Run For it!

Do Or Do Not...

No, today's blog entry isn't about Star Wars. As you can see above, its about RUNBOW. I put that Star Wars quote there because it is one of many, many, many things you will see when you die in this game. And you'll probably die. Runbow is a fast paced and very tricky game. Or at least I should say its demo is fast paced and tricky cause thats all I've played of the game so far. As I said last week, Runbow was one of many games that saw a demo release for Nindies@Home. I got to the play the demo and....

I loved it!



Runbow is full of sarcasm whether you win or lose. There's always a snarky comment waiting for you. The game is full of humor, action, adventure, and lots of running. I also really dig the art style.



Runbow looks like the opening of a movie like Pink Panther, Catch Me If You Can or Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It has a very 50s/60s retro vibe. The characters are all cool looking, the backgrounds are simplistic and very fun to look at it. Though you won't have much time to stare at the background. You'll be running whether you play Run Mode or Adventure or any of the modes that weren't in the demo. The game seems to have a lot of modes. And as you can see in the picture above, you can play the game with multiple people! I did not get a chance to play the demo with somebody else. That said, the game is really fun by yourself.

 

Runbow has a really good soundtrack too. Even though it was the same song through the demo, I just couldn't help singing along with it and tapping my feet. The music, the gameplay, and the sarcasm all come together to create an excellent demo!

Although, it should be noted that the demo does have some framerate issues. Hopefully these will be ironed out in the full game.

You can tell that the Runbow demo isn't the complete game. This is just a small taste of whats in store for us! I mean, come on, Shovel Knight AND Rusty from Steamworld Dig are in the full game!! You gotta play it. I gotta play it too. Is it Runbow time yet?!

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All of the above pictures were taken from google here.

I'll be back on Monday. I'll talk about Two Tribes RIVE demo then!

Sory Abuot Al The Typo

The day before their Digital Event, Nintendo had a surprise for Wii U eshop fans: Nindies@Home. This special event allowed players (for a limited time) to download several demos of upcoming Indie games. I downloaded each and every one of these demos. And was definitely excited about a few of them. Of course, with E3 and all my various reviews I write, I haven't had a chance to write about any of them....till now. On Friday, I'll talk about Runbow. Today, I'd like to talk about Typoman.



The first time I played Typoman, I had no idea what to do. The game didn't have a tutorial or even an explanation about what it was about. You were just thrown into the game. Not the best introduction. So, I quickly stopped playing the game. And then the game was demoed during Treehouse Live at E3. Typoman was clearly explained there and shown off. I knew right away that I HAD to play the demo again.



The main objective is in this game is to move letters and create new words. The words will help you get past obstacles. For instance, look at the picture above. In it, you see the word SLOW. The character created that word with some letters. Now see that word CRUSH? If the main character goes under it at the wrong time, he'll be crushed for sure. With the slow there, though, the crush obstacle will go slow and Typoman should be able to get past it. When I played this level, I created the word STOP. But I had to create it at the right moment. If you create it at the wrong moment, you can't get past the obstacle (its too close to the ground). These word creation puzzles are very unique. Typoman is unlike any other games I've seen on the Wii U eshop.



Hey wait. This picture looks familiar. Yes, its almost the same picture that I started this article with. As you can see, its raining. There's also that big hole full of water down there. Typoman can't get past that because if he touches t he water, he'll die. So here we go with word creation again. The word up there says rain but you can change it into something else. There is a rope with the letter D up above. You can get on the rope and swing the letter over to RAIN creating....DRAIN. The hole will completely drain and Typoman can get past the obstacle. There are many other cool puzzles like this too. Typoman is such an inventive game. I enjoyed my time with the game. In fact, I need to play the demo again soon.



This demo is a TRAP for sure. Once you play it and you understand whats going on, you'll want to play the full game. I know I want to. And you get a discount if you downloaded the demo! Awesome!

Well, thats it for now. See you on Friday for Runbow.

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The above pictures were taken from Google here.

Ping 1.5+ (Wii U) Review

Everybody has their favorite retro games. In fact, everyone has a different opinion on what games are retro to them. Some people, I’m sure, consider Playstation 1 games retro. For me, retro games will always be NES titles. For other people, it would be the Atari. No matter what your retro taste, there are always games trying to feed on that retro nostalgia.

Ping 1.5+ is a retro inspired puzzle game for the Wii U eshop. From its graphics to its gameplay, Ping is looking for those fans of games like Pong, Breakout, and other other classic Atari and NES games. But is it any good? Does its graphics and gameplay transcend pure nostalgia? Read on to find out my thoughts!





The touch screen is your friend in Ping 1.5+ The game can be controlled via the analog sticks but that doesn’t work very well. The touch control is accurate and makes the game very interactive. Ping is a great game to play via Off-TV mode because of this. The game makes great use of the gamepad. Ping is connected to Miiverse and has special stamps too. Very cool. And its also a fun and challenging game.




Ping is full of surprises and tributes to older games. The basic gameplay does stay the same throughout but mixes in new and unexpected challenges. The boss fights, especially, are cool. Be warned though: Ping is a very hard game. It starts out easy, but quickly increases in difficulty. You may not finish this game, but you’ll have fun playing it and taking on these levels.





While Ping can be really hard at times, you don’t have to worry about unlocking each and every level. When you unlock a world, all of the levels are there for you to play. And you don’t have to beat the final boss level on each world to unlock a new world. I really like that the game is open like this. Ping is a very good game!

I love Ping’s retro inspired graphics. At first, you may just think this game is a Pong ripoff, but its not. The graphics are inspired by those old Atari and NES games, but the background and foreground special effects make it look even better than those games. Ping is a visual treat; you just never know what to expect next from it.




The game has a very techno inspired soundtrack. Its pretty good and doesn’t get annoying at all. The sound effects are very good too. There is one slight announce as far as sound though. Occasionally, the sound will glitch and make a loud buzzing sound. Other than that, the sound is really good.



Ping 1.5+ is a must play if you love retro inspired puzzlers. The game is fun and full of surprises. Ping also makes great use of the gamepad and the Wii U. The game does have some glitches, but overall, Ping is a very good puzzle game. You'll especially love this game if you love Atari/NES games, but I don't think you have to have that nostalgia to enjoy this game. Its fun and challenging. Oh and I absolutely love the graphics and the soundtrack. I recommend this game! Buy it!

My Score: 8.5/10
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Thanks to the developer Christopher F. Arnold for giving me a copy of the game for this review.

All of the above pictures were taken from Google here.

I'm Ready To Design Some Homes

When Nintendo first announced Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer, I thought the game would just be a simple house designing spinoff of Animal Crossing. And while you do design houses, it turns out that there is a little bit more to the game than just that.



In Happy Home Designer, you work for Tom Nook in his Nook's Homes store. Lyle, Digby, and a new character, Lottie, also work there. Tom Nook will quickly go away and Lottie will be the main person you report to. As for the job, you are tasked with designing animal's homes. You can do this by inviting them via the amiibo cards:



Or by inviting them from the town's plaza! Yes, you don't NEED the cards to play this game. But you will definitely WANT them. See that Isabelle card? With that or any other special character card, you can invite special characters to LIVE in your town. You'll create a house for Isabelle or Tom Nook or K.K. Slider or or....oh man. I need some of these cards!!

With the cards, you'll specifically invite animals. The animals in the plaza are RANDOM. So who knows who you'll get. I'll definitely be inviting some good randoms too (no clown sheep!!!).



Designing homes is a bit more complicated then we thought. You pick a place in the town to put a house and then...well...look at that picture above! You get to design the OUTSIDE of the animal's house too!



You pick the look of the animal's house, what goes around the house, including trees, flowers, and stuff that you could only put inside the animal's house in New Leaf. You can put furniture outside! Wow.



After you design the outside, then you design the inside of the house. You get suggestions from the animals and some initial furniture and then you can design the rest of the house however you like. You'll be MAD WITH POWER! 'insert evil laugh here'

 

If it was just designing houses, well, that would be cool but the Animal Crossing developers didn't stop there. As you can see from the picture above, you can design a school too! And a hospital. And stores!!! You pick the outside look of the building and then design the inside however you want. Looks like there is even more room to be creative in the designing of buildings.



Plus, you pick who the teacher of the school is and who the students are. You can also pick the doctor of the hospital!! And who runs the shops or restaurants or whatever. Oh and the animals can wear hats and glasses this time around! The level of animal interaction is going to be amazing in Happy Home Designer.




There are some questions that are still unanswered however. We don't know if you'll be able to walk around in the actual town. We've seen the character walking in the plaza, but when going to an animals house, we've only seen the character zooming there (looks like they take their car there). It seems unlikely that you can fish or bug hunt though. And we know that doing favors for animals is gone. We have no idea if this game has holidays. Actually we don't even know if it has a real time clock, although that seems likely because they showed day and night in some videos.

Another question is: how many animal's houses can you design per day? We know that Nook's Homes closes down later in the day.

All of these questions should be answered next month! The game is coming out in July in Japan. There will be some people who import the game and play it. So we should have these questions answered.

Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer comes out on September 25, 2015 in the U.S. No matter what the answers are to the above questions, I'm VERY excited for this game! Can't wait to play it!

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All of the above pictures come from Google and are copyright Nintendo.

My Final Nintendo E3 2015 Thoughts

I wrote about the Nintendo Digital Event and how I much I loved it already. So I'll skip that part of Nintendo's E3 (but I had to post another muppet pic. Just HAD to). Lets talk about the Treehouse and how I think Nintendo ultimately did this E3.

First of all, I thought the Treehouse was really good. Sure, they did repeat a lot of games. They did that last year too. But you won't find any other people who are this excited about the games that they are involved in making.You can tell how much these people love and enjoy the games. Its a joy to watch them play and talk about games, especially ones you're really interested in.





My favorite Treehouse Spotlight, the one I'm still watching over and over, is Happy Home Designer. You all know how much of an Animal Crossing fan I am. Happy Home Designer has turned out to be a fantastic surprise and I can't wait to see more of it. I really enjoyed this spotlight. I wish there had been another spotlight for the game. Oh well. Hopefully we'll see more in a Direct soon.



I loved the spotlight on the amiibo. Especially the amiibo cards and the Animal Crossing figures. Though the 8-bit Marios above are really cool too. I know its going to be hard to find all this stuff. Though I'm crossing my fingers about the cards.



There was so much more I liked about the Treehouse but I think most of that was covered on my twitter (@df2506).

I really could go on and on forever about Nintendo this E3. But I won't.

I think Nintendo did a great job this year. Actually, ever since they switched from press conferences to Digital Events and added the Treehouse, Nintendo has been rocking E3. Last year we got a TON of new Wii U games announced. This year, the focus was on the 3DS. I'm more than ok with this because I own both systems. So I really enjoyed seeing all of the excellent Wii U surprises we got last year. And I think the 3DS ones this year are equally as good.

Plus, we did get some Wii U surprises, just maybe not the ones people wanted. Personally, I really liked the look of Animal Crossing amiibo festival. I think its great that the AC franchise is getting a different kind of spinoff. It looks like a party game that I'd enjoy a lot. Not so sure about Mario Tennis, but the graphics looked good. And Star Fox wowed me.

Overall, I thought this was one of Nintendo's best E3's. Even better than last year. Was it their best ever? Who knows. Nintendo is NOT done yet.

Oh and if you weren't happy with what Nintendo did at E3, wait two seconds. They'll be a Nintendo Direct soon.

(Ok, two seconds is an exaggeration BUT it won't be too long till we see Nintendo again. you can bet on that).

For Nintendo, E3 is just a stop along the way. They don't need E3. E3 needs them. Nintendo has announcements throughout the year. They will continue to surprise you no matter what they do. Thats Nintendo for you. They want fun, surprises, and to be different from everyone else.

And I hope they always stay this way.

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The pictures above were taken from Google. All are copyright Nintendo

This blog will be back on June 29th. Most likely with an Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer blog entry!