released February 2006, purchased February 2006
And another brand new Nintendo IP slips out to absolutely no acclaim while jackholes everywhere bitch and whine about Nintendo never doing any new IP! ANOTHER MARIO GAME DURRRRRR.
This is a fantastic little game, a sandbox world set entirely within one family's household chiefly seen from the perspective of toys. Cheebo himself is only about six inches tall, so if you need to get to the kitchen sink it involves climbing up drawer handles and whatnot. This viewpoint has been done before, from Micro Machines to Army Men, but Chibi-Robo's open world environment, task-based storyline and bizarre cast of characters give it the needed charm and luster. This is a very Nintendo GTA.
Of course, by February '06, the GameCube was already on life support, so poor Cheebo didn't get the marketing respect nor the sales he deserved.
Plus, that dude needs merch, pronto.
Memory Score: You found all ten Frog Rings! Now find all ten again!
released March 2006, purchased March 2006
This game had been around since, what, E3 2004? Nobody quite knew what to make of it then, and when it finally showed up, it sucked just enough that even those who would have sold its praises up and down were annoyed by it.
It's definitely unique: a pinball game with RTS elements set in a fictionalized feudal Japan with the occasional giant headed spider monk. Typical pinball controls apply, but you control your armies with voice commands... and those commands are usually you screaming at them to get the hell out of the way of your smashy iron wreckin' ball.
Unfortunately, it's damn near unplayable. The voice control is sketchy, the last half of the game is frustratingly obtuse, and goal-oriented pinball remains just as obnoxious as goal-oriented pinball has always been. To make matters worse - and I'm talking eating-your-grandmother worse - the game demands you play each level in sequence without the possibility of re-playing older levels (until the very end.) If you do decide to jump back and re-play one (because, maybe, you, you know, enjoyed it), the game erases all of your progress beyond that level. WTF.
Memory Score: A good-bad idea gone horribly bad-bad.
released July 2005, purchased July 2006
I was following this one for quite some time, simply because it was an M-rated GameCube exclusive (another arm of the doomed Capcom Five), but the tepid early reviews bumped it off of my watch list. So I picked it up a year later for $15.
I can see why nobody got it. Killer 7 has weird-ass controls for no good reason other than to have weird-ass controls. Unless you dedicate some serious adjustment time to the first few levels, the control scheme just gets in the way. When a game puts "walk" on the A button instead of the analog stick, you know it's just messing with you.
But.
If you can make it past all of that, Killer 7 is slick and satisfying. The storyline gives Sons of Liberty a run for its money in the head-scratching-logic department. The primary conceit - you control a team of assassins who all seem to share the same body - is darkly clever.
A recommended game. Just know what you're in for.
Memory Score: Master, we're in a tight spot!
released November 2004, purchased March 2007
Although I usually don't care much for backwards compatibility, it can be nice to use the previous generation's cream to get you through the new generation's lean first year. I went from the Wii's Twilight Princess and WarioWare right into Baten Kaitos, a three year old B-grade GameCube-exclusive RPG.
I gave it a try because of A) the price, B) the card-based combat system and C) it's from Namco. Easily the best $5.50 I ever spent. I ended up with 50+ hours in on this one.
Baten Kaitos starts out with a really dull plot, but if you slog through the cliche parts, some cool stuff starts to happen... including a completely unexpected homage to the little-known Namco game Tower of Druaga. The middle of this game is pretty cool, but it's bookended with by-the-numbers RPG junk. The worst part is that even the boring bits could have been passable had Namco bothered to fashion proper cinematic cutscenes instead of using the game engine for the entire thing.
Oh, and as far as the card-based stuff... it's really just a more interesting (to me, anyway) way to level up your characters' skills. Each of the six playable characters gets their own deck and of course you keep mixing in the best cards you find (or buy). Aside from your personal desire for pure variety, there's not any reason to even care about half of the team, since only three go into combat at a time. Each battle, your attacks are determined by the cards you draw and the complexity is neatly layered by enemies' strengths and weakness to various types, your ability to pull off any of the game's mysterious combos, and an intense poker hand system that makes you identify matching card values to form pairs and full houses before the timer runs out on your attack. It's pretty amazing, actually.
Memory Score: I loved how they kept talking to me.
Next time: the stats.
