Tag Archives: Lyndsey Hicks

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — Issue 54

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Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night
Kon­a­mi, 1997

Sym­pho­ny of the Night plays a sweet song of woe

I ful­ly admit that I’m a lit­tle late for the Hal­loween par­ty that is Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night. I real­ly stopped pay­ing atten­tion to the series after Super Castl­e­va­nia IV, most­ly because it’s a hard series and I have a lot of love for that game and the orig­i­nal. I did­n’t need any­more Castl­e­va­nia. But after coax­ing from friends, mak­ing the Metroid­Va­nia con­nec­tions and know­ing its leg­endary sta­tus, here we are, and it’s tak­en a bite out of me.

Sym­pho­ny of the Night, in all its goth­ic hor­ror, appeals to me on sev­er­al lev­els. The sto­ry is famil­iar in that Alu­card — son of Drac­u­la and a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the third game — is attempt­ing to stop his father once again. That famil­iar­i­ty is enough to get me going because it’s all I need to know about what’s going on. Sure, I’m kind of used to a Bel­mont lead­ing the way, but Sym­pho­ny of the Night does­n’t need to rely on that kind of tradition. 

The tra­di­tion that it does lean on is game­play. The com­bat and move­ment are excel­lent, and it feels sec­ond nature to move around. Keep­ing it sim­ple but adding the RPG ele­ments was a fan­tas­tic design choice. Most of the new weapons are cool, and fight­ing ene­mies is a beau­ti­ful­ly built song and dance. Best of all, there is an in-game map includ­ed. For a sprawl­ing game requir­ing mas­sive plat­form­ing, a map is required, and Sym­pho­ny hits the mark by auto­mat­i­cal­ly includ­ing this. 


Graph­i­cal­ly, the game is gor­geous. Kon­a­mi did some­thing beau­ti­ful here and Castl­e­va­nia looks bet­ter than ever. The goth­ic details are some­thing to behold and are eye-catch­ing as well as pleas­ing to some­one with a goth sen­si­bil­i­ty and yearn­ing for video games. The sound­track is just as beau­ti­ful, neces­si­tat­ing find­ing the sound­track to add to the col­lec­tion. There are famil­iar riffs (Vam­pire Killer makes a cameo) and new chords to strike that are mas­ter­pieces, which is expect­ed of the leg­endary Kon­a­mi sound.

Alas, while try­ing to think of any­thing wrong with it, I’ve con­clud­ed that Sym­pho­ny of the Night is a well-exe­cut­ed mas­ter­piece. It hits all the marks and pulls no punch­es in ele­gance, crafts­man­ship. It’s telling that most Castl­e­va­nia games lat­er in the series use Sym­pho­ny as the tem­plate on which they build. Sym­pho­ny is a build­ing crescen­do of great­ness, cul­mi­nat­ing in sol­id sto­ry­telling, game­play and world-building.

Street Fighter 6 — Issue 53

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Street Fight­er 6

Cap­com, 2023

Per­fect Street Fighter

We love to say that this isn’t your old man’s what­ev­er when­ev­er some­thing has changed. As cliché as this is — and make no mis­take this is cliché — Cap­com’s newest entry in the old man fight­ing game that is Street Fight­er isn’t your dad­dy’s Street Fight­er. It isn’t even your broth­er’s Street Fight­er, where he used to let you beat him up in ver­sus mode and hit you with Flash Kicks to mag­i­cal­ly come back and win. No, this is the young man and casu­al’s Street Fight­er. This is a new era of fight­ing designed to get every­one involved whether they’ve exe­cut­ed a Hado­ken or not.

Street Fight­er 6 came out with a fresh coat of paint, new mechan­ics but some­thing dif­fer­ent under the hood. It plays like Street Fight­er V, but with­out the V‑Trigger mechan­ics. Now, it’s back to the basics and Dri­ve Gauge, a new mechan­ic that can turn the tide of a bat­tle quick­ly. The Dri­ve Gauge rewards offense and cre­ativ­i­ty in com­bos while dis­cour­ag­ing defen­sive turtling. This plays into the larg­er, estab­lished Street Fight­er reper­toire of super arts and par­ries. It’s nice for a vet­er­an because it’s some­thing new and good for new­bies to the world of Street Fight­er because it’s not super com­pli­cat­ed to learn.

Some­thing else new that ben­e­fits every­one is the intro­duc­tion of three types of con­trol schemes: Clas­sic, Mod­ern and Dynam­ic. Clas­sic plays much like the old Street Fight­er of yore with a six-but­ton lay­out (Jab, Strong, Fierce, Short, For­ward, Round­house), Mod­ern has a sim­pli­fied four-but­ton lay­out (think Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2) and Dynam­ic is an offline only slant where the CPU choos­es the most appro­pri­ate but­ton press­es for moves. It’s a strong, smart deci­sion designed to open the door for more play­ers to get involved in your long-run­ning series that seems over­whelm­ing and daunt­ing at first.
Anoth­er smart deci­sion includ­ed is the tuto­r­i­al and vari­ety of modes. SF6 does its darn­d­est to have some­thing for every­one, and it’s imme­di­ate­ly seen in the modes avail­able at the start. Fight Hub, a return­ing and revamped World Tour Mode and a robust train­ing mode make this a mas­sive buy and win for the fight­ing game con­nois­seur. Fight Hub is where you’ll prob­a­bly spend most of your time; it’s where match­mak­ing takes place as well as emu­lat­ed old­er ver­sions of Street Fight­er live. 

How­ev­er, I tend to live in World Tour Mode. As a devot­ed fan of the orig­i­nal mode (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 52 for our cov­er­age of the pop­u­lar mode from Street Fight­er Alpha 3), as soon as it was announced I knew I was a day one pur­chase. And with more than two years of wheel­ing and deal­ing with my cre­at­ed char­ac­ter, I can enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly say I love it. I enjoy run­ning around the fleshed-out Metro City (of Final Fight fame) with my looka­like fight­er. I love that they took the con­cept born of Alpha 3 and gave it a soul and per­son­al­i­ty after so many years, and I love that it’s easy to get into and plays as well as it does.

The beau­ty of this new chap­ter of Street Fight­er also lies in the char­ac­ter and envi­ron­ment designs. Street Fight­er has always looked nice and SF6 is no dif­fer­ent. The stage design is gor­geous, and the char­ac­ter mod­els look nice. Even the weird cre­ations that can come out of World Tour Mode have a nice look to them. We spent time at GI going through some of the char­ac­ters and just mar­veling over how far Street Fight­er has come with char­ac­ter design because it’s evi­dent in this game just in the char­ac­ter select screen. The new­bies in Marisa, Manon, Kim­ber­ly, Lily and JP are fun and cool, and the old­er stal­warts like Ryu, Ken and Dhal­sim look fan­tas­tic. The sound­track, while lack­ing in some areas, does have some toe tap­pers. Though I’m not a fan of Juri, I love her theme and Luke’s has grown on me. I’m almost cer­tain there will be more addi­tions to my lik­ing as more sea­sons are released and revi­sions are made.

While there is so much to like here, I do have some nit­picks to address. First, while I’m a fan of see­ing famil­iar faces, there are so many return­ing folks that don’t need to be here. We are in a post-Street Fight­er III: 3rd Strike land in-game sto­ry-wise, so why are we still deal­ing with M. Bison/Super Dead Dic­ta­tor™? Cap­com said he real­ly was dead after the in-game events of Street Fight­er V, so hav­ing him as DLC is unnec­es­sary. Like­wise, I don’t need to know what Aku­ma is up to. I want more of the 3rd Strike char­ac­ters back and I want the mys­tery of G, my favorite Street Fight­er char­ac­ter, solved. Also, Cap­com bet­ter not give us a mil­lion paid revi­sions, either. They bet­ter roll out updates as free upgrades and act like they’ve learned their les­son dur­ing the past 34 years of Street Fight­er II agency. I say this because I can see the writ­ing on the wall, and I don’t want to have to pay for the next upgrade of the main­line series.

I love Street Fight­er 6. I love see­ing the plot pay­off of old­er games (i.e. Li-Fen, the young girl in the intro of 3rd Strike, is here and old­er, which helps tie down when the game takes place), and I love to see the con­ti­nu­ity of Street Fight­er and oth­er Cap­com games com­ing togeth­er. I real­ly enjoy play­ing SF6, it’s teach­ing this old dog new tricks and I find myself ful­ly invest­ed in the future of the grand­dad­dy of fight­ing games more than ever.

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology & Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX — Issue 52

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Street Fight­er Alpha 3 Max (PlaySta­tion Portable)

Let’s get this out the way quick­ly: Alpha 3 Max is the best portable ver­sion of Alpha 3 avail­able. It’s even one of the best ports of Alpha 3 among the numer­ous ports of the game. It has every­thing that its big broth­er con­soles have and then some, with the mas­sive final updat­ed ros­ter that each suc­ces­sive entry has intro­duced, and improve­ments made to the dif­fer­ent estab­lished modes. 


The graph­ics are nice and large, and the music is still as top notch as ever. But there is a catch because there always is: This is only avail­able for the PlaySta­tion Portable. So, if you can track down that defunct sys­tem, get this to have it on the go and have a blast as only one can with Alpha 3 in its final form glo­ry. It’s worth a look just for the com­plete ros­ter alone.

Score: 4 out of 5

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Street Fight­er Alpha Anthol­o­gy (PlaySta­tion 2)

This col­lec­tion of Street Fight­er Alpha games is sub­lime, espe­cial­ly if you have a PlaySta­tion 2 lay­ing around. It fea­tures all the Alpha games, remix­es and arranged ver­sions, the Alpha 2 Gold revi­sion and a nice port of Super Gem Fight­er Mini-Mix. The best part of the col­lec­tion is that it plays nice­ly in every game. It plays like a dream and han­dles well with a good PS2 con­troller or joystick. 

 

Even bet­ter is the includ­ed Hyper Street Fight­er Alpha, which allows pit­ting dif­fer­ent Alpha char­ac­ters against each oth­er using that spe­cif­ic game’s mechan­ics and rule­sets. Think Alpha 2’s Rose ver­sus Alpha 3 V‑ISM Rose. That’s the hid­den draw of the game, one that’s not adver­tised and that you won’t dis­cov­er with­out time invest­ed. How­ev­er, with smooth play and con­ve­nience much like 30th Anniver­sary col­lec­tion, this is a must buy for the PS2 collection.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Street Fighter Alpha 2 — Issue 52

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Clas­sic Cus­tom Com­bo action

Street Fight­er Alpha 2 still a com­mu­ni­ty fave

Good but not great. That’s what Street Fight­er Alpha 2 rep­re­sents for me. I don’t hate the game these days. After a mature return to the game after many years spent ador­ing Street Fight­er Alpha 3, I can hon­est­ly say the game is a good set­up for the king of the hill that is Alpha 3.

Because Cap­com has advised that Street Fight­er Alpha 2’s sto­ry super­sedes Alpha’s sto­ry, we’re not rehash­ing any­thing here. Just know that every­one is after M. Bison at this point because he’s up to no good as he always is and will be, and Aku­ma enters the chat because he sup­pos­ed­ly killed Ryu and Ken’s mas­ter Gouken. Every­thing that hap­pens in Alpha 2 sets Alpha 3 up in a way that explains why M. Bison is so pow­er­ful by the end of the series and why he’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­er dur­ing Street Fight­er II. It’s com­pelling even if you’re a casu­al fan of Street Fighter.


The graph­ics haven’t made a sig­nif­i­cant leap between Alpha games and yet they some­how look clean­er. They’re chunki­er and larg­er, and you can tell they’re get­ting clos­er to the Alpha 3 stream­lined ver­sion that became the hall­mark of the Street Fight­er expe­ri­ence in the ear­ly to mid-2000s before the advent of Street Fight­er IV.

Thank­ful­ly, while there isn’t a big leap for­ward in the look between games, there is a siz­able improve­ment in the sound­track of Alpha 2. Quite a few tracks stand out and it’s worth hunt­ing down the playlist because there are some gems. It’s still not at the Alpha 3 lev­el but it’s get­ting there if you need reassurance.

What I did­n’t care for in Alpha has improved in Alpha 2: how it plays. The play feel has improved with the intro­duc­tion of Cus­tom Com­bos, and while clunky to exe­cute, it’s a nice change of pace for the series. They’re in their infan­cy here so don’t expect the absolute dom­i­nance of Alpha 3 V‑ISM but they are cool to see and it’s sat­is­fy­ing to get them to work con­sis­tent­ly in play once you know what you’re doing. Watch­ing high-lev­el play shows how Alpha 2 is meant to be played, and it demon­strates Alpha 2’s strengths: Nuanced strat­e­gy and a clean engine.

Alpha 2 does have its quirks, though. Some­times the game just does­n’t feel quite right and by that I mean, I don’t like how it feels some­times. It can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly feel slow and slug­gish but then it course cor­rects and the game plays like a dream. Com­bos work but then some­times, I strug­gle to get things going. I can’t place my fin­ger on it, even years lat­er, but there’s some­thing off about Alpha 2 but I’ve learned to accept it for what it is and over­all just accept Alpha 2. It may be because I did­n’t start the series until Alpha 3, but Alpha 2 does­n’t always feel right. I still pre­fer to play Alpha 3 in every respect, but accep­tance of Alpha 2 is a sign of maturity.

Alpha 2 is the mid­point of the Alpha series and that’s OK. It’s got its grow­ing pains but the growth is there and it’s still regard­ed as a strong fight­ing game. Alpha 2 has val­ue and as the mid­dle child of the series, it’s got a lot to offer and a cer­tain charm that is bright­ened by the fact that Cap­com learned its les­son and seem­ing­ly learned to count to three. Alpha 2 is a good bridge to greatness.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams — Issue 52

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Start­ing at the beginning

Street Fight­er Alpha sets the tone for spin­off franchise

I promise I can see the poten­tial in the orig­i­nal Street Fight­er Alpha: War­riors’ Dreams. I can look down from my high perch of love for Alpha 3 and accept that the series came from some­where. After all, every series must have a start. But it’s a long hard stretch to say it’s an all-time great start.

Street Fight­er Alpha estab­lish­es the series’ sto­ry: After Ryu wins the first World Fight­ing Tour­na­ment (as depict­ed in Street Fight­er), he returns home to find his mas­ter Gouken mur­dered and sets out to get revenge. At the same time, Chun-Li, Guile and Char­lie — along with oth­er var­i­ous mem­bers of the cast such as new­com­er Rose — work togeth­er to take down M. Bison, who is work­ing to estab­lish his empire and achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Know two things about the sto­ry: One, it’s a sequel to 1987’s Street Fight­er and a pre­quel to Street Fight­er II; and, two, its sto­ry­line is sup­plant­ed by Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Cap­com deployed this strat­e­gy with the Darkstalkers/Vampire series as well, which was coin­ci­den­tal­ly cre­at­ed around the same time as Alpha. And this isn’t the only instance of crossover con­cepts, either.

Alpha plays and feels much like ear­ly Vam­pire as well. The new addi­tions of mul­ti-lev­el super com­bos and air block­ing are here, too, and like Vam­pire, rep­re­sent an upgrade from the days of Super Tur­bo. But, as much as I like the upgrad­ed mechan­ics, I don’t like how Alpha plays. It feels clunky and slow with a molasses edge to the movesets. While the series did even­tu­al­ly improve with time and speed adjust­ments, it’s painful­ly obvi­ous here that it need­ed a speed boost.


Alpha also resem­bles Vam­pire in pre­sen­ta­tion. The graph­ics are nice and big, and the sprites are nice­ly drawn. It’s an ear­ly ver­sion of the Alpha 3 pre­sen­ta­tion that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s pleas­ing to see it here. The music isn’t at the Alpha 3 lev­el yet, but there are a few tracks that might make you tap your toe. 

What I want­ed from the first game in the Alpha series shows up lat­er in the final game, but the start isn’t ter­ri­ble. It need­ed some work and giv­en that Alpha 2 made improve­ments on this sol­id foun­da­tion in Alpha, I think it’s safe to call this the beta of the Alpha series.

Score: 3 out of 5

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection — Issue 52

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A mild col­lec­tion of peak ear­ly Street Fighter

There was a time when all the ear­ly gen­er­a­tion Street Fight­er games weren’t avail­able in the same place. Us old-timers had to own mul­ti­ple sys­tems and col­lec­tions on those sys­tems to com­plete the library of fight­ing street games. But then along came the 30th anniver­sary of the land­mark fight­ing game fran­chise and would­n’t you know, Cap­com thought it pru­dent to offer a bonan­za of Street Fight­er. Whether or not it’s a boun­ti­ful buf­fet is still up for judgment.

Street Fight­er 30th Anniver­sary Col­lec­tion aims to do one thing: Give you all the Street Fight­er you can shake a stick at. Includ­ed out of the box are: Street Fight­er, all ver­sions of Street Fight­er II (includ­ing Tour­na­ment Bat­tle, exclu­sive to the Nin­ten­do Switch); Street Fight­er Alpha, Street Fight­er Alpha 2 and Street Fight­er Alpha 3 Upper; and, Street Fight­er III: New Gen­er­a­tion, 2nd Impact: Giant Attack and 3rd Strike. This essen­tial­ly cov­ers all the bases for ear­ly Street Fight­er, which is great. Give me every­thing in one pack­age and let me choose what I want to play. But alas, there is a catch: All the ver­sions includ­ed are the arcade ver­sions of the games. That means, for exam­ple, with Street Fight­er Alpha 3 you aren’t going to get World Tour Mode. What­ev­er you received in the arcade is what you’re get­ting here so I hope you like the vanil­la ver­sions because that’s what’s served here. That’s not a bad thing if you love Street Fight­er, and it’s the smart solu­tion because includ­ing the home addi­tions would have pushed this col­lec­tion to dou­ble discs or more.


The pack­age is fine graph­i­cal­ly. The games includ­ed are going to look exact­ly the way they did when they were released, which is exact­ly how they should here and isn’t the focus. What should be the focus is the sur­round­ing pack­age and it’s nice. The graph­ics look clean, and menus are invit­ing. How­ev­er, I do have a gripe with the menus: Cap­com is in dire need of a copy edi­tor. I found at least one error in the text (Aku­ma’s bio in Super Street Fight­er II X for the curi­ous), and this isn’t the first time I’ve found this type of thing (there’s an error in Super Street Fight­er IV’s text as well). 

As a for­mer pro­fes­sion­al edi­tor, this type of thing in video games gets on my nerves. Cap­com is a bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­ny; hir­ing a copy edi­tor to spell check the menus and text should­n’t be a prob­lem. It reeks of slop­pi­ness, though I should­n’t be sur­prised as this is the same com­pa­ny that refus­es to trans­late the board game in Project Jus­tice or the dat­ing sims in both ver­sions of Rival Schools. But I digress. The pre­sen­ta­tion is good, and it looks fine on mod­ern systems.

The music is the same as the graph­ics: just as you remem­ber it and per­fect­ly fine. There is a sound test and that’s help­ful if you don’t already have any of the tracks in your music col­lec­tion. There are a few remix­es in the menus that you may not have heard before, but there isn’t any­thing note­wor­thy like say Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion. The extras are mid, though some of the art­work and the offi­cial time­lines pro­vid­ed are neat. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of it and there should be with this many games included.

And just like the pre­sen­ta­tion, the playa­bil­i­ty is just as good as you remem­ber. I was able to fin­ish sev­er­al games in the arcade mode — once I adjust­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty, which is a god­send — and every­thing felt great even with a PlaySta­tion 4 Pro con­troller. I also jumped online to test the net­code, and it was decent. How­ev­er, with the supe­ri­or Fight­cade now in full swing, fight­ing online with 30th Anniver­sary has been made irrelevant.

This is the col­lec­tion to end all Cap­com col­lec­tions for their fight­ing games. Yes, Cap­com insists on releas­ing oth­er col­lec­tions with these games, but this is a good stop gap if you want the main­stream stuff all in one place. Come for the nos­tal­gia and the con­ve­nience and maybe stay for the extras. Three decades of Street Fight­er should be a spec­ta­cle to behold but it’s lack­ing in the knock your socks off draw-ins. It’s still a rad street fight, however.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Soulcalibur VI — Issue 48

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A new stage of history
Soul­cal­ibur returns to its roots

It’s been a long time since Soul­cal­ibur was good. And I mean, real­ly good, where it’s about the fight­ing and the locales and the sick char­ac­ter designs. Because make no mis­take, Soul­cal­ibur hit a brick wall right about the time of the fourth entry. Seri­ous­ly, no one asked for Star Wars draped all over Soul­cal­ibur, yet there we were with Yoda and the gang mak­ing them­selves at home in the series known for its sword and sor­cery. But then some­thing hap­pened: Some­one on Project Soul said, “you know what would be great? Return­ing back to the thing that made us suc­cess­ful in the first place: Soul­cal­ibur.” And here we are with the sixth entry and it’s a return to form.

Soul­cal­ibur VI is essen­tial­ly a retelling of the sec­ond game in the series, Soul­cal­ibur. The evil sword Soul Edge has fall­en into the wrong hands through­out his­to­ry, and it has now found its way into the embrace of one Siegfried. Sigfried, hav­ing lost his ten­u­ous grasp on san­i­ty and real­i­ty in gen­er­al, has trans­formed into the Azure Knight, bet­ter known as Night­mare, and begun wreak­ing hav­oc on the world in this demon­ic pos­sessed guise. There are those who seek the sword for right­eous rea­sons and those who seek it for greed and glo­ry, but the sword must be stopped. Because it’s a retread of Soul­cal­ibur, not too much has changed sto­ry-wise. The entire cast of the game has returned with some new folks sprin­kled in for good mea­sure. This is fine because that cast was leg­endary and set the stan­dard for future entries.


But what if you want­ed to do a lit­tle some­thing dif­fer­ent this time around? The excel­lent char­ac­ter cre­ator has every­thing cov­ered. This mode is so well done and such a time sink. I spent at least two hours mak­ing a rea­son­able fac­sim­i­le of the Cap­com’s Ruby Heart — my favorite pirate — and it was pain­less and easy to do, even with the default offer­ings. This cre­ator mode has been around a long time in Soul­cal­ibur — since the third game — but here it’s refined and pol­ished. I spent more time here than any­where else, and what I want­ed to make was only lim­it­ed by my lack of ideas.

Despite lack­ing in skill with Soul­cal­ibur over the years, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the ease of jump­ing into fight­ing. I have had an extend­ed absence from the series, but I could still pull off moves and com­bos with old favorites like Mit­su­ru­gi, Cer­vantes, Ivy and Vol­do. The fight­ing felt pol­ished and clean, much like old­er entries, which is crit­i­cal in draw­ing in some­one like me that has­n’t real­ly played much since Soul­cal­ibur II.

Anoth­er good nos­tal­gic draw was the pre­sen­ta­tion. Soul­cal­ibur as a series has nev­er lacked in the aes­thet­ics depart­ment, and this game is no dif­fer­ent. It looks nice, with good char­ac­ter mod­els and entic­ing back­grounds. Because it’s basi­cal­ly a remake, the back­grounds are ref­er­ences to pre­vi­ous stages but with a more mod­ern cleanup job applied. I absolute­ly loved the orig­i­nal Soul­cal­ibur’s look and still do, and this ver­sion does good in remind­ing me of why that is. While not quite as ground­break­ing in its graph­ics as the arcade and Dream­cast port were 25 years ago, they’re still quite breath­tak­ing and beautiful.

And, there isn’t too much to dis­like about Soul­cal­ibur VI. I’m not fond of the AI dif­fi­cul­ty, which seems a lit­tle too spot­ty. A few match­es felt like rub­ber band­ing in the sec­ond round if I won the first round, but then if there was a third round, the AI would just stand there and let me wail away. That’s weird in a fight­ing game, but then again, most Soul­cal­ibur entries felt that way in the begin­ning of the series. I just wish that was fixed by the sixth game.

Over­all, Soul­cal­ibur VI tries to make up for the mis­steps of the past with a sol­id re-imag­in­ing and return to its roots. Though it’s been five years since release and no new con­tent has been on the hori­zon, it’s a still a viable fight­ing game for those who haven’t dived back into the world of souls. The soul still burns in this rehabbed and reformed sequel.

DanceDance Revolution Konamix — Issue 48

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Dev­il­ish danc­ing demon
There’s blood on the dance floor with Konamix

As a devout Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion fan, I’ve made it clear that qual­i­ty DDR is non-nego­tiable. And what I mean by that is, a mix has to be good. It has to have DDR orig­i­nals, maybe a few qual­i­ty licens­es and the inter­face has to be work­able. DDR Kon­amix, a North Amer­i­can port of DDR 4th Mix, is a semi-decent solu­tion to a real problem.

Kon­amix plays like every oth­er ear­ly pre-Super­No­va ver­sion of DDR. Step­ping on arrows in time to a song is refined by this point, so it’s noth­ing new, and scor­ing also remains the same as DDR 1st Mix through 3rd Mix. So, real­ly the most impor­tant aspect of this mix is the songlist, and there are some gems here. Some of our favorites appeared here for the first time in a North Amer­i­can release, such as PARA­NOiA Rebirth and SUPER STAR. The 52 songs in the track­list are all Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals, hence the name, and that’s a boon because that imme­di­ate­ly makes the list worth play­ing and makes up for a few weird issues.


But how does it play? In terms of DDR mix playa­bil­i­ty, it’s not user friend­ly like lat­er mix­es. The tim­ing is high­ly sus­pect, and adjust­ing that fea­ture in the options is stil­luse­less. Because of the dif­fer­ences in frame rates and mod­ern tele­vi­sions, try­ing to play this is a fool’s errand because it’s almost so off that you’re nev­er going to do well. The weird tim­ing issues mean a lot of Goods, Greats and Boos. Also, the inter­face is obnox­ious until you choose to use All Music. With every­thing unlocked, the All Music option makes the game tolerable. 

With a lot of flawed options and playa­bil­i­ty issues, DDR Kon­amix isn’t exact­ly a must-have. How­ev­er, only because of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals should you buy this; some of these beau­ties are rare enough that you’d need to import Japan­ese mix­es to see them again. While I have a nos­tal­gic fond­ness for Kon­amix because it was my first expo­sure to mod­ern DDR, I would only con­sid­er this mix if you want to be called a DDR master.

Chuck Rock — Issue 48

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Mediocre pre­his­toric origins
Dinosaur plat­form­ing mechan­ics does no favors

For what­ev­er rea­son, I used to be enam­ored with Chuck Rock. Maybe it was the col­or­ful graph­ics, or it was the “charm­ing” plat­form­ing. What­ev­er it was, it isn’t here in mod­ern gam­ing and with crit­i­cal hind­sight now, I can safe­ly say it should have rolled back under the rock it slith­ered from.

There isn’t much to the thread­bare bedrock of Chuck Rock. You, Chuck, are a pre­his­toric meat­head who isn’t capa­ble of more than a few words and grunts. You’re tasked with retriev­ing your kid­napped wife, Ophe­lia, from your love rival, Gary. You tra­verse through six stages, gut bump­ing dinosaurs and oth­er crea­tures, lift­ing heavy rocks to solve puz­zles and eat­ing var­i­ous foods to replen­ish your health. Occa­sion­al­ly, you’ll fight a boss who tries to keep you from your beloved and eat you. Just about every­thing is hos­tile and there are many nat­ur­al obsta­cles threat­en­ing you on the journey. 


It seems, how­ev­er, that no one men­tioned that the actu­al game­play was the real threat here. For starters, noth­ing does any­thing well. Chuck is lethar­gic and aim­less with­out a true sense of pur­pose. I get it, he’s a cave­man, but that gim­mick falls flat fair­ly fast. He’s a chore to con­trol in a hop ‘n’ bop that’s aping Super Mario World, and it’s aping the ter­ri­ble parts while try­ing to be cute. 

While the graph­ics are nice, know­ing what’s a haz­ard and what is use­ful isn’t the eas­i­est to dis­cern. Some items blend well, and some ene­mies look like they could be help­ful items. It’s a shame con­sid­er­ing the graph­ics are clean and deeply hued with a com­ic book ink feel. Chuck has a nice sprite and match­es well with the con­cept as do the dinosaurs. How­ev­er, while they look nice, noth­ing nice can be said about the sound­track. It’s monot­o­nous and bor­ing, and there’s noth­ing that stands out. It’s bor­ing and goofy, much like the game­play and the con­cept, which does noth­ing to endear any­one look­ing for a nice sol­id ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do or Gen­e­sis platformer.

What we have here is a fail­ure to cap­i­tal­ize on an estab­lished plat­former. Mario set the stan­dard a year ear­li­er with the excel­lent stan­dard-bear­er Super Mario World. Core should have tak­en a look at that and emu­lat­ed what they saw. They did­n’t, and we’re stuck with some­thing that, while cute, is nigh unplayable in some spots and a chore in oth­ers. Let’s be glad that with a bet­ter dis­cern­ing eye, I learned to leave some games in the Stone Ages.

New Super Mario Bros. DS — Issue 47

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Stomp­ing step stone

New Super Mario Bros. DS a good tri­al run

Now, y’all know I love me some Mario. I’m a Mario girl and have been for a long time. A whole issue devot­ed to him and his exploits aside, there are few main­line Mario games that I haven’t played and enjoyed. As a con­nois­seur on all things Mario, his leap to 3D was not one of my favorite things to expe­ri­ence because of the sur­prise con­di­tion of motion sick­ness. So, imag­ine my hap­pi­ness when the series took the side­step to start pro­duc­ing 2D games again. Nin­ten­do’s first entry, New Super Mario Bros., was a warm-up if not a prac­tice ses­sion for some­thing greater.

The sto­ry starts pleas­ant­ly enough with Bows­er kid­nap­ping Princess Peach for the mil­lionth time. It’s stan­dard fare for Mario games at this point and it’s ser­vice­able enough because that’s what you’re sup­posed to do in Mario games: save the princess. But there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent here: a new­er style of graph­ics and play mechan­ics to whet your appetite for that “new” in the title. The game looks clean­er and brighter as com­pared to the last 2D out­ing — Super Mario World for the SNES — and Mario is more defined. Yes, you’re still in the Mush­room King­dom but it looks new­er. The way you play is also new. Mar­i­o’s get­ting around a lot bet­ter in mod­ern times and it start­ed here with a new butt stomp, wall jump, triple jump and new pow­er-ups in the Mini Mush­room, Mega Mush­room and the Blue Koopa Shell. These pow­er-ups are wel­come addi­tions to the Mario reper­toire and are fun to use.

My main gripe comes from the new mechan­ics, how­ev­er. While I love that Mario moves well, some­times he moves almost too well. I had the same issue here as I did with the lat­er Wii ver­sion: Mario slides around entire­ly too much. I have to keep in the back of my mind to under­com­pen­sate and over­cor­rect with run­ning and jump­ing move­ments con­stant­ly, and it’s a bit much to keep up with while try­ing to play well. When I want Mario to stop run­ning, it should be instant­ly. There should­n’t be extra frames of stop­ping. Also, some of the jumps don’t feel as clean as they should if we’re bas­ing it on the known Mario stan­dard. It’s all a lit­tle too loosey-goosey for my lik­ing and makes clean play a lit­tle bit more of a chore than I’d care to do. Lat­er entries have cleaned this up, but it’s obvi­ous here and I can cut it some slack because it has been fixed. Just know that it’s part of the “new” experience.

New Super Mario Bros. has the Mario charm the series is known for as well. It’s fun to play and dis­cov­er new secrets and see the new con­cepts work out in a series that puts in the work to inno­vate and stay rel­e­vant. This first game was the step­ping stone for the phe­nom­e­nal New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and you can clear­ly see where it’s going in terms of the total pack­age. It’s not an insult to say this was the prac­tice run and that prac­tice makes per­fect, espe­cial­ly if you’re New Super Mario Bros., and you’re com­pared to oth­er main­line Mario games, and you sell 30 mil­lion copies as the best-sell­ing DS game of all-time. Clear­ly, this is a mega Mario hit and good start­ing point for the 2D throw­back of the franchise.