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[What happens if evil spirits corrupt digitalized memories of the deceased?]

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TalkBack / Master Reboot Review

« on: July 30, 2014, 10:41:53 AM »

What happens if evil spirits corrupt digitalized memories of the deceased?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/38185/master-reboot-review

Welcome to the world of Master Reboot, which revolves around an institute that creates the Soul Cloud; a way to preserve memories of the deceased for friends and relatives to visit. But when the system becomes corrupted and turns evil our female protagonist has to put a stop to the servers.

The game can best be described as puzzle game from a first person perspective. There is enough diversity here to keep players busy. Master Reboot had me searching for items, recreating a musical piece or shooting targets on a fairground attraction. Most of these goals are pretty straightforward and rarely challenging, but never to a point of annoyance.  Upon completing these challenges players are presented with a short cartoon clip explaining the events you just pieced together from the Soul Cloud's memories.

As interesting as the story starts out, it quickly falls flat due to the lack of detail. Master Reboot remains vague and the bits and pieces you find aren’t enough to form a complete picture. The game never really follow through with the mechanic of piecing together memories. Master Reboot is also quite vague in its intentions, often forcing you to wander around aimlessly until you find the small detail it wanted you to find. I am a big fan of games teaching you through gameplay, but when I get annoyed because I have no clue as of what to do next, it’s poor game design.

Despite the rather bland looking graphics, the game manages to create a creepy atmosphere and there were moments where I genuinely tensed up. Unfortunately Wales Interactive reverts to cheap jump scares too often provide a lasting impact. Master Reboot has its pretty moments, like in seeing the sun coming through the trees in a forest, but most of the graphics are subpar. Most objects are completely textureless and character models seem too simple. Big square shapes also make up most of the environment, making Master Reboot look like a nineties PC-game. One could argue an intentional art style, but the reality is that Master Reboot looks pretty underwhelming. Luckily the audio messes with you enough to sort-of oversee this shortcoming. Distant screams, scratches and sudden thumps behind you as you focus on a puzzle are unnerving to say the least.

The controls are quite clunky, but due to the slow pace of the game it's never a big problem. At least until I ran into the completely misplaced first person platforming which the game doesn’t need at all. Admittedly these moments are sporadic, but they add unneeded frustration to the experience. An even bigger problem are the many bugs I ran into during my time in the Soul Cloud. It’s a shame as the game isn’t terrible, but its good ideas are poorly executed–making a potentially great game feel unsatisfactory in the end.

[Badgers are flung into space in an unpolished, uninspired clone of a game we all know.]

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TalkBack / Gravity Badgers Review

« on: June 20, 2014, 03:04:00 AM »

Badgers are flung into space in an unpolished, uninspired clone of a game we all know.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/37885/gravity-badgers-review

Looking at the cartoon styled badgers in space suits accompanied by a beefy theme song on the title screen of Gravity Badgers, gave me hope for his title. It looked like an action cartoon from the eighties, the ones that ran on Saturday morning. This feeling quickly went away when the actual game started.

In a thin story, mostly portrayed by a static image in the line of the title screen, I turned out to have taken on the role of Captain T Bayback. He’s a on a mission to rescue his family, friends, and the rest of the universe from a pack of evil honey badgers called the Hellsett. As the camera glides over the beautifully painted artwork however, not much of this story is explained. At times, you run into other badgers whose dialog is so poorly written that it didn’t hold my attention to the story line at all. Include a couple of bad puns and none of this supposed epic battle will stick. Not that this would matter, as players most likely won’t remember much of the story of Angry Birds either.

Bringing this game up isn’t a coincidence as the gameplay of Gravity Badgers closely resembles Angry Birds. By pulling the badger back and releasing it, it floats through space following the trajectory to hit the green wormhole. Much like Angry Birds Space, the gravitational pull of planets is used to guide our hero to the goal. Some planets push our badger friend away, whereas others pull him towards them. But where Angry Birds managed to give a great feeling of control and accomplishment, the gameplay of Gravity Badgers feels more like hit and miss in order to succeed.

Over the course of 140 levels I kept launching the badger, crashing into a planet, slightly adjusting the aim and trying again. I rarely had to tone down the force behind my badger launch; full speed usually got the job done. If the level wasn’t beaten instantly, I would restart, try again, try again and beat it. Never spending more than two to three minutes in a level made me feel like I hadn’t accomplished anything. Gravity Badgers just goes on doing the same thing over and over again. Even with some retries there still didn’t seem to be much challenge in unlocking the chapters. Near the end things got tougher with a few enemy monsters and moving targets to dodge, but a feeling of reward was nowhere to be found.

Every level contains three yellow orbs, which can be collected for a three star rating at the end of the level. There is no actual benefit for collecting these and the main point seems to be to show your score to friends. Players can unlock every level in the game without ever getting a single orb. Wouldn’t this have been a great way to get players more involved? Incentivise gamers to get the most out of a level before you let them through? Gravity Badgers does no such thing, which feels like wasted potential.

At the end of each chapter I got into boss fights, which seemed promising. An evil badger mounted in a giant robotic device, starts firing lasers at our heroic badger. Defeating him could have been done in so many exciting ways: slinging planets or stars into him, making the evil badger follow the player and crash into the scenery or some explosive for example. Instead, every boss battle consists of avoiding the lasers until his constantly depleting life gauge is empty. Utter disappointment.

Presentation wise, Gravity Badgers feels barren. With the dark backdrop of space and only a few colourful planets and enemies in the static playing field, not much is happening on screen. The enemies and badgers themselves aren’t animated at all, they just glide over the screen. After the cool theme tune it turned out that looping music in the levels itself is far less impressive. On top of that all sound effects and music come from the TV and not the Wii U GamePad. This makes the off-screen play function of the game even more lacklustre than it already was. Controlling badgers with the touchscreen works alright as does the control scheme utilizing the sticks and buttons. I say alright, as I’ve managed to send of many badgers to their untimely deaths by the controller not understanding my input and firing in the wrong direction. Gravity Badgers’ pacing could also have been better. Misfiring—especially when fired too slowly—and watching the badger follow the trajectory, clearly missing the target is frustrating. There is retry button, but getting to it is a hassle and too slow to keep you shooting of badgers into space contently.

The concept of badgers in space suits fighting evil seems promising, but Gravity Badgers ends up being little more than a poor Angry Birds clone. The gameplay is repetitive, without much of a challenge and the visuals feel barren and uninspired. I played my way through the levels without ever feeling good about it. Gamers looking for an interesting physics-based puzzle game for Wii U are better off getting the Angry Birds Trilogy.

[Even this second reopening isn’t a festive one.]

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TalkBack / Hometown Story (EU ver.) Review

« on: May 21, 2014, 03:39:23 PM »

Even this second reopening isn’t a festive one.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/37484/hometown-story-eu-ver-review

Hometown Story starts off with players arriving in their hometown to reopen their late grandmother’s shop. After being given a small introduction to their new life as a shop owner, players can immediately begin to setup the store and stock the shelves. Then the game settles you into the daily grind of running the shop and talking to NPCs.

This all sounds all right on paper, but unfortunately the gameplay becomes very stale very quickly. Running the shop means randomly putting down items and hoping for them to be sold. There is no way of knowing what will sell or clever ways to dive into the unserved markets of the town.  This leads to the game’s biggest flaw: it is incredibly unclear with what it expects of the player. This leads to continually stocking shelves until a event finally triggers. Players need to fulfill missions (i.e. get certain item and sell it) in order to advance the story, but not knowing what to buy at what moment is frustrating.

Players simply place mission items in their store and wait until the right customer walks in and buys it. The game just seems to lazily assume that players will eventually figure out what it wants. This makes the telling of the uninteresting story through forgettable clients, way too slow to even latch on. The European version of Hometown Story was said to have fixed the troubling story pacing of the North American version, but the results are still far from interesting.

Even outside the shop, the game doesn’t break away from dull gameplay. Players meet potential clients, who usually aren’t interesting, and collect various items by picking them up from the ground. Performing varied kinds of action, like chopping wood or cutting grass in order to get these free salable items would have added to the gameplay value of the game.

Walking around the empty-looking town is a complete mess as well. The images on the top screen of the 3DS are in set angles, which cannot be adjusted. Because of the weird nature of these angles, I found myself running into walls and missing the exit I was looking for. The only solution is to alternate between the map on the bottom screen and top screen.

New in the European version of the game is the addition of fishing, which allows players to easily stock up on more free goods. Unfortunately there is no skill required to acquire the fish. The actual act of fishing is shallow and the supply of fish is seemingly unlimited, making the entire process feel worthless. I found myself returning to fishing daily though, as it was the quickest way to make big money and expand my shop.

It’s a shame that the aesthetics of the game can’t save Hometown Story from its mundane, repetitive and unclear gameplay. The village and its population look very cute and the character customization is adequate.

The entire game has a regretfully sloppy presentation, which is especially sad considering that Nobuo Uematsu worked on the soundtrack. The biggest problem is that I kept on playing, without ever getting rewarded for my effort. The game goes nowhere and doesn’t offer any sort of challenge or fun. It kept me coming back, hoping that something would happen. In the end it just kept me busy with endless amounts of repeating the same actions and waiting for results. Grandma’s store might as well have stayed closed.

[Time travel can't save the empty button mashing with the Aeternoblade.]

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TalkBack / AeternoBlade Review

« on: March 24, 2014, 11:56:00 AM »

Time travel can't save the empty button mashing with the Aeternoblade.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/36938/aeternoblade-review

The feel of a PlayStation-era 2D action platform game in true Metroidvania style is what Aeternoblade’s aesthetics and gameplay footage promised when it was first shown. The art style—especially the character designs—obviously borrows from the Final Fantasy games of the era. If this would have been combined with the exploration and controls of a Super Metroid, Corecell Technology would have a definite hit to their name.

After a cutscene which looks nice, albeit seemingly straight from the early 2000’s, we jump into the action. We follow our heroine, Freya, at the height of her conflict with the evil Beladim. Seeking revenge for the destruction of her hometown, Freya confronts the demonic lord, but the battle results in her death. By the power of her sword, the Aeternoblade, she is able to go back in time in order to re-attempt her quest to bring Beladim to justice.

The time travel aspect is a nice touch and quite subtle in its execution. Freya is able to rewind time at any moment, allowing for the correction of mistakes in battle and semi-interesting puzzles. The latter never gets any better than a platform that moves in an opposite direction after hitting a switch. By reversing the order of time, Freya is able to create a new passage way which wasn’t possible before. It’s nothing mind blowing, but it’s a nice change from the running around and hacking away with your blade. In battle and more specifically in boss battles, this rewinding of time is a helpful aid but it also takes away from the game. Although the ability is limited, I was able to rewind portions of boss fights long enough to keep the giant enemy in a position where I could keep hitting it without ever receiving a single blow. Not that some of the bosses aren’t that much of a fight—as you will die repeatedly—it feels like you are betraying the system, cheating on the game.

The boss fights might be interesting, but the other minions of this dark army do not pose as much of challenge. You can easily hack your way through hordes of re-spawning enemies, which all feel a bit lacking in creativity. Flying heads, brownish mud men who couldn’t land a hit if you were standing still, and walking suits of armour all make an effort to stop you in your tracks. The action tries to be engaging by presenting you with unlockable attacks, but never reaches beyond the mashing of the Y button to spam attacks. Freya connects attacks into sequences which are great when actually hitting the target, but when missed her attack animation still plays out. It feels archaic to see our supposed warrior queen hacking away in the air as the enemy stands behind her. Like the battle sequences, the platforming doesn’t fare much better. Usually Aeternoblade offers you the choice between two paths; one high and one low. There is the occasional pit of spears to jump over, or the before mentioned platforms, but they never require much thought or challenge to pass. Aeternoblade has the ingredients to make for a successful action platform game, but fails miserably in its execution.

Visually the game feels completely empty. Freya’s model and some of the other main characters like Beladim come across alright—especially when in dialogue—but the environments and enemies lack any form of detail. Everything seems to be build out of big, rough blocks in order to keep the framerate up. Although it exceeds in this, the player is left with the feeling that Aeternoblade could have looked a lot better. The 3D effect would be totally negligible if not for the annoying damage counters which pop out of the screen. Contrary to its intended message of “look at this cool effect”, it feels out of place and really takes the momentum out of the game.

Here lies another one of Aeternoblade’s annoyances: the game unfolds so slowly and even though it’s not text heavy, it feels the need to point out obvious solutions by using the camera. Imagine this: you walk into a new screen and the game stops you. The camera slowly slides to a switch after which it pans wide, to then slowly zoom in on a platform. During this 15 second animation, you have already gotten the message as it is so blatantly obvious. It is hand-holding that the game doesn’t need.

Unfortunately, this sums up Aeternoblade quite well. Rather than the fast-paced, explorative action platformer with a cool time traveling twist, Aeternoblade turns out as a dull repetitive button mashing without much soul.

[Take an excellent museum tour from the comfort of your own home!]

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TalkBack / Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre Review

« on: February 21, 2014, 06:41:07 PM »

Take an excellent museum tour from the comfort of your own home!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/36655/nintendo-3ds-guide-louvre-review

We all know and love Nintendo for its classics franchises, but sometimes the company takes some strange side-steps. The latter is the case with the eShop addition of the Louvre Nintendo 3DS Guide; a guided tour through on of the largest museums in the world, and home to the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and many others.

It would seem a bit odd to think of museum visitors waving a 3DS around, but the museum does actually offer them for rent. Game consoles in a museum, it’s one of those marvelously weird things that makes Nintendo the company we love. All quirkiness aside, the app is well put together and contains a lot of content. It so good, that you could stay at home and just wander through the museum from the comfort of your couch.

Whether you’re an art enthusiast or not, you’ll find a lot of value in the €20 download. If we ignore the rather hefty price tag, there are hours of voiced commentary (languages other than English are available as a separate purchase), 3D representations of sculptures, and 2D and 3D pictures of all pieces of art. Upon starting you will be given the choice of looking at individual artworks or to take the actual guided tour of the museum.

These guided tours are the best way to experience the look and feel of the Louvre. Through 3D pictures of the museum and its hallways, accompanied by a map on the top screen, the guide takes you through a couple of pre-set tours along several of its most famous pieces. These tours can take between 40 and 90 minutes, although they never feel too long. The narrator explains every aspect of the art work in a calm pleasant voice. The detail in the extensive commentary is wonderful and grabs the listener; I wanted to know more and gained a whole new perspective on many of these artworks.

The quality of commentary is the core reason I, although not an art person, kept staring at and finding details in sculptures and paintings for hours on end. It also got me to really appreciate a statue in particular: “The Victory of Samothrace.” When I first arrived at the statue, situated on a mighty platform with stairs on either side, I didn’t see anything other than a headless angel figure on rock. This depiction of the Goddess Nike, descending from the heavens to declare victory to the warriors aboard the capital ship, truly took my breath away. Here’s where the power of the guided tour lies; making you understand what makes these pieces magnificent and why they’re worth your time.
 
The guided tour however does not offer the level of detail which you will get in the individual artworks section. Here you listen to extended commentaries, while you casually zoom in on the masterpieces. The guidance brings you many subtleties and details you would never spot on your own. For Statues, there are multiple angles and a free roaming camera-angle to view them from. Unfortunately this feature hasn’t been added for every statue in the museum, although the default angles cover enough depth and detail.

Navigation through the app is easy enough and carefully explained. Sliding through the menus is easy as well as putting together your own personal tour of the museum. You can select up to 12 pieces and the software will create the shortest path to string it all together for you. Everything in the app feels carefully created with lots of love for the museum and that’s exactly what you would want and expect from it.

Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre might not be for everyone, but offers lots of content for all who give the app a go. If you are an art lover, this is definitely for you. But if you are like me and don’t visit museums that often, there is still a lot to be found. Unfortunately the price tag will not invite the latter category to pick this title up, but it may be the cheapest and easiest way to be able to walk the magnificent hallways of the Louvre.