Guys, holy crap, guys, it's Barbie monkeyflippin' Race & Ride. I know with all the great games always coming out, it's important to have reviews to reference so you can figure out which games are right for you, so here I am, reviewing this Playstation Barbie game. And chances are that unless you're a five year old girl, this game isn't for you (and even five year old girls ought to be playing better games than this).
All opposed, say "neigh".
Essentially what we've got here is a horse game where you race and - get this - ride around one of five scenic trails. Before that though, you get to choose from one of four different horses which you can name, just as long as the name you want is one of the preset options that Barbie knows how to say. Also outside of the trails, you can feed your horse, put on its riding gear, and wash it! All of these things have no effect whatsoever, but Barbie assures me that giving the horse a bath is "so much fun". In fact, all throughout the game, Barbie feels the need to comment out loud about how cute, fun, or pretty whatever we're seeing or doing is. It's as if the game is self aware of how un-cute, un-fun, and un-pretty it is and has to desperately reassert that it's worth playing as often as it can just in case the player starts to have second thoughts.
Yes, please. I could stop any time now.
The main part of the game is out on the trails, which each consist of a day segment and a night segment. For Playstation 1, the graphics aren't all that bad, but that's because almost everything is pre-rendered. Being pre-rendered, it's also only slightly more interactive than a DVD menu. For the most part, the game plays itself and the only influence you have over your horse is making it speed up, slow down, lean to the sides, or jump. There's never any reason to go slower than full speed and leaning to the sides is only useful for avoiding the very occasional obstacle and otherwise does nothing but make your horse look like it's going to the side. Jumping is also just used to avoid obstacles, which will only slow you down and make you try jumping again if you run into them.
Get the rabbit to the carrot by guessing the correct holes. If you guess wrong, you start over.
Along each trail are various points of interest that you can stop and examine. Many are as simple as watching an animal run around and make a noise when you click on it, but there are also a few minigames, which are all incredibly simple and mostly based on guessing until you win, and a couple boring races (these have a 2-player option, by the way). These little stops are also a big part of the game, should you choose to stop at them, and they show off how crappy this game is better than anything. On each trail, there are two minigames in particular that, when completed, will give you a fragment of the postcard that unlocks the final level. Completing the final trail will reward you with a heartwarming cutscene of a foal. How nice.
Essentially this game is just an interactive video of a horse running through pre-rendered environments with a few terrible minigames thrown in. The visuals and sound effects that show off these locations aren't actually that bad, but Barbie's incessant comments and the game's overall lack of interactivity really bring the quality down. Parents, if you feel the need to follow gender stereotypes and buy your daughter a cute, pink game, try getting an actually good game like Kirby or something. Or, if it's about the horses, let them ride around in Shadow of the Colossus. Almost anything would be better than playing this game. For another horrible game, check out Home Aloneon NES.
Updated 8/1/2017 - I've acquired a complete copy of Taco Bell Tasty Temple Challenge and scanned the "manual" that came with it. Here you go!
Original article, as posted on 4/22/2013:
Did you know that Taco Bell gave out computer games as Kids Meal prizes? They've actually done this more than once, most recently giving out Atari classics in 2010, but they also gave out some original games on floppy disks back in 2000 (I think). Information for these games is incredibly scarce, and it's likely that there are yet other Taco Bell games that I haven't found any information on at all, but so far I've found evidence of the following games:
Jumping Bean Jamboree
Taco Maker Marathon
Digital Extreme Sports Games
Atari Classics (Centipede, Lunar Landing, Asteroids, Super Breakout)
Tasty Temple Challenge
As a kid, I only remember playing two Taco Bell games: Tasty Temple Challenge and one other that I can't find any information about whatsoever, but I seem to recall it involving jumping on the moon.
Anyway, as Tasty Temple Challenge is the one I'm most familiar with, that's the one I'm reviewing. It also seems to be the most interesting out of all of them. According to the game's readme file, you play as Baja Bill, an archaeologist and "hungry dude", who falls asleep while on an expedition and dreams that the temple he is exploring is filled with delicious Taco Bell foods. None of that back story really has any bearing on the actual game, but it disappoints me a little to find that all this is just a dream. The important thing is that this game plays like classic Doom,except that you shoot hot sauce at cartoon cobras and scorpions. As a kid, I was just impressed that Taco Bell had a first person shooter as a kids meal prize. Unfortunately, I was never able to beat the game... until now!
The graphics are pretty crappy, but then again, the game is pretty old. While the maze-like corridors look as dark and gritty as any other old FPS for the computer, the enemies (of which there are only two, not including the boss) look like they came right out of a cartoon from the 80s. The bad guys just come straight at you and hurt you when they touch you. If you hit them a few times, they'll turn tail and run away, which gives you the option to either leave them be or finish them off viciously. Unlike in real life, the hot sauce actually burns enemies to a pile of ash. The game consists of exploring the temple to find keys and other items so that you can backtrack and explore new areas with the ultimate goal of acquiring the Grande Meal. Apart from key items, there are also limited use hot sauce and wild sauce pickups and some sort of blow gun attachment that can kill enemies faster. For health refills, you can collect any of the many different Taco Bell food items scattered about the ruins. As a kid, the biggest difficulty for me was getting lost, which is understandable, since most of the game looks the same and there are some unnecessary areas. Thankfully, there's an optional map that can be displayed over the screen that will fill in as you explore. This actually helped me figure out how to progress when I played it.
Of course, if you use the map, it'll be hard to see much else.
The controls are what I imagine playing a flute to be like if flutes were made out of live fish. That is to say, they aren't that great. Movement is limited to the arrow keys and mouse, with Home for jumping and End for crouching, which is necessary for swimming. You can also use PageUp and PageDown to look up and down, but the sensitivity is way too high and it never serves any purpose. Of course, these controls are not remappable unless you use an outside program. During my play, I encountered a few glitches. The first crashed the game while I was on an elevator and played a horribly loud sound. The second was an enemy's pile of ash moving posthumously. The third occurred twice after no apparent cause and allowed me to walk through walls and go out of bounds, but also made shooting enemies impossible. Luckily, it's possible to save your game to safeguard against these bugs. Unluckily, loading a file often mutes the sound. Also, selecting New Game from the pause menu sometimes inexplicably doesn't work and requires a reset of the game. If you're any good at all and make use of the save files, you should be able to easily finish in under an hour, but with some practice, you could even get close to my high score of 3:19.
The Final Word There's no reason to go through the effort of playing this game, and yet, I kind of enjoyed going back to finish it. It sucks, but not nearly as bad as it could. Now you know it exists. Wheee~
If you haven't heard of it, Pottermore is a flash based website on which users can go through the highlights of the Harry Potter series as interactive moments. It has minigames, things to collect and find, new backstory written by J.K. Rowling, and some simple multiplayer things as well. It's moderately interesting, though I'm pretty sure it's just a marketing ploy to keep everyone from forgetting Harry Potter now that all the movies and books are done. Now that moderately interesting thingamabob has made its way to the similarly less than interesting Playstation Home. Playstation Home, if you aren't familiar, is basically a free MMO with not much purpose. It has some games that you can play, you can customize your avatar, you can explore different themed areas, and you can pay exorbitant amounts of real money to get more costumes and furniture for your room. As far as I can tell, it mostly ends up as a 3D chat room filled with advertisements for games and other products. It's also apparently been in open beta since the end of 2008.
The Pottermore areas are basically what you'd expect from Playstation Home: themed environments, overpriced DLC, and a few crappy minigames. Before you start, it's possible to link your Pottermore account to Playstation Home, but as far as I can tell this only allows you to trade the cards you've collected. The first area is Diagon Alley, where all the witches and wizards buy their stuff. When you start, your Playstation Home persona will be wearing wizard robes. Only Harry Potter themed costumes can be worn in the Pottermore areas in order to maintain the illusion as much as possible. Like Diagon Alley from the book, there are lots of stores in this version, which of course contain clothes and virtual pets that you can buy for three-ish dollars a piece. As for games, there are card trading and "book herding". Trading cards is self explanatory and book herding involves trying to push bouncing books into a cage faster than your opponent. Sometimes spells appear that you can use to impede the other person's progress, but overall this game is incredibly simple and frustrating to play. The other area is the Hogwarts Express, the train that students use to get to Hogwarts. This location doesn't have any DLC to buy, but it still has card trading locations. Its other minigames are a trivia game and wizard duels. The trivia game is pretty straightforward and relatively entertaining. It's first to ten points and whoever answers correctly the fastest gets to choose the next category. Wizard Duel pits you against an opponent on the train and you have to shoot spells at them. You can actually move around, hide behind the chairs, and aim your spells, so it has significantly more depth than the other games (but still not very much). Whenever you get hit, you get knocked down and have to shake the controller or rotate the control sticks to get back up. If you and your opponent's spells clash, a series of button presses come up that you have to press in order as fast as you can. Dueling is easily the most entertaining part of Pottermore on Playstation Home, but for the time it takes to download Home, the locations, and find a partner for the minigame, I can't really recommend it, even if it is free.
Overall, the Pottermore locations on Home are like the rest of Home: not worth the time and hard drive space. Exploring the areas as a wizard and taking part in the minigames might be fun for younger players, but I think most people would better enjoy playing something else or using the Pottermore website instead.Perhaps after a few updates it'll be more worth playing.
In the game known as New Super Mario Bros. U, there is Boost Mode, a mode where one person places blocks and influences the environment using the GamePad's touch screen while the other players run through levels as normal. The moment this feature was shown at E3, gamers knew in their hearts that this power would inevitably be used for evil by "that one friend". It was designed to aid the players, but it would be used to troll the players. Indeed, this is exactly what happened, but instead of getting angry, my friends and I decided to see how far we could take it. And thus,BOOST TROLL was born. It's a battle of wits and skill between Mario and the almighty "Hand of God".
My friends and I demonstrate the art of Boost Trolling.
The goal of the game is simple: Mario must attempt to finish the level while the Boost Troll attempts to kill him until he gets Game Over or gives up. Every level offers a vastly different kind of challenge depending on what powerups are available, the number of pits, whether it's in a cave, underwater, or overworld, and other factors that you'll discover as you play. Some levels give a strong advantage to Mario, but most give the advantage to the troll. Each new gameplay element offers new ways to screw over Mario. Here are a few of the most common situations to look out for and some strategies to go along with them:
As the troll, it's important to keep Mario away from any powerups. Placing a block right above (or below, if ground pounded) an item-giving block as pictured will destroy the powerup when it comes out. Yoshi cannot be destroyed in this manner. As Mario, try faking out the troll by jumping at unexpected times or ground pounding blocks instead. If the mushroom or Yoshi is moving, the troll can also use blocks to redirect its path or touch it to make it bounce.
The troll should constantly place blocks in front of Mario to run the timer down and also to annoy the player. Pits are the troll's best opportunity to kill Mario, so don't waste them. The troll should be careful not to leave any protruding blocks that might give Mario a foothold and allow him to climb over the barrier.
Whenever possible, the troll should limit Mario's space and trap him with enemies. Mario should watch out for places where this is likely to happen and jump over them or jump quickly to break the boost mode blocks before the enemy gets to him.
The troll can sometimes affect the environment or influence enemies. In the image above, the troll can cause the spinning ground to suddenly spin quickly in the other direction. Some enemies, when tapped, will hop a little, which can throw off the Mario player. But be careful when tapping enemies like piranha plants and dry bones, as this will temporarily disable them and actually help Mario.
Have you found any good trolling strategies? If so, let me know in the comments!
If you've played previous Mr. Driller games, you may think that you know the drill, but Mr. Driller: Drill Land brings several new versions of that classic formula to the table which should entertain fans and newcomers alike. For those not in the know, Mr. Driller is a series of puzzle games which involve digging down through colored blocks. Same colored blocks stick together and will break when you drill through a connecting block, causing all the blocks above them to fall. You have to keep moving steadilydownward while avoiding being crushed and while keeping an eye out for air refills if you want to win. This game takes place in a theme park which has various attractions that all involve drilling. From the main hub, you can choose which of the five modes you want to play or go to the shops to spend the points you earn from playing on collectible cards, goods, and items that will help you clear levels if you get stuck. There's also a mostly pointless parade that you can watch and control that has the characters going by on floats. Four player multiplayer is also available from the main menu and features a race and a battle mode. Each of the five attractions has three difficulties and an unlimited mode, but only the easiest difficulty is available to start. The others are unlocked one at a time as you clear all five modes on each available difficulty. The harder difficulties not only make the distance you have to dig longer, but in most cases they add new layouts of blocks and other new puzzle elements as well. Each level is also accompanied with a fully voice acted cutscene before and after it, which is generally just silly dialogue between the characters. There is a story, but it's very simple and unnecessary. The graphics are crisp and colorful, and it's worth noting that the game's soundtrack is absolutely fantastic (composed by Go Shiina of Tales of Legendia fame). In fact, the only way I knew about this game in the first place was because of its soundtrack. Now then, onto the different modes, each of which I have recorded for your viewing pleasure. World Drill Tour
Gameplay at 4:00
World Drill Tour is the mode that most resembles previous Mr. Driller games; in fact, it's almost identical. The goal is simply to get to the target depth while collecting air tanks. You only have three lives so you'll have to be careful to avoid getting crushed or running out of air. For high score seekers, the more air containers you get, the more points you get. You'll also get a bonus for collecting every air tank, not losing lives, and for finishing quickly. This is also the only mode in which you can choose any character and each character has certain strengths that are unique to them. Star Driller
Gameplay at 0:50
Star Driller is very similar to World Drill Tour except that there are now ?-Block items that will cause one of many random effects to occur. Usually the effects are good and may refill your air, increase your max air, warp you further down, or destroy blocks. But getting the item blocks is also a risk because sometimes a black hole will appear which will suck you in and put you back to the start of the section you're in if you fall into it.
Drindy Adventure
Gameplay at 0:55
Drindy Adventure is the first mode that makes significant changes to the traditional formula. Air is no longer an issue, so you have as long as you need to figure out what to drill and what not to drill. However, on your way to the bottom there are gold statues that you have to collect. It isn't as easy as just collecting them though, as they are usually guarded by traps such as rolling boulders, spikes, and fire. This mode is definitely more about planning than speed.
Horror Night House
Gameplay at 1:00
This haunted house themed mode is more different still and probably one of the funnest. Once again, the air meter is gone and instead there is an HP meter. Also, the goal is no longer to reach a target depth. Instead, you'll need to collect jars of holy water which you can use to freeze roaming ghosts in blocks. Once frozen, the ghosts can be defeated by drilling the block that they are contained in. This causes them to drop "drystals" which you need to advance to the next level. If you get crushed, are attacked by the ghosts, or drill a block containing ghosts that aren't frozen, you'll lose HP. Running out of HP means game over.
Hole of Druaga
Gameplay at 1:00
This is the most different of all the modes and it resembles a dungeon crawler. The stage is divided into a randomly generated arrangement of rooms which are revealed on the map as you explore them. This time you have HP instead of air, but your HP decreases not only from being crushed, but also every time you drill or get hit by enemies. Yeah, there are enemies now and if you beat them, they'll drop items. The items can be used from a menu and will destroy certain blocks, change the color of blocks, restore your HP, or give you helpful abilities. In order to win, you'll have to find a key that is being guarded by a dragon, then find the door that the key opens, and finally defeat a boss using the items you collected throughout the level. Along with Horror Night House, Hole of Druaga is my other favorite mode.
Everything about Mr. Driller: Drill Land is incredibly polished and fun. The soundtrack and voice acted cutscenes are above and beyond the call of duty for a puzzle game like this, but are very much welcomed. It really is strange that this game never made it out of Japan because it is an excellent puzzle game. If you're into puzzle games or other Mr. Driller games and have the ability to play it, I definitely recommend giving it a shot.
In order to play Mr. Driller: Drill Land you will need a Japanese console, a region-modded console, or a Wii with the ability to change the game region and language to Japanese. You will not be able to save if using Freeloader for Game Cube. Japanese Game Cube games require their own memory card with only Japanese save data on them which must be reformatted when used for the first time. Mr. Driller: Drill Land is one of a few games that checks the console's region before saving, so if you don't change the game region and language with AnyRegionChanger (or a safer and more up-to-date app like ModMii) you will not be able to save even if you can run the game. I found that running Pimp My Wii, which automatically downloaded and installed the appropriate hacks and custom IOSs required, fixed any errors I encountered with AnyRegionChanger, but due to the constantly evolving homebrew scene, I recommend that you find a more up-to-date and in depth tutorial if you are planning to attempt changing your Wii's region.
Right off, that title might be a bit misleading as the Japan-exclusive Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 (My Summer Vacation 3) wasn't targeted at Japanophiles at all, nor does it feature sentient animals. Rather, it's aimed at Japanese people, young and old, who want to experience the nostalgia of a summer vacation in rural Hokkaido or experience it for the first time. Its resemblance to Animal Crossing comes in because of its laid back, do-what-you-want-in-every day-life style.
Everything you'll need for bug collecting.
In Boku no Natsuyasumi, things are simple. There aren't any obvious goals and no matter what you do, time will pass and the days will go by until the summer vacation is over. There are various events that always occur on certain days, but for the most part you're free to explore the farm and surrounding area to do what you want. You can collect bottle caps and bugs, some of which you can have fight your friends' bugs. You can help out on the farm by milking cows and collecting eggs or you can go swimming or sliding down hills on a cardboard box. You'll make friends with other kids, play games, and explore. Whatever you do, you'll write about it in your picture diary at the end of the day. You could say that the goal of the game is to have the best summer vacation ever. Perhaps the biggest draw of this game is how atmospheric it is. The beautiful and detailed hand drawn backgrounds for each area are a convincing representation of a rural Japanese house and farm. The attention to detail is impressive, with little things like a dirty clothes hamper or storage boxes in the basement adding up to the feeling that this is a real house with real people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the house and surrounding area is in fact based on a real place, because it is incredibly convincing.
A bit of clutter helps the house feel real.
To the same end, instead of background music, there are only the sounds of nature or whatever other ambient sounds are in the area. The characters are similarly convincing, and talk like you'd expect people to talk: about everyday things, not forcing a story down your throat. It's all there to give the player the same experience a young Japanese boy might have visiting his uncle's farm in rural Hokkaido. Perhaps some playing this game have had such an experience in their childhood and would like to relive it, or perhaps they grew up and were never able to experience a vacation like this. Either way, short of flying to Japan and getting a family to let you stay with them, playing Boku no Natsuyasumi is the best way to experience rural Japan for yourself, and from the perspective of a child to whom everyday things are filled with adventure and wonder. If that sounds like your kind of game, you might want to give it a try. This game in the series is for PS3, which is region-free so you won't have any trouble playing it in that regard. However, if you don't know any Japanese, it might be a bit difficult and not quite as enjoyable. Since I don't expect many non-Japanese gamers to take the plunge and import this game based solely on my recommendation, I've recorded (and translated!) the first day of Boku's vacation so you can experience it for yourself. Boku no Natsuyasumi is a beautiful and unique series that deserves more recognition outside of Japan. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.
UPDATE: I've now recorded and translated the second day of Boku's summer vacation! It should give you an even better idea of what playing the game is like. So take a look and don't let my many unpaid hours go to waste:
I had an itch that needed to be scratched. It was the co-op NES game itch. So, without telling him what we were going to play, I invited my friend over for some games. Somewhat surprisingly, there were a lot of co-op NES games to choose from, especially among beat 'em ups and shoot 'em ups. I decided to go with two I was familiar with and one that I hadn't really played before. Also, I recorded our experiences for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers 2
This game is impressive for its time and still a joy to play today. It's got your usual platforming, but you can also pick up and throw objects like in Super Mario Bros. 2, hide in boxes like in Metal Gear Solid, and ride in minecarts like in Donkey Kong Country. There aren't that many levels, but each level introduces entirely new graphics, music, enemies, and subtle gameplay mechanics which are often used only once. It's really cool to see new things introduced so often and for them to be implemented so well. The settings for each level aren't the usual platforming game levels either; instead of grassy areas, deserts, frozen tundras, and lava levels, you'll run through an oversized restaurant, clock tower, sewer, wild west, and others. Of course, what makes this game even better is the simultaneous co-op, which feels like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, way before that even came out. There are plenty of ways to interact with your partner too: you can jump on them, pick them up and throw them, and even attack them if you wanted to. It's super fun and all of these things together make Chip 'N Dale 2 really feel ahead of its time.
Bubble Bobble
Bubble Bobble isn't exactly bursting with a variety of content like Chip 'N Dale was, but that's alright because it has solid and fun core gameplay and over 100 levels to enjoy it in. And it's also like six years older than Chip 'N Dale 2. In fact, it's a port of an arcade game. In each level, all you have to do is shoot bubbles at the enemies to capture them, then pop the bubbles to kill them. If you don't do it fast enough, they'll get angry and move faster, and if you're still too slow, an invincible enemy (that scared me as a kid) will appear to motivate you further. Apart from the normal bubbles you can shoot, there are also special bubbles that float around certain stages that can drop fire, shoot lightning bolts, or send you shooting down the stage when popped. Once again, playing with a friend makes everything more fun. It's also nice that this game has unlimited continues and passwords for each level that aren't annoyingly long. If you manage to get to the end, there is even a secret ending to go for if you think you're skilled enough. Even though this game is quite old, it's still unique and fun to play.
Contra
Ouch. My friend and I didn't do nearly as well at Contra as we did in the other games. And that's saying something, because we did pretty badly at the other games too. This game is hard, so it's no wonder it made the Konami code famous. It didn't take us long to resort to the free thirty lives the code gave either. Though we still didn't make it far, it definitely seemed like the kind of game that would be really fun to play if you were good at it. The best things about it were its fast pace, the ability to shoot in eight directions, and the plentiful weapon upgrades. Unfortunately for us, if you die, you lose the weapon upgrades, so we were limited to feeling awesome for only seconds at a time. The stages seemed to be divided into side-scrolling platforming stages and third person tunnel stages. The controls for platforming were wonderful and easy to use, but the tunnel levels were a bit less intuitive and had a bit of a learning curve. For us, those levels were less fun and often resulted in deaths due to misunderstanding the controls and graphics. Even though I did pretty badly and would've liked to see more platforming stages, I can't deny that what I saw of Contra seemed to be a great game. But if you're playing it for the first time, don't expect to be a master from the start; this game is Nintendo hard.
That's all for this week, but if you have any recommendations for more co-op NES games you'd like to see us play, let me know in the comments and you could see them in a future post.
My friend and I were playing Crash Team Racing and Aku Aku gave us some advice regarding what to do when you get a TNT crate on your head. We, of course, thought this advice was preposterous and would certainly be of no use in our daily lives. But little did we know that trouble was brewing...
In theory, I like fighting games. In practice, I'm pretty bad at them. For most, the combos and attacks are too complicated and unintuitive for me to bother memorizing. Even when I do get the hang of performing basic attacks, grabs, and blocks, I find that I still lose to button mashing and do better with button mashing myself. It's [probably] no fault of the game's, so I'll take the blame for my failure.
Out of all the traditional fighting games I've played (i.e. not Smash Bros.), Street Fighter seemed like the easiest to learn. I did training and arcade mode and, well, it wasn't too pretty...
I've played a Sega Saturn probably less than five times in my life and as far as I can remember, I have never played Bug Too! before (though my neighbor across the street might've had it now that I think about it). Well in any case, I've played [some of] it now and I'm here to tell you what I think! I'll also refrain from using exclamation points from now on whenever possible, even though the game's title does unnecessarily contain one. Basically, it's a 3D platformer akin to Crash Bandicoot. You play as a bug starring in a series of movies. Each movie makes up a world and contains a few levels with bosses at the end of them. As you progress through each level, you can collect diamonds and other trinkets to increase your score which determines how much money the movie earns. I've yet to discover why making a high grossing movie matters or, really, how the levels being movie sets really affects the gameplay at all.
The walkable path was hard enough to see as it was;
then they added fog.
As a kid, I might have been excited to explore any 3D game world, but playing this game now, I can't help but wonder at some of the design choices. Rather than being able to run around freely in the 3D environment, your character will often be confined to a 2D plane and can only change direction at specific junctions. On the one hand, this keeps you from falling off the sides, but on the other hand it severely limits your mobility and is not implemented well. You will frequently encounter areas where you'll want to jump down from a ledge but find that you can't due to an invisible wall. Seriously, there are invisible walls everywhere. In one early puzzle, you have to push a lever to rotate a cube further on. In any normal game, any surface of the cube would allow you to walk on it and get to any adjacent area, but in Bug Too! you'll only be able to walk on the parts that have a slightly different colored path. To make matters worse, you can walk up and down walls, which would be cool normally, but as with moving anywhere in this game, you'll only be able to do it if the game wants you to. The puzzles and platforming aren't exactly difficult; they just waste your time by making you run back and forth. Then there's the first boss which, unlike most enemies up to that point, hurts you when you jump on it and can only be damaged by a new move you only acquire for the first time during the fight (as far as I could tell).
When it comes to the graphics and audio, Bug Too! is hit or miss. The graphics aren't too bad as a whole, but the lack of visual cues for where you can and can't go is a huge oversight. The music also isn't bad, but it inexplicably fades out rather than smoothly looping like any other game's music. The characters also talk and say one-liners every now and then, which I guess you could count as a positive if you're feeling generous. In spite of all my criticisms, Bug Too! isn't a terrible game. It's just not a very good game. When it was new, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it as I would have any 3D platforming game. Even now, there's some fun to be had here. It's just that there are so many faults that you may as well play one of the many better alternatives. Check out my partial Let's Play series below:
I love LittleBigPlanet. It's fun platforming, it's got character, the soundtrack is great, and most importantly, you can create almost any kind of stage or game that you can imagine. In fact, there are so many great custom stages available to play that I kind of get overwhelmed by it. I mean, there's no way I can possibly play all the great levels people have made, so I usually just don't even try and decide to play something else entirely. It just wouldn't be fair to play only some of the amazing custom levels. Well, anyway, if you're not like me and don't get overwhelmed by the plethora of levels, maybe you'll consider checking out the level I made. It requires you to use the spawn gates in new ways in order to finish. Add it to your queue at lbp.me/v/xc-rvc!
I found out about Air Fortress earlier this year when I was looking through a list of games made by HAL Laboratory, the developer responsible for Kirby and Super Smash Bros.. It turns out they've been around a lot longer than I thought: since 1980. I tried out Air Fortress along with a few other games and decided that this would be a good one to get and review in greater detail.
Pop bubble, receive bacon.
The game itself can be explained pretty simply. Each level is divided into two parts: a traditional space shooter part and an on foot part. During the space segment, you ride on (not in) a spaceship and approach the air fortress, which really is a space fortress. While doing so, you must shoot enemies and dodge obstacles, like the giant turd-shaped asteroids that appear to be in the background but aren't. But more importantly, you collect bubbles of E and B which will prepare you for the second segment. One's first assumption might be that E stands for Energy and B stands for Bombs, but there's nothing that confirms this. I first assumed that the E stood for Earwax, but later I realized that E and B could only possibly stand for Eggs and Bacon. Once inside the fortress, you're on foot, armed with a gun, your collected bacon, and a jetpack that runs on eggs. The goal here is to find and destroy the Eye of Sauron which powers the space station, then find the exit before the fortress explodes with you in it. Of course there are enemies to worry about too and as the levels go on, the air fortresses become more and more mazelike.
For Frodo!!
Navigating with the jetpack is pretty cool, and when you shoot it kicks you back realistically. Any movement or shooting decreases your eggs, but standing still makes them quickly recharge. If you get hit by an enemy your maximum number eggs decreases, and if you run out of eggs, you die. The bacon acts as a limited use explosive shot, which explains why so many mistakenly believe that the B stands for bomb. Every level works pretty much the same way and rapidly gets harder until, when you get to level 5 or 6, it's nearly impossible. I don't see how you'd ever be able to finish them all, but there 8 levels and then second quest versions of each level. Thankfully, there is a password system in this game so you don't have to do it all in one go. Seriously, some of these levels all but require you to map them out so you don't waste all your eggs wandering around and so that you can actually escape when you get to that point. The music is pretty much the same throughout and has just two main tracks, one for each section, so by the third or fourth level you'll have them hopelessly stuck in your head. The graphics are pretty old looking, but not bad. They don't vary much by level though. The most impressive part comes when you destroy an air fortress's core (Sauron), which makes the lights flicker, the music go creepy, and the screen gradually start to shake as you dash to the exit. It's scary and panic inducing as there is no countdown clock to your destruction besides judging from the amount of shaking and noise. Well, with that summary out of the way, you can now watch it in action in the videos below:
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