1458: Wonderful!

I was fortunate enough to catch a pricing error on Nintendo’s Web store yesterday — I didn’t even know they had a Web store until yesterday, incidentally — that enabled me to score copies of The Wonderful 101 and Pikmin 3 for Wii U for just £8.95 each. It was touch-and-go as to whether Nintendo would honour these low prices, as it is any time a pricing error such as this comes up, but fortunately they honoured my purchase and I’m now the proud owner of digital copies of both of the aforementioned games. (I’d normally prefer physical, but my Wii U isn’t exactly heaving with other downloads, so I can live with these two being boxless.)

You may ask why I didn’t already own these two games, given that many Wii U owners regard one, the other or both as among the best games on the console. Well, the simple answer is that I wasn’t sure if I’d like either of them — and certainly not enough to drop £50 on them. £8.95, while a relatively high price compared to what you can pick up in a Steam sale, is well within “impulse purchase” territory, however, and I was happy to give them both a go for that price.

I tried The Wonderful 101 tonight. I have enjoyed the Platinum games I’ve played to date — particularly Bayonetta, which in retrospect is probably one of my favourite games of the console generation just gone — but had heard that this was somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with. As such, I approached it with a certain degree of trepidation.

It is somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with, but much like Bayonetta rewarded you spending some time with it and getting to know how everything worked, so too does this game — and it doesn’t take all that long to get your head around what’s going on enough to improve your end-level ranking by a considerable degree.

For the uninitiated, The Wonderful 101 is a bizarre game in which you play a small army of superheroes as they attempt to fend off an alien invasion. The entire band moves as a group following whichever character is currently marked as the “leader”, and various button presses can cause their formation to expand or contract.

The key mechanic in combat is making use of the “Wonder Line”, which allows you to do various things with your small army of minions. By drawing shapes on the touchscreen of the Wii U GamePad or twiddling the right stick in various ways, you can perform “Unite” attacks — drawing a circle causes a number of the party to form a giant fist, for example, while drawing a straight line allows them to form a sword. You can also stretch your line of heroes over gaps and up walls to make bridges and ladders, too, and in order to snag some of the levels’ secrets it’s entirely necessary to do this.

The game is obviously very different to Bayonetta, which focused on a single character with a diverse variety of skills, but it also has a number of things in common with its spiritual precursor. For starters, all the enemies have distinctive “tells” to show when they’re about to attack, and by learning these you’ll know when to dodge and when to make use of the hilarious “Unite Guts” move, in which the entire party morphs into a giant pudding and shields against an attack. In Bayonetta, dodging attacks was key to the experience as it allowed you to trigger “Witch Time” in which time slowed down and you could send your score into orbit; in The Wonderful 101 it’s a much more practical affair — it simply prevents you from taking damage, though in some cases, successfully blocking can rebound projectiles back at enemies or flip armoured vehicles onto their rooves.

I’ve only played two levels so far — both of them twice — but having got a handle on how everything works relatively quickly I now feel I “get” what the game is doing and look forward to trying more. I don’t know if I’ll end up obsessing over it quite as much as I did with Bayonetta when that first came out, but it’s certainly got a lot of the same ingredients — and if you’re a Wii U owner who has enjoyed Platinum’s other work, I’d say you probably can’t go all that far wrong with this.

1438: Mario Time!

Finally picked up Super Mario 3D World today with some of our Christmas money. (Andie spent all hers on Lego; I still have some left, which I’m probably going to spend on board games.)

What do you know? It’s fantastic, and to be honest I feel a bit sorry for anyone playing through the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One’s weak launch lineup in preference to the variety of really great games available for Wii U this Christmas time, with Super Mario 3D World certainly being a candidate for strongest of a strong bunch.

I’ve played through two “worlds” so far, and already it’s shown considerably more invention and creativity than almost any other game I’ve played in recent memory. Nintendo just gets “fun”. The Mario devs know what would be enjoyable and memorable to play, and they implement it in such a way that it manages to be consistently surprising and delightful even as you continue to progress through the levels. Rarely does it become predictable, and rarely does it get so hung up on a single trick that it becomes stale or boring; often, you’ll come across an enemy or trap that shows up maybe once or twice and is then never seen again — a far cry from some other games that repeatedly fling the same generic tricks and traps at you over the course of a lengthy adventure.

The thing I particularly like about Super Mario 3D World and its predecessor Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS is how intuitive it is. You’ll very rarely be given an explicit tutorial or an insultingly simple level to teach you how things work; rather, you’ll immediately be given a new item and it be implemented in such a manner that you can’t help but figure out how it works and what it’s for straight away. Beautiful game design.

Take the very first level: almost right off the bat, you’re given Super Mario 3D World’s new power-up, the cat suit. You’re not explicitly told how the cat suit works — how you can run up the walls, how you can “pounce” while you’re in the air — but the way the first level is designed encourages you to try these things out for yourself. You’ll naturally discover how the mechanics work, and it’s always pleasing and delightful to do so. The first time I found that wearing the cat suit allowed Mario and friends to climb up the flagpole at the end of the level for an easy gold flag put a genuine smile on my face.

The presentation is immaculate, too. A rock-solid 60fps; some well-designed, clear visuals; a minimal but informative interface; and some really, really great music performed on real instruments — Super Mario 3D World is without a doubt one of the most polished Mario games I’ve seen in recent memory, though I understand the Super Mario Galaxy games — which I’m yet to play — probably give it a run for its money, albeit in standard definition.

I’m looking forward to playing more, but I flattened the GamePad battery playing earlier. Perhaps I should invest in one of those new high-capacity batteries!

1081: Reasons to Get a Wii U (or a Friend Who Owns a Wii U): Nintendo Land

Page_1 I had some friends over tonight for some computer and board game action. I lost our game of Agricola as usual (though not by as much as normal — I’ll take that) but what I really wanted to talk about was the game we played earlier in the evening — Nintendo Land.

I had a feeling that Nintendo Land would go down well, but I’m super-impressed by quite how much fun it really is. We were concentrating on the competitive games, based on the Mario, Animal Crossing and Luigi’s Mansion franchises, and all of them provide chaotic fun for up to five players along with an apt demonstration of exactly what the Gamepad controller device brings to the table.

The Luigi’s Mansion game sees the player with the Gamepad taking on the role of a ghost and up to four players with Wii Remotes playing the part of ghost hunters armed only with torches. The ghost’s job is to knock out all the ghost hunters by sneaking up on them and touching them; the ghost hunters’ job is to reduce the ghost’s hit points to zero by shining light on it. The twist is that the ghost is invisible on the TV screen, which the hunter players are referring to, and only the ghost player gets a full overview of where they are in relation to the others on the Gamepad screen. The ghost also occasionally reveals itself when lightning flashes and when it performs a “dash” action, and the hunters’ controllers vibrate when the ghost is nearby. The ghost player has an on-screen marker showing the boundary of where the vibrations will occur, meaning they can play some amusing mind games with the other players if they desire.

The Animal Crossing game, meanwhile, casts the Gamepad player in the role of two guards and the Wii Remote players in the role of animals trying to collect sweets. The animal players have to collect a particular number of sweets before the guards catch them three times, though the more sweets they are carrying, the slower they move. The twist with this one is that the single Gamepad player controls both guards using the dual analogue sticks on the Gamepad, and their viewpoint pans and zooms to keep both guards in view at once, while the players on the TV may only see what is in their immediate vicinity.

Finally, the Mario-themed game casts the Gamepad player in the role of Mario and the Wii Remote players in the role of various-coloured Toads. It’s Mario’s job to stay un-caught until a timer expires, and it’s up to the Toads to capture him as quickly as possible. Like in the Animal Crossing game, the Toads may only see what is in their immediate vicinity, and their controls are deliberately clunky and awkward to make it more challenging for them to catch the more agile Mario. The Mario player, meanwhile, has a screen that shows both an overview of the entire level (including where the two Toads are) and a close-up of their immediate surroundings. For the most part, the Mario player will be using the overview map to try and stay out of trouble, but when the Toads get near the close-up view comes into it own as Mario tries to avoid their tackles.

These three games offer a tiny subset of what Nintendo Land has to offer — there are a selection of more cooperative games on offer as well as a bunch of single-player games for the Gamepad that would still be fun for friends to take it in turns on.

The interesting thing about Nintendo Land is that it’s a slight shift in attitude from Wii Sports, the pack-in game with the previous-generation Wii. Wii Sports was designed to be accessible and intuitive, making use primarily of motion controls that anyone could perform. Nintendo Land, meanwhile, assumes a basic level of “game literacy” — familiarity with a controller being used “traditionally” — but still remains accessible to a wide audience. Consequently, it strikes a good balance between being casual-friendly as well as challenging and fun to veteran gamers.

Next week I’ll hopefully have the opportunity to play both Nintendo Land and the excellent Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed with a full complement of five players, so I’m looking forward to that. The games described above are great fun with three; I can only imagine the chaos with five. I can’t wait.

Think about that. When was the last time you played a game that you couldn’t wait to get your friends over to your house for?

1073: It’s-a Me!

As I said I probably would, I picked up New Super Mario Bros. U or whatever it’s called today. Mario in HD is a pleasing sight, though I’m one of those people who still likes the blocky old pixel-art too, and to whom SD graphics aren’t as offensive as they appear to be to some. But I digress.

It’s somewhat ironic that the most old-school Mario experience you can get today comes from a subseries with “New” as part of its title. Ever since the first New Super Mario Bros. launched on the DS and provided traditional 2D platforming with an up-to-date 3D aesthetic, this particular offshoot of the Mario series has remained firmly and staunchly set in its ways, providing gameplay that is not fundamentally any different from Super Mario World, which, let’s not forget, came out in 1990.

This is not, I hasten to add, a bad thing. Super Mario World is probably my favourite Mario game of all time — at least it was. It remains to be seen whether or not this new Wii U version will be able to uproot it, but I will always have a very fond place in my heart for the SNES classic. It was so perfectly balanced, so completely fair all the way through — even on the ridiculously difficult Special Island levels — and so packed with things to discover that I actually played it through several times, which I don’t normally tend to do with platform games. 96 levels (or, more accurately, exits) was a big deal at the time, too. It’s still pretty massive for a platform game even today.

New Super Mario Bros. U follows the Mario World tradition very closely, with a few bits and pieces from Mario 3 along the way. You have your top down map screen with multiple routes to your eventual destinations (castles housing bosses, naturally); you have a mixture of levels where the challenge comes from evading enemies and levels where your pixel platforming skills are tested to the limit; you have a selection of interesting but natural-feeling puzzles incorporated into the gameplay; and you have gameplay so intuitive that there isn’t a tutorial because there really doesn’t need to be one. (After playing so many Facebook games for work where the tutorial literally doesn’t let you press anything you want to press for anywhere between ten minutes and half an hour, this is a breath of fresh air.)

There are a few intriguing additions, however, some of which may have been present in the previous Wii-based New Super Mario Bros. game which I haven’t really played much of. First up, there’s the baby Yoshis, who can be carried around and fed, but unlike in Mario World, their special abilities can be used even in baby form. The pink one, for example, blows up like a balloon and can be used to reach otherwise inaccessible areas; the yellow one explodes in light, useful for dark caves. I’m not sure (yet) if there’s anything more to them than this, but they add some interesting new game mechanics which, as Mario games always have done in the past, encourage experimentation.

I really haven’t played a Mario game seriously since Super Mario Sunshine, which I didn’t really enjoy all that much, and certainly haven’t finished one since Super Mario 64. I was never quite sure how I felt about Mario’s shift into 3D — although I respected Mario 64 in particular, I always felt like I preferred 2D platformers, and the same is still true today. New Super Mario Bros. U looks set to scratch that itch with tight controls, challenging levels and an interesting-sounding cooperative mode that I’m keen to try out when I get some friends around.

I’m very much enjoying the Wii U so far, if you hadn’t already gathered. It’s a console designed for pure fun. Whereas both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are trying desperately to be that “one box you need under your TV,” Nintendo are once again sneaking past to provide a system that is fun, accessible and entertaining for the whole family. It may not be the most technologically advanced system in the world (though the Gamepad is super-cool — I’m looking forward to seeing some creative uses of that), the games may not be the biggest-budget blockbusters (though the presence of Arkham City, Darksiders II and Call of Duty in the launch lineup suggests that big-name publishers are at least willing to give it a shot for now) and it’s doubtful it will become any “serious” gamer’s primary console, but it does what it does extraordinarily well — and that is to provide “pure” gaming experiences such as those Nintendo has always provided. Hopefully we’ll see some niche publishers taking a few risks like we saw towards the end of the Wii’s lifespan, too — sequels or follow-ups to Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower would be just lovely, thankyouplease.

1067: I Accidentally a Wii U

As the title says, I most certainly did accidentally a Wii U. And no, it’s not dangerous.

Actually, it wasn’t accidental at all; I’d been pondering getting one for a little while, particularly after hearing a number of my friends were having fun with their respective ones, and I saw in Game today that they were doing some quite nice deals. So, after gaining suitable approval from Andie (who is actually quite interested in playing with it too) I appear to find myself with a shiny new black Wii U plus copies of Sonic and whatever Racing Transformed and NintendoLand, which comes with the console.

I can’t comment too much on the system’s capabilities as we don’t have reliable Internet access at our new place as yet — we’re leeching Wi-Fi off our neighbours’ bandwidth at present. (Legally, I might add — service provider BT offers the ability for users to set aside part of their bandwidth for public use, so we’re taking full advantage of the fact that our neighbours have this facility turned on while we wait for our own high-speed line to be installed… which won’t be until January 16. Boo!) However, I can comment a little on the games I have played so far.

Let’s start with Sonic and… ugh, I’m going to have to actually check what the sodding thing’s called, aren’t I? Let’s see… *rummages* Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, commonly shortened to just Sonic Transformed. Right. Yes. Sonic Transformed. It is a kart racing game. As seemingly usually happens, someone else has beaten Nintendo, supposed masters of the kart racing genre, to the kart racing punch on their own system. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s actually rather good.

Sega’s had a few goes at this kart racing lark with previous entries in the Sonic and All-Stars Racing series, and they’ve actually been quite good in my admittedly limited experience — even the iOS version is pretty decent, and it is very easy to fuck up the controls in an iOS racer. (Believe me. I know. I have suffered through a lot of them for the sake of reviewing them.) With Sonic Transformed, though, what they’ve done is channel Diddy Kong Racing, which is something I am very happy about because Diddy Kong Racing was freaking awesome.

For those unfamiliar, Diddy Kong Racing was a kart racer for the Nintendo 64 console, developed by Rare, who were the undisputed masters of development for that platform besides Nintendo. One of many cool things about Diddy Kong Racing was that you weren’t limited to just straight kart racing — you also got to fly planes and race hovercraft over watery courses, too. This gave the game plenty more variety than your average kart racer, and meant that not only did you have to figure out how each character handled, but you also had to get to grips with each of the three vehicles’ idiosyncracies, too.

Sonic Transformed also features karts, hovercrafts and aircraft. Only rather than having races focused around just one of these at a time, a single event in Sonic Transformed will more often than not see you switching back and forth between them at various points, with frequently hilarious results. For example, an After Burner-themed level sees you racing your karts across an aircraft carrier deck as F-14 Tomcats launch either side of you. Drive through the blue gate that signals a transformation, and suddenly you’re flying through the air on the way to the next carrier, surrounded by dogfighting aircraft and other mayhem. Fly through the blue gate on the next carrier and you’re back in your kart again, powersliding around the deck to head back the other way and repeat the whole process.

Sonic Transformed is also fantastic for Sega fanservice. While the characters and settings may not be quite as universally recognised as the old Nintendo favourites seen in the various Mario Kart games, it is absolutely delightful to be reminded of some of Sega’s past masterworks — everything from Jet Set Radio to Panzer Dragoon via Skies of Arcadia, all with wonderful remixes of their iconic music, and all having their own dynamic take on the game’s chaotic, track-shifting racing.

Sonic Transformed is, of course, also available on other platforms and whether or not the Wii U is the “best” platform for it is a matter of debate as I haven’t played it multiplayer yet, though five-player local multiplayer is not to be sniffed at, plus there are a couple of “Party Play” modes that make use of the Gamepad device. When racing in single-player, the Gamepad is used to display a top-down map view — not particularly practical to glance at while racing, but a nice touch nonetheless.

So I’m impressed with Sonic Transformed. How about NintendoLand?

NintendoLand is clearly the Wii Sports/Play equivalent, in that it’s a series of simple little games designed to showcase the system. Unlike Wii Sports and Play, however, the whole experience is fleshed out a little better, with incentives for progress, trophy scores to challenge and achievement-like stickers to collect. The games make good use of the Gamepad’s capabilities, and many of them include nice little touches like displaying your face on screen during play using the Gamepad’s front-facing camera. They’re little more than minigames in most cases, but I can see these being fun at parties, plus the obsessive collector types out there will want to get their hands on as many “prizes” as possible.

In more general terms, I like the feel of the Gamepad a lot — it’s not too heavy, and it’s shaped nicely in the hand, though as with Nintendo’s handhelds having to hold the stylus and use the buttons can sometimes be a little cumbersome. The use of sound is very clever — the Gamepad sound tends to complement what is coming out of your TV/home theatre speakers, giving a really nice “3D” effect as some noises are literally closer to you than others. This is put to interesting effect in NintendoLand, where the “guide” character Monita typically talks to you through the Gamepad, but her voice can also be heard in a muffled, mumbly form through the TV/HT speakers. I anticipate plenty of other games will make intriguing use of this functionality in the future.

So far I’m pretty impressed, then. It seems like a decent system that will only improve over time, and if nothing else it’s likely to continue the Wii’s legacy as the go-to machine for fun, easy to understand local co-op experiences. I’ll be interested to try out the online functionality — particularly MiiVerse — but that will have to wait until we have proper Internet access here!

#oneaday Day 158: Wii3

More E3 gubbins today, with the big news being Nintendo’s announcement of its new console, the Wii U, which features a controller with a big-ass touchscreen in the middle of it. It looks pretty damn impressive, to be fair, but it remains to be seen whether or not it’ll become just another gimmick for people to deride.

That said, I liked the Wii. It was a good console for social gaming. And I’m not talking about bollocksy “Share This With Your Friends!” Facebook titles — I’m talking about getting together with actual real-life three-dimensional people in the same room and playing fun games. Maybe the Wii’s games weren’t the most hardcore — but have you ever played a “hardcore” game with friends who aren’t particularly up on their gaming? It becomes an exercise in frustration, with experienced players either deliberately having to nerf themselves or the less-experienced ones giving up out of sheer frustration. The Wii knew exactly what its market was, and it tapped it perfectly with the minigame collections and the motion control. Hardcore gaming it was not, but the 360 and PS3 covered that more than adequately, so Nintendo had no need to compete.

Now, though, it’s a different story. Microsoft is wooing the former Wii market with all its Kinect shenanigans and running the risk of alienating the core user base, were it not for platform mainstays such as Call of Duty, Gears of War and the like. Microsoft’s E3 press conference left a lot of gamers frustrated that there wasn’t more for “them” on offer, but Microsoft have seen the success Nintendo had with the Wii and want a piece of that pie — and given the Wii’s dated technology, are perfectly entitled to that.

Nintendo, in response, fight back with a new console that purports to offer the best of both worlds — a casual-friendly console that supports all existing Wii hardware and software that is also a hardcore-friendly console that will see hopefully great versions of big-name games like Batman: Arkham City with the additional benefit of both the world’s biggest VMU (Dreamcast-five!) and the ability to carry on playing whenever your significant other and/or housemate bursts into the room desperate to watch Britain’s Got Desperate People Who Really Want To Be On Television Despite Being Shit and Absolute Cunts. It looks awesome, though a lot will depend on the price of the system — and its crazy controller.

Meanwhile, in PC land, we continue to have the most backward-compatible system in the universe with the cheapest games in the universe (excepting that little games exchange on Zargon Prime, they actually do have the cheapest games in the universe) and consoles start to look just a little bit gimmicky. Possibly.

Oh dear. PC snobbery is starting to infest my brain!