Topic: NWR's Top 10 3DS Titles! (Honorable Mentions Part 2!)

@I-U Monster Hunter, Etrian Odyssey IV, and Resident Evil Revelations would like to have a word with you and they're at the front of the line as many other would like to join that conversation!

Is Etrian Odyssey IV a "pick up and play" kind of game to start? I know Revelations and Monster Hunter aren't. Speaking of Revelations, that's my one gripe with NWR's list. I shouldn't have played the game's demo as that made me think and expect that Revelations would be all from Jill's perspective. It turned out to be a sloppy experience with its frequent character switching.

If you can label any RPG pick up and go ill be surprised! However its as pick up and go as most any other RPG. The lack of story and really main characters makes it a bit more simple to pick up. Casual mode helps for new commers as well! There is a demo in the shop and its actually the first I would say 2-3 hours of the game plus you can level up to 10.

Again, I'm a fan of Mutant Mudds. But its level of quality doesn't begin to compare to games like EOIV, RE:R, and most likely SMT4. Actually, it isn't even as good as Mighty Switch Force. It is nowhere near the 3DS' best third-party offering.

Besides, "Pick Up and Play" ≠ Better Game necessarily.

I actually think the most rewarding and deepest experiences are the games that take time to learn. Pick up and go is alright if you just want to dive right in but often what you see in the first 10 mins is all you get out of the game play! Give me a nice learning curve any day and ill play it for 10s of hours on end ie EO4 is at over 115 hours for me now!

I've picked up Awakening due in part to its inclusion of a casual mode, and I've looked into the Etrian Odyssey series when IV was about to come out. While it sounds like it has a rough difficulty, which could be avoided with the new mode, I really liked the sound of the focus on exploration. Not quite sure I want to dip into another RPG just yet though.

It can to some, and obviously did for NWR, though I'm sure more than that trait of Mutant Mudds went toward their opinion of it.

EOIV comes with casual mode and quicksave feature, so I guess it's a good "play here, continue there" kind of game for gamers who want a pick up and play game. But it needs you to focus your attention on it if you want to fully enjoy it.

You just compared the time it takes to complete a game to the time it takes to beat a game. If you count a 30 minute game, 3 difficulties, 3 characters and the speed runs and no damage runs included, you get at least the amount of time to complete Mutant Mudds.
Therefore, 30 minutes to complete a game is too short, but this one would take hours. Meaning that you just made no sense.

You didn't clarify the conditions for 100% in Gunman Clive. When you said 30 minutes, I thought you meant 100% completion as that's what I was going by for Mutant Mudds. Since you didn't make it clear the first time, how long does it take to 100% Gunman Clive?

You just described Mighty Switch Force, too, except MSF is very rewarding to complete and replay. What exactly makes it better than that?

I don't know who beat Gunman Clive in 30 mins but it took me just over an hour my first time through. I guess I either suck or took my time! I did have one freeze though before the patch.

I didn't like Mighty Swtich Force much. Unlike Mutant Mudds, which is straightforward with exploration on the side, Switch Force had criminals around the environment that had to be captured to reach the goal of a stage. Add in the time pressure to make the best times and its use of puzzle solving, and the game simply didn't carry the same level and ease of immersion as Mutant Mudds did for me. I still haven't bothered with most of the game's stages.

Well, Mutant Mudds took 8:13 to complete according to activity log.
Gunman Clive is at 9:17, with one playthrough left with the 3rd character, and a few speedruns.
Those are just my times, not the average. But they are similar as far as I know.

If that's the kind of time you've got trying to 100% Gunman Clive, then I don't feel it's a short game. Why it isn't on or won't be on NWR's list is just their preference. I personally haven't downloaded Gunman Clive.

Oh. Makes sense, though I should mention that the time pressure is only for completion, and beating your best times can be riveting. Then again, I love platformers that make me think. It's what makes the Metroid games so good, for instance. i'm surprised you're not more of a fan of that type of game.

Also, how is it possible to get immersed in a game with no story or atmosphere?

Mighty Switch Force never really impressed me. The graphics were drop your jaw, wet your pants gorgeous for a 3DS game, but the platforming not so much. It was difficult to immerse myself in the game because it was like having 5 objectives in one level. It was like a complicated Mario (not comparing it, just an example) , where you have 5 exits to go through at once. Then if you missed one, oh well, go back and find it. The time limit was frustrating for me as well, because you just need to find a correct path to get the medal thing, which made me feel like I did it wrong.
I'm not trying to say it was a bad game at all, just not as good to me as other platformers I've played. Because basically completing 4 "mini levels" in the main level, then redoing them from a death isn't my favorite game idea.
But dem graphics.

I can immerse myself in Mutant Mudds, due to the flow of the game. The levels all have a set point to get to, the end, and you have to figure out and time how to get there. You know as much as you knew in SMB to be honest (in story). You are a guy, going out to accomplish a mission. Yet that is still a popular game to this day, proving story is not all.

It may seem like I'm here to argue, but I'm just trying to get my opinion out. ._."

In Metroid though, we're not faced with a timer, we're free to think about where we need to go and how we're going to go there. Most of the time, I come to a new colored door, I try to find the required upgrade as to gain access to that area. A check of the map usually tells if that new door's area is going to really progress me through the latter parts of a region or if it's one of those side rooms that has a Missile Expansion, Energy Tank, so on. For the most part, the puzzles are simple to solve by just going back for the right gear or/and analyzing an area's cracks/scans. Time comes after the mission's already accomplished, which makes speed running more friendly than it being brought out right from the start.

Mutant Mudds does have a story and atmosphere. It's like earlier games, where story is directed at the player in a short scene at the beginning, which in Mutant Mudds involves Max and his Grannie playing a game with each other via their DS systems (or 3DS systems). As they continue playing, clips of an approaching muddy meteor are shown until it becomes the news, which then details that a Mudds invasion has occurred. To start, I'm a gamer and I enjoy playing games with my family members. I also wear glasses and have dirty blond hair, which almost describes Max. It wasn't hard for me to get a feel for being this character, as though I knew very little about Max I knew enough for a connection from the start.

Now the levels in Mutant Mudds are focused around 8 themes: forest, ice, fire, mountain, space, Game Boy, Virtual Boy and CGA. For me, visually I already have a sense of atmosphere from the first 5 easily, as I've seen plenty of material based on them gaming and otherwise. The only way they wouldn't carry any atmosphere is if they looked nothing like their respective themes, but they do and their feel easily carried over. Now with the GB theme, that was more of a nostalgic atmosphere, bringing me back to the visual experiences I had when I was gaming on that handheld. It helped me connect with Max more too, as he seems to be a kid of 8-11, which is when I was still enjoying Super Mario Land 2 on car trips or around the house. With the Virtual Boy theme, it had that odd feel to it with the levels being red and black, truly feeling like a twisted parallel accessed off of reality as the game conveyed with its placement of doors in the main levels. CGA is the theme of the Grannie levels, and again a twisted parallel is the impression. Being associated to putting all of Grannie's skills to the test, the CGA theme made me think of her as more than just Max's Grannie or as another playable, but also like she had a part to play in thwarting the invasion of their world. It felt like the little family shared the motive to protect one another and preserve the world that they share. Both Grannie and Max became more believable.

Well, actually, most of the replayability of metroid games comes from trying to beat your previous time.

The game keeps track of the time you take to beat it and rewards you based on it.

Though yeah, thankfully, the game is not rushing you (most of the time).

I'll give Mutant Mudds this. It has a boatload of content, and it has one of the best uses of stereoscopic 3D on the system. Other than that, I really don't see what makes it stand out so much. It's still a good game worth the price, but I don't think it's top ten eShop material (much less top ten system overall).

The gameplay is great, and so is the music, but the other 3 major retro platformers on the service (MSF!, VVVVVV, & Cave Story) have those claims as well, so Mudds doesn't stand out in any particular way in those regards.

Then there's where the game falls short. The graphics aren't retro (they look like they're either made out of plastic or covered in laminate), which makes the retro vibe less impactful compared to the other 3. The game is also difficult for the wrong reasons. Unlike the other 3 platformers on the service, which feel well designed, Mudds' later levels (and most special levels) are filled with leaps of faith & cheap offscreen enemy placement (that was okay in the retro era, but now feels like a lazy way out to make a game feel "retro". There are other ways to give a game retro difficulty, while maintaining modern standards). Finally, the game is highly unoriginal. The gameplay is the most safe (in terms of fresh ideas) out of all the big retro platformers, and it seems like Renegade Kid took a whole 5 minutes to come up with the game's theme (oh, a kid shooting mud monsters with a water gun in the most cliché of platforming environments). Oh, and it has no bosses!

Again, it's a good game, just highly overrated.

I know this. I was trying to say why my love for Metroid didn't lead to a love of Mighty Switch Force.