Super Mario Bros Wii

Now how many times have we purchased this game? It seems they make a new Super Mario Bros for each platform...not that you can blame Nintendo, since people keep buying it. So I bought it.

Sadly I haven't been able to experience the multiplayer, being too cheap and lazy to buy extra controllers and invite people over, so I'm not even going to talk about that. Instead I'm going to talk about...100% completion, and lives.

Oh, and Bowser.

While I understand 100% completion, the only rewards for 100% completion should be bragging rights awards. New skins, new character, whatever. But don't lock significant chunks of content behind it. Super Mario Bros Wii has eight worlds, and when you complete the eighth world, you gain access to world nine. So far, so spiffy.

But then it turns out to play a given level in world nine, you have to achieve 100% completion in a corresponding earlier world. To play 9-1 you have to 100% complete World 1. At the moment I've only unlocked 9-1 because I am by no means a platform god...and that's probably the only bonus world I'll see. Which is a shame, because it's a hard, interesting level with new setpieces. Instead of making it so I won't see a large chunk of content (Super Mario Bros Wii, 100% completion aside, is not an incredibly long game), they could give out...oh, infinite mushrooms in your "backup powerup" screen.

Because you'll be using a lot of these backup powerups if you're like me. Who wants to be tiny when you enter a world (and not small mushroom tiny, either)? Every time you die you're reset...and what's up with having lives anyhow? They're so absurdly easy to get that it's nigh-impossible to run out. They're not a limiting factor, so they serve no purpose. Heck, they even have a video in the game on how to get infinite 1-Ups. I suppose it's mostly an artifact of the original but...come on, if you keep green mushrooms around, change their nature!

Now that that's out of the way, Bowser. He's by far the best part of the game. Homage to the classic cutting-the-drawbridge thing...and then he grows enormous and pursues you through his castle. He blows up bits of the scenery and sends lava waves you have to dodge. It's amazing and showcases a lot of what they could do with Mario but don't. Dynamically destructible environments, manipulating mob abilities into helping you, and seriously epic bosses.

In the end, it's probably not quite worth the money, but it's worth a rental or waiting until the price comes down a bit. Unless you have friends to play with, and then the multiplayer might be fun. Though I've heard tell of some problems with it too...

Dragon Age, Torchlight

So I picked up two games recently; Dragon Age and torchlight.

Dragon Age has been pretty thoroughly hyped, what with all the emphasis on your character origin and how it affects the story. And I must say it's a really well-done game. My favorite thing is the banter between your NPCs. It seems every pair of NPCs has a long list of running conversations that are frankly hilarious. Especially Zhevran, who is a lech, and Morrigan, who is snark personified (and voiced by Claudia Black). But as I'm playing it, I'm having less fun than I really should. Part of this is combat - I realize this is squad-based combat, and you're supposed to micromanage. But really, I have enough to do just fiddling with my mage and trying to avoid catching my own party in friendly fire with my absurdly overpowered AOEs. Having to stop all the time to keep everyone focus-fired on one target or not run off into an AOE effect that's already in place or the like quickly saps my enjoyment from combat segments. Everything else I like, but there's so much combat.

Conversely, Torchlight is nothing but combat. The storyline is thin-to-nonexistent, but as a concentrated Diablo you don't really expect much. And the combat is fun. It is of course just one player, but you have lots of options (with a diablo-style class and skill system), and they're all fun. Good loot, and very very easily moddable. One thing that I disliked about Dragon Age is that there was no way to respec. At all. And there's no way to tell without experience which skills are valuable and which ones are underpowered. Torchlight had no respec option to begin with, but the modability meant that they could release a respec mod very quickly. So far as I can tell, Dragon Age is not hugely mod-friendly.

While I like them both, I think Torchlight is actually better value for money.