So I beat the first 8 worlds of Super Mario 3D Land.

The game starts to get harder mid world 5, and by world 7 it's "challenging". The only levels that really gave me any trouble were in world 8 though, except for a few star coins I had stupid deaths going after over and over.

World 8 was so good, compared to the rest of the game, that I felt like I had entered another dimension of some sort. And the final castle. Oh that was epic.

Unfortunately now that I've saved the princess I've got to save Luigi. I finished the "main" game with 104 star coins (not much grinding but a tiny bit, about 10 coins worth, occured there) and 94 lives. So it's not THAT hard, even at the final level which is probably the one that killed me the most (I entered with 99 lives). Each special world seems to operate differently from the main ones, in which the final castle and all levels are available immediately if you have the coins to access them. In special world one, it seems the castle needs 110 coins so I'm going to have to find 6 more somehow (I wonder how ). The levels definitely seem harder though, so this should be fun.


My main criticism's of the game's first 8 worlds:
- The bosses were extremely lazily done. They were repeats of the same 3 fights, two of which (the non Bowser ones) were negligibly easy except for one of them that threw lava platforms into the mix.

- The tanooki suit is dirt common and negates a lot of the difficulty in most of the "main" game. It is way too easy to get one, and it makes the game way too easy. The projectile suits are also kind of bad, but not quite on the same level. <- The problem is that the levels are balanced around small mario being able to do almost everything, so adding the offensive capabilities and hovering power up kind of ruin most of the challenge.

- They could have done a better job with placement of some of the star coins.

- The telescope mechanic is dumb.

- The cannon mechanic is also dumb.

I mean, I kind of see that as a failing of the Pokémon franchise in the first through fourth gens, and while having the Team Magma/Aqua sidequest in Gen 3 happen during the 8 gym leaders progression was nice, it kind of felt to me like that was just trying to re-do Team Rocket, and even though Gen 5 had some sort of story that made me intrigued, I don't think they went quite far enough with it. I think the non-handheld Pokémon games did some extremely interesting things (I'm counting both the Stadiums and XDs, though not Colosseum because that was boring), but were kind of hampered in different ways. And I've probably put thousands of hours into Pokémon games, unlike with other Nintendo franchises.


You are very right on that count. It's been probably 3 or 4 years since I played any of Skyward Sword, and the other three I mentioned (Ocarina, Twilight, and Wind Waker) were all quite before that. I think, by percentage of the game, I played Ocarina the most, followed by Skyward Sword, then Twilight Princess, and finally Wind Waker trailing in last place because, essentially, I got handed the controller when my friend who owned the game couldn't get past the dungeon for some reason or another. I don't even think I played in all the dungeons of Ocarina, and I know it didn't take all that long to complete that game.


You didn't really address this one in your second post, but I think Skyward Sword suffered from two, maybe three major things. First, it was coming off the heels of Twilight Princess, which meant a few things. Following Twilight Princess they had to figure out what "other world" to include and while you could argue mechanically that it was the sections of ancient past, the whole "sky" aspect is definitely front and center in the game, as it keeps you going back there as if it's Hyrule Field, and the sky itself is... well, I found it kind of boring since there was not much up there, mostly it was transportation. Also, as you said, Twilight Princess gave us Link's best companion in Midna, and while almost anything they made would have been lesser compared to her, Fi was as bad as Navi, which only compounded the issue. The motion controls are another issue; while I did not find them enjoyable, I did think it was led to interesting design such as the four-armed stalfos which you had to hit from the right direction to slip past their guard and such, so it could be considered a third point of weakness.

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I want to say that I have the intent to one day play through Majora's Mask and A Link to the Past, because I've heard those two have the greatest thematic and narrative presentation of all the Legend of Zelda games. I've never known anyone who had the games, so I've never been able to see or play them myself.

I would recommend getting both ocarina and majora on the 3ds.

I've had the $ for a DS sitting in my wallet for like a year or two now. Every time I consider buying one, I think 'Will I use this for a day or two, then lose interest?'. But I would not be re-makes of old games. I'd maybe buy 1 new pokemon game, and like....that adventure time game? I dont know.

A lot of the value in a 3ds is the zelda remakes, the xenoblade chronicles port, and a bunch of 1st party games that only ever came out on the 3ds. You have to be interested in things like Luigi's Mansion 2, the Zelda remakes, the "new" Mario games, etc. to make it worth dropping money on the system. In my opinion.

Started playing Mariokart 7...

So the game now has COINS. Basically, the more you collect, the faster you go, up to 10 held. You lose some if you get hit by an item. <- They've basically shifted all of the unlockables, for the most part, to this metric. So at varying intervals up to 5000 coins you will RANDOMLY unlock a new car part. <- There's no way to know which one you will get, as it's random. At 5000, you'll have all the basic parts, and you will unlock golden parts (non-random) at 10K, 15K, and 20K coins.

So what does this mean for unlocking races? Well you start with 8 characters and 3 of each part. All car parts are unlocked via coins. And the other 8 characters are unlocked by winning 150CC cups, along with mirror mode for doing all 8. There are absolutely zero unlockables for winning any particular 50CC, 100CC, or mirror mode race in particular, although beating all cups in a single cc will let you use your mii as a racer.

The actual tracks themselves have been good so far, but #feelsbadman.

From what I've heard they did very little in porting Ocarina, and I'm not sure I'd really enjoy playing it nowadays if that's the case. Honestly if it weren't for the fact that a friend got one of those New3DSs with Monster Hunter built-in and offered for me to get his old 3DS plus the Monster Hunter cartridge, I wouldn't even have a 3DS at all.

At this point in time, I don't feel like paying for even the handheld Triple-A releases for a number of reasons. Foremost among those reasons, I have noticed that I no longer put in dozens of hours into the video games I have, and will play some of a dozen different games over the course of a week rather than stick with one for a longer period, which makes dropping a lot of cash or investing a lot of time in a single game much less appealing, and I know that Ocarina of Time goes for around $30-40 (though a quick Amazon search tells me its price is even higher on average). Even considering digital download through Nintendo's e-store (which by all rights should be less expensive), I am extremely wary of buying a digital-only game that is restricted only to whatever Nintendo product can use them, especially since I have no real connection to my handheld Nintendo device anymore. If/when my 3DS stops working, I doubt I will buy another one because I don't have the same connection to the games on it that I used to with my Gameboys. Another big reason I don't want to buy games for the 3DS is because I'd honestly rather have the games on my PC. I briefly thought about downloading some indie titles like Shovel Knight or Binding of Isaac Rebirth on the e-store, but then realized that I would really rather play them on my PC. I would have a bigger screen, more control options, capture options, modding capability, and often DRM-free options since I have a passion for indie titles.

The two counter-arguments I can easily come up with are 1) I don't have a connection with my 3DS because I'm not willing to get (a) game(s) to make a connection with it; and 2) the 3DS is portable which means you can take it and play it anywhere. The first argument I can kind of explain by addressing the second. Due to both choice and circumstance, I have an iPhone (an iPhone 4S specifically which is incapable of upgrading past iOS7 at this point and is rather slow because of its age), an iPad mini (important to note because of its size), and a laptop. I don't actually have a desktop. So right off the bat, I have a plethora of transportation options. In fact, due to the aforementioned slowness of my old iPhone, I generally take my iPad with my virtually everywhere -- I use it to play podcasts and/or music while driving, I have numerous well-sized mobile games (which is another thing entirely since mobile games often have more interesting design, though for various reasons), and of course the ability to do all sorts of things an average computer can do, things I do not want to use the 3DS interface to do. Ironically, I don't actually play games on my iPad while I am out of the house all that often (though I will if I'm at a friend or family's house), usually instead turning to it so that I can read or write something. Then there's the fact that I have a completely mobile laptop. If I do go anywhere for long enough that I would want to play my games, I just have the option of taking my entire PC along with me, with the added benefit of having all the options a PC gives to me, like editing pictures, watching videos, etc.

I realize this was an overly-long response to what you said, but I decided from the outset I wanted to fully explain my stance on the matter.

I want to respond to one part of that.

Changes when they ported Ocarina.

- A little bit of censorship (I haven't noticed much though, and the stuff I have I either don't care or consider an improvement)
- It got a graphical overhaul.
- They also did a small controls overhaul that feels a lot better as a whole. Especially in the water temple.
- They added a "hints" stone near Link's treehouse and the Temple of Time that can help some people out (I don't use the feature, but the game used to be bad at telling you where to go sometimes and this helps)
- Navi got an overhaul that makes that whole thing A LOT better. A large number of her prompts now are "optional", meaning you can press a button to hear them but you aren't forced to.
- They added the masterquest in as an unlockable. A mirrored version.
- Link has better spacial awareness. Um...... basically he looks around at things more and you get more advance warning when enemies are close.
- They added a boss rush and the ability to refight bosses (timed).
- They added a cutscene viewer.
- Faeries now fully restore your health instead of just 8 hearts.
- The Water Temple is slightly better designed. By this, I mean there are plaques on the wall giving you more information to be able to navigate better. This, combined with part of the controls overhaul, make it feel A LOT better.
- The stone of agony was changed to the shard of agony (sound based instead of rumble based).
- The deku stick was nerfed.
- Some glitches were "fixed", but new ones ended up being added to the game. Most players won't care about either.

The deku stick used to do as much damage as the master sword, which allowed for things the developers didn't intend. A huge part of this was one cycling bosses, and thus missing entire phases of the 3 bosses you fought as a kid. They nerfed it to be about the same as the kokiri sword.

Responding to the other part, the reason, the main reason to get any Nintendo console, is because you want to play the exclusives. It's not "is this portable?" It's "Can this play pokemon?"

For Luna specifically, it's "Can it play Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate?" I am not fully convinced you would never play that game again if your 3DS broke, especially since by that time the price of the original will probably be $30 - $80 (it's already down to $100-$120 depending on the machine).

Possibly true, but the way I look at it, there are a lot of "ifs" that will come up by the time my 3DS stops working 5 years down the line or so. Capcom may finally release a PC version of Monster Hunter in the West (it already exists for Japan, China and South Korea). A Toukiden game may get a competent PC port. Other, Monster Hunter-esque titles may pop up like Blacksea Odyssey that suitably take its place (note: I'm not necessarily saying Blacksea Odyssey can take the place of Monster Hunter, just using it as an example). I may simply lose enough interest in Monster Hunter to not care enough, or just go back to playing it on the PSP (despite needing the claw hand formation).

If it broke tomorrow? I would probably buy another 3DS within a month. But I don't expect that to happen.

Now, if they made a Super Mario 64 remake, I would seriously consider getting that. Hell, it took me half a second to remember I still own and have a method of playing my original Blue and Yellow versions of Pokémon when I heard they were re-releasing those on the e-store. I have wanted to go back and play one or both of those for the last half a year now that I have so much more knowledge in game design.

Something I don't like about Ocarina of Time sometimes. It seems that the amount of damage enemies do can ramp up severely to artificially make certain fights harder. The most blatant example is the Iron Knuckle, which does 4 hearts of damage per hit and is one of the most hated enemies in the game because of it.

This sometimes leads to you "dying out of nowhere", where Link doesn't actually have as much health as one would think and it's actually really easy for the bar to go down while exploring a temple. Especially if you repeatedly fall victim to a wall master over and over (thank you forest temple).

.... Certainly makes the double damage factor of the Master Quest interesting (can't wait to fight the Iron Knuckles).

If I remember correctly, the 3DS can play DS games and there is a Super Mario 64 remake on the DS.

Edit: Yep.

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-64-DS ... r+mario+64

I was going to ask "why are Wario, Yoshi, and Luigi on the box", but I see that has to do with some weird multiplayer mode. I'm definitely going to look into that, though at the moment I'm trying to not spend too much money on games because I've already spent $80+ over the holidays on various games.

You see, it's things like that that show you aren't doing thorough research.

You start out playing as Yoshi and have to unlock Mario, Luigi, and Wario as playable characters in the single player. Mario is by far the most important and the game forces you to unlock him very early, while Luigi and Wario are only required for a couple of stars so they are much more well "hidden".

If I've built up some image as someone who does all the research all the time, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble; I'm still just as capable of making stupid comments based on a quick glance as anyone else. That much should probably have been apparent at my surprise at a Mario 64 remake.

I did take a look around afterwards, though, and I see that they altered the controls somewhat to make up for the lack of an analog stick on the DS, though from what I found it's still less finicky when you have the 3DS stick than only the DS's D-pad. I couldn't find a decent review that talked about the new characters, as most went on about the mini-games or they were newcomers that had never played the N64 version. It still sounds like a good proposition, though, and I imagine the character-specific stars are mostly the 30 new ones they added.

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After playing through Guacamelee for technically a second time, this time with a friend and with a controller instead of on keyboard, I think it's... alright, I guess? Like, the controls are solid at least, but even with the difference between Gold Edition and Super Turbo Championship edition, the humour kind of falls flat now that I'm used to indie games making references to other games, and I didn't feel like it had a whole lot to offer me. The core gameplay loop is pretty okay, since it is a very solid metroidvania, but I just don't feel like there was anything that made it really stand out. Playing through the newest edition did add a hint of character to the P2 character (who also gives you hints in single player), but it only used like five lines of dialogue to do so and nothing else.

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I was watching a friend play Cave Story+ and it made me appreciate how old Cave Story is and how good Shovel Knight is. I understand that said friend was quite far into the game, but there were some quite frankly bad design decisions throughout the sections I saw him going back and forth through, most notably the "I Wanna Be The Guy" types of unfair gameplay: spikes falling from a ceiling that is covered in aesthetically identical but safe stalactites, new enemies being introduced at nearly every turn which were capable of killing in just a few hits in situations where you had to do or die, and other obfuscated manners of progressing.

Even Wings of Vi is better designed in my opinion, being unforgiving but not unfair in the way Cave Story is. I've heard it "advanced the genre" way back when, but I'm honestly wondering how? Was it because it was released for free, or because it had multiple endings, or because of the moral grayness, or something else entirely?

If I remember correctly, Cave Story had those things as a "feature". In fact, many games have those kinds of things as a "feature". There's a whole market of games where that is the main appeal of the game.

Well, wait, then, how did it advance the genre of "unfair platformer" if that's the case? I get that there are games that have that appeal (although as stated I believe that's not good design and I prefer games like Wings of Vi which are extremely difficult but not unfair), but I could have sworn I've seen people hold up Cave Story as some sort of pinnacle of its time. I think I'm going to do a little digging to see if I can find a suitable explanation.

On that subject, I think I mentioned earlier that I'd come across a couple of youtube reviews of older games like the DKC series, Banjo Kazooie series, Mario 64, etc, and there was a point brought up as a positive: hidden rewards. Overall, I think the idea of a reward given to players for exploring is a very good thing, but one of the points specifically for DKC1 was that to find everything, you'd often have to go places that by all accounts should lead to your death, at least insofar as the game had taught you. That, to me, is again bad design, because it means that there are two major ways for the player to find everything (not to just find one or two, which can happen by accident): either the player has to follow a guide // get help from a friend, or the player has to repeatedly jump into bottomless pits and other deadly hazards trying to look for these dang things, potentially getting many game overs in the process.

People have held System Shock 2 up as a pinnacle of its time as well. Have you played that at all? It is literally one of the worst experiences I've ever had in an fps.

Nostalgia be a powerful thing.

I really really like Luigi's Mansion 2 so far, but I have one bone to pick...

The cooperative multiplayer, which is for 1-4 players, is obviously balanced around EXACTLY having the max at all times. There isn't a scaling difficulty here (which would have been great).

I have not yet played System Shock 2, though I do have it on GOG. Historically, though, the FPSs I've played (not the ones I was forced to play with friends like Halo or CoD) have been the ones that have the aesthetic of FPS but not the theming of them: games like Fallout 3/New Vegas or the Portal series. I've not yet finished Spec Ops: The Line, but that one I have for the same reason I wanted Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons for so long -- that is, experiencing a game with a ludonarrative that matches its story. I've also had Mass Effect 1 and 2 sitting in my Steam library for 2 or more years now, and that one is specifically because it was supposed to be a pretty good story. System Shock 2 I was told was an excellent cyberpunk story, but I'm not sure when I'll ever get around to it knowing its dated FPS mechanics.

Also, I just watched a long-form analysis video of Cave Story (nearly half an hour long) and left a youtube comment longer than a lot of my posts here addressing most of the points the guy made in the video. I strongly disagreed with most of his points, especially when he started lauding the very falling stalactites I was earlier criticizing. I learned nothing of why Cave Story is looked at so fondly and will probably keep looking.