New Super Mario Bros Wii

Fess up time, I've had this game for a while. It's one of the very, very, very few games I bought within the first couple of months of release. But I'm not playing much new right now, so the next couple of posts will be on games that I've already played a while ago. So here are my thoughts on New Super Mario Bros Wii...

Nostalgia can take you so far,  but the sheer fun is what brings it home. Sure, playing this game took me back to playing the original NES games when I was a wee lad; same gameplay, ect, but I'm almost positive that I would find New Super Mario Bros. Wii a blast if I'd never had any inkling of what the plumbing siblings from Brooklyn were all about. Make no mistake, Mario has been a fixture in gaming for eons and its not because of the mustache (though let's be honest, the mustache doesn't hurt), it's because they are consistently top quality games. This one is no different. From the vibrant graphics and colors to the familiar and effective gameplay, this game is very addictive. The level design is most excellent as I entered each world wondering what other kind of wacky situations the game designers could possibly get the Mario Bros. and their Toad pals into and was never let down. Yes, there are difficult levels. It might take a few frustrating tries to get some levels figured out, but once you do and conquer that bad boy, it is immensely satisfying. This is simply the Mario Way.

Try activating this lever when the wife keeps accidentally leaping on it first.

And multiplayer, ah yes, multiplayer. What a wonderful creation that has been. There's nothing more fun than sitting down with a buddy and plowing through a rousing game of Mario Bros. And at the same time, there's nothing more frustrating than sitting down with a buddy (or significant other) and dying your way through Mario Bros. Just a word to the wise; if you head into a game with someone with a few less years of experience at the joystick, go with patience. Loads of patience. I'd hate to see good marriages break up over a mustached plumber in red overalls. To be fair though, once I changed my mindset from "go in to win!" to "let's just have some fun", playing with the wife was indeed fun.

It's cool that the game lets you use the controller like an old school NES controller, but this too can have frustrations. Maybe I'm just not as nimble with the fingers as I used to be or I've grown more accustomed to analog sticks, but the D-Pad feels a little small and it can be annoying when trying to hit the "down" button and going sideways or vice-versa. Just a minor quibble though that doesn't take away from the fact that this game is just sheer fun for the whole family.

How it compares to other modern Mario games just varies on your mileage, I suppose. I think I may find Mario Galaxy a bit more fun, but the wife definitely prefers good ol' Side Scroller Mario. In the end, for me, just give me a fun game with that crazy plumber in the tripped out Mushroom Kingdom, and I'm sure I can find a reason to play.

Lost In Shadow for Wii

Lost in Shadow for the Wii is a game that is different enough to be interesting, but doesn't quite get interesting enough to keep my attention to finish it. I rented this a couple of week ago and at first, I was really into it.  You start out as a boy on the top of a tower tall enough make Saruman say, "That might be a little overboard."  An evil armored Vader-like monstrosity proceeds to sever your shadow from your body and hurl it 25,898 stories to the ground.

It's now up to your shadow to make its way up the tower to join back with its boy.  It's like when the Ghostbusters had to get to the top of the building to fight Gozer, but with more platforming.  The cool mechanic of the game is that as a shadow, you can only interact with shadows.  You don't run along a ledge, you run along the ledge's shadow.  When you encounter a random sword stuck in the ground, you don't pick up the sword, you get the shadow of the sword.

By the Power of Greyskull!!!!

All in all, it is a refreshing take on the platformer genre.   You hit switches, travel through ghostly shadow corridors, manipulate light to give you different perspectives, all very cool.  But after going through a few levels, that's all you keep doing.  There are a few shadow spiders and the like you fight along the way, but it becomes a lot of slash, slash, slash, jump back to avoid the swipe!  Rinse and repeat.  Which is what I felt the game did, rinse and repeat.

I've seen other reviews that say there's a little something that happens later in the game that sort of makes up for all the repetition, but as I said, this was a rental and I don't have a ton of time to begin with to spend on video games as much as I'd like, so I couldn't give it more than a few hours.  What little time I do have, I want to spend it with games that grip me and drag me along with its game play.  

Don't get me wrong, I like what the game is attempting, going in a bit of a different direction.  I just wish they would have done more with it.  I would say it's worth a rental, at least.  I don't think I'm gonna spend any more cash to buy it and finish it up, though.  

A Little Bit About Me

Just a little info, so you know where I'm coming from, gaming wise. When I was but a wee lad an even wee-er cousin of mine would come down and visit the family for the summer. And one summer he brought forth the Nintendo Entertainment System. Much Mario was played that summer. Eventually, I got one for Christmas with a couple of games (I believe Mario 2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). There was much rejoicing. Zelda and Metroid was played and enjoyed. Tetris came along and all the adults would steal our system away from us to play that.

The Super Nintendo came around about the time I was heading into Junior High or so and I remember wanting it so bad. We had to sell our NES, but I didn't care if it meant getting an even bigger and better version of it. With Super Mario World, to boot. The graphics blew me away. Our family never had a lot, but I had friends and cousins that had some cool games. Games like A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Super Metroid and Super Mario RPG were played and beat without ever owning them.

I never put much stock into other systems, understand, me and all my friends were about the Big N. So, Nintendo 64 comes out and it's my first big time purchase with my own cash made by myself working at a real job. I was blown to smithereens by Mario 64. Ocarina of Time eventually made it's way into my hands and I thought it couldn't get much better. I was a huge Bond fan, especially of the movie GoldenEye, the first one I saw on a big screen. I was anxious to get that game before I even realized it was gonna be the game changer it was. Needless to say, multiplayer was played and friends and family had great times executing one another. It was about the time I beat the mission part of the game when we got our first computer with internet access.

I barely touched my 64 after that. This is where I fell away. I pretty much missed the Gamecube. Until one day my friend got himself a Wii and sold me his Gamecube real cheap. Then it started again. Metroid. Mario. Zelda. Played them all and the love came back. I was eventually able to scrounge up a Wii a couple of years ago and I thnik I might play it more than when I was a kid. Actually, that's probably not accurate, what with a full time job and all. Plus raising kids. Scratch that, I don't play it as much as then, but I'm probably into it as much as I was back then.

Moral of the story is, I went away and the Wii, and to a lesser extent, my later experience with the Gamecube brought me back and this little blog is my way of chronicling my catching up.

Twilight Princess

So I borrowed Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess somewhere like a year or so ago and got a good way through it before I had to return it.  I was into it, a big Zelda fan and all, but I kinda felt it was trying too hard to recapture Ocarina of Time magic at some points.  After Wind Waker had the audacity to look like a cartoon, go and flood Hyrule and changed up the thing a bit while keeping the core of what Zelda was and being very exciting in the process, I felt this one kind of took a step back. That aside, I enjoyed my time with it and was hoping to be able to finish it.

Not too long ago, the wife found a copy for me on Craigslist for about 15 bucks and it was a near mint beaut.  So I've put it in and began playing it again.  My initial fears of it being OOT redux went to the back of my mind as I just re- immersed myself in the Zelda experience.  Man, there's just nothing like it; getting sucked into the world of Hyrule and exploring your way around it.  Before, I was all into getting as much as the story done as I could and now, I don't want it to end.  I've stopped to smell the roses.   I've begun putting the story off and seeing what surprises await me in the corners of the kingdom.  I've never been much of a complete-ist, always just satisfied beating the story part of the game.  Sure, I'd like to get as much as I can before I ended the story, but it was no big deal for me to complete it at 100%, and honestly, it's still not.

But now I've made it to the City in the Sky and I feel the adventure beginning to dwindle down and I find myself doing any small task just to keep the thing going.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that as much as I do feel like it's trying a little too hard to go back to the Ocarina well, any game that makes me want to postpone finishing the storyline is not one to be ignored.  It is still Zelda, after all, and I have learned never to take that for granted.

Bring on Skyward Sword, baby.

A Little More "No More Heroes"

I played a couple more levels of this most brutal of awesome games and gave it back to whom it was owned and came to a decision of my own. I must get this game. I know I can find it cheap online somewhere, so when I get a few extra spending dollars, this puppy is mine in all of it's "M" rated glory. The comparisons to Madworld are definitely there, but the difference is that after playing both games for the same amount of time, I was bored of Madworld and I wanted to keep on playing No More Heroes. Sure, the gameplay can get repetitive, the enemies are largely the same, mowing the grass as a mini game is a bit annoying, and if I were to ever meet Travis Touchdown in real life, I'd wanna kick is smart alec teeth down his throat; but there is something immensely satisfying about hacking your way through a throng of enemies with a lightsa... sorry, Beam Katana. The gameplay is flat out fun. And after defeating the third boss in the game, you started seeing a bit of an actual story emerge. Maybe our hero isn't as callous as he seems. Either way, after that, I had to hang it up and just wanted to keep playing. I'm also pretty keen on playing the sequel at some point, as it looks like in addition to more brutal No More Heroes' type mayhem, the mini games look retro fun.

Until then, I've re-begun an old Gamecube game I've had sitting around the house for a couple of years without really getting into. What a mistake that's been, because the game is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and it is awesome.

No More Heroes

So I borrowed this little dandy of a game from someone and started playing yesterday. I basically have only played the first level, getting to and defeating the first boss of the game. For those that don't know, No More Heroes is a game of assassins. You play as Travis Touchdown, a bit of a modern gaming dude who needed some cash, so he killed a guy for money and then found out that guy was the number 11 Assassin in the world, making you the number 11 Assassin in the world. After finding out this bit of info, he decided, quite logically, of course, that he would like to be Numero Uno. So he's off to whack number 10 and so on and so forth. Oh, and he's armed with a sword that can only be described as a lightsaber.

That's the gist of the story and, as I mentioned, I've only played the first little bit. The game is definitely for the mature audience, with it's over the top violence and explicit language. In fact, it reminds me a little of another game I've played in the recent past, Madworld. Now, there are differences in the two games, for sure. For one thing, in Madworld, you wield a chainsaw, not a lightsaber. The point is, that while I enjoyed Madworld at first, after the first couple of levels, the spectacle of the hardcore violence and over the top-ness of it all wore off and it became a very repetitive game to me. I hope this doesn't happen with No More Heroes, as I'm enjoying what I've played of it, but I can feel the similarities in the two. Specifically, the fact that it appears to be a lot of button mashing; you hit the A button over and over again til you can swing the Wii remote to execute a sweet finishing move. It's fun now, but will it still be fun three levels from now? I guess we'll see. I hear that there are things to be able to do in between missions to keep it a little fresh, so that might help.

Overall, though, I am enjoying the game. The stylized graphics are great for the Wii and there is something to be said about swinging that Wii remote to finish off your foes. The motion controls of the ol' 'Mote seems to respond pretty well to what you wanna do. It feels like the game could get addicting. Still, it's too early to tell what I really think about it, but I'm cautiously hopeful.

More Mario Kart Wii Online

On further review, screw Mario Kart online.