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576

TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads

« on: February 17, 2010, 04:01:06 PM »

Yeah, there's a huge difference between a finished game's release being delayed and a game never being completed.

577

General Chat / Re: Lost

« on: February 17, 2010, 03:58:14 PM »

I'm just going to put this whole post in spoiler tags because it's hard to tell what is and what isn't a spoiler. (If you haven't seen the whole series by now, though, should you really be reading this thread?)

They never say that Frank Lapidus is a candidate - they simply say at one point, "Do you think he's a candidate?"

Vudu, I agree that there's no real reason for Hurley to have won the lottery, other than the universe "self-correcting" and making him win the lottery with different numbers. There are some other similar "plot holes" that I don't think will really get filled. For example, neither Hurley, Claire, nor Locke really have any reason to be on Oceanic 815. Hurley was originally there to find out information about the cursed numbers, but if he doesn't have the cursed numbers, he doesn't have that reason to fly to Australia. Claire was flying to LA on the suggestion of that psychic guy, and they later figured out that the psychic guy put Claire on that flight because he knew it would crash on the island. So if Claire wasn't going to crash on the island, he really had no reason to put her on that flight. And finally, Locke was in Australia on a walkabout, and he originally got the walkabout idea from that black guy who was Whidmore's assistant. I think the assumption is that the guy told Locke about the walkabout because he knew that would eventually get him to land on the island, so if that wasn't going to happen, he wouldn't have told him about the walkabout. I highly doubt any of these things will be addressed, and they're ultimately not that important, but it's interesting to think about.

578

Podcast Discussion / Re: Game of the Decade -- Vote After Listening to RFN 183!

« on: February 17, 2010, 12:46:24 AM »

Yeah, if I were on that panel I'd have dropped Melee right away, just because I really didn't play it much. But I realize I am not representative of the majority of Nintendo fans in that sense.

579

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: February 16, 2010, 03:39:07 PM »

I just got Weeds Season 5 and have gotten through the first 3 episodes. So far, not bad but definitely fails to live up to the first 3 seasons. Once they left Agrestic, the show hasn't been the same. Elizabeth Perkins' and Kevin Nealon's characters have both descended into near total triviality, Romany Malco's absence is sorely felt, and the suburban satire elements of the series are almost completely absent now. But Mary Louise Parker and Justin Kirk are still goddamn awesome actors and it's fun to see the kind of **** that Shane and Silas are getting into now. I'd give the first 3 seasons a 9/10 average and seasons 4 and 5 (so far) a 7/10.

EDIT: Why the hell is "s u b u r b a n" being changed to sUncleBob (is awesome!) (is awesome!)urban?

580

TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads

« on: February 16, 2010, 03:22:43 PM »

I picked up Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. I have the first and third Phoenix Wright games on DS, so I needed this one to round out the trilogy. I'm a bit disappointed that it looks just like a DS screen blown up on the Wii - I was hoping for a decent resolution, but I guess this is a pretty straight port. No big deal though, these games aren't about the graphics.

581

General Chat / Re: Lost

« on: February 16, 2010, 03:15:41 PM »

Just because they are offset by a few years doesn't mean that they can't ultimately affect each other somehow. In fact I think it's incredibly obvious that they will somehow. And I think some of the plot developments in the new timeline, like Christian's corpse being missing, are rife with potential - in fact, that plot point is the most mysterious thing on the show right now.

582

Podcast Discussion / Re: Game of the Decade -- Vote After Listening to RFN 183!

« on: February 16, 2010, 12:12:15 PM »

I went with Metroid Prime - that game is pretty much responsible for getting me into modern gaming. Super Mario Galaxy is a very strong contender too, though. And by the way, I do not play Mario games for the "hub world" or for "interconnected levels"... I play Zelda and Metroid for continuous, explorable worlds, not Mario. Mario is about delivering short, manageable chunks of platforming goodness, and that's exactly what Galaxy does (and what Sunshine doesn't do nearly as well.)

[Stand behind the prosecutor's desk in this new addition to the Ace Attorney series.]

583

TalkBack / IMPRESSIONS: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

« on: February 01, 2010, 11:25:23 PM »

Stand behind the prosecutor's desk in this new addition to the Ace Attorney series.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressionsArt.cfm?artid=20880

 Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Demo Impressions    

Today, Nintendo released a demo of upcoming DS game Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth on the Wii's Nintendo Channel. The game is due in stores in a few weeks, and is firmly in the vein of the previous Ace Attorney games, which had you playing in the shoes of defense attorneys Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice. This time around, however, you get to see things from the other side of the courtroom, as you're taking control of Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor who was Phoenix Wright's main adversary in previous games.    

Capcom definitely has the development of these games down to a science. The interface and narrative style will be immediately familiar to anyone who has previously played an Ace Attorney game. The presentation is identical, down to the fonts and the music. The demo starts with a short cutscene consisting of some anime-style stills of a murder taking place in an attorney's office. After that, you enter as Miles onto the crime scene, where a couple of cops are taking evidence. The action occurs on the top screen, while you use your stylus on the lower screen to move Miles. You can also use the D-pad to move Miles around, which feels a lot more precise. This is actually a new feature for the series, as the previous games never actually showed Phoenix walking around the environments; you were simply shown a scene on the lower screen, and you poked around it with your stylus.    

Turns out the attorney's office in which the murder took place belongs to Miles Edgeworth, who has just returned from a month-long vacation. Shortly after arriving, you are joined by Detective Gumshoe, a reliable standby from the older Ace Attorney games. He's there primarily to give Miles someone to bounce information off of, giving the character an excuse to lay out the importance of each piece of evidence in the room. As you move close to an important item in the scene, an Examine button appears on the lower screen, and tapping it lets you check it out more closely, often switching to a zoomed in view of part of the crime scene that lets you examine even smaller details more closely.    

When you find something important, it either gets added to your Evidence menu, or, if you simply discover an important piece of information, it gets added to your Logic menu - another new addition. In the demo, you find out that the victim was a cop, and that the murder weapon was a standard-issue police revolver. Once those pieces of information are in your Logic menu, you can physically "connect" them by tapping them with your stylus and pressing Connect. Once you do so, some new information is created, propelling the investigation forward. This is a welcome addition, as the older games usually required you to hunt down a certain character and show them a piece of evidence in order for an important logical connection to be made. Now Miles can come to conclusions all on his own.    

The demo is short, allowing you to search a single crime scene and come up with a couple of Logic connections. The courtroom portion of the Ace Attorney games isn't available in the demo, which is a shame, as that's the most iconic part of the series. Nevertheless, the addictive brainy investigative gameplay seems to remain totally intact here, while the few new interface additions have the potential to spice up the experience a bit.    

Ace Attorney Investigation: Miles Edgeworth will be available for the Nintendo DS on February 16th, 2010.

584

TalkBack / Re: REVIEWS: Diner Dash: Flo on the Go

« on: December 06, 2009, 01:08:26 AM »

I'm the new guy.

[Diner Dash: Flo on the Go brings the stress of waiting on tables right to your pocket!]

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TalkBack / REVIEWS: Diner Dash: Flo on the Go

« on: December 05, 2009, 03:30:10 PM »

Diner Dash: Flo on the Go brings the stress of waiting on tables right to your pocket!
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewArt.cfm?artid=20489

 If there's one thing Diner Dash has taught me, it's that I never want to work in a restaurant for as long as I live. That's not necessarily because Diner Dash is no fun, but I just know that in real life, I could never handle the sheer amount of anger I seem to inspire in the game's customers.    

For those who don't know, Diner Dash is a frantic restaurant simulation franchise that first appeared as a lightweight downloadable computer game, and has since been ported in various forms to the Nintendo DS, the iPhone, Xbox Live Arcade and a variety of other platforms. Actually, "restaurant simulation" might be putting it too strongly - there's no managing income or opening new locations in this game; instead, the game focuses on the fast-paced world of waitressing. In this installment, the main character, Flo, and her friend Darla are heading on a cruise for a much-needed vacation.  But when they lose their luggage in the opening scene, they are forced to work in the ship's restaurant to earn some cash to get their wardrobes back together. Pretty lame vacation if you ask me!    

As in previous Diner Dash games, the gameplay area consists of a dining room with tables of various sizes, a counter where the food is cooked, and a bus tray. Customers come in and you have to seat them, take their order, bring their order to the food counter, grab their food when it's prepared, take it to the table, hand them their bill when they're finished, and take their dirty dishes to the bus tray. Simple enough when you're dealing with a single customer, but unfortunately, you never are. Customers keep coming and coming, and each customer is usually in a different stage of their meal than all of the others, so keeping track of where to go and in what order becomes a gargantuan task. The longer customers have to wait for anything (whether it's being seated, receiving their meal, receiving their bill, etc.), the less happy they become, as indicated by a heart graphic that slowly depletes as time goes by. You can also see a customer's happiness level through their facial expression, and a simple scowl can feel surprisingly cutting when you're doing your best to dash around and fulfill everyone's needs.    

As the game progresses, layers of complexity are slowly added to the basic gameplay.  An optional drink dispenser can raise a table's happiness level, a mop can be used to clean up spills, and different customer types need to be placed strategically (keep those crying babies away from the other customers!). On top of that, different customers wear different-colored clothes, and arranging them at tables to sit in matching chairs can net you some extra points. The game reaches a surprising level of complication once all these extra elements are thrown into the mix, and it's pretty easy to lose your head trying to take care of everything that's going on.    

The entire game is controlled with the stylus, and it works very well. This is one of those games that could never work well with buttons, and as such, it's perfectly suited to the DS. The real fun comes when you realize you can "stack" Flo's movements - that is, you can select her destinations faster than she can actually move to them, and the game remembers where you've been clicking such that Flo catches up eventually. Once you get the hang of it, you can reach a certain level of Zen as you smoothly click on the places Flo needs to go and simply trust that she will get there in the right order. Once you achieve this level of mastery, the gameplay can become quite addictive and satisfying.    

However, the game's low-budget roots are evident in its graphics and presentation. The graphics are SNES-quality at best, featuring low-detail cartoon-style character sprites. Some of the interface elements are so small and pixelated that they are difficult to interpret, such as the little thought bubble that appears over customers' heads when they want their area mopped. It took me a while to figure out what the heck they were asking for. It's reasonable to expect a certain level of flash and polish when playing a game on a modern platform such the DS, and this game simply doesn't deliver. Cutscenes between sections of the game are weak as well - the story takes place in the form of comic-style panels, with word bubbles that don't actually contain any words. The words are located on the second screen, making for a pretty confusing reading experience. Fortunately, these sequences are short and inconsequential.    

Diner Dash features little in the way of bonus content. There is a story mode, in which you play increasingly difficult levels and your vacation progresses from a cruise ship to a train to an island and beyond; there is an endless shift mode, in which you wait on customers until too many of them get fed up with your service and leave; and there is a multiplayer mode requiring each player to own their own copy of the game (which seems pretty ridiculous for a game of this graphical simplicity). You can customize Flo's outfit with pieces of clothing you earn by completing levels in the story mode, but most of the clothing is pretty nondescript, and in Flo's pixelated gameplay form, it's difficult to tell what she's wearing anyway. You can also occasionally upgrade the restaurant's furniture, which affects the gameplay in no way whatsoever.    

The game's soundtrack features catchy background tunes that stylistically match Flo's current locale, and it never gets too frantic or repetitive, which is nice. The sound effects are decent, with chatting customers, crying babies, and cooking sounds emanating from the kitchen area blending together to give the restaurant a fair level of atmosphere.    

Overall, the game can be quite fun, but it doesn't offer much in the way of gameplay variety, and the presentation is on par with online Flash games. I would be hard pressed to recommend the DS version of Diner Dash when the same game can be had on the PC for a much lower price. Unless you really need to play this one "on the go", there are better ways to get it.

Pros:
       

Fast-paced addictive gameplay

 

Stylus controls work very well

 

Pleasant sound design

       Cons:
       

Disappointing graphics

 

Threadbare story

 

Limited replayability

               Graphics:  6.0
       These graphics are way too simple; the game looks like a low-end web game. I expect a little more pizazz from a handheld console game. But they are functional enough and occasionally fairly cute.

               Sound:  7.5
       The various restaurant denizens make quite a bit of racket, and the music is simple but never too annoying or repetitive. You won't feel the need to mute this game unless you just hate crying babies.

               Control:  8.5
       This game lends itself perfectly to stylus control, and you'll soon find yourself plotting Flo's course with ease.

                      Gameplay:  8.0
       The game mechanic can be really addictive once you get the hang of things, but each level feels like a more stressful version of the last. Variety is introduced through a few different elements, however, so the gameplay doesn't become too stale too quickly.

 

       Lastability:  6.0
       You likely won't find yourself playing through this game over and over, and there's nothing really useful to unlock. It could be good for a quick romp when you've got some downtime and feel like you're not accomplishing anything, though.

 

       Final:  7.5
       If this gameplay style suits you, you can really get addicted quickly. However, the DS version doesn't do much to spruce up the simplistic budget-game feel of the series, and the content feels sparse.