Super Mario 3D Land

Undeniably, Mario's latest adventure on the Nintendo 3DS holds a special tribute towards one of the greatest NES games, which is Super Mario Bros. 3, which also happens to be my favorite Mario platformer.

Super Mario 3D Land is also connected with the 2 Game Boy Land titles, but I don't think there is much relevance other than the name. It's design is closely observed from various kind of earlier titles, including Super Mario 64, the Galaxies, the New Super Mario Bros. entries and as if reincarnated for a new era, Super Mario Bros. 3 elements are floating around this whole game.

With it's precise controls where I only had to get used with the slide pad's movement for a few levels, 3D Land is instantly familiar for anyone who has played with the plumber's platformers before. It takes constructive level design, which gradually emerges towards getting better crafted, while it keeps you busy with collectable valuables, well known and new enemies, remixed and re-used songs from before and a steady rate of variety.

It is, if you think about it, so diverse by it's levels, that it constantly keeps the players busy and guessing as to what kind of obstacles are to be found next. The new and old power items such as the Raccoon Tail and the Boomerang Suit offer simple yet enjoyable ways of playing. And if you have trouble, presumably because of the last levels, there is help available.

The 3D is rendered useful in here, allowing for some interesting level designs here and there. It has also become more accurately to land on spots during the game now because of the third dimensional helping out. Certainly, this is a very good choice as a game if you want to see what benefits 3D brings towards gaming.

After beating the game, unlocking 8 more worlds, I beat those as well and I can safely conclude that it indeed is a better game than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but does not hold up well enough towards the Galaxy games, when speaking of level design, length and presentation.

For a portable 3D platformer, this is a good choice to pick up if you want to spend 5 through 10 minutes each day to swift through several levels, or just beat the whole game in roughly a week. Which means getting a whole lot of Star Coins and seeing the last available levels.

I am also told that the very last level is unlocked if you beat the whole game pretty much twice, but I don't feel like doing that, much like I did so with the first Super Mario Galaxy.  In any case, Nintendo has put up a very fine Mario game once again.

Rating: 8.0

Heroes of Newerth

After laying down Defense of the Ancients back in early 2009, based of Aeon of Strife as earliest as I can tell, this game succeeded it.

The same game concept is re-used in here, but instead of being limited to the engine of Warcraft III, Heroes of Newerth has it's own one, allowing for many more things to be designed here, including a shop, better dedicated servers and voicechat amongst several positive things.

It borrows or steals(take your pick) hero concepts from DotA Allstars, which was maintained by Eul, Guinsoo and IceFrog throughout the years, while creating unique kinds of heroes on S2 Games's own. Sometimes, in present day, even the community gets the chance for their suggestions to be implemented.

Heroes such as Balphagore, Martyr, Ra and Engineer add their own original spin towards the established formula, making it all even more intricate, time demanding and enjoyable to know and use each of those. Especially newcomers, who know by now that the game has become F2P, if this is their first game based of DotA, prepare to get overwhelmed by the content, as well as the community.

That's right, the community is still as bad as I remember from the days of DotA, perhaps even worse, as vote kicking, conceding and constant yelling at the microphone or insulting, blaming, grieving and raging are ways to demotivate anyone. It is the only reason why Heroes of Newerth isn't an excellent game to pick up and play, because there are uncountable multiplayer games where the competition is still intact, yet way less badly emotional.

Heroes of Newerth can either be very entertaining, or very obnoxious, depending on the circumstances, most of all including your teammates and the enemies's. The best matches are usually those where the teams are equal in their overall strength, and they continue to clash, all 10 players available at once during battles.

There are plenty of sites nowadays which can explain how these kinds of games are played, including League of Legends, Demigod, Heroes of Newerth and the upcoming DotA 2, Realm of the Titans, Rise of the Immortals and Blizzard's own version of DotA. So I won't mention how it is played once again(I wrote a DotA blog at IGN already).

This sub-genre of action Real Time Strategy seems to have originated partly from Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis in 1989, although I cannot backup this claim. Anyway, enough with the history lesson.

If you are looking for a team based competitive online game which can be very enjoyable and which constantly gets updated with new content, balance changes and bug fixes, Heroes of Newerth would be a good start. Other current valuable options within the genre are still the ongoing DotA Allstars and most likely League of Legends(I haven't played it).

Xenoblade Chronicles

This ain't "just" a game. It has the unique status of an authentic Japanese Role Playing Game on the Nintendo Wii. Excluding Monster Hunter Tri, last year's big third party game, Xenoblade is the largest available RPG on the last period of active months for the Wii.

Mind me, I know that the game is developed by the first party known as Monolith Soft., responsible for the Xenosaga trilogy on the PS2, Baten Kaitos on the GameCube and previously created Disaster: Day of Crisis on the white console.

There is just no way around it. If you are by any chance a faithful JRPG fan, Xenoblade will deliver for you, in one way or another. It's grand presentation is marvelous, and it's interface is designed in a simple but helpful way. This is, without a doubt, one of the Wii's prettiest games.

The gameplay reminds me the most of Final Fantasy XII, except that it is here executed more smoothly, more exciting and best of all, it fixes small things common to the traditional thinking design that only RPG veterans will notice, regardless of it being an action based one. For example though, skipping large areas of walking grounds by the use of landmarks is well done and well needed for a giant design such as this.

I had barely traversed through the landscapes and I can say already that I love the soundtrack accompanying me. The songs feel calm, exotic and grand to me. The battle theme, that can change according to the hectic tension each battle provides, actually never bores me, because it is that good.

As far as the story goes, it starts out pretty normal, aside from watching two gigantic gods fight each other. Shulk leads a calm life alongside his childhood friends Reyn and Fiora, and spends most of his time inside interiors. It is not until abnormal circumstances arise involving Mechons and the legendary Monado sword that the plot is starting to move and from there on out, no matter how large the game is, the plot thickens and continues to grow in an intriguing way, while every party character is very much likable with good portraits of human emotions.

Some of the traditional RPG standards, such as normal attacks and mana, are both ignored. Instead, normal attacks activate automatically, and health regenerates the same way after battles. A special system called Chain Attacks is available once you use Art(the equivalent of Spells or Abilities in here) skills effectively, which definitely reminded me of Mega Man X: Command Mission's Final Strike. Once activated, you can chain Art attacks for free on an enemy, and if you chain well enough according to the game's rules, you can do even much more damage.

Next to this, each character has their own special ability to use in battles, which fills up the more attacks are successfully done. Such as Reyn being able to drag enemies towards him using aggression, or Shulk being able to reflect off special incoming future attacks.

That's right, future attacks. This RPG involves a future concept used during the story as well as combat and when picking up certain items, showing you possible future events happening. Stronger enemies usually start using dangerous future attacks, which you can overcome by either calling in for help from your allies, or using one of your own counter Arts, such as letting the enemy fall asleep.

Xenoblade also incorporates a crafting mode, letting you create certain gems out of crystals and cylinders, which make you able to equip their bonus attributes on your character's equipment. There is another kind of gameplay, called Heart-to-Heart. It basically is about building off affinity towards party characters, which then unlock bonus scenes at many parts of the game, giving you more rewards.

The Art skills themselves can be leveled up by collecting enough AP(action points if I remember) using various ways. Each character can also learn special Skill Trees, most of them being active passively, while experiencing around. And if you collect enough items in an area and place them in the so called Collectopedia, you can get access to bonus rewards. Even trading items amongst party characters can give more affinity and thus more options to see Heart-To-Hearts.

Convenient tutorials are placed alongside the first parts, explaining the gameplay well and understandable and the amount of it is also quite impressive for an action rpg such as this. Even tedious repetition in battles(should this happen, although I doubt it for most of us) as will be noticed by the ones preparing to beat the game can easily be bounced of by changing characters once in a while, offering just as much entertainment because of the diversity in them.

The only dissapointing note for me in this is that many of the side quests, next to the many others in this huge game, are tedious to complete, because certain characters only appear at certain times during day or night. Other than this minor point, nothing else of serious error can be mentioned by me.

For it's sheer amount of fun, length and lasting appeal already is Xenoblade an absolute must play for RPG fans.It's graphics and soundtrack are top notch, it is rewarding on it's own to traverse the god's bodies(which are the world maps of this game basically) and listening to these dazzling songs while the great gameplay kicks in plenty of times. Even the difficulty is fair and spot on for me.

It's amazing how a single game can let me enjoy a dying console as excitingly as possible until the last few promising games are released and the next generation is amongst us.

Rating: 9.0