Mario Galaxy or how Nintendo Cheats

I finally got around to playing Mario Galaxy after the break. I wasn't allowed to buy it before xmas since it was on my list but then no one bought it for me...so I had to do the honorable thing and borrow it from someone who had already beaten it.

I'm 68 stars in and I'm not sure how much further I'm going to go. I feel like 70'ish is the sweet spot for the game. I feel like I've seen almost everything the game has to offer and after this I'll just be OCD and torturing myself to collect 100 purple coins within 2 minutes. Once I got 60 I went straight to the final boss which definitely could have been better. Instead of adding any new mechanics he's just more or less a homework test. You just do the same thing you did earlier in the game but multiple times in a row. Shrug.

My real problem with the game is I kind of feel like Nintendo cheated with this game. When you make a modern 3d action platformer game there are ALL these problems - camera, level design, level pacing, cohesion, blah blah. With Galaxies I feel like they said, 'ok - instead of trying to solve all these problems lets just remove as many as possible!'

Camera? Well - what are the problems with camera? Walls, collision, etc so lets just get rid of those problems by making the play space spherical! Anytime the world isn't spherical the camera breaks down SUPER fast. The bootleg go into first person mode to look around was a crutch that didn't even work 1/2 the time for me.

Level Design? I could make some comment about how the small worlds keep the fun focused but in all honesty this game has pretty damn good Level Design. Especially the 2d'ish worlds with the gravity going all crazy.

Level Pacing? I think they did kick this one out for sure. Usually going from point A to point B requires keeping the trip fun for the player. Sometimes it's just having level 1 dudes to kill along the way. Mario Galaxy totally gets rids of this problem by jumping from one plane to the next via a star. The problem I have with this is most of the time I really don't know where I'm going - I just jump in because there is no where else to go. In some instances it's really hard to go backwards also - in case I didn't have enough star bits for the first section and needed to collect more.

Cohesion? This one is a double edged sword. I really do like this game since you are doing something new all the time. At the same time - this game is kind of exhausting because you are doing something new! Galaxy feels very much like Mario and Wario Ware combined. Maybe this design choice was more telling of how popular the DS is and how to make this game feel like a portable game? shrug. While I was excited to get the next star it was only really my curiosity that made me push on. I felt like I could have stopped almost anywhere in the game and not have regretted it. Maybe thats part of the charm? Not sure.

The biggest problem I have with the game is the overall lack of exploration. In mario64 you could enter a world and maybe have immediate access to 4 of the 6 stars. In Galaxy I felt like I deviated from what they wanted me to do maybe once...maybe twice. I'm no longer exploring the level that they have given me - I'm just along for the ride. I hella forget how Sunshine handled this to be honest.

After that it really bums me out that Nintendo can't figure out how to do swimming in 3d. The swimming were by far the worst fucking levels. That and 'spring' mario. The flowers - ice and fire sucked being on a timer also. There was really no need for it.

There are a couple of other nitpicking things I didn't like about the game - how long it takes after you get a star to get back to the same level to get the next star. Along with why are there even lives? I played once for about 4 hours straight and had 40'ish lives saved up. Saved the game for dinner and when I started back up I only had what is it? 4 or 5? Whatever you start off with. Thanks....

That being said I think they did a really good job of taking complex shapes in 3d space and really simplifying it and while still making it fun. I think the game is a definite must play but I wouldn't give it 10 out of 10.

Uncharted

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully everyone reading this has played Uncharted or doesn't plan to play it at all because I'm going to spoil the hell out of the game. Read at your own peril! Haha...

During the PS2 years I treated Naughty Dog and Insomniac much like Pepsi and Coke. I am definitely a fan of Coke (Mexican Coke FTW) and Ratchet was my addiction. I fell in love with Ratchet and finished all of them - aside from that terrible Dead Locked one that should have never come out. I tried to play every Jak game and could only stomach them for an hour at the most. I don't know why - they just didn't grab me.

With the PS3 things have definitely changed. While I still <3 the Ratchet (absolute must play if you own a PS3) I couldn't stand Resistance what so ever. I played it long enough so that it became a modern shooter (health regeneration) but quit after that. A lot of people tell me it's a great game and they very well may be correct - but the game isn't for me and I'll probably never finish it. Uncharted on the other hand - is the first Naughty Dog game I've completed since umm...Way Of The Warrior I'm guessing? Uncharted offers everything I want in a videogame - good story, good acting, fun platforming, short game time, good feeling main character, etc.

BTW, avoid the demo of Uncharted that you can download on PSN. I downloaded the demo and never wanted to play the game after playing it for some reason. I was having lunch with 2 of the sound guys from GoW2 (Chuck and Todd) who had both played it and told me how good the game was - if it wasn't for that lunch I would have never played the game. In fact...almost all demo's I download off of PSN turn out to be not fun for some reason - Simpson's, motorstorm, etc.

Anyway, after beating Uncharted and barely just starting Assassin's Creed I must fully admit that 'next-generation' character interaction is upon us. These 2 games have completely raised the bar on how a character interacts with the environment. And I'm not even talking about super technical things like how Uncharted has IK on the feet and AC's doesn't - just the small things that really help sell the world. Drake walks down the German boat and blends from his normal navigation to putting out his hand and stepping over something in the way then going back to his normal nav. All the while I never let go of pushing nothing more then 'forward' on the controller. Knowing how much work is needed to get all of this to work I was definitely impressed. (Animation, level design, collision, detection, blending, etc)

Not all is perfect with Uncharted - thats for sure. After playing this game and Resident Evil 4 I'm pretty convinced that Jet Ski's should be banned from all videogames. Including Wave Racer. There is this great chase scene where the chick drives the jeep and you get to shoot fools nonstop. It's all fun and exciting and you wanna do it again when you finish. Then you get on a jet ski and Drake is all, 'I'll drive!' The problem is that you control Drake for driving and the chick for shooting. So you have to come to a complete stop to shoot then drive some more. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Not to mention going up the waterfalls and what not. Definitely the lowest point in the game.

I'm slowly starting to get sick of achievements - especially in 'real' games. My friend Nate says they should be removed from all games except for arcade games or maybe just in multiplayer. As I'm playing Uncharted and blowing dude's heads off it rewards me by saying, '20 kills with the handgun' or whatever it says. Even though I like the handgun now I start feeling the need to get 20 kills with all the guns that are in the game. Which *may* have been OK if all the guns were drastically different or classed out but it felt like there was a lot of overlap. I couldn't really tell the difference between the AK and the M16. At one point I stopped the game and thought to myself, 'man - I'm just playing the game of kill X dudes with certain guns and not playing Unchrated.' At that point I just finished the game with the guns that *I* liked.

The melee definitely feels tacked on as well. They try a few mechanics such as if the enemy is killed with a special combo (square, triangle, square) then they drop twice the normal amount of ammo. This combo feels messy to say the least and I could never tell when to push the next button or if I had really performed it correctly.

The kills on the other hand are really well animated and feel rewarding. I like the leg tackle and some of the other ones. However I think I went through the whole game and used melee maybe less then 10 times total.

While I had a lot of fun with the story - there were too many bad guys. They could have easily cut one or combined 2 of them into one to clean things up. Speaking of bad guys, the final battle definitely could have used some lovin'. To the ND guys - I'm not hating - I worked on a game with Hades and Ares so I fully understand how these things happen.

All in all though - everyone should check out Uncharted as it is definitely in my top 5 favorite games of 2007.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to blog more. So this is an attempt. Hopefully it was somewhat entertaining.