deKay

Blok Drop U (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 19/10/2014 Written by deKay

I was able to get hold of a free copy of this from someone, and felt a little guilty I hadn’t spent the feeble 89p or whatever it usually costs. Having played it, though, I’m not any more.

It isn’t a bad game at all, but it suffers from two problems: It’s too random, and it’s too short.

The idea is to tap on grey blocks, making all of them disappear, leaving a single red block balanced somewhere without it falling of the bottom of the screen. For the first few levels, it’s mostly puzzle based – remove the blocks in a specific order to make the red one fall as you need it to. After that though, there’s a clear idea of how you’re supposed to finish the level, but the sliding and falling and bouncing is too random. You can do almost the exact same sequence of taps several times in a row and get completely different outcomes. By the end, it just becomes luck or perseverance as to whether you win or not.

And the end comes far too quickly. There are only 30 levels, with each taking less than a minute to complete, even if you have to try multiple times. The game isn’t even long enough to allow you to review it on the eShop – you have to hit an hour’s play to do that! There’s zero replayability too, so little chance of me reaching an hour. How hard could it have been to double or triple the number of levels?

StreetPass Battle (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 07/10/2014 Written by deKay

Finally! After $hlmun attempts at beating the Emperor in the final country, I won! Why did it take so many attempts? Because it’s entirely down to luck whether you win or not.

You see, unlike the previous battles where you can choose how many of each type of army to use, and the order to send them out (and the ability to spy on the enemy to find out what they’re going to send out), the final battle is five random Rock, Paper, Scissors fights. You’ve no way of knowing what the Emperor is going to choose, and each time either of you wins a fight, the other person loses half their entire army. Since the Emperor starts with more than twice as many soldiers as you, you’re already essentially two fights down.

And when you lose overall, so many of your soldiers run away that you have to spend several days racking up StreetPass hits again to replenish your soldiers enough to try again.

Having only managed to win, at most, one of the five fights on every single attempt, my final battle was four wins and a draw, easily besting him. Phew!

No. I won’t be playing the “after game” content. And once I’ve got all 80 plants in StreetPass Garden (I’m up to 75) I can put StreetPass Plaza to rest for a bit and actually play some “real” 3DS games again!

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 29/09/2014 Written by deKay

I hope my B, and to a slightly lesser extent, Y buttons are OK. In my twelve hours running through the main Legend Mode campaign, I’ve pressed them rather a lot. I don’t think they’re worn out, but not since I played one of those “shooting watch” games have I hit a button so many times. Mash mash mash mash mash.

BBY. BBBY. BBBBY. Other variations, peppered with ZR (bombs, usually) and the odd X to pull off a special attack or (rarely) A to dodge. And block? Blocking is for girls. In fact, I didn’t even realise there was a block until I’d nearly finished the game. Once more, “There’s a block button?” returns. Apparently, pressing R triggers your magic and makes you do fancier attacks for a bit. I used it once, I think.

Sounds repetitive, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. Well, it is, obviously, but it never feels like you’re doing the same thing over and over. You keep being pulled away to rescue or defend elsewhere on the map, or you have to swap secondary weapon to deal with a different foe, or you might need to run away for a bit and find some hearts. Or escort a bombchu. Or take down a massive boss who requires more skill than random button bashing achieves. And sure, you revisit the same locations several times, but the situation is different. Sometimes you’re a different character (and they all perform differently), or you have new tasks, so it never feels like a rehash.

Importantly, it is a lot of fun. Swording/hammering/harping (really) your way through massive swathes of foes, knocking out 10, 20, 50 – even 100 – in one combo will never, ever get old or tiring.

Add to that the collection addiction where you collect weapons and materials that baddies drop to better your defences and attacks, adding new combo moves and perks, and even replaying missions isn’t a chore.

I did spend a little while on the NES Zelda-inspired Adventure mode, both between missions on the main mode and after completing the game, and it too is pretty fantastic. And huge. You’re given smaller missions where you have to defeat only certain enemies, take down a certain number in a time limit, and assorted other challenges, but there are loads of them. How well you do determines which areas of the map you open up too, so you need to perform well rather than just win if you want to open up everything.

Now I’ll work my way through that, while I wait for the DLC, all four pieces of which I’ve already pre-ordered…

Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD (PS3): COMPLETED!

Posted on 22/09/2014 Written by deKay

It seemed very hurried towards the end. Years were skipped. Very little story exposition happened. Events just occurred in quick succession, and I realised how linear this Assassin’s Creed game actually was.

I’d started to suspect a twist at the end, and by the end of Sequence 7-ish I’d realised what it was. The ending threw me, until (spoiler), and the Citizen E thing happened.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad game, but it’s probably the worst Assassin’s Creed title in a long while. Even without the boats. It’s just a shame that it was so short, so linear, and so disjointed, as the actual assassining was enjoyable. The PS3 pad didn’t help either, I suppose.

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)

Posted on 21/09/2014 Written by deKay

For many years I’ve lamented how the the 3D Zelda games (that is to say, those that aren’t top down rather than those you play with glasses) are, well, pants. Over my time as a gamer, I’ve never got into the Samurai/Dynasty Warriors series. I’ve played a few, and even bought the 3DS one, but stopped there.

So why did I have a moment of weakness and buy a download code for Hyrule Warriors, a combination of all that is bad about Zelda games and a game series I couldn’t be more meh about? I don’t know. But I’m glad I did because it’s bloody awesome.

Fans of games known as “Musou” (at least, known as that to nerds who propagate the idea the series is niche and, well, non-Japanophile gamers wouldn’t like it) will see this is little more than a Zelda skinned example of the genre. Battlefields filled with forts, allies, and more enemies than a feeble little Nintendo console should really be able to cope with – let alone with no slowdown, and generals to defeat.

Only with Zelda clothes on, these battlefields are areas like Hyrule Field and Death Mountain. The allies are Impa and Sheik. The enemies are ripped straight from Zelda games, and the generals, instead of being historical samurai warriors, are bosses Link has previously defeated in “normal” Zelda titles. Massive bosses, in some cases. And cuccos. Yay!

Gameplay is just like in Warriors, where you take ground by capturing forts and regions, lose ground by not paying attention to what’s going on elsewhere in the map, and your allies run round doing the same with not the best AI in their heads. Ultimately, you can’t rely on them to do anything, so sometimes you need to abandon your current objective to save their hide – again – before returning to the task at hand.

A Zelda twist is that you can pick up secondary weapons from treasure chests (complete with obligatory DA DA DA DAAAAH). These are instantly recognisable: Bombs, Boomerang, Bow, Hookshot, and so on. You can probably guess the rest. You can also play as any of your allies instead of just Link, and you recruit more warriors as you progress in the game. Additionally, there’s a crafting part to the game where you can upgrade and enhance your weapons, and choose new perks and abilities, for the price of some materials that enemies drop and a bag of rupees.

Somehow, it manages to feel just like Zelda without actually playing anything like any Zelda game before it. Which is A Good Thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Of course, I’m only about 4 or 5 hours in at the moment, so there’s still time for everything to head south, but what would appear to be a repetitive button masher is actually an addictive and surprisingly varied action title. More of this sort of thing with your game serieses, please Nintendo.