X-Blades

The Short

Pros
- Game isn't completely broken
- Auto-maps to an Xbox 360 controller on the PC, which is nice
- Game is playable, if mashing X over and over can be counted as "playing"
- I got it essentially for free in an indie bundle somehow
- The background/world graphics are actually somewhat inspired at times
- Eventually it ends


Cons
- Graphically dated, even on max specs on PC
- Main character's design is an absolute joke
- Gameplay is extremely repetitive and dull
- Upgrades are lifeless and tedious
- No real dodge/block button
- Enemies don't react at all when you deal damage / no hit feedback
- Bosses take far too long to take down
- Some reviewers actually gave it decent scores, which tricked people into wasting their money

Meet Ayumi. Truly a woman for the modern age. 

The Long

If you are going into game design, you should pick up X-Blades. Nobody else in the entire world should even give this game a second glance, but if you are someone who likes to study games (particularly the third-person action genre variety, such as Bayonetta or God of War), then you really must play X-Blades. Not because the game is good, heavens no! But because X-Blade is the literal embodiment of everything that can be done wrong in the genre. I'm dead serious here.

I'm extremely temped to forego an actual review (or my regular formula at least) and just list down every example of how X-Blades flubs it each and every step of the way, but hopefully I'll make it to the end without getting too sidetracked. 

But seriously...are you seeing this outfit? Someone green-lighted this? Not only that, they touted it as a feature on both the box and development videos? Sorry...already getting off track here.

This game looks like ass. In both a figurative and a *cough* literal sense. 

X-Blades is the "story" of Ayumi, treasure hunter lady. I put "story" in quotes because I skipped most of it after hearing the first line to come out of her mouth. Essentially she's looking for treasure, slices up enemies, yada yada. Every instance where she spoke made me want to smash my head into a door over and over again until I went busting through like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, so we'll just leave it as "unimportant" and "bad."

Aw man, I'm already just wanting to list off all the mistakes this game makes. Screw it, we're doing that instead. Not like anybody wants to read reviews of bad games that try to mask their opinions, anyway.

In this shot, she has 67,700 souls. Why the huge space instead of a comma? I dunno, ask the bad UI designers?

So I'm a massive fan of this genre, as in massive. I've played truckloads of action games over the years, with the 3D fighting types being an absolute favorite. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, God of War; the works. As you play through these games you start to notice some reoccurring trends, common errors if you would. Usually most games iron these out by later installments, or they only do one or two so it's forgivable.

X-Blades does all of them. Really. 

So let's just make a list here, shall we? Here's hoping I can actually remember them all, because I sure am not going back to play the game again just to remember.

Luckily, I have a lot of screenshots. 

- Infinitely Spawning Enemies - 

aka "The 'Matt Hazard' Issue"

There's nothing more frustrating then to feel like you aren't making progress in an action game. Usually you can gauge your progress as you progress forward and murder everything in your path, watching the numbers dwindle. In games where they make every kill a chore, you want to feel satisfied when you clear out a room. You don't want to feel like you are swimming against the tide.

X-Blades does this, and in spades. Nearly every level has an enemy whose sole job is to spawn truckloads more enemies. Sometimes there's a dozen of these guys, just popping out flying ghosts like there's no tomorrow! Some can't be killed until all the enemies are killed! Every boss in the game will spawn an infinite number of enemies until taken down. It's tedium at its finest!

While perhaps every once in a while its forgivable, doing it nearly every level is unbelievable. How lazy do you have to be? "Hey, just throw a few spawners in and we'll call it a level. Done!" This is Bad Design 101, and we are just getting started.

Lightning...go?

- Bosses with way too much life - 

aka "The 'No More Heroes' Issue"

This seems to be a Japanese game thing, but it happens in western games too. You get to a boss, and it seems like you are doing no damage to him at all. So what should be a challenging, engaging five minute battle ends up being ten minutes of frustrating tedium. Like the final bosses of Conan or Viking. The best part is, in most of these situations they won't even have the courtesy to grant you a checkpoint. So if you die, you go all the way back to the beginning, thirty minutes back. It's frustrating, obnoxious, and an amateur mistake. X-Blades does it not just with the bosses, but with every freaking enemy...you know what? Let's give it it's own bold thingy here.

- EVERYTHING has way too much life (including you) - 

aka "The 'Ninja Gaiden 1' Issue"

Everything takes forever to kill. Everything. Even when using the elemental weaknesses against them, it still takes too long. Even after upgrading your weapons (which I swear does nothing), most everything takes about twice as long as it should to go down. To add insult to injury, they hardly do any damage to your massive health bar, either, so it becomes an incredibly dull war of attrition. It's worse on the bosses, but having the regular enemies do it is just...it's bad. 

Hope you brought popcorn. I'm not stopping. 

- Gating your path until you kill every last enemy -

- The "'Way too many action games do this' issue"

Man I hate this, and it's always so contrived. "An invisible door appears! You can't continue until you kill every enemy in the area!"

I can understand how this can work, and honestly it's kind of a staple of the genre. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and God of War all do it frequently and I love those games. What makes X-Blades so much worse is the previously mentioned year and a half it takes to kill anything, and the fact that if even one tiny, hidden enemy remains (because some of them don't even seek you out; they just sort of hide) you are gated from continuing. What an awful mess. Not only that, after you clear the path, it doesn't even give you a camera pan to show where to go. You just run around hoping to find the exit eventually. Great. 

- Putting bad platforming in an action game -

- The "'Seriously, stop tacking this crap on if your system isn't designed for it' issue"

Another common issue, but it's way worse in X-Blades, mostly because the double jump only works when it wants to. I'm not kidding; I never found a way to reliably do it. Everybody loooooovvvesss having to do platforming in games that up until that point have been about action, right? That's why climbing the Hades spires in God of War is the best thing ever? Oh wait, no, it was the worst part in an otherwise highly decent game. Because nobody wants to endure bad jumping mixed with bad camera with gameplay controls clearly designed for combat in mind. 

X-Blades, with its awful jumping, takes this to a whole new level. Not only are the parts short and completely frustrating and unnecessary, but the only way to do any sort of sprint is to double tap the analog stick forward and press jump. Seriously, have you tried double tapping an analog stick in a 3D game with any reliability? It just doesn't work. And, in this game's case, resultes in a lot of cheap deaths.

I really despise this game. 

- No hit feedback. At all. -

The "'Nobody makes this mistake anymore' issue"

This is a big one. A real big one. I'd even say that, even with all the other issues before (and forthcoming) I'm listing, this one hurts me the most. There is no feedback in this game, none. Sure some of the smaller enemies sort of think about flinching when you hit them, but big enemies and bosses? They don't even react. Unless you use magic specific to knocking people over (like Earthquake), you can flail about like a crazy person and not know if your hits are even registering. Despite sometimes popping off bits of blood (or gore or...something. I honestly don't know what it is), enemies never flinch, change attack patterns, or recognize you've hit them. And considering how bad the clipping is in this game (it's bad. I can walk through most bosses without taking damage or issue whatsoever), you might never know. Considering how slow boss health meters drop (as mentioned before) you could fail about for a good chunk of time before realizing you are doing no damage. Considering some enemies have actual immunity to specific weapons like...I dunno, regular slashing, knowing that you were doing no damage would be a nice thing.

Added bonus is even your hit animation is weirdly unexaggerated. Don't worry: they make sure you can't do anything for a good several seconds before it resolves, but it looks more like she's just standing there rather than attacking. That's not frustrating at all in the middle of a big fight, to suddenly stop moving and not know why. 

I'm never gonna stop. 

- Not designing levels that flow together or work with your basic gameplay mechanics -

The "Wait, what game am I making here?" issue

X-Blades is split into a large number of very small chapters that have no mid-chapter checkpoints. 90% of these consist of a single area screen where enemies will spawn forever for a good chunk of time until you kill every single one of them and the exit to the next spot appears. Then you go into another single room "level," fight everything, and proceed. Some of these require jumping, and the game scores you after every single room.

The problem is that, with the controls, nothing seems to be designed around how the fighting is set up. You only have a basic attack and a ranged attack, and then a handful of powerups. Enemies seem to be made completely at random and the stages do not encourage any exploration or sense of wonder. One stage (I kid you not about this) was me standing in a room while spikes appeared on the floor and I dodged them by walking around the room slowly. After completing an entire set of spike patterns the pattern reset. I began to wonder if there was something else I was supposed to do, as it had been around ten minutes of me walking around a tiny room dodging spikes that did no damage. Turns out, nope! About halfway through the second cycle a cutscene triggered and I moved on. What was the freaking point of that?

- A combat system that only uses a single button -

The "Enslaved" Issue

As if this game hasn't sold you on tedium yet, what if I told you there's only one attack button? No light and heavy, no variety, one melee attack. Yeah, you have a gun attack, but considering how many enemies are melee you'll mostly just be pressing X over and over.

There are a few magic abilities in the game, which you can map to all the rest of the buttons, but most require either "Rage" or are completely useless. So you'll pretty much be pressing X. Over and over. Forever. 

Demon eyes!

- Having useless powerups that are either too cheap, too expensive, or impossible to find -

The "Devil May Cry" Issue

Upgrades in this game are a complete joke. First off there are the ones you can buy, your magic. The magic itself is a buy once, get it forever deal. It never really upgrades (though buying one kind unlocks more, though it never tells you this even remotely. Would a tree kill you?). 

The prices for these upgrades make no sense. Some are 150 souls. Some are 30,000. Both popping up shortly after starting the game. Which is better? Which does more damage? What's the difference between Fire and Lightning Blades, besides 15,000 souls? What do these moves do? Are there more combos or anything I can do with them? X-Blades tells nothing. 

But in order to actually upgrade damage you have to find secret items in the environment, which are usually hidden within inanimate objects like pots or statues. Huge surprise coming: statues take something like 10-20 hits to destroy. Seriously. And sometimes pots don't break because (as mentioned) the clipping and collision detection in this game is awful. So you'll probably miss a bunch of upgrades along the way.

Not that any matter, since there's perhaps three spells you should get (Fire Swords...uh...and Fire Swords) that are useful. The rest are absolute garbage, especially the ranged "Magic" you learn at the beginning. It does nothing. 

A bad game walks into a bar and asks, "Why do I exist?" And the bartender trades it in an Gamestop. 

- Having Auto-targeting that doesn't work -

The "Games that don't have manuel targeting" issue

This one is especially worse since a good portion of this game is ranged attack, and she can only hit something if she's targeting it.

There is no manual targeting in this game. At all. Everything is done automatically. And I say "is done" very loosely here, because the game seems to randomly choose who to target based on it's current daily horoscope mixed with whatever it read in its tea leaves this morning. I have no idea the reasoning behind the targeting here. I've tried to manually figure it out by messing with the camera, but the only thing it does consistently is avoid targeting bosses for useless enemies or just nothing in the environment. Guess it has that down, at least.

- Being so misogynistic that even males cringe at your character design.-

The "Japan" Issue

I think I should start this off with a picture, which probably isn't safe for work. Not that any of these screenshots have been.

Nothin wrong here. 

Let's go over Ayumi's clothes (or lack thereof). She wears a skimpy bikini top with a g-string on bottom, thigh armor sort of covering part of her butt but not really. Now let me point out that this is a 3D action game, so you spend most of the time behind the character. And also mention that in game her thong is low enough to see the top of her ass-crack as her butt jiggles about.

What the hell is wrong with these people? 

Add in a hefty dose of boob-bounce and the fact she looks like a well-endowed twelve-year-old and the creep factor has hit amazing new levels. I remember reading interviews with the developers of this game who were absolutely obsessed with this character design. They plastered it across everything, bring it up in every interview and touting it as the best part of their game. Like...seriously?

I'm not one to open the can of worms regarding women in games because it's far too complex with both sides taking way too many pot shots. But I think we can all agree that this character design offends everybody, clean sweep. I was embarrassed the minute I loaded this game up.

 Just...dammit X-Blades!

I could keep going, but I think you've had enough.  

Added on top of this system is graphics and character models that look like they were made in the PS2 times. Some developers use cell shading to make absolutely beautiful games (Eternal Sonata, Wind Waker) while others use it to cover lazy graphics. X-Blades is among the latter. While I will admit some of the environments do look decent, usually they are coated in such a think layer of bloom and light that you can't see anything that's going on. This is funny, because the actual effects in battle and bland, don't really emit any light (just a sort of uniform light blob; no actual shadow effects here), and it all looks outright dull. Monster designs are hideous, have low poly count, and again look like something off the PS1. 

Music is also tedious. Going a Devil May Cry route with awful butt-rock mixed with songs that I swear were written for the sole purpose of being annoying, the background music was frustrating to say the least. But what is even more annoying is the voice acting, with every character spouting awful lines in what has to be the most obnoxious voices ever. 

So much for keeping this all short. 

As stated at the beginning, X-Blades is a great game to look at from a design perspective, especially in this day and age. It falls into every single trap action games have been trying to avoid over the past decade. Despite all this, the game is still technically playable, though I have no idea why you'd ever want to. Unless you have it for a means of study, absolutely avoid.

What makes me sadder is that some gaming outlets gave this thing reasonable scores (probably because it wasn't completely broken), which undoubtably tricked some people into buying it (or playing it, in my sad case). It even got a sequel! This is not a good game, not by any stretch of the imagination. If you are looking for an action game, look anywhere elsewhere.

NOT recommended. One out of five stars. 

Evil whats-her-face compels you. 

Missionforce: Cyberstorm

The Short

Pros
- Hexagonal, turn-based HERC/Mech combat game
- Heavy emphasis on power usage, weapons loadouts, and team balancing
- Incredible amount of depth, features, and abilities
- Tons of HERCs provide a solid balance
- Creating "Bioderm" pilots that you can alter, edit, and jack up is exciting
- Wide variety of mission structures
- Fantastic 256 color, Windows 95 graphics
- Bioderm death scenes are delightfully creepy

Cons
- Can be punishingly difficult, especially the first "boss mission"
- Death is permanent, so tread with caution
- Ore harvesting missions can be tedious
- Enemies get priority hits if you enter their LOS, but this ability was given to your team via patch
- As of writing this review, I have no way of getting this game to play on a modern machine. You'll have to pick up Windows 95 computer just to run it.

I might get a little rambley here. 

The Long

I. Love. Missionforce: Cyberstorm. No, seriously, this is one of those childhood-defining games of my youth, right up there with games like Lords of the Realm 2 and The Incredible Machine 2. My brother and I originally watched a trailer of this game (back when they put demos/trailers for games on other PC game discs) and knew we had to have it after burning through the extremely short demo. It was a fateful day when he found a copy of it, Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires, and Caesar II in a triple pack on super-clearance at CompUSA (totally dating this review since CompUSA still existed). I have fond memories of having to copy the whole game disc to our 486-66, Windows 3.1 computer (since it would only run on Windows 95 and thus not work on our outdated operating system unless tricked) and burning through the game for hours and hours. Not only that, we would recreate the HERCs from Cyberstorm out of Legos (our other childhood love) until we essentially recreated every HERC in the game. 

Yeah, we were a bit obsessive.

Anyway, self storytelling time is over, let's get on with the review. For many of you, you probably have no idea what Missionforce: Cyberstorm even is. Well, luckily for you, I'm here to tell ya. If you're a fan of old-school strategy games that ran in glorious 256 colors and had more depth than originally met the eye, I have a game for you!

Just looking at these shots is a nostalgia overload. 

Missionforce: Cyberstorm is set in Sierra's Earthsiege universe, which consisted of two Earthsiege games and a final installment: Starsiege. Essentially, those games were massive MechWarrior knockoffs only not quite as good, though they were graphically a bit better. Cyberstorm was a spinoff of sorts, where you took the classic HERCS (which are nothing like MECHS, or so says Sierra's copyright lawyers) and, instead of driving 'em, you commanded 'em. Simple enough, right?

Well...not really. Because buried under this game's "cheap spin-off" exterior is an insanely deep turn-based strategy experience, and one that I'd love to see somebody revisit to this day. So what exactly makes Cyberstorm tick?

The ground texture is hideous, but man...256 color glory. 

Cyberstorm pits you against the robot enemies known as the Cybrids, which want nothing more than to blow up humanity. Your task is twofold: assemble a HERC army (which includes outfitting them with weapon types, pilots, and power options) and then send them off to war. Let's run down both of these really fast.

Specing out your HERCs is awesome, mostly because of the variety of HERCs available and the number of weapon upgrades. There are three weapon types: energy, cannon, and missiles. While not a set rule, generally how they work is that energy weapons are great against shields but not armor, canons suck against shields but punch through armor, and missiles are a bit of both (but with crazy range). Each HERC has its own loadout that can't be changed (such as the all-cannon Giant or jack-of-all-trades Remora) in terms of weapon types, but you can upgrade and alter the specific weapons. For example, there are some energy weapons that are only good against shields (EMP weapons), while others that will ignore shields entirely but have awful accuracy. As your team grows and your options increase, you'll have to assemble a team that can work well together as well as fight solo if needs be.

Remember when games had flavor text and specs for everything? Good ol' days, man. 

In addition to maxing out your HERCs, you also have to train clone pilots called Bioderms to drive 'em around. Bioderms can be bought and trained, and each has an "age" (meaning a number of missions they can go on before they die or have to be recycled). Playing more unlocks special, one-only Bioderms as well as more cloning options, which adds a whole different layer to the game. Gotta make sure your dudes in the energy weapon HERCs are actually trained in energy weapons!

The specing is an absolute blast, and it's all based on a "credits" system. My only real irk is that the game just doesn't give you enough money to feel empowered. Often you are barely making enough back to pay for repairs, Bioderm detoxes, and small weapon upgrades. While there are tedious ore-mining missions that can net a lot of credits, it's a very slow progression. This is exacerbated by the sheer number of options: weapons, generators, shields, legs (for jumping/speed), arms, etc. There's just an absurd amount of upgrades here, and no set "best" one (which helps you develop your own style. Hit n' run, or heavy, slow tanks?). It's a slow burn.

 However, once you do assemble an awesome army of HERCs, it's an absolute joy to send them on the warpath, which I'll discuss next.

Poundin' through a turret's shields. 

Missionforce: Cyberstorm is played on a hexagonal grid based battlefield. There are terrain heights and depths (and types), all of which effect weapon accuracy, distance available to travel, and more. Another important factor is energy, essentially your power. You have two bars: an always-replenishing "active" energy bar (the only bar available for walking), and a "reserve" bar, which only refills if you have extra energy in the "active" bar (you can see it in the screenshot above in the bottom left: two red/green bars). Usually the reserve bar is used to fire energy weapons after a long walk, though if you run completely out of power you'll be in trouble. Energy management is important!

Once you find the enemy, wartime begins. Here's where another layer of strategy develops: shield placement, weapon use, and distance/accuracy. Shields (which are also hexagonal) can be adjusted to be moved forward or backwards, depending on the direction of the enemy. However, your enemies can do the same, and putting all your shields in front can make you a sitting duck if you are flanked. Once you (or the enemy) punches through shields you cause actual damage, which in your case can result in weapon damage, leg damage, or more. Getting your legs blown off while in the middle of a hot zone can have bad outcomes, especially since death/destruction is permanent. 

Things can get pretty crazy. 

There's more. You have to pick the order which your weapons fire (energy, missile, etc.) and accuracy based off your pilot, the distance, and the terrain. Again, I'm sort of just spouting off gameplay mechanics here which is probably stupid boring, but I just want to convey the level of depth Cyberstorm has. Seriously, it's absurd.

Anyway, it's turn based, where you go and then the Cybrids, which means you have to prepare for the worst in every situation. Some missions are defend-the-base variety, others destroy-the-base. Others task you to mine ore (which takes tons of power to do) while a few are just seek-and-destroy. There's a good mix and all are quite challenging, especially considering how difficult this game can get.

Adjusting shields. 

Missionforce: Cyberstorm is pretty hardcore. As stated, if your HERC goes down, you lose both the machine and the pilot: neither are salvageable. Luckily you can save anytime, but one bad save can ruin you. Because the enemies have sight-initiative (meaning they get to take pot-shots when you enter their line of vision), it's pretty essentially to install the patch that gives your units that as well (the original version doesn't. Talk about unfair!). Having your most expensive unit get flanked and rocked because his back wasn't shielded can hurt, and even if a HERC survives you still have to pay for repairs (or don't, and sent them to the next mission damaged). It's punishing, but luckily the game starts off easy enough that you get into the swing of things.

The exception being the first "boss" mission (of three) in the game. As the game locks you out of certain upgrades until after promotions, you can only have a set team for the first "assault the stronghold" mission of the game. I must have died dozens of times against this first boss because the game just doesn't allow you to equip with powerful enough gear. I had a full squad of the best HERCs at the time (Demons), fully upgraded, awesome Bioderms, and still got slaughtered. It's hard!

Regardless, combat is an intense, tactical blast. It's hard, punishing, and requires a lot of thought. Meaning it fits in well with other tactical style games of the era, such as Fallout and the old Civ games.

Train 'dem Bioderms

Graphically, this looks like a Windows 95 game, and I mean that in a good way. It's got the 256 color thing going on full force, but it also employs a little bit of early-age 3D for the ship models when upgrading and the Bioderm chambers. Because it was more stylized than polygon pushing, I still think this game looks quite fantastic. The textures of terrain on the battle maps does look pretty awful, but the HERCs themselves are decent and the enemies look imposing. Plus, wireframe models of stuff for damage reports is always cool. Yes. Always. Don't argue.

Music and sounds are fantastic. There honestly isn't too much music, but what there is is creepy and atmospheric. The laser fire and explosions are great, but the absolutely most horrific is the bioderm screams when they die. This accompanied by a terrifying animation of their faces melting off into skulls, and since one of the bioderms is a baby that means this is one of the few games where you can kill a baby by overdosing it on stimpaks. Kids to Adults, everybody!

Freaked me out as a kid, freaks me out now.

My biggest "issue" with this game is it's impossible to run on modern machines. Unless you can get a virtual machine up with Windows 95, 98, or (shudder) ME, there is no way to play this game. It won't install or run on a 64 bit architecture, and even then it conflicts with modern versions of Windows and often just straight up won't install. Hey, Good Ol Games? I have a job for you...

That and rather intense difficulty curve aside, Missionforce: Cyberstorm is an excellent tactical strategy game with incredible depth and tons of awesome, MECH...er...HERC blasting content. If you can find a way to get this game running, do. It'll suck up hours of your life and is absolutely worth every second. 

They don't make 'em like this anymore. Except I guess the new XCom. Now remake Cyberstorm, Fireaxis! Four out of five stars. 

And I thought car repairs were expensive...

WarioWare Inc.: Mega Party Game$

The Short

Pros
- 200 microgames playable in both single and multiplayer
- Eight multiplayer modes of a wide variety that focus on the microgames
- Minigames and modes are fun, especially with a group of friends
- WarioWare charm shines through
- Can play on a GBA with a link cable, though I have no idea why

Cons
- All the minigames are exactly the same ones in the GBA Warioware: Mega Microgames
- As such, the graphical quality looks like a GBA game
- While there are some really good multiplayer modes, a few are genuine duds
- Not as many wild unlockables as in the GBA versions of the game
- No real story mode for single player; mostly just playing through the minigames back to back

Send a cat to space. 

The Long

I guess I should have expect it. After all, the premise for WarioWare: Epic Microgames on the GBA was that Wario wanted to wring as much money out of people as possible by developing quick, easy games that ripped off other games. As such, I suppose this Gamecube iteration, WarioWare: Mega Party Games follows the ideology well: it's a complete rehash of the GBA game, just in multiplayer form. As such, I don't know if I should be mad at Nintendo for releasing what is essentially a cash grab, or praise them for making reality match the fiction set in the Wario universe.

I'm really overthinking this.

WarioWare: Mega Party Games is just that: a bunch of party games. However, unlike games like Mario Party where it's 75% awful board game and 25% fun minigames, Mega Party Games gets the balance right. It's streamlined, fast, and all the games are unlocked from the get go. 

It's just too bad there's really no original single player content here to speak of. 

Playing space minigame Othello. Yeah, why not. 

Mega Party Games has no "story" to speak of. That's right, they even got rid of the phoned in versions they made for Mega Microgames and Twisted. If you are the kind of person who is buying this game to play single player: you probably shouldn't, unless there is no way at all to get your hands on something that plays GBA games. The single player is a very stripped down version of the GBA original (again, with all the same microgames as the original) and as such lacks a lot of the charm and hooks that made the original so endearing. While, yes, the games are still a lot of fun single player, it's very obvious it was phoned-in for this installment.

Mega Party Games is meant to be played multiplayer, and as such that is where the most fun will be had. 

An impossible level of coordination. 

Mega Party Games has eight themed multiplayer modes with two little throwaway bonuses (jumprope and paper airplane race). Each of these modes ranges from "mediocre" to "great," and in order to unlock them all you have to play through each at least once. There's even one that's cooperative, oddly enough, where one person plays and the others shine lights so they can see what's going on. But the rest are full on competitive. 

I have to give them props for variety. One is space othello, where in order to capture a square you have to play a required number of minigames correctly (as one would guess, corners require long chains). Another is simply random microgame assignment with lives, where sometimes all four go at once. A Mario Party esque one in terms of random winning is an e-card one (based on the failed GBA e-reader), where one mess up can send you from first to last. It's a solid assortment.

Some are fantastic. Our house favorite is the balloon one, which is a variation of hot potato. One player is put through a microgame while the others pound the A button to fill a balloon. Once you beat the microgame the next player cycles through, and whomever the balloon pops on loses. It's fast and frantic with a good mix of random and strategy, so it works. 

Then you have the weird ones, or just plain bad. Mona's requires someone to play a minigame while doing something "weird" (such as covering one eye, holding their breath, etc) in real life, and after accomplishing the game the rest of the players "clap" to vote on how well they did. The microgames actually do nothing when it comes to scoring, so it's really just an example of what happens when you run out of ideas. 

Clap away, puppets! 

I will say this: the frantic pace of WarioWare makes for some excellent multiplayer. While I wish it had more options in terms of difficulty and speed, the game does scale based on performance, meaning better players will have harder challenges as things progress. Most modes last around five minutes, enhancing the whole "let's go one again!" mentality that party games are supposed to evoke. With a group of friends (intoxicated or otherwise), Mega Party Games can be a chaotic hoot. 

But I've been avoiding the elephant in the room: the microgames themselves. And how they are exactly the same 200 from the GBA game released just before this one.

They go so far as to show it being played on a GBA on your TV. Shameless, much?

I kid you not: there are maybe a dozen original microgames in this collection, and all those are the four-player specific ones. The rest of the microgames are cut-and-paste identical to the GBA release Mega Microgames. So much so that you can even plug a GBA in through the GBA+Gamecube connector and play them on your Game Boy instead, at the same graphical fidelity. Are you even trying, Nintendo?

To be fair, all the original microgames are fantastic, but as someone who played the first game to death I was genuinely disappointed to not see an original game in the bunch. Not to mention that since I had played the first game and none of my friends had, it made for a rather dramatic unfair advantage. If the idea behind the microgames is they are just a few seconds long and incredibly easy to create, why the heck did Nintendo not make a few more specific to this game?

Dance!

It gets even worse: not only are they the same games, they are the same graphical resolution as well, meaning they look pretty mediocre on the Gamecube. I thought the minigames were funny and had decent graphical quality on my tiny GBA screen, but blown up big-style on my TV I could absolutely see the GBA fuzziness. It's like they didn't even try.

The sounds are all directly ripped from the GBA version, with only a few originals in the mix. They're all just as memorable and catchy as before, but the digitized voices which were passable on the GBA because of the inferior hardware still sound like they are coming off a cartridge when we all know they're on one of those Gamecube minidiscs. For shame, Nintendo. For shame.

This game made sense on the GBA, because the GBA looks like that. On the Gamecube...not so much. 

Despite me not wanting to say this, I still like Mega Party Games, if only because the WarioWare formula works so well for a frantic multiplayer experience. This game is an absolutely shameless cash grab (and at least Nintendo seemed to know it, as they released it at budget price of $30 back when it first came out) and undeniably lazy, but despite that I still had a lot of fun with it. If you are getting it because you want more single player WarioWare: don't. This is not a single player game, even though it touts such on the back of the box. But if you want a frantic multiplayer experience and are sick of the obnoxious Mario Party games, WarioWare is an excellent alternative. 

Just don't think too much about how Nintendo survives of selling you the same games over and over and over until the end of time. Three out of five stars.

The eReader: Truly ahead of its time.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

The Short

Pros
- Hilarious, cheesy, well-written story
- Absolutely outrageous and over the top characters
- Playing both detective and attorney can be a blast
- Great music and art
- Sticks with you long after you beat the game
- Cases are fun and have some great twists (despite the last one being weak)
- Being able to yell "HOLD IT!" or "OBJECTION!" into the DS mic is freaking hilarious
- iOS and Wii ports are both solid

Cons
- Short, with only five cases
- Relies a heavy amont on its own designed "logic," which can lead to issues
- Detective portions can be guesswork to find a certain object before the game lets you progress
- Graphically looks like the GBA port it is, with the touchscreen relatively useless
- Final fifth case feels tacked on (because it was)

The start of a thousand memes. 

The Long

I love the fact that Phoenix Wright exists, because it means that somewhere over in Japan somebody came into work at Capcom HQ and was like, "You know what the industry is missing? LAWYER GAMES."

And from that absolutely brilliant idea was birthed the Phoenix Wright franchise. First released in Japan on the GBA, it was ported (someone lazily) over to the new Nintendo DS for American audiences. And, yes, I was being serious before: this is a game where you play a lawyer. A defense attorney, to be completely accurate. And you do exactly what you think: defend people in court. Yep.

Which makes it all the more amazing at how incredible Phoenix Wright is. 

Brilliant burn there, Mr. Wright.

I won't lie: the majority of your enjoyment from Phoenix Wright is going to be from its absurd story (or stories might be more accurate). You play as Phoenix Wright, rookie defense attorney who is just starting off his career. As such he's insecure, makes awful jokes, and gets a bit overconfident at times. Luckily he has helpful tutors to guide him, but quickly the training wheels are taken off and he's thrown into the big world of defensive lawyering all by himself. 

That's where you come in. 

As the player, you will be participating in one of two activities: either going around collecting evidence (visiting witnesses, searching for clues, etc.) or getting into court to present those clues. The game is structured such that you cannot miss anything necessary during detectiving: it's pretty much a straight shot as you tick off check boxes to get to the end. Pretty basic. 

This game makes being a lawyer look more intense than doing back flips on a BMX bike off the side of the Grand Canyon while drinking Monster Energy. 

Back to the story: you have five cases to deal with (though four were the only ones included on the GBA games, and thus they flow together well while the fifth is a bit tacked on) and you have to prove your person innocent or die trying! Luckily Phoenix only gets people who actually are innocent, so there's no moral conundrum here. Where the game really shines, however, is its absurd characters. 

From crazy afro-lady photographers to blue-haired rich scumbags, sleeping crazy hermits or insane old ladies, Phoenix Wright has it all. It even has an evil attorney named Manfred Von Karma. Seriously, they couldn't ham this up any more if they tried. 

The silliness really shines, however, because of the balance. Many of these cases are serious (murders, digging up into the main character's pasts to reveal some genuinely dark secrets, and more) but the game keeps everything so over the top that the melodrama plays nicely with the exaggerated absurdity. To not mince any more words: the game is downright charming, well written, and knows exactly how serious to take itself (read: not at all). The jokes are spot on and the cases are genuinely interesting, which is all you really need.

Suck it, Edgeworth. 

The gameplay, unfortunately, doesn't really deliver as much as one might hope. As stated before you have two main things to do in Ace Attorney: search for evidence, then use the evidence in a court scene. Of these two, the former is by far the most aggravating. Searching a static image for small object is about as fun as looking for a needle in a haystack, especially since often you aren't even sure if you are looking in the right location. The game gates you from continuing until you fulfill certain (unknown) objectives, meaning it is very easy to get stuck and frustrated. When you do find clues it's usually really rewarding, as it's often accompanied by a silly bit of dialogue. But playing Sherlock is very slow, frustrating, and you rarely feel like you actually accomplished a goal. It's more like you luckily stumbled on the right place to tell the game that you are allowed to continue now.

Courtroom drama plays much better. You are charged with listening to both the information given as well as witness testimony. I dunno if they made these people swear on a Bible or whatever, but they lie constantly, and its your job to unravel it all and force them to spill the beans. You do this by tearing apart their statements chunk by chunk, pushing when necessary and using evidence to expose the lies. It works about 80% of the time, with the other 20% where the game falls to "adventure game logic," meaning next to no logic at all. It's the whole "throw the pie at the yeti" trap from King's Quest V: some leaps of logic simply don't make sense. After a while you can start to think the way the game wants you, but even then I would get stuck on some stupid cross examinations later in the game. 

But I will say: when you totally destroy a known liar's testimony using your wits and evidence (usually resulting in the person actually breaking down in defeat), that soul-crush is delicious.

You get five mistakes a trial, then you have to start all over. 

Graphically, Ace Attorney looks like a GBA game. The top screen does pretty much everything, with the bottom being reserved for menu choices or...tap to advance text. The game also looks a bit low-res (especially on high-res iPhone, which this game has been ported to) even on the DS screen. However, the bright colors and absurd art stylings do more than make up for the technical shortcomings. 

The music is also excellent. Even though there's only a handful of tracks, they are just as suspenseful and over-the-top as one would expect from a game about super-lawyers. You'll find yourself humming these tunes long after the game is over.

Ya screwed up. 

Despite having some rather glaring gameplay issues, I absolutely love Phoenix Wright. If you treat it more like an interactive visual novel instead of a game (and use a guide for the dull "play detective" parts), the story here is an absolute riot and absolutely worth diving in for. While Phoenix Wright might not be the most inspired game in terms of mechanics, the idea of making a lawyer game is undoubtably inspired. It's a hoot, genuinely emotional, and necessary playing if you own a DS or an iOS device (or a Wii, since I guess its out on that too). 

While the sequels do tend to fare a little better, this first game is still my favorite. Four out of five stars. 

Nice hair.

Kirby Gourmet Race Music Video!

My wife and I made a music video! Enjoy!

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 5: Final Fantasy IV, Earthbound, & Bonus

So in my Squaresoft post I mentioned I didn't do Final Fantasy IV. Well, I was feeling pretty bad about that, so I decided to remedy it by making A WHOLE BUNCH OF 'EM.

...but I didn't do any step by steps of the actual in-game heroes. Sorry. So instead, let's see my work on the enemy I was going to have them fight...

Whatever could it be?

Yeah, I really should actually document this stuff...

It's VampGirl! This is seriously one of my most favorite enemy sprites from FFIV. 

For a size estimate (if the cart doesn't cut it), it's about as big as Sigma, who was about as big as my forearm. 

So now it's time to kick butt and take names...

I figured the final party would be appropriate. 

Cecil was the most annoying because he's mostly a muted yellow/white color, of which there is only one bead color (cream). So we compensated by using a mix of yellows and grays. I still think it worked out! Kain was also annoying, but he also turned out a lot better than I'd expected. 

YOU KNOW WHOSE FAT?!

I love the Fat Chocobo. 

The whole group before we stuck 'em to the wall. 

...and after we stuck 'em to the wall. 

All the rest of them are hangin' out next to the Fat Chocobo. I gotta say, I LOVE Cid. I wanna make another one and put 'em up at work. Probably because I kind of look like him (glances at profile picture...)

The whole brigade. We put them over the bedroom door because...I have no idea. 

Next, a few bonus ones. Earthbound!

I kind of want to make every NPC from the game. I just love the style from the Mother games. 

And we put them over the piano because...it's...piano related. Not really.

But it gives me something awesome to look at whist I pound out a bad rendition of Loss of Me. 

A few other misc ones coming off the misc truck...

Wario's Woods is my wife's favorite puzzle game. Besides maybe Plants vs Zombies. 

I am so bad at Wario's Woods it isn't even funny, so my wife made all of these. Because she's absurdly good at Wario's Woods.

We put 'em next to Dr. Mario and the Mario RPG cupboard under the stairs. 

I think it still needs something, but we'll see.

Lastly, we did a bunch of misc NES ones that we weren't sure where to put 'em or what to do, but I wanted to make. So in no particular order, let's play "guess what NES game these are from!"

I put this on in the bathroom sitting on the lightswitch. 

And...

This one should be pretty easy to guess. 

And.....

I figured next to the shower was appropriate. 

And lastly, my wife made a ton of Minnish Cap cats because...she likes cats.

She also made that Companion Cube you see through our coffee table. 

And that's it from this batch! And I just realized I haven't made any Kirby sprites yet. SO NOW GUESS WHAT IM DOING TONIGHT?!