Rayman Origins 3DS Demo: Playing in the Shadows was a Lesson in Speed Running in Platformers

I’ve never played a Rayman game before. The series gained prominence at a time when I was still playing RPGs exclusively, so I never did give the games a try, but I was interested in Origins as it looked like a beautiful and fun 2D platformer. When I noticed there was a demo up for it, I was excited to try it for myself. It did not disappoint. I had a lot of fun with the game.

There are three levels included on the demo and each one showcases a different sort of level. The first level is the standard platformer. Rayman jumps from platform to platform and punches and kicks enemies into oblivion. The jumping was a bit floaty and slippery and I wasn’t quite used to that, but it only took a few jumps to get the hang of the new jumping mechanics (I’ve been mostly playing Mario games these last few months and the jumping is less slippery). Even though the physics were a lot different from what I usually play, I still really enjoyed the platforming in Origins. :)

 

Mutant Mudds Demo: Pays Homage to Classic Nintendo

Mutant Mudds is the eshop’s first digital game demo and it was a lot of fun. The demo has 4 playable levels, each increasing in difficulty. The first level plays a lot like a tutorial, with signs telling you what to press next. It worked remarkably well and got me familiar with all the ways I could move throughout the levels. The second playable level shouldn’t give anyone too much trouble, but levels 3 and 4 give the player a taste of just how difficult Mutant Mudds can get. I personally found 3 a bit harder than 4, most likely because it was during this level that I had to master timing my jump just right to take advantage of the appearing and disappearing platforms. It took me a few tries to finish the third level, yet I really enjoyed this extra difficulty because it wasn’t unfairly hard. Granted, I’m not the best at platformers, so perhaps others didn’t really find the demo of Mutant Mudds too difficult and whizzed through all 4 levels. To me, however, Mutant Mudds reminded me strongly of Super Mario World. The games play differently (Max floats in the air for a few seconds with his “double jump” and shoots at things, gameplay mechanics not found in Mario games), but at their core they are about asking the player to think about how to get the jumps and timing right. Trial and error and deaths are key. You get better as you realize just how to pull off that jump or just when to avoid the boss. It can get frustrating at times, but it is oh so satisfying to finally have the gears kick into place and master just what the game wants you to.

 

Crush 3D Demo: Silly Introduction but a Solid Puzzle Game

Another demo that was recently released on the DS3’s eshop was Crush 3D. The game starts out really silly and the static pictures with floating word bubbles look rather tacky, but beyond that lacklustre introduction was a very fun puzzle game. The basic premise of Crush is to use perspective to find a path to the end of a level. The demo gives you 4 stages to try. The first stage introduces to you the basic controls of the game and the three subsequent stages show you just how a different angle can change an unsolvable puzzle into a simple one. Of course the catch here is you have to really think about what angle you should try crushing the world (crushing means making the 3D world 2D and vice versa). The last stage stumped me because I was stubbornly clinging to a single angle and wasn’t trying the game from a different perspective. Luckily the game has a hint system so if you ever get really stuck, you can trade in a point for a hint. If you are going for a perfect score though, you will not want to waste those points (and you will need to find two extras: a book and a trophy as well).

The game is definitely very unique and works really well on the 3DS. I am aware that a PSP version exists, but I haven’t tried it myself, so I don’t know how different the two versions are. The demo was fun and I didn’t have any trouble with any controls or the camera. In fact, the demo has really warmed me up to the game. I’ll have to pick up a copy whenever I have less stuff to play.

Anyone else try the demo? What did you think?

–SW

 

Metal Gear Soild 3 Demo: Interesting Game but Terrible Camera

This demo has been sitting downloaded on my 3DS for quite some time and I finally got around to trying it. I’ve heard so much good word of mouth about this series but I’m not much of an action type of gamer, so I’ve mostly passed over trying it, but I thought, free demo, why not.

The first thing I noticed when playing was the camera. It does not like to cooperate. I found myself accidentally going back to previous areas because I kept being disoriented by the camera. Then when it came time to sneak past guards, I always got caught because the camera failed to warn me about a guard being in plain sight; or while I was adjusting the camera to make sure no one was there, I would get spotted. Perhaps it would have made the game too easy, but having the guards appear on the map would have helped tremendously in preventing me from making stupid mistakes like being seen in plain sight because the camera angle didn’t tell me there was a guard coming from my back. Speaking of the camera, one thing I kept wishing I could do was auto-realigning the camera. It would have helped a lot with the disorientation and during alert phase when I was frantically trying to hide/get away.

Also worth noting was that, while the game was pretty tough in the sense of not being seen, it was very lenient in terms of death. There was one point where I was frantically trying to get away from loads of enemy soldiers ganging up on me during alert phase and even though they kept pelting me with bullets, it took a lot to get Snake down to zero. Even with a game over, you don’t start at the beginning, but rather the beginning of that particular challenge, so the game is really forgiving of mistakes.

 

Resident Evil: Revelations Demo & My Thoughts

Fairly recently Nintendo and Capcom released a demo of Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS online shop and I was pretty excited about this. I finally got around to trying and finishing the demo yesterday and I decided to make a blog post about my thoughts about the demo because this was my first real exposure to horror games. So please keep that in mind when you read my thoughts below. ^__^

The creepy eyeball thing that is sort of part of the logo for this game.