Gamesugar

November 22, 2012

Review – Crashmo

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 10:19 pm

Review Crashmo
Nintendo’s plush sumo returns to push and pull more blocks for your digital bucks, this time attempting to retrieve wayward birds instead of children. After an awkward attempt to greet a visiting girl frightens her birds away, players will need to help Mallo solve the puzzles of Papa Blox’s Crashmo course in order to rescue each and fix the situation.

Papa seems to have been busy since last year, with the most immediate change being the addition of gravity – meaning that pushing one block will cause the others above it to fall, and offering Intelligent Systems a fresh chance to cram the game’s stages full of puzzles that seem rather impossible, until I chill out and realize the solution is rather simple.

That’s usually the way it goes, except for the times it doesn’t. Those are the terrible times. The dark times. The times when I throw myself on the mercy of Papa Blox for advice and he tells me to try moving some blocks, and I want to cry just a little.

Then I remember I can just skip around it and try again later.

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November 11, 2012

Review – Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Review Paper Mario Sticker Star
Though it will likely come as no surprise to hear that Bowser has once again crashed the festivities of the Mushroom Kingdom, it’s not entirely his fault. Given that the Kingdom has a party for just about everything, the Koopa King would be hard pressed to show up when there wasn’t an event being held.

This time Bowser crashes the party during the annual Sticker Festival, where his attempt to seize power causes royal stickers to scatter across the Kingdom, setting Mario up nicely to do his hero thing – said thing being to visit deserts and snowy peaks in order to retrieve the stars and bring Bowser’s latest dictatorship to an end.

Naturally, the 2D paper aesthetic runs deep in this 3D landscape, from cardboard health bars to enemies that crumple when stomped – an ideal environment for Nintendo’s attempt to augment the series with layers of stickers that litter the landscape to provide players with the means to once again defeat Bowser’s minions.

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December 16, 2011

My New Addiction – Pushmo

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:25 am

Pushmo
Pushmo is quite a bit like Atlus’ Catherine, sans the sex and guilt. That was my immediate reaction to Nintendo’s recent digital release, and I stand by it as both amusing and helpful in framing the idea that we’re going to talk about moving blocks around here.

To set the stage, a Pushmo is a large block or shape, composed of a smaller series of blocks, varying in shape but connected by color. Many Pushmo give the appearance of a failed game of Tetris, while others form more complex shapes such as animals.

Wasn’t that helpful? No? Don’t worry, we’ll try to make some sense of this together.

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