Syu-Pa Pa-I-Pa Ma-Ri-O

That's my Hongul-to-English attempt at Super Paper Mario. I've been playing it, relying heavily on a guide since I can't read any of the text. Despite my lack of understanding of the plot (with a few exceptions where I happen to be in the company of a native speaker), it's a lot of fun.

The game's got a cast of funny but childish playable characters and bosses. The little colorful butterfly next to mario is a spirit who helps you along your way. You can use a variety of different helpers, each with a different skill, mostly to defeat enemies and solve simple yet fun puzzles. Most puzzles involve flipping from the 2D view to a kind of 3D-2D mix.

Some objects that cannot be seen in 2D can be seen in 3D so you end up switching back and forth to reveal new paths and enemies.

The game has a pretty simple menu interface, as I can even navigate it in Hongul. This is a good thing for me.

It also includes the usual cast. So far I have Mario, Princess, and Bowser. Each have their own abilities and you can switch between them at any point. This also adds to some of the fun of the puzzles as you may have to switch to Princess to float over an area and then switch back to Mario in order to go into the 3D plane and reveal and new door, etc etc.

There's also some fun throwbacks to older games, like the giant original Nintendo Mario pictured above. You can also get a bunch of tiny little versions of him to bounce around and help you. All in all, it's a fun game, not amazing, but fun. I'll definitely finish it, and I've enjoyed it so far with the exception of a few dull points.

Spore Ends Up Failing

I was really liking Spore for a bit there, but I gotta say it fell off pretty quick. After the Creature Stage, you move onto the Tribal Stage, where you have a small town full of creatures that look like whatever you ended up with at the end of your creature stage plus some outfits and accessories that you can change around (most of which have no effect on your creatures whatsoever...lame). At this point the game is still reasonably fun, you have a few other tribes with which to interact, and you can sing to them and give them gifts to gain their favor or just kill 'em off. I did a little bit of both and it was fun for a while, then I advanced to the next stage.

The next stage is the Civilization Stage. The main issue I had at this point was that the game lost its initial appeal of evolving and changing around your creature while gaining new abilities etc. It began to feel like a mediocre RTS. I spent a lot of time designing buildings for my cities which I could barely see unless I zoomed in super close which was disappointing, seemed like it really wasn't worth all the effort. You can also create a land vehicle, boats and aircraft, and despite (once again) all the time one will take to design them, there isn't too much to do with them. I ended up just driving around collecting resources and blowing away other cities. It was pretty dull, and the next stage, the Space Stage, was no improvement.

I figured this could be pretty cool, advancing to space, exploring other galaxies! Nah, not really. This is probably the most boring of all...

...you just end up flying around from planet to planet doing menial tasks, abducting creatures, zapping the occasional enemy craft. All in all, it was not impressive. So while Spore has a really promising start, it really fails to deliver.

The graphics remain bright and bubbly and the sound effects are cool. The game has a good feel overall but I just wanted more from it. Eh, maybe I'll pick it up again some other time.

Spore

I started playing Spore this weekend and I'm enjoying it despite the fact that my creature keeps getting eaten and starving to death...
The game starts you as a microscopic organism and takes you through various levels of evolution, ending in space I believe. At the moment, I've gotten my guy outta the water and onto the land.

Here's a bit of my evolution so far...

One of the first stages of my on-land evolution.

Gave myself some wings and a horn-esque thing on my nose to impress.

I decided to go for kinda a mix between a dinosaur and an insect for this stage.

This is my current state. More insect-like than anything I guess. No, I have no idea why I put an eye on his chest...

I haven't really gotten the hang of the game quite yet. It seems pretty cool so far but I think I need to learn how to better customize my creature. There's a ton of options (arms, legs, pincers, ears, mouths, wings etc. etc. etc.). Each one costs a certain amount of DNA points and holds its own benefits such as the ability to impress and/or eat other creatures. I feel like my strategy from this point on is going to be to focus on either impressing or killing, not try to balance both of them.

As for the look and feel, the graphics are bright and colorful as are the sound effects and music. The game contains a wide variety of other creatures to encounter, all of which are very different in shape and size. The controls are simple, mostly just point-and-click and a couple number keys for various abilities. All in all, Spore is looking pretty good.

Final Thoughts on Prey

I finished Prey today and while it was fun, it was way too easy and altogether not that satisfying of a gaming experience. The game doesn't allow you to die...which is convenient but kinda makes battles seem pointless. You can just stand still, get shot at, die, come back...etc etc.

The spirit realm you get sent into when you run out of health. You shoot arrows at the red flying thingies to get your health back.

Some of the later weapons turned out to be pretty cool. I guess I just prefer more realistic weaponry to bizarre alien alternatives. The guns I really liked in the game were the first one, comprable to a machine gun/sniper rifle combo, the shotgun-like rifle that shoots green goo at your enemies and another gun that seemed like a chaingun or something. In a sci-fi environment it wouldn't really have made sense to have human weapons but I just find random alien crap kinda dull a lot of the time.

The shotgun-esque weapon and a view of your protagonist's girlfriend being tortured...good times.

Some of the scenery later in the game was pretty cool, lots of large geometric shapes containing reasonably fun puzzles and battles. This didn't make up for much though.

The final boss is within that box, probably the most fun fight in the game, but still not that great.

Overall, I wasn't impressed. Despite these few cool-looking scenes most of the game takes place in random alien hallways and caverns. The ability to change the center of gravity, allowing your character to essentially rotate rooms seemed cool at first but eventually got pretty tiresome and just rather confusing.

One of the cooler looking areas in the game.

The end was probably the most fun part, but I definitely am not gonna be playing it again. I don't really have much more to say about it.

Prey gets a B-...at best. I'm gonna tackle Spore next, we'll see if it does any better!

I Get to Finish Lost Odyssey!

Hooray for me! I'm back at my parent's house for the week so I can make delicious use of the High Definition wonderfulness that is their TV.
It's been a long 2 months...or something...since I've played Lost Odyssey after having been denied continued play just after reaching the final disk. But, be warned game, you will be defeated soon, and then I'll write about the crappy ending you will no doubt deliver to me.

Classic: The Double Beat Down

Something that seems to occur quite a bit in-game. I just thought I'd grab a nice shot of it. We approached each other, each swung our weapons at the same time and...well, the rest is history.

My Character Looking Cool Riding a Ghost

The post-title says it all. Don't I look like a badass that will totally shoot you to death?