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.

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.

Game Ramblings #20 – Xeodrifter

More info from Renegade Kid

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Action/Platformer, Metroidvania
  • Also Available On: PC, 3DS, Vita, Wii U

I’ve been grabbing a lot of the releases by Limited Run Games for my collection of late, and being a fan of Metroidvania games, this one was at the top of my list.  While this isn’t the best Metroidvania I’ve ever played, it’s one of best in terms of its raw mechanics, and that props up the main issues that I had with the game.  In the end, I really had two main issues with the game; it’s length and repetition of boss battles.

Unlike Metroid’s generally single open world, Xeodrifter takes place on 4 smaller locations.  While there is a bit of revisiting to each location, the small size means there is not much in the way of secret paths to visit.  There are a handful of spots in each world with hidden health or weapon upgrades, but not the breadth of secret areas that the Metroid games use to open up entirely new paths for core traversal.

Like Metroid, each core upgrade is also given after a boss battle.  However, the bosses in Xeodrifter all have the same visual design, other than a color palette swap.  Each battle also builds on top of the previous, with largely the same mechanics, with generally a single addition using the skill learned from the previous battle.  By the end of the game, this makes the boss fights quite a lot easier, as you’ve generally already learned the pattern of how to beat the boss, and can generally make a pretty good guess at what the new mechanic will be.

That said, mechanically this game really does shine.  It’s core shooting and movement is extremely fluid, and at a generally faster pace than would be expected out of the bigger names titles in the genre.  The upgrades also add a lot of flexibility to the game, with the standout probably being the upgrade that allows you to pass between different depths in the scene, not unlike the 3D gameplay used in recent 3DS Kirby titles.  Combined with other abilities, such as the submarine and dashing, you’ll often be juggling movement and shooting across multiple planes of gameplay at the same time.

Also of note is the gun upgrade system.  This game ignores the more standard straight beam upgrades from Metroid in place of a point-based upgrade system.  The guns can be upgraded in 5 ways; bullet size, bullet speed, fire rate, fire spread, and movement wave width.  Because of this, the guns can be upgraded in a way that suits the player’s style, rather than just being a straight upgrade.  For example, I maxed bullet size and fire rate, while putting a few points into the movement wave.  What this gave me was effectively a machine gun shooting large pellets, while moving in a small wave pattern.  I could have just as easily made a powerful slow firing shotgun, or something akin to a rail gun depending on how I wanted to play.  It was a truly fun way for them to handle the hidden upgrades typical of the genre.

Generally speaking, if you’re a fan of Metroidvanias, this is probably worth a try.  The game has its issues, but it has great core mechnicas, and is relatively cheap, so for a bit of a time filler, it’s worth the play.