Game Time - 5/14/2012

Last week I didn't do much gaming, so I decided to skip a week of Game Time in order to have something to talk about. Instead of playing games I decided to watch every current episode of Community and see The Avengers. Both of them were awesome.

Enough of those non-video games though, because I haven't done this in two weeks. There are a bunch of games I've played and it's about time I talked about them. I played the new SSX DLC called Mt. Eddie, Awesomenauts, Trine 2, and Zack and Wiki. 

It's a solid bunch of old and new this week, so I hope you enjoy this edition of Game Time.

SSX DLC Mt. Eddie

On May 1st the debut DLC for SSX was released. Prior to it's release EA was teasing that it would be taking players on a trip down memory lane with some Tricky themes courses and visuals. Their teasing ended up becoming reality, because the DLC titled Mt. Eddie is decidedly reminiscent of SSX in it's Tricky days. I played enough of it to write up a review, which you can find here.

While the new SSX was fairly well received it left some players wanting more. Fans of the older games wanted courses that were less filled with holes and more focused on tricking. Mt. Eddie is exactly what those people were asking for. It's 9 drops down a trick oriented mountain. A few of the drops last for over 10 minutes, which makes the scoring potential insanely high.

Expect craziness like this from Mt. Eddie.

It takes everything I like about the new SSX and pairs it with the SSX days of old to deliver a very fun package. As I say in the review if you liked SSX, but wanted it to be more like the old games then this is exactly what you're looking for. You'll also like it if you were just craving more SSX.

Awesomenauts 

Even though it's publisher DTP Entertainment was facing liquidation Awesomenauts still managed to see the light of digital stores on May 1st. Prior to it's release I knew next to nothing about it, but I was interested in seeing what indie developer Ronimo Games has to offer. Out of curiosity I downloaded the game from PlayStation Plus, which I felt kind of odd about due to the position of the publisher.

Despite my momentary qualms about the free download I booted up the game and was surprised by what I found. Awesomenauts is a sidescrolling MOBA, which is an interesting change of pace from the RTS based MOBAS I've tried my hand at before. Instead of clicking a million times you're just going to be pushing a whole lot of buttons. It's basic platforming to get around and each face button corresponds to one of your skills.

Awesomenauts is exactly what you're looking for if you want a console MOBA.

In Awesomenauts you choose from one of six heroes before you go into a game. When everyone is all set you're launched into an arena on either the blue or red teams. After a few seconds your side will start spawning robots that advance towards the opposing side. Like all Moba's the goal is to defeat the opposing heroes, turrets, and robots while leveling up, gathering money (Solar), and purchasing skills. In order to achieve victory you'll have to make your way to the enemies base and destroy it.

After playing a few rounds of Awesomenauts I decided that I didn't want to play it any more. I had a decent amount of fun, but it helped me come to the conclusion that I'm not really a MOBA guy. For the past few years I've been around people who go crazy for League of Legends and I know a lot of people who swear by DOTA, but I never really liked either very much. I can see the appeal of Awesomenauts, but I just don't enjoy it as much as I'd like. To me it seems like Tug-of-War with skills and I just can't get super invested.

This just looks like the opening splash of a Saturday morning cartoon.

With that said I think that Awesomenauts is great. It has a sense of style that reminds me very much of a Saturday morning cartoon. It's neat to see a developer try to create a MOBA that can easily be played on consoles. Ronimo is bringing MOBAs to consoles for the first time and I can only imagine that it's doing very well for them. There's been a lot of buzz around the game and I personally know a lot of people who have bought it.

As long as they keep updating the game I can see it having a long life. The plans for the first two DLC heroes can already be found around the internet. I can only imagine that they're going to keep balancing the game and releasing content until the player base has died out. I might jump in if a hero I really like is released.

Trine 2

I've had my eye on Trine 2 for a while, but never got around to buying it. Now that it's free on PlaySation Plus I had no choice but to pick it up. I never played the first Trine, but after playing a bit of Trine 2 I now know why people seemed to like it so much.

Trine 2 is all about solving puzzles. You play as Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight, and Zoya the Thief who all have different abilities. You switch between the three in order to solve the game's many puzzles. Pontius is best suited for combat. He has a sword that heavily damages enemies and he can block almost all incoming damage with his shield. Zoya can lightly damage enemies and shoot switches with her bow and grapple onto wooden ledges with her grappling hook. The person you'll be spending the most time with is Amadeus. He's essentially the main puzzle solver. He can create boxes and levitate things.

Amadeus is the main puzzle solver in Trine 2.

I started playing Trine 2 with a friend of mine in local co-op. The first thing we realized is that the wizard can be used to bypass any puzzle in multiplayer. Each one is set up to be solved in a specific way. You're supposed to get from one point to another by switching between the three characters. However, when you're the wizard you can just levitate your partner on a box to wherever you need to go. Then if you switch to the wizard you can levitate your partner over in order to totally bypass the puzzle. Since this basically negates all of the challenge we tried to figure everything out the way we were supposed to.

I haven't tried to play the game single player yet, but I can only imagine that it's much more challenging. I'm going to give it a shot though, because Trine 2 has pulled me in. I really like it. I've always been a big fan of solving these types of puzzles, but paired with the music and visuals I may have fallen in love.

Trine 2 is straight up pretty to look at.

There's something about Trine 2 that's straight up charming. The voice over, visuals, and music come together to make it feel very much like an old-timey fantasy storybook. I didn't start playing the single player yet, but I did boot it up just to look and listen to the game for awhile. Now I might have to buy a copy of the first game, because I just want to consume as much of it as I can.

Zack and Wiki

The Wii seems like it would be a great place for point and click adventure games, but there really aren't that many. The few that exist are mostly relegated to downloadable titles. As far as I know Zack and Wiki is the only retail game of this type that exists, and that's okay. I bought the game a few years ago when a local video store was going out of business, but never got around tom playing it. For some reason I started playing it this past week and I've been playing it since.

I completely expected the game to be unoriginal and uninspired, but that was far from the truth. Very rarely is it that Capcom takes a chance on new IP's, but they hit it out of the park with Zack and Wiki. You control Zack the orphaned pirate boy and his friend the golden floating monkey Wiki. They have been taken in by the band of misfits known as the Sea Rabbits. As is the usual with pirate kids, Zack wants to be the greatest pirate in the world.

You'll be pointing the Wii Mote at everything you find on screen. It works surprisingly well.

Zack and Wiki is exactly as I described it. You point the Wii Remote at the screen and push A to interact with objects. Each stage you need to find a way to get to a golden chest. In order to do that you need to pick up various items and interact with your surroundings. What Zack and Wiki does differently is that you get a lot of your items from enemies. If you shake the Wii Remote then Wiki will turn into a bell and morph the enemy into  a useful item.

After playing for a few hours I became enamored with the fun and original puzzles. I remember there being a lot of buzz around the game when it was released, so I decided to see how well it was received. As I expected it did fairly well critically, but didn't sell well at all. For some reason the most interesting games review well, but sell terribly. It's a shame, because it discourages developers and publishers from going too far out of their comfort zone.

Video Games?

As you can see I've got a few games started up at the same time. It's a shame, because I don't know which one to try and finish first. Then there's the fact that I still haven't beaten Xenoblade. I made it right up to the point of no return, but decided I needed a break. Maybe I'll finish that this week? I don't want to wait too long and end up leaving that game behind. It's too good for that, so I need to get myself together.

It's been a barren few weeks as far as game releases go, but we're nearing an unusually high release time for summer. Diablo 3 comes out in 2 days, which I sadly won't be able to play due to the general awfulness of my laptop. Max Payne 3 comes out as well, which I may actually pick up. I'm kind of in the mood for shooting people while diving in slow motion.

I don't know what I'm going to play. Find out in the next edition of Game Time.

     -Manny

DLC Review of Mt. Eddie and Classic Characters Bundle Pack for SSX

This is a DLC review of the Mt. Eddie and Classic Characters Bundle Pack for SSX.

Score: 4/5


I really enjoyed the new SSX, but there were a fair number of people who wanted it to be more like Tricky and SSX 3. Lucky for them the development team heard their cries and decided to release Mt. Eddie, which is a clear homage to the SSX days of old.

One of the major complaints of the new SSX was that the drops were filled with too many random holes. At first it’s not that big a deal, but the further you delve into the game the worse it gets. This makes it so that you can’t truly focus on racing, or tricking. You constantly have to watch yourself in order to stay on the track, but Mt. Eddie gets rid of that. It’s either pure tricking, or pure racing. No longer are there gaping chasms to fall into.

As you can see there are tons of jumps.

Mt. Eddie is the ultimate spot for tricking. There are rails, jumps, and half-pipes everywhere. This gives the whole course a great flow. The only thing you have to figure out is where your next trick is coming from, and it ends up feeling great. To make things even better it’s always nighttime and fireworks are perpetually going off. The mountain has a lot more color than the rest of the game and it looks really cool.

The whole mountain has 9 different drops, which are distributed between trick and race events. The race events are okay, but just like in the main game they lose out to the trick events. It just seems weird to try and get down the mountain has fast as possible when there are so many opportunities for tricking. As you’d expect the trick events on Mt. Eddie are awesome. As I said there are places to trick everywhere and on top of that the events are all fairly long. The trick event at the top of the mountain can take 15-20 minutes to complete, which makes it more like the single mountains that old SSX games had.

Imagine something like this, but for 20 minutes.

In an attempt to cram more nostalgia into the game they also decided to add Classic Characters. This is the part of the DLC that totally lost me. It adds seven new characters to play as, but they’re not really new at all. Instead they’re just 7 different versions of characters the game already has. The only difference is that they look like they used to in SSX Tricky. This means that there are only technically 6 retro characters, because both versions of Eddie look almost exactly the same. What’s really lame is that since they’re separate characters you have to level them up again. It takes a really long time to level a character up to 11, so it’s not exactly worth it for that.

In order to offset the need to re-level each character they each get their own unique retro boards. They’re really good and most of them look pretty cool. It’s a nice attempt, but it still doesn’t make it worth re-leveling an alternate version of the same character. It may have been better if they added retro costumes instead of making separate characters.

I don't really prefer any of the classic looks to the new ones, but I'm sure some people feel differently.

The bundle is certainly worth it, because it’s only $7.99. If you buy the characters and Mt. Eddie separately they’re $5.99 a piece, which seems a little steep. Whether you’re looking for some old school SSX nostalgia or just looking to have more SSX content in your life then this pack is going to fit your needs. With the quality of Mt. Eddie there’s hope that all future DLC will be just as entertaining.