Quick Impressions
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I played a few games already! Hit the jump for impressions!
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside StoryI started off my day by playing this little DS title, but mostly because nobody else cared about it and the DSi was sitting there, unloved. I am a pretty big fan of this action-ey RPG series, and this looks pretty much similar to Partners in Time. You play Mario and Luigi, where the A and B buttons control either dude, with powers very much like the ones in PiT. However, the other half of the game features the ability to play as Bowser, where he can punch and breathe fire (which is what Bowser does? That and mumble. And fuck up kidnapping attempts). The cuteness to the game comes in the fact that Mario and Luigi actually travel inside Bowser to help him on some larger quest. The demo on the floor featured a level where Bowser needs to pull something, and Mario and Luigi fight inwards to his muscle to power it up somehow. It’s kind of hokey, but that’s what you get with this type of game. Animation is cute, and smooth, and the gameplay is tight. IT IS A FAIRLY GENERIC GAME WHAT DID YOU EXPECT. I enjoyed it?
2. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
I spent far too long with this game – there was a huge ass line that formed after I started playing (they were giving away the feather stylus when you played, so maybe that added to the line). Listen – this is just Phantom Hourglass. It plays the same way with the stylus, and you have silly special items, including a kind of whirlwind blowing device that requires you to (sigh, again) blow into the stylus. I would be glad when they stopped adding that feature to games. You also controlled a “phantom,” this kind of Darknut guy seen in the trailers, and could guide him around to attack enemies. When there’s lava, Link can ride him. When there’s switches to be stood upon, GUESS WHO. Also, he blocks lava flows! And he is slow as shit. There was a boss fight with a large rhinoceros beetle with a smelly, cloudy ass, and the game literally had you go around behind him and blow on his ass. With the whirlwind. This is part of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. This is a real thing. The final section featured a little train action, which was just boating, but without any ability to stray from that path. You shot things by tapping the screen, and pulled a whistle (which went, appropriately, whoo whoo). There was another boss/mini-boss/one-eyed generic cave creature that was fought with cannons to the face, and that’s where I died. If they take away the sneaking around dungeon that tied Phantom Hourglass together – then I am 100% sold day one. It’s Zelda!
3. Sin and Punishment 2
I fucking love Sin and Punishment. The sequel looks like they took the graphics and insanity of Ikaruga and just stuck a floating boy (or GIRL take THAT feminism) with a gun in there. You shoot and shoot and shoot. And people shoot at you. And you can fly. It’s an update to a great and kind of low-profile N64 game. It’s pretty tough, well, at least the demo was. It controlled with both nunchuck and remote, where you moved around with the nunchuck stick, and pointed at the screen with the remote – this is a really great way to play the game. I am probably going to go back and play this again, because it goes by pretty quickly.
Three games. Three paragraphs. I also got a personal demo of a DSi-ware translation game that utilized the camera – you took a picture of a word (japanese, english) and it translated that word after a few clicks. It was pretty nifty, although this dude was pretty sneaky about trying to find an angle to sell me on the idea.