Apparently monkey catching

Ape Escape 3 was my next miniature project following Klonoa and unlike Klonoa I'd been having it waiting in the wings for awhile since I purchased it used not very long ago. I haven't played Ape Escape 2 yet, but I did play the first and in general not much seems to have changed. That's not really a bad thing, although I can't say I particularly like the analog stick-focused gameplay. In a way that's saying a lot of my feelings for the game in a nutshell, because this type of gameplay is such a prominent feature of the game. However, despite not being very fond of the controls it was still more or less enjoyable. It's still fun to frantically run around catching or sneaking up on the game's monkeys with all the same gadgets.

One strong, positive feeling I have of the game is for the level design. The premise of the game is that monkeys are using TV to take over the world and put everyone into a trance. Levels the player visits are all movie sets responsible for the broadcasts. The number of genres and environments represented as well as references to specific movies and shows is staggering. While the individual levels each follow a sort of theme, even within individual levels there is a great deal of variety. An example is a level that starts off with kind of an Indiana Jones theme in sort of a rugged, mountain area with a water fall. Up from this area are some ancient ruins, and beyond those is some sort of transporter that goes up into the sky to an Olympus- or heaven-like area with angel monkeys flying around.

Graphics are simple looking and generally cartoonish, but that's not a bad thing. The look works well for the game. I've already talked about the levels, which are a plus for the graphics because so much looks fresh when you can see it rather than the same thing over and over. Music is mostly upbeat and somewhat catchy. The English voice acting is where Ape Escape 3 hits a big snag when it comes to sound though. Just by playing through the levels I can tell the game is supposed to be completely ridiculous and funny, but the generic and lifeless voices given to the characters are adept at sucking away all possible humor whenever they pop up in cut scenes and tutorials. On that topic, the tutorials are needlessly redundant and numerous, although at least it's not usually a big problem to skip through them.

A new element to the Ape Escape series this game brings is the morph ability, which allows the player to temporarily become something like a knight, ninja or western gunslinger. Each offers corresponding abilities that are generally an upgrade to both catching monkeys and doing damage to the rare boss. I guess I can't exactly say I dislike these morphs, but there is something about them I'm not crazy about even though it's hard to describe what exactly that is. It almost feels like cheating to become one and then spam one technique over and over to bypass the regular gameplay. They do go along with the game's theme of traveling through many different TV genres.

Overall Ape Escape 3 was a better game than the first if only for the diverse environments. Otherwise, it's the same monkey catching action, which as I've said isn't a bad thing.

Suddenly inflating with Klonoa

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile was even more random of a pick of what to play next than Beautiful Katamari was. I was in somewhat of a hiatus and I didn't feel like much of anything, so I started throwing ideas around my head. One of them was Klonoa, which I noticed had recently become one of the PS1 games available on the Playstation Store. I really didn't know much about Klonoa. The only way I knew the character and its games existed was due to some sort of cameo he made in one of the Tales games. I'm not even sure which one, but it may have been Tales of the Abyss. Anyway, I wanted to try it out eventually considering that from what I could gather it was a critically acclaimed 2D platformer.

As much as I liked the game, I don't think it has left a terribly strong impression on me, but I can certainly see why it is liked. Strong graphics, strong music and strong gameplay is a good combination. The story and the characters were a little inane, but at least the characters all have gibberish voices in the semi-frequent cut scenes (the voices could have been much, much worse). The game also has two main drawbacks. First, it's short. As good as it is it really didn't last long and I ended up getting the majority of the optional stuff with very little backtracking (the collectible is rescuing random characters). Second, I encountered glitches. This may be only for playing it on the PSP, but the game froze up in several cut scenes and without fail during the end level fanfare of 2-2. After doing some checking online it seems I'm not the only one to have had these problems. Eventually I just learned to always skip the fanfare as soon as possible to avoid any chance of the game freezing after I finished a level. So, it wasn't insurmountable, but I did end up repeating 2-2 about five times between it freezing during a cut scene and then systematically after I completed it. It nearly ruined the game for me because I was about ready to put it down in frustration.

Fortunately I didn't because I encountered few problems through the rest of the game. The gameplay mechanic of inflating enemies and either using them as weapons or a double jump is fairly unique, although it also never really stopped feeling a bit odd. I wouldn't mind playing the Wii port of the game to see how they updated the graphics and I'd also like to hunt down Klonoa 2 on the Playstation 2 eventually. Considering the glitches, I wouldn't recommend playing the game on the PSP like I did assuming there is a widespread problem, especially if you can play it on something else.

Randomly rolling

Sometimes you just feel like rolling. Rolling a Katamari that is. Once the compulsion hit me I decided to direct my efforts toward Beautiful Katamari, mostly because it's the only Katamari game I haven't quite played out yet. Unfortunately, as I do not have a Playstation 3, Forever Katamari is not among the games I have access to. I have an inkling that it's better than Beautiful Katamari however.

Beautiful Katamari is one of the weaker entries in the series I think and a significant reason for why is it easily has the weakest soundtrack. Not a single one of my favorite music tracks from previous games made it into the score, and although there are a few decent songs nothing really stands out. There are even fewer tracks I want to listen to repeatedly or for as long as some of the courses last. Considering in my last post I said I don't really have an ear for music, this may sound like a reversal, but music has been a unique strength of the Katamari series and is pretty important to enjoying the gameplay for me.

Fortunately, the gameplay remains very good and Beautiful Katamari does introduce some interesting new environments to roll in. The interior areas that smaller Katamari have access to like the restaurant, store and supermarket are fun and interesting. The themes of the stages this time around are pretty easy to ignore and for the most part you really only have to worry about making the Katamari as big as possible as fast as possible. There are some unique exceptions, like trying to roll up the cheapest or lowest calorie items in the supermarket to make the biggest Katamari possible, but usually you can ignore what the King of All Cosmos says. I consider that a plus, considering I like to actively ignore him. On the other hand, it doesn't have the variety of wacky levels that We Love Katamari has. One of the main things I'd yet to do in the game since I first played it were the DLC stages, which were rather expensive last I looked. They've now dropped in price to about half of what they were, which is more reasonable. So I tried them and enjoyed them for a period of time, but not so long as to really make it worth even the lowered prices. The graphics are basically unchanged from the games on the Playstation 2 from what I can tell. Screen resolution and how clear smaller objects look seem to be the only major changes visually, but that's fine considering the unique look of the game has aged well.

It's still a decent Katamari game and the regular content is worthwhile if you can find it for a lower price. A better game in the series is Me & My Katamari, oddly enough, which remains my favorite just under We Love Katamari. Me & My Katamari has a very nice selection for its soundtrack and a good assortment of levels too. The PSP controls take some getting used to, but they end up working surprisingly well. The only real problem I have with that game is the tendency for some levels to transport you from one area to another after getting to a certain size, rather than the more seamless method featured in every other Katamari game.

Review of Kirby's Return to Dream Land

Kirby's Return to Dream Land basically takes the concept of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and applies it to the Kirby series. It translates the 2D side-scrolling gameplay of the originals to 3D side scrolling, harkens back to earlier entries in the series primarily, and throws cooperative gameplay with up to four players into the mix. Overall it does a pretty good job at what it sets out to do. Since this is the first official review I've done for my blog, I'll mention now briefly that I will primarily examine games based on gameplay, looks and sound. Other factors such as story, controls and replay value may weigh in on a case-by-case basis.

There's not too much to say about the gameplay besides that it's classic Kirby. You move forward, eat certain enemies to gain their powers, then use those powers to blow through everything in your way until either losing them or finding a better ability to copy as you move through a stage. Kirby can float so there's no danger (usually) of falling into a pit, but there's a good number of varied obstacles for some platforming fun. There is a variety of abilities with a lot of mainstays and a few new ones to copy. Nearly all the familiar abilities have at least one nice little addition, like the spark ability being combined with plasma, and some of the new powers are fun and useful, like water.

One gripe I have with the gameplay are the super abilities, which are new to this entry. Back when I saw a trailer for this game I remember seeing a few of these in action, such as when Kirby pulls out a massive sword and does an attack that spans nearly the entire screen. It looked very impressive at the time. Now it looks uninteresting because I know how these abilities are used now. A fair number of stages feature one of several super abilities in the last area before the goal, and they're instantly recognizable because a large, fancy looking enemy will conveniently appear in front of you as if to inconspicuously say: "I'll bet I have a pretty awesome power." Assuming you do as the game intends and copy their ability, you'll spend the next few minutes spamming the one attack they have. Almost all of them require you to use the ability to hit time or location sensitive windows of opportunity, which if missed will require the use of the ability yet again. Super ability attacks will pause action for about three to five seconds each time they are used. It's boring to do and it is even more boring if you are another player tagging along with the Kirby using the super ability. Snow bowl, where you become a large snowball and roll forward, is about the only one that's actually interesting. However, if the super ability segments are plodding than at least there's a decent reward in the more frantic section that always come immediately afterward. For every super ability section there's a star gate that appears just before the goal, usually with some minor requirement to make it appear, such as by destroying a large object. The gates lead to obstacle courses that are a race against time to keep from being crushed and are immediately followed by decent boss battles. The ultimate reward is a few energy spheres, the collectibles this time around typically hidden (sometimes well, sometimes not) throughout all the stages. Anyway, the gist of this rant is I think super abilities were a poor addition to the game.

Having multiplayer is a plus for the game and without it I probably wouldn't have played it for awhile longer. I don't actually own the game, but I've been playing it alongside my friend Eric who does. We only get to it for an hour or two once a week so it has taken awhile to go through. The drop-in mechanic of allowing additional players to come and go whenever they want, making use of a shared pool of lives, is nice and flexible. It can be played with up to four players, although I'm not so sure how well four players would work in practice. The game worked fine for the most part with two players. Actually it feels like it was optimized for two players as Eric commented at one point. Fortunately we didn't have to worry about bumping into each other or anything like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and generally we could do our own thing. However, once every now and then one of the cooperative mechanics would kick in. For example, we'd be jumping and floating between platforms and then suddenly Eric's Kirby would jump off my head, sending me directly down into a pit (or vice versa). These instances were rare and generally no more than minor annoyances, especially considering the ease of most of the game, but they did happen and I can scarcely imagine what situations would allow these mechanics to be useful. More often one of our characters would get lodged on the other's head, and while that could be debilitating depending on the situation it was usually more funny than anything (especially if the one doing the sitting was Dedede). Still not useful though.

On the note of mentioning one of the other characters, there are three playable characters besides Kirby: King Dedede, Meta Knight and a hero Waddle Dee. Apparently only usable by players besides the first, who is locked in as Kirby, I spent the majority of the game using these characters. I used Kirby some early on mostly to try out the various special abilities, but once I had it's hard to overlook the usefulness of the other characters and their permanent abilities. Meta Knight was my choice for quickly moving through levels and cutting down weak enemies, Dedede was my boss killer, and the Waddle Dee while fun was mostly set aside for the former two as the game became more difficult.

I briefly mentioned the game was easy and indeed it was for Eric and me. Both of us have played numerous Kirby games and we cleared standard mode with barely a problem and probably without either of us giving it our full, serious effort. Extra mode was quite a bit more challenging and we finally reached our first game over about halfway through on a boss, and the difficulty increased even more from there. How easy and how hard a game is are difficult qualities to rate for anyone but myself and it's even more difficult to say whether one or the other is good or bad. I guess I'm mentioning it as more of an observation. The easiness didn't bother me much early on, it was still fun, and the increased challenge was welcome by the time it arrived. Aside from the ease of the game, particularly early on, it also feels like it takes time for the stages to really start getting interesting.

Graphics are the easy part to critique because Kirby's Return to Dream Land certainly looks nice. I'm not too picky about the technical superiority of some graphics versus others, but to me this looks like they took the series' 2D sprites and translated it to 3D within the Wii's capabilities. That's about as best as I could expect. Stages are colorful and relatively varied in appearance, and player characters and enemies are well animated. Kudos.

Sound is somewhat of a tricky area for me to approach primarily because of all the things I notice, sound effects and music are almost never at the forefront. The game makes sounds like I would expect it to from my experience with Kirby in the past and the music seemed to fit whatever situations I was in. For me that's enough to give a game a positive pass when it comes to sound. Now there are certainly some music tracks I like more than others and I have a few older favorites that from what I could tell were competently rearranged, but in general there was no specific music in the game that really caught my attention. I asked Eric about the music since he has a much better ear for it than I ever will. He agreed he didn't think much stood out at first, but as things progressed he believes there were a number of catchy tracks.

I feel like I spent a good chunk of the review criticizing rather than praising, but don't take that to mean I didn't like the game. It was good, although not great. The multiplayer mechanics could be slightly less intrusive and some mostly minor gameplay gripes are what keep it from approaching overall better entries like Kirby Super Star. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is a solid addition to the series that keeps all the good, core elements older fans are familiar with. With an easier difficulty and possibility of multiple players, it's also probably a pretty good entry game into the series for newer gamers.

My rating: 8/10

Some content in this post is being used under the fair use exception of copyright law. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is copyright of HAL Laboratory and Nintendo.