Gamesugar

January 12, 2012

Review – Mighty Switch Force

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 12:53 am

Review Mighty Switch Force
Largely owing to the poor driving skills of law enforcement officials, the streets of the future will be overrun by blonde criminal vixens. As a ludicrously dressed officer of the law, your mission is to search out and apprehend these escapees with your trusty pistol and the ability to phase platform aiding blocks in-and-out of existence.

So not quite RoboCop, but it’ll do.

WayForward’s latest 2D offering is scaled toward creating a smaller series of incidents that fit a quick speedrun flavored agenda, which doesn’t leave nearly so much meat on the discussion bone but does make for a good and proper portable diversion. The objective of tracking down a set number of convicts per stage with the aid of a singular ability is certainly the developer’s most straightforward effort in recent memory, and creates a space where a more narrowly focused title can simply add to the layers of difficulty without losing cohesion along the way.

There isn’t as much space for the vibrant animations of BloodRayne: Betrayal or the long corridors of Aliens: Infestation, but there’s something familiar and quaint here to while away a few hours near a fireplace stoked by digital nostalgia.

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December 18, 2011

Lazy Sunday – Gorging on GBA

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:14 am

Sweet N Low Game Boy Advance
Nintendo’s GameBoy Advance kickback for early 3DS adoption is keeping my thumbs busy this weekend. Frankly, it’s a bit silly that I’m using shiny new hardware to play titles that can run on a machine I can pick up for change at a yardsale, but here we are. Being able to link my Club Nintendo account to the 3DS to earn rewards for purchases that can than be redeemed for even more virtual console titles means that this nostalgia trip isn’t likely to end anytime soon.

Normally I’d rank my memory as annoyingly sharp, but toss ten Nintendo published GBA titles my way and I have to stop to question whether I’ve ever really appreciated how many gems the system has to offer. From the delightful animation of Kirby using a cell phone to call on reinforcements in the Amazing Mirror, to the insane pace at which WarioWare Inc. spits challenges at players – and yes, even the simple joy of carrying Yoshi’s Island around in my pocket again – the burnout I’ve been feeling has subsided.

Yes, every now and again I worry that I don’t like videogames nearly so much as I thought, and I need reminding of why that isn’t the case. I get so busy consuming the never-ending flood of new releases, searching for the new aesthetic and digging around for adult-minded things that justify my immense investment of time, that the play and passion of that drive gets a bit fuzzy.

There are probably lots of important discussion points with virtual releases, about preserving the past and remembering it for me at wholsesale – all that jazz. But at the moment I’ve fallen back into an older language, the kind of excited chatter you squeeze in during recess. Is there a bit of escapism involved? Maybe, but I’m comfortable with it at the moment. All that matters is that this weekend, I’ve found some clarity in the finely aged sampling Nintendo handed out on Friday – though I’m sure it was waiting on any number of old consoles cluttering up my storage room, except the Jaguar of course.

If there is a point here, it’s that maybe I hope that some of you out there can relate. And if you can, then dig up an old game this weekend, a forgotten favorite or a freshly unearthed discovery, and as is the fashion in these uncharted Sugarlands, tell me about it below.

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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December 8, 2011

Lenin’s Pigeon, and Other Tales of Interest

Lenins Pidgeon
With the tide of Holiday releases unleashed and digested, fragments of info for other gaming destinations have begun surfacing once again, making a pleasant excuse for grab bag posts with misleading headlines.

My itchy trigger fingers got a tease with Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture announcing that their co-developed shooter, Sine Mora, will be exclusively hitting Xbox LIVE Arcade courtesy of Microsoft – the tease of course being the lack of any date or pricing. If you’re unfamiliar with the “diesel-punk shoot ’em up,” I shall again attempt to point your interest in the proper direction – namely here.

And not to be left out of the bullet party, G.Rev released video for their HD release of Under Defeat, which is currently set to hit Japanese Xbox 360’s and PlayStation 3’s next Spring. The buzz so far is that the 360 version will not be region-free, so catch the video below and then commence harassing your publisher of choice. Perhaps we can organize some sort of letter and signal flare campaign…

And finally, Nintendo fans should be made aware that Club Nintendo Rewards will now be offering the chance to trade reward coins for downloadable titles, at least for a little while. I was able to log in briefly to the site, which has since imploded for the day, but the rewards section showed the WiiWare title Fluidity, 3D Classics: Xevious, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! and the original Super Mario Kart.

Trading coins for digital titles sounds good to me, and wondering how far Nintendo will expand the offering of titles is a pleasant distraction from the debate over what Miyamoto’s interview with Wired does or does not mean.

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November 1, 2011

Review – Kirby’s Return to Dream Land

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 4:10 pm

Review Kirbys Return to Dream Land
For the second year in a row Nintendo’s pink pudgy star brings his insatiable appetite for adventure to the Wii, as well as his seemingly never-ending vendetta against a familiar tree. It would be forgivable to view this release with a pinch of cynicism, as a kneejerk attempt to pad out a Wii release schedule that hasn’t thinned out so much as dried up with the shift in focus to the 3DS and Wii U.

And though it only took a day to lightly pass through Return to Dream Land, I’m not feeling quite that cynical. Kirby’s latest outing sports significantly less yarn this year, instead offering a traditional Kirby platformer that gives Hal Laboratory another chance to strut their penchant for visual flair and rather magical stage design. However, Kirby’s return does suffer for want of a point to all the wonderful abilities Hal can grant him, and in the absence of any real challenge the finer points become so ridiculously subtle that one could miss the treats entirely for never being encouraged to discover them.

The old rules apply, and Kirby once again becomes who he eats, which makes the menu of potential powers the emphasis, and though stages never slouch about finding space for moments of inspiration that leave me smiling at how clever Hal continues to be, the playing is much more an act of design appreciation over tactile engagement.

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October 6, 2011

Review Crow vs. Tetris Axis

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , — Review Crow @ 7:18 pm

Review Crow versus Tetris Axis
Caw caw, c-caw caw caw, caaaw! Caw ca-caw, caw caw caw caaaaaaw; c-caw caaaw! Caw, Caw caaaaw caw c-caw – caw c-caw caw caaaaaw!

[Review Crow would like to start off by mentioning shiny things – bottle caps, dew worms, keys, nickels, dimes, quarters, toonies, and loonies. Review Crow feels it is important that you know these things are shiny, and that shiny things are of interest to him, because he has to report that Tetris Axis is not such a shiny thing.]

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September 29, 2011

Review – Kirby Mass Attack

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Mister Raroo @ 4:05 pm

Review Kirby Mass Attack
HAL Laboratory was the first developer to truly show just how cool games could be on the Nintendo DS. Those of us who survived the dark, dreary days that were the DS’s first few months of existence know how slim the pickings were. But, like the sun breaking after a long night, along came Kirby Canvas Curse, and gone was any buyer’s remorse we had been feeling.

Canvas Curse skillfully demonstrated that the DS’s touch screen could be used for more than gimmicky mini-games, while also taking the Kirby series in an interesting new direction. I still play it on a regular basis all these years later – it is fabulous, and if you haven’t played it, do yourself a favor and track it down immediately.

Now we find ourselves in the twilight of the Nintendo DS’s reign, and HAL returns once again with an absolute knockout release. Kirby Mass Attack, like its cousin Canvas Curse, does away with a traditional control scheme and opts instead for stylus-driven control. Thankfully, the wizards at HAL superbly integrated this type of control scheme into engaging and intelligent level design and aesthetics, and the end result is one of the most interesting, innovative, and fun games to hit the Nintendo DS in quite some time.

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