E3 Day 1 Impressions: Here's Jake

Howdy. I'm Jake. A handful of people may recognize me as jake2000, and an infinitesimally smaller handful might know me from Idle Thumbs. I offered to help out with the Shack's E3 coverage this year and they were nice enough to say yes. I haven't got a ton for you today but I'll be back tomorrow with LucasArts' lineup, The Witcher, and a pile of other stuff.

Anyway, games:

Super Mario Galaxy (working title)
Developer: Nintendo; Publisher: Nintendo
Wii

While my job here at E3 seems to largely consist of talking about the games not already pegged by the actual Shacknews staff, I've managed to sneak a couple others in. For instance, while Chris was occupied by a zillion appointments, I somehow beat him to the punch on getting into the Nintendo booth, and getting my hands on Super Mario Galaxy.

I had no idea what to expect. With the Wii controller there are quite a lot of possibilities, and one's imagination tends to run wild. When the then-titled Revolution controller was first revealed, with the video of all the Japanese people wildly throwing their hands around to the sounds of dentist drills, symphonies, and 8-bit hopping sounds, the first thing I wondered was what the heck Miyamoto was cooking up for the controls of the next Mario game. Visions of flicking the remote around to make Mario jump from wall to wall, or using it to guide him around on an invisible tether like the denizens of Animal Crossing Wild World haunted my dreams. I've been a Mario junkie as long as I can remember, and while I by and large trust Nintendo to do right with every modification or addition they make to the main-canon Super Mario games, I love the way the games play in their current form and was hesitantly bracing myself for a major shift.

There's been quite a lot of talk about the Wii and what its new controller means for how games - especially Nintendo's games - are played. Will it change everything? Will it break all the rules? (Whatever that means.) Will our conceptions of how a game is played be turned upside down?

After spending some time with Super Mario Galaxy, I can very definitively tell you that I don't know, because this game in no way answers any of those questions. With Super Mario Galaxy I didn't know what to expect, but what I played at E3 was a fairly solid, surprisingly traditionally-controlled 3D Mario platformer, which just sort of happened to use the Wii remote from time to time if you felt like it.

The Super Mario Galaxy demo took Mario, triple-jumping, wall-sliding, butt-stomping woo-hoo's, wee-hee's and all, and moved him to a game world consisting of a series of vaguely spherical asteroids, moons and assorted land masses suspended in space. Each floating celestial chunk has its own center of gravity, so as the player you can move Mario around all over the surface without falling off (think the Prince's home planet in Katamari Damacy, or the crazy suspended sphere in the Prey gameplay videos). Each floating body acts as a miniature level, with simple platforming goals which must be achieved, the completion of which will unlock a launcher to send Mario flying off into space to the next floating puzzle.

In the demo some of the floating land masses contained a few enemies to squash and little else - the only "puzzle" was finding the launcher - while others had jump puzzles or odd rotations in the center of gravity to compensate for, resulting in some trickier solving. A few of them contained bosses as well, including an enjoyable (but simple) boss fight with a giant four-legged robot who launched heat-seeking (or as the case may be, Mario-seeking) Bullet Bills. The fight consisted mainly of using the game's crazy gravity tricks to run up the robot's legs while being chased by a Bill, only to duck out of the way at the last moment once you reach the robot's top, causing the bullet to obliterate part of the shield around it's head. Much like Mario 64 and Sunshine, beating the boss resulted in a gold star floating down from the sky, which Mario collected in a flurry of "wee-hee's," ending the demo.

Waiting in line I watched others play through the demo, sending Mario spinning around spherical and cylindrical asteroids, moons, and assorted land masses suspended in space. It was cool to be sure - Galaxy's spinning celestial bodies-as-levels approach is a big departure both from a visual and level design standpoint from Mario 64 or Mario Sunshine - but what genuinely surprised me was how the game was controlled: purely from the analog stick. Mario's actual movement - the core platforming gameplay - has remained untouched from when we last saw him in Super Mario Sunshine. The Wii remote must be shaken back and forth to cause Mario to do a spin attack (which is also how one launches Mario from one floating land mass to another), but otherwise its involvement in the demo was kept to the periphery.

Case in point: in addition to Mario's standard love of coins, Super Mario Galaxy introduces small floating spikey orbs which can only be collected by way of the remote. Holding down the B button (the remote's equivalent of the N64's Z-trigger) and dragging a floating cursor over a star orb will add it to your tally of collected objects. What purpose they served (other than the Nintendo rep's claim that finding 100 of them would yield an extra life) is unknown to me, but in the context of the demo they didn't seem central to anything.

The only other major use of the remote involved sending the on-screen cursor to some smaller star icons floating between planets. Clicking on them would cause them to glow brightly and pull Mario towards them; when activated one after the other Mario could be sent floating from star to star until he reached a remote destination. It's cool, but (at least in the context we saw in the demo) not at all essential.

In the end I really don't know what to think. What was demoed was undoubtedly fun - who's going to say no to what looks to be a solid Mario platformer with the bonus inclusion of insane spherical gravity - and I'll surely be picking it up as soon as it's out. It's just not what I was expecting at all.

Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins
Developer: Capcom; Publisher: Capcom
PSP

I have only three strong memories of playing Ghosts 'n Goblins on my NES all those years ago: 1) It's really hard, 2) I suck horribly at it, and 3) If you get hit your guy runs around in his underwear. Playing Capcom's PSP revival of the game - Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins - at the show today brought the rest back.

Anyone familiar with the original Ghosts 'n Goblins should know what to expect from this one - though the graphics are now 3D, and take advantage of the PSP's ability to make things glow nicely and explode in ways unimaginable in 1986, the core gameplay of the original action-scroller has remained largely untouched. You're still Arthur the knight, running across screen after screen of cartoonish horror backdrops, tossing knives and torches and things at (yes) ghosts and goblins. And, much to the delight of my inner ten-year-old, when an aforementioned ghost or goblin (or other enemy) touches you, your armor goes flying off. Capcom really stuck to the roots with this title, even down to the original's cheesy renaissance faire "Game Over" font (which I saw twice during my playthrough).

The changes Capcom has made largely deal with actually giving the game's difficulty some scalability. For instance, unlike the original, in Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins you can get extra lives, and you come back right where you left off instead of at a pre-determined savepoint. You can also select between easy, standard and hard modes. Additional power-ups and moves have also been thrown to the mix, including a double-jump power-up, the ability to grab ledges, and a simple inventory-based leveling system for more magic and attack abilities. If you sucked hard at the original and want to, you know, actually beat a Ghosts 'n Goblins game (even if it's now on easy mode), now's your chance. And, considering I died about a zillion times on easy mode, it seems like the experience on hard mode would be an ample challenge (and a liability for any PSPs and unblemished walls) for anyone interested.

God Hand
Developer: Clover Studios; Publisher: Capcom
PS2

God Hand. I played God Hand by myself for ten minutes - from the beginning of the demo to a point where I could find nothing else to do - and had no clue what the hell was going on. The game is being developed by Capcom's Clover Studios, the developers behind Viewtiful Joe and Okami, so uniqueness - even outright weirdness - is probably expected. Fine. But what do you do when your character - a muscular, realistically rendered Old West Outlaw type - beats some hoodlum to the ground, and instead of lying there or maybe fading away, the guy's corpse disappears in a pop and turns into a piece of fruit? I know what I did: I found the nearest Capcom rep, dragged them over and asked them to explain what exactly I was looking at.

That didn't happen. Instead, she explained to me the game's underlying story, which appears here largely cribbed from the game's press release: "Centuries ago, the world was in imminent doom until a man defeated Satan and sealed away his godly powers into his own arms. Legend has it that anyone who acquired such hands would possess immense power that could turn them into a deity or demon. Years later, a gruff drifter named Jean finds his way to this troubled region and defends a woman surrounded by a brutal mob. Despite his valiant efforts, Jean is overpowered by these thugs and his right arm is severed before he falls unconscious. He later awakens to find his limb whole again and that he is now the possessor of the legendary "God Hand." The burden of being hunted by demonic legions seeking the right hand of God soon begins. In God Hand, it's judgment day as players assume the role of Jean as he tries to ward off the demons that seek to obtain the coveted appendage."

On the whole the game is presented in a fairly realistic style - no Viewtiful Joe-esque comic shading or Okami watercolor stuff going on here. If you were to just walk past a guy playing maybe a 10 second snip of God Hand you might think he was playing some random 3D beat-em-up that stole its setting and style from Red Dead Revolver, GUN, or maybe LucasArts' classic FPS Outlaws. It's a trick. I fell for it. When enemies started turning into fruit that looked more like it belonged in Pac-Man than in a western-themed brawler, and when I found my guy inadvertently locked in a combo resulting in him smacking an enemy on the head over and over, I realized that while the setting and the story in God Hand are fairly straightforward "serious" video game fare, the gameplay itself actually has a sense of humor.

On the surface, God Hand is a standard 3D beat-em-up. Guys come at you, you fight them. As I explored the small western town that served as the environment for the demo, various standard looking old west hoodlum guys would pop out from behind doors, sneak up from behind me, or occasionally just fade in directly in front of me and start punching me. I punched back. In addition to the standard punches and kicks (and associated combo system) though, God Hand employs a sort of Special Move Roulette, ostensibly designed to help you, but more often than not the game gets the last laugh. Whether that laugh is with you or at you is largely up to your own ineptitude.

The special move roulette is more or less a standard "select a special attack" menu which you can pop up at any time during a fight and scroll through to select a move. The catch: the fight doesn't stop, so you have to choose your move fast and get the menu out of the way. The attacks listed in the roulette range from huge explosions and anime-esque energy blasts from the titular God Hand, to a move consisting of nothing but you kneeing your opponent in the nuts, but nested in amongst all of them is a single line hanging out by itself, labeled "FAILURE."

The fights I was in sometimes got really fast paced, and I got nervous.

You see, sometimes instead of turning into comedy fruit, the bad guys you kill tear in half and give birth to huge smoking demons and fat Rancor-trainer types who basically lunge at you or assault you with a barrage of fire or something. It was at this point that I panicked, popped open the move roulette, shuffled down as fast as I could to the most powerful move I had available, but inevitably fucked it up out of terror, rolling down to "FAILURE." Instead of the huge energy blast I was expecting, Jean just slapped his forehead and looked frustrated for a second while the spawn of Satan continued to flatten me into the dirt floor.

I eventually died, Game Over'd, and was taken back to the main menu. Instead of the usual E3 demo menu "black screen with a logo" fare, I was presented with a video of a bunch of dancing girls, inter-cut with footage of choice fight scenes from the game, all set to blaring western surf rock. Scrolling along the top and bottom of the screen in what looked like electric lights was a message telling me how mind-blowingly hard the game was.

I asked the Capcom rep how far along the game was and was told it was very early. I have no idea how well a western/demonic/supernatural comedy beat-em-up would hold up as anything longer than a demo of ten old west buildings filled with guys who either turn into fruit or smoke-belching demons, but what was there at the show was pretty great.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure
Developer: Traveller's Tales; Publisher: Sega
PS2, GC, PSP

The Super Monkey Ball games have so far been pure gameplay experiences, with the series' main game focusing entirely on its Marble Madness-like rolling ball labyrinth boards, accompanied by an array of party games, most of which are excellent examples of solid no-holds-barred split-screen multiplayer competition.

With Super Monkey Ball Adventure, Sega and developer Traveller's Tales have decided to play with the formula, injecting a bit of modern 3D platformer into the series. While Super Monkey Ball Adventure looks to still offer the same puzzle-centric gameplay as previous Monkey Ball titles, the game now comes with a light-hearted narrative, an overworld, powerups, and even subquests.

When I first heard that - the stuff about the overworld, the subquests, the powerups, the plot - my immediate conclusion was, of course, "they've ruined it." I wondered why on earth anyone would want to add all sorts of fluff and frills to a series people buy entirely for the gameplay. The thing is , once I started playing I couldn't actually bring myself to stop. It was actually bad. I had other games I needed to see, but I kept starting to leave, taking two or three steps away from the game, only to turn around and play another board, investigate another new power-up, or check another party game mode.

The story revolves around five islands - the home island of the four monkeys from Monkey Ball 1 and 2 as well as four other islands who are all fighting amongst themselves - all of which must be visited and restored to their natural state of pre-infighting happiness (you read that right). Thankfully, instead of piles of ridiculous new gameplay conceits, this happiness is largely restored by simply playing through a series of standard Monkey Ball labyrinth boards.

That's why I couldn't stay away - the overworld was there if I wanted to explore it, but its main purpose was to serve as an interactive map between puzzles. A door might have to be opened here or there, or a character might have to be spoken too, but by and large everything serves as conduits to and from small pads which shoot your monkey ball up into space to roll around on floating shapes and through goal posts.

Each of the five islands is inhabited by other monkeys, many of whom have small tasks or games for you if you wish, and will reward you with information, bananas, or occasionally upgrades for your ball. Ball upgrades range from the ability to increase and decrease the diameter of the ball, to covering it with suction cups for limited wall climbing ability, to fully swapping out your ball for a ball hastily constructed out of wood which can float across water.

Progressing through the main adventure mode and its subquests and main puzzles unlock party games and hidden modes within the party games, as well as the game's 50 new Monkey Ball boards themselves, which all become available from a standard Puzzle Mode menu once completed in adventure mode.

Monkey Race, Fight, Target, and more classic party game modes from the first two games are included, as well as a handful of new modes including "Monkey Bounce," a game oddly reminiscent of the board game Othello in which your monkey is bouncing around on a checkerboard, stamping any square on which it lands with its color (the goal being to cover as much of the board with your color as possible). Many of the old party games have been given a retoolings as well, bringing their already high level of polish that much higher. The items in Monkey Race have been significantly beefed up to include more ostentatious pick-ups, including the spring-loaded fist from Monkey Fight.

My first thought was that Super Monkey Ball Adventure would likely be one to pass up, but if the demo's anything to go by, it's a welcome addition to the series.