Review #767: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror

 A broken mirror is the least of Kirby's problems....

 While I've played my fair share of Kirby games I wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fan, however, the first Kirby game on the Gameboy Advance, Nightmare in Dreamland, is one fantastic game so I had high expectations for Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Sadly, the game pretty much fell short in every way.

 A Dark MetaKnight has appeared and divided Kirby into four Kirbys, so now they team up to figure out what's wrong. What's wrong is that MetaKnight has destroyed the eponymous Amazing Mirror, so they have to collect every shard and right what's wrong. The game looks and plays a lot like Nightmare in Dreamland, which is a good thing, since I've always considered that game to be one of the best looking games on the system. That said, this isn't just another 2-D platformer, oh no, this is a Metroidvania, a series of large zones interconnected between each other. I love Metroidvanias, so surely this game would be great, right? Well.... it gets a lot of things wrong.....

 The first thing that you'll notice upon starting the game is that there are three other Kirbies around you, but they are dumb and controlled by the AI. As you go through the game you'll be able to occasionally come in contact with them, albeit they aren't much help, or you can summon them by calling them on the phone, which is only ever useful to clear a few obstacles or to get yourself a quick heal during boss battles. Bosses aren't particularly tough, but they were made with 4 players in mind, so they are a bit of damage sponges. Boring damage sponges at that. Your allies aren't particularly useful, but hey! One of them might drop in wielding a power which you can then steal from them as soon as they get hit.

 Kirby's abilities remain the same, suck in enemies and eat them to steal their powers. I'm pretty sure that Super Jump was the only power that got the axe, but now we have Cupid, Missile, Magic(Just a one-time random support spell), Chef and Smash, which is Smash Bros.-lite moveset for Kirby. Sword, Fighter and Hammer have movesets now, so different directions on the digital pad + B produces different effects. There are three new minigames you can play with Players or the CPU, and they are pretty decent. There is no bonus Meta Knight mode to unlock, but beating the game unlocks the Master Sword, a power that can destroy any block and has different moves from the basic Sword.

 So now onto what doesn't work... Well, anything that's Metroidvania like. Where should I start from? The map of each area, provided you can actually find it, is pretty much useless. Some "roads" are arrowed, but even then sometimes you might be able to return from where you came from, other times the door behind you just disappears because screw you, this wasn't the exit you wanted to take but the game doesn't care, it's the long way back for you. There are not enough transporters in the game, getting anywhere takes too much time. Oh, and sometimes you need a specific power up to get to alternate routes or chests, which is usually either the hammer, missile or fire dash, so you have to remember what power you need, where the room is and where to get the damned power in the first place. And pray to god that you don't lose the power on the way, because if you get hit you lose your power and if you can't catch it in time it's gone for good. Imagine if this was Symphony of the Night and getting hit could cost you the Double Jump or your Mist Form? Unbelievable. Word of advise" A+B+START+SELECT is how you Reset in the game, because there's no other way to return to the main menu in case you wanted to try a new color or somethin'.

 Alternate colors for Kirby and extra hit points are the only real rewards in the game, but most chests you'll find either have worthless lives, worthless because the life counter resets every time you start the game or healing items you use on the spot. And there's no way to tell what each chest has, sometimes you'll go through hoops in order to get to a chest that only contained a healing items, while others you might find a new color for Kirby on a chest lying just in front of you. It's really dumb. The game has 9 main zones, and each Zone has a Boss as well as multiple "Goal" zones. Goal Zones are zones that force you into a minigame to earn worthless lives and then pop you back into the game nexus. Hopefully you had the map and could avoid the Goal, otherwise you might have to walk a long way back to the area you were exploring because if you enter a Goal you can't go back to the room that came before. It sucks.

 Kirby & the Amazing Mirror was disappointing to say the least. I've been meaning to play this game for years now, but it wound up being a horrible Metroidvania and one of the worst Kirby games I've ever played. That said, I hope the ability to change Kirby's colors returns in future games.
 5.0 out of 10

Review #766: Motocross Maniacs Advance

 She's a maniac, maniac!

 Man, Konami was really betting it on the Gameboy Advance back in the day, they developed a ton of games for the little handheld that could. Case in point, Motocross Maniacs Advance, another game I used to play through Emulation, although I never invested much time on it. This game is kinda weird to be honest, it's a horizontal 2-D racing game over all sorts of crazy tracks with multiple routes and levels with a bit of Mario Kart throw in for good measure.

 The game has four main modes: Championship, made up of six different Cups, although with a few repeated tracks between them. Attack Mode, made up of Time Attack and Point Attack. Action Mode, the minigame sub menu which has Bomb Tag, which works like Konami Krazy Racer's bomb chaser, basically, an elimination round in which you must pass a bomb between racers and whoever has it when the timer runs out loses, rinse and repeat until there's a single survivor, Hidden Lab, in which you run on a conveyor belt avoiding obstacles and gathering coins, pretty boring, and Zombie, in which you must use Nitros to defeat monsters. Lastly, there's multiplayer via link cable. There are 13 different tracks as well as 8 racers, with 2 secret racers unlocked by finishing every Cup.

 A is your accelerator, and you can hold back on the dpad in order to perform wheelies or tricks while on air, B is your Nitro, which is a key mechanic in the game in order to gain air and access to other routes aside from the one at ground level. R is your break and L uses whatever item you've got on stock, from missiles and mines, to shields and thunders. There are two elements you must keep track of at every time: Your Nitros and your fuel, both which can be collected on the track alongside your items. Running out of gas loses you the race, and running out of Nitro, well, sucks, because you won't be able to drive swiftly over certain obstacles or reach other routes. Items always spawn at set locations, so as long as you learn where the Nitros and Fuel cans are on the course you should be just fine.

 The game is fine for a short while, but there's not much meat to these bones, once you beat every cup and unlock the bonus racers there's little to keep you coming back for more unless you've got other humans to play the game with. It's over before you know it, but at least it's fun while it lasts.
 6.5 out of 10

Review #765: X-Men - The Official Game

 Everybody is someone's X.

 Trying to understand how the game's boxart, which clearly shows a three because it's based off the third X-Men movie relates to the official title, as official as Wikipedia and Gamefaqs gets, is an exercise in frustration, so I'll just call it X-Men: The Official Game. This is the last, at this time, WayForward game I own and, sadly, might not have been the best way to end my WayForward adventure in.

 The game doesn't follow the plot of the movie at all. I mean, I haven't seen the movie, but I know it's all about Phoenix, but this game is about Wolverine, NightCrawler, Colossus and Iceman teaming up to find 'parts' to repair Cerebro, and for some reason or another, end up doing battle with Sabertooth, Mystique, Multiple Man and others. The plot isn't interesting nor does it make much sense, but the character cutouts used for dialogue are pretty and the spritework is decent, if unremarkable for WayForward's standards.

 This is a 2-D action/platform game that feels very stiff and dull. The game is somewhat reminiscent of an old Gameboy Color game in which you played as a X-Men team led by Wolverine. A jumps and tapping B performs a two hit combo. After pressing B once you can then tap Up, Down, Back or A for different second attacks, although most of the time you'll find what works for each character and never switch it up. There's no reason to use the B - Up attacks because there's no point to throwing enemies upwards, so with most characters I was content with just B - Down. B - A destroys blocks beneath you, if you are Colossus, so that got a bit of use from me, but most of the time B - Down felt like the best move with every character. The L button is used to switch between characters, each one having their own health and rage bars. Rage is built by defeating enemies or collecting blue power ups, and you can tap R to deal extra damage for as long as your rage gauge lasts. It's... it's a weird mechanic because I really don't understand why it's there. It's so generic too, characters just flash red for no reason. I mean, it makes sense for Wolverine to have a rage gauge, but the other characters? Night Crawler? Colossus? It doesn't make sense for them. They should've gone with Super Attacks instead of this half baked extra damage timed mode.

 Characters have slight differences between each other, Colossus can't jump as high and feels slower than the others, but can store up to four Rage bars as well as destroy weakened walls, NightCrawler's B - A is a teleport, but you must quickly hold Up or Down after pressing A if you want to teleport anywhere besides in front of you, but not too fast, lest you accidentally pull off a B - Up or B - Down. Wolverine has regenerating health, be it if he is your chosen character or not and Iceman... Iceman has nothing. His B - A covers a slightly longer range than other characters' attacks? I dunno. The whole thing feels very half baked as well, the most you could get through Colossus and NightCrawler's abilities are restorative items you don't really need because the game is quite easy. And it's so weird how Iceman gets nothing, and the most Wolverine gets is regenerating health. How about letting Wolverine climb on walls with his claws? Or giving Iceman proper projectile attacks but turning him into a glass cannon?

 As uninspired and poorly thought-out as it feels the game also has a few quirks that make it's even more insipid. For instance, the jumping distance is proportional to how long you press the A button, but on a few occasions it feels like you have to hold the button down for what feels like too long, it's very awkward. It's not the only game that does this, but it's the only game in recent memory that had me holding down the button for so long in order to get the highest jump. The combat is very clunky too, the collision detection doesn't feel quite right, enemies can take up too much damage and they get too much mercy invincibility. It's NOT a hard game, but enemies take too long to kill in a game that is already quite boring, I wouldn't blame you if you resorted to spamming NightCrawler's teleport in order to quickly zip through stages. The only challenging part in the game is the final boss, since you have to endure a long stage filled to the brim with annoying flying pests that pester you with lasers.

 It sucks but.... X-Men: The Official game sucks. It's boring, it's clunky and it has a lot of ideas that aren't properly explored or developed. It's neat having different attributes on each characters, but they don't get much use. The different combo enders sounds like a good idea, but the implementation is clunky and defeating enemies a boring chore. Overall? It's not very good....

 3.0 out of 10

Review #764: Shining Soul II

 Shine bright like a diamond.

 Alright, this is yet another 'old GBA games I used to emulate a lot back in the day', 'cause, y'see, Shining Soul II is amazing. I mean, I've more memories of the first game since it came out before and thus I got to play it more, but I never finished either game, until now.

 This is a dungeon crawler RPG like Diablo but with anime flair. When starting a new game you can choose your character class from between 8 different possibilities, were-animal creatures and humans round up the cast, fulfilling traditional classes such as Knight, Brawler, Mage, etc. Gender and Race are predefined per class, but you get about 8 different color palettes to pick from. The story... is pretty boring, pretty dull and actually takes away from the game. There are countless inane lines of dialogue that you can't fast forward, so even if you read the entire dialogue box, you still have to wait a few seconds before you can press the A button, which is incredibly annoying, I mean, the ending cutscene went on and on and on and on and on and I just wanted to unlock the new difficulty setting and character class. It's no stretch to say that the game is a bit hard so you might grind a few levels or stronger equipment by going back to previous dungeons.... except that the unskippable cutscenes and dialogue will play every time you re-enter the dungeon, which was a very sore spot when it came to playing the game. There's no good reason to have the same exact dialogue play out by bosses you already killed when you revisit an older dungeon. There are no excuses, this was an incredibly poor design choice, and the worst thing about the game by far.

 If you've ever played a loot-based dungeon crawler then you'll know exactly how this game plays. You run around dungeons defeating enemies who may or may not drop loot, some which you'll be able to equip right away, some which might require a trip back to town or an identifying scroll in order to use them. You'll need copious amounts of healing items if you aim to survive, and you could always use Wings to teleport back to town before continuing from the dungeon floor you just came from. Death, at least on the normal difficulty, seems like a slap on the wrist, a piece of equipped armor and any gold you might be carrying will drop, but upon respawning back on town an Angel will just fly you over the floor you were killed on, and you can just pick up whatever you left, dead monsters don't even respawn, so with enough patience you can get through any dungeon, although running out of money on a boss might be a problem.

 The A button attacks, which can be charged, and the B buttons uses whatever item you have selected. You have two quick menus, R for weapons/spells and L for items, so you can quickly swap between whatever item you want to use, or weapons/spells if you want to try something different. And it's also kind of a necessity, because entering any menu is done in real time, so you could get killed while examining your loot. Leveling up grants you a Skillpoint, to spend on mostly passive stats, I played with the Knight so it might not hold water for the other classes, and 4 stats points to increase your stats. There doesn't seem to be a way to respec your character, so you'll have to live with your choices. Saving the game returns you to the main menus, which was a very weird design choice, but the worst part about it is that every single time you save your game, the game will remind you of your return to the menu through an annoying amount of unskippable dialogue boxes. I'm level 41 already, I know how the save feature works, stop patronizing me!

 The game is pretty rudimentary, with its lack of Active skills or even color-coded loot rarity, but it's very addictive and very fun, despite the dialogue-related issues. I kept replaying older dungeons, yet I was having a lot of fun. The game is also pretty lengthy, it has 10 main dungeons, but about 10 more optional areas that open up through side quests, of which there's a hearty amount, even if you have to talk to every NPC after every dungeon if you hope not to miss any of them. All in all, it's a fun, replayable loot-RPG.

 I adored this game, it's very fun, and had it not had all those unskippable and repeating dialogue scenes it could've been an easy 9. As it stands, it's a game that's incredibly fun as long as you can put up with an absurd downtime every time a cutscene plays when you play new and old levels alike.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #763: Life is Strange

 Not a 'Blue is the Warmest Color" spinoff.

 Back in the day, I used to love graphic adventure games such as Monkey Island, but nowadays the genre is mostly dead, living on through games like the Telltales series' or Life is Strange, with a bigger emphasis on dialogue and choices rather than on crafty or ridiculous puzzles. Life is Strange was kind of popular back when it first released, and while it hasn't held the popularity it once had, it's still fondly remembered.

 In the game you play as Max Caulfield, a mousy university student who one day discovers she has the power to rewind time when her estranged ex-best friend, Chloe Sullivan, gets shot by the resident psycho-jock Nathan. What follows is a quasi murder-mystery story in which Max and Chloe team up to discover what happened to  Rachel Amber, Chloe's friend after Max left town. I liked the story, I liked a lot of characters and hated others that we were supposed to hate. That said, I think that they wrote too many characters like dorks or geeks, like Chloe herself, who is supposed to be a rebel but calls Max "Super Max", which felt somewhat out of character from what I expected from her. All five chapters have multiple choices, some are big, some are small, regardless, you could always Rewind time and see which outcome you like the most, provided it won't pay off in latter chapters. I felt like the fifth chapter got a bit silly when it came to the chapter's villain, with his dialogue coming off borderline campy, but it totally made up for that with one trippy dream-sequence. Plus, despite my dislike for some of his dialogue, I thought the fifth chapter was really good.

 The game is very well voice acted, however, even though I'm a staunch defender of gameplay over graphics, this is a game in which the story IS the game, and it takes a while getting used to the lifeless PS2-looking character models aimlessly flapping their lips as well acted dialogue comes out. It can make a few emotional scenes turn out unintentionally funny. On the other hand, the soundtrack is glorious.

 Besides making decisions every now and then, the game has a few light puzzle elements. Things such as asking questions that anger characters, so that you can rewind back time and ask them about this new piece of information before they became uncooperative. Other times you might have to get into a certain spot and then rewind time, because Max stays still but the world around her goes back in time. Save for this one puzzle on the shack, they are pretty easy to figure out.

 Can't say I was a huge fan of the game, but I like Max and I liked her powers, I think the Rewind power is a neat twist on these games built around making decisions. Most characters were interesting, and making choices was actually rather fun, so kudos for making players get engrossed on their decisions and what they could affect in future chapters.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #762: Marvel's The Invincible Iron Man

 See? You can make a good Iron Man game.

 Iron Man has had it rough as far as the videogame world is concerned. While he has had some playable appearances on some truly great game, his self titled games have fared much worse, Iron Man 2 being one of the worst games I've ever played in my life, and I only played the demo. Thankfully, Marvel's The Invincible Iron Man for the Gameboy Advance proved that you could make a decent game out of the tin can hero.

 The game is made up of 8 stages, a few with minibosses, and 2 proper boss stages. It's not too short, but it's not lengthy either. The game has a few cutscenes and they use gorgeous 2-D art that must belong to a Comicbook, because it's just too good. As for the game itself, it's a 2-D sidescroller platform/shooter, like Contra or Metal Slug, but a bit easier provided you are careful.

 Iron Man can jump and double jump with the A button, tackle/dash with R button, although only once while on the air, shoot with the B button, and he can also charge his shots, and lastly, he can use the Uni-Beam or a area-clearing attack with the L button. These latter two super moves cost orbs, the uni-beam costs 1 orb and the AOE burst costs 2 orbs. I found that the screen-clearing move was much more useful and no situation really needed the uni-beam, save for the last boss, so I just hoarded orbs for when I needed the burst.

 The game has this weird limitation where your basic and charged shots consume energy from a gauge that refills over time at a very slow pace, although you'll find red orbs throughout the levels that will charge it a bit. This means that shooting willy nilly will come back to bite you in the back when you get swarmed by enemies and must rely on a slow stream of weak energy shots since you're out of energy. But in a way, this also teaches you to be careful. The game can be challenging if you're not careful and mindful of your energy gauge, which I know sounds like a hassle, but it's not too bad.

 If anything, this game proves that you can make a decent Iron Man game. It plays fine, it looks great and makes good use of the license.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #761: Daredevil

 It can't be worse than the move, now could it?

 Back in the day, every crappy movie deserved a crappy licensed game, and Daredevil ought not be the exception. Thankfully, it's actually a pretty decent beat'em up that reminded me a lot of old Genesis games, thanks to how it looks and plays.

 I'm not sure if the game is a retelling of the movie or a follow up or what have you, but it ends just like the movie. Sorta. The game both begins and ends with different showcases of movie stills that make no sense, at first I wasn't sure if the game was telling me that the movie took place before the game or whatever, and after I finished it and got the ending reel... I was just as confused. When it boils down to it, it's a 23 stage long beat'em up that'll have you facing bosses from the movie, such as Elektra and Bullseye, as well as other enemies exclusive to this game, like Echo and a green... troll-thing. There are a ton of extras to unlock, such as Daredevil's original yellow costume as well as Elektra, Bullseye and Kingpin's comic sprites instead of their movie-inspired ones, which is pretty neat. The entire game runs on passwords, so I just found the Master Password and played the entire game as Yellow Daredevil. Sue me.

 A jumps, B is your standard three-hit combo, R attacks with your billy club and pressing R after a two-hit B combo will end the string with a club attack, double tapping either side and pressing B performs a sliding kick. Daredevil also gets a double jump, and the L button allows you to tap into his senses to reveal hidden power ups, be it health restoring items, temporary double damage, temporary invincibility or temporarily turning your club into a projectile that stuns enemies. Different enemies are more vulnerable either to punches or club attacks, and sometimes, in order to better deal with waves of enemies, it's important to figure out how best to deal with the situation at hand.

 Most of the levels and challenges are your standard beat'em up/platformer hybrid fare, and stages aren't too bad, every now and then mixing up things with vertical movements in order to progress as opposed to a straight zip line from left to right, not that the game is lacking on those type of stages either. That said, bosses are very poorly designed, particularly Elektra, the first boss, since plenty of times there seems to be no way to defeat them but to take damage. Elektra took me out 3-4 times, so I gave up and looked up how to defeat her... and the game's only guide tells you that you need to get hit in order to beat her. Eventually I retried her fight again, since I wanted to see how her movie sprite looked, and I defeated her on my first try... even though I had to get hit in order to do it.

 Considering this is pretty much Daredevil's only videogame, I'd say he got off pretty leniently, since this is actually a pretty decent, albeit unremarkable beat'em up. Plenty of things could've been better, but they could've done so much worse, just look at the poor Power Rangers, so I'll gladly take what we got with this game.
 6.5 out of 10