Beast's Handheld Review Thread

[beast780]

As per Hubs requests, here are reviews I've done for 3DS games and will continue to do for Vita games.

[beast780]

Okay, so I've played enough of Sonic Generations to give my take on it.

This feels like a Sonic game from the early nineties. Some of my favorite moments came from the Sega Genesis, a system in which I never owned. Luckily, my neighbor had a Genesis with a lot of the systems greatest moments (Some of my favorites included Earthworm Jim and the Sonic games). With gameplay here you've got two Sonics, classic Sonic and modern Sonic, which both have their own skillsets. This game is pretty much a time trial to test how fast you can get through a level. Classic Sonic levels pretty much consist of 2D platforming, while modern Sonic levels are mainly 2D with an isometric camera angle. There are some moments where the camera sneaks behind Sonics back as you're racing through the levels, but they don't happen a lot.

The hub consists of what looks like 9 areas, each area has both a modern and a classic level. It seems modern Sonic has more moves than classic Sonic, like a homing ability, which with the press of the jump button allows you to automatically attack an enemy, and a boost ability. After the first boss fight, which I was able to complete after 10 times using a trial and error type mentality, classic Sonic learned modern Sonic's homing ability.

The platforming is pretty decent, it feels just like one of the aforementioned Genesis era Sonics. It can be frustrating due to the 3DS' small screen and sometimes clunky controls, but there is no time limit to finish an area. Once again, Sonic collects rings on his run through a level, and loses them as he gets attacked by enemies. If Sonic has no rings and is attacked by an enemy, nothings there but the sweet timely release of DEATH!! (No idea why I emphasized that!)

The graphics are hit or miss. The Emerald Coast and Green Hill Zone type levels look great, however the city type levels look clunky and bland. I've been playing with the 3D off, as it's nothing to bother with.

The music is your classic Sonic fair, which is pretty good so why change it.

Verdict/TL;DR

I only paid $27 for it, but even that felt like too much. By all means, buy this game, but wait until its $19.99. I'd give it a 3.5/5 or 7.0.

[beast780]

Here's my review on Mario Kart 7.

First of all, this is a Mario Kart game, and the changes are subtle, but really add to the gameplay. Since I'm pretty sure all of you have played Mario Kart, I'm just going to write about the changes to this version. My favorite change is that among the 16 new courses, at least 3 of them are point to point sprint races. Instead of completing laps, you complete segments of one long course. The only problem is that two of these tracks are the same setting, Wuhu Island, one that goes around the island, and one themed after Pilotwings Resort in which the last segment comprises of the new gliders, which I'll talk about later. They are great tracks though.

Thats my next segment, track design. The new track design in this game feel well thought out. Although the older courses had a few gems, they could have picked some better courses to replace some of them. They have 3 courses based off the original Mario Kart and Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA, and the only one of these I really enjoyed was the SNES version of Rainbow Road, one of my favorite tracks in the whole series. The gliding sequences are one of my favorite new additions. By hitting the blue speed ramp, you proceed to launch in the air and your kart sprouts a glider, which doesn't last forever, but I'd you you use it properly, you can avoid some obstacles. The underwater sequences are really pretty, and add some new features like lesser gravity.

It must be noted that this is a game meant to play with friends in the same room. Playing online is nice, but seeing the look on your friends face after you shell him and pass him to take the win is priceless.

There is a ton of content in this game, including 16 new courses, and 16 older courses. There are 8 characters unlocked at the beginning, and 9 characters that unlock during the course of the game. Your Mii unlocks by completing all of the 8 cups on any difficulty, and the other 8 characters are unlocked by finishing each cup first on 150cc, which sucks. I'll get on a rant about 150cc later. There are a lot of kart options that unlock as you progress in the game. After you pick your character, you select your kart by picking a body style, wheels and a glider, each one has different stats including speed, acceleration, weight, handling etc.

150cc is so frustrating when playing single player, and is best suited for multiplayer. Like previous Mario Karts, making one or two mistakes, which can include the AI completely screwing you over, will cause you to finish fifth or later. It's ok this mode is in here, but locking all the characters behind it really made me mad.

This game is proof, right alongside Super Mario 3D Land, that Nintendo is really starting to understand the 3D capabilities of its console. It's one of the only games I'm capable of playing on full 3D without side effects. It doesn't add as much as SM3DL did, but damn is it nice.

According to a past post I made, I've already told you this is my second favorite game on the console, so here's my verdict.

[edit] I forgot to talk about weapons the main stable in the series.

The weapons are pretty much the same, different weapons vary on your position in the race. You'll get weaker weapons up front such as green shells, banana peels and red shells. In the middle of the pack you'll get triple green/red shells. And at the back you'll get Bullet Bill mode, stars and the dreaded blue shell. I can't tell you enough how much I hate the blue shell, but it's never killed the series. Rubber banding doesn't stop at weapons, I found myself way behind 7th on occasions and coming back and winning races, but it fits these titles. There are a couple new weapons I've seen, my favorite is a jackpot style a la carte style weapon, where landing it includes all of the following; a mushroom, a star, a red shell, a green shell, a banana and some other stuff to use in rapid succession. I've only really seen it being picked up 5th or later and is quite rare. The Tanooki suit and Fire Flower are much more common. The Tanooki tail is a great addition, it allows you to attack using your tail for a short time, you can either deflect shells (sorry, not the blue shell) or melee attack other carts. The Fire Flower allows you to shoot fireballs for a short while, they resemble green shells, where they are shot in a straight line and are very inaccurate from long range. It's a nice addition.

I've also noticed they've finally done away with the trap power up box, which could be really annoying at times.

[/edit]

tl/dr

Buy it when you get a chance. 4.5/5 or 9.0.

[beast780]

Ok, so I think I'm far enough into Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns to give it a review, so here we go again... I'm going to write this in case you haven't played a Harvest Moon game before.

Harvest Moon is a Japanese farming simulator that in recent efforts since the GameCube games have added a little social simulation. The story takes place in fantasy world featuring two towns (Bluebell and Konohana) and a mountainous natural habitat in between. Years before the story started, the mayor of the two towns began feuding over who cooked the best food (yawn). Basically, yes there is a story, you pick the village you want to live in at the start of the game. Each village has its distinct advantages; Bluebell is primarily a livestock oriented village, featuring a bigger barn space on your farm, as well as a livestock shop. Konohana is based around growing plants, thus having larger fields for growing plants. For the record, you can both farm livestock and plants no matter which farm you choose, I chose Konohana. After each season (there are four, consisting of 31 days each), you can choose to switch towns.

Back to the story, your job is to mend relationships between the mayors of both towns so the Harvest goddess will bore out the tunnel connecting the two towns, and you'll want to do this, however boring it may be, because it takes forever to travel to each village via mountain. The story is boring Japanese fare, as has always been with Harvest Moon, featuring boring unimaginative characters. You can get married, and have kids, but I find that it never really added anything.

Basically, as I said earlier, there are 4 seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) featuring 31 days each. Each month is full of festivals, such as the aforementioned cooking festivals, crop festivals, animal festivals and fishing festivals, each featuring a theme. You don't have to attend these, but some of the better power ups are only available by winning these festivals, and the shops are all closed on these days, which when your out of crops and need to buy more, is VERY frustrating.

Each day your character awakens at 6 am, unless he passed out from running out of stamina or staying up too late in the previous day. Thankfully you get your first horse around the second day, making traveling MUCH easier and faster. You have to water/harvest any plants that need tending, then take care of animals and then what you do with the rest of your day is up to you. I'm going to break this up into three sections; crops, animals, and the rest of the day

Planting crops starts off with you buying the seeds at the store in Konohana. Seeds are season specific, adding a little depth and strategy, but not much. You then go back to your farm, equip your sickle (equipping is so much easier in this version, thanks to the right trigger bringing up your tools inventory) and clear out the grass in which you want to sow your seed. Before you do this, you than can bring out your hoe, and create a hill where plants can be seeded. One cool new feature is right after clicking the action button, you can hold back and press the 'a' button quickly again, to create a longer chain of hills, making watering a hell of a lot easier. This was by far the best new addition, making things a lot simpler. After the seed is planted, you water it everyday by using the water can tool until it is harvestable. If you dug a trench, you can water the trench watering every thing in it in one foul swoop, a real time saver. After you harvest your veggies, you can either sell them, or use them in cooking. Some plants will sprout new veggies every so often, but most will require you to buy new seeds and replant them. Fertilizer can be bought, and planted making plants more valuable for selling or cooking.
As livestock goes, you have some choices, you can buy a baby chick, lamb, cow or alpaca in Bluebell that you can then raise to the adult versions that produce items you can sell or use in cooking. Chickens give you eggs, cows can be milked, sheep and alpacas give wool. You have to feed them everyday, but this has been streamlined so you buy the food in Bluebell, and you can store it in your horse cart (Another great new addition making portable storage!) and it will come out of the hopper in your barn and you can just throw it in the food bin. If it is sunny, you can move your animals outside, however if it rains they will get sick, needing very expensive medicine to cure. Luckily, Natsume has added pets that will help you escort livestock inside and outside. I'll get onto pets later. After your first pet of each style grows to an adult, you can either have the lady in the Bluebell store impregnate it, or buy a new adult animal. Impregnating will take the pet away from your farm for two weeks, when it comes back, it brings it's baby with it. The advantage over buying new is it will carry its parents friendship rating with it, the higher the friendship rating, the more valuable the item it produces. You increase friendship by tending to the animals every day, by brushing the four legged critters, or holding the chickens.

You can buy up to five pets to help herd your animals. Each pet also has a friendship rating, the higher the rating, the more animals it can herd. Pets friendship increase by holding them, or feeding them. Unlike livestock, feeding pets have no negative side effects. Pets made a real impact on this one, making tending animals A LOT easier. However, with a lot of animals on screen, the framerate will drop, which does suck.
Now onto the rest of your day.

Early in the game, you make a lot of your money by harvesting items in the mountains. You can fish, catch bugs or collect stone and wood which you can use to expand your farm and open the tunnel. You can also do requests which are found on a board in front of a towns city hall, which is nice early on, but once you start making serious dough later in the game, you'll probably avoid the unmandatory ones. There are requests that allow you to expand your farm, those feel satisfying once you do them, as you can do more stuff afterwards.

This really wraps up what I needed to say about this game. If i think of this, Ill add more to it. So onto the

TL;DR

+ Incredibly Deep
+ When you make a lot of money, it's really satisfying, feels like you earned your money
+ It does add some great new ideas to the series, like trenched plants, and a far superior control scheme to past Harvest Moons
- Unimpressive Story and Characters, as always
- Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive...
- Frame rate stutters

Are you a fan of Harvest Moon? This is undoubtedly my favorite game in the series, I give it a 4.5/5 or 9.0/10

Do you not like Harvest Moon? It is better than most Harvest Moons, but in the end its more Harvest Moon... I give it a 2/5 or 4.0/10

Have you never played it before? It's fun, think Animal Crossing mixed with the Sims... Pick it up if you can find it for $20-$30. I give it a 3.5/5 or 7.5/10

[Comb My Afro]

I know your in the process of doing a big write-up on Pushmo beast, but i thought i would whack a few quick thoughts in on it.

No 3DS owner has an excuse for not buying this game. It's quirky, original and just a joy to play. You get stuck on a level, you curse the game, you finally complete and love the game. Then the same happens on the next level. Yet it still keeps you coming for more and more, i find myself playing saying "just one more level then bed" then playing another 4 levels before i've even realised. Sign of a great game in my eyes.

Game starts easy but gets tricky FAST, i'm hardly in at all and i'm already having to think long and hard about puzzles im on now.

Any 3DS owner without this game, boot your console up, get it the e-shop and get it now. It won't dissapoint. At all.

9/10 with ease.

[beast780]

I know your in the process of doing a big write-up on Pushmo beast, but i thought i would whack a few quick thoughts in on it.

No 3DS owner has an excuse for not buying this game. It's quirky, original and just a joy to play. You get stuck on a level, you curse the game, you finally complete and love the game. Then the same happens on the next level. Yet it still keeps you coming for more and more, i find myself playing saying "just one more level then bed" then playing another 4 levels before i've even realised. Sign of a great game in my eyes.

Game starts easy but gets tricky FAST, i'm hardly in at all and i'm already having to think long and hard about puzzles im on now.

Any 3DS owner without this game, boot your console up, get it the e-shop and get it now. It won't dissapoint. At all.

9/10 with ease.

While there are things that annoy me in Pushmo, it's easily one of the best things Nintendo has done in recent memory.

[beast780]

Ok Duder's, here is my review for Pushmo, the $7 game currently available on the 3DS' eShop. There are plenty of things for me to discuss, both positive and negative.

First, the premise of the game, as I'm sure all of you know, is you have "Tetris" style blocks that make up an image that can be pushed and pulled to create platforms, in which the objective is to reach the top of the level and save "children" who have been trapped inside the top of the level.


A Level from Pushmo, Image Taken from GiantBomb.com

The art style is absolutely fabulous, it feels ripped right out of Animal Crossing, one of my favorite Nintendo properties of all time. The colors are all bright and lively. The character models are hit or miss with me, yes they are different, but maybe a little over the top, however it's not much to complain about, maybe its just me.

There are two types of "Pushmo", just straight up level designs which were made to challenge you, or "murals" which are shaped like real life objects or Nintendo properties. Theres plenty of diversity, and an infinite amount of content with a level designer, and the ability to share levels, I'll get to this later.

There isn't much of a story, and what story there is is really cheesy, you go from "Pushmo" to "Pushmo", solve the puzzle and save the child who is trapped in the design.

But who cares about story, where this game really shines is its gameplay. Any block on the screen can be pushed or pulled up to three times to create platforms to navigate the puzzle. It looks easy, but some of the levels make you stop and try to figure out. I find myself using a lot of trial and error. If you make a boo boo that you can't fix by pushing or pulling, there is a handy reset button at the bottom of the puzzle, which I've had to use more than a handful of times. It's better than having to press the pause button and reset from there, well done!

The early levels/tutorial levels are easy, but the difficulty ramps up. I recommend playing this game all the way through before setting it down for an extended time frame, as you will forget some of the things needed to get you through a level. If you are stuck in a level, the developer has included an option that allows you to move on to the next "Pushmo", I've also used this option in some of the harder puzzles!

I can see this game helping keep your brain in good shape as it does put it through a workout, much like Nintendos Brain Age games, and is good for every age. Each "Pushmo" has a rating from * to ****, with the latter being the harder to complete levels.

The level designer, from what I have seen, works properly. You get a postage stamp style square complete with a grid that you paint to create the level you want to make. I can see people getting real inventive here, however, I'm not that artsy so I'll leave this to those of us more gifted. Before you can post a level, you must complete it, this smartly prevents people from posting "impossible" levels, I feel this is a great implementation made by people smarter than I.

Now the reason I do not like this. When you complete a level, you get a hypertext link to the QR Code to post on the internet, like this one I pulled from the GiantBomb.com Pushmo QR Thread.



tl;dr

Pros

+ The level designer creates literally infinite content
+ It challenges your brain like the best of them
+ Only $7
+ I see Pushmo staying, like inclusion into Super Smash Bros in some form

Cons

- I don't like how involved posting levels using QR Codes is
- It may just be me, but the characters are a little too over the top
- No story, but who the hell cares

I give Pushmo a perfect 5/5 or 10.0/10. Buy it, now!

[hub]

beast, I hate to sound like an old nagging grandma, but if you could make a new thread for each of your reviews, that would be totally awesome.

That way, I could tag each thread with the specific words, and google, etc would pick it up and send it out the the rest of the world.

And tuck in your shirt, young man!

/grandma

[beast780]

Fuck you, my shirt shall remain untucked.

And yeah I'll create a new thread.

[Deckarderin]

Stupid, I hate to sound like a permanent grandmother, but when a new topic for each one of your comments would be really great.

That way I could have scored in every thread of specific words and Google, etc, will collect and send the rest of the world.