Tag: Nintendo Switch

VIDEO GAME REVIEW: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Switch)

written by David Steffen

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Nintendo Switch is a 2019 polished and expanded version of the 1993 Game Boy game of the same title. It is part of the Legend of Zelda series of games that came out shortly after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and has a very similar look and game engine and many of the same items, but has its own feel and story and additional items and enemies all its own.

The story begins at an indeterminate time in Link’s life, and not even clear which Link it is (as the characters named Link in the series as a whole are actually generations of heroes with the same name, rather than a single character), but I think it’s most likely given the timing of the game that this is the Link from A Link to the Past some short time after that game (because he mentions Zelda. The game begins with a ship that Link is sailing on running into a fierce storm that causes a shipwreck, and he wakes up on mysterious Koholint Island to the face of someone who looks very much like Zelda.

This game is, to this day, a major departure from the series in that it is missing many of the major elements that define the Zelda formula. Most of the games are defined by the magical Triforce and the three people that seem to be tied irrevocably to each of its aspects: Zelda for wisdom, Link for courage, Ganon/Ganondorf for power. But this is not a game about Zelda, or about Ganon (a little funny that a Legend of Zelda game barely mentions the titular princess).

The game is almost entirely the same as the original Game Boy version. The mechanics, enemies, dungeons are generally the same. The most noticeable change is the graphics, which are all 3-d rendered and look very pretty and glossy, and it’s fun to see the update. Other graphics related changes such as the overworld is split up into clear “screens” that scroll from one to another, they instead flow smoothly. A big change is that the Switch takes advantage of having more buttons by assigning dedicated buttons to the most vital items like the sword and the shield–in the original game boy game there were two item buttons that you can assign to anything including the sword and the shield, so if you wanted to use two other items, you couldn’t use the sword and shield at all. There is also a new side game where you can build your own dungeons out of preset room blocks, and a new optional dungeon which you will have to find yourself that’s not part of the main quest.

Whether you played the game when it originally came out or you’re new to it, this is a fun game to get hold of. It’s a good introduction to the series as well, because it is a little more forgiving in some ways than the others in the series.

Visuals
The main update from the original are the visuals and they look very nice! Kindof a cute and glossy overhaul, making the character and enemy designs much more detailed than the original Game Boy version was capable of.

Audio
Catchy as ever, The Legend of Zelda series has always had excellent earworms.

Challenge
Overall this is probably one of the Zelda games with an easier learning curve. The top-down view is easier to navigate for beginner players than the modern full-depth worlds. The phone huts throughout the world give you hints on what you’re supposed to be working on next. If you die in the overworld you can choose to continue on the exact same screen without penalty (this is extremely handy for younger players) and if you die in a dungeon although you have to restart from the beginning you at least get to keep any progress you made (i.e. keys collected, doors unlocked) before you died. It’s a good choice if you want to introduce a kid new to video games to the world of Zelda.

Story
The story is pretty light and not particularly sensible. Link spends the game risking his life to wake the godlike entity whose very dreaming defines the island and everything on it. It seems like a really bad plan, and never at any point in the game seems like a good idea, but it’s the only way to move forward with the plot.

Session Time
Since you can save anywhere and continue back from that same screen on the overworld this makes it very easy to pick up and down. Although dungeons would require a little bit of re-playthrough you can at least keep progress made. And of course the Switch still has the major advantage of being able to sleep and unsleep very quickly.

Playability
Controls are easy to pick up, of course it takes some skill and practice to get get at attacking and dodging effectively.

Replayability
There is some replay value in trying to collect all of the secret shells that are scattered throughout the land, to try to earn the rewards, and also to tackle the secret dungeon that’s been added in this version, find all the pieces of heart, and etc.

Originality
Of course this incarnation is a remake of an earlier game, so you can’t judge this incarnation fairly on its originality. The original game itself used the format of another game of its time very closely: the SNES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, including many of the same items. But even at that time it did add a significant number of new things and had its own feel.

Playtime
Legend of Zelda experts will probably breeze through most of it, as it is one of the easier games in the series, but there are still quite a few dungeons to discover and defeat as well as plenty of things to discover in the overworld.

Overall
The original incarnation of this game is still one of my favorite Game Boy games, an excellent entry in the Legend of Zelda series, and although it borrowed heavy from its SNES predecessor it is still an entertaining and fun game in its own right. This remake of it makes it easy to find for a new generation, as well as updating the graphics and adding some new content, and it was a great deal of fun to revisit it. You can buy it for the Switch for $60 anywhere Nintendo Switch games are sold.

VIDEO GAME REVIEW: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

written by David Steffen

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a turn based combat game developed for the Nintendo Switch by Ubisoft, which is a mashup of Nintendo popular Mario Bros. franchise and Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids franchise.

A new invention has just been completed, a visor that allows the wearer to fuse two other objects into one object. Everything is going smoothly until the Rabbids arrive in the labarotory in their Time Washing Machine and start wreaking havoc, grabbing the visor among other things and fusing random things together. The inventor is a big Mario fan, so there are lots of Mario decorations around the lab, and soon the rabbid wearing the visor has fused Mario characters like Peach and Luigi with Rabbids, and the Time Washing Machine takes them all to the Mushroom Kingdom where the Rabbids are running wild, fused with various elements and monsters of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s up to Mario, Rabbid Peach, and Rabbid Luigi to save the kingdom.

The gameplay is turn-based, and everyone is equipped with ranged weapons unique to their character and much of the game is based around finding cover from enemy fire while trying to get around the enemy cover to fire on them. You can also move every turn to change cover spots and to tackle an enemy as you go. For most rounds, the last team standing wins (different rules may apply in individual cases). To move from area to area to try to work toward saving the kingdom, they have to fight through hordes of Rabbids fused with monsters along the way.

Maybe it’s because I’m not at all familiar with the Rabbids, but I didn’t find the premise compelling. Who are the Rabbids, why do I care? But the major issue for me was that the difficulty curve was badly designed. The first battles I found too easy; I didn’t have to try very hard, just had to persevere, follow basic rules about finding cover, try to stick to the higher ground whenever possible. For several hours of gameplay this was enough, I was able to advance and didn’t die, and not only was this part not particularly challenging, it was repetitive and dull. This continued until I reached the first mini-boss battle with a more formidable foe, at which point I got soundly beaten by the mini-boss and the hordes of Rabbid minions. The earlier battles hadn’t prepared me for whatever strategies were needed to beat that tougher foe, and I was bored enough of the earlier challenges I didn’t want to go back and try to level-grind if that’s what was needed to stand a chance. I didn’t care enough about making it further in the game to really devote myself to trying over and over again to try to beat this boss, and much of that apathy was the difficulty curve of the game, which ran low low low low high without transitioning from one to the other smoothly.

Visuals
A mixture of standard 3-D Mario design with weird Rabbid looks.

Audio
Nothing remarkable.

Challenge
Very uneven challenge curve, starts out so easy that it’s boring, then ramps steeply up very suddenly.

Story
The story does not make a ton of sense, and seems to be a lot of work to justify a game mashup.

Session Time
The nice thing about the switch is you can put it to sleep at will no matter what part of the game it’s in.

Playability
Easy enough that the early battles are pretty easy to pick up. But could use some more difficulty ramp-up to prep for tougher battles.

Replayability
Even playing through the first time got boring very quickly.

Originality
While game mashups bring their own kind of originality, the gameplay itself is nothing particular original

Playtime
Unknown, didn’t get all the way through, I played for a few hours so far.

Overall
Maybe a fan of the Rabbids would be more into the game than I was, but I found the challenge progression of the game very uneven, not challenging enough at the beginning and then suddenly very challenging. I’m sure someone will find the game fun, but it’s not for me.  You can find it for $60 at major retailers

GAME REVIEW: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

written by David Steffen

Image result for super smash bros ultimate

Super Smash Bros is the fifth entry in a multi/single player fighting game starring famous characters from Nintendo games and games by other companies, this one for the Nintendo Switch. In typical fashion, only a limited number of characters is available from the beginning, the twelve playable characters from the original Super Smash Bros. But this game includes all playable characters from all previous Super Smash Bros games, and with additional playable characters, for a total of 76 playable characters that can be unlocked. This is not including DLC, which will add additional characters, the first couple of which have already been announced: the Piranha Plant from Mario games, and Joker from the Persona series.

Many of the characters are ones you’d expect from a Nintendo cross-game mixup, like Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Link, Zelda, Samus Aran. There are also quite a few characters from the Pokemon franchise, including Pikachu, Mewtwo, Lucario, and the Pokemon Trainer who can cycle between Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle within the same fight. The cast includes Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series with various explosives, Ken and Ryu from Street Fighter games, a bunch of characters from the Fire Emblem series, as well as quite a few oddball references like Mr Game & Watch and R.O.B. and the Wii Fit Trainer.

The series has a huge following, you can find anything you could want to know out there by searching, profiles of all the fighters including how to best use their special moves and what specific games individual special moves reference, videos of gameplay, tournaments, lots of gameplay tips.

The controls are easy enough to pick up that someone can become basically competent pretty quickly–movement with the joystick, jump with the joystick or jump buttons. Basic attacks are a single button which can be modified by tilting, holding, or “smashing” the joystick in one of the major directions or by performing attacks in mid-air (these tend to be punches/kickes of various kinds). Special attacks are a different button and tend to be more varied and have to do with this particular character’s abilities, like Bowser’s fire breath or Solid Snake’s land mines, or Pikachu’s lightning bolts, which have variations based on holding the joystick in different directions. Then there is dodging and blocking (which beginners tend not to use, in my experience).

To be an expert, there is a lot to learn about what moves are superior to other moves, what moves will pack extra punch if timed or spaced just perfectly, how to time dodges and blocks to become a very elusive target. I am not an expert, and I doubt I will ever be, a lot of these details are incredibly hard to master. But there is a lot of middle ground between being easy to pick up and extremely hard to master, and if you think a brawling game with famous video game characters sounds fine, give it a try if you haven’t tried the series yet! If you have tried the series, it is a solid entry with the major benefit of having ALL of the previous characters (some characters were in one game but not in the next, so if you’d missed that one game you’d missed that character entirely, but this one is all-inclusive).

Challenge
It’s as challenging as you want it to be, as you can set the challenge level. As far as, like, historical street fighter type games go, it’s easier to pick up the controls, because you don’t have to memorize special move key combinations for each character. But there are complexities to which moves can work against which other moves, the timing of hits and the timing of dodging or shields, that to become an expert at the game you would have to spend a lot of time learning and honing your reflexes.

Story
There is a story mode, but story is certainly the weakest point of any Smash Bros game, more or less just an excuse for a series of battles but without being particularly interesting or compelling on its own.

Session Time
Most battles will take a maximum of a few minutes win or lose, and in certain modes you can even put a strict time limit on it if you want to be done more quickly, so it’s a very easy game to pick up and set down.

Replayability
With a total of 78 playable characters in the game, not including DLC, there is a lot of variety just in variations of moves and play styles. Combine that in the various single player modes, and then multiple player modes, and there is a lot of potential for replay.

Originality
The first Super Smash Bros was very original, I hadn’t seen a cross-game-universe fighting game on that scale before. At this point it’s the fifth entry in the franchise, and working from a proven formula, always increasing the scale and tweaking the rules, though I wouldn’t say this entry is any more original.

Playtime
As much or as little as you want, really. If you want to unlock all of the playable characters and you want to unlock all of the achievements, you could spend a long, long time at it.

Overall
I have been a fan of this franchise since its launch on the Nintendo 64 in 1999, and they would have to seriously screw it up to not get my recommendation. The controls are easier to pick up than a lot of fighting games and it is just fun and goofy to face favorites by Nintendo against each other, like Bowser vs Samus Aran or Pikachu vs Ganandorf or King K. Rool against Ryu from Street Fighter. You can buy it digitally directly from Nintendo, or buy it on a cartridge from various retailers for $60.