TwiddleGeek

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New Super Mario Bros. is an interesting mix of old school and new, hardcore and casual gaming. One the one hand, the game is a complete throwback to the days of 2D platforming Mario. On the other, it’s been given a modern revamp with 3D models rather than sprites, new moves like wall jumps, and a few new power-ups. More interesting, at first glance the game feels so easy that even the most casual player could finish it in a single weekend with little difficulty. But if you play to collect all three Star Coins on every level, it suddenly becomes a lengthy and frustratingly challenging adventure.

If you loved Mario 1 and long for more side scrolling action, you’ll be right at home here. This isn’t a remake, rather it’s a new game in the 2D series that takes the gameplay back to its roots. It’s not even very much like Mario 3 or Super Mario World as there’s no flight, no Yoshi, and no real goal other than reaching the flagpole. If reaching the goal is all you care about, dashing through the 8 worlds is a snap. Too easy, in fact. I was severely disappointed with the game on my first play through due to how simple it seemed to be. But after you complete the game once, you gain the ability to save anywhere. Now it’s time to go collecting, and this is where things get interesting.

Hidden in every level are 3 Star Coins… collecting these can make your life very difficult. Sometimes they’re well hidden, but in many cases they’re tantalizingly just out of reach. Many require some perfectly timed jumps, some tricky use of an enemy head-stomp, or even the use of one of the new power-ups to obtain. To completely finish the game you need to not only find every one of these coins, you also need to unlock every single alternative path via secret exits on several stages. The casual players can easily ignore all this and still have fun, but the hardcore really need to take up the challenge to complete this game in order to get the full potential out of it.

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To picture Revenant Wings, imagine a game that’s a cross between the characters and action-based fighting system of Final Fantasy XII, and a sort of Final Fantasy Real Time Strategy game. That is, Revenant Wings isn’t a typical Tactical RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics, FFTA, Disgaea or so forth, it focuses more on a RTS style battle system of “capture resource, make units. Select group, point, click.” What this means is you’ll be less concerned with each individual unit, and more concerned with the group and resources of the map.

This isn’t Starcraft either though, in that the only “resources” you have to manage are basically the summon points and perhaps a soul crystal. Take your enemies’ summon points, and the tide of the battle slowly turns in your favor. Each group of subunits (healers, ranged fighters, melee fighters, flying creatures) are lead by a main party character, and these characters have some of the strongest battle abilities. Perhaps imagine something vaguely like the hero system of Warcraft III.

Revenant Wings is at times a little light on the strategy and heavy on the point-and-click mobbing with a swarm of units, but in the later levels of the game a fairly careful battle must be played or strong foes will easily overwhelm your units and wipe out the party. The frustration of failure is equaled by the joy of success though, and the game’s lengthy 18+ hour campaign clips along with minimal drag and only a little level grinding. If you like RTS games and the idea of one that continues the story of FFXII and stars familiar characters appeals to you, then check out Revenant Wings.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings is a bit hard to explain. It plays something like a standard Tactical RPG, yet the battles are in real time and with slightly more direct control over the units. Each main unit has several supporting units, and combat is basically dumbed down into a rock-paper-scissors type affair that, in the end, doesn’t matter a whole lot. Rather than worry about strategy, a much more effective tactic so far into the game has been to simply Zerg rush whatever enemy I’m facing with all of my forces all at once.

More interesting to me are the familiar, and now uber cute, chibi characters who continue the story of Final Fantasy XII in a strange and barely related fashion, much like Final Fantasy X-2. Personally I didn’t see X-2 as the abomination that many did, so the addition to the story is quite welcomed. The combat is interesting enough, especially if you enjoyed games like Tactics and Tactics Advance like I did. It’s different enough from your standard Tactical RPG though that even if you didn’t, this may still be worth taking a look at.

I don’t think the 80-something missions are going to take very long to play through from what I’ve seen so far, but there does seem to be enough variety to keep things interesting if you’re willing to do the side quests. What currently has me stuck though is a seemingly rather ill conceived stealth mission with Vaan, who is basically getting his ass kicked repeatedly for trying to be Sam Freaking Fisher and failing badly. Why does every game insist on throwing a stealth level into the mix?

Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations is not very different from its predecessor. While you do get the chance to play as several characters this time around, that doesn’t change the witness questioning, evidence presenting, crime scene investigating, psyche-lock breaking gameplay. So what is noteworthy about it? I for one enjoyed the interweaving of characters and stories through three out of the five trials - it gave the game more cohesion than “Justice for All,” where the cases were largely self-contained and episodic. It was additionally engaging that these cases involved the backstories and tangled relationships of several major characters; one of PW’s strengths is its characters - Phoenix, Maya and a handful of lovable prosecutors new and old are all present and accounted for.

It’s also worth pointing out that whereas I often find localization of games and anime to be too contrived when they try to add cultural references and jokes, these games handle the job with style (”Special Password Admin-Restricted Data Access? That’s madness!” “No Maya, that’s SPARDA.”). Although the Japanese name puns are lost completely, I feel this is no big loss (puns seem to be highly appreciated in Japanese humor, while in English they’re the last resort before you get the hook).

In short, if you liked the previous two PW titles and you’re craving more, Trials & Tribulations does not disappoint.