What We’re Playing This Week – Star Fox Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cNp80bDRwQ

Jake Rushing – Pokémon Yellow (Gameboy), StarFox Zero (Wii U)

For this week, I will be focusing on going through Pokémon Yellow. So far, I managed to beat Misty, and now I’m going through S.S. Anne and battling trainers on the ship. I’ll try and get to the halfway point before Star Fox Zero comes out on shelves.

Since I pre-ordered Star Fox Zero over a month and a half ago, I’ll be planning on picking it up when it comes out and I’ll play a little of it to see what I’m expecting. From what I’ve read so far, this is supposed to be good, so I’m pretty excited that Star Fox’s overdue return is near!

Sean Willis – Lost Reavers Open Beta f2p (Wii U), Random Racing games with an Xbox360 Racing Wheel Mad Catz, Obviously all the Star Fox games (especially SF2 Beta).

Lost Reavers also known as Project Treasure is an interesting little free to play time sink. It’s a bit laggy, tons of repetition, tons of grinding, kinda generic but it’s not too bad once you get into it. Currently it’s available as an open beta so no horrible microtransactions yet. Kind of expecting it but I have a feeling it won’t be too bad. Gameplay wise it’s a standard hack n slash with a light attack combo string once you level it up and you play with three other people playing as one of four characters who each have their own gun or melee style. Which ends up mostly lots of clones. It’s not great sure but something about it is sort of inviting, we’ll see how it ends up when it’s out of beta. Let’s ya play offline though which is cool for a free to play game, but not too helpful.

Found an Xbox 360 Mad Catz racing wheel at a thrift shop for twelve bucks recently. Cleaned it up and it works perfect, even had the pedals intact. It’s not too fancy but works easily enough on PC and I’m used to getting around Microsoft’s Xinput drivers tying the analog triggers together into one axis anyway so that is rarely much an issue. Kind of replaces my ancient one I had for PC back in the DOS days as a kid. I miss that one so much. It’s nothing too fancy with only two (technically three) axis to use but a d-pad and buttons plus a gear shift and even gear paddles that work both ways. (tied to existing buttons but it’s just nice to have) Not bad for the price at retail, better for the price I paid, though it did need some major cleaning. I ever mention I dislike rubber grips on controllers? No? Cause I very much dislike rubber grips on controllers, they don’t hold up well over time in my experience. Still fun to play racing games the right way again, even if my Steam Controller sorta works like a Wiimote, maybe I should duck tape it to this one heh.

Lastly it’s Star Fox week for me. Like Jake I’m pretty excited for the new entry into the series after such a long long time. Sure it’s yet ANOTHER remake, yes that’s right you kids in the corner, Star Fox 64 was the third game, I mean second, officially anyway. Always was a nut about the first game back when 3D was a new thing. Was crazy about the second game, transforming arwings, open maps, more playable characters and that crazy live battle going on during missions that sometimes requires the player to jump out and take care of it but without being completely annoying. Okay so I played the beta, it’s out there in the interwebs for quite a long time now and it was dang good in my humble opinion. Go learn how emulators work and try it out, totally worth it. So ya, Star Fox Zero has transforming arwings now, cool. That’s where the similarities end though as it looks like the game takes after Star Fox 64 the most and was aimed for a more casual paced experience early on. (easy no damage mode isn’t bad, just not creative btw.) I’ll reserve my judgement but I’m not gonna get my hopes up too much, I wanna enjoy this despite it’s shortcomings. It’s just been too long and one of my favorite developers Platinum is behind it so hopefully it serves some challenge to the old original StarFox fans. (amiibo bonus doesn’t count. Unless it has some crazy electronic music.) So ya, Playing all the StarFox games will Friday, even the bad ones, so let’s do an aileron roll (it’s not a barrel roll you know) and have some fun in space this week. Oh and the tower defense bonus game looks like a nice casual addition, that might be nice, looked fun when it was at E3 that one time.

Marshall Garvey – WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii)

Aw yeah! I’m kicking it old school with WarioWare: Smooth Moves, which I got as part of my bi-weekly payday treat bundle at Dimple. I hadn’t played it in a good 6-7 years, when it was a frequent favorite at my place every time my friend Shane Canton brought it over. After all this time, I figured it was time to bring home my own copy, and it’s just as insanely fun as ever. For those somehow not familiar with it, it’s basically just a relentless stream of trippy minigames, most of which defy description. While the novelty of doing these minigames with the Wii remote should ostensibly be long gone almost 10 years after the fact, Smooth Moves hasn’t lost any of its zany appeal after all this time. Whether for a friend gathering or just for a good “anytime” play, it’s a total treat. Let’s just say my fanhood is so sincere, I even dressed up as Jimmy T. for Halloween in 2009. Seriously. Here’s a pic for proof:

Terry Randolph – Bravely Default (3DS), Undertale (Steam), Dead Space (Xbox One)

This week is moving week — which means less time to focus on games and more time focusing on getting everything for tomorrow. When there’s time, I want to finish Undertale and make significant headway into Bravely Default (Bravely Second just came out, so it’d be nice to be able to get that later on in the year). It was a nice surprise to get back into turn based RPGs since the last couple games I’d be invested in were shooter RPGs. The only challenge is, with the backlog challenge heavily underway, it’s hard to find ways to churn through my games and eliminate them off of my list at a decent pace. However, the pressure of not trying to buy games and keep up with release dates has been refreshing and made gaming more fun again. I also have Pokemon: Red as well, but that’s going to be played when I just want to kill time.

When I finish moving, I plan on finishing up the extra content that’s left of Tom Clancy’s The Division and enjoy some good ole Dead Space. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake putting the difficulty on Hard for Dead Space.