Welcome back to another edition of Week: End Game: On! What games are the Dojo staffers playing this weekend? Read on to find out!
Anthony Vigna
After stopping by Club Nintendo , I snagged two of the games that are free this month: Super Mario World on Wii U and Trajectile on 3DS! To celebrate, I spent a good chunk going through Super Mario World to see how far I’d get within two hours. As it turns out, I got pretty far! Seriously I’m already at Bowser’s Castle! The fact that I used a warp to get there totally counts as actual progress, right?
I didn’t take on Bowser just yet though. Instead, I went straight to the special world to see all those ridiculous levels named after words that only people from the ’90s would use. You know, words like “radical” and “tubular.” Who ever said the word tubular in a sentence and was 100 percent serious about it? Not only is that word dumb, but the level in the game is pretty annoying as well! Basically, you have to fly through the entire stage at 1mph as an inflated Mario while multiple Chargin’ Chucks throw a cavalcade of baseballs and footballs at your face! It was ridiculously frustrating, but I’m proud to say that I eventually beat it.
…no, I will not tell you how many times it took me to do that. That would hurt my gaming pride!
Marc Deschamps
This week, I started playing GoldenEye on Nintendo Wii after allowing the game to sit on my shelf for over three years, untouched. While I have confessed on Nintendojo that I once had a bone-headed bias toward Super Mario 64 during the early days of the N64, I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned the fact that I wasn’t particularly fond of GoldenEye, either. While the title was a staple of the all-night gaming sessions my friends and I would have back in middle school and high school, I was really, really bad at GoldenEye. Unlike my friends, I didn’t own the game, and never had a particularly fond opinion toward first-person shooters. Christmas 2010 seemed like the perfect opportunity to bury the hatchet with Bond (just as I had with Mario when Super Mario Sunshine came out in 2002), but I happened to get another game that Christmas that stole my attention. That game was Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Bond was, once again, neglected.
Now that I’ve finally played it, I can say that it isn’t too bad. I’m still not particularly good at it, but I am enjoying it so far. The Wii Remote controls are leaving my arm a little tired, so I’m considering switching to the Wavebird, but I hate to switch now that I’ve finally gotten used to the button layout. I guess we’ll see!
In Animal Crossing: New Leaf news, I finally got a Sleek Wall! Now I just need a Sleek Carpet and my collection is complete! Cobb told me today that he was thinking about moving, and I quickly talked him out of it. After all the work I’ve done to make his home less creepy, this is my reward? That hurts, Cobb.
Robert Marrujo
Life’s been a marathon, lately. Between classes, art, and writing, I’m feeling myself be ground into a fine dust on a daily basis. It’s worth it, though. That long-gestating project I’ve mentioned in the past just needs a couple finishing touches and it’s off to the races! I can’t wait for all our Nintendojo readers to see it. As a result, though, I’ve had little time to actively play anything. To help myself unwind, I think that this weekend I’m going to kick back and play some Viewtiful Joe on GameCube. That game is as fresh today as when it first came out. It’s a shame Capcom hasn’t done anything with the property in years, as today’s powerhouse consoles would be a perfect fit for its stylized graphics.
Trouble is brewing with my Wii U, though. Angela and I have been playing Brawl via the console’s Wii mode, and the other night I took what I thought to be an innocuous screenshot. I was trying to restart a match when it happened, as I accidentally hit the wrong buttons and took the pic. It saved to the system’s memory, and now I’m getting the same error message as the first time my Wii U died on me, which says that the Wii’s system memory is corrupted. Sigh. Nintendo fixed it for me before, but I lost everything I’d ever had saved on my old Wii as a result. All my game data gone, followed by hours of redownloading titles. I do NOT want to do this again, but it looks like I have little choice. Pray for me, people…
Andy Hoover
Sweet jumping plumber it’s been a while since I’ve chimed in!
My gaming has recently been split between two types of sessions: sitting down in front of a console or being too lazy to actually move to my console and just playing a handheld.
I plan to use the former to continue my replay of the first two Infamous games so I can finally get around to playing Infamous: Second Son, also known as the reason to wipe the dust off my PS4.
As for the latter, I think I’ll keep on playing Pokémon Battle Trozei for 3DS. I never really played the DS original that much so it took me a while to really pick up on the intricacies of the game, of which there are actually quite a few. Altogether I think the game did a brilliant job of combining the addictive nature of a match three puzzler with the characters and concepts of Pokémon. However, I still feel like I should at least I should try to boot up something else, because my 3DS backlog is getting embarrassing.
Angela Marrujo
I’m still plodding away at Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, but plodding isn’t the greatest word because I’m actually having a fantastic time revisiting it. TTYD is, in my humble opinion, the best of the Paper Mario games. The writing, storyline, supporting cast, everything just come together so well in this game that every time I start it up I want to keep playing for hours on end.
Unfortunately, by the time I get out of work I only end up getting a couple of hours with the game, if that, before it’s back to work in the morning, but every time I play I keep running into characters and situations in the story I’d forgotten about that make me laugh out loud. Tonight I was in Petalburg and the ancient Koopa mayor kept referring to Mario as Murphy, and then I had to participate in a game show quiz with a Thwomp who told me I was in for a terrible fate (and then had to clarify that by terrible, he means awful).
I’m looking forward to my continued time with TTYD.
Anthony Pershkin
I’ve been having a blast burning through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed I and II. I originally dismissed those games due to the massive whining of Star Wars fans and other people alike, but now I feel kind of stupid, because The Force Unleashed is right up my alley. Surprisingly enough, I’m enjoying the sequel a lot more than the original, which is considered to be superior. Personally, I think The Force Unleashed II got more polish and it is a more streamlined action game than its predecessor. There’s less goofing around with the powers and more of an actual game.
The story in both titles is surprisingly solid. Nothing too spectacular, but quite entertaining overall. I also have the Wii versions of both games, in case I need more “unleashing” in my daily life. From what I’ve played in the past, they seem very different from their HD brothers, so it should be interesting to experience The Force Unleashed I and II in a new way.
What games are you looking forward to playing this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
Nitpick: It’s Pokemon Battle Trozei, not Torzei.
Must’ve slipped by me earlier. Fixed now. :)