Week: End Game: On 08.18.12

Welcome to Week: End Game: On! After a short hiatus, we’re back with all our staff’s weekly gaming endeavours and boy do we have a special edition for you. From Pokédex challenges to reformed eldery gamers, our staff have certainly been keeping busy so let’s get this round table on the road!

Pierre Bienaimé

Having recently replaced my lost copy of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, that’s what I’ll be playing these next few days. I can’t get enough of this series, and hopefully Intelligent Systems will follow their current projects with some more turn-based goodness. I’m also pretty keen on Dust: An Elysian Tail, a 2D XBLA game that dropped this week. I’m halfway done with the game, going by the completion percentage offered in game.

Oh, and Cut the Rope. I’m making slow progress, but only because I want to three-star every level!

Kyle England

This weekend, and most of the past month really, has been all about Pokémon for me. In July my computer went kaput (hence my absence from the Dojo), and in my ennui from lack of internet, I picked some old Pokémon adventures back up. Most recently I have been playing through Pokémon Black Version. My team is top notch, if I do say so myself. It includes Ferrothorn, who is the meanest defensive Pokémon I have ever raised. Ferrothorn’s defense stat is through the roof, and he has the ability Iron Barbs which damages any opponent that uses a physical attack against it. Couple that with the held item Rocky Helmet (which doubles the damage dealt with Iron Barbs), and using Iron Defense, and you have an impenetrable Pokémon that causes opponents to faint from attacking it.

Do not mess with this.. catcus?

With my renewed interest in Pokémon, I have decided to do what I have always wanted to do, but never could: complete the National Pokédex by catching every single creature. A tough task for sure, but I already have many event Pokémon and legendaries. And if I can do that, I think I want to shoot for an even higher goal– make a living Pokédex. That is, having in my PC Boxes one of every single kind of Pokémon. It’s crazy, but I want to be the very best. Like no one ever was.

But later this weekend I will probably take a break from traveling Unova to pick up a copy of New Super Mario Bros. 2 for Nintendo 3DS. I really really would like to get a 3DS XL along with it, but that will have to wait for now.

Nicolas Vestre

Lately I’ve been playing Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door yet again, and I’ve just finished conquering the Glitz Pit. Now, however, it’s time for a fun Virtual Console break! I’ve been meaning to download Ufouria: The Saga for the past two years, and now I finally did it! Progress so far has been scant, and I’ve died an awful lot– usually because I go the opposite way of those helpful directional arrows that keep popping up. To damage enemies, one has to press down on the control pad as they descend; it would have been helpful to have been privy to that information sooner!

Effectively using the entirety of the Wii Points on my card, I also downloaded Pulseman for Sega Genesis, which is developed by Game Freak of Pokémon fame, as well as Alex Kidd in Miracle World for Master System. Both should prove to be entertaining, and I’m really looking forward to playing them.

Only four more courses to go in Mario Kart 7 before I’ve gotten a good race time on every track! I’ve had this game for months, and in anticipation of New Super Mario Bros. 2, I told myself I’d master (to the feeble extent I can) every track in the game before Mario’s latest platformer gets released. As of late, I’ve been doing about one track a day, so I’m going to have to double up to finish in time. I’m saving the last course in the game to play on 3DS XL… did I mention I’m getting one of those things this weekend?

“Of course Nic, critical thinking is the key to success!”

Slowly but surely I’ve been inching my way through Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and I’m having a great time. It’s always interesting when one goes to great lengths to solve a puzzle that ends up being extremely simple– of course you’re supposed to light the match first! Trick question!

Lastly there’s Fez for Xbox 360, where I’ve gone much further since my game froze itself and died. This game is a lot of fun, and has intricate secrets for those who are willing to search for them. Unfortunately, without the help of the internet, many things (such as the secret language) go right over my head. It’s always been this way with these games for me (I can’t even begin to play Myst). For now I’ll do everything I can, having full knowledge that I have a Microsoft Points card waiting for me.

Bradly Hale

Oh God, I love this game – I love The Last Story! If you’ve been reading my WE:GO reports over the past several months, you may have recognized that I’ve been fiendishly anticipating the arrival of Mistwalker’s latest JRPG. Ever since I laid eyes on the game, I’ve been in love with it. Now, finally, I own it. I got the call from Gamestop this morning stating my pre-order arrived, so I promptly left work to pick it up. Unfortunately, since this was 10am this morning, and since I had clients to see throughout the day, I had to stare at the case for eight, grueling hours as it lay, tantalizingly, on my office desk in all of its beautiful retail packing splendor.

Needless to say, shortly after I got home from dinner tonight, I was able to sit down and fire it up. I was immediately sold at the title screen – I knew, just from that, this was going to be my kind of game. The first hour was riveting in and of itself, but from there, things have only gotten better. Unfortunately, despite having my Wii for several years, and never running into a single problem with it, three hours into the game, my machine locked up, and continued to lock up every time I triggered a certain cutscene in the game. What are the odds?! I take this certainly as a sign of karma. Anyhow, refusing to let my game experience be tarnished by my uncooperative system, I just simply drove my ass to Walmart right quick and bought another Wii, transferred over my data (thankfully my Wii is modded), and continued playing. Yeah, that happened, and I’m not ashamed of it.

Is The Last Story worth buying a Wii for? Apparently it is if you’re Bradly…

Anyhow, I love this game, I really do. The battling mechanics, the art style, the music, the story, the characters – oh hot damn, the characters! – it’s all brilliant. I am typically a fan of traditional JRPGs, which provided me with [some] trepidation with The Last Story merely because it’s battling system was anything but conventional, but I have to say, now that I’m playing it, TSL is just the right blend of new and old elements. It feels strangely familiar, yet entirely new thanks to the incorporation of some very innovative gameplay mechanics; a JRPG with cover-based tactics?! Blasphome, I say! Gah, I love it though!

If you are a fan of the genre, you owe it to yourself to purchase this game. I mean hell, after all, I just, on a whim, went out and bought a brand new Wii, just so I could continue playing it. I think that truly speaks to the quality of the title. Thus, I think it goes without being said, I will be playing The Last Story all weekend long. Fortunately I don’t have any plans, other than to get in a few rounds of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and see the Expendables 2, so you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be wasting away hours of my life in Lazulis City. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some more JRPG goodness to get down on.

Katharine Byrne

I’m trying to tear myself away from Theatrhythm Final Fantasy this weekend– I really am. There are just so many other games I need to get back to playing, like Radiant Historia or Project Zero 2: Wii Edition. I haven’t even started the latter, but I did play about half an hour of Radiant Historia about two months ago, and then I got rather… sidetracked. If I don’t get back to it soon, I’m almost sure that I’ll have forgotten what’s going on! And that’s never a good thing. That said, Theathrhythm is just so easy to play for a quick injection of Final Fantasy goodness that it’s kinda hard to stop once I’ve done a few challenges or completed some Dark Notes. But I must be strong and put it to one side. Deep breaths…

Joseph Nelson

During my visit home to London, aside from watching the Olympics and seeing family and friends, I was reunited with my Wii. My joyous reunion came to an abrupt end, however, when I realised that despite owning her own Wii, my Sister had taken up residence in my bedroom during my absence to play Rock Band. I think it was probably due to my Mother playing Wii Fit Plus constantly. I have no idea whether she was any good, as I’m not sure her skills as a cellist translate to the stratocaster. One of the drumsticks was missing though, so I think she was just playing drums. By playing, I almost certainly mean flailing her arms until the stick makes contact with something… anything.

After tripping over the myriad Unicorn plush toys my Sister had smuggled into my domain, and disconnected the instruments, I decided to play Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. It’s an old game, but I love it, and I’m hoping the upcoming Wii U title Avengers: Battle for Earth will be a sort of spiritual sequel to the Ultimate Alliance series (I’m including X-Men Legends and its sequel in this too). These games mix the inimitable characters that Marvel has created over the years and throw them into storylines written specifically for the games. Think of them as a sort of…video game movie.

If you’re wondering what the hell this is, it’s the first result that comes up when you put “unicorn playing drums” into Google Images.

I also went to visit my Nan, too. Some of you will remember in the Rage Quits round table a while back that playing Wii with my Nan is never a good idea, due to her violent outbursts during New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Luckily, we hid the game from her so well that we don’t remember where we put it. So I instead played against her on Wii Sports Resort. Dogfight mode on air sports is obviously the best, after Swordsplay, but my Nan says that game is ‘too vigorous’. Just never play an 18 hole game of Frisbee Golf on multiplayer mode. It went on FOREVER.

Now that our staff have shared, it’s your turn! What have you been playing this week? Be sure to let us know in the comments’ section below!