Goin' German with Liverwurst, pretzels and beer
Pulled out the Wii today to play Overlord: Dark Legend. It’s basicially a shortened version of Overlord II. At least it seems that way. I haven’t played Overlord II in a while but it seems pretty much the same. The cut-scenes seem scaled down to still images from what I remember. The Wii’s controls were as annoying as ever for me but they worked well enough in this game. Trying to control multiple subgroups of minions at the same time during boss fights was a real pain. In every one of them, I ended up simplifying my group or at most two minion types with the second one just being red minions fixed to one spot as ranged fighters. During adventuring I would go with four of each type plus more browns to fill it out. Then I would have browns selected for any spur of the moment fights and then switch when another type was needed to get past a barrier of fire, water or poison gas. It was annoying to try and hold the Wiimote at such an angle so that the cursor was always on the screen. I fiddled with various positions to keep my hand from getting tired.
I finished the game in around ten hours. It was a pretty quick game but fun. The writing by Rhianna Pratchett (who most recently wrote the Tomb Raider game) was really funny. I enjoyed all the dialog. I wonder why there aren’t more games like this out there. There’s Pikmin of course, but nothing else.
Once I finished that, I hooked up my Game Cube and started Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door. I got as far as the first few rooms in Hooktale Castle. I’m really loving this game. The battle system is very similar to the Mario & Luigi games so I felt right at home doing timed jumps and hammering of foes. The game is set up like a RPG in every way but there are lots of platforming and action moments sprinkled throughout. For instance in battle, you have to think fast because unexpected events happen like the audience throws things at you or the enemy suddenly multiplies to fill the screen. In the adventure screens, you do a lot of jumping, hammering and even flying. You get “cursed” with being able to turn into a paper airplane to fly over gaps.
The whole paper asthetic is really neat. You sometimes move to a background plane and move along a single line of landscape. I love the way you enter buildings and the walls just unfold for you so you can see inside.
After a while I realized I was really relaxing into this game after the somewhat tense time playing Overlord on the Wii. I think that’s a very good sign of a great game. I just hope I can get to the end of it and not get stuck on some really hard boss fights.
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