The U.S.S. Sulaco drifts silently through space, short on a flight crew but freshly infested with those iconic monsters that mostly come at night.
Mostly.
Without Ellen Ripley to save the day, the task of investigating and once again attempting to exterminate the alien menace falls on a new squad of marines – four to be exact. The initial lineup of characters offers the typical bravado, and includes an obligatory “Vasquez” character. And that initial tip of the hat is only one of the many ways Infestation illustrates a profound love for the James Cameron film. From an early cat cameo to an additional mini-game that challenges players to stab the DS stylus like a knife between on-screen fingers, this is the Aliens game that never arrived when 2D was the norm and not the occasional throwback treat.
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Posted: October 19, 2011 at 1:44 pm
By Jamie Love |
HAL Laboratory was the first developer to truly show just how cool games could be on the Nintendo DS. Those of us who survived the dark, dreary days that were the DS’s first few months of existence know how slim the pickings were. But, like the sun breaking after a long night, along came Kirby Canvas Curse, and gone was any buyer’s remorse we had been feeling.
Canvas Curse skillfully demonstrated that the DS’s touch screen could be used for more than gimmicky mini-games, while also taking the Kirby series in an interesting new direction. I still play it on a regular basis all these years later – it is fabulous, and if you haven’t played it, do yourself a favor and track it down immediately.
Now we find ourselves in the twilight of the Nintendo DS’s reign, and HAL returns once again with an absolute knockout release. Kirby Mass Attack, like its cousin Canvas Curse, does away with a traditional control scheme and opts instead for stylus-driven control. Thankfully, the wizards at HAL superbly integrated this type of control scheme into engaging and intelligent level design and aesthetics, and the end result is one of the most interesting, innovative, and fun games to hit the Nintendo DS in quite some time.
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Death is only the beginning in Capcom’s latest DS release, which begins with the demise of its protagonist, Sissel, only to start a spiritual adventure that finds him making plenty of new friends and influencing people – despite the handicap of being deceased. The first of Sissel’s new acquaintances is a possessed lamp, which kindly introduces him to a ghost world overlapping the land of the living and allows Sissel a means of moving the story forward by unraveling the multiple threads that comprise it.
Capable of switching between these two spheres, Sissel is able to possess and manipulate inanimate objects, a skill key toward solving the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death – though this ability results in him helping plenty of others along the way, like a phantom littlest hobo.
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Posted: January 11, 2011 at 9:09 am
By Jamie Love |
Just how does Dr. Robotnik Eggman have so much money at his disposal? You’d think that the repair bills resulting from his many battles with Sonic the Hedgehog over the years would have put him into bankruptcy by now. Yet time and time again the diabolical Eggman somehow comes up with enough revenue to construct armies of robots, elaborate airship fortresses, and, in the case of Sonic Colors, an interplanetary amusement park.
Did Eggman have a lucrative career thanks to his status as a doctor? Is he independently wealthy? Is he shoulder-deep in credit card debt?
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I recently came to a conclusion: I don’t think I have what it takes to be a survivor. My wife and I were discussing what would happen if a zombie apocalypse actually fell upon mankind, and we both decided we would rather become zombies than deal with the stress of struggling to live on. Neither of us possesses the types of aggressive personalities that would be necessary to cope with the rigors that such a grueling, exhausting existence would bring.
Perhaps the largest and scariest threat of all in any survival scenario comes in the form of other survivors. With zombies, for instance, at least you have an idea of what to expect. They may be relentless, but they all follow similar patterns of behavior. Not so with humans. You never know when your so-called allies might turn on you in order to get a leg up and boost their own chances of living to see another day.
With this in mind, I think it’s safe to say that should I find myself in the situation of protagonist Junpei from 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, I probably wouldn’t even make it through the first challenge he faces.
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As the Professor is so fond of saying, few things satisfy like a puzzle solved.
A good story runs a close second however, and the latest dose of Professor Layton to hit the North American DS brings the familiar and balanced mix of mystery narrative and puzzles that has helped make Level-5 a little more known to those not quite as consumed by the RPG genre.
Layton uses an easy style of animation, the stuff of cartoons and storybooks, allowing for humorously exaggerated characters and the occasional talking animal against a rather finely detailed London backdrop that still allows space for drama, offering up something marketing dreams are made of – a title that legitimately has a very natural and open appeal.
From the moment the story begins, it feels like the type of game you could recommend to anyone. And what seems entirely important about this feeling is that the game conveys that broad appeal while still delighting in eccentricities and details, where conventional wisdom seems to so often recommend stripping a product down to increase the sales potential.
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Posted: September 20, 2010 at 1:57 pm
By Jamie Love |
Last year’s mobile game from Prope has returned for a Wii/DS combo release, though interviews have revealed that the Wii version preceded all other concerns – and it definitely shows.
Prope Studio founder Yuji Naka’s life after Sega is easy to typecast as one focused on the control side of gaming – the way we interact with the medium, not simply via the use of new peripherals but in exploring the way tactile actions and video output work together to create new experiences. Last year that focus had me tapping on a cereal box to vibrate a WiiMote with the release of Let’s Tap, but where that release came across more as an interesting technical demonstration, Ivy the Kiwi? is less on the esoteric and more about playtime with straight-forward appeal.
More over, Ivy feels like a return to form, a game of crafted levels designed for an instantly iconic character that is unavoidably as cute as a box of puppies, and finds a welcome place alongside other Naka creations such as Sonic the Hedgehog or Nights into Dreams
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Posted: September 16, 2010 at 6:07 pm
By Jamie Love |