Links Crossbow Moaning
29 December, 2008 at 11:18 am | In editorial | Leave a CommentOver Christmas I was given Links Crossbow training for the Nintendo Wii as a present from my brother.
I remember this game being controversial amongst Nintendo fanboys as it was the first ever fully fledged Zelda spinoff title. Its a lightgun arcade game made mostly from recycled assets from Zelda: Twilight Princess.
To be honest, as long as its done in an imaginitive way, I think its reasonable for developers to recycle bits from their previous games. It was a famous USP of Warioware’s initial Gameboy Advance release as it borrowed familiar pieces from Nintendo’s previous games.
Even Smilebit’s ‘The Typing of the Dead’ mostly recycled ‘The House of the Dead 2′ (complete with dodgy voice acting and cheesy music). It was extremely tongue in cheek and made for a really fun, entertaining game. The most important thing is that it offered something new.
In this respect, Link’s Crossbow training is a dazzling success. Its a really satisfying on rails shooter with lots of different missions, destructible environments and hidden bonuses. The Nunchuk’s analogue stick means that for the first time in a lightgun game, you get free movement of your character on some challenges.
I enjoyed the game so much that I went back again and again to achieve gold medals on all of the challenges. I thought being a Nintendo game there may be some unlockable secret level or a new mode of playing the game. But there was nothing. Not even a message to acknowledge that I’d got all gold medals.
Nintendo have a long history of offering rewards and unlockable goodies. That was their thing: their games may have mostly looked like their aimed at children but they would offer some tough challenges if you searched for them.
Thats how Nintendo previously kept their hardcore gamers happy. Link’s Crossbow Training and its refusal to acknowledge enthusastic gamers who play it through to the end could be the start of a worrying trend from Nintendo.
The Demise of the Sound Test
3 July, 2008 at 9:19 pm | In editorial | Leave a CommentTags: 16 bit, 8 bit, sound test
Perhaps its something to do with games becoming more complicated and professional, but the sound test is a feature which has not weathered the progress of game development.
It was never something as practical as adjusting brightness, or screen resolution but it certainly had its own charm. I can’t think of any practical situation where a sound test would be required to solve a problem.
And yet, there was something incredibly liberating about playing any sound or theme from a video game at will. With an audience the sound test became a very valuable tool in providing some extra enjoyment from a game. Naturally, it lent itself to comical miming of badly sampled speech or perhaps some other sound effects for an impromptu performance inspired by the bunch of chimes, cracks, and bleeps.
For the more committed sound testers out there, it was entirely possible to make a drum loop out of explosions, impacts and other violent noises. This was something that I took immense pleasure in, and there was a live, almost acoustic quality in making these from just using a menu.
There’s also something to be said about the type of games which offered a sound test. The ones which I fondly remember are a pedigree of the hardcore games on my youth: Contra, Streetfighter, Castlevania, R-Type, etc.
As the quality of sound in games improved, the novelty of the sound test waned. Something as simple as laughing at a Mega Drive’s murky attempts at recreated sampled speech (even the groans of some poor enemy getting punched in the face) would be confined to the 16-bit consoles.
My most recent experience of playing with the sound test was with Super Smash Bros Melee. The sound test for this game was only offered as a reward for unlocking everything else in the game, and this was a welcome reward. The type of gamer who would complete the game inside out is probably someone who would appreciate having a wealth of Nintendo samples and music available to play with.
The novelty of a sound test will always be something I’ll appreciate. Its something which is not included in the new games on the market, but I will always have fond memories of playing about with random sounds for fun from the 16-bit era.
Sonic Adventure DX retrospective
3 July, 2008 at 9:03 pm | In editorial | Leave a CommentTags: Dreamcast, Gamecube, Sonic, Sonic Adventure DX
Perhaps its the more recent news stories of the upcoming Sonic Unleashed or the huge announcement of Sonic as a confirmed character in Smash Bros Brawl, but I’ve been really wanting to replay through the original Sonic Adventure. I originally had Sonic Adventure International on import for my Japanese Dreamcast when I first played it nearly a decade ago. Its not the most polished game around, but there’s something about it that makes it one of my favourite games.
I had so much love for this game that I even got the Gamecube re-release of it in 2003, and it was great to play the game on a good controller with a decent analogue stick, and the way it linked up to the GBA instead of the Dreamcast’s VMU made much more sense.
The music selection in this game was so jaunty and light hearted. It had a shamelessly cheesy 80’s style Rock theme tune which wouldn’t seem at all out of place as a dream Guitar Hero bonus track. It even featured a embarrassing classic 1990’s rap track with Knuckles’ rap (“You can call me Knuckles/Unlike Sonic I don’t chuckle) and a frantic Drum n Bass theme to the twisting death trap of the Sky Deck stage.
What I liked about the game apart from the (at the time) incredible graphics and sense of speed was the story. Or to more specific I really enjoyed the narrative of the story. It sounds like a gimmick, but the way each of the 6 playable characters had their own interweaving stories really reinforced and gave integrity to what should have been a standard throwaway videogame plot.
We saw Tails’ struggle to branch out and become independent of Sonic, Knuckles journey as he tried to secure the shards of the Master Emerald, Amy’s constant escape from Eggman’s robot Zero, and E102 Gamma’s discovery of morals and conscience.
The level design in this game has some suprising depth as you replay it to get more of the Sonic Emblems. Its satisfying when you have to use creative solutions as you skip chunks of the levels in order to meet the harsh speed run time requirements. This brought a mild cerebral element to the fast platforming gameplay.
For a game which is coming up to a decade old now, its still fun to play. It marked a milestone in Sonic’s videogame career as he made the inevitable jump into 3D platforming, but for me, it also proves that satisfying 3D Sonic games are capable of being produced.
Welcome!
7 November, 2007 at 10:38 pm | In editorial | Leave a CommentTags: , editorial, video games
Welcome to my gaming blog. I’d just like to say from the outset, that this blog is going to be all about my personal experiences and musings I’ve had of playing games. We’ve all had some experience of video games, some good, some bad, some even downright bizarre but I think they’re always worth hearing.
You’ll (hopefully) find reviews, retrospectives, features and – of course it being a blog and all – genuine blog posts. What you wont find is up to the minute breaking news on whats going on in the video games industry. There are teams of full time journalists getting paid to do that and I don’t plan on invading their territory.
Thanks for sticking it out this far, and keep on checking back as I plan on regularly updating this blog.
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
