Wizorb review

Note: the following review was copy-pasted from my Steam review.

You should try Wizorb if you've ever played Breakout/Arkanoid/clones and thought, "Yeah, this is okay, but I'd rather play something else." And if you would PREFER to play those over other games, buy this right now. Even if it's not on sale. I mean, c'mon, it's three bucks!

For me, a lot of Breakout games become frustrating or dull, primarily because of choke points in level designs. This game has some of those, but it also gives you *permanent* tools for dealing with them, instead of forcing you to pray for a power-up. True, you have a usage meter that restricts how much/often you can use them, but refills come often enough (at least early on) that it's not too aggravating. You can shoot out bricks, bring in some wind, make the ball plow through breakable bricks (as opposed to the normal bouncing), and straight-up move the ball to where you want. Each technique consumes more of your magic meter, but you otherwise have total control over when you want to activate them.

Plus, there are shops in some levels (which are often locked, but you can unlock them by touching the door with the ball while you possess a key; or just hit a switch) and bonus areas in others. Each offer potions to refill your magic meter, extra lives, stuff like that. Also, at the starting village, you can donate money to the citizens to help them rebuild from a monster raid, which I'm guessing will result in rewards and shops later on.

The levels sets can drag on a bit, but you're given continues for if you run out of lives (you simply restart the current level if you need to use one), and you can save and quit in the middle of a set. Each set ends with a boss fight, and I like how these play out! The first one, at least, has no bricks - just two basic monsters and one large monster with a simple attack pattern. Although I won with ease, it was an engaging first fight, and it leaves me eager to see what's in store.

The game has keyboard controls, but the paddle moves too slowly to catch the ball once it speeds up enough (the ball gets faster the longer it's in play). I strongly recommend a mouse - or a TrackPoint (pointing stick), if you have a laptop with one. (Touchpad players need not apply.)

I really like the visual design. The sprites are fluidly animated, yet the color pallete is reminiscent of 8-bit game machines (I think of the NES, but YMMV). The frame rate is pretty smooth on my 2009 ThinkPad, never stuttering in my 45-minute first play. However, I don't care much for the music (part of that is surely just my tastes, but there are plenty of 8-bittish chiptunes that I've enjoyed over the years; this game's just aren't among them), so I guess this is a good game to utilize Steam's music player with if you find yourself agreeing with me. (You can adjust the game's music and sound effect volumes separately.)

Also, cross-platform support (especially for Linux!) is a big plus in my book. And like I said, the game's cheap. Give it a shot!

Wizorb on Steam

Review: Sonic CD (XBLA version): A Blast From The Past, Present, and Future

Sonic CD is one of those games that can’t be brought up without half the room going, “… Sonic what?” Released on the expensive, ill-fated Sega CD (a Genesis/Megadrive accessory that was plagued by horrible, FMV-based “games”), only the more dedicated fans will have heard of it, let alone beaten it, and it’s not an easy game to show to fans who are more accustomed to Sonic’s … modern achievements. But underneath its obscurity, Sonic CD is a real treasure, and Sega was smart enough to make sure that treasure feels as beautiful now as it was then, using Sonic fanChristian “Taxman” Whitehead’s “Retro Engine” for all the ports.

For starters, the game now runs at 60 frames per second in all situations, and features true widescreen support. Sprites can be smoothed out to make them seem better to bystanders, but I’m perfectly happy to play with their old, unfiltered selves (granted, I have an old CRT TV). The USA and Japanese soundtracks are included (defaults to JP); while the JP soundtrack is considered to be vastly superior by many, the USA one has its merits. (My two cents: play as Sonic with the one you like most, and then play, with the other soundtrack, as …) Tails shows up in this port as well, as an unlockable character, awarded by beating the game once as Sonic. He features his flying and swimming abilities from Sonic 3, and a few new sprites for situations he’s previously never been in (the Special Stages come to mind). Tails is great for leisurely exploring the levels to learn paths you may have been timid or too much in a hurry to go down as Sonic (that 10 minute limit can be haunting!). Finally, the game saves after each Zone (Act, as it’s called in later games), instead of only after you defeat a boss, and you get four save slots.

Sonic, of course, is where the action all is, and he’s a joy to control here. I found myself able to peel through stages like they were nothing in Time Attack mode, while able to elegantly explore the stages in the main game, scouring the land for time posts and rings. Sonic accelerates and stops smoothly (contrast: Sonic 4 Ep. 1), and you’re given the option of using the original Spindash (that is, the one in the original Sonic CD) or the Sonic 2-style spindash (the good one, in seemingly everyone’s opinion). Sometimes I really didn’t care if I was moving towards the goal or away; it was just funto move Sonic around, especially on the obstacle-course sections of the Zones.

Sonic CD’s Special Stages – accessed by finishing a Zone with at least 50 rings - have been perfectly preserved as well – maybe a little too well. The pseudo-3D design can be jarring for audiences that didn’t grow up in the Mode 7-esque days, and even old-school fans will have to adjust to the now incredibly-smooth framerate (60 FPS vs. 30 FPS in the original), as jumping timing is a little different. I found it fairly easy to get used to, and before I knew it I had three Time Stones. (Good luck, of course, on getting the other four!) The objective, for those wondering, is to run around the 3D stage and destroy multiple UFOs floating in the air by jumping into them – with a 99 second time limit that drops by ten seconds if you walk into water. Succeed, and you win a Time Stone.

Players of modern Sonic who are used to holding right and jumping from time to time won’t find much of that here. The stage designs are dense, packed with obstacles that ensure that Sonic will rarely reach top speed. There are multiple possible reasons, all benign. It becomes all that more joyous when you can move Sonic at top speed for those precious seconds. Time travel becomes a challenge as you struggle to maintain good speed to start the warp (and it becomes harder to do it by accident). Time trials are more challenging as you struggle to find a fast route (if you find it, you canblaze through most Zones). The slower pace lets you take in the scenery better. Maybe the level designers just got giddy about the extra storage space. Whatever the reason, Sonic CD’s levels can seem convoluted and intimidating at first, but with time they become elegant, beautiful paths that can be tackled without breaking a sweat.

The game does have a few nits, like the score tally at the end of each Zone occuring after the music has played (and feeling like an arbitrary delay if you happen to be playing your own music), but the game offers plenty of redeeming qualities that all the negatives can be brushed aside with ease. And to top it off, this thing is $5 (at least on Xbox Live Arcade). It’s practically an impulse buy. What more could you ask for from Sega, who, at long last, has given a formerly forgotten title its welcome return.

First Impressions: 4.5/5 OHMAGOD SONIC CD IS BACK AND SEGA DIDN’T SCREW IT UP

Gameplay: 4.5/5. The Sonic 2-style Spindash is a welcome improvement. Sonic is fun to control.

Visuals: 3.5/5. They didn’t remake the sprites, just added a smoothing filter. Special Stage looks dated as a result.

Sound: 4.5/5. Is it 18-year-old music? Yes. Is it lossless? I don’t know. Does it sound fresh and exciting? OH YES

Controls: 5/5. Back to basics. You could play this with an Atari VCS joystick. Again, Sonic moves great.

Difficulty: 4/5. I’m not really sure how hard this would be for a newcomer. I’ve technically played this game before (on the 1995 PC version), so I know the game fairly well.

Storyline: 2/5. This was back in a time when Sonic wasn’t about story, so just ignore this number and go play the darn game.

Overall: 5/5.

Sonic and all affiliated characters and elements are © Sega, Sonic Team. Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade are © Microsoft Corporation.

This review was originally published on Tumblr in December 2011. View the original post.
Sonic CD on Steam

Review: Frogger 3D (1997)

    Frogger, as a game in general, hardly needs introduction to most gamers around today. Konami developed the arcade hit in the early 80s, and Sega (then its publisher) granted the rights to port it to various companies, including Parker Brothers and Sierra. Seemingly every video game and computing platform of the era soon received official ports, most notably the Atari home consoles. Unquestionably a hit, the game made a lasting impression throughout the decade, and was granted a sequel (ThreeeDeep!) for several home consoles in 1984. Time passed, and Frogger largely fell out of the public eye for the majority of the 90s, occasionally being granted a reference in assorted media, and even a brief animated series - until, suddenly, Frogger started showing up in a whole slew of video games in the early 2000s. Showing up on the then-current home consoles and the Game Boy Advance, Frogger underwent a huge revamp of sorts, seemingly out of nowhere, and rode into the millenium on various expansions, ports, and the like. But, in truth, the revival started a little before Y2K came about - with a 3D game, in 1997.

    Branded as Frogger: He's Back!, the 1997 Frogger was a 3D remake of the arcade game for the PlayStation and the PC, developed by SCE Cambridge and published by Hasbro Interactive. It was an instant success, selling nearly a million copies in the first four months. It didn't gather the warmest of critical reception, but the game made a decent fanbase for itself and is generally remembered fondly by its players.

    At least, at first.

    Frogger '97 starts off pretty well. It has a number of interesting levels (which are divided into nine Zones; more on that later), has a pretty catchy soundtrack, and gives Frogger three neat powerups that spice up the gameplay. The visuals, while a bit simplistic for their time, are colorful and kind of charming, and they get the job done. The controls respond pretty well (although the camera rotation takes some getting used to), and the level design at times incorporates a feel of exploration, keeping the experience from growing stale as you progress through the game and hunt for the baby frogs.

    But that's where some of the problems start to come in.

    What belies Frogger's cheery presentation and simple starting difficulty level is a brutal, merciless game. The level timer is the first component - although it gives reasonable time limits in the PC version, the PlayStation version's timer stalks the player like a crocodile eyeing his next helping of frog's legs. While the game does offer powerups that grant extra time, over half of the later levels give you naught but a few seconds' leeway to nab your next baby frog; a few even start you off with less than the barest minimum necessary to grab the farthest frog, forcing you to eat time flies every time you set out for the next baby.

    Similarly, the design of some of the levels tends to pile on the stress when it comes to racing against the clock. Frogger Goes Skiing is egregious in particular, thanks to its atypical sliding mechanic - the directional buttons merely steer and adjust Frogger’s speed. Touching any enemy, or any side of a jump ramp, kills the poor frog. Falling down a hole or off the side kills him. All the while, the timer is counting down, and the overhead light is constantly diminishing - a gimmick of the Zone in which the level resides - so swift completion is mandatory. Other levels rely on obstacles like mazes (Web Caverns and - in a sense - Lava Crush) or astoundingly tricky enemy patterns (Big Boulder Alley, for instance) to stall for time and kill the player from all sides. Without any mode for free play or exploration, it may take dozens of tries to learn any given level’s layout or patterns, swiftly leading to frustration. The only show of mercy that the game offers is that this kind of difficulty is almost exclusively saved for the later levels of the second half of Zones; while earlier levels are tricky, they are beatable with a little practice.

    One of the game’s gimmicks is that, in one level of each Zone, there’s a Golden Frog hidden somewhere. A few are out in the open, requiring minimal effort to locate and reach; while others are cleverly tucked away in spots one might have to go out of their way to search for - that is, if they weren’t already doing so to complete the level, thanks to some of the placements of the baby frogs. Thankfully, once a Golden Frog is found, it stays that way - even if the player Game Overs on the level. Each Golden Frog appears on the side of its Zone’s block on the level select screen; they also unlock new Zones, one per frog. Finding all nine of them grant the player a bonus ending when they clear the final level - but it boils down to a short, rather uninteresting video clip whose content is almost a non-sequitur. It's a task best suited to a player that enjoys the hunt, rather than the reward.

    But rest assured, it will be an interesting hunt. Frogger has a handful of new moves and power-ups to navigate the Zones: a powerful Croak to help locate the babies, Marco Polo style (it also triggers a burst of light in the cave levels); a long-reaching tongue, used to pick up items such as Auto-Hop and Time Flies; and a Superhop, used to leap over obstacles, climb the terrain, and maintain some hangtime when jumping off a moving platform. The Zones themselves come in a variety of settings to test these abilities - including the classic “retro” stages, a riverside highway, a beehive and some deep woods, a lava-coated factory (in which Frogger will sometimes wipe his brow), dank caves, the sky, a desert, grime-infested sewers, and a jungle.

Items are present, too, in the form of edibles - namely, fies. Most flies give points, but there are flies that add time to the timer; flies that extend the reach of Frogger’s tongue; flies that let him auto-hop at top speed; flies that increase his hopping speed; and flies that outright grant an extra life.

The game has a decent soundtrack, with two level themes for each Zone. the Retro Level themes have a timeless feel with a positive vibe; the Lily Islands themes are light and a bit jazzy; and Lava Crush’s theme is a punchy romp through the factory, to mention a few. The end credits feature a nice melody that combines tracks from all the Zones, and it feels particularly nostalgic.

    Overall, Frogger 3D is a nifty package, and it can keep dedicated gamers busy for several weeks as they clear the courses and aim for higher scores. It’s tricky, and requires a lot of practice to clear the later levels, but in my opinion the feeling when one finally beats a tough stage is worth it. If you can find a copy, give it a shot!

This review was originally fermenting as an article planned for Hardcore Gaming 101, but I decided to tweak it a bit and post it here.

Review: Fire Emblem: Awakening

No matter how much I try to avoid it, my focus on new games keeps drifting back to old(er) favorites. Sometimes this means firing up a Virtual Console title or bringing my SNES out of a shoebox, but at other times it simply means dusting off a two-year-old cartridge case and popping the game in my 3DS. After a while, I decide it's been fun and put the game away to focus on the newest stuff (or, you know, real life), but some games get a good hold of me and I keep playing them for days or even weeks, simply because I enjoy them that much, even if it means putting off playing that shiny new game I bought the other day. Fire Emblem: Awakening is one of those games.

For the uninitiated, Awakening is a tactical RPG, the thirteenth in the Fire Emblem franchise, and a savior for the nearly-cancelled series, selling over 400,000 copies in North America alone. It is widely regarded by players as the best 3DS game to reach the continent during 2013, a notion I've echoed to many friends. The game tells the story of Prince Chrom and his band of Shepards, a group of warriors who aim to protect the peace in their haildom of Ylisse; the game also explores the background of the player-created character (known as Robin or the Avatar by default), who is found by the Shepards, uninformed and amnesiac.

The game employs the usual grid-based Super Fancy Extreme Ultra Chess 9001 & Knuckles system, with assorted characters and classes, weapons and tomes, staves and skills, and anyone who's played Final Fantasy Tactics or a previous Fire Emblem will feel right at home; anyone who hasn't will be pleased to know that the tutorial is informative and unintimidating – which is good, because those unaccustomed to strategy will likely want to spend their brainpower experimenting and avoiding any casualties on their side, as fallen units in this game are lost forever. Intelligent Systems was generous enough to add a Casual Mode, which renders defeated units simply incapacitated for the battle instead of totally, irreversibly dead – but some will prefer to avoid this handicap, as it takes the sting out of a loss and drops something that is uniquely Fire Emblem. I can attest that the enemies in the game will jump right to picking off the weak units if they get the chance, and your party will become weak if you don't flex some strategic muscle and let them cower in a corner every battle. All of this adds weight to every decision, and watching how the enemy responds to your movements can be tension-filled and – if you survive – rewarding.

As in life, though, there's more to this game than meets the eye. The game's Support system allows each of the characters you encounter to form bonds by fighting side-by-side in combat, and at certain points, you can watch them interact – for a certain degree of “watch” - and eventually make them close friends or even marriage partners. The dialog in the Support scenes is nothing short of charming, adding depth to all of the characters and providing numerous heartwarming and hilarious moments. Even better, the Avatar can support with every character, giving him or her lots of marriage options and perhaps some wish-fulfillment to the player. All of this ties back to combat, as characters with strong bonds will take better care of each other on the battlefield, making the feature worthwhile even for players who somehow find the whole thing a bit sappy for their tastes (every cutscene and bout of dialog in the game can be skipped, incidentally).

The presentation can be a bit of a mixed bag, though, depending on one's tastes. The game features a healthy mix of polygons and obvious sprites, though the latter is limited mainly to characters on the maps and item icons in menus; almost everything else is polygonal. Sometimes this results in uniquely distracting effects, such as a rocking ship in one chapter which is overlaid by unmoving sprites on the battle grid; but for some this adds to the charm of the visuals, as Fire Emblem has long been presented with only sprites. On the other hand, the coloring of the environments leave a bit to be desired, as the landscapes quickly prove to be little more than shades of brown and green. Battle scenes, despite impressive character animations, soon start to blend into each other or feel a bit dull, especially when compared to the menus, which at least show lots of colorful character portraits and tomes to mix it up a bit.

The music is consistently wonderful. Often moderately-paced, battle themes run at a smooth tempo that's perfect for thinking about your next move, and it seamlessly ups in scale when combat begins. Cutscenes get some great tunes as well, and the entire soundtrack has a few recurring riffs – leitmotifs – to give it consistent themes. It makes it all the more enjoyable to actively listen to, even when not playing the game (and if you can't shell out for a set of CDs, worry not - the game lets you freely play its music in the Unit Gallery after you beat the game once).

When the game is done, it has a lot of extras to offer – there are several side-stories and plenty of paid downloadable chapters to check out if you end up bitten by the strategy bug. Even if strategy's not really your thing, it's worth downloading the demo or borrowing a copy to see if you might adapt. Failing that, however, as long as you own a 3DS, I can say without a shred of uncertainty that Fire Emblem: Awakening is worth your time.

This review originally appeared on Review A Great Game Day 2015. You can view it here.