I finally got a points card and bought MaBoShi, it's a WiiWare game for 800 points (and 81 blocks) that came out in Europe last week
It has three playfields next to each other, think of them as arcade machines. A player can drag his Mii on one of the fields and then play on it, picking one of the three game modes to play.
All three modes are highscore-based, your goal is to get to One million dollars! Er, points. The games have levels that you go through and as far as I can tell they're pre-designed, not random (except for enemies, most of those pick a random point to appear in).
In circle mode you control a ball that accelerates either clockwise or counter-clockwise, the play field is circular and in a sideview (i.e. gravity pulls towards the bottom), usually with some physics-affected object in the center (ball on achain, rotating platform, etc). All you can do is toggle which direction the circle accelerates into, by using that, inertia and gravity you can adjust your speed and make the ball fall across the field or just run loopings. Enemies spawn in the center of the play field and try to leave it, if an enemy leaves you lose. The types of enemies that spawn is defined by the level, different types have different movement behaviours. You destroy enemies by hitting them with the ball, the dead enemy is then thrown around and can kill other enemies by hitting them. Killing multiple enemies in one "jump" (not just with debries but also with bouncing from enemy to enemy) gives more points.
The stick mode is the hardest mode, you have a point that swings a stick around itself and you can press the A button to make the point get flung about by the stick. That's physics based, not just moving in a straight line. The stick rotates automatically and accelerates. It's affected by gravity though, it slows down as it goes up and speeds up as it goes down. If it has too little inertia to loop it falls back down and rotates in the other direction. If you swing around wrong it takes a while to rev up again, I think if you swing right you can avoid losing stick momentum. It's not easy to do though. You can hit enemies, bricks and a pinball item (bounces and kills stuff it hits) with your stick like a bat, like in the circle mode dead enemies bounce around and hit other enemies. You lose if anything nasty hits the point your stick rotates around. The goal is to move upwards using your stick, the faster you reach the goal line of the level the better your "medal" and the medal increases the points defeated enemies are worth (for the rest of the game) so rushing through the early levels without bothering with killing much can be better than going for points early on as later kills are worth much more. I've seen boss battles in the demonstration video but haven't reached them myself.
In the square mode you use the d-pad to move a square, the mode is turnbased like a roguelike (one step = one turn). Your square places a block when it moves kinda like Tron... except one block on your tail starts on fire. Every (second?) turn burning blocks ignite any blocks around them, thus your trail burns like a fuse. The play field is littered with blocks you're supposed to destroy and setting them on fire is the way to do that. Burning blocks disappear after a few turns. The game is very strategic, since your trail burns up slower than you draw it you should draw it in a way that makes the fire reach the forward positions faster (your trail is made of the same blocks you destroy so unburnt parts of it can catch fire from any source). Every turn the play field scrolls down a bit, if any block touches the bottom you lose (even if that block is on fire but still burning). Trapping yourself between blocks also kills you. There are bombs you can use to clear larger parts of the field, getting blasted by one kills you too I presume.
Of course the big advertised feature is the effect system, some things cross the play field boundaries so you can affect the players next to you. The stick can reach across fields, dead enemies bounce to other players too (the stick and dead enemies cause fires in the square mode) and fire at the edge of the playing field shoots flames over. Since you won't fill all three fields with people all the time the game will play demonstration movies on them as well as replays (you can play your own replays in them too), occassionally a "Mr. Naboshi" bonus game pops up too where you're supposed to hit formations of enemies with whatever you can send to other fields. You can save replays of your games and share them with friends too.
All three games have multiplier items that you'll obviously want to grab.
It seems to be designed as some sort of arcade with multiple people being able to play independently of each other but still having some sort of effect. Unfortunately you have to use one Wiimote per player even though the games could feasibly be controlled with the attachments too. You can also download a DS version and play on the go.
Overall the game seems like they put a lot of polish into it despite the core games being really simple. The use of physics in stick and circle give those modes potential for depth, I guess with enough skill using that stuff to one's advantage would be very interesting. The stick mode replays certainly look interesting, if it weren't for them I wouldn't have thought it's possible to conserve stick momentum after a swing, I just don't know how... For those of us who aren't so skilled the square game is very straightforward and predictable (except maybe debries from other playfields igniting random blocks in your game). The assessment I read elsewhere was square is great, circle nice and stick sucks, so far I feel the same way but I guess with enough skill the stick game could become interesting to play. Also I haven't tried multiplayer yet, no idea how that plays out (the manual suggests you can help or hurt your allies, the only way to hurt that I can see would be to toss an enemy at a square player so it ignites a bomb when he is nearby...)
I'd say the square game alone wouldn't be worth the whole 800 points, my gut says 600 would fit that but there's the other modes and all that jazz so all in all I'd say these 800 points are worth it.
Topic: MaBoShi three shapes arcade (WiiWare) (Read 1881 times)
