Kirby Super Star Ultra

I've been deliberately avoiding writing in this blog because I really do not want to talk about Super Star Ultra.  This isn't some ridiculous "oh it's gonna be so bad it hurts my eyyyyyes" reluctance to pass judgment, it's that I just have nothing interesting to say about Super Star Ultra.  It's a good, fun game, but good in such a dull, retreaded way that I'm prevented from gushing about anything.  Like, man, did you not play the original?  Well, you should get this.  Otherwise, I guess it's still okay?  I don't know leave me alone *curl up in fetal position*

One problem I have with approaching this game is that I've played Kirby Super Star for the SNES so many fucking times I don't even know if I like it anymore.  The concept of Super Star, giving the player multiple bite-sized games with slightly different mechanics as opposed to one big boi playthrough is clever enough, appealing to the central attraction of Kirby games (bright, easy distraction from the crushing hell of modern life).  And even now, after roughly two dozen play throughs, I would still be more than happy to redo Revenge of Meta Knight.*  But the rest of the segments?  Fuck, man.  I loved them as a kid, but now the algorithm has changed in inperceptable ways, like I'm in Jacob's Ladder and Super Star is dancing with me but out the corner of my eye I think I see Squeak Squad slowly crawling from between its legs.

Because that's the primary issue of Super Star and Super Star Ultra:  Once again, it's just too lazily easy.  Granted, it doesn't have the unrelenting sameness of non-difficulty that Squeak Squad features, but there's still virtually no point in the main game where something is going to even momentarily throw your dinosaur gaming brain for a loop.  Ultra changes very little from the core games, if anything, though adding a few modes that mostly are somehow even easier (I'm pretty certain at this point I could do the Meta Knight mode blindfolded) or, in the case of the updated arenas, try to respond to the ease of the original game but holy shit I see your padding mall order batman, get out of my face.  The only addition I genuinely like was the return of King DeDeDe, if just for the fact that someone on the staff recognized that Revenge of Metaknight was far and way the best thing the original had to offer.

Ultimately, I guess it comes down to whether one religiously played the original Super Star.  Unless you're some sort of weird Kirby fanatic, there's not a whole lot going for Ultra if you've already beaten the original black and blue.  Still, if for some reason you never bothered doing that, you should thank the gods for your luck and get Ultra, because then you will probably never hate yourself again.

*- I love it when games have those "HOW IS HE DOING THIS OUR DEFENSES ARE SO LAME" baddy conversations that you can hear, to the point it makes me sad when I don't hear them, because they have to be astoundingly easy to program.

Kirby: Squeak Squad

I don't remember much about Squeak Squad, but I remember when I played it.

It was roughly into the second year of law school.  I had borrowed the game from a friend, and was deciding to play it while I got my oil changed.  I hate having my oil changed, from the cost of having it done, the fear someone will do something horribly wrong to my car, to the embarrassment that I, a normally competent human male, cannot change the oil myself.  But I am more terrified of having my engine explode, so here I was, ordering some horrible Burger King abomination and turning on my DS, for the SQUEAK SQUAD.  For an hour, I felt about as challenged from the game as I did using a free hand to move fries into my mouth.  When the car was ready, I saved the game, saw that I was already 35% complete, and said a silent prayer for the people that paid like thirty dollars for this shit.

And believe me, Squeak Squad is shit, for the same reason I can see why people hated Return to Dreamland for the Wii.  Both feature the same goddamned gameplay we saw since the NES days, and while I'm sure that's goddamned exciting to nerds who think retro by itself is somehow worthwhile, it's also snoozetown for me.  I realize I said in my Canvas Curse review that I liked Kirby because it was easy, but there's a difference between easy and easy.  Canvas, at least for half the game, was engaging, but not frustrating, new areas requesting perhaps a few seconds of your brain farting a synapse before proceeding.  There is literally nothing engaging about Squeak Squad if you have ever played a traditional Kirby side-scroller.  Or hell, any side scroller.  Hell, have you ever just held a game boy in your hands?  Congrats, you can probably beat Squeak Squad.


The apparently element of "challenge" is that to fully clear a stage, you need to grab treasure chests.  However, the title bad guys also try to grab it, which means you have to complete some pathetic puzzle and/or fight a mouse boss.  The mouse bosses are sort of fun, but a problem exists in that there are literally only 4 main baddies in the Squeak Squad, and no, their fighting tactics do not change at all.  There is strong guy, ninja guy, mouse in saucer, and main mouse and I don't even know if you fight the main mouse until the end so let me amend my statement to only THREE main baddies.

BISHY SQUEAKY SQUADUU ^_____^ COPYRIGHT FAT GIRL 2009 DO NOT STEAL

I actually visited the wiki page for the game to see what I could remember besides "stupid easy" and "fight the same 4 bosses for treasure chests."  Wikipedia told me that there are apparently modifications to your powers that drastically change how they work.  I DON'T REMEMBER THIS.  Like I think there was a UFO power, but otherwise the gameplay was completely forgotten to me.  I'm generally not one to completely forget something I played to near 100% completion, so I'm going to make a safe bet and assume that the modification powers were both really poorly implemented and completely unnecessary to completion aside from those areas that forced you to use them because we all like that riiiiiight?

Jesus what else am I supposed to say here.  This is not a game, it is a nap simulator with fucking rats and memories of burgers that upset my stomach and my own failure of masculinity.  Do not play this.  Just play Kirby Superstar or OH NO WHAT AM I SAYING END TRANSMISSION

Kirby: Canvas Curse (2005)

I really like Kirby games.

For me, Kirby has always been the perfection of "casual action."  You don't play Kirby to be stressed out, but instead to get slackjawed and murder waddle-dees or some shit.  There's that pink puffball, wonder what wacky adventure against dark matter or another forgettable monster boss he's going to get into.  Oh great, got the sword ability, time to beat the game.

With that purpose of these games in mind, it makes sense why so many Kirby games seem to revolve around villains gimping Kirby in one way or another.  We, the audience playing, don't want to be concerned with a whole lot of unrealized potential in our playing, so thank you Dark Poopsock for making Kirby into a golf ball now I just have to hit him into holes.  Oh great, Kirby is yarn, so much for worrying about copy abilites and and floating, wow these graphics are soooo preeeeettyyyyy.  So on and so forth.  The day that Kirby has upgrade points and combo actions is going to be the day we see a massive commercial failure for HAL.

So roughly six months after the DS launched, we got Kirby: Canvas Curse.  A villain transforms Kirby into a literal ball, and HE NEEDS YOUR HELP.  No, don't touch those complicated buttons or d-pad, this is stylus only.  Just lay the DS down on your desk, and use your free hand for some cookies or something.  Aw yeah.

The big control scheme in Canvas is that, as Kirby is a ball, he cannot move on his own.  You can make him dash by tapping on him, but more convenient and versatile is the ability to use the stylus to paint lines on the screen, which Kirby can ride upon, regardless of height or angle.  The only limitation is that you have a limited paint gauge which refills when you're not drawing, but you will virtually never be in danger of running out of paint unless you're making Kirby ride up 30-feet phallic symbols (hint: this is the best part).  There are also enemies, but they  can be simply tapped on to stun for easy pickins' by Kirby, so they exist entirely as moving power-ups.  Unfortunately, all ability changes do is replace your dash ability with some other sort of vague mobility power that you use maybe two or three times in contrived puzzle sections, some of which involve you not being about to use your paint ability.  I could give you a precise rundown of every ability in Kirby Superstar, but I cannot remember what any ability in Canvas Curse does.  Maybe fire gives you a horizontal fireball??  Ultimately, running completely contrary to previous Kirby games, powers are too lame and useless that unless the game forces you to grab one, you're going to be best off with regular Kirbs.  What a depressing situation!

On the other hand, the painting ability is a wonderful.  Almost all DS games with lots of touchscreen control are pretty awful, or at best suffer in quality due to said touchscreen gimmicks.  Canvas Curse, especially for being released so early in the DS's lifecycle, has the perfect sort of touch control, with only a few points  where I recall going "I didn't touch the screen I did not this is bullshit."  For like half of the game it was like being on a magical cruise where despite some kind of obnoxious guests and a table with a short leg, you still loved every minute.

But then you slowly realize that, while the sights are magical, it's all sort of the same sight and why am I on this boss minigame again.    The touch control is great, but when the entirety of your roughly 8-10 hour gameplay revolves around "draw line, watch kirby roll on line, occasionally draw other line to block enemy shot," boredom crawls in and will not leave your basement.  The environments do basically nothing to liven things up, with you visiting thrilling locales such as "ice stage with ice spikes that fall from ceiling" and "fire stage where lava rises from the floor."  The game rarely adds anything to spice up the formula, so you're stuck gawking at the touchscreen and little else.  There are collectable medals and time trials and "conserve your paint meter" trials, but winning the trials are largely a matter of trial and error, with the hardest stages forcing you hope the camera doesn't lurch out of control and cost you another restart, which I guess invalidates my previous complement about the regular game not having any control issues.  The unlocks are mostly total garbage, with the best things being a few extra stages and having balls of King Dedede and Metaknight, the latter could be fun to play around with if the stage design wasn't so goddamned boring in the first place.

Canvas Curse isn't a bad game, and in the context of a stylus-only near launch game for the DS, it's also pretty good.  Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough content to manufacture a great title.  Would Kirby find his way and not release a game that I had to add a million provisos to?

Eventually.

Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS)

Okay so this was a pretty rad RPG.  I'm not going to carefully discuss every stupid minutae of this game, because let's face it this is more about me mulling over the game to better understand it than finding the JIN SAY QUOI of the menu system (which I will say was amazingly well-done, aside from deciding to hide a character's skills in the stats section, or giving any real indication of how powerful said skills are though it's not like the game punishes you for using them in any way).  So, what made this game so rad?

1) Stocke.  Stocke Stocke Stocke.  In a modern era where RPG protagonists are either embarrassing pastiches of Shinji Ikari and John Wayne, tilting towards whichever extreme best suits some retarded storyline, Stocke is one of the very few RPG heroes I actively rooted for. How does he do it?

a) A personality capable of intelligent thought.  I think we can agree that most RPG main guys, despite their central role in the plot, tend to be pushed through things.  OH NO THE ORC KING HAS ATTACKED OUR VILLAGE QUICKLY YOU ARE THE LEGENDARY HERO.  While Stocke also has destiny thrust upon him, he reacts to the news with a "whatever okay let's fix this shit."  He considers ramifications, but also actually does things without needing player input.  I still kind of like Persona 3 a little more than Radiant Historia, but going back to the former took a fair bit of time getting used to my character being less a fleshed character of his own and more of a depressing simulacrum of what a lonely nerd would imagine a true high school experience to be like.

b) He's such a fun character.  Radiant Historia manages to avoid the "BUT THOU MUST" yes/no dichotomy that usually suffices for character development by plainly characterizing Stocke as an asshole that gets shit done.  I'm sure there's some hardcore RPG players that were mad they had no input in how the character they were controlling was going to react, but holy shit fuck these guys right they probably smell really bad.  It's fun to see an RPG, let alone a JRPG, where while all the other characters are going "WHY MUST WAR BE SO PAINFUL HOW CAN WE SURVIVE," the guy you're controlling responds with "jesus christ let's kill some bitches and be home in time for dinner."  It's a good thing too, because the game is so fucking chatty with its story (though people complaining loudly about this detail have clearly never played Golden Sun or its sequels, which featured 50% more talky and 300% less plot advancement per word GOD YOU'VE REPEATED THE SAME CONCEPT TWENTY TIMES DUDE LIGHTHOUSES STONES I GET IT CHRIST)

2) Other characters aren't so bad?  Honestly, it's like a 50/50 deal.  Some guys, like the starting healer sword guy, are pretty generic and lame, but Historia does get a special award for making the 9-year-old girl character genuinely likeable and not OH GOD DIE.  Which is pretty good, because she's also by far the best character in the entire game, thus allowing me to bypass the conundrum present in alot of RPGs where a really good character on paper is ruined by having a personality so wretched you can't bear to deal with them.  Yeah, fuck you too Ken.  But there's no characters I really actively disliked, and even the lame healer sword guy revealed some surprising sides if you bother with sidequests, so hurray for that.  Even better, the worst character in the game is also the one you'll see the least of, so you won't even have to worry about not using him in any point ever!

3) The battle system!  While I have alot of issues with the battle system, it's vaguely creative and is much more often fun rather than not, and occasionally is an utter blast to use.  Without getting into things, every battle has the enemies arranges on a 3x3 grid, usually, though not always, with each enemy taking up a single spot in the grid.  You have a regular attack, but generally you will be using MP-consuming skills (as there is almost never a point where you will run out of MP provided you don't play like a spaz, not to mention that I was  drowning in items by the end of the game).  Skills are not just magic, but also include abilities that either move the baddies around on the grid, or target specific sections of the grid regardless if there are enemies there or not.  The big trick with the game is using skills to bunch enemies together, culminating in one final nuke attack to deal massive damage to everyone you swept up in your combo.  Generally, when battles don't have any added issues, the system is simple and fun to use, especially as you get new party members with new ways to explode shit.  So, what are the issues?

The primacy of magic is probably the biggest problem I have with the game.  The position an enemy occupies on the vertical part of the grid plays a major role in the effect of physical attacks on both you and the enemy.  If an enemy is on the furthest column, any physical attack he gives will be severely reduced versus if he was on the front row, but any physical attack you make will also be horribly reduced.  But hey, guess what kind of attack is completely affected by distance?  Boom.  Alot of battles against things that I couldn't immediately kill with a first round combo usually resulted in me pushing them to the back row while whatever mages I had slowly ice spell'd him into oblivion.  It also doesn't help that generally most trash enemies attack purely physically, and even if they use spells, usually the best party members in the game follow a pattern of having terribad defense and physical attack, but godly magic offense and defense.  As a result, two of the three physical characters in the game are unbearably gimped, with the third being useful only for two moves that literally break the game in their power.  So, are there any problems with the magical characters?  Not really, except for the 

Randomly placed grid spanning bosses.  It's definitely a curious decision on the part of the game maker: "I've made a battle system that rewards strategic thinking over simply mashing the attack button, now let's add a ton of bosses that cannot actually be moved!"  Also, by ton of bosses, I actually mean recolors of the same fucking giant spider.    Battles with these spoiler not really bosses are easily the worst part of the game:  Suddenly, my game has transmuted into generic RPG turn-based combat where I hit and heal and hit and heal, which wouldn't even be so bad if the game was built for that sort of thing, but generally enemies tend to hit like trucks if you don't dispatch things quickly, so the fights tend to go hit heal revive revive hit revive get hit by random aoe fuck you spell get pissed restart game cheese fight by using limit break ripoff abilities to remove boss turns and amass giant combo to kill.

Finally, there's a pretty weird ass difficulty curve.  The first quarter of the game is pretty basic stuff, though featuring some tricky fights if you aren't properly leveled.  The second quarter is EASILY the hardest section of the game, where the game suddenly places you in battles against like six enemies at a time, all of whom are pretty good at murdering you while your own characters have basically learned nothing useful for the past ten levels, culminating in a boss fight that is nearly impossible to beat unless you break under pressure like me and realize that you need a character that you will never use again.  The last half of the game, however, gets progressively easier as you unlock the skills you should have had like eight hours ago and suddenly you're killing everything in a single round and bosses just cry to message boards about you.  The final boss especially is only a threat if you haven't learned that getting combos in battle drastically increases your damage.

4) A pretty good game length.  I finished Radiant Historia in about 30 hours.  Part of that length was based off me using faqs to locate sidequests, though I didn't complete them all (my reaction to the optional bosses was a "NO THANK YOU SIR").  I echo a complaint from another blogger critic (whose sidequest guide I gleefully used) that the game drags towards the middle, though by the end everything reaches a satisfactory pace.  Still, compared to the tactic of many rpgs in just forcing endless circles on you to reach some magical gameplay length mark (fuck you golden sun seriously), this was pretty damned good.

5) The ending was so great.  Especially the (spoiler not really) super secret ending you get if you complete certain sidequests, which I am not going to spoil because it is seriously worth getting and made me grin so goddamned hard.