Worth Playing vol. 9: The Wii One

The Wii is officially a generation past and with the bizarre exception of Rodea: They Sky Soldier releasing as a Wii title paced in with the Wii U version, there aren’t going to be anymore games created for Nintendo’s money-making, motion controlled system. The system has sold over 100 MILLION units worldwide, making it one of the best selling video game consoles of all time (and Nintendo’s best selling non-handheld console to date). With that many units on the market it can be easy to skip over a few gems while playing arguably some of the best games out there like Super Mario Galaxy and Resident Evil 4. I’ve compiled a list of ten awesome Wii games that are worth tracking down, even as we’re approaching the little-console-that-could’s 9th birthday! And while the Wii U is chugging along strongly, these games can also be played on that console as well, giving even more incentive to find and play them!

 

Pokemon Rumble World Could (and Should) Have Been So Much More

The latest game in the renowned Pokemon franchise, a free-to-play action game called Pokemon Rumble World, has been out for around two weeks now and I’ve spent a good deal of time finding, battling, and collecting Pokemon toys. At its best the game offers up fun, addictive gameplay not unlike a child’s version of Diablo: at its worst the game feels boring and limited. But I have hope the game can be better, the game can be what Pokemon Conquest was to strategy RPGs: an introduction title for a new generation of fans to the awesome world of action RPGs. There’s hope for this series Nintendo. Hope and an aspiration to make it something special, something truly worthy of the Pokemon moniker.

 

Sunday Roundup: 4/12/15

A bit late on getting this one out, but a great week nonetheless for games. After passing on a select few games during the tail end of GameStop’s Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal, I decided to drag myself back to the store to purchase what I honestly should have bought the first time. Sadly, and let this be a lesson, only one of the games from the trio I originally intended on picking up were still available. *sigh*

A preordered game arrived from Amazon this past week, as well as a random sealed PS2 game. Oh, and a very interesting find at Goodwill capped off the week.

 

The Inescapable Allure of Etrian Mystery Dungeon

Dungeon crawlers have been one of the biggest surprises for me in all my years of gaming. The idea of rigorously treading through a seemingly endless dungeon full of ridiculously challenging enemies and assured failure around nay every corner just didn’t seem all that fun. When I had the opportunity to play Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan on Nintendo 3DS, all my perceptions shifted. Suddenly the idea of immense challenge and discovery was fun, fresh, and exciting. Exploring a dungeon for the first time was unlike any other RPG before, and I found myself bleeding countless hours into the game only to progress forward a small bit. Being able to map out the dungeon floor, marking the location of items and major enemies gave myself a grand sense of security, like I had an advantage over the once threatening world which spelled my doom numerous times before.

So then why is Etrian Mystery Dungeon, a game which strips away that safety blanket of knowing the coordinates of each dungeon and replaces it with randomly generated floors while still maintaining the degree of difficulty of past Etrian games, still incredibly fun, fresh, and exciting?

It comes down to Etrian Mystery Dungeon doing two things right: exploration and development.

 

Sunday Roundup: 4/5/15

Happy Easter everyone!

This week saw a collection of games from Goodwill, eBay, and GameStop. A few of those GameStop games were great finds: games I have wanted to play for a long time and games that were simply a steal for the price. Anytime I can find something at Goodwill is always a treat as well, and this there was even a surprise (literally!) in one of the games I bought. Lastly the games from eBay were part of a lot of loose DS games, but still included some swell finds for a sweet price.