3ds — Page 15

StreetPass Explorers (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 19/09/2016 Written by deKay

See, I said I thought I’d nearly completed another one, and verily it came to (street) pass that I did. StreetPass Explorers uses the distance your collected chums have walked, rather than their favourite colours, to determine how far you can explore a map.

Dotted around the map are bags with items in, wild animals who want to eat you, rocks to break through, snowballs to jump over and magic treasure to collect and piece together. It’s pretty good, although maddeningly frustrating when you run out of steps just before reaching your goal and on your next turn, complete with a full compliment of 10 explorer helpers, travel three pixels and waste all their steps. As happened lots of times to me.

Like the other new StreetPass games, play is swift and the game overall isn’t too long. There’s also more to do, again like the other titles, once it’s complete.

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StreetPass Slot Racer (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 16/09/2016 Written by deKay

That’s two of five down already! These new StreetPass games seem quite a bit shorter than the previous ones, so far anyway.

StreetPass Slot Racer is basically Scalextric. You play by holding down A to go, and letting go of A to slow down – and you need to time doing this on corners and jumps correctly in order to get the best speed boosts. There are a fair few courses to work up through as you rank up, and the final “boss” is a head to head race with Iceman, the world champion slot car race driver.

This final race was actually really easy, but unlocking him was hard as one of the challenges before him needs you to finish in under 46 seconds. THREE TIMES I managed 46.07. So frustrating!

There’s more to do now though, and some new ranks have opened up, so like Trader I’ll keep playing. It’s looking like the next one to be completed might be Explorers, so watch this space.

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Pokémon X: I may have the Rumble Badge

Posted on 04/08/2016 Written by Xexyz

There was a bit of mucking about in Shalour City, running back and forth to the Tower of Mastery and the gym. I was anticipating a long slog up the tower, similar to the ghost towers of other games, but after winning the gym badge and being told to go back up the tower, in fact it was a simple slope to the top. There I was given a Lucario with mega evolution. Mega evolution seems to make your pokémon change colour a bit and become stupidly overpowered.

Lucario in hand, I left the city and started to travel East, but in real life I got off the train and some time over night my 3DS ran out of battery. I can't remember when I saved. I hope I don't have to repeat the gym, although beating the fighting trainers only required one of my pokémon - Vivillon, who could one-hit-kill with a Psybeam.

Pokémon X: lost in Reflection Cave

Posted on 26/07/2016 Written by Xexyz

I've not written about Pokémon X before, and yet have fifteen hours logged to it. Partially that's because I've been rather lazy with my gaming diary, and partially that's because Nintendo have prevented you from posting screenshots to Miiverse, which in turn means I can't post them here.

Anyway. I don't have a great record with pokémon games. I have played Yellow, Sapphire, LeafGreen, Pearl, Black, and now X. I have never completed one; I have reached the Elite Four on the first four games listed, and on Pearl I managed to beat them - only to get defeated by a champion and sent back to the beginning.

Yet I keep getting drawn back in. Maybe it's that I love the beginning game - exploring the map, catching pokémon and filling up the pokédex. The gyms to start with are generally easy, and the main problem you can have is being too powerful, with a team who just KO any rare wild pokémon instead of letting you catch them.

And so it has been the case with Pokémon X, except the game seems to be progressing a lot slower than previous iterations. I have played for 15 hours, and have only cleared two gyms. The journeys between gyms are not only longer - multiple long routes each time - but also contain more sidequests and distractions. It feels a bit Assassins-Creed-ish. I am trying to ignore anything not important, outside of the usual pokémon collecting and levelling, but I fear that I may end up with an underpowered team. We shall see.

I've just arrived in Shalour City, where I believe there is a new gym. People are talking of a strange tower, though, so I suspect I may investigate that first ...

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 02/07/2016 Written by deKay

The original Shantae on the Game Boy Colour (which I played on the 3DS VC not that long ago) was a lovely little platformer with some slight issues: it was very, very hard, and there was a lot of backtracking and wandering aimlessly. I really enjoyed it, but I was a little concerned the followups were going to have the same problems. Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse does not, I was pleased to discover.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse — Maximum Spider

I picked the game up as part of that Nintendo Humble Bundle a while back and now I’ve played it I can say it’s a definite highlight of that pack. It looks incredible, especially in 3D, and fixes all of issues of the original game. There’s backtracking, but there’s an item that warps you to the start of each area and several upgrades and shortcuts you can use to speed around the place. It’s not exactly easy, especially the final area on the way to the end of game boss, but it is substantially more accessible than the GBC title. Baddies don’t take hundreds of hits, and those that do can be dispatched easier if you buy the available upgrades in the shop. I found that many could be defeated more easily later in the game using extra moves I’d unlocked too.

These moves, like a dash, a triple jump and a down-attack also turn Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse into a Metroidvania type platformer, even more so than the (no longer available) animal morphs of the original, allowing access to new areas. There’s even a fill-in-all-the-squares Castlevania style map, and an dungeon filled with skeletons which apes Castlevania even more. As before, your hair is your weapon, and is basically a whip anyway!

Hidden around the game, some more difficult to find and/or reach than others, are evil cacklebats, each corrupted by Dark Magic. A side quest, to unlock the “proper” ending, is to defeat all 20 of these creatures. I managed it although finding two of them took ages! There are also hidden squid which, when you collect four, gives you an extra health heart. I didn’t get them all, but they’re not important for the story.

My only (tiny) disappointment with Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse was that each area borrows very heavily from areas in the first game, with most of the baddies from that returning. Yes, they’re redrawn and look incredible, but they’re the same as they were before. There are a few new ones, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. The bosses are all new (bar one, who literally tells you he’s a filler boss now, having returned from a previous game) and they’re all fun to beat.

Definitely one of Wayforward’s best games, although most of their output is pretty special. I’m really interested in playing their HD remake of the DSi Shantae game now too!

Click to view slideshow.

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