Game Review: Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

Shantae: 1/2-Genie Hero

• Publisher: WayForward / Marvelous
• Developer: WayForward / Inti Creates
• Release Date: 20 December 2016
• Systems: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, XBox One, Wii U, Switch
• Genre: 2D Action (Platformer)
• Players: 1
• Cost: US$20

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Mighty No. 9, a game that rode high atop a mega-bucks-earning KickStarter campaign, only to crash into a pile of manure upon release.  Another game that also went through the crowd-funding motions at the same time was the new sequel to Shantae, sub-titled 1/2-Genie Hero.  I, myself, contributed to that campaign, spending more on it than I did with Mighty No. 9, for the record.  Upon backing, I opted to receive the PlayStation 3 port, since I have seen no need for the newer wave of consoles.  But, that port got cancelled, along with the one for XBox 360.  I'll say one good thing about how Comcept handled Mighty No.9 -- at least they actually released the PS3 and XBox 360 ports!  But whatever, there's still the PC version, so that's what I fell back on.  #PCGamingMasterRace  So, was all that worry worth it?

The game starts with Tinkerbats invading Scuttle Town -- again.

The story starts with Risky Boots and her Tinkerbat pirates invading Scuttle Town.  Second verse, same as the first.  So it should come as no surprise that Shantae's Uncle Mimic has unveiled a new mechanical contraption, and sends Shantae to gather the parts for it so they won't be stolen by Risky Boots, only for the finished product to be stolen by Risky Boots in the end.  It's basically another one of those "Mad Libs" sequels, as I described Risky's Revenge before.  In your quest to find these machine parts, you will unlock a succession of five worlds, accessible through a map screen as opposed to one giant overworld.  In fact, there are no discrete dungeon areas this time around; instead, all the worlds are self-contained action stages.  This does make them seem shorter than in previous games, but there are still plenty of hidden areas strewn about for you to revisit after earning new abilities.  And, on the positive side, that means less faffing about with sidequests than there was in Pirate's Curse.

While the main story failed to engage me, personally, each world comes with their own sub-plots, which have a bit more going for them... okay, still not much.  For example, the bratty genie guardian who takes over Shantae's role as the defender of Scuttle Town is rather unceremoniously brushed off after clearing the desert world.  But they are tied in with some pretty novel settings, like a factory where young maidens are transformed into "counterfeit mermaids" by having big-mouthed fish latch onto their waists, or even a magic-carpet race, which is in essence just a forced-scrolling platforming segment.  It's nice to see that the quirky sense of humour the series has built up over the years is still in full effect.

Shantae's dance transformation ("Danceformation", then?  ...I'll see myself out.) powers make a return after an absence in Pirate's Curse, where... she had a little run-in with the plot.  How they work this time is you hold a button to bring up a menu, and press a direction for the form you want to take.  It's sort of a hybrid of the transformation systems in the first two games, and is one of the more elegant solutions I could think of, since it lets you page through many options at a fast enough rate, while not forcing you to memorise a button sequence like in the first game.  And there are over a dozen transformations for you to unlock, although a little more uniqueness and utility would be appreciated.  Some of them are useless apart from specific situations, especially the mouse, who can go through tiny, maze-like passages and do little else.  And why do we need two separate forms for moving about underwater?

The new method of selecting transformations is both quick and convenient.

The Shantae games seem to go back and forth as to whether its attack items are consumable or meter-limited, and this time around they are once again limited by a magic meter.  As in Risky's Revenge, I like this because it encourages their use, especially since magic pickups are so common.  Then again, you'll be able to deal more damage faster just by upgrading your hair's damage and attack speed.  But late in the game, after completing an arduous collection quest, you can unlock a tiara that gives you infinite magic power, and this combined with the other items, especially the invincibility shield, make 1/2-Genie Hero game-breakingly easy.  I suppose it contrasts with the slightly harder difficulty at the beginning of the game, where you start with fewer heart containers than before, and must rely more heavily on consumable healing items until you start to upgrade yourself.

Freed from the limitations of past 8 and 16-bit platforms, the character art has been completely redone with hand-drawn animations, and it looks gorgeous.  Their animation is extremely fluid, even on huge boss characters like the Giga Mermaid.  On the other hand, the backgrounds are done with 3D models, and they look extremely basic in comparison to the pristine 2D art, their relative lack of detail fits with the cartoonish art style.  This is the same setup that WayForward has used in games like DuckTales Remastered, so you'd think they'd have come up with some way to spice up the backgrounds somehow, but apparently not.  And why is it that when we return to certain worlds, especially the desert world, the backgrounds have so much detail removed from the first time around?  Maybe it's just a bug in the version I played, I don't know.  #PCGamingMasterRace  The soundtrack, once again composed by Jake Kaufman, brings back many melodies from his songs from previous games, but with slight variations. I think its quasi-chiptune sound has a bit of a Sonic influence to it this time around, and coming from me, that is high praise.

Sprite animation is fluid and expressive, especially on bosses like the Giga Mermaid.

1/2-Genie Hero is not the longest game on the market, but none of the other Shantae games are either.  Expect something in the neighbourhood of 6 hours for a 100% clear playthrough, or 3 hours for a speed run, which is shorter than Pirate's Curse was, but less padded.  Alternate modes have been added since the game's initial release, such as the Hero Mode where all your transformations are unlocked from the start, and Hard Core Mode for extra difficulty.  And if you missed the gameplay revolutions brought on by Pirate's Curse, they have been brought back for the alternate campaign, where we play as Risky Boots and unlock her pirate gear for alternate movement techniques.  However, it is sold as separate DLC (US$10), although people who backed the game when it was on KickStarter got it for free.  While I am lucky to count myself as one of those people, this "sectioning off the best parts of the game as DLC" is a troubling habit for WayForward to start picking up, and especially for my beloved Shantae series.

Come to think of it, as a whole, 1/2-Genie Hero puts the Shantae series at a crossroads of concern.  WayForward's approach to sequels is starting to become formulaic.  If WayForward will ever make a sequel to this, they're going to need some cracking good ideas to elevate it above the status quo they've built up, as they did with Pirate's Curse.  That goes doubly if they choose to crowd-fund it, since it's our money on the line.  But don't be too afraid about it just yet, since 1/2-Genie Hero is still quite good.  It's a short, snacky kind of game, but it's incredibly sweet while it lasts.  If nothing else, playing 1/2-Genie Hero, and knowing that there was at least one good game to come out of crowd-funding, allowed me to end 2016 on a much-needed high note.

Positives:
+ Streamlines many of the series' more time-wasting mechanics.
+ Astounding character animations.
+ The Risky Boots campaign.

Negatives:
- Some combinations of upgrades break the game's balance.
- The backgrounds seem a little basic in comparison to the character sprites.
- The Risky Boots campaign as separate DLC.

Control: 5 counterfeit mermaids out of 5
Design: 4 counterfeit mermaids out of 5
Graphics: 4 counterfeit mermaids out of 5
Sound: 5 counterfeit mermaids out of 5
Value: 3 counterfeit mermaids out of 5
The Call: 85% (B+)

You might also like: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, DuckTales: Remastered, Shovel Knight

Game Review: Mighty No. 9

As you may have noticed, I've taken a hiatus from the SDP over the past year.  I've kind of been focused on other projects, especially my other blog, the Sekai Ichi Japan travel blog.  But I've finally reached a point where I can put that on hold and return to this.  To herald my long-awaited comeback, I'll start off by reviewing a couple of games that came out just last year.  I've had these reviews in the oven for quite a while longer, but haven't found the inspiration to finish them until now.  Maybe I should have published these reviews when they were still relevant, but putting enough time behind me gives me the benefit of cooling down any passions that may influence my criticism for better or worse.  ...Sure, let's go with that.  Now with no further ado, I present to you...

Mighty No. 9

• Publisher: Deep Silver 
• Developer: Comcept / Inti Creates 
• Release Date: 21 June 2016
• Systems: PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, XBox 360, XBox One, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS
• Genre: 2D Action (Platformer)
• Players: 1 
• Cost: US$20

Yup, almost three years since its debut announcement on Kickstarter, Mighty No. 9, the second coming of Mega Man in-all-but-name is upon us. And seeing as how I wrote an editorial on this game, in addition to funding it when it was on Kickstarter, I feel an obligation to review the finished product. I endorsed said project back then, but in retrospect I'm not sure why. In that very editorial, I even said I had gotten bored of the original Mega Man formula embraced by its spiritual successor. In fact, I'm actually more of a Sonic and Legend of Zelda kind of guy. (Which explains why I took to Mega Man Legends the way I did; it's basically Zelda with guns.) My expectations weren't the highest, but thankfully I managed to stay out of the drama concerning its repeated delays despite the inordinate amount of money thrown at it by its backers ("Beckers", if you will).

Mighty No. 9 is a jump-and-shoot platformer developed by Comcept and Keiji Inafune, the co-creator of Mega Man.  In other words, Mighty No. 9 is a jump-and-shoot platformer developed by Comcept and Keiji Inafune, the co-creator of Mega Man, or at least as close as it can be without the keys to the licence.  In a world where humans and robots live together, a mysterious event causes robots across the country to go haywire, including the Mighty Numbers 1 through 8, created by Dr. Light Dr. White. But some robots were unaffected, like our player character: the titular Mega Man Mighty No. 9, a.k.a. the not-so-titular Rock Beck. And faster than you can say "soy un perdedor", Beck and Dr. White are on the case to, respectively, restore the mad robots and get to the bottom of all this. In case you haven't figured it out now, the plot is exactly like any given Mega Man game, with the names changed around a bit.

Beck needs to dash into enemies to finish them off.

And so is the gameplay: Beck jumps among platforms, shoots enemy robots, and collects special weapons from defeated bosses. But even this formula gets shaken up, ever so slightly, by Beck's new ability: the dash. This move can be used with the press of a button and is unlimited in use, so if nothing else it is deeply incorporated into the game's design. Dashing is used not just for platforming, but also for attacking: shooting enemies enough turns them unstable, at which point you can dash to finish them off, and get a temporary stat buff in the process.  These boosts not all that noticeable however, and something like extra health or ammo would be much more appreciated.

Sometimes, it's not even worth the effort, especially if an enemy you've just stunned is hovering over a bottomless pit or other trap.  Try tp give it the ol' coup-de-grace, and there's a good prospect that you might mis-time your dash back to the starting platform, and fall to your doom.  But the thing is, you're pressured to do this anyway, since dash-killing baddies right after you disable them builds up a combo counter, which leads to extra points, which lead to... nothing in particular.  So much for that, then.  You could say this approach does help the gameplay stand out among the many other Mega Man titles, but when you get right down to it, is it just extra busy work, when we used to be able to just shoot targets into oblivion? Yes, yes it is. But who am I to complain about new mechanics? Lord knows we had enough Mega Man sequels to prove that making so many games without such a unique selling point isn't the way to go either.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Of course, getting through the stages themselves is only half of the battle; the other half is knowing -- I mean, fighting the bosses. Like in Mega Man, Mighty Numbers 1 through 8 yield their weapons when you defeat them, allowing you to exploit the weaknesses of other bosses with them. Once again, this give the player the challenge of figuring out which boss is weak to which weapon... except not, because you can have the game straight-out tell you what their weaknesses are!  But the thing is, every so often, you have to hit them with a dash to finalize the damage you've just dealt, and if you fail that, they heal that chunk of health you worked so hard to chip off! There are even a number of bosses who possess instant-kill attacks!  Speaking of, there is no reason why spikes still need to be an instant kill, as they are in this very game. To quote the Zero Punctuation review of (the admittedly superior) Shovel Knight:

"We've got bottomless pits for a perfectly functional, if slightly ambiguous, instant kill; we don't need spikes muscling in on their turf! Five minutes ago, a bloke the size of a pregnant bus jumped down and hit me with the metal windsurfing sail that he seems to think is a sword, and it didn't even take off a whole health point. Now I'm being splattered across four dimensions because my elbow brushed against the stucco ceiling. I'm a trifle miffed! I think it's only an instant kill because spikes were an instant kill in Mega Man, but it was just as unnecessary then, too."

That may be true of both games, but you know what Shovel Knight has that Mighty No. 9 doesn't? Infinite lives! Let me quiz you readers on this topic:

Q: Where did lives systems in video game come from?
A: From arcade games, to let the next person in line play (and subsequently, pay) as soon as possible.

Q: Why do console games have lives systems?
A: Because they were ported from arcade games.

Q: Ah, but what if the console game in question was not an arcade port? Why would it have a lives system then?
A: ...I got nothing.

Dashing and precision platforming don't mix, especially when insta-kill spikes or bottomless pits are involved.

See, if you must include a lives system in your game, don't make it mandatory; just include it as an option, like Arcade Mode in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. (Incidentally, why haven't they ever brought Arcade Mode back to CoD? Was their Special-Ops mission mode from Modern Warfare 2 just so revolutionary that they couldn't look back?) And sure, losing all your lives just forces you to restart the level in question, not the whole game, plus you can set your lives to as many as 10 right off the bat. But that's just putting patches on the problem instead of addressing the root cause.

But even if the game did offer infinite lives, there's one more problem which grinds my gears. Each time you die, the game docks you a penalty of 3,000 points. And by the game's standards, 3,000 is a lot of points. This matters because you get grades for your performance upon completing a level. And if you get killed enough that your score ends up at 0, all you get is a meager finishing bonus and a D rank. I guess the idea is that you get better at the stage so you can do it without dying even once, but getting that D the first time around does not leave a good impression of the game, and could very well discourage players from trying them again.

Let's change the subject to something which doesn't cause frustration. In comparison to the old Mega Man games, which couldn't afford a detailed story due to space constraints, Mighty No. 9 does a great job in building up its setting.  The boss characters all have some sort of utility purpose they could have been used for before turning evil, a concept which hasn't been explored since Mega Man 1.  The levels all take place within appropriately-themed industrial sites throughout the USA, plus a level set in the White House, of all places.  Then again, this same level has you chasing down a sniper in a long, looping corridor without checkpoints -- but with more insta-kill spikes, of course -- so they might as well not have bothered.

The limited character animations make most cutscenes feel unfinished.

World-building is one thing, but the graphics which bring that world to life fail to impress.  Sure, a game like this doesn't need too many visual gimmicks to work, but it's still well behind the times. On the one hand, animations like Beck's walk cycle are expressive and bouncy. On the other hand, the animation in cutscenes is considerably more limited, as characters don't move their mouths when they talk! Like, at all!  Even Mega Man Legends, a game that came out two decades ago, animated the character's mouths, and that was just with 2-D textures!  And yet despite it all, the game is somehow a bit poorly-optimised.  Maybe it's just on the PlayStation 3 version I played, but there are quite a few instances of slowdown and frame-skipping.  One such instance even made me miss a ledge and fall to the death!  It's these sort of thing which gives the impression of a game that's only half-baked, and make us wonder where the heck all that money we backed it with went.

In conclusion, Mighty No. 9 is basically this generation's Daikatana, for there are many coincidental similarities between the two games.  Both were developed by brand-new studios started by game designers with quite a bit of pedigree behind them.  Both were announced three years ahead of their eventual release, during which time their developments were plagued with accusations of mis-management amidst vast budgets, not to mention some insulting advertisements.  And when the actual games came out, their almost-admirable attempts at world-building were overshadowed by game mechanics which work against the player, graphics which seemed a whole generation behind the times, and were general disappointments at best.  Not to mention, they are both tangentially related to actually good games by developers who had their heads screwed on tighter.  For Daikatana, it was Deus Ex, by the "good" half of Ion Storm.  And for Mighty No. 9, that would be Azure Striker Gunvolt by Inti Creates, who coincidentally also did work on this game.  Perhaps I should review Gunvolt myself one day, but in the meantime, I think I've got the perfect tagline to describe this whole affair: "Keiji Inafune is about to make you his b!tch."

Suck it down, ladies and gentlemen.  But until next time, this is IchigoRyu.

You are the resistance.

Positives:
+ Promising world-building.
+ The bonus challenge missions.
+ Expressive characters and animations.

Negatives:
- The dash-to-kill mechanic is an unnecessary addition forced upon us.
- Relentlessly difficult, even without the lives system.

- Extremely basic graphics and sub-par optimisation.

Control: 3 spikes out of 5
Design: 1 spikes out of 5
Audiovisual: 2 spikes out of 5
Value: 3 spikes out of 5
The Call: 50% (D)

You might like instead: Azure Striker Gunvolt, Shovel Knight, Strider

Indie-Cember 2: Never Alone

Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)

• Publisher: E-Line Media 
• Developer: Upper One Games 
• Release: 
• PC / PlayStation 4 / XBox One, 18 November 2014 
• Wii U, 25 June 2015 
• Genre: 2D Action/Puzzle 
• Players: 1-2 Co-op 
• Cost: US$15

Previously on Indie-Cember, I reviewed Go! Go! Nippon!, a dating-sim visual novel which would totally have been a generic addition to its genre were it not for the context of exploring a foreign culture. And because I have suddenly decided to arrange my reviews this month in some sort of narrative flow, I shall take on Never Alone, which does the same thing in the context of a platform-puzzler. ...Well, shoot, that seems to have given away my opinion on the game right off the bat, but stick around and I'll try to explain myself.

Never Alone takes place in the world of the Iñupiat, an Inuit society living in northern Alaska. The heroine of this story is a young Iñupiat lady named Nuna, who goes out hunting one day and gets chased by a polar bear, only to be saved by a white arctic fox, with whom she goes out on adventures of some sort. As you play through their adventures of some sort, you switch control between Nuna and Fox on the fly, as you utilize their differring abilities to solve platforming puzzles and move forward. Nuna can push blocks and, once acquired, throw her bola to hit distant targets, whereas Fox can climb certain walls and call on spirits to serve as platforms. The puzzles are no more complex than in, say, the Lego Star Wars games. A co-operative mode is also available if you have a friend handy.

Some passages require the abilities of both characters,
such as Fox making rope spirits appear for Nuna to swing on.

I'm not sure the controls are firing on all cylinders, however. Whichever character happens to be controlled by the computer can be a little sluggish in following your character's movements. It's almost as if the game was trying to coerce you into playing co-op, eh? Another specific gripe I have is how you throw Nuna's bola by holding the right control stick opposite the direction you want to aim in, and flick it across to throw. I found this a very imprecise mechanic at all but the shortest ranges. Honestly, it's at least as bad as the aiming controls in Yoshi's Island, admit it. And sometimes, you have to do so while you're being chased by someone or something, and given that you'll only have one or two spare attempts to hit your target, the aiming becomes a severe liability at all but the shortest ranges. At least you have infinite lives, checkpoints are frequent, and the overall pace of gameplay is quite leisurely, so it never feels too stressful. Also, as I was playing the PC version, I got stuck with a bug where I ended up controlling both characters at once, rendering the game impassable early on. This bug has been acknowledged by the developers, who have posted a solution here. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but considering the persnickety nature of PC gaming, I feel I should bring this to your attention.

Never Alone is based on lands in the real-world Arctic, so naturally the setting is going to deal with a lot of ice and snow. But, as we learned from Frozen, it is easy to make that sort of thing look pretty. And despite it all, some of the chapters nonetheless manage to stand out in terms of the sites and sights they present. For example, one takes place inside a giant ice whale, and another takes place on a cliffside village during an aurora borealis. Granted, part of the notability of these levels comes from the mechanics they introduce. The ice whale part introduces swimming (in which Nuna and Fox can never drown, as commented on by the narrator... I'm serious), whereas the other level I mentioned features aurora monsters which follow looping paths and must be avoided, lest Nuna and/or Fox suffer death by snatching. So it looks like I've solved the mystery of why each of these levels were memorable despite all of them taking place in the same biome. The soundtrack is ambient and, together with the setting and the relaxed pace of gameplay, does a great job of building the feeling that you are... well, not alone, because that would make a lie out of the title.

The game's setting is pretty much all ice and snow,
but some chapters mix things up visually.

The story is narrated at certain points by a storyteller in the Iñupiaq language (subtitled in English, of course), sometimes without breaking the flow of play. There are cutscenes, of course, but most of them are presented in a quasi-animated, leather scrimshaw style, as if to mimic styles of art that are popular up there. But those aren't the only cultural ties that Never Alone boasts. Throughout the game, you can find owls which will unlock video clips, called Insights, to play at your leisure. These Insights are mini-documentaries, only a couple of minutes each, about some Iñupiat cultural feature. These range from their unique beliefs to facets of their everyday lives, and all of them have to do with something that happens in the game. Indeed, members of the Iñupiat community helped write this game, and as such it really feels like those people are sharing themselves with the gaming world. It is for that reason that for all its insubstantiality, I can't stay mad at the game.

At first I was going to liken Never Alone to DLC Quest, in that it's an ordinary 2D platformer buoyed only by its context. But upon further reflection, I think Papo y Yo would be a more fitting comparison. It's simple, relying on just a few mechanics for most of its puzzles, and it's heavily steeped in a foreign culture and presented with great imagination. Either way, it's amazing the difference a little context makes. Without any of the trimmings of its setting, Never Alone would just be another puzzle-platformer with no replay value and not even a lot of first-play value. Also, US$15 is a bit much for an indie game, especially one this short. But if you could take just a couple of hours out of your time to breeze through this game and watch all the Insights, you might just walk away feeling enriched.

Positives:
+ Puzzle platforming with a patient pace.
+ Unique and distinct level designs, even within the confines of an ice/snow theme.
+ Wonderfully ambient and emotive.
+ The cultural insight videos enrich the story.

Negatives:
- Clumsy controls, especially with computer-controlled characters.
- Only about two hours long, with almost no replay value.

Controls: 2 bolas out of 5
Design: 3 bolas out of 5
Writing: 5 bolas out of 5
Graphics: 4 bolas out of 5

Value: 2 bolas out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

Game Review: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

• Publisher: WayForward 
• Developer: WayForward / Inti Creates 
• Release: 
• Nintendo 3DS: 23 October 2014 
• Wii U: 25 December 2014 
• PC: 23 April 2015 
• Genre: 2D Action 
• Players: 1 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed the first two Shantae games. So naturally, me writing a review of the latest sequel was inevitable. If you'll recall my review of Risky's Revenge, the second game in the series, my greatest complaint was its short length. However, I did try to give it the benefit of the doubt, assuming that WayForward had so much trouble trying to find a publisher after the commercial failure of the first game. Well, at the risk of spoiling this review, I'm pleased to report this is no longer the case for the newest entry, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. Maybe they've gotten used to this whole digital-distribution thing now, so that they don't have to work their budgets around what a publisher will or won't give them. Or maybe it's because they collaborated on this game with Inti Creates, a Japanese development team famous for, among other things, the Mega Man Zero series, Azure Striker Gunvolt, and the upcoming Mighty No.9 (with Comcept). They even made a port of Pirate's Curse for the Wii U, thus beating the crowdfunded 1/2-Genie Hero to become the series' first console game, and later followed by a PC port, just like Risky's Revenge. So does this new influx of resources, man-hours, and/or willpower translate to a better game?

When a brand-new evil entity known as the Pirate Master threatens the safety of Sequin Land, our heroine, the half-genie Shantae, and her nemesis, the lady pirate Risky Boots, must form an uneasy alliance to take him down. Shantae's trademarked dance-powered animal transformations are unavailable this time around, due to a run-in with the plot last time around. So in lieu of those, progress is controlled by the acquiring of various pirate paraphernelia. There's a pistol to shoot switches and deal light damage, a scimitar to break blocks underfoot, a giant hat to glide with while jumping, and so on. And unlike the aforementioned transformations, which require you to stop and enter some form of dance mode to activate, each of these new moves has their own button input or inputs. It's like the developers said, "We've got six buttons to work with on this 3DS thing, and by gum, we're going to use them!"

New equipments like the Pirate Hat elevate the gameplay experience, pardon the pun. (3DS version.)

Control ergonomics aside, this decision was a good one in the interest of making the gameplay feel fresh again. They don't offer the same abilities as the animal transformations from the first two games, but nonetheless offer new possibilities for exploring the game worlds. But it's not all different: the series' traditional attack items such as Fire Balls, Pike Balls, and Storm Puffs are back again. Whereas attack items in Risky's Revenge were fueled by a magic meter, Pirate's Curse switches them back to being consumables. However, they can be dropped by defeated enemies as well as purchased from the shop, so things even out on that front. Once again, Heart Squids may be collected to extend Shantae's maximum health, although instead of instantly taking effect as you would expect to see in most video games, you have to bring them to the "squidsmith" in Scuttle Town, who will smash them four at a time to form new heart containers. Sadistic, yes, but it also clues you in to the level of comedy you'll be dealing with in Pirate's Curse.

Instead of the singular overworld map employed in the first two Shantaes, and indeed most every Metroidvania-type game, the world of Pirate's Curse is laid out across six or so islands, one of them being the main town and the others each containing one of the games dungeon levels, and connected by a hub menu. This was also a great decision, as it cuts down on travel time quite a bit. Besides, Dust: An Elysian Tail also did this sort of thing, and that was one of the few video games I gave a perfect score to! There were still a few fetch quests which had me lost the first time around, and some of the pre-dungeon events drug on just long enough to be not fun. For example, a mid-game episode on Tan Line Island forces you into a stealth section. Still, my first play-through clocked in at about 8 hours, and if I may say so, it was 8 hours well-spent. Beating the game once unlocks the Pirate Mode, where you get all the pirate acccessories from the start of the game. If nothing else, it lets us laypeople experiment with speed-running through the game.

The character portraits look neat in stereoscopic 3D. ...Take my word for it. (Wii U version.)

The pseudo-16-bit art style of Risky's Revenge has gone largely unchanged for Pirate's Curse, although I suppose it's neat to see more enemies from the first game returning with a visual upgrade. For a game whose graphics engine relies mainly on 2D sprites, the few times that stereoscopic 3D effects in (the 3DS version of) Pirate's Curse are used are all the more notable, especially on the character portraits during dialogue scenes. Obviously this doesn't apply to the Wii U and PC ports, where said portraits were re-drawn to take advantage of the higher screen resolutions, but the other art assets were not. WayForward has done HD graphics before, even on games ported from smaller-screened platforms, so this was a curious oversight. I don't know, maybe they're saving all that work for Half-Genie Hero. The soundtrack, once again composed by Jake Kaufman, is also partly recycled from the last game, but it was cool then and is still cool now. Once again it takes melodies from the first game, along with new ones, and jacking them up with Middle-Eastern and other influences. Pirate's Curse is also the first Shantae game to introduce voice acting, tastefully limited to a few sound bites in gameplay and cutscenes. In case you're interested, the leading lady is played by Christina "Vee" Valenzuela, also known for playing Cerebella in Skullgirls, and Sailor Mars from the new Sailor Moon dub.

Still, I must stress that gameplay, not graphics, is nine-tenths of the law. Apart from the new abilities and streamlined world layout, I like how the little damage point numbers that pop up like from a classic RPG, or the halfway-decent map screen, including maps for dungeons, a glaring omission in the last game. It's the little details like those which take the experience over the top, although there are other details I wish had been cleaned up. I wish that I could leave notes on the maps when I find a place to come back to later (maybe I've been spoiled by The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds). It would certainly help me keep track of the numerous, and often unintuitive, trading-game fetch quests needed to progress through the game, as it's easy to ignore places you'll need to put things later on. Then there's the smaller stuff, like how the sub-menu automatically switches pages when I find a key item or something. But smaller stuff aside, Pirate's Curse ranks up there with sequels such as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Mega Man Legends 2, or Just Cause 2, which don't reinvent too much, but fine-tune the experiences of their predecessor whilst offering far more of it. Pirate's Curse is clearly the best game in the Shantae series thus far, offering a challenging hurdle for 1/2-Genie Hero to clear. But whether or not it does, the SDP and I will be all over that like black on a Tinkerbat.  (...Don't look at me like that. Risky Boots's minions aren't African, they're literally black-skinned monster thingies.)

Positives:
+ More content than the first two games (combined).
+ The pirate tools offer up new abilities for exploration.
+ Tasteful introduction of voice acting.
+ Retains the series' sense of humour.

Negatives:
- Some of the fetch quests can leave you wandering aimlessly to solve them.
- A few sections of the game appear to drag on, if only for being less fun than the rest of the game.
- The lack of upscaled graphics in the Wii U and PC ports seem like a missed opportunity.

Controls: 5 pirate tools out of 5
Design: 4 pirate tools out of 5
Graphics: 5 pirate tools out of 5
Sound: 5 pirate tools out of 5
Value: 4 pirate tools out of 5
The Call: 90% (A-)

Game Review: 007 Legends

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Mega Man Legends and its sequel. And now for something completely different.

007 Legends

• Publisher: Activision 
• Developer: Eurocom 
• Release: 
• PlayStation 3 / XBox 360, 16 October 2012 
• Wii U, 11 December 2012 
• Genre: 3D Action (First-person shooter) 
• Players: 1-4 offline, 2-12 online

Funny thing about Mega Man Legends 3: even though I've been raising such a stink about how it was cancelled ever since I heard of its untimely demise, I actually don't have much of an emotional investment Mega Man as a whole, apart from re-discovering how much of a great sequel the second Legends game was. As a matter of fact, my favourite fandom is James Bond, and you should know that by now, seeing as how I devoted 24 reviews last year to all its films (that matter). As such, I waited eagerly for the 2010 Goldeneye remake on Wii, and my expectations were met, on the whole, but there's frankly no need for me to review it when its follow up is so similar. Replace the self-contained plot of Goldeneye (either the N64 or Wii one) with a buffet of neo-retro film reboots, and you get the follow-up Activision and Eurocom pulled off for 007's 50th anniversary, known as 007 Legends.

Given its role as an anniversary milestone, Legends's storyline is more or less a tribute to Bonds past. The settings are re-imagined excerpts from various films, one for each actor who played 007: Goldfinger (from the Sean Connery era), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (George Lazenby), Licence to Kill (Timothy Dalton), Die Another Day (Pierce Brosnan), and Moonraker (Roger Moore). On the whole it's a fine selection, I will admit, however the incorporation of Die Another Day in a retelling of other Bond stories is redundant, seeing as how the film itself is a re-hashing of the franchise's famous moments. With or without that choice of source material, in terms of storytelling, this may not have been the best way to go about things. Unlike, say, Goldeneye (either one), which had the time to build up a plot and the antagonist's reasoning behind setting it into motion, each of the five stories in Legends relies on awkward info-dumps to explain everything. If you've never seen the movies in question, you may get left in the proverbial dust. The environments capture the essence of their silver-screen counterparts with a modern flair to create a very slick aesthetic worthy of the 007 legacy. It's too bad the characters' stilted facial animations and the terribly dodgy shadows have to negate those graphical strong points. A handful of actors from those films have returned to provide likeness and voice talents; however Bond himself, here modeled after Daniel Craig, has received a sound-alike voice actor, and not a very good one at that. Dude, mister Goldfinger is about to cut you in half with a frickin' laser beam, you think you could at least sound scared?

Say what you want about Moonraker, but it makes for a fun level.

But despite all the fanservice, there was one thing that totally soured the experience for me: the levels they divided these scenes into are too dang few and too dang long. There are only eleven levels, and the majority can last a half-hour or longer. As discussed in my review of Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, having to invest more time on a level diminishes its replay attractiveness. But it gets worse: because of these larger levels, the loading times average around one minute a pop*. And if you need to re-start from a checkpoint, due to death or choice, that's another minute's worth of loading headed your way! Now, compare that to the Call of Duty games, which only waste a few seconds of your time on reloading levels, and there's no justification other than Eurocom sucks at optimisation. Dangit man, if you're going to imitate something that's already been imitated to the detriment of the industry as a whole, at least imitate it properly!

So enough about what 007 Legends is; what does it play like? There's a reason I brought up Call of Duty a few sentences ago, because apart from the horrendous loading times, it follows the same basic gameplay precepts of said franchise. Regenerating health, limited weapon slots, aiming down sights, unskippable cutscenes with quick-time events, and all those other things that have made first-person shooters less than fun. "But wait", you say, "aren't you forgetting its more innovative features?" And to that I say: be patient, you. The Classic health system from Goldeneye (either one) marks a return, only this time you can opt to use it on any difficulty level, not just the hard mode. Which is good, because I've never been too keen on the concept of regenerating HP, with or without the benefit of superpowers to explain it. Granted, I will take advantage of it if provided, but if the consequences of your actions (read: damage) are automatically nullified, it takes away from the challenge, and challenge is the reason we play video games on the whole, no? And because of how long the levels are, you can find not only body armour but health packs in the Classic modes. A welcome concession, although this should've been taken as a sign that the levels should've been broken up better.

If there's anything that separates the 007 games from the post-Modern Warfare Call of Duty model, even under Activision's tenure, it's the stealth segments, and Legends adds a few "refinements" to the formula. A meter will pop up around the centre of the screen pointing to guards and indicating their states of alertness (see also: Far Cry 3). I would call this helpful, but when you can stand ten metres in front of a guard and it takes him a couple of seconds to even walk over to check it out, well, this game can only support so much willing suspension of disbelief. Oh, and let's not forget about the gadgets! In many missions, Bond gets to use a laser watch and a pen that shoots tranquiliser, shock, and distraction darts. Sure, it's fun to use them all to carve out different paths through the stealth sections, but I for one couldn't help thinking about how the recent films tended to shy away from this sort of techno-gee-wizzery. Canon? What canon?

I don't see how lasering a guard helps, but it works wonders on cameras.

In the interest of cinematics, you'll also get into fight scenes where you flick the analog sticks up or down to throw punches. All the correct moves are identified with on-screen commands, but at the same time your foes leave their own visual cues as to their weak points. As a result, once I got used to this mechanic, my thought process turned to, "Okay, I get it, you can remove the training wheels now", never to cease. Furthermore, Legends attempts to bridge the gap between multiplayer and single-player experiences by incorporating features from the former into the latter, namely by a separate experience-point system, and weapon attachments you can purchase with said points. And in lieu of the time trials from Goldeneye (either one), many levels also feature bonus trials which can be performed on top of your other objectives. There are still time trials, yes, but also stealth trials, target trials, and elimination/specialist trials, which require you to focus on using one particular gun. These can be fun, but again, I'd be more inclined to take them on if I didn't have to spend so much time just finishing the level, to say nothing of the loading times I'd incur if I had to re-play any parts.

Speaking of multiplayer, if you're considering purchasing 007 Legends for its online multiplayer component, don't bother. Yes, it's the traditional level-up-and-unlock-weapons-and-perks gadgets routine that has become another consequence of Call of Duty's dominance of the first-person shooter genre, and I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't hooked onto this sort of thing to some degree. However, I've only been able to find public matches in the traditional Team Conflict mode, or if I'm lucky, the Legends mode, a free-for-all where you play as classic Bond characters. Having all those other fun modes like Golden Gun and Escalation but no one to play them with is a darn shame. Oh well, at least there's always split-screen...

Since 007 Legends does so may good and bad things at the same time, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But then I realised... The over-long levels? The slavish adherence to other games' customs? The blatant disregard for canon? ...This is Activision's answer to Goldeneye: Rogue Agent! And as I recall, that game didn't turn out so well for EA, who only put out one more underwhelming 007 title before surrendering the licence. What's more, the case of 007 Legends may be one of history repeating: after its underwhelming retail performance, it was de-listed from various download services, and developer Eurocom was shuttered after almost 25 years in the industry. Under other circumstances, I'd react with shame, but hopefully this will give the James Bond video game franchise the chance for a fresh start. (At the risk of starting a flame war, might I suggest Infinity Ward? At least they can do loading right.)

Positives:
+ Brilliant set designs reinvent the source material.
+ The freedom of stealth sections.
+ The single-player upgrade system.

Negatives:
- Poor story integration.
- Too many generic first-person shooter mechanics.
- Long loading times.*

Control: 4 martinis out of 5
Design: 2 martinis out of 5
Audiovisual: 3 martinis out of 5
Value: 2 martinis out of 5
The Call: 55% (D+)

So that's my review, but before I go, I'd like to indulge in a little editorialising regarding the game's downloadable content. Two missions based on the new movie Skyfall were made available for free upon the film's release. In the case of North America, this was three and a half weeks after Legends came out. The two levels are on the short side, and only cover the first act of the movie, not even mentioning its main villain. Now, one thing I noticed is that the download size of this "update" was a paltry 100KB*; in other words, it was more than likely a file to unlock content already on the disc. As someone who has witnessed the tragedy of "disc-locked content" in games like Capcom's Street Fighter X Tekken, this should've sent up a red flag in my head. But if ever there were a proper excuse for disc-locked content, this would be it. One, delaying access to the Skyfall content until the movie was released curtailed the possibility of unwittingly walking into spoilers (not that the levels spoil too much about the film anyway). But most importantly, it's free, so any fears about being coerced into forking over more than the game's purchase price are moot. But just as a warning to game developers everywhere, and Capcom, do NOT pull this [noun] on us again. (NB: Also rendering this point moot, the Skyfall levels are available out-of-the-box in the Wii U port, since it was released after the film.)

*Marked observations are based on the PlayStation 3 version.