Now Playing: 10.27.2011

Fluffy Star Warriors, WiiWare JRPGs, and cardboard Pokémon invade our personal spaces this week. Oh, and some imaginary babyz.

By Andrew Hsieh. Posted 10/27/2011 18:00 Comment on this     ShareThis

Fancy buying a video game or two this week? There’s a lot out there– and that’s where Nintendojo’s Now Playing column comes in. Check out the list, and lean back as we figure out just what these games are all about.


Note: titles in grey apply to Europe only.

Wii

October 24, 2011
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (Nintendo)
October 25, 2011
Monster High: Ghoul Spirit (THQ)
National Geographic Challenge! (UTV Ignition)
October 28, 2011
We Sing Rock! (Nordic Games)

WiiWare

October 27, 2011
ANIMA Ark of Sinners (Anima Game Studio)

3DS

October 24, 2011
Pokémon Rumble Blast (Nintendo)
October 25, 2011
Cute Puppies (Ubisoft)
Horses 3D (Ubisoft)
Imagine Babyz 3D (Ubisoft)
NCIS (Ubisoft)

Nintendo eShop

October 27, 2011
Pyramids (Enjoy Gaming)
Burger Time Deluxe (G-Mode)

Nintendo Video

October 27, 2011
Thriller (DreamWorks Animation)

Nintendo DS

October 25, 2011
Monster High: Ghoul Spirit (THQ)
Kirby Mass Attack (Nintendo)

DSiWare

October 27, 2011
Halloween: Trick or Treat (Virtual Playground)
Academy: Checkers (Gamelion)


Look, Nintendo, this isn’t hard. You’re a video game company. You clearly want people to have money so that they’ll buy your games. So why in Gunpei Yokoi’s name would you release two Kirby games in one week? How are we going to scrounge to buy those things? We’ll have to go back to our job of making plastic banana peels for joke shops, and let me tell you, the health benefits there are just short of miserable. And the boss looks suspiciously like Donkey Kong.

Aside from Kirby (whose identity-shifting over the past years is perfect for Halloween week) we’ve got a number of other games this week– which is unfortunate for those games, because Kirby is pretty much impossible to keep down, as Super Smash Bros. Brawl can attest to. Monster High: Ghoul Spirit, based on the popular (?) line of dolls inspired by horror fiction, is just scary-looking enough to fulfill its place on Halloween week, as are Ubisoft’s rather horrifying forays into 3DS. I mean, look at Imagine Babyz 3D. We even tried to imagine these babyz some time ago and we utterly failed, mainly because, really, these babies are Hardcore. What’s even more terrifying is Horses 3D andCute Puppies. They’re just so broad-sounding, you know? Who knows whether Horses 3D will, in fact, feature three-dimensional The Godfather impressions, or whether Cute Puppies has all the hideous rejects from Nintendogs?

(Now that we think about it, being in Nintendogs smacks of being in the world’s most popular fraternity. Pledges probably have to take long walks out in the rain, and suffer abandonment in a lonely room for months at a time. It’s reasonable– if they can’t survive this, how will they survive the actual game?)


She’s no Sonia Belmont, but she can try to be!

What’s really interesting this week is ANIMA Ark of Sinners, a game from the eponymous Anima Game Studio that’s making its debut right on WiiWare, for 1000 points. And as some reviewers have already pointed out, it looks a lot like old-school, two-dimensional Castlevania! The difference? ANIMA is apparently a JRPG, which probably makes it one of the few available on WiiWare– the others, off the top of our heads, comprising the Final Fantasy IV: The After Years episodes. Yeah, bit of a drought there, which is why ANIMA doesn’t look bad at all! Graphics are a little eh, but that comes with the territory in WiiWare these days. Unless your name is Lost Winds, in which case, here, take all my money.

Finally, let’s talk about Pokémon Rumble Blast, which thankfully looks a lot better than the Wii version, Pokémon Rumble. Actually, that undersells Pokémon Rumble— we’ve played this game, and considering it’s basically Dynasty Warriors with cardboard Pokémon, it’s actually extremely entertaining. The only problem with the original game is that it’s even more repetitive than usual– instead of pressing the same button over and over again like with Koei’s games, Pokémon Rumble has players pressing the same button over and over again in the same stages over and over again. It’s safe to say this makes things pretty dull. Fortunately, Pokémon Rumble Blast looks like it has more stages and more Pokémon– the original only had the first generation’s. And of course this game is in 3D, which as Nintendo would say, is a Big Improvement.

But what we’ll really be playing this week is Burger Time Deluxe. Hey, we’re just feeling hungry.


Any of these games catch your eye? Gonna play some Kirby? Maybe ditch him for ANIMA? Let us know in the comments!

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