I’ve been trying to decide how I should be going about the Game Spotlight for these two games. They’ve been created by a developer that has released an odd array of games, led by a man who is brilliant yet ignored by most, released on a console many gamers don’t really take seriously.

My first encounter with Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) was on the GameCube through a game called “killer7″… without going into too much detail (we can save that for another Game Spotlight), there are those who have studied the game in intricate detail, even writing entire essays relating to what the game was really about. No, seriously, you can have a look for yourself if you look around hard enough… basically, the game was a socio-political look at the relationship between the east and west… it’s riveting stuff.

No More Heroes, on the other hand, does not deal with such SERIOUS BUSINESS subject matter. In fact, what it does deal with is very close to our hearts… video games. What the folks over at Grasshopper Manufacture have created with No More Heroes is an observation of video games, the state of video games in the world today, and the types of people who play these games. Just as there have been walls of text written up for killer7, the same has been done for No More Heroes and its sequel… and it’s just a whole lot of outrageously silly fun at the expense… of everything.

Both games also drip with pop culture references, everything from sci-fi to anime, video games, wrestling, music, movies and so on. Some are more subtle than others and I’m sure there are a lot that are just fly right over peoples heads.

No More Heroes

Before anyone even knew of the games existence, the project titled “Heroes” was originally planned for an exclusive release on the Xbox 360. However, early into its development the project jumped ship and became a Wii game. A few days after E3 2006, the first trailer for Heroes was released… and man was it quite the interesting trailer, complete with an interesting art style akin to killer7, what appeared to be a lightsaber, characters with outrageous names and horrendously bad voice acting. Fans of killer7 looked at this trailer and started to interpret it as a statement between the flashy HD consoles (360 and PS3) vs Wii. In the trailer, Travis Touchdown famously utters the line “Your shining armour and fine words won’t get you anywhere!“… awesomely lame.

Who is Travis Touchdown? Well, he’s you, me, and just about every other geek out there in our world. On the surface the story of No More Heroes is a simple one. Geek buys a “beam katana” off of eBay; geek becomes an assassin. After making his first kill he strikes a deal to become the number 1 assassin so he can bone a hawt blonde French chick as his prize… of course, it’s not really that simple.

A common thread that binds a lot of games developed by Grasshopper Manufacture is that they all seem to have a streak of brilliance through what is otherwise an awkward set of gameplay mechanics. Most would look at these games and see them as half baked; missing the mark of what makes a game playable. These complaints are valid in a way, but I find that a lot of what seems restrictive about these games is in themselves a message to the player about what this game really is about.

For example, in No More Heroes, the most engaging and thrilling parts are always the boss battles and the combat itself. This is where No More Heroes shines and it’s the time when players truly feel the joy of gaming. On the other hand, the overworld of Santa Destroy is dull, lifeless and a pain in the ass to make your way through. To get through the streets of Santa Destroy, you use the Schpeltiger, Travis’ “super large scooter” that resembles an X-Wing and is as big as a Y-Wing, is an awesome machine but difficult to control and not the most practical way of getting around Santa Destroy. There are many elements like this that make up the game, but they don’t appear to be lacking because of laziness, but rather on purpose.

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of people have their own theories and have written up walls of text about their theories all around the interweb. I’ll link you to a few of them that I’ve found at the end of the entry since they’re all pretty interesting reads… if you’ve played the game, of course.

So, you either hate it and don’t get what anyone sees in it, or you like it because it has some fun moments scattered through it, or you love it because you feel there’s something else there that’s more than the sum of its parts.

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise

Recently in Japan, a version of the game called “No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise” has been ported over to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with HD visuals and a mode called “Very Sweet” where all of the female characters wear much skimpier outfits than they usually do in the standard game. I don’t really know how I feel about the making of this port mostly because Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture had no involvement in its creation. True, the original concept for the game was planned as a 360 release, however it evolved since then and became something entirely different.

The motion controls in No More Heroes is what gives the game its fun factor. Performing wrestling moves and finishers through the commands that appear on screen by any other means seems pointless. In fact, No More Heroes 2 has the option of letting players use the Wii Classic Controller instead of the usual Wii Remote + Nunchuk setup as an alternative… it’s nowhere near as good. When you’re in the heat of a great boss battle, the motion controls give it that extra push that makes you feel great when you knock the boss back and perform a critical hit or a wrestling move on them… but speaking of No More Heroes 2…

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

I honestly didn’t expect it when the first trailer for the game was revealed. I mean, I wanted MORE No More Heroes, but felt that it wasn’t a possibility since, at the time, Suda51 had not made a sequel for any of his games. So, I’m very thankful for the existence of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. I wanted more and was given exactly what I wanted.

The funny thing about it is that Suda51 himself stated that the first No More Heroes was intended to be a stand alone game and that he had no plans for a sequel at all. Even funnier is the fact that at the end of the first game, in its “true” ending sequence it shows “To be continued” written much like the way it was written at the end of Back to the Future… For those of you who don’t actually know why that’s funny, it’s because the first Back to the Future movie was intended to be a stand alone movie with no plans for any sequels. It wasn’t till the movie was released and became an instant hit that the plans for a sequel were ever thought of… the “To be continued” text at the end of the first movie was just a tease for the audience to make them think something more was coming when, at the time, it wasn’t true… I love it.

In NMH2, the story continues from the first… but what exactly is the story of No More Heroes? While it is fun to have these characters die in absurd ways as their blood splatters everywhere, there’s more to it than that. Is the quest to become number 1 really what this is about in the first? Is the quest for revenge the true plot in the second? I don’t think so, and many others don’t either. If you hadn’t realised that there was more going on than what was literally being shown on screen in the first game, you certainly will in the second.

I enjoyed the combat gameplay in the first game quite a lot and somehow they managed to improve it immensely in the second game. I haven’t really gone back to the first game to compare just exactly how things were changed to see whether these changes were big changes or subtle ones, but whatever they did made the whole experience a hell of a lot more fun. Of course, the biggest addition to the game that added the most to the experience were the 8-bit mini-games.

I’m sure a lot of people are getting sick of mini-game collections in games these days, and in a way, NMH2 is making a statement about just that… but at the same time, the mini-games that are a part of this game are mind-blowingly good. I would go on and on just about these games, however I’ve decided that to try to cut this entry down a little since it’s become so long, I’ll post up a separate entry talking exclusively about the 8-bit games that appear in NMH2.

The only unfortunate part about this game is the fact that it’s much too short. The first game was a little longer since you had to do a little more to earn money so you could progress to the next ranked battle, but in the second game you can just continue on whenever you wanted. I did take my time and earned enough money to buy all of the beam katana’s as well as complete all of the revenge missions, but still… I just breezed through the game in a day and that was that. I absolutely love the game, but I think I may have loved it a little too quickly…

Much like the end of the first game, there doesn’t appear to be anything to suggest that there will be a sequel in the future. Suda51 has suggested that their may be a sequel if enough people want it and that it would appear on Nintendo next home console. If there is a No More Heroes 3, will it be centered on Travis Touchdown or is this really the end of his story?

Whatever happens, these two games have been one hell of a ride.

Some interesting reads…

As mentioned above many times… there are quite a lot of people who like to write walls of text (including me looking at the size of this entry) about No More Heroes. Here are some of those articles that I could find for this entry, but I’m sure there are more out there.

No More Heroes related articles

• No More Heroes is not punk
• What ‘No More Heroes’ Really Means

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle related articles

• Analyzing No More Heroes 2, part 1: The bosses
• Analyzing No More Heroes 2, part 2: The bosses, part 2
• What NMH 2: Desperate Struggle really means, part 1
• What NMH 2: Desperate Struggle really means, part 2

Damn, long entry is long. I really didn’t intend things to get this long… plus this entry has taken me a few days to write, destroy, rewrite, rinse and repeat… the Game Spotlight entries are more about shedding light on games some people may have missed for whatever reason. Sure, I do end up talking about some games that everyone and their dog have bought at times, but the Game Spotlight is really meant for games such as this… ones that shouldn’t be ignored, but are… unfortunately.

Around the net, everyone seems to crave another Star Fox game. Well, the truth is, Star Fox sucks… and Star Fox has been sucking for quite a long time, though to be honest I did find Assault to be pretty entertaining in parts… even so, there’s a very good reason why we haven’t seen Star Fox on Wii so far and it’s because Nintendo doesn’t know what they want to do with the series because it just keeps on sucking. I’m sure another game in the series will be revealed eventu– “Can’t let you do that, Star Fox!”

What I’d like to see is Wolf O’Donnell and his crew tear up the screen in their Wolfen in a different kind of adventure.

“You’re good, but I’m better.”

Nintendo doesn’t seem to really know what it wants to do with Star Fox at this point. The formula for the series seems to vary between each game and they can never seem to get it quite right. With Star Wolf on the other hand you don’t need to stick to any of the Star Fox traditions or formulas of what makes a Star Fox game. Unlike Fox and his crew, Star Wolf are outlaws and considered the scum of the universe. Excellent, this pretty much means that anything goes with them. Hell, they’ve even been known to work with the good guys instead of fighting against them… this makes Star Wolf A LOT more interesting than Star Fox already.

Also, Star Wolf has an awesome theme…

“You’re on my turf now. Watch…your…step…Fox.”

Wolf’s motivations seem to be centered around being were the action is and to ultimately fight the good fight. His mercenary crew is for hire by anyone who is willing to pay the fee but his motivations are his own. Star Fox Command took the branching paths concept of the original Star Fox and Star Fox 64 to another level and provided a branching storyline to go with it. The branching path/story concept would work extremely well with Star Wolf and is the only gameplay mechanic I would carry over from Star Fox.

Being mercenaries, Star Wolf would be able to take on odd jobs around the Lylat system for pirates, outlaws, private military groups, etc for a listed fee. The higher the reward, the higher the difficulty… but not only that, other factors would come into play as well. Depending on who Wolf chose to work with, his reputation would be effected and the people he would deal with during the progression of the game would change along with the story.

The way I’m envisioning this is kind how BioWare has with Mass Effect in terms of the Paragon/Renegade system and the overall effect it and your actions have toward the story. I even think it would be a great idea to let the player dictate which way they want to take the story during the battle. For example, Star Wolf could end up being hired to protect a mining colony. Now, that could be the mission to begin with, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change mid-mission. What if the attacking forces make Wolf an offer to join them and double what the mining colony has offered them? The player could then choose by their actions whether they continue attacking the bad guys or turn their guns on the colony itself.

To differ Wolf from Fox even more, instead of picking up power-ups from the field, Wolf would have to use the money he acquires from each mission to upgrade the individual Wolfen of his crew as well as to repair them. He could also use the money to buy supplies like bombs or even buy information that could take the story into another direction depending on whether the player acts on it.

Taking things even further away from how Star Fox would do things, I’d want this to be a pretty meaty game as well and not just some extended arcade experience that Star Fox seems to have gone for in the past. This game would be around 15 to 20 hours on a single run through of the story… and then players would still need to play through it again to see all of the other branching story lines and endings. Keep Wolf and his crew in their Wolfen for the action, but have it as almost like an RPG experience where the player can dictate how they want to upgrade their Wolfen, what special skills and abilities they give to Wolf and his crew and which path they ultimately walk.

“Looks like we win this round, Star Fox”

So where’s Star Fox during Wolf’s adventure? Hopefully nowhere to be found, to be honest. If this game were to exist, I’d set it during the events of Star Fox Adventures so that the Star Fox crew can’t interfere with the story at all… well… maybe Falco can, cause Falco is awesome… but that’s as much as I would allow.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is one of my favourite games on the Nintendo DS, it’s up there with the entire Ace Attorney series by Capcom which I also hold in extremely high respect. However, unlike Capcom, Cing is a developer with very few games under its belt. A PS2 game, a few Japan-only mobile phone games, a few DS games and a couple of Wii games. Quality over quantity is the way Cing operates, and their recent games on the DS and Wii were all very well made, quality games.

Of course, even if the games are brilliant, it’s not necessarily going to ensure that a developer will find success. As gamers, we all know very well how there are some games that seem to catch on and others that, while excellent, seem to be swept under the rug by most. I feel that this has happened to practically every game Cing has ever released, but at the same time it’s not surprising at all.

Despite Nintendo’s on and off support over the last few years, Cing hasn’t really seen much exposure for their games. The first game I ever played from them was Another Code: Two Memories (known as Trace Memory in North America). Cing was one of the first developers to release anything significant on the DS with Another Code. Its use of the touch screen, built-in microphone and even (and brilliantly) the clam shell design of the Nintendo DS itself were used in the various puzzles found in the game. It may have been a very short game, but Another Code left a great impression with me with the level of ingenuity Cing used to make the game. It’s very lucky for Cing that Nintendo promoted Another Code at E3, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been aware of the game at all.

When Hotel Dusk was announced, I immediately paid attention to it because of Another Code. I knew that it was something I shouldn’t ignore and when it was finally released, I bought it on day 1 and played it all the way through in one go, forsaking all other games I may have been playing at the time. As I said before, I love Hotel Dusk… and I made it my mission to tell people all about the game. I told anyone I knew who owned a DS about Hotel Dusk and even convinced a couple of people to buy the game even though they had heard nothing of it before I came along.

Nintendo always made sure to mention Cing’s games at various conferences, most prominently at E3 when showing off upcoming DS and Wii games. Another Code: R – A Journey into Lost Memories was another title that Nintendo had shown off as one of the key titles being released on Wii. Despite this show of support, Another Code: R was only released in Japan and Europe, with no release in North America, Australia or any other region… luckily for me though, it seems that UK games are actually playable on Australian Wii, so I’ve actually bought myself a copy of the game off of eBay which should be arriving this week. On the other hand, anyone in North America who was hoping to get their hands on the game will be sorely disappointed. I wrote an entry about this a few months back… it was one of the games that just wasn’t given a chance.

The sequel to Hotel Dusk, Last Window: Midnight Promise was recently released in Japan back in January and, at this point, is still set for a localisation and release in North America… I really hope that goes through because I know what Cing is capable of and from what I’ve heard and seen of the game in its Japanese form, it’s said to be just as well made as the first.

Cing is a very small developer and relies heavily on other companies to do all the big advertising. Unfortunately you don’t get much of that with their games. Most people out there don’t even know what Another Code, Hotel Dusk and Little King’s Story are or why they’re so damn good… hell, I don’t even know why Little King’s Story is good, but from what I’ve been hearing from people who have actually bought and played the game, it’s meant to be a gem that people aren’t taking notice of… kinda reminds me of how a lot of people ended up ignoring Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure by Capcom… but then Capcom is a pretty big and powerful company that can afford to have a few of their games sell poorly. Cing on the other hand depends on every game sold.

Whatever caused their downfall, be it lack of advertising, lack of general interest, piracy or ninjas… I salute you Cing. I hope that somehow, you guys pull through this and are able to continue on making great games.

This entire entry will be extremely spoilerific because I really HAVE to share with you just how ridiculous this game really is. It’s so bad that the President of Nintendo of America, Reginald “Reggie” Fils-Aimé, stated that this game would NEVER make it to North America… lucky for me, the wacky folks of Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of Australia decided that “If the American’s don’t want it, we certainly must have it!”… So here it is… read about it, because you’re not going to want to play it.

The game follows Raymond Bryce, an International Rescue worker and apparently a former US Marine (to explain why Ray is such a weapons expert, I guess). During a volcanic eruption, Ray is doing his thing but ends up losing his friend, Steve, who is also a rescue worker. Ray can’t forgive himself for his friends loss since he feels the need to save everyone but ultimately doesn’t have the power to… deep, man… deep.

So anyway, during this part of the game you go through the usual tutorial stuff: Learn how to walk and run and how to jump, how to breathe, because that’s important, and also how to punch boulders and rocks. Yes, folks, punching boulders isn’t just for a steroid abused Chris Redfield. Not only that, I learned that you can also punch and kick barrels and wooden crates as well as mailboxes, trash bins and also cardboard boxes that happen to be laying around too.

Flash forward a year and Ray is a public servant for Blue Ridge City, and for whatever reason he meets an FBI agent who tells him about some military group who has stolen nukes and is threatening the government and all that kinda jazz… sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it. Then for some reason this chick, who happens to be the sister of his friend, Steve, gets kidnapped by this group, and Ray who feels guilty about Steve’s death goes after her and this military group to save her… and that’s pretty much the entire plot right there. Ray feels guilty, chick gets kidnapped, Ray wants to save her but at the same time is told to stop this group from blowing up some random city and do all of this while facing a string of natural disasters…

So anyway, Ray is going to save this chick… AND THEN SUDDENLY AN EARTHQUAKE! Buildings are crumbling, people are FREAKING OUT, and for some reason I start getting into a gunfight with all these military dudes… then after I think I’m close to saving that chick, they escape with her and some other guy and I have to go after them.

Now, I’m in the city which is crumbling around me still, buildings falling over, and there are people who need help. Some of these people happen to call for your help, though only if it’s a plot element, others are people you have to find and save yourself… of course, if there’s no one around and you press the Z button to look for people, Ray will say “There’s no one who needs saving here” in an extremely disappointing tone, as if he wants people to be injured and in need of his help. Great guy, that Ray…

Oh, and also, I did mention the ability to punch and kick open stuff, but I didn’t mention the fact that when you do, you’ll find items! I know, you’re thinking “Well, what’s so different about that? That’s practically in every game.”… Well, yes and no. Here are a couple of examples… You see a mailbox, and you decide to punch it open, it explodes open after a few punches and then you find that it drops a big hunk of meat on the bone, cooked to perfection… Okay, so this seems a bit strange… who put that succulent oversized piece of cooked meat in the mailbox? Ray doesn’t care, because he’ll pick it up from the ground and eat it right then and there to regain his stamina.

Of course, all through this you’re still going after that military group to save that one chick… and for whatever reason that military group has a fuck tonne of guys who happen to be all gunning for you. I don’t know how many guys I’ve killed in this game, but I’ve taken out a small army as well as various kinds of vehicles including a couple of choppers… and something else I’ll get to at the end of this entry… anyway, I’m chasing after these guys and end up going through a pretty awesome car chase scene. Hands down the driving element of this game is its best feature, but is ruined by having to deal with all the disasters along the way… one of the disasters being, no, not a regular tornado, but a FIRE tornado!… yeah, I don’t get it either, but whatever man…

So, first came the earthquake and as a result there’s a tsunami heading towards the city… so naturally Ray and the military dudes decide to have a shoot out on the bridge as the tsunami is heading towards them. This guy has balls man, a tsunami doesn’t even scare him cause he feels he has time to be Rambo…

Anyway, after he kills everyone he decides that now is a good time to leave just as the tsunami is just about to hit. Ray gets in his car and drives away from certain death at full speed. The driving in this part is a bit different though, in previous driving areas you would drive the car in first person mode, but in this instance the camera is on the outside and is facing back at the tsunami with the car on screen. The bridge is falling apart as you escape and you’re struggling to stay ahead of it and onto solid ground. Then he goes into a subway system and ends up having to outrun a rush of water in there… and then ANOTHER TSUNAMI decides to come on down and Ray, as the bad ass he is decides he’ll outrun the tsunami ON FOOT. ON FOOT! *stares at you*… and he fails, lol. Ray gets swept away and the military dudes happen to escape too.

Stuff happens and Ray ends up following the military dudes to some mines near a Volcano, and surprise, surprise, the Volcano decides to erupt. Ray is dodging huge fiery boulders raining down from the sky, tries to save the chick again, fails and the military dudes escape. Ray then has to get the hell out of there and decides to drive out of there while the lava is flowing and the pyroclastic flow that is coming down the mountain is bearing down on him… of course, like before, Ray fails and gets caught in it… and survives. When he wakes up some little girl has saved him and then he decides to get the little girl to safety and they travel through the mountain to safety… oh, and you get to kill a bear.

Ray gets out of there with the little girl, and then he’s off to some other place that just happens to be flooded due to a hurricane that’s bearing down on it. He’s going after that military group cause he has to save that chick and he military group who is too stupid to realise that the only reason all of their guys are dying is because of their hostage… WHICH THEY DON’T EVEN NEED ANY MORE, is still holding her and taunting Ray as he shoots them all down.

Oh yeah, another thing about punching open stuff is that you have to be careful. Sometimes, instead of getting an item from the container, you suddenly get set on fire. There I was punching a trash bin open in a flooded area with some pretty heavy rain coming down, and suddenly I’m on fire, even though I’m knee deep in water and completely drenched. Well whatever, during this flooded level I happen to end up saving that chick, only to have her re-kidnapped again which is another kick in the nuts.

So we’re coming near the end of it, I’m chasing these guys in my car for the last time through a full force hurricane and they get on a ferry to… I have no idea. Anyway, I’m on a ferry now and it’s the last part of the game. I’ve been through an earthquake, a fire tornado, a couple of tsunami as well as two volcanos, then a flood and a hurricane… so now what?

Now we have the final boss fight, of course! For some reason as Ray is talking to the last guy, it reminds me of the final boss fight on the deck of the ship in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune… but then all of a sudden the bad guy is standing next to something that’s covered…Now I’m thinking this guy is going to come after me on the deck of this ferry with a freaking TANK. But no, that’s not what he had in mind… instead…

METAL GEAR?!!!!!!?!!??!?!!!!?!?!?1//1?#2131342pir5thy34eoftaguhlokdhg!!!!!!!1

I kid you not, this guy was in a poor man’s Metal Gear Rex. It was Rex vs Ray! And it didn’t stop there! After defeating pseudo-Rex, I fought the boss one on one, man to man… in a quick time fight scene that reminded me of a poor man’s version of the knife fight in Resident Evil 4… though most of the fight didn’t feature any knives… oh and then I got to disarm a nuke which was fun and lived happily ever after…. OR DID THEY?

At the end of the game you get to view an alternate ending. All of those Disasters that Ray has faced during that 24 hour period is nothing compared to what’s about to hit the planet…. AN ASTEROID!

AN ASTEROID IS HEADING TOWARDS THE PLANET! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO PUNCH AND KICK IT INTO A SAFE TRAJECTORY?

I loled.

Okay so that was a pretty huge entry for a game that doesn’t matter… so if you couldn’t be bothered reading all of that, at least watch this… it pretty much sums it all up.

…Epic, truly epic. I’m so glad I bought this game and played it all the way through, just so I could tell everyone else about it. As I said at the start… it’s so bad that it’s good.

So what exactly IS the Super Guide and why should you care or not care? In short, the Super Guide is a feature that when activated will play the game for you… and this kind of description is what has put a lot of people up in arms and have condemned the feature outright without them even looking into what it really is.

Put your rage and your conclusions aside and let’s continue on and see what this is really all about…

The Super Guide really isn’t just some magic button that let’s the game play itself. What it is is a tool to allow a game to be accessible to those who may not be the best at video games and may not be self proclaimed pro-gamers that we all seem to believe we are. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is not an easy game and although it’s not anywhere near the hardest game either, the idea of adding the Super Guide is to try to level the playing field so that people who aren’t experienced gamers won’t give up in frustration in later levels.

Let’s go through the features of the Super Guide:

• The Super Guide is not accessible right away during the game. The green Super Guide block only appears in a level if you have died 8 times in a row during the level and will disappear once you have completed that particular level.
• The feature only works in single player mode, the Super Guide block will not appear if you’re playing with two or more players.
• If you do choose to hit the green Super Guide block, you are told what the feature is about and are given an option to activate it or decline. Once activated, Luigi will take control of the game in place of Mario. With Luigi in control, at any time through the level, you can deactivate the feature and take back control of the game to finish the level yourself.
• Using the Super Guide feature will not automatically score you all of the Star Coins, it will not help you find all of the secrets or have you performing super cool moves or have Luigi run all the way to the finish. It’s a very slow, safe and boring pace and not something you’ll want to sit through time and time again.
• The game will record the fact that you’ve used the feature and will show people that fact on your save file. (Oh, the shame of it all!)
• This feature is completely optional and to add to that, you may NEVER even see that green Super Guide block appear at all. To have it appear you must first truly SUCK at the game and be desperate enough to use it.

Now that you’ve had a bit of an explanation, let’s see the Super Guide in action so you can see for yourself exactly what it’s all about.

I personally haven’t seen the feature at all through my play through of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. At the moment this entry is being written I’m currently up to 8-1 which is almost at the end of the game. The difficulty level may not be up there with Ninja Gaiden, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii does get challenging enough during certain levels that will frustrate some and ultimately have them put down the controller and move onto something that isn’t.

I almost feel as if Nintendo purposefully made the game harder because the Super Guide feature was added on. If that really is the case, then hell yes, I want this feature in more games because even though I’ll never use it and will never see the option appear to use it in the first place, it will give Nintendo an excuse to make the overall game more challenging.

…isn’t that what we all really want?

The first game in the series gave us sights and sounds that created quite the atmospheric dark and lonely experience. If you didn’t have a huge HDTV, a Dolby Digital capable surround sound system and a room where you could turn the lights out, draw the curtains and sit in the pitch black darkness with only the glow of the TV in front of you, then you weren’t experiencing the game the way it really is meant to be played.

On the other hand, Dead Space Extraction is an entirely different beast to the original…

Dead Space as a series has certain expectations to live up to as well as a style and atmosphere it must abide to. The second game in the series, Dead Space Extraction must still be true to the original despite the differing gameplay genre and the very different platform that it has been released on.

When EA announced that Dead Space would come to Wii, the first thing that came to the minds of Wii fans was that it would be a port/remake of the original game, in other words, a second coming of Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. Outrage followed as more details came to light and the game was confirmed to be a rail shooter, or what EA likes to describe as a “guided first person shooter”… of course, few people bought into the idea.

Judging by the sales of this game, it seems to me that the only people who ended up buying it are the few people who own/have played and finished the first Dead Space and have a Wii. Unfortunately, the amount of people who fall into that group is quite small so the sales for Dead Space Extraction are so bad that an employee of Visceral Games has openly admitted his disappointment about it, as well as Wii as a platform for “mature” games. But just because it’s a game the sold badly, is it a bad game?

Dead Space Extraction is a prequel to Dead Space and allows you to directly experience the events that lead up right to the very beginning of the original game. It’s your average survival horror movie told from a first person perspective complete with lots of camera shake. You have your typical survivors with your typical survivor horror script and your well known stereotypical characters of the genre. It also happens to be, for long periods of time, very uneventful. Through a lot of the levels there is a lot of story to be told, however during most of these moments you really don’t have anything to shoot… which, when it comes to a on-rails shooter game… can be a bit of a problem. Luckily Dead Space has a Challenge mode that allows players to see how long they can survive hordes of Necromorphs to make up for the lack of them during heavier story moments in the story mode… Oh, another thing about the story and something I must stress is that Dead Space Extraction contains A LOT of spoilers that will definitely ruin the original game for anyone who hasn’t played it before playing this game.

Seriously, if you haven’t played the first Dead Space, you really should avoid playing Extraction… and that in itself is part of the problem mentioned earlier. This is a game that was clearly made to please fans of the first game. I loved playing through Extraction for the sake of the story itself, in fact, as soon as I finished it I got a strong urge to start a new game of the original Dead Space to continue the story where Extraction left off from. With that in mind, it does seem self defeating for the developers to release this game on a platform that doesn’t actually have the original game released on it.

The presentation is pretty well done, despite the limitations of Wii, the visuals and styling held up pretty strongly and felt just right enough to pass as a Dead Space game, of course watching the game in motion is better than viewing the screenshots to really get that sense so I’ll finish this off with the trailer shown back in E3 2009 of Extraction.

As a long time Metroid fan, my first impressions of Metroid Prime being a first person game weren’t very positive at all. How could anyone turn a game series like Metroid into something that is so alien to the series? It’s impossible, it will never work and these developers I’ve never heard of are way over their heads… All of us who had doubts are very glad that we were dead WRONG about Retro Studios and their excellent work on Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. They had the balls and the support they needed to take a very old and loved series and showing us that it can be more than just a 2D action platformer.

Metroid Prime

Who knew that Metroid would somehow work as a first person game? Retro Studios seemed to have figured it out early enough in its development to end up crafting one hell of a game from the concept. But it wasn’t just the fact that it was first person, Retro literally put you behind the visor and turned the HUD into a practical effect on the visor rather than being just THERE for no real reason other than to help the player keep track of certain information. I’m also impressed by the way they were able to keep a lot of what makes Metroid great, not everything, but there is a lot about Metroid Prime that has the same charm and greatness of Super Metroid. However, Retro wasn’t just out to try to make a first person game feel as Metroid as possible, they also took steps to add their own new and original ideas to the series. The best addition to the series, and something I will miss if missing in future 3D Metroid games is scanning objects with your visor.

The visor, for me, was an excellent way of telling a story for a series that wasn’t really known for its story telling. Metroid has always been a series more about ambience than story. The most story you get from a Metroid game before Prime came from a starting intro or some text in a manual. The information you get from visor scans may be in a raw format, but it allowed the player to figure out the mystery of what happened on Tallon IV for themselves rather than have to explain to them by dialogue or showing you outright. I like a good mystery and I love Retro for allowing me to figure things out for myself… but what I really love is how some of the elements from Metroid Prime ended up showing up in other games after it. For example, putting the player behind the visor was recreated for Star Wars: Republic Commando. Many games have also adopted the “scanning” concept for their own games with their own little twists.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Many find Echoes to be a lesser game than the first Metroid Prime. Yes, it is a little more linear, and sure the dark world may have become annoying after the initial awe wore off, these are valid points. However, as I look back at Echoes after playing the entire trilogy and having time to think about it over the years, I’m starting to think that whatever faults it may have don’t really diminish the greatness of the game. Retro put a lot of effort into the second game, the environments look phenomenal, the music is haunting and ambient and they managed to make the game look even better, which is quite the effort considering how great Prime looked to begin with.

I remember when I first got Echoes, it was on release day. As soon as I got home, I shut the curtains and made sure to make my room as dark as possible. I had my TV ready to go and my stereo (didn’t have the surround sound system back then…) for my run through of the game. I spent every waking moment playing Echoes religiously and took my time admiring the beauty of the game. I made sure to finish my first run with a 100% completion rate, and when it was all over, I felt very satisfied with the experience.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

When Wii was finally revealed to us, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was that this system is going to make the gameplay for Metroid Prime 3 so damn awesome. Nintendo knew it, Retro Studios knew it, and anyone who cared and didn’t care about Metroid Prime knew it. Nintendo and Retro were so confident that they even coded up a demo version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes with Wii remote controls attached as a proof of concept that impressed all who played it.

The controls feel great, so good that after playing Corruption, it was hard to actually go back to playing the first two games using the GameCube controller. Luckily Nintendo was good enough to port over old GameCube titles to Wii lol. The controls are great, the art and environments are presented extremely well, but I did feel that Corruption did move away a little too much from some of what made Metroid great. For instance, you don’t quite feel as alone as you did before, a lot of the story was also told in a more traditional format rather than relying solely on scans… but the worst part for me was that the game felt and really was extremely linear. The feeling of exploration was extremely diminished in Corruption which is a big minus for me, but I guess it is forgiven since as a trilogy, you get a great mix that will satisfy a wide variety of tastes.

Metroid Prime Trilogy

In Japan, Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes have both been released as separate “New Play Control!” games for Wii. Outside of Japan we’ve gotten a great treat from Retro Studios who have repackaged the entire series as the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Prime, Echoes and Corruption all on a single disc. Do you feel the love? I know I do… it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. To add to its greatness, Nintendo (of America) also went all out with the packaging. The “Collector’s Edition” metal case and art book is an extremely rare thing for any Nintendo game. It really shows how much Nintendo values the series and the contribution that Retro has brought to Nintendo. The thing that sucks is that Europe and Australia doesn’t get that awesome metal case (damn you!)… But you know what? I’m that much of a fan of the series, I’ve decided that I’m going to buy the Australian release of the Metroid Prime Trilogy, but I am also going to get onto eBay and buy myself a copy of the US Collector’s Edition pack with the metal case just so I can take the AU version of the game and stick it in that awesome case. I will go that far just to get that case!

Thank you, Nintendo, for having enough faith in Retro Studios back at the turn of the century to allow them to have their own take of the Metroid series. Thank you, Retro Studios, for revitalising a very old series and injecting a whole lot of awesome into a series that you didn’t think could get any more awesome. And hell yes, thank you for re-releasing the entire trilogy for Wii! It really is a dream come true for all of us who are fans of the series.

I can’t wait to get my hands on it come October 15… I’ll be having a HUGE Metroid Prime Trilogy marathon and using up every second of my free time playing through some of the best games ever made.

The three games I’ll be talking about are The Conduit, Deadly Creatures and Disaster: Day of Crisis. All three games seemed to have had high expectations by Wii enthusiasts but ultimately received very low sales.

The Conduit

The Conduit is probably the highest profile game out of the list of three, though in terms of quality, its only shining feature is the amount of customisation available for players to set their own controls. Once you get the controls tweaked just the way you like ‘em, you end up with a Wiimote controlled FPS that feels too damn good to be true… the rest of the game however…

It’s half cooked and the ingredients used are not very fresh to begin with, and that’s the bottom line. The creature designs of the drudge seem like they came from rejected ideas from Retro Studios (the Metroid Prime Trilogy) and Bungie (the Halo series). Even worse is the fact that the drudge seem to have the exact same voice actors that were used for the various aliens in the Halo series. There were quite a lot of moments where you just thought “this is way too much of a rip-off of everything else”… it really wasn’t funny.

To add to it, the ending of the game sucks. I mean, it doesn’t have much of a plot to begin with so don’t worry if you’re worried about spoilers, but the ending was so forced… EXTREMELY forced. It’s done in such a way that they’re basically going to shove a sequel down your throat in the future whether you liked the taste or not. I’m not kidding here, when I got to the end of the game, I didn’t even realise I was at the end, I was convinced there had to be a couple more chapters at least… but there I was, staring at the end credits thinking “this game just screwed me over.. hard”…

Controls are great, story mode sucked… I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, but I really want to try to find some kind of redeeming element to go along with those controls.

Deadly Creatures

I’ve probably enjoyed myself the most playing Deadly Creatures than the other two so far. THQ managed to create something very interesting with this game, though it does have some flaws, most of which you can overlook such as the pauses in the game for when it’s loading new areas.

What Deadly Creatures does right is that it combines action and adventure with exploration and some nice brawling. Sure, you may be playing as a Tarantula and a Scorpion, and the story may not be directly related to your adventure, but that’s what makes this game interesting and worth my time playing. It may not be for everyone, but THQ certainly believed in this game enough to invest enough money to hire Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper to play the two human characters.

It may not be the greatest game ever made, but it certainly is a good effort from the folks at THQ. I hope to see more of this kind of work from them in the future.

Disaster: Day of Crisis

As the name suggests, this game is exactly what you think it is: a very cheesy disaster movie turned into a game. The game itself is developed by Monolith Soft, a developer acquired by Nintendo quite awhile ago now… though, apparently not everyone over at Nintendo was too happy about this game which is why it will most likely never be released in North America.

As I play through this game, I feel like it had so much potential if the right developers were working on it. It combines action and adventure with mini games and at times and some impressive cutscenes (if you block out the fact that the amount of cheesiness dumped into this game is more than a triple cheese pizza with a cheese filled crust). At times it plays like a poor mans Metal Gear without the stealth and Kojima flavoured awesomeness. I’ve only really just started the game and played the first few levels so I can’t give a complete impression, though from what I’ve seen so far, I’m glad I got it at half price lol.

Second Opinion

Mr. Weasel says:

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………………What am I supposed to say now? You’ve pretty much covered all the negative aspects… and I’m not here to be positive.

Nintendo of Australia is definitely happy with bringing out Wii Sports Resort down here as well as the Metroid Prime Trilogy later this year. They have much confidence in those and similar titles; however it doesn’t seem to extend to all first party Nintendo games. In fact, there seems to be a couple of games Nintendo of Australia thinks just is not for the Australian market at all.

Okay, so Excitebots: Trick Racing may not be the best or most interesting game ever made, but I still find it interesting that Nintendo of Australia has chosen to simply not sell the game in this country at all. The reasoning is that they just don’t think it’ll sell very well down here, which may be a fair point… however it then makes you wonder why another niche game like Trauma Center: Second Opinion and New Blood have been released down here… with Nintendo as their publisher. Hell, you can even get Club Nintendo stars if you purchase either of those games. Atlus must have shovelled quite a lot of money down Nintendo’s throat to get those two games into the country.

The second game which isn’t seeing much attention down here, though is being treated slightly better than Excitebots, is Punch-Out!! for Wii. Unlike Excitebots, this is a game that has received very favourable reviews and is also from a series long remembered and loved… which is probably why it actually is being released down here. The problem is that it’s only being released at a single retail chain, JB Hi-Fi. The reasoning for this game not having a full release is the same with Excitebots… just not enough interest, apparently.

Well okay, so the general theme from Nintendo of Australia seems to be, “no one really cares, so why bother selling it?” Interesting take… though you’d think that a company like Nintendo would realise that if you advertise these games there is a pretty good chance that you’ll create interest for your products… no?

Either way, I’m kind of nervous about missing out on Punch-Out!! since it does have a “limited release”… it makes me feel like, if I don’t get it on release day then I’ll never be able to find it anywhere and then I’ll miss out completely. I really should pre-order it or something but there’s no JB Hi-Fi anywhere near where I live. Damn.

There seem to be many factors as to why Red Steel was made of so much fail. The use of the Unreal 2 engine, the obviously rushed development process despite much support from Nintendo… but mostly it was just the fact that Ubisoft wanted to make this game for as cheap as possible to try to prove that you can make cheap games on Wii that are still quality works. From Ubisoft’s point of view, this is a great thing. After all, Ubisoft did convince quite a lot of people to buy Red Steel, including myself. From the beginning of the game’s development, they were continually assuring people that they were the ones to lead the third party charge on Wii. Ultimately Ubisoft has become a source of “shovelware” for the system.

The game has a unique art style and tries to draw the player into some unique gameplay. And according to the magazine images coming straight from Ubisoft, a very good looking game. Unfortunately, there was quite a backlash when people realised the images shown in those magazines and later released on the net were touched up images and didn’t actually resemble the final product at all. To add to that, when the game was finally released people soon discovered that the gameplay wasn’t all that they had thought it would be. Turning was excruciatingly slow and the sword fights were a pain to pull off with the hit and miss motion controls.

Another great part of Red Steel are the many surprising glitches that pop up as you play, each more funny/annoying that the last. You start off with a few small AI glitches, and then a couple of moments where the animation for the enemies don’t load and they do that stiff stand straight with arms out default post thing and simply stand there. Sure, it starts small, but it soon gets pretty big and pretty had half way through the story mode. Here are the top three moments:

3. Invincible enemies: During quite a few moments throughout the game, enemy characters would spontaneously become invincible. Depending on the situation, you’ll either have to save your ammo and run for your life… such as it is, or simply restart the game, or die…

2. Never ending level: One of the levels has an ending where you have to get to the exit doors of the building for the level to end. Of course, you’re making your way to the end of the level, you’re being chased by a horde of henchmen all packing machine guns, ready to take you down. So, I get to the end of the level and suddenly nothing happens. I know the level is meant to end when I get to those doors, but… nothing! I immediately turned around and started having a shoot out with all of the henchmen that were chasing me. After awhile I decided that it was ultimately pointless to go on and simply walked out of my cover spot and let myself get shot. The level was…. COMPLETE! I had successfully finished the mission as soon as I died… well, whatever, I guess.

1. Again and again: This one is hands down the most annoying glitch in the game and almost made me stop playing altogether… though I know 99.9% of your are asking why I even bothered in the first place. Anyway, the #1 glitch in the game is a very simple one… The game works with a mission system and each new mission is given to you in a bar. There was one particular mission I completed which felt pretty long, so naturally I was glad to get to the next one… unfortunately, as I started the next mission I discovered that the next mission was in fact the exact same mission I had already finished! Why? I have no idea! It just decided to reload the last mission I played and have me replay it for absolutely no reason at all. The worst part is that I didn’t save in the bar, so I had to end up saving at the start of that mission and just turned my Wii off. I decided to spend a week or two playing some other games after that, it was just too much for me.

Yup, you either want to avoid this game at all costs, or actually try it just to see how bad it really is. Either way, you’ll ask yourself why anyone has bothered to play this game in the first place.

Despite the problems of the original, Ubisoft has decided that Red Steel deserves a sequel. Perhaps it’s their way of trying to make up for past mistakes and to try to give the series a second chance by reinventing it. So far what has been shown is that the game will be a little bit western and a little bit samurai movie set in a modern day city. They’re going for a new art style and are promising new things.

As crazy as it sounds, I’m currently neutral about Red Steel 2. I’m going to wait and see how things turn out. Ubisoft has made a lot of mistakes with the first Red Steel so chances are the sequel will definitely turn out better than the original… the question is, even if it’s better, will it be good enough for someone to actually buy and genuinely enjoy?