dsblog: a Nintendo DS weblog

Ouendan 2 for cheap, not in time for Christmas

I'll break radio silence to inform you that Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is available as this week's weekly special at Play Asia. It could make a great late holiday present for someone with a new DS who likes rhythm games.

Merry holiday!

Around the galaxy

I got to play Super Mario Galaxy a couple nights this week, before my copy arrives from Amazon next week. As I commented on Nick's blog:

I am consistently disturbed at how shiny and fuzzy everything is. And Ice Mario... I think the plumber has been in the Mushroom Kingdom for a little too long. Perhaps the curious placement of stars in the logotype was not an unfortunate accident but a warning.

But the game is totally fun.

I picked up the habit in playing the previous games of replaying worlds immediately, so I crowned a few of the regular galaxies. I had Brad's copy for a couple days and got to the Engine Room, so if I'd had it for another day I might have been able to return my copy when it arrived (until I wanted to fully complete the game, not just beat it).

Extra songs in Jam Sessions

Best Buy has the same deal for Jam Sessions as they (and other retailers) have on some CDs: extra songs. Which is kinda weird for a video game; how pissed would you be if Guitar Hero 2 had special songs you could only play if you bought it from Best Buy (or, god forbid, Gamestop)?

However, for Jam Sessions, the extra songs manifest in the form of a little sticker on the front, not unlike the "Redeem me now!" coupons I've seen on loaves of bread and other groceries. How does this work? Hilariously, you unlock the songs by entering a code in Free Play mode with the directional pad.

For bonus hilarity, what exactly is that code? If you're a gamer, you can guess it. It's even the code you might enter aimlessly in a moment of boredom. (It does nothing on the title screen of Ouendan, trust me.)

Yes, indeed, it's the good ol' Konami Code, ↑↑↓↓←→←→. (Which you might know if you'd searched for it, but since I picked up my copy just now from an actual Best Buy, I had the joy of discovering it serendipitously.)

Surely it works on copies you buy from elsewhere besides Best Buy. Let me know if you bought the game somewhere else and it does.

Puzzle box: Picross and Sudoku

At a friend's recommendation, I borrowed a coworker's copy of Picross DS. It's an interesting puzzle game, and has a bevy of strategies and inferences to make. I hadn't done picrosses before, so it's been fun to figure out how to play. Even if it's basic strategy, you can mark all the boxes in the overlap of all a segment's possible positions. Picross DS also makes it fun with the themed puzzles and pixel art animations you get for solving puzzles. So the past few days I've found myself awake for an extra hour until it just hurts to try to figure out the matrices and I start making mistakes.

This is right after I found myself, having left my iPod at someone's house, regularly playing Brain Age's sudoku. Partly that's what had me buy it in the first place, having not been convinced I would stick with a brain exercise regimen (and I was right). Though I'm not a big sudoku fan, I like puzzles enough that it seemed worth it at the time. (I'm a big enough fan of zany art direction that if Dr. Sudoku were a DS title with Brain Age's intuitive interface, I would have bought it with zero hesitation.)

I was playing it to the point that I finally figured out some new strategy. Before, I played mechanically; on several occasions my thinkmeats were useless enough that I simply charted out on the convenient touch screen the possibilities, and tried to compute the solution. I would try to solve them "for real" first, sure, but eventually I hit a wall on page two of the puzzles. Through the design of the puzzles, I could tell they were teaching me to note what potential pairs there are, so if one is filled in, I automatically know what the other is. To show these pairs is also the first time I had to put potential numbers out of order. Until then, I had put each potential number in its nominal grid space, and was constantly annoyed that Brain Age would let me put any number in any portion of the square.

Another thing I learned is how important it is to ignore useless information. When trying to compute the puzzle, you literally write down every possibility, and with all those numbers, can't pick out where in the board the next inference is. That became downright necessary when I started working with potential pairs, as I had to see the actual numbers, not just the positions. I still use the puzzle as a workbook—a prosthetic headspace—but now I try to keep my head clear so I have space to reason about the puzzle.

And these learning experiences is what makes puzzle games satisfying.

Psychonauts

I know I'm possibly the last person to play Psychonauts. It came out in 2005, so long ago for a video game that its official website has fallen into disrepair, most of the links returning 404s. Some of the minds you enter in the game are like that, misfiring synapses preventing a cohesive understanding of the situation surrounding their owners. Ultimately Psychonauts is about telling the story to the characters within it, so everyone can get to the end.

Psychonauts is an adventure platformer by Tim Schafer's Double Fine. To illustrate what I mean by “adventure platformer,” I can contrast two other games I played this weekend, Return to Mysterious Island and Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The former is a pure adventure game, also from 2005: all clicking and puzzles and story, though there's some satisfying action at the end. The latter seems to be a platformer, in that you maneuver through a linear level, solving obstacles and dispatching enemies. Island has a fairly small world, and ends in the exact spot it begins. Unlike what of the main game I've played, Anniversary's Croft Manor segment is pretty adventure-y; it's a contiguous area where your play areas for different goals somewhat overlap. Psychonauts has the best of both of these: story, and jumping, and puzzles, and enemies.

Whether there is such a thing as adventure/platformer, Tim Schafer has final say in this interview with Razputin's Domain shortly before they released Psychonauts:

[H]ere’s the thing: I don’t think genres matter. I think quality matters. It doesn’t matter what type of game you’re making, what specific collection of formal rules you are following, what label people put on your game. All that matters is whether it’s a good game or not.

Psychonauts reminds me most of Sly Cooper. One holiday I was visiting some cousins who had just received a PS2 that Christmas, with the original Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, and they were kind (or just enough) to let me play it for the entire time I was there. With both games, the essence was exploring a mostly linear platforming world that was just challenging enough to keep telling the story.

Psychonauts seemed to have a wider array of side activities, as well. Though they were related to the huge variety of different collections to work through, most of the other activity still has a direct impact on the core game, such as revealing more story points, improving your powers, or embiggening your mental health bar.

Controlling Raz was a little difficult in parts, especially near the end where the game does the equivalent of flicking the side of your head and babbling in your ear while you're trying to make demanding jumps and shots. I was playing with the 360 controller, and I don't know how one could do it with a mouse or keyboard without even more frustration.

Altogether it's as good a game as I hoped it would be. Adventure and platforming are two great tastes that go great together, and there was plenty of buzz about the game when it came out. Why didn't I play it sooner? At the time I didn't play many PC games, or didn't have ready access to a PS2, but now I have no excuse: Psychonauts is on Gametap, which I already had for Sam & Max Season 1. It's also on Steam, if you'd rather pay $20 to download the game by itself. If you haven't played Psychonauts either, now's as good a time as any.

WarioWare: Twisted! JP for $17

If you never picked up WarioWare: Twisted! for GBA, Play-Asia has it for their weekly special, so it's $17 for another three days. The only catch is it's the Japanese version—but hey, it's WarioWare, do you really need to read WarioWare?

I played it in my DS when it came out over here and it's a fine installment of the series. If you missed it, here's your chance!