Picked up more games this week, despite not having time to play them. But we had good reasons and better coupons, so the time was right. Sprung (DS), Mario Party 6 (Cube), Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA).
I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel anyway. Finished Sly Cooper 2 tonight after a long break (review here)... and I could tell I was had been away too long. My skills were rusty, I had completely forgotten the buttons for Bentley and Murray. But I hate them anyway. The critics disagree, but I say those two totally suck and they need to go. Those two stereotypes aside, I really liked the game. I'm just all about Sly and the daring elegance he brings to the game. The other two can go pound sand... they're like taking Pac-Man out of Pac-Man and replacing him with that sad vector spaceship from Asteroids. It would work, but there's no magic.
Also beat Pikmin 2 this week... well, paid off Hocotate Freight's 10,000 poko debt anyway. There's plenty more game after that point. In fact, the game is telling me that I haven't even found half of the total 200 treasures available. That's a ton more to go, but I feel like I accomplished something anyway. I mean, I saw the credits roll.
So, not counting Mario Party 6, I only have 5 games in the Yet To Be Played Pile. That's not too bad. I've had to avoid buying Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metroid Prime 2 because I know they're just not getting played for a long time, which makes me sad because I love being part of the Launch Day hype.
Mario Party sort of breaks the rule. I know exactly when I'm going to play it: when friends are over. It's not something that's going to take a huge personal commitment like X-Men: Legends or Ratchet & Clank 3. Plus MP6 comes with a new stupid (free) peripheral, a microphone. I tested out one of the mic games tonight, a surprisingly varied quiz show. Since there's only one mic, you takes turns holding it to answer the questions, but other players can use their controller to buzz in and steal your question if you get it wrong. Cute. Worked well enough. If the game thinks it mis-heard your answer, it will ask you "Did you say 'Waluigi?' Yes or No?" and then you respond to that. I sure do wish the mic was wireless, as passing it around a group of four is likely to get cumbersome, but I doubt even Nintendo could get us a free wireless mic as a pack-in. It plugs into the memory card port, not a controller port, which is unexpectedly nice.
I'm a big supporter of the Mario Party series. Each one gets better than the one before. I know a new edition every year is a lot; even I would agree that fewer versions would make future sequels more of an event. But the concept has improved so much in little steps that it's hard to fault Nintendo for it. Just off the top of my head, they removed the negative coins for losing games, added the ability to speed up CPU turns, tried out 2P modes and 1P modes that weren't just the 4P mode with less human players, further developed the game board graphics every time (low point being #4's abstract boards), thrown in tons of supplementary games (like hockey in #5!), added more and more playable characters, cleaned up the once-confusing item system, all while keeping the core simple (win mini-games to collect coins to buy stars). It's the best party game available, and just about everybody has tried to top it and failed. Including Sonic, Crash, Pac-Man, and whatever pseudo-mascots they think they have over on Xbox.
Although I'd love the series to release at a lower price point, but then again I'd love every game to cost less. Duh.
Here's what Mario Party 6 has done to the formula. Every game board now has day and night effects. Every third turn, it switched from day to night and back, causing some events and mini-games to change. Interesting. There's a handful of microphone games. Interesting. Some of the boards change up the way you gather stars... one board has one single star location with different pricing during night and day; one board has one star location that rotates with a Bowser space; one board starts everyone out with 5 stars and sets you to concentrate on stealing them from each other. Very interesting. Stars are now counted after every game and stored in a bank, for use as currency to purchase unlockables. Very interesting.
The item system from MP5 is much slicker. In 5, you picked up free random item capsules at designated vending spots (in an unnecessarily long animation), then decided later to use them by spending your coins. Spending the money after the fact was weird, tossing them around the board to place them was weirder, and thanks to an obscure icon system, you could never tell what item was placed where. Not since that awful mini-mega system (#4) have I had such a rough time explaining rules to players.
Now called Orbs, you can buy them at a shop or pick them up for free (quickly, thank you). The hassle of payment has been removed, although you still do the long-distance toss to place them. But now, the Orbs you placed are marked with an image of your head, so you know what Orb spaces are likely to hurt you (those with somebody else's head).
Among the classic end-of-game Bonus Stars, the Coin Star is out, replaced with the Orb Star (the player who used the most Orbs.) For a long time now, I've thought that the Coin Star (most Coins in game) and the Mini-Game Star (most Coins won in mini-games) are more or less the same thing, so I'm happy they pared that down. Oh, and somebody up in English Localization finally changed the Happening Star to the Action Star.
Since MP6 wants you to gather stars to unlock stuff (like Toadette!), I've been playing all day. Well, not me, per se. Once the game starts, I set all the players to CPU and let the game play itself. So I'm actually getting stars right now. About 15 stars per game, on average. Plus, I'm probably opening up lots of ??????? games... I still have some of those left to uncover on #5, but it's random so the only thing to do is play. I know it sounds sad: I'm watching 4P CPU games of Mario Party, but I can get it even sadder. Once I set the players all to a starting handicap of 9 stars each! Didn't work though, the game saw through my deviousness and only awarded me the stars collected above the handicap setting.
Maybe I haven't found it yet, but #6 doesn't seem to have a single player Story Mode. I bet not many people have played them (they can get very boring, you against 3 CPUs) but they always end with some crazy board game boss fight against Bowser. I'll miss that in #6, but the other additions make up for it.
