Review: Yoshi's New Island

Developer: Arzest
Publisher: Nintendo

Nintendo keeps on crapping on the Yoshi's Island series, and it bothers me.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was one of the most innovative games to come out of the SNES years. The music was great, the levels were smart, it had a totally unique aesthetic that no other game could quite copy, and it was fun.

Nintendo handed off the series to Artoon for 2006's Yoshi's Island DS, and the results were disappointing. It looked like Yoshi's Island, certainly, and the controls were lifted wholesale from Yoshi's Island, but it didn't feel like Yoshi's Island. The bosses were rehashes of the first game, the levels weren't as innovative, and it just felt... off. It wasn’t a terrible game, just limp.

Fortunately, Nintendo cut ties with Artoon, so Yoshi's New Island wasn't going to end up in their hands. A new developer, Arzest, turned out to be the developer of Yoshi's New Island.

But wait, where did Arzest come from?

They're old developers from Artoon.

Crap.

Arzest threw out the unique style of the first two Yoshi's Island games and switched to a more watercolor-esque look that more closely resembled the N64 game Yoshi's Story. Yoshi's Story was the worst Yoshi game, so I don't understand why they would consciously try and emulate its look, but the look of Yoshi's New Island is actually the least objectionable part of it. Most of the time, Yoshi’s New Island looks good, if not great.

No, the art style isn’t what hurts Yoshi’s New Island. What makes Yoshi's New Island problematic is that it brings nothing new to the table. Nothing at all. For example, the worlds follow the same progression: World 1 is a grass land, World 2 introduces Koopa Troops, World 3 is a wet jungle with monkeys, World 4 is in a sunset landscape, World 5 is a snow world, and World 6 is going to the castle. This is the same progression from the first two games. The final boss is even an enormous Bowser, for goodness sake! I mean, the first time you fight him in the original Yoshi's Island, it's amazing. After that? Much less so.

A few other quibbles that add up to a big deal:

1. Yoshi delays for a split second before throwing an egg. In the first two games, he didn't have to "grab" an egg, he would just have it immediately in hand when you pressed the button. In this one, he has to grab an egg and then throw it. That little delay throws off the timing of experienced players, which makes it that much harder to line up shots.
2. You don't get a score at the end of a level anymore. Instead, the game tells you if you got all the coins, stars and flowers and checks them off for you on the map screen. This is a big, big deal. For example, if you only get 86/100 on a level or 46/100 on a level, the world map shows both level as looking the same. Granted, in the grand scheme of things the most important thing with each level is, "Did you get all the coins, stars and flowers?" Still, knowing the difference between a level you juuuuuust missed and one you were way off on is huge, and they excised that for no good reason.
3. Yoshi’s New Island's big addition is "giant eggs," and they do nothing important. At certain points, Yoshi can pick up really large eggs that he can throw and break barriers. They only can be used once, and just in those specific areas. In other words, they're not a new gameplay mechanic or a new idea, just another thing that the original Yoshi's Island did better.
4. The "transformations" are pointless. In the original Yoshi's Island, there were times where Yoshi would transform into a helicopter, submarine or car for a bit. They weren't that exciting, but they changed up the gameplay for just a bit. The transformations in Yoshi's New Island, though, are pretty drab. You go into a door, change into something like a jackhammer and then drill your way through a maze. It's a race against time to get to the end of the transformation area, which means that important stuff gets missed unless you want to go back through the level, which you won't. You also have to tilt your 3DS to get through these areas, which is ridiculous and makes something frustrating even more so.

These complaints, taken individually, aren’t a big deal. When you add them all up, it just underscores the fact that Arzest has gotten further away from what made Yoshi's Island great. Yoshi's Island was a wild experiment from a mad scientist that just happened to work.

I mean, none of the original game should have worked. Yoshi’s Island had a weirdo art style that was widely panned before release, a strange egg-throwing mechanic that could have been too complicated, a baby that would cry like nails on a chalkboard if you got hit by an enemy, and bosses that were way beyond what people were used to. Somehow, it all came together.

The Yoshi's Island series has lost that experimental edge, preferring just to run over the same territory laid down by Miyamoto all those years ago with minor changes that just ruin it. So why would Nintendo willingly allow Arzest to rehash Yoshi's Island while still calling it "new?" Beats me. Maybe they assume that most people haven't played the original, but the people who are interested in a new Yoshi's Island game are interested because the original generated so much goodwill. By pointlessly redoing Yoshi's Island over and over, they ruin what made the first one so good.

So, if you've never played a Yoshi's Island game before, maybe you'll like Yoshi's New Island. If you've played the original, though, and you're wondering if you should play Yoshi's New Island, you might enjoy it if you lower your expectations. Like, way lower.

Final Rating: D

Review: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

A Zelda game set in the same world as the SNES classic Link to the Past is just inviting criticism. Link to the Past is one of Nintendo's finest games, and frankly, one of its proudest achievements. Any game set in the same world would have huge expectations, and any misstep would be a disaster. A game set in that world would have to be near perfect in order to stand on its own. It feels like, at worst, a symptom of creative bankruptcy and at best a fool's errand.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is almost perfect. It holds specific charms if you've played Link to the Past, but the previous game isn't required to enjoy Link Between Worlds. As great as Link to the Past is, it still bears some of the fingerprints of old game design philosophy, with its emphasis on grinding and esoteric puzzles. Link Between Worlds takes what was great about Link to the Past and removes anything that's not necessary to the actual playing of the game. It's another masterclass in design from Nintendo.

What's fascinating is the way it builds on the player's knowledge of Link to the Past while expounding and deepening it, subtly nodding in the direction of the original while standing on its own two feet and bringing some of the most remarkable changes to the Zelda series in a while. What are some of these changes?

First, they've emphasized non-linear progression throughout the game, meaning you can go through the various dungeons almost in any order you choose. This really helped me out, since I always have a tendency to get stuck in Zelda games. This way, I was able to fiddle with different dungeons and pick the one I wanted, then move on to a different one if I was feeling overwhelmed.

Next, they've put in an item store. Instead of getting items in dungeons, you can rent or buy items using rupees. (I didn't even rent items, just waited until I had the money and bought them.) You would think this would ruin the game, since Zelda games are supposed to be about finding the item you need to progress and moving onwards, yet it doesn't. Here's why: You get so many rupees that you don't need to run around and grind for money. Then, because you can use any item you wish, you're never faced with an obstacle you can't find a way past or that block off large chunks of the world.

There's another huge change with Link Between Worlds that no one is really talking about: There's no more inventory management. You don't have to watch how many arrows or bombs you have, or how much magic power you have. Instead, it's all handled by a meter that refills on its own gradually. This works great, because you're never in a position where you don't have bombs and need to scramble around and grind for them, but at the same time you don't have "unlimited" uses either. If you lay down bomb after bomb after bomb, you'll have to stop and wait for your meter to refill. It's not so bad that you have to babysit your meter, but it does force you to use your weapons responsibly while still allowing you to experiment.

Now, Link Between Worlds makes a few small missteps, but they're so minor as to be nitpicky. For example, because Link Between Worlds is nonlinear, there's no difficulty curve after a point. Nintendo made up for it by making each dungeon wildly unique and memorable instead of making every enemy progressively more difficult, but the feeling of gradual progression is slightly missed. Link Between Worlds also feels short, but that's mostly because it's tight as a drum. It took me 16 hours to complete, but I was farting around with sidequests for a while before I got back on the main quest. Speaking of which, in the end, the sidequests weren't as important as I thought they were going to be. They were still fun, though, and I'm glad I did them.

Honestly, though, the fact that Nintendo would willingly invite comparisons to one of its finest classic games, then go on to exceed or beat those expectations is astounding. Anyone who thinks Nintendo has lost "it," whatever "it" may be, should play Link Between Worlds if only to find out how wrong they are.

Final Grade: A

Review: NES Remix

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

Nintendo has a deep bench of games they can go to when they need to. They have old franchises that they've never used properly, like Balloon Fight. They have old favorites that still remain fresh, like Mario and Zelda. They have the most history of any game company currently existing.

The games they released during the NES era have been picked over and picked over so much that it's hard to find anything new to do with them. And yet, Nintendo found a way.

NES Remix is, at its heart, a celebration of old NES games while providing players with achievements and challenges. It can be by turns incredibly satisfying, incredibly challenging, and incredibly frustrating. It includes classic games like Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda as well as not-so-classic games like Clu Clu Land and Ice Climber.

Your enjoyment of the game will hinge on how much you like these older games, and some of them really don't hold up well. The good news is that if you don't like one of the crappier games in the collection, you can usually move on to a game that's more fun to play.

The best part are the remixes, where they take a game and change something major on it. For example, in one remix, you play through level 4-1 in Super Mario Bros., but it's completely covered in ice. In another remix, you do a lap in Excitebike in the dark with nothing but your headlights lighting the way.

The only downside of NES Remix is that right now it only includes 16 games, all from the first two years of the NES. One hopes that they'll expand it with DLC (or free DLC? One can dream) so that it can include games like Kirby's Adventure, Mario 3, Punch-Out!! and others. Even if they don't, it's still a ton of fun and worth the $15.

Final Rating: B+

Review: Pokemon X & Y

Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo

Pokémon games are frequently ridiculed for being "just for kids." This is absurd. If Pokémon is just for kids, then we have some incredibly smart kids out there who apparently know how to put together a team with strengths and weaknesses, engage socially to get what they need and help others, and juggle a series of numbers and equations in order to keep everything straight.

So, way to go, kids!

However, Pokémon games have been stuck in a rut for a while, and there have always been a few major flaws that keep getting repeated in every new version. Black & White added a few more social features into the mix, but Black & White 2 literally retreaded the same ground. There haven't been a lot of new innovations in a while, just incremental improvements.

For instance, a lot of your time is wasted grinding, unless you happen to get a new Pokémon via trade. However, trading can be tedious if you have trouble finding a partner or put up a Pokémon for trade that no one wants.

Building up your team of Pokémon was always annoying too. In order to level up a weak Pokémon, you would have to start the battle with the weak one, then swap it out for the one you really wanted to use in order to get the weak one a share of the experience. It was time-consuming, and it would cause you to lose a move at the beginning of each battle. It could also leave your team lop-sided, as only a few of your Pokemon would be powerful and the rest in development.

No one ever really said anything about these things, though. After all, that was just Pokémon. It was part of the game series, and players had long ago either made their peace with the flaws or simply ignored the series.

Pokémon X & Y did something unthinkable: They actually went through and asked, "What is tedious in Pokémon and how can we fix it?" There was no real reason for them to do this, since even lesser entries of the Pokémon series sell enormous amounts, yet they really rethought things. That led to lots of fantastic changes that make X & Y the best iteration of Pokémon yet.

For one, level grinding is severely reduced in the game. If you want to spend some time grinding, fine. If you don't, you don't have to, since the X & Y is far more balanced than previous versions. Encounters also will net you more experience, meaning that you'll gain levels a lot faster, get better evolutions a lot quicker and get to the fun parts of Pokémon instead of wasting your time messing with the same old parts.

You can also get an item that shares your experience points throughout your party that you can turn on and off at a whim. This is huge. No longer do you have to swap your Pokémon in order to get them experience in battle. It saves so much time that was otherwise wasted, and helps keep your party balanced for when you really need it.

Speaking of fun parts, one of my pet peeves about Pokémon was always that there was no real incentive for capturing new Pokémon. Sure, the point of the game is to find and collect Pokémon, but there were no tangible in-game benefits for doing so. In X & Y, they've fixed that. Now, you get experience points for capturing OR defeating Pokémon. It's such a basic change, but it makes a huge difference.

Another great feature is the new Wonder Trade system. You put up a Pokémon for trade and get matched up with another random trading partner. You must accept their Pokémon, no matter if you want to or not. If you trade away a level 50 Raichu and receive a level 2 Bidoof in return, tough cookies. However, if you trade away a level 4 Pansear and get back a level 60 Gyarados, score!

I absolutely love Wonder Trade. You never know what you're going to get. Sure, sometimes you'll get some garbage, but you can always turn around and trade it again. It's like a Pokémon slot machine, and it's never not exciting.

Another great feature is the ability to send other players bonuses. If you so desire, you can send other players abilities like an HP restore, improved catch power or improved attack power. Combined with Wonder Trade, it's really quite nice. If you get a really nice Pokémon via trade, you can send bonuses to the sender in gratitude. One time I traded away a Farfetch'd and got bonus after bonus from the grateful party. It feels good.

That being said, there are some purists who aren't happy about these changes. Fortunately, if you want to struggle through Pokémon the way you always do, you can turn off most of these improvements. I don't understand why you would, but you can if you want. However, I really cannot fathom what's the big deal. Nintendo and Game Freak have taken a game series that was good and made it better. Some people will complain about any change, I guess.

The only legitimate complaint on Pokémon X & Y is the very, very slight story. The plot in X & Y is the same as every other Pokémon game: You're a kid. You get a Pokémon. You try and capture other Pokémon in an attempt to catch them all. You go to eight gyms and get badges. Some evil group wastes their time try to use Pokémon to take over the world. Eventually, you beat the evil group and take on the four toughest trainers in the world. Lather, rinse, repeat. If you're looking for a major change to this formula, you're not going to find one.

That being said, there is just so much to love about Pokémon X & Y that one measly review couldn't do it justice. I'll put it this way: If you always liked the idea of Pokémon but could never get into the games, Pokémon X & Y is an excellent place to start. If you liked previous Pokémon games, get X & Y right now.

Final Rating: A-

Review: FTL

What is it about roguelike games that makes them so much fun?

There's no reason that they should be fun. You're constantly failing. The penalty for failure is outrageously high, and there are many times you have no control over what exactly happens. You're fighting against a random number generator that frequently goes out of its way to screw you over.

So, once again, why are they fun?

The best explanation is that roguelikes are fun in the same way that card games are fun. For example, in poker, you don't have a choice about what cards you're dealt or what your opponents will do. They're all crazy variables that can change from minute to minute. The only thing you can control is yourself: You can try and read the situation, read your opponents, and place your bets accordingly.


That gambling sense runs through roguelike games. The only things you can control are your resources and how to manage them. Everything else is up to the game. You must play the hand you are dealt, succeed or die trying.

FTL plays that feeling to the hilt. In FTL, you're a lone spaceship on the run from Rebel forces. You must jump from star system to star system, collect crew members, scrap (FTL's currency), weapons and upgrades on route to destroy the rebel flagship. Along the way, you will die repeatedly and emphatically, and sometimes through no fault of your own.

That's part of what makes FTL so much fun, though. When you look back at your most recent run, you can usually pinpoint where it all went wrong. Maybe you spent too much scrap repairing your hull instead of buying a shield upgrade. Maybe you sent a crewmember to their death needlessly. Maybe you should have gone away from the star that was spitting out solar flares at you before it set the whole ship on fire.

Those sorts of decisions become learning experiences that you use on your next run. Invariably, you get dealt a new hand with different variables, but in the back of your mind are the lessons you've already learned. You make a promise to yourself not to make the same mistakes twice.

Can FTL feel unfair? Sometimes. Can it be needlessly random? Yes, absolutely. Is it a wildly entertaining game that keeps you wanting more? Of course.

Final Grade: A-

Review: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Developer: Nintendo/Monolith Soft
Publisher: Nintendo

If you've never played Animal Crossing, it can be a hard game to wrap your head around. On the surface, it appears that Animal Crossing is just about collecting bugs, going fishing and collecting fruit to pay off a home loan. That doesn’t sound like fun. That sounds like work.

Those who have actually played any of the games in the series will tell a different story. Animal Crossing games are insanely charming, entertaining, and relaxing. It's some of the most fun you'll have while chopping down trees.

However, the last entry in the series, City Folk, was disappointing. Nothing new was really added to the series, and the minor additions didn't really deepen Animal Crossing in general. Had the series had finally run out of new territory to conquer? And would New Leaf be any better?

The good news is that New Leaf is fantastic. The bad news is that you'll be playing it for the next year.
What makes New Leaf such a revelation is that it does something that the series should have done a long time ago: It makes you the mayor of your little town. With that power, you can enact ordinances, build new buildings and otherwise customize your city in a way you couldn't before. That alone would have been enough to recommend this game, but New Leaf goes beyond that.

What New Leaf really does is make Animal Crossing the game it always was supposed to be. See, the ideas that were introduced in previous games could never be implemented very well because of hardware limitations and other bugaboos that held it back. For example, in the original game, if you wanted to visit someone else's city, you had to physically have their memory card and insert it into your Gamecube to go there. On the DS version, if you opened up your city so others could view it, it would get trashed by griefers. Wild World introduced an extra Main Street area, but didn't let you change much about it.

In New Leaf, these limitations are fixed. What to let someone visit your town? Only friends can come in, reducing the chance that something awful will happen. Want to upload your city so other people can look through it without breaking anything? Sure, you can use the Dream Suite to do that. Want to add a second floor to your museum and open a new gift shop? Sure! Combined with the new customization options, that's what makes New Leaf one of the best games on the 3DS and the best Animal Crossing game in the series.

However, the final and most important thing to say about Animal Crossing: New Leaf, though, is that it's fun. It's just as simple as that. New Leaf is fun. If you like fun games, you should try it out. If you don't like fun, then I'm sorry for you. The rest of us will just be over here playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Final Rating: A

Review: Rogue Legacy

Developer: Cellar Door Games

Roguelike games (games with randomized dungeon layouts and high penalties for death) are experiencing a renaissance. Shiren the Wanderer, Dungeons of Dredmor, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, FTL and others are bringing the genre to the fore in a way that hasn't happened for a long, long time.

Because roguelikes are increasingly popular, we're starting to see the first wave of roguelike "remixes." These are games that take the basic principles of roguelikes and change them or combine them with other genres. One of the first is Rogue Legacy.
Rogue Legacy combines a roguelike with platforming and RPG elements. It's a platform game where you explore a randomized castle, kill enemies, find treasure, and destroy bosses. When your character dies, he or she is dead for good, but their heir takes over in their place. Then, your heir explores a new randomized castle. If you like a certain castle, you can lock it down to explore it again with your new heir.

Your goal is to gather gold in the castle and spend it on your citadel in hopes that you'll improve the fortunes of your descendants. You can also find plans and runes in the castle, which can unlock weapons and armor, as well as new powers that can help you in your quest.

The basic skeleton of a roguelike is there, in the sense that sometimes you'll die in a "gotcha" moment or will come across an enemy you've never seen and suddenly be mauled to death in horrible fashion. Sometimes, you'll have incredible luck and make it farther than you ever have before.

That's what's appealing about these kinds of games. Roguelikes can be compared to poker: It's not so much the hand you're dealt so much as what you do with it. In poker, you can be dealt a horrible hand but bluff your way through to come out ahead, or you can be dealt an amazing hand and misplay it. Roguelikes are similar, and Rogue Legacy captures that to a 'T'.

However, where Rogue Legacy missteps a bit is with the "traits" that it assigns your descendants. For example, one trait is "IBS," where your character sometimes farts when he jumps. One of the traits is "coprolalia," where you character swears when they get hit. It's a little juvenile, but some of the traits actually have some good social commentary. For example, the "gay" trait changes... nothing at all. Your hero (or heroine) is just as strong with the same powers as anyone else. Insert your interpretation here.

If you play Rogue Legacy, some tips: The game will tell you to spend your money on weapons and runes instead of your citadel, and that's definitely true. The more money you spend on your citadel, the more expensive everything else becomes, and the amount of money you would have to spend on the citadel to equal the abilities of some of the weapons and armor is prohibitive.

Also, don't be afraid to restart your game if you don't like the way it's heading. I restarted twice, and on my third time got out to an early advantage against my opponents that I was able to parlay into an almost-completed citadel and several powerful runes. Restarting the game also helps you to gain familiarity with the various enemies so there are fewer "gotcha" moments. Choose to do whatever you like, though.

Rogue Legacy is a lot of fun, fairly deep and all-around entertaining. It's definitely worth a look if you like platformers, and definitely worth it if you like roguelikes.

Final Grade: A-

Review: Surgeon Simulator 2013

There's a new genre of game that I'm calling the "Glorious Failure" genre. It includes games like QWOP, CLOP, and the demo of Surgeon Simulator 2013. In a Glorious Failure game, you could conceivably win with the tools you’re given, yet those tools are so difficult to use that only the insane would be able to succeed. Failure is a much more common (and hilarious) result.

In fact, failure is kind of the point of this genre. The sillier you look and the more ridiculous your attempts, the more fun you'll end up having.

So why do I include the demo of Surgeon Simulator and not the full game? Because the full game of Surgeon Simulator 2013 sort of forgets that the whole point of these games is failure.

In Surgeon Simulator 2013, you play as a surgeon who has to perform complex surgical procedures on poor, defenseless patients. You control your fingers with a few keys on the keyboard, and you move, lower and tilt your hand with the mouse. The general idea of Surgeon Simulator 2013 is that you're supposed to successfully complete a heart transplant, kidney transplant or brain transplant using one hand and a variety of surgical tools.

That's ostensibly the idea behind it, but it's so much more fun pawing at the tools like a drunken toddler and causing mayhem. Most of the videos online of Surgeon Simulator show the players giggling as they embed a scalpel into the patient’s lung, or accidentally dropping a bonesaw into the patient’s chest cavity and desperately trying to get it out. That’s when Surgeon Simulator is at its best: When everything goes wrong.

However, Surgeon Simulator 2013 breaks that feeling. Instead, they ask you to actually perform the surgeries from start to finish, and then you can unlock other surgeries. Now, this may not sound like a flaw to you. After all, isn't the point of a game that you need to improve so you can advance onward?

Yes, but Glorious Failure games aren't the same thing. Remember, in a Glorious Failure game, the controls are usually so needlessly complex that you can't be expected to succeed, and failure is encouraged. At some times, Surgeon Simulator 2013 gets this. For example, Surgeon Simulator 2013 gives you an achievement if you throw two hearts into the chest cavity, if you throw in something that doesn't belong or if you flip off the patient.

But then, they ask you to actually do the surgeries, and it's just frustrating.

For example, to do a heart transplant, what you're supposed to do is break the ribcage, rip out the lungs, cut out the heart and toss another heart in there. Unlike the demo version of Surgeon Simulator 2013, the ribcage splinters into a million little pieces. If you toss in the heart and there are too many ribcage pieces sitting in the chest cavity, you don't succeed with the surgery because the heart can’t land where it needs to. You have to pick out the tiny pieces of bone first, which can be a problem if you have the heart there..

The kidney transplant is even worse. You're presented with the large and small intestine and have to remove them in order to get to the kidneys. I swear, I've sat there for at least a half an hour with scalpels, saws, lasers and hammers trying to remove the organs and have gotten nowhere. Once, I nicked the corner of the small intestine and severed a tiny corner. That was as close as I've gotten to removing it. I’ve grabbed onto the large intestine and pulled. It didn’t budge.

This sort of behavior is funny when you're expected to fail. However, when you're trying to succeed and you can't because the controls get in the way, that's terrible.

Bossa Games needed to go one way or the other: Either tidy up the controls so that the player could succeed (which defeats the whole purpose of the game) or let the player fail and still proceed. They should have actually encouraged such failure, like allowing you to proceed if you've killed the patient in under two minutes or something like that.

Is that morbid? Well, this is a game where you're smashing open ribcages with a hammer and ingesting drugs accidentally. If you're going to go that route, take it all the way. Allow the player to plant a little flag inside the chest cavity. Accidentally start yourself on fire. Cause the patient to wake up momentarily. Throw a kidney into a paper shredder. Take it all the way. The more mayhem, the better. The more failure, the better.

Instead, taking a game that's built for failure and then expecting the player to succeed is just unfair. For example, on the title screen I spent twenty minutes trying to get my hand to pick up a floppy disc and insert it into a computer, and you expect me to remove a brain without killing the patient? Yeah, not happening.

When Surgeon Simulator 2013 works, it’s a thing of morbid beauty. When it doesn’t, it’s an exercise in frustration and ragequitting. A shame, too, because they really had something on their hands there, and I’m not referring to the kidneys on ice.

Final Grade: D+

Review: Starseed Pilgrim

Remember seeing a magic trick when you were a kid? The first time you saw a magician saw a lady in half, you were shocked. Then, when he put her back together, you were stunned. You wondered in amazement, “How did he do that?”

Then, someone showed you how the trick worked. They showed you that there are two boxes, and the lady bunches herself up in one box while another woman sticks her legs out of the other box to give the illusion of a woman sawed in half. There was probably a moment of excitement when you finally realized what had been happening the whole time. However, you no longer cared to see the trick afterwards. It no longer held your attention in the same way because you knew exactly what was happening.

Starseed Pilgrim reminded me of that. Starseed Pilgrim is a 2D platformer game with emergent gameplay, where you're expected to make your way around the world and explore for exploration's sake. The early instructions in the game are the equivalent of, "Here is how to move. Press the Space Bar to plant a seed. Go." You're dumped into an all-white world and that's it.
At first, you're confused and lost. You spend time wondering why you're playing this game in the first place. Then, you slowly start understanding what the game is all about. You figure out what the point of it is, and how it all works together.

Then there's a moment of realization where everything sets in. "Oh, this does this and this does this! I go here and do this, then I grab that, then open this!" That's when the pleasure center of your brain lights up, pats you on the head and tells you what a good boy (or girl) you've been.

Afterwards, you wander around and ask yourself, "OK, now what?"

That's where the designers of the game hope that the game really starts for you. If Starseed Pilgrim really has its hooks into you, you'll start poking around, getting more snippets of poetry (yes, poetry) to read, and going further and further through the world.

However, the problem is that there's no definitive goal to shoot for. I'm not saying that there needed to be little guideposts sprinkled throughout the world or a giant floating head telling you what to do next, or immersion-breaking achievements of any kind. Just a goal.

In other emergent games like Minecraft or Terraria, you're building something. You're affecting the world, like putting up a building or revitalizing a formerly dead area. When you're done, you can say, "I did that. I made that." When you open up a new area of Starseed Pilgrim, it looks pretty much like the last area you opened up. There are slightly different rules in the new areas, and you're going further, but for what? What is the ultimate goal?

This could have been solved easily. The stated goal at the beginning of game is to "bring back the sky." So how about when you plant a seed, the blank white blocks around it turn to a sky-blue color? Eventually, clouds start forming in the blue blocks and weather returns to the world. Now you have a goal to play towards. Your emergent gameplay has an endpoint, not just playing just to play.

You may read this review and think I didn't like Starseed Pilgrim, but that's not true. I thought it was an exceptional experience and I'd love to wipe my brain and start over from scratch, relearning the world and how it works. The sound design is really cool, like the sound of encroaching darkness that sounds just as ominous as it looks. Starseed Pilgrim also has a totally unique aesthetic that looks unlike any other game out there right now.

I'm only disappointed because Starseed Pilgrim came oh-so-close to being a knockout of a game. Instead, it ended up as a really neat one with some interesting and mysterious mechanics, which is a lot closer to perfection than a lot of other developers can get.

Final Rating: B

Review: Gunman Clive

Developer: Horberg Productions
Publisher: Horberg Productions

Gunman Clive is the best hand-drawn platformer featuring a cowboy who goes to space and fights robots that I've ever played on the 3DS.

All facetiousness aside, Gunman Clive is pretty great. It's a platform/shooter game where you play as the titular Clive and rescue a damsel in distress. Or, if you prefer, play as the damsel in distress and rescue Clive.

The first thing you'll notice when you start up Gunman Clive is the unique graphical style. Everything looks like a "Wanted" poster in the Old West, which gives it a look that's instantly distinguishable from any other game on the eShop. It uses a limited color palette of yellows and oranges that you would think it would get boring to look at, but it doesn't.

Clive does almost everything right for an action /platformer. The controls are really tight. I never ran into a situation where I missed a jump or got myself killed because of the controls. The levels are varied and interesting, with tons of little surprises along the way.

I only have two complaints. One, the music is a little bland in parts, but it's not awful. I played the whole game with the sound on and I didn't regret it. Two, Clive is awfully short. I finished the whole game in an hour. However, it's only $1.99, so you can't get too angry about the length.

I didn't know what to expect from Gunman Clive, but I'm glad I played it, and you'll like it too.

Final Grade: A-

Review: Dungeon Hearts

Developer: Cube Roots
Publisher: Devolver Digital


Dungeon Hearts has a really cool idea at its core: What if battles in RPGs took place entirely via a fast-paced match-three puzzle interface instead of the old menu-based way? It's an exceptional idea, but Dungeon Hearts can't quite pull it off.

In Dungeon Hearts, you play through a series of battles, one right after the other. At the bottom of the screen, there's a constantly-scrolling stream of tiles called the FateStream. The tiles have different colors which correspond to the colors of your four units, and mixed in to the FateStream are tiles that can damage your units or cause various status effects to affect them. When a tile gets to the end of the FateStream, it's gone, so in order to defeat your enemies, you have to quickly match tiles.

Your enemies also get tiles that appear at random in the FateStream, and if the tiles reach your characters, then they apply that effect, whether it's a straight attack, freezing, weakening, or some other debuff. Each unit has its own allotment of hit points, and when they run out, your game ends.

After each battle is complete, you're given another pile of gems to sort through, except that matching the gems in this area enables your characters to gain levels. Gaining levels strengthens your characters and unlocks special skills which can be used during combat.

Got all that? Good. The system itself is great and fairly easy to master, but the way the system is implemented is problematic.

First, the way your characters gain levels isn't very well-executed. If you mess up during the gem-matching portion after the battles are concluded, you may have gimped your characters for good. That's a problem, since levelling the characters unlocks skills, and some of those skills are as basic as a healing spell. If you've made a mistake and somehow not unlocked it, too bad!

There's also a tile that the enemies can use against you that's wildly overpowered: Life Drain. It continually damages the unit it hits while giving that life to your opponent. Now, these sort of spells and effects are in a lot of other games, but usually they have a set duration, like five or ten seconds. However, in Dungeon Hearts, Life Drain just keeps running until your unit dies, making it the most deadly tile in the game. Whenever you see one, you have to drop everything and desperately try and obliterate it or it's all over.

So if you do get hit with Life Drain, how do you stop it from killing you? Well, one of your characters has a skill that heals and clears debuffs. What if you didn't level up enough to get that skill? Too bad! More than likely, though, what will happen is that you used the skill and now have to wait for it to recharge. And what if that happens? Too bad!

How do you recharge your skills? By attacking with the appropriate character. What if no gems show up for that character? Too bad! What if the character who has the healing skill dies? Too bad! He also gets a resurrection skill, and if he dies, too bad! No resurrecting for you!

I don't like whining about fairness in games, but I have to say this: If you tie the strategy of your game into something that's completely random, that's not fair. That changes your carefully-constructed game into something like poker: You can think that you're a great poker player, but if you end up with the wrong cards in your hand, it doesn't matter how good you are. You will lose. That's how Dungeon Hearts feels sometimes.

So how could the situation have been improved? First, what about item drops that you can equip onto your characters, like shields that create immunities or absorb damage? What about a more generalized way of levelling your characters? Say, you match the gems, and then can pick who you want to upgrade and what you want to upgrade on them? That seems fair to me.

When Dungeon Hearts works, it's incredible. It's fun to play, the gem-matching is a ton of fun, and it's an idea that really hasn't been tried before. I would love to see this idea expanded upon and given a narrative so that it's closer to a real RPG. However, as it currently stands Dungeon Hearts feels like 75% of a great idea. The matching mechanics are just fine, but there needs to be more player agency and strategy. Since it's only 75% of a great idea, it gets a score that averages out to... 75%.

Final Rating: C

Review: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Awakening is reason enough to own a 3DS.

I don't throw that phrase out lightly, especially because it's hard to convince someone to plunk down $150+ just to play one game. However, when the game in question is as deep and engaging as Fire Emblem: Awakening, it's absolutely true.

Awakening is the latest in Nintendo's long-running series of turn-based tactical RPGs. In Fire Emblem games, you move your characters around a grid-based map, select which enemies they're going to attack, and then watch the battle play out. There are three types of weapons: Swords, axes and lances. Swords are better than axes, axes are better than lances, and lances are better than swords. There are also magic powers, some which are more useful against certain types of enemies than others. Characters that fight alongside each other will also build up friendships. The stronger the friendship, the higher the combat bonus that they generate.
Fire Emblem is also known for having permadeath: If one of your characters dies in combat, they're dead and they're not coming back. That means you have to carefully plan your strategy and protect your spellcasters and archers so that you don't lose them forever.

The most recent entry was Shadow Dragon, released for the DS. It was OK, but certainly not a system-seller. You'd be excused for thinking that Awakening was something similar. I certainly did. However, Awakening has so much more going for it.

The gameplay in Awakening is just as tight as other games in the series, but with an extra graphical sheen that will make it difficult to go back to previous games in the series. I know of what I speak, because I tried going back to Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and couldn't do it. Awakening is just too pretty. The cutscenes are tremendous, the maps are gorgeous and brightly colored, and the 3D is used to excellent effect.

You can also get characters to marry and have children in Awakening. I won't spoil how it works because a large chunk of the plot hinges on it. However, exploring the romance options for your various characters isn't a superficial waste of time like some other games with romance options. In Awakening, it actually has real gameplay benefits for your characters.

Speaking of those characters, they're all exceptional. They have excellent personalities, which makes it easy and fun to match them up. You can ask yourself questions like, "Should I match up the stoic and gynophobic Lon'qu with the tough and terrifying warrior woman Sully or the scientific and Aspie-esque Miriel? What about Donnel, the country bumpkin? Should I torment him by matching him up with the uptight Maribelle?" You can make these decisions in the best interests of the characters themselves, or just match up completely incompatible characters and see what happens, which is frequently hilarious.

The story is also pretty great, too, full of surprises and twists. In contrast to many video game stories, the characters actually have good motivations and make good choices, and the story fits together really well.

There's also a lot to do in Fire Emblem: Awakening. I've been playing for over 30 hours and I'm still not finished with the main quest yet. I've been dabbling in romance options, doing sidequests, optimizing items, and all sorts of other things besides actually finishing the game just because it's so much fun.

If there are flaws in Fire Emblem: Awakening, they're flaws that are endemic to the series as a whole. For example, just like other games in the series, weapons and magic tomes have a limited amount of uses before they're spent. All Fire Emblem games have this feature, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

It would also be fantastic if Awakening would allow you to restart a battle from the beginning. Some previous games had the "Restart Chapter" option, so I don't know why it's missing here. Maybe they didn't want it because they were afraid that people would abuse it, but let's face it: Most people who play Fire Emblem are going to restart the game when they lose a character anyway. Since they're going to do it anyway, you might as well give the player the ability without making them jump through hoops.

All in all, though, Fire Emblem: Awakening is in the conversation as the best game on the 3DS. That's heady territory, considering some of the great stuff that's out there for it.

If you own a 3DS, get Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you don't own a 3DS but have been on the fence about it, get off the fence and get one for Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you don't want a 3DS at all for whatever weird reason, suit yourself. Just be advised that you're missing one of the best tactical RPGs ever.

Final Rating: A-

Review: DLC Quest

Developer: Going Loud Studios

DLC Quest is commentary disguised as a game. The basic concept of the game is that DLC (downloadable content) is wrecking games. It's getting to the point that you practically need to pay the game company extra money in order to use a pause screen, or even to jump. That's the direction the industry is going, amirite? You may or may not agree with that assessment, but it's a pretty good hook for a game.

In DLC Quest, the only way to progress is by picking up coins in the game that you can use to "buy" the sections in the game that are missing from a shopkeeper who's all too eager to nickel-and-dime you to death. You can increase your health, get "game-breaking" weapons, and unlock "uncompleted" areas of the game.
For a while, DLC Quest is very, very funny and has some pretty pointed commentary. For example, you can get a sword, but the sword needs to be sharpened before it can be used. You can sit and sharpen it on a grinding wheel, but you'll have to press the "sharpen" button 10,000 times. Why not pay money to get it sharpened much quicker? You get the coins to pay for it, and now you only have to press the "sharpen" button 10 times. That's some pretty pointed commentary on the whole "freemium" way of playing games: "Sure, you can play our MMO for free, but unless you want the game to be a tedious grind, you should pay money."

But, when DLC Quest moves away from commentary and starts trying to be more of a "game," like in the bonus "Live Freemium Or Die" pack, it starts getting tedious. They start picking on some of the other dumb things that games do, like lock certain areas away for Day One DLC, or making you do silly fetch quests, but it doesn't really come together like it should. That's the problem with satire in games: Making a player run all around the world and do ridiculous fetch quests is funny in theory,  but take note: Making the player do something tedious isn't funny, just tedious.

Kurt Vonnegut had a quote that I think is applicable here: "Use the reader's time in a way in which they won't feel that it was wasted." Replace "reader" with "player," and that should give future gaming satirists something to chew on. Sure, you can make fun of fetch quests and annoying backtracking, but somehow you have to make it interesting. Lampshade it somehow, do something that will make the player laugh at it. Just don't waste their time.

However, for $2.99, DLC Quest is a fun little diversion. It could have been better, but then again, so could the majority of the video game industry.

Final Rating: C+

Review: New Super Mario Bros. U

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

I've been staring at this empty document for a while, trying to figure out what to say about New Super Mario Bros. U. What can I say that I haven't already said, either in my reviews of New Super Mario Bros. Wii or New Super Mario Bros. 2? Can I just say, "Just read those reviews and come back here?" What about, "It's OK, I guess." Can I say that?

I suppose I can't, but that's the problem that Nintendo's starting to bump in to with the New Super Mario Bros. series. It's bringing in diminishing returns, even as the sales continue to pile up.

So let's just do this: Let's point at what's new in New Super Mario Bros. U and grade each part individually. That should give us a good idea of whether this new one is worth playing.
The most obvious change is the Wii U GamePad. I'll be honest: Playing this on the GamePad has been fantastic. I love being able to play the game with no latency on the pad itself while having headphones plugged into it. Grade: A+.

Multiplayer on the Wii game was really frustrating. With the addition of the GamePad, multiplayer has been expanded greatly now. One person can either help out by adding blocks or troll everyone by creating obstacles. Most everyone will create obstacles instead, which leads to beautiful anarchy. Grade: A.

The difficulty is cranked up. I'm ashamed to admit that I let the computer take me through one of the later levels. Am I getting bad at platformers in my old age? I don't think so, since I don't have a problem with other platformers, just this one. I'll blame the game, not the player. Grade: B

Miiverse integration is really cool the first time you see it. It's cool to see what other people have posted in-game, and there are some very creative people out there. After a while, though, it gets a little tedious. Grade: B

The extra challenges are a cool addition, though I'm not sure what purpose they serve other than showing off how awesome you are to yourself. Grade: B+

The world map is a definite improvement over the boring and stale New Super Mario Bros. 2 map, and harkens back the days of Super Mario World. However, is having a cool world map necessarily "new?" I don't think so. Grade: Did not qualify.

So where does that leave us? This all averages out to about a B+. That seems fair to me. A quick ranking of the "New" series:

1. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2. New Super Mario Bros. U
3. New Super Mario Bros. 2
4. New Super Mario Bros.

All right, now that Nintendo has pumped out game after game of side-scrolling Mario action, can they please stop? I beg of Nintendo to stop with the New series for now. Wait until the next Nintendo system. We're all worn out on side-scrolling Mario games for the time being. Too much of a good thing is still too much.

Final Grade: B+

Review: Antichamber

Developer: Alexander Bruce

The other night, my wife and I were stuck watching some hacky sitcoms in a waiting room. The jokes were stale, the plots predictable, and we didn't laugh once. Once they were over, we were furious. Why? Because I could have written a better TV show than the shows we watched, and I don't even write for TV.

Another show that we're fans of is How I Met Your Mother. On a good episode of HIMYM, the plots flow together so ably and easily that you can't help but be impressed with the talent and skill of the writers and showrunners. When you're finished with a really good episode, you just sit back in awe, thinking, "How did they come up with that idea?"

What does any of this have to do with Antichamber?

Well, there are some games that you play that make you say, "I could have done this myself." Once you're done playing Gun Shooterface 8: Shoot Harder, you roll your eyes, set the game aside, and move on. There are many games like it, and another one will roll down the pike as soon as you turn around.

On the other hand, Antichamber is one of those games that I could never have made in a million years. I remain in awe of it. I don't even know how someone would even start making a game like Antichamber. It's forces your brain into such odd configurations that I shudder to think of the condition of the brain that Antichamber came from.

If I were to sum up Antichamber in a few words, it would be "Portal plus Metroid plus M. C. Escher." The first and most obvious comparison is Portal and at first glance, there are some similarities between the two games. You're in a strange place, Antichamber is in first-person, there are puzzles, and you get a gun with which to solve the puzzles. That's where the similarities end, though. Unlike Portal, there are no discrete "test rooms," there is no narrative, and Antichamber has puzzles far more extreme than Portal had in its wildest moments.

Here's an example of a fairly early puzzle in Antichamber: You are standing in front of two corridors. The one on the left is tinted red and the one on the right is tinted blue. You walk through the red corridor and end up back looking at the same corridors. You walk through the blue corridor and end up back at the same place once again. How do you progress?

Another mind-bender: You look through a strangely patterned window and see a different shaped corridor on the other side. When you walk away from the window, you are now in that corridor. Go to the other side of the window and look through again, and you'll see the first corridor. Now stop looking through the window and you're in the new corridor. So, Antichamber plops you in a room with eight windows. Find the exit.

If all of this sounds confusing, that's because it's supposed to be. Antichamber disorients you, forcing you to learn the rules of this strange new place, then forces you to work within them. It doesn't take long until your brain is completely on board with the fact that you have to stare at the giant unblinking eyes on the wall until the eyes close, or that you have to make a pulsating blob of light start rocketing around the chamber you're in to destroy a platform in order that a new platform will automatically be created, and there goes your brain. I think I smell smoke.

You get a gun that gets different abilities along the way. This is where the Metroid comparisons are apt, since every new upgrade to your gun opens up areas that were once closed to you. It requires some backtracking at times in order to proceed onward. If you're not a fan of backtracking in games, this might not work for you. I like backtracking, so it worked out well for me.

There are two minor flaws with Antichamber. One, there are a few instances where you need to know how to use certain skills in order to progress. Antichamber doesn't always adequately explain them, though, so you could end up wandering around for a little too long before the answer strikes you in the face accidentally.

Next, since there's no narrative, the end of the game is a little limp. I'll put the obligatory SPOILER ALERT tag here, but there really isn't much to spoil. In the ending, you just fire a... thing at another... thing, and then some stuff happens, and you can't be certain what you just witnessed or how it has any relevance to what you just went through. Since there's no semblance of anything approaching a narrative, Antichamber doesn't really stick the landing as well as I would like. It keeps you at arm's distance, in a sense.  END SPOILER ALERT. For that reason, it's probably not going to ignite the sort of feverish devotion that Portal did, but unless you were a huge fan of falsified pastries, I don't foresee that being a huge issue.

What does it all come down to? Well, I have seen things in Antichamber that I have never seen before in a game, and I'm doubtful that I'll ever see again. Antichamber looks like nothing else, plays like nothing else, and bent my brain like nothing else I've ever played. If you like first-person puzzle games at all, you need to try this.

Final Rating: A-

Review: Proteus

Developer: Ed Key and David Kanaga

Whenever a game like Proteus or Dear Esther comes out, the question on everyone's lips is, "Is this really a game?" It's such a fake question, but since it's going to be asked of anyone reading this review, let's get it out of the way. A game needs three things to be called a game: Controls, Goals and Anticipation. Here's what we mean:

• Controls: Can you control your avatar's movement through the game world?
• Goals: Is there a definitive goal that you are steering that character toward?
• Anticipation: Are you expecting something when you get to that goal?

With Dear Esther, you can control your character's movement. You have a goal. You're anticipating what will happen when you reach that goal. Therefore, it's a game.

With Proteus, you control your character's movement. You set your own goals, much like Minecraft allows the player to do. You anticipate what will happen when you reach that goal. Therefore, it's a game.

Now that we have that philosophical wankery out the way, can we talk about Proteus itself? Thanks.

You really have to see this motion to get the full effect.

At the outset of Proteus, you awake floating in the water. Before you, you see the faint outline of an island. You move toward it, and music slowly comes alive around you. Your movements, what you see onscreen and what you're standing near affect the music, adding instruments or tones to it. There are no enemies to kill, no princesses to rescue, just you and a magically musical island. The seasons change from spring to summer, then to fall, then winter, and your time on the island is over.

Proteus brings you along with subtle nudges. "Hey, there's a snow-capped mountain. I wonder what the music sounds like there. Look, a flock of birds. I wonder what music they make? There's a gathering storm. I wonder what sound that will make?" The game itself doesn't have to set goals in front of the player, just let the player choose what they would like to see.

Every time you start the game anew, a new island is randomly generated. The islands have the same basic features on every one, but since the mix and match of colors and shapes is different on each, the music will be slightly different. If you specifically want to save the island you're on, you can take a "snapshot," which saves the state of the game and acts as a Save/Load system.

It's hard to tell you much about Proteus without spoiling it, but I will pinpoint two moments that blew me away: One, when a flock of birds ran away from me, chirping all the way, adding an extra bit of harmony to the background music, and two, when the season changed to winter. I believe I audibly gasped when that happened.

There are a few flaws. Once you've played through Proteus once, you can go back, start a new island and give it another go. There are a few subtle differences between islands, different creatures to find, new land formations and the like, but it doesn't appear that you're not going to find anything major, like new biomes or anything wildly out of the ordinary, which is a little disappointing.

There are also times where you find cool structures and would like to go back and visit them at a different time or season, but you can't remember where they are. There's no minimap, so you just have to remember where it was. This can be frustrating, especially in the winter season where visibility is reduced.

Also, while spring, summer, and the early part of autumn are neat, the transition from autumn to winter and winter itself are not quite as impressive. While winter looks really cool when you first see it, it quickly becomes frustrating as you try to figure out where you're going because of low visibility, and after a while, the game begins the ending process without so much as a warning. I also wish that the game would let you go back to spring once winter is through and keep on playing, but the developers may have had their reasons.

Proteus could maybe benefit from a few more game-like touches, like achievements (so you know the breadth of what you haven't seen yet) and a minimap (so you could see how much of the island you haven't found yet and find things on the island that you had previously found), but adding those in might destroy the delicate balance of solitude and exploration that Proteus has. I'm sure as more player feedback is added, the makers of Proteus will expand and deepen the world even more.

That being said, Proteus is a really incredible experience, although it's not for everyone. If you want a game where you can run around and shoot things, Proteus will bore you to tears. However, if you want a game where you can investigate and enjoy a strange new world, gasp at the sound of a flying owl, watch shooting stars light up the night sky, or just walk through an orchard of cherry blossoms as the falling blooms make gentle tinkling sounds, Proteus is magnificent.

Final Grade: B

Review: 10000000

Developer: Eighty-Eight Games

If you make a list of games currently available on Steam, you can probably put 10000000 near the top of that list.

That's not primarily due to its quality, although it's a good game. It's mostly due to alphabetization.

/rimshot

Seriously, though, 10000000 is pretty good. Imagine if you combined a fast-paced game of Bejeweled with a free-running game like Temple Run, toss in resource-gathering and combat along with some RPG-lite elements. Whip it in a blender and serve chilled, and that's 10000000.

In 10000000, you're trapped in a castle, and you won't be able to leave until you score 10,000,000 points. In order to score points, you have to run through a dungeon, stopping periodically to open treasure chests, fight monsters and unlock doors. The longer you survive in the dungeons, the more points you gather. This is all handled with a gem-matching game in the vein of Bejeweled, and different jewels cause different things to happen. For example, sword jewels use physical attacks, wand jewels use magic attacks, and key jewels can open up treasure chests. If you're in front of a treasure chest, no amount of sword jewels will open that chest, just key jewels.

Meanwhile, you can upgrade rooms in your castle from the wood and stone you collect in the dungeon. Those rooms unlock upgrades which enable you to improve your attack strength, defenses, magic strength and other bonuses, which mean that you can run through the dungeons longer, rack up more points and resources, and on and on until you reach 10,000,000 points.

I like free-running games like Jetpack Joyride, Temple Run and Canabalt, but they never feel very deep to me. Since there's no definitive goal, you just keep playing until you get bored or unlock everything you wanted to unlock. I like puzzle games, but after a while, you're just trying to top your high score. Once again, there's no definitive goal, so you just keep playing until you get tired of it. Combining the two, then placing a definitive goal in front of the player is a stroke of genius.

10000000 has a few flaws, though. The sound and music don't quite work. The music is trying to affect a retro vibe, and it doesn't pull it off with the skill of, say, VVVVVV. The sounds can be a little confusing too. There's a noise that you hear when you match up wood and stone jewels that sounds like it should be for an attack instead. Even after several hours of playtime, I'm still not used to it.

I also wish there was a little more meat to the game, too. For example, you're upgrading rooms in the castle, but I wish there was more to do with it, like another strategy dimension. Imagine if the castle was under attack, and you could use your wood and stone to repair the castle and improve its defenses, expand the size of it, and other crazy stuff like that. That would be pretty awesome, but I guess you can't have everything.

10000000 is a great, great game, though. I was playing it one night and looked at the clock. It was about 10pm, so I decided to just do one more run through the dungeon. My "one more run" had turned into "50 more runs," and when I looked at the clock again it was 11:30pm. It's a lot of fun, and well worth its low cost.

Final Grade: A-

Review: Wario Land II

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

Some games are only appreciated years after their release. Wario Land II is one of those games.

When Wario Land II came out, there was a lot of anger directed at it, and reviews were tepid. Why? In Wario Land II, Wario can't die. He can't drown, get impaled by spikes or fall down bottomless pits. The levels had no time limits. If he gets hit by an enemy, he just falls backwards a bit and loses some coins. There were no powerups or special moves that Wario would gain as the game went along either.

For a platformer, this was high heresy. Where would the challenge come from? I mean, if you have no death, doesn’t that mean that you don’t have to be careful? You could just barge into wherever you want and just bum-rush your way through the game artlessly without really playing it well, just stumbling from level to level like a drunken partygoer? With no powerups, what would keep people playing? How could anyone enjoy a game like this?

What we didn’t realize at the time is that Nintendo was completely rethinking platform games, and they realized that they could make a different kind of platform game that wasn’t like Mario. Mario games are all about precision, forward momentum and consistent movement. If you're standing around in a Mario game, you're playing it wrong.

In Wario Land II, the dynamic is a little different. Wario has to slow things down, examine his surroundings and continue forward. The challenge doesn't necessarily come with avoiding enemies and obstacles, but rather the exploration and secret nooks and crannies hidden throughout the game. Sure, you could power through artlessly and get to one of the endings, but you would literally miss half of the game.

Some of the methods of getting to the secret levels are downright devious, too. I won’t spoil anything, but one in particular has an inventiveness that is unequaled in any other Game Boy game and, frankly, a lot of console games too. It’s so headslappingly clever and obvious at the same time that you’ll wonder how you didn’t think of it.

Wario has also been loaded up with special moves, and there are also enemy attacks that will give Wario temporary abilities. Therefore, a lack of powerup mushrooms, or garlic, or whatever you would like to scatter throughout the game doesn’t really hurt Wario Land II. Some enemies will change Wario into a zombie, flatten him, or make him fat among other things. Using those special abilities, you can access different parts of the level, and it's a really interesting way to rethink powerups.

The only area of Wario Land II that needs improvement are the bosses. The bosses are unique and interesting, but when you lose a battle you get thrown backwards in the level a bit and have to make your way back to the boss. Some of the bosses are incredibly challenging, so you might find yourself trudging through the same area repeatedly just to get back to the same stupid boss fight where you’ll get beaten again and have to go through the same area again.

Aside from that, Wario Land II heralded a new generation of platformer that completely broke the rules of what platformers were “supposed” to be. We didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but we sure do now.

Final Rating: A-

Review: Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

If anything, you have to admire Nintendo's audacity.

One of the questions that keeps RPG designers up at night is: "How can we make RPGs lest grind-y?" Nintendo asked that question themselves, and came up with the answer: "Get rid of a progression system that requires players to grind."

That's what Nintendo tried for Paper Mario: Sticker Star. In Sticker Star, you don't gain any experience points from battles, which means you don't level up. The only thing you earn from battles are coins, and you find stickers throughout the world to improve your stats. It's an interesting choice for an RPG. Was it successful? Not really.
In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Mario fights his battles in a turn-based fashion. You find stickers around the world stuck to walls, floors, enemies and the like. You use those stickers for your attacks. In other words, in order to use a jump attack, you need to have a Jump sticker in your inventory. When you use the sticker, it's discarded.

That means that your only important resource in the entire game is stickers. Coins are spent on stickers and the usage thereof. You get stickers that can be used for special attacks, stickers for recovery, and stickers for regular attacks. Every time you get a sticker, it's placed in your book, which has a limited amount of space.

It sounds interesting, right? What could be wrong with that system? Well, think about it. Since you have a limited amount of space in which to store your stickers, you can only have a few stickers in your sticker book. In every battle, you're using at least two or three stickers, sometimes less, sometimes more.

Do you see the problem yet? If not, I'll spell it out: It makes more sense to avoid battles than to fight them. The more battles you fight, the fewer stickers you'll end up with. Don't have the right sticker to do a basic jump attack? Too bad! You're not using a jump attack! Fighting a tough enemy and need more stickers? Hope you didn't use your stickers on other fights!

You know what's crazy? In-game, there's a museum where you can "donate" stickers to complete the collection. Now why would I want to use the only resource I have in order to fill out a museum? What possible reward do I get? I'm sure there is one, but it's never adequately explained in-game.

Not only that, but you'll sometimes get special stickers that are good against certain bosses. If you don't have these stickers, you're in for a long battle of attrition against the boss. These stickers are huge, most of the time, so they take up a lot of space in your sticker book. You never know which sticker is going to work on the boss, so you have to keep a few different ones in your inventory. That takes up even more space and makes you afraid to use them, because what if you need them later? It's a wildly mismanaged system from top to bottom.

So what about a lack of a level progression system? Does removing the grind make Paper Mario: Sticker Star better than previous Paper Mario games?

There's something that's intrinsic to the appeal of an RPG. When your character is at level 1, you may have trouble beating up a low-level, cannon-fodder enemy. When your character is at level 30, you can go back and wipe the floor with them. They can't land a hit on you, and you can kill them in one shot. That feeling of growing power is key to the success of the RPG genre.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star doesn't give you that feeling. Right after you've completed the first world, the game gives you the chance to go to World 2 or World 3. I stepped into World 3, nervous that I was going to get killed right away. I didn't. I didn't need to be any stronger than I already was, because the enemies were the same in World 3 as in World 2.

So then the story is worth playing, right? After all, previous Paper Mario games had a great story, and the Mario & Luigi games always have fun stories too. What about Paper Mario: Sticker Star?

Yes, what about it? Miyamoto had them remove the story from Sticker Star, the same as he did with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Why? Because people who played Super Paper Mario didn't notice the story as much as they did the gameplay. Therefore, he viewed the story as unimportant.

So that means that in Sticker Star, Nintendo excised all the reasons that someone would play an RPG: Story, progression, everything. What did they leave behind? Inventory management. Wheeeee.

So are we playing Paper Mario: Sticker Star wrong? Maybe we're supposed to play it like a platformer and not an RPG, right?

That would make sense, except for these reasons:

1. The battles are turn-based.
2. There's a TON of inventory management.
3. It looks like an RPG and is marketed as one.
4. The levels aren't super-exciting to make up for the lack of RPG elements.

I do have to give Nintendo credit for trying something different. Yet, there are reasons that certain RPG tropes remain. The grind is there for a reason. The story is there for a reason. Removing them just creates a two-dimensional experience, much like a paper cutout of a beloved hero.

Final Rating: D