More New Games

Tried Boom Blox Bash Party. Fun.

Tried Dream Pinball 3D. Fun, but:

It suffers from camera and framerate issues. The camera sometimes doesn’t follow the ball quickly enough, which is especially bad when the ball is headed at the flippers. More than once I lost the ball because it was offscreen. Also, the motion isn’t terribly smooth; the ball, when moving quickly, seems to jump from one place to another, and the flippers appear to just instantly go from down to up.

That said, I like it. It reminds me of Epic Pinball, somewhat. The tables are all very similarly laid out, but they are pretty fun. If the camera and framerate weren’t problematic, I’d say it’s definitely a good game. With those problems, it’s just an okay game. Nice design, fun, but not a must-have. Maybe more on this one later.

A Few Games

Tried NinjaBread Man. It sucks.

Tried Ninja Reflex. Didn’t suck as much as the previous game, but still not good.

Tried Boom Blox. Fun.

Tried Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. Meh. Not awful.

Tried Crayola: Colorful Journey. The idea is nice, but the execution is bad. Barely playable.

Tried Geometry Wars. Fun.

Tried NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. Fun, but I wasn’t very good at it.

Need to play some of these a bit more.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

18 stars, 9 comet coins. This is a good game.

Google Pac-Man

Played the Google Pac-Man logo game thing for a while. Pac-Man surely is a great game; if only modern games would take a lesson and focus a bit more on fun than on graphics, the world would be a better place.

Super Mario Galaxy: Complete

121 stars. I found Red-Hot Purple Coins to be easier than expected–I got it on the first try.

Just a little longer before I can play Super Mario Galaxy 2. I’ve read no previews nor watched any videos except one commercial, so I’m not sure what to expect. I hope, though, that it’ll be comparable to its predecessor. Well, I’ll know soon enough.

America’s Army 3

Tried out America’s Army 3 (which is apparently the second in the series, I think?), thinking that surely they had improved it since the last incarnation. This was not the case. In fact, I’m not sure they even got new dialogue during the training–it sounded very familiar.

The controls sucked, the graphics were bad, and the training (which I couldn’t even manage to force myself through) was a mixture of boring, repetitive, and pointless. Is there really a reason why I should sit through medical training when the application in-game is just ‘hold spacebar for three seconds per injury, regardless of type’? Eventually there was a test in which the player must select the right treatment, but I’m not sure whether that mechanic would eventually be part of the gameplay or if it was just there to justify forcing the player to sit through ten minutes of training.

In short, I think that they were clearly trying to push hard toward the realism end of the spectrum, at the expense of gameplay, but they failed even at that. I’m don’t think I’ll play this one any more, and it’s doubtful whether I’ll even try it again if there’s a new entry in the series. The game is free, but my time isn’t.

Coil

Played Coil on steam. I’m not totally clear on what the story is meant to be (which I think is intentional), but it was acceptably good, given its shortness. Doubt I’ll ever play through it again, though.

Lava Spire Daredevil Run is brutal

97 stars. Ouch.

Super Mario Galaxy, again

Got 96 stars. Some of these are hard. I spent nineteen lives on Cosmic Luigi Forest Race before I finally won; I kept falling when I was almost at the star. Very sad. Still, I hope to finish by the end of tomorrow.

Super Mario Galaxy progress

Got about 76 stars with Luigi on Super Mario Galaxy.