Ikachan (Video Game; Nintendo 3DS eShop) - Review

Ikachan feels like the video game equivalent of a decent little short story written for a high school Creative Writing class. It's noticeable that the creator took some short cuts to get this done. And it's over quickly. But even if it's certainly not great, there's a distinct joy to be gotten out of the experience. Ikachan is an okay game that makes up for some laziness with charm. 

This game casts you as a cute little squid named Ikachan. You maneuver him around with a combination of aiming his head with the circle pad and propelling him forward with the a or b button. It controls similarly to an underwater level in a 2D Mario game, save for aiming replacing more direct movement. The physics feel great and it's fun to maneuver Ikachan around. 

This game is at its best when you're avoiding enemies, collecting fish to level yourself up, and taking down the few bosses. The game gives you a small, open environment to explore, and this provides for some neat metroidvania-style gameplay, in which you gain new abilities or items that can be used in past areas. The game has gorgeous and adorable pixel art that looks even cooler when the 3D is flipped on. The sound effects and chiptunes combine with the visuals to create a really engrossing atmosphere.

Unfortunately, a lot of the progression depends on going back and forth, talking to NPC's. The story is cool but the diaogue is usually a bit dull and it gets frustrating when you have to arbitrarily initiate conversation with the characters until something happens. The most banal areas of the game, by the way, are where all of these characters are.

At the end of my playthrough, I felt more positive than negative about my journey. Since the game is only an hour long, it's hard to forgive boring, text-heavy segments that probably made up half of my play-time. But it's a pretty trip that tells a weird, charming, simple story, with a cool ending to boot. It's clear that the creator had fun making Ikachan, and I had fun playing it. It's okay. 

***

This game takes place in the universe of Cave Story, and is made by the same dude. It originated as freeware, but I played the Nintendo 3DS eShop version for review. It costs $5, which is a decent price. 

Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move (Video Game) - Review

Back in 2006, Nintendo put out Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis for the Nintendo DS, which was quite the departure from Mario vs. Donkey Kong on the Gameboy Advance. The original game on the GBA was a spiritual successor to Donkey Kong on the original Gameboy, which is often dubbed Donkey Kong 94, in order to distinguish this 1994 release from the classic arcade game. These two games on the GB and GBA are brilliant puzzle-platformers, but when that DS game came out, the series changed to straight-up puzzle games, similar to Lemmings. 

Many fans were disappointed with this change. I, for one, enjoyed the newer ones, but I have to admit that the series was getting a bit stale. Since MvD2, there have been three more games in the series. The latest, Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, for the Nintendo 3DS's eShop, is actually quite different from the others since MvD2, despite being another straight-up puzzle game. The problem of staleness is not evident in this release. Minis on the Move mixes things up enough to feel fresh, and it's a smart, addictive puzzle game, despite some missed opportunity. 

The major difference between this game and the few games before it is the angled, 3D view, replacing the on-the-side, 2D view. That may not seem like too big of a deal, but I'd say it gives the game an updated feel. The goal of this game is to place tiles on a board to form pathways for the series-signature minis (adorable little toys of Mario and co.) to use, in order to get them to the goal. Along the way, there are doodads to be collected which are unneeded for progression, but the game is definitely most enjoyable when attempting to collect everything on each board. These boards are very fun and challenging to solve. Completing a board with all of the doodads collected is very satisfying. Aesthetically, it's certainly colorful, certainly cute, and it looks nice in 3D. The music is fine, yet forgettable: If you'd like something to do while watching TV or listening to your iPod, this is an alright game to mute and play during. You'll just have to go without the satisfying victory music and crushing failure music. 

There are four different variants on this basic design, each intertwined and each equally fun and well thought-out. One, entitled "Mario's Main Event," gives tiles for you to use mostly randomly. If you don't use the tiles given to you quick enough, your pipe of tiles will overflow and you'll fail. Things like bombs, which get rid of tiles on the board, and trash cans, which will take three unwanted tiles in your pipe, make things easier on you, but this mode remains very tense. It's tons of fun. It forces you to think quickly, and frantically tap your mini in order to get them to go faster. The "Giant Jungle" mode is basically the same, except that boards are massive and with much more to collect, making it ludicrously challenging, which makes this mode fun in its own right. 

"Many Mini Mayhem" throws multiple Minis into the equation, and doesn't let you add any tiles onto the board. Instead, some tiles on the board can just be moved or manipulated. This mode is the most frantic of them all, and a real rush. Another is called "Puzzle Palace," which gives you all of the tiles you're allowed to use at the start. This mode forces you to carefully think things out, without pressure to do anything quickly. This difference in design means that this variant has to have more complex boards in order to be as challenging as the others, and it pulls that off. 

Each mode ramps up the difficultly progressively by adding new tiles and obstacles into the equation, which means the game doesn't wear thin. "Mario's Main Game" has seventy levels, "Puzzle Palace" has eighty levels, and "Many Mini Mayhem" has fifty. If you collect all of the doodads on each of the levels of these three modes, you'll receive a star. The doodads on "Giant Jungle" are stars, and there are ten of these on each of the three levels for that mode. These stars, 230 possible, overall, go in a shared pool, which cleverly connects each mode. Once you reach certain amounts of stars, mini games and virtual toys are unlocked. 

There are four mini games, and each has at least a few variants, which are individually unlocked. One is "Mini Target Smash," which is a pretty standard but enjoyable shooting range. Another is "Fly Guy Grab," which is definitely the worst of the bunch; not bad, but pretty mediocre. "Cube Crash" is the best, which is similar to the shooting range game, but instead of regular ol' targets, you smash large, three dimensional structures. The last is "Elevation Station," which is an alright on-the-side 2D affair in which you move around a mini to avoid bullet bills and collect coins. All of these, besides the last, look very striking in stereoscopic 3D. Overall these mini games are a great diversion, and progressively unlocking more variants on these four mini games really incentivizes collecting those doodads! 

There is also a creation suite which allows you to create levels which can be uploaded online for anyone with the game to download [or stream] and play. Creation is simple, uploading is simple, and players others' levels is simple. Levels are organized into "Top Weekly," "Random," "Popular" and "Friends" categories. The only problem is that you can only make levels like the ones you'd find in "Mario's Main Game." 

That problem is really one facet of a larger problem, which is the only one plaguing this game, and that's missed opportunity. Why don't the four modes have an identical amount of stars in them, making the experience even more cohesive? Unlocking the little "Toy Collection" toys and polishing them and looking at them is neat, but why can't I play as them? The best example of missed opportunity is how frivolous the top screen feels during the main game. All of the control for placing and moving tiles is on the bottom screen, and the entire board is depicted on the bottom screen, albeit with a minimalistic, uninteresting look. The top screen merely has a visually interesting look at the action, with no real useful information besides the timer, so you'll mostly never look at it. Why not make it less frivolous? None of these things really affect the quality of the game in any mechanical way, but these all just feel jarring. These are just nitpicks, but they all pile up into one big nitpick - there is clearly missed opportunity here. 

But don't get me wrong: The game as it is, is great. The core mechanics are very clever, and it's a totally addictive experience. There's a lot to do, and none of it feels like padding, making this feel like a very substantial package. A very cute, substantial package, that is sometimes frantic, sometimes methodical, and always mentally stimulating. Even though there are things I wish this game would have done, I love it for what it is.   

*** 

According to my 3DS's activity log, I played this game for 11 hours and 42 minutes. It currently costs $9.99, which is a fantastic price.   

The Last of Us (Video Game) - Review

The Last of Us is special in many ways. It marks the first time Naughty Dog has started a second new IP on the same platform. It's essentially the last big release that is exclusive to the 7th generation of consoles. And it's also not only one of the finest video games of said generation, it's one of the finest ever crafted. With its unparalleled, visceral combat, jaw-dropping aesthetics, and unprecedented storytelling, The Last of Us is truly masterful.

The Last of Us is another story about a zombie apocalypse, but it does enough of its own to ensure that doesn't make it feel stale in any way. For example, these zombies are not even quite zombies, but a growth after affliction from a fungus. As time goes on, the growth gets worse, first making one lose control of his or her body, then taking away vision, etc. What's smart is that not only does the growth get worse with each stage for the victim, but the further along a particular victim is in their sick state, the more difficult of an enemy they are to deal with in the game. This game builds its own world, with a crippling government run via Martial Law, and a rebellion group against the government known as The Fireflies. 

Soon enough the player finds himself in control of a man named Joel, escorting a fourteen-year old girl named Ellie somewhere because of a prior agreement. They're great characters, Joel a shell of a once normal man with remnants of his humanity left, and Ellie a chipper girl that has adapted very well to the only world that she's ever known. The game very easily got me invested in these characters as well as the various other characters along the way. Comedy, drama, and horror are all elegantly represented here. It's very funny, and it's very sad, and it's very intense, and each of those types of story-telling are balanced remarkably well. 

The game is absolutely stunning. The beginning of the game actually isn't, I should say, with lots of unimpressive textures, but once the game really gets started, the beginning's lack of graphical flair is easily forgotten. The facial animation is top of the line, not looking awkward at all and getting across the emotion of the characters well. The world is packed with detail and may just be the most impressive display of visuals on this generation of consoles. The great contextual animation that Naughty Dog gave to the industry with Uncharted 2 is here, which means that when a character approaches a wall, for example, their hand will casually touch and push off of it for no reason other than aesthetics. The score is also fantastic, drumming up the proper emotion for each particular moment.

I have always wanted combat in video games to be as good as it is in The Last of Us. Many action games of this kind, with varying levels of detriment to their respective qualities, come off as artificially challenging, through lazy design like enemies that take a ludicrous amount of bullets, but not this one. It's perfectly challenging, with every death feeling like my fault, partly due to the multitude of equally viable options available. The fusion of gunplay and stealth feels more natural than other games that attempt to do the same because one does not feel cheap because of the other. It doesn't feel like a shooter with stealth tacked on, and it doesn't feel like a stealth game with shooting tacked on. 

The AI is very well-done and impressed me more than I've ever been impressed by such a thing. Enemies react dynamically to how you play, in familiar ways such as flanking you when in a bad position, but also in new ways. For example, if you are dominating your opponents, they will run away from you, frightened. Your allies also have impressive AI, helping you in a way that doesn't make the game too easy, but in a way that makes sense. The AI overall comes off as organic.  

The violence is very brutal, which made me feel genuinely bad about my actions, but the tense, survival-horror atmosphere makes me empathize with the character I'm in control of. He's just trying to survive. This game had me of two minds, one of my own, civilized perspective, and the other of Joel, this man whose sense of morality is mostly broken due to a country whose order has crumbled. This makes the combat even more engaging. I feel like the successes of my character are truly my successes, and when I finished off a large group of dudes, I needed a breather.  The only other types of gameplay to be had other than combat are good puzzles that don't ask much of the player and serve as a nice break, and RPG elements that eschew things that bog down gameplay like inventory management and stick with completely fun things like upgrading weapons and your character. 

That level of empathy for actions that are unacceptable when scrutinized under civilized morality is a concept that runs from the beginning of the game all the way to its controversial ending. Many have reacted differently to this hard-to-swallow ending. I think the ending solidifies a pretty clear theme: In this world where everything has gone awry, many have dropped their sense of morality because their own survival seems more important to them. This is a theme that can be picked up from things like The Walking Dead, but The Last of Us hammers it home more strongly than any fiction I've ever experienced. And part of its effectiveness lies in the emotions that being forced to take the role of someone in a world like this intrinsically bring about, which is revolutionary for gaming. 

The Last of Us also features a multiplayer component, which presents a unique type of gameplay. You choose a faction to align yourself with and you play alongside other real people. As you do well, your camp of people grows and remains healthy, and vice versa. The combat of the single player is recreated pretty well in multiplayer, and it comes off as a well-thought-out diversion. It's fun, but it's not the star of the show here.  

The star of the show here is this masterful single-player experience. Naughty Dog has crafted a piece of high art. The Last of Us is a pretty much perfect experience. It is one of the finest achievements in the history of video games. I laughed, I cried, I nervously clenched my controller, and I wrote this glowing review with optimism for the gaming industry.