Tag Archives: Nintendo

Best of 2013, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2013 #1: Fire Emblem Awakening

31/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

Fire Emblem Awakening Handheld games have an unfortunate tendency to be overlooked in the copious GOTY awards at this time of year, but the lack of this in the popular lists – not this one, then – is a tragedy. Good for Animal Crossing and Zelda, which are great, but here we have a B-tier Nintendo franchise upping its game on a spectacular scale.

The 3DS has had a spectacular year, by all accounts, and its earliest hit was my favourite. Its presentation is lovely, from the personality-filled 3D models to the animated cut-scenes that almost justify the stereoscopic effects on their own. It’s the perfect standard bearer for the features of the 3DS, introducing me to StreetPass, SpotPass and the rest through well thought out integration. Plenty of free DLC as well. Sad that that seems like an aberration today.

Credit, too, for 8-4‘s brilliant translation. True to the setting and humorous without being obnoxious, even while including Internet memes in its dialogue – something I still find hard to believe is possible.

Awakening is a great starting point for Fire Emblem neophytes, with little baggage from the previous instalments and even – cover your ears, purists – the ability to disable what was once the series’ USP: permadeath. This nod to accessibility should be praised rather than reviled, for this game’s unexpectedly strong sales performance – who knew that a good game on a system that was starved of great software would result in sales? – look to have kept it alive.

If the standards are this high, here’s to many more.

Best of 2013, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2013 #3: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

29/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds A Zelda sequel just seems weird. Sure, Majora’s Mask technically takes place directly after Ocarina of Time and the Links in the first two games are the same incarnation, but to use the same map, the same world, even the same visual style? What’s next? A new one every year?

But it works. A Link to the Past is long enough ago that my memory of this map is far from perfect, and it hardly seems like we’re on a slippery slope to talking about Zelda 2015 next year – although I wouldn’t complain if there was Majora’s Mask 3D in time for next year’s list. A Link Between Worlds looks hideous in screenshots but lovely in motion, the rock solid 60fps, even in 3D, ensuring the same level of responsiveness as the SNES game.

My only complaint would be that a couple of the noble experiments with the tried-and-tested Zelda structure don’t really work. The rental system, for example, takes away the fun of revisiting past areas with new items and, as far as I can tell, adds only unnecessary frustration when dying. Rupees are so abundant that it’s no great hardship to buy your items outright, and from that point the rental system has no reason to exist. The game’s also very easy, without much of a difficulty curve that is clearly a symptom of its lost structure.

Still, it’s Zelda, and it’s the best in a while. Should this turn out to be the first in a Mario-esque cranking out of a familiar Nintendo series, and the quality stays this high, I won’t complain.

Best of 2013, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2013 #7: Pokémon X

25/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

Pokémon X I’d been disappointed by my returns to Pokémon since what I perceive to be its heyday in the late 90s. It’s a series whose advancements between iterations had been conservative by even Nintendo’s standards, with everything from its templated story to the designs of its new Pokémon exhibiting diminishing returns.

X and Y, though, while still not a reinvention, felt refreshed. Actual 3D graphics, like anyone who’d played Pokémon had wanted since the N64 days, were the banner feature and injected personality into the limited sprite-based characters of yore. Also impressive was the well-integrated networking, which brought social aspects that only a game with the popular clout of Pokémon could pull off – I’m still waiting for my first Fire Emblem StreetPass, but Pokémon was netting me a couple a day. A nice reminder of what a world where the 3DS was an unmitigated hit.

I still say we need a Pokémon game that really mixes things up in the way that past transitions to 3D have done for Nintendo’s popular franchises, but X and Y were at least a step towards that. Kudos for being the first instalment I’ve enjoyed since the GBA.

Best of 2013, Games, GOTY, Nintendo

Best of 2013 #9: Luigi’s Mansion 2

23/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

Luigi's Mansion 2 If I’m honest, I could take or leave Pikmin, but this is a revival from Nintendo’s GameCube wilderness years that surprised me by doing that wonderful thing of giving you something you didn’t know you wanted. Although it would have been pretty far down my list of desirable Nintendo revivals, Luigi’s Mansion 2 became a showpiece for the hardware, the atmospheric potential of the 3D effect, and the banner release for the Year of Luigi.

Only the fact that its qualities can’t sustain it throughout some gratuitous backtracking keeps Luigi’s Mansion from climbing further up this year’s list. But if you take your time, avoiding tiring of going through the same corridor for the fifteenth time, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most charming games around. It’s like the gaming equivalent of a Pixar movie, full of personality, wit and fun little touches.

Whereas the original Luigi’s Mansion disappointed as a flagship launch title for a new Nintendo console – it followed Mario 64 there, let’s not forget – I feel like the 3DS would have had a less bumpy debut had it arrived with a game as complementary to the hardware as this game. I loved it, and it’s now my go-to recommendation for new 3DS buyers.

Editorials, Games, Nintendo, Xbox

Bring Back Conker’s Bad Fur Day

16/12/2013 Olly Leave a comment

Whichever N64 game you want to play, chances are there’s a port, HD update, or Virtual Console release out there somewhere. GoldenEye’s a notable but understandable exception given what must be a minefield of rights issues – published by Nintendo, developed by Microsoft-owned Rare, based on a licence held by Activision, based on a film produced by a company that has since gone bankrupt and is now distributed by Sony – but at a push we have a couple of reasonably good remakes. How am I supposed to play Conker’s Bad Fur Day, though? It’s one of those annoying games that lacks a definitive edition – Persona 3 is another one – only with the frustration compounded by all the legal means being seriously compromised in some way.

The Great Mighty Poo in Conker: Live & Reloaded

What brought this to mind was selling my N64 copy. Given its condition and the fact that it came out quite late in the N64’s life, I made good money on it, but it was a hard sale to make because it’s a tough game to play legally nowadays. I could, of course, have plugged in the old N64, but that would be reliant on my controllers still working and, let’s face it, it’s going to look like shit on a modern TV. Plus, you know, £100.

Nintendo wouldn’t touch the game, so it was published in the UK by THQ and Rare kept the rights. Rare’s still owned by Microsoft, so no Virtual Console release.

Mercifully, then, we have the Microsoft-published Xbox remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded. It’s much prettier and it works on an Xbox 360. Problem solved? Nope. You see, it had its name changed before release from Conker: Live & Uncut, which should set off alarm bells. Compare, for example, the Great Mighty Poo scene on a Nintendo 64 to Microsoft’s adult-friendly shooter box. As someone who won’t watch a film when it’s been cut by seconds, this is completely unacceptable. No shit. Literally.

Microsoft isn’t new at this console game any more, and it’s certainly not averse to publishing adult content in its games. In that case, how about giving Conker the same treatment as Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, which both had excellent, well-received Xbox Live Arcade ports that updated the games and even added functionality that was dropped from the N64 originals? Get me a playable, uncut version of the game – hell, maybe throw in the lovely assets from the Xbox port – and you’ll both redeem yourselves for Live & Reloaded and make me feel much better for having sold out on my original copy.

Games, Impressions, Nintendo

The Kick Up the Arse That Pokémon Needed

26/10/2013 Olly Leave a comment

It’s funny what a difference a few tweaks in the right place can make. I wrote back in 2011 about my disappointment in Pokémon White, my first foray into the series since the GBA evidence to me that it was a series in decline. It was a sense of diminishing returns that left my copy of Sapphire abandoned and Blue as my only game with a full Pokédex, and a hardware generation and a couple of instalments in the game series hadn’t done anything to advance things substantially.

As you might have guessed, I’ve recently given it another go with Pokémon X. Fool me once and all that, but my 1998 self would have been so deliriously happy with a fully 3D Pokémon game that I couldn’t resist. And, unsurprisingly, not much has changed between this and Black and White. Nor, indeed, the Game Boy games. Maybe I’m a graphics whore or something, but the little changes here have made all the difference.

Pokémon X/Y Trainer

Graphics aren’t everything, sure, but they are something, and Pokémon X – or Y, but I’m going to talk about the version I own – doesn’t feel as half-arsed as Black/White did. Seeing those monsters in three dimensions, performing flashy attacks beyond bobbing the sprite up and down, adds dramatically to the personality and appeal. It’s like going from a pen-and-paper RPG to, well, a video game.

Another complaint I had about Black/White was that I found Pokémon to be insultingly formulaic. To illustrate:

It’s time for you to become a Pokémon trainer! Go and get your starter from the local professor!
Your rival picked the opposing element, so fight him/her.
Work your way through the gym leaders.
Thwart the plot of a criminal gang with a weird uniform, staffed entirely by incompetent henchmen.
Head to Victory Road and beat the Elite Four.
Uncover some secret of Pokémon mastery that the world’s scientists couldn’t crack a kid could for some reason.
Go after a set of one-of-a-kind legendaries.
If you’re not bored by now, pour months into building a competitive team.
Oh, and catch ’em all™.

Which Pokémon game am I talking about? It basically could be any of them.

X is the same, but by not looking just like it did on the Game Boy and delivering the occasional well-placed hit of nostalgia (see screenshot below) it tickles the urge that the last generation failed to. If I’d drifted away from the series and come back to this instalment, I’d have been perfectly happy with how much things had progressed.

Pokémon X/Y Mega Blastoise

It’s still not the 3D adventure that I would have killed for in 1998 – Monster Hunter looks closer to that ideal, so it’s feasible, though perhaps not from a small team on a release schedule like Game Freak’s – but as a much-needed improvement to a stagnated franchise, Pokémon X delivers. Given that delivering on the series’ potential would require Nintendo to release powerful hardware, show some ambition and overhaul a proven cash cow, I’ll take what I can get.