Game Quicky: I Spy Spooky Mansion (Wii) ~ An Unexpected Remake!

Wikipedia page

Sometimes you don’t expect a game to get a remake. One of these games is “I Spy Spooky Mansion”. I have fond memories of playing this game on my aunt’s computer when I went over to her place. A few years ago, I was able to snag my own copy during a garage sale. Now, when I was browsing eBay for cheap old Wii games, I found this game. I got confused. I honestly thought that somebody mislabeled this game. I thought there was no way for a game from 1999 to get a port to the Wii in 2010. But, the truth is quite different. This game did get a port in 2010 and got released to the Wii in North America. I say North America, but it’s quite possible that this game also got released in the EU, but I haven’t seen a copy in the stores. Now, I played this Wii port and this article will talk about my opinions on the game. Maybe in a future article, I’ll talk about my thoughts and opinions on the PC version of the game. But, now I kindly invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

The good

The story of this game isn’t 100% the same. Well, sort of. You are still trapped in the spooky mansion together with Skelly and you have to escape. But, the method of escaping is different in this version of the game. I won’t spoil it, but I enjoy the original and the new endings to the game.

The sound design of this game is amazing. Compared to the original, this game feels more alive. There are a lot of obvious “spooks” in the game, like when you are upstairs, you hear somebody going up the stairs. Not to mention, the voice acting for Skelly is amazing. I personally enjoy the voice acting in this game more than the original. Well, I also have to compare a dubbed version of the game with the original English voice work now, so take that how you want.

The gameplay is mostly unchanged in this port of the game. You still get an I Spy riddle where you have to find a handful of objects inside a certain area. With easy to understand controls, you have to find these objects in the scene. The big difference with the original is the fact that most of the scenes are in 3D or are bigger than the screen itself. In the original, you have a 2D picture to “stare” at, to find all the objects. I quite like this style and it allowed the developers to put more details in the scene and hide the objects in more creative ways.

Apart from that, there are some gimmick Wii minigames where you have to make a certain motion with the Wii remote to win the minigame and find the hidden object. While you can’t really lose these minigames, they are a nice distraction from the hidden object quest. One minor thing that annoyed me was the fact that I couldn’t skip the tutorial speak and that the tutorial box stayed a bit too long on screen in my opinion.

While it would have been amazing to freely walk around in the mansion, sadly enough, that’s not the case in this game. You can walk around by pointing and using the A button to go into a moving transition. This minor change compared to the original makes the mansion feel more alive. In the original, you had to click on a door and you immediately moved through it. In this game, you go through a, sadly inescapable, cut scene.

The hidden object scenes are quite easy to spot. While exploring through the mansion, the scenes where you can play an I Spy riddle play a small animation. While some areas are the same compared to the original like the dining room and the kitchen, there are a few new rooms like underneath the bed and a board game in the living room. Fun times!

The bad

While the explore able mansion isn’t that large, I think it would be great if a map feature would have been implemented. Once or twice I wanted to go to a room and I forgot if it was downstairs or upstairs. Then again, this is only a minor problem since you were able to get quickly up and downstairs.

Something that I could also critique in the original and that’s still present here is the fact that you can still access the puzzles you have completed. This makes it quite annoying when you are looking for that final piece of the puzzle to beat the game. Now, I totally understand the reason for that decision. In the middle of the game, you need to look for pieces of paper and those are hidden inside parts of the puzzle.

Now, I might be spoiled by playing a ton of casual games/hidden object games but a hint button would have been an amazing addition. Sometimes I got stuck because I wasn’t able to find one hidden object and I restored to spam clicking the entire screen. In addition to that, it would be nice if I had some sort of sound effect or something on-screen when I reached the end of where I could go. Some puzzles go from left to right but not the full 360°, so either make the player hit a wall or give a visual clue that you can’t continue to move the camera.

While the sound design is really well done, the music is a major letdown. While there is some music in the game, it’s nothing to write home about. Most of this game is played in silence together with the great sound design. It’s a bummer since a lot of horror or horror-themed games have amazing soundtracks and I really missed it in this game.

Conclusion

This port surprised me. In a good way. While this game isn’t perfect and could use some polishing, I enjoyed my time with this game. I wanted to complete this game to see what they changed in this version and how it played. The differences with the original PC version of the game are refreshing changes to the formula.

If you enjoyed the original, puzzle games, casual games or hidden object games; this game is a perfect short title to play through. I highly recommend it when you are into those style of games. Now, if you didn’t get interested in this game during this review, I would highly advise you to stay away from this game since the repetitiveness gets boring really fast.

I’m so glad that I gave this game a chance and didn’t write it off as another piece of Wii shovelware. It’s an enjoyable title for young and old. While I could totally understand people not really liking this game, I argue that this game has a lot to offer and enjoy. I might not go replaying this game in the near future, but who knows… Maybe one day.

And with that, I think I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

 

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NekoJonez: Nintendo MiiPlaza v3.0: What I want to see.

Oh wow, it has been a long time since this Neko created an article for this blog first instead of the other way around. Well, I hope that might improve my fanbase… Jonez, what were you thinking? The idea of this joke in the introduction how it’s good but not good enough and then compare it to StreetPass MiiPlaza isn’t going to work this way. Yeah, let’s just explain to the people that I wanted to write an article about the changes I want to see if they ever would make a major update to StreetPass MiiPlaza. And as tradition, invite them to leave a comment with their thoughts on what they think about the article or what they want to see changed. 

StreetPass, itself.

Account system?

If this was possible, that would be mindblowing. Just think about it, there are a bunch of families where the 3DS is owned by more then one child. They have to share their 3DS with their brother or sister. And then different accounts for them they could switch between would be an amazing feature.

Granted, it would be a pain to integrate. This might even mean that the whole 3DS system would need a major rewrite where every account will need a ton of set-up. That would be a major downside of the feature. I’m going to think out loud here and there in this article so, see this article as a sort brainstorm I did and one I’m expanding while writing this article.

Better menu’s.

This is one they should DO without thinking actually. Some menu’s of the MiiPlaza are just bad. Let’s start with the music menu. You should be able to easily access the menu by mini-game. Not having them all dumped into one list under each other. Good luck finding your song then.

For the hats menu, you should be able to search them. Or at least, put them by category. Sometimes looking for a hat is such a pain and it takes too much time to find one back.

Also, I think this is a valid remark but Nintendo, tell me why the firmwire updates are protected with the pin code and the update to MiiPlaza isn’t? Isn’t that a big gap in the consistency of your firmwire?

Please improve the menu’s Nintendo, they are working on my nerves, big time. My biggest frustration is how you can barely sort the Mii’s on your plaza itself. And if you can, that feature is quite hidden.

Since I have a game or two that drops the Mii’s of the people who helped me in game onto the Plaza. And I wish I could be able to sort of those who are from that game and who I actually saw or past in real life. And it would be such a blessing if those people didn’t count towards the achievements. Yeah, thanks to Bravely Default I have now the achievement that I have more then 100 Mii’s on my Plaza. Great…

Music

This will be a short one but to my honest opinion, I like the idea that the music changes when you have a certain number in your Plaza. Although, why isn’t it possible yet to change the music of the main plaza back to a previous version or the music you unlocked in the jukebox?

That would be amazing. Maybe a possibility to have the music that is on the SD card? Yeah, why not? Since hearing that same music over and over again might get a bit tiresome. On the other hand, it’s the OST to the game, so it might get lost and that’s no big fun to the creator of the music. So scrap the SD idea, and introduce the other idea about selecting the music of the jukebox.

And dear Nintendo, please finally learn that music isn’t a sound to indicate that you lost or won a level. A song has a duration of at least a minute. Please put the sound effects in a separate place. Turn the jukebox in a soundtest, why the heck not? To give some nostalgia-gasms to the retro gamers under us.

Misc stuff

So, in between writing and publishing this article, I put a bit more thought in what I wrote. When I was playing, I had another idea. Why can’t the exchange booth be updated? I mean here that the 4 featured hats change daily. But what if you could lock a hat for some time? When you truly want to have a hat.

Also, maybe expand the selection? And make a selection that is always there. But the 4 changing daily should have a price like 1 additional play coin or something.

Also, when you have played all mini-games with the Mii’s you met, why are they still following you for a while? If you go to your plaza, they should stop following you.

Another idea is that you can check the (past) greetings of a character. I met somebody at my college and we had to find each other by other means on Facebook. That was a true annoyance.

Also, maybe some sort of leader board for the general MiiPlaza high scores could be awesome. I understand that you can see the people you passed by are in that list, but wouldn’t it be more awesome to compare your results with those around the world?

And please Nintendo, add a way to see the progress of those on your friend list. A game that could really benefit from this is StreetPass Garden.

The games

Puzzles

The puzzles are already a great start. It was the main reason why I took my 3DS outside. And here are my idea’s to improve the Puzzle Swap concept.

First of all, it could be amazing to kind of bookmark people. When they have pieces of a puzzle you want, you could ask those people to bring their 3DS to class or to the playground daily and that way you could easily complete a puzzle.

Maybe give us a way to get more puzzle pieces from a person at once when you pay some play coins for it. I mean, you use them to get puzzle pieces from the amazing cats~

StreetPass Quest

Did you know, that if you beat StreetPass Quest twice, you unlock StreetPass Quest 2? That’s an amazing surprise.

And to be honest, the complaints I had with StreetPass Quest are implemented in StreetPass Quest 2.

So, honestly, I have no complaints here. Surprising not? One idea is that you have some sort of “log” where you can check which color does which magic. Could save you some time by looking it up online.

The DLC Games

Oh yes, I’m calling them the DLC games. And yes, I actually bought them without looking at any screenshots or video’s. I just wanted the complete experience of the MiiPlaza. I’m like that. When I see on Steam that there is a more expensive version with more features, I ALWAYS buy the more expensive version. I want to have everything the developer publishes.

So, since not everybody got those additional games, I’m also going to give a short explanation of the game. So, YEAH! More content of the NekoJonez.

StreetPass Squad

Ever thought to yourself, this StreetPass Quest is great but what if I could play a shooter with my friends? One, thanks for playing on the 3DS, since most gamers answer that question with a (generic) mainstream shooter that they can play on their computers.

And second, that’s this game basically. And I truly enjoy how the color of the Mii changes the weapon that they have. Each Mii you meet is a pod at your ship. You have four spots where you can place a Mii. 3 in front and one in the back. The other Mii’s you can place behind the Mii’s to upgrade their weapon.

What’s awesome is that you can rotate the ships so that your projectiles shoot in different directions. Also, this game has so different modes. From protecting crystals to horizontal and vertical shooting. With bosses at the end of every stage. This game is rather fun to play.

My first remark is simple. Why can’t you keep playing the game when the pods are still in tact? Isn’t that a bit silly? When beating a level, you see which pods are still in tact. Maybe I have to beat the game once for unlocking that but that is lame honestly.

But what’s awesome in this game is that you can see the scores of the people you passed by. And you can see their profile. Sweet going there. Also, the more missions you beat, the more titles you can give yourself at your profile.

The other remark I have with this game is that you should add the name of the stages in the ranking. That’s my remark short and sweet.

And my final remark is that they should add a sort of syncing. When somebody that you passed has beaten his or her high score, it should update your list with the touch of a button instead of having to pass by them again.

StreetPass Garden

Yes, StreetPass Garden is exactly what it sounds, you have a garden that you can show (off) at your friends. Each Mii that visits your garden waters your plant once. When it’s fully grown, the seeds of your plant and your guest’s plant mix. This way you can gather more plants.

It sounds boring at first, while that isn’t true at all. This game is actually playable when you haven’t any hits on MiiPlaza. You don’t get the message: “Pass by people to play this game” BS. And this game has the most depth of them all. You can visit shops, expand and decorate your garden quite a bit.

And my remarks for this game are mentioned earlier. Most of them. One major remark is how you can only check out people their garden once they visit you. You should be able to visit their garden as soon as they once visited yours. And with syncing. That could be awesome.

StreetPass Battle

Want to conquer the world with your friends? Well, that’s possible in this game! Which is an amazing concept. And it truly is amazing.

This game is actually pretty tactical. You have to win battles. While they don’t have a lot of depth, it’s quite easily to loose yourself in them. Since some battles have some special rules that make each battle feel different then the one before.

It’s based on the rock-paper-scissors style of battles. So, nothing truly special, but for a StreetPass game, it’s pretty good.

My complaints are, well… big. One complaint is how there is almost no difference in the amount of soldiers the people you meet different times bring in then how many soldiers a Mii brings in you met for the first time. That shouldn’t be the case!

Also, some battles require you to meet many people, since the amount of soldiers your enemies has are sometimes nearly doubled. A bit lazy in my opinion.

Another problem I have with the game is how you can’t give soldiers to others. When you meet a monarch from afar, you can battle them. Which is great, but isn’t perfect. If you could have an option that they get 50 soldiers when they meet you, then it would be perfect!

StreetPass Mansion

And this is your RPG-ish adventure game. In this game, you explore a haunted mansion for ghosts and treasures. Each Mii you meet, have a puzzle piece that you can place on the board. Your goal is to find the stairs in the room.

When you add a green piece to green pieces that are already laying down, then a chest or crystal appears in that room.

This is also a game where you can die. I mean here that there is no win/lose thingy. You actually have a health bar.

My major problem with this game is that when you hire investigators… The animation takes so long! It’s the longest of all the games and pressing “R” barely speeds the process up like in the other games.

This game feels a bit half finished. The game feels like it misses some great features like a list of all enemies and better inventory management. For real, this game has one of the worst inventory systems I have seen. It’s just clunky to use and destroys the fun of the game quite a bit.

And the worst part is that it’s possible that somebody has a part you can’t use in the room. Oh yes, then you’re pretty screwed. A hit just went lost.

In addition, you have to place your pieces where your character can go to. In a way, I understand why they programmed it like that, but I truly feel like it’s a missed opportunity. You could have build up so many possible combo’s.  Anyways, it’s the game I put least of time into. Since it feels a bit broken to me. Or that might just be my opinion.

Closing words.

So, I’m finally done with writing this long article. On my twitter I said that this article is around 2500 words, double from my normal article length. First I thought of splitting this article into two. And publish one piece here and the other on my personal blog. After some thought, I decided to leave the article in one piece.

Thanks for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed this article. Take it as my way to apologize of reblogging my articles here. This is one of the articles I started writing here. And when I started writing, I kept writing. I started writing this article in my college breaks and finished it on a Tuesday night just before going to bed.

So, I’m rather  curious what you guys think about my idea’s. And what idea’s you have for Nintendo to improve Mii Plaza. While the chances are extremely small that Nintendo is going to implement these changes, you never know. Maybe one day they might show up in the Mii Plaza. Or they might create some more new amazing content for us to explore. Anyways, this Neko is tired and still has some publishing work to do for this article. I hope to see you another time!