Game Quicky: WarioWare Gold (3DS) ~ Minigame Short

Nintendo microsite

For those who don’t know, I live in Belgium. Around late November – beginning December, we have a special holiday.  Depending on the region you are in, you either celebrate Sinterklaas or Sint Maarten. Both days are basically the same thing, but Sint Maarten takes place in late November and Sinterklaas in early December. Now, what is this? Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas Day is a sort of 2nd Christmas day/Santa Claus celebration. I could explain the whole celebration, but I think I’m just going to link to a Wikipedia page that explains it better than I can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas. Now, why am I mentioning this? Well, during this celebration I usually give my godchild a gift and I get a special gift from my godmother. This year she gave me WarioWare Gold for the Nintendo 3DS. Now that I have finished the game, what did I think about it? Let’s take a look at it! Oh, and before you say: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” Well, I just want to review this game… Anyways, feel free 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

While the story isn’t anything special, the voice acting is just amazing. It’s one of the best performances that Charles Martinet as Wario. The voice acting actually gives the story the charm it needs.

The theming of the minigames is perfect. This game is sort of a compilation game of all the previous WarioWare games, the 300 mini-games it has are a blast to play. Especially since you have games where you need to use the microphone, gyrosensors and the touch screen.

There are quite interesting extras in this game like recording your own voice in the cutscenes and the mini-games. There is also a lot of Nintendo history in this game that made me quite nostalgic.

So, the gameplay is amazing. If you played WarioWare games in the past, you’ll feel right at home with this game. If you have never played a WarioWare game, the game works like this. You get challenged by a character that sets the theme of the mini-games. In these mini-games, you have to quickly perform one action to complete a goal. For example; shave three hairs for a chin or blow, blow out a candle, raise a bridge on time… All of this with a simple action or button press. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, you go to the next round. The consequence is if you lose, you lose one of your 4 lives. Logically, you need to restart the whole chapter when your 4 lives are lost. The mini-games speed up at a certain point and after a couple of rounds, you’ll face the final challenge of that character.

The visuals of this game are amazing. The game looks colorful and vibrant. The artwork is sublime. There are a lot of amazing references to other Nintendo games and to earlier WarioWare series. I especially loved the nods to WarioWare D.I.Y. with some mini-games having crudely drawn visuals like a casual player would create on the Nintendo DS.

I had a really hard time deciding where to place the soundtrack of this game. I’m personally a bit mixed on it. While the soundtrack has a lot of great tracks, there are a few that didn’t click with me. Now, when I replayed these sections, I noticed that the tracks didn’t click with me outside of the game. So, I can’t fault the game too much for that. So, that’s why I decided to mention the soundtrack in the good section.

The bad

So, let’s talk about the story in this game. While the voice acting is amazing and adds a lot of charm, it doesn’t fix the mediocre story of this game. The story just feels incomplete, storylines that go too quickly to their conclusion. There is barely any arc.

I can totally understand that the story needs to be short and bite-sized for the WarioWare games, but I feel that there is a lot of wasted potentials here and that this story could have been more interesting if it was more fleshed out for a Wario platformer.

While collecting the collectibles is a fun distraction and a nice post-game objective, most of them are just useless. In previous games, most of the unlockables had some sort of interesting function but in this game, a lot of them are just images of previous Nintendo products with a little bit of explanation. That’s a major let down.

Conclusion

This game is an interesting one. While I highly enjoyed my time with the game, I felt that there were a few things lacking. I felt that a bit more polish might have improved this game to be even better. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of things that this game does right and nails in the process. Like the voice acting and the visuals.

Personally, I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys playing mini-game collections, puzzle games, Nintendo games, and other WarioWare games. Personally, I wouldn’t pay full price for this game and wait for a discount. But, I wouldn’t skip this game at all. I think it’s worthy to be in your 3DS collection or library.

Since this game is one of the only games that use almost all the features of the 3DS and I think that’s just great. Thankfully, they didn’t use the 3D feature or I would be in trouble because I use a 2DS XL.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. And yes, I have left a few things out for you to discover… I want to thank you so much for reading this article and 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: 75/100

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Game Music: My Favorites – Numbero 14: My week off!

More articles about gaming music

So, I got a week off last week. I was planning to relax, but I did a lot of other things. From family stuff to studying and working for my evening classes. I also got sick in the last few days. Which is a major bummer since I could have done a bit more if I was less sick. In any case, I think it’s time to write another article about gaming music. Also, thank you Kitami for providing me with this art. I was planning to use it a while ago for a new series I had in mind, but I kind of put it on hold. In any case… If you are new to this series of mine, I listen a lot to game music. It keeps me focused at work and it can cheer me up when I’m down. I try to avoid duplicates on this list. Also, one track per franchise per article. For example, no two Zelda tracks in one article… But in two, just fine. Also, no remixes except when I tell otherwise in the introduction. So, are you ready for a few tracks that are lately playing quite a lot for me…? And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the music and or the games. 

Giana Sisters – Twisted Dreams (PC) ~ Dark Giana Track 2

First Impression

I wasn’t lying in my first impression article. The music in this game is truly amazing. It wasn’t an easy one to pick just one track from this game’s soundtrack.

After some time deciding, I chose this one. Just the mix of chiptune and rock vibe is mind blowing. If only I could play guitar and play this track. But that won’t be for any time soon, since I couldn’t even play the flute back in high school.

Why did I choose this track? Well, because it reminded me a lot of the original game. It might be a re-imaging but damn, the remake of this track is truly well done. Also, I’m still surprised how they were able to mix elements of chiptune and rock so well together.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (DS) ~  Objection! 2004

I’m disappointed at Capcom for cancelling the Ace Attorney spin off. Well, not exactly cancelling. The Great Ace Attorney. Oh well, I hope I can find a playthrough with English subtitles somewhere on the internet. Thankfully, they are bringing Ace Attorney 6 to the west.

I once tried to write a rant about Japanese games never getting a western release, but it didn’t turn out that well. Because I was listing to this nicely made track from the Ace Attorney series.

That reminds me, I should write an article about the Ace Attorney games I didn’t take a look at yet. I’ll put that on my ever growing list of games I want to review or write about.

In any case, I don’t think I need to explain why this is one of my favorite game series. Go dig around on my blog, you will find a couple of articles why I think this is one of the best series ever.

Virtue’s Last Reward (3DS) ~ Blue Bird Lamentation

Review

This. Song. It gets me every time. Just like the “Don’t Say Goodbye” songs at the end of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon… The writing, the atmosphere and the presentation make this a hard to swallow track. Then, they add a track like this. It will play with your feelings. And it will give it a hard slap. Not once, but at least twice.

Just play this game and when you get to this point, when the song plays… You will understand why I’m saying this. I wrote this part of the article at least three times since each and every time, I just wrote the same thing twice. The emotions that this music triggers is just that strong to me.

It’s a damn shame I forgot about this amazing track in all my other game music articles. But I have another “excuse” to talk about this track. They finally, FINALLY announced the sequel and it’s coming to the west! Heaven YES!

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS) ~ Boss Theme One

Now, here is a game I really should play again one day. It’s a game I nearly finished before somehow I lost my save file. If I remember correctly, I stupidly saved while I was in a new game. Yeah, that mistake. All those hours in a RPG, lost.

Well, back in 2012, there was an article floating around that there might be a new Golden Sun in the making if the fans asked for it. I’m really curious if the developers are making a new Golden Sun title. It would give me a reason to play the games. This is one of the games I always want to play but another game comes and distracts me. But I’m sure, one day I will actually play this game again. I’m sure of it!

Oh yeah… The music. I nearly forgot. The music of the first boss was the most memorable to me. Recently, I got the tune back in my head for some reason… It might be a sign. A sign that I need to play this game.

Age of Empires 2 (PC) ~ Music 10

First Impression

Well, recently I replayed Age Of Empires II HD Edition with my friends. Various memories came back to me. Memories from playing sessions when I played a lot of this game and memories from when I played this game with my sister.

This game was a big part of my childhood. I always played some singleplayer maps where I tried to conquer my enemies with various tactics. The “funny” thing is that I’m really bad in choosing what units are effective. So, yes, I’m not that good at the game. But I still had and I’m still having a lot of fun with this game. Now, I only wish that they make a remake of the original Age Of Empires game for Steam. That would be a real blessing. Now, I have to use my retro game PC to play the original.

In any case, I think that this song is one of my favorites. Oh, if you wonder about the name… I wasn’t able to find the names of each track. Somehow I wasn’t able to find the original names of this track. If you know, feel free to leave me a comment and I will fix it in my article.

Oh, and the new upcoming content for this series makes me almost forget that we, most likely, will never see Age Of Empires 4.

Wrapping up

I used this article to also talk a bit about announcements of games that are coming to us. Games that I’m truly excited about. Just today, I learned about Age Of Mythology’s new expansion pack. I linked an article from the official website. Also, are they creating a new expansion pack for Age Of Empires II HD?

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Hopefully, you guys and girls discovered some new and nice music to listen too. In any case, I hope to welcome you in another article but until then, game on~.

First Impression: Giana Sisters – Twisted Dreams (PC) ~ Rip-off With A Twist

Official website

Sadly enough, my week off is nearly at an end. I enjoyed my time off quite a lot. But at the other hand, I did some work for my personal life. The consequence of that is that I could barely play games… But hey, I will have more time in the (near) future to write articles again. I also promised to write two articles this week. Perhaps three even. In any case, before I’m going to take a look to this title, first some small history lesson. This game is a spiritual successor to the original Giana Sisters. Why is it not the real sequel? Well, it’s more of a reboot of a controversial series. The original PC game was a Mario rip-off. It was called the Great Giana Sisters. I linked to a Wikipedia article that explains the gist of the history behind this game. When I saw this game on Steam (a while ago), I was impressed. I thought it would be a sort of HD remake. But it’s far from that. This is a reboot with new gameplay ideas, story and it’s own personality while not loosing the charm of the original. But what did I think of it…? Let’s find out, time to write a first impression after playing the first few levels. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

Kickstarter

Like a more famous game called Shovel Knight, this game started out on KickStarter too. From what I read, this game was actually a re-imaging of a remake that was made of the original Giana Sisters. Which makes this even more interesting, since the remake was released on my favorite platform of all time: Nintendo DS.

When I found this game on Steam, I was quite interested since it was different from what I played on the DS. In the DS game, it was more a sort of hard Mario-ish game with sisters instead of brothers.

The atmosphere was something else, the story was kind of basic… well, it was so similar to your typical Mario story it kinda hurts. But in my opinion, platformers like these have no real need of a story or can be excused when the story is rather at the generic side. Yet, the story in this game threw me off the hook. Like in the original, the story is barely explained. You had to make it out from the scenery and from the introduction cutscene. This left a lot open for the imagination of the player. How they did it, probably just good game design, the developers of this PC game made it work in Twisted Dreams.

The big twist here is that you can play as both sisters without having to depend on a power-up. In the original game, you had to find a candy hidden in a block (like a mushroom in Mario.) to change into the other sister that could shoot fireballs. Well, in this game, with a simple tap of the button… You change into the other sister.

Changing

Changing in the other sister changes up the gameplay quite a lot. Not only the visuals change from bright & happy to dark & gloomy… The music changes and the whole atmosphere. I got the urge to try to look for a deeper meaning. If a game can pull this off, that means it’s drawing you in. Which is a damn good thing. I usually get easily bored of platformers. But when there is an interesting mechanic involved, well… That gets my attention.

Yet, there is a major flaw with this game and the are the keyboard controls. It might be a lot better on an usual QWERTY keyboard, but on an AZERTY keyboard it bugs out. The following issues I have with the keyboard controls:

• The up arrow is JUMP. (Which is a crime in itself.)
• The “W” key is to swirl around. On my keyboard that’s the “Z” key… Why display the “W” and confuse me?
• A very handy feature to switch from sister to sister is missing from the keyboard controls. (It are the trigger buttons on a controller.)
• The game showed the wrong buttons often. And what I mean here is that the tutorial showed how you can control the game with a controller…. While I was playing with a keyboard.

At first I thought, you weren’t able to change the controls. But it appears you can. You can change them from the splash screen. Kind of hidden, but okay… I might have gone off on a ramble there. In short, this game is best played with a controller.

The other stuff

This game has two styles. This is a very interesting concept. From the games I have played, I haven’t seen many games do this. First let’s start with the visuals. This game looks very nice in my opinion. Both the colorful and dark side. It gives each sister their own personality. While I would have switched the styles around for the sisters… It works real well.

The level design is brutal in some areas. This gives the player a nice challenge. The developers where kind enough to not work with a life system but with a death counter. The amount of times you died, counts to your final score on that level.

Gameplay wise, this game is a platformer where you switch between two sisters. Each sister has her own abilities and uses. Sometimes you need to switch between the sisters to solve interesting puzzles.

This game has also a mindblowing soundtrack. It’s something I would seriously listen to from time to time. It’s catchy and melodic. I love how one song can sound so good in two different tones. (Like I said earlier, the music also changes when you switch between sisters.)

I would like to say a bit more about this game, but I’ll leave that up for the review. What I personally think of this game right now is that it’s an amazing game and that I can’t wait what they do for the sequel. But I truly hope that they don’t mess up the controls. If you like a platformer with some good challenge and an interesting switching mechanic, this game is right up you alley. I just hope that only AZERTY keyboards got this many issues with the controls… If I’m wrong, play this game with a controller, just to be on the safe side. Oh, and I reported the controls issues to the devs on the Steam forums. Who knows, maybe it’s fixed in a patch rendering my issues with the controls something of the past.

In any case, I think I’m going to wrap up this first impression here. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you and another artilce. Also have an amazing rest of your day and game on~!