26. Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (incomplete) (PSP, 2011)
I start this list with the only game I didn’t finish this year, primarily due to a combination of sheer apathy and a simmering hatred of one particularly character. The game, sadly, was pretty close to dead on arrival after its strange and unfortunately quite bad Prologue chapter, where we meet the protagonist and her family. Essentially, the game surrounds its incompetent female main (Estelle) with two Gary Stu characters, her dad (Cassius) and her adoptive brother / love interest (Joshua), and the relationship between these characters is very bizarre. There is one particular scene in the prologue where the dad spends the entire scene talking down / insulting the intelligence of the main character in a way that made me feel really uncomfortable because it’s a bit too reminiscent of classic abuse patterns. Best not to think about that too hard.
So your main character is a Bracer, which is kind of like a combination of a mercenary and a ranger, I guess? Anyway, there’s another scene later in the prologue where Estelle, while on an assignment, starts yelling at some child that they rescue in a tower infested with monsters, and they get ganged up on because she’s an idiot but don’t worry the Gary Stu dad shows up to save the day.
I was tempted to stop playing after the prologue, but I was told the game gets better (which is true). Chapter 1 gives you two other party members, Scherazard, who is one of Dad Stu’s old students, and Olivier, who is this silly foppish bisexual spy. These are definitely the two best members of the cast from what I played. We get a bit more into the meat of the gameplay and it’s pretty easy and not that great, reminds me a lot of Grandia 1, a system with the potential to be interesting but is mostly wasted on the tiny amount of thought you have to put into beating enemies. The shadow of Cassius, unfortunately for the game, seems to haunt us. First, an airline is hijacked by a terrorist organization that supposedly had Cassius on it, but we are told that there is no way that Cassius could be on it because he is such a badass that he could singlehandedly stop terrorism. Then we meet General Morgan, who hates the Bracers, but later we find out it’s because Cassie Sue was once part of the military and he was best military member ever but he left the military to become a Bracer. This is such a stupid plot point that I just laughed out loud when I saw it.
Okay, this Cassius hero worship is getting a little ridiculous even by the standards of such things, but at least we have some cool party members now. Well, did, because they leave at the end of Chapter 1. Which makes a lot of sense plotwise but leaves us with Estelle and Joshua, who are not particularly great. Chapter 2 is kinda boring. We get to hang out with the token hot-blooded anime rival Agate and Kloe, who is kind of the generically nice but unexciting PC. Because so much of the chapter is spent at Kloe’s school without combat or plot progression, a lot of the chapter doesn’t really shed light on the story, which is a bit of a strange choice. The story doesn’t really change in any meaningful way from the beginning to the end of it. At the end of the chapter we are greeted with, predictably, Agate’s backstory of how he was rescued from a life of crime by Cassius. Again, I laughed out loud at this. The boat chase scene is pretty awesome to cap off the chapter, at least.
Chapter 3 has the token child character join you in the beginning, and you go to the quirky scientist/technology town. I stopped playing when arriving in the town after going through another really boring dungeon. After deciding to quit the game, I was greeted with the knowledge that Cassius
plot kills the final boss. I laughed again.
25. Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (GB, 1993)
One of my primary goals of the year was to delve into game series that I’d never played before to diversify a bit. One of the first things I did during this idea was to look at Smash’s roster and grab a few games from series I had never played. Zelda was one of the things I was more skeptical about, because I know that the series is exploration focused rather than story or character or gameplay focused. This is a trait which a lot of people really like, the ability to traverse a world, to feel independent. But it’s never really been my cup of tea. The decision to try LA was based on its portability and its price, which I believe was 4 dollars.
If I said I believed I would love this game when I started it, I would be lying. I think the game is pretty much what I thought it would be, except for one thing that drove me a bit crazy. I often found that the plot triggers for the next event or events occurring were quite random, and often it felt like you had to basically just talk to everyone all the time and a bunch of guesswork to figure out WTF you were supposed to do next. I tried to indulge in the true experience without FAQing, but I ended up FAQing it anyway because I got bored with the monotony of trying to figure out what to do next all of the time.
The best part of the game is clearly the pet Chain Chomp. Why don’t I have a pet chain chomp?
I’m going to try 3D Zelda next year. I think having a more immersive / realistic looking world might help me enjoy the experience of exploration a bit more, but we’ll see.
24. Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice (DS, 2007)
After playing Dual Destinies in December of last year, I decided I was interested in seeing Apollo Justice in his own game, so this was the first game I beat this year. The game is often considered to be the ugly duckling of the series, which is why it took me so long to play it. The game has its bright spots; in particular, the game shines when Apollo, Trucy, and Ema interact. Ema is a hilarious contrast to the positive and upbeat Apollo and Trucy, and they bounce off each other quite well. Klavier is not my all-time favorite prosecutor, but I think he acquits himself respectably and is an enjoyable if shallow character. So the game’s main lawyer, assistant, detective, and prosecutor are all pretty cool. So why is the game so low, then?
The answer is “pretty much everything else”. In two cases, the game seems to push aside the dynamic between Apollo and other people for Emo Phoenix vs. Kristoph, and the game generally suffers for this. I enjoyed the first case pretty well, and it’s one of my favorite first cases because it has a bit more meat than a lot of them, but the subsequent cases aren’t really as good. 4-2 is an okay filler case, Plum Kitaki amuses me and the murder is interesting enough to unravel. Its big comedic character falls flat for a North American audience, I think, which doesn’t really help the case’s comedy credentials. I don’t think I’d really call it an all-time favorite but I wouldn’t dock the game points for it either.
The last two cases aren’t really very enjoyable though. The third case has the weird problem of the character who orchestrates a murder based on a song, and framing a child for murdering and dragging a very tall, stout guy across a stage feels like a really stupid thing to do. And the person who lies in court to cover up ACTING SECRETS. I hate you so much. The fourth case is just a clusterfuck because it has you
convicting someone who is already in prison, which is extremely anticlimactic, and the whole time travel thing where you unravel the mysteries of the unsympathetic-as-fuck Gramaryes is actually extremely boring. Kristoff having his weird meltdown about letting plebs be involved in the court system just comes off as whiny and weird, and is a bit of a sour note to end the game on. The case does teach us the value of peddling your children to help you partake in illegal activity, though, and what could be a better lesson than that?
23. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii, 2012)
This is probably the game on this list that I have the most conflicted feelings about. I borrowed it from Meeple, which I greatly appreciate BTW since I know the game is quite expensive, and had it for a few months before finally deciding to sit down to play it. It has an interesting setting idea, this kind of friendly post-apocalyptic setting where people are just trying to stay happy and trying to get by through the bad times. It worked pretty well for me overall. The earlygame does a good job of developing that setting, and the three party members in that arc are pleasantly enjoyable. The gameplay isn’t very good at first, but a lot of games have pretty bad gameplay earlygame because you’re getting used to the system still.
The game’s core problem writing wise is that is doesn’t do a good job of character development over its 65 hours. Most of the characters who join you don’t really have character growth, and the one character who does, Shulk, seems to grow into a stereotype and a bit of an idiot. Xenoblade’s best characters are the generically likable/amusing best friend character Reyn, and the just and strong-willed Melia. Neither are great, though. I’m not as big of a fan of Dunban (he’s a very stock male badass mentor character) and Riki (not a very funny comedic character, Reyn does his job way better!), and Seven is a bit on the damsel side of the force for me. Sharla is okay but has a very predictable, paint-by-numbers character arc.
The villains range from baby eating to mega baby eating, which is a bit disappointing compared to Xenogears or even Xenosaga (which the game does seem to draw upon somewhat). Mumkar is a hilariously bad character, with his buildup being the weird intro sequence, where he reveals that he is evil, and then the game tries to treat the fact that a character you met for one second is alive is really a strange choice. The ending of the character is pretty unsatisfying as well; you beat him in battle, and you have this scene where Shulk refuses to kill him even though he’s a homicidal maniac. But don’t worry, he dies when he is hit with falling debris (I think?) and falls into oblivion, so any moral conundrum that could have been set up was invalidated by this lazy piece of writing. The characters in the game generally love yelling a lot, particularly at robots, and often scenes are filled with the hot-blooded rage of MEN WHO WANT TO FIGHT ROBOTS! They also like running at robots, and usually being ineffective at fighting after running at them. I found it rather comical, but the game seems to want you to take it seriously, which is unfortunate.
Plotwise the game doesn’t shit itself or anything, but I found it not to be the strong point of the game either. It has some interesting ideas, but not great execution of those ideas. A science-y setting complaint – there is a fight between giant robots that people live on during the course of the game. I was willing to stomach the idea that people live on these giant non-radial beings without problems with gravity because whatever video games. The ramifications of the two robots that people live on fighting each other doesn’t really seem to be comprehended or cared about by the writers. Because it’s cooooool.
Gameplaywise the game is very weird, and one of the rare games that I think has way more enjoyable random encounters than bosses. At the game’s best, the gameplay is engaging and fun and keeps you on your toes, timing which moves you use by enemy. The very little control you have over your allies and the inability to switch between characters in battle hurts, though. I would say about half of the game’s areas have enjoyable and thoughtful random encounters, and the other half tend to be quite easy and brainless but not offensive.
The game’s bosses, on the other hand, are generally pretty terrible. They decided to implement a hard level cap where if you were not at least five levels within the boss’s level, you would be unable to beat the boss (unless you are like a speedrunner of the game, which obviously on a first playthrough I was not). Some casual experimentation told me that if I was six levels below the boss, my hit rates were under 5%, and at five levels it was around 70-80%. I am fine with a game being harder when you are underlevelled, obviously, as I chose to be underlevelled in this game, but it feels needlessly punitive to punish people additionally for choosing to play the game in a certain way. I ended up reaching the final boss sequence about seven levels underlevelled despite fighting almost everything in the final dungeon, and many enemies I fought multiple times. The game has a quest system, which it expects you to use to gain these additional levels. I would be fine with this in principle if it didn’t scale the lategame bosses to impossible without it! So I ended up grinding for about 3 hours before finally being only four levels under the final boss (just because I didn’t want to go through the final boss sequence a third time). Oh, did I mention that I had to FAQ the final boss’s level because the game hides it? Bad design decision on top of a bad design decision. The reason I dwell on the level thing is not only does it have this goofy system with level scaling, the bosses’ challenge seems to be almost all derived from what level you are because the most interesting options you have in randoms (status) is not applicable to them.
Aesthetically, the game is quite appealing, with both nice music and very beautiful graphics; I really like the High Entia city because it feels like what a palace should look like. I also enjoy the different outfits you can give characters based on their armor, even if Reyn in full plate armor seems super silly for the setting (and you don’t get to see his sexy bod as much).
It’s an interesting mess of a game, and as much as the endgame gameplay issues tried to piss me off, I’m still glad I played and beat it.
22. Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS, 2014)
The worst Kirby I played this year because Hypernova is a degenerate and boring superpower.
21. Kirby’s Adventure (NES, 1993)
This game is similar to RotD except older and uglier. Has the amazing King Dedede plot twist though!
20. Kirby’s Return to Dreamland (Wii, 2011)
So Kirby is the second series I decided to try on my Nintendo kick: mostly motivated by my love of King Dedede in Smash Bros., a general love for cute things, the hole in my game playing experience, and the fact that Kirby’s Adventure was free through the Club Nintendo stuff. The game is clearly designed for children, difficulty wise, and that’s fine, so it mostly coasts on being really adorable and being part of a genre I rather enjoy. I think it’s interesting what effect having infinite floating power has on a platformer – it mostly makes the game not about its platforming, but occasionally the game can challenge you on that front. I like the different powerups – Sword, Spear, Needle, etc. – and Return to Dreamland has the special versions of several of the powerups that you use to solve puzzles. Kirby is just so darn cute in all of the outfits, too.
The game does periodically have some interesting bosses, but most of them are braindead easy. I do feel like none of the games outstay their welcome length-wise – KA is about 4 hours, and the other two were around 7-8 hours.
So yeah, I consider all three of them fine games but I don’t think I’m going to seek out many more Kirby games unless they sound notably different than these. I may play Kirby Super Star!
19. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS, 2011)
This game is pleasantly breezy, a fun mix of 2D Mario level design and 3D Mario graphical style. It has some reasonably inspired stage design, especially late in the game. I found myself quite challenged by the last couple of worlds. The final stage is utter douchebaggery and a complete delight to play. Bowser is a pretty fulfilling boss to beat in this game relative to many other Mario games, where you either fight a pretty easy boss or do some kind of gimmick. Overall, though, the game feels like a beta game for another game on this list, Super Mario 3D World, which excels over it in pretty much every way.
18. Mana Khemia: The Fall of Alchemy (PS2, 2008)
This game is definitely an odd duck, for better or for worse. The most notable thing about the game in general is its cast, which is a wild mess of silly, off the wall, and often deranged individuals. How well this assortment of madmen works depends on the player’s disposition (how much you like playing as good / realistic people vs. how much you revel in silliness) and how good each individual character is. I’d say Lily is the most successful character of the story; she reflects a realistic trope (spoiled rich girl) taken to a rather ridiculous extreme.
I also enjoyed Raze and Chloe well as the person who makes sarcastic remarks and snarks from the side. Et and Enna make an interesting pair and you can’t help but feel really really sorry for Enna. Puniyo is a character that is totally silly and unrealistic and the game is utterly fine with it, and I think she works pretty well as the 5 year old slime mob boss or whatever she is. I think Yun and Pepperoni are less successful characters overall, as they are both a little bit dull, and Goto is an utter mess of a character partially saved by his amazing, amazing voice actor. The villain cast is pretty enjoyable; Reicher is of course creepy and fabulous, but the person who I really enjoyed is Tetri, possibly because she reminds me a bit of myself. She loooves cute things but also loves logic / science.
FLAY is back as a hammy supervillain / teacher at the school and it’s pretty great.
Plotwise the game is fairly generic, you have some mystery to unravel but it never hooked me much. For the most part the dialogue is character interaction and silly shenanigans, which is fine by me. The game’s serious plot isn’t horrid but not really why you’d play it.
Gameplaywise the game is mostly a breeze, it’s too easy even on hard mode and the Common Skills are a little too overpowered relative to the regular skillsets. It is worse than the first game for most things related to gameplay, which is a bit of a strange step back. The one thing that it does better than the first game (which is a big deal) is that you get a full party way sooner, allowing you to utilize the switching system more quickly. Since it feels like a core mechanic of the series, I think this is a pretty big improvement. The game feels like it is at its worst when it meanders too long in its boring dungeons, and at its best when it’s throwing jerkass bosses at you.
It has the nuisances of the first game reduced, especially the item creation because it’s all in the same room and you can go to a sub-menu to make something you need. It still takes too much time and annoys me, but it’s better than the first game’s at least.
Is it better than MK1? Yeah, I’d say so, but not by enough that I would be surprised to hear someone say it wasn’t or anything. MK1’s plot doesn’t do too much for me, and the gameplay differences are not very drastic. I’m much more satisfied with MK2’s cast than MK1’s, overall, which is the deciding factor for me, as well as the decrease in the clunkiness of the item forging system.
17. Super Mario World 2 (SNES, 1995)
I had wanted to play SMW2 for a long time. It was the sequel to a game that I loved very much as a kid, but my brother sold my SNES around the time it came out. For whatever reason I missed the fact that the game had a GBA port, possibly because of the stupid titles that the ports gave all of the games. My interest renewed in the game a couple years ago while watching it, but I generally don’t like playing games on the PC so I waited for it to be released for the Virtual Console. And then finally, in 2014, it was.
The game is quite interesting, it’s a platformer where the character you control is very wobbly and hard to control relative to the precision of Mario and Megaman. Overall I find it a bit weird that they chose such a strange control scheme, but whatever. The graphics are quite nice for an SNES game. The stage design is pretty creative but overall not that great, I enjoy the gimmicks but often the game doesn’t implement them in as interesting ways as it could. And the final boss is just a mess. But the game is still fun! Just not an all-time great.
16. Megaman 10 (WiiWare, 2010)
I decided to play Megaman 10 a rather long time after Megaman 9, and I’m not sure exactly why. I watched it played by Grefter and Magey, but for whatever reason it didn’t hook me the way MM9 did. And when I played it that mostly bore itself out. I’d say MM9 is a gem partially because it tries to be MM2 and does it even better than MM2 did, with excellent stage design and overpowered weapons that you need to beat the difficult levels. MM10 is definitely a less inspired game, with weak stage design and not as cool weapon choice, but it’s not a bad game or anything. Just not one I have the desire to replay a bunch of times, unlike 1/2/3/8/9. I think its robot master stages in particular are some of the weakest in the series, but the game does make up for it with having good stages at the end of the game. Some of the weapons are pretty nifty once you get used to using them, but none of them are great. Overall, if you’re a Megaman fan, I’d say this game is worth picking up, it’s cheap and pretty fun. But I’d expect a game close in quality to MM4/MM5 rather than the greats.
15. Zelda II: Adventure of Link (NES, 1988)
So after my experiment playing Link’s Awakening, I decided to try a different 2D Zelda, but this time one that was part of a genre I enjoy a bit more than the top-down style of regular 2D Zelda for combat. So I dug into the archives for a game that was released in Japan a few months before I was born.
The game is not for the faint of heart in the style of most NES games, due to its brutal difficulty and occasional confusion for what to do next. Much like LA, there are times when you just don’t know what the fuck you’re supposed to be doing. I will say that Zelda II’s couple of really bad instances (Bagu and the hidden city) are worse than anything LA pulls, but on the other hand it pulls way less of them and I generally found myself able to play the game pleasantly without a guide. One thing that Zelda II does on this front that I vastly prefer over LA is that it generally won’t make you backtrack to areas you’ve already completed to find people, so generally your proximity to whatever person you are trying to find is much shorter than LA, where I often found myself trekking all over the world to find things.
Aside from this, though, Zelda II has a pretty cool battle system. You have often interesting resource management that is dynamic and changes throughout the game, the levelling system which I found quite thought-provoking and interesting, and the high/low system allows you to have more options with fighting than the top-down system of the other games. The game reminds me most of a proto-Metroidvania, which is generally a good thing in my eyes. The up and down stab add extra things to your arsenal later as well, which is quite nice. My biggest problem with the game battle system wise is that it sometimes is a bit too challenging, particularly at points where you have to do a long overworld trek back to the place you needed to go.
The game is very different than other Zeldas, so I can see why fans of Zelda may not always care for it. But I think if you can appreciate it for what it is – rather than hating what it isn’t – it’s an enjoyable enough game.
14. Super Smash Bros 3DS (3DS, 2014)
Smash 3DS is a fun portable experience, but it’s mostly the same as the Wii U version.
13. Super Smash Bros Wii U (Wii U, 2014)
A Smash Bros. with two of my favorite female characters added in? A Smash Bros. with Megaman? A Smash Bros. with a Bowser that isn’t an embarrassment to Bowsers? I’m so in. I mostly play the multiplayer so I dunno much about the singleplayer modes, but the multiplayer feels better than Brawl’s. Maybe it’s the better roster, maybe it’s the lack of tripping mechanics, but I definitely like it more.
I can’t believe it made Riki and Dunban the characters in Shulk’s Final Smash. I like to yell at anyone who hits me with it because of that. Jerks.
12. Donkey Kong Country Returns (3DS, 2013)
This game hates you and all you stand for. Fun little platformer, but doesn’t have the variety in stage design necessary to be a fantastic one. I do quite enjoy the rocket barrels and minecart stages though. I am hyped for Tropical Freeze.
11. New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U, 2012)
I really enjoy the colorful stages and the fun multiplayer in this game. It’s a well-designed game, and I feel like it is better at making the stages multiplayer and singleplayer friendly than the Wii version. Pretty cool game, much like the Wii game. Honestly, I had a blast laughing with my friends while playing it when we’d run into each other at bad times. The unpredictability of allies that Elfboy talked about is basically me and our other friend being incompetent and jumping on each other’s heads and running into each other. Don’t judge me.
10. Bravely Default: Where the Fairy Flies (3DS, 2014)
This game was the highest RPG on the list until late December, and it’s a pretty good one. While the plot is a bit weak, I quite enjoyed the character work with Edea/Agnes/Ringabel. The game’s character work becomes a little less good later, emphasizing its pretty bad plot instead, but I forgave it for that. Even for Braev Lee, who in the face of being able to make you understand what he is doing, instead blubbers mysteriously and fights you with honor, and still doesn’t tell you the truth even when you beat him. What a dick. DeRosso and Yulyana are two other failed characters, and they command enough of the game’s later plot to be a drag, but…
What I found less forgivable is the end of the game and its repetitive boss fights and the characters’ facepalming-worthy inability to figure out what the player knew. I thought it would be one of my favorite games of the year for sure in the first few chapters, but it’s held back by its major lategame plot issues which bleed into the gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, I think this game has one of the best job systems I’ve ever seen, allowing you to mix and match classes in awesome ways. It feels like you have so many different avenues for making distinct characters, and a lot of the classes are pretty good. I also like that it doesn’t have the stupid thing with Freelancer like FF5 – I always got annoyed that Freelancer/Mime was the superior choice in FF5 lategame. I also love the cute little outfits that all the people wear. ^_^
Overall I think it’s a pretty cool game. It is the FF5 spiritual successor that I always needed in my life, but the game is derailed by its lategame problems.
9. Pokemon Omega Ruby (3DS, 2014)
There’s not a lot to say about this game. It’s Pokemon, and probably one of my favorite installments to date, as a combination of Gen 3 ad Gen 6. Its plotting isn’t a complete mess like Gen 6 and it has more challenging gyms than it as well, although the trainers are worse. And it has PokeAmie, which allowed me to pet things for hours, especially since I brought a Piplup into the game.
8. Devil May Cry (PS2, 2001)
I decided to try my hand at Devil May Cry, partially in preparation for playing the controversial Bayonetta series, but also because people had said it was fun. It is fun. At first I was not sold on the game because the camera drives me absolutely crazy, but as time went on I began to have a greater appreciation for the game’s interesting gameplay ideas and fun bosses. Also, Dante is a total babe and I want to play as him again. Its plot is hilariously bad, and it has the scene of ridiculousness, but fortunately it doesn’t consume very much of your time. I think the game does a decent job with atmosphere? I feel like the best way to make a game seem scary is to make enemies difficult so you are actually scared of them, so bonus points for that.
7. Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS, 2012)
3D action games are all the rage in this segment of the ratings. The game’s a fun little combination of rail shooter and action game, and it’s an enjoyable romp. The cast of Viridi, Hades, Pit, and Palutena is great for laughs, and the game amused the hell out of me with its bizarre, off-the-wall humor. I also really love its character portraits. I think it’s a weaker action game than Devil May Cry and I found the shooter gameplay a bit tedious, and the game is hell on my hands, but it’s still worth playing and is quite fun.
6. Theatrhythm: Curtain Call (3DS, 2014)
This sequel to Theathrythm is basically the same game with a couple of improvements, primarily that it has way more songs and allows access to the characters you want quicker. In the original TR, you had to go to great lengths to collect specific shard for every character and without doing the random, annoying Dark Notes, you wouldn’t get the characters you wanted. In this game, you get characters by just playing normally, and you can choose between five characters or so from every shard, which gives you a lot more options to customize your experience. I like a lot of the added characters, including Barret, Edgar, and Vanille, as well as people that were only in the iOS version like Tifa, Serah, Ramza, and Hope.
They also tried to make the FMS stages more challenging, which is definitely a nice improvement, although they are still easier than BMS stages. The imbalance feels less extreme now, though, which is good. I actually feel like I can die on FMS even when I am fully practiced if I run into a difficult song.
I also love that they added in some music from other Square games, including Bravely Default and Chrono Trigger, for DLC. Thumbs up. You can argue that this sequel is a bit too much like the original, but I like the original so I really can’t say I care. But if you’ve never played either, I’d recommend just playing this one.
5. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS, 2008)
Order of Eccelsia is a game that coasts solely on gameplay. It has to, because its plot is dumb, its cast is beyond bland, and it has the fine Castlevania tradition of making the true ending unlockable (for all that it’s less difficult than average to access). Fortunately, because of the well-designed bosses (except the crab, but fuck that guy) and the interesting weapon system which gives you pros and cons to everything and you really have to change your stuff based on situation, it succeeds at offering a very enjoyable gameplay experience.
4. Super Metroid (SNES, 1994)
This was the third game series I dragged out of the archives to play, and it’s my favorite. It’s a very atmospheric game with a space thriller feel, and the gameplay is quite solid as well. The non-linearity is in a way that generally works, although occasionally I found myself a bit stumped by some of its weirder things. There’s a few things about the game that expose its age – the strange, unexplained (except by gesture) wall jumping mechanics and a couple of odd, poorly designed bosses, but overall the game is quite good.
3. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U, 2014)
I defended my thesis after a horrific graduate school experience on May 26th, and decided that my pining after a Wii U because of adesperate need to play the new Mario Kart was sufficiently pathetic, so I bought it for myself for a graduation present.
What can I say? It’s console Mario Kart. It’s amazingly great for multiplayer for players of varied skill levels. The game, much like Hyrule Warriors, is beautiful and bright and cheerful and makes me happy. I also love its jazzy tracks; a step above the corny music from old Mario Karts, IMO. The tracks are amazingly fun, the DLC is fabulous, and I love the F-Zero and Zelda adapted stages.
I generally give this game the nod over MK7 because playing multiplayer all on the same screen just feels more fun, somehow. That’s basically it. Both games bring back the coin system and have better stage design than Wii, and the games feel like two halves of a whole.
2. Hyrule Warriors (Wii U, 2014)
Meeple often tries to whip me into watching videos of stuff, and usually I ignore him because I am too lazy to listen to other people talk. But on the day of the Nintendo E3 stream, I decided, okay, fine, I’ll watch it. I had just bought the Wii U a few days ago and I was interested in seeing what kind of stuff I could look forward to playing on my shiny new system (if anything).
The game that really caught my eye was Hyrule Warriors, a gorgeous Zelda and DW crossover. While I have never been a Zelda fan, I was immediately excited about the game, between all of the playable female characters, the great art and graphics, and the varied fighting styles. So I preordered it, and prepared to play as Zelda, who is a badass motherfucker AND girly AND stylish in pink so fuck you.
Gameplaywise, the game is like a 3D action game, with a lot of bosses and sub-bosses, but it also has the strategy elements of taking and giving up keeps. Mooks mostly exist to interfere with your ability to manage bases rather than being an individual threat, but it works pretty well. I think the game is at its best when you have to juggle different objectives while trying not to die, either via health or by losing your base.
So I played the Legend Mode, which is decent but does not have quite enough Zelda playing for my liking, although it is cool in that it tries to get you to play as different people, even featuring a section where you play as Ganondorf conquering Hyrule. The story is pretty stock but has some sweet moments. I like how the story portrays Link and Zelda as partners and allies rather than love interest or damsel and hero. And the game tries to give Link a character flaw! Crazy! I’m pretty fond of the female villain Cia as well; she’s not a good person nor is she particularly redeemable, which is actually kind of nice to see in a female villain! Impa’s pretty cool as well as the general of the military, and I love her badass new redesign. Also I like to ship her and Zelda because they start the game together in Zelda’s bedroom. OTP, obviously. The game shoehorns in crossover Zelda characters by having a small time travel plot. A free DLC lets you play as the villains, and Cia is pretty broken.
But the Adventure Mode is where you get full reign to let hijinks begin and play as Zelda as much as your fangirl heart desires. And I did. There are tons of different map conceits, all with objectives that you often need to balance to win. The 3D action game elements and the DW elements combine together to make it a pleasant experience. And with so many weapons to experiment with, I never got bored. I even downloaded all of the DLC, giving the Nintendo Overlords all of my money. I finally stopped playing when I went to Oklahoma, but I am getting twitchy thinking about all the incomplete stuff…
The music in this game is pretty great; heavier, more rock versions of Zelda music is generally up my alley. I love both the environments (Skyloft is a particular favorite) and the character designs are great as I mentioned. I also love all of the victory scenes and stylish boss intros. It’s so bright and cheerful, a contrast to the drabness of the average ‘realistic’ looking game. And now I am motivated to play Twilight Princess thanks to this game.
1. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013)
This is probably my favorite Mario game since the NES days. It combines the strength of Super Mario Bros. 2 (the ability to switch between characters based on which stage you are doing) with more modern punishment for death and level design. The game brings in the wall jumping mechanics from the New Super Mario Bros. series and brings the 3D Mario feel to a 2D level design. Playing it, I was immediately surprised by how much the game blends all of those elements so nicely.
It adds a major outfit in the Cat Suit, which is quite potent on many levels and very useful for nabbing some Green Stars but it is hardly in the Shroomcoptor / Cape tier of silly items. You can skip some things but it doesn’t help with platforming at all, and you need to be at short range to kill enemies and you can’t just float above them. Leaf is back in this game (as well as in 3D Land) but doesn’t have flying so it is reduced to a short range killing and platforming item. Flower is back in its traditional role, and Peach looks so cute with her ponytail in the flower outfit.
There’s also a Hammer Bros. suit which is pretty cool, but again not super potent.
The game has a pretty nice difficulty curve; the first few worlds are a little too easy for me, but I understand that a lot of people playing the game may not be that experienced at the genre. By the time you get into the meat of the game, though, the challenge is quite nice, and the aftergame levels are quite challenging. The game throws a variety of creative stages at you, and most of them are successful. The bosses are colorful and fun, even if they aren’t always the most challenging. The later stages of the game tend to have fairly consistently good stage design in particular.
The aftergame is 3 worlds plus an extra secret world for collecting all of the stamps / green stars / goalposts. The first aftergame world is just a Super Mario Galaxy-themed world, with Rosalina joining as a PC after the second stage. Most of the stages are quite tricky and challenging. The second two aftergame worlds are primarily difficult remixes of earlier stages, often either imposing major time limits or putting them in the dark or making the platforming harder in some way. The stages don’t feel all that similar to the original ones usually, and the stages often take advantage of your previous knowledge of the old stages. After collecting the ton of items, you get to the mega aftergame. One of the stages is a 30 room marathon of these 10-second-time-limit puzzles, which you have to succeed at all of them in a row to beat. That was quite challenging. The second is a Captain Toad stage which is pretty tricky, and the third is a hellish nightmare of a stage, with all of the most annoying stuff in the world smashed into one stage.
Captain Toad stages I enjoyed for what they were, although I’m not sure how it will translate into a full game. I mostly loved their music and their cuteness.
I think the game is quite a success aesthetically, with both crisp and colorful graphics and awesome, mood-setting music.
I mostly played this game on single-player, although I did a few stages on multiplayer with my friend. It was fairly enjoyable, although I’d say the game is less optimized for it than NSMBU.
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A great year for gaming, my dears! Hope the next year is just as fab. <3
