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Shelved It #1 – Paper Mario: Color Splash

More Information from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Wii U
  • Shelved At: Bowser’s Castle, basically the last couple hours of the game.

It may seem weird that I shelved a game when I knew I was near the end of the game, but for this game it was basically the point of no return for me.  Paper Mario: Color Splash was a frustrating experience.  Frustrating because it’s a much better game than the previous entry, Sticker Star, but also because the key story points generally introduced changes in mechanics that seemed to counteract everything that had been going on before.

One of the big things that really turned me off from playing Sticker Star was the need to collect stickers just to continue the battles.  This has unfortunately not gone away, but at least for the bulk of the game, is not a huge issue.  There are now a couple shops in the main town that sell standard cards, as well as the more special-case Thing cards that are the primary mechanic of most boss fights.  That said, the convenience of them being there is fairly heavily counteracted by the need for them to be there.  Going into a boss battle, you generally don’t know what you need to do to win.  You may know what cards you’ll need, but not when or how to use them.  Because of this, it was not uncommon for me to go into a boss battle blind, effectively expecting to die so I could actually prepare for the fight.

Because this entry is also not a stat-based RPG, the effective growth curve of enemies results in you needing upgraded variants of cards, and therefore a higher overall cost.  The cost is both coins if buying directly, or amount of paint used if using unpainted cards.  This ended up pushing me to a point where to get past where I shelved the game, I would have had to just grind through battles with cheap cards in order to buy the expensive cards I now knew I needed.  Because the first fight in Bowser’s Castle effectively starts out by removing your paint supply, then limiting you to specific colors of cards, simply stocking up on cheaper unpainted variants was a recipe for death.  While grinding then wouldn’t have been difficult, it wasn’t worth the amount of time needed given how many frustrating boss fights I’d already encountered getting to there.

If nothing else, there were some positive signs in this game if a future entry cleans up some of the less fun shenanigans.  The story itself was much more entertaining than either Sticker Star or the sort of related Paper Jam, and was definitely much closer to the quality of the RPG entries in the series.  While the battle system had some collecting issues, when I was just using the cards themselves, it was still a mechanically tight and fun to use turn-based system, with a lot of variety in the cards beyond the standard jump/hammer.  The visuals and soundtrack were also both fantastic.

At this point, I’m not really sure what this series needs.  My instinct is to say they just need to go back to making a straight RPG experience, and Paper Jam was certainly enough of an indication that a Mario RPG is still fun to play.  That said, they’ve shown that non-RPG Paper games can be a lot of fun with Super Paper Mario, but that was nearly 10 years ago at this point.  I suspect what they really need to do is just take a break and try some other things before deciding to come back, because their attempts at new things within this IP have become at best a mixed bag.

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Game Ramblings #22 – Forza Horizon 3

More Info from Turn 10

So, I like Forza.  Of the now 11 games I have for the Xbox One, 4 of them are Forzas.  It goes without saying that I was looking forward to this one.  This was also a bit of an experiment for me, as it’s the first of the new Xbox Play Anywhere titles I’ve gotten, so it was going to set the tone in how I considered those purchases going forward.

Let’s get this out of the way.  The PC port was rock solid.  Visually it didn’t look that incredibly different than the Xbox One version, but that was already a fairly solid looking title on its own.  What it did get right are the details.  It has really solid 21:9 aspect ratio support, which a lot of PC games still don’t get right.  It has both really solid quick configure video settings for more casual users (including a really solid dynamic visuals system to keep framerate steady), as well as highly configurable settings for your higher end users.  Even on ultra, getting 60 fps was not a problem.  Also of note, they added a bunch of wheel support with promises to continue adding more.  Having played some with the Logitech G27, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but it was definitely worth a laugh.  So, that out of the way, the question then is how good is the actual game?

The racing itself is about what is expected of a Horizon title.  The cars still have a pretty solid feel to them, with the actual steering, breaking, etc still feeling relatively realistic, even if it tilts more towards the arcadey side of things when it comes to drifting.  Different classes of cars are very obviously in different performance tiers, and it’s obvious to tell the difference between the handling and acceleration dynamics of various vehicles.  To some extent the amount of damage that vehicles can take, even with simulation damage on, is somewhat outlandish, but given the gameplay it feels pretty appropriate without being completely over the top.  That said, AI drivatars are still somewhat rubberbandy, and definitely exist purely to provide a mark of in-race progression, because they generally have a tendency to run their line to a fault, even if you are already in the middle of the race line.  Overall though, the speed of races, and continued hilarity of the cross country events provides an experience that stays fresh as you proceed through each event.

The progression system of Horizon 3’s meta game has definitely seen some improvements over 2.  Whereas 2 had you going through a fairly linear path of championships back to back, 3 really pushes the open world to the forefront.  The name of the game is gaining fans, and gaining more fans allows festival locations to be upgraded, unlocking events, PR stunts, and ultimately the Horizon showcases.  Because everything you do inherently gains fans, you are much less locked into a core path.  One minute you may be doing a race, then hopping to a Bucket List, or looking for speed traps and jumps.  You also aren’t locked to vehicles for non-championship events, so I was changing vehicles at a much higher frequency than in 2.  Overall the game provided a much better play as you want it experience than past games, despite the fact that the first 2 titles were already fairly open in their progression.

I guess if I were to end it with anything, it’s that this is probably a good game to jump into if you’re at all a racing game fan.  If you’re purely a PC gamer and haven’t played a Forza game, this would fall in line with recent Need for Speed games, or the older Burnout Paradise as comparable games that have made it to PC.  If you’re a console gamer the list is pretty similar.  Really, if the idea of plowing through a field doing 180 in a Ferrari, all while mowing down bushes and jumping off a cliff into a river sounds at all appealing, you’d probably dig this one.  Yes, that happens.  Regularly.

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Game Ramblings #21 – Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens

More Info from WB Games

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Also Available On: Android, iOS, PC, 3DS, PS3, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One

I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to games with tiny little icons all over the map.  Assassin’s Creed and its glut of side missions causes me to spend hours doing chores every time a new one of those comes out.  Any open world GTA-style game I’m almost guaranteed to get sidetracked from the story while doing random shit all over the world.  In Lego games, I have to collect every single little damn character minifig, and enjoy myself doing it.  Lego TFA is no different, with characters and vehicles galore to collect, and I made damn sure to get my platinum trophy doing it.

If you’ve never played a Lego game before, they generally follow the same pattern.  Take a movie, twist it a lot with comedic reinvisioning of the story, make everything explode into lego studs that act as currency, and good to go.  They’re generally light hearted games, with good puzzle elements, and surprisingly fun combat for a simple game.  They also generally have a LOT of side quests in open hub worlds, and upwards of a couple hundred character minifigs to find and purchase.  Short version; this is a Lego fan’s dream, even moreso if they are a Star Wars fan.

All that said, as a standalone experience, this is still easily worth recommending.  The combat is typical short-combo action game combat, but the variety of characters and difference in melee and ranged combat gives some nice flexibility.  In addition, all characters can activate unique powers to help solve puzzles, so having a large crew of characters for post-game completion is also a big benefit.  By the end, most free play levels going for completion, it wouldn’t be too uncommon for me to be rotating between 10-15 different characters to grab everything.

In the end, whether or not you’d like this style of game is entirely up to whether or not you enjoy sort of light-action and a lot of collecting.  I wouldn’t lie and say it doesn’t get monotonous at times, but this is one of the best of this type of game that I’ve played of late.