Over the course of its rise in the hearts and minds of today’s youth, the A
Game Boy Advance
Tron 2.0: Killer App
Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by
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Monolith’s Tron 2.0 on the PC served as a wake-up call to gamers–it was excellent and proved that licensed games don’t always have to be cheap grabs for cash. Unfortunately, Digital Eclipse’s Tron 2.0: Killer App for the Game Boy Advance doesn’t even seem to try to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps.
An evil hacker has infiltrated the ENCOM computer system, and the legendary program Tron–assisted by the lightcycle program Mercury–must stop him. Each character has his or her own set of levels, but there are no gameplay differences between the two. Perhaps due to both characters being available from the start, both Tron and Mercury’s stories start off at a very low difficulty, making playing through the game as the other character very unsatisfying.
The majority of the game is an isometric platformer with repetitive projectile combat. Nearby enemies are automatically locked onto and jumping, strafing and firing all at once is never difficult to do. However, the main problem is that the player only ever encounters three different types of enemy with any regularity, and the combat is just too easy. Most enemies can be defeated through mindless button mashing, and since each one drops a health-restoring item taking a hit or two is never much of a problem. When the player finally does die the character simply respawns at the point of death with a full health bar, minus one life.
That is, assuming the player has any lives left over after the plentiful instant-death tiles. Jumping puzzles are rarely fun in isometric platformers, and Tron is no exception. Even worse is that the tiles designed simply to damage the player look extremely similar to these death tiles, and they are often even right next to each other. On a portable gaming platform that is inexcusable–less-than-ideal lighting situations can render the game unplayable, even on an SP.
Scattered throughout the colorful world of the ENCOM system are various mandatory minigames. The most common, hacking, resembles the old game Pipe Dreams. Random tiles must be used to connect two points on the game grid within a given time limit. The game is good in theory, but in practice is severely flawed and at times made me simply turn off the game in disgust. When a tile is connected to the start point, there is a chance of receiving bonus time–but place one anywhere else and the player may randomly receive a time addition, time subtraction or the source of my anger: an alarm tile which requires starting the puzzle over. The fact that the game then also randomly places alarm tiles in front of the only path, making the puzzle effectively impossible to win, is simply insulting. Also offensive are the poorly conceived 3D Tank and Recognizer modes. The games look and play worse than Lawnmower Man for the Super Nintendo, yet are forced upon the player after every couple levels. The fairly amusing lightcycle races do not make up for the other minigames.
One of the game’s biggest selling points is the inclusion of the classic arcade games Tron and Discs of Tron. This is the first time the games have seen the light of day since their original releases and they are still surprisingly fun today. Unfortunately even though the gameplay is intact, the ports are very poorly done. The graphics were not redesigned for the smaller screen and are often difficult to make out. Worst of all is the horrendous slowdown encountered whenever there are multiple discs on the screen at once in Discs of Tron. The arcade games alone simply cannot make this a justifiable purchase.
Tron 2.0: Killer App is a lackluster game with too many frustrations for such little fun. The short length and lack of real replay value make it not worth picking up. If you’re looking for a fun game in the Tron universe, pick up the PC or Xbox versions.
Mario Pinball Land
Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by
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Taking the next step in their quest to bring Mario to every game type imaginable, Nintendo has released Mario Pinball Land. This time, our pasta-loving hero finds himself acting as a ball on a series of bright and busy pinball tables. Alongside a cast of familiar faces, he bounces and bumps his way through this beautiful, but eventually average, game.
In true Mario fashion, the pinball action revolves around saving the Princess. Once again she has been kidnapped by Bowser, and once again it is up to Mario to rescue her. Oddly, however, this time she was kidnapped while on an amusement park ride that mashes people into spheres and shoots them via cannon at a giant dartboard. After the ride is hijacked and she is shot into the far reaches of Bowser’s castle, Mario eagerly jumps in the ride and goes spinning after her.
It may not be the most compelling story ever, but it does create a way for a pinball game to play as a non-linear quest. Each game table is a different world. Using cannons players can move from one table to another, clearing them in any order they like. All five worlds have a different theme, challenge, and enemies from the standard Mario stable of characters.
The opening world, an amusement park, starts players off knocking goombas and ghosts into oblivion. The quest moves on through the grass, desert, water, and winter worlds before eventually ending at Bowser’s castle. Worlds are divided into multiple boards, which each fill the Game Boy screen. Although it is possible to travel to each world from the beginning of the game, many paths to different boards can only be accessed after a certain number of stars are collected by completing challenges.
Challenges fall into a few categories, including defeating all the enemies on the screen, collecting red coins within a time limit, and finishing off the boss that waits at the end of each world. Boss fights, like some of the other challenges, usually involve more than simply pounding enemies with the ball. Instead, most rely on indirect attacks using the environment or power-ups.
Power-ups can be purchased from Toad with coins dropped by defeated foes, and using them adds quite a bit of variety to the game. No Mario game would be complete without mushrooms. This time, they either turn Mario into a double-sized ball or shrink him to sizes small enough to enter holes and access hidden areas. Extra balls, warp pipes, and Yoshi-egg multiballs are a few of the extras that spice things up.
Pinball Land‘s sound and graphics are both top-notch, featuring some of the most interesting graphics seen on the GBA. Level designs are imaginative, without becoming cluttered enough to overwhelm or distract from the action. Mario and his enemies are all crisp and colorful, with a pre-rendered look reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country.
Animation is fluid, which goes a long way toward creating an illusion of depth. Elements bounce around convincingly, with no slowdown or glitches to distract from the frantic gameplay. Sound effects are all familiar themes from Mario’s world, which are used appropriately and accent play well. The music, as well, does a good job of setting an upbeat and quick tone without becoming repetitive or annoying.
Unfortunately, all of this polished gameplay begins to dull after a few hours of play. Pinball Land may be challenging, but it is still rarely dangerous. Players are only actually in danger of losing a life on the bottom screen of each world, so, as more areas are opened, the player spends little time in places where there is real danger of failing. This subtly shifts the focus from the normal pinball-style fight to keep the ball in play to a more sedate quest to explore all the areas and complete all the challenges.
The challenges can be hard, and take some practice to master, but without the rush of fighting to stay alive they lose some of their excitement. Removing the fear of losing a ball and including the ability to save your game creates individual pinball sessions that go on almost indefinitely. After playing for hours to reach all the goals, players will tend to feel finished with the game. Without the thrill of standard pinball, they may be unlikely to play through it again.
This is balanced somewhat by the addition of a time attack mode, where players race to take down a world’s boss in the shortest time possible. After having beaten the bosses at least twice each to complete the standard game, though, this mode just doesn’t seem as compelling as it could.
Physics in Pinball Land, like its graphics, are more suited to a cartoon than the real world. The ball’s movements, particularly off the tips of the flippers, aren’t quite what one might expect. This may be a source of frustration for the first few minutes, but after playing for a while the exaggerated responses begin to fit the tables well, allowing for shots that loop around the screen and reach areas that wouldn’t be accessible on a real table.
Though not without its annoyances, Mario Pinball Land is still an entertaining game. Its engaging mixture of game types and interesting graphics combine to create a fun ride, but one that is sadly over too soon.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/hamhamgames/cover.jpg[/floatleft]The characters of Hamtaro are back in yet another highly addictive title. Hamtaro: Ham Ham Games follows the lovable creatures through a 15 event sports festival. The release of this game came just prior to the start of the 2004 Olympics in Athens so I have aptly named this the Hamster Olympics. You play as part of the Ham-Ham team and obviously try to win top honors in each event.
Each day of the competition is typically broken up into several parts. There are 3 events with free time in between each event. You can use free time to walk around and talk to people in different areas of the game and collect sunflower seeds. When you enter an area and start an event you have a few choices. You can view the tutorial on how to play the event, you can practice the event, and then you can enter the event. You can also set the level of difficulty for each event. I highly recommend starting on easy, watching the tutorial, and practicing until you have the event down solid. Some of the events are just timing button presses and some require a very high level of patience and a lot of practice. When you decide to enter the event you are given a choice of characters from the team. Sometimes there is only 1 choice, but in other events there are multiple member of the team that are experts in the event. You then battle it out and are rewarded a medal for your efforts. The medaling system is Gold, Silver, Bronze and you are also awarded a number of sunflower seeds for each medal ranking. The number of seeds for each medal goes up as you raise the difficulty.
At the end of each day you take your hamster back to the clubhouse and go to sleep. This will start a new day so you can continue your utter domination of the Hamster Olympics (at least that was the case for me). The 15 events you will be competing in are as follows:
[list]
[*]100m Dash
[*]Tennis
[*]Hammer Throw
[*]Diving
[*]Beach Volleyball
[*]Hurdles
[*]Bird back riding
[*]Pole Vault
[*]Carrot Pull
[*]Swimming
[*]Archery
[*]Sailing
[*]Triple Jump
[*]Synchronized Swimming
[*]Marathon
[/list]
The event that gave me the most trouble was the Bird back riding, but I ended up with a dominating gold medal anyway.
This game does make use of the GBA to GBA link cable or the GBA wireless adapter if you have one. You can compare stats with your friends and there are plenty of items to collect and trade with your friends. I only own 1 GBA and so I will not be touching too much on the linking capabilities of the game.
Up until this point I know what you are thinking. If you checked out the screens for the game and have made it this far then you are wondering why on earth I would recommend you pick up a cute little game where hamsters compete in Olympic sports. The only thing I can say to that is crack. The game is like crack. Not quite to the extent that Animal Crossing is, but it is very addicting and I want nothing more than to be the most dominant hamster athlete in the world.
I didn’t really dig the music or sound effects in Ham-Ham Games so I spent most of the time playing with the sound off. This works well for gaming on the go and not so well if you play in a Gameboy Player. Since I did spend some time with it in my GBP I figured that I would mention that the game was much easier to play with a full size GC controller. This is not always the case for GBA games since they often rely on the D-pad and just 2 buttons that are in strange places on the GC controller. The swimming event relied heavily on timed presses of different sets of buttons and would probably be needlessly hard with a full sized controller so I opted to stick with my GBA for that event.
Hamtaro Ham Ham Games is a fun Olympic style game that will appeal to a broad range of ages. Youngsters will like the cute hamsters but may find some of the events a little too difficult. Adults will find themselves addicting to ensuring that their team has the gold in the next event in order to maximize their dominance in this highly competitive arena. All in all it was a good game and playing new games on the GBA always delights me because the focus is always on gameplay over graphics and that gives me a very nostalgic feeling.
Megaman & Bass
Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by
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[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/megamanbass/cover.jpg[/floatleft]It seems the Megaman series has been with us forever. With 8 games in the main series, 5 on the Gameboy, 7 X-series games, and numerous spin-offs into other genres and one shots, it is a huge franchise. Often it seems like many of the spin-offs or sequels have lost what I really loved about the original games. Megaman and Bass, being based in the original series, seemed to have the potential to bring back the good old magic of the Megaman 2 and 3 days. Does it succeed? Yes and no.
Megaman and Bass is a traditional Megaman game, but it allows you to choose between Megaman and Bass as your main character. Each has slightly different abilities which change the game experience a fair bit. Megaman has his traditional charge shot and slide, and can shoot through walls. Bass, however has a neat double jump, and aimable turbo shot, and a dash move. This gives the game some replay value, but I found the game a bit too difficult with Megaman, as I’ll discuss later. I have played through the game with Bass, and have only started to delve into Megman’s side.
Ever since Megaman 6 on the SNES, the traditional access to all 8 bosses from the get go has been broken up. In this game you can pick from any of 3 bosses after you beat the intro level, and from there you can earn paths to more bosses by beating individuals out of the first set. Although I miss the more open and traditional method, I won’t complain about the new layout. As usual, beating a boss gives you access to his weapon, which has a gimmick that might make it especially useful in certain parts of the game.
For the most part the levels are challenging, but not too difficult. Because this game was ported from the SNES, it was originally designed for a larger screen. I haven’t played the original version (it was Japan only), but I noticed there were very few “leaps of faith” (where the screen was too small for you to see where you were going) and I was happy about that. Once you get in a good groove with Bass, you can clean through most of the levels pretty easily, especially if you have some upgrades. The only thing that disappointed me was that Bass’ aimable automatic shot made boss weapons unnecessary almost all of the time.
The bosses are a bit trickier. Many of them have a weakness to another bosses specific weapon, but if you don’t have the right weapon equipped they can be almost impossible. Your normal shot does minimal damage to them, and their shots or other special attacks can take off a lot of your health bar. Ground man was the worst offender, and was quite difficult even when I found his weakness. I eventually managed to overcome them all. Curiously, I had an easier time with Dynamo Man using my normal blaster than his “Achilles’ Heel” weapon.
Now I may make it seem like the game is a walk in the park, but actually it resembles the early Megaman games quite a bit. At first, levels and bosses seem impossible, but as you learn the tricks and patterns you can breeze through them. Also, as the game gets more difficult, Auto (another of Doctor Light’s creations) offers you more and more permanent powerups that you can purchase with the many bolts you find lying around. You can also replay earlier levels to get more bolts if you need them. Many of these powerups are only active when you equip them, and you can only equip one at a time, but with some fast switching you can easily make use of all of them effectively during a level.
This game also seems to have some decent replay value. Not only can you play through again after having beaten it with one hero, but the game also has CDs scattered throughout each of the levels. These CDs unlock all of the Megaman characters and robot masters from the previous games (even the three special bosses from the Wily Wars!). They are often only accessible after you have beaten other levels, and some are only available to one of the two characters. I usually dislike item hunts like these, but many of the CDs are in plain sight and they bring back the old Megaman nostalgia.
Now I get to the one thing I don’t like: playing as Megaman. I played through the game with Bass, and had a great time. Megaman was much more difficult to get through the game with. His lack of a double jump and his slower shot make many of the levels harder, and the bosses are nearly impossible to dodge in some cases. Although I like using him as a harder “difficulty level,” he is just too frustrating. I haven’t been able to get far with him at all. I would have preferred a more balanced approach here.
Don’t expect Megaman and Bass to capture the level of perfection that was Megaman 2 and 3, but it is really a great game. I honestly think it’s one of the best entries in the series for quite some time. If you are a GBA-toting Megaman fan (and I mean the real deal, none of this Battle Transmission stuff), you really owe it to yourself to take this for a spin.
