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Jan 31st, 2007 at 19:11:57 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
Kirby's Adventure GameLog part the second. I apologize if this is coming in a bit late, I've been sick.
So, I spent my second playtime getting through the third level and partway through the fourth level. In way of new powers, I came across the Hammer, Mike, Hi-Jump, Back-Drop, Throw, and Laser. The laser is hard to hit things with, the Mike is powerful, but has only three charges, the backdrop and throw are both relatively useless against bosses, which is where it really counts. The high jump, upon first inspection, seems useless. Kirby -can- fly after all, right? I will elaborate more on this later.
Through the third level, the different stages are set on a "tower climbing" backdrop, with some pretty interesting effects for going up the spiraling tower from the outside. The tower itself seems to spin as you go along its side. This was rather interesting and well done. The third boss, however, was incredibly frustrating. The player is supposed to fight a sun and a moon, which alternate going into the sky and raining things on you. You need to grab one of these stars raining from the sky, and turn it into a power to use against the boss on the ground. However, between the attacks on both ends, I could not manage to evade well enough to not die, making it the first non-mini boss I had lost against.
The fourth level had several interesting level elements, in that some sections had a strong wind blowing which would push Kirby around, which the player would have to deal with. As well, level four had icy floors at some points, which Kirby might slide along and fall into a bottomless pit. However, as Kirby can fly, this is rather trivial. Were it not for me wanting to check everything out, I doubt I would have noticed and not simply flown on ahead. In fact, Kirby's ability to fly makes for a rather poor platforming character. There is almost no good ways to make jumping puzzles.
As for the fourth boss, the player fights on a set of clouds traveling ever upwards, with a boss constantly destroying the platforms, and moving far to well to be hit by most abilities. This is where Hi-Jump becomes interesting. The player has to eat enemies on the stage that give Kirby Hi-Jump, then use the otherwise seemingly useless ability to flying straight up and damage the boss. I, however, realized this too late and lost.
I think that, after the second playthrough, my opinion of Kirby's Adventure may have dropped. The ability to fly, which I had not really used the first time, really makes many of the puzzles simple.
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Jan 31st, 2007 at 14:38:27 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
Kirby's Adventure, entry the first.
I'd never actually played Kirby's Adventure before, and this copy I got from a friend, so I was interested in how it would play out. I finished the first two levels (five stages each), and had a chance to experiment with many of Kirby's powers.
Immediately off, the level design doesn't seem as intricate as, say, Mario 3. However, it soon became apparent (to me at least) that the levels weren’t the focus of the game; the focus was Kirby's powers.
The powers I encountered (and can remember vividly enough) were Spark, Sword, Tornado, Wheel, Freeze, Cutter, Needle, Crash, Fire, and Beam. Certain abilities, such as Spark, Wheel, Tornado, Needle, and Freeze, seemed to make Kirby invincible to all but boss/mini-boss collisions, making them rather powerful. However, Freeze, Needle, and Spark have relatively short range, balancing them, and Wheel and Tornado cause Kirby to move uncontrollably, making them balanced in a way as well.
Some powers, like Sword, felt relatively useless. It had a very short range aerial attack, and a merely okay ground based attack. Another, Crash, had the ability to destroy everything on the screen, but could only be used once, making it not particularly effective as well.
The first boss did not seem very interesting, as I spammed him to death with Spark, and he died in moments, but the second boss was rather fun to fight against. It did not seem to take as much damage from powers as it did from simply spitting objects that it painted back at it, making it a game of waiting for it to attack and then countering, which was rather fun.
So far, aside from some frustrating mini-bosses, the game seems pretty good.
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Jan 19th, 2007 at 03:25:11 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) |
Super Mario Brothers 3! The return, second post!
After a break to write the first log and do some other stuff, I picked Mario 3 back up. This time, I had several of my friends watching. As it turns out, I do not game well under peer pressure (and mocking), and lost to the first stage again. After they wandered off though, I beat the first three stages without incident, and got both the warp whistle in 1-3 and the castle, skipping ahead to the eighth and final world.
The first level of the eighth world is a scrolling stage, unlike 1-1 through 1-3, which means I could not blaze along at my own pace. It also is swarming with enemies, be they bob-ombs from cannons, or crazy ninja wrench throwing moles. As well, there are heaps of cannons that appear slowly from the side of the screen, trying to catch you off guard with their cannonballs. It is a tough stage. Unfortunately, beyond my skill level, and thus I lost. Twice.
After deciding that I could not adequately explore the game and its features with only a single stage on the final level, I restarted instead of continuing, and warp whistled to world four: giant world. This world is incredibly interesting from an aesthetic standpoint, with enemy sprites, tubes, even blocks and clouds at four times the size. This massive size actually allows for some shading, and the giant piranha plant almost appeared to be an enlarged sixteen bit sprite. The blocks, from a game play standpoint, were so large and powerful that raccoon-Mario could not break them with his tail, and required a koopa shell in order to accomplish this feet. When destroyed, they split into four “regular” blocks when breaking, something I considered aesthetically humorous, but incredibly fitting. It may just be a minor point, but I enjoyed the makeup of these giant-world blocks.
Wishing to further test the game, I warp whistled to world 6, the ice world. Immediately off the bat, I noticed Mario sliding on the frigid surface. The lack of traction (as Mario only took a short distance to stop after running before) added an immediate changeup to the game play. The player (me) now has to worry about running into enemies or off of edges completely by accident. Despite this, it is not unbeatable and provides an interesting challenge. These new themes each world make it more and more difficult, yet interesting for the player. After beating the first level, I skipped ahead thanks to a group of hammer bros. to the first sub-castle. It goes to show that there are interesting secret paths and tricks, even on the world map. However, in the sub-castle, I proceeded to repeatedly lose to a tight series of required jumps on a moving platform, and by the time I ran out of lives, I had already played for quite some time.
But, despite its oft-frustrating eight-bit level of game play, Super Mario Bros. 3 is superbly designed, and well deserving of its status as a classic in the annals of gaming history.
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Jan 19th, 2007 at 02:26:42 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) |
Ah, Mario 3... It has been a long, long time since I had last played you...
Today, I picked up Mario 3 for the first time in years. I could not have been more than a few years old back when I played it on my brother's NES. Which is why I'm so disappointed in myself now. I had played this game in my youth, and as with every other child who had, I remembered all the secrets. Yet, I got a game over on the very first stage.
I do not know if my skills have deteriorated, or I am simply tired, but I do know that older games have much more brutal difficulty. No life bars, no halfway points in stages.
Then, of course, I got myself together and beat the first three stages, got the first warp whistle and then proceeded to lose the rest of my lives in the first sub-castle.
But enough about my play experience; let's talk about what makes this game a classic: the game play. Each of the first three stages all have hidden sections to explore, often by flying at the proper time while using raccoon-mario, or by dropping behind a white block, or even by uncovering hidden blocks. What I'm trying to say is: the level designs are ingenious. There are multiple ways to go through them and, unless you, like me, have played this game since childhood, there are so many secrets to discover.
The game play is simple. There's the four-directional D-Pad and two buttons, run and jump. For the most part, this makes for easy to pick up, low learning curve game play. Despite this, I find now that I get frustrated by there only being two buttons, as run is also everything else except for jump. You want to shoot a fireball? Press the run button. Spin with the raccoon suit? Run button. This makes it at least a little frustrating when trying to run and attack at the same time, as one is forced to stop running to use any of the other abilities. This, however, is a fault of the hardware, not the game, and is something the programmers were likely forced to do to accommodate these things into the NES controller. Modern Mario games like Super Mario Sunshine do not have the same button for shoot and run, although my memory does not recall if Super Mario World and its SNES four button controller had the same fault or not. What I'm trying to say is: it's something that needed to be improved and was improved in later games.
And what about the story? It's an NES game. It did not have the storage capacity for a detailed story. Yet, despite the lack of an overarching plot (aside from save the kings who were transformed and rescue the princess), does not detract from it when compared to other older, similarly impaired games. As such, its superb game play and level design make it a great game.
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Captain Wii has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 13 days |
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