Toronto Thumbs

REVIEW
Wario Land: Shake It!

It’s undoubtedly a good time to be a fan of old-school side-scrolling platforming games. Capcom recently released Bionic Commando Rearmed and Mega Man 9, Sony released Little Big Planet today, and Nintendo released Wario Land: Shake It! last month.

The first time I got my hands on this game was in August at a Nintendo holiday preview event. They had a few journalists visit a fancy hotel room and we were all shown their big holiday releases one at a time. Matt Ryan, Senior Supervisor of Communications & Advertising for Nintendo of Canada, remarked that I had a huge smile on my face as I shook the controller madly to get Wario to do the same to a bag of coins.

It was then that I realized just how awesome Wario Land: Shake It! was going to be. The same thing happened at Nintendo’s booth at PAX. Though I had already played it, I couldn’t get enough of Wario. How had this truly disgusting character become so compelling?

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Posted in Nintendo, Reviews, Wii | 6 Comments »

REVIEW
Mega Man 9

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Mega Man 9 is now available for the three mighty consoles via digital distribution. If you haven’t played a Mega Man game but consider yourself a gamer – well, I’m sorry, but you’re missing out on an entire set of feelings and sensations. It’s like thinking you’re a candy lover while you’ve never had dark chocolate. It may not be for you, but it’s something you just have to try.

My first memory of Mega Man was running over to my friend Steve’s house (he lived down the street) to play his NES and Mega Man 2. It was immediately different from other games I’d played because of the stage select feature. Rather than having a stage 1, stage 2, and so forth, players could actually choose which stages they wanted to go to and in which order.

When the series made the jump to the Game Boy, I made sure it was on my Christmas wish list. Since the first time I took my turn at Crash Man’s stage, I knew I was playing something special. After the X series of games on the Super Nintendo, however, I fell out of touch with the series and was content to play the newest games of the time – but I’d still pick up Mega Man 2 on my Game Boy every now and then for old time’s sake.

Mega Man showed up on my radar again when the Anniversary Collection was released for the GameCube. A whole disc of 2D Mega Man games for $20? Can’t go wrong with that.

Now, Mega Man 9 has hit and I’ll admit, at first I was skeptical. Was this just a cheap attempt to pull at retro gamers’ wallet strings by stirring up their desire for new nostalgia? The unveiling of the downloadable extra content didn’t help this feeling. To get the full game, with all the extras, would cost gamers around $18. Not bad for a new game – but Mega Man 9 is kind of an old game, isn’t it?

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Posted in Blast From the Past, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Wii, Xbox 360 | 5 Comments »

REVIEW
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars is one of the most successful, and bittersweet entertainment franchises in existence. It’s hard to think of a medium that Star Wars has NOT penetrated. Gamewise, there are so many Star Wars titles that I can’t even remember them all. One of my favourites was Jedi Academy (PC), specifically with the Force Mod III module loaded, allowing you to play Jedi and Sith of various classes, utilize different types of lightsabers and subscribe to a number of different saber-wielding styles.

While the game was fun, the control scheme was flawed. You’d utilize the ASDW keys to move, of course and Force powers were assigned to F keys. Of course, to direct your Force powers, you were required to target them using the mouse, which shifter your whole point of view when you moved it. Not too shabby, until you work the saber into the equation. To swing your saber, you were required to move the mouse back and forth. See the problem here?

Enter the Wii.

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Posted in Awesome, Reviews, Wii | 3 Comments »

Weekend Play: Wario Land: Shake It

At Nintendo’s PAX booth, they had two titles that held a lot of my interest. One of them was Animal Crossing: City Folk. The other was Wario Land: Shake It! This week, the latter hit store shelves. The game also hit the Toronto Thumbs office, and we’ve been playing it a bit today, getting into the wacky but cool controls and actually realizing there’s a fun story behind it all, too. From our early impressions it looks like this one’s a winner – but we’ll see if it holds up to a weekend of frenetic shaking.

Posted in Wii | 2 Comments »

Mortal Kombat Armageddon Wii

It’s been over a year since I first reviewed Mortal Kombat Armageddon for Wii. The review was done for a music magazine that shoehorned its game reviews into half a page of real estate, so the review was only about 30 words long. How can you review anything in 30 words? It’s certainly difficult. See, this paragraph is already longer.

At the time I wrote the review I really didn’t play the game with anything other than the Wii Remote and Nunchuck combination, which is the control scheme that series creator Ed Boon promised would have your grandmother pulling fatalities on you. Could that even be possible? Turns out it was an overstatement, as half the time I couldn’t get regular moves to execute properly. Of course, at the time the Wii was still very, very new, so I figured that some of the misfiring of the controls wasn’t due to them being programmed poorly, but that it was me who couldn’t pull them off because I wasn’t skilled enough to.

I guess, in a way, this is because I generally feel that if I can’t do something, I’m not worth a damn. Instead, I likened this to when I was first discovering fighting games. Street Fighter II was selling Super Nintendos sell left and right despite its heavy $100 CDN pricetag, and the first time I played it I was confused why the creators would have six buttons at their disposal but not assign special moves to any of them. Instead, players had to pull off a series of different combinations on the control pad and then hit a button in order to throw fireballs, do hurricane kicks, or perform other devastating attacks.

Because this was a whole new way of playing games for me, it took a while for me to get used to pulling off these moves, and indeed I will admit that I can do uppercuts for Ken and Ryu a lot easier from the right side of the screen than I can from the left. So you can see how me not being able to pull off MK Wii’s gesture-based special moves reminded me of getting my ass kicked in Street Fighter in the arcades in the early 90s.

Due to my recent revived interest in Mortal Kombat, which is spurred on by the fact that Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe will be released in November and because I associate Halloween with MK anyway, I decided to give Mortal Kombat Armageddon another go this weekend. On Friday, I played it after my guests left for the night, and stayed up ’til 3 a.m. playing it. Only this time, I used the Classic Controller. It is by far the best way to experience this game – other than with friends, that is. I spent a few hours learning different fatality steps and practiced them over and over again and now I’ve created a particularly cheesy and over-the-top finishing move that it makes some of the Friendship moves from MK2 and 3 look serious.

Armageddon can probably be had on the cheap these days, if you can find it in stores. Also, the PS2 Premium Edition includes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which is another amazing title in the series. This month, Midway will be releasing Mortal Kombat Kollection, a three-disc PS2 bundle featuring MK Deception, MK Armageddon, and MK Shaolin Monks. If you’re a fan of fighters and for some reason haven’t played the last few Mortal Kombats, give them a shot – you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Posted in PlayStation 2, Wii | No Comments »

Super Paper Mario: Mario Hamster

A few nights ago I tried to get back into playing Super Paper Mario, which I hadn’t previously finished. I started off from the beginning and got to Chapter 2-3, in which Mario “accidentally” breaks a vase and then has to pay it off in rubees. Mario’s currency of choice, the coin, is just not good enough so in this level players need to earn rubees.

There are a few ways to earn them. The first of which is a room where you hit spark blocks to generate energy, and you get one rubee for each time you hit a block. If you get 100 rubees, you can buy information from another prisoner/slave on how to get to a room where the rubees are earned much faster.

After going to that room and earning 10,000 rubees by RUNNING IN A HAMSTER WHEEL FOR ABOUT TEN MINUTES, you can buy the password to the rubee vault from another prisoner. Once Mario steals all the rubees in the vault (and how ethical is that, really?), he pays off his debt and the chapter is closed.

Yes, I could have just gone online and searched for what the vault password was – but that wouldn’t be playing the game and getting the full experience out of it. And what one word sums up the experience of that level? Boring!

I nominate Chapter 2-3 of Super Paper Mario as one of the worst video game levels ever. What were the developers thinking? It was this level that made me turn off the Wii for the night.

Posted in Awful, Editorial, Wii | 7 Comments »

You Have to Really Like Rock Band to Get These

At X’08 in August the Rock Band 2 set-up didn’t feature the new and improved stock drumkit that will be included with box sets of the game. Instead, EA opted to show off a piece of third-party merchandise: The ION Drum Rocker.

It’s an expensive but impressive piece of hardware. At $300, you could most definitely buy a real, if not beat-up drumkit – or, you could just buy this and have the coolest Rock Band kit around. The pads feel much better than those on the pack-in kit, and the cymbals are just mapped green, yellow, and blue pads. The pedal’s solidly constructed and I don’t see anyone ever having to replace this kit once they’ve bought it.

Although it is a fine piece of hardware, the price point and the fact that it’s about twice as big as the regular Rock Band kit are off-putting, especially for those of us who live in small apartments. Then again, these fancy pads can be used as an electronic drum set with some additional equipment. The kit will be available in three styles: PS2/PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Posted in Awesome, Music, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 | 7 Comments »

A Beam of Light for Compilation Discs

Although download services for the three major platforms have given publishers a lucrative venue with which to sell their old games to us again, SNK has not given up on the good ol’ compilation disc.

Today, the arcade giant released SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 for Wii. This disc contains 16 classic NEOGEO arcade hits, some of which are also available on the Virtual Console. Economically speaking, it makes much better sense to get the games on this disc.

Here’s hoping more publishers will continue to put their old games out on hardcopy formats. Digital distribution is nice, but it shouldn’t cost more than something that actually has a physical incarnation.

Posted in News, Wii | No Comments »