Animal Crossing: LGTTC EU Release Date

The UK website for Nintendo states that Animal Crossing will be released on the 5th December this year. The Wii Speak will launch simultaneously and will be sold seperately.

I’ll be getting both… for christmas.

First Impressions: Wario Land – The Shake Dimension

The Wario Land games started off on the gameboy. Being too young to have played the game (sad face) I only played Wario World, a mediocre attempt at a 3D Wario game. When I heard about there being a new 2D Wario Land game on the Wii, which is a console often criticised by Xbox and PS3 fans for not having HD graphics, I was a bit skeptical. But when I saw the screenshots, I was happy with how it turned out.

The game was released in Europe yesterday. Wario’s got to go into the Shake Dimension in order to defeat the evil Shake King. By doing this, he will get a great reward of treasure. The gameplay is similar to old 2D platformers, but with a twist. The Wii remote. You hold the Wii-mote sideways, and shake it to do a few things, like shaking items out of enemies.

The music in the game is quite good. And while, at least from what I’ve heard so far, it’s not orchestrated like Super Mario Galaxy’s soundtrack is, it’s still a great soundtrack from Nintendo. The cutscenes are completely hand-drawn, which (obviously) makes it look like a cartoon.

I’d reccomend buying this game if you haven’t bought at least 2 of the “bigger” games on the system (Zelda, Galaxy, Brawl, etc).

I may do a review of this soon, depending on whether or not I get the time.

First Impressions: Mega Man 9 (Wii)

Instead of getting SBCG4AP Ep 2, I downloaded Mega Man 9 this morning. I’ve only beat one boss, so this won’t be that great of a First Impressions post. Oh well.

Mega Man 9 is an 8-bit game, for the few of you that don’t know. So if you’re a graphics whore, you should probably you should probably not buy this. The story is that many robots have started reaking havoc on wherever it is Mega Man lives (I’m a Mega Man noob) and has framed Dr Light. It’s you’re job to clear his name, and defeat all the evil robots.

The music in the game is really good, even though it’s 8-bit. If you really like the music, you should probably buy the arranged album on Play-asia.com, like myself.

I’d reccomend the game to hardcore gamers, but casual may want to do a bit more looking into the game to see if they’ll enjoy it. Unfortunately, Xbox 360 owners will have to wait for a few days to play this.

First Impressions: Super Mario RPG – Legend of the Seven Stars + Why I haven’t got a few things done

WARNING: Before getting this game, make sure your TV can play in 60 Hz, or 480p. You will not be able to play the game if it doesn’t.

I decided to miss out on buying SBCG4AP Episode 2 on European launch date and instead buy Super Mario RPG, a game that Europe missed out on when it was released in Japan and the Americas on the Super Nintendo. The game was made by Square, now known as Square Enix, who are well known for there involvement in the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games.

It plays out like a traditional RPG, as you’d expect. It features an overhead view of Mario and his surroundings. It’s not fully 3D, but the character models are 3D. As you’d expect from a Mario game, there are some attacks that are obligitary for any Mario games, like the jump, but it also has the fireball. I’m currently up to a dragon boss, which is hard, in a word. It’s a recommended download from the Virtual Console. I may review it soon.

Also, the reason why I haven’t done my Mega Man review is because (you guessed it) it’s so damn hard to complete. (Sidenote: I HATE Iceman’s stage) And the reason why I don’t have my Dazzle yet is a longer story.

You may not know this, but I’m a teenager and live with my parents. My house is having an extension at the moment, and I thought it would be done by now, because I was told that many MANY months ago. Now, it’s due to be finished by about christmas. This is a problem because the TV I have at the moment doesn’t have any Composite outputs, and I won’t be getting a new TV until the extension is done. I could use another method, but it would take a hell of a lot of moving around. However, I could ask my unkle if he could give me some SCART things. Rather then explain what they are, which would take forever, I’ll just say that they have Composite outputs.

First Impressions: Kirby’s Adventure

I downloaded Kirby’s Adventure today because I had 500 Points. I have no interesting introduction, that’s the only reason I got the game. And because of THIS GUY’S playthrough.

Kirby’s Adventure is the second game of the Kirby series, and, I have to admit, I’ve never played the first one, so I can’t tell you what was new in this version of the game. This games graphics are very colourful for an NES game. The gameplay is very good, as you would expect from HAL Laboratory. You can suck people in to your mouth and take their special abilities, which is a really unique and very cool feature of the Kirby series. The boss battles in this game are pretty easy. The stratergy is normally the same. They attack, you dodge, they stupidly exploit their weaknesses and give you something to hit them with. Rinse and Repeat. I have gotten up to Butter Building. The game has really awesome music, and some of the music is remixed in other games, such as Super Smash Bros Brawl for the Wii. I would definitely reccomend downloading this, but because there is a demo in Super Smash Bros Brawl, I’d say you should try that out first, just incase you’re not into this kind of thing.

That’s it for this First Impressions. Reviews of this, Mega Man and Wii Fit will be coming shortly, and a First Impressions of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People should be coming tommorow, as that’s when trusty Wikipedia says it will be released on the European WiiWare.

First Impressions: Mega Man

In anticipation for the upcoming WiiWare, PSN and XBLA title, Mega Man 9, I’ve downloadd the first Mega Man on the Wii Virtual Console in an attempt to familiarize myself a bit with the franchise before buying Mega Man 9.

The first thing I noticed after the title screen was that people who reviewed this game were right. This game is pretty difficult. You can beat the bosses in any order, but I’m going clockwise starting with Cutman. The Cutman fight wasn’t hard when you’d figured out the stratergy.  The stages are crammed full of characters while you’re making your way to the boss, they all are determined to make your path to the bos as hell-ish as possible. Rather than talking about the difficulty, I’ll talk about the gameplay. The gameplay is pretty fun, and addicting. The stages are short, and there aren’t that many bosses on the menu screen, so I would gather that it’s a short game.  I’d definitely reccomend dusting off your NES or downloading this off the Wii Vrtual Console before buying Mega Man 9, because if Mega Man 9 is as difficult as it looks, you’re in for one heck of a challenge.

PS: I’ve also downloaded Kirby’s Adventure (I got a Points Card today), so look out for a First Impressions of that in a few minutes.

First Impressions: Defend Your Castle

Defend Your Castle is a Wiiware game based on the popular flash game of the same name. It’s developed by XGen Studios and was a WiiWare launch title in the NA, but out didn’t come out in Europe until recently. I downloaded it today and here are my thoughts on it.

Defend Your Castle is a game where many enemies try to destroy your castle. You are a giant, invisible hand, displayed as a cursor. Your job is to destroy these enemies before they weaken the castle. You are also in charge of what happens around the castle. For example, you can make the castle stronger and add many upgrades to the castle. It’s a pretty addictive game, even though the concept is simple. The graphics look like they were made out of paper, and the word health was deliberatly mis-spelled as “helth”. This is what makes the graphical style unique.

So far, I’m really pleased with the game and, for 500 Wii Points, I’d say it’s definitely worth the purchase. I’ll probably edit this post with a score for the game out of 10 at some point, but I wouldn’t post a review for the game because I’d just be repeating myself.

PS: I may be getting SBCG4AP soon, as it’s not out in Europe yet, so look out for a first impressions of that game.

PS: I’m too lazy too add tags at the moment. XD

E3 2008: AC Wii, Wii Sports 2 and…

After Nintendo’s E3 conference I didn’t feel the anticipation I normally do after a Nintendo press conference. There were some good announcements that we didn’t know about, like Wii Sports: Resort, Animal Crossing: City Folk and Grand Theft Auto on the DS. That being said, the majority was Nintendo talking about how well they did in the past year and trailers for third-party games, and the trailers showed nothing we didn’t already know about the games.

Of course, Animal Crossing was announced, under the title “Animal Crossing: City Folk”. Nintendo have finally made the leap that fans were screaming for and given them Online Voice Chat, which is named Wii Speak, and will come free with AC:CF. This time around, instead of having a, while fun, quite restricted town, you’ll have a city to explore, and this is where you’ll find the hairdresser. Here you can change hairstyles and (suprisingly) put on a mask to make you look like one of your Mii’s. Obviously, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection returns, so I’m happy.

Then there’s Wii Sports: Resort, designed to take advantage of the new Wii Motion Plus, which will make the Wii pick up more accurate motions of the wrist. I doubt that it will make a huge difference on the way we play games as Reggie seems to think, but, being the big Nintendo fan that I am, I’ll buy it.

Soon after that, we are re-introduced to Wii Music. You’ll be able to play 50 different instruments using the Wii remote and nunchuck. The conference ended by Miyamoto and other much less famous people playing the main theme of Super Mario Bros on Wii music.

By far the best third-party announcement (which isn’t saying much) is the announcement of Grand Theft Auto coming to the DS. It will take place in Librety City and will introduce more new characters to the series.

The conference for me and most people watching on UStream was a bit of a let-down. There was no Pikmin 3, no Starfox for the Wii and no DK Wii. The only game that the audience KNOWS will be great is Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Wario Land Videos

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension’s Japanese microsite has putup some nice little videos of the game. These videos include an introduction to the game presented in cartoony glory. And the other video is a gameplay trailer for the game, showing off its 2D graphics. For a 2D game, the graphics are pretty nice to look at, although it seems a bit odd that in the era of 3D gaming and realistic graphics, Nintendo would go and make their first fully 2D game on a home console in years. But, gameplay is more important than graphics afterall!

Here is a link to the Wario Land microsite. There are some transparent circles on the site, whcih probably means it will be updated in the coming days before its Japanese release date, meaning I’ll let you know about any updates!

For those of you looking for my Super Smash Bros Brawl review, I’m writing it at the moment, but it’s a huge game, so I have a few things to cover before I post it.

Super Smash Bros Brawl: First Impressions

Sorry about the delay. I should’ve had this up yesterday but I was playing Brawl obssessively.

Anyway, the first thing that one would do when starting up Brawl is seeing how the controls work in a Group Battle or Training mode. I use the GC controller and the controls work very well. There are 4 ways to play the game, as you’ve probably heard: Wiimote on its side, Wiimote and nunchuck, Classic Controller and (my personal favourite) the Gamecube Controller. The battles remain untouched except for a few things. There is a new Smash Ball that I’m sure many of you have heard of. The character who manages to break it open will get a very powerful special move.

You will spend quite a lot of time in Solo mode as well. Classic mode, Events mode and more await you in this menu. But for this first impressions, let me talk about the Subspace Emmisary. The Subspace Emmisary is where you’ll want to unlock new characters. Every character that isn’t playable at the start of the game can be unlocked here including characters that contributed a lot to the hype (for me anyway), Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog. SSE sees you clearing enemies of an area and then proceeding to another level. But the levels are not always like this. Near the start of the game, there is a level where you have to run away from a live statue, whilst fighting some enemies. The story of SSE is that the Ancient Minister wants to take over an un-named land, by planting bombs with a time limit in many different locations. He has many monsters at his disposal to try and slow you down, so the characters of Brawl will have to save the land by stopping the Ancient Ministers plots. Along the way, more characters will come to help you.

I think the game is very good at the moment. Good story mode, amazing group brawl, and online. What’s not to like. Look out for my review soon.