Month: December 2005

More 30 second reviews.

Mario Kart DS (DS)

It’s the same old classic Mario Kart gameplay, but the DS version improves it by having loads of tracks (16 new ones plus 16 classic ones from previous versions), a lot of choices in characters and vehicles, and online play. There’s a wide variety of different layouts and obstacles among the tracks, too, so it’s never the same race twice.

It’s a little bit frustrating in that online competition often involves a ‘snaking’ technique that’s difficult to pull off — if your thumbs aren’t up to it, you’d better get used to second or third place. The blue shell item seems a bit unfair, too — it can knock you from the lead back into third place by nothing more than the sheer luck of the person who got it. It’s still fun just to try, though.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA)

I wasn’t sure whether the gameplay in this one would be more like Super Mario Brothers or the original Donkey Kongs, and surprisingly, it’s both and neither. It’s like DK in that it’s on a smaller scale, with a particular goal to reach and some familiar elements like the hammer, but it’s also more like SMB in how you can move and fight enemies, but it’s also more puzzle-based than either of them were.

It’s kind of fun, but also a little too easy (so far) and looks like it could be fairly short. (On the other hand, considering how many unfinished games I have lined up, a shorter one might not be so bad…)

Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time (DS)

It’s apparently more of the same of the previous game (M&L: Superstar Saga) on the GBA, but I didn’t play the first one so that’s fine with me. It’s great anyways, combining RPGish stats and items with some reflex-testing action in the combat screens and while moving around, all done in the Mario universe style.

Shadow Of The Colossus (PS2)

This is probably one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s fairly simple — all you do is fight these giant creatures by climbing all over them and stabbing them in their weak spots, but each one presents a slightly different puzzle as to how you get to those spots or even how to get on them in the first place. Then, once you’re on, it’s fairly tense and exciting as you struggle to hold on and reach those spots without losing your grip and falling off. Add a tragic story, an excellent soundtrack, and a unique visual style, and you’ve got a great game.

Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)

This is basically The Sims, but geared more towards the kiddie crowd. Fish, dig up fossils, visit your neighbours, plant trees and flowers, arrange furniture for better ‘feng shui’, expand your house, catch bugs, shop, construct constellations in the sky… The DS version adds online support, so you can visit each others’ towns, and some things will subtly spread from town to town. A constellation you draw might suddenly show up in a friend’s town, you can write messages in bottles and throw them in the ocean and they’ll wash up on the shore of someone else’s town, and there’s a cat that wanders between towns whose face you can redraw.

Despite its simplicity and kid-targetted cutesyness, it’s strangely addictive. There are a lot of little subtleties, and I find myself turning it on at least once per day just to see if there’s some new NPC visiting the town, if the other residents have sent me mail, what’s new in the shops…

Need For Speed: Most Wanted (PC)

The story is stupid and the cutscenes are eye-rollingly cheesy, but the important part is the driving, and NFS:MW does that extremely well. The cars control well, the city you drive around in is large and good-looking, and there’s a wide variety of different races and challenges to participate in. Best of all is when you get the attention of the cops and enter pursuit mode, where you try to rack up as many infractions, fines, and bounties as possible, avoid the ever-escalating police efforts (they’ll eventually pull out roadblocks, high-speed pursuit cruisers, spike strips, SUVs, helicopters…), and eventually ditch them and hide out until things cool down.

The only downsides are that the tuning options are a bit more limited compared to other games, and it’s fairly linear; once you’ve finished the storyline and challenge series, that’s it and there are no further free-form or random goals.

Civilization IV (PC)

Civ 3 had a bit of a lukewarm reception since it introduced some bad design choices (rampant corruption, killer unit stacks) that made it frustrating at times. Civ 4 fixes most of Civ 3’s problems while keeping the best parts of it (culture, expanding borders) and adding some interesting new elements (religion, Great Citizens, military unit skill specializations). It’s easily the best version of Civilization yet, finally knocking Civ 2 off that perch.

Its only faults so far are that you’re still vulnerable to getting screwed by not having certain critical resources in your territory, and some victory types are much harder to achieve than others. If you try to go for a Conquest victory, it takes so long to conquer neighbours that it’s likely one of the AI civilizations will hit a Cultural or Space Race victory first. If you really want to win certain ways, you pretty much have to disable all of the other victory types first.

Fable: The Lost Chapters (PC)

This was kind of fun in the sense that it was ‘comfortable’ — all of the familiar RPG elements are there and the combat is a little more action-oriented to keep things interesting. Still, the overall story was fairly bland and generic and a lot of the hyped-up features (choosing good or evil, wooing town residents, your character aging, etc.) were fairly shallow or meaningless in the end.