Blog: Things About Paper Mario: Origami King

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a pretty interesting game. It's the most recent result of the crafted world games Nintendo has been working on and the latest Paper Mario game. As such I found it to be beautiful, but also a little over polished.

Honestly it 's a game that was fun while I was playing but thinking back on it a few months later, I'm finding it a bit bland. Still it has some interesting elements and I think it's worth talking about.

Please be aware of spoilers right up to the ending for Paper Mario: The Origami King.

Things I Liked

The visuals of the game are pretty awesome. The designers have put a lot of effort into constructing a world out of paper and crafts. The game feels very natural and also like the kind of idea they were looking for in the early Paper Mario games. 

That said, I liked the "real world" style more than the origami style. I think they did a lot of really interesting work in the origami creatures and settings later in the game, but somehow the lacked a little of the charm of the crafted style. Totally impressive, but I think not just the thing I really liked.

I liked the two new combat systems that were introduced for Origami King. I think the card-based RPG-style battle system used in Colour Splash was enough to keep the game interesting, but it wasn't a draw to the game. Both of the two systems used in Origami King are much more engaging. I like the minion fighting system, where you have to group enemies together to hit them either with an attack that's the right shape. It's not a knock out, but it's certainly enough to make you sit up an pay attention to every fight in the game.

The star for me, though, is really the system for boss fights. You have to create a path for Mario to travel to the boss, picking up power-ups and magic along the way and then hit the boss with the right kind of attack. These turned out to be interesting puzzles and sometimes really dynamic and interesting fights. I found it took me about half the game to really figure it out, but once I did I really enjoyed the puzzle and fight-control aspects the game offered.

Another thing I really loved is that the game has a quick help mechanism to get you through combat. You can choose at the start of a turn to spend some money for support from your audience of Toads. If you spend a little money you might get a point or two of damage to the enemies (pretty much useless but maybe lets you finish up a battle). If you spend more they might refill your health. If you spend at least 100 coins, they'll actually help solve a step in the puzzle. This can really help sometimes when you just can't see the solution. The game throws more than enough money at you that there's no real penalty to using the system.

The only downside to this is that the game does a terrible job of explaining how the system actually works. I spent a while frustrated with the game especially when I was really tired or stressed trying to win a boss fight before I lose and have to start over. Once I understood, it was nice to be able to choose if I felt up to tackling the puzzle myself or if I needed some help.

#PaperMario #PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/lWaLbNzwOf

— Games TJ Plays (@GamesTJPlays) October 28, 2020

Things I Didn't Like

Honestly as a game with this level polish, there's not much to not like about it. The story is a little linear, but that's not too uncommon for a jrpg-style game and it doesn't have quite the same level of personality as I though Colour Splash had. 

I think the thing I disliked the most about this game is that it's as polished as it is. I recently watched Tama Hero's video on the evolution of Animal Crossing villagers, and she discussed the transition of the villagers from somewhat frustrating, but realistic characters to very smooth town decorations. 

Paper Mario has a somewhat similar trajectory as a series, with a very rough first outing on the N64 to an sprawling but esoteric adventure on the Game Cube to the smaller and more streamlined games that followed. At the end of the day this feels a bit like a pretty view and funny quip dispenser. 

Oh. One more thing. This is a Paper Mario game that doesn't end with a parade. What the fuck?

Things I Noticed

The Paper Mario games are known for the their excellent writing. They tend to have a charm and wit that gets left out of a lot of Nintendo's other games. Recently, Treehouse has really added a lot more personality to the games they translate (such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons), but the Paper Mario games have had a strong identity right from the start.

That being said, I think that Origami King didn't have the same level of attention as Colour Splash. There's a moment late in Colour Splash where you meet a troop of 50 Red Rescue Toads. They all look identical, but every single one of them has unique dialog, not just once but trees of dialog that lasts to the end of the game. Origami King lacks a little bit of that, there's just a little bit less life in the NPCs and in the world. 

I also had a bit of a hard time with the music. It's very good music, but it's completely unmemorable. Honestly every time I started playing I was surprised that it didn't have the theme from Colour Splash. 

Things I'd Put In a Game

Paper Mario games also inspire me to focus on those details that make the world really feel alive.

I like the general innovativeness of the combat system. The Paper Mario series is well situated in allowing for different kinds of combat that doesn't necessarily relate to the rest of the game. I'm not sure that's a thing that works smoothly in every game but it's still a fun thing to keep in mind for the right moment.

One this I definitely like is the low/no penalty system to make combat easier. There's been a lot of discussion about how to adjust difficulty and game play to accommodate players of different skills and players with different abilities. There are a lot of important parts to that discussion and different ways to implement it but I think making it a straight forward part of the combat is a really good way to be accommodating to all players. 

Final Things

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a fun game. It's pretty, it's charming, it sounds nice, it's worth playing. I finished it as much as I wanted in about 25 hours. There's more you can go back for to get collectables and such, but I was pretty happy just to get to the end of the story. 

Not every game has to be a ground breaking epic, sometimes it's nice just have something bright fun and quick to play and Origami King is that to a t. I really enjoyed my time with it.

Blog: Thoughts on Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

It’s not a great game, but Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is a fixture in my home. I actually expect at this point that we’ve played more of that game than pretty much anybody else. To be honest, it’s not a great game, but it has some interesting points and it’s a game I’ve spent a long, looong time thinking about.

Welcome

I’d usually offer spoiler warnings at this point, but I’m not sure there really are spoilers for a party game like this. Additionally if there are spoilers, they’re for Animal Crossing in general or for Animal Crossing: New Leaf more specifically.

Things I Liked

I’m relatively new to Animal Crossing. I only picked up the series at New Leaf (the 4th game in the series, which came out in 2012). I picked it up after watching Chuggaconroy’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf Let’s Play. I bought matching 3DSs for my partner and I and two copies of Animal Crossing New Leaf. We got up extremely early on Boxing Day to watch the World Junior Hockey Championship, and started two new towns. I played New Leaf for well over a year, but eventually petered out as the new things to see in the game became fewer and fewer. My partner still plays at least a little bit each day (even with New Horizons to play as well).

The tradition keeps it going for us.

The town itself is an important part of any Animal Crossing game. Which villagers are in town, how the town is laid out, how the town is decorated are all important aspects. The town in Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is also important. The game is played on a map of spaces spread out around a randomly generated town when you start playing. The different spaces in the game map to different events based on local fixtures so as you move around the map you get a few different experiences based on where you are. This provides a lot of familiarity as you swing by the coffee shop, or the bonfire, or the pool.

Events happen each time you land on a space. Each time you stop, a tiny vignette plays out with your character getting happier or making money, or getting sadder or losing money. The generic events are alright, but they don’t really hold the game in the long term. The events based on places around town are a nice addition, especially as your town grows, but the events that happen especially for specific characters have been the things that really charmed us. Having Blathers find fossils for the museum or Reese spend the day working with Cyrus makes the game charming and different enough each time you play it to keep it interesting. The special monthly events, like Festival, Toy Day or the August fireworks are also important and charming. We made a rule early on that we’d only play in the current month and that means that the time passing in real life is an important part of our enjoyment of the game.

The Amiibo Figures are also a nice part of Amiibo Festival. Getting to bring in villagers to live in the town (and host the games) is nice. Playing the game as the special villagers (such as Isabelle, Digby, etc…) is nice. The events provide them with a lot of character on top of whatever you bring in from other animal crossing games and the variety of costumes makes it worthwhile to keep playing.

I've had a K.K. concert running in my living room for the last three years.

Things I didn’t Like

While it has charm, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival seriously lacks things to do (let alone interesting decisions). It's probably worth noting, that my perspective is as someone who is not a kid and does not have kids, so my expectations are different than the developers. Still I feel like there are some elements of this game which aren't as good as they could be. The basic mechanic has you rolling a D6 to move around the board. When you reach a branch in the path, you can choose which direction you want to go. On top of that you can collect cards that let you go a specific number of spaces, do something special, like roll double or pick your roll, or change a few other aspects of the game.

Roll and find your fate.

The frustrating part is that there’s enough flexibility in what they designed that you could make interesting choices once a turn, or at least once every few turns.

I see that they want to have a heavy randomness in the game. The game has a strong “Snakes and Ladders” or “Candyland” flavour, in that your success in life is at the hand of bigger elements. Similarly, randomness is a staple of Mario Party, and it makes it easier for people of different skill levels to play together. However. I think they could have kept a lot of that randomness while still allowing the player to do a little more to control their own fate. A weekly card, along with the weekly turnips, would have gone a long way towards making this work. Or maybe a no-items, final destination configuration might also help for some long-term players.

Happiness in August

One of the other things that is somewhat frustrating about the game is that there’s no trade off between the two currencies in the game. You have bells (money) and you have happy points (happy … points). Sometimes you get events which give you both, just one, take one away or take both away. I have certainly traded happiness for money in my life and money for happiness, so it’s a little disappointing sometimes that the game has no trade-off option between the two. Especially as there are lots of in game events which seem like this would be the appropriate result. I spent a little extra money on my coffee today, and I really enjoyed it, is a “you lost money” event, rather than a “you lost money, but got happy” event.

The final thing that particularly frustrates me that I’d like to include here is that the game just stops. Well that’s not strictly true, so far as we’ve played the game continues, with different events each month, but the ability to grow your amiibo cuts off after level 6. I suppose that’s fair enough, but it feels to me a bit as though they didn’t have a lot of plans for people to play the game as long as we’ve played it.

Things I Noticed

The strength of Amiibo Fest is really in its charm. We’ve tried to play it a bit slowly, adding new things to the town infrequently and we’ve limited the number of animals we’ve added to the town too (which is partly due to a lack of the animals we want on the Amiibo Cards we were able to find).

Llama love is in the air.

Still despite the fact that this is a candy land style game, with a, you take the good with the bad and everything balances out mindset, we’ve managed to play about once a week for more than two years now. While that certainly says something about us, I think it also speaks to the way the game feels.

Obviously the Animal Crossing games in general are a testament to the idea that you can have many different verbs in gaming and that non-combative ones can be just as appealing. Amiibo Festival feels like a part of that dialogue, a game which focuses on togetherness beyond the game.

Things I’d Include in a Game

I have a lot of feelings about Amiibo Fest, but I don’t know that I want to, or could, create a game that follows it’s structure or design. That being said, I think the persistent environment of a board game that grows over time is very nice, especially if it can be managed in such a way that it has a narrative arc with an ending to it. Pandemic Legacy is a great game that you can play over many sessions and you build up a world with your history of mistakes and successes. I think having a gentler game that still builds up its own history as you play it is an interesting approach.

Remember Last Year?

I also think you could expand that to have a game grow over the course of a year and then have a giant celebration leading into a new game plus, new year kind of thing. That way you could have a new town grow up to follow your old towns each year, with some elements of the old towns kept around for nostalgia or remembrance and then new elements from your new town for the new year.

I was pretty flabbergasted when I saw The Runaway Guys tackle this and realized they were playing in a totally different town, and I think this game might have benefitted from making that difference a little more palpable. Obviously not everyone is going to want to step away from the town they have, but having a natural end might make it easier to decide when and how to end.

Final Things

I don’t know if Amiibo Festival could have been better. I won’t argue that the charm is reason enough to play, and if you’re looking for anything like a Mario Party experience you’re going to be disappointed. As I said, this is very much a Candyland experience. That being said, we still enjoy it and every time I play I'm struck that with just a little different construction it could have been a secret gem that really lasts.

I mean, how much charm can this game have?

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 156)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos, we go through the five steps of trauma, remind ourselves just how awesome we are and then get dirty fighting about video games.

• First, Dael Kingsmill, illustrates the trauma that is a broken Internet connection. 
• Second, Pomplamoose is the shit, and they have been right since the very beginning.
• Finally, The Gaming Historian walks us through the rise of Tengen and the war of Atari vs Nintendo.

Blog: Thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy

I have a confession to make: I've never finished a main line Mario game. Not the NES ones, not the SNES ones, not 64, not Sunshine, not Galaxy, not New Super Mario Bros Wii (or Wii U) Galaxy 2, not any of the DS or 3DS ones. I've played almost all of them, but I've never actually played any of them through to completion. This is a bit of a short coming in my gaming history I feel and so I've set out to fix that.

Super Mario Galaxy! - From GameFAQs

Super Mario Galaxy  is my favourite Mario game, in terms of style, tone and gameplay so I thought I'd tackle it first. I've now finished all Mario 120 stars and am starting on the Luigi play though, but I think I've done enough for the time being to call this one "finished".

Things I Liked

The number one thing I liked about Super Mario Galaxy is the ambiance. When you start up the game after leaving for a while you're hit with happy music and bright colours and it feels like everyone is happy to see you. This happiness caries over to all the places in the Comet Observatory and into all the levels as well. This isn't rare for Mario games, but it really makes you happy as soon as the game turns on and it just keeps going.

The number two thing I liked about Galaxy is the control. This is an obvious point since the quality of control has been the factor that's made Mario one of the top gaming franchises (if not the top).   You never ended up feeling like you weren't able to make Mario go exactly where you wanted him to go and when things did go awry it was easy to see exactly why (as in, I shouldn't jump into that space).

Things I Didn't Like

The thing I most didn't like about Super Mario Galaxy is the power-ups, which were either difficult to use, not that interesting or had time limits imposed which made them less useful and less interesting. Spring Mario is probably the worst of these as it only serves to make Mario harder to control. Additionally because it allows Mario to jump significantly higher, it causes the designers to use put everything up out of camera frame so that you are forced to spend a lot of time trying to get up high enough to see the level. The biggest problem however is that it is very difficult to tell where Mario is, in 3D space and so you frequently jump into things or off the edge of the platforms because you can't tell the difference.

Nothing can possibly go wrong! - From GameFAQs

The time limits on the fire and ice flowers were also annoying. In the 2D Mario games when the fire flower power up (or later the leaves or the feathers or any of the costumes) you were able to keep it as long as you didn't get hit and you didn't die. They opened up your ability to play because you could do things you couldn't necessarily do without them. Here they actually reduce the options presented to you, "You got the fire flower? Better hurry to kill the thing that can only be killed with the fire flower!"

I liked Cloud Mario and thought that it was a lot of fun to be able to jump far away from where you could normally make it to. Bee Mario was fine, but I never really felt one way or another about it. The other powers ups, though, all failed to make the game either more interesting or more fun. In the cases where they added difficulty, it was fake difficulty and really only frustrated me.

The other big problem with the game is that the "end" of the game comes halfway through. Once you collect half of the total stars, you can fight Bowser and be "done". I can see that this was added so that it was possible to finish the game without going on to do the challenging levels, leaving those available to people who want to be "hardcore".

In and of itself this would be fine but there's no difference between the levels before you fight Bowser and the levels after (even the levels that are only opened up after you fight him). After you win the game dumps you back at the title screen, when you go back to your save file the game goes "oh you came back, well let's keep going" and then nothing changes. Peach remains kidnapped, except that you can't do that mission again (and get a star for it anyway) and everything else is exactly the same.

I would really appreciate the game noticing that I'd "won" already. It doesn't have to change the gameplay or any of the levels, but some changes in the hub world would be great.  For example, assuming you rescued Peach at 60 stars, the game could go "Great! Mario you're a hero! But don't you think you could help all these other people get their starship powered up again so they can go home?" Then Peach would hang out with Rosalina, be generally encouraging and the rest of the game would go on.

Things I Noticed

One of the things I noticed most pointed about this game is that 3D platforming is still hard. I haven't played enough to be sure that this really is the pinnacle, but I certainly can't think of a 3D platformer that's considered better. However it's still really easy to get lost in 3D space, not be where you think you are and die when you thought you were doing something super reasonable. Maybe I'm getting old and maybe I just never had the eyes for it, but I think that Super Mario Galaxy is one of the factors that pushed Nintendo to focus so much on moving the Mario games towards the 3DS.

I mostly know where you are ...  - From GameFAQs

Things I'd Include in a Game

There are two things I'd keep in mind for a game of my own based on Super Mario Galaxy. The first is ambiance and the second is fine controls. There is nothing more frustrating in gaming that knowing what you want to do an being unable to execute it. Mario games are generally the best examples of control in video games and for any game where control is important the developer should strive to live up to this level.

The ambiance is important, not only that bright happy games are fun to play (although, I would like to make some games that give this bright feeling) but that everything about your game should build towards the feeling that you would like your players to have.

Final Thoughts

I love this game, despite what seems to be an overabundance of complaining above. I think among the 3D Mario games it's my favourite (although that may change as I play through the others). It brings a lot of fun to the party, which is, at the end of the day, the point of playing.

It's bright and even if it's going to kill you at least it looks nice - From GameFAQs user Nicholas761

Blog: Thoughts on Pikmin

I recently finished replaying Pikmin. Pikmin is a real-time strategy game released by Nintendo for the Gamecube in 2001. Pikmin was later followed up by Pikmin 2 and now Pikmin 3 is scheduled to be a launch(ish) title for the Wii U. In it you play Captain Olimar, erstwhile space ship captain who has crashed into a terrifying planet full of giant captain eating monsters. You have to find the 30 missing parts of your ship  with the help of 3 different, colour-coded for your convenience, species of animate carrots. I rented it (and played it through) through when it first came out and recently picked it up at my local game store.

Piiiiiikmin (via GameFAQs)

You play Pikmin by raising up a swarm of these small simple creatures who's basic functions are to fight things and carry things. You get more pikmin by having them carry food back to their "onions" from which they sprout new seeds which bloom into pikmin which you then pluck and put into forced labour fighting monsters, removing bariers and carrying more food and your ship parts. Different pikmin are immune to different environmental hazards. Put together you get a game that's part puzzle game part action-strategy game.

It's a simple game and really short (I finished it in 3 light evenings, and I wasn't that good). I enjoyed enough to feel like writing a bit about it, especially because of the brightness of the game and how much fun it was it was to play.

What I Liked

The greatest part about Pikmin is the feeling of the game. It's bright and colourful and the controls are (for the most part) not frustrating. It's easy enough to see a problem, decide on a solution and implement it (whether or not it will work is another story). The controls feel good and the game doesn't fight you outside of a couple of AI elements, since the pikmin are supposed to be independent creatures you sometimes have to work with what they want. This doesn't detract from the game at all though.

It's kinda fun to hang out with these guys. (via GameFAQs)

I like the constrained nature of the game. Your ship has crashed, you have 30 days to retrieve 30 ship parts. Pikmin fight things and cary things. All you need to do is make sure the paths are open (which you do by using more pikmin to fight things. The game isn't overwhelming with complexity, either in the gameplay or the story, so it's simple to sit down and play for a few minutes when ever you feel like it. Days last 13 minutes, so it's easy to get a small snippet of Pikmin in although it sometimes takes a couple of days planning to get a task done and it's easy to forget what you were aiming to do.

What I Didn't Like

The biggest issue I had with Pikmin is the strength of the enemies. This is partly due to my having played a lot more Pikmin 2 where the a lot of the bosses from Pikmin become easier, regular field enemies and you have stronger Pikmin to fight them. Still I would describe Pikmin as an easy game, except for the combat. It's also true that most of the enemies are based on patterns and the more you play the more comfortable you get with the correct way to fight each kind of enemy.

Patience is a virtue rarely explored in video games. Watch out for the feet. (via GameFAQs)

I also found that the game is a little bit small and simple (despite my having like the constrained nature above). Again this might be my experience with Pikmin 2 peeking though, but the areas are a bit small and there aren't any extra things to do. It would be nice to find a few extra surprises here and there to expand on the game a bit.

While it's mostly alright, the AI was not all it could be. While most of the game felt like you were collaborating with helpful, mostly compliant creatures (who sometimes had their own agendas) every once in a while the covers fall off and you run into problems. One instance I had was when a bunch of blue-pikmin who are able to walk through water (they have gills) wouldn't carry a ship part back to the ship unless a bridge was repaired for them to carry it over the water. It's a case where what should be a largely emergent AI system was trumped by traditional video game design and it made the game worse for it. From what I recall they did make this much better in Pikmin 2, but as an AI researcher its frustrating to see something we could implement much better going to waste.

Things I Noticed

Pikmin was also re-released on the Wii and while I haven't played it (I have watched Chuggaconroy's Let's Play), I noticed that they signifiantly reworked the controls. This seems to have removed a lot of the issues I've had with getting the pikmin to the right places at the right time. While I don't think the Gamecube controls are terrible it does look like the Wii controls make the game a lot easier.

Things I'd Include in a Game

The bright and happy aspect of Pikmin shouldn't be underrated, even if it causes people to feel like it's a "kiddy" game. It's obviously not appropriate for every game, but sometimes its nice to be able to relax and enjoy the atmosphere ... although this possibly makes it more horrific when you get a swarm of pikmin eaten.

How can it not be charming? (via GameFAQs)

I also like the bite sized chunks attached to achievable goals. This game came out long before the "social gaming" trend started and it's a good reminder that small fun pieces of game play doesn't have to also be about microtransactions.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed Pikmin and if you're able to get your hands on it I recommend playing it. It's a lot of fun by itself and an interesting example of where video games have been in the past. I'm really glad I picked it up and I'm pretty excited for the forthcoming Pikmin 3.

It is the fundamental nature of the Pikmin. All things must be carried. (via GameFAQs)