Chris Ingersoll

SB09: Chris Ingersoll’s picks

December 18, 2009

One of Snackbar Games’ traditions every year is to have each staffer pick their top ten games of the year. We’re so all over the map in our tastes that our lists are never similar. Today, we have site veteran Chris Ingersoll. We’d be surprised that he wrote so much about only two systems, but…well, we know the guy.

As usual for my own year-end list, I want to emphasize that this only covers games released this year that I have actually played. This leaves a lot of front runners left off the list simply because I don’t own the system(s) on which they were released, I wasn’t interested in them, I had other financial obligations at the time of its release and it got back-burnered, or any number of other reasons. Additionally, there are a few titles remaining to be released this year that could have stolen a place or two.

Right off the bat, I don’t own an Xbox360, PS3, PSP, DSi, or gaming-capable PC. For the two systems that I do own, here are the ones I didn’t get to for 2009 that probably deserve consideration: READ MORE

Gaming Unplugged: Small World expansions

December 6, 2009

Features / Unplugged / by Chris Ingersoll /

Earlier this year, Days of Wonder published Philippe Keyaerts’s Small World, a fantasy territory-grabbing game that has already won a couple of Game of the Year awards. Contained within that game were dozens of fantasy races and special powers, plus one blank race banner and one blank power banner suitable for players to create their own additions to the game. Some of those player-created additions have now been collected and officially released as mini-expansions!

Small World Cursed! brings opportunistic Goblins and swarming Kobolds to the proceedings, as well as five new special powers, including “Were-“, Ransacking, Marauding, “Hordes of”, and Cursed. These powers mostly revolve around aggression, although the Cursed power is a curious (and painful!) exception. Grand Dames of Small World add the feminine races of Gypsies, White Ladies, and Priestesses plus the powers of Peace-Loving and Historian. A lot of Grand Dames is concerned with races in decline, giving that otherwise passive part of the core game an added dimension.

The best part about adding both expansions to the base set is that it takes much longer for a declined race to be “recycled” in the last few turns, if at all. I’ve played one four-player session that went through all of the races in the nine turns without repeating That kind of variety is what makes Small World so fun. None of the new additions feel too strong or two weak, although the strength of a few may take some time to discover.

Both expansions include a quick rules summary for their respective races and powers, as well as crediting each new addition to its creator. These submissions came in from seven different countries and eleven different players, showcasing the international appeal of Small World. Each can be picked up for around ten dollars. Unfortunately, the one drawback to these expansions is the fact that the much-vaunted box insert of the original game wasn’t designed with expansion in mind; I had to abandon mine and resort to traditional bagging in order to contain everything in one box. Still, that’s a small price to pay for the added entertainment.

Nostalgia

December 6, 2009

DS / Reviews / by Chris Ingersoll /

As I understand it, the original design for the game that would ultimately become Nostalgia was created about ten years ago. It was shelved as the developers took on other tasks (including the DS remake of Final Fantasy III), and when the opportunity presented itself they were able to add to their plans to make better use of the improvements of the intervening decade, like the DS itself. As a result, what we get is a curious blend of old-school RPG tropes with a few interesting twists.

The world of Nostalgia is an alternate-version 19th Century Earth, filled with steampunk, airships, magic, and above all an emphasis on exploration. The main character is Eddie Brown, son of famed adventurer (and thinly-veiled Indiana Jones knock-off) Gilbert Brown, who has gone missing. Before long Eddie has assembled the tradtional four-man band of himself (the fighter), Pad (the rogue), Melody (the wizard), and Fiona (the cleric) that sets off to eventually thwart a shadowy cabal of extremists like all 17-year-olds do in this genre. Along the way each will discover who they really are and reconnect with their parents, all while discovering ancient wonders and battling fantastic monsters.

Where Nostalgia does things a bit differently however is the overworld. As soon as you leave the starting town (and main hub) of London you are given your father’s airship. All travel in the overworld is done via an airship, and you can be attacked by other airships or flying monsters as you move from city to city (and, indeed, continent to continent). Ship combat is a bit different than normal dungeon combat, as each team member (wo)mans a different armament and acts independently, but you all share a single HP total. When you’re being triple-teamed, you either quickly learn to adopt a defensive stance or die. Eventually you gain the ability to climb to higher altitudes to bypass obstacles like mountains, but incredibly dangerous enemies lurk at those heights; expect several surprise Game Overs, as running away is usually not possible. Until you get some stronger gear, I advise you to stick to the lower altitudes unless necessary and save often.

Nostalgia’s other primary innovation is the visible turn order. Along the left side of the bottom screen you’ll see seven panels depicting your party and your enemies. Whoever is at the top is the one currently active, and the order goes down the list. Different moves (like magic) have longer wait times, and there are some moves you can use to add wait time to your enemies or grant additional speed to your own team. Shrewd management of this feature will allow you greater control over your battles.

Finally, Nostalgia uses a skill tree to learn new techniques. In addition to XP and GP, you will earn SP from battles. That SP can be spent on a character’s skill to improve it in some way (better effect, less MP cost, lower wait time, etc.). When certain skills are improved to a specific level, it will unlock a new (often related) skill, often well ahead of schedule compared to when the character would normally learn it. Some skills are more important than others, and knowing what you’re doing here can really affect the difficulty of the game. To the game’s credit, I never felt the need to grind up levels, cash, or skills, although hitting every side quest offered goes a long way towards that.

While all of that seems impressive, all of those innovations tend to meld into the background as you progress through the somewhat bland story. I didn’t really care about any of the developments in the plot, more than a few of which were fairly obvious to anyone even partially genre-savvy. It felt like I had played this game before, and in many ways I have. Nostalgia doesn’t really break enough new ground to stand out among the crowd, and there were several times where the only sense of nostalgia the game instilled in me was for the similar but superior Skies of Arkadia. Still, it’s a quality enough title that should occupy you for about forty to fifty hours if you’re willing to overlook the inherently dated nature of most of it.

(…and if it will let you, that is. While I was playing the Nostalgia I learned about a game-breaking bug that is believed to affect about 1/3rd of all US carts. About 2/3rds of the way through the story, there is a two-part boss; in the bugged carts, the second part of the boss does not spawn, rendering the game impossible to complete; since the bug is apparently in the code and not something you can correct, you can’t even start over and try again. I was right near that point when I discovered this, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when it was there as scheduled. I still think the game is worth picking up, but be aware that this problem exists, especially if buying a pre-owned version.)

ESRB: E10 for Mild Fantasy Violence. 19th Century Earth was a big time for hand pistols; every non-magic user who isn’t a sword-user is packing heat.

Pros: Some neat features, and a solid if unspectacular story

Cons: finding “Ancient Treasures” is nearly a pixel-hunt, ship combat is surprisingly lethal until late in the game

Plays like: most other turn-based RPGs

Pokemon Rumble

November 30, 2009

Reviews / Wii / by Chris Ingersoll /

Pokémon Rumble pits hundreds of “toy pokémon” in a battle royale against each other to determine the champion. Each pokémon can learn two moves, mapped to the 1 and 2 buttons (the Classic Controller is also supported). Using only those two moves per ‘mon, you are challenged to clear six stages filled with other ‘mon and one giant boss. The action is real-time, sort of like a side-scrolling beat-’em-up but with a top-down view.

Some of the enemies you KO will fall down and be added to your team when you pick them up, giving you additional options; the ones that don’t will leave behind cash that is used in the various terminals in the hub worlds to recruit new team members, teach new moves (randomly selected from moves typically available via TM in the games), or whatever. You can also release lower-powered and/or undesired team members for additional cash, and sometimes for surprise bonuses as well. You can switch ‘mon at any point during the stage, although there is a delay as your Wonder Key winds up the replacement. If three of your pokémon faint during a stage, you lose and are kicked back to the hub world (although you do keep anything you had collected up to that point).

You keep clearing stages and acquiring new toy pokémon until you’ve collected one with a power level over the threshold for the current Battle Royale, at which point that gate is opened. Battle Royales are wild timed melees filled with pokémon. Beating enemies here will give you additional time, and eventually you will have to take on the toughest bosses around in order to clear it, claim your reward, and move on to the next level. You can only switch out in a Battle Royale when your current pokémon faints, so make sure you’ve got the right tools for the job here!

At first the game just uses the 151 pokémon of the original Red/Blue/Green/Yellow games (Mew is actually freely available via password from www.pokemonrumble.com), with Mewtwo obviously being the grand champion. Defeating him will unlock advanced mode, which features pokémon from the current generation (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum). I don’t know if there’s a level beyond that yet, but even if there isn’t I still got my 1500 Wii Points’ worth out of this game. There’s even a free demo available in the Wii Shop if you want to try before you buy (it ends as soon as you qualify for the first Battle Royale).

ESRB: E10 for Mild Cartoon Violence. The usual pokémon cockfighting is a bit more pronounced now that it’s in real-time, but it’s still very abstract.

Pros: Fast-playing action

Cons: No actual leveling up; you simply replace weaker pokémon with stronger ones as you catch them and discard the rest

Plays like: An arcadey beat-’em-up or shooter (bordering on “bullet hell” at times).

A Boy and his Blob

November 29, 2009

Reviews / Wii / by Chris Ingersoll /

In 1989, Absolute Entertainment published a bizarre puzzle-platformer called A Boy and His Blob for the NES. It featured a refugee alien blob that could change into a variety of shapes when fed different flavors of jellybeans by his young earth companion. The two would have to utilize the blob’s various functions to bypass obstacles and collect money and additional jellybeans, eventually purchasing some vitamins before blasting off (via a root beer jellybean’s rocket transformation) to the planet Blobbonia, where they must do battle with the evil emperor who had enslaved the peaceful blobs (by firing the vitamins at him after feeding the blob an orange jellybean, turning it into a “Vitablaster”). The game was incredibly difficult, partially due to the limited number of jellybeans available to you; if you wasted the wrong ones or had the blob positioned incorrectly, you might not even be able to finish.

The original A Boy and His Blob was an obscure title at best, but its quirky appeal made an impression on most of the kids who played it. When the announcement came that Wayforward would be creating a new version of the game for the Wii, using hand-drawn animation, those kids — now adults — were treated to a wave of twenty year-old nostalgia.

In addition to the graphical upgrade, the game play received several much-needed tweaks as well. Instead of one large, spanning world (plus Blobbonia) the action has been divided up into over 40 smaller levels spread across four sub-areas; each sub-area has a hub from which you can access any of that world’s levels or freely move to any previous world. Each level allows you only a specific subset of jellybeans, ranging from one to twelve flavors of the fifteen present in the game; you have an unlimited number of these jellybeans at your disposal, allowing you more freedom for experimentation and error.

On the subject of “error,” you also have unlimited lives and the game’s checkpoints are generous; this is fortunate, as you will die frequently, especially in the second half of the game and during one of the handful of boss fights. The boy is very fragile, falling to even a single touch of one of the enemies or several hazards (including water and falls above a certain height unless cushioned by one of the blob’s softer transformations). He is also frustratingly immobile; he moves at only one speed (which is slow), has little jumping ability, and cannot duck. If it weren’t for his nearly pin-point accurate jellybean throwing ability (holding down the B button shows your trajectory, which you can adjust like a pool simulator), he would basically be useless.

Not that the blob (who was named Blobbert in the original game; I don’t think he really has a name this time, nor does the boy) is much better. Although he is somehow immune to any damage, he moves on his own and as such isn’t under your direct control. As a result, he will sometimes get himself stuck in awkward places. You can steer him a bit with well-placed jellybeans (which he will seek out if he can) or use the C button to call him to your side; the call button is also used to return the blob to his usual amorphous form, which is the only way to get him to assume a new one. If you ever get too separated, you can throw him a balloon jellybean, which will allow him to catch up (and serves no other function; you always have berry as one of your flavors on every level); if you can’t reach him with a jellybean, calling him three times in succession will cause him to transform into a balloon on his own.

Unlike the original title, the game never tells you what flavors of jellybeans you’re using to trigger transformations. A few are legacies from the original game (licorice = ladder, apple = jack, tangerine = trampoline, root beer = rocket, cola = bubble, coconut = coconut), and a few new ones are mentioned in the manual (pear = parachute, bubblegum = bouncer, berry = balloon, banana = anvil), but others (cannon, shield, and two final transformations I don’t want to spoil) have absolutely no indication — heck, there are two different flavors listed for the cannon transformation on official sources (the box says cream, the website says caramel; given the color of the bean in the game, I believe the box). In fact, there is no text in the game at all, nor is there a tutorial like you would expect from most games. There are occasionally billboards with hints drawn on them, but that’s all the help you get.

The cartoon-like presentation of the game, coupled with the complete lack of any in-game text, may lead you to believe that the game is a walk in the park, and for the first fifteen levels or so this will be the case. The difficulty ramps up starting with the second boss fight, however, and a lot of frustration will set in by the time you reach the third. The game’s demands simply can’t always keep up with the limitations of the controls (and in the case of the third boss, some hit detection issues as well) and you will die cheaply and repeatedly. The final few levels make up for this somewhat by being epically awesome (entirely due to the last transformation), but getting to that point is quite the chore, especially given the somewhat plodding pace of “level – hub – level”.

If you can overcome the game’s limitations, you should get a fair amount of enjoyment out of A Boy and His Blob. If you’re especially hardcore, you can even seek out the three treasure chests hidden in each level; finding all three will unlock an additional challenge stage, effectively doubling the game play value. Each challenge stage you clear will unlock various special features like art galleries and development notes. The game is already bargain-priced at $40, which messes with our rating system a bit; ultimately it’s worth a look if you want a different experience on the Wii, but not anything I’d go out of my way to pick up right away.

ESRB Rating: E for mild cartoon violence; your primary method of dispatching enemies is to drop rocks or anvils on them, or else using the hole transformation to drop them into pits.

Plays like: Other than the original, the level-based puzzle-platforming reminded me of Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’s Treasure

Pros: Gorgeous presentation, classic nostalgia, and quite possibly the first game ever to feature a “hug” button.

Cons: Maneuverability issues cause too much frustration

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