It’s great comfort TV – often extremely clever, but at the same time, extremely structured. You know what to expect from the show; there’ll be a few witty cast members, a bit of mystery, and an interesting case that will be wrapped up within the hour (organized in such a manner that the first half will consist of the police investigation, while the second half will focus on the prosecution as they make their case in the courtroom). In fact, it’s a formula that seems to slot quite well into Telltale’s episodic game structure.

Even with a format perfect for a game adaptation, I would not in a million years have expected the Law & Order license to produce a good game. While flawed in several ways, by dropping many of the adventure game tropes that you expect from the studio and borrowing bits and pieces from the similarly themed LA Noire and Phoenix Wright, Telltale Games has produced an intriguing title that perfectly captures the spirit and conventions of its licensed material.

Like the television show, each episode of Law & Order: Legacies is broken up into “law” (police) and “order” (courtroom) sections, and each of those can be divided up into a series of corresponding minigames interspersed between cutscenes.

The meat of the police section is the interrogation of witnesses and suspects. During these segments, you’ll ask questions and listen to your subject’s responses. If they tell a lie, or if you spot any sort of inaccuracy, you will be presented with a chance to press for more detail and present evidence that contradicts their statement. Instead of presenting physical pieces of evidence, like you might in Phoenix Wright, you instead tend to point out logical fallacies or direct lies by relating to previous statements. This is largely a test of your memory, but if you’re like me and have roughly the memory of a goldfish, you can bring up a log of all previous conversations at any time. These interrogations tend to be incredibly simple, and you can usually spot the lies (and point out the truth) with ease. The answer options usually include one obvious response, one that is close but just slightly off, and two that are obvious jokes (though, I will give them credit – they tend to be pretty clever jokes). However, despite their relative ease, these segments often get pretty tense, and some of the back and forth between the cops and the suspect is really fun.

The other minigame that you’ll encounter during the police investigations is a crime scene examination. This comes in the form of a hidden-object game, where you have to circle each of the items that you’ve been sent to find. These objects are hidden amongst a number of similar objects (or under conspicuously placed towels or boxes), and you’ll have to be careful to select the right one. Again, this game is pretty easy – you are provided with outlines of most of the items that you’re searching for (though, they do mark a few as question marks to add a little bit of a challenge).

The controls for these segments can be a bit frustrating, however. Moving the mouse toward the edge of the screen simply moves a fixed camera along a track, and there were a number of times where I really just wanted full control over my viewpoint and level of zoom. Additionally, you have to physically draw a circle around an object instead of just clicking on it. When an object is small, this gets a bit tricky – you may have to draw your circle a few times just to get it to recognize what you’re looking for. This was a case where it was clear that this game was designed for the iPad, and controls that work well on a touchscreen don’t always translate to a mouse.

Courtroom cross-examinations play out quite similarly to the interrogations conducted during the police scenes. You’ll press holes in witness testimony and look out for lies from the accused, then present evidence that contradicts their claims. The key gameplay difference comes into play when the defense attorney takes over. You are given the option to raise an objection after every question posed to a subject, and if you do object, you have to specify what exact rule was violated. These tend to be things like asking the subject leading questions to get specific answers out of them, or pointing out that the defense is deliberately trying to get a reaction from the jury. You’ll also point out when subjects are asked to give expert testimony on a topic that they are not well-versed in, as well as other similar infractions.

Like the interrogations, the cross-examinations are a lot of fun and can occasionally be incredibly tense, especially given that somewhat more is on the line this time. As the case progresses, a meter will fill or shrink in response to the actions taken by the prosecution and defense, representing which side the jury favors. If you take the lead and fill this meter, you’ll be able to press for not just the guilty verdict, but also a stronger prison sentence. If the meter is too low, the criminal might get off with a minor slap on the wrist.

It is blatantly obvious that Law & Order: Legacies was designed first and foremost as an iPad game. This comes through most clearly in the gameplay design choices. You never directly control a character – game interaction instead comes in the form of clicking menu options and drawing circles around objects. However, the iPadness of the design (if you’ll forgive my lack of a better phrase) can be felt at every level, from the Apple-style toggles and button styling to the low-polygon graphics engine. In general, the fact that this is an iPad game ported to the PC isn’t a bad thing – it just feels a bit limiting. I couldn’t help but lust after a few of the improvements that could have come from small changes to the PC port, things like better control options during the crime scene investigations.

My reaction to the graphics in Law & Order Legacies is a bit mixed. Telltale’s internal engine was designed to work well on lower-end machines, so the company tends to stick to cartoon-like renderings. That style works well for humorous games like Sam & Max or Monkey Island, but when combined with the more serious themes of Law & Order, it often just doesn’t mesh well at all. When I was wrapped up in the storyline, the art generally didn’t bother me, but it can be pretty jarring when the camera cuts to a crudely rendered cell-shaded corpse. On the other hand – I’d almost rather they stick to the cartoony designs over attempting to realistically depict people on a game designed for the iPad. So, mixed feelings overall, but the art style works most of the time, and I’d rather they stick to cell-shading if the game is ultimately designed for a portable device.

Telltale is known for their great writing, and Law & Order is no exception. The cases featured in each episode are fairly gripping, and have some great twists and turns. The characters (both the interrogators and interrogatees) have great dialogue, and some of the responses that you can choose during conversations are downright hilarious. The subject matter of the cases fit the general atmosphere of the show well, and are actually fairly topical. For instance, the first case is a thinly-veiled retelling of the recent News Corp phone hacking scandal (with an added sex abuse tie-in and a hacker who demands that you call him “Anonymous”). The voice acting is fitting, and while you can tell that they used sound-alikes rather than the actual cast members, the voices are close enough that it isn’t distracting.

Playing Law & Order: Legacies doesn’t really feel like you’re playing a game. It feels like you’re interacting with an episode of a television show. While playing a game is – almost by definition – interacting with a video feed, there is absolutely a difference between playing something like LA Noire and completing an episode of Law & Order. In some ways, Law & Order is more of a “choose your own adventure” story, where your mistakes can cause the story to branch in slightly different directions.

Mind you, this isn’t entirely a bad thing. The individual episodes of Law & Order: Legacies are gripping, fast-paced stories that pull you along for a ride that lasts about exactly as long as an episode of the show that the series is licensed from. While annoyingly easy at times, the individual minigames are very fun, and winning over the jury in the courtroom can be a pretty stressful affair. By trimming the fat from the game, Law & Order is left with nothing but the core of each case, and in many ways, the choice to drop some of the more “gamey” bits of a typical adventure game was the best decision that Telltale could have made. I ended up having more fun with Law & Order than I did with many of the individual cases in LA Noire simply because I didn’t have to spend half an hour driving around a massive world. I could dive straight into the investigation.

Law & Order: Legacies will be primarily of interest to fans of the long-running television franchise, and those fans will absolutely be thrilled with the final product. It’s a well-written set of interactive episodes of the show, and is ripe with familiar characters and other treats for that audience. However, this isn’t entirely a fans-only affair. Anybody looking for a pesudo Phoenix Wright experience should consider giving Law & Order a try. It’s not without its warts, but I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying the ride.

Law & Order: Legacies

Developer
Telltale Games

Publisher
Telltale Games

System
PC, Mac, iOS (Mac Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 26, 2012

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

How are the two games similar?

Let me count the ways…

-A visually striking 2D platformer with 2 player co-op? Check.

-Presentation framed around a man reading a storybook? Check.

-Protagonist equipped with a whip-like weapon used to lasso enemies into spheres that can then be tossed at other things – as well as being used to grapple and swing from hooks? Check.

That isn’t to say that this game is simply Epic Yarn starring a decomposing octopus girl. The combat system, while not more refined, is much deeper. Also, it is possible to die in Scarygirl, and it is possible to die a lot.

Therein lies the most noticeable mechanical difference between Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Scarygirl; while the former wants you to make it to the end of the game with little effort and explore arts and crafts projects they call levels with minimal consequence, the latter starts out with a similar philosophy, but at some point decides that it instead wants to see how much crap you’ll put up with for a chance to get a glimpse at the next colorfully macabre landscape.

Granted, Scarygirl presents a series of beautiful landscapes – the kind you wouldn’t expect to find in a downloadable title. For the sake of comparison, I took a peek at the game’s 2D source material, and I was amazed at how well the developer was able to add an extra dimension to that work within the game.

Sadly, Scarygirl suffers from a problem shared by many pretty games; the graphics often get in the way of the gameplay. On many an occasion, objects in the foreground will completely block a generous portion of the screen, leaving you blindly mashing the attack buttons, hoping you’re hitting whatever enemies are hiding behind them.

Blindly mashing the attack buttons, by the way, is a perfectly viable way to get through most of the game, whether or not you can see the enemies, but I’ll elaborate more on that later.

Sound is a curious and mixed bag deserving attention here, varying between good, serviceable, and entirely non-existent. When the game begins and players are collecting mass quantities of gems, the action sounds like you’re running your fingers across a wind chime – a cool effect that supplements the ambiance of the game.

The narrator also has a generous portion of gravitas, spending the time it takes for the game to load to further the story in a pleasantly organic way. Unfortunately, the further you make it into the game (nine words that could begin many statements about Scarygirl), the more objects you encounter that are inexplicably silent in the play and interaction.

When you’re fighting a giant mechanical dragon for instance, and it approaches you to shoot flames in your direction, you’d expect those flames to make some sort of roaring and/or crackling sound, not a silent and/or nonexistent sound.

There are also a few airships with huge cannons that are apparently enchanted by some sort of sound-cloaking spell, because when it fires said cannons, which shoot out balls twice the size of Scarygirl, they make not so much as a peep. Also, I have no idea what an axe getting reflected by a force field sounds like, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not total silence.

All in all, Scarygirl is a game that confuses the ears.

For the most part the platforming in Scarygirl is competent, but it has its hiccups, particularly when navigating the game’s ubiquitous rotating platforms; if you land on a platform while it’s rotating, the game has a really hard time deciding whether or not you actually landed on it. There are also moments where you’ll really lament the fact that no matter how hard you press the jump button, Scarygirl will always jump the same height, especially in some of the later parts of the game where if you jump too high YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY DIE.

Fighting the bad guys in Scarygirl is an experience that starts out similarly tolerable, if not somewhat delightful; the tentacled protagonist has a series of combos of light and heavy attacks at her disposal, and can buy more of them using the gems collected throughout the game.

However, that potential is undermined and essentially tossed into the dustbin given that, for the most part, players can just mash the two attack buttons and kill anything; the only motivation you have to not do that is that Scarygirl is able to use near-dead enemies as weapons by grappling them. Unfortunately, unless you know the precise number of hit points an enemy has, and are meticulously counting the numbers flying off of their heads, you will more than likely kill the enemies mid-combo.

And when the game flips the switch from a “fun little button masher” to “frustrating fights with those damn blue guards armed with poles and swords twice as long as your reach,” you’re going to need to grapple as many enemies as you can, leaving you chipping away at half-beaten enemies with light attacks until the purple grapple icon shows up, giving you the “OK” to do so – a terrible strategy when there are TWO OR THREE MORE DAMN DIRTY BLUE GUARDS BEHIND IT WHO CAN REACH YOU FROM BEHIND THE STUNNED ONE.

Sorry, I just had to vent – there’s this one level near the end where the game just drops a crapload of some of the strongest enemies onto this small flat surface, and you fight them 3-9 at a time, and after you die on that a couple dozen times, the game just stops being fun. That being said, there are difficult enemies in this game that are actually pretty interesting to fight – particularly the bosses, who each have a unique weakness that you have to figure out, rendering them stunned and ready for an open can of button-mashing.

In addition to the several hours of gameplay that you’ll experience going through the game the first time, there is some replay value to be had. Several of the levels split off in multiple directions, adding some variety for revisits. Counter-intuitively, there are also bonuses to be had for accomplishing certain feats in each level, such as finding every gem, and if you want to do that, you’ll probably have to take both paths each stage offers. There’s also an online leaderboard, if you want to show off your combination of sick fighting skills and obsessive gem collecting.

Maybe in the end, this game isn’t that much like Kirby’s Epic yarn after all. Scarygirl is like a rainbow puppy making stool on your carpet; you want to get angry at it because it’s so hard to control, but then you see its adorable eyes and colorful coat, and can’t stay mad at it for too long.

Also, the puppy is missing one arm and has a tentacle for the other.

Also, I am not good at similes.

Scarygirl

Developer
TikGames

Publisher
Square-Enix

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), Xbox 360 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) (Xbox LIVE Arcade Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Co-op

Release Date
January 18th, 2012 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) / January 24th, 2012 (PlayStation Network)

Price
$9.99, 800 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The action will pause for a moment before the villain doubles over with a cry and vanishes, possibly leaving behind coins as you sheath your sword and await the next opponent foolish enough to try a similar tactic.

Sakura Samurai is never long for providing another adversary either, all of them determined to prevent your quest to save Princess Cherry Blossom and return peace to the land. But for a game overflowing with waves of opponents, an intimate one-on-one battle system makes every fight a dance of patience and precision that offers a chance to mimic the calm and collected spirit of an anime samurai.

Answering the call to save the Princess without hesitation or elaborate explanation, players are presented with a world map littered with stage points, requiring that each one be cleared in succession to reveal the path forward. Entering these stages drops players into the scenic Japanese countryside, where various formations of enemies await the chance to end this quest, and quickly form into intimidating clusters around the player’s position while taking turns striking out in real time.

Enemies may charge at the player from a distance, or move in closer for quicker swings, and after attacking, an enemy will often back away to allow comrades a chance to play. The camera will pivot around until an enemy initiates an attack, and players can attempt to influence this process by dashing toward their preferred opponent, able to block incoming attacks as well as initiate their own. Striking enemies prematurely will often result in the player’s own attacks being blocked however, and has a nasty tendency of wearing down the Sakura Sword.

Players can achieve quick single strikes against enemies when their guard is down before a strike, but evading enemy attacks to gain a counterstrike opportunity is the key ingredient to success in combat. As an enemy prepares to strike, their blade will briefly flash red, indicating a precious window in which players can evade in any direction, and in turn land two quick blows with their sword.

To shake up the process, later enemy encounters will also offer yellow flashes, indicating multiple strikes that require more drawn out evasive measures. Evasions also add to a special strike gauge, which will allow players to execute a more powerful attack on multiple enemies when filled. Adding to the learning curve, it becomes necessary to watch for enemy gestures that indicate the type of attack about to occur. Some enemies may attack from the side and require a side-dash evasion, but may also strike forward and require the player to fall back evasively before attempting to charge forward for a counterstrike.

The variation of attack patterns continually evolves as players travel along the ancient road, adding armored enemies that wield heavy swords and extended javelins. Eventually archer opponents are added as well, making it necessary to dodge arrows, though sometimes archers can be helpful given their habit of firing at your position regardless of whether their own comrades are blocking the shot. There are also ninja enemies that will buzz around the screen while tossing out bombs and throwing stars.

Stages draw easy water from the well of potential formations, which went a long way in keeping me engaged in a process that was essentially asking that I simply clear out nests of enemies repeatedly – a task that never changes, with players growing stronger but still executing the same maneuvers throughout the game. But the experience didn’t feel like the grind that approach suggests, with each stage offering potential surprises, and the act of reacting to enemy attacks continually challenging my reflexes. It’s easy to approach a stage prepared, even knowing the set stage formation of enemies due to replays, but the play of evasion and precision strikes keeps the experience from wearing thin as quickly as one might expect.

With all of the combat details out of the way, it’s hard to believe I haven’t even discussed a critical element of evasion yet, but here we are.

Aside from saving your hearts, a successful evasion also rewards players with precision points, which serve as an additional layer of currency. With each evasion, a chain of precision points builds, and players can carry that chain into each new and revisited area. However, the chain will reset to zero when the player is struck by an enemy or has one of their own attacks blocked, which may make you question what the point is, but rest assured there is one.

The value of precision points is found within villages, where players can visit the item shop and sell their precision scores to the vendor, who keeps a record of your highest precision chain on the store shelf. An interesting gamble presents itself in asking the player to wager how long they are willing to carry the chain before selling it, and that transaction becomes an essential means of coin collecting later in the game.

I found it necessary to return to earlier areas and evade easier enemies repeatedly in order to trade higher chains for much needed cash.

The monetary burden of the game primarily rests on the desire to upgrade the Sakura Sword by having the local swordsmith forge a higher level blade, which is the most expensive action within the game. Cheaper concerns include sharpening stones, which are needed in battle when your blade dulls from blocked attacks, as well as local expenses such as food for the journey and healing hotel visits where progress can be saved.

There are also items that augment your combat possibilities and are handled aptly in battle via the dpad, such as daggers that can be thrown at enemies from a distance, and frogs that can be tossed at enemies to distract them long enough to break their defense. The two most expensive items in the game are a robe that will shield players from a certain amount of attacks, and an amulet that renews your health should you fall in battle.

Each of the game’s three over-world areas offers a village with identical resources, save for variations on a stamp collecting mini-game street challenge, and the ability to raise your sword level.

Clearing all the stages of an area opens the path to the local fortress, where multiple waves of enemies stand between players and an area boss that will put tactics to the test with complex attack patterns. Thankfully, each cleared stage along the way rewards players with half a heart, and two halves naturally add an additional container count so that players grow stronger while progressing. Additional sympathy is shown when players perish within a stage, returning to the world map to find the game’s friendly Kappa character marking a stage where enemies will give more coins when defeated to help get you back on track.

The strategy is straightforward, but no matter how many patterns I learned, it was still easy to get caught off guard. The variation on attack patterns from all enemies means that you can never relax your attention to subtle details, separating this release from the more typical hack and slash style of ninja games typically offered.

I can’t readily the recall the last swordfight where I had time to squint at an opponent before each strike – a curious spaghetti western moment before each round of samurai Punch-Out!! occurs. The overwhelming need to pay attention to details in battle kept my typically lazy gamer senses engaged, offering a level of replay value that helps this latest eShop release stand tall among some impressive titles of late.

Sakura Samurai offers a level of control where the proposition is simplistic, but the reactionary requirement leaves plenty to learn and master – put to the test beyond the campaign with thug challenges that task players with taking down a set amount of enemies in record time. Should the heat of battle ever become too much, players are always free to visit the Rock Garden, where the 3DS step counter is used to make a Sakura tree bloom – a pretty idea that adds to the charm and compliments the tactile pleasure Sakura Samurai’s rather unique sense of pacing offers on and off the battlefield.

Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword

Developer
Nintendo

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo 3DS (3DSWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
February 2, 2012

Price
$6.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Last year saw Sega attempt to strike first blood on the peripheral with Rise of Nightmares, a gritty game of bloody nurses and sharp weapons that asked players to use their body to punch and kick the cream-filling out of the undead. The violent workout met with mixed results in the attempt to stretch the narrative and physical experience into a retail release.

Enter NanaOn-Sha, otherwise known as the people who brought you the music rhythm genre with titles like Parappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy, now teaming up with Zoë Mode to bring their own full-body spin on the concept on a smaller scale with the Xbox LIVE Arcade release of Haunt.

Although comparing the two games mechanically is helpful, separating them thematically is essential – where Sega sought a B movie slaughter-fest, Haunt is a more lighthearted horror affair. While the game offers jump-scares that get the blood pumping, the spirit of fascination and charm found within the experience is more apt to leave you smiling by the end instead of covering your eyes.

That said however, the game will ask you to cover your eyes at times, though only when set upon by goggle-wearing ghouls.

Players enter Haunt’s mansion without explanation, regaining consciousness to the sound of Benjamin Muldoon’s voice, who quickly turns out to be both the owner of the mansion and a man trapped within the canvas of a painting. In order to both instruct the player on the evolving rules of the game, and to provide a measure of company during an isolating experience, Muldoon can move to any painting within the mansion.

Muldoon is also voiced by Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, providing a voice that lends an incredible measure of warmth and entertainment, enough to almost justify the purchase in order to simply listen to him talk, and perhaps even justify calling Schafer at home to listen while he tells you about his day – should you find the means to call him, please don’t tell him where you got the idea. Normally the dialogue of NPC’s leaves me searching for the skip feature, which Haunt does provide, but this was the first time in recent memory that I longed for an absent “tell me more” button.

Muldoon leads the player to a machine powered by four glowing vials known as Phantaflasks. Before the final flask can be inserted however, ghosts make off with three of the vials, escaping behind three separate doors leading to larger areas of the mansion – you can probably see where this is going. Player’s must tackle each of the three areas in order to retrieve the flasks and help Muldoon with an objective that remains purposefully vague in order to have a bit of fun at the player’s expense in the final moments of the game.

The three areas share plenty of similarities, offering long winding hallways with doors leading to rooms filled with cabinets and drawers that literally shake in begging to be opened by the players outstretched hands – curiously, the game is quite insistent that you also close each door or drawer when finished. The bulk of item discovery involves spheres of vitality that keep the health bar topped up, and vitality vials that will refill said bar should you perish along the way – though the relative ease of the title makes it hard to imagine this happening. Light exploration will have players searching for missing mechanical parts or keys, usually by searching the rooms on one end of a stage and then returning to those on the other side. Since players can’t save whenever they please, stage segments take physical exertion into consideration and as such makes the idea of ever getting lost hard to imagine.

Losing vitality also factors into the scoring for each stage of the game, which adds to leaderboard totals that are a nice enough touch, though it is hard to imagine anyone dancing around whilst proclaiming their domination of Haunt based on score accomplishments.

Moving through the hallways of Haunt is a matter of aiming a flashlight with your outstretched hand and walking on the spot to move toward the focal point of light created by that action. The player can alter their speed by moving on the spot quicker, and I found movement in general more comfortable than Rise of Nightmares, which asked players to put a foot forward and hold it there to move ahead, if only because with Haunt you need a lot less space to get the job done.

I happened to be playing in a much smaller room than usual, and lifting my knees while walking on the spot never failed to move me forward – though there were times where I started physically moving forward because it is apparently very hard to walk on the spot without doing so. There are occasional jitters that crop up while readjusting your direction at times, but these are small instances that never derail the journey.

The areas offer a variety of activities, from a carnival styled tunnel train ride, to audio tricks that require moments of silence from the player via the Kinect microphone. The game is constantly attempting to change tactics and looking for ways to get the drop on players, aided by the relatively short one-day nature of this XBLA release that leaves little space for repetition. With that said however, the player’s role in essentially reacting to phantom aggression largely involves dodging, ducking, and swinging both arms repeatedly.

Haunt’s confrontations largely occur via four primary ghost types. There’s an orange ghost that hurls projectiles that must be swatted back, a yellow ghost that requires you to cover your eyes until you get a chance to snap its goggles, a heavier green ghost that takes powerful swings at the player that must be dodged while waiting for a chance to counterstrike, and a shrieking pinkish ghost that must be shouted back at – be aware that people in your household may come running to see what the problem is the first time this occurs. The flashlight serves as a means of draining the health of each ghost as well, often when the initial response has temporally dazed them.

This review won’t manage to name every small moment of interaction or surprise that charmed me along the way, and I wouldn’t want to list them all off and spoil your supper anyway. The important point is that the game never stops trying to pull the player in deeper, including using Kinect camera trickery to literally make players part of the experience.

By the end, the tricks do get familiar, and eventually it becomes easy to expect certain surprises while gathering those Phantaflasks. But Haunt never tries to delay the trip, and in the same way a good piece of writing uses only as many words as it needs, so too does Haunt only stretch the journey for as long as it can provide some new means of interaction. The game takes the quality over quantity route to avoid overstaying its welcome.

And the Kinect needs more games that don’t over-extend their welcome simply to justify retail existence, reaching an audience that may not know Xbox LIVE Arcade even exists, but have fresh reason to discover it here. Despite a few hiccups and a level of ease that makes it tempting to suggest the game is entirely intended for a younger audience, Haunt is attempting to build its mansion on more sensible ground for the peripheral, which is certainly reason enough for Microsoft to give the title more of a push and a recommendation for any Kinect owners in the audience to grab a room in this mansion for the night.

Haunt

Developer
NanaOn-Sha, Zoë Mode

Publisher
Microsoft Studios

System
Xbox 360 (Kinect) (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 18th, 2012

Price
800 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Such is the premise of Renegade Kid’s new addition to a growing eShop library of digital offerings for the 3DS, one which gives such a shout-out to the glory days of the Nintendo Entertainment System – from the visuals to the occasionally infuriating platforming – that you may just feel obliged to blow in the empty cartridge slot before playing.

Mutant Mudds demands core platforming fundamentals, the repetitious requirements of reflex, patience, and timing. The game is deceptively simple in its presentation, using a hub world to offer an initial sixteen portals to environments filled with moving platforms, spiky pitfalls, and the aforementioned mud creatures. Hidden away within each of these stages are secret levels, offering a secondary exit from each stage and dramatically increasing the difficulty involved in reaching the end.

Completing each primary or secret stage rewards players with a water sprite, which are required to open all of those sixteen portals. Assumedly giving a nod to other Nintendo hardware of the past, those hidden levels are labeled V-Land and/or G-Land, with the first using red overtones reminiscent of the Virtual Boy, while the other uses the grayscale aesthetics of the GameBoy.

Our young hero traverses stages armed with a water powered cannon and jetpack, thereby able to briefly hover on the air in addition to jumping. The jetpack will keep players in the air until an obligatory gauge depletes, or until players press the button a second time to drop back to the ground. The moment players touch the ground, the gauge is fully replenished, making it tempting to move rather quickly through the stages – though rest assured that said stages will immediately emphasis a more cautious pace.

The hub map also offers access to Grannie’s attic, where upgrades can be unlocked in exchange for diamonds found throughout the stages. Each of the sixteen primary stages offers 100 diamonds, and players will need to gather every last one given Grannie’s greedy demands when it comes to trading items for coin.

Only one of these three additional upgrades can be equipped at a time, leaving players to choose between the ability to shoot further, hover longer, or jump boost directly into the air to reach more of those secret stages.

Adding to the layers of this onion, the stages of Mutant Mudds also have three parallax planes where action unfolds simultaneously, using directional jump points to hurl the player further back into the screen, or right up snug to the player’s viewpoint. Because there are no item drops or health gains, this adds incentive to dispatching more enemies in order to clear the screen, as foreground enemies can obscure the field of vision while players are trying to bounce from platforms in the background.

This also allows the game to put the 3D to interesting use with a few enemies that strike by moving between planes, and watching them move from the background to the foreground is a bit magical.

Later stages even unleash angry clouds that will blow the player from one plane to another, often leading to the player’s death, or allowing the stage timer to dwindle down.

Tackling these stages never feels cheap, but can feel incredibly difficult given the meticulous layout, which uses smaller amounts of enemies in all the right places. The game relies quite a bit on vanishing platforms, forcing the player to time their jumps perfectly while dealing with projectile hurling enemies on the other side of a chasm, shielded enemies that can only be struck from behind, and flying enemies that drop explosives. The stages also use familiar environmental hazards, such as lava and slippery ice to further complicate the journey. Should you prevail in finding all of the known water sprites and diamonds, the game will even launch you into the final frontier, taking the fight to space.

The real nostalgia bite here, aside from the pixels and looping music, is that access to the entirety of the game fits all snug and cozy on that initial hub screen, making this a matter of fighting tooth and nail to unlock all of the game’s secrets by playing with an obsessive mindset rather than searching endlessly through larger environments.

The emphasis is less about hurrying toward a climactic finish and more about tackling stages repeatedly until the challenge is met, an act that strained my tired eyes at midnight but saw me still playing by 3am, ridiculously convinced that the 52nd attempt would be the charm for one particular stage.

The longevity of Mutant Mudds favors those compulsive players that will persist until every last diamond and sprite is claimed, and wear said achievement like a badge of honor. But as with most nostalgia trips, the invitation to simply visit and hover around the game’s finely crafted stages is open to anyone who appreciates an earnest love letter to the roots of 2D side-scrolling.

Mutant Mudds

Developer
Renegade Kid

Publisher
Renegade Kid

System
Nintendo 3DS (3DSWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 26, 2012

Price
$8.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

As such, Terry Cavanagh’s PC indie title, VVVVVV, is a welcome sight on the 3DS’ eShop, but I wouldn’t want any idea of indie fan-service to undermine the move, given that the game’s level of polish and play earn placement on the list of eShop offerings worth the investment of player’s time and money regardless of how many people worked on the title.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with why, let’s fill in some blanks below.

Encountering a spaceship catastrophe, players find themselves exploring an alternate dimension as Captain Viridian, searching for lost crew members in the hope of escaping. Beyond the ability to move left or right across the screen, Captain Viridian’s only ability is changing gravity, allowing him to switch between standing on the ground and ceiling. This leaves players constantly switching their footing to explore the black void that quickly reveals spiky pitfalls and teleporting hubs on the road to mapping the entirety of space the game offers.

The charm here, aside from the Commodore styled visuals, is how deceptively simplistic the aesthetics appear to be at first glance. With no intentional disrespect, VVVVVV initially looks like the sort of game one could quickly slap together – though it takes very little time with the game to realize that such a statement is far from the truth.

VVVVVV is filled with meticulous design trickery, some of which will feel overly sadistic when you’re trying to fall through connecting screens while avoiding the placement of spikes and other deadly obstacles. And then there are smaller moments of realization, such as springboard screens where moving forward at full tilt will allow Captain Viridian to clear obstacles via the game’s inherent momentum.

Then, perhaps one triggers a sequence where the bottom of the screen starts moving to hurry the player upward through obstacles at a dizzying pace – you can’t rush, and you can’t crawl, you just start trusting the pacing the game manages to impart on you. Or maybe you curse and walk away, but chances are you’ll come back around before too long.

I’ve certainly cursed this game enough times only to come back to it. That pull owes plenty to the fact that I can always see where I want to go next, and spot the route that will get me there despite the number of deaths involved in the process. Add a spirit of earnest old school exploration, of wanting to know what’s in every blackened corner of the map, and it’s hard to stay mad for any real stretch of time.

With that said, exploration doesn’t feed a traditional connection to an emerging world. The fact that I didn’t catch myself humanizing the characters as an emphasis stuck with me, not as a negative but rather an interesting note while traversing a game that relies on naked curiosity, merciless challenge, and occasional oddities. Rescuing the crew is just a happy incidental while attempting to grasp the hostile space that is so initially overwhelming.

Completing the game unlocks additional modes of play, though players can also choose to unlock these at their leisure beforehand.

This release includes several player-created levels, as well as a Time Trial mode and a No Death mode should you wish to see just how far you can travel through the game without dying.

There’s also a Flip mode, which allows players to flip the entire game and addition stages vertically – at least in theory, since enabling this mode presented me with black screens of nothingness and seems wanting for an out of order sign at the moment.

That hiccup aside, VVVVVV has turned up at an important time, just as the eShop seems eager to offer 3DS owners a reason to take its existence seriously, and hopefully opens the gateway not just to ports of other independent titles, but toward setting the eShop up as a platform for more small and independent developers to ply their trade. That’s probably a little overly idealistic of me, but it’s a pretty thought worth having all the same.

VVVVVV

Developer
Terry Cavanagh, Nicalis

Publisher
Nicalis

System
Nintendo 3DS (3DSWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 29, 2011

Price
$7.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Said tables vary in theme and license, ranging from generic space opera motifs to tables based on Marvel franchises, and the majority of these offer a wide range of point objectives and shiny neon Vegas styling to seduce the senses. The key ingredient in my continuing addiction is the way the game consistently ranks you against others, urging you to play just a little bit longer to defeat friends and strangers alike.

Zen Pinball 3D carries this exact experience over to Nintendo’s handheld, which would seem to leave little to discuss here. Still, I’m sure we can find something to talk about, so please do read on.

Zen Pinball 3D hits the 3DS with four playable tables, which certainly stress a variation on theme, perhaps hoping to aesthetically appeal to everyone with at least one of the choices. Excalibur offers the expected sword and castle, while Shaman turns up drum beats and mysticism. El Dorado’s explorer theme leaned a little more toward my interest, which was then captured completely by the retro science fiction charm of robots and invaders in Earth Defense.

Players can jump right into these tables with the single-player option, but the game also forces me to lightly use the word multiplayer with the addition of Hotseat mode. With Hotseat mode, 1-4 players can play together by passing the 3DS around to the next person in line whenever a ball is lost, thus explaining my use of the word “lightly”. When it comes to pinball, my concern falls on beating other people’s scores rather than sharing the experience through multiplayer, but even Metroid Prime Pinball allowed for some competitive local fun back in the day.

Metroid Prime Pinball came to mind quite a few times, particularly when I questioned whether the typical Zen tables might prove too busy and cluttered on the 3DS’ screen.

I’m not entirely convinced that keeping track of the ball doesn’t stretch the limits of reason given the screen size, but Zen Studios allows players to switch between eight different view options on the fly, making it harder to complain once I’d found my preferred setting.

My ideal controls were easier to find, using the d-pad and the B button while holding the 3DS, but the shoulder pads stand ready to serve anyone who disagrees with my preference.

While I don’t often mention 3D in every 3DS review cranked out here to date, the addition of that feature makes for a dramatic difference on the visual appeal, and my own visual ability to play. Turning up the 3D slider brings the table to life as if one were looking down at an actual pinball table, giving every raised ramp and flipper a new opportunity to standout on the screen. It gives the game a hook that can’t be had on other platforms, and it certainly works at hooking my attention here.

I’m always in need of pinball titles on any and all devices, and Zen Studios has voiced the intention to support the game with DLC down the road. When they do get around to adding tables however, my hope is that they’ll deliver less ports of existing tables and craft fresh experiences, perhaps even a few that play to Nintendo nostalgia, which feels like a missed opportunity here.

Zen Pinball 3D

Developer
Zen Studios

Publisher
Zen Studios

System
Nintendo 3DS (3DSWare)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Hotseat Multiplayer

Release Date
January 12, 2012

Price
$6.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

InXile Entertainment’s HD revival doesn’t detour from this core formula that made the most of technical limitations, offering a sidescroller that asks you to travel from one end of the screen and back again, again, and again. Despite what I consider a premium price point for the privilege, Choplifter HD is also a game of cheap and immediate thrills that doesn’t beg for more than a minimal time commitment, satisfied with whatever little bit of time you have to spare here and there. But aside from the explosions and burst play style, it’s not so easily written off either.

Plus, trying to squish people hoping to be saved is still a guilty bit of fun.

Choplifter HD’s mission structure digs for variations on the core theme of back and forth gameplay that is easy to fall into, but hard to spend anything more than ten minutes at a time with. Rescuing hostages or trapped civilians is a key activity, but so is escorting soldiers, evacuating people by crossing a warzone, hitting key military targets, and yes, even rescuing people from the zombie horde when the game takes that last inevitable move toward throwing in everything plus the kitchen sink – and a Duke Nukem cameo to boot.

Saving people, defeating enemies, and doing these things within the allotted amount of time rewards players with stars after each stage, unlocking alternative helicopters for stages – there was at least one instance where unlocking a different ride was the only way I was making it through the midway point of this game.

As light and fluffy as that sounds, there’s a level of strategy that creeps into the mix. Resource management becomes the major focus of play, with players burdened by a need to monitor the damage level of their helicopter, their fuel supply, and a machinegun that loves to overheat when your trigger finger gets too heavy – this is complimented by a limited number of missiles as well.

Fueling stations are often scattered throughout longer areas, but repairs and missiles can only be gained by returning to the original launch point. While on the one hand this means that it’s easy to stay alive by simply retreating back to base for repairs and fuel, that pace proves continually aggravating and forces a different approach that favors crawling ahead through stages, attempting to take out soldiers firing bullets and deadly RPGS in addition to AA guns and all manner of light and heavily armored vehicular opposition.

Adding some unique difficulty is the fact that there are two positions of attack. As players fly across the screen, they point an analog stick in the direction they wish to fire and to gain missile lock, either weapon activated with a tap of the shoulder button. But the helicopter can also pivot, and will need to in order to face the screen to attack enemy positions on a secondary plane. This means that players need to get quick at switching angles in order to face and deal with enemies on both planes, making it deadly to blaze ahead versus the cautious crawling approach, poking ahead to spot enemy positions only to back off again to dodge a wave of missiles and gunfire that could quickly send players packing back to base.

But one can’t ignore the ridiculous dare that exists, particularly aided by a bust ability that will add speed at the expense of more fuel, allowing players to attempt suicidal runs through fortified areas. There are plenty of times where I was able to survive when my patience demanded a faster pace of play – though just as many times where that approach saw me crash and burn.

Somewhere in this mix I keep walking away from something disposable only to return to a game that really is quite clever in making the most of a limiting play focus. There’s certainly more than the cheap exploitation of the Choplifter title I expected, but also plenty of enjoyment to be had in that very idea. It’s fun to blaze a trail of destruction through the game, at least for a few minutes before falling back into the frustration of methodical play necessary for success.

The dry hidden objectives, thirty missions, and helicopter variations invite modest replay but really leave me hanging on the $15 price point, which is unfortunate given that there really is enough here to merit some light distraction. I just can’t shake the feeling that compared to other titles in the same price range, and others selling for even less, you’ll feel a pinch of buyer’s remorse before too long.

Choplifter HD

Developer
inXile Entertainment

Publisher
inXile Entertainment, Konami

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), PC, Xbox 360 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) (Xbox LIVE Arcade Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 11, 2012

Price
$14.99, 1200 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

So not quite RoboCop, but it’ll do.

WayForward’s latest 2D offering is scaled toward creating a smaller series of incidents that fit a quick speedrun flavored agenda, which doesn’t leave nearly so much meat on the discussion bone but does make for a good and proper portable diversion. The objective of tracking down a set number of convicts per stage with the aid of a singular ability is certainly the developer’s most straightforward effort in recent memory, and creates a space where a more narrowly focused title can simply add to the layers of difficulty without losing cohesion along the way.

There isn’t as much space for the vibrant animations of BloodRayne: Betrayal or the long corridors of Aliens: Infestation, but there’s something familiar and quaint here to while away a few hours near a fireplace stoked by digital nostalgia.

While players will encounter a few types of monsters along the way, such critters are more filler than focus, easily dispatched and placed sparingly around stages to create short interruptions in the hurried search for fugitives. The focus is on the ability to switch blocks between a physical and ethereal state, gaining leverage to reach platforms where fugitives wait patiently to be apprehended – and they all must be caught in order to bring about the robotic suit that ushers players out of a stage to examine the time results.

Our protagonist is possessed of some fairly standard moves for a WayForward character, merely able to tap out shots from her pistol and perform a single jump. Manipulating blocks is again the name of the game, standing on one, and then jumping while triggering the switch that brings a higher one into physical existence before her feet hit it, and so on. As you might imagine, this lends WayForward plenty of opportunities to have players jumping across large expanses of the screen while switching blocks repeatedly to stick the landing.

The challenge primarily builds with cannon styled blocks, which will launch your character and any enemies that get into them in the direction their indicator arrow points toward. This naturally brings about plenty of puzzles that involve moving a certain enemy type to a new placement, and requires less quick thinking than quick fingers to switch to each new block in time to keep the momentum going. Often times, exploding enemies will need to be moved in this fashion to destroy rock-type blocks that can’t be switched on and off.

The game also adds colored blocks that can be stayed from switching by standing on a block of similar color – red and green – offering the player fresh diversion in the effort to create viable pathways before leaping into the fray.

Once again, the premise is very simple, although sometimes when I’m tired it’s incredible easy to kill myself repeatedly until the battery gives out. But there’s something very warming in WayForward’s handling of the small-scale familiar, finding plenty of means to increase the challenge during the game’s stages while also exploiting opportunities for their signature graphical charm to emerge – switching blocks to smash enemies into the screen never loses its charm, as a matter of fact.

That the long term value comes from grinding your completion time down from say, six minutes to one minute, probably ensures that the more sadistically inclined will be playing long after I’ve moved on to something else, but the quirky entry is a welcome addition to an eShop that is finally warranting some attention beyond virtual revisits.

Mighty Switch Force

Developer
WayForward Technologies

Publisher
WayForward Technologies

System
Nintendo 3DS (3DSWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 22, 2011

Price
$5.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The game involves claiming bounties on “them outlaws”, a task that can be accomplished A) by sucking their unconscious bodies into some kind of… thing… or, B) by murdering them horribly and sucking their corpses into the same kind of…thing…

To this end, Stranger employs an eclectic mix of tricks that, in a lesser game, might not fit together. Primarily, the bounty hunter is able to switch between the first and third person perspectives, granting him some different abilities tied to those modes.

In third person, Stranger will break out into a four-legged run that can smash obstacles and enemies, and he’s able to employ some quick melee attacks for crowd control. Though it may immediately seem like a mode used chiefly for navigation and platforming, the sprint and melee attacks can be critical for defeating enemies and escaping dangerous situations if the player learns to smoothly coordinate the two modes.

In first person, Stranger wields a double-barrelled crossbow loaded with an assortment of critters in the place of traditional ammunition; animals and insects that create different effects when fired. These can be employed to create traps, incapacitate, delay, or simply annihilate enemies—and, in an unexpectedly obvious twist, ammo must be hunted rather than collected.

Requiring that small colonies of critters be zapped with an infinite supply of electric flies, it’s not a complex or time consuming element of the game, hardly more complicated than a standard pickup—but it creates an interesting layer of challenge in many of the game’s scenarios. Ammo capacity is fairly low, making it entirely possible that the player will run out of an important ammo type during a skirmish, requiring that he then scour the battlefield and quickly zap and scoop up critters right in the middle of the firefight.

Especially refreshing is how much Stranger’s Wrath teaches the player about its own mechanics without resorting to hand-holding. Though there’s a fairly comprehensive opening tutorial, once the game is rolling the player is largely left to his own devices—and it works, with a comfortable learning curve even as the missions pile on increasingly difficult enemies that require particular tactics to defeat.

Experimentation and combining the right kinds of firepower in the double-barrelled crossbow can yield some interesting results and significantly speed up the pace of combat. It’s not merely a matter of the ammo best suited to the job, but also the ammo you can spare; though an enemy-ensnaring spider is easily the cleanest way to subdue lesser enemies, it’s not the most efficient—as spiders can be hard to find, and might best be employed for higher level bad guys. Combining more plentiful (if messier) ammo can be used to down foes just as quickly, allowing rarer ammo types to be conserved.

As a byproduct, the pacing of any battle can vary wildly. A methodical, stealth oriented approach can disintegrate quickly into a spray-and-pray shootout and back again, simply by virtue of the ammunition equipped.

As the battles become more and more demanding, Stranger’s Wrath requires quicker thinking and a better understanding of enemy weaknesses. It’s not long before enemy types with opposing weakpoints begin to travel together, requiring that the player employ limber tactics to dispatch them.

Later levels stack more interesting environmental scenarios with an exponentially increasing number of dangerous enemies, and it can be punishing—but finding the right groove, switching to all the right ammo and shooting at all the right times is invigorating.

Missions are capped by boss encounters, and this is where things get a little messy. Bosses, understandably, cannot be felled with the same simplicity of their rank and file goons; one can’t expect to launch a single skunk-bomb at a boss and bounty him while he’s puking.

One of the few communication failures of the game is that it’s never quite made clear that bosses can be subdued, without lethal force, by draining their stamina bars rather than their life bars. Players are likely to capture the early bosses alive without much difficulty, but find that later bosses seem to respond only to lethal damage—when in fact what’s required is careful observation regarding which weapons drain which bars.

Perhaps the boss strategy is obscure by design. The first instinct of any gamer is going to be to fixate on the life bar of a boss, and the difficulty to discerning a non-lethal strategy for bosses does add an element of challenge that demands a break from such traditional FPS thinking—making it difficult to write this one up as a flaw.

Stranger’s true flaws are few and mostly technical. The HD upgrade has been handled nicely, though there remains some of the visual harshness and darkness characteristic of titles from the previous generation of consoles. Additionally, some audio flops see some dialogue clipped awkwardly—especially when Stranger dashes through an occupied town, while the soundtrack often can’t decide exactly which track it would like to play.

Meanwhile, the art and production values have stood the test of time. The slow-speaking Stranger makes every line fun to listen to, operating alongside a cast of fun characters and illustrated with fluid, satisfying animation.

The title drips with humor and personality, with even the cartoonish weaponized critters offering quips before being flung into the fray.

What’s more, while many modern games seem to think they have much more of a story than they actually do and spend an inordinate amount of time fixating on a narrative that just isn’t there, Stranger’s Wrath knows exactly how much time its story warrants and doesn’t waste a second more. It’s a tight, straightforward tale, and there’s a lesson to be learned there about knowing what kind of property you have on your hands.

Stranger’s Wrath, like a lot of HD updates, isn’t going to offer much for existing fans of the title and probably won’t warrant a revisit, but it’s a perfect opportunity for those who missed the game on its first pass. The game has withstood the ravages of time well, which is no small feat in an medium that moves so quickly, and holds up better than some other, higher profile titles to see the HD upgrade.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD

Developer
Just Add Water

Publisher
Oddworld Inhabitants

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), PC (PlayStation Network Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 27, 2011

Price
$14.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review