We have a thread for iOS, one for Android, and one for the Vita, so why not? Curious - how is Nano Assault supposed to be? Also: I am really wishing Rodea would get out of development hell. I mean - it's finished, right? So it's infuriating that we don't even have a release date yet.
The current landscape of games for the 3DS is pretty barren if you don't live in Japan. Plenty of interesting titles over there that we'll never see.
There's some good stuff here and there, though. Super Mario 3D Land is quite good; I also like Theatrhythm, Tales of the Abyss, and the 3DS Harvest Moon. Mutant Mudds is also a very good downloadable retro platformer that actually makes good use of the 3D. It's a bit short, but it's downloadable and for the price I think it holds up well. I've played through the entire game several times.
Mutant Mudds is fantastic. Super Mario 3D Land is essentially a portable Galaxy game, and it works beautifully. Tales of the Abyss is good, but, that being said, you do have to put up with a party made entirely of utter pricks, so it's not for everyone. (It's probably worth picking up at MSRP even if you hate it, though, because it's already being resold for batshit crazy prices due to the tiny print runs.) Kid Icarus: Uprising is either absolutely fantastic or completely unplayable, based entirely on whether or not you can actually play the game without twisting your hands into gnarled knots, screaming for the peace of oblivion. It's probably the best game on the system if you can actually play it, but it needs a demo more than any game has ever needed one. Your response would be, without fail, either "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME" or "OW. PAIN. OW." Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 are coming up; they're DS games, but whatever. If you, like me, love some pogeymanz, these are particularly good pogeymanz. Ocarina of Time is Ocarina of Time; it's probably the best version of the game, but being a port (even one with better textures and a decent framerate) it's really not worth $40 if you've already played the game. If you somehow haven't - well, you're in for a treat. I understand that Revelaitons is supposed to be the best Resident Evil game of this entire console generation; that being said, I'm not a fan of the series, so I can't say anything hands-on there. Can't speak for Theatrhythm; I do not have rhythm, theat or otherwise. If you like rhythm games, apparently Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure is quite good.
Mutand Mudds and Super Mario 3D Land are great. Also, if you like old platformers, VVVVVV is really a blast; the game really brings back memories of 8-bit games from 30 years ago; some parts are really hard too. It doesn't really have any 3D gameplay, but it does look better with 3D on than it did on my PC. I think Metal Gear Solid is nice, so if sneaking around and looking out through well rendered 3D foilage is your thing, is worth a go. (Revelations is also nice if you like Resdident Evil, but I haven't played that a lot). Kid Icarus is fantastic, but I am not sure I have fingers nimble enough to get very far in it. It is a pain to play. The Zen Pinball games suffer from the relatively low resolution on the console, but Pinball really does look good on the 3D screen. And I hope Farsight can get the framrate problems they have with Pinball Arcade sorted, so I can buy that on yet another platform.
So, I'm going to tell you all to purchase Denpa Men, right now. Downloadable dungeon-crawling RPG. $10. Characters procedurally generated from Wi-Fi networks. Basically - you find Wi-Fi networks, pull out your 3DS and spin around like an asshole while you try to capture the little Pikmin-looking guys that're generated from them. Once you catch some, you build a party of 4-8 Denpa Men and go into the dungeons. Stats, skills, resistances - all generated from the properties of the network. Dungeons are a top-down affair, littered with chests and randomly generated enemies. Let one of the enemies catch your party, and you're plunged into a first-person, turn-based battle a la Dragon Quest. Battles are quick-paced; most of them, you can coast through, but bosses and higher-end enemies will demand some real strategy. Your build is a big deal! Go into a dungeon with the right party and equipment, and you can breeze through; on the other hand, the wrong setup can make even simple fights a lost cause. So, you WILL need to collect Denpa Men - again, hopefully you don't mind spinning around like an asshole in public. If not - you can also get them from QR codes. But - you can't revive those ones. Losing Denpa Men in battle means you need to revive them before leaving the dungeon, or else they'll die. You can revive the Denpa Men you find either by paying a stupid amount of money or by capturing them again. When I say "a stupid amount of money," I mean it; you'll make several dungeon runs to revive one high-level casualty. When you wipe out (and you will wipe out) you're going to be without that party for some time. And, as mentioned - if you get your Denpa Men from QR codes, they're dead. Period. They don't appear in the list of Denpa Men to revive. (You can re-scan the QR codes, but you lose all the experience. They're essentially brand-new Denpa Men.) You can re-capture them for free, but then you have to remember where you found each one. This is way more of a game than it has any right to be; I expected something like the incredibly simple AR apps that come pre-installed. Nope! It's a lengthy and (later on) quite hard RPG. The aesthetic is ...interesting. One of the early enemies is a walking head of corn called a Corn Critter. This is some insane bullshit, but it's fun. "But all of this sounds incredibly weird, and I'm a boring, boring person!" There's a demo. It goes up to the end of the first dungeon. You can carry a save over to the full version. Download it.
3DS owners have a new thing they should buy: Art Academy: Lessons For Everyone. Art Academy is an art class in 3DS cart form, basically. It assumes no significant prior knowledge, and purports to teach you to paint and draw, with an emphasis on technique and including some theory. I have no experience with or skill at visual arts, so I was pretty much the target audience, and starting from scratch. I've spent two or three days with it so far. In that time I've done the first four intro lessons and two mini-lessons (mini-lessons are adjuncts to the main lessons, and are there to help you refine a skill, sometimes with a twist.) My first two I wasn't happy enough with to export, although I still have the session saved so I can always go back. Attempts 3 through 6 were good enough to export, though. I've put them in an album here to show off show what it teaches. None of them will get me an MFA or anything, but starting from zero I'm really happy with them for the most part: http://imgur.com/a/M0RY1 It's total freehand, there are no line tools or anything -- this isn't Adobe Illustrator, it tries to teach you real technique. I bought my copy in store for $35. You can buy it through the eShop as well and in some ways that might be preferable so you can always have it with you. Painting seems like it would be real expensive to get started with, and messy. It's got me thinking I might buy some art pencils and take a stab at real drawing, though.
...Wow. Um, holy shit. I did not expect you to be able to do that on a 3DS. I might very well purchase this. Yeah, you know what? Doing that right now. Because - wow.
Liberation Maiden is out. It's really good! Not as balls-to-the-wall insane as you'd expect given its pedigree, but it's a hell of a game nonetheless. And it's got a decent difficulty level to it. It is short, though. Five stages. Very arcade-y, score attack centered; you should know that much going in. Still - well worth $8. Are the other Guild01 titles this good? oh, right: Don't touch it if you're one of the wimps people who couldn't play Kid Icarus. This has similar controls, and isn't nearly so forgiving.
Paper Mario is out today, and while I was very weary about the battle system at first (no experience points, lolwut), it's still a pretty good light resource management style rpg that's more action-oriented than its predecessors. I'm only a couple hours in, but it seems to be worth a purchase. Some people may really be turned off by the battle system, though.
Oh, and while I don't own it, Rhythm Thief is a blast to play. There's a demo in the eshop, and while I typically don't like rhythm games, I really enjoyed that demo. I recommend people check it out. There's also a demo for Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion out now.
I bought a 3DS the other day, mostly so I had a bigger screen to play my old DS games for my old man eyes. Ok, I am not really that old, and my eye sight is considered well above average, but I kept on struggling with my first gen DS console paying attention to what was happening. Needless to say, I grabbed both Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns and Mario Kart 7. While I've yet to try the Harvest Moon game, I have spent some time with Mario Kart 7. And I feel incredibly underwhelmed. There are a few courses that I enjoyed, but not to the same extent as what Mario Kart on the DS did. On the DS, I felt the courses were more creative and rewarded good cornering and powersliding. Every race in Mario Kart 7 I can expect to be smacked with at least blue shell, it no longer seems like a rare treat. Of course, maybe I just need to take it online, but I have no real intention of doing so at the moment. Also, holy shit Inigma. I saw the Academy Lesson at the shop and thought "meh, no way that could work." But evidently not. I think I'll include it on my next shopping trip when I look to pick up Paper Mario and Super Mario 3D land based on the recommendations here.
I've had my problems with MK7 just the same as you. I was expecting the next evolution from what was arguably the best mario kart game (DS), but it really fell short. I love the graphics, the 3D, and I would argue that this is the best version of Star Road yet, but the gameplay failed bad. Not only is boosting harder to pull off, there's less opportunity to (perhaps intentionally done to combat the snaking that was rampant online in MKDS) but they also 'balanced' the items to be more of a lottery. I think it was Shiggy who said it was done on purpose as a form of 'luck', so that newer players could compete evenly with vets, but the execution of it falls short to where there's no sense of skill left in the game, and the races seem to be won purely on chance. This is especially bad in online mode. Luckily, you can set up a lobby that doesn't use blue shells. Another annoyance is that when you're hit with something, the recovery time is a lot longer than in previous games, making it easy to be well ahead of the pack, then hit with a blue shell, and you cross the finish line in 8th place because you couldn't speed up in time. That unrewarding feeling that comes from the gameplay is easily this game's biggest fault. It's still a fun game and there is still a slight shred of skill involved, but I was really disappointed with it. I heard that the patch added some gameplay tweaks, but nothing seemed different to me. Still fun if you're in the mood, though. It's not a bad game at all, just... unrewarding. Take that for what you will.
Another good game is Starfox 64 3D. While it's not my favorite starfox title, the remake is handled very well (but no online mode). It's also very pretty graphically. Starfox in 3D with pretty pictures. It's a great thing to experience.
Nano Assault is very interesting. It's nothing like the other two Nano games on DS. It's got two gameplay styles: The main one is kinda like Super Stardust in how it controls and plays, but it's generally goal based (kill all the enemies or collect all the stuff), but then there's these third person starfox-esque 3D shmup sections. They are *very* hard at times, and the reticule is a bit sluggish, causing unnecessary hits, but they're the most fun part of the game and it looks *brilliant* in 3D. I don't think some of the bosses are beatable in 2D, with how their bullet spray comes at you. I got my copy for $10 and if a hybrid super stardust slash shmup is your thing, you can probably find it just as cheap. I wouldn't pay more than $15, though.
I liked A Tale of Two Towns. I bought the new one (A New Beginning) recently though and so far I want to kill myself because the tutorial takes like eight years to finish. The best Mario Kart game is still the SNES one; nothing since the 64 one has been worth buying at all. I picked this up as well because Paper Mario is The Best Thing -- I try to pretend Super Paper Mario didn't happen -- and so far I'm liking it a lot. I'm probably less far than you are though, I've only played maybe a half hour. What happens if you run out of stickers? I'm a little afraid I won't stock up enough and I'll just get screwed. I have Rhythm Thief and I don't like it as much as I wish I did. I do like rhythm games. I haven't tried the Epic Mickey 3DS demo, but I'm hearing some pretty bad things about it over at Something Awful.
Rapunzel get over here and talk about Tale of Two Towns! Word of warning on the 3DS version, though -- I've heard it's buggy, so we got the regular DS version.
I am also liking Tale of Two Towns, although in addition to the usual "you MUST have a strategy guide" problem inherent to every single Harvest Moon game, the enforced timeline of upgrades is really, really annoying. You can upgrade tools or farm buildings once per season, and your choice (especially for buildings) is limited. If you are to the point where you're ready to get married, have a child, or have the mayors' friendship up high enough to open up part of the tunnel, then you're either getting an upgraded bed option or a tunnel option, and if you wanted to expand your pasture, tough. Better wait until winter and hope you don't befriend anyone too much! That said, it's an easy enough system to game once you get the hang of it. There's a good walkthrough here.
I don't totally understand how stuff like that, or the need to eat, or anything like that keeps getting included in HM games. It is never a good or fun addition. No one ever likes it. Why do they keep doing it? Unrelated: Has the 3DS finally arrived? Are there now enough good games for the damn thing to not be a punchline?
I'd say so. This whole year has been very good for the platform; the problem was that they launched it well ahead of all its games. Really - they probably should have delayed the release until they could launch with Super Mario 3D Land, Ocarina of Time, and Kid Icarus. Steel Diver isn't exactly a strong launch title.
My guess is the inclusion of additional features/things to manage will offset the repetition - I've never found that to be the case, however. All the extra things to manage just stress me out more often than not. As for the 3DS arriving... hard to say. The rack of games for it at Gamestop has gotten awfully small - it's sharing space with standard DS games now. There's a handful of quality stuff available, but I don't think developers are really paying attention to it.
I was going to make a list of the really great games, but it turns out it's smaller than I thought. Here's what I've come up with: Retail: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask Pokemon (I hate this game, but it's unquestionably a seller) Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy Super Mario 3D Land Paper Mario: Sticker Star Downloadable: Pushmo Mutant Mudds I left out remakes; Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 are not "new" games by any objective measure,* On the other hand, great games are becoming more frequent. Luigi's Mansion and Etrian Odyssey 4 will be out early next year and should both be good. Animal Crossing: New Leaf should be out here soonish and will sell a billion copies, although to my mind, like Pokemon, it's basically the same game we've been sold like three times already. Much as I hate 3D as a gimmick, the system has received some really top notch games and I'm hoping the trend continues. One thing I'm noticing is that first-party games continue to be a huge portion of the high quality options for the 3DS. Nintendo continues to be Nintendo, for better or worse. * Animal Crossing and Pokemon are new games, even if they feel really same-y to me, in contrast to literal remakes like Ocarina of Time.
PYRRHON pretty much hates your guts for leaving out the best game on the entire system. It's half rail shooter, half TPS, and half LOOT LOOT LOOT. That's three halves. Does your game have three halves? The enemies are challenging, the level designs interesting and complex, and the controls allow for an incredible level of precision and speed. Yes, there's a learning curve. Well, more of a learning cliff. It's worth it. The ground combat is as good as the air, if not better, once you get the hang of it - you're dashing around the stage firing volleys of bullets at enemies while you try desperately not to get hit. No regenerating health here; you run out of health, and you get one final mercy hit point. Get hit again and you're dead. On later stages and higher difficulty levels, this can mean that you die in two hits. And the entire thing is covered with genuinely funny, rapid-fire banter between the characters. Characters such as the best one, PYRRHON. Instead of over-the-top melodrama, you get a gloriously self-aware script with a slightly mean sense of humor. And the difficulty system is brilliant, allowing boring people to clear the game without shedding too many tears, while giving everyone else every option on a spectrum between "easy" and "bullet hell." With real rewards for doing so - you get better loot and more money out of the levels on higher intensity, which can be put into buying and fusing better weapons, enabling you to take on higher and higher intensities. Hell, the multiplayer isn't even bad. in conclusion: Kid Icarus: Uprising is what would happen if Sin & Punishment were a third-person shooter, and also Diablo It is the antithesis of everything that's wrong with the big AAA bro shooters.
I will buy that I guess. I never knew any of this. Also I got to the end of your post before I understood that you were talking about Kid Icarus: Uprising. I spent the entire post thinking you were talking up some game called "Pyrrhon" that I'd never heard of.
Kid Icarus would be a pretty great game on a system with two analog sticks. On the 3DS it is a monument to Nintendo's stubbornness and a portable wrist pain generator.
Kid Icarus wouldn't be as hard to get used to with dual analog; it just wouldn't work at all. Dual analog is an awful, awful way to play a shooter at the best of times. The rise of console shooters is one of the reasons why the genre has gotten so much slower recently. For the caffeinated-six-year-old pace of Kid Icarus it would be completely unusable; not enough speed, not enough precision. Beyond that, though - I've never had the wrist pain issues anyway. How are you trying to play the game? Turn the sensitivity up to max in the options. And don't try holding it up in the air like a tool; relax. Sit down; your left hand should be sitting in your lap as opposed to supporting the 3DS on its own. You don't need the stand, and it won't help with anything. If you're trying to play the game on the bus, then, yeah, you're going to be in for a miserable time. I'm not sure what would possess you to play a game with 20-minute stages on the bus anyway, mind you. But if you have a nice chair or a bed or anything you should be able to get into a comfortable posture; the important thing is that you don't try holding the console in midair by one side. Because, yeah, that's going to hurt like a bitch.
I try not to talk about how much the controls for Kid Icarus suck because of its contingent of uber-fanboys who insist that its half-assed virtual trackball implementation is not only a reasonable way to play the game but is actually superior to dual analog. I should have known anyone that into the game would be one. Do you actually remember what reality feels like?
I don't remember if I posted this elsewhere here or just on Facebook... I've been playing New Super Mario Bros 2 quite a bit and while I can't say I particularly like it, I am compelled to keep beating levels. Somehow I accidentally found the alternate progression... I went from World 1 to World Mushroom instead of World 2, and from there to World Fire Flower, and now I'm in World 6. It's been kinda weird and trippy and I'm not putting much thought into it and I'll probably beat it. But two specific thoughts: One, I'm glad they got rid of the mechanic from Super Mario 3D Land where you needed to collect big coins in order to progress. HATED that, I abandoned the game the first time I realized I was gonna have to go back and collect big coins. Now you can progress through the main levels without them, but you can spend big coins to unlock Mushroom People houses for power-ups. Two, I really really wish they'd made a 3DS sequel to Super Mario Bros 2 instead of a 3DS sequel to New Super Mario Bros.
Oh! Also I saw that somehow I missed the release of the (spiritual?) sequel to 999, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. Anyone played it? Loved 999.
I didn't even realize this was a problem for anyone because I always had a billion times more than I needed. I am probably slightly OCD, and I tried REALLY HARD to get all the big coins anyway. It's been ingrained into me since Super Mario World. FUCK that would be awesome. I've never even thought about that idea and now I REALLY WANT IT. I have heard 999's name a billion times but I know nothing about it and it gets lost in my head among all the other weirdo DS games like Flower, Sun and Rain. What is it and should I try to track down a copy and why?
Ah, I'm the exact opposite. I play just to make it through the level. If a big coin is easy to get or not too far out of my way I'll go for it, but otherwise I see them as bennies for completionists as opposed to people like me who just want to see all the worlds. It's a narrative-driven puzzle game. I haven't played the title you mentioned, the closest comparison I've got is to Phantom Detective: Ghost Trick although the mechanics are totally different. The gameplay is pretty simple. You're trapped on a ship and you have to solve puzzles to get out, typically by finding objects and applying the objects to other objects in venerable adventure game fashion. There are two things that make it great in my opinion. One, the story is fantastic. The characters are interesting, and there's an additional factor to the trap in that you have to have specific combinations of people take different paths. For example at one branch you could take characters A, B and C with you, or D, E and F, but not A, B and D because of how the ship is designed. And this changes the story. This leads into: Two, the game is explicitly designed to be replayed multiple times in order to see different endings. In fact you can't get the best or true ending without having done a few of the previous endings, and the game's story not only acknowledges this but explains it. (Sort of.) It's pretty trippy.
I respectfully disagree. =/ Sorry to hear that. To each their own, though. Mickey's more of a Genesis style platformer (if that makes sense to you), as it's based on Castle of Illusion. I'm not a huge fan of either. I won't be buying the game. As for the stickers, I don't know what happens. I avoid a lot of fights so as to not run out.
On the topic of Kid Icarus, I agree with Afti up there. The redeeming quality about the controls is that the difficulty is adjustable on every level. Other than the controls, it really is a steller game. There's a bit too much talking going on that I've sometimes missed because I was trying to survive, but certain parts of the dialogue had me throwing a major gigglefit. Example (I don't think this is a spoiler), Hades is trying to say he's a good guy by going into this elaborate tale about wanting to bring a little girl's dead parents back to life in a very sarcastic tone, and throughout his story, the bottom screen is showing simple stills of what he's talking about, but the parents are zombies. And the girl is unaware or doesn't care. I lol'd. So as far as my list of favorite games on the system, or what I think are some of the best (in no particular order): Kid Icarus Tales of the Abyss (though I usually have to turn the 3D down to halfway for dialogue sections, as they made the text float uncomfortably high off the scene) Mario 3D land (the only mario game I've actually wanted to go out of my way to find the big coins on. I didn't enjoy it as much as some.) Stairfax (While I know it's 'just a remake so it doesn't count', it's still a game for this system, and it's one of the funnest and best looking in 3D aside from paper mario) Paper Mario Ocaremake (say what you will, this is the best version of the game that's available. Not my favorite Zelda, and I wouldn't even call it the best [i can hear the fanboys screaming already], it's still a good rushed remake and the inclusion of master quest makes it worth the $20 you'll probably find it for these days) If you like playing games in 3D, the 3D classics version of Kirby's Adventure is lovely. Mighty Switch Force is awesomesauce Mutant Mudds is hard and fun, but I think it's just a tad overrated Sakura Samurai is a good time waster for short sessions, but the availability of save points kinda ruins that. You spend several minutes just going to save. The only DSiWare games I reccomend are the Mighty games and Shantae. Here's hoping the original Shantae comes to the virtual console soon. My cart of it is worth more than double what I paid now! I could sell it and buy Earthbound! Honorable Mentions: RE Revelations is fairly good, though a bit too linear and drawn out for my tastes. There's little mystery when you turn a corner or enter a new room. It falls prey to the formula of 'go into a room > clear the room > get the object to go to another room > rinse repeat'. You could oversimplify that to be applicable to most RE games and Zelda too, but this one really takes the cake. It's pretty, though, I'll give it that. NSMB2 - it's highly unoriginal and collecting the coins is completely pointless. That being said, it's like a pointless version of Mario World. It's fun to play and get to the next level, but it didn't really give me the feeling that what I was doing mattered. Maybe I'm just getting burned out on mario games. Heroes of Ruin - it's like a free MMO you'd find online, but with only a max of four players at a time. It's rather varied though, and it's not a grindfest. It's got voice chat so you can yell at the high-level guys that joined your party "Hey, I'm trying to follow the story here! Stop skipping the quest text and scenes!" The game also adjusts its difficulty for how many players you have, and I tend to solo so I can follow the plot. There are several optional quests that require 2-4 people. Other than that, it's fairly generic. There's also a bug in the game that's yet to be patched, where if you skip a quest in an area and join a game where the host is at that area below you and you get that quest and do it, you'll no longer be able to pick up quests in your own progression. It's been known since release and has yet to be patched. Oh, and since we mentioned a few DS games, I'm just going to throw this out there: Radiant Historia. Get it. Buy it, put it on your acecard, whatever. It's a brilliant game. For a system drowning in RPGs, it's really one of the best. Lastly, my most anticipated game is easily Animal Crossing. Well, that and Luigi's Mansion, but with Animal Crossing I can spend so much time with it in a happy little world of bliss. I was already sold on it before it was even announced, but this shot is the thing that's got me truly excited to play it: THAT OUTFIT IS TOO CUTE
I enjoyed the hell out of the first Animal Crossing but I've bought every one since then and they're all the same game. This is the same game again, right? I mean, I know you're the mayor, but is it actually going to be different?
About as different as WW was from the first. The one on Wii was a direct albiet slightly upgraded port of the DS one, but the DS one was a major departure/upgrade over the cube. It'll be like that. Basically the same game, but with better online features, more robust towns, and more interactivity with just about everything. You can even go swimming, and the island is back. There are also different remixes of the same KK song, like a country version or an electro/dubstep version. Basically the same game but with a massive overhaul and upgrade. I got really into the Cube one and the DS one, but couldn't spend more than five minutes with the wii one. This, to me, will be like the DS one; I know I'll be killing hundreds of hours setting up lampposts next to benches in the snow and planting flowers nearby to make it all come together. AND THOSE CLOTHES!!
Probably skipping this one then. I didn't think the DS one was a major departure from the Gamecube one at all.
I thought it had arrived last year at Pax East when everyone seemed to be running around streetpassing to get all the picture pieces and get through Find Mii mulitple times to collect all the hats. I hoovered up over 500 miis and only had to stop because my battery kept running out.
When I say "arrived," I mean "has a respectable library of games that would justify the investment." Even if you want to use sales figures as a metric, a place like PAX East is not going to be a good representative sample. I've had a 3DS since launch day, but it sure as shit wasnt worth buying at the time.
Honestly, I spend more time dicking around in the "world" of the 3DS, with the miis, the Nintendo video, the drawing app, and demos from the estore, than I do playing games bought in a store. I think I'm only on my third "major" game on the system, but I get the thing out all the time to play with the other stuff. So I'm not sure I agree with your metric. Games sales may be one thing, but people carrying their 3DS and using it are another. Besides, there are so many DS games that play just fine on it, that whenever I get streetpassed, I'm just as likely to see the other person has last played a DS game on it as a 3DS game.
