“Why Link? I clearly made a stabbing motion! Why did you pull out a bomb, explode yourself, and then jump of a cliff? I hate you!” I have now found that there is little in the world more rage-worthy than a game where you are fighting the controls instead of the boss. A friend hinted that since there is a simple accelerometer in the Wii remote, that small quick movements would get the best results. This lead to every type of flailing I could think of – sometimes you hit a stride and one specific movement got you the death-dealing forward stab you needed to poke the monster’s eye out. Oh but woe on you if thought that motion would still work in the next encounter, instead you got a spinning slice that dealt no damage to the skeleton with four swords to block your attacks. Your reward for thinking a stab motion would get you a stab attack? Paralyzing electricity, yay! The yay is necessary, without it you’ll throw the Wii remote into the TV and owe your friend a new one.

Now, I’m not saying that I expect the game to be easy, or that I blame the game for my failure. I enjoy games that end in my fiery death again and again – that seems to be the main goal of Super Meat Boy, it even displays your incompetence in a collage of your splashy death. I love that game. The reason this is different, is the dissatisfaction that comes with doing the same thing over and over waiting for the results to change. I know that sounds like video games, but it’s not. You do the same thing repeatedly, hoping you will press the right button with better timing. The fault is yours. You didn’t press the block button, so you died. Using the imprecise motion controls is like being punished for singing off-key when you don’t know the song and you’re wearing earplugs. “Press the A button to block” is pretty clear. There isn’t much nuance to button pressing. Timing, yes – technique of pressing, not so much. The rage comes from the feeling that you’ve done everything right, but you still lost because … eh.

Ok, the game itself. I really liked Skyward Sword. I thought the art style was beautiful, though I’m a sucker for colorful games. This seems like a nice compromise between the fancy realism of Twilight Princess and the lighthearted cartoonishness of Windwaker. Good thing they keep changing the art style though, because not much else changes. It’s a small gripe, because I love Zelda games, but I joked with the friend/purchaser of the game about finding three of something, which leads to a big cut-scene, after which you have to get 5 -7 of something. And that’s that happens: you visit the forest, volcano, and desert along with your trusted friends the slingshot, the hookshot/clawshot, bombs, and bow. That’s as specific as I can be to avoid spoilers, and it’s not a big surprise.

However, there are a ton of little things to make the game really enjoyable, and the old standby structure is done really well. The dungeons are interesting and beautiful, and the obstacles are creative. The game seems focused on growth and evolution, since you return to the same areas to explore different sections and watch them change. The desert presents different dangers based on time shifts; the forest expands once you learn to swim – the entire thing floods. Everything is about evolution – Groose and his theme music become more complex during the game, your sword evolves, you have spiritual growth, and Zelda … well she changes too. You’ll see. I was avoiding this version because I thought it wouldn’t hold up to the older  Zelda games, and I was dead wrong. Yes, the controls make me want to fling myself off of Skyloft, but the game is totally worth it.

The idea behind this clever card game is that each round there is a judge, much like in Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, who offers the other players around the table a task.  This task tends to follow a somewhat four-colour premise like “Find Atlantis,”  ”Make a Billion Dollars,” or “Take Over the Moon.”  The other players draw from the deck of Unstable Elements various items like Ninjas, Mud, Rap Music, and Bureaucracy and then have to find some creative way to accomplish this task, jotting their notes down hastily like the sociopathic outline of an essay or a deviant’s grant proposal.  The judge or “TA” then goes through these proposals, chooses which one is best by arbitrary, subjective evaluations which can be influenced by bribery and bad taste and then gives the the victor a point and passes the role of judge to the next player and the cycle continues.

Like Apples to Apples, the game works best when one has a good idea what will tickle the TA’s fancy.  Do they like well thought out, plausible scenarios?  Can they be convinced based on a series of improbable puns?  Do they have a soft spot for cannibalism?  Unlike Apples to Apples, the game requires that one do more than just pick a likely option and toss it out; the job of having to write down a clever response truly ups the learning curve, adding a Balderdash-esque need for clever penmanship and quirky writing skills.

It has its slow points as folks silently pen their devious scenarios, scratch out their failures, and agonize over just what the best usage of  Monkeys might be but this tension is broken nicely as the TA reads aloud the ridiculous suggestions that have made until finally choosing a winner.  I highly recommend this game for folks who don’t mind scribbling and who want to create instant camaraderie around a table.  I brought a group of strangers together who will now all giggle profusely at the mention of Robot Butlers for reasons that are best not gotten into in mixed company.  All in all, a solid game.  I can’t praise it enough.

Notch, the creator of the game, started this simple yet brilliant project small and it has grown to incredible heights. The game spent a long time in Alpha and Beta, garnering a huge number of fans who knew the game was a working project and have had more fun watching it grow. Animals can be bred now, which led to the invention of the cutest baby animal blocks I’ve ever seen. You can brew potions, enchant your weapons, and create computers with red-stone (electrical) wires and circuits. There is even a mirror world to The Nether called The End where you can find an Ender Dragon and win? the game. Because there are literally no rails on this sandbox, you can get a pet wolf and go adventuring – exploring the beautiful (I know, I know, it’s all blocks, but sometimes they’re really prettily arranged ok?) blocky landscapes, build castles and farms, or mine to the bottom of the world and make diamond everything (I only need one more diamond to make an enchanting table!).

The reason I spent so much time playing is because it’s immensely satisfying to see a building go up when you mined, planned, and set every block of it. My only qualm with this game is calling it a game. It really does feel more like a toy. I’m not sure where the dividing line lives, but I’m pretty sure Minecraft built its blocky castle within spitting distance. With all the new updates, the ‘ending’ of the game does try to contextualize the world. It implies that the player is dreaming or stuck in Purgatory, but I’m not sure if this really affects the game/toy since you only get this information in a text block once you finish. It’s like learning that Braid is actually a metaphor for the atomic bomb – it’s really cool and intellectual but doesn’t have much impact on the player.

I absolutely recommend picking up a license for the game. It used to be easy to run well, but the updates have made the strain on your computer significantly heavier – especially if you want the pretty texture packs or like to fill you underwater castle with redstone machines. That bums me out, but in return Notch added Ocelots that you can tame with fish to become house-cats. Now I can have a pet dog and blocky pet kitty, awesome!

In the game, you play one of a set of various characters with different skills and specialties.  Some are skilled at ranged combat and skullduggery while others are walking meat shields who can take a bunch of damage or blast enemies with magic.  Others are good at jumping.  From there, the players take turns running around the board, trying to overcome various challenges which are represented by various tokens on the hex map.  These tokens are colour-coded from Green (easy) to Red (Hope you like dying) so players can decide what kind of challenge they want to go for and don’t wind up staring down the nose of a dragon with nothing but a spoon for a sword and a bucket for a helmet.  This simple system really makes the game a lot of fun as you have to decide when it’s time to risk going after harder challenges.  You could spend the entire game easily mopping up greens but it’s going to take you longer to gain experience and level and the rewards are pretty weak.  There are also various towns on the board which sell magic weapons, spells, potions, and even minions.  This is where playing with others really makes things fun because it becomes a race to go after these various challenges and gear before your so called friends grab them all up.  I’ve only ever played with two or three players but I can imagine it becomes a veritable zoo with five or six folks all scrambling for the limited resources or trying to bash each other over the head to steal their choice loot.

The mechanics are where things get a touch iffy but the reasons for them are sound.  Movement and combat make sense but it’s a bit of a thAC0 situation to sort of work out how.  Instead of rolling dice to determine how many squares you move, you roll dice with different terrain printed on each side which indicates what terrain you can move through.  Sometimes it would be nice to just say, “I move three,” instead of, “I’ve got a river, two roads, and a hill…where can I go again?”  Likewise, combat is divided into various rounds which takes a bit of practice getting used to.

There is a ton of replay value with this game as you try out different characters and face different challenges each time.  Like in any rpg, it’s fun to see your character go from a weak little newb to a walking battle tank with minions and artifacts coming out the wazoo and if it does grow stale, Fantasy Flight is more than willing to provide additional content with its many, Many expansions and add-ons.  A lot of fun.  When playing with friends, I highly recommend having another player read out your challenges to you and then reading their challenges out to them as it makes the game a lot more interactive and provides folks with something to do when it’s not their turn.  Also, it gives you a chance to practice your dramatic GM voice.  Enjoy!

Fable: adorable RPG with the overused motivation of “my family was killed and I will live at this academy until I can avenge them”. It had a cliché but fun-to-play story. The controls were a little loose, and the map was both mazy and small (I’ll explain this oxymoron in a moment) but the combat was fun and variable. I said maze-like and small at the same time because there were forest parts 1-10 between goals that all looked identical, and if you chose the wrong ‘door’ you had to trace back through the winding paths to try a different exit – because traipsing through the woods was simply impossible while traipsing through the woods. Sigh. However, you’d end up doing this intentionally when you realized you needed to grind for experience orbs.

On the good side: this was the first game I ever played (yes, I joined the game-playing community late, deal with it) with a dominating alignment system. I mean dominating in that it was the deciding factor in my play-style. It was fun, but a continual weak point of the Fable series for me. It means that your morality had better line up with Lionhead’s, and of course there is only absolute good and absolute evil. Fable III was particularly bad about this, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s move on…

To Fable II. You get a puppy! That was my favorite addition to the series. The big down-side for me was the animation style. They went for better graphics but landed in that desert of not-quite-realistic and not-quite-pretty-enough to be intentionally cartoonish. The morality system intact, I decided to be as evil as my scrunchy black heart could muster. Unfortunately the standards I set for myself were tested in the tower of terrible (Tattered Spire) and I ended up close to sainthood after leaving. So I gathered my puppy and went to fight the Big Bad. I loved this game. Aside from the minor irritants of morality and aesthetic appeal it was addictive and fun.

But then Fable III happened. I started as a princess! And you get a fun scene where you choose whether the cute boy is your best friend or your boyfriend. Of course, I went for the smoochies. It was the first Fable game where you had a romantic relationship with someone who had a personality. I resolved to center my character around this, and it paid off big time. This game really got it right. It embraces its rails instead of pretending they aren’t there and leading you into disappointment. It makes a distinction between ‘goodness’ and popularity, and it’s difficult to remain a popular ruler.

Most importantly, this game has the coolest menu system I have ever seen. You never leave the game. When you press the menu button, you are transported to a home base where you can go look at your trophies on the wall, run up and down your big pile of money, try on clothes off the rack, and pick your weapon off the display. There has never been a more satisfying feeling than walking over and picking up the sword you want to use, or dyeing your hair funny colors just to see what your butler will say.

Bottom Line: Fable III wins on the grounds of giving the player a cool butler to compliment them on their clothing choices and letting them marry their childhood sweetheart. But I really did enjoy them all.

P.S. The series has FANTASTIC voice actors.

This game suffers from my biggest pet peeve: bugs. Anything from quests, items getting stuck in your inventory, NPC’s refusing to move until you Fus Roh Dah them into a door, to the walls of your cave turning pink. The first month of playing this game was a fun grab bag of things going wrong. We had dragons that refused to land, flying around taunting you but never becoming an active enemy, invisible draugr that were merely wire frames with no texture, and last and certainly worst, a permanently summoned dremora that caused every character in the game to unceasingly berate you for using dangerous magic. The last caused the unfortunate mage to be abandoned. Starting a new character is not as much of a problem in Skyrim however, since the game allows enough customization in your play style to create a new experience. Yes you will be endlessly sent to wind though dimly lit passages to collect important artifact X, Y, and Q, but you can do so in many different ways. A lot of the dungeon crawling aspect comes from the radiant quests. This means that a quests can come from different people or that they can send to different places – awesome. That raises the replay value on the game since things will never be exactly the same, however, the radiant quests are so generic that even if a different member of the Companion’s guild sends you to kill a bandit leader, the conversation/cave is so bland that you’ll never notice the difference. For me, it boils down to a really cool idea that doesn’t actually add much to the play experience.

My favorite thing about this game is its leveling system. It is the closest I’ve seen in a game to truly organic growth. You gain skills points in 19 different areas – ranging in everything from archery to alchemy to speech. You level up, and pick perks to give you an edge in whatever specialty you’ve been using. Unlike Fable or other RPGs of that ilk, there are not categories of experience (melee, range, and magic) but different points for every single skill. You can’t get perks in Alchemy until you’ve gained experience by doing Alchemy. Therefore, you aren’t limited by class or stuck with a specialty, if you want to try two handed weapons after leveling up your archery – brilliant, do both. I chose Archery, Conjuration and Smithing to specialize in. I like experimenting though, so I dabble now and then with Restoration magic, Destruction Magic, and Enchanting. This aspect is what makes replaying those bland caves so fun, you can get a totally different experience by having a different combination of skills. Some things are easier for a sneaky thief than a mage, or vice-versa – that game doesn’t go out of its way to be equal, but as long as you focus in some sort of damage dealing skill you’ll be just fine. Also, there are not enough perks to specialize in everything. This is not one of those games where you end up master of all the elements, and swords, and ranged, plus you’re invisible. You have to choose. At the same time that I love being God of my small goblin-filled world, not having your cake and eating too actually makes you strategize.

I can’t ignore the contribution of the sandbox play style to the high replay value. Once you escape from dragon-infested Helgen, you can go off and do anything you please. You can go pick flowers for days and then join the Bard’s college. It doesn’t matter. There are six major quest lines, twelve daedric quests, and more minor quest than I can count, as well as the semi-random radient quest system that will never stop finding caves for you to obliterate. You can lead the Companions, the Mage’s College, The Dark Brotherhood, and the Thieve’s Guild, along with fight in the Civil War and the figure out that whole dragon problem. Being Dragonborn is your main quest line, but you’d never know it. It is not much longer that the other quest lines and there is never any incentive to complete those quests.

The bottom line is Skyrim is addictive and fun – controls are tight, play is immersive, and it’s just fun. Also, I have to say Bethesda has been working on multiple patches to fix bugs, many of the worst have been addressed and some of the texture problems have been fixed. Improvement is great, but a little backwards to me that a multi-million dollar company is dealing with massive game-breaking bugs in a game we paid sixty dollars to play. But I digress, that is an entirely different rant, and maybe a different article altogether.

P.S. It’s gorgeous!

Ahem, let me try that again.  Growing up eleven years younger than your next closest sibling means that as you poke around in old boxes and closets, chances are you’ll come across some strange treasures.  When your brothers are hard core gamer dorks from the ’80s, those chances explode.  One such discovery for a young, grubby-handed Leeman was a pile of dog-eared books for the Paranoia RPG game.  That’s a conversation for another day but suffice it to say, it led me to eventually snatch up the card game tie-in, Paranoia Mandatory Bonus Fun!  Card Game by Mongoose Publishing.

The card game is designed to offer a fast-paced, no prep, stripped down version of the experience one gets while playing the RPG.  Players represent the Red-coloured troubleshooters in a dystopian future where all aspects of life are controlled by the Computer.  The Computer serves as mother, father, and disintegrator all in one.  Where his robotic minions or laser cannons can’t go or might risk unnecessary physical danger or warranty expiration, he sends in his troubleshooters.  Luckily, like batteries, the troubleshooters all come in a six pack with a back up clone ready to replace his atomized predecessor at a moment’s notice.

Each of the players is striving to rise up the ranks of the internecine Paranoia hierarchy from lowly Red to Orange to Yellow and so on up until they become a coveted Ultraviolet.  The chances of them getting that far are highly unlikely however as the missions they are sent on tend to have a high attrition rate and worse, tend to reveal their treasonous predilections.  You know you’ve got a good game on your hands when you have both hit points and treason points and one of the game rounds calls for summary executions.  Much like Munchkin, the game nominally has the players on the same team but if one player does too well, it behooves the rest to tackle him to the ground.  This creates a nice level of tension where each players wants to do well but not Too well lest they be blasted into a greasy smear.  By the end of the game, whoever has the highest rank on the colour spectrum is the winner.  In our case, our winner was also completely dead and out of clones so it was something of a pyrrhic victory.  As we described it, he had a really nice plaque set up in the cafeteria.

The game moves at a decent clip and requires a healthy ego and sense of humour to not get to upset when people start teaming up against you.  Betrayal is necessary and encouraged and the game does a good job of keeping everything just ridiculous enough that no-one should start crossing their arms and making a harrumph face.  Still, I encourage folks to gauge their group of gamers before jumping in.  Munchkin is a good test; if no-one in your group gets upset during a game (something I rarely see) then this should be a good one as well.

Right at the top of the game, after the players decide if they want to be smoldering Edward James Olmos, greasy but lovable James Callis, or pre-Botoxed Mary Mcdonnell, they are then dealt a card from the Loyalty Deck which determines if they’re a Cylon or a human.  At this stage, depending on the number of players, there are anywhere from zero to three Cylons who only win if the humans don’t.  That’s right, players don’t even know for sure if there is a traitor in their midst.  If this wasn’t bad enough, halfway on their way to salvation, the Loyalty deck comes back into play in a Sleeper Phase and players dip again into the well of treachery.  What this means is that if there wasn’t a Cylon before, there definitely is now.  Also, at this stage, there’s a chance that a human or Cylon can be a sympathizer which means that they switch teams but no-one knows which team for sure.  Beautiful paranoia!

In the game I just enjoyed, we all spent the first half of the game as humans, unsure if we could trust each other and trying to take care of the mindless bad guys which the game manages to procedurally run through some fairly well thought out mechanisms.  We took some damage, lost some ships, and generally blundered our way from jump to jump.  There was a moment of pure,genuine relief when we made that first jump and the fleet of Cylons about to pound us into dust just got swept off the board and we were able to catch our breath and put out our fires.  That relief lasted until we came to the Sleeper Phase.  At this point, I (a lovely President Roslyn) drew the You Are a Cylon card and my neighbour to the right (Admiral Adama) revealed himself to be the Sympathizer.  This made things very interesting as all four players went from having a vague sense of unease to only two maintaining that sentiment, one knowing he was a bad guy but unsure where his colleague in crime was, and I sitting pretty, knowing exactly who to trust and who not to.  Not a good place for the humans to be.  After a little light sabotage, our Chief Engineer being sent to jail by the doppelganger president, and another Cylon fleet springing into action, the hammer finally dropped and the human fleet ran out of food and starved to death on any icy moon while Cylon Roslin and her Admiral paramour laughed wickedly into the night.

All in all, it’s a lot of fun but the capacity for hurt feelings and bad blood is high, not Munchkin or Diplomacy levels but still, a good sense of humour and some decent self-esteem are an absolute must.  There is a certain, uneven feeling to the game and I wonder if it’s even possible for the humans to win but I still recommend it for folks who loved the show or are just interested in a very different way of playing and want to inject a little unease and nail biting suspense into your game.  Be sure to keep the rule book handy though, this is Fantasy Flight and while it isn’t Avalon Hill, they still like their rules nice and crunchy.

As a side note, you get bonus points if, like my friend, you play Baltar with an invisible Six whispering in your ear all game.  So say we all.

You see, it all began years ago, back when I lived in Nigeria.  On a brief visit to the States, my parents decided that even though I couldn’t have an NES, I could have a Nintendo game.  I remember walking up and down the aisles at Toys R Us without a clue in my head what would be a good game and what I settled on was Ninja Gaiden 2 and Maniac Mansion.  Zoom a few years later when my folks moved back to the States permanently and we got our first Apple product, the long-defunct MacTV.  One of the first CD-roms we got for it (and had to place in a plastic caddy before inserting it into the machine, Holla 1993!) was a 4 pack of Lucasarts games, the most memorable and important one being The Secret of Monkey Island.  Finally, fast forward twenty years and many games later and we find creator Tim Schafer in a bind.  Everyone has been clamouring for a new adventure game like the ones of yore but no studio will fund/distribute/care because it’s an adventure game and what is this, 1997?  Clever man that he is, Tim turned to the power of Kickstarter to get the $400k he wants to make the game and document it in a hilarious behind-the-scenes scheme he’s devised.  Within 8 hours, they had the $400k pledged and only a few hours later, I got to sit and watch as it clocked over past the million dollar marker.  As I type, they’re at 1.5, no 1.6, nope sorry, 1.7 million and counting.

What does this say about the future prospects of gaming?  Is this just a fluke?  Are people like me essentially paying these fellas a tip for how much we loved Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Full Throttle?  A friend pointed out that this was the ultimate DRM in that people have paid for the product before it even exists.  Even if this is simply one genius cashing in on nostalgia, I’m fascinated to see not only what happens with this game but future games and if this model is sustainable, because the possibilities are breath-taking.

Use Leeman with Excitement and let’s hope the little pixelated man on our screen doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say, “I can’t use these things together”.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

The game is a cooperative endeavour where each player assumes the role of a resident of Arkham with just enough pluck, skill, or bad fortune to take on a host of otherworldly baddies. Being co-operative, the big challenge of this game is keeping all the moving pieces spinning so you don’t wind up cheating the invisible antagonist at the table. Luckily, the system is robust enough to handle the occasional fumble. In our case, any errors we made were instantly fixable and had no long-term ramifications which might have made the game less fun.

And the game is fun. Be it as a shotgun-wielding author, spell-slinging asylum-bound physician, or motorcycle-riding magician waving a copy of the Necronomicon at shambling horrors, we each had a chance to step into the foetid, tenebrous world inspired by and, indeed, peppered with HP Lovecraft’s writings. Even when the tone is stepped on by an odd confluence of game mechanics and lurid description, the cognitive dissonance only adds to the overall feeling of oblique humour.

Every turn, players go around the city of Arkham or plunge head-first into the portals that keep springing up faster than Wack-A-Moles. Either way, they encounter horrors, uncover clues, or engage in some light shopping. At the beginning of the game, the heroes only have to contend with a few monsters and things are only a little weird, but if they leave the portals open for too long, the city risks becoming overwhelmed and the peril mounts at an astonishingly fast rate. Wait too long and the Ancient Horrors awake and the heroes must engage in an epic final battle and vanquish or find themselves the eschatological equivalent of an hors d’oeuvre platter. The game comes with a lot of options not only for character types but also for the final monster so there’s a lot of variety in the game play and should that not satisfy you, Fantasy Flight has kindly offered several expansions, all available for purchase.

Given the number of moving pieces, it does behoove the players to keep a rulebook handy and brace oneself for moments of frantic thumbing to find the right solution to a given, unforeseen scenario. I especially find some of the movement and combat rules a touch confounding at times in how they intersect. All in all, though, the game manages to combine the fun, meandering, and leveling-up qualities of a Talisman or a Runebound with the panicky sense of impending doom of a Battlestar Galactica or Pandemic. It gets really nerve-wracking as time starts to run out on the very literal Doom Track and Azathoth or mighty C’thulhu stirs. In our case, we managed to lull the Ancient Horror back to its slumber which was a good thing as its final boss attack was “Eats the World.”

$5 per person buys you unlimited game time. And they’ve got everything- from Risk to Dream Phone, Survivor Trivia to Sorry. The walls-lining game shelves are beautifully overwhelming so should you choose not to waste your precious time starring at their brilliance, the staff will come by your table to find the one you were looking for or suggest something new. For someone who pretty exclusively plays Taboo and Monopoly, this is a major selling point. Not only do I not know how to play most games (and despise reading instructions), I’ve never even heard of most of them. Who knew there was something called Pandemic wherein the players all work together to eradicate disease from the globe? I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a board game where the players worked together; I thought game night was a time for the hyper-competitive to prove their dominance and destroy all their friendships. Nope, Pandemic exists, and it’s pretty much the greatest game ever. But it was also the first one that cool guy in the hat introduced me to, so I’m biased.  (For the record- about 90% of the Snakes & Lattes staff could be described as “that cool guy in the hat”, depending on your definition of “cool”, but we’re going with mine, so it applies).

The multi-room café is always packed but the staff sticks close by anyway, explaining games in detail, taking new orders on their schmantzy ipad system and supervising your first few rounds on a new game. And if you happen to hate the one they suggested? Just pick a new one. My friends and I made the rounds to 3 other games before ordering up another shot at Pandemic (which we’ve yet to beat, by the way, we keep getting too cocky then freakin’ Manila starts a new outbreak).

Toronto also has a serious café hours problem. I can’t seem to find a decent one open past Starbucks closing, but these guys are still going even after most bars have closed (2am most days; 4am Friday-Saturday) and are open at 11am 7 days a week. Oh, and they serve sandwiches and baked goods too- so you don’t starve while you save the world or battle ghosts or discover which boy has a secret crush on you (told you they had Dream Phone- 12 year old me was thrilled).

Snakes & Lattes, 600 Bloor St W. Go ahead, you’ve got some time, go stop a worldwide Pandemic- and order a raspberry cheesecake milkshake while you’re at it- that cool guy in the hat will be happy to help.

Abobo’s Big Adventure is a flash game made by taking the different scenarios of a varied assortment of NES games and cramming them together into a box with a club. It sounds like a bad thing but I assure you it isn’t. I was unsure how I’d feel about this raunchy and inappropriately hilarious homage to the NES era, but after playing through the Double Dragon goomba stomping and nostalgic and slightly inappropriate Zelda dungeon, I was hooked on its charming simplicity. The controls mimic the classic game setup, with buttons to move and to attack, without any complicated and extensive button combinations. I don’t usually play games on my computer, but the setup was still intuitive. Villains and scenes from Mario, Megaman, and Zelda all come together to make an addicting crossover nothing short of hilarious, all with a new twist. The game still seems to retain the harsh difficulty from the NES era. Since there wasn’t necessarily an option for multiple endings, games had to be harder in order to prolong their gaming life. If a game was easy enough that it could be beaten in an hour, people may question their desire to play the game more and get better at it. Abobo provides a good challenge in multiple mediums; with Mega Man 2, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Contra, Balloon Fight, Double Dragon, Kung Fu, and Pro Wrestling being the driving forces behind the gameplay engines for Abobo.

The game is free, fun, and mind numbingly addicting, with my only gripe being the need to redo the entire Zelda dungeon if I die while exploring. Other than that, it’s a perfect way to kill time on the computer.  Give it a try at http://abobosbigadventure.com/fullgame.php, you won’t regret it. 

In Jetpack Joyride, you are a mischievous scamp who steals a jetpack and carries out a ride of carnage through a laser- and rocket-infested lab, collecting coins and ruining the hard work of several panicky scientists. The game is a simple side scroller that zooms past you at accelerating speeds while you tap the screen or let go in order to increase or decrease altitude. The mechanics are simple but as you collect power ups that transform your jetpack, they get increasingly complicated and put your physics-sense to the test. Various missions and challenges vary up the otherwise simple game.

The animations are clean and dynamic and gameplay is very easy to grasp. The real trick is figuring out whether to use your left or right thumb. Using the right obscures approaching dangers but using the left risks hiding your little man and trust me, you don’t want to do that. The coins you collect act as a kind of currency which you can use between games to purchase upgrades but more importantly, Hats! If the prospect of a top-hat wearing little man in a lab coat causing havoc in a smoke-spouting steampunk jetpack doesn’t have you jumping, I don’t know what will. It’s a perfect example of the kind of game someone like my wife who normally can’t handle five minutes of videogaming can spend hours in rapt attention poking.

Addictive and cute and there’s even a dragon. I’m for it.

So how do we view the Nintendo Ambassador program? Is it merely a bone Nintendo has thrown us to make up for the fact that they dropped the price on the 3DS significantly so shortly after its release? Or is it a genuine bonus for those who took the risk and purchased the system when it first came out? Essentially, it comes down to the quality of the games. If the games are good enough to mask the loss of money incurred by the player, then they can overlook the cost. If the games are sub-par, then only bitter feelings will follow.

The ambassador program has had two phases so far. The first phase released the following games for download from the NES: Yoshi, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link, Balloon Fight, Wrecking Crew, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr. Ice Climber, NES Open Tournament Golf, and Metroid. These classic games were loved at the time of their release, and are still loved today, but that does not mean that the games themselves have aged well. Harsh difficulty and the lack of many modern gaming amenities such as basic in-game hints as to where to go next may leave many modern gamers frustrated. Metroid doesn’t lead you by the hand from point to point, rather it’s up to the player to find his own way. The same happens with the Zelda games. As such, modern gamers may have a difficult time getting past these outdated modes of gaming. The other games are also very repetitive, and lack any sort of plot and depth. This isn’t a failing on the games side, but rather a difference in taste as well as technological capability that has lead to this modern reception. The graphics are simple and unappealing compared to modern games. Regardless of these faults, older gamers enjoy them for their nostalgia value, so they will always have some sort of inherent worth. After this first wave, it didn’t really feel as if I had gotten my money’s worth in games.

The second wave managed to shore up some of these shortcomings. Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$, Metroid Fusion, Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Wario Land 4, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, and F-Zero Maximum Velocity. These games have stood up much better to the passage of time. They all remain very playable, even whilst on the go. Plots have much improved, with Fire Emblem, Metroid Fusion, and The Minish Cap all deliver wonderful stories and gameplay in small portable packages. Each game offers something for different gamers. There’s the racing sim, the Mario platformer, the Metroid dungeon crawler, the strategy Fire Emblem, and the game for those with a short attention span, WarioWare. This kind of variety was nice to see after the first wave, when I thought that all we would get out of the Ambassador was a lot of repackaged oldies that can’t really cut it in today’s market. Now I have an all around assortment of games to take with me while I travel. Which brings me to my primary qualm with this second wave. All the downloads are for GBA games, but when you try to close the cover and enter into sleep mode, the game still chugs along. It doesn’t pause the action for you, all it does is switch the screen off. For a mobile device, where you might have to close the cover and move quickly, it seems very inconvenient. However, Nintendo has still managed to make the Ambassador plan take the sting out of paying the extra money for a 3DS at launch.

So in short, Nintendo has done well in making older games available to the public, even if some of those games have not withstood the test of time. The ambassador program was off to a slow start, but it has made up for its poor beginning with its recent releases. The trend of rereleasing old games on new platforms shows no signs of slowing, but for as much as we complain about the lack of originality of games, it is always nice to walk down memory lane and relive the games of our childhoods.