Games: Mario Party (N64), Mario Party 2 (N64), Mario Party 3 (N64), Mario Party 4 (GCN), Mario Party 5 (GCN), Mario Party 6 (GCN), Mario Party Advance (GBA), Mario Party 7 (GCN), Mario Party 8 (Wii), Mario Party DS (DS), Mario Party 9 (Wii), Mario Party Island Tour (3DS)
Oh, the nostalgia. Words can’t adequately express the feelings that come with reminiscing about the days I spent playing the first two Mario Party games with my friends and siblings as a kid. It was like playing a themed board game where any outcome was possible, and whether that meant you got to come back from the brink of certain loss to win the day thanks to your secret ability to land on special spaces, or you got absolutely shafted by your sister’s coincidental run of extreme luck, the chaotic memories were burned into your brain. The minigame design of the early games was also tight enough to warrant playing them on their own, and while it’s true that the series suffered a drop in quality (not to mention originality) as it moved into the Gamecube era, the last couple of years have seen a couple of fresh ideas making their way back into proceedings. I’m cautiously optimistic about Mario Party’s Bowser-centric Wii U debut.
It may be one of Nintendo’s lowest output franchises, boasting only two games in over a decade, but anyone who’s played a Luigi’s Mansion game can attest to the quality it offers. The first full-fledged solo outing for Mario’s slightly less famous younger brother, Luigi’s Mansion hit as a Gamecube launch title 12 years ago and, despite its relatively short length, managed to pack in plenty of atmospheric, slightly unsettling, puzzle-solving goodness. The game rewarded curiosity and exploration in unconventional ways, characterised Luigi in a hilarious new light and featured boss fights as clever as the environmental design around them. Though I regrettably haven’t played the 3DS’ Luigi’s Mansion 2 (known overseas as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon), I have heard absolutely nothing but praise from everyone who has, and intend to give it a spin when I can find the time between other releases.
Games: F-Zero (SNES), F-Zero X (N64), F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (GBA), F-Zero GX (GCN)
Here’s a controversial one to kick things off. I know there are plenty of vocal F-Zero fans who swear by the well-tuned arcade (read: insane) difficulty of the futuristic racing series, and said fans are positively foaming at the mouth for a new sequel. The last console entry in the franchise, F-Zero GX for the Gamecube, is now more than a decade old, so a new one is indeed long overdue. F-Zero’s ridiculous energy, intergalactic character roster and unique aesthetic do arguably set it apart from Nintendo’s higher-profile racing series, and Captain Falcon is an insanely popular character thanks to the Super Smash Bros series, so its a little baffling why it’s taking the Big N so long to get things going again. I’d buy a new F-Zero game, even though I would be terrible at it.
If you’re reading this out of curiosity, you may be shocked to see me counting down 30 Nintendo franchises. “Wait a minute,” you may ask. “Does Nintendo even have 30 videogame franchises?”
Well, my dear reader, I can tell you after a bit of research on my part that they have more than 60 of the things. Yeah, that YouTube comment didn’t know what it was talking about. But what constitutes a “franchise” and what are the eligible entries that won’t make it onto my personal list? Indeed, before I get onto the countdown proper, it’s worth answering these questions. Continue reading →
Nintendo. They’ve been around for as long as I’ve played videogames, and they’ve made videogames since before I was born. They are credited with saving the videogame industry from its catastrophic collapse in 1983 and they’ve been producing extraordinarily high-quality games ever since. They possess a wealth of first party development studios that are responsible for some of the most beloved franchises of all time. They are close to the hearts of millions and millions of gamers worldwide. And this month, Nintendo turns 125 years old (Don’t freak out – they weren’t always a videogame company).
To celebrate this momentous milestone, and in anticipation of the release of Super Smash Bros for 3DS on October 4th (itself a celebratory Nintendo party if ever there was one), I will be counting down my personal top 30 favourite Nintendo franchises over the next few weeks. It’s a difficult task to say the least but I’m very close to reaching a settled order, which will of course be my own personal opinion and nothing more.
I hope you enjoy, and long live Nintendo!
By the way, the image at the top of the page was taken from the lovely website TeePublic, where you can purchase it as a shirt from this page! Just saying.
For the last two years on this blog I have backed up my excitement for the entertainment media offerings of the month of June by writing down some of said offerings in a dedicated post. While this year’s version of the month doesn’t look quite as good in this department as, say, last year’s, when The Last of Us and Animal Crossing: New Leaf dropped on consecutive days, I’m still able to bring together ten releases for which I am suitably keen. I would be jumping out of my skin waiting for June to come around even without any of these – the FIFA World Cup is nearly here, after all – but they just make the idea of the month even sweeter. Here are ten of the things that will be available to us this June (in chronological order): Continue reading →
Perhaps fittingly, this article took me a long time to complete.
Some games take a bit longer to finish than others. Occasionally, a lot longer. A game you might enjoy isn’t necessarily compelling all the time, so sometimes you may need to take a long break. When you add the many distractions that life brings onto an already long game completion time, you might just find that several months pass you by before you have the chance to go back and finish what you left hanging long ago. On the other hand, sometimes you’ll try pretty consistently to finish something, but your skill level just isn’t up to the task. Only plenty of practice and determination will see you over the finish line (as in life). And then there are the games that just won’t end. Either way, finishing a game you started a long time ago is nearly always immensely satisfying.
This list is dedicated to those games that have taken me real effort to complete throughout my own personal gaming history.
Three clarifications:
One, this list does not take into account how long it took me to “get to 100% completion” in a particular game, but rather how long it took to reach the end credits of its story mode/campaign/etc.
Two, a game needs to have taken me at least 3 months to complete to be eligible for this list.
Three, this list is ranked by effort rather than length. Though I have included approximations of how long each game took to finish, this time figure does not determine the order of the list. Less quantifiable factors went into deciding how much of an effort each game represented to me.
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10. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (Gamecube ~6 months)
Any fan of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle will tell you that the game has a ton of content, the most appealing of which comprises what is quite possibly the most in-depth Tamagotchi-style pet simulator systems ever put into a videogame. The Chao Garden was a notoriously addictive time sink for most players of the Dreamcast/Gamecube favourite and it was the primary reason that it took me so long to reach the end of the actual story. Sure, the release of Super Smash Bros Melee a mere two weeks after the Gamecube version launched certainly got in the way, as did my skill level and some confusing late level design (Crazy Gadget, anyone?). But above all, it was those damn adorable Chao that kept me from making a serious push to finish both of the game’s parallel storylines. When the game’s “epilogue campaign” then appeared, it came as a genuine surprise and a formidable challenge, so my satisfaction at the end credits only increased.
Shortly after it went live (in closed form) on February 14th, I dived into the very exciting beta version of Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming Xbox One pseudo-exclusive Titanfall and played quite a bit of it. Since then it has moved into open status and then finished up entirely. If you didn’t have a chance to play it or simply feel like reading about a different perspective on the whirlwind week, read on. . . MOTION FLOW
The first thing I noticed when I got started in the Titanfall beta was the immense focus on constant movement. Titanfall thrives on ensuring that every action flows easily into another action and it is this, rather than the presence of Titans per se, that defines the game. At least half of every match (much more if you’re me) is spent outside of a Titan, but that part of the experience doesn’t feel like a standard FPS might, due mostly to the ability to “wall-run” and double jump with the aid of a jetpack-style implement. Sure, you can stay low and take people on at street level as a Titan-less pilot, but that puts you at a tremendous disadvantage should you meet one. Verticality is the name of the game and going up is easy. Once you get the hang of the airborne movement mechanics, which are all about just one button and a sense of timing, the feeling is awesome. Comparing it to the action of anime series Attack on Titan yields more than just name-based similarities. Continue reading →
So I just finished the single player downloadable content for PS3 exclusive The Last of Us, released a couple of days ago, and I have to say that it’s pretty damn good. Entitled Left Behind, it’s definitely short (around 2-3 hours, which is probably par for the course with this kind of DLC) and maybe you could argue it’s also a bit pricey for what it gives you. But I’m certainly glad I played it. As you might already know if you read my review last year, I adored The Last of Us and it only just missed out on my personal game of the year award for 2013. If you share my feelings on the brilliance of the original game then you owe it to yourself to consider playing Left Behind. Here are five reasons why: .
1. It fleshes out both the original story and its world.
Though it sets itself up as a prequel, Left Behind is only really half so. The narrative follows two interchanging paths, one set before Ellie meets Joel and one set during the events of The Last of Us’ main storyline. As such, if you face the temptation to play Left Behind first and let it lead into the main event, resist. You will have things spoiled for you in a big way if you elect to look at things in that manner.
Having said that, the bulk of the story of Left Behind focuses on Ellie as she explores a decrepit mall with her friend Riley, who has recently joined the rebellious Fireflies organisation. The brief tale is inspired by, and indeed connected to, the four-issue Dark Horse comic book series American Dreams that was released last year. It features callbacks and references to both major and side events in The Last of Us, particularly if you are willing to poke around the environment a bit, and its revelations add an extra layer to the main game’s excellent ending. TLOU rightly stands alone as a well told, standalone story, but Left Behind certainly makes it richer.
Here we go again, with another bumper edition of pure, distilled anticipation.
Ah, 2014. How you promise such great excuses for us to use up our hard-earned time and money. Indeed, with another typically uneventful (though wonderfully relaxing) January out of the way, it’s as good a time as any to talk about what I personally am most eagerly awaiting this year. Some of these things will be disappointing, I have no doubt, but I have reason to believe most of them will live up to the hype. So exciting are the gaming and movie offerings of 2014 that I have had to expand my third annual anticipation list article to include multiple honorable mentions. I’ve also thrown some applicable trailers onto this page, because people seem to like something to look at. Here we go.
MOVIES
10. Mockingjay Part One
My excitement for the next movie in the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise is tempered by the general track record of novel adaptations that insist on splitting into two parts. It’s pretty well documented that “Part I”s tend to be a little on the unfulfilling side, as they are only ever one half of a whole story. Having said that, given the surprising quality of the Catching Fire adaptation, I’m keen to see how Francis Lawrence and co. treat the very heavy Mockingjay story.
9. Wish I Was Here
Whether you happen to be a lover or a hater of what Zach Braff did through the Kickstarter website to help his latest film stick to his vision, I can quite confidently say that I am the former. So much so, in fact, that I was one of the 47 thousand-odd backers who gave money to the project. I was a huge fan of Braff’s last writer-director effort, 2004’s Garden State, and the promise of Wish I Was Here serving as a pseudo-sequel to the decade-old indie gem is too hard to pass up. Hopefully it doesn’t suck.
8. Big Hero 6
We don’t know an awful lot about Big Hero 6 yet – only that it is based on a neglected Marvel superhero license, set in a hybrid between San Francisco and Tokyo, will be released at the end of the year, and most importantly, comes from the same wide pool of talent that gave us Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen. Expectations will be high for Disney’s intriguing next animation house effort.
7. How to Train Your Dragon 2
Speaking of high expectations, Disney’s number 1 competitor for animated movie supremacy is looking to come out firing in 2014 with the much-anticipated sequel to its super-charming 2010 hit How to Train Your Dragon. The trailers seem to indicate some real character growth across the board, as well as what appears to be a rather unconventional narrative structure for a family movie like this. But then again, you should never trust a trailer.
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The next film in Marvel Studios’ ongoing lead-up to The Avengers 2 is being marketed as somewhat of an Avengers film itself, an “Avengers 1.5” if you will, considering the focus its trailers place on shots of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Nick Fury and Black Widow. But far from being the distraction it was in Iron Man 2, this choice of direction actually adds to the appeal of the movie to me, as I happen to regard Cap as the least interesting of the four main movie Avengers. Add the appearance of characters like Falcon and, of course, the Winter Soldier himself, and you can consider me hyped.
Vagrant Rant 