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[We look at the overall package contained within 3D Land.]

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TalkBack / Super Mario 3D Land Impressions

« on: November 02, 2011, 07:28:07 PM »

We look at the overall package contained within 3D Land.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/28312

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Playing through Super Mario 3D Land you’ll find it is impossible to not reminisce about our portly plumber’s past adventures and the way things used to be. Some are just how you remember, but others are tweaked to sit more comfortably within this latest outing. Super Mario 3D Land may be light in terms of pure innovation but when all this retro flavouring is so much fun you’d need to have a heart of stone to not adore this game for what it is - a charming love letter to all things Mario pre-1997, as if Nintendo sat down and decided that most of the new-fangled stuff in Mario’s 3D outings from the N64 onwards should be swept away to celebrate what made the old-school 2D Mario games of old so great in the first place. 

That’s not to say that all this talk of lack of innovation means there’s a lack of ideas. SM3DL may not consist entirely of genuinely new stuff to do but it certainly isn’t afraid to stuff itself full to rafters of neat things that takes what we’ve seen many times, mixing it up to present puzzles and challenges in new and unique ways. Of course, it’s not all completely old school and there’s a fair few elements that we’ve seen in the recent Mario games too in order to make everything feel fresh but familiar at the same time so that the game almost comes off as a portable version of Super Mario Galaxy, with the spherical levels swapped out for something a bit more in keeping with what we're used to. This wave of familiarity is enough to ensure that even the staunchest die-hard will still have a good time and young newcomers to Nintendo’s flagship franchise will be entranced by gameplay that is as bewitching as ever.

Turn the game on and the SM3DL logo floats tantalisingly in front of your eyes as Mario scampers and leaps over some blocks behind it. The music immediately gets the nostalgia neurons firing and the opening intro depicts a dark and stormy night with a tree having all its super leaves being blown away, presumably so that Mario can go and grab them all later. We then get shown a really nice postcard from Princess Peach - or maybe it’s from Bowser who’s gloating - with artwork that’s straight out of Super Mario Bros. 3 telling our hero that she’s been kidnapped (again!) and we’re straight off to the first world. 

The worlds are laid out in a similar way to the world map in Super Mario Galaxy 2. There’s no discernible theme this time round (for example, World Two is not the obligatory desert world). Within each world map Mario makes his way from level to level until he reaches the end where you take on a boss, which could be Bowser’s castle in one world or a fleet of floating airships the next. The bottom screen is a plain and simple line diagram showing your progress through the world with a charming Mario sprite straight out of his first title on the NES marking your position, while the top screen shows a spinning model of the level you’re currently on, just as you’d see in the Super Mario Galaxy games, with a fully rendered Mario running on the spot stomping his feet impatiently, beads of sweat flying from his head. Within each world map you also have a Toad Mushroom house and the occasional purple block challenge. These take you inside the block’s all-white interior and task you to collect all the items, be it star medals, a super leaf or fire flowers, within the ten second time limit. Street Pass functionality is built in so that the items you win in these purple block challenges can be exchanged. There are three star medals to be found in each level, and collecting them all allows you to open up another level later on that can only be accessed if you’ve found enough.

The levels themselves are all quite small when compared to Mario’s other 3D games, but this helps keep everything feel tight and focused. Rather than being large open plan areas like in Super Mario 64, they instead mimic what we’ve seen in the Galaxy games, so that they are a close approximation to the 2D side-scrollers of old. The camera cannot be controlled and sits in a fixed position, but it zooms in and out as you progress to enable you to fully take in what is going on, and on some levels it pans and tilts on its own accord. One early highlight is where it shifts to an overhead view as you head towards a series of descending platforms and you have to use the proper block to make your way down. It’s a very clever visual trick and can be really vertigo-inducing if you’re that way afflicted, particularly when the 3D is turned on and it has to be seen to be believed. 

It’s sometimes hard to believe that a handheld device of this small size can chuck out such gorgeous visuals. The actual look is very similar to Super Mario Galaxy The levels have primary colours in abundance and the graphics are truly beautiful. The 3D is very nicely applied; never being too overbearing and whilst it is not essential to play the game, having it turned on is a real bonus as it provides excellent spatial awareness and some of the levels really benefit from it. It’s the first 3DS game where I’ve left the 3D turned on long after the initial wow factor has worn off. Nintendo have designed the game to take full advantage of the 3D with Mario running towards the screen and back again as he makes his merry way continually to the right, but ensuring that as great and immersive it is, it is never a necessity in order to progress and you can turn off the 3D with no barrier to your progress. 

There’s been a lot of chatter about the use of a run button and at first I do admit that it feels weird guiding Mario around a open 3D space with the Circle Pad not governing your speed. Mario will only ever move at walking pace until you hit that run button. You wonder why Nintendo have taken this seemingly backwards step in the control design, but it soon clicks as you move through the first few levels; having your speed tied to a button rather than by how far you push the Circle Pad actually makes things more accurate and you feel that you have far more control over Mario. I can imagine just how many mistakes and unplanned deaths were occurring if ever Mario was controlled as he is in his other 3D games. One touch of the Circle Pad in some of these intricate levels would have seen Mario running to his death over the edge. After a while you’ll wonder why you were ever worried, it works very well and makes some of the trickier levels easier to navigate so for me it’s a good move.

One thing I did find is that the game overall is a bit on the simple side, compared to Mario’s other outings the difficulty has definitely been reduced. It's not a major issue as the levels are all great fun and they have some ingenious design ideas running through them. One level has a network of red and blue panels that you must use to make your way forward; whenever you jump it makes all the tiles of one colour fold away leaving nothing but vast empty space beneath. Jump again and that colour will fold back up to form a stable platform but the other, previously visible colour tiles will fold down. This continual to-ing and fro-ing of tiles means that you have to plan every move before you jump and it gives the designers the scope to craft some fiendish pathways through to the end of the level and it makes it very tense knowing that you’re just one jump away from death; something that the Mario games have always been very good at. Most levels will take a few minutes to get through and after an hour of playing I had already got to the end of world two, so by that logic you’re talking about an adventure that will take six to seven hours to clear, although you do have the added side-challenge of finding all the star medals in each level to add to the longevity and some of those are very cleverly tucked away so it could take a while!

I think the thing that strikes me the most is all the little things that you’d invariably miss the first time round, only to spot them when you play again. All the little visual touches, the audio cues to games from the past, the way that long-established genre staples have been evolved to suit this game. Toad’s house has that tune playing when you go in, some Goombas have Tanooki tails that waggle as they run, you jump on an enemy and the coin is instantly added to your running total rather than you having to go chasing it. All little things admittedly but the joy is in the detail and the way Nintendo have taken existing things and re-invigorated everything for a modern audience is very clever and SM3DL is full of incidental tweaks like this. You cannot help but just sit and stare at it all in wonder. 

I’ve been guilty in the past of pre-judging SM3DL before playing it. It all looked so samey and dare I say a little bit boring. I said at the time that I should have known better, and playing through the beginning of the game has only re-enforced my shame at thinking such things of Nintendo’s latest release. SM3DL is nothing short of superb and for all the talk of lack of difficulty and gameplay elements that we’ve all seen before, there’s been enough of a re-jigging across the board to ensure that anyone who plays this is going to have a whale of a time for the whole duration. That just goes to show (and it’s what the Mario games are so good at when compared to their contemporaries) that as long as you are having fun nothing else matters.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart Impressions

« on: July 31, 2011, 11:39:52 AM »

@ TalesOfFan - the drift handles just like Mario Kart Wii. It feels strange at first because of the circle pad but after five minutes it's just fine 

@ UltimatePartyBear - driving underwater just feels like it's slowed down a little, it is pretty much a cosmetic thing.

[It's a mix of old and new.]

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TalkBack / Super Mario 3D Land Impressions

« on: July 28, 2011, 06:11:44 PM »

It's a mix of old and new.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/27280

When the first screenshots of Super Mario 3D Land surfaced, I wasn’t that impressed. It all looked a little… boring. How stupid do I feel having just played on a demo unit where I really enjoyed playing it! It just goes to show that you should never judge prematurely. It was just a small taster but there was a lot to be learned by playing through the demo. 

Super Mario 3D looks like a remixed hybrid of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Bros 3, taking the best of both to bring an all-new adventure which is reassuringly retro in its design and make-up whilst including everything that has made the modern Mario adventures so amazing to play. The camera sits in a fixed position, looming over Mario’s position as you move around the levels. They are all quite short compared to what we’ve grown used to but this is seemingly a push back to the early days of platforming, as well as a conscious nod to the fact that we’re playing on a handheld. 

Everywhere you look there are winks and nods to the past, most prominent of which is the Tanooki suit, which makes a return. Grab the brown super leaf and Mario will pop on the suit. You are not able to fly any more, nor turn into a statue but you can glide after jumping. Holding down the jump button makes Mario slowly fall back to earth, tail wagging furiously. In the few levels I played, this little move helped save my life many times. 

Elsewhere there’s lots of things that make a return from games past; end of level flag poles are back, bouncy blocks with musical notes on are dotted around the levels, and the enemies read like a "Who’s Who" from Mario’s past. One of the levels was a floating airship with bullet bills aplenty firing at you, while another was made up of switches that made a path of green tiles appear that you had to traverse before they disappeared. 

Mario handles very nicely thanks to the Circle Pad and you never feel like the controls are getting in your way. Any mistakes are down to you, and not because the controls have let you down. It has to be said that the controls are a strange mix of old and new. You can no longer triple jump and falling off a platform equals death. There’s no more ledge-grabbing, something which I found particularly annoying to begin with but after a while you get used to it. A dedicated dash button is welcome and being able to control your speed is a lot easier than having your speed tied to how far you move the Circle Pad. The "press down to enter a pipe" problem is solved by having you press the R button instead. Also returning is the old-school "two hits and you're dead" system, rather than having a health meter as in Super Mario Galaxy. 

Mario’s shadow is constantly onscreen no matter what you’re doing or what bit of scenery may be blocking your view. This makes it a lot easier to move around the levels, particularly when time is against you. It all looks as gorgeous as you’d expect from this next batch of Nintendo software. Levels and characters are all bright and bold and the level of presentation is very nice. 3D is implemented very well and it looks great to push the slider up and watch the level stretch into the distance ahead of you. Nintendo have also put in some new bits to take advantage of the 3D, like the piranha plant who spits black goo at the screen to obscure your view, very clever. 

All in all Super Mario 3D Land is shaping up to be another essential addition to his canon of games. The mix of old and new gameplay styles has a great deal of potential and I cannot wait to play it again come release. 

[Luigi returns to his ghost hunt and capture occupation.]

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TalkBack / Luigi's Mansion 2 Impressions

« on: July 24, 2011, 07:04:56 PM »

Luigi returns to his ghost hunt and capture occupation.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/27260

I always thought it was a real shame that Luigi’s Mansion, one of the GameCube’s launch titles, didn’t rate more highly. It was an utterly charming and engaging game that suited our famous plumber’s younger sibling perfectly, as well as a refreshing change of pace. Even though the original suffered from unfortunate release timing that affected expectations, here we are with the sequel and it turns out that Luigi’s return to the haunted mansion is a perfect fit for the Nintendo 3DS. 

The way in which the game is presented, pretty much identical to its predecessor with Luigi moving from room to room, provides the ideal setup to demonstrate what the console can do both in terms of its 3D visuals and in overall graphical wizardry. It looks really lovely, easily one of the best games I’ve seen so far on the console, and it lays claim to being the first game where I’ve pushed the 3D slider right up to the max (up until now I’ve always found the picture easiest to see at around the halfway mark). All the rooms are full of little details with lots to catch the eye: lights flicker, Luigi’s torch gives off a wonderful looking lens flare when he’s facing the screen and lightning bolts flash outside illuminating darkened areas.

The feeling of this being more of the same extends to how it plays but this is no bad thing. Obviously with only the one analogue control this time around it does feel slightly awkward at first, but nothing that a few minutes of play time will get rid of and after a while you’ll be moving around and using your Poltergust 5000 with ease. 

The demo tasked us to tackle a ghoulie who’s lurking in the library. Professor E. Gadd makes a welcome return from the first game and is on hand to guide Luigi throughout the game. He uses his new gizmos to warp Luigi through to the outside grounds of the mansion where we are given the opportunity to spend a bit of time moving around, trying out the vacuum on a statue of our toothy scientist friend and generally getting used to the controls. The Circle Pad moves Luigi, pressing R sucks in air through your vacuum, and pressing L blows air out. We were encouraged to practice by sucking the sheet covering E. Gadd’s statue, then blowing air out to make the helicopter blades spin, with cash aplenty your reward. You can interact with pretty much everything in this way. 

We made our way into the mansion and headed to the library, passing through a lab full of machinery, a garage with an old car sitting abandoned and a dining room. Each contains ghosts and to tackle them you need to stun them with your strobe light, which is turned on by pressing A. Some ghosts can only be stunned at specific times, such as the ghost in the dining room who is armed with a saucepan on his head. You need to wait until he lifts it in order to stun him, whereupon his heart appears and you can then vacuum him up. In the first Luigi’s Mansion game you did this by using a combination of the analogue stick and the yellow C stick. Luigi’s Mansion 2 gets around the 3DS’ lack of a second stick by bringing up a prompt to press A when you get near to defeating the ghost. Press A in time and you’ll be given an extra dose of vacuuming strength to help finish off the ghost you’re tackling. 

As you wrestle with the ghosts, they’ll do their best to escape, dragging Luigi around the room trying to make him crash into furniture or other ghosts so that the vacuum’s hold on them is broken. All you can do is pull on the Circle Pad in the opposite direction to where the ghost is dragging you and hang on for dear life. The battles with the ghosts can be quite frantic and exciting and it makes for an interesting mix of styles, fighting with the ghosts and then returning to the slow but steady exploration of the spooky haunted house. Once we reach the library we’re faced with a big-headed ghost who will lob books at Luigi before giving you clues on how to stun him. 

For those who played through Luigi’s first mansion and came away disappointed then I’m afraid there’s not much here to tempt you back as it is a case of more of the same, but tweaked and refined to make best use of the new technology. For those of you who did enjoy it then you should be very excited. The game shows a lot of promise. It looks gorgeous, it’s full of charm, personality, and quirky humour and it should prove to be an entertaining alternative to all the other games looming over the horizon. Hopefully this time around more people will give Luigi's offering the attention and praise it deserves. 

[Is it just Mario Kart DS with new gimmicks, or something more?]

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TalkBack / Mario Kart Impressions

« on: July 24, 2011, 06:21:56 PM »

Is it just Mario Kart DS with new gimmicks, or something more?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/27257

For the most part, the series has stuck close to its origins in Super Mario Kart when it comes to the gameplay that has served it so well. Nips and tucks as we move from console generation to generation are one thing, but kites and submarines? You'd be forgiven for wondering whether this is a step too far beyond what is expected for Mario Kart.

Hang-gliders, propellers, plus whatever other contraptions and gizmos Nintendo include in the final game are deployed automatically with no input from you. Drive off a particularly high ledge or boost off a jump and the hang-glider will pop out, allowing you to gently swoop down to earth using the Circle Pad to guide your descent. Propellers work in the same way: drive into water and the propeller will pop out from behind you and give you a push through the depths. At first glance these additions seem merely cosmetic but as you play it becomes apparent that they will add to your racing tactics. When you are hang-gliding you can travel quite far down the course if your flying skills are with you on the day, using that opportunity to scout out the road ahead for shortcuts, or you could just as easily push yourself into a nose dive to get back to the real racing. Propellers also give you more scope than first appears. On one of the demo courses the track narrowed down to a thin Y-shaped junction with a big pool of water beyond. Your Mario Kart racing instincts scream at you to avoid falling into the water because you'll have fallen out of the track and be dumped unceremoniously back onto the course by Lakitu with the lengthy time delay that brings, but as I head towards this junction I get hit from behind by a red shell and spin out over the edge and straight into the water. Grumbles aplenty from me but rather than seeing the screen fade to black, I recovered from the shell hit straight away, the propeller appeared and I just kept on driving through the pool, up the side and back to rejoin the course further ahead. It completely changes the scope of the track and how you approach it.

The demo had a mini grand prix with three races that provide the perfect way to show off the new additions. The first track takes you through what would appear to be a mountainous region of the mushroom kingdom. It's all big sweeping curves with ramps leading to boost-assisted jumps, which is great for demonstrating the hang-glider in all its glory. You leap off the ramp and out pops the hang-glider and you can then glide up, down and to the left or right, dodging overhanging pipes as you go. I must admit that I did wonder just how this was going to fit in within the Mario Kart ‘feel’ but after the first lap I was already on my way to being sure that this new gameplay mechanic is only going to help add to the racing experience. Track two takes you underground through a network of caves with pools of water dotted around the course , clamshells and weeds blocking your way as you power through the water. The final course cuts through Donkey Kong's jungle with some familiar faces from DK's recent Wii outing making an appearance.

The game itself looks as beautiful as you’d expect from a Nintendo release. All the characters look great, enhanced versions of the Mario Kart DS models. The courses I saw were all beautifully rendered with great backdrops. The 3D really is the best I’ve seen to date on the 3DS. The immersion it gives you as you swerve around obstacles and career through the tracks is second to none.

A new feature is the kart customisation screen. You choose your character (eight were available in the demo), then the main body of your kart, which from the demo we played offered a standard kart, a Yoshi egg and the frame of a truck. You're then given a choice of wheels: small, standard or large. In all honesty, the racers amongst us are only ever to going to plump for the standard wheels. The small trolley-like wheels are too jittery and sensitive and the big truck wheels make navigating some of the tracks a real lumbering chore. Young ones will have a field day mixing up all the different variations for a kart of their choice but I for one will be sticking with the tried and tested standard kart.

Drifting is present and correct but to begin with it feels loose and floaty on 3DS using the Circle Pad (D pad control is not an option). Decades spent waggling my thumb over a D pad meant that it took me a little while to get to grips with how the 3DS handles but you’ll quickly get used to it. Something else that makes a return from ‘ye good old days’ (and we're surprised it's taken so long to return) is coin collecting, with Mario's favourite collectibles laid out liberally throughout courses. Keep on grabbing these and you'll get a speed boost. All the items are present and correct and from what we could see there were no new ones, although we'd be surprised if there aren't one or two more in the final game.

A few people are going to be doubtful of the new hang-glider/propeller mechanics, but I feel that their inclusion will be a small but integral part of this latest update. It’s just enough to help keep the series feeling fresh, but it’s not too much of a departure to cause any real concern. Otherwise, the game is pretty much what we’ve come to expect over the years. Expertly balanced racing with gorgeous graphics and great use of 3D (the first time another racer squirts squid ink in your face it’ll scare the daylights out of you). It’s normally a negative to find out that a game is just ‘more of the same’ but when it comes to Mario Kart that’s just what I want!

[How does the 3DS version compare with the game from previous times?]

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TalkBack / The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Impressions

« on: June 04, 2011, 04:21:53 PM »

How does the 3DS version compare with the game from previous times?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/26384

Recently, Nintendo held a special preview event for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3DS in one of those achingly cool venues in the heart of London (that only serve to remind me of how uncool I am). The room was decked out with moody green lighting and a fake tree doing a fairly good impression of the Great Deku Tree dominated the centre of the room. The Ocarina of Time soundtrack was played over the loudspeakers, images of Link’s shield were spread all over the walls, and drinks (served up in pewter tankards no less) and nibbles were in ready supply. 

The full retail version of Ocarina of Time 3DS was playable, and not the demo version of the game that has been play-tested previously. There were three save slots: one from the beginning of the game, one that started you off just before you enter into the Temple of Time to become adult Link, and the last one from around midway through the main quest with Navi barking at you to investigate the mysterious cloud hanging over Death Mountain.

The game itself is just as you remember it and has lost none of its charm over the years. Ocarina of Time on N64 remains as one of Nintendo's best releases for the system and is still a complete joy to play. Little niggles from back then, such as the occasionally unhelpful camera, have made their way to 3DS but thankfully the biggest problem of item switching has been remedied by giving us a touch-based inventory management. It’s a real lifesaver and having that bottom screen is of real benefit. Swapping items on the fly is a breeze and playing the Ocarina is also very easy. It makes the game so intuitive and I can’t help but wonder about the potential for Wii’s successor. If these rumours about it having a controller with a screen on it are true then it will certainly change the way we play adventure games such as Zelda. A dedicated touch screen on your controller that lets you control your inventory and view a map continually, leaving the main screen uncluttered? Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

It is hard not to be taken aback by the 3D effect the first time you see it. Up until now I had always been slightly disappointed by the way the 3DS seemed to be generating a stereoscopic image by showing what looked like progressive layers of cardboard cut-outs, but here it truly is comparable to peering through a window into a real 3D space. Items that you collect leap out at you, and running around Hyrule Field gives you a real sense of the sheer size of the place as you step across the expansive rolling landscape. Heading into the temples generates some real "wow" moments as you see the newly retextured environments, it does a great job of showing off what the 3DS can do.

However, 3D is a subjective issue as for every person who has it turned to full, there are others who have it set near the bottom of the scale. For me, the sweet spot is just over half way. I don’t know if it is due to my dodgy eyesight but I often see image ghosting when the 3D is turned all the way up, but it is never enough to detract from the game and it is all down to personal preference. 

While I love the way that you can move the 3DS to view your surroundings in first person mode, of course with 3D turned on, you have to hold the 3DS just so in order to keep the visuals intact. So, going into first person view with the 3D turned on means that you have to move the whole top half of your body in order to keep the 3D effect from breaking. Not too much of an issue you’d think, and for those who’ve had a 3DS since launch you’ll have had ample opportunity to get yourself acquainted with this but it will make you look like a raving loony if played on public transport, pointing your 3DS to the heavens, and it’s not exactly the most comfortable of things when playing for extended periods either. Mercifully, you’re also allowed to control the view with the analogue stick. Don’t get me wrong, it's a delightful feature that works incredibly well but I suspect that the longer you play, the more you’ll revert to just looking around with the analogue stick. 

What is also immediately apparent is how smart the game looks thanks to the graphical spring clean. Character models are all vastly improved and there are new textures throughout. It really helps to modernise the game and make it look and feel fresh. Colours are vibrant and everything is nice and crisp, but when all is said and done we’re still talking about a game that is over ten years old, albeit redressed for a new console generation. Ocarina of Time is revered as one of the best games of all time, and quite rightly so, but does that justify Nintendo trotting out the game one more time? There is no point in denying it, despite its age, Ocarina of Time is still a master class in game design and the improved visuals, along with the additional content such as the Master Quest once you’ve completed the main game, the Boss Quest when the adventure is over, and adjustments to the inventory system only re-affirm the belief that this is nothing less than an essential purchase.

Also at the event, Nintendo had set up a "nostalgia corner", where some Nintendo 64 consoles had been rigged up to show off the original Ocarina of Time in all of its pixellated glory. It gave the benefit of a direct comparison with how the game has improved in the transition to 3DS. The N64 version appears fuzzy, with the colours washed out of it when compared to this remake. Funny how your rose-tinted memory tells you one thing but the cruel, stark passage of time and technological advancement tells you another!