M&L: Bowser’s Inside Story

Platform: Nintendo DS

Title Screen

Genre: RPG (though it includes action commands and a platformer-like overworld)

Plot Synopsis: A strange illness known as “The Blorbs” is infecting the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom, causing them to balloon up into giant balls (Weird Internet Fetish Count: 1). A council is held to discuss the situation, which Bowser interrupts; upon promptly being defeated, he eats a mushroom given to him by a mysterious shopkeeper (SPOILER ALERT: It’s everyone’s favorite Engrish-spouter Fawful) which causes him to begin inhaling things uncontrollably, including every person who is attending said council (WIFC: 2). The Mario Brothers then go on a quest to cure the Blorbs and save the Kingdom, with Bowser as their unwitting partner.

Gameplay Score: 18/20

As noted above, the overworld is kind of like a platformer while the combat is more like an RPG. This has worked well for all Mario RPGs before and continues to work now. You also get to switch between Bowser and the Bros, which creates an interesting change of pace between the enemies they face and the skills they use. At certain points in the game, you also take place in minigames, which are fairly well integrated into the plot, quite difficult at times, and all too sparse. The best minigame is a top-down shooter, not because the game itself is of higher quality but because of what it segues into: GIANT BOWSER COMBAT.

My God... it's beautiful...

Fairness Score: 7/10

The gameplay is almost disgustingly fair at times compared to others, creating a somewhat annoying sense of uneven difficulty when one enemy has an attack so hard to avoid that you spend 5 hours getting used to it and another enemy in the same area is a complete and utter joke. The late game bosses are also pure evil with the exception of the final boss itself, which causes even more dissonance when you consider the fact that it should be the toughest point of the game. However, in most cases one’s skill is more or less directly proportional to how well they do, so it still gets a passable grade.

Plot Score: 9/10

The plot may sound stupid, but that’s because it is. Luckily, though, it’s a Mario RPG, which means that the vast majority of dialog is making fun of either the series, old video games in general, or all video games; what remains is essentially Bowser being hilariously stupid. It is impossible to put into words how good the dialog, be it plot-relevant or random throwaway text you may never encounter, is.

Music Score: 4/5

I love the music, but there’s only one battle theme (not counting boss fights), which is always sort of a problem. The variation in the overworld and minigames more than makes up for this, though.

Pictured: A man made out of blocks, adding to the almost absurd variety of species in the Mario universe.

Graphics: 5/5

The graphics are great. They’re interesting and sometimes even do something completely new for the series, which is always a pleasant surprise. I don’t really know whether I like the combat sprites or the characters in the overworld better, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s always fun to look at. It also helps that it isn’t 3D, so the graphics look more like a late Genesis game then an early N64 game.

Bonus Points

There is one area that leads to the downfall of what is an incredible game. This area is the use of the shoulder buttons. I have nothing against shoulder buttons in concept, but in all three handheld systems I have ever owned they end up being the first things to break– and apparently I am not alone in this situation, based on the people that agreed with me when I breached the topic on a different site. Therefore, a game which requires the shoulder buttons for a critical part of the gameplay– such as swapping abilities, which is required from the very beginning of the game– is incredibly irritating (I only managed to beat the game at all because my shoulder buttons didn’t break completely until I’d reached the very end). A game which also requires it to cancel out of combat actions– thus forcing you to reset if you, say, try to use a special skill with insufficient SP– and to change badges– thus forcing you to stick with a mediocre healing skill the entire game– is inexcusable. Therefore: -3 points for using them so damn much. But wait. The badge-swapping occurs entirely on the bottom screen, and the badges are even arranged in wheel formations! Would it be so hard to implement a way to swap badges via the touch screen? That’s another -2, for a total of -5 points.

USE THIS INSTEAD, DAMN YOU. WHAT IS WRONG WITH DOING THIS?

However, I must also give credit where credit is due: The voice acting is incredible. Obviously there isn’t much, but what there is is spectacular, especially for Bowser. Considering that his only two lines are “Showtime” and “Nintendo”, he sure makes an impact on you, to the degree that anyone who has finished Super Mario Sunshine will be able to forgive Nintendo for the lifelong grudge they hold. +2 points for a grand total of -3 again.

Final Score: 40/50 (45/50 with functioning shoulder buttons)

The game is very good, but I’d better drive this point into the ground one last time: Buy it only if your DS’s shoulder buttons function perfectly. I’m not kidding one bit.

Fossil Fighters

Platform: Nintendo DS

Genre: Mons. As I noted before, there aren’t that many mon games about– the only two that I can really think of right now are Dragon Quest Monsters and, naturally, Pokemon– but they essentially boil down to acquiring creatures of some sort (in this case ‘vivosaurs’, reanimated prehistoric creatures) and using them to fight by proxy.

Plot Synopsis: INSERT STANDARD MONS GAME PLOT HERE, up to a point. On the surface,  it’s just some dude collecting dinosaurs to fight other dudes with dinosaurs, and eventually INSERT NAME OF EVIL TEAM HERE “The BB Bandits.” However, it manages to throw in a couple of pretty damn good plot twists, and is not above indulging in the occasional bit of metahumor.

Gameplay Score: 17/20

Interestingly, the gameplay is divided among a couple of activities. Obviously, there is a heavy emphasis on leveling up your vivosaurs and battling others; however, what is particularly interesting is the way that vivosaurs are obtained. Essentially, you go to an area and use sonar and a pickax to dig up rocks containing fossils, which you then clean with a hammer and drill in order to get to the fossil itself.

The fights themselves start out nail-bitingly tough and require quick tactical decisions; however, somewhat curiously, the difficulty actually begins to ramp down as the game progresses and you begin to work with greater move pools. This eventually reaches a point of absurdity when you face off against the wildly overrated Saurhead, who “lets you win…” and then later challenges you to five matches in a row, with the last against his strongest vivosaurs, and you naturally pound him into the ground. The main failing is the A.I.: Once you get to a certain point, the commentators on the top screen and every opponent you face spontaneously become idiots.

The fossil-cleaning process is, while fresh at first, quite tedious in the endgame as well. Luckily, a while into the game you can just hand off any fossil you’ve cleaned at least once before onto a robot, who will clean it to a quality proportionate to how many times you have cleaned them manually. Except some of them. Long story short, good at first but peters out, especially once you hit the brick wall I like to refer to as “post-plot content” which rarely entices me enough to actually go for it.

I couldn't find a picture of Saurhead or the robot, so here's Dr. Exposition. I mean Diggins.

Fairness Score: 8/10

You will note I changed the name of this category. To elaborate: the Fairness Score is the willingness of the developers to be evil to you in the sake of difficulty. “But how can this not have a ten out of ten?” I hear you cry. Simple: The fossil cleaning. There are certain fossil rocks that are very tough and require you to use the hammer to break their outer shell (Dark Fossils), and other fossils that are simply very resistant to any attempt to clean them. There are other fossil rocks that clean very easily, and if you keep your drill on for a millisecond to long will instantly leave you a pulped fossil. Then there are fossil rocks that require the hammer– a very clumsy, incredibly powerful tool– and are incredibly brittle. I have no further comment, and since google image search continues to fail me I cannot post an image.

Figure One: "Google Image Search Sucks" produces that bean sculpture in Chicago.

Plot Score: 8/10

The plot starts off fairly cliche, but holy crap is it worth it. When it’s not breaking the fourth wall, using downright surreal humor or just being silly for the sake of being silly, it manages to weave a story that– if not particularly good– is quite self-aware and manages to have an actually decent surprise thrown in! I must offer my kudos. It also stays consistently good throughout the game, which is a plus.

Music Score: 4/5

The same problem I have with the gameplay I have with the music. It’s very good, varied, and catchy at first but by the time you reach the end game you really don’t care for it anymore.

Graphics Score: 4/5

Like 3-D DS games tend to be due to the graphical limitations, the graphics remind me of an N64 game while the player is drunk, playing on a mountaintop, has a fear of heights, and has just overdosed on allergy medication, but artificially unblurred using… uh… photoshop eyes.

Pictured: Photoshop Eye.

That said, the graphics get points for being, if nothing else, incredibly distinctive (I refer you again to Professor Tealhair), and all character sprites are pretty damn fun to look at. Especially the vivosaurs.

Spinax is notable for Auto Counter, a balanced skill set, and looking god damn awesome.

Bonus Points

I AM GIVING OUT BONUS POINTS AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME. HAHAHAHA.

Underused Genre: 3 (Seriously, why are there so few mons games?!)

Final Score: 44/50

While by no means a perfect game, Fossil Fighters stays entertaining for quite a long time, and it gives a fresh breath of air into a fairly monopolized genre. I highly recommend buying it, if only for the sheer awesome hypothetical of fighting a T-rex with tiny little plant eaters and winning.

Genre: Puzzle/Platformer

Platform: PC

The first screen of the main game

Plot Synopsis: A mad scientist has created a bomb that will create a new ice age. His first attempt (somehow) produced a sapient ball, but his second attempt worked and the bomb is armed and dangerous. It’s up to the ball to get to the bomb, turn it off, and avert an apocalypse.

Gameplay Score: 19/20

The main game mechanic is to bounce around, finding people and creatures that give you new materials, and then bounce around with those for awhile, rinse and repeat. However, this quickly becomes complex and difficult: there are 10 ball types, and precisely three of those are straight-up upgrades of the original ball. The others run the gamut from “increased mobility and increased control” to “flight” to “totally useless, but required twice.” The use of these different materials, and their pros and cons, are very clever and entertaining, creating difficult puzzles; for example, getting your heavy iron ball through a maze of lava, or having to use a fragile glass ball due to a massive amount of lasers.

Tolerability Score: 7/10

While the difficulty, for the most part, is fair, there are a few areas which were clearly designed by a sadist; notably, any area involving the Glass or Pathetic ball, and the level with invisible platforms. However, most levels can be beaten in a few tries; the invisible platform one is the only real spot of fake difficulty.

Also, platforms that suddenly crush you when you take the wrong path. Have fun!

Plot Score: 8/10

It’s hardly a great plot, but it’s a gameplay-focused freeware game, so it gets a pass. Also, while the plot itself is shallow, the characters are interesting; though often one-dimensional, you find yourself somewhat fond of them. The cutscenes– very rare in a freeware game– are fairly intriguing, and draw you into the game more than one would expect.

Music Score: 4/5

The music isn’t that great, but it isn’t bad, either. It is good and varied, both by location and by the sound of it– some sounds heavily synthesized, some of it sounding like actual instruments– and all of it thematic.

Graphics Score: 5/5

The graphics, while somewhat simple, are very distinctive; you can’t call anything poorly-drawn, it all uses good contrasting colors, and it’s fairly clear what everything is.  The attention to detail is good: wherever you go, little creatures will appear in the background, sometimes complemented by tiny passages or houses.

Overall Score: 43/50

It’s a strong, interesting game that’s well worth your time. I highly recommend it.

Yeah, you heard me.

Plot Synopsis: Uhhhhh… hmmmm… wait, no, I got this… oh, wait, no. No plot whatsoever. Even arcade games had some semblance of a plot ever since we got more advanced than Pac-Man, but not this game.  No, why put so much effort into an excuse plot when you can be spending that time coding Longcat’s evil counterpart?

Pictured: A god damned waste of time.

I can give the premise, though, which is that you’re some kid with a hat resembling a rooster’s comb and a magic notebook, trying to collect these things called “starites” which are, I assume, in high demand by your home country for use in creating cloaking devices and sonic generators which frustrate your enemy into submission.  That’s, uh, pretty much it.  Usually you’re doing something nice to other people in the process, but it’s way more fun to be a dick.  More on that later.

Gameplay Score: 3/20

There are so many frigging problems with the gameplay that I’ll barely be able to scratch the surface, so I’ve decided to divide it into categories, and subdivide those.

• The Control Sucks

Movement is controlled by the stylus.  This makes picking up or using certain objects a monumental hassle.

• The Dictionary Sucks

The dictionary has over 22,000 words, but this actually is a lot less than you’d think, mainly because of how many damned synonyms there are. Go ahead, type in “DEVIL.”  Then try “INCUBUS”, “DEMON,” and the like.  That’s at least three words for the same thing, so now you know how they fit ‘em all in there.

The mechanics are also weird: regardless of the qualifiers, the game will more often than not only pay attention to the last block of text, unless it knows exactly what you want.  Thus, “SHRINK RAY” shrinks things; “GROWTH RAY” creates a god damned manta.  Bafflingly, “GOLEM” means the same as “ROBOT”– which SORTA makes sense, since they’re basically the same, but I would rather have a shambling mass of mud and rocks thank you very much– but “AUTOMATON” gets you some kind of doll thing.  Maybe it’s a voodoo doll?  Nope, that summons a different– but equally useless, object altogether.

Finally, about one-third of the objects are either totally useless or background scenery.  Why, of COURSE I wanted “BARRICADE” to make scenery that serves no purpose other than to get me a worse score!  God forbid any chance of my accidentally using it as, say, a god damned barricade!

• The Levels Suck

There are two kinds of levels in Scribblenauts: “Puzzle” levels, and “Action” levels, which are code for “Crappy” levels and “Crappier and Especially Frustrating” levels.  In theory, they follow a formula: in a Puzzle level you must fulfill a demand, which in turn produces the starite; in an Action level, you simply have to reach the starite.  However, the game quickly decides to abandon any semblance of order this provides by essentially cheating:  In one “puzzle” level, you have to lead a soldier to three heavily guarded crates; in one “action” level you have to think of a way to get a starite out of a tree.  How actiony.

Pictured: Another god damned waste of time. Also: OH MY GOD HOW AM I GONNA KNOCK THAT TREE DOWN MY ADRENALINE IS GOING NUTS

It’s been said that you can beat almost every level with just PTERANODON, ROPE and a weapon of your choice.  This is pretty much true, and often required.  Though the game hypothetically rewards ingenuity with extra points/currency, you don’t get very far before basically being forced to use the same object over and over again.  If you’re like me, you simply quit the level, and inevitably the game, in annoyance.

The only level I really enjoyed was the Halloween one, for one reason: You can win it with violence, which is arbitrarily limited on nearly every other level.  I beat it by spawning “CANNIBAL,” “CTHULHU,” and “(EVIL) MAXWELL” which were individually far more entertaining than all the other levels put together.

• The Level Editor Sucks

As much as I hate the levels, the level editor manages to be even worse.  Why?  Well, for one, you have an object limit just like the main game, so abandon all hope of creating any level even approaching the complexity of a game-packaged one. Screw scenery and large objects, you’ll just have to make do, Mr. Arty-Artist Greedenstein the Third. Furthermore, you have to use beaten levels as templates, so you better have patience if you want to actually make something good and long.

Oh, and you can’t script an opening cutscene, and I’m fairly sure that you can only do action levels.

INCREDIBLY ADVANCED MODDING TOOLS INCLUDED!

• The Reactions Suck

My biggest gripe with this game is that the objects don’t react how you’d expect them to.  One of the levels is a museum, where you have to snatch the starite without harming the guards. You’re basically forced to go up and around, since there’s a security camera which creates a barrier if you pass it.  What’s that?  You might try becoming invisible, or using an EMP device?  Hahaha, no way, asshole.  The developers decided it was Twoflower’s Magical +2 Camera of Railroading.

At another point you see a werewolf.  We all know that werewolves are generally unkillable by conventional means, right?  So naturally, you try dropping a lump of silver, its well-known weakness, on it.  Nothing happens.  You throw the silver at it.  Nope.  You try a sprig of wolfsbane, but when attempting to throw it the ass-backwards control makes you run straight into the werewolf, who massacres you.  Why have WOLFSBANE in the dictionary if it isn’t the frigging bane of wolves?!

The only ray of hope is that GORGON and COCKATRICE/BASILISK(CREATURE) can petrify you, which implies that if the designers spent a little less time with the in-jokes they might have made a half-decent game.

Tolerability Score: 2/10

The difficulty in the later levels stems merely from the assumption that you still have hope: you can get past almost all of them incredibly easily if you just give in to the rope.  Using rope, incidentally, gives you the “Roped In” merit– appropriately named, since the game is coercing you to give up and spawn it in every other puzzle.  God, though, the levels are annoying.  I’ve already mostly touched on why, but I’ll add one thing: nearly every level has the caveat that you can’t kill anyone.  The only level I really enjoyed was therefore the Halloween level, because anything that hurts the kids gets you the starite on the basis of a “trick,” meaning you can use a good half of your dictionary that is normally off-limits.

Plot Score: 0/10

God, guys.  Even retro throwback games have a semblance of a plot, mainly because nearly all games in the Atari 2600 era and beyond did too.  You didn’t even try.

Music Score: 1/5

Bland, generic, repetitive, and tinny.  It’s fairly varied between areas, but that doesn’t mitigate the crappiness much.

Graphics Score: 4/5

The graphics are the only part of the game I like: they’re charming and cute, and yet can capture a being of pure malevolence and anger quite well.

Scribblenauts' Cthulhu: Frightening and adorable at the same time.

Overall Score: 10/50

This game was incredibly terrible, but I will say one thing about it: I plan to buy any sequel.  This is for one reason: sequels have to have change, and with no plot, terrible music, and a dictionary that makes no sense half the time, the only way to go is up.  I think the main reason it didn’t work was because it was too high-concept.  Look at Spore: That took over a decade, and even then it was still slightly disappointing, so unless these guys had been working on this thing since 2000, they simply couldn’t perfect it.  Hopefully 5th Cell’s future efforts will be better.

The achievement, be it in the form of a trophy, a badge, or an addition to a meaningless score, seems to somehow carry more gravitas than the self-imposed or implied challenge. While equally as meaningless as the high score or bonus ending, the simple achievement somehow compels you to accomplish a task that might not even cross your mind otherwise. Why is such a simple trick of programming so hypnotic?

It may be that it’s a form of immediate reward for the task. Unlike a hypothetical good ending, or the possible ability to knock down bosses like bowling pins, the achievement is right there, staring at you, daring you to complete it. You can’t turn the achievement down without putting some effort forth first; you’d seem like a wuss. So perhaps it appeals to our pride: “If you don’t at least try for this thing, you’re a pathetic worm.”

Whatever the cause, it’s somewhat odd to consider that the Modern Achievement took so long to come into existence. Back in ye olden days, the game was its own reward. You were expected to complete it, then play it again while looking all over the place for any possible secret that might net you a different ending or special item. It’s hard to say when the classic reward for 100% completion, the sword which can one-shot anything but of course you don’t need it since you already killed the hardest boss in the game, gave way to tiny pictographs that sneaked into the menu or your profile.

The Modern Achievement was certainly influenced by the advent of the internet; where once you had to call a friend over to check out your awesome sword, they would now be awed by tiny badges every time they looked at your profile. They might then be compelled to outdo you, to get their own achievements, the ones that you couldn’t. An unending cycle is created.

Whatever its roots, the Modern Achievement is now a hallmark of gaming and, interestingly, a good way to convince people to expand their horizons– the more games they play, the more badges they can get, and more often than not this requires trying something new. Serving both to motivate us and convince us to expand our horizons, the Modern Achievement is brilliant and good for gaming.

Genre: JRPG

Platform: SNES

Note: This game was never imported from Japan, so unless you can read Japanese you need to get a patched ROM. The English patch I used can be found here.

Live A Live Title Screen

Plot Synopsis: Strictly speaking, the overarching plot is almost entirely impossible to summarize without massive spoilers. Here, though, is what can be said: The game takes place in eight different chapters, plus a finale chapter tying everything together. Each chapter takes place in a different time period– the Caveman chapter, which centers around rescuing a cavewoman from a malevolent rival clan; the Ninja chapter, which centers around rescuing a man unfairly imprisoned by a power-hungry shogun; the Kung-Fu chapter, with an old master who wishes to find a worthy inheritor of his school of fighting; the Wild West chapter, featuring an outlaw with a mysterious past and the man sworn to tracking him down; the Present chapter, where you take control of a fighter with the goal of becoming Strongest Man in the World; the Near Future chapter, featuring a psychic who unravels a huge military conspiracy; the Science Fiction chapter, where you play as a robot on a cargo vessel journeying to Earth; and the Medieval chapter, where your knight attempts to rescue the princess who was to become his bride. Each chapter is unique, while still mostly adhering to the same basic structure.

Gameplay Score: 18/20

This game blew me away. There’s a nice variety of enemies in every chapter (at least until the final one, where nearly all of them are just palette swaps), and LOTS of secrets to discover (almost to a fault– we’ll see that later on.) The only issues I had were with the Sci-Fi and Ninja chapters. The Sci-Fi chapter, having practically no combat, became somewhat monotonous, but its saving grace was that this actually built a wonderful atmosphere. The Ninja chapter just dragged, mainly because of how huge and complicated it was– while the rest of the chapters are just straightforward enough to make sense, the Ninja chapter is frigging insane, and if it isn’t twice as long as all the others then it sure as hell seemed like it. Still, it’s very entertaining and challenging, and challenges your logic far more often than most RPGs.

PROTIP: You just wasted five seconds of your life.

Tolerability Score: 4/10

But for everything great about the gameplay, there’s a bunch of stupid crap that I don’t have the patience for. There are nearly-impossible-to-find secret areas and items, like the Monolith that you find in the caveman chapter by examining a rock exactly 100 times and heading left, or the robot you find in the ninja chapter by defeating the robot-man in just the right way and then inserting exactly three coins into a slot you probably missed.

Then, of course, there’s the practically unbeatable enemies that require superhuman grinding to defeat, like the King Mammoth in the caveman chapter, who is hard to find to boot, or the giant fish in the ninja chapter.

NOT PICTURED: Giant fish taking one damage, then using an attack that not only does ridiculous damage, but covers the entire screen in water field (bad).

Oh, and lest we forget, all the different traps in the ninja chapter which dump you down to a jail cell, and the special dungeons in the final chapter that are required for you to get decent equipment, not to mention that you need to get every character’s best weapon to get the best ending. If you are both a completionist and dedicated to not reading guides, I pity you if you play this game.

The bosses are jerks, too, but at least they can be found and beaten by someone without OCD and/or superpowers. What? You didn’t grind the cavewoman up to level 6?! AHAHAHAHA! You’re going to die now. (I would have had more images in this section, but I can’t find any for the life of me. It’s like google is somehow averse to incredibly specific screenshots of Japan-only games! If you find or screencap anything helpful, send it to me and you’ll get props.)

Plot Score: 9/10

Each chapter is a bit cliche, but almost all of them are still entertaining and put an interesting spin on things (except, of course, for the ninja chapter). They often use (self)parody to mitigate this, and even when they don’t the writing team were very good at drawing me into the plot. It all gets wrapped up in the final chapter, and I feel they did a good job of it. If that weren’t enough, bizarre running gags abound (In every chapter, except possibly the Present, Watanabe’s Father dies, prompting the same hilariously overblown expression of bug-eyed grief from Watanabe Jr.) and you can often find hidden backstory by doing some poking around.

Graphics Score: 5/5

The graphics, as noted, are varied, detailed, quirky and fun to look at. Every enemy’s facial expression conveys their personality perfectly, be it desperate, egotistical or infuriated.

Pictured: "Broken by a conflict of directive and logic"

Music Score: 5/5

The music is brilliant, and incredibly catchy to boot. Of special note are the Buriki Daioh and boss themes– they will be stuck in your head for at least three days after you hear them.

Overall Score: 41/50

The game is great, but the fake difficulty and all the random crap you have to find and bizarre leaps of logic you need to take really take their toll. If you enjoy having a huge amount of extra challenges, I highly recommend it. Even if you don’t, it kicks ass and you should play it. Just don’t expect the SUPPER DUPER HAPPY ENDING.

Tales of Monkey Island: Episode 1

Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure

Console: PC, Wii, Xbox 360 (download for all)

Plot Synopsis: Frymush Guybrush Leapfrog Threepwood, Mighty Pirate(tm), is once again at the thrilling conclusion to one of his trademark adventures, off to rescue his wife Elaine from the variably-undead pirate LeChuck. As per usual, he assembles an enchanted weapon out of something useful and root beer, and runs LeChuck through– but rather than killing him, it turns him human, transferring all his evil into Guybrush’s left hand (well, and the surrounding area, but there was a lot.) Then the ship explodes because Guybrush did something stupid, leaving him stranded on a mysterious island where the winds all blow inward…

Gameplay Score: 18/20

I love this game. The puzzles are almost always fairly challenging, and usually not in the wrong way; there’s a lot of room for exploration and trial-and-error; and you’ll often have to think hard about a solution to something. My advice: avoid walkthroughs like the plague, because you usually don’t have to resort to them; and there’s a shortcut to the altar. The best part is probably the bit in the Marquis de Singe’s office, which despite only giving you a few actions to perform is still fun and challenging. The Treasure Hunt bit seems a bit superfluous to me, though.

Wait, who are you? When the hell did you show up?

Tolerability Score: 8/10

Aside from a couple of annoying “wall banger” sections, the puzzles are straightforward and merely require a little critical thinking. Just remember the maxims of “look freaking everywhere for tiny things,” and “go back to where you were earlier and see if anything’s changed, moron.”

Plot Score: 10/10

The plot is both frequently hilarious and occasionally dramatic, as befitting a game in the series. The system of episodic gaming that Telltale uses sets up a nice cliffhanger, leaving you hungry for more, and they clearly put effort into writing this.

Graphics Score: 4/5

I love the graphics for this game. They’re quirky, interesting to the eye, and very distinctive. The one problem I have is that rarely, when speaking to someone, something interesting is obscured (for example: that guy up there has two peglegs. Not that you can see them when you’re actually talking to him).

Music Score: 4/5

The music is a pleasant mix of accordions(?) and marimbas. I always enjoy the music they come up with, although it’s a tad scarce in certain areas.

Final Score: 44/50

While by no means a perfect game, Tales of Monkey Island is entertaining and should only get better as they release the remaining episodes. I give it two thumbs up.

Only slightly less wacky and bizarre than the game.

Toe Jam & Earl

Platform: Sega Genesis

Genre: Roguelike

Plot Synopsis: Toe Jam and Earl, the embarassingly eighties inhabitants of Planet Funkotron, are cruising along in their spaceship while pumping out some PHAT BEATS (and no “broadcast between space vessels” handwave– there are literally subwoofers sticking out the sides) when TJ (the red one) lets Earl (the orange one) drive. Bad move– they quickly get smashed by a meteor, causing their ship to crash into “the craziest planet in the galaxy– Earth!” And crazy it is, as devils, giant hamster balls, hula girls and dorks dressed as wizards with actual magic all make an appearance within the first three levels.

Gameplay Score: 4/20

Most roguelikes are turn based and have many RPG elements. Toe Jam&Earl forgoes that, instead making it real time and having the characters’ abilities more or less static. Two interesting features: randomized levels are optional, and it actually supports two-player mode. However, it’s not as fun or challenging as most other roguelikes. You remember how, when you played NetHack, you’d always end up dying by attacking a floating eye by accident, or in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon that damn Ryhorn would prevent you from using any good attacks because of its Lightning Rod? This sort of thing doesn’t really happen; the first few levels are slow paced, partially because the giant hamsterballs are the only things that pose any real threat and partially because your character moves at a snail’s pace when not equipped with hi-top sneakers. Give me a grid any day, so long as it doesn’t take me ten minutes to get through it. The concept itself, though, was fairly interesting– your goal was to get all ten ship parts, so it was, in a way, the proto-Pikmin 1. Key differences:

1. In Pikmin, your characters don’t move like turtles after a stressful day.
2. In Pikmin 1, there’s a time limit which adds a sense of urgency; in Pikmin 2, there’s an emphasis on “should I risk what I have, or take longer to win”, like in the classic dice game Zilch. In both cases, the game is all the better for it.
3. In Pikmin, you actually worry about getting your ass kicked, like any good game you’ve never played before.

Summary: It’s boooooooring.

Tolerability Score: 9/10

For the length of time that I could actually stand to keep playing, there wasn’t anything or anyone really annoying or unfair. The only reason it avoids a perfect ten is the hula girls that don’t do much besides waste your time, as if they needed to pad out this thing any longer!

Plot Score: 6/10

While the plot is really stupid in and of itself, it gets bonus points for humor and dadaism. It’s greatly improved if you choose to view it as tongue-in-cheek, which I did unconsciously; only later did I realize that wait, this was released when executives might ACTUALLY HAVE BELIEVED that that’s how cool people talked. Then I got a little depressed.

The dadaism factor is fairly obvious; as I mentioned earlier, the variety of NPCs is simply bizarre, and the layout is completely random. Why are some sections arbitrarily covered in paved roads (or are they airstrips)? Why do telephones of all things reveal part of the map? Why does Earth have several layers of crust, suspended above each other? In this respect, it’s practically Zippy the Pinhead: The Game, but without the politics and the witty Griffyisms. If you want something bizarre, this is second only to Katamari Damacy.

Graphics Score: 3/5

The graphics are about as average as you can get. It’s a sort of isometric perspective, it’s drawn in the same goofy style all over. But really, you’d expect better from the same console that had Bubba ‘n’ Stix, with its esoteric enemies and interesting landscapes, and Comix Zone, with its vibrant colors and characters that look like they were actually right out of a silver age comic.

Music Score: 4/5

I can’t really complain about the music, but it’s not too thrilling, which fits right with the rest of the game. It’s nice and catchy, but nothing as memorable as most games.

Overall Score: 26/50

It’s severely weakened by the gameplay, so much so that when I saw that I had ranked it almost as highly as ActRaiser I decided to revamp the scoring system by doubling the points for gameplay. Congratulations, ToeJam&Earl: you get the first ever Glass Joe Sucking So Bad It Makes Everything Else Look Better Prize. If you play this game, you’d better have a high tolerance for slow pace, or you will not be happy.

Man, at least he's competent when he wears headgear.

Option #1: The Metroidvania

The Castlevania and Metroid series are both very successful because they’ve hit on a good formula: lots of enemies, and a huge interconnected map. Now that Metroid has moved into the FPS realm, we’re lucky to even get a good 2D game on the DS. So proposal #1 is that Captain Falcon fight his way through complicated criminal and/or alien bases to get to his target.

Pros:

• Logically, a crime lord (or whatever) would probably want to have a large and complex base to protect against intruders, so it makes sense from a logical standpoint.
• It would give quite a bit of gameplay, and lots of gamers love exploration.

Con:

• Either Captain Falcon would have to have his work cut out for him just to get one bounty, or we’d have several rather unsatisfying mini-dungeons.

Option #2: The GTA

As we all know, Nintendo is the clean (or kiddy, if you’re not a big fan of it) company of the Big Three, but they could still learn a bit from Grand Theft Auto. The formula– car chase, fight, race, shootout, fight, race, ad infinitum– seems like it would naturally lend itself to a game about a bounty hunter who also drives a car.

Pros:

• Again, it makes logical sense: Captain Falcon has to drive as well as fight, so you might want to have a little of that in there.
• It would keep the fanboys, who would likely complain about it being so different from other F-Zero games, from getting too upset and 1) not buying the game and 2) annoying everyone on the internet.
• It would break up the monotony that might result of only being able to fight, or only being able to race.

Cons:

• There is the fact that, since this hypothetical title would be distancing itself from the main series, it might seem hypocritical, too wary, or just plain dumb to include racing.
• In addition, people might want a game where you just fight as Captain Falcon rather than having to race. You can’t appeal to every demographic, after all.

Option #3: The Beat-em-Up

For our third option, we have the type of game that was a classic before the advent of 3D and the decline of video arcades. Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, The Simpsons; all were great games because they featured good old violence, mayhem and straightforward level design. Falcon is a shoe-in; the only thing he loves almost as much as punching some poor sap with his splendorous glowing fist is kicking some other guy in the face.

Pros:

• Lots of gamers wanting to recapture that nostalgia for the classics would flock to it, and nostalgia is the seventh fundamental force of the universe (the fifth being Love and the sixth being Cheese).
• Cooperative multiplayer would be easy to implement, and that’s always a nice bonus to a good game.
• It would simply be awesome. Think of the types of moves a guy with a fist that catches on fire when he punches, simply because of how awesomely powerful that punch is, could pull off! Think of the types of enemies he’d have to fight for it to be fair! The mind reels at how imaginative they could be, especially since it’s set far into the future and there are aliens, god only knows how many different species and how outlandish each one is!

Con:

• The retro aspect might turn some off as well as turning others on, so it’s a mixed bag. Aside from that, I can’t think of any downside.

Platform: SNES

Genre: Sidescroller/God Game

Plot Synopsis: Some evil god comes into a benevolent god’s world and wrecks up the   place, filling it with monsters and making it uninhabitable. You’re the benevolent god, ready to smite some asses.

Gameplay Score: 17/20

The game’s concept is already kind of weird– who would think to mix an RTS and a sidescroller– but it’s pretty good. The sidescrolling levels are fast-paced, and the RTS levels make interesting, if sometimes rather obvious and spelled-out, use of your powers as a god. The one problem I have with it is that it’s overly difficult. Megaman difficult. It’s also a bit short, which feels weird; it’s one of those games that seems like it should be stretched out a bit more, like Chrono Trigger. It wouldn’t have been so bad for the platforming levels, but the lack of additional village-building content was off-putting; it left me craving more villages, and more ways in which they could be interconnected. As the game stands, there are exactly five examples of Offerings from one village that actually matter in another: wheat, bridges, music, wool, and medicine. It’s a good start, but quite lacking in the interdependency that could have been possible.

Tolerability Score: 4/10

And as with any overly difficult game, half the difficulty comes from Annoying Enemies. In this case, it’s the Giant Skull in the Village Mode, which takes out five of your Angel’s health in one hit and causes an earthquake, leveling your ENTIRE CITY, if it isn’t put down. There’s also the Rock-Throwing Dwarf-Goblin-Things in the Vaguely Mountain stage, which naturally cause you to fall off the very small platform you need to traverse the entire stage on. And of course, befitting something as challenging as Megaman, there’s a mandatory boss rush, which is next-to-impossible due to getting no recharges on health or magic.

Oh, and I found out in the last Village that I could build on top of ice. But not around– yes, around, not across– a river, without getting Bridge Building 101 courses in Stupid Villager School. This annoyed me to no end, seeing as this led to me taking about a half hour more than I needed to, leading to a fun cycle where an imp destroyed my farmlands faster than I could regenerate them, a dragon destroyed houses, and a skull attacked my Angel avatar as soon as it could do anything, reducing a god to complete impotence until he finally realized that he could build on terrain that didn’t look buildable at all.

Plot Score: 5/10

Like I said, it’s basically an excuse plot for both beating up monsters and building villages; a couple of village subplots are interesting, so that bumps it up a little from the two I was going to give it. More character development is needed: the true identity of a conman, the  motivations (or lack thereof) of the villain. There’s also no foreshadowing, or information of any kind, on the bosses; even the first Zelda game let you know that somewhere there was a DODONGO that you would expose to some variety of SMOKE. Instead, you get random mythological creatures thrown in at the end of every stage.

Graphics Score: 4/5

The graphics are pretty good, but not incredible, and there’s nothing to complain about other than the damn ice.

Music Score: 5/5

The music kicks ass. No complaints here.

OVERALL SCORE: 35/50

It’s a decent game, but it’s the kind that compensates for being too short by being too hard. Still, it could do a lot worse for itself.

Ways It Could Be Better:

• Trade in a little difficulty for length, increasing the number of villages and variety of monsters.
• Develop the plot more clearly. Who is this ill-defined demon? What’s the deal, if any, with your angel?
• Make design more straightforward: don’t have ice that can’t be melted, or mysterious line drawings that are just barely blocked by mountains. In contrast, make goals less straightforward; my villagers can alert me that their windmills stopped working without spelling out for me in big neon letters that I need to use my Wind power.
• The earthquake power is stupid, because you only need it once (if you want all the HP-upgrading artifacts, it goes up to a whopping twice!) Either use it more– perhaps in the hypothetical Seventh Damn Town– or excise it for a creative use of another power.