3RM @ NYCC 2012: New Super Mario Bros. U

Alex:

Nintendo had been pushing quite a few Wii U launch titles at its New York Comic Con booth this year, and one of them was a demo of their latest big Mario game: New Super Mario Bros. U.  I got to play it briefly using Boost Mode, so let me give some short impressions on the product.

At the show, the Boost Rush Mode demo put up to four players into a collection of stages to race through and get a high score, not unlike New Super Mario Bros. 2's Coin Rush Mode.  In Boost Rush Mode, players are given a time limit to complete the set of stages based on a particular theme.  Unlike normal stages, however, the screen continues to slowly advance forward, and as more coins are collected, the speed of the scroll can accelerate greatly.  To make things more complicated, the whole team shares lives, so one player constantly dying can result in the whole group's failure before reaching the end.  It is quite a bit more difficult than playing through the normal game, so it will take teamwork and pure skill to survive the trek.

Now, I mentioned four players, but there is technically room for a fifth with the Wii U GamePad.  This fifth person plays in Boost Mode, a mode of play in which the GamePad user can assist the characters by creating blocks on-screen.  Tapping onto the GamePad's touch screen generates a block which can be used to prevent a hero from falling to his death or to help someone make it to higher places in the level.  Boost Mode also allows the GamePad user to tap at enemies to freeze them in place, helping the others dodge or attack where necessary.

In the end, what mattered in the level was that our efforts would work together to persevere through the snow-covered landscape and the twirling star platforms before us, but our team effort would prove ineffective at best.  Most of the time, the players' interactions with each other, combined with my own interference, caused plenty of chaos and ended the lives of many.  People can still interact with each other in-game, so a number of deaths erupted from those shenanigans.  There were times when I put down a block for someone to jump on, only to have them hit it from underneath and plummet to their doom.  Nintendo has said that using Boost Mode can be cool for speedruns, but I suspect it will be much more difficult to get speedruns coordinated between two different people in a game such as NSMBU.

Graphically, NSMBU looks like a High-Definition version of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and there are a number of graphical improvements here and there.  However, when looking for the Wii U's graphical showcase, NSMBU is not the game that fits that description.  Still, it works for what it does, and at least it is not as sterile-looking as the original Wii release.

New Super Mario Bros. U releases with the launch of the Wii U: November 18th, 2012.  Get some friends together and be prepared to lose them from this game!

3RM @ NYCC 2012: Rayman Legends

While we did get to play Ubisoft's Rayman Legends at New York Comic Con, we only did so for a brief moment, so instead of detailed impressions, here is a short clip of the game at the showfloor.

Rayman Legends is releasing sometime 2013 exclusively for Wii U.

3RM @ NYCC 2012: TANK! TANK! TANK!

Tony:

At Namco Bandai’s NYCC booth, facing Nintendo’s booth were some playable Wii U titles. The game I got a chance to play was TANK! TANK! TANK!, an arcade game revolving around tanks, tanks, and more tanks. After playing the game a short while, I can say while it was enjoyable, but I am also worried about its content.

The demo on the show floor had two modes: a monster battle mode and a multiplayer mode. Once a mode was selected, the game took a picture of my face using the Wii U GamePad's camera and used it as my player icon. It might not be ground-breaking, but it was a nice touch when playing with multiple players. Sadly, besides the use of the camera at the beginning, there seemed to be no real use of the gamepad. While I hear there is a mode that does fully utilize it, I would have liked to see it here in the demo.

The mode I played was the monster battle mode, which had me either take down a bunch of large monsters or one massive beast within a given time limit. The first stage had me shooting a horde of arachnids that were ransacking the city. Running around with three other tanks, it was my duty to destroy enough bugs before time ran out. Outside of the standard tank attack available, the battlefield was full of weapon power-ups which made mowing down spiders much easier. However, such large attacks not just kill monsters; it also destroyed various buildings around the city! This chaos spanned throughout the match to the point where only a few buildings were left standing. The multitude of enemies and the wonton destruction of cities reminded me of another game, Earth Defense Force, where it was my job to exterminate a massive amount of ants and spiders before they could take over the city. I could even destroy buildings in that game, too, and for the record, both games are all the more fun for it.

The second mission put me and my team against a massive three-headed dragon by the harbor. Despite there being only one monster, it had a large amount of health. The hydra dragon could easily bite down and destroy the tanks with its three heads so keeping a safe distance was the key to success. Like the prior mission, there were various weapon drops, although this time there were also missiles that could be fired at the dragon, dealing significant damage. Sadly, I discovered those power-ups too late, and we failed just short of victory as the dragon only had 3.3% health left. Darn it! Despite the failure, throughout both missions I had fun shooting and blowing things up.

With a name like TANK! TANK! TANK!, it is easy to see that the game has tank-like controls. There was no strafing, and I had to move the body of the tank separately from the head, which took some getting used to. I also had to get use to the in-game camera, as it would sometimes go into buildings or debris left behind. Luckily this only happened a handful of times, and it did not negatively affect my progress of blasting spiders.

For being a Wii U launch title, TANK! TANK! TANK! does not push the new console’s graphics at all. While everything ran smoothly and had no issues holding up through the madness, the geometry of the environment and tanks was rather basic. This lead to another issue the game has coming up: content verses price. The game was fun to play, sure, but if the content is limited and the cost is too high, the game will not be worth the time. Hopefully the final game will provide enough experiences for players to overlook the game’s graphical simplicities for its price point.

TANK! TANK! TANK! is a fun game to play if you just want to blow things up. The overall experience reminded me of Earth Defense Force 2017 in a good way. Based on what I played, the game’s fast-paced action and expanding chaos makes this game a great pick-up-and-play experience with or without friends. My only concern is whether or not the game has enough to do in it for people to pay full retail price on the game.

3RM @ NYCC 2012: Adventure Time: Hey Ice King, Why'd you Steal Our Garbage?

Alex:

Nowadays, there are few cartoons that are as crazy and unique as Adventure Time.  While the series has several moments reminiscent of video games, there has not been a full video game release using the franchise, until now.  Adventure Time: Hey Ice King, Why’d You Steal Our Garbage? is the series’ debut video game onto the Nintendo DS and 3DS, and D3 Publisher was showing off a build of the game at New York Comic Con for us to play.  While we were not permitted to show showfloor footage of the game, we got to interview Senior Marketing Manager Fernando Bustamante about it for you to enjoy in the video above.  After having played a bit of the game, I will say that Adventure Time is shaping up to be a fitting game for the show with great animation and humorous monsters and scenarios.

In Adventure Time: Hey Ice King, Why’d you Steal Our Garbage?, our story begins when Finn has a nightmare involving the Cosmic Owl and Jake, but when he wakes up, his best dog buddy helps him feel better by letting him destroy his secret teacup collection.  Just as they run outside to start another day of adventuring, the Ice King emerges to inform them that he has taken their trash.  Now while Jake is quite content with this, Finn thinks something is up (and taking someone else’s stuff is not right, even if it is trash), and so the two go on an adventure to get their garbage back and kick Ice King’s butt, as always.

Adventure Time is an adventure game with inspirations from a variety of games with a unique twist in the mix.  The game is primarily a side-scroller in which players control Finn and Jake working together to progress through the wilderness of The Grass Lands, The Candy Kingdom, and other memorable locations in the Land of Ooo.  Initially, Finn and Jake have few means to fight off the rock and sign monsters around, but over the course of the game, they can obtain battle abilities to boost their strength and fight enemies in a multitude of ways.  The gameplay feels very similar to that of Zelda II: Adventure of Link, and the callback to it only gets greater when you travel around the map.  In an overhead view, Finn travels around the Land of Ooo to his next location, occasionally getting help from the shape-changing Jake to cross gaps and traverse the land.  If they wander off the main path, however, monsters appear and can take the heroes into a random encounter!

Outside of the obvious callbacks to older adventure games, Adventure Time's gameplay is enhanced with the help of BMO, the heroes' companion gaming device.  Once he joins the party, he takes up the bottom screen, and players can use him to see Finn and Jakes' stats, the world map, and their inventory.  The inventory ranges from food to magic crystals, and using these items in-game can help heal the duo or temporarily boost stats or attack enemies on screen.  Also, items can be used on each other, providing a boost of effects; for example, adding syrup to pancakes will boost the healing effect they provide.  However, combining items incorrectly can do more harm than good; nobody wants ketchup in their milkshakes!

I got to play the game from the beginning, and on the 3DSXL, the game looks very good.  The character animations are extremely smooth, and the colorful worlds display very well on the 3D display.  It looked like a diorama of the Adventure Time world, with highly-animated characters and monsters abound.  The game did not have much in the way of voice-acting, but from what I was told, there should be more voice acting implemented in the final version of the game.  How much, though, I do not know.

My experience with the game was good, but I must mention that the game is quite difficult to start.  I found myself dying often in the earlier stretch of the game.  I imagine that it was more my rushing through the demo than it was the game's difficulty, but even so, there are a lot of enemies to fight in each environment.  I hope the later parts of the game experiment more with the level design, too, as I only really saw flatter landscapes rather than vertical and wide-open mazes to explore.  I did not use the inventory system much through my playtime, but I suspect using BMO in conjunction with newly-acquired battle abilities will break away from any potential monotony.  Of course, what chance is there for monotony in an ADVENTURE TIME game written by creator Pendleton Ward?  Probably very small.

Adventure Time: HIKWYSOG? looked great at the show, and while the mechanics were simple early on, it was just the opening of the adventure, after all.  With WayFoward and the show's creator behind this game, I have a feeling it will be a worthy component to the series and our handheld collections.  When it comes out this November, I have a feeling I will know what time it is.

3RM @ NYCC 2012: Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed

Sonic and Aaron Webber Commentary

Danica Patrick and Dragons

Alex:

Sumo Digital and Sega have been working well together for the last few years to bring us games starring a multitude of Sega characters, and this year, the two are releasing their second racing game starring Sonic and a collection of other Sega favorites: Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed.  While Sega itself did not have a booth at this year’s New York Comic Con, two demo units of the racer were at the Archie Comic booth, and we even got Associate Brand Manager Aaron Webber to chat with us about the game.  After my brief hands-on and some examination of the demos there, I can see the potential this racer has at the starting line.

Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is the sequel to 2010’s Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, but the game adds a very significant twist to the gameplay this time around.  Initially, the game plays similar to that of its predecessor; players choose Sonic and Sega characters to race in vehicles along tracks designed from the worlds of Sega’s lore.  However, at particular moments in the race, the vehicles can transform from cars to boats or planes to accommodate changes in the track.  These other vehicle forms control very differently from the original form; whereas boats are affected by the flow of water physics, the planes add aerodynamic elements into the game.  The vehicle changes help break up what might otherwise be a simple course, and the changing track allows players to experience more of the environments around them.

Transformed appears to take content from its previous game while adding in a collection of characters expected and unexpected.  Returning are a number of characters from the original, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, AiAi, and Beat, but Sumo Digital is adding in new Sega favorites such as NiGHTS, Gilius Thunderhead, and Vyse.  The odder additions to this game are Ralph from the upcoming Disney movie Wreck-it Ralph and Danica Patrick, a JR Motorsports NASCAR Nationwide Series racer who will be driving in a Sega-sponsored vehicle in future NASCAR races.  I will admit, it was very odd seeing someone play through Panzer Dragoon’s stage with Danica, but at the same time, the gameplay does not get pushed aside simply because she was included in the game.  I was more concerned about how many reused environments we might see in the final release.  Sumo seems to be focusing a lot on the Sonic Heroes motif for Sonic’s world, and from the looks of it, we might be losing certain characters from the roster who were more niche, including Opa-Opa and Alex Kidd (but maybe I’m biased toward the latter).  We still do not know the final roster of courses or characters, so I might be wrong, but it is a concern to have now, regardless.

I got to play as Sonic in his franchise’s stage, and on the PlayStation 3, the game looks as good as ever.  I had only played parts of the first game's Xbox 360 demo before, and even then, I saw issues with the game’s framerate.  In this playthrough, however, I could see a definite improvement in the framerate, which remained mostly consistent throughout the playthrough.  The shading and color were very crisp in this game, as well.  The Xbox 360 demo showed a little weakness when it came to larger environment changes, but I imagine it will have been optimized in time for release.

I found Transformed to control fairly well, even if I made a few mistakes here and there at the beginning.  In the air, the car slowed down a bit too much in my eyes, but on the ground, the car turned and moved well around curves and through loop-de-loops.  On the water, I could feel the controls shift and really emphasize the water below me, and coupled with a giant octopus attacking me and a multitude of water mines throughout the final stretch, it felt a lot more action-packed than I expected when the race began.  As for weapons, there are the usual power-ups one can use to attack other racers such as snowballs or a tornado to flip them around, but there are also special All-Star moves which can be used once racers collect enough coins and do enough tricks in the race.  I did not get to use an All-Star move, but I got to use a few weapons and boosts to stay with the pack.  Even though I ended up in third, the experience was a fun one, and I wish I got to play it again during my time there.

Alas, only the PS3 and 360 versions were playable at the event, but the Wii U version is promising to have unique content to it, using the Wii U GamePad for asymmetric gameplay modes as well as five-player offline multiplayer.  I was unable to get any further details from Aaron about these modes, but hopefully more information will arise before it releases.

I found my experience with Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed to be quite good, and my concerns and nitpicking aside, I walked away more interested in the game than when I approached it.  Transformed should be releasing November 18^th for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U, and the handheld editions of the game will release sometime in December, as far as we know.

Oh, and Ristar is the flagman.  So, that’s cool.