Glen-i Posted January 5, 2017 Posted January 5, 2017 Been kinda falling behind on this. Gonna update it with the last few games I finished this year. So prepare for quite a long post... First of all, I played through Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky... again. I already talked at length about this in 2015, so won't go too much into it. I still love it! I also finished Rhythm Paradise Megamix. I won't go into too much about it, because it's pretty self-explanatory really. It's Rhythm Paradise with a few new games and loads of old ones. Very enjoyable! Now on to more detailed summaries. Disaster: Day of Crisis came out on the Wii in 2008. It's an... hang on... action-adventure, arcade rail shooter, first-aid simulator, QTE based, driving, disaster movie parody. Also Die Hard. And it's from the people who made Xenoblade Chronicles. The game is probably best known for being so incredibly silly, Reggie himself thought it was too stupid for America. So you know you're in for... something at least. You play as Raymond Bryce, former US Marine and International Rescue Team member and world's unluckiest man. After he quit the Rescue Team gig because his friend died, he's called by the FBI to help rescue two hostages from a terrorist group called SURGE. One of those hostages being the sister of mentioned dead friend. Funny that. Sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, except that this is going to be one crappy day for Ray, because right when he confronts SURGE, an Earthquake hits and he has to escape a collapsing building while being shot at by terrorists. This is the first level. Can Ray defeat SURGE, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanoes, Floods, Hurricanes and other stuff I'm not mentioning? Let's hope so, he really needs to get that compass to Lisa, you know, her. The game revels in it's ridiculousness, cheesy dialogue up the wazzoo and it's the way the game manages to outdo itself in stupid that makes it really appealing for me. It really is a great parody of the B-Movie Disaster movie. The gameplay mainly revolves around two styles of gameplay, exploration third person action and the rail shooter combat. If you've played Time Crisis, you should know what to expect from the combat. It's very similar and strangely fun. Of course, the pointer controls shine here. During the game however, you'll be thrown into many situations that throw new mechanics at you, one moment, you're running away from a Tsunami (With a new speed boost mechanic thrown in for good measure), the next, you're performing CPR on a guy. Even after the final boss, (which is completely silly, of course) the game happily throws one last new mechanic to up the tension. It's a great laugh. However, there are issues, the main one being the driving sections, which suffer from mediocre motion controls and not-great physics, making them frustrating at times. The game also suffers from a few glitches, nothing horrible, just minor things really. The graphics in this game are, eh, really. It's passable, but the Wii can do better. The soundtrack is amazing though, really over-the-top and epic, which suits the game perfectly. Shame none of it got into Smash really. A Disaster stage would be so amazing in that... This game is great for just blasting through, it's always entertaining, mainly because of how silly it all is. In fact, why I don't just show you how silly it all is? Also, Pokemon Omega Ruby totally ripped this game off. Right at the end of this game, you unlock a bonus level which involves Ray going into space to fight a meteor! Naturally, I've now nicknamed my Rayquaza "Raymond" Secretly the best character in the game. Pokemon Sun is the 7th Mainline entry in the long running Pokemon series. I shouldn't have to tell you that, but you know. The game involves a young Pokemon Trainer going off to explore a new region and, oh come on, you know what it's about. The game plays like every other Pokemon game, you train up a team of Pokemon and go through 8 Gyms in order to... Oh wait! HANG ON! There are no Gyms! This changes everything! Except it kinda doesn't really. Instead of Gyms, you've got these things called Trials which involve you having to do a certain task. once you do this task, you the fight a "Totem Pokemon, which is basically just a beefed up wild Pokemon that tend to utilise double battle strategies with Pokemon it can call for help. Problem is, I feel that these totem battles don't hold a candle to Gym Leaders because the strategy simply boils down to "Kill the totem Pokemon first" The trials aren't that hot either, there's a few stand out ones, (Like the Fire Trial above featuring Hiker David) but they're pretty much just discount gyms, the last one in particular was so anti-climactic, I couldn't help but laugh. It was a nice attempt, but if you're gonna try and replace Gyms, try using something that's not just crappier Gyms, okay? There's all sorts of improvements to the formula, but there's also some baffling backsteps, (The online system being the major one, a whole page of the Pokemon thread wasted because @Aneres11 and I were trying to do one trade) Also Triple and Rotation battles are non-exsistent, which makes me very sad. So, it's a pretty standard Pokemon game all in all, still fun, but not the amazing shake-up everyone claims it is. The Pokemon available are hugely borked towards the original 150, which is weird considering that there's a whole bunch of new shiny ones to play with, but they only show up now and again which many people know, infuriates me to no end. When you have 301 Pokemon in your game and more than a third of them consist of Pokemon seen in the 90's, you know you have a problem. The graphics are, well they're better than the other 3DS Pokemon games. Framerate is still god-awful though, due to the ridiculously high-quality Pokemon models. Hopefully, this won't be an issue with the Switch, but then again, it is Game Freak and new hardware, so who knows? The soundtrack is nice as well, very different in style. The final battle is total generic weaksauce and kinda a dampener on the whole thing, but the rest of it is good. So all in all, it's a good Pokemon game. I'd put it as 3rd best Gen. We're never seeing Battle Frontier ever again, are we? That's a kinky outfit there, must be a WayForward game. Shantae: Half-Genie Hero came out for the WiiU a couple of weeks ago, it's the fourth game in the Shantae series and was backed by Kickstarter. You play as Shantae, who after some shenanigans with arch-nemesis, Risky Boots, is fired from her job as Guardian Genie yet again because a few things got damaged. She has the worst boss, you know? Thankfully, her Uncle wants to build a special contraption that would protect her hometown from further epic boss fights. (Wouldn't that put her out of a job again?) So Shantae agrees to help find materials while also helping out Scuttle Town in order to get her job back for the third time. The game plays like a Metroid game for the most parts, you progress through the game and find upgrades to make Shantae more awesome. The major difference is that the levels are much more linear this time. They are set up a lot like the levels you'd find in a Kirby game. The only problem is that in Kirby games, you could find all the secrets in each level straight away on your first run through, but in Shantae some secrets require upgrades you get later on. Which means you're gonna need to do some back-tracking in order to progress, which isn't exactly great. The game is a bit easier than previous games as well, which isn't a big dealbreaker for me, but others might find that unappealing. Humour, which has always been a nice component of the game is not quite up to snuff either, it has it's moments, but it's not quite as great as Pirate's Curse. The visuals are amazing. WayForward really know how to make great looking sprites and the jump to HD makes Shantae's world look amazing! Esecially the animations. The sound, on the other hand, seems to be really shoddy at times. The actual soundtrack is amazing (Even if it is mostly remixes), but the editing is not great. There's sound clipping and more than a few volume balance issues. (That bootup music catches me off-guard too much.) It makes it feel cheaper than I expected from it. The game is certainly fun, but it doesn't live up to Pirate's Curse or Risky's Revenge, which is a shame. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - SNES Shovel Knight - 3DS (Custom Knight amiibo playthrough) Game & Watch Gallery 2 - GB Radiohammer - 3DS Ace Attorney Investigations: Prosecutor's Path - DS Shovel Knight - WiiU (Co-op run with Dcubed) Puzzle and Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition - 3DS (Crazy Diamond Wall 2nd Playthrough Difficulty) Metroid Prime - Wii Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - Wii Game & Watch Gallery Advance - GBA Zelda - Game & Watch Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Wii Metroid Fusion - GBA Super Mario World - SNES Star Fox Zero - WiiU Bravely Second: End Layer - 3DS Hyrule Warriors Legends - 3DS Super Metroid - SNES Freedom Planet - WiiU Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. - 3DS Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon - 3DS Paper Mario - N64 Zero Time Dilemma - 3DS My Nintendo Picross - 3DS Pocket Card Jockey - 3DS Monster Hunter Generations - 3DS WarioWare Touched - DS Donkey Kong Country 2 - SNES Kirby: Planet Robobot - 3DS Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - WiiU Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! - DS Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! - DS Elite Beat Agents - DS AM2R - PC Xenoblade Chronicles X - WiiU Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice - 3DS Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - 3DS New Super Mario Bros. 2 - 3DS (Poverty Run) Paper Mario: Colour Splash - WiiU Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky - DS Rhythm Paradise Megamix - 3DS Disaster: Day of Crisis - Wii Pokemon Sun - 3DS Shantae: Half-Genie Hero - WiiU That’s 44 games in total, 6 less than last year. (That’s expected though, given the sparce releases) Favourite new game was definitely Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. Totally loved it!
Recommended Posts