Some Other Castle » mario and luigi

Some Other Podcast, Episode 40: Midget Zombie Clowns

Leah — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:23:21 +0000

We hope everyone has had/is having a perfectly wonderful holiday season! We know we are; after all, thanks to this week’s special guests, Dan and Joe, we finally get to gorge ourselves upon the long-awaited Fudgie the Whale! What better way to celebrate the coming of the new year than with chocolate crunchies and talk about (what else?) VIDEO GAMES? Rather than our usual setup, we have a chat about the games that stood out for us in the year 2009. Do you agree? Let us know!

Link the halls with boughs of holly…. (in no particular order and probably missing a few… gimme a break, I was drinking…)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Forza 3

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Pokemon Platinum

Resident Evil 5

Wii Sports Resort

Chronicles of Riddick

Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Shadow Complex

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Punch-Out!

Katamari Forever

Gyromancer

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Some Other Podcast, Episode 30: High Five!

Leah — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:01:15 +0000

It’s our thirtieth episode, and you know what that means: cake! We’re completely on a sugar high from all the frosting we inhaled beforehand, so you’re going to have to excuse the tangents. You know, like you usually do. In between tangents, we do find time to talk about demos (for good and evil), the scariness of hard games, and just what the proper use of those Modern Warfare 2 goggles might be…

LINKFACE!

Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Katamari Forever

Wet

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona PSP

Demon’s Souls

Uncharted 2

Sony confirms 250 gig PS3 for $350 to drop November 3

Bayonetta demo available on Japanese PSN

God of War 3 demo coming out in Japan for purchasers of inFamous

Left 4 Dead 2 demo 10/27 for preorder customers, 11/3 for everyone else

Facebook and Twitter coming to XBL in November

WoW film to be written by Saving Private Ryan guy

Daily Star says MW2 goggles will be used for pervy stuff

Black Wii remote and nunchuck coming 11/16

GameStop director drops 2.3 million shares of stock

Magic the Gathering getting expansion 10/21 on XBLA, will cost 400 MS points

Avatar Halloween costumes coming to XBL

Band Hero demo on XBLA

We still love the listener mail! Send it to podcast@someothercastle.com

Confessions of a Backlogged Gamer, Week 36: Stupid Moon

Leah — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:36:24 +0000

Brace yourself, because it’s a landmark week. I completed not one, but TWO games! Of course, I acquired more than that in return, and it’s possible that I put off writing this column until I was done one of them so that I would have more progress to report, but… shhh. It’s the thought that counts. Right?

I probably would have finished Katamari Forever much more quickly than I did if it hadn’t been for the moon. Yeah, that’s right. The moon. The moon has to be of a certain size before the King (well, in this case, it’s actually the Robot King) will allow it to take its proper place in the cosmos, of course, and I had some serious issues getting it big enough (that’s what she said). Twice in a row, I went through the entire 15-ish minute level only to be thwarted at the last second by not being able to get the last 10 meters or so, which was incredibly frustrating. I eventually emerged victorious, though, and completed the game not long after. The penultimate level, by the way, is really kind of disturbing; having returned to his former fabulous self, the true King commands you to roll up the body of the Robot King, bit by bit, until you can roll up his heart (technically his reactor core, but it’s pretty much the same for a robot). See, this is what I love about the Katamari series. It’s SO adorable, but under that adorable, there’s a layer of fucked-up that they can get away with because of all the bright shiny colors. Did anyone else notice that people scream when they get rolled up? What about the massive property damage caused when everything gets lumped together? And exactly what happens when stars and planets get sucked into that ball? Massive destruction has never been so cute.

I continued to love Mario and Luigi as well, although towards the end of the game, there are a few parts that grate a bit. The one that sticks out the most is the fact that the final boss fight took me TWO HOURS to complete. That’s longer than the final boss fight in Persona 3 took (although granted, this one was a lot less perilous than that one). I don’t know whether I was just lower level than I was supposed to be or what, but this really seemed excessive and out of keeping with the rest of the game. Like any other fight in the game, all you really have to do is get the pattern down and then follow along until the enemy falls. This is one of the instances where Mario and Luigi have to work together with Bowser, so of course there’s a different pattern for each battle scene, and after one false start where I died within the first few rounds, I didn’t have a problem with that. I could have continued the fight indefinitely, and that’s what it felt like I was doing. I even consulted an online faq at one point just to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong because it was taking so long. The only explanation I can really come up with is simply that I wasn’t doing enough damage, but given that I wasn’t having any trouble surviving and that I made it a point to fight as many random battles as possible during the game itself, I don’t think that should have been the case…. but what else could it be? Anyway, I did finish the battle and the game, and that fight aside, I was very impressed overall. I hope it isn’t another four years until the next! (Probably will be, though…)

I briefly began Persona PSP this week as well, playing just long enough to get through the intro movies and get a quick look at the battle system and setup. I’m not sure what I think just yet; it doesn’t feel quite the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and as I said, it was a short amount of playtime, so I’m hesitant to give impressions just yet. I’m not a big fan of the first-person wandering, though. The battles aren’t difficult to grasp, but they really do just dump you into the middle without any sort of tutorials or anything. Normally I wouldn’t complain about this, and it’s not a huge complaint now, but with things like demon negotiations, it would have been nice to at least have the option to hear what exactly I’m supposed to be doing there. I guess I’ll just have to mess with it some more and see what happens.

Current backlog total: 108

Now playing: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP); Wet (360)

New games added: Demon’s Souls (PS3); Halo 3: ODST (360); Wet (360); Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)

Games completed: Katamari Forever (PS3); Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS)

Some Other Podcast, Episode 29: Drinking For Two

Leah — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:21:28 +0000

We know how much you missed us, so to make it all better, we’ve included large doses of extra awesome this week. After a very special announcement, we continue on to chat about assorted TGS news, Elaine’s need for yet more plastic peripherals, and more Japanese games than you can shake a wang at…

Linktastic!

Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Katamari Forever

Dissidia Final Fantasy

Halo 3: ODST

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

Rock Band: Beatles

Nier Replicant/Gestalt look frickin’ sweet

Super Street Fighter IV announced, coming spring 2010

Naughty Dog pulls Twitter integration from Uncharted 2 because it’s annoying as hell

Set list confirmed for DJ Hero

Alpha Protocol pushed to next year; Sega pretends like they know nothing

Firmware 6.10 tethers PSP Go to cell phones

DSiWare locked to hardware… really, Nintendo?

PS3 outsells Wii in Japan for September

Trine finally coming to PSN 10/22

EA trademarks “The Ripper”

2.2 million DSi sold; Reggie says Walmart is their biggest customer

U2 wants their own music game, fails to notice they are not the Beatles

Dragon Age getting Day 1 DLC

LISTENER MAIL! It goes here: podcast@someothercastle.com

Confessions of a Backlogged Gamer, Week 35: The Curious Effects of Magic Mushrooms

Leah — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:03:56 +0000

Sometimes a game has great writing, and sometimes it has great gameplay. Either of these by itself can be a little tricky to find, but a game that has both is a genuine treasure. I’ve always found that the Mario and Luigi series is quite reliable for falling into that last category, which is why I had been patiently waiting for the latest installment, Bowser’s Inside Story, for quite some time before it actually came out. I played a hefty chunk of it this week, and I am happy to report that it’s just as awesome as ever.

I think the thing that has surprised me the most about the game at this point is that you actually spend a great deal more time than I was expecting playing as Bowser rather than the plumbers. This isn’t a bad thing, and it doesn’t mean that you *don’t* play as Mario and Luigi– some of the best fights are the ones in which you actually play as both (usually accomplished by having Bowser inhale something smaller and then having the boys beat it down once it’s in his body). I was just a little surprised that they chose to put so much focus on Bowser when the series has traditionally focus mostly on the 0thers. The basic mechanics of the battles stay mostly the same, though; rather than having jumps and hammers, Bowser fights with punches and flames, but it’s essentially the same idea. Where the game really draws a distinction for itself is in the mini-games it utilizes to activate certain features of Bowser’s body from within to solve puzzles or add extra power to get through tough spots. These, so far, have ranged from pumping up his muscles by batting electrical impulses into them (this one recurs, with minor changes, throughout the game), to fording a river of adrenaline to get him out from under a fallen castle, to stylus-based speedy digestion of a giant carrot in his stomach. These side-activities offer an interesting break from the normal turn-based battles, keeping things interesting and showing just how creative the folks at AlphaDream can really be. At this point, I’ve played about seven hours of the game, and I’m still completely enthralled with it. That’s part of the reason I haven’t really put much time into other stuff this week…

I didn’t really finish Dissidia so much as I hit a giant brick wall. I’m not a hundred percent sure how far you’re *supposed* to be able to get before you have to go level your character, but I made it to somewhere towards the end of Shade Impulse 3 (I assume there are five total, but I don’t really know). I didn’t want to level; I just wanted to fight. So, for my purposes, I’m finished… and this way I got to stop while it was still fun. I think that’s fair.

I’m also still playing Katamari Forever, and I have one complaint (it’s not even a big one, because how can you really have big complaints about Katamari?). I play these games because I want to roll things up into a giant ball. It’s very simple. It’s very silly. I don’t have to think about it too hard. This is why my least favorite levels have traditionally been the ones that have some sort of trick or gimmick to them: make the brightest-lit Katamari possible, for example, or roll up a cow or bear (but not just ANY cow or bear….). The remastered levels that appear from the older games, by and large, seem to be of this latter type. This isn’t universally true, but they do seem to appear with greater frequency than the simple “roll things until the Katamari is THIS big” type, which are what I prefer. I guess the tricky levels are more unique, and so make more sense to be remade, but they can occasionally be frustrating to me, and Katamari should NEVER be frustrating. As I said, a minor complaint, but there it is.

Current backlog total: 106

Now playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS); Katamari Forever (PS3); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

New games added: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS)

Games completed: Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP)

Confessions of a Backlogged Gamer, Week 34: How I Roll

Leah — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:45:23 +0000

Yeah, I know I used pretty much the same title for a recent podcast. It fits, okay?

So, as you might surmise, I have been hitting the Katamari pretty hard. Really, why wouldn’t I? It’s bright and shiny, the music is as infectiously adorable as ever, and the King of All Cosmos retains his creepy awesomeness. Even more so now, actually, because now there’s a robot version of him as well…

Katamari Forever has two basic sections: there are the new levels, which were created specifcally for this game, and the recreated old levels, which are prettied-up versions of those featured in previous Katamari titles. This might sound like a cheap bid to get more play out of stuff that’s already been done, but it really isn’t. The levels look gorgeous, even on my crappy non-HD screen, and they fit into the (admittedly weird) story perfectly; you’re rolling around in the King’s head trying to “wake up” his memories (i.e. the old levels), which start out in black and white and gradually turn colorful the more you roll. There isn’t exactly anything particularly groundbreaking in this iteration, but as far as I’m concerned, there didn’t need to be. All I really want to do is wad stuff up into my life, damn it. Success!

I’ve crossed the twenty-hour mark in Dissidia, which is much more content than I was anticipating getting out of the title, and I’m still having a lot of fun with it. I’ve gotten through the storylines of the initial ten characters, and I’ve unlocked all of the bad guys as well. I haven’t really messed with the arcade mode, but I think I’m going to go for that when I’m done with the rest of the story mode (which is where everyone comes back together to defeat the ultimate evil and blah blah blah…). Like I’ve said before, the actual story isn’t all that important to me here; it’s stereotypical JRPG stuff slopped into a fighting frame. Whatever. The great part is that the stages and the bravery system make this different from a standard fighter, which is (I think) why I like it so much. Some of the characters are more difficult to use than others; there definitely seem to be a few balance issues from what I’ve played. However, I even grew into those that I had the most trouble with (FUCK Terra, for example) by the time I’d spent five boards with them. In the end levels, you can choose your character, and I’m going with Cloud for the time being (don’t look at me that way, he was higher level than Squall). I confess to taking a peek at the strategy guide to see if anything else unlocked, and it looks like there’s yet more after I finish the bit I’m in now, so we’ll see how long I can keep this up.

I haven’t quit Pokemon Platinum, but I have shelved it for the time being, because I really, really wanted to play Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. I’m glad I did, because the game meets and surpasses the expectations that I had from playing the previous titles in the series (which rank among my favorite handheld titles to date). It’s been nearly four years since the last M&L (Partners in Time), but I fell right back into the mechanics as though I’d never left. There’s a new facet to the gameplay now, as you control not only the titular plumbers, but also Bowser himself, who contains essentially the rest of the cast in his tummy (and other bits). There’s some neat interplay between the two scenarios, and I’m interested to see how that continues to develop (I’m only about two hours in at this point). Overall, I’d say this is a must-get, particularly if you enjoyed any of the previous games in the series, including the Paper Marios (essentially its sister series).

Continuing on the track of games-I-should-have-played-many-years-ago-but-didn’t-because-shooters-scared-me, I recently borrowed The Orange Box from Elaine specifically so that I could play Portal. I was a bit apprehensive about doing so, because even though every person I’ve ever talked to has sung the game’s praises, I get nervous about these types of puzzle games. I know this makes me sound like a big baby, but I was afraid I’d get too frustrated trying to figure things out, and the fact that it’s a sort-of shooter (which is, as we know, NOT my usual genre of choice) would only make it worse. I’m very glad that I was wrong. Rather than getting frustrated, I actually found myself getting excited when the insight hit and I figured out how to get through a particularly troublesome area. The writing is hilarious, the puzzles are creative, and the game is just the right length at around three hours (for me, anyway). If you haven’t played Portal…. well, I think I was the only one left who hadn’t. But, you know, do it.

Current backlog total: 106

Now playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS); Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP); Katamari Forever (PS3)

New games added: Katamari Forever (PS3); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

Games completed: Portal (360)