Donkey Kong...Returns

There's one thing that I take as a constant in video games. And that is that moving platforms will continue to move at a constant pace. Donkey Kong Country Returns, stage 6-1 Sticky Situation takes this constant and mocks it. The platforms that slowly fall down the screen move at one speed, slow up for a second or so, then continue at the previous speed. I can't tell you how many times that got me. I'd jump to one right before it slowed up and I'd miss it, falling to my death. At least my wife didn't seem to recognize the death music and comment on it. I really hate that.

"Yes, I KNOW I just died 10 times in a row. LAY OFF!"

And the little pig with the spastic waving white flag telling me that Super Kong can come in to save the day doesn't help much either. But he's at least easier to ignore. :)

I think another part of what makes this game tough is that it really screws with my depth perception. I'd often completely miss seeing ledges or enemies because they were on a different plane than I was focusing on. I don't know if it's a color contrast problem or just the insane amount of focus this game demands to not die (over and over and over again).

On a positive and nostalgic note, the music has lodged itself into my brain quite a few times. I can't tell how much of that is due to my remembering the original and how much is due to it just being very well done. In general, the first few worlds were a fun little romp that reminded me why I loved the original game on the N64. Then they slowly started to get a bit sadistic. And I swear you used to just have to hold down the jump button when bouncing off an enemy's head to get a little jump boost. Now you have to hit the jump button again right at the same time you're landing on its head. Which isn't too tough if you're really thinking about it. But you're soon required to do it with split second timing or you risk falling off the mine cart. Oh the mine cart. Don't even get me started on those things.

Halo Reach & NBA Jam

Halo: Reach

I was really impressed with this game. Sure it was short, the campaign is only around 6-8 hours (I think?) and was over before I knew it. But it was a perfect rental for me since I have really no desire to play multiplayer. I started it on a Sunday, played a bunch that day and next, then finished the last 30 min. or so on a Tuesday. I had gotten myself to a point right before the end when I quit on Monday for the night without even really realizing it. I blew up a big ship thing, and then, boom, roll credits. There's an interesting little segment after the credits that I couldn't really tell how much of an input I really had and then it was really over. I guess I was used to Halo 3 where the sections just seemed to go on and on, and on. Not that it was bad, but this one was much more trimmed down.

All the familiar enemies from the Halo series seem to make an appearance. The only new things I remember are some non-violent ostrich-like things (that were fun to shoot and I later learned that there's an achievement for killing 7 of 'em) and the dudes with purple energy shields. They're a real pain in the ass. I think Bungie realized this though, as there aren't usually too many of them all together and they don't have too great of weapons. Unrelated to anything, I swear I heard one of my squad mates say "Just like shootin' swamp rats back home!" in a thinly veiled Star Wars reference.

Another new thing that I liked was the section where you take control of a fighter plane in space. Halo has always had you trying out different vehicle types, and this is a welcome new one. How can I tell they did a really good job? Moving around in three dimensions and tracking enemy fighters wasn't difficult at all. This is often where dogfighting flying games fail for me.

So it seemed a well done and fitting end to the Bungie-designed Halo games. The text from the developers at the end was a nice thank you to the fans, and since I've now played at least the single player for all of them, I consider myself firmly in that camp.

NBA Jam

To be brutally honest, I didn't like this one at all. I vaguely remember playing this in the arcade and the SNES & Genesis. At the time I was at least peripherally aware of NBA stars since I played basketball. This time around, I hadn't even heard of many of the teams, let alone nearly any of the stars. I mean, seriously, Oklahoma City has a team!? Who knew? My second mistake was getting this one for the Wii, when it would have probably been better for me on the Xbox or PS3. At least then I might stick around a bit to try to pick up some achievements. Originally the Wii version was supposed to have more game modes and come out first, but that all got changed at the last minute, I think. I don't know, I only sort of keep up with that stuff. So I had put the Wii version in my queue and forgotten about it.

What didn't I like about it? Well, I guess I'm just not really looking for an arcade style game like this anymore. Another problem was the control scheme on the Wii and how the shooting and jumping is mapped to flinging the remote up and back down. Much less involved than they could have made it, sure, but I kept doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And I couldn't figure out how to JAM instead of make jumpshots and lay-ups. That just seems wrong in a game called NBA Jam.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

I didn't love or hate this game so I won't spend much time on the write up of it. I had it for a little over a week, completed the story, and sent it back. There's another gameplay mode that allows you to sneak around in new environments and stealthily take out a bunch of bad guys. Basically what you've been doing throughout the whole story mode, but now with little to no story. I tried one of these after I finished the game but just couldn't stay motivated to keep going. So it's a decent stealth shooter game that didn't try to make things too complicated, but failed to hold my interest for long.

One of the greatest parts of this game? The little noises that play when you interact with the menu items. Which sounds really odd, I know. But they're so unexpectedly different and yet they're familiar and somehow right.

A short time with a lot of games

I accidentally got Castlevania: Lords of Shadow in the mail. Accidentally because it was one of those games I added to my queue when I first heard about it, and then forgot about it. It happened to come to me shortly after release and I thought "huh, I know almost nothing about this one." Don't look at me like that. You know you've done it with Netflix.

This just about sums it up perfectly, since I didn't really enjoy this game. And the thought of slogging through two discs worth of stuff that I didn't really enjoy made me a little bit sad. So I took the opportunity over a few days out of town to send the game back and have a new one waiting for me when I got home.

The new one was ModNation Racers and it's already in the envelope to go back. Not because it's bad. I sort of enjoyed the Sony take on Mario Kart. But because the game is broken. I think it's just my copy, because surely other people would have noticed if it locks up any time you try to go to anything but career race, right? I spent a ton of time downloading updates and patches for the game. It's a shame I didn't get to play it more.

On my trip I tackled a few newer DS games. Super Scribblenauts won for "most time consumed." I like it. But I cringe every time a level starts by flashing up "Adjective Level." I feel like you have to do some trial and error to get one of the three or four words the developers were thinking of to pass those. I need to try a few more of the action levels and try out the new, non-stylus based controls a bit more.

Alice in Wonderland (for DS) surprised me a bit. The art style is really original and the gameplay is mostly not boring. I probably need to put in some more time on that one.

Splinter Cell Conviction is on it's way next. Mainly because I hear you can effectively play the entire game by sneaking around and poppin' dudes in the head with a silenced pistol. Good times!

DS Lunch

Depending on who you are or how long you've been reading this blog, you may or may not know what the title signifies.

A FEW NERDY ENGINEERS GET TOGETHER TO PLAY NINTENDO DS OVER LUNCH AND TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. I STARTED THIS BLOG THINKING WE'D ALL POST TO IT. BUT NOW IT'S PRETTY MUCH JUST "DAVE'S PLACE TO POST ABOUT GAMES."

That's how it started, of course. But it's sort of turned into my creative space to talk about something that I care about while emulating the style of some people that I admire. Lately I seem to have gotten in a rhythm of doing a quick recap of the game I just finished from GameFly. Maybe I feel some kind of need to justify the subscription cost in addition to playing the games? Anyway, I thought it might be fun to walk you through a typical day of a real DS Lunch. I don't even remember exactly how or when it started, but it's been going on for probably five years.

Every Wednesday, it starts by me remembering to bring both my DS and my lunch to work with me in the morning. Then at noon, we meet in a conference room, eat our lunches, talk about games we've been playing at home in the last week, and play DS. Typically it's about four or five of us (mostly engineers) but we've had as many as 8, which means all human opponents and no brain-dead CPU players in Mario Kart. Ninety five percent of the time the unspoken choice is Mario Kart. There have been a few other games that we try out, Tetris or Bomberman sometimes, but we always come back to Kart racing.

It's a rare game that has the perfect blend of skill, luck, and fun. It does lots of things right. I'm not gonna tell you that the DS version is perfect, far from it. Just today we were saying that the next version really needs to have a replay feature. Some crazy, improbable stuff happens when you have several people all out to get each other.

We do a lot of yelling at each other. Celebrating last second wins. Banging our heads against the walls because of last second defeats. For all of the people that schedule meetings in conference rooms nearby over lunch, or have offices nearby...I'm sorry. Well, not that sorry. We do keep meeting every week.