Game Review #4: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Hey, guess what? Mario sucks. No offense to the little guy, but the franchise has sort of been milked dry to the point where I just can't stand it anymore, with all the Lands, Worlds, Sunshines, Galaxies, Karts, Parties, useless spin-offs, bad cartoons, a worse movie, and anything you can slap the word "New" onto. But then there's Mario RPGs, the insane-sounding gems that end up capturing our hearts. It's hard to say what it is about Mario RPGs that makes them so special, at least for me. Maybe it's how much they remind me of EarthBound, being RPGs but still having a sense of humor. They don't ever do any of the dark stuff that EarthBound is known for, but instead stay on  the happy, funny side of things, which is still pretty big for RPGs, as most of them stick to the other side and try to be dark and grim all the time, which has really gotten boring as it makes even the most unique story like The Witcher look like a Skyrim clone to me. But screw all the actual analysis. Let's start judging games by their covers! My first impression of the phrase "Mario RPG" was similar to my thoughts on The Rugrats' successor, All Grown Up, which was something like "Doesn't that just defeat the point? I mean, Mario is a platformer. Who thought this was a good idea?" And boy was I wrong. The thing about most Mario games is that they have trouble making an actual story except for the beginning with a "save the princess" cutscene, and then a "Hooray, you win!" cutscene at the end. But the RPGs are able to maintain an actual story throughout. The gameplay is also pretty spot on and well balanced with the story. But enough with openings that are longer than my entire review of Game Dev Tycoon. Today I'm talking about Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The game, like many Mario RPGs, involves a whole ton of platforming, and it could be argued that it's more than usual because technically there's more things that you need to do in order to get from point A to point B, including: High Jumping by putting Luigi on top of Mario; spinning across chasms by putting Mario on top of Luigi; making Mario small by hitting him with a hammer; burying Luigi by hitting him with a hammer; making the Bros. walk sideways by electrocuting Mario; running faster by burning Luigi; and actually having to press A and B to make them both jump onto a ledge. The good part about all this is that realizing which thing you have to do to get through is much more rewarding mentally. And all the field abilities have been loosely translated into special attacks in battle. Oh, yeah, the battle system. Like other Mario RPGs before, this game implemented a system of timing your button presses while performing attacks to make the attack good. And this isn't even limited to the special attacks, though the special attacks are notorious for the timing you have to manage on the highest difficulty setting. With all three of your standard attacking methods, you need to time button presses to your hits to get the most out of your attack. Also, every attack that enemies try to hit you with can be dodged with (well would you look at that) even more precise button timing. Some attacks can even end up as counterattacks if they in any way involve physically harming your opponent which happens a lot since most of the attacks you're gonna deal with are the opponent just walking up to you and kicking you or something making it not very hard to jump on their heads while they're standing right in front of you. On the topic of the game's charm, it does a great job of adding personality to some usually faceless characters and pays attention to every part of the Mario franchise that it could find time to cover. And it adds tons of new and fun ideas to the series' canon including the ENTIRE BEANBEAN KINGDOM which has tons of its own lore and new locations. Too bad it never shows up again. Seems like every Mario RPG series comes up with a brilliant idea that just sort of goes away... Well, at least Fawful sticks around for the rest of the series. Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have 3 games to finish before Paper Jam comes out. All they need to do is squeeze Geno into that thing somewhere and it's certifiably perfect   

Game Review #3: EarthBound

Gather 'round kids. It's story time with The LKIF. Once upon a time, there was a little 8-year-old child who just got a Wii. So what game does he get? Smash Bros. of course! And which character does he question the existence of first? Ness! Why? Because he has no idea who the hell Ness is! Anyway, his brother tell him he's from something called EarthBound and since he's 8, he doesn't bother looking it up and just moves on with his life continuing to play as PKMN Trainer and failing to figure out how to switch to Charizard. Who was this beautiful, little child? Why, it was a young me, of course. So yeah, I didn't know about Ness until I was eight, and I didn't know much of anything about EarthBound until early last year. Curious about this character that somehow has been in every Smash game, I took it upon myself to learn everything about the game without actually playing it. That failed epically. So, through means that I don't find it necessary to disclose to the public, I played the game (and if you're gonna say that I couldn't have pirated it since the game crashes before the final boss and deletes your save file if you pirate the game, I already knew that, so good for you; you just ruled out one possible way I could've played the game.) Anyway, EarthBound is an old RPG on the SNES. The first thing you'll notice is that instead of being an angsty teenage knight in a world being attacked by a dragon that you have to slay with your sword, Exsabermastery Soul, you're a thirteen-year-old boy in a suburban house and at the moment, your biggest problem is that a meteorite landed, like, less than a mile from your house and the only monsters you have to deal with are angry dogs that you hit with a baseball bat. You could call that animal abuse, but no! They've been made evil by the influence of the game's main villain Giygas so it's perfectly acceptable to hit them with bats. But you won't be fighting dogs forever, though. By the time this game's done, you'll have fought sentient stop signs, religious painters, and a couple palette swaps of vomit. So, anyway, you have psychic powers (that are never explained in this game) and you have to beat an omnipotent alien alongside 3 other kids that you never really speak to and you just assume are friendly with you if the silent protagonist switch were turned off. One of the things I liked about this game was a serious case of role reversal. The main character, Ness, has mostly abilities that make it easy to consider him as mainly a healer/support character, whereas Paula, the only female in your party, is the main special, or PSI, damage dealer having access to all three of the elemental PSI attacks. That's quite different from the usual structure placing the main character ass the offensive badass and the hot girlfriend as a healer. Also, the game has a much more relatable than most JRPGs, and RPGs in general I guess. Since it's set in a modern world, you're much more likely to understand how everything works in the world. Instead of riding around on horses or some old Royal Caravan, you take buses to get between towns. NPCs drop their Old English speak for modern, often comical dialogue. People tell you not to stare at their hips. People play EarthBound in EarthBound. People pass out drunk. Oh, sorry translation team. People pass out from 'too much coffee' #totallyathing. The game is almost like a Mario RPG dialogue-wise with all the comedic charm of games like Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. As for the battle system, it's nothing special to tell you the truth. It replaces most RPG's 'magic' or 'special' option with 'PSI' which are your psychic powers, but that's about as much innovation as the battle system has. There is this thing about it where instead of taking all the damage at once, you take it one at a time, so if you can end the battle before it finishes going all the way down, you end up taking half the damage or even skipping out on dying every now and then, but most of the time, it's not actually gonna matter no matter how over-sold the idea is. Aside from that, it's just regular turn-based combat. As for the graphical quality, it's the SNES. That's about all that one can say about it. Aside from the LSD trip in the background of all the battles, it's just kinda flat, kinda pixelated graphics that you can expect from late SNES games. I think the game's defining feature, though, is its ability to transition between bright and cheerful to dark and depressing without even thinking about it. Most games that try to do this crash and burn. I couldn't even find that many examples that did it to the extremes that EarthBound reached. Most games pick one or the other and stick with it. There's no cartoon religious cults in Wind Waker, and there's no gloomily lit clowns in Twilight Princess. I think. To be honest there might be and just no one cares enough about it to check. But EarthBound easily makes the switch back and forth between these two extremes. In fact, this is reflected in the game's ending. To get to the final area of the game, you have to go through Saturn Valley, home of the Mr. Saturns, who have been stated to represent innocence in the game. Also, the area itself has bright, full colors and happy music. But after talking to Dr. Andonuts in order to get to the final area, you'll be informed that the only way to do it is to go back in time, which can only be achieved if you and your party transfer your consciousness into robot bodies and you may never be able to return to your real body or even back to your time, which, for those of you with broken brains, is pretty damn creepy in and of itself. But the game's final area adds to this with its creepy, blank white and gray tiles making up almost the whole area, broken up by nothing but metallic grey Starman enemies and metallic, sphere-shaped warp points, all leading up to the final boss's room which is just a series of pipes over a black background. And then there's all the final boss's creepy forms. I won't go into anymore detail but anyway, belated spoiler alert. So for all its short-comings, that are solely a result of being 16-bit, EarthBound is well worth the HOLY SHIT THIS THING TOOK ME 16 HOURS?!    

Game Review #2: Game Dev Tycoon

So, instead of doing another huge, high tier game made by a company that has its own console, I'm gonna talk about an indie game by Greenheart Games I found on Steam, an application my parents won't let me use anymore because they don't understand the idea of PC exclusives and the idea that since they got me a Mac for some reason, I can't use physical copies. So, anyway, the game was Game Dev Tycoon. As a "recreational game developer," this game really spoke to me. And if you're wondering where you can find any of the games I've made, too bad. I've never finished one in my life. But Game Dev Tycoon lets you see all the ups and downs of being a game developer without actually having to do any work. You can choose how much you want to focus on completely arbitrary categories, handle the press, get hype, hire some people, and, of course, make the same Call of Duty game over and over again until you run out of money. It's a pretty fun game, and a pretty realistic one at that. If you start the game with the topic 'Fantasy' you're sort of set for the game because you can just keep making Fantasy/RPGs until the end of the game and no one will ever get tired of it. But then, you can also do Fantasy/Adventure games and you've got another source of income. And then you can just fill spaces in between with some other topic with Simulation and boom; instant win. Not to say the game is easy or boring. A lot of the time, you actually find yourself taking risks that you know for a fact are gonna end up badly, but are just fun to screw around with. One time I made a Werewolf Simulator that sold about 2 copies. The game even goes so far as to include Nigerian Prince scams. Although, I must say, I've seen those in a lot of simulation games recently. We get it: Nigerian princes are a big thing now, but that doesn't mean everything has to have them. You think you're making an original little gag. Well, you're not. So stop. Anyway, Game Dev Tycoon is probably one of my favorite time waster games. There's no need for an Internet connection so I've played it on a couple of long car rides, although that's not really relevant anymore since one of my cars has wi-fi *totally isn't bragging about anything*. I still would play it if I still had Steam installed on my computer *totally isn't complaining to an audience that doesn't care*. But with all the games features, it's totally worth the ten bucks it costs. Sessions are long and take up plenty of unused time, and it makes you want to come back to it every chance you get to see what's going to happen next. A few things I'd like out of the game though: Sequels to be made possible much earlier; a remake/remaster/port to a newer console system; the ability to play as one of the main hardware companies like "Ninvento"(the games version of Nintendo if you didn't realize) or "Vena"(Sega). That last one I'd like to do in particular to see if I could have done better and kept them in the console market. But in all seriousness now, I highly recommend this game if your parents haven't deleted your Steam. Now, I'm going to wait until I grow up so I can redownload Steam without my parents telling me I can't..