Now I know why I found NiGHTS in the bargain bin.
Current Backlog Size: 39 Wii games... sort of
Goal: Complete all those nagging 100% save file challenges.
Progress Since Last Update: Fatal Frame 4, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
It's been a sizable gap since my last update here, but I think contributing to our Best of the Wii features is a reasonable excuse. Not to mention another recent distraction in my life to fuel my obsessive completionism and dash my hopes of ever clearing out my backlog:
That counter, it taunts me in my dreams!
This game is a heck of a lot of fun, and while as a concept it might not live up to the Wii iteration of the New Super Mario Bros. series, when it comes to wholesome Mario goodness it dishes out in spades. As of writing this update I've reached 350,000 coins (but I wasn't going to snap another photo), and my Coin Rush record is over 23,000, and I'm determined to reach the million coins. Failing to do so will leave me with a dirty feeling of unfulfillment, and Mario deserves better than that.
Nonetheless, I've been making a conscious effort to get back into the swing of things, and as I wrote the Muramasa page for the Top 10 feature, I played through Kisuke's story which I'd previously not touched. I managed to complete the collection of swords and see all six of the endings, and while I could try to finish the hardest difficulty or complete the item list, I'm satisfied with the progress I've made on this game. It's time to move on.
I also played through Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, also known as Fatal Frame 4, using the handy translation patch some fans created a while back. This game is a dream for survival horror fans, but a nightmare for completionists - the game is unfortunately rife with bugs that prevent certain ghosts from appearing or registering in the checklist when photographed, thus preventing you from ever achieving the congratulatory ghost list completion message and the corresponding prize. As such, of the 233 spaces in the ghost list, only 227 are able to be captured. It's speculated by fans that this was one of the main reasons why the game was never localized. Regardless of the fact, though, the game is quite awesome and a fair deal scarier than anything the series has thrown at you thus far. I was particularly surprised to learn from my first completion that Suda51 played a heavy part in the story direction of the game! I'd still love to see this game get fixed up for a last-minute localization sans list-breaking glitches, I'd certainly buy it again.
I'm currently halfway through my second playthrough at 191 ghosts found and I still have Hard Mode left to finish, assuming my game doesn't glitch again. Last night I had a cutscene fail to trigger as I stepped through a door, and I was trapped in an endless black void that forced me to reset back to the previous save. Bummer.
Finally, I popped in the copy of NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams that I bought from a Blockbuster ex-rental sale for a pittance a few years back, having only heard about the series from a friend who liked the original game. I've played a few hours into it, and I'm fairly confident it's not my thing. It has some reasonably pretty backgrounds and some decent music, and that's about as much praise as I can give the game.
The story presented in the first few levels is a rather pukey mess of confusion for those like myself who aren't familiar with the characters, the direction given in the levels is over-simplified and the movement clunky, and having never played the original I found the time limits, particularly in an early boss battle, to be strict and unforgiving. The game is little more than frustrating to me and I really can't bring myself to care about the cast in any way - I'm gonna take this off my list. No thanks.
