Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) - Review

Stick it where it don't shine.
Rage-filled spoilers!

I love the Mario & Luigi games. They've got great characters, fun stories, interesting gameplay and exciting worlds. Don't worry, you're not in the wrong review. I'm just listing things that Paper Mario: Sticker Star could've had, but doesn't. Paper Mario: Sticker Star, or PMSS as I am fittingly going to abbreviate it, because it made me rage like I had PMS, has flat characters, a boring story, nerdrage inducing gameplay and tedious worlds instead.

After 20 hours and almost at the end of the game I just slammed my 3DS shut and decided enough was enough. The game had made me angry for the last time, and I wasn't going to deal with any of its bullcrap any longer. Those 20 hours had been filled with me going "what the heck am I supposed to do here?!" and then "how on earth was I supposed to figure that out?!" after googling the answer. I am daft with game logic at the best of times, and often find I want to kick myself in the backside when I can't figure something out. Not so with PMSS which I thought was genuinely unfair. I'll give you some (un)funny examples in a moment, but first let me explain to you how I ended up playing this game.

Again, I've got to mention the Mario & Luigi games. The RPG-series in which you play Mario & Luigi through some of the weirdest places have been a truly entertaining one for me through all the games I have played so far (which are Superstar Saga, Partners in Time and Dream Team Bros.). It made me think that maybe the Paper Mario series would be worth checking out, and the easiest for me to obtain without selling a kidney was PMSS (since I don't own a Wii or WiiU).

I was immediately disappointed when it turned out Paper Mario isn't an RPG at all, which I had for some reason gotten into my head. I wasn't going to let that stop me though, since I play loads of games that aren't RPGs but it definitely made me wonder if I had any clue as to what Paper Mario was at all, or if I had been thinking of some other game all along. This review might also make you think I am an easily angered person, but I am really not. I am usually serenity incarnate, but this game made me tap into

The schtick about PMSS is that not only is Mario and everything around him made of paper (which I find is a fun and interesting aesthetical idea) but everything you do also revolves around stickers. Combat, which is similar to that in the Mario & Luigi games in which you're required to time your attacks and blocks to increase damage done and reduce damage taken, is done entirely by using stickers you find around the world and buy from the store. These stickers can pretty much be anything. From your down to earth stomp and hammer pound, to more esoterical items like Fans, Vacuums and Scissors. And this is where some of my biggest issues with PMSS rears its ugly head.

I don't even want to get into the story, because it is completely pointless. In essence however, you set out to rescue some royal stickers because of reasons. You get a side-kick sticker named Kersti who quickly tells you about something called "paperization". Paperization basically allows you to manipulate the world in different places with the help of stickers. It sounds pretty cool on paper (no pun intended) but doesn't always work so well in action. Sometimes these paperizations are necessary to advance the game and almost always it's extremely unclear which sticker it is you need to use. If you use the wrong one, it disappears and you have to go back to wherever it was you found it and pick it up again (something I didn't even know was possible until about a third into the game).

Let me explain the scenario here. You get to someplace in the game and you don't know how to advance. The first and easiest thing to figure out is that you probably need to paperize somewhere. Finding the right place is also rarely an issue. But you're only presented with an empty box and no inkling as to what sticker should go in there. This is especially infuriating during boss fights, because some are unbeatable unless you figure out which sticker needs to be used.

Here's an example; you fight a big cheep cheep about half way through the game. Almost immediately the fish jumps far out into the water, out of reach of your attacks. Not only might you have lined up some of your best stickers to hit him, which will now fizzle and be wasted, you also can not hit him and will die unless you figure out a way to get him back to you. The solution is a fish hook sticker. That sounds completely logical right? Sure enough, but only if you've already found the fish hook sticker, which is hidden in a completely different level. If you, like me, stand there without that sticker you have to just realize that "hey, I should probably have a fish hook here", then go to every stage and try to find the secret place where a fish hook, that you don't even know for sure is in the game or the solution to your boss fight, might be. This obtuseness just goes on.

In a later stage you need to find a sticker piece hidden underneath a pile of garbage. The solution is to have a goat sticker eat all the garbage. There is a chomp-chomp boss you can only defeat by removing the peg he's chained to before you enter the fight so that he jumps off instead of fights you. There are doorways that you genuinely can't frickin see because they're hidden behind objects. Not doorways to secret areas, just regular doorways you need to go further into the stage! (While that has nothing to do with paperization, it is very annoying).

The straw that finally broke my back was when I was fighting another chomp chomp, which to beat I had to enter a fight with to put to sleep with a certain sticker, then run from the fight so I could hit the peg, then re-enter the fight and have him run off. Trying to hit the peg I accidentally re-entered the fight by hitting the chomp chomp instead and since I for some reason couldn't run from the fight again I was screwed. I would have to restart the level to retry. I just looked at the screen and thought "No. I'm not doing this. This game is legitimately making me angry, and that is so not worth my valuable game-time".

Bosses are also often so much more difficult than everything else in the game that if you don't figure out their weakness you'll basically run out of all your stickers trying to kill them. I've always had a pet peeve with this kind of discrepancy between regular mobs and bosses if it doesn't feel natural or well-designed (the Persona games is an example of where this makes sense). But fighting a boss and find that the same attack suddenly does a tenth or even twentieth of the damage with no explanation, it just feels unnatural and unfair. It feels like they are trying to force me to use my special stickers, rather than making it optional to ease the fight.

In all of that it doesn't help that, as mentioned, the story is completely meh (which it often is in Mario-games, but countered with great gameplay). It doesn't help that none of the characters are interesting, or even make me remotely chuckle, like in the Mario & Luigi games. It doesn't help that the stages have jumping sections that almost made me want to crush my 3DS in my hands out of anger. But on the other hand I find it really doubtful that even if those elements had worked, it would've been enough to remove the extreme frustration I felt with the gameplay. It's also made me seriously wonder if I should play Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam...

I do have to give credit where credits due though and say that the OST is well worth a listen as there are some really great tunes in this game. It is actually a bit of a comfort knowing that I haven't just wasted 20 hours on this game but at least walk away with some nice songs for my playlist (songs I could've admittedly found anyway and with a lot less rage, but still).

In the end PMSS felt like I was playing a really cruel point & click adventure game - requiring me to picture solutions I didn't know for sure were even in the game, then set out to find this mirage. And just too much trial and error, putting me in situations where I realized I was screwed only because I had no idea what was coming. Imagine King's Quest but with none of the heart or fun.

Odds and Ends - On Wolf Hall, Castlevania and Suikoden

Just a couple of bits and pieces for this post;

I just finished Hilary Mantels "Wolf Hall" today and must say I am quite underwhelmed. It has been hauled as a masterpiece by... people. I'm not really sure who says so, but she did receive the Booker Award for it so clearly there is someone who likes it. For some reason I came across the TV-series first and then found out it was based on a book. As I quite like historically based fiction I decided to watch it and absolutely loved it. Mark Rylance, whom I had never heard of nor seen before, was great in it and I immediately started watching a load of other movies he's been in. I also decided I wanted to read the books the series was based on to see if it had more to offer, as is often the case when books become series or movies. Unfortunately that is not so here. If you have any interest in the era or historical stories overall, I definitely recommend the TV-series over the books as it is more comprehensible and as such a lot more enjoyable. Mantel simply employs a writing style which might be commended for it unconventionality, but it often left me confused as to what was going on and who was doing what. Apparently this is something other people have found a problem as well, so it wasn't just me being slow-witted (this time).

Overall the story is a good one though, based in facts but Mantel has of course taken some liberties with the characters and she's done a fairly good job there. The little quirks she's given these historical figures may be somewhat founded in actual sources, but either way they feel believable and justifiable in the context. Apparently she aimed to set the reader directly into the event of things, to make you feel like you're there. I do feel like she has succeeded in this but some of the comprehensibility has been lost instead. She's removed too much exposition, and I'm usually the last person to want more exposition. Commendable effort but still, watch the series rather than suffer through the book is my recommendation.

I also just finished Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and that on the other hand was just as good as I've been told it to be. It had a few very minor issues, so small they barely even deserve to be called issues to be honest. For instance the way to use items is a bit round-about and I missed the slide move that is in some later Castlevania instalments. But overall it's the masterpiece it's being hailed as, especially considering it was pretty ground-breaking when it was released. There isn't much to dislike actually, except maybe the dialogue in general and the voice acting in particular. The artstyle is great, the music is absolutely phenomenal and the gameplay is great fun. If you haven't played it for whatever reason you really should. It's just too bad it's so expensive to get hold of nowadays.

One of the VGM podcasts I listen to mentioned Suikoden 1 & 2 and I realized I've only ever played Suikoden 5 which I've tried to get into several times without succeeding. I can't even put my finger on what it is that makes me lose interest only a few hours into the game, but it has a slow start (although not as torturously slow as Star Ocean 3), boring characters, story, gameplay... well yeah it doesn't really have much going for it. I've only gotten 1,5 hour into Suikoden at the moment but so far so good. I already like the characters better, the story seems pretty standard so far and the gameplay is promising. I definitely prefer the Playstation sprite work over the ps2 polygons, there is just something about the ps2 era RPG polygon artwork that really turns me off playing those games. Star Ocean 3 as already mentioned is another game where the aesthetics really don't appeal to me, Breath of Fire Dragon Quarters had this issue too somewhat. Final Fantasy X just barely gets away with it, but it has so many other issues... well I digress.

I intend to check out at least Suikoden 1 & 2, and if they are fun I'll see if I'll move furher down the list until I hit 5 at which point I might give it another chance. Who knows, maybe having played the other games will make the fifth one more enjoyable?

I've also hit a metaphorical brick wall in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. I've come across a boss event that is silly difficult, especially compared to the challenge so far, and I was certain it was the final event. I thought it would make the game a bit short so I decided to see if I was right. I was not, of course. Turns out this event is just barely half way. There is still loads of game left to play and I want to get there! But ramming my head against this boss, which has to be killed in a very specific way, is wearing a lot on my patience. What'll happen though is that I'll stop playing it for a while, get back to it, one-shot the boss and wonder what I made such a fuss about. I've also got SMT: Devil Survivor 2 and SMT: Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2 to play after that but that feels like far off in the distance now.

Crimson Shroud and Convoluted Gameplay

Oh Crimson Shroud. Who knew such a tiny little game hidden as a downloadable on the 3DS could turn out to be such a tease? I bought it back in February 2014, simply because I had some cash over in my 3DS funds, it was cheap and seemed reasonably fun. It's taken me two years and five hours of gametime just to get through the second area of the game. Yet it says a lot of the gameplay that after all that time I still had the want to give it just one more try.

There have been more games than I dare to count throughout the years where I've gotten stuck somewhere and given up. Sometimes I give up forever, which usually isn't a decision I take straight away, but after having stared at the game icon on my desktop often enough without having any interest in playing it, it normally gets the boot. Equally often I do decide to give it another go, only to find that whatever had me stuck wasn't much of a problem at all and I go on my merry way.

The artstyle isn't the only thing that feels like Final Fantasy.

There are so many different ways you can get stuck in a game - a boss or area is too difficult, or you simply don't know what to do or where to go next. If it's simply a matter of not being able to figuring something out I might resort to a walkthrough or playthrough to push me along. If it's a tough area I often give it a set amount of tries or some grinding to try and get through. If that turns out not to be enough the game has to be very fun or compelling to have me put in that bit of extra effort needed of me to get further. Ys Origin was one of those games that failed to get that from me. Crimson Shroud it turns out did get it, eventually, eventhough what it asked of me was almost laughably harsh.

You know a game is pretty off the radar when it doesn't have its own Wikipedia page nor Gamefaqs walkthrough, but Crimson Shroud is such a game. It had gotten good reviews however, and I had quite fun with it when I started playing. The quirky aesthetics, it all looks like a tabletop RPG, definitely added to the charm and the gameplay was compelling eventhough it was a pretty by the numbers and scaled down RPG. The Classic Game Room review states it pretty well when they call it "a fifth of an RPG", because that is exactly what it feels like. For what little I've played however, it feels like it's drawn out the essence of what makes RPGs fun and run with it. I was a bit bummed therefor, when I hit what almost was a literal brick wall only a few hours into the game (it was in fact a door).

You'll get to see these a lot.

At what looks like the end of the second area is a room called the Gerseym Waterway in which you fight a handful of skeletons. They're pretty tricky the first couple of times you fight them, but this will soon change as you realize you're going to have to fight them for many, many more times, especially if you're unlucky like me. When I first got here and defeated the skeletons nothing happened. The door that lead to the next area didn't open and I had no idea why. So I started trecking around, I started revisiting every room I had been in so far (thankfully not too many) and I eventually returned to the room and fought the skeletons again. And again. After more than an hour of this and not being anywhere closer to a solution I decided I was clearly too stupid for whatever puzzle was keeping me from advancing, and looked it up on the internet.

Turns out you need a special item from the mage skeletons specifically, that also is a rare drop. Even after I read that I didn't give up however, but after yet another hour or so of fighting without having seen the drop I decided it was time to move on. And I didn't touch the game again for 1,5 year.

Until today, when I decided to give it another go. I was feeling lucky, or something, but I actually really wanted to continue the game. I started playing, and I fought the skeletons again, over and over. After several attempts I decided to refresh my memory on what needed to be done and turned to the almighty internet. This is when I discovered that there wasn't an easily found walkthrough of it anywhere, and only one pretty bad quality playthrough of it on Youtube. I had to scour forums to find the information I needed, and the information wasn't being very clear. Everyone seemed to agree that a certain item was needed, but some claimed that you needed to kill the skeletons in a certain order for it to appear. Then you needed to take this item to another certain room, use it to unlock a chest to get another item with which you could unlock the door. But the first item could also be used as a trinket, making it even unclearer that it was a crucial item for furthering your progress.

Apparently there are hints to this in the game. I can tell you they are pretty damn vague! And I definitely would've never ever in my wildest dreams have been able to figure this out on my own, and I doubt I would've even been able to randomly succeed just by trying long enough. It immediately made me think of Simon's Quest and its convoluted gameplay. Fortunately for Crimson Shroud, it was fun enough to make me want to go through the effort and it turns out today was indeed my lucky day, as the trinket dropped for me eventually. Now I can continue to play it, two years after I almost gave up on it. That is probably the longest I've had a game on standby, but at least now I can see if I can finish it and move on.

Toddler & Game - Whip The Hair Back and Forth

My son is almost 2,5 years old and so far I haven't actively encouraged him to play video games. We don't own any kind of tablet and I won't let him use my phone or PC (because he messes everything up!), so he's left to the consoles we have standing around. It's not that I'm worried he'll be too inactive, he spends about 80% of his awake time running around, but rather that I am worried about the well being of my consoles. The level he's been at so far is turning the consoles off and on again and as long as that was the case I prefered him doing other things.

But that is changing, and it is very interesting to see. It started with Yoshi's Story. I'm not sure how he got interested in the game to begin with, I was probably playing it at some point or other - but he loved the intro sequence and especially the music. After that it was impossible for me to try to play the game, he reset the console after the first minute or so of intro, rewatched, reset, rewatched and so on until I told him we'd go do something else (it didn't take long before I felt sorry for my N64). Same thing with Sonic on the Mega Drive (my bfs favorite game).

Eventually he would press a button on the controller, because hey! buttons are totally fun to press. And they are! In video games all kinds of things happen when you press the controller and he quickly figured that one button would make Yoshi eat stuff and the other would make Yoshi jump. So we licked and jumped a lot. But obviously he still had no grasp of the concept of the game, to get to the end of it. And when you're that age you make up your own rules and try out new things all the time. It's one of the most charming aspects of the age and I normally let him to it until he figures something out that he likes. Besides, who says you have to play games a certain way? The main focus is to have fun with them. I used to play Settlers 2 completely without enemies after all, simply because I enjoyed building up a society without the hassle of adversaries.

Sometimes however, I like to try things out and see what he thinks. Because the controller is way big for his wee little hands (they're totally cute), he can't push the buttons and make Yoshi walk at the same time. I decided to see if we could co-op play the game where I would make Yoshi walk and he would jump and eat things. And it was actually really fun! It was a huge challenge for me, since I needed to avoid dangers and make sure to not run into enemies/pits until the son was pressing the right buttons, and he was having a blast getting to eat fruits and jump over pits. Great success. Although resetting the console and watching the intro sequence is still what he enjoys most so far.

He had less trouble when it came to my N3DS, something I have been lending to him only very reluctantly because that is 150 euro of hardware he could decide to throw into the floor at any second. Not to mention my fear that he would accidentally erase some data from it, I've been through that horrible experience before (yes I am looking at you little brother!) As I was sitting next to him and supervising his every move I realized that there is actually a lot more for a toddler to enjoy about a 3DS than I initally thought. For instance I didn't have a clue that most main menu icons are sound triggered, in which they will move faster if you blow or speak into the mic. My son discovered this quickly and will sit yelling at the 3DS for a while before moving on to other things.

Next he discovered my Shantae and the Pirate's Curse in which he could shoot and hair-whip as Shantae, which he loved for some reason. It took him quite some time before he even tried to run around, and because he was at my end-game save he ran straight into the final boss... which he BEAT! I'll be completely honest and admit I activated Pike Ball for him, but other than that I didn't touch a single thing and he managed to finish the final boss of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse just by pressing things randomly (because I really doubt he knew what was actually going on).

He also found a drawing program I didn't even know the 3DS had (turns out it's the Letter Box feature where you can draw your own letters and also replay your drawing, it's quite cool) and the camera. Next time I checked he had taken 20 pictures of his feet and drawn 30 letters full of squigglies.

And that's the level we're at at the moment and it'll be interesting to see how that develops further on. I'm still not in a hurry for him to get any kind of hooked on video games, as I am certain the Minecraft curse will affect him too soon enough. But I am also not against him playing some every now and then as it is in fact interactive entertainment just as with any other toy. Who knows, I might let him inherit my Game Boy Advance SP for his third birthday. He would probably just look at it and wonder why there isn't a touch screen or camera though.

Sunday Thoughts - Year of the Pokémon

I bought and started playing Pokémon Red yesterday, eventhough I already own both Blue and Red on the original cartridge. My reasoning was that I have to use my Game Boy DS to play those and eventhough I really like that console, it's not as handy as my 3DS. Problem solved, thank you Nintendo! But you can pretty much slap the name Pokémon on anything and I will buy it. And it is definitely a good year to be a Pokémon fan. Not only did we get this surprise re-release (I at least had not heard of it until the day before it was released), there is the announcement of Sun and Moon and the already known Pokken and Pokemon Go to get excited about too. I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but it sure would be cool with another Stadium/Colosseum game as well (as far as I can tell the last one was released 9 years ago!).

The most important choice you'll ever make in a game - nerdist.com

I've never played Red though, when I started out with the whole Pokémon thing I managed to get my hands on the Blue version. Not that they differ much, but I do prefer the exclusive Pokemon for Red than Blue. I was a bit late to the game back then, I was 14 when they were released but didn't get my own Game Boy and game until at least a year later. I swiftly started playing the TCG as well and was a couple of years older than pretty much everyone else playing it. I recall going to the Pokémon Club gatherings (we even had them in backwater Sweden, it says a whole lot about the popularity of the game) and being surrounded by kids 5-12 years of age whereas I was in my late teens. I really miss those times, it was good fun. Heck, I still have my Pokémon decks but no one to play with. I haven't played the TCG for 10 years though so players nowadays would consider my decks archaic at best.

I had partially forgotten how unforgiving the original games were, at least compared to the more recent releases. The Pokémon games were never particularly difficult, but if any of them are it would be the first gen ones. "When do I get my running shoes?" I naïvely asked my bf. "Aww, there aren't any running shoes in these games" he said and patted me on the head. Of course not, I should've remembered that. Nor do you get any starting Poke Balls and poison ticks outside of battle. Item Finder and XP Share were a lot less user friendly than they became in later games. There are no NPC conveniently standing around outside of caves waiting to heal your Pokémon either, you're on your own until you get to a town. I remember getting to Victory Road and giving up because I got stuck in some god forsaken cave and the random encounters were doing my head in. I'm not even sure I ever ended up beating the game. Well, time to rectify that then! The music is still brilliant though, squeezing every ounce of capability out of the Game Boy sound chip. I am already looking forward to getting to Lavender Town and not being able to sleep afterwards.

Mystery Dungeon are good fan service games - gamerant.com

Although I've far from tried every Pokémon spin-off, there are just so many, I've liked all the ones I have tried. Me and my friends played Pokémon Stadium loads, even the half-hearted mini-games, which makes me wonder if there was just nothing better for us to do or if our love for Pokemon also made us blind as to the quality of what we were playing. Pokémon Conquest was a cool crossover spinoff that I quite enjoyed. I don't technically count the Smash Bros games Pokémon spin-offs, but the Pokémon feature quite heavily and they're loads of fun. I've loved the Mystery Dungeon games I've tried, in fact I think they're my favorite Pokémon spin-off series. My only problem with them is the same I have for pretty much any Pokémon game - they're too simple. It says a lot about the quality of the gameplay when you're willing to play hours on end in a game that doesn't actually offer any kind of challenge. It can hardly be for the story either, so what makes Pokémon so compelling? I'm not even going to try and answer that question in what is supposed to be a relatively short post, let's leave that for another day. The funny thing is though, as I've pointed out before, eventhough there is a lot about Pokémon I think could be done better I never get bored and I keep getting back to it more than 15 years later. I can't think of another game series that I love and enjoy that deeply. And I'm hardly alone. If the Pokémon TCG clubs were to re-open, I'd be the 30-something among other 30-somethings.

I don't think Pokémon is going anywhere soon, in case anyone ever thought as much. Nintendo has a real nack for creating long lasting and loved franchises that aren't necessarily RPGs. In a way Pokémon has outgrown even Mario. You've got Pokémon in movies, series, cards (as mentioned), toys, merchandise... I already thought this was going to turn out to be a pretty good year for video gaming, but it has turned out to be a pretty good year to be a Pokémon fan as well.

I've written Pokémon so many times now, the word has lost its meaning...

High Expectations - Games I Am Looking Forward To 2016

'Tis the habit of video game magazines to dedicate the first issue of the year to games we should all be looking forward to. And I thought to myself, hey I can do that just as good as anyone, I'm a pro at looking forward to things. There are actually a couple of games I am thrilled about but the last time I played something on day 1 release was Pokémon X&Y, so just because I am hoping some of these entries will turn out as cool as they sound, I probably won't get around to playing them until next-next year, at best. Be that as it may, here are the games I will be keeping an extra close watch on;

Tacoma
From the developers of Gone Home, Fullbright delivers Tacoma which could be said to be Gone Home in space - sort of. I actually quite liked Gone Home and eventhough I didn't think it was worth the money (20 euro for 2 hours of gameplay, those 2 hours would have to be life-alteringly good. And it's not that good) I still think it's one of the better interactive stories I've played (way better than To the Moon for example). Add to that my affinity for all things space and you've got a recipe for something I am bound to find tasty. Wait, are we talking about food or games, I am getting confused.

You can tell they have people that worked on Bioshock 2 - gamespot.com

Pokémon Go
Anything with the word "Pokémon" in it will have my interest, but not always manage to make me develop a crush (I am looking at you Pokémon Snap). Pokémon Go however mixes my intense love of Pokémon with my albeit lukewarm fondness of the concept of Ingress. I have been Ingressing, you could sort of say I am still Ingressing seeing as I still have the app installed and do it every once in a month when I happen to remember. My problem with Ingress was that the portals didn't particularly engage me. But if you could just call them, say, Pokémon instead - color me engaged. Yes, I am not ashamed to say I am that simple.

As far as I've understood it, Pokémon Go is really basically Ingress but in Pokémon terms and eventhough I will probably get bored of that too eventually, I am still really looking forward to trying it out. Too bad for the bf who has a Windows phone though.

Doom
I can't even motivate in a logical way why this would interest me to any special degree, considering the first Doom scared the begees out of me and I kind of stuck with Quake 2 after that. Then I kind of dropped shooters like this all together and I can't say I've picked it up since. But reading about Doom really got me into the whole thing again. I mean, shooter are fun after all, and what better than the one that made it into a phenomenon?

FFVII Remake
This is one of the games I want to play at release, but since I don't own a ps4 and probably won't get one for this game alone, I'll just sit on my hands and wait for the PC release. There's going to be a PC release right? Admittedly, playing any FF game on the PC feels a bit blasphemous, but I justify it by telling myself that the line between consoles (except anything Nintendo) and computers has been sufficiently blurred for those concerns not to matter.

FFVII was the first game I played that had a deep, engaging story and more than three hours of gameplay (pretty sure Yoshi's Story doesn't fit the description). As such it showed me a whole new world of video gaming, one where I think I thought to myself for the first time "you know what, this isn't just a game!". No time before had I fallen in love with the story, characters and music as much as with FFVII, and I have been longing for a remake since the concept of remakes. I could barely believe it when I first read about it and I cross all my fingers and toes it will end up being one of the good ones, rather than one of the disappointing ones. But if it turns out it's horrible, I can always drown my sorrows in the old FFVII.

Torment: Tides of Numenera
I was late to the party with Planescape: Torment, finishing it for the first (and so far only) time some two years ago. I loved it. I can't even imagine what someone who loved it when it was released must be feeling upon hearing that it was going to be made. Considering it was funded on Kickstarter within hours, they probably shit a brick. Now, this isn't a remake and frankly I don't think Planescape: Torment needs one. Instead it is a continuation of sorts so it can turn out to be awesome or not so awesome. But I guess that goes for any sort of game nowadays.

Every guy seemed to have that hair in late 90's - unigamesity.com

No Mans Sky
This game is so ambitious you could almost say it's impossible for it not to disappoint. And my expectations of this game are suitably ambivalent. On the one hand I do love the concept and potential of this game. Again with the space and exploration, two things that in combination are probably my favorite thing ever in terms of entertainment. On the other hand, how do you keep it fun? When there is so much to explore, most of it is bound to be (or at least to quickly become) repetitive and dull? I thought so of Skyrim, a game infinitely smaller than No Mans Sky (as I understood it, NMS aims to be endlessly big). It will probably, hopefully, be one of those "it's what you make it" kind of games and with the right tools it could be amazing.

Yo-kai Watch
A Pokémon game that isn't Pokémon? Need I say more, really? It's huge in Japan (but then again, so are a whole lot of things I am not very interested in) and apparently we're only just getting in on the whole phenomenon that is Yo-kai Watch. I don't really know that much about it, except I think you kind of battle with ghosts (hence Yo-kai) and you know, it's sort of like Pokémon. I don't need to know more. I want it.

Copyright infringement from Pokémon next - gamepedia.com

So that's it for the games I am looking forward to this year, there are probably more I couldn't think of when writing this but I guess you could argue that in that case they weren't very interesting. What games have you going antsy this year?

Pokémon X & Y - First Impressions

The following post includes some spoilers, no story spoilers though.

It must've been around 1998 that I first got my hands on a Pokemon game. Because I was a bit late onto the scene, and thus had a general idea of what to expect, I wasn't blown away by it in the sense of discovering just how awesome the game was - I already knew how awesome the game was and all the fun I had lying in store for me. It did not let me down. It was only the beginning of a long love story to a game franchise that has managed to keep me entertained throughout the years, I don't think there is any Pokemon game (in the original series) that I dislike and I couldn't even say which one I like the most (although of course the first one has a special place in my and many other peoples heart for many good reasons). I bought, traded and played with the TCG for years (and only really stopped because I didn't have anyone else to play with). I bought the stickers, the plush animals, went to the cinema to see the first movie (and get my promo card) and bought many of the spin-off games as well. Naturally, when I first heard about Pokemon X & Y, the first real 3d pokemon game, somewhere this spring 2013, I was very, very excited. Partly because it was another pokemon game, and the news of that alone would have me jumping with glee, and partly because of the prospect of maybe getting to experience what pokemon fans over the world have been asking for ever since the first game was released (and games like Pokemon Stadium showed us the potential of) - pokemons fighting it off in actual 3d graphics.

Soooo pretty... - se.ign.com

During what felt like an endless wait, I had a lot of time to think about the new game. I intentionally and intently tried to avoid any and all information about it, eventhough my curiousity got the best of me a few times (I just had to check out what the Megavolutions to Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise looked like). Still, in the world of global information it is almost impossible to not get at least small scraps of information forced onto you every now and then, and so screen shots and trailers soon found their way to me. I definitely liked what I saw, and had no doubt in my mind it was going to be yet another awesome Pokemon, but I didn't get the feeling it was going to blow my mind in the way some people were hoping for. In all honesty I didn't think what little I saw seemed all that different from Black & White, where they also played a bit with perspectives, and so I prepared myself to be swept away as always, but not enraptured.

Now that I've had a chance to actually try out the game that I've been waiting for most of the year - what do I think? Is it everything it promised? Is it "just" good or completely awesome? Was I wrong to doubt it, even a little?

Interestingly enough, after ~20 hours and three gyms of gaming (which would've been more had I not had a 24 hour work shift this weekend!), this experience so far is very similar to my first experience with the first game. Back then I too knew already roughly what to expect and how good the game was. I was still blown away by how much fun and how much cooler the game turned out to actually be when I started playing it. My short review of Pokemon X (which is the copy I have) would be to say about the same thing. After five generations I had a pretty good idea of what the game was going to be and how much fun I was going to have. And with previous games Pokemon has always delivered pretty much that. But this time around I was amazed and thrilled at how much better than my expectations the game turned out to actually be. Eventhough it is basically exactly the same as it has been since the first game 17 years ago, Pokemon still manages to surprise me. That's not to say it is perfect. Pokemon is delivering the same experience it always has, only prettier and a little bit better, but everything good that comes with that (why change a winning formula) means whatever annoyed you about the old games probably still is around to annoy you. I use the word "annoy" very lightly however, as even the things I dislike the most in the game (I'll get to that shortly) never get distracting enough to take away any of the fun of the game as a whole.

Not everything is better in 3d - tv.com

First of all, the game is pretty. I had my doubts about how cool and aesthetically pleasing the new 3d graphics could possibly be, but let me tell you that they are definitely a lot better and awesome than I at least had assumed. Everything from the crisp Pokemon 3d models, the pretty colors of the different skills the Pokemon use (which, of course, are almost entirely same old as previous games) to the fact that people in the world around you now have some moving animations, are pure eye candy. Just the fact that the battle screen now has some sort of background makes me care less about the fact that there still is practically as little interaction between the pkmn as in the first games. I thought the difference between Black & White and X & Y wouldn't be big, but going back to the previous generation now you see just how big the differences are - Black & White, which I when I first played it thought was beautiful, looks boring in comparison. I'm the last one to say that graphics is a particularly important part to the fun of a game, but with X & Y I can say it is definitely enhancing the experience. And I do feel, at least so far, that they've done a good job getting the most out of it, the areas you walk through feel varied and don't feel like "just another patch of grass or cave", waht could quickly be the case in older games. The 3d effect isn't in use everywhere in the game, and that doesn't bother me as I at the moment play with it off anyway to save on battery time. I can only imagine with Nintendo launching their 2ds almost at the same time, the idea isn't to play with much 3d effects in any case, but where it is active it does a good job further enhancing the beautiful graphics.

Random Snorlax to brighten your day - aliexpress.com

So let's talk a bit about what's probably the most important aspect to the game - the gameplay. Of course, even without having to go into any details regarding the story line, old players will know exactly what to expect. This to me doesn't have to be a bad thing at all, and in pkmn we know it to be a winning concept. I am sure more people would be outraged about any changes than there are whiners out there at the moment complaining about pkmn never changing. As usual, the differences and betterments lie in the details instead. One of the first thing I noticed, and am really happy about, is the sheer amount of different pkmn that seem to be present in the game. Something that used to annoy me in older games was that the starting areas always had the same two-three pkmn to encounter, and overall I always wanted more of the total amount to be easily available in the game (by easily I mean without having to trade and the like). X & Y seem to have taken this to heart, having me almost wish instead that there were less pkmn in this game (!). If you're a collector or completionist of any kind, which I'm fortunately not, you'll have your work cut out for you. It feels like every new grass patch I come to holds at least five pkmn I haven't even seen before and reaching the goal to "catch em all" has never felt as fun, at least to me. The best thing about it is that it allows you to start out with a varied group of pkmn right from the start, whereas older games only offered you so many - I feel like the replay value is possibly the highest in this game, a lot because of this.

Pkmn has never been as online as it is with this installment either, allowing easy access to other pkmn players all over the world, or just your neighborhood friends if you prefer, for trading, fighting and comparing of pkmn. Some features are truly fun to engage in, like Wonder Trade where you offer any pkmn for trade and get a random unknown from someone else in the world in return. Completely relying on the generosity of other people I've been unlucky enough to get Weedles and lucky enough to get Froakies, it's a lottery that's easy to get stuck in.

Pokémon have dabbled in 3d before - jogospokemon.wordpress.com

The new o-power system is another feature that I'm having a lot of fun with. O-powers can be anything from a temporary bonus to attack power to extra catch rate that you can either give to yourself or anyone else in the world. Each power takes some energy to give, of which you have a limited amount that slowly recharges over time, and giving to yourself costs a lot more than giving to someone else. It has made me and the bf shout out requests to eachother and allowing the other person to save you in a pinch - I'll ask for some healing when I am in a gym and close to death for instance. Every now and then you'll receive a power from some random stranger in the world, and I do occasionally throw out some powers, since using them is the only way to level them and thus increasing their bonuses. The cooldown on the powers makes them just the kind of fun bonus without being overpowered that I think the developers were after, and it is extra fun that the function promotes generosity towards others rather than hogging.

This game does of course, as the other games in the series, have a couple of mini games to engage in and throw time into. For the first time ever I can say that these are some that I am actually interested in and have fun with. In earlier games I would always try them out, be it beauty contests or poké blocks, but they were never anything for me. In this game we've got features that not only are more fun, they can actually affect your pkmn in game in a way that make them a lot more interesting, at least to me, than previous mini games. Through Pokemon-Amie you can pat, smack (yepp, you can be a cruel pkmn trainer too), feed or play mini games with any pkmn in your party in a sort of Tamagotchi style feature. Other peoples pkmn can come visit in your decorateable pkmn room and leave you more gifts to further decorate your room with. In the Super Training you can have your pkmn complete different training mini games that actually affect its stats in game. I am not sure how "game breaking" this could be, but I know there are already lengthy discussions on forums all over the internet on how to best do your training, where to put your points and other things that makes me think of Elitis Jerks. Just as with pvp in a game like World of Warcraft, this is entirely optional and nothing you have to put any time into if you don't feel like it to enjoy the game, but I feel like they make more sense and more worthwhile the way they have been implemented in this game than in previous games.

We're still waiting for this though - ign.com

You can now also change the way your character looks. So what, was my first thought, since I normally don't put much effort into what my avatar looks like in other RPG-like games. I'm one of those people who clicks "randomize" a couple of times to get it over with. Never would I have thought that it'd be this much fun to play dress up doll with your own character in X & Y however. At first I didn't think I'd ever want to spend money on the clothes and accessories that are available to you in different clothing stores, because they don't actually make any difference. Except it is so much fun to try out clothes, and I instantly turn into a 5 year old playing with Barbies again when I enter the stores. The new pretty 3d graphics definitely add to the fun of this and especially it will turn out to be a great thing to use your money on later in the game, since piling money usually turned out to be a "problem" in older games.

Before I say anything else, because now I'll be saying a word or two about a couple of things I like less about the game, I would like to emphasize just how awesome and fun X & Y has turned out to be to me. The following things I'm mentioning now are to considered minor issues, things I simply wish they would've done a bit differently. They're still not bad enough to actually ruin much of the actual gameplay.

Firstly, this game probably has the worst music out of all the games in the series. That's not to say that it is in any way bad, just not as good as it could've been or as some tunes in the older games. Of course I love just about every tune in Red & Blue for nostalgic reasons, but even Black & White (and all the other older games) had at least some tunes I really loved. Especially battle tunes need to be good, since you get to hear them so often. X & Y are not delivering the same great and fun tunes that older games did, unfortunately. One tune in a city I've just come to even made me nauseous (!) so that I felt like I had to mute the game for the duration of my stay. That's an extreme example and I could still come across something great since I have a lot left of the game. So far however they're mostly just bland and a bit boring. Sound effects are great however, and the differents sounds the pkmn make have never sounded better while still being true to the original.

And with the new "Live Competition" come the people who take it way too seriously - reddit.com

Secondly, the pkmn games have always suffered from being a bit too easy. I think most people can recognize themselves in being able to burn through most gyms with just one or two pkmn one shotting every competition. This is how things like the Nuzlocke challenge came to be, basically putting restrictions on yourself to up the challenge of the game. To me this has generally not been much of a problem. I usually play with and try to level six different pkmn already from the start, which has kept me fairly close to the levels of the people I am encountering. Pkmn has never been challenging to me until perhaps Pokémon League, but challenging enough. What I have a problem with however is the AI of the trainers, which I've always wished would've been at least somewhat better. When a trainer uses the same worthless skill twice or more it makes me sad, and I feel like it would've really upped the fun of the game if trainers actually seemed to have some sort of tactical thinking. I'm not sure why Game Freak has decided to let every trainer in the pkmn world remain a block head, but they still pretty much are. Why couldn't at least the gym trainers be a bit smarter?

Thirdly, I really wish they would've implemented more than one save by now. Or at least some way to allow you to save pkmn from an older playthrough. I don't know how many times I've picked up an old pkmn game, started it up and decided not to play it after all because I couldn't find it in my heart to delete the pkmn that were on it, and all the memories of the playthrough with them (or so it feels). Don't underestimate how much you emotionally invest yourself in those little pixels (now polygons), just erasing them is such a difficult choice that I rarely have the strength to take it. This, and only this, has removed a lot of the replay value of the games to me, and it feels like a simple thing to solve. With X & Y, Nintendo have promised a sort of cloud save feature which will allows us to upload our pkmn to their servers. This way I can store whatever pkmn I want to keep after I'm done with my current playthrough, keeping them safe while I erase the other data. The problem with this is that it comes with a fee, admittedly quite a low fee, but still nothing I might want to pay for years to come (and will the feature even be available for that long?). It can go five years before I decide to pick the game back up to play again, and I just wish Nintendo gave me a simpler way to store my pkmn in the long term. The solution they have now is great for the actively playing, but I don't think it's a good solution for the future. It's a minor issue, admittedly, but also one I think they could solve pretty easily, and it would really make a nostalgic sod like me incredibly happy if I could store the pkmn in my gameboy (NDS), or something along those lines.

I'm not sure much more needs to be said about this game, I am certain most of you are playing it already. If you aren't and have any interest in the pkmn series, this game will definitely give you many hours of fun and is definitely worth the money. So far I think it's great, it has been surprising me around every corner and the gameplay is every bit as familiar but improved to make it an awesome experience. Now if you excuse me, I need to get back to playing, I've been spending too much time writing this post already.

A Review on Pokémon Mystery Dungeon - Gates to Infinity

I've come to realize that I am a pretty big fan of the whole "roguelike" game genre, and the reason why is spelled "Pokémon Mystery Dungeon". Until a couple of weeks ago I had never even heard of the term roguelikes, and I was thrilled to realize that although not a big game genre, there are loads of games out there for me to discover that will hopefully entertain me as much as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has. I'll give you a quick explanation as to what a roguelike game means, before I need to take you a couple years back and some steps away from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon to give you the whole picture of my relationship with these kind of games;

"The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by level randomization, permanent death, and turn-based movement. (...)  Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many monsters, items, and environmental features." - wikipedia.org

When I first played a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game I was struck by how similar it was in style to one of my old time favorites - Azure Dreams to the PS. I'm not sure how well known or popular Azure Dreams ever was (or is), but I put in so many hours into that game, without ever even finishing it. As with most roguelikes, the gameplay to Azure Dreams is fairly simple, and contains a whole lot of dungeon crawling in randomized levels that get increasingly harder. The penalty of dying is different from game to game, but normally you end up losing everything. In Azure Dreams the challenge is reaching the top floor of a tower, each floor being filled with treasures to find and monsters to fight. The trick to Azure Dreams is that everytime you leave the tower, you lose all your levels meaning you have to start from scratch each time. With you however you can have an amount of pets that fight for you, pets that will keep their level and thus be your main weapon against the monsters in the tower and towards reaching the ultimate goal of the top floor. It might sound confusing but is simple, in the end it means going in and out of the tower a whole lot of times, leveling up your pets to always be able to reach a bit further. The biggest critique against roguelikes has probably always been its repetiveness, it is basically designed around redoing the same thing over and over until you get it right.

Inspiration for Pokémon? Some of the Azure Dreams pets - angelfire.com

But then again, many, many games have this kind of gameplay as their core idea, games that usually end up being insanely popular. Tetris, Mario, even a game like World of Warcraft can be said to have this as their main selling point. And eventhough the main goal of most roguelikes is to grind through dungeons, there are often surrounding goals that can be achieved through all that dungeon crawling. In Azure Dreams and the current Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game I am playing, Gates to Infinity, a secondary goal is to build up a society outside of the dungeons where you can further increase your effectiviness inside the dungeons. Both Azure Dreams and PMD require you to gather a strong team of fighters to be able to counter all the kinds of mobs inside the dungeons. To me, roguelike is a game genre I can play for hours and hours on end, and simply not get bored of.

This strong and new found love for roguelikes in general and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon in particular has made me think that the PMD franchise is seriously underrated and unjustly frowned upon. Admittedly I've only played two games so far, but I know they are fairly similar in style and that I would probably enjoy all of them about equally much (ie a lot). Overall the PMD games are probably considered very simple roguelikes but to me that is probably the only really bad thing to say about it. When I read that the DS games had received an average of 6.5 score from ign.com I wondered if the reviewer disliked the games compared to other roguelikes or compared to completely different games. I for instance had loads of fun with a game like PMD: Explorers of Time, which was the first PMD I played. Now I realize that there is individual taste and that a 6.5 doesn't mean everyone will think it's just an "okay" game, but it insinuates that it's not a well designed game which I just don't agree with. Again, compared to what? To me it feels like at least this reviewer is hammering down on things that normally are at the core of a roguelike - dungeons that feel the same, and overall repetiveness. Interestingly enough these PMDs have received a much higher overall score from players than from "pro" reviewers. When I saw that the game I'm currently playing, PMD: Gates to Infinity, had received the low score of 4.5, I felt like I needed to give my PoV on this game series, a PoV from someone who actually likes the repetiveness and embraces it.

spelblogg.pricerunner.se

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon - Gates to Infinity Review

If you like Pokémon and you like roguelikes, you've definitely come to the right place with the PMD-series - offering a whole lot of both. In fact I'd start out right away by saying, if you don't find Pokémon absolutely awesome, you might consider PMD GoI (and pretty much all the other PMD games) a bit heavy on the Pokémon. In GoI you get to start out as one of 5 different Pokémon and also choose one of the remaining ones as your partner Pkmn who will be with you pretty much throughout the game. Depending on your choice you will get different types of skills, but GoI is a fairly easy game overall making the choice more one of taste than one of tactics.

In GoI the main story is about a human being pulled into the pkmn world to save it from "some big threat", and while the story progresses you can do the usual quests which in GoI means taking on jobs to go into dungeons and solve different issues - be it to subdue a boss of sorts, finding and item or rescue some stray pkmn. The story is far from boring although not very deep, but there is a lot of it. I've had cut scenes taking what must've been 15 minutes, and the story progresses fairly quickly meaning that you can have really long cutscenes between every other dungeon that you complete. Because of this I can definitely feel like GoI is a bit heavy on the dialogue side, which fortunately is saved by some really well written and funny characters in the game. The two main characters, namely yourself and your sidekick are probably the least interesting, but your surroundings, both the starting city and the society you build up throughout your playing contains some characters that had me laugh out loud and really feel for them. As a big fan of the whole pkmn franchise I simply love seeing pkmn in this personal and character driven way, considering how plain and comparatively insipid the pkmn are in the main game series. This is something I've mentioned before, but sometimes I really wish they'd borrow the idea from Digimon with pkmn that actually have personalities. Some of the interaction between the socially hateful Scraggy and the aloof Quagsire are simply hilarious and the way the loudmouthed Rampardos is trying to get the Cinccino to notice him is charming. This isn't a game just filled with pkmn that are simplistic and overly good, but with some really well written characters that really add to the overall feel.

gcentertainmentsystem.blogspot.com

The gameplay is pretty standard roguelike and if you've played any of the other PMD games you know what to expect. Every now and then a wild pkmn defeated in a dungeon will ask to join your team, and there are many different pkmn to catch. Just as in the main series, these come with different types that are stronger or weaker against other types. This is something I wish the game would make more of a tactical choice, and although there are certain game elements that reward you for giving some planning to your group composition, overall they really don't make much of a difference in the main story game mode since just about everything you can encounter can be overcome with relative ease. This is the only big problem I have with this game - it's a bit too simple and the big challenges are far apart and not even they are really that difficult. The game will shower you in useful items, meaning you very rarely run out of healing items or other things needed to be able to progress. You need Elixirs to up your PP, otherwise you eventually run out of usable moves. In the beginning I made sure to use the Elixirs as little as possible, assuming they'd be a rare commodity. After some gaming I have more than 60 lying around in my bank and I end up vendoring the ones I gather because the dungeons will provide you with more than you'll ever end up needing. After more than 30 hours of gaming I've only died once in the main story (after hours of easy gaming I was surprised by a pkmn that actually two shot me), and that is not because of my leet skills or cautious game style. It's unfortunate because there are many features in PMD GoI that could be used to force the player to do some real planning and thinking, like how certain types of pkmn get stronger certain days, but the easy difficulty level renders most of them pretty obsolete.

You can't control the rest of your team more than giving them general directions, such as staying together or wandering off on your own. As far as I know this is common for roguelike games and it works well. Because of the easy level of the game I almost always have my entire team walk off on their own, and I very rarely have to worry about them. The AI is nothing special, you can tell your team which skills to use so that they don't get stuck using Tail Whip five times in a row against a mob. Although not clever, the game play is simple enough to make sure the AI won't annoy you either. There are two things that keep me really interested and going in this game - finding the "hard parts" in the dungeons and advancing the village. Most dungeons will have one or several levels where you can find rooms filled with monsters or secret, harder to get to areas where the mobs are a lot tougher than the rest of the dungeon. When you enter these areas the difficulty level rises by a lot, and although far from as challenging as some of the harder roguelikes, they still require tactical thinking and good usage of items to be able to survive.

cheatsguru.com

If you end up feeling like the storymode is either too simple or too much story, GoI offers two other modes for those who just want to get into some dungeon crawling action. The first one, Companion Mode, allows you to suspend your story mode and set out into a dungeon with a second team - simply allowing you to do some dungeon crawling without all the dialogue and storymode interrupting your gaming. The second one is called the Magnagates, a feature I quite like since this is where the game offers some real challenge. By using the camera and looking for round objects in your surroundings you can open up a "magnagate" (walking around your home looking for them is actually more fun than it sounds), a dungeon in which you play a preset team of pkmn and encounter a bit more difficult enemies. You start each dungeon without any items, further increasing the difficulty, although your team keeps any levels you might've gotten previously. The big surprise to me was that if you lose a team member he is gone forever. I haven't even figured out how to fill out your team again, although I assume it is by having wild pkmn join, which means you need to be a lot more careful not to die in the Magnagate dungeons than the storymode and companion mode ones. My preset team started out with three pkmn and I accidentally lost one meaning that every Magnagate I do now is with only two pkmn on the team. Everything gathered in either mode will be sent to the main story mode.

Eventhough I'd love for GoI to be more challenging than it is, it still gets the overall gameplay right. I still find myself drawn in and wanting to do just that one more dungeon all the time. There are many things to do, many pkmn to love, and wanting to explore yet another dungeon just doesn't get boring. Without spoiling too much I can say that the storyline turned out to be more interesting for this kind of game than I initially thought, and although still not comparable to proper story driven games it at least offers some tiny surprises. If you enjoy the roguelike game style and happen to also be a pkmn fan, I don't see any reason not to play this game - not for the challenge, but for the experience. And maybe hopefully in the future, a PMD will be released with some increased difficulty - to me everything else about this game is just about perfect.