NYCC 2011: Mario Kart 7

Our adventure into this year's New York Comic Con was not exactly as peachy as we would have liked, but when is a convention not stressful? We were only able to attend the Thursday and Friday events for both economical and physical reasons, but we got a handful of videos and impressions to make for you all.

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Mario Kart gets its 7th iteration this year, and this time, it is on Nintendo's newest handheld. I got to briefly try out the game's demo station at this year's New York Comic Con, and it was a pretty good experience, even if it lacked all the modes mentioned in recent months.

I only played one race, and I could not place the location's name itself, but it was a large collection of setpieces set on a large island. The demo allowed me to choose one of eight characters, the body of the vehicle, the tires, and the hang glider. Hang glider? In Mario Kart? Oh, yes, and there is more, too.

There's some Pilotwings in my Mario Kart, and I do not mind.

The track I raced had a number of unique setpieces, starting with a cave filled with flying bats which knocked my cart around. Then, all of the racers raced through the cave filled with stalactites, and shortly thereafter, large boulders rushed toward us as we climbed the steep hills. Once I reached the top, Yoshi barreled into the air, and his kart sprouted its hang glider, allowing me to fly through the air and rush between the trees from above. These kart transformations are the newest additions to the franchise, and my experience with this first one was fairly positive. The other additional transformation involves a submarine, but I did not get to try that one out here. These transformations almost makes up for the lack of bikes this time around!

The demo lacked new abilities, but this game's sure got 'em!

The game's graphics are very smooth, similar to that of Mario Kart Wii. Some elements have been cut back to ensure that the game runs at the full 60 frames per second, but when you are rushing through each track, I do not think many will care. There is some bumpmapping on the vehicles, which helps to mask any lower polygons the karts themselves might display. The 3D effect mixed with the game's worlds and power-ups was great; I got inked by a Blooper and was very surprised about how close the ink looked on-screen. The depth especially showed when in the air, no doubt partly why they decided on using the hang glider in the first place. As this was essentially the E3 demo, I could not experience the new first-person mode, but it should certainly be useful to show off the game's 3D effect.

Coming Soon: Mario Sim Racer.

I would say the game is pretty good so far, but those not interested in Mario Kart will clearly not be won over this time around. We have no footage of the game, but you can surely expect to see more in the coming months!

NYCC 2011: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Our adventure into this year's New York Comic Con was not exactly as peachy as we would have liked, but when is a convention not stressful? We were only able to attend the Thursday and Friday events for both economical and physical reasons, but we got a handful of videos and impressions to make for you all.

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This year, Nintendo gets to end its 25th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda with a bang. Using Wii Motion+ and a slew of new design elements, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword could be the last massive game on Nintendo's current gaming system. At this year's New York Comic Con, we got to check out some of the demos, which were taking up a large chunk of Nintendo's booth on the showfloor, and it was difficult to control at first, albeit rewarding once done right.

The demo was split into three parts, consisting of a flight section, a dungeon section, and a boss fight against Ghirahim, the game's main villain (or at least original villain). On my time, I only got to play the battle agianst Ghirahim, and from my short experience, I found the game more challenging than its predecessor, Twilight Princess. The battle takes place at the end of the Skyview Temple, in which Link encounters the dark being in his attempt to capture Zelda. While explaining his hatred toward those in the sky, Ghirahim eventually decides to bring Link to the brink of death, and the battle begins.

You know when you encounter a guy with purple eyeliner and a menacing smile, a fight will begin.

Swinging the Remote is vastly important, which can be confusing for some after playing several games using "waggle." In the battle, Ghirahim approaches link and tries to grab the sword from his hands, so it is imperative to slash where his hands are not. After doing enough damage, he will make his sword appear, bringing in a real sword fight. If you slash at his sword, he will counter with a powerful slash attack. The boss also creates a number of darts to shoot at you, but if you slash at them just right, they launch right back to the creepy villain. In the end, as with the rest of the game, where the sword goes is very tantamount to the success of a battle.

Forget Epona, this animal can FLY!

The other two sections, covered by the video below, were played by people other than us, but we were able to gauge the experiences in a mixed fashion. In particular, we noticed two differing reactions from the dungeon section of the demo. Sometimes the player would swish the sword in a swift, waggle motion, but that resulted in the Stalfos killing off Link fairly quickly. However, once a user actually used the Remote like a sword, the battle became a lot easier. From the experience, the game will be difficult for many gamers, particularly as it brings emphasis to direction of a slash rather than the timing of it. Hopefully people will not take this difficulty in a terribly negative way.

Wagglers will soon become strugglers, even early on.

The graphics and music are altogether charming. The music is mostly orchestrated, which adds to the emotional subtext to the areas around Link. From the adventurous sounds of the sky to the dark and ominous violin solo in the dungeon, the soundtrack has a lot of benefits from the use of real instruments this time around. Graphically, the game looks top notch; bloom is not overly used and is instead used sparingly amid the well-modeled environments. Animations were smooth, and the colors give the game an impressionist style.

While the demo was very minimal in content, it was still a good window to look through and see what will come to us this November 20th.

NYCC 2011: Super Mario 3D Land

Our adventure into this year's New York Comic Con was not exactly as peachy as we would have liked, but when is a convention not stressful? We were only able to attend the Thursday and Friday events for both economical and physical reasons, but we got a handful of videos and impressions to make for you all.

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Mario is a character who is recognized greatly, regardless of the dimension of game he is in, whether 2D or 3D. Well, his upcoming adventure, Super Mario 3D Land, looks to try and combine the level elements of 2D Mario games while melding in a unique control and graphical element portrayed by his 3D adventures. This game also brings about a unique situation for our powerful plumber: this time Bowser has his Princess AND his power-ups!

Small Mario? Time Limits? This is sounding like old-school Mario to me!

From my short playtime at this year's New York Comic Con, this adventure felt pretty good, although I initially had a couple qualms about the controls. I got to play the underground stage and Boom Boom Airship levels out of the four available levels.

Graphically, Super Mario 3D Land is astonishing. The game looks like a Wii game, partly like the Super Mario Galaxy adventures. There is a solid framerate, and while it has no bloom effects and the like, the game moves fluidly and is top-tier for the handheld, thus far. As for the 3D depth, it can get extremely intense, and when I got into the sweet spot, 3D Land looked like I was looking into a small block world, with Mario inside it. On occasion, though, the camera felt a little too close to Mario; it should have panned out a little, in my opinion. The 3D effect really helped the platforming, regardless; with it off, making jumps felt harder for me to accomplish.

The music is close to some music from Super Mario Galaxy, with new instruments here and there. The game lacks orchestration, but the tunes are basic Mario tunes through and through. This game will not win any awards for its music this time around, though. It will be an acceptable Mario soundtrack, at best, from what I have heard thus far.

The depth helps, especially when it comes to the inevitably difficult areas ahead.

As for the actual gameplay elements, the game controls much like Galaxy, except you have to use the run button to move fast and can only move in eight directions. These might have been to make the game closer to old-school Mario platformers, but movement still feels a bit odd considering the analog input. I especially had trouble doing a backflip; I had performed something like it once and was unable to do it anymore, despite many attempts afterward. Hopefully the controls become less of a problem the more you play it.

Throughout my little excursion, I got the fire flower and leaf powerups, the latter of which even the enemies make use! This game felt like it was pulling a lot from the older games, so much that I feel this game is more like a 3D Super Mario Bros. 3 rather than a new Super Mario Galaxy. Instead of the stars, we see flagpoles. Instead of star bits, there are lots of ? blocks to hit with Mario's iron fist. Oh, yes, this is old-school Mario in 3D. The more I played it, the more I wanted to keep playing it.

Yeah, he's probably not going to get that 1UP.

From the few levels I played, the game is certainly another good Mario game, but whether it sits among the near-perfect Wii adventures will have to wait until I get my hands on the full version. Here's a clip of Super Mario 3D Land, filmed by Jennifer Ivins from FantasyFaction.com.

Super Mario 3D Land emerges November 13th.

NYCC 2011: Kirby's Return to Dreamland

Our adventure into this year's New York Comic Con was not exactly as peachy as we would have liked, but when is a convention not stressful? We were only able to attend the Thursday and Friday events for both economical and physical reasons, but we got a handful of videos and impressions to make for you all.

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Last year, we got the first console Kirby adventure in a long time, but soon, a classic Kirby adventure will emerge for the Wii. This Comic Con, we got our hands on a part of the game, and it was all charm and no fuss.

Kirby's Return to Dreamland stars Kirby in his attempt to help out an alien being, whose ship has crash-landed onto Pop Star and scattered its pieces throughout the planet. Thankfully, Kirby is not alone in this adventure; if more than one player wants to jump in, they can either join in as different colored Kirbies or play as King Dedede, Metaknight, or a spear-touting Waddle Dee.

Even while cooperating, King Dedede treats Kirby with little respect.

Kirby's newest console adventure from HAL is as bright and inviting as any Kirby game in the past; while it lacks the severe heart attack-inducing cute levels of Epic Yarn, this game certainly fits the mold of a delightful platforming adventure. The game's graphics were very colorful and cheerful, very much how a Kirby game should be. The animations were smooth, so smooth that you could see the pink puffball jiggle with each movement he made.

Keep your jaw open like that and it will get stuck, mister!

The controls were very responsive, even when using the motion controls for the new Super-Inhale move. Shaking the controller to initiate the attack felt very natural, turning Kirby into a motion-controlled vacuum. The Super-Inhale is not the only new ability; Kirby also can obtain extremely-devastating Super Abilities. I got the Ultra Sword ability in the demo, in which Kirby pulls out an over-sized sword and slashes at everything in its path; at the event, anyone who saw this move called Kirby hardcore. There are quite a few more Super Abilities, so all those haters better beware!

Thunderkirbies, HO!

Do not judge this game negatively because of last year's Epic Yarn or this year's Mass Attack. If you want a traditional Kirby game with four-player co-op and plenty of super moves, this is the one to get. This is a definitive Kirby game. Although I did not play the game with anyone else, the impressions of multiplayer experiences with the game were fairly positive. Check below for a brief video clip of the demo.

Kirby's Return to Dreamland will be coming out today, October 24th.

NYCC 2011: Sonic Generations

Our adventure into this year's New York Comic Con was not exactly as peachy as we would have liked, but when is a convention not stressful? We were only able to attend the Thursday and Friday events for both economical and physical reasons, but we got a handful of videos and impressions to make for you all.

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Sonic Generations was available in split venues at this year's New York Comic Con; the console version of the game was situated at the Archie Comics booth while Nintendo housed the 3DS edition (which was on rotation with other third party games such as Skylanders and Shinobi). I only got my hands on the 3DS version, and it looks to have improved some since it last appeared in public.

Old Sonic Character, meet New Sonic Worlds.

Comparatively, Classic Sonic was both slower and tighter in control than Modern Sonic was. Classic Sonic required more of a running start to really get moving while Modern Sonic accelerated much faster, making it a tad harder to know what was in front of him. While I didn’t test to see just how close Classic Sonic’s physics were to the physics on the Genesis, I could tell there were some differences, but not enough to impede my experience. As for Modern Sonic, he played similarly to his Sonic Rush counterparts, which was fast and smooth.

Green Hill has gone 3D. Blast Processing has returned!

One thing I noticed was that the Classic Sonic stage layouts were copies of the original level layouts back on the Genesis. This is a tad disappointing as Green Hill Zone Act 1 is only 30 seconds long and there is no feeling of experiencing new levels. Luckily, Modern Sonic’s stages are completely new with rails and other stage gimmicks. I was happy to notice that both Classic and Modern Sonic had complex platforming elements as well as multiple paths to choose from, adding to the game’s replayablilty. One element I did not like for Modern Sonic was that in some parts you needed to boost in order to get through while other parts punished you if you didn’t take you time. As far as level layouts go, they were pretty much on par with Sonic Rush’s level design, which is okay by me. As for the boss in the demo, Big Arm, I found the battle challenging and fun. Compared to videos I have seen online, this boss fight felt tougher as a result of his constantly changing attack pattern; this more difficult battle also allowed me the time to hear the music, which was a neat combination of both new and old themes.

After playing both versions, I found a problem I had not thought of before. In the console versions, both Sonics have different looking stages and play styles, but in the 3DS version, both Sonics look the same and have similar levels. This caused some confusion mid-game; at times I would forget that I had special abilities or that I could not use special attacks. Hopefully this will not be too much of an issue for me later on!

Well, as long as it is fun, I won't complain about including Sonic Heroes.

After seeing both versions in person, it was clear that the console version is getting far more attention than the handheld version. Both games look nice, but some corners are being cut in order to get the 3DS game out this year. My other concern is game length. The HD version has 9 stages each with two acts and 10 missions, but so far it appears that there are only 7 stages with 2 acts on the 3DS. Besides that, the game does appear to be improving and should be at least enjoyable to fans of the more recent Sonic handheld games.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure to speak with Aaron Webber about Sonic Generations, which you can see in the video below. While no release date has been announced for the 3DS version, the 360, PC, and Playstation 3 version of Sonic Generations is expected later this month.