Category Archives: Nintendo

Best of 2007, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2007 #2: Super Mario Galaxy

30/12/2007 Olly Leave a comment

Super Mario Galaxy

Ooh, controversial!

Super Mario Galaxy is a brilliant game, and the best Nintendo game since the almighty Ocarina of Time. It’s a Wii game that feels like that’s what it’s always been. And all without a minigame in sight.

It’s probably best to explain here why it’s not number one. I’ve said in the past that I think Super Mario 64 is almost flawless, and a game that is maybe possibly kind of a bit better (or is it, etc?) should surely then go straight in at the top of the list and all subsequent ones. Well…no. And it’s not you, it’s me.

I just don’t feel it like I used to, and I don’t know how to explain it without sounding really shallow. Mario Galaxy’s story is a bit more prominent than Mario 64’s and the talking stars get on my nerves. The platforming is still as good as ever, basically playing like those suspended play areas that made up the Bowser levels extended to fill an entire game, but the camera hasn’t moved on with the imaginations of the developers and therefore technical issues which were occasional niggles in 1996/97 are now more problematic.

Don’t let my justification of the placement make it sound like I’m entirely down on the game. It just seems that most are putting this at number one almost out of duty because it’s Mario and because Nintendo are the kings of their castle again, and as a result I have to justify my blasphemy. And it’s not because the Wii having almost nothing all year and then stealing in to take its second top spot running would annoy me.

That Mario Galaxy is one of the best games of the year is beyond doubt and, really, the ultimate number is irrelevant. Just knowing that it’s Nintendo’s best in years speak more than any single digit.

Best of 2007, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2007 #9: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

23/12/2007 Olly Leave a comment

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Somehow, Corruption is both the best and worst of the Metroid Prime series. It’s the best looking, it has the smoothest difficulty curve, and yes: it has the best controls.

It proves once again that when controls are tweaked with the Wii in mind rather than crowbarred onto the remote that it’s a very capable control system. I couldn’t imagine playing Halo on the Wii remote but at the same time I couldn’t imagine playing Metroid Prime on a 360 controller. It has its place, and that’s fine.

My main complaint is that it’s continued the shift away from what makes a Metroid that was started in Metroid Prime 2 and Hunters, and this one really suffers the most from it. This series is about isolation on a hostile planet, whereas Corruption has an opening that infamously echoes that of the first Halo to an almost plagiaristic extent, and most of the planets will have you running into fellow bounty hunters and receiving communications from the Federation. I’m not the only one to have also noted that these aspects aren’t particularly well done either, making them especially alienating for fans.

Still, these issues are with the story, which is thankfully a largely secondary distraction. The good stuff is just as good, and the token gimmick (the titular corruption of the phazon variety) is better than the annoying Dark Aether guff in Metroid Prime 2. It’s a great sci-fi adventure and, if Retro can get over the temptation to lean too much on the story, leaves me keen to see what they can do with their obvious talent and the best first-person shooting controls on a console.

Best of 2007, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2007 #10: Hotel Dusk: Room 215

22/12/2007 Olly Leave a comment

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

If I wasn’t giving it its little bit of recognition here, this would be a shoo-in for one of those fun but meaningless awards like ‘best game nobody played’ or ‘most overlooked game of the year’ (surely an oxymoron if you’re recognising it with an award?). It’s been and gone so completely that it’s hard to believe that it actually came out this year.

It felt to me like 2007 was a poorer year than previous for the DS in all respects but sales, which are still in the stratosphere. The new entry into the Ouendan series lacked the immediate appeal that the first game had, and even Zelda seemed to arrive with little fanfare, missing out on the event game status that New Super Mario Bros enjoyed. Hotel Dusk, though, is a uniquely DS game that won me over with its noirish style and storyline. It really wouldn’t have worked as well on any other platform.

While far from perfect, it was able to tap my enthusiasm in for a number of different things. The old adventure games, for one. And noir. And the brilliant design decision to hold the DS vertically like a book, emphasising the pulp novel influence and really making it perfect to play on the bog, and allowing for the genius idea of writing your own notes in your notebook. If only they’d fixed some of the minor annoyances – slow text scrolling is a pet peeve of mine, and the plot progression wasn’t always smooth – Hotel Dusk could have been even higher on this list. More adventure games please, Nintendo. Or make LucasArts do the right thing.

But in the meantime, play this one. I’m sure it’s cheap now.

Best of 2007, Games, GOTY, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2007

21/12/2007 Olly Leave a comment

Can you believe that it’s that time again? With ten days to go until 2008, my rundown of my favourite games of 2007 begins tomorrow. As always, the rules are that the games must have been released in one of the three major territories (Europe, US, Japan) at some point in the calendar year 2007, and obviously must have been played by me during that time.

With three consoles on full steam and out of the post-launch doldrums (some more than anothers), this year has really been about the games. 2005 brought three new systems and 2006 two more, while unless you live in the gaming third world known as Europe, 2007 was about the manufacturers flexing their muscles with software as the crowds pored over sales figures and enjoyed the spoils.

Recent months have led to this year being mentioned in the same breath as 2004 (Halo 2, MGS3, GTA San Andreas) and the immortal 2001 (Halo, GTA3, MGS2 – notice a pattern? – Final Fantasy X, Gran Turismo 3, Silent Hill 2, Devil May Cry, etc), and while the 2001 comparison seems almost fatuous when look at the classics we had that year, 2008 has been set up to be an epic. I’m both anticipating and dreading having to fit games of the calibre of Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA4 into only ten positions.

Just for reference, these were my choices over the last two years:

And let me get it out of the way immediately to say that Mass Effect will not make the list because I’m not getting it until Christmas and so won’t have the opportunity to include it. Assuming I like it, however, it will be included in the late additions, as I did with a couple of notable games last year.

Games, Impressions, Nintendo, Sega

Mario & Sonic at the Wii Flat

28/11/2007 Olly 3 Comments

I think I’m with most gamers when I say that my biggest question regarding this unusual collaboration is what exactly Mario is doping to enable him to match Sonic in a foot race. After having spent an afternoon with the game at the Wii Flat in London, I’m even more confused. Mario was pretty brisk if you held the run button, but when Bowser, Wario, and Eggman can keep up…well…it’s madness!

Once I was over my apoplectic fit and could put aside my inner fanboy, however, I couldn’t stay angry with it. I was too exhausted to…

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Games, Impressions, Nintendo

Super Mario All-Star

27/11/2007 Olly Leave a comment

At the risk of attack from the Nintendo fundamentalists, Mario Sunshine really wasn’t that great. It was good, but compared to the almost unimpeachable Super Mario 64 (as far as I’m concerned, the best game of the 32/64-bit generation), it felt soulless and disappointing.

So we arguably haven’t had a truly great Mario in over a decade – come on, New Super Mario Bros was hardly Mario 64 – aaand…now that Super Mario Galaxy is here, we do. The hit ratio may have dropped since we had Super Mario Bros 1-3 plus World in five years, but now, even without Miyamoto at the helm, the standards for Mario have been put back as high as they should be.

While I think that those calling this the greatest Mario game ever are simply wrong, the comparisons that have been made between this and Super Mario Bros 3 are apt. Both games took the fairly conservative design of a previous game and just went a bit mental, but whereas the limits of SMB3’s madness were enemies with gigantism, flying raccoons, and a tanuki suit that inexplicably transformed Mario into a statue, Galaxy runs with it.

Such concepts as gravity – surely essential to a platform game – become meaningless. And while the race against the penguin in Mario 64 had some context, Galaxy’s equivalent is to have a community of penguins who surf on a smiling manta ray. It gives no explanation and clearly delights in the bemused expressions that such flights of fancy will induce. It’s a wonderful game that’s gloriously fun to just go with. And the space setting, unbounded by any real level structure (you can get completely different level designs within the same galaxy), has let them take a pile of concepts that couldn’t be expanded into a whole game and simply use them as single, throwaway levels. It seems almost profligate to use some great ideas in such a manner, but really it’s better that they go here than in a minigame compilation.

My one complaint would have to be that the mechanics sometimes can’t keep up with the design. Things haven’t really moved on since Mario 64’s benchmark for a 3D camera, and it sometimes doesn’t work with these far more complex level designs. The camera will more often than not be impossible to move manually – I don’t remember this ever being the case in Mario 64 – and just occasionally this will leave you looking at Mario’s shadow through a solid structure or with an awkward angle on a jump that could lead to oblivion if missed. It doesn’t happen all the time by any means, but it happens just enough to annoy.

Similarly, the human brain (or mine at least) can occasionally seem as incapable of keeping up as the camera. Mario can continually flip and take the controls with him, while I occasionally spent half a second flapping around in an effort to work out whether up was still up. Call it my failing rather than the game’s, if you like, but the fact is there is some inconsistency, such as when one double-sided surface in one galaxy will let you run seamlessly around the edge and onto the other side, whereas one in the next galaxy that is identical in all but theme will dump you off into a black hole if you try the same manoeuvre. As with the camera, it only happens enough to be an irritation.

It would be churlish of me to call this anything other than a great game because of a couple of qualms, though. This is still by far the best game on the Wii (no jokes, please) and, like its forebears, it will stick in the memory well beyond most of the big hits of this generation. This game reminds you what Nintendo can be when they stop thinking about minigames.