Review: Mario Party 9

It's Mario time!

STATUS: [COMPLETED]

RATING: [3.5/5]

I thought I'd write about something more light-hearted than Mass Effect this time, so I decided I'd do one of my rare reviews. I'm going to talk about Mario Party 9. My boyfriend and I have been playing it a lot lately, and quite frankly it's a lot of fun. There are a couple major flaws with the game, though. We'll get to those in a bit, but first I'd like to talk about what I do like.

No coins/stars system.
I'm sure some people don't like that this has gone by the wayside, but I like that it's new. The coin/star system was getting tired and this is a welcome change. The new mini-star system makes even one mini-star feel important. Coins felt relatively worthless in prior games, and this solves that issue.

Everyone moves together in a car.
This is very weird at first and hard to get used to, but it's actually really awesome. It's really fun trying to figure out ways to screw your friends over, and this makes it a lot easier to do so. Plus, it allows some new dynamics to come into play, like the "captain" (the player whose turn it currently is) and mad dashes away from danger.

Maps are fresh and new.
It's fun trying to run away from rising lava, forcing others to be attacked by sharks, or trying to make it your turn when fighting a boss so that you gain a bonus, and these are just some of the things you can do in the new game. Simply put, the mechanics feel fresh.

All in all, the multi-player party feature is awesome, and makes up for the huge flaws in the rest of the game (though this is probably because you won't often be playing by yourself). Flaws, you say? Oh, indeed so.

Single player is the exact same as multiplayer.
There's not much to say about this except that it's really not that fun. Who wants to play a Mario Party map by yourself? There's a bit of "story" thrown in there, like how you are coming to get Bowser and are going through all the maps to get to him, and Bowser gets angry and sends minions after you. However, the maps are the exact same. The only difference is that your fourth player is Shy Guy, who is playing for Bowser. If he wins, you're screwed. So far, the only benefit I see to playing the single player campaign is earning new characters, which is the ONLY way to do so. Which leads me to...

There's not much to do with your earned mini-stars.
Sure, you can spend them on stuff, but not much. After you buy the one new level or master difficulty for a computer, you're left with different cars to ride in on the maps or star constellations (which do absolutely no good to purchase). I would have liked to see a large character roster that you could purchase with your mini-stars, instead of the current options and a couple extra characters only unlock-able via the story mode.

You still can't play online.
I really thought Nintendo would have added online play this time around since Super Smash Bros had it and did it relatively well, considering the Wii's limited system. Even though the Wii doesn't have a great online gaming system, I still would have played this while Skyping or using Facetime with friends. It would have been a nice addition to be able to play with real people when you have no one to play with at your own house. /Sigh.

The rundown:
The game is a solid installment in the Mario Party series. It's fun, and the multiplayer has a welcome facelift. I just wish the single player did, too.

Zelda : Skyward Sword

OH MY GOD THE NEW ONE!

STATUS : [COMPLETED]

RATING: [5/5]

Hooray! A new Zelda Adventure.

I'm a little bias, cause Zelda's my jam, but I'm gonna write about it anyway.

Art:

I got the distinct impression that this game was trying to find the middle ground between the Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask/Twilight Princess art vein, and the Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks art vein. I was worried at first, because Zelda has always been a specific thing to me. I don't feel the want or need to play the Wind Waker art vein because the art style bothers me. For me, that's just not Zelda. I don't doubt its a great game, that's just me.   In any case, any worry I had pretty well evaporated. I like the art style for Twilight princess MORE, but I'm was pretty comfortable with the art style in this game. Except the birds, those things look dorky as hell.

There is something I'd like to mention about the art style that I appreciated was:

Every game has to deal with the fact that they can't make the entire visible environment high-res all the time. The stuff in your immediate vicinity has high resolution textures and models, but as things get further away, they become more and more vague. This is a wonderful feature that makes games run faster. however, not all games do it gracefully. Some use plane-clipping, which make the world look like it ends at a hard line not too far away. Some use a fog. Some make sure the environments are so twisty, you can't see too far in front of you, therefore they don't really have to deal with it. Some of these work better than others, but a common problem many of these methods have, is that its usually fairly obvious when something makes the transition from low-res to high-res models and textures. Zelda managed a technique that, in my opinion, elegantly took care of both these issues. They environments have a distinctly 'paint blotted' look to them. Most of them look like paintings. The further back the environment, the more 'blotted' it looks. I suspect that because of the nature of the textures, its less obvious when they 'pop' from low to high res, but maybe they also found some really efficient code to hide it. Either way, it looks great.  Also : I'm pretty near sighted, and the way stuff looked in the distance isn't too far off from how things look when I have my glasses off. I appreciated that.

Design:

Dear lord. Where to start.

So, the levels and the puzzles were pretty Zelda standard, so I won't go too deep into them (haHA. Multiple entendre) They were delightful as always, with the standard  items/weapons plus some new shiny ones. Long story short, delightful.

Okay, on to the new stuff: FIGHTING MECHANICS.

So, Twilight Princess started to capture the joys of sword fighting with the Wii mote (when done right). Skyward Sword perfected it! (Mostly).  The position of Link's sword is a direct translation of the Wiimote. The direction you slash is the exact direction he slashes. And, even more to the point: it MATTERS.  The enemies all have some sort of guard to them, and you can only hurt them if you slash in a certain direction. And wait, it gets better. Some of the enemies are intelligent enough to block in a relevant direction: so if you're holding you sword to the right side of your body, they'll block in that direction, making it more difficult for you to get an opening. Its such a delightful way to fight!  I also admire that you cant just hold up your shield, you have to time your shield to parry their attacks. If you trigger your shield at the wrong time (which you do with the nunchuck in your left hand, of course) then they damage your shield, which sucks cause they can break pretty easy. So you have to think about the fight legitimately.   

The ONLY complaint I had with the fighting mechanics, which is something I'm not sure they could prevent, is that it tends to pick up your 'pre-swing' movement (moving the wiimote to the left side of your body for a left-to-right swing) as an actual sword swing, and missing your actual swing completely. This is a pretty big deal when you're fighting something that's blocking you with an electrified weapon that zaps you whenever you touch it. In any case, it just took a little adapting on my part. You have to treat the wiimote LESS like a sword and flick instead of swing. 

In any case, the fighting mechanics are delightful, and for the last boss, I had to stand up and get into it cause the sword fighting was so fun.  Big thumbs up.

Story:

The story is very enjoyable, and even moreso if you've played the other Zelda games. (Especially OOT and Twilight Princess) It keeps dropping certain story pieces and names that make you think its going to tie a bunch of the games together.  I'm not going to give away whether it does or not.  However, aside from all that, the story itself is quite enjoyable =) Good immersion, not as many story pieces/game mechanics that are just convenient to advancing the story as you'd find in many games of this genre. 

Anyway, I'm done writing, though I feel like there's much more I could say.

[TLDR] Generic Zelda Wonderfulness + DELIGHTFUL new fighting mechanics = play it NOW, especially if you're a Zelda fan.

End.