Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release: 2009

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the 2^nd installment of the Legend of Zelda series for the Nintendo DS. Like all its predecessors, this game is also an action-role playing game and has kept the perspective/viewpoint to those of the older 2-dimensional Zelda games while sporting 3-dimensional graphics. Once again, the game lets you control Link, the game’s protagonist, and assumes his adventure to save Princess Zelda. Though unlike Mario games, the protagonist you control in each games are different from one another and existed in different timelines and worlds even though he has the same name. Also unlike Mario games, Zelda games also have a fully fleshed out story. But as the story and characters in each game are not in continuity, it will not be necessary for gamers to play through previous games to enjoy this one.

It is quite a feat for Nintendo to have translated Zelda’s complex control scheme to a portable console. As the DS do not have enough buttons, Nintendo had decided to use the touch screen and the microphone as the interface. You are able to play through the whole game with just the touch screen and the microphone, although buttons can be used to access certain features easily. You move the character by touching the direction you want Link to move and the speed of the character’s movement is based on how far your stylus is from Link, the further the faster. Attacking with the sword can be done through 3 different ways. You can attack enemies by tapping on them, swiping a line between you and the enemy to do a horizontal slash or move your stylus in 360 degree around Link to execute the 360 degree circular slash. There are also quite a number of weapons and items to be collected and used. One interesting weapon is the boomerang. To use it, you switch to the weapon and then use you stylus to draw the path that you want the boomerang to follow. There are also other weapons which require you to blow into the microphone to activate them. The game also features this flute which requires you to blow into the microphone and use the touch screen to move the flute much like a harmonica to play certain tunes.

Movement in the game is not restricted to foot and as the title suggests, you are able to travel around the world on the spirit tracks in a train. The train controls are simple and requires you to either shift the gear to accelerate or brake. You are able to switch paths and attack enemies with a cannon.

The heart of all Zelda games is still the well designed dungeons. There is any mechanics introduced in this game that are not found in the previous Zelda game on the DS. Even so, the puzzles in the dungeons are cleverly designed and are varied enough to keep the gamers engaged throughout. Boss fights are satisfying although the bosses in this game are much easier compared to previous Zelda games. Generally, this can be considered the easiest Zelda game and is particularly noticeable if you have completed other games in the series. That doesn’t mean the game is easy and gamers new to the series will still find it of a decent challenge.

Like the previous DS outing, Spirit Tracks follows the cel shaded art style that was first used in the series by The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker on the gamecube. The graphics are bright and colourful and the cel shaded style allows for extremely expressive facial animations. Much of the game is pleasant to look at with only certain environments that used extremely low resolution textures marring the aesthetics. The music in the game is excellent and is made up of mostly remixed tunes from the past games.

The Legend of Zelda games have always been excellent with interesting story, characters, huge world to explore, tight gameplay mechanics, cleverly designed dungeons and satisfying boss fights. Spirit Tracks does most of that really well and doesn’t disappoint. A good game to tide Zelda fans through until the next installment releases on the wii.

Rating: 9/10
Weiwen

Developer: SquareSoft(now Square Enix)
Platform: Playstation 2
Year: 2002

What do you get if you combined the familiar Disney characters, some amazing characters from the Final Fantasy series and mix it together with some original characters and elements? You get Kingdom Hearts, an action adventure game that became surprisingly popular even with the weird mishmash. This franchise would go on to produce even more games and there are now presently six titles.

(left to right: Riku, Kairi, Sora, Donald, Goofy)

Summary:
You start as Sora, the main protagonist, on Destiny islands. Together with his friends, Riku and Kairi, the trio was planning to leave the island to explore new worlds only for their islands to be attacked and destroyed by the heartless, shadowy monsters without a body or soul and borne from hearts that are corrupted by darkness. Sora soon finds himself in Transverse Town where he meets up with Donald and Goofy (yes, yes you heard right). The two promptly teams up with Sora after finding out that he’s the bearer of the Keyblade, a weapon that can be used against the heartless, the ‘key’ that their king (hint: He’s a mouse. A very famous mouse and he’s not mighty mouse) had asked them to find before he left their world to fight off the growing population of darkness.

The three would end up travelling across different worlds, mostly based on popular Disney movies and cartoons, via a special ship called the Gumi Ship manned by Chip and Dale. Donald and Goofy are both looking for the King while Sora is out looking for Riku and Kairi. Each keyhole they find in that world and successfully sealed by using Sora’s keyblade would ensure that the world would not be consumed by the heartless. Meanwhile, one of the big bad in the game is Malecifient (villain of Disney’s sleeping beauty) who is out to capture the seven princesses of heart in order to seek out Kingdom Hearts, a collection of immense knowledge and power and the source of all hearts.

Gameplay:

The game keeps to many of the rpg elements, player can level up, pick up spells, learn special abilities, use items and change equipments. However the battles all takes place in real time so you really have to really run around fighting heartless and dodging them. The battles are not alone, as you’ll always fight with partners. Most of the time they are Donald and Goofy but you can switch to other partners, which are special citizens to the world they come from. For example, in Halloween Town, a world based on Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas, you can switch either Goofy or Donald for Jack Skellington.

The gameplay follows a linear story but gives player the choice of which world to go and what to do first. Most of the time you need to revisit the world a few time be it to train and level up or as part of the story.

Something that irks me would be the camera angle in the game. Most of the time, the perspective the camera gives you during the battle fights can give you a headache. You either run around so you can get a clear perspective or play around with the manual camera. Another thing I didn’t like was the Gumi ship mini game level you will have to go through mandatory every time you want to head to a new world. Mainly, it is your typically space shooting game. The problem? I’m terrible at those sort of games. Failing that mini game meant that you could not unlock the world and you have to retry until you get through it.

The summoning part during battles can be weird too. Summon gems can be found by Sora during the journey. These gems are formed when the heart of one of the residents being too strong to be consumed from a world that has been destroyed by the Heartless. When summon, Sora’s partners will withdraw from the battle until the summon’s time runs out. Mainly the weird part comes from the characters used for as the summon. I’m alright with Genie from Aladdin or Simba from the Lion King but Bambi? That’s stretching it a little far

(Bambi's here to save the day!)

Graphics:
A standard enough that it seems you are really in a Disney based universe. It blends in the graphics from two different factions perfectly. The graphics is really what makes the whole game seems entirely plausible even with its bizarreness. The game doesn’t heavily borrow on the Disney graphics either. The designs for the heartless are extensive and also the Keyblade collections.

Audio:
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Sure there are some of the tracks which are based from their original music but you can tell that they put a lot of effort to create the original ones.

Is it fun:
Yes. Surprisingly it was really enjoyable and fun. It's a great game to play if you don't find seeing Disney characters and final fantasy characters together....

Come along and sing a song
And join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Wokays Review 12!!

(Recess week not counted right?!)

Okay anyway!

I decided to try this game this week.

Personally I have a phobia of all these ghost nonsense.

So I try not to play any creepy games.

Or games that would freak me out.

But this week I decided to 'challenge' myself.

And try something new.

Okay ah this game that I reviewed this week is not necessarily scary or creepy!

But still.... 

Okay so let's start with the review already:

Objective of the game:
It's pretty simple.
You are a ghost hunter.
And you visit a 'haunted' place.
You are to accomplish a list of things.
Some include taking photos of certain objects.
Some include finding certain things.
Some include decoding certain cases.
Main thing: Unravel the mystery behind this haunted place.


What makes this game compelling?

1) Okay first it's a web-game:
I like web-games because they are basically no-strings attached games.
You don't need to download anything, maybe just wait a bit for it to load but that's it.
Simple use of mouse to control movements and actions.

2) Interesting storyline:
I know there are similar 'mystery' games out there.
But since this was my first try at this genre, I thought that it was pretty interesting.
The whole 'ghostly' theme and scary effects played off pretty well.

3) Content of the game:
As mentioned above, good storyline.
Also, the objects that you were supposed to pick up & things that you have to do were in sync with the game's theme.
The many areas that you can explore also made the game fun.
I spent an hour playing this game!

4) Aesthetics & Sound:
As always, I like to play games which have nice aesthetics.. don't we all?
I thought Ghostscape2 had a right look for it.
I also thought the pop-ups while you're clearing the tasks were very helpful.
The black and white feature made players focus more on the game this time.

Sound-wise was okay. It fitted the theme.
However I thought it could be more creepy-sounding.

5) Level design:
Since this was a one-level game, I thought the way the game was divided into parts was interesting. It was made in a way that you have to remember where you went. And what have you found in those places. Miss one place and you might miss finding things at that area.

6) Mystery:
I think the major attraction for this game was the mysterious factory.
It attracted me based on my curiosity to find out what was the ending and how to get there.
I think this game has achieved what most games want to achieve: to get a player to stay and play it till the end.

Play Ghostscape2 HERE.

Developer: Tecmo
Platform: Playstation 2
Year: 2003
Summary:
You follow the story of two twin sisters,Mayu and Mio, who find themselves trapped in a village cursed to forever replay the day of a failed ritual. As Mayu becomes possessed by the village's spell, it is up to Mio to solve the mystery of the village, find her sister and then get themselves out of the village.

What is this:
The second installment of the Fatal Frame series which is a survival horror game. During the game, player have to explore the curse village and solve puzzles while at the same time survive attacking ghosts. These ghost can be defeated however by a special antique camera, Camera Obscura. Taking pictures of the ghost will allow you to exorcise it. There are various ammunition that can be found collected and used in the game which gives the camera different power. The camera can also be customized by special items found in the game which would help the player during battles with the undead. The filament of the camera also turns red when there is a hostile ghost around, a good indicator to start running or prepare to fight.

(smile for the camera)

Is it hard:
Not for the the faint hearted I'm afraid. As you have to take pictures of the ghosts in order to defeat them, you are really meeting them face to face. Sometimes you have to let the ghosts get near to you in order to deal a lot of damages. The boss battle can be tricky as well sometimes. What you do in the game can affect the ending which you get in the game. So if you want to achieve a certain ending, you better check if your the conditions done right. Player can choose the level of difficult at the start of the game of if they are starting the game again. But trust me when I tell you nightmare difficulty is called nightmare difficulty for a reason.

For beginners, it will take some time to get use to the camera. Most of the time you will lean towards the 'take as much pictures as you can' strategy. This thus leads to the player not making full use of the camera's function. But once you get use to it, the gameplay will get easier.

(don't turn back... don't turn back...)

Artwork:
The game is in 3D and there are some scenes which are done very realistic. The cut scenes are something to look out for. They really look as if they could be used for a horror film instead.

Audio:
Hauntingly chilling. The music they used for the ending theme is actually pretty nice though. Would leave you in tears especially when you hear it after getting the true ending of the game. Won't spoil it for you but the ending is really amazing...

Is it fun:
It really is. What actually drew me was the story inside the game, the tragedy of some of the characters (yes, they're ghosts but they were people too!). The game is more fun if you're playing together with an audience. One, for the thrills. Two, for the chills. Three for... well when you hear your friends scream when a ghost suddenly pops up unexpectedly.

Game: Square meal
Developer: Nitrome
Platform: pc

What is it?
This game is a game whereby you have this square-looking monster. YOU as the player has to control this square monster to eat other monsters(enemies) in each level. The objective is simple and direct and quite typical.


Uniqueness?

Gameplay
However, this game added something interesting. The square monster attacks with its mouth. YOU as the player controls the monster to stuff different type of blocks into its mouth and then shoot the blocks out to knock out the monster enemies. Thereafter player can go and eat up the monsters while it is in a dizzy state. However if the monster wake up and the player touches it,the player will die and have to restart the level again.There are various different types of blocks in the game.Examples like stone,metal,wood blocks. Each types of blocks has a unique attribute to it. For example, the wood will be destroyed once it hit the walls in the game. This meant each wooden blocks can only be used once. The unique attributes of each type of bloacks are not known to the players at the start of the game. Thus it adds in a surprise element to the players as they will discover it while playing the game.


Enemies
There are various types of enemies in this game and each type of enemies have different attributes to it too. The brown looking jelly like creatures are the easiest to kill and the game will get harder as more difficult/sly enemies are added in the later levels. The character design of the enemies looks good to me as it sort of tells me what special attributes it has. For example, the bull skull like creature looks like a bull to me and hence its attribute is to charge upon seeing the square character(player).


Levels
The game is a top down view game ,similar to the bomberman game that i reviewed perviously. The levels are carefully think of as it is kind of a strategy game too. Players have to carefully think which types of blocks to pick up and deal with the different types of monsters, or else they might end up with insufficient blocks to kill the monsters.


Drawbacks
One of the drawbacks of the game is that once the square monster touches other monster, the square monster dies and player has to restart that level again. this is quite irriating to me as i feel that player should have at least 3 lives for each level before they have to restart the same level when they die.
















Screenshot of the gameplay