Tag: eShop

The Swapper – Quadruple Standards

I’m going to make this short because The Swapper is a shit game and I don’t want to waste more energy on it. I’m very busy you see, with superior games like Witcher 3. I’ve spent the last month playing The Swapper on and off, desperately trying to find something interesting to say about it, but there’s just nothing. It’s a puzzle platformer where you create clones of yourself to solve puzzles. Yep an Indie puzzle platformer, what a refreshing addition to your game library in 2015. It’s the “I want to be a game developer” genre, but this game somehow got lucky and became a huge hit with critics. Scores from big mainstream outlets ranged from 8 to 10, and the only reason I’m writing this article is to tear that shit down and put it into perspective.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – Now With 3D Graphics!!

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WHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA!! Don’t fall over dudes!! Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is back in THREE DEE!! Have YOU played it yet? Everyone at school is talking about it. Remastered in stereoscopic 3D glory, the world of Sonic 2 has come alive. Race across Emerald Hill Zone, work your way through Chemical Plant Zone, hold your nose through Oil Ocean Zone and explore Mystic Cave Zone like NEVER BEFORE! Collect rings, save animals, run through loops and take on a range of bosses in glorious 3D graphics that fit in your pocket. That’s right, you can take it to school and be the coolest kid there. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has launched on the Nintendo 3DS eShop for a few dollars, and it’s worth throwing your lunch away for.

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Plague of Shadows – Erratic and Free DLC

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Hee hee hee!! It’s myyyyyy turn. Throw your shovels away and bust out the beakers, because we’ve got a spell to concoct. With the Essence of every Knight I’m going to make a spell of ultimate power that will allow me to do anything I want. The bravery of these clueless Knights just makes me want to hurl, it’s so cliche. With special potions and smart movement I take advantage of their predictable Knight-like behavior. That’s it, run towards me. Right into my bombs. Too easy, AHAHA. My campaign has taken place in the shadows, and I’m not going to charge anyone or demand anything, just so I can stay underground in my laboratory and continue being brilliant. I have stealthily arrived in Shovel Knight as an automated download, but nobody cares about him. His essence is merely an ingredient in my potion. The other Knights are too stupid to complete anything, so there’s also a password to unlock me. Assuming they can read, HEE HEE!! I merely picked the sneakiest method to execute my devious plan. This is the real story, while the other Knights fight for glory and take each other out, we’re about to take control of the entire world.

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Gunman Clive HD Collection – Of Jump and Shoot

Pew pew. Gunman Clive is a videogame where you jump around and shoot bad dudes, and Gunman Clive 2 is the sequel with more jumping and more shooting. Originally released on 3DS, they have now combined to form Gunman Clive HD Collection on Wii U, a huge collection of 2 games where you jump and shoot things. I’m going to make this review short and to-the-point, because that’s what Gunman Clive is all about. He doesn’t mess around with convoluted stories or filler content. This is probably the cheapest HD Collection ever made at 5 Australian dollars, and it’s the best version of each game. Instead of following the trend of other HD Collections by including new “features” like glitches, patches, crashes, muddy textures and framerate problems; this HD Collection actually makes the games better by refining the controls and polishing up the graphics for the big screen. The 5 dollar AU price point translates to 4 dollars in the US because we’re different. It’s 3 or 4 pounds / euros / whatever in Europe’s different regions. 700 rupees if you’re in Hyrule. 50,000 gems in Woolly World. 2000 coins in Inkopolis. Alright, that’s enough. I don’t know every currency and Gunman Clive is still pending classification in a few of these places. For a universal comparison, Gunman Clive HD Collection is the price of a freshly baked, choc-filled cake with strawberry topping. Except this will kill you dozens of times, instead of once. YEEEAAHHH!!!

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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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Shovel Knight – A Tale of Shovelry

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What a day. My arms are tired from shoveling, and my legs ache from jumping and squatting. Such is the life of a Knight of Shovelry, but I am prepared to do this every day. My purpose is to stop The Enchantress and rescue Shield Knight, but right now I am consumed by the warmth of this fire. There’s something magical and innocent about it. Those 8-bit flames might not light up a castle, but they keep me warm. A mellow tune plays in my mind as I reflect on a hard day’s shoveling. It was tough but I got some gems, beat some enemies and took down one of the Knights of The Order. Such fools, surely they see The Enchantress is using them. Alas, not my problem. I will knock some sense into them the only way I know how, with my shovel. As I drift off to sleep I search for pleasant thoughts, the chime of gems, the great jumps I cleared, that musical note I found… yeah… I did all that… I will save you Shield Knight… zzzz.

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Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse – eShop Treasure

Shantae on Game Boy was an incredible technical feat in 2002. The Game Boy Advance was already out, but Wayforward stuck to their guns and made the best GBC game possible, working so hard to make it one of the best looking games on the system. Unfortunately while the gameplay had some neat ideas, it felt like it wasn’t as exciting as it could be. It’s well designed and I understand why people like it, but I personally never really felt inspired by it, and the movement is very basic to the point where it’s not that enjoyable to play. It made an interesting one-time playthrough at the very least and established the character. Fast forward a decade, and Shantae has been set free from technical limitations with the release of Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse on 3DS and Wii U. Sporting a glorious pixelated style in 3D and on the big screen, the game takes Shantae’s wildest wishes and makes them come true. I’ve just played through the Wii U version and it’s absolutely fucking amazing. The music, controls, gameplay design, structure, presentation are all excellent and everything has suddenly clicked in a brilliant way. It’s significant. I’d liken the improvement here to the jump between Metroid and Super Metroid. Great foundations were already in place, but now it’s a lot more fun to play. This is a top-tier videogame, and I felt that the second I started controlling Shantae.

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Cubemen 2 – GamePad Warfare

Cubemen 2 is an ambitious title just released on the Wii U eShop that hosts 3D strategic battles over multiple platforms and game modes. Developers 3 Sprockets and Nnooo have got together to make sure PC and Wii U gamers can do the same. This means PC and Wii U owners can not just create and share levels with each other, but also play directly online whether you’re sitting at your desk or on the couch, or even the toilet thanks to the Wii U GamePad. Just like your dinner, this game is extremely open and customisable; and while it does boast a solid campaign and single player elements, the focus is on the player and what kind of experience you want to create. There is soooooo much to say about each game mode I could flood you with a few paragraphs on each one, but I’ll just talk about my own experience so far and explain the core gameplay and features in detail.

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Siesta Fiesta – Everyone’s Invited, Paddles Provided (BYO Drinks & Tunes)

Siesta Fiesta is a game I bought without having a clue of its quality or how it would play, I read some reviews but gaming journalism has approached the point where I can’t tell the difference between a 4 and a 9 anymore when Splash or Crash gets good reviews. Everything is good or bad just because you should trust us. Anyway I had 2 motivations for diving into this mysterious fiesta. Firstly the price is great ($5.85AU) for an original 3DS game, and second is the fact that it was released here at all. Due to an inexcusably bad classifications system, a lot of small games skip Australia because developers simply can’t make the money back and I don’t blame them. I want to commend the effort of developer Mojo Bones for including Australia in their definition of “worldwide” when we perhaps don’t deserve it at the moment. OK that’s rubbish, everybody deserves videogames.

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Game & Wario – Wario’s Identity Crisis

Game & Wario is a game I’ve had for about a year and I still can’t figure out how to describe it, nor have I ever wanted to. The art style feels forced, the presentation is a mess, and half the games just aren’t very fun to play. I’ve had some fun with it and unlocked all the games but it still gives me an odd unfinished feeling after 20 hours playtime. With this being one of the free games in the new Mario Kart 8 promotion, many people have been asking about it, and for good reason because it’s a difficult game to gauge. Is it simple addictive fun like previous Wario Ware games? Are the games more fleshed out? Is it a platformer? Is it an FPS? Is there more content or less? What is content?

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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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Cloudberry Kingdom – No Randomly Generated Pain, No Gain

Welcome to Cloudberry Kingdom, the game that abuses you with unfathomably difficult levels and then cheers you up by letting you die as many times as you want. This is a 2D platformer with an ambitious premise of randomly generated levels, but does that mean level design is thrown out the window? Luckily the other main feature of the game balances this out – customisation. I enjoyed my brief time with it at PAX and it made me curious enough to spend $15AU on the full game, which has just been released on Wii U, PS3, 360 and PC. I’ve spent some solid time with the game now and I’m happy to say Cloudberry Kingdom is the real deal.

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Mighty Switch Force! 2 – 60 Second Review

OK, LET’S DO THIS, I’m going for a PAR TIME here! I just got through every level of this game and man oh man it’s really GOOD! OK, the first game was good right? But this takes it to a whole new level. Level 2, because it’s the 2 game. 2 comes after 1 and that means this is a sequel. A really good sequel that doesn’t really add much but adds a lot. ARE YOU FOLLOWING?

NO TIME TO READ THIS

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