Category: Impressions

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Friends of Nintendo Bundle

Last year Nintendo surprised us with their very own humble bundle but region locked the games to North America. As an affluent Australian I bought it anyway, directing the money to charity, just to support the concept. This year though, no doubt inspired by me, they ensured the bundle was open to Nintendo customers in Europe, South America and Oceania so I was excited to actually be able to play it. I’ve got some quick impressions of most of the games to share and there’s even a download code for one game to give away if you’re too stingy to buy the bundle. Continue reading “Friends of Nintendo Bundle” →

Star Fox Zero – Flying Through The Bullshit

I played about 5 hours of Star Fox Zero today and I’m just so excited that I have to write out these impressions and clear up some things about this game immediately. There’s a lot of confusion going around about the controls and quite frankly, it’s all fucking bullshit. Game journalists spinning this propaganda are a bunch of IDIOTS who can not be trusted to form an opinion, let alone provide one to the masses. Kotaku, IGN, Polygon, the usual clusterfucks that everybody should know to avoid by now have all given this game bad reviews because it threatens their 2 dimensional way of thinking. It’s the same fucking bullshit ZombiU and The Wonderful 101 endured, they see this game as a threat because it’s another heavy hitter on the Wii U that threatens to take their normal games away. I want to throw that mindset in the bin and fucking burn it. There is room for every game to be beautiful. The controls in Star Fox Zero are outstanding, and this game is absolute quality.

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Yo-Kai Watch – Demo Impressions

That’s right, you’ve stumbled into a writeup of impressions of a free demo. It might seem a bit redundant but this game has a special charm to it I wanted to share, and a lot of people still don’t play free demos because being active is hard. If you have a 3DS and live in Australia or America (EU release date 2016), just close this now and download the demo yourself. It’s a comfy 858 blocks and gives you 15 plays which is more than enough to decide if you like it. It’s a good 20-30 minutes of walking around town looking for Yo-Kai.

The game’s awesome production values become apparent right away with a really cool cutscene of a boy uncovering something in a dark forest. The animation is well-done and it creates a sense of wonder right off the bat. This picture is the exact quality on the 3DS screen.

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Look and Feel: The first 4 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X

Getting my feet wet in Mira, the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X, took a lot more effort than usual. Although recently unemployed, with limitless freedom in front of me, the game’s release coincided with my partner and I packing up for a month away from our cosy inner-city apartment. Arriving at my parent’s house in the flood prone swamp lands of Busselton, I discovered the internet speeds of my hometown have not kept up with the developed world and have intact regressed due to the ageing copper interchanges slowly rusting away. It took over 30 hours to complete the 20GB installation, 30 hours I mostly spent complaining to unsympathetic ears on Miiverse where people told me to “just buy a physical copy” or “get a job”. Compounding matters further there’s only one television and my Mum hates video games so I didn’t get any game time in until everyone went off to their respective workplaces this morning. The four hours I did get to play though, were spectacular.

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Tri Force Heroes – Demo Impressions!!

Nintendo’s been distributing *HELLO* demo codes for The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes on 3DS and *HELLO* I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on some from Nintendo Australia. I say lucky because their *HELLO* email system is shitty and unreliable, and these are seemingly distributed randomly. With the death of Club Nintendo it seems they’ve finally fixed their database and I got my first *HELLO* email from them in months. Anyway, I’m needed in the Drablands!! *LET’S GO!*

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Super Mario Maker – The First Week

It’s been one week and this game has already turned my brain into coins. I’ve made a bunch of levels and played hundreds, and when I go outside I see potential Mario levels everywhere. The shape of my fence. The hills and trees beyond the farms. The crane at work lifting stacks of wood up to the flagpole, I mean conveyor belt. I’m gonna whore out some level codes in this post, but first here’s a little bit of a *dingding* writeup. What was that? Don’t *dingding* worry about it.

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Nindies@Home – Demo Impressions

Recently Nintendo held a promotion on the Wii U eShop that let gamers sample a whole bunch of Indie games. Over the course of 3 weeks, a wave of 3 new games popped up to sample each week. Simply by playing the demo of one of these games, you are granted 15% off their retail price when they come out. Nindies@Home was Nintendo’s way of bringing some of the E3 experience into people’s homes, and helping Indie devs get more exposure. The promotion just finished in Australia and I’ve just finished playing them all. It arrived here later than America and Europe, since ratings are expensive here and demos have to go through certification. I didn’t expect the promotion to arrive here at all so it was a pleasant surprise. Nintendo AU pulled through and I’m very thankful. They have been doing a great job with everything lately. I took the opportunity to play all 9 games and offer my thoughts.

The following are demo event impressions and not representative of my final opinion.

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New 3DS – Hands On (EB Expo)

Nintendo Australia has been kicking arse lately. With brand new managing director Tom Nook, things are starting to turn around with tables no doubt being flipped over at NAL HQ. In our very first Nintendo Direct it was announced we were getting New 3DS this year, much to the shock of all 12 Australians active on Twitter. Very keen to have a look at this new machine, I got a sneak peak at the EB Expo and here are my impressions. Continue reading “New 3DS – Hands On (EB Expo)” →

Splatoon – 3, 2, 1, IMPRESSIONS! (EB Expo)

I was lucky enough to play Splatoon at the EB Expo this weekend, and even luckier to line up and play it again. And again. And a few more times. You make your own luck right? As an avid Mario Kart racer I still can’t answer that. Anyway, after 6 rounds I still wanted more but figured that was enough to get a good idea of the game, after all there were other games to try at the Splatoon Expo. The bottom line is it’s amazing, but this is the first paragraph so I’ll say a bit more.

The kids shirt was white before the game started

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5 Easy Steps – How To Fix Resident Evil

I’ve just finished playing Resident Evil 6 and after some very bad first impressions, the full game turned out pretty decent. Leon’s campaign was extremely enjoyable and the game does a lot of things right as well as wrong. The game has some interesting scenarios, amazing bosses, great dialogue (by cheesy RE standards), and even good music. One thing I really love are the environments, they are unbelievable to walk around in. The streets of China have ridiculous detail as does almost every area in the game, and there’s some nice unique scenes to enjoy and bask in. I had a lot of joyous moments simply moving the camera around and looking at all the unnecessary detail in every corner. Furthermore the gameplay is extremely robust, and the controls are a good refinement of Resident Evil 4 and 5’s strengths. I think in terms of game mechanics, this is the best Resident Evil to date.

However the the more detail you have, the bigger the mess when it all falls apart, and the things the game does wrong are big enough to kill the mood. While the shooting mechanics are good, they are abused far too much. I simply don’t like shooting games. As a Resident Evil fan, I shouldn’t have to know how to play Battlefield. I’m tired of shooting and after Chris’s campaign I need a break from the sound of gunfire and explosions for a good month. The pacing is relentless and ridiculous, if you can even call it pacing. People troll the game a lot and it’s very easy to criticise, but the significant thing about all these bad changes to the series is they are simply design choices. Resident Evil 6 could have been AMAZING if somebody stepped in and said “this is a bad idea”. In this hypothetical article, I am that guy.

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Capcom has invited me to their development offices to flip tea tables over, but I can only destroy 5 of them. These are the tables I would flip.

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Xenoblade Chronicles – Doing Music Right

Xenoblade Chronicles has been out for a few years now (depending on your region) and I still listen to the soundtrack almost daily. With almost one hundred well-composed songs brimming with heart and energy, it’s incomparable to anything else in music let alone videogames. Many RPG’s have large impressive soundtracks and it’s a huge strength of the genre, but Xenoblade pushes creativity to new heights with the variety and consistent quality throughout. There’s enough here to find something different to listen to every day and for every mood. I think music in videogames is very important, and while not every development team can form a super band of composers like Xenoblade, they should at least try. There’s no reason to let the powerful magic of music go to waste and I’m going to outline some things Xenoblade does right and why it’s the absolute pinnacle of videogame soundtracks.

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Forza 5 – Doing It Wrong (The Next-Generation Illusion)

The first next-gen racing simulator is arriving this month, and it features less tracks and cars than the previous game. Why is that? Developer Turn 10 has said in order to be a “next-gen” experience, everything must be up to quality standards of detail.

“We found that we ship a game that has over 200 cars, and they’re all to this level of detail with huge diversity. It’s been a successful program for us, having the paid DLC. Those that don’t want it don’t have to get it, and those that want it can buy it. The season pass allows them to buy it as a subscription.”

That Season Pass costs $50 US and just includes cars, with the first pack arriving Day 1. Connect these two very large dots in front of us right now, and we have a game that is designed to exploit your wallet. The next-gen experience.

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Pikmin 3 DLC – Doing It Right

The second pack of DLC for Pikmin 3 has arrived today and I’ve already spent a few hours with it. I just Platinum’d the second new stage and my brain is in recovery mode because it feels like I conquered the impossible! Each Mission opens with enemies scattered all over the map and assaults you with strategic possibilities from the start, it’s overwhelming and impossible to comprehend how to beat it at first glance. Slowly but surely the progression makes itself clear and little tricks and shortcuts begin to show themselves. “How many Pikmin do I need for this enemy? Can I run past it? Does my butt look big in this spacesuit?” The challenges in the DLC so far have been much harder than the initial 5 Mission Mode stages and I absolutely love Nintendo’s approach of using DLC to expand the gameplay mechanics.

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Mario Kart 8 – One Race (DETAILED IMPRESSIONS)

At the EB Expo this year I was lucky enough to drive a race of Mario Kart 8. By lucky, I mean I shot my arm up in the air at the speed of light and almost lost it in the rafters. The Nintendo area had a screen on stage for a number of different game events, including Just Dance and Mario Kart 7. Mario Kart 8 was a special game they only pulled out every few hours, and I was very grateful for my chance to play it.

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Here’s the setup with two random dudes playing, one Wii U GamePad and one Wiimote. Unfortunately when I got up, the other kid (my opponent) wanted to use the GamePad so I let him and took the Wii Remote, because kids always come first. I’d used motion steering in my many hours of Mario Kart Wii so this was no hurdle for me. Let the race begin!

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