I feel that I’ve been living a bit of a dual life lately – Professor Layton and the Curious Village is my faithful companion that I bring with me, and Mass Effect is my passionate affair in the evening. I tend to play Professor Layton before class and Mass Effect when I have some time to really sit down and enjoy it.

I recently finished Professor Layton after two months of frequent puzzle-solving. I spent nearly 12 hours on it, solving every puzzle (including bonus and downloadable weekly puzzles). I admit to looking up help and using hints on rare occasions, but, for the most part, I solved the 144 puzzles on my own.

Professor Layton is a perfect match of game and platform. The DS is perfect for its point-and-click interface. I had suggested how well this interface would work for a portable game after my experience with Zack and Wiki, and it was fun to see it realized.

The gameplay was flexible enough to allow me to feel satisfied with a play session of three minutes or three hours. I found that most puzzles were relatively short, but for those that required more thought, I could continue thinking about them after I turned off the DS. I would never lose my progress because the game allows you to quit out of any puzzle very easily and to save at almost any point in the game. This made Professor Layton the perfect game to travel with, since I would never get stuck in the middle of something. This also encouraged me to play it more than other DS games because I never had to worry about losing my work.

The game was packed with content that made it really fun for me. There were collectible items that often unlocked more puzzles, such as the inn and painting scraps. The puzzles gave out picarats as a score (and sometimes the collectible pieces as well). The picarats seemed to have little significance other than indicating the difficulty of a puzzle. However, some puzzles with a higher picarat value were easy for me (such as spatial slide puzzles), while others were harder for me (such as some geometry-based puzzles). I found that, if a puzzle was harder for me, an indication of its difficulty would be how many hint coins I had to spend to solve it. Hint coins were another fun collectible item that rewarded me for clicking in many random locations on the screen. I loved the collectible items that encouraged me to fully explore the game.

Aside from the optional collectibles and the short puzzle structure, I found that this game also catered to the portable platform with its audio. The game didn’t require sound to be enjoyed and had subtitles over all the movies. While I am a firm believer in sound enhancing a game experience, a portable game should be designed to be enjoyed with or without sound. When I could have sound, I really enjoyed the music and sound effects, even if some of the characters’ voices were cheesy and had silly accents.

The story of this game was well-paced. Important plot elements were revealed in evenly spaced chapters. The game would give a brief summary of the current events when you loaded a save to get you up to speed. The story was light but engaging because of the many mysteries. I could tell when I was getting close to the end because mysteries kept getting solved. One of the methods of storytelling was short animated movies. They were done in a 2-D animation style that suited the game and its aesthetic quite well. All the movies were short and to the point, so I never felt like I was taken out of the action.

I found very few flaws with this game. I could claim that certain picarat values seemed too high or too low, but a puzzle’s difficulty can be very subjective depending on a person’s intellectual strengths. Another subjective issue I noticed with this game was my dislike of certain character drawings. The character designs looked a little strange to me, but it was all very stylized. After playing more of the game, I got used to it and minded it less. Also, toward the end of the game, the story helps explain some of the characters’ odd appearances.

I was excited to finish Professor Layton, but now I think that I will miss it. I have had some great experiences on the DS, including Elite Beat Agents and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Now I guess I will be searching for the next great DS game, at least until the next Professor Layton game is released.  

It’s been a while since I’ve actually finished a game. Given my academic commitments, a game has to be pretty strong for me to play it through. The fact that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was on DS made it much more accessible and I finished it within a month.

I had mentioned in my previous post about Phantom Hourglass how it was relatively easy. It got a little bit more difficult toward the end. Unfortunately, one of the points where I got stuck was when I was stuck in real life in an airport. Stranded without the internet, I called a friend for help and soon figured out what I had been doing wrong. So much of the path in Phantom Hourglass is so straightforward that I got tripped up on something stupid. I had to blow a hole in the wall, but the spot to bomb was somewhat ambiguous. In every other area of the game, the spots to bomb were much more obvious.

Despite a few frustrating inconsistencies, most of the game was fun. The path to completion was fairly linear and I enjoyed playing through to the end. Gadgets were acquired one by one. I loved the puzzles that challenged me to use various gadgets, such as the mouse-shaped bombs that followed paths I drew on the screen.

Given the limited resources and space on a DS cartridge, Phantom Hourglass seemed to be a strong portable experience. Despite the linear path, I still felt a sense of exploration as I continued to visit new islands. The puzzles were clever and varied. The NPCs had personality and quirky backgrounds.

Phantom Hourglass was not without a few flaws. My main complaint and chief frustration was the necessity of revisiting the same temple over and over again. While I could skip certain parts of the level, much of it could still be repetitive. I absolutely hate sneaking around in games, and I had to continue redoing parts where I would sneak around. Also, the money and treasure seemed unbalanced. I found a lot of treasure, but I always had too much money so I never had to sell anything. The treasure was relatively pointless. I had often gone through a frustrating and finicky salvaging minigame to find most of that treasure, so I felt much of my effort was wasted. Finally, there was a possibility to upgrade some abilities, such as adding a shock to my sword attacks. I upgraded a couple abilities but it didn’t make a noticeable difference.

I really did enjoy playing this game. Each dungeon took about 10-20 minutes, which was convenient for short sessions. (However, you cannot save once in a dungeon.) The ending itself was strong and suitable for the game’s theme and story. I enjoyed the characters and the fact that I was a hero. I would recommend this game to people who like creative, engaging adventure experiences in portable form.  

I’ve been a huge fan of the DS ever since I discovered Elite Beat Agents. The compact size means I have the ability to game between classes, when I’m in line, and when I generally am stuck waiting. It’s fantastic to be able to whip out my DS on a moment's notice and suddenly become immersed in a great game.

Most of the games I’ve played on DS so far have been strong, well-constructed games. Fortunately, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is no exception. I was surprised by its simplicity, as it has a pared down item and inventory system, especially compared to the complicated DS version of the RPG Final Fantasy III. The game moves quickly, as most dungeons can easily be beaten in half an hour or less.

Phantom Hourglass’s simplicity should not be mistaken for that of a children’s game. While it is relatively easy in terms of difficulty, it is a very clever, well-designed experience. Objects such as bombs hardly harm you when you accidentally set them off and deadly falls only remove a small portion of your health. This friendly system encourages exploration and doesn’t punish you for mistakes. The controls are primarily based on touch with the stylus, and with the small screen, this makes it easier to mess up than with a console.

Although I am not opposed to difficult games, the ease of Phantom Hourglass makes it a lot of fun for a more casual, portable experience. Its GameCube predecessor, The Wind Waker, had more complicated puzzles and levels, and I sometimes found myself frustrated. I have only been stumped on a couple of occasions in Phantom Hourglass, and most of that was realizing that I had to interact with my DS in an unconventional way (i.e. blowing into the DS microphone to blow out a candle in the game).

For a DS game, Phantom Hourglass is incredibly immersive. The tasks are given out quickly and there is little lag. I feel as if I am part of the story from the very beginning and that I am actively influencing the world. The game lets you do most of the work on your own. Also, the fact that the default name for the main character is my name (the game takes it from your DS) makes it all the more personal. Suddenly, it’s me who’s saving the day, not a group of heroes like in the RPGs I often play.

I have very few complaints about this game, as I feel that the simplicity and stylized drawings create a charming Zelda interpretation. However, my main complaint would be the simplicity of the combat system. There are two basic attacks, made with a stylus slash and a stylus circle. I rarely use the slash, as I have had a hard time making Link slash the enemy instead of running into its attacks. The circle attack is fairly effective, but doing it too many times in a row makes him dizzy (while cute, it limits this attack).

The touch controls can also be a little bit impractical in one other feature: the map-drawing feature. I find it very handy how you can draw and make notes on your map with the touch screen. Unfortunately, many of these maps are very small on the DS screen, so it becomes hard to write anything legibly. I have resorted to little dots and lines mostly, as anything else is pointless. The game is fairly forgiving in terms of marking things, so it is never a huge problem; it’s just slightly inconvenient not to be able to make intelligible notes.

Overall, I fell that Phantom Hourglass is a very strong game. The simple design makes it accessible, even when I could only play it for two minutes at a time. While the touch controls can be a little bit limiting, the idea of making notes on a map is a nice innovation. I have enjoyed the levels I have played so far and look forward to playing it again soon.  

Five months ago, in that basement classroom we Interactive Entertainment majors can call home, I had my first taste of Zelda. I wrote about it on this very blog last October and how impressed I was with the puzzles and charming fantasy world. I thought about buying a GameCube to play it, but it was good thing that I didn’t. Two months later, I had a Wii.

My excitement with Wii games temporarily made me forget that the Wii had backwards compatibility. I had forgotten about playing Zelda until I stumbled upon the Wind Waker strategy guide in a used bookstore for $3. This guide is hard to get for under $30 these days, so I was very excited. I then bought a used GameCube remote and memory card. Now I could play Wind Waker again.

I wanted to savor my return to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I sat down on a Friday night and played to my heart’s content. With the help of the strategy guide, I felt like I got a lot more out of the first hour of the game (which is how far I had played before without any help). I already knew what to do for the most part, but it was neat to know certain things, such as which spots to avoid if you don’t want to trigger events yet.

I also discovered some new content in previously-visited areas of the game, such as a mini-game. There was a pig-herding side quest on the island. When I first played, I simply thought it was fun to run around with a pig over my head. However, I now knew that there was a purpose to this silliness. I usually don’t care for mini-games, but I found this one to be fun because of the novelty factor. Some games, like Spyro, have silly herding games with creatures you kick and then make annoying noises. You have to do mini-games like this to move forward. In Wind Waker, this herding game involved pigs that would run away from you but were never too hard to catch if you used your brain. The pigs were believable and not aggravatingly stupid. I felt like I had accomplished something simply by being able to catch the pig, especially since I was rewarded with the amusing animation of a plump pink piglet squirming above my head.

Despite my appreciation for this game, I did learn one important things: I should really spend more time practicing jumps. There is one portion where you must swing on lanterns to get to platforms in a pirate ship. I had a lot of trouble with this thre first time I played, and my previous attempts provided no help when I had to do it again last Friday. Fortunately, I made it through by telling myself each time that it would be the last time. Then, I discovered that all my time spent jumping on lanterns was actually meant to help me. The pirate ship drops you off on an island fortress that also has several lantern jumps. Usually it was only one at a time (and not a string of them). I was glad I had some practice because it significantly reduced the number of times I fell.

Even if I do have a little trouble with jumps at first, I do learn eventually. This is no fault of the game and I actually appreciate a good jump now and then. After all, it’s much more fun to virtually rope jump for me because I’m way too scared to perform many of those stunts in real life. I really enjoyed my experience in Wind Waker and I look forward to playing it more again.  

I have never owned a Nintendo console until I purchased my Wii last December. I feel a little bit embarrassed to admit it, especially when many of my gamer classmates all have fond memories of Mario and Zelda. They can go on and on for hours, talking about their favorite Super Smash Bros. tournaments or nodding knowingly at someone’s Mario shirt. I wondered about this secret club of Children Who Grew Up with Nintendo and hoped to someday understand.

Perhaps that was why I decided to try playing the old-school Super Mario Bros. I loaded the game up and pressed all the buttons, trying to figure out what to do. I figured out how to move forward and jump, and did okay for a little bit. Then I found a nice chasm and seemed to have a magnetic attraction to it. If falling off a cliff didn’t killed me, I seemed to accidentally hit some random googly-eyed enemy within seconds. I had to admit the hopeless truth: I was a Mario Moron. I couldn’t even make it past the first level.

I quit the Super Nintendo game in frustration, hoping that failing at Mario didn’t mean that I was a failure as a gamer. I hoped to someday conquer it, but I didn’t try again until recently, with the New Super Mario Bros. for DS. I had originally seen this game last May while I was in Japan. The DS Lite had just been released there, and I would often see the commercial for New Super Mario Bros. on the train. It showed a young Japanese woman sitting on her bed at home, talking to the game as she played. I thought it was neat that they showed a girl playing, but it didn’t make me want a DS. I thought they were nice, but why would I want something so small? I changed my mind recently and haven’t regretted my choice.

New Super Mario Bros. was the second game I got for the DS. I had heard great things about it, and I was excited to play. I started the game and soon had difficulty getting past the first level. Again. I now owned the game, and I didn’t want to give up so easily. I took my DS with me later that day when I my sister and I were getting haircuts. After I had my hair done, I sat by the front desk, playing Mario with ridiculously good-looking hair. One of the other stylists sat near me and snuck a few peeks at my game. I’m sure he must’ve thought I was a little odd.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in the game, but I did get past the first level. I figured out a few things, like when to jump to kill enemies and how the physics change when you grow or shrink. I made it past the first two or three levels, but that wasn’t enough to save. I was frustrated because I couldn’t save after each level. I should probably just read the manual, but I still don’t know how to save. I’m hoping that, when I get better, I will earn the privilege to save.

I haven’t played Mario much since that day at the salon. After becoming obsessed with Elite Beat Agents, I think it will be hard for me to play much else until I’ve completed that game. The only reason I brought Mario to the salon instead of Elite Beat Agents was the fact that Mario didn't need any sound to succeed. I think it just requires more patience and perseverance on my part. I hoping that, if I stick with Mario a little longer, someday I will no longer be a Mario Moron.  

I finally rented a game for the Wii other than Wii Sports. I got Rayman’s Raving Rabbids. This may seem like an unconventional choice considering the release of the new Zelda game and the popular Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but I was captivated by the French commercial for Rabbids that I viewed on YouTube. It has a bunch of rabbids playing the game, and there is one particularly memorable scene where there are several rabbids huddled around a couch, all shaking their Wiimotes and nunchucks at the same time. Check it out here:

Rabbids French Trailer

My sister and I finally got around to playing it. The game is set up as levels of four or five mini-games in a gladiator arena base level. There are one or two games from different categories (rhythm, precision, etc.) that all involve different uses of the Wiimote. Many of the games fit into my ideal of mini-games, where you have to play them for two or three times before you can beat them. Some are more successful than others.

By far, I found the rhythm games to be the most fun. They involve shaking the Wiimote and nunchuck in time to the music as raddibs hit a certain spot on the screen. I enjoy music a lot and am a big fan of DDR, so it really appeals me. I also think it is one of the most fun games to watch. My sister and her boyfriend played it in versus mode, and it was hilarious to see two people seated side by side, shaking sticks in time to the ridiculous music and looking completely focused.

Another type of game that seems to translate successfully onto the Wii is the shooter. There are several Western-style shooters in rabbids that are mandatory to complete a level. The Wiimote is used like a computer mouse to aim at the rabbids and shoot them with a plunger gun. There are many friendly features, such as a fairly generous target range (anywhere on the body knocks most rabbids down), short breaks before strings of rabbids, and an endless supply of ammo. The nunchuck is shaken to reload, and the trigger in the right-hand Wiimote is your trigger.

The design is fairly intuitive, and this extends to a great GUI (Graphical User Interface). The ammo and score are displayed along the top. When ammo is depleted (5 plungers at a time), you they turn opaque. The colors and placement of the GUI is very easy to read over a short period of time and never clutters the view.

Some of the other games are severely flawed, however. I grew so frustrated playing one particular game that I quit playing and considered returning the game. It involved pointing the Wiimote at each rabbid’s snorkel mask and then pressing a button to shoot some sort of drink at them. The aiming was absolutely terrible. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to aim at the eyes of the mask or the snorkel. Also, you have to manage the flow of the drink by constantly shaking the nunchuck, which wasn’t an easy task. I found it very stressful, as the rabbids would creep up to the front, getting bigger and bigger, and then scream in a gremlin-like voice.

This wasn’t the only game with flaws. Many of the games offer only a very brief set of instructions, which is fast and convenient but often fail to tell you important details. For example, on a labyrinth game, you had to figure out that you could slide your ball into a weak wall to break it and take a shortcut necessary to win. Certain secrets are fine with me, but I really prefer to play games where the secrets are not mandatory to win. Games become much more accessible to a wider audience if you save the secrets for those who really want to go through the trouble to find them. Secrets such as those involved to complete puzzles in adventure games turn many players off; veteran players often look up the answers online or use strategy guides. With so many games to play, there is less time to waste on frustrating secrets.

Despite Raving Rabbids’ flaws, I think I will continue playing it for a little while longer. It is nice to be able to pick up a game without worrying about when to find the next save point (each game is about a minute or two long). Even so, I do not find it a stellar use of the Wii technology and hope to find something that better utilizes the Wii’s potential.  

As an aspiring game designer, I knew that I had to play Zelda sooner or later. Embarrassed not to immediately associate the name “Link” with happy childhood memories unlike many of my peers, I decided I could avoid Nintendo no longer. I had always had a PlayStation and never bothered to play Nintendo games (due to the seemingly limited options available for games on their consoles) and had never been a big fan of Mario. Yet the Zelda series kept coming up in class discussions and casual conversations. As an RPG fan as well, I was long overdue to play Zelda.

Fortunately, my professor brought The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker to class today. I jumped at the opportunity and sat down to play. I was engrossed in the game and found the island strikingly similar to that in the original Kingdom Hearts. I played for a good twenty minutes before noticing that a few people had gathered around to watch. I offered to let them play, but was glad when they declined. I was finally getting the hang of the controls and the style of the game.

When a mystical bird flew in with a girl in its talons, I was quickly reminded an article on Shigeru Miyamoto. It talked about his sense of exploration and fun. The colorful world of Zelda held the distinctive, imaginative style that has defined Miyamoto’s games since the original Mario series. I began to see why such a fan base has grown.

An hour later, class was over. Sadly, I could not save my progress or return to play Zelda later. However, I was excited to play again. I even considered buying a GameCube. I would not mind playing that hour again because it was a lot of fun.

When I returned home, another game in the same genre was waiting in my mailbox: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. I had an opportunity to play it later in the day. After feeling stressed from the week, I was glad to have a fun game to play (after having rented so many games exclusively for my school project).

This game started out with a lengthy cinematic process. Once into the game, however, it was mainly platformer action. I enjoyed the playful style and friendly characters. One particular task, herding creatures resembling water buffalos into a pen for a farmer, reminded me of a very similar task in the third Spyro game. I player for a couple hours.

However, I ran into much more frustration in Jak and Daxter. I was continually dying, but there wasn’t a limit on the number of lives. Toward the end, I believe I spent about ten minutes trying to beat a boss. I kept dying, but about 80% of the time I died was from carelessness during the simple jumps to get to the boss. I was so angry about losing that I lost my focus. I was so stubborn that I kept at it over and over again, and finally beat the boss. I played a little bit longer after that, and got stuck. I was still upset from beating the boss and quit around 1 a.m. to get some sleep.

After playing both platformers, I began to wonder why one had appealed to me so much more than the other. Both games were made into best-selling series. Both had whimsical creatures and bright, playful levels. The characters and stories were rich. It seemed to come down to the puzzles and difficulties. The Zelda game felt more intellectual and charming, such as when you could discover that you can hide under barrels to avoid getting caught unarmed. The Jak game had more meaningless mini-games, such as catching 200 fish (catch only two of the three types and the speed at which they swim increases) or the animal herding. It reminded me of Kingdom Hearts II and getting frustrated with ridiculous tasks.

While both games may be strong, I believe that they do appeal to different types of players. Zelda requires more of a puzzling mind, where you have to ask yourself how you can use what you know to solve the problem. Jak and Daxter gave less initial guidance but left the world so open that you had to discover things for yourself that had less bearing on mental challenge and left more to chance or physical skill. While both games satisfied my need to run around and collect items, I found that Zelda was more fun, simply because it was crafted like a puzzle; all the pieces were there and you just had to figure out how to use them. I felt like I was respected as a player to solve simple challenges that were attainable with a little thought. With Jak, the action was there, but the cleverness and subtlety was not.

I am not sure whether the fluidity of Zelda was due to the countless iterations and since the beginning of the Zelda series or simply more compatible elements (simple puzzles as opposed to mini-games in the same game type). However, I do think that the Jak games would appeal to players who are less inclined to want to think through a puzzle and simply win by pushing through the incidents of ridiculously menial tasks.