Late to the Party Video Game Review: Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker

                I have never played Super Mario 3D World, the game where Captain Toad got its start, but I can understand the idea behind making this a game all its own.  Captain Toad is incredibly addicting.  The graphics are great, the gameplay mechanics are relatively easy, though having to rotate the world you are on while trying to walk can be difficult at times, and the difficulty level is perfect.  This is a great puzzle game with short enough levels that you can start and stop whenever you want.  I continuously find myself say “okay, one more level, okay, just one more” and on and on. 

                The premise behind the game is simple, you collect stars to advance in the storybook (each page is a new level) until you reach the end and rescue your companion (Toad or Toadette, depending on which book you’re in).  There are also other collectibles in each level, such as the three diamonds you need to gather to advance in the book (certain pages are only accessible when you have gathered the requisite number of diamonds – kind of like the stars in Super Mario Galaxy).  There are also coins to be collected, and the always illusive Gold Mushroom.  The game starts off simply enough, and honestly, the first book, where you’re Toad rescuing Toadette, is fairly simple.  As you go along though, the difficulty ratchets up, not just in the gathering of collectibles, but the completion of the stages themselves.  This makes for a better experience because, while I was able to breeze through the first book, the second book (where you play as Toadette) and the third book (where you play as both) push the difficulty up quite a few notches.  There is a fourth "bonus book" which includes missions that you can unlock by gathering the gems that are hidden throughout the main levels, just to keep the replayability, which is already fairly high, at a maximum rate.

                This is a great game if you love the Mario Bros. Franchise but are a little tired of the side-scrolling, jump on Goombas and save the Princess kind of adventure.  It’s a nice change of pace, much like the Luigi’s Mansion games, a new twist on a popular character.  I hope to see more of this kind of stuff from Nintendo in the future instead of the same old rehashing of a tired plot and gameplay mechanic that has become many of their Mario games of late.

Late to the Party Video Game Review: Super Smash Bros. WiiU

                I’m old enough to remember the first iteration of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, and while I am no connoisseur of fighting games, I enjoyed seeing Mario versus Donkey Kong, etc.  Personally, I thought Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii was the perfect fighting game.  It had great characters, the fighting game aspect was everything you remembered and loved about the series and the sidescrolling adventure that mixed in classic gameplay with bouts of fighting was the perfect addition to make it a fun game for the single player.

                Nintendo smartly decided to create a new Smash Bros. for the WiiU, adding more characters and beautiful graphics to go along with their new system.  Unfortunately, they replaced the sidescrolling adventure mode with a Mario Party-esque digital board game.  I played it, and I have to admit, for 90% of it I had no idea what was going on, until it was time to fight.  That was the biggest let down of the game, because at that point, there’s not much left to the game for the single player.  Is it fun to fight against your friends (or in my case, my son, who always has to be Little Mac for some reason)?  Of course it is.  Beyond that though…there’s not much to keep me there.  It’s fun to pick up every once in awhile and try out a new character, play through the game with a new set of moves, maybe even try to master the Duck Hunt Dog or Wii Fit Trainer, but beyond that, it doesn’t hold a lot of replay value.

                The graphics are great, as expected, the controls are relatively easy (though easier with the WiiU pad than the stick controller) and the amount of and variance of characters is awesome.  Unfortunately, as fighting games are expanding to add longevity to their “shelf life” Super Smash Bros. U to a step back.  Even Mortal Kombat added different modes of play to keep things interesting. 

                One final word about the Amiibos, Nintendo’s “Toys to Life” game companions:  they are completely and utterly useless.  In Skylanders, you can play as the toys you collect, in Disney Infinity, you can play with the toys you collect, with Amiibos, you bring them in to the game to earn experience…and that’s it.  There have no utility in the game itself.  You can fight against them, sure, but why would I go out and buy a Donkey Kong Amiibo only to fight against it?  I want him on my team!  This, plus hearing that any progress made with the Amiibos in Smash Bros. needs to be erased before you can use them in the upcoming Marioparty 10 makes me wonder what the hell Nintendo is thinking.  The sculpts are great, they all look beautiful, for the most part, but where Skylanders seems to have perfected the genre from the get-go, Nintendo seemed like it threw something together to avoid being left in the dust.

                All in all, Super Smash Bros. WiiU is about what you’d expect from a fighting game, but not enough to make it a good next-gen fighting game.  I still love kicking ass and taking names as Bowser, but it’s nothing I would do with any real regularity.

Late to the Party Video Game Review: South Park The Stick of Truth

                I have had South Park since it was released but have avoided it while I finished up other games, hoping to play it through without stopping and starting like I did for many of the other games on this list.  Having some free space in my gaming schedule, I decided to pick up South Park and give it a shot.  Not being a huge fan of turn-based role playing games a la Final Fantasy, I was a little worried, but hoped that the writing and familiar characters would help me overcome that distaste.

                What I got was a game that, while it was still a turn-based RPG, it did not make those turns as painful as I remember them being from old Nintendo games of yore.  The action was fast paced and interesting, the looting was epic, there is literally (that’s a pun) garbage all over for you to rummage through and turn in to the various vendors out there in South Park.  There were also plenty of collectables to gather in this game, from Chinpokomon, to Facebook friends, to all of the weapons, armor and enhancements scattered throughout the town (including the forest, farm and Canada – yes, Canada).  Searching for all of the collectables takes up a good amount of your time itself, but the bulk is obviously devoted to the missions. 

Being that this is an RPG, the missions are broken up into both story missions and side missions that don’t require you to beat them but that offer plenty of incentive to do so.  Not only do you acquire experience points by completing side missions (an important thing to do during an RPG, even if you are capped at level 15, a level I achieved long before the final stage, let alone the final battle) but you also get better loot and even summon abilities (Jesus, Mr. Hanky and the owner of City Wok to name a few) which provide a powerful ally that basically kills anyone you are fighting (except bosses).  The kicker with the summon buddies is that you can only use their ability once per “day” (there are three days in the game). 

The writing is exactly what you would expect from a South Park game that is unrestricted by censors of any kind.  While the unfettered cursing and suggestive items are funny enough, the nudity for nudity’s sake (even if it’s cut-paper animated nudity) seems a little ridiculous.  I could have done without those instances, but overall the majority of the interactions involve the usual gang of kids from South Park and in that respect it is just like an episode of the show.  Everything fits together quite nicely between the quests, the cut scenes and the battles and it all works well within the general framework of the game, which basically pits two factions against one another who then need to come together to fight a common enemy at the end.  While that is a traditional comic book/fantasy trope, it is wholly believable here because these kids are all friends and we know that going in. 

Trey Parker and Matt Stone do an incredible job of creating the town of South Park within the game and getting us to care about the town we live in.  The only problem I have is that we do not spend enough time in the town.  Even completing all of the side quests and finding probably 75% of the collectables, I was still able to finish the game in roughly 12-15 hours.  The last part of the game was a cakewalk as I had already reached my max level and had powered up my weapons with add-ons that basically made the fights incredibly one-sided.  While I’m not too mad about that last part, I put in the time to get to that level after all, the fact that one slow, lonely day could provide me with enough time to beat the game feels like a bit of a ripoff in this day and age of 50-60 hour game completion times. 

Beyond the painfully short play time, this game was everything I was hoping it would be when I heard that it was coming out.  I’m glad I picked it up and will definitely be doing so if they ever get around to making a sequel.  Even if you are not a fan of turn-based RPGs, I would advise you check this out. 

Late to the Party Video Game Review – Darksiders II

                I was a huge fan of Joe Madureira when I was growing up, as were most people interested in comics in the ‘90s.  When he left to work in video games, it was a dark day indeed, but luckily we only had to wait damn near forever for the first Darksiders game to come out.  The game itself was a lot of fun, very Legend of Zelda with a darker and more mature tone to it.  The character designs were obviously stunning as well.  Being that the game was about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and the first game only featured one of the horsemen, you would expect there to be at least one sequel.  Thankfully we did not have to wait nearly as long for Darksiders II.

                Darksiders II features a new cast of characters (you play as Death, War’s brother this time around) yet they still have the same “Joe Mad” design sense that makes them instantly appealing and a visual treat.  The game mechanics in the sequel are a little different as War was a bruiser while death is a bit quicker and lighter on his feet.  You can still equip slower weapons like maces and clubs, but who would want to?  Death also has the ability to run along walls (much more so than War did in the first game) making the puzzles a bit more interesting this time around. 

                This game definitely feels like a sequel to the first game as it is very similar in terms of its approach.  It definitely still falls under the hack/slash mold of video games where you kill a bunch of enemies and then move forward until you approach more enemies to kill, with a few puzzles thrown in for good measure.  The sequel does add in a bit more in the way of RPG elements in terms of giving Death different weapons or armor to enhance stats that the first game just did not offer.  While this adds a fun bit of customization to your character (and god-bless the animators as whatever armor you place on death shows up in the subsequent cutscenes) and you definitely get to play around with a multitude of different weapons (there are many different scythes to try and your secondary weapon can be anything from claws to maces) it doesn’t do a whole lot besides provide you with the loot to load up on health and wrath potions to get you through boss-fights (something I didn’t bother doing until later in the game).

                The world is very open while still directing you where you need to go and the collectables are plentiful (if that’s your thing).  The enemies can be a little intense at times, they either are incredibly powerful or there are so many that they tend to swarm you, but it is nothing but a momentary blip on the radar if you use your special abilities (the zombies are particularly effective even though they are quite the wrath-drain).  The majority of the bosses are difficult but not impossible, with most requiring that you do something with your most recently acquired gadget (a la Legend of Zelda) in order to defeat them.  While the bosses were generally challenging, especially figuring out that little “trick” that would help you defeat them, the final two bosses, who were straight-up hack and slash until they’re dead were incredibly easy.  For a point of reference, the scribe, the level boss right before you face the final two bosses was so difficult that I had to turn the difficulty from “normal” to “easy” (I know, I’m a pussy) after continually dying (I put it back after beating him).  While the final two bosses, I believe that I may have died once, if at all between the two.  The respite was nice, but I kind of expected more to finish off the game.

                All in all, this was a solid game, one I wish I had played a little more consistently when I bought it instead of letting it sit and coming back to it, but I had a lot of fun with it.  I’m sure it’s really cheap now so I would advise checking it out.  The stages have been set and I’ve heard rumblings of a third installment, so if we all cross our fingers it won’t happen too late for the 360 console generation (because there’s no way I’m spending the money on an xbox one)

Late to the Party Video Game Review: New Super Mario Bros. U

                I would venture a guess that 95% of people that have ever played video games have played Super Mario Brothers in some iteration.  This is not a bad thing, the Mario Brothers games are awesome and were many child’s “gateway drug” to video games.  They are incredibly fun to play, with enough of a challenge to keep even a serious gamer busy (and frustrated at times).  The main problem is that once you play one Super Mario Bros. game, you’ve pretty much played them all.  Don’t let Nintendo try to tell you any different either, because their definition of a different Mario experience apparently consists of new suits that do the same things as before (seriously, a leaf, a feather, an acorn, they all make you float).

                I do understand Nintendo releasing a new Mario game with each new system, obviously you want to keep your flagship character relevant.  What I have an issue with is the fact that I have played this game before, and not just a game like this one, but this exact game.  Pretty much every side-scrolling Mario game is the exact same since the unheralded success of Super Mario Bros. 3, and while sticking to a formula is never a bad thing, making the exact same game with better graphics is.  This is not to take away from the fun of the game, it was a good time, but it offered nothing new at all. 

                The game starts off easy enough and gets progressively more difficult as the “worlds” progress.  The individual stages are what is difficult though, not the bosses, those are still incredibly easy, jump on their head three times and they’re dead.  It does seem like this version of the game took a page out of the book of New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS and made the acquisition of 1ups and extra lives that much easier (and boy do you need it in certain spots).  I was damn-near ready to give up at one point after dying multiple times in a row and getting stuck on a random stage for a good forty minutes.  My perseverance paid off though and I made it to the next tough stage before eventually beating Bowser and saving the princess (yet again). 

                The graphics in this game are downright beautiful, fully utilizing the HD capability of the WiiU.  The controls are still the same as they ever were, except the jump button and the “run” button have a strange configuration (to me at least) which led to a few painful deaths.  The controls are easy to get used to, especially if this isn’t your first Mario game, and do not really take away from the game at all.  The addition of Yoshi, even though it is few and far between, is nice as well.  The “worlds” you have to traverse are similar as well: traditional, desert, ice, water (ugh, water), giant, cloud, Koopa castle, etc., and while they are fun in their own right, are way too similar to anything else we’ve played over the past twenty years when it comes to this series. 

                In short, if this is your first Mario game, or your first in a while, you’ll be happily surprised that this franchise has stayed exactly the same.  If you are not new to the series, don’t waste your money (it’s still nearly $50) when you can just download Super Mario Bros. 3 from the Eshop for $10. 

Late to the Party Video Game Review – Pikmin 3

                The WiiU is pretty sparse when it comes to titles in general, especially titles created specifically for that platform.  Pikmin 3 is one of the only non-Mario WiiU exclusives out there that has received any kind of acclaim.  Was it worth it, or was it just like any girl at the Kubert School…pretty by default.  Let’s see.

                First of all, even though the characters themselves are cartoony in nature, the backgrounds are completely realistically realized, and they are stunning.  In fact, the backgrounds look even more realistic because they are populated by cartoony monsters and characters.  The fruit that you need to collect is completely realistic as well and everything environmental effects abound.  When it rains, everything looks wet.  While that may sound like a “no shit, Sherlock” statement, the fact that no stone is left unturned in that respect is incredible.  The designers could have easily made it so that the ground looked wet, or there was some “water” on the screen so you got the impression of rain, but no.  I actually feel wet while playing it, it looks that real. 

                The story itself is a pretty basic one.  You are pretty much on one giant “fetch-quest”.  Something that would take up only a small part of a larger game like Skyrim or Dragon-Age is the entire game here.  That could be why the game itself is fairly short.  You mission is to find fruit for your home planet because (social commentary alert) your home planet mis-managed their resources.  A good amount of your days are spent finding and harvesting fruit, while you also look for the other two members of your party.   Once you have all of your party together, you turn your attention to finding Olimar (who I believe was the star of the first few Pikmin games, right? I never played them) as well as your cosmic drive key so that you can actually take the fruit back home.  All of this is done in fifteen minute “days”.  At the end of each day (literally from sunup to sundown in the game) you retreat back to your ship with the Pikmin you have amassed, only to pick back up where you left off the next day.  Each day, you drink one bottle of juice (regardless of whether you have one, two or three people in your party) so you need to make sure you have enough juice, and have thereby found enough fruit in your daily travels.  This makes a big part of your day revolve around resource management.  Do I advance the story?  Do I stock up on fruit and/or Pikmin?  You have to make that decision almost on a daily basis.  Completists may want to get all of the fruit, but you can’t always access the fruit locations until later in the game, and *spoiler alert* once you’ve beaten the game, you’re done.  The game is so tied in to the story that once you have beaten the final boss, rescued Olimar and gotten your key back, that’s it.  Game over.  If you thought (like I did) that you would do all that and then be able to go back through and collect the fruit you were unable to get before (because it was underwater and you didn’t have blue PIkmin, or it was behind an electrified fence and you didn’t have yellow Pikmin) you are sadly mistaken, that is unless you want to beat the final boss again (you don’t, he’s a pain in the ass). 

                That is the one drawback to Pikmin 3.  I loved the graphics, the gameplay worked pretty well, I could have done without the gibberish that  they speak, but that’s just me, and even the length of the game was adequate, short but adequate (though if I had actually paid full price for the game I would have been a little pissed – luckily this was the Mario Kart 8 add-on).  Being handcuffed to the story and completely sabotaging the replayability of the game because of it left a sour taste in my mouth though.  I liked everything else about it so much that I looked forward to going back through and collecting the fruit I had neglected during the initial playthrough.  Now, not so much.  Will I pick the game up again at some point?  Maybe.  But a good game, with good replayability wouldn’t even leave me that choice.  I would be drawn to play the game again after beating it, like Pikmin 3 was on the way to doing until the twist ending came along. 

                The final verdict for Pikmin 3 is, like many Nintendo games unfortunately: It’s good but not something I would willingly pay full price for.  Pikmin 3 is a fun game, one that may not be suitable for kids based solely on the game mechanics, but is fun to play nonetheless.

Late to the Party Video Game Review: Mario Kart 8

                Generally I wait until I have beaten a game to give you the review, which is why you have yet to hear anything about Darksiders 2 and Wonderful 101 (I’m working on them, I promise).  With Mario Kart 8, I feel like I have played enough of it, despite just recently purchasing it, to do the game justice with a review.

                I love Mario Kart, my kids love Mario Kart, and while I wanted this game from the moment it was announced, sixty dollars is a steep price to pay.  Luckily, my brother brought to my attention that if you bought Mario Kart 8 and registered it on Club Nintendo by July 31, you got a free game (a $50 value!).  This was something that I found hard to pass up.  Not to mention the fact that I was able to knock twenty-five dollars off the price by cashing in some of my Gamestop points, and I was sold.  Two WiiU games for thirty-five dollars?  I doubt I’ll ever see Mario Kart for that much, much less two games (I chose Pikmin 3, that’s on the list for review as well).  I jumped at the opportunity.

                I went home and fired up the game and it was like an old friend greeted me.  I had Mario Kart for the Wii, though that was stolen from me along with the system last year, and I have the 3DS version as well (one of Logan’s favorite games).  Hell, I remember when I was younger, Mario Kart on the SNES was the only game my father would play with us, so to say that Mario Kart and I have quite the history would be an understatement.  Nintendo games in general and Mario games specifically are the kinds of games that are perfect for families, perfect games to share with your children, and because of that I would have recommended this game before I even started playing it.

                Now that I have played through a good portion of it (six different “cups” totaling twenty-four races) I can easily state that this is some of the most fun I have had playing the WiiU.  Now, I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t played the WiiU much, and I sure as shit haven’t explored much in the way of its full capabilities yet either, but Mario Kart 8 might just wake me up in that respect.  I have only played New Super Mario Brothers WiiU and Wonderful 101 on the system and while both were nice games, they didn’t really overwhelm me in any way.  Mario Kart 8 did that in spades though.  I was blown away from my very first race in terms of the graphics and the gameplay.  The graphics were beautiful, taking full advantage of the WiiU’s HD graphics to make every bit of the scenery as vibrant and breathtaking as possible.  The controls are easy to use and respond well regardless of whether you are using the traditional joystick method or the motion sensor (both options available on the gamepad). 

                The major difference (selling point?) of Mario Kart 8 is the inclusion of “hover craft” mode.  Unfortunately I didn’t see this utilized to any great degree within the races I participated in.  There are some instances where you can drive along the walls, usually collecting coins or speed bursts along the way, but more often than not, that mechanic is utilized along the general track, and because you are looking at the race from the perspective of being behind the racer, it doesn’t change much.  The initial view of the racetrack is impressive, seeing the track go from horizontal to vertical and back again, but beyond that it doesn’t give you a different feel when you’re actually racing.

                The courses in Mario Kart 8 are interesting and inventive.  They feel similar to other Mario Kart courses but only because of the amount of tracks I have raced on since the inception of the series.  The construction and slight nuances in the new courses are wonderful to behold (I’ve run into more than one wall while marveling at my surroundings).  As in every newer Mario Kart, the tracks are split between brand new tracks and old tracks, reimagined for the new system.  This is one of the first times I have seen those tracks completely reimagined.  Usually it’s just a matter of updating the graphics and making things a bit smoother for the new system.  With this edition of the game it looks like Nintendo upped their game and recreated the standard tracks, using the same premise as the old tracks but completely reinventing them so they feel brand new.

                Mario Kart 8, like all of the Mario Kart games is chock full of replayability.  Beyond just the standard of there being no real end to the game, no end boss or something of that nature, Nintendo gave you goals, things to unlock as you progress within the game.  The inclusion of coins on the track give you ways to unlock parts for your carts (as well as giving you a speed boost on the track itself) making the customization of your ride a constant thing.  In order to see how this customization effects the attributes of your kart, just hit the + button.  The ability to unlock other characters is fun as well.  My wife and I, even if we didn’t want to race the next race, couldn’t wait to see who we unlocked by beating the previous “cup”. 

                I’ll have to admit, the best part of this game was that I was able to bring it home, pop it in the system, give a controller to my wife and five minutes later, after choosing our characters and some cart customization we were literally off to the races.  We played for a good sixty to ninety minutes and had a great time doing it.  She even won a couple races!

                Whether you have kids or not, Mario Kart 8 is a perfect addition to your WiiU collection.  If you don’t have a WiiU yet, this is the game you were waiting for, trust me.

Late to the Party Video Game Review: Diablo III

                A month or so ago, I posted a review for Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds, in which I stated how nostalgia mixed with gameplay to create an admirable experience for anyone that entered Hyrule on a quest to save  the princess.  Diablo III has higher stakes than Zelda (save the world, not just a princess), but the nostalgia factor is just as high.  This could be due to the fact that Diablo I and II were released when I was still in high school and we’ve been eagerly awaiting not only a new Diablo, but one that could be played on a console for years.  Imitators have come and gone in that time (Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, pretty much anything with sword/sorcery and an inventory system) but anyone that has played the original PC Diablo games have held out hope that they would be able to revisit that world with updated graphics and gameplay.

                We got our wish, and with Nik’s review of the first few hours of gameplay (one of the first articles on this site), it looked like a wish fulfilled to the highest power.  Nik picked up the PC version of Diablo III when it first came out, I decided to wait and grab the console version (360) as I’m not much of PC gamer.  I have to admit, I couldn’t wait for this game, holding off for as long as I could to let the price go down a little first (I still find it hard to stomach $60 for a game) and eventually grabbed it around the beginning of the year.  I jumped right into it with both feet and soon found myself covered in waves of nostalgia.  I remembered the gameplay, I recognized the surroundings (to an extent) and the prospect of fighting Diablo again had me raring to go.  Unfortunately that excitement turned into tedium as the hours of gameplay grew.  I forgot just how much of a grind the original two games were, or how linear everything was.  I am not a huge, open-world game fan (for examples of that just look at anything Rockstar puts out), but this game was incredibly linear, as in, turn the viewing angle slightly and it would feel like Super Mario Brothers.  Even the exploring that you did do, in a clearing or a large room in a castle was completely unnecessary as you really wouldn’t gain anything from the experience.

                One of the major downfalls of this game (and it was apparently only in the console version) is that the inventory system was reduced to the generic list of items that we see in any of the other fantasy-genre games.  One of the things I loved about the first two games was the innovative inventory system.  You had a grid that represented your “backpack” and you could only carry weapons/items to the point where that backpack was full.  You could move things around to maximize space but it often came down to “do I want to spend an extra six squares on a shield or three squares on a sword and three potions.”  That system had a very table-top RPG element to it that I loved at the time and couldn’t wait to get into with this iteration.  To see that removed for the console version seemed to take away what little originality was left in the game.

                This is not a terrible game, despite the issues I had with it.  The graphics are great, with the cutscene graphics being exceptional, and the gameplay is solid.  The characters are interesting, and the choices are incredibly varied beyond just a different name and weapon-set.  I chose to be the Witch-Doctor and thoroughly enjoyed it.  He definitely seems like the kind of character that would be good for beginners as you can stay back and let all of your summoned minions take the brunt of the damage, but he was fun to play with nonetheless. 

                As I finished the game, I was overcome with a sense of accomplishment that this game I had slogged through for quite a while was finally done.  I was, however, also overcome with a feeling of “that’s it?”  The final boss, Diablo, was incredibly easy, one of the easiest of the game, to be honest.  It’s not like I was maxed out in terms of my level either as I had just crossed level 30 (with the cap being 50 I believe).  However, after dying multiple times with the other bosses, I was able to dispatch Diablo fairly quickly and easily. 

                Co-Op multiplayer in this game is relatively fun but not overwhelmingly so.  It is nice to play with someone (in this case, my son Jake) who is seeing this terrain for the first time, to go back and forth with him sitting next to me on the couch as we slog through dungeons and fight hordes of enemies, but multiplayer on its own doesn’t bring much more to the table, and honestly, if it wasn’t for Jake I probably wouldn’t pick the game back up.

                Where nostalgia in Legend of Zelda helped ease me back into Hyrule, nostalgia in Diablo III made it feel like a game built for 1998 that was just delayed for sixteen years in its release.  If you can find the game at a cheap price, scoop it up for the experience, but at this point, games like Dragon Age, or The Elder Scrolls have long since passed Diablo by.

Late to the Party Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds

                Nostalgia is a funny thing.  It can either transport you back to o a time and place and enhance your experience with whatever media is doing the transporting, or it can transport you back in time and make you think “why the hell was I so enamored with that?”  Recently I have played two video games on either side of that coin.  A Link Between Worlds falls so far on the positive side of that spectrum that I cannot recommend it with any more vigor if I was being paid by Nintendo themselves.  (The second game will be getting its own “Late to the Party Video Game Review” in the upcoming months when I finish it).

                I have long enjoyed the Legend of Zelda games, my favorite being the original Game Boy offering Link’s Awakening.  All of my favorite Zelda games though followed the same formula: a top-down camera angle, multiple dungeons and tons of items to enhance my experience.  The stories have always been good, if not relatively formulaic, but they were just a vehicle to get me to the dungeons.  Hell, at least Zelda tried to have a different story each time, unlike Mario games which are still doing the whole “Koopa steals the princess, go rescue her by beating up all his kids” thing.  I loved Hyrule, how it was an open world game, but not really.  You had a direction and if you wanted to follow it you absolutely could, but if you wanted to explore on your own, that’s cool too.  Side-quests were not a part of the game (they were more like mini-games that had no real bearing on your completion of the game aside from maybe giving you a piece of a heart).  You could find all of the heart containers and be well equipped to fight Ganon at the end, or you could get the bare minimum and still complete the game, no biggie.  Many games have tried to replicate this feel, but Zelda has always done it best.

                This brings us to A Link Between Worlds, the most recent offering in the Legend of Zelda franchise and the first game to utilize the classic top-down camera angle since 2005’s Game Boy Advance offering The Minish Cap.  I fell out of touch with the Zelda series for quite some time as I didn’t really play a lot of Nintendo games for much of my late high school and college years.  When I got back into Nintendo games, the Zelda series had morphed into the over-the-shoulder camera view that I couldn’t really attribute to the series, it never felt the same (though two people who’s video game opinions I trust implicitly, my brother Nik, and good friend from high school Ian, have both implored me to give them a shot).  When I heard that there would be a new Zelda game that utilized the mechanic that I assumed was long since forgotten I was overjoyed.  When I heard that it was going to be set in the same world as A Link to the Past (the lone Super Nintendo Zelda game) my excitement grew even more. 

                I picked up the game many months after its release (unfortunately in the real world, a mortgage trumps a return to Hyrule every time) and was blown away from the opening screen.  It took me back to 1992, providing that same sense of excitement and wonder that I felt seeing A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening for the first time.  The best part was that I was a more seasoned gamer this time around so I wasn’t as frustrated by the difficulty of the Legend of Zelda series.  The game played just as I expected and just as I hoped it would.  It had everything that I was looking for in a Zelda game, from the multiple dungeons, items and characters that I remembered from earlier games.  I found the fact that you could only rent items at first to be kind of strange, I was used to finding them in the dungeons and keeping them, but this mechanic did put more of an onus on doing everything possible to avoid dying (when you die all of your rented items go back to the shop) and forced you to strategize a bit.  Do you rent all of the items you can and then try and go as far as you can or do you rent them piecemeal and do a little bit at a time (a lot of it has to do with how confident you are in not dying). 

                The fact that you can eventually buy the items is a welcome sight, and it makes sense because the rupees in this game are plentiful.  Of course it also helps that your bombs and arrows are supplied by magic powder and not their own inventory like those previous Zelda games.  That way, you don’t have to hope you find the item refills, you just wait until your magic-meter replenishes itself.  This does take a bit of strategy out of the game in terms of conserving said items as you’ll never run out, but I actually didn’t mind it.  The graphics are similar to A Link to the Past but updated for the 3DS.  The only problem I have is that aside from Link and Zelda, most of the human characters look like someone took the WiiU’s Mii-Maker and just threw a bunch of random characters together.  The generic-ness of those secondary and tertiary characters takes away from how well everything else was realized in this game. 

                The dungeons are not as frustrating as I remember A Link to the Past’s dungeons to be, but again, that may be because it has been many years and many video game hours since I last played that game.  Regardless, there is some thought that needs to go into the puzzles here, it’s not always flip a switch and you’re done (with the tornado rod cave being the one that gave both me and my girlfriend the most difficulty).  Regardless, the difficulty is not insurmountable and it actually adds to the fun of the game.  If I was able to breeze through the game in a manner of hours, I would feel cheated (especially since a Zelda game will never be sold for much less than its initial sale price).  Because the game provides a challenge, and hours of entertainment on top of that, it is well worth the price of admission. 

The new mechanic is that Link can travel between “worlds” (Hyrule and Lorule) through cracks in walls by turning himself to a two-dimensional painting of himself.  I was curious as to how this would work when I first heard about it, but the mechanic is basically the same as A Link to the Past’s magic mirror, you can only use it in certain areas that have the cracks, that’s all.  The ability does come in handy for boss fights as well as to complete some of the puzzles in the dungeons, so it’s nice to see that the game designers really tried to utilize the 2D aspect for more than just travelling between worlds.

                While this game is phenomenal in its own right, it is equally as frustrating because of what it is.  This is return to form for the Zelda series, one that could, and should, be capitalized on by Nintendo as their own titles for their systems (especially the WiiU) are few and far between.  Just picture A Link Between Worlds on your television at home.  Instead of looking at a tiny screen on your 3DS, you could be controlling Link on the big screen, enjoying all the care and detail that the designers put into this game at an enhanced size.  The 3D function on the DS does not need to be used for this game (and I didn’t use it more than a few times just to test it) so that would not be a huge deal.  Hell, make a brand new top-down Zelda game.  Even if you want to release a regular over-the-shoulder Zelda game every two years or so, release a top-down nostalgic game in the interim years.  People will buy it, people will buy it the day it comes out and play the shit out of it.  Instead of releasing another Mario game with the same tired premise and gameplay, let’s release something everyone really wants.  If Nintendo really wants to reinvigorate its brand and become a player in the video game wars then they should start to think about their brands, the ones they won’t let anyone else touch, and really crank up production on those titles.

                In short, A Link Between Worlds is one of the best games I have played in a long time and uses the nostalgia factor in the best way possible.  If you like old Nintendo games, hell, if you like good video games in general, this is the game for you.  I could not give it a higher recommendation.