This is it, guys. This is the breakout, must-buy hit that WiiWare needed to justify its existence. LostWinds is a beautiful and unique exploration-based platformer that takes full and natural advantage of the Wii's control setup. Due to its short length, it would be hard to justify a retail release without costly additions and the expected amount of gameplay bloat, but thanks to WiiWare, LostWinds has the potential to thrive at a low price point of $10.
And you'd better damn well buy it, if you know what's good for you.
I loved Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on GameCube. Many didn't. I'm guessing this is because they attempted to play the single-player mode, which is universally described as the most horrible and painful thing in the history of video games. Crystal Chronicles wasn't meant to be played this way, though. Assuming you had the extra GBAs, link cables, and warm bodies to back it up, FFCC offered a unique and satisfying cooperative multiplayer experience the likes of which has never been seen in a game before or since.
But forget all that. FFCC: My Life as a King is a totally different beast. Unlike the cooperative action-RPG that preceded it, FFCC's new WiiWare entry is a simulation-styled city-building game that inverts the usual RPG setup. Where most RPGs place you in the role of a hero in service of a king, My Life as a King lets you to be the monarch in charge of who lives and who dies in a town of your creation. But does it work?
Faced with the difficult choice between the innovative cuteness of LostWinds and the familiarity of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles universe in My Life as a King, I instead decided to make Nnooo's Pop my first WiiWare download. The games that required thinking could wait, I figured. I just want to pop me some bubbles.
And that's what I did. I didn't count on the possibility that it might be a good game, though. I figured I'd play it for a few minutes, write a scathing and dismissive review, and be done with it. But no! As unlikely as it seems, this bubble-popping simulator's got some depth to it, and I'd even go so far as to say that it's worth your money.
They're here! The first batch of downloadable WiiWare games has hit the Wii Shop Channel, and the lineup is looking mighty fine indeed. Here's a quick rundown of what's currently available:
- Defend Your Castle (XGen Studios, 500 Points)
- Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles -- My Life as a King (Square Enix, 1,500 Points)
- LostWinds (Frontier Development, 1,000 Points)
- Pop (Nnooo, 700 Points)
- TV Show King (Gameloft, 1,000 Points)
- V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack (High Voltage, 700 Points)
While the games I've been looking forward to the most (Dr. Mario Online Rx and, of course, Major League Eating: The Game) are unfortunately nowhere to be seen as of yet, games like LostWinds, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles -- My Life as a King, and Defend Your Castle look like they're worth a shot. I'll eventually get around to playing every WiiWare game this week, so expect to see some impressions soon.
Nintendo's official press release follows the jump. Which games catch your eye?
Boom Blox is a game whose pre-release hype went from "wuh?" to "yay!" with amazing speed, and after release its reputation only seems to be improving. Reviews are good and even the sort of rigid fan who screams about EA being the devil may be finding him or herself tempted to play this one. I know it's on the list of games I want to get to playing once Deadline Hell wraps up.
So what the hell is Boom Blox? Unless you went out of your way to follow previews very closely, you probably just know it involved cute cube-shaped creatures and lots of explosions. The full game appears to be more of a puzzle title than an action game, but there appear to be some platformer-like elements to the gameplay. How well does Boom Blox pull off its premise? Let's let the critics tell us.
Boom Blox
A good E3 lets you see enough games that you can write about damn near everything that comes out until just a few months before the next E3 with confidence. That sure as hell isn't going to be true for this year, as two of the most important third-party publishers for Nintendo are among the increasingly long list of companies sitting this year's event out... at least officially.
Activision Blizzard's sit-out is a real shocker, hinted to be the result of bad blood with current ESA leadership. If they're not at E3, that means whatever they're doing with Guitar Hero 4 on the Wii and Guitar Hero On Tour for DS is also going to be a no-show. Rhythm games are unusually well-suited to play on the display floor, so losing the chance to play these titles is crap.
Losing Atlus is a really big deal if you like small, weird Japanese games and of course the great output from Atlus the developer. No Atlus means no Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 and probably a bevy of other unannounced Nintendo DS titles making a no-show.
It's great that the Wii is getting a version of Rock Band, although right out of the gate it's missing two key features: no DLC, and no online multiplayer. DLC is getting released for the Wii (and PS2) in the form of... an expansion disc. Oooh. How 1998.
The disc's pricing is a little interesting. The disc is set to ship for $29.99, which means that Wii and PS2 buyers get the 20 songs included for roughly $10 less than their next-gen counterparts despite costs of packaging and shipping. Of course, an expansion disc buyer doesn't get to pick and choose songs the way a 360 or PS3 player does. (Check out a track list of included songs behind the cut.)
Opinions seem pretty divided on the subject not of whether or not the disc is kind of lame compared to true DLC (it is), but exactly how lame it is. On the one hand, Wii owners had no reason to expect any sort of extra tracks, and in that respect the expansion disc is a pleasant surprise. The track selection for the disc is decent, but on the other hand, a horribly tiny fragment of what the next-gen owners have to choose from.
Rock Band
A few years ago... well, more than that, but still... an upcoming GBA game called Project Exile was drawing unusually positive buzz. It was an RPG that looked like it was going to have one of those epic plots that 2D games have rarely attempted since the heyday of Phantasy Star and Shining Force. Even better, it was coming from totally unknown developers Studio Archcraft, so it had the allure of the heartfelt indy game. Sadly, Project Exile, like so many in-progress projects, ended up falling off the enthusiast press's radar.
Well, there's some hope for Project Exile now. It's back under the new title Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled for Nintendo DS, and publisher Graffiti Entertainment seems confident that the game can finally ship before Q2 2008 is out. The game has a new ,a href="http://www.graffitientertainment.com/downloads/BlackSigil/BlackSigilOfficialTrailer.wmv">trailer out that makes it look like an old school RPG gamer's delight, and in general, it's good to see smaller and more personal projects like this thriving.
So technically this announcement is a few days old, but it doesn't seem to be widely reported and I can't quite believe this is actually happening. JoWood and Dreamcatcher, producers of... what the hell, a bunch of things I've never heard of and that crappy Agatha Christie Wii adventure game... well, yeah, those guys just announced a DS game called Driver's Ed Portable. You're thinking "What, like Brain Training for Driver's Ed?" And yes, you are correct.
This is not a game design that makes sense on any level, or should work at all. Yet, JoWood/Dreamcatcher is forthrightly stating that they'll offer a version with rules relevant to all 50 U.S. states, 13 Canadian provinces, and five different European countries. There's one segment meant to help you study for the written test, and then mini-games designed to develop reflexes. The whole thing is supposed to be available this Fall, but will it be useful? Will it be fun? Will anyone want to buy this thing? That remains to be seen.
Full press release info behind the cut.
Sorry to flake out on you for a few days, folks, and it may happen again soon. Deadline season's getting thick. For now, though, I am back with a long-overdue and frankly heartbreaking look at Gamecock's Insecticide, a DS game that appeared to be one of the most exciting prospects going at last year's E3. As with a lot of games that look great on the show floor, though, something didn't quite come together with this one.
With a metacritic average sitting at 55%, the reviews suggest that quite a lot didn't quite come together. Most reviews cite the camera, but you'll see all kinds of complaints before we're through. Really, it's a shame, because Insecticide had a dynamite premise and a creative pedigree that didn't leave any reason to think the final product would've been anything but fun to play. Anyway, if you want to see the anatomy of how not to polish up a game for release, then jump under the cut.
Insecticide
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