Flipper tells a very simple tale of a boy and his quest to save his titular goldfish, Flipper from the evil intentions of ghosts, pirates and robots. Simple as that sounds, don’t let it fool you: Flipper is definitely one of the most charming and unique games on the service.
Price: 500 Nintendo Points on the Nintendo DSiWare Shop
You’ve got to hand it to Capcom. They sure know how handle retro games, be it remakes (Bionic Commando Rearmed) or brand new affairs (Megaman 9), It’ll be high quality stuff. Their newest retro based game, Dark Void Zero does not disrupt that fact.
You can tell Capcom spent alot of time on this game simply on all the backstory they created for the game. From dual screened arcade cabinets to Jimmy Fallon (Seriously!), the “history” of Dark Void Zero is definitely something fun to read up on. You can start off here at Capcom Unity.
However, is all this marketing hype simply hiding a lame attempt at promoting the release of Dark Void on the 360 and PS3? After a great game session, I’m going to have to say no!
Oh, Capcom!
As soon as you boot it up, Dark Void Zero tosses retro charm in your face. As seen above, you actually have to blow into the DSi’s microphone to get to the game’s main menu. (Of course if you’re in public and prefer not to do so, you can simply press A) You are greeted with fantastic bitmusic from Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) and a simple menu. Select your difficulty and start up the game by learning about the backstory of Earth’s struggle with the Watchers, an alien race trying to create a stable portal to invade Earth fullforce.
Hover & Kill
Teaming up with the brilliant scientist Nikolai Tesla, you take control of Rusty and jet pack your way into facilities, stealing keycards and shooting badguys. The top screen gives you a metriodvania-type map, while the touch screen houses all of the gameplay. Using the map, you must run, gun and hover towards objectives that Nikolai sets out for you. Simple controls and clear settings make for great handling in this plataformer/shooter.
Decent enemy and weapon/item variety ensures that things don’t get stale and secondary objectives such as finding old captain’s logs and eliminating enemy scientists give you reason to explore every nook and cranny of the map. Doing this all while fantastic bitmusic plays proves to be one of the most fun and polished experiences on DSiWare. However, it’s because of all this that it’s one flaw becomes incredibly apparent. It ends too soon.
Dark Void Zero only has 3 levels. Why must something so fun, end so quickly? Sure, you can replay the game on higher difficulty settings (Easy, Normal & Hard) and try to best your highscore, but I still would have liked to see some more of Rusty’s adventures in the void.
Overall, I would recommend Dark Void Zero to those who want a good quick (maybe too quick) action game during commute or to those already crazy with the Dark Void universe. (That was early!) Capcom, I hope you continue working on projects like this, making retro styled games in line with your big console releases. Make Lost Planet Zero happen!
+Incredibly fun & polished
+GREAT MUSIC
=You fight the same boss over the 3 levels, albeit with improvements.
Price: $4.99 on the Playstation Store & Amazon.com
You play as BOY, a worm like creature who eats and stretches for GIRL, a larger female world creature who stretches around the galaxy. The more BOY stretches, the more GIRL can and wrap herself around other planets. This process in whole is a community metagame where every single BOY’s (Players) stretch count is added to GIRL. The more people play, the more planets GIRL can get to, and the more places GIRL can get to, the more weird levels BOY can play around in.
The controls are very easy, mainly using the dual analog sticks to control each end of BOY and the shoulder buttons to hop and eat almost anything in the crazy levels, which are filled with insane things. If you played any of the Katamari Damacy games, you might be used to this sort of thing! The game also includes an offline multiplayer mode where up to 4 BOYS can stretch around to their heart’s content on one screen. (Player 1 controls the incredible but hard to master camera.)
Overall, NOBY NOBY BOY is a very weird, but oddly charming game, and worth the 5 dollars just to experience the weirdness yourself. The game includes leaderboards as well as a screenshot taking tool and a direct Youtube upload feature where you can share your stretching techniques or something incredibly odd with others on Youtube easily.
+ Odd & charming
+ Awesome community features (Youtube & Leaderboard support, screenshot tool)
= Getting more levels to play around in is a community process, and may take a while
- The charm may not be for everyone.
- Camera may take some getting used to.
Warning: Possible spoilers, even though I probably won’t be talking about the story that much.
Right about a few days after Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released to the masses (FANTASTIC game by the way!), Sony & Naughty Dog in conjunction with Witchblade’s Marco Castiello dropped off a motion comic prequel to the first game in the Playstation Store called Uncharted: Eye of Indra. The comic was penciled in by Castiello while Sony added in the motion and the voice talent. (More of Nolan North is a good thing!) As I was drunk with Uncharted fandom, I rushed to the online store and downloaded the first issue.
The first issue of this mini-series is free and is in a video format, which I didn’t mind. Each issue was promised to be around five minutes long, which is decent considering every issue after this was priced at 99 cents each. While I was watching the free first issue, halfway into the comic it cutoff and presented an ad for Uncharted 2. This was a pretty odd ad to have here, since most people who would download this probably already got the highly anticipated game earlier in the week. It was pretty short, and it got back to the comic quickly. A few minutes later, another ad hits, this time for a Toyota Fourrunner featuring Drake running from some bad guys and the Toyota saving the day. Compared to the comic it was badly animated and feature no speaking roles whatsoever. The faces on the bad guys when Drake escaped were pretty hilarious, it looked like they were staring at him in horror.
HOLY CRAP, A TOYOTA!?
Aside from that probably unintentional hilarious moment, the ad was crap. But hey, the download was free so I assume this is what we would have to deal with. Heck, you could even watch it online, see those wonderful faces yourself.
Ending with a cliffhanger (All of them but the last one always freaking do, it’s good tactics.) one now has to wait for the next issues. Which took about pretty much a month to appear on the store. This is where my problems began. Downloading the the 99 cent issue, this time it didn’t come in a video format like the first one, and is now tied into the game menu. This might not be an issue to every, but I wanted to keep all of these in a single folder, which is now impossible to do so. I assume this was to keep it from being uploaded or something? Yeah good luck with that. After getting over it, I hopped right into the issue and was greeted with a wraparound, pressed X to continue and the comic started instantly boxed in a border with instructions below. Play/Stop, Return to Menu (Why?) and a full screen mode. Why would anyone keep the border around is beyond me, so I just pressed the full screen button and watched away.
A few minutes into the comic, just where it gets good (Eddy FREAKING Raja could make anything good if he wants) I’m greeted by…the same car ad that was in the first one. Seriously? Didn’t I pay for this? And they didn’t even bother to change it up, it’s the same exact ad. At least I got to see those guys who apparently never have seen a car before again. Ha.
Right after this I got a phone call and hit pause. Finished the call, grabbed the controller and hit play. It started playing from the start again. What the hell? I figured I must have hit stop or something so I tried to fast forward– oh wait, I CAN’T DO THAT. There is no option to seek through the comic. What kind of bullcrap is that? So not only do I have to go through the entire thing again with no control, I have to watch that goddamn ad. I guess that’s why it’s not in a video format, so you’re forced to watch this. Annoying.
After I returned to where I left off, it ended like 7 seconds after. Gah, it’s shorter than the freebie? Issue’s 2 & 3 share this shortness and the same exact ads, while 4 actually has a different Toyota ad with Drake actually driving the thing, and people who know what cars are following him in another one. This is a fresh change of pace too late, seeing this is the final issue. There’s a little enjoyable twist in the ending (I believe we have found a possible Uncharted 3 villain/teammate/whatever), and right after that it ties itself into the first game. (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune)
All in all, the mini-series itself was fantastic, getting a little backstory is always a great thing. However, while the idea itself was fantastic, the execution of the paid issues were sloppy and bad. I don’t know if you could call this a review, since I didn’t talk much about the story, but this is just me ranting. Yes, I’m ranting about a 3 dollar comic series. That’s what blogs are for right? If you’re crazy about Uncharted, these are nice gifts for yourself, even though you will probably see these on Youtube anyway.
