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Wii Fit U: unexpectedly good news

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Installing Wii Fit U, the game found my old Wii Fit save historic and imported my historic data.  It only imported one score (the top one) for each of the minigames, but that's better than nothing.

On my first try, back in November, it told me that I had a Wii Fit age of 29.  Since then I've played the game from time to time, and it's hovered around 25.  This is very good news, given that I'm 36.  Even better news is that according to the historic data, I'm now at my lowest weight since 2008.

This surprises me, particularly since I ran the London Marathon in 2008.  I would be the first to admit that I've let myself go a little since then.  Still, as long as I ignore the idea that it might be caused by the balance board being used on carpet now, when it was previously on a wooden floor, it means I can eat more chocolate.  Hoorah.

The introduction of the Wii Fit Meter changes things considerably.  I wore the pedometer for Walk With Me for months, eventually stopping simply because it was too much hassle having to constantly find the game cart and put it in my DS.  With this, the game is always on the Wii U and it takes about five minutes to download the data from the device, as well as do the fitness test.

So I get to see how many calories I've burnt off from simply walking.  It's not that many.


In fairness, this wasn't taking into account the fact that I took Nicholas swimming for thirty minutes (the WFM's not waterproof), but going by this I should be ballooning.

Time to burn some calories doing games, then.  The ski jump is as good as it's always been, though I'm nowhere near my old best scores.  I need to be going at least 60mph by the bottom of the ramp.



The second screen's used really well in many of these games - but I do need to find my stand, since it's not ideal with it being balanced in front of the TV.

To the Moon: upsetting

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Man, this is really quite a difficult game.  Not because of the gameplay, but because of the story.  As you go further back, it's clear why River experienced problems in later life, why John has been left with so much trouble in his mind.  The meaning of the paper rabbits has just been revealed; I've just seen John and River get married, with River saying that nothing felt different and John saying the difference was responsibility.  Did he know of River's condition at that point?

It's a beautiful game.  I was welling up as they danced at the top of the lighthouse, after (or, rather, before) naming it.  The cynicism of the researchers seemed ill-placed that point.



And my first bug ... pretty sure they shouldn't be standing in mid-air ...



To the Moon: affecting

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It's hardly the most stunning of games from a technical point of view.  I've encountered no bugs, but the slow text and stuttery animation are initially difficult to get past.  The graphics, while basic, are atmospheric, and at times feel rather foreboding.  And the story ...

You start the game arriving at a house where two kids are playing the piano.  It's a really lovely tune, and variants of it continue throughout the game.  You learn why it is you're there - to go back in time and change things to ensure that your client gets to visit the moon.


The script is well written and funny at times, and while at the start there are lots of little details that are easily overlooked, these tend to be expanded on later.



I've taken quite a few steps back in time now, but according to the timeline I'm still only a fifth of the way through the game.  The story is already getting to affect me though, as I know how things turn out when I learn about promises made, news being shared, and  feelings exposed.



You see, ordinarily that last screen would be a massive spoiler, but you know she dies from the very start of the game - in fact, at the start she's already dead, but you go back in time to find her.  That's where the spoilers lie.

I'll continue this sometime soon.

Stacking: completed!

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Woah, where did that come from?  Nothing about the game at all, then suddenly completed?

Stacking is sort of an evolution of the point-and-click adventure game, except rather than using objects you find in the world, you use the individual abilities of the characters you meet instead.  You do this by stacking inside them - you play as Charlie, the smallest Russian doll in the world, and the other Russian dolls are of varying sizes.  To control a doll of size 3, you need to first stack into a doll of size 2.  You directly control Charlie (or the doll which Charlie is inside), and at times this was a little imprecise, with at least one instance of the doll getting stuck on scenery.


That was a minor annoyance though, and the game has plenty of charm to overcome it.  Presentationally, it's well thought out, set in the 1930s with a silent movie art deco feel to it.  It's very clever, as well, as most of the puzzles have multiple solutions, and you only require one to continue through the story.  On the first level I did just this, but by the time I was running around a Zeppelin, I was intrigued as to how to solve each puzzle in as many ways possible.

Not only that, but there are additional challenges and special characters to collect and amusing things to do.  I'm not one for repeating things over and over again, but this game was amusing, charming and (maybe most importantly) short, and I found myself at the end of a few hours seeing the ending with the majority of collectibles from levels three and four in the bag.



I still went back to those levels though.  There are some really funny bits of dialogue throughout the game, and some of the animations on dolls is ingenious.  The Widow Chastity manages to sway her hips, even though she doesn't have any hips.


Other dolls have their own personality.




So enamoured was I with the game, that I immediately went back to the first levels and found all the collectibles there as well.  I completed the game by wrapping five dolls in bandages aboard the ocean liner, which seems a fitting end.





There's some additional content available for about £3.50 (causing the locked achievements above); I may well buy that one day when I'm tired of playing a gritty brown adventure game.

Gauntlet: generally boring

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Some games don't age well, unfortunately. Moreover, some games just don't suit certain settings in the first place, and age makes it ever more evident.  Playing Gauntlet last night, I felt that it should have stayed in the arcade, as the constant draining of health and difficulty in dispatching enemies feels odd when there's nobody waiting to have the next go on the machine.

In the end I just decided to clear an achievement for getting the highest score on the leaderboard.  This meant getting above 8000 on a single life.  By warping to level four, I found I could stand in a corridor and kill all the enemies spawning around a corner; after a while the walls changed to exits and I could kill even more in the level.  Not the most fun thing ever, though.