Wii Fit

“That’s obese!” the voice happily chirps. The voice, belonging to an anthropomorphized bathroom scale, is my nemesis. It is Wii Fit, and every day it tells me I am overweight (or, after a night drinking too many margaritas, obese). Read more

Mario Kart Wii

Nintendo’s latest and greatest title for the Wii, Mario Kart, was released on April 27. Across the globe, the buzz about how wonderful this game is supposed be gave me the impression that its massive white box would hold untold wonders of gaming joy. With talk of new items, tracks, karts, motorcycles, and even worldwide multi-player online play, I became genuinely “pumped” for the release of this title. Shortly after purchasing the game I began to call all my friends to come over for split-screen battles that would be waged throughout the night. After picking up several boxes of pizza and a nearly endless supply of caffeine-injected products, midnight rolled around and it was time to race.

After popping countless balloons in battle mode, we decided to unlock the rest of the available tracks through the single player mode. By then we had gotten a good feel of the new items and vehicles, and most importantly, the Wii wheel. So we zoomed through all of the Grand prix races and then it was back to battling each other. When we each had found the type of kart or motorcycle we liked best on our favorite Nintendo characters, we battled the night away just like we did when Mario Kart for the SNES was the newest thing.

Like most of the games Nintendo has released for the Wii, Mario Kart is an excellent party game with a oddly high re-playability rate. It is a great game for families and friends to enjoy together. The Wii Wheel works very smoothly, as long as you don’t over-exaggerate your turning. Mario Kart also works with the Wiimote only, or the Wiimote and nunchuk (the classic controller) and the Nintendo Gamecube controller - and all work quite well. It really depends on what’s comfortable for you. This makes it easy to include all your friends without having to break the bank buying lots of new controllers.

Around noon the next day, when everybody had gone home, I decided to check out the online play. After skimming through the farce that is the user-agreement, I pressed ‘Accept’ and quickly jumped into a race with nine other people from across the US. Sad to say, I was the only one from Oklahoma. The big head I had from owning my friends at the kart party quickly deflated, because then I began to learn what the word “owned” really meant. Anyway, online was still a lot of fun. I never had any lagging problems, and I never got disconnected. Everything ran as smoothly as if I was playing with these people in my home, whether I was winning or not.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing this game like it was stuck on self-destruct mode. Mario Kart continues its tradition of being a fun and re-playable party game. Adding the online multi-player exponentially increases the chance of me picking up the Wii Wheel again and again. Nintendo has delivered another impressive title for its revolutionary system.

Endless Ocean

I have been known to be obnoxiously dismissive of “sandbox games”.  “GTA III isn’t really a game,” I’d sniff over a glass of port and a bit of Stilton, “but more of a toy.”  It’s thus with some embarrassment that I admit that Endless Ocean has me hooked.  It’s a toy, but what a toy.

Endless Ocean is a scuba diving simulator. The purpose of the game is to swim around underwater, look at pretty things, and occasionally interact with different types of marine life.  That’s it.  There is no shooting, no danger (the sharks in this sea won’t eat you), and no sense of urgency whatsoever. The only plot is various assignments, such as to escort a wealthy donor on a dive, pointing out their favorite fish to them. 

The game is structured in such a way that information opens up to you through experimentation and exploration.  You interact with animals in various ways (poking them, feeding them, writing in front of them with an “underwater pen”, and so on), and if you reach a certain level of interaction you earn an entry in the encyclopedia for that creature.

Some of the most intriguing experiences were the underwater caves. In a game where there is no way to fail, these beautifully created and realized caves still managed to introduce both grandeur and drama through natural splendour.  Douglas Adams describing Fjordland, New Zealand once wrote “one’s first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.”  That’s the best way I can describe some of the sights I’ve seen in Endless Ocean. You can dive day and night, and the seasons vary offering subtly different experiences.

There are minigames going on all about you, but they are not intrusive and are easily ignored.  The music is soothing, lyrical,  apropriate, and reason enough to lazily explore the sea-floor.

You have a variety of tools to bring with you on dives.  The whistle can be used to summon any friendly sea creatures such as a dolphin. The camera is used to take photos for certain missions  or simply to add detail to your scrapbook.

There are also a number of “off-screen” locations that you can unlock through the course of the game.  For example, a local aquarium may ask you to stock one of their tanks; you decide what sort of marine life should live in the aquarium.  As in most of Endless Ocean, there is no particular reward or reason for this beyond pure esthetics.  And that’s just fine.

Some might pick nits about the accuracy of the game.  There is the aforementioned lack of danger.  There is the setting, a fictional sea which conveniently has flora and fauna from every ocean in the world.  There is the ease with which complicated diving manuevers can be performed.  But these complaints fundamentally miss the point.  Endless Ocean is a simple world meant to evoke wonder and joy simply by existing, and by being interesting and beautiful.  And that’s more than enough to make me happy.

Super Mario Galaxy

For some, this was the next venture in a line of 3-D Mario titles; others were anticipating the true successor to Super Mario 64. One thing’s for certain, we all were excited. Mario is once more tasked with saving Princess Peach from King Bowser, but this time the quest puts the entire universe on the table. So was this the game we’ve all been waiting for?

Galaxy is instantly familiar, drawing a clear influence from past Mario titles while maintaining a powerful unique touch. Each themed galaxy has between one and six stages (each stage has a star) which can include hidden and ‘comet’ (extra challenge) bonuses. While most stages were quite linear, they still allow a varying degree of free-roaming. The linearity was by no means a bad thing, however. These stages, ranging in difficulty, were about the puzzles and getting from one obstacle to another to reach the end than searching an entire world for where to go next.

The free-roaming level select hub works just as Peach’s Castle or Isle Del Fino did previously, but in comparison is dull. Most of the levels accessible through the hub are standard adventure levels, however some are less traditional, forcing a new control style. The most intriguing of these was the use of the Wii remote in a pestle and mortar fashion to guide Mario through an obstacle course as he stood atop a big ball.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects is the lack of disgruntlement from playing. We’re faced with moments in some games when we just don’t feel like playing anymore because we ‘die’ too much. Spare lives are spent almost as quickly as they’re harvested - quite efficiently courtesy of the abundance of collectible star bits - in Galaxy, however, as a result these classic inconveniences aren’t actually that discouraging courtesy of interesting level design, well-placed spawn points, and the never-looming fear of a game over.

Frankly, at first this oddly controlled universe presented more hardship than thrill. Often I found myself craning my neck to deal with a difficult camera angle or to cope with running upside-down. Thankfully, these discomforts were short-lived and my noggin soon enjoyed a familiar upright stance. I could finally begin to really enjoy the game.

Bar the aforementioned temporary displeasures, the game controls are brilliant. The set of moves Mario can execute has been reduced to only necessary ones and a new do-all activated by flicking the remote. While uneasiness may precede using this seemingly gimmicky function, it is actually refined, fluent, and natural to use. The amount of perfection put into controlling Mario is incredible – not once is something a fault of the game. At times, there is the rare annoyance such as pulling off a side somersault which requires a painfully specific execution. What an awful complaint to make – the controls are too perfect. Super Mario Galaxy is a finely polished gem exhibiting a perfect balance of traditional and motion control on the Wii console.

Mercury Meltdown Revolution

Rejoice, gamers, your long wait is over. We’ve seen a few ports of Mercury Meltdown since it premiered on the PSP last year, but of all those only the Wii version seems perfectly suited to its choice of console. Yes, rather than buttons that lead to frantic turning of the controller or portable console (go on, admit it, everyone did it), this time you get to move that annoying blob of mercury using the infamous motion sensors that come a standard in the Wii Remote.

The game is a clear port, but for once this works in Revolution’s favour. Each level sees you having to manoeuvre said mercury from A to B, avoiding traps and making use of various nifty gizmos including a teleporter and airbrushes. You can even heat or cool your blob, adding another dimension to levels. The Wii incarnation also adds a couple of new levels and shuffles the others around a bit, just to chase any hint of monotony out the window. This kind of care and attention is sure to win even more fans.

The best thing about this game is the intuitive nature of the controls. Yes, if only one game were meant to be on the Wii, this is it. It’s an odd but satisfying feeling to rotate the remote and watch the mercury begin to shift in the same direction. Because of this, it takes mere seconds to figure out how to play. The graphics are identical to previous versions, with the realistic metal surrounded by an almost cartoonish HUD and environments which lack the realism of the original. On the other hand, the game itself is not as hard as the original either, so that can only be a good sign.

Given the number of Wii titles currently assaulting gamers, Revolution could easily be missed, but it’s actually one of the best titles to be released and could seemingly have been designed exclusively for the Wii if not for its prior appearances on the PSP and PS2. Even if you’ve played it before and have nailed the levels, there’s still plenty here. It’s the kind of game with high replay value. Every serious Wii owner who wants to see what their beloved console is really capable should definitely give this a go.

Metroid Prime 3: First Impressions

I fought through a sore right leg and a bad back to walk nearly two miles to my local Toys R’ Us the other day. Why? Well, to pick up Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii of course! It’s been two days since I started playing Samus Aran’s latest 3D outing and I thought I’d share my initial thoughts on this highly-anticipated “final” installment in the Metroid Prime series.

Graphics-

First off, Metroid Prime 3 looks beautiful. The graphics have come a long way from the first unveiled screenshots of the game, which back then made it almost indistinguishable from Metroid Prime 2. It wouldn’t have killed Retro to tweak Samus’s HUD a little, but the backgrounds and locales are rich, lively and easily comparable to first-generation Xbox 360 games. I’m not even 1/4 into the game yet, but so far Prime 3 is the best-looking Wii game I’ve ever seen.

Sound-

Another area of huge improvement. The first Prime had a primitive soundtrack that was saved by some familiar tunes, whereas the second Prime’s entire audio collection sounded like something an electronica maniac composed in his basement using software from the original Game Boy. I’m happy to report that Metroid Prime 3 sounds nothing resembling this.

Most of MP3’s sound effects seem to be refined samples from the past two Primes, but the music is another story. Gone are the grating MIDIs from the past two Primes (save a few recycled, if slightly improved selections); replaced with much grander, more sophisticated orchestral pieces. Much similar to Super Metroid than anything else. This is a good thing, although Retro could’ve done even better with a live orchestra performing the score.

Oh yeah, and everyone talks now….except Samus. Why, oh why, did Retro tweak her body with shapelier legs and sexier eyes and yet leave out the final feminine trait that could potentially reel in thousands of female Metroid fans? I just don’t see the point in continuing to make Samus mute. Why even bother to give her a name if Nintendo wants her to feel like the player? Excluding Samus, though, the voice acting is actually pretty good. Particularly for the Aurora Unit, a “good” version of the Mother Brain who oddly sounds like a combination of Frieza from Dragonball Z and my college speech professor.

Controls-

Relatively smooth, and not as difficult to get adjusted to as one might think. Targeting is more challenging now that you have to manually aim the Wiimote at your enemy after locking on, but I suppose it’s more true to life. It also helps that so far most of the enemies I’ve encountered are relatively slow and stay in plain sight. Turning is slower than it used to be though, and the buttons for missiles and changing visors are also somewhat awkwardly placed. Just wait till you get your hands on the fun Grapple Lasso though. It just might make you yearn for Wii Castlevania.

Gameplay-

Different from the get-go. Unlike past Metroid games, where it was essentially you against an entire planet, Samus has company this time around. In addition to the presence of rival bounty hunters, interaction in MP3 is plentiful. For the first time in a Metroid game you have the ability to talk to NPCs. The Aurora Unit is also a constant throughout, serving as a guiding ear that briefs you on missions, maps your destination and provides hints and advice.

Your travels in Prime 3 no longer take place on a single planet, but several. Let’s face it, constant backtracking nearly ruined Metroid Prime 2. In Prime 3, however, instead of Samus being forced to navigate one giant, confusing map, each world is divided into multiple, much smaller sections. Each of these sections can be reached using Samus’s redesigned ship, which acts as a mobile home base. Not only can you save and replenish your energy and weapon supply, but you can view the inside of the cockpit and use the various controls to find out what your percentage of Phazon corruption is, for example. The ship can also supposedly be summoned for an air strike at certain points, although I haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing this yet.

Final thoughts-

Let me clarify that these are only my first impressions of Metroid Prime 3 and my opinion of the game could change very suddenly, very dramatically. So far, however, this is shaping up to be a most exciting conclusion to the Prime series. I’m very pleased at Retro Studios for the greater emphasis on story and the faster, more action-oriented gameplay. It just feels….right. I can’t wait to delve deeper into Prime 3 and finally figure out how Dark Samus, the Mother Brain and Phazon are connected. Look for my full review in PTD #310.