Today I played some retro titles on Wii, watched some more Clone Wars episodes, played the Lego Star Wars take on them, and finally dug into Batman Arkham Origins.
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (Wii):
This is a very cool game. It’s a platformer where you are tasked with drawing in items, creatures and elements of the environment. First you create your character through a simple paint application and watch as your character appears in the world under your command. I made these floating arrows for all the body parts. They are disconnected kind of like Rayman. Then I had to draw a heart for a health pickup. I just drew a heart and forgot to fill it in. Now they are hard to see. Then I entered an area of the world where I started some serious platforming. I had to draw in a bridge. Then I drew in platforms Okami style. This means it was drawn in real time without having to go to the app. Things that will be repeated throughout a level send you to the app to design them. Otherwise you kind of spray paint them in and they only last a short while. Then I died and had to restart the level. Then again. Then I was out. No repetition please. Ugh, not today.
Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii):
This game looks fantastic. Both the sound and the visuals harken back to the original game. And boy do the controls work well with the nun-chuck and Wii-mote. I especially liked the various things you can do by shaking them both alternately. Usually this just makes DK pound the ground with his hands, but if you hold the left stick down at the same time, he crouches and blows air. This knocks the seeds off dandelions. You don’t have to shake the controllers that much to get a result either which greatly reduces fatigue.
My only issue was that they only give you two hearts of health. Two hearts! This is kind of ridiculous, and I found myself repeating the first area a few times. And that was a few times too many. I’m keeping this game in my collection though. I love the way it looks and plays.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (Wii):
Honestly, I didn’t like this game because it tells you absolutely nothing about what to do. It told me I could talk to villagers to find out, but I couldn’t find any except in the few shops, and they didn’t help me at all. I bought a house by the shore, though, and let my dog out for a romp. That was cool. I wanted to herd some farm animals though. I didn’t have the patience to figure this game out any further.
Lego Star Wars III: Clone Wars (XBO download):
I discovered after the first story line that there is a whole other story line to play. So I did that. The second story line was episodes from the tv show about the pursuit of Ventress. I had just watched the first chapter “Ambush” on the tv show. They followed it pretty closely but not exactly.
I almost finished the second story line but the game froze on me and I couldn’t restart it without rebooting the whole console, so I moved on.
Batman Arkham Origins (Xbox 360 disc on a XBO via backwards compatibility):
I rented this from the library. I was going to play this next week on my PS3 anyway. Oh my was this an excellent game. This came out after Arkham City and, although I didn’t play that one yet, Origins seems like it is probably very similar. The combat is very similar to Batman Arkham Asylum which I have played. I leaned heavily on counter attacks. This seemed to be the most important move. Then I tried to remember the finishing moves and use them here and there. I leveled up twice, upgraded my armor once, and then my flying dive move. I started using the dive attack a lot and it was super fun. I glided in, boosted my speed, took a guy down, then grappled my way back to a ledge and did it again and again. So great.
The story is fantastic, and the city is incredible. It’s huge and so detailed. Batman has so many gadgets too. The game teaches you how to use of some of them at the beginning, but I struggled to remember all of them as I got deeper into the game. Man does the game look great too. Batman taking off in the bat-jet looks powerful. I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
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