted and imaginative and the developers put a number of smart twists on the standard adventure gameplay.

Originality Rating: Decent

8) Addictiveness

When it comes to adventure games I tend to find them really addictive when I’m successfully solving the puzzles and the game’s making me feel like a big man, but when I get stuck I get cranky and cast them aside. Yes, childish I know. Thankfully the good job the developers did of balancing the game kept things addictive.

Addictiveness Rating: Very Good

9) Appeal Factor

It’s a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by small companies; this title is not destined for blockbuster sales. That said, Sam and Max themselves are appealing characters and more recognizable than you might think (hell, my mom recognizes who Max is). There was also a pretty strong online push to get this on the Wii, but then Internet hype usually doesn’t translate into people actually getting off their asses and following through in real life (just ask the makers of Snakes on a Plane or look at the polls that say youth voting may actually be down this election).

Appeal Factor Rating: Decent

10) Miscellaneous

You get a few minor extras on the disc, like concept art. Also there’s a puzzle in the game that revolves around properly crafting “Yo’ Momma” jokes. If that doesn’t help sell you on the game then frankly I don’t know what to say to you.

Miscellaneous Rating: Great

The Scores
Story/Modes: Great
Graphics: Decent
Sound: Great
Control and Gameplay: Great
Replayability: Great
Balance: Very Good
Originality: Decent
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Decent
Miscellaneous: Great
Final Score: Very Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary

Sam and Max: Season One was a nostalgic blast from the past for me as thankfully time has not dulled the ability of the former LucasArts employees at Telltale to create funny, memorable and engaging adventure games. Unfortunately, they haven’t really grown much either, with a number of old faults still persisting, but I’m willing to cut Telltale some slack; the adventure genre has been in such a sorry state for the last decade that a return to 1998, warts and all, still comes off as refreshing and impressive. Hopefully Telltale will push the envelope more with future projects, but for right now I’m quite happy with what we’ve got.

As for the specifics of the Wii version, long story short, control good, graphics, not so much. If you’re looking to get Season One in disc-form the PC version is probably best, but considering it’s somewhat difficult to find, the Wii version is a perfectly acceptable 2nd option.
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Could this be Lucard’s subtle way of criticizing my spelling abilities? Well I’m offended sir, I’ll have you know I’m a master of uh, you know, words and stuff. I’m very eloquint, er elloquaint…hmmm, no that’s not right either. Margot, save me!

Aw shucks Margot, what would I do without you? Onward to the magical mind-expanding adventures!

1) Modes

The ambitious developers of Word Brain saw fit to include a whopping 6 unique minigames in the title, most of which are boring, generic versions of well known word games. You get boring, generic Boggle, Scrabble, Word Search and more. No crosswords though, as those would take a small amount of effort to put together.

Modes Rating: Bad

2) Graphics

Lots of lettered tiles, and that’s about it. The page I’m typing on in Microsoft Word is about as visually stimulating. If I were to turn that cursed paperclip helper on it would probably be a slightly more exciting visual feast than Word Brain.

Graphics Rating: Bad

3) Sound

Here we have the highlight of the game (which says something since I’m still giving the section a “poor” rating). There’s not much music to speak of, and the voice actress they used for Margot sounds kind of nasally and annoying, but the developers made up for it somewhat by hiring the most unjustifiably enthusiastic folks ever to sing for you.

When you start up the game you’ll be greeted with…

“Maaarrrgot’s Wooord Brain…YEAH!”

When you select a mode to play it’s the same.

“Wooooord Search…YEAH!”

These people get excited about anything, even your failures.

“Gaaame over…YEAH!”

With a game like this you have grasp at any shred of entertainment you can find, and giggling at the game’s constant, desperately overzealous YEAHs is about as fun as Margot’s Word Brain ever gets.

Sound Rating: Poor

4) Control and Gameplay

Margot’s Word Brain is played entirely with the Wiimote, mostly in a point and click fashion. Sounds good, except your cursor moves at a frustratingly slow pace and there are occasional glitches when it comes to selecting letters. On top of that, there a handful of oversights that smack of rushed development. For instance, the fact that once you select something in this game there’s no way to back out. Did you accidentally choose “Word Mine” instead of “Word Search” from the main menu? Too bad, you’re stuck, because there’s no way to get back to the main menu until you’ve finished playing through a round of Word Mine.

Now, Let’s go through the dazzling myriad of minigames Word Brain offers the player.

Word Link: Basically Boggle without the only thing that makes Boggle much fun; that of course being shaking the letter cubes around then slamming them on the table.

Word Mine: This is the jumble from the kiddie fun page in your local paper. Since it’s randomized much of the time there are no actual words to be found in the letters you’re given.

Hyper Txt: A minigame designed to teach kids how to properly text message. Yes, seriously. Apparently it’s important to train kids early in the fine art of being a dou—

Whoops, sorry Margot. I’ll behave myself.

Word Run: This is Scrabble, except played on a tiny field, with no double or triple word scores and a very limited dictionary of words available to you. In other words, it achieves the nigh impossible and makes Scrabble more boring.

Word Safe: This is the same as Word Link, except now the letters are in a circle.

Word Search: For some reason they didn’t give this one a non-descriptive Margot-ized name. It’s a basic word search except you’re only looking for 3 words on a tiny field.

Word Brain: Well now, this minigame must at least be exciting; I mean, they named the whole game after it! Well no actually, Word Brain is just the 6 other games played one after another in a mundane marathon.

My final bone of contention is with the dictionary the game uses. Even I didn’t know the definitions of about a third of the words used in the game, and I’m a 26-year-old professional writer. This game is supposed to be for elementary school kids; if I’ve never heard of a lot of the words used in this game, what hope does a six-year-old have? I might be able to somewhat forgive this game’s failure as entertainment if it was teaching kids how to spell words they may actually use, but with this ridiculous dictionary it’s not even doing that.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Poor

5) Replayability

It only took me around 20 minutes to play through all of Word Brain’s modes, and yet there was still a devil on my shoulder telling me to only play through half of them and just review it based on that (Don’t worry though, being a man of class and integrity I subjected myself to all of them). I say without any exaggeration that I’d rather just sit in a chair and stare at a blank TV screen for 20 minutes than have to play this game on it.

Replayability Rating: Worthless

6) Balance

Completely broken. Some games are far harder than others, and in general they’re all too difficult for young children. Also every game uses totally randomized letters, meaning your scores rarely have anything to do with your spelling ability, but rather the fact that the computer decided to give you nothing but E’s in Word Mine.

Worst of all, the game’s dreadful balance may actually make your kids feel bad. After playing through the “Word Brain” section, the game will give you a Brain Age-like rating represented by a light bulb. I tried it a couple times, and never got better than a “40-Watts” rating. Again, this is from an adult who gets paid money to write things. I imagine most kids will get a flickering barely illuminated bulb and a “5-Watts” rating every time they play, and nothing makes a kid less eager to learn than informing them over and over again that they’re a dullard.

Balance Rating: Dreadful

7) Originality

Margot’s Word Brain is nothing more than a bunch of standard word games made even more generic than they already were. When playing a game like this have to wonder about the developers behind it; how do people so unambitious and unimaginative get into a creative field like game design in the first place? I imagine there was a lot of drinking going on amongst the team that squeezed out this turd.

Originality Rating: Dreadful

8) Addictiveness

I felt the irresistible urge to shut this game off and never touch it again about 5 seconds after seeing the title screen. This game is the essence of apathy in a DVD-case.

Addictiveness Rating: Worthless

9) Appeal Factor

As terrible as this game is, it will still sell to doddering grandparents looking for something for little Billy for Christmas, and to those no fun over-protective hippie parents that only let their kids play educational games and have everything but PBS blocked on the TV.

Also the picture of Margot on the front of the box looks like Supernanny, except younger and even more sexy (sadly Word Brain disappoints yet again as Margot looks nothing like Supernanny in the game itself. Teases).

Appeal Factor Rating: Bad

10) Miscellaneous

God, what else is there to say? I think I’ve pretty thoroughly established by this point that Margot’s Word Brain is garbage. I do have a question though; when did it become accepted that it was okay for children’s entertainment to all be brainless sludge? Back when I was a lad all games were made to be acceptable for children, and I was raised on awesome stuff like Mario, Zelda, Maniac Mansion and Punch-out, which resulted in me still being a hardened fan 20 years later! They also made decent cartoons and movies for kids back then too; these days though all kids have are Teletubbies and Word Brains. Just because kids are young doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Oh and one other thing; why is this game rated E10+? Does Margot suffer a wardrobe malfunction or get struck with a bout of tourette’s somewhere in the game? If so I may have to reconsider my opinion of Word Brain.

Miscellaneous Rating: Worthless

The Scores
Story/Modes: Bad
Graphics: Bad
Sound: Poor
Control and Gameplay: Poor
Replayability: Worthless
Balance: Dreadful
Originality: Dreadful
Addictiveness: Worthless
Appeal Factor: Bad
Miscellaneous: Worthless
Final Score: Very Bad Game

Short Attention Span Summary

An incredibly lazy effort that falls flat on it’s face as both entertainment or any sort of half-decent educational tool, and I urge all parents not to inflict it on their poor innocent children. Put simply as possible, Margot’s Word Brain is a huge, festering pile of sh—

Aw, c’mon Margot. You know as well as I do you had it coming.

Reeeeeview oooover…YEAH!
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Which is why this game is so baffling. It appears to be an old school as it gets 2D platformer, the kind of thing you never see these days outside of downloadable remakes of NES games, but of course that can’t be seeing as Nintendo is out of the game making business. My theory is this must all be a dream, so this review might be cut short once the naked supermodels show up.

1) Story

The most surprising thing about Wario Land’s story is that it actually, you know, exists. Nintendo platformers and narrative are generally like oil and water. This one actually has a semi-involved plot involving worlds contained within magical globes, sexy double-crossing pirates and big bottomless sacks. Even more unexpected the story is told partly through well-animated cutscenes done by Production I.G., the studio behind well known anime series such as Ghost in the Shell and Evangelion. You’re unlikely to be moved to tears by Wario’s latest snot-picking storyline, but it’s definitely better than average for this type of game.

Story/Modes Rating: Decent

2) Graphics

This is one gorgeous game. “But wait, “ you demand “how could this be? Where the polygons? Where’s the all important 3rd D?”

Wario Land is completely old school in style and technique; the backgrounds and characters are all hand drawn and the overall aesthetic is pure 16-bit, but Good-Feel has used the greater technical abilities of the Wii to deliver something that looks better than any 16-bit game could. The painted backgrounds and beautiful, rich and varied, but Wario and the enemies are the real standouts. All the characters were hand drawn by Production I.G. and their movement is amazingly fluid, rivaling most recent hand drawn Disney movies in terms quality of animation and personality. The Wario of Wario Land: Shake It! is a gelatinous ball of greedy flab; watching him bounce, slam, wriggle and jiggle through the world is hugely entertaining in and of itself.

The only criticism I could level at the game’s visuals is that there is apparently no true widescreen mode included. Personally I didn’t care since I was playing it on a standard def TV, but you fancy pants hi-def TV owners will have to put up with borders on the sides of the screen. But hey, it’s not the frame that matters it’s the picture inside.

Graphics Rating: Amazing

3) Sound

Shake it serves up a good old school catchy soundtrack that will leave you humming. It may sound a bit simple and archaic at first, but that could be said about a lot of aspects of this game. The tracks get better as the game progresses and by the end you’ll be charmed. There’s not really any spoken dialogue outside of Wario’s typical “wah-hahs!” and so on, but that’s okay; Wario’s acting abilities peaked with “I’ma Wario, I’ma gonna win!” on Mario Kart 64 anyways.

Sound Rating: Great

4) Control and Gameplay

Traditional is again the name of the game here. Wario Land keeps it straightforward, no complex RPG elements or overly trying puzzle solving to get in the way here. You simply jump, dash and bash your way through the stage collecting coins and solving simple flip-the-switch style puzzles as you search for a little bugger named Merfle. Once you find him and free him from his cage the game throws a little twist at you as you then have to the escape the stage within a time limit. When escaping the stage Wario is powered up, allowing him to lay waste to anything in his path and it’s a lot of fun to rampage through the stage you just painstakingly platformed through. It’s also important to collect coins as they can be used to purchase new maps or more health for Wario, so exploration is encouraged.

The “Shake It!” in the title obviously alludes to the Wii’s motion controls, which are implemented in an understated, yet sensible way. The game is played with the Wiimote on its side NES style and a small handful of motions are used throughout the game in different situations. Shaking it up and down is used to shake the crap out of enemies and any other number of objects in the game, and tilting it back and forth racing game style allows you to set your trajectory when you throw something, control precarious mine carts and pilot a submarine. The makers of the game wisely don’t try and come up with different motions for every minor ability; they instead found motions that worked and came up with different applications for them.

Wario Land doesn’t bring a huge number of new ideas to the table, but what’s here is polished to a glossy shine. It reminds me of New Super Mario Bros. in that way, but I would say this game actually has more personality.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Incredible

5) Replayability

It only took me around 7 hours to “beat” the game. Not that impressive, that’s only the beginning. There are numerous hidden stages in the game, with over a 3rd of the stages not being required to get to the final boss. The game also has Xbox-esque achievements, with a list of sometimes quite challenging tasks for every stage in the game. People looking to finish everything this game has to offer will probably be playing in the 15 – 20, rather than 7-hour range.

Replayability Rating: Above Average

6) Balance

Like all recent Nintendo platformers the challenge in Wario Land: Shake It! is multi-tiered. Simply getting to and beating the final boss is something nearly anyone can accomplish without much trouble. Finding and unlocking all the secret stages is for more dedicated players, although casual players could still do it with perseverance. Collecting all the treasure and polishing off all the achievements is a challenge only for the hardcore though. There’s a level of challenge in here for everyone.

Balance Rating: Incredible

7) Originality

It’s funny; in a way Wario Land: Shake It! is so old school it’s almost new again. There are a lot of people out there who have never actually played a game like this on a home console. Most of Gamefan’s curmudgeonly old readers may find it a little overly familiar though.

Originality Rating: Below Average

8) Addictiveness

This game is quite addictive considering it’s genre. I can usually only play platformers for so long; the frustration and level of concentration needed tends to burn me out after about an hour. Not this game; I had to force myself to put it down because I didn’t want to finish it too quickly (nothing worse the premature completion).

Addictiveness Rating: Great

9) Appeal Factor

Well, it’s got the Nintendo name on the box and it stars a popular character from the Mario universe. On the other hand based on the comments I’ve seen around the Interwebs people seem to be a little weirded out by the old school presentation, as well as by the arguably somewhat high 50-dollar price tag. That said, I think the game will sell as well as a purely 2D home console game can in the year 2008 (the fact that Nintendo’s online ad for the game has been a major viral success won’t hurt either).

Appeal Factor Rating: Above Average

10) Miscellaneous

It’s nice to see the videogame industry starting to realize there’s still some value in the genres they threw under the bus with the move to 2D to 3D. I don’t think that every game should be stuck in the past, but it’s clear there’s till some life in these genres, particularly with newer hardware powering them.

Miscellaneous Rating: Incredible

The Scores
Story/Modes: Decent
Graphics: Amazing
Sound: Great
Control and Gameplay: Incredible
Replayability: Above Average
Balance: Incredible
Originality: Below Average
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Above Average
Miscellaneous: Incredible
Final Score: Very Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary

It doesn’t break much new ground, but Wario Land: Shake It! is a highly polished adventure bursting with charm (and fart jokes). As much as some corners of the Internet like to complain about Nintendo abandoning the core gamer, if this game ends up flopping I’d have to say it’s the other way around. This sweet slice of traditional gaming is one I’d recommend to anyone, core and casual alike.
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Thankfully in recent years with to the rise of casual gaming and all three consoles trying to push smaller downloadable games, people are finally starting to come to terms with the fact that it’s still okay to play games with only two Ds in them. Many genres largely shunned for the past couple generations like shumps and 2D fighters are making a comeback, but no old-school genre can match the resurgence of the puzzle-platformer. N+, Braid, Crush, PixelJunk Eden; the list of slick new puzzle-platformers being showered with praise by reviewers and players alike goes on and on. Hell, somebody even went and finally made puzzle platforming work in 3D with Portal, a title the gaming community collectively declared better than sex (although admittedly a lot of them were guessing). Lost amongst this explosion of stylish new puzzle-platformers we have Toki Tori, quietly released on Nintendo’s WiiWare service a couple of months ago. This game does not dress itself up in stylish visuals or emo-laden storylines; it’s pure old-school puzzle platforming that would have been right at home during the 16-bit golden age of the genre, but does a throwback like this still stand-up against it’s flashier contemporaries? Let’s find out…

1) Story/Modes

Story-wise you’re a chicken named Toki Tori who’s out to collect eggs and that’s about all there is to that. What, you need more? Chicken, eggs; is there something about this you don’t understand? If it makes you feel better you can imagine the eggs are metaphors for uhhh, let’s say existential emotional justification…or something.

Anyways, as far as modes go, you only get the one main adventure mode, but there are some options to be found therein. A 2nd player can pick up a controller, draw on the screen and generally help you out in a simple version of multiplayer similar to what was in Mario Galaxy. It’s not really a full-fledged multiplayer mode but it’s a good way to make bored girlfriends feel like they’re involved. Unlike many WiiWare games Toki Tori also features a decent array of control options (Wiimote only, Wiimote and nunchuck and classic controller schemes are all available). While not overflowing with modes, Toki Tori certainly feels like a full-featured game.

Modes Rating: Decent

2) Graphics

This game would look right at home as a late Super Nintendo game. When I say that I don’t just mean in the sense that it’s 2D or dated technologically (which it is) but that even it’s art style is pure 16-bit with the bold visuals of an N+ or PixelJunk title nowhere in sight. The only place the game breaks out of it’s “is this an SNES game?” box is with Toki Tori himself and the enemies which are done up with them fancy polygon things, and thus animate a lot more smoothly than any sprite. The game’s old-school visuals aren’t necessarily a terrible thing though as the 16-bit era was the real heyday of puzzle-platformers and so for old-timers like me the visuals should feel like a nice fit.

Graphics Rating: Decent

3) Sound

Now here’s somewhere I was really surprised. The music in this game is great, passing the “am I still humming the tunes after I turn off the game?” test with flying colors. I was actually sad when I completed the 2nd world because I liked its music so damn much. Aside from the music the sound effects are fine and while there’s no voice acting, that’s not a big deal as you can use the power of your mind to imagine Toki Tori sounding like anybody. Personally I went with Wilford Brimley.

Sound Rating: Great

4) Control and Gameplay

Toki Tori doesn’t really have an easy to promote high concept or hook, as the game instead sticks close to tried and true designs. You control Toki Tori who can run, crawl up small ledges and climb ladders, but is unable to jump or fly (despite his birdish nature). What he can do is use a number of tools such as bridges, blocks, bubbles and various guns that affect enemies in different ways. The game is essentially Lode Runner meets Lemmings with the challenge derived from a) plotting the correct path through the platform and ladder filled stages and b) properly managing your limited supply of tools. So no, the game isn’t overly unique, but if you’re going to copy you may as well copy the best.

The stages are smartly designed and even though you’ll have to repeat most of the later stages many, many times the game rarely becomes frustrating. With each retry you almost always feel as if you’re making progress and when you finally complete the stage it can be very satisfying. Wisely most of the stages are designed so that if you know what you’re doing you can play through them in under a minute; in other words when you mess up and have to restart you’re usually never losing more than a minute or so of playtime, which is a big part of why the game rarely frustrates.

The game also serves up a nice variety of control choices. Your first option is the somewhat gimmicky Wiimote-only scheme in which you lead Toki Tori using the pointer. Point anywhere, click and the chicken will find his way there (you can also cycle through your inventory of tools by flicking the Wiimote left and right). If you aren’t a big fan of this style of control (I wasn’t) you can also plug in the nunchuck and move using the analog stick, in fact you’re pretty much free to create your own hybrid control scheme. Plugging in the nunchuck doesn’t deactivate the pointer or motion functionality, so for instance you can still use the pointer to move Toki Tori most of the time and only use the control stick when more precise movement is required (which is how I did things). Finally if you hate the Wiimote and nunchuck for some reason (begging the question why you own a Wii at all) you can also play using the classic controller.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Great

5) Replayability

Playing through all 40 regular stages took this reviewer nearly 10 hours, which would alone make Toki Tori one of WiiWare’s deepest titles, but there are also an additional 29 “Hard” stages unlocked as you play through the game (yes, the total number of stages does in fact add up to 69). Some of these Hard stages really live up to their name and those who want to complete all of them could easily find their total playtime stretching to 15 or 20 hours. The only WiiWare title that might boast more depth than this one is Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King and that game costs at least 5 dollars more than Toki Tori (and possibly a lot more than that if you pony up for the extra content). Toki Tori is the best value on WiiWare to date and one of the best for the Wii period.

Replayability Rating: Classic

6) Balance

Puzzle-platformers are a difficult genre to balance as what stages a person will find particularly challenging is subjective and dependant on their own unique thought patterns; a puzzle that stumps you, your friend will breeze right through. That said, Toki Tori does the best job it possibly can. Any time you get a new tool its function is clearly explained and you’re even given a mini-stage illustrating its use to play through. This is not a game that artificially inflates challenge by being vague about what your abilities are.

The challenge ramps up at a nice steady pace without any abnormally difficult or easy puzzles interrupting the flow. The 40 regular stages can get quite tricky, but they all should be beatable by pretty much anyone with persistence. The 29 hard stages on the other hand may be more than some folks can handle, but that’s okay as they’re entirely optional and can be played in any order you want.

The game even includes an ingenious little wildcard system. If you find yourself stuck, you can use your wildcard to skip the puzzle. You only get one wildcard, but you can get it back to use on another stage if you succesfully complete the stage you originally used it on. It may not sound like much, but it’s a great frustration safety valve and in most cases if you take a break from a puzzle for a while and tackle it fresh later it will go down much easier, so reclaiming your wildcard usually isn’t a problem. All in all the developers do a great job of making a traditionally frustrating genre as painless as possible without sacrificing challenge.

Balance Rating: Amazing

7) Originality

As I said before the game is basically Lode Runner meets Lemmings, so it’s not on the bleeding edge of ingenuity. Within this framework though the developers cook up plenty of clever puzzles and uses for the various tools, so it’s not as if the game is totally uninventive.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8) Addictiveness

This is definitely one of those “okay, one more try” kind of games and it’s very easy for one more try on a tough stage to turn into 20 more tries and suddenly an hour of your life has disappeared. Then when you actually beat the stage you of course have to at least check out the new stage you unlocked and suddenly you’re sucked into the whole cycle again.

Addictiveness Rating: Great

9) Appeal Factor

On the “con” side Toki Tori, as mentioned before, doesn’t really have a high concept hook, nor is it part of a recognizable franchise. On the “pro” side, it’s got a cute mascot, it’s part of a genre that’s going through a resurgence and well, have you seen some of the stuff on WiiWare? If the general game buying public doesn’t find this more appealing than Major League Eating and Pong Toss there’s something seriously wrong.

Appeal Factor Rating: Above Average

10) Miscellaneous

This game was a nice throwback to the halcyon days of my youth when I used to sit around playing Lost Vikings and Lemmings until my leg muscles atrophied, and while I don’t expect the game to strike this personal chord with everyone, even those that consider the original Playstation old-school gaming should be able to appreciate the rock solid design on display here. My one minor miscellaneous gripe is that the game does gobble a lot of that precious Wii internal memory (nearly 300 blocks). Considering the fact that there are prettier WiiWare games that consume less I can’t help but think Two Tribes could have optimized things a bit more.

Miscellaneous Rating: Great

The Scores
Story/Modes: Decent
Graphics: Decent
Sound: Great
Control and Gameplay: Great
Replayability: Classic
Balance: Amazing
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Above Average
Miscellaneous: Great
Final Score: Very Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary

Toki Tori delivers big when it comes to providing old-school craftsmanship, value for your dollar and sun-glasses wearing chickens. Yes it’s lacking in the originality department and its story is no great shakes, but at least you don’t have to worry about Jonathan Blow getting pissed off at you for not interpreting it properly. Without a doubt worth 10 bucks, this and LostWinds are thus far the 2 WiiWare must-haves in my humble opinion.

The Political Machine lets you play out any number of scenarios; simulate the big Obama/McCain showdown, swap Hilary in if you’re a bitter Clinton supporter or if you’re a 15-year old message board poster who doesn’t know the first thing about practical politics you can try to lead Ron Paul to the Oval Office. Now personally being a cynical misanthrope who breaks out in an itchy rash when in close proximity to hope I decided to create my own character…

…Dr. Magnus Wolfblood, supervillian extraordinaire, crusher of hope, destroyer of dreams and notorious double-parker. Will I succeed in my diabolical quest to derail the Obama hope express, and more importantly considering this is a video game review, will I have any fun doing it?

1) Modes

The Political Machine provides a fairly deep field of gameplay candidates. You can cast your vote for Quick Play, which lets you to customize and play a single game. You can pick your candidate, your opponent and one of several scenarios (including real-world ones like the Election of 2008 and the Race of 1860 or fantasy scenarios like The Emperor of Drengi which challenges you to become the democratically elected leader of a race of treacherous reptilian aliens). The scenario selection is a bit thin, with the ones based on actual historical events being more compelling than the purely imaginary ones, but Stardock promises that you’ll be able to download new scenarios between now and the November election, so hopefully we get a few more scenarios based on historically significant Presidential races.

Next on the ballot is Campaign mode. This disappoints somewhat as I would have liked my candidate to have to climb through the levels of government, having him become Mayor, Governor, President then defending incumbent President, but instead you simply play through a series of unrelated Presidential elections. You start off against pushovers like Jimmy Carter and Ulysses Grant and eventually face legends like Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson (all the opponents you beat will be unlocked for use in Quick Play later). Campaign is fun enough, but it’s something you pretty much could have created yourself in Quick Play.

Finally there’s the not to be forgotten Multiplayer, which worked quite well, or at least it did on the rare occasion I could find a match (clearly my reputation as a master political strategist proceeds me and the lobby emptied in fear when I arrived). Unfortunately there’s no option to simply take turns playing on the same computer with a flesh-and-blood friend, so you can’t put that insufferable first year poli-sci major in their place unless they also buy the game, drive home and get online.

So there’s a decent array of stuff to do, although that “aw, I wish I could do _______” feeling crops up fairly often. If this was a full-priced game I would be less than impressed, but for a 20-dollar budget title The Political Machine provides enough to satisfy.

Modes Rating: Above Average

2) Graphics

About 90% of your time with this game will be spent staring at a map of America done up in a pretty blue-and-red colour scheme. It’s not particularly exciting but the map is clean and functional (although it can get a little cluttered towards the end of a game). The game does have an animated intro and occasionally while playing you’ll get to take a break from studying the map to take part in an interview, which adds a little visual excitement (very little). The visuals in this title get the job done, but that’s about it.

Graphics Rating: Mediocre

3) Sound

As you might expect the game contains typical pomp and circumstance filled Presidential themes, but they also mix in some more upbeat tunes as well. I actually caught myself humming some of them after I finished playing and really that’s the only test a game’s music has to pass with me. Unfortunately there’s no voice acting in the title, which seems like a missed opportunity. I’m sure they could have found a bad George W. Bush impersonator in their price range at the very least.

Sound Rating: Enjoyable

4) Control and Gameplay

Despite the goofy bobble-headed presentation The Political Machine has some real depth to it. Your goal is to jet set around the map, winning voters over on a state-by-state basis. Winning a state depends on your awareness level and your position on the issues that matter to the people of that state.

Every state you visit will have issues the voters there are most concerned about and your candidate’s position on those issues is pretty much set at the beginning of the game. In other words you can’t give a speech in New York saying you’re pro-gun control then fly down to Arkansas and hand out free sawed-off shotguns from the back of a flatbed truck. What you can do though is raise the importance of key issues. For instance let’s say you’re a Republican trying to achieve the impossible and win New York state; now your views on the environment, abortion and the Iraq war aren’t likely make them fall in love with you, but your position on the economy and gas prices are compatible with the voters there. Your job is to make sure those two issues become the number 1 and 2 issues in that state and that abortion, the environment and Iraq get buried. The other piece of the puzzle is voter awareness as your position on the issues won’t matter if none of the voters know who you are and thus don’t turn out to vote come November. Raising voter awareness and boosting the issues you’re strong on can be achieved in several ways.

First off, in most even moderately important states you’ll want to build yourself a headquarters, which come in 3 varieties. A standard Election Headquarters raises voter awareness, brings in a bit of extra cash and allows you to campaign on larger variety of issues in that state; an Election Headquarters is crucial in closely contested swing states. You can also build a Consultants Office; these buildings generate “Political Capitol”, which can be used to hire campaign workers (called “Operatives” in the game). Operatives like Speech Writers, and Fashion Consultants will give a boost to your candidate’s stats, while others like the Smear Merchant or Fixer can be moved and placed in states where they’re most needed. Operatives are often the deciding factor when it comes to tilting a closely contested state to your side, so it’s important to have at least a couple Consultants Offices set up. Finally you can build an Outreach Center, which generates PR Clout that you can use to win the endorsement of special interest groups.

Once you have your shiny new headquarters built, it’s time to start making speeches and burying the voters in a tidal wave of advertising. Both speeches and ads essentially work the same way, with issues gaining in importance the more speechifying and advertising you do in regards to them. The only real difference between the two is that a speech is a one-off event, giving an issue a significant boost in importance while an advertising campaign will slowly raise the importance of an issue over a number of turns even if you’re not in the state. You can also give speeches or run ad campaigns attacking or misrepresenting your opponent’s position, giving you the choice of playing either the mud raking scumbag or high-road walking saint. Of course everything you do costs money, so you’ll have to stop to raise funds from time to time with the amount of money you rake in varying depending on your candidate’s fundraising skills, the wealth of the state you’re in and your awareness level there.

There’s even more to this game (I haven’t even touched on how you can recruit activists or take part in TV interviews) but I don’t want to descend into manual mode and recite every minor feature and mechanic. Suffice to say, for a 20-dollar game The Political Machine is surprisingly complex and perhaps more importantly it feels credible. The issues are up to date, the game’s clearly been developed by folks who know their politics and the mysterious formulas and algorithms that determine the winner usually produce results that feel very true to life (in some cases they’re eerily similar to that of recent elections). The game doesn’t quite stack up to the giants of the turn-based strategy genre, but it’s closer than you might expect.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Great

5) Replayability

Playing through Campaign mode as both a Democrat and a Republican should take you a solid 12 – 15 hours, and Quick play is infinitely replayable. That said, the somewhat limited scope of The Political Machine means it doesn’t have the longevity of some other strategy titles. You’ll get more out of this game than most budget games, but by the time November 4th rolls around there’s a good chance this game will have thoroughly worn out it’s welcome.

Replayability Rating: Good

6) Balance

Okay, this section is a bit tricky. The Political Machine is not particularly well balanced, but there within lies much of the game’s appeal. There’s no playing fair in the real world of politics, and this game presents the system in all its unjust wonky glory. This may frustrate some, but political junkies wouldn’t have it any other way.

Balance Rating: Enjoyable

7) Originality

I’m surprised there aren’t more games that deal directly with politics. Every time a developer creates a game that revolves around something that’s part of our every day lives like cooking, worrying about how fat we’re getting or petting our dogs it sells a boatload of copies, and yet the vast majority of games stick to the run-of-the-mill commando alien ninjas dismembering mutant zombies from hell stuff. There’s few things more obsessed over these days than the upcoming election, yet Stardock seems to be the only company to have made a serious attempt at a game based on the situation, so good on them. The actual gameplay lifts fairly heavily from other turn-based strategy games, but the premise is unique and welcome.

Originality Rating: Good

8) Addictiveness

I know a PC strategy game is good when it’s trance over me is finally broken by the sound of birds outside singing as the sun rises after an entire night of me sitting half-comatose in front of my monitor. While The Political Machine doesn’t quite pass the sunrise test, it got close. Most of the time you can finish a game in only an hour to an hour-and-a-half, so the draw to play “just one more game” is strong, particularly when you didn’t become president because of a single state you only lost by 2-points (god damn you Florida).

Addictiveness Rating: Great

9) Appeal Factor

The game is based on events everybody’s talking about and lighthearted presentation, well written manual and helpful tutorials mean pretty much anyone should be able to get into this game. Well, if they actually hear about it and can find it that is; this game’s profile is pretty low and a lot of people just don’t buy games until they’ve seen 10 thousand TV commercials for them.

Appeal Factor Rating: Above Average

10) Miscellaneous

There’s no way this game’s hardware requirements should be as high as they are. Now my computer is admittedly no graphics-processing beast, but it can run nice looking older games like Civilization IV and F.E.A.R. and yet I had to turn off special effects in The Political Machine to get it to run smoothly, which is ridiculous; this game should be able to run on a Pentium III.

That said I can’t criticize the game too harshly, as it provides for great moments like this…

…what’s this you’re looking at you ask? Why, it’s a map of the election results following Dr. Magnus Wolfblood’s triumphant and inspiring victory over that Barack Whathisname guy! “Wait,” you say “but Obama won way more states and it says at the top that his support is 50% to your 44%!”

Yup, and he also beat me by nearly 12 million in the popular vote and yet I still stole the election with 273 electoral votes to his 265. Don’t you just love the Electoral College? I have a right mind to print off that map and tape it to my bedroom ceiling.

Miscellaneous Rating: Mediocre

The Scores
Story/Modes: Above Average
Graphics: Mediocre
Sound: Enjoyable
Control and Gameplay: Great
Replayability: Good
Balance: Enjoyable
Originality: Good
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Above Average
Miscellaneous: Mediocre

Final Score: Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary

I was pleasantly surprised by this game, which is, despite appearances, is a very solidly crafted little strategy game. It’s no Civ or Galactic Civilizations, but for 20 bucks The Political Machine 2008 is a game I can easily recommend to both political junkies and strategy fans alike, but you don’t have to take my word for it…

President Wolfblood commands you to buy The Political Machine 2008! Also, kneeling…lots of kneeling. But once you’re done that, buy this game!
http://media.insidepulse.com/zones/diehardgamefan/uploads/2008/07/pmts.jpg

The one major exception to my general dislike of the genre is Taito’s Bust-a-Move series (I refuse to call it Puzzle Bobble like they do in Japan due to my raging xenophobia). Bust-a-Move and Magnetica seem to have a lot in common, so when the WiiWare version of Mitchell’s series was released this past Monday I decided to give it a shot. Even though it’s lacking in the adorable cartoon dinosaur department, does Magnetica Twist manage to stand up as a quality colored object matchin’ puzzle game? That’s a puzzle we’re about to answer.

1) Modes

Magnetica Twist serves up a decent assortment of gameplay choices, the first being Challenge, which is your standard puzzle game marathon mode where you keep playing as the game gradually gets faster/tougher until you die or, hopefully, get to level 100. Quest is considerably more interesting as you can choose a path and are then presented with a variety of different scenarios to clear. Quest even spices things up with bonus rounds that tweak the gameplay and have you doing things like shooting down rockets or trying to sink your marbles into holes (typing that made me feel dirty). Quest even features bosses, which try to kill you with onslaughts of now-deadly marbles.

Finally there’s multiplayer which comes in both Co-op and Competitive forms, both of which can be played in a few different ways. Sadly though there is no online multiplayer, which is a shame because these kind of quick, simple games are exactly what Nintendo’s online service is best suited for. For 10 dollars Magnetica Twist offers up a solid collection of stuff to do, but compared to most puzzle games these days it’s a bit anemic.

Modes Rating: Decent

2) Graphics

This title’s visuals are as bland as dry toasted Wonder Bread. I’d almost go as far as to say the DS version of Magnetica features more exciting graphics as that game at least had a consistent hi-tech/futuristic themed visual style. This version has no style whatsoever; you’ve got your marbles, your canon, a scintillating usually grey or brown background and that’s all she wrote. Most of the time your Mii is the most visually exciting thing on screen and well, that’s kind of sad.

Graphics Rating: Poor

3) Sound

Most of Nintendo’s casual offerings feature a similar style of music (take a listen to the Wii Sports menu music to get an idea of what I’m talking about) and this game is no different. The music in Magnetica Twist is cheery, inoffensive and generally sets the right mood even if it is completely generic.

Sound Rating: Decent

4) Control and Gameplay

If you’ve never played a Magnetica game before (or for that matter the near identical rip-offs of Mitchell’s series, Zuma and Luxor) here’s the basic rundown; much like the Bust-a-Move games you have a fixed pointer/cannon which you rotate and fire colored balls with (they’re referred to as marbles in Magnetica) and if you manage to match up 3 of the same colour they disappear. Unlike Bust-a-Move though where your pointer is at the bottom of the screen and a mass of balls descends from above, Magnetica’s cannon is usually located somewhere in the middle of the screen with the marbles proceeding along various twisted paths toward a goal. The “Magnetica” name is drawn from the fact that marbles of the same colour are magnetically drawn to each other. For instance let’s say you had a sequence of 2 red marbles, followed by 2 green, then 2 more red; if you were to eliminate the green marbles in the middle the red ones would pull together. This is where most of the strategy in the game lies as you can use their magnetic nature to draw marbles away from the end point and create combos.

That’s about all there is to it. Magnetica is very easy to hop into, which explains why essentially the same design has become popular amongst online casual gamers, but it doesn’t have a lot of depth. To compare the two again, Bust-a-Move’s design allows for much more complex patterns, more specatcular combos and requires a greater degree of skill to hit the tricky bank shots off the side of the bin; by comparison Magnetica can be quickly mastered but you’ll likely grow tired of it more quickly as well. That said the design is still fairly fun in short bursts, or at least it would be if the game actually featured halfway decent control, which surely it must have. It would be almost impossible to mess up the control in a game where the only thing you do is rotate in a circle and shoot marbles, right? Wrong, the miracle workers at the Mitchell Corporation have taken a game with about the simplest mechanics imaginable and still managed to break the controls.

Magnetica Twist features a completely needless motion-based control scheme. The Wiimote is good at a few things; flailing it around to swing a sword or punch your friends in the face in Wii Sports’ Boxing? That ability probably accounted for 10 million Wii sales alone. Using the pointer for more accurate headshots? That’s something all good sadists can get behind. Hell, even holding it on it’s side for racing games can add to a game if it’s done properly. Unfortunately far too many Wii games replace standard button-pushing with arbitrary motion controls that don’t correspond to what’s happening onscreen and usually result in a reduction of accuracy. Magnetica Twist is a prime example of the latter.

In order to rotate your cannon you have to hold the Wiimote out straight as if you were using it as a TV remote and twist it from side to side. This is probably my least favorite of the standard Wiimote motions developers continually use as holding your arm up and twisting your wrist is not a natural thing to do for any length of time. Frankly I got tired of doing this sort of thing after about 10 minutes playing the manta-ray surfing stages in Super Mario Galaxy, and at least the control during those sections actually worked. Not only is controlling Magnetica Twist uncomfortable but it’s frustratingly unresponsive. If you twist the at Wiimote at a deliberate even speed everything works fine, but if you twist too fast you run the risk of your motions not being picked up, or worse I sometimes had my cannon turn in the exact opposite direction of which I was twisting. Basically the control craps out exactly when you need it to be most responsive; if you have everything in hand the control is manageble, but if things start getting frantic and you need to make some quick moves to save your ass you can usually count on the controls screwing you.

The icing on the cake? This is the only control scheme available. That’s right, no D-pad for you punk, you’ll play using the broken motions controls or not at all (I suggest the latter).

Even with the lousy controls there is still some entertainment to be wrung from Magnetica Twist, particularly from its multiplayer mode. Since both you and your opponent are dealing with the same control issues you’re essentially on an equal cow dung coated playing field (and hey, for once protesting your loss because your “controller wasn’t working” will be a legitimate excuse).

Control and Gameplay Rating: Poor

5) Replayability

Between it’s 3 difficulty levels Quest mode offers 60 levels, which took me around 4 to 5 hours to complete (and I’m not particularly great at these type of games). Once you’re done with Quest you’re pretty much stuck trying to endure Challenge mode or going for high scores to extend the game’s value, although by that time Magnetica’s somewhat shallow mechanics may have worn out their welcome.

How long this game will last for you will largely hinge on how much you get out of it’s multiplayer, which is actually pretty fun when being played competitively. Although are people going to be putting down Mario Kart or Smash Bros. to sink considerable amounts of time into Magnetica Twist? I somehow doubt it. That said even if all you do is play through Quest then never touch the game again, you’ll still be getting a decent value for 10 bucks.

Replayability Rating: Above Average

6) Balance

Both Quest and Challenge mode offer 3 difficulty levels to choose from, each of which ramps up in challenge at nice rate. The level of difficulty can be a bit inconsistent at times when playing Quest, but for the most part this is a well-balanced game.

Balance Rating: Good

7) Originality

Mitchell has been making Magnetica games for around a decade now (originally the series was known as Puzz Loop or Ballistic depending on which side of the Pacific you lived on) and the design hasn’t changed a hell of a lot in those 10 years. Add copycats Zuma and Luxor to the mix and there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already played a game or two very much like this one. Oh, and just in case I haven’t harped on this comparison enough, let’s not forget that Magnetica borrowed many of it’s mechanics from the Bust-a-Move games (a series that isn’t exactly smelling springtime fresh these days either). This game is about as lacking in uniqueness as a puzzle game can be without being the 746th version of Tetris.

Originality Rating: Bad

8) Addictiveness

I went through three phases when playing this game.

Phase 1 – “Argh, what the hell is wrong with this control? Turn! Turn! No, not that way!”

Phase 2 – “Well okay, finally got the controls somewhat mastered. Hey this is kind of fun I guess.”

Phase 3 – “Okay, no it’s not. My forearm hurts. How much longer do I have to play this before I can review it?”

So yeah, I didn’t find this game particularly entrancing. Maybe some people will, as there are certainly a lot of Zuma players out there, although I imagine most of those people would prefer to play a version of this game with controls that work.

Addictiveness Rating: Mediocre

9) Appeal Factor

This game doesn’t exactly dazzle (or razzle for the matter) with exciting presentation, nor does it feature any recognizable mascots to hook players. Ironically the very companies that Mitchell’s suing for ripping off them are going to help generate sales for Magnetica Twist, as I’m sure a good chunk of people buying this game will do it because it looks like Zuma (not knowing where PopCap got their idea in the first place). The fact that Nintendo’s publishing it will also help as a certain segment of the gaming population would buy a box full of malaria bacteria as long as it had the Nintendo logo on it.

Appeal Factor Rating: Decent

10) Miscellaneous

Nintendo’s approach to it’s own WiiWare service has thus far been really disappointing. While 3rd parties like Frontier Developments or High Voltage are making really good stuff for WiiWare like LostWinds and Gyrostarr, Nintendo is publishing stuff like Magnetica Twist and Pokemon Ranch. Nintendo wouldn’t attach their name to retail games this mediocre, but when it comes to WiiWare the message seems to be loud and clear, “don’t bother putting in any effort guys, it’s just WiiWare. We sure aren’t”.

Miscellaneous Rating: Poor

The Scores
Story/Modes: Decent
Graphics: Poor
Sound: Decent
Control and Gameplay: Poor
Replayability: Above Average
Balance: Good
Originality: Bad
Addictiveness: Mediocre
Appeal Factor: Decent
Miscellaneous: Poor

Final Score: Mediocre Game

Short Attention Span Summary

The Magnetica design is on the shallow side to begin with and when you add wonky motion control to the mix you find yourself with a game that falls far short of the best in the colored object matchin’ puzzle genre. Coming from Nintendo this is very disappointing as this is one of the most mediocre products I’ve ever seen them attach their name to as a publisher, and if Mitchell is pissed off about other companies stealing their concept I’m not sure what they’re trying to accomplish by releasing games like this that are considerably worse than the imitations. Don’t support this kind of laziness; keep your Wii points for some of the great 3rd party WiiWare offerings.
http://media.insidepulse.com/zones/diehardgamefan/uploads/2008/07/large.jpg

Give us a bit of an idea of how the LostWinds project was born and evolved. Was it a concept that had been in germination for a long time and was simply fit into the WiiWare framework, or did it all come together rather quickly?

David Braben: The story of how LostWinds came about is a little unusual: at Frontier we have long encouraged debate and discussion on games design / ideas, and have an internal forum dedicated to sharing ideas and opinions under the name of “Game of the Week”. The scope ranges from one-line game ideas like ‘we should do a game about monkeys with detachable limbs’ to fully-fledged design documents. This causes a great deal of debate, criticism and argument, with many improvements, problems being raised and solved – we have likened the process to dangling a leg of lamb into a piranha-filled stream: the water boils for a while, but then whatever is left must be pretty tough.

The idea for LostWinds dates from the time that the Wii was first announced, when we were brainstorming design ideas that made good use of the Wii controls – it is one of many strong ideas we have built up over time, and it gathered a number of very enthusiastic internal advocates.

The actual original idea for the game came from when Steve Burgess was watching the trees and leaves from the window on a windy day. He remembers thinking about how many ways the wind shapes and manipulates different things within the world, and if only there was some way to become the wind in a game. He then applied this train of thought to the Wii controller.

As time has gone by, we felt more certain that LostWinds would satisfy a pent up demand from Wii owners for something innovative that delivers deep, involving, Wii-specific gameplay in a beautiful skin. The game gathered a number of very enthusiastic champions internally who worked on the concept, setting art direction, generating gameplay ideas, and inventing the mythos surrounding the gameworld.

Timing is often everything. Out of the blue, in late 2007, Nintendo invited us to a mysterious meeting in London: as it turned out, to explain their plans for WiiWare. We were delighted that their ideals for WiiWare were almost exactly fulfilled by LostWinds; allowing developers like us to create something innovative specifically for the Wii and, most importantly, its controller. We went well prepared, and took a copy of the LostWinds concept document to the meeting. Since some people were available after finishing “Thrillville Off the Rails” with LucasArts, we decided to go for it, as the chance to be a launch title for WiiWare was too good to pass up. So we said “sounds great, and this is what we’d like to do”. That was it!

What attracted Frontier Developments to the notion of doing a downloadable game, and what about WiiWare interested you specifically (as opposed to say, Xbox Live Arcade)?

DB: Download channels like WiiWare, PSN or XBLA seem to be a very interesting outlet for our creativity and commercially we think online distribution will become significant for games generally, as it has for music and is becoming for video. The opportunity to be a WiiWare launch title for the service was very attractive to us and we would certainly be very interested in doing games for the other download services, but that would be with games equally as appropriate for the console and its audience as we think LostWinds is for the Wii.

Significantly, the scope of LostWinds was such that we had the ability to deliver it entirely by ourselves. We see LostWinds as an early trailblazer of a possible future for us and it is therefore important to us that it isn’t a retail title. We don’t view the distribution mechanism as defining the effort we put into or quality that we deliver in any game and in LostWinds Frontier has delivered the highest quality Wii–specific game we can. We view the longer-term significance of LostWinds as revolving around the fact that we’ve done that all by ourselves.

Nintendo’s Wind Waker seems to be somewhat of an inspiration to LostWinds. What else served as inspiration to the development team?

DB: We have also seen some people comparing LostWinds to titles such as Ico, Metroid, Okami and so on, which is very flattering because these are great games, but the whole idea came from thinking about how to best use the Wii’s controller; the whole point of the game is to allow the player to use the Wii control system in a coherent, intuitive, satisfying way within the environment of a cool game with no compromises.

Within that mandate, we tried to follow our own path and be true to the game-world of Mistralis and its values – for example on the art direction; we started with the idea that the culture of Mistralis would be very wind based. It came very naturally to us to take inspiration from indigenous cultures that lived in high, windy environments, and we immediately started thinking of a mix of Tibetan culture, and cultures in the Andes. So there was a blending and merging of some of the naturalistic aesthetics that they have, together with our own take on how we felt the world of LostWinds should look.

I definitely noticed a strong Asian/Japanese aesthetic in LostWinds, despite you guys being based in England.

DB: The Eurogamer review of LostWinds described it, as “a disarming British love letter to Japanese game development” which I felt was quite apt.

Most of the stuff on WiiWare is relatively simplistic. Was the idea of doing a full action-adventure game for WiiWare intimidating when even Nintendo itself wasn’t attempting anything so ambitious? Was there any difficulty in fitting it all into a mere 43 MB?

DB: Perhaps this is quite revealing about Frontier, but we didn’t even consider such issues! We didn’t know what other people were up to anyway in the early days of development, we just tried to do the best implementation we could of the LostWinds game idea.

When developing a game, you always have to be aware of one limit or other, whether its system memory, processing power, disc space, streaming speed, and so on. Elite, which was my first game co-developed with Ian Bell, ran on a computer called the BBC Micro and fit a whole galaxy (or at least the illusion of one) into 32 kilobytes of memory – smaller than most e-mails today! Whether it’s a BBC Micro system memory or a BluRay disc for PlayStation 3, there will always be a limit that it’s easy for game developers to blow if they are not careful. So we are careful.

A sequel to LostWinds has already been announced. Is it safe to say you’re taking an episodic approach to the series? If so, how many chapters do you plan to divide the story into and how long will us poor deprived gamers have to wait between each entry?

DB: The enthusiasm of the team who developed the LostWinds concept meant they created a very detailed, coherent world and back-story for the game. There is still a lot more gameplay and story to come out of Mistralis. But we’d like people to try LostWinds for what it is, and then hopefully when we are ready to talk about another game they will remember a positive experience and feel that they want to sample a new experience in the world.

Have you been pleased with the fan and reviewer reaction to the game so far? Have there been any responses to the game that surprised you or criticisms you felt were unfair?

DB: We are definitely very pleased and grateful for the great reaction we’ve had so far. The enthusiasm of the guys who developed the early concept, and the reaction from others in Frontier to it, gave us an indication that people like us (i.e. dedicated Wii gamers) might “get it” in the same way we did, but even so its very exciting!

With any game you eagerly await people’s ‘verdict’ on the game, and even more so with LostWinds – because it is the first game that has come from Frontier’s Game of the Week forums everyone at the company feels a strong attachment to it, like a parent. Its very rewarding to have so many people enjoying what we did.

I think we’re old and wise enough to accept and respect the fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion on any topic whether we agree with it or not, so once something goes public its fair game. We just keep any feelings of injustice from that one negative review festering away until the time is ripe to gain cold-blooded revenge…only joking ;-)

Will Toku and Enril ever sail their way into retail shelves? Once the LostWinds story is complete could all the chapters be combined and sold on a disc? Or if the WiiWare entries are successful, could we see a larger scale sequel done as a full disc-based title?

DB: As we said above, an important part of the raison d’etre for LostWinds is the fact that it’s available via digital distribution. But “never say never” – certainly it is a possibility for the future.

What’s the point of collecting all 24 of the Melodia Idols? If I told you I got them all would you give me some candy? I didn’t even use a guide! Surely that counts for something.

DB: There is a gravely important point to collecting those idols – your sense of self-worth. Well done! ;-)

Well now, it’s not often you get a pat on the back for finishing a game directly from the title’s producer! Maybe I’ll write Shigeru Miyamoto and see if I can’t get a well done for getting all 121 stars in Mario Galaxy. Anyways back on track; tell us what other exciting stuff Frontier is working on. Do you have plans for any other Wii games aside from LostWinds? What about for the Xbox 360, PS3 or PC?

DB: We’re working on several things, but the only one we can talk about is The Outsider, an action-thriller game for PS3, Xbox360 and PC that gives the player unprecedented control over how the game’s story unfolds based on what they do and how they do it in the game. We certainly do have plans to support the Wii in future; it’s a huge gaming platform!

Finally, no interview with David Braben would be complete without asking…when the heck are we getting Elite 4?

DB: Thank you for that unique question! ;-) We’re not ready to talk about it (yet), sorry!

Well, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and keep the great games coming guys!

DB: It’s an absolute pleasure – thanks for your kind words and the opportunity to talk to your readers, we appreciate it.
http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/files/2008/05/lostwinds1.jpg

1) Story

LostWinds presents a very Zelda-esque storyline (the fact this game borrows a lot from the Zelda series, specifically Wind Waker, will be a bit of a theme in this review). You know the drill, silent unassuming child is sent off by a wise old coot to collect the means to defeat some evil entity sealed away ages ago (someday folks in RPGs and action-adventures should realize sealing away evil forces only makes them madder) and he’s helped in his quest by a chatty fairy, imp, talking boat or in this case, wind spirit. So yeah, it’s familiar, but it’s well told with nicely executed picture-book style art in some cutscenes and an economy of words. This is a game that knows when to get the story out of the way and just let you play.

Story Rating: Enjoyable

2) Graphics

This is one heck of a purdy game. When I first loaded up LostWinds I had my eagle eye on the lookout for clues to how such a good-looking game could be done on WiiWare. Surely the videos and screenshots hadn’t told the whole story. Blurry textures and lack of polygons must be more obvious on a full-sized TV I thought, or maybe outside of a few pretty areas most of the game takes place in Snowstorm Land with your character running around against a plain white background. Turns out I was wrong to doubt, as this game looks great from beginning to end with no obvious technical shortcomings.

The game’s art style is clearly inspired by Wind Waker and in my opinion actually one-ups Nintendo’s big-budget game. Wind Waker certainly had its amazing visual moments, but often the style was overdone and much of the environment (like the big blue sheet ocean) was rather bland. LostWinds by comparison is more subtle in it’s style and it’s world’s are lush, warm and detailed. Oh, and the main character is as adorable as a sack full of kittens and babies.

Graphics Rating: Great

3) Sound

The music in this game has a very soothing Japanese vibe to it, which is kind of odd since the game was developed in England, but whatever, it perfectly suits the game. The sound effects are also right on, with every little thing you can use your wind powers on having it’s own distinct rustle or noise. There’s no voice acting, but I didn’t expect lengthy voice-acted conversations in a 43 MB downloadable game anyways.

Sound Rating: Good

4) Control and Gameplay

LostWinds lifts its basic concept from Wind Waker (I told you’d it was a theme), but I’m going to risk fanboy rage here and say LostWinds actually does the concept right. Controlling the wind in Nintendo’s game was a somewhat clunky process, while it’s simple and intuitive in LostWinds.

You control main character Toku with the nunchuck and wind spirit Enril with the Wiimote. Toku can’t do much on his own, you can make him run around with the analog stick, he’ll climb up on small ledges automatically and he’ll pick up small items with a push of the Z-button, the rest of the actions rely on the Wiimote IR pointer. Enril is represented by a stylized icon onscreen, which you use to draw directional paths that control the wind. Hold down the A-button and swipe the icon over Toku or objects like boulders and you can blow them around, lifting and maneuvering them as you please. Later in the game you will gain the Slipstream ability which lets you to hold down B and draw more specific paths for the wind to follow (allowing you to direct fire around corners for instance) as well as the cyclone ability which let’s you supercharge boulders or other items and throw them through barriers.

It takes a few minutes to get used to the fact that basic actions like jumping require swiping at Toku with the IR pointer instead of simply pushing a button, but it quickly becomes second nature. The only control issue I ever had is that you toss around Toku and boulders or other items using the same method which sometimes causes you to toss a boulder when you only wanted to move Toku and vice-versa. That’s a very minor gripe though.

The unique game mechanics are used to great effect as nearly every inch of the game’s admittedly small world is packed with ledges to climb, areas to explore and puzzles to solve. The game uses the classic Metroid technique whereby you’ll be teased by areas you can’t quite access early in the game yet will revisit when you’ve gained new abilities. It’s satisfying exploring and opening up every nook, cranny and crevice in the game and the small size of the world arguably works in the title’s favor as you’ll rarely find yourself lost or frustrated for any length of time and backtracking never feels like a drag when you can get anywhere within a couple minutes.

The puzzles are well crafted and will get your synapses firing, but also don’t go overboard. Adding too many steps and complex requirements to the puzzles could have caused annoyance given the game’s unique controls (for instance, as already mentioned moving boulders around can be slightly annoying, but the game is smart enough not too force you to move them too far). LostWinds is ultimately a relaxing, yet engrossing light action-adventure experience.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Classic

5) Replayability

So yeah, as you may be picking up by this point in the review, I like this game a lot. I adore it like a racecar made of candy, which makes its brevity all the more painful. This game is short, real short…3 to 5 hours depending on your experience with the action-adventure genre (as a veteran of tons of ‘em it took me around 3 ½ hours). There’s also a little totem collecting side quest, but don’t expect that to add much more than an extra half-hour to the game.

Now if this was a full-price 49.99 retail game I’d really take the piss out of it for it’s paltry length, but while Frontier Developments hasn’t explicitly said so, they’re basically taking the episodic gaming approach to this series. They’ve already announced a LostWinds 2 and, not to give too much away, but even after beating the game you won’t have seen the whole story. So while as a retail game LostWinds would fall far short, as a 10-dollar episodic game it’s right in line with what others are doing. For instance Sam and Max, the most successful episodic gaming series right now, regularly turn in episodes even shorter than LostWinds. I won’t bullshit you, I definitely would have liked the game to be longer, but the low price and episodic nature of the game eases the pain.

Replayability Rating: Mediocre

6) Balance

This game is not particularly taxing. The enemies pose little threat and once I mastered slowing my fall by waving the cursor over my character most of the damage I took came from accidentally dropping boulders on my own head. You’ll pretty much always have 2 or 3 lives in stock so it’s not only possible but likely you’ll never find yourself in any sort of Game Over situation.

But this game isn’t meant to be a punishing test of thumb endurance; the challenge here is based on exploration and puzzle solving. This game will get you thinking, the challenge ramping up at a nice gentle rate, although admittedly it never becomes too baffling. The litmus test when it comes to balance in my opinion is whether the game ever becomes frustrating due to either excessive ease or difficulty. Even though LostWinds could be described as easy, it never felt frustrating or patronizing so I can’t knock it.

Balance Rating: Good

7) Originality

So while neither the setting, story or notion of an action-adventure game where you control the wind are terribly original, the actual way you go about controlling the wind is. LostWinds successfully concocts a new use of the Wiimote and really maximizes its unique mechanics with a succession of clever challenges. The game definitely feels fresh.

Originality Rating: Good

8) Addictiveness

A lot of people are going to beat this game in one sitting. I didn’t because, well, I’m insane and feel like I’m getting a better value the more days it takes me to beat a game (even if I’m just spreading the same number of hours over more days) but it was definitely difficult putting the controller down that first day. This game will charm you right from its first minutes and leave you a sweaty withdrawal afflicted mess when it comes to its too-soon conclusion.

Addictiveness Rating: Great

9) Appeal Factor

A lot of developers don’t know the difference between charming and cute. Cute is for little girls and your mom, charming is good for everyone, even living testosterone factories like me. This game has charm in spades. Kids will love it, but a guy in his 20s could feel comfortable playing it too without fear that his buddies will question his sexuality (at least not more than usual). If you can play this game and not be charmed then you’re a big stupidhead and I don’t want to be your friend, so there.

Now of course this game doesn’t have a big franchise name attached to it, it hasn’t received any advertising and it’s only available on WiiWare, which is something a large portion of Wii owners probably don’t even realize they have access to. This game has a lot going against it, but it’s picking up great word of mouth on the Internet and I think anyone who actually checks out a few videos of it will be intrigued, and if they actually get to play it they’ll be hooked. I predict LostWinds and it’s sequels will be one of the bigger successes for WiiWare and if you don’t agree you’re a big stupidhead and I don’t want to be your friend, so there.

Appeal Factor Rating: Good

10) Miscellaneous

Who knew that it wouldn’t be Nintendo itself that would show everyone how to do WiiWare right? While the Big N’s announced titles look rather uninspiring, Frontier Developments have proven that WiiWare can be used to deliver a unique, fun, charming full action-adventure experience. If other developers take a cue from LostWinds then the WiiWare could be something special.

Miscellaneous Rating: Classic

The Scores
Story/Modes: Enjoyable
Graphics: Great
Sound: Good
Control and Gameplay: Classic
Replayability: Below Average
Balance: Good
Originality: Good
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Good
Miscellaneous: Classic

Final Score: Very Good Game

Short Attention Span Summary

LostWinds is simply one of the best experiences I’ve had on the Wii, perhaps only bested in terms of pure fun and satisfaction by Mario Galaxy. Yes it’s short, but it also only costs a 5th as much as most games of its quality on the system, so it’s hard to complain. If you’ve got your Wii connected to the Internet and have the means to so I can’t recommend you download this little gem highly enough.
http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/files/2008/05/lostwinds1.jpg

Anyways, Diamonds in the Rough is the first game from new Greek developer Atropos Studios and is written/designed by the guy who single-handedly developed the cult favorite freeware adventure Other Worlds. So far a small handful of sites devoted to adventure games have bestowed largely glowing reviews upon this title, but is this merely a case of people being pleasantly surprised that a game made with very limited resources is actually decent or have Atropos Studios managed to produce a true top-level adventure game?

1) Story

Near the end of DitR (which I’ll refer to the game as from now on so as to limit finger strain) your main character takes a dose of yellow phosphorous leaving him with only a couple torturous hours to live. Re-checking the beginning of this paragraph to see if you missed a spoiler warning? There’s not one there because this is actually the first thing you learn when you start up the a new game, as right from the beginning DitR announces it’s intention to present a story that’s a little different. Maybe even a bit challenging.

The rest of the game takes place in flashback form as you take control of Jason Hart, a young man from a rough background who happens to have limited psychic abilities. If presented with a question with multiple answers, Jason has the ability to always choose the answer the person who asked the question wants him to choose. Jason is recruited by Diamonds in the Rough, an organization lead by a William Hungerton and relocated to a small, isolated compound/town whose residents all posses special abilities. All Jason has to do is take part in occasional tests of his powers and he’s provided with anything he could possibly want, except information about Diamonds in the Rough’s true purpose that is. That information quickly becomes Jason’s number one desire when he discovers a vaguely sinister message carved into an old desk by the man who lived in his house before him…

“We aren’t diamonds, we’re only pieces of coal.”

The set-up for DitR is quite unique, the little town is populated by an interesting cast characters and despite being written by someone for whom English isn’t a first language, and the dialogue is pretty sharp. It’s not perfect, most people from non-English speaking countries that try to write in English don’t realize that North Americans speak a formless mush of contractions, half pronounced, blended-together words and stupid phrases we picked up from rap videos, and as such the dialog in DitR sounds a bit inauthentic at times. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you.

Where DitR’s story succeeds best though is in creating a constant lingering sense of unease. There’s no intestine chomping zombies, no cackling villains or shambling genital shaped abominations and yet right from the beginning there’s a palatable sense there’s something not right about this seemingly idyllic town. Discovering the aforementioned “pieces of coal” message is a genuinely off-putting moment, and later in the game when you find a couple drops of blood on a bathroom floor you’ll feel like you’ve been punched in the gut. Games like Ninja Gaiden can spend countless hours and dollars developing the perfect blood-spurting neck wound and gamers simply shrug their shoulders then move onto the next hyper-violent action game, while DitR manages to create a truly disturbing moment with a couple red dots on a bathroom floor. Now that’s the power of a well-built story.

A lot of other reviews of this game mention a twist ending, leading me to question whether these reviewers actually know what “twist ending” means. Granted the ending of the game is definitely surprising, even a bit shocking, but it’s in a “wow, are they really going there with this story?” sense, not because of any twist. I wasn’t sure what I thought about the ending at first. Given the somewhat surreal feeling of most of the story I guess I was expecting the DitR organization’s sinister motivations to be more cosmic or supernatural in nature, when instead they’re rooted in our real and sometimes very ugly world. In retrospect though, I have to give the writer of DitR credit for tackling such challenging subject matter. You simply wouldn’t see anything like this in a mainstream game. In an interesting move the writer even includes a message you can read after you beat the game explaining his motivations, writing processes and research methods, which puts the ending in the proper context (and at the same time will scare the shit out of you with the information that some of the characters in the game were actually based on real people).

Bottomline Diamonds in the Rough’s storyline is one of the most intriguing I’ve experienced in years and is without a doubt the most worthwhile aspect of the game.

Story Rating: Classic

2) Graphics

Now I know I just wrote that this game creates a sense of unease mostly through it’s well crafted story rather than packing the game with hideous freaks, but I may have to take that back…

Argh, God! Kill it, kill it with fire! Yes, this game is filled with such abominations. Characters with strange, twisted, anatomically incorrect appendages that bend and flex in ways human limbs weren’t intended to. Dead soulless eyes stare out at you; their bodies remaining eerily stalk still as they talk, as if they’re waiting to strike. Brrrrrr.

Just in case I’m not making this clear enough, the DitR character models? Really, really, really ugly. Like, really. The environments are comparatively much better looking in that they’re merely static, bland and low-res as opposed to a borderline heath hazard.

Graphics Rating: Dreadful

3) Sound

Now unlike the visuals the audio in DitR is actually pretty good. The music is simple and often seems to be incongruous to the settings or situation, but that actually adds to the vaguely off-putting, surreal vibe of the game.

Surprisingly given this is a Greek game the English voice acting is also solidly done, or at least the male voices are. The female voices are largely lousy, the most noticeable poor performance being the girl doing your best friend Sydelle’s voice. She’s a major character who you hear from a lot and the performance is mostly stilted with the actress doing a poor job of concealing some sort of accent (it doesn’t sound Greek, but then I’m no linguist). This seems to be a common issue with video games actually. When it comes to the male voice actors they hire guys who can actually, you know, act, but when it comes to casting the female parts they just grab anyone with boobs who works in the office then plunk them in front of a microphone. Maybe it’s some sort of desperate game designer seduction technique.

“Hey sweetheart, why don’t you come over to my place? We can have a few drinks then if the mood strikes you maybe we can, well you know…record some lines for my indy adventure game. I’ll make you a star honey, a star!”

Ahem, what were we talking about again? Oh right. DitR music = very good, voice acting = average. Moving on.

Sound Rating: Good

4) Control and Gameplay

Diamonds in the Rough is a point-and-click adventure game, but even though you interact with everything simply by clicking on it this game is presented in a 3rd person perspective instead of 1st person style like Myst. This is kind of needless, as having Jason wandering around onscreen accomplishes nothing other than to slow down the gameplay and offend gamers’ eyes with his ugliness. A 1st person perspective would have allowed them to streamline things and hide their severe limitations where creating 3D models is concerned, but oh well.

If you’ve used a computer sometime within the last 15 years you should be able to get your head around controlling DitR just fine. You simply use the left mouse key to click on anything you want to interact with and the right mouse key to scroll through your pointer’s various functions (walk, examine, use, talk, use item/thought). The game requires you to constantly scroll through the functions and it starts to become rather annoying quickly, particularly since many of the functions could have been combined (there’s really no reason examine, use and talk had to be separate functions). This incessant scrolling through the functions is exacerbated by the fact that you can’t simply open up your inventory and click on an item to select it, you have to switch to the “use” function in order to grab it. This is completely needless.

The gameplay here will be pretty familiar to anyone who’s played an adventure game before. You wander around a smallish world, pump people for information and haul a backbreaking load of trinkets around that you’ll use and combine to solve puzzles in order to progress. It’s pretty standard stuff with the one major addition to the mix being the Thoughts Panel.

Occasionally while talking to someone, reading something or examining an item a light bulb will appear over your head and a new thought will be added to your Thoughts Panel. By selecting one of these it will become Jason’s current thought, but unfortunately the mechanic is not quite as interesting as you might hope. Your current thought has no effect on how you act or respond to people, you’ll reply to other characters in the same way regardless of if you’re thinking about the sinister doings of the Diamonds in the Rough organization or cupcakes. Instead the thoughts are simply used as a 2nd inventory. Once you select a thought it will be represented as a sticky note which you can show to people to trigger new conversations, apply to items or areas on screen to help solve puzzles or even combine with inventory items or other thoughts to create new thoughts. So there’s a fair amount of depth to it, but honestly the Thoughts Panel often just makes the game more complicated rather than more fun. As just one example, in most current adventure games if you have a new objective new conversation branches will simply automatically appear when you talk to people. Not here, instead you have to fish around in your Thoughts Panel for the right thought to show them in order to get some new information, which makes me think “pain in the ass” more than “innovative”.

This “make things needlessly complicated” approach is really applied to the majority of the game’s puzzles. This game doesn’t really serve up much in the way of satisfyingly clever mind teasers, most of the challenge in DitR comes from the game simply withholding information or being frustratingly vague about things. For instance at one point in the game you have to get an object out of your closet which should be easy for anyone who isn’t, you know, a bug-eating moron. But of course this is an adventure game, so your main character is a bug-eating moron and can’t find anything in his own closet because the light is burned out. Okay fine, I’m used to adventure games where the guy tasked with saving the world is barely smart enough to dress himself, so I’ll accept he needs to order a light bulb to locate things a foot in front of his face in his own closet. No hint about how to order said light bulb is given, you’re simply sent off to randomly scour the area in a process that’s more frustrating than fun. This kind of thing happens a lot in the game. Also in order to trigger events you often have to complete totally unrelated tasks the game doesn’t inform you of. Want to get a guy to appear in the park for a clandestine meeting? Well, make sure you combined two thoughts in the Thoughts Panel, talked to some random kid, and delivered a specific envelope (none of which has much of anything to do with meeting this guy). The makers of the game simply decided you had to have this, this and that done in order to progress to the next step in the game. Would be lovely if they’d actually tell players that.

Now I’m sure a small selection of old-school adventure game fanatics may enjoy this kind of stuff, but those of us who don’t think adventure games should stay forever mired in the same needlessly obtuse gameplay we were putting up with in the 20 years ago will mostly be annoyed.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Mediocre

5) Replayability

As with most adventure titles, if you know what you’re doing you could probably blow through this game in an hour or two. That said the game’s vagueness and relatively high level of challenge will significantly lengthen your experience (personally it took me around 10 hours to complete the game). 10 hours is actually pretty decent for an adventure game, but once you’re done you’re done. There’s no incentive to play through again and I expect most people won’t, as the game’s annoyances will only be more noticeable when you’re no longer distracted by wondering what’s going to happen next in the story.

Replayability Rating: Mediocre

6) Balance

DitR is definitely more difficult than your average current day adventure game, but for the most part it chugs along at a pretty steady high, but manageable level of difficulty. That is, until you careen headfirst into the brick wall that is the password puzzle. This brain breaking frustration-fest requires a migraine-inducing array of steps and questionable leaps of logic to complete. Good puzzles should stimulate you and make your feel smart when you solve them. This puzzle makes you feel stupid and when you finally slog through it you mainly just feel like punching the guy who designed it. So yeah, the game’s actually pretty well balanced with one big glaring pimple-on-prom-night exception.

Balance Rating: Mediocre

7) Originality

Gameplay-wise this game is mostly very standard stuff, with the Thoughts Panel sounding interesting but not adding a whole lot to the game. I do have to give it points for it’s unique and challenging storyline though even if the actual gameplay is strictly by the book.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8) Addictiveness

This game is very hot and cold when it comes to addictiveness. When you’re on a roll, knocking down the puzzles and revealing the story at a decent rate the game will grab you and hours will disappear without you noticing. On the other hand, when you find yourself lost due to the game’s stubborn insistence on denying you guidance all the game’s flaws become much more noticeable. If I hadn’t sworn a solemn blood oath to Gamefan cult leader Alex Lucard to review this game on time it definitely would have been put on the backburner after a few of the more brain breaking sections.

Addictiveness Rating: Decent

9) Appeal Factor

Most people are going to take one look at this game and not give it the slightest chance. Everything about it screams low-budget indy game and just like most people would rather watch the latest “Adam Sandler makes a funny voice for 90 minutes” movie than a quality independent film, the vast majority won’t give this one a 2nd look. It doesn’t help that it’s an adventure game either, as it’s a cult genre at best these days. I don’t expect this one to spread much beyond the community of true adventure game fanatics.

Appeal Factor Rating: Awful

10) Miscellaneous

You feel kind of bad beating up on a low-budget independent game like this. It’s like that poor kid in elementary school…sure he sported a bowl-cut, wore the same clothes for 2 months straight and his lunch each day was nothing but an old hot dog bun and a slice of processed cheese, but it’s wasn’t really his fault. I respect the makers of Diamonds in the Rough for telling a challenging story, attempting to do something a little bit different and just generally trying to make a fairly ambitious game without a lot of resources. In some respects they actually succeeded big time and I’d like to see what Alkis Polyrakis and the folks at Atropos Studios cook up in the future.

Miscellaneous Rating: Enjoyable

The Scores
Story: Classic
Graphics: Dreadful
Sound: Good
Control and Gameplay: Mediocre
Replayability: Mediocre
Balance: Mediocre
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Decent
Appeal Factor: Awful
Miscellaneous: Enjoyable

Final Score: Mediocre Game

Short Attention Span Summary

You know it’s one thing to review a Grand Theft Auto IV or Smash Bros. Brawl and report that, shock of shocks, these games are in fact good. It’s another and more satisfying thing altogether I think to discover that great obscure game, that diamond in the rough (see what I did there?) and help give it some much-needed exposure. I was hoping this would be that game, but despite an excellent story it just has too many issues weighing it down to recommend to anyone but the most dedicated of adventure game fans. Then again, they’re probably the only people who would go out of their way to track this game down anyways, so I suppose it all works out in the end.
http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/files/2008/05/diehardditr1small.jpg

1) Story/Modes

Does anyone actually care about stories when it comes to shumps? I can’t imagine they do. Criticizing the story in a shoot ‘em up seems like the equivalent of disliking a movie because you thought the tie a guy wore in one scene was ugly or hating football because they don’t paint the goalposts your favorite colour. In other words, it’s entirely beside the point. If you must know, “Nanostray” actually does refer to a virus that’s ravaging mankind and uh, somehow you have to stop it by blowing up a bunch of shit with a spaceship…or something. Can we move onto the modes now? Thanks.

Okay, this game actually serves up a pretty decent array of modes and options. There is of course the main adventure mode, which consists of 8 stages you can play either on your own, or in a welcome option, locally with a friend co-op style. After you beat a stage in Adventure you can then play it in Arcade mode for high scores, which can be uploaded to online leaderboards via Wi-fi (unfortunately this is as far as online goes with this game).

There’s also a Challenge mode where you’ll be asked to meet specific conditions while replaying certain stages (or parts of stages). I’m not a big fan of the “challenge modes” that seem to be appearing in more and more games these days. They tend to feel like busy-work to me, but I guess it’s something to do other than gun for high scores after you beat the game, which is more than a lot of shumps offer.

Finally there’s “Simulator mode”, which is the developer’s code for “Rip-offs of Other Popular Shooter styles Mode”. You get an Asteroids rip-off, a Breakout rip-off and more! If there was an old game where you flew around shooting stuff, there’s a good chance it’s ripped off here.

All in all, there’s quite an impressive selection of stuff to plow through here, even if none of it is particularly original.

Story/Modes Rating: Very Good

2) Graphics

While the gameplay itself is strictly 2D, the graphics are polygonal 3D. This gives a nice sensation of depth and is a welcome departure from your average DS title, which tends to look like a Gameboy Advance game with a few more colours added. There’s usually a ton of stuff flying around the screen at any one time and some of the bosses are quite impressive, yet the frame rate stays nice and solid. On a technical level Nanostray 2’s graphics are definitely in the top 10% or so of what’s available on the DS.

Artistically the game is a bit bland though. For a shoot ‘em up to sell these days it seems they need graphics designed for people tripping on mushrooms (look at Geometry Wars or Everyday Shooter for example). By comparison the visuals in this game are technically impressive but somewhat generic and subdued colour-wise. Overall though Nanostray 2’s graphics are one of it’s strongest suits.

Graphics Rating: Great

3) Sound

This game serves up your standard-issue shump soundtrack. Slightly trippy electronica with occasional cheesy guitar riffs. I’d never listen to anything like this in real life lest I endanger my precious indy cred, but it suits the gameplay perfectly well. Other than that things go boom in a satisfying manner when they blow up, so there’s nothing really to complain about here.

Sound Rating: Good

4) Control and Gameplay

Control-wise you can choose to either play with classic button controls in which you move with the d-pad and shoot stuff with the A, B and shoulder buttons, or you can go with touch controls where you maneuver your ship around with the stylus. The touch controls actually work okay, but you’ll find your own hand will too often obscure the action and during particularly frantic sections you’re liable to grind your touchscreen into a scratched and tattered mess, so it’s probably best to just use the classic button controls, which are nice and responsive.

Your ship has a standard forward shot as well as two satellites you can position around yourself using the L and R buttons, so you can essentially fire in 3 directions at once most of the time. Before each stage you can also choose one of 6 secondary weapons (Pulse, Seeker, Raydion, Ion Strike, Shock Mines or Spin). These weapons are generally pretty powerful, but their use is also limited as they drain a power meter each time you unleash them. So you have plenty of options for obliterating your enemies. Almost too many honestly. I kind of prefer the elegant simplicity of an Ikaruga to having a 100 bullets flying out of my ship in all directions at any one time, but you get used to it.

The stages take a best of both worlds approach as half of them scroll vertically and the other half scroll horizontally. I generally preferred the vertical stages as they were faster and the level designs generally seemed to be tighter, although your preference may be different.

The game is very boss-oriented as every stage follows a standard pattern…blast past some grunts, fight a small yet speedy mid-stage boss, blast a few more grunts then fight a giant screen-filling final boss that’s slow yet can absorb more bullets than the Terminator. The bosses are generally quite entertaining and well designed, but they perhaps overly dominate the game. Most of your time will be spent against them and they will cause the majority of your deaths to the point where the non-boss sections of the game start to feel like mere filler. Eventually you may even start to resent the non-boss sections a little as you continually fly through them to get to a boss that keeps destroying you. Bottom-line the boss fights could have been toned down a bit, but aside from that this is a fun if somewhat standard shooter.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Good

5) Replayability

As in all games of this type, if you know what you’re doing you can zip through the game very quickly, but the high level of challenge will significantly extend the time it will take you to beat Adventure mode. It took yours truly around 7 hours to get through the 8 stages on the standard difficulty level (and yes, I realize I’m probably opening myself up to mockery by guys with bedrooms full of imported shooters and anime figurines by admitting it took me that long). Once you’ve beat the game there’s multiple difficulty levels, high scores, challenges and Simulation mode mini-games to play.

There’s quite a bit of meat on Nanostray 2’s bones, although your mileage may vary depending on how many times you’re willing to play and replay the game. If you’re willing to play each section of the game until every bullet pattern is seared into your synapses then you’ll get a lot out of it, while if you’re just looking to beat the Adventure mode’s 8 stages and see the end credits it will be over a lot faster. By shump standards though, there’s definitely a lot here.

Replayability Rating: Good

6) Balance

Hitting the right balance with this genre is tough. Hardcore fans of the genre most likely to buy the game want to be punished with ridiculous difficulty, while the average gamer the title needs to appeal to be a breakout success want a level of difficulty hardcore fans would find a bore. Considering these challenges the makers of Nanostray 2 manage to hit a decent balance.

On the standard difficulty shump fanatics who see glowing bullet patterns whenever they close their eyes will find this game a bit on the easy side, but for the average serious gamer it should provide a stiff, yet not insurmountable, challenge. There are also varying difficulty settings so the game should be able to keep everyone but the most casual gamers relatively happy.

Balance Rating: Good

7) Originality

There’s intentionally nothing original about this game. Nanostray 2 is made by people who love shoot ‘em ups for people who love shoot ‘em ups. The goal was obviously to try and take everything that was great about old shooters, collect it together and stuff it on a single game card. Adding in a bunch of new dangerous ideas to the mix would divert them from their stroll down memory lane. I can’t give Nanostray 2 a good rating for originality, but considering the nature of the game it’s not a major detriment.

Originality Rating: Bad

8) Addictiveness

Are you a bit of a masochistic type? Does dying repeatedly in a videogame give you a strange thrill you’d only confess to your therapist or in a whisper to a lover in the dark of night? Well then this game might grab you as the developers do a fairly good job of capturing the classic addictive shump appeal. It certainly isn’t as infuriatingly enchanting as the best games in the genre, but it should keep you coming back.

A lot of gamers will immediately be turned off though. Particularly younger gamers not accustomed to this level of challenge, most of whom will give up on the game after a few deaths so they can go listen to rap music in their meth lab while wearing oversized pants or whatever the kids are doing today. For the people this game is actually aimed at though, it should prove fairly addictive.

Addictiveness Rating: Above Average

9) Appeal Factor

Nanostray 2 is a fairly difficult hardcore game in a largely dormant genre with generic box art, no appealing characters to sell it and is published by a smallish company without the money or inclination to do much advertising for it. Add a dash of salt and you’re looking at the perfect recipe for profoundly lousy sales right there. On the up side maybe Majesco will send me a plaque or something if I’m the only person on the planet who ends up buying the game.

Appeal Factor Rating: Bad

10) Miscellaneous

I like the DS, but it’s really quite depressing sometimes the crushing lack of passion or effort that goes into the average DS game. The boredom of the developers flows out of the touchscreen, up your stylus and into your very soul when you’re playing the latest lifeless Brain Training or Virtual Pet clone on the system. So it’s nice to play a game on the DS, particularly a 3rd party game, where the developers obviously had a love for the subject matter and put some real effort into creating something of quality. Whether they completely succeeded or not doesn’t matter…at least they friggin’ tried.

Miscellaneous Rating: Good

The Scores
Story/Modes: Very Good
Graphics: Great
Sound: Good
Control and Gameplay: Good
Replayability: Good
Balance: Good
Originality: Bad
Addictiveness: Above Average
Appeal Factor: Bad
Miscellaneous: Good

Final Score: Enjoyable Game

Short Attention Span Summary
Like shoot ‘em ups? Well good news, so do the guys at Shin’en and they’ve cooked a good little tribute to the genre in Nanostray 2. It doesn’t do anything radically new or different, and it has some gameplay balance issues but it was clearly made with the kind of care DS games are rarely afforded. If you’re a shooter fan who finds the idea of not being able to blast at things when you’re out of the house chilling, you should definitely check this game out. If you’re an average gamer just looking for something a little more challenging on the DS, you should also give this game a look. Casual gamers can safely skip it though as the game probably isn’t quite good enough to make a convert of you.
http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/files/2008/04/nanostrayts.JPG