Mario Kart Wii

Le dernier et plus grand titre de Nintendo pour le Wii, Mario Kart, a été libéré le 27 avril. À travers le globe, le bourdonnement au sujet de la façon dont merveilleux ce jeu est supposé soit m'a donné l'impression que sa boîte blanche massive tiendrait des merveilles incalculables de joie de jeu. Avec l'entretien de nouveaux articles, de voies, de karts, de motos, et même de jeu en ligne multijoueur mondial, je suis devenu véritablement « pompé » pour le dégagement de ce titre. Peu de temps après acheter le jeu j'ai commencé à appeler tous mes amis pour venir pour les batailles de dédoubler-écran qui seraient faites tout au long de la nuit. Après que sélectionnant vers le haut de plusieurs boîtes de pizza et d'un approvisionnement presque sans fin en produits caféine-injectés, le minuit ait roulé autour et il était temps d'emballer.

Après avoir sauté les ballons innombrables en mode de bataille, nous avons décidé d'ouvrir le reste des voies disponibles par le mode simple de joueur. D'ici là nous avons eu un bon sentir des nouveaux articles et véhicules, et d'une manière plus importante, la roue de Wii. Ainsi nous avons bourdonné par toutes les courses grandes de prix et alors il était de nouveau à se lutter. Quand nous chacun avions trouvé le type du kart ou de moto que nous avons aimée mieux sur nos caractères préférés de Nintendo, nous avons lutté la nuit partie juste comme nous quand 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.

Is Seattle ready for all the geekiness of PAX V?

Are you ready to join Gabe and Tycho at PAX?  Aug. 29-31, 2008 at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle proud geeks will be flocking to get their Penny Arcade loot signed by the duo that started it all.  If they may not acquire a signature or hints to On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, they will garner much more geeky wisdom from the vast array of gaming heads of state that will be there.

Three days of hands on game play sound like enough to make PAX a roaring success alone.  Microsoft, UbiSoft Games, Nintendo, and Sony, are just some of the big hitters that will be exhibiting and showing of prereleases at this gaming show that stemmed from a hobby.

The ECTO-1, of Ghostbuster fame, the PAX 10 independent games showcase, and two nights of music are just teasers of what you will enjoy while you are the exploring every square inch of the almost doubled exhibition hall.  What more can one ask for, next to face to face time with Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik themselves?  Well, if you cannot settle for that, be sure to check out the approximately 72 games exhibitors that are going to be geared up ready to keep you occupied.  Game on!

Wii goes to bat and X-OOM’s into a homerun!

The Wii has just become even more fun than ever.  When you need a break from gaming, you can stream music from your PC using X-OOM Media Center.  Music, videos, and photos are all able to be transferred to your Wii with this new interactive media hub.

Instead of requiring bothersome USB drives, CD’s or memory cards, with X-OOM, once the software is installed on the PC you may wirelessly share your media files with the Wii.  Another feature to look forward to is the ability to browse the internet.  X-OOM allows access to over 1000 digital radio and TV channels, as well as podcast support, RSS feeds, YouTube, and Google Video.

Navigation and installation promises to be very simple.  With the Wii adding so many features like these to their product, I begin to wonder what they could possibly come out with next to top it?  A teleportation device to reduce gas prices?  Okay that is stretching a bit, however, the X-OOM Media Center will allow you to have music anywhere in the house you want it, provided you have a Wii there.  How cool is that?

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.

Professor Layton

I recently tried to explain to a friend about the fox, chicken and the worm.

“It’s a classic puzzle.  You’ve got a fox, a chicken, and a worm on one side of a river.  You can only carry two of them on a boat. If you leave the fox alone with the chicken, it will eat it, and if you leave the chicken alone with the worm, it will eat it.  How can you get all three of them across the river safely?”

My friend, having never played Zork Zero, looked at me as though I were mad.  But now I have my revenge, for I have introduced him to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, which has a variant of this puzzle, and he is completely addicted.

Puzzle games have been a bit outré in the past few years since the PC community recovered from the excesses of the early CD-ROM years.  Perhaps it was a lingering sense of guilt over wasted hours spent playing The 7th Guest.  The typical puzzle in today’s games tends to be a sideshow to the main event and boring to boot.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is all about good puzzles, what are sometimes called “brainteasers”.  Some of them are straightforward, some of them are trick puzzles.  Some are easy, some are hard.  But nearly all of them are interesting, and they don’t talk down to the player.

The eponymous Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, visit the village of St. Mystere to assist in a mysterious bequest.  The villagers of St. Mystere spend their days, and nights, trying to solve puzzles.  As Layton unravels the thread of the game’s plot he will also be presented with well over 100 puzzles, of varied difficulties, by the villagers.

The artwork is beautiful: simple lines, and somehow evocative of the animated film The Triplets of Belleville.  The music, likewise, evokes the French countryside, and if it can get a bit repetitive at times, it still enhances the experience.  That being said, I’m a sucker for accordion music.   Your mileage may vary. The inhabitants of the village are by turns awkward, fat, ugly, grotesque-looking, and supercilious, so it looks to me as though the authors actually did carefully survey the inhabitants of small French villages before creating the game.  

Throughout the game you’ll find “hint coins” which can be used to purchase hints on any puzzles.  You’ll also receive different puzzles from the same villagers.  At the end of a given “chapter” of the game, any unsolved puzzles will appear in “Granny Riddleton’s Puzzle Shack”, so there is no way to  permanently miss a puzzle.  It did seem to me that solving a puzzle in Granny’s shack was less satisfying than solving it “on the street,” but that’s entirely a question of mood.

There are also various meta-puzzles along the way that unlock bonus content, and there is extra downloadable content that can be played without impacting the main storyline of the game.

A sequel has already been released in Japan, and work is proceeding on the third game, which I will buy without a second thought.  It’s that good.