Thoughts on Mario Kart Wii

05/11/08 10:03 am

Yes I know, I haven't updated in over a month. I'm [slowly] working on a piece of art in Illustrator, at which I'm still something of a newb... but I quite like the style of art you can make with it, so I'm tryin'. There's still a Shakugan no Shana skin pending, and possibly a new Okami one too. I've also gotten a lot of Google searches for "Smash Bros Brawl skin," so I might give that a shot as well. In the meantime, let's talk about...

Mario Kart Wii

It's not bad, but it's not terribly impressive either. First off, the Wii Wheel? If you've any interest in precision control, you'll dump it. This was somewhat surprising to me, since the Wiimote controls in certain levels of Mario Galaxy were markedly sensitive. But, oh well, it's a gimmick.

Moving on to gameplay... Having gotten the game with Rirath, we tried out the multiplayer modes first. From the start, about half of the total tracks are missing, and must be unlocked through single player mode only. This was kind of disappointing - not that the content had to be unlocked, but that there's no means of unlocking it through multiplayer. The concept of "Cups" is somewhat borked in multiplayer, since you can pick and choose tracks and the order you want to play them in; it's really just four separate races in an arbitrary grouping. Battle mode has suffered most from retooling: you can no longer play one-on-one, but must play in teams with CPUs, and when you lose your balloons, you simply respawn with a new set, as the game keeps a running tally of cumulative hits for each team. I've read the argument that this was done to facilitate a better WiFi battle experience, and maybe so, but why must the offline battles follow the same rules?

The game's AI has also been improved, which at times is frustratingly merciless, like when you get bombarded by numerous items in succession. In fact, items in general feel a bit broken - if you're in back, you can always count on a star or a bullet bill to propel you to the front, and if you're in first, it's only a matter of time before a blue shell is upon you. As such, the first two laps of the race are essentially meaningless - you can be in last place going into the final lap and easily score 1st with items. It's more to your detriment to hold onto first position, as you'll simply get pounded down again and again.

So those are the highlights of what's broken in the game, how about what's good? The visuals and music are both laudable, and it's fun to see some of the series' previous tracks renewed in Wii-goodness. The new tracks are well-designed too. The addition of bikes provides more depth when choosing your vehicle, with varied abilities like drifting, drafting and tricks under consideration. I've yet to try the online play, but people say that's fun too. :P

All in all, it's a good game, but not a great game. Which is a shame after seeing such wonderful first-party franchise titles like Brawl and Mario Galaxy.

Filed under: Games  Mario Kart Wii  Opinion  

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Cleaning Up the URLs

04/08/08 10:45 am

I have been tinkering with the site's .htaccess directives to change the URLs from variable-laden to "clean" versions, because it's user and search engine friendly. This might cause some links to go AWOL however, since well-defined redirection rules can be tricky business. If you find a link that's not taking you where you expect it to, please email me (or leave a comment on this post) with the full URL you used. Don't tell me about the links in the RSS feed though - I know about those already.

Filed under: Site Related  Technical  

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Winamp Classic Viscolor Tool

04/2/08 6:34 pm

I'm not highly skilled with Javascript, and it's somewhat amusing to me that it's an in-demand skill at all. Back in the day, we all hated Javascript because, as far as we could tell, its only use was for annoying, useless things like pop-up greetings or animated page transitions. But now JS is back in vogue, most often touted through "AJAX," and people... like it. Huh. Go figure.

Anyway, the point of my ramblings is to say I spent some time Javascripting over the previous weekend. Here is the fruit of my work: a viscolor.txt generator for making Winamp Classic skins. Up until now I have been making my viscolor files manually... it's stupid, I know, but it's why so many of my visualizers feature flat-color bars and backgrounds. But I went Googling for an automated maker, and didn't find anything particularly useful. When such a problem presents itself to me, I just do it myself. ^^;

So, hopefully that can be of use to any fellow skinners out there. If not, it's still useful to me. Huzzah!

...Oh yes, it doesn't seem to work in IE, of course... Maybe I'll try to fix that later. But really, use Firefox.

Edit: fixed in IE, mostly. But still, Firefox.

Filed under: Random  Skins  Technical  

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Happy Easter!

03/23/08 12:43 pm

Happy Easter, site visitors! Between the chocolate bunnies and egg hunts, take a moment to reflect on what Easter's really about - the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's a good thing.

Filed under: Life  

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Smash Tactics

03/23/08 12:27 pm

Ah, Smash Bros Brawl... we've been waiting for you for months, and what do you give us? ... A pretty great game, actually. I'm typically not one for fighting games, but I like the Smash series for its combination of beloved characters, relatively simple attack execution, fun battle items, and knock outs that are based on getting flung from the ring rather than having your life meter emptied. Brawl builds on its predecessor's already strong foundation with updated graphics, more items, more characters and more ways to play.

My first move was to play through the adventure mode, "The Subspace Emissary," since you can unlock all of the "secret" characters in it (a preferable method to doing things like Target Smash or completing some number of Brawls in the triple digits). If Brawl is your first venture into Smash, it's also a conducive way to find a character you like, since you'll have to use nearly all of them to get through it. It becomes frustrating at the end however, when you must re-fight every boss while traversing a maze of enemies that continually respawn. The final boss also seems to have a one-hit kill attack that can't be dodged(?). I consider the whole adventure mode as an extra though, and a good one for what it's worth.

The real content is of course, the Brawls! Having a full group of four to fight with is great, and Nintendo's finally starting to grasp the idea that we like digital networking - so if you can't gather a crowd in person, now you can go online. It's a shame however, that the big N must always bend over backward to ensure a sterile environment; while playing with strangers, there's no chat, no nicknames, no taunts, no options to add someone to your buddy list, nothing of an interactive nature. Surely we can't have any of that, lest some poor child be exposed to heinous four letter words or unwanted pictures of human anatomy! [/sarcasm] That's a whole 'nother topic, really... If you're a fellow online Brawl player and you'd like to exchange friend codes, send an email.

Also if you're obsessive, there's this big wall of stuff to get for completing certain challenges... but I know I'm not going to do 'em all... nope...

At other times - portable times - I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance as well (seriously, name too long). I played Tactics back in the day and enjoyed it, but it was certainly flawed in a few places - sloppy translation of the story, places where you could get stuck in unbeatable battles with no means of reset, the annoyance of wait time between selecting and actually casting a spell, and former guest units who would then join your team permanently and ludicrously overpower those units you'd sunk hours into training. Tactics Advance gets rid of these, and adds more races, new and different jobs, and other improvements. The law system... I don't really care about; it's simple enough to avoid violations if you have a varied team, and then they're somewhat pointless once you can change and revoke them. In any case, it's a fun game, and also quite long for a portable title.

And that's the shpeel about my gaming life - thanks for humoring me. As for skins, there are currently two in the works: Resident Evil 4 and Shakugan no Shana.

Filed under: Games  Final Fantasy Tactics Advance  Super Smash Bros Brawl  Opinion  

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RE4 Wrap Up & Apollo Justice

02/25/08 7:38 pm

When we last left our hero, he had infiltrated the enemy headquarters on ... some island. There are some rather eerie settings here, particularly the run-down hospital where you meet your first regenerator. And those minigun toting commando enemies? Ouch. It took me several attempts to beat Krauser, since I kept trying to shoot him and the time limit would run out. Use the knife? Bah.

On the other hand, I defeated the final boss on my first attempt ("what? All I have to do is shoot the eyeball, then use a context-command? ... Hmm."), after which I was disheartened to die several times on the jet ski escape from the island. I realize I must be simply awful at it, but it felt so out of place to begin with: I just beat the boss... game is over now - gimme a cut scene and some closure, not an opportunity to instantly die 10 more times before you roll credits.

All in all though, I had an unexpectedly great time with this game. I feel a good part of the credit for that must go to the Wii remote controls - for some reason I am near-incapable of simultaneously using one analog stick for movement and one for aiming. The Wii remote makes aiming far more intuitive and comfortable, especially for a n00b (of the genre) like myself. On that note, I can't wait to try out Metroid Prime 3...

But when another Gyakuten Saiban comes to call, nary an objection can be made.

Apollo Justice is the first game in the Ace Attorney / Gyakuten Saiban series to be made for the Nintendo DS rather than being a port of a Gameboy Advance title. However, several of the "new" features actually premiered in the fifth case of the first game - "Rise From the Ashes" - which was added on to the DS version of the title. Fingerprinting, video analysis, 3D evidence inspection and blood detection all return in Apollo Justice, in addition to "perceiving," foot printing, x-ray scanning and sound analysis with a mixing board, to name a few.

While I like these features, I couldn't help but wish for more freedom with them. Why can I only dust for fingerprints when I'm led to do so? Why can't I put any piece of paper in the x-ray scanner, even if it comes out blank? Giving us free reign on the gadgets might have drawn attention away from the stark linearity in the plot, but instead it's reinforced by "only when I say so" access.

And then there's the 3D rendering of evidence... okay, it looks nice, but feels pointless when an examination yields no additional information; this was implemented better in Ashes, where an object was only visible in 3D if a 3D analysis would reveal something special.

However, as usual, Gyakuten Saiban delivers an immersive, intricate story that had me hooked 'til the end. While I liked Trials & Tribulations for its interweaving of stories through three cases, Justice intertwines all of its cases. Since the series dropped most of its regular faces in favor of a new cast, character development was essential, and the game does a satisfying job of bridging the past and present, always revealing things in bits and pieces as you go, of course. Personally I wasn't so enticed by the new breed of smiley, polite prosecutor (it's more fun when they're being smarmy and mean... and cyborg!), but he plays an air guitar in court... how can I not be amused by that?

Filed under: Games  Apollo Justice  Phoenix Wright  Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition  Opinion  

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Moar RE Foar

02/12/08 7:05 pm

My escapade through Resident Evil 4 Wii Ed continues - I've reached "the island," which follows in the series of simply named locales such as "the village," and "the castle."

Defeating Salazar (or "squeaky voiced midget Napoleon" *link content not suitable for children) took a couple of tries, for a single reason: the one-hit kill. Whatever game it appears in, this really gets on my nerves; I've been fighting this boss for some five minutes, repeatedly dodging flailing tentacles and spider-like creatures, waiting for those few brief moments when I can hit its vulnerable spot, and then it lunges with a many-fanged mouth and a roar that will be your death knell, if you don't run away quickly enough. Worse are the chainsaw-wielding fellows amongst the villagers, or the zealots carrying head-chomping parasites; these guys will show up while you're already occupied fighting off a crowd of enemies, get close to you and then BAM, "You are dead" (I love how the game over screen so flagrantly informs me of this - as if I didn't know that decapitation was fatal).

It's a violation of good faith in gaming. You enter the game with [or progressively acquire] an understanding of the rules that bind you and, supposedly, the enemies as well; you cannot take down your foes in a single hit, but nor can they do it to you, so you have a sense of fairness in the game. A one-hit kill is a violation of this would-be mutual understanding, and thusly feels like cheating. Of course, games try to compensate for this by making killer attacks slow or inaccurate, providing a margin of safety through successful reaction or sheer good fortune. I suppose out of those two, I'd prefer the former, which at least has something to do with my ability in the game, rather than the latter where there's nothing but a coin flip between success and epic fail. Still it doesn't make it any less frustrating when a challenge you would've won is usurped by a tiny mistake that will cost you everything. If I were emo, perhaps I'd muse, "such is life" (...but I'm not... I like bunnies).

I understand though, that the "survival horror" genre is apparently not supposed to be like this in the first place. I'm told that RE4 is an anomaly in that it gives you the means to fight back against the hordes, whereas you'd normally need to turn tail and run for the hills, I suppose. But what fun would that be? As mentioned in my previous post about the game, this isn't my typical gaming fare; it's the first I've played in the genre, really. Because I like it, there's a decent chance I'll give its predecessors a shot at some point, but if a zombie is trying to eat my sweet sweet brains and all I can do is run walk slowly backwards while still facing forward, it doesn't sound like a fun time.

At the very least, Rirath has predestined that I will play Umbrella Chronicles on co-op, however.

Filed under: Games  Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition  Opinion  

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