Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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New Super Mario Bros. U: Second game of 2019 for me. I've owned this game for a pretty long time (I got it free as part of the promotional campaign Nintendo launched to get people to buy Mario Kart 8 at the time, which saw them giving out free retail games via download), but I never got past the first world or so before getting turned off by the NSMB aesthetic and dismissing it as another cookie-cutter game in that series. I definitely rushed to judgment, though, as, having pretty thoroughly beaten this game (all secret paths found, all star coins collected in all the normal worlds, and four of the eight superstar road courses fully completed at this point), I was shocked by how much fun I was having. This is very much the cream of the crop of the NSMB franchise, a stellar 2D platformer that, if not for some unfortunate niggles, would be among the best games on the Wii U.

First, the good: the level design in this game is fantastic. They're often large and vertical enough to allow for a decent amount of exploration, as well as hiding a number of secrets. Like Mario games of yore, this game is filled with secret exits that allow the player to bypass large sections of the map at a time. Once you get a number of these, the world map, which, by the way, is one big, interconnected thing, you'll find interesting paths connecting the various worlds in this game.

The world and boss diversity both take a step up in this entry, with somewhat more creative environments alongside boss encounters that, honestly, are probably some of the best I've seen in a 2D Mario game. You're still always fighting the koopa kids, of course, but their manner of attacking changes somewhat. My favorite was an aquatic boss battle where you had to lure bullet bills to keep hitting the enemy, even as he kept making them encroach on my character from various side of the screen.

Of course, both these aspects pale in comparison to something like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, but, for 2D Mario games, which tend not to be hugely creative affairs, I found them to be satisfactory.

There's also apparently a wealth of bonuses challenges and side content in this game. I played a few of them after finishing the game, and new challenges kept unlocking when I mastered more basic ones. It seems like, even after fully completing the game, you could get a lot of mileage out of trying to master these challenges.

As for the bad... the first thing I have to say is that, however much fun this is to play, it's still a NSMB game, which means terrible, repetitive music and a lifeless art-style that is the video game aesthetics equivalent of American cheese: artificial, tasteless, and plastic-y. There's no getting around this: I imagine this great platformer would have been much more well-received if it had actually gone the extra length to distinguish itself aesthetically from past NSMB games.

The other complaint I have is the weirdly restrictive controller options available to you. By default, in single-player mode, you can use the GamePad, Wii U Pro Controller, and sideways Wiimote. The classic controller and Wiimote + Nunchuk don't work out. But this is still OK. The trouble comes when you want to play in multiplayer mode. For some godforsaken reason, the game will not let one person play on a Pro controller and the other on the GamePad, Oh no. Instead, anyone using the GamePad is relegated to "boost mode," which involves tapping the touch screen to place blocks in the game. If they actually want to play, though, and you only have one extra controller, then someone is getting saddled with the sideways Wiimote. And I hate the sideways Wiimote. It's worse than a sideways joycon, because I can't even put it in a controller shell and make it more comfortable to hold. I have a GamePad. I have a classic controller. I have a nunchuk. All of these could easily be made to work well with the game (I believe Tropical Freeze gave you all of those controller options, in fact!). But no: instead, I'm stuck with a control scheme that practically makes the game no fun to play.

Additionally, the game had Miiverse heavily integrated into it, and there's no way to turn this off. But Miiverse is dead. It CONTINUALLY popped up messages at me asking me to do stuff on Miiverse, which was irritating, as this could have easily been patched out of the game, and I don't care to have the game continually nagging me to do something outside of the game anyway. It's worse than those 3DS games that keep popping up annoying reminders to "take a break from playing once in a while," as if Nintendo wants to be my parent or something.

Not the best 2D platformer ever made, or even the best on the system, but it's still a pretty polished, addictive, and superb little adventure. I played for 5 or 6 hours straight as I was finished it up tonight, and the time really flew by. It took me 20 hours or so to complete as much as I did, and I imagine you could get a lot more time out of it by pursuing all of those challenges. Definitely worth looking into for anyone who owns a Wii U (or a Switch, which should have fixed at least two of the three problems I mentioned in the upcoming port).

8/10

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(this post will be kind of disorganized and rambling; I have a lot to say about this game, and my thoughts aren't really in order, seeing as how I've only just fully completed it)

I've completely finished Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice on the Nintendo 3DS, which makes it my third finished game in 2019. While I've always remained a fan of this series, I won't pretend that my enthusiasm for recent AA games, starting with Apollo Justice, hasn't divebombed. AJ and Dual Destinies are both fine games in their own right, but they simply couldn't live up to the standards of the original trilogy. I'm glad to report, however, that trend has changed massively with the latest 2016 outing in the series, Spirit of Justice, which not only goes back to the level of excellence I associated with the original trilogy, but actually tops those games in many respects.

There's so much to praise here. First: I really, really like a lot of the new characters in this entry. They're fun and realistically complicated people in their own right, even when they can, at first glance, easily be fit into predefined character archetypes (the character Rayfa, for example, is definitely a tsundere, but she also has enough variation to her characterization to allow her to transcend this and become a unique fictional person in her own right). Ema returns here, and, thankfully, she's a lot less miserable than she was in Apollo Justice.

I've had a lot of difficulty relating to Apollo over the last couple of games, and have struggled to find him anything other than obnoxious. This game truly does Apollo justice (heh), though, illuminating his personal history and tying his fate in with the destiny of a nation in a complex and electrifying final case that might actually surpass Bridge to the Turnabout in terms of how it fuses the personal with a wide-ranging conspiracy that ties the entire game together into one epic narrative.

One of the best immediate changes made in this game is situating most of it in an entirely different region. Khura'in is a fantastic new setting for a few reasons: it deeply connects the histories of certain major characters; as a theocracy ruled over by an unjust and fanatical monarchy, it poses a lot of genuinely fascinating challenges for cases taken on by Phoenix (primarily, a law that sentences defense attorneys to the same punishment meted out to their client should they happen to lose; this persecution quickly led to all of the country's lawyers seeking asylum elsewhere, and forced those charged with crimes to undergo trials without any kind of representation on their behalf); and, tying into the theocratic aspects of the setting, and leaning in to the always-present supernatural aspects of the series, the use of divination seances by the princess of Khura'in to summon the memories of the dead is an innovative twist that, in addition to providing an entirely new trial mechanic, also helps "even the playing field," so to speak, with Phoenix Wright and his ever-increasing crew of lawyers and friends with outright superpowers. It's cool to see the supernatural being invoked on behalf of the prosecution.

This might be the first game in the Ace Attorney series where I genuinely enjoyed every single case in the game. Some of them are much lower in quality than others, but the average quality of the game, from case-to-case, is probably the highest it has ever been in the mainline games.

My favorite aspect of SoJ is, unquestionably, how well it ties the entire series together. There has always been a lot of... disconnection between the trilogies, with connections and older character cropping up only occasionally, and even then feeling like out-of-place cameos, but the integration of old and new characters in this game really makes the Ace Attorney universe come together brilliantly. Maya, Pearl, Phoenix, and Edgeworth fit alongside Apollo, Trucy, and Athena into one integrated story. The game actually revisits Kurain Village at one point!

Presentation-wise, everything is similarly fantastic. The game uses full 3D models, similar to the previous series entry, Dual Destinies. Unlike that game, though, these models are actually extremely well-animated and surprisingly detailed. There's a lot more natural movement and life in these character models (perhaps a bit too much: once in a while, the game will hang on a dialog box or stutter a bit after a particularly complex animation or set of animations. I feel like this game is pushing against the limits of what is comfortably achievable on the standard 3DS hardware). One fully 3D animated cutscene that particularly benefits from this step up in production values is Rayfa's Dance of Devotion at the beginning of a Divination Seance: it looks really, really good for the system. The music is also superb, with some remixes of older tunes that really jazz them up alongside compelling newer tunes.

So, for the most part, I was extremely satisfied with this game. It does still have some minor issues that keep it from being as good as it could possibly be. To briefly list them:

• There are two filler cases in this game: Case 2, The Magical Turnabout, and Case 4, Turnabout Storyteller, are both disconnected from the larger plot of the game, and seem to only exist to give Apollo and Athena something to do before the harrowing final case. I happen to think Case 2 is one of the better cases in the series, and, even though Case 4 isn't great, it's still better-than-average for an Ace Attorney filler case.
• While I like Nahyuta Sahdmadhi (especially in terms of how he connects to Apollo and the game's compelling larger story in Khura'in), he's not especially interesting as a prosecutor. The original Ace Attorney and Trials and Tribulations both benefited from having complex and interesting prosecutors who were full of personality. Nahyuta doesn't bring a lot to the table in this regard, unfortunately, and spends most of his trials calling you putrid and ENDLESSLY telling you to "let it go, and move on." Endlessly. It's his catchphrase, and he uses it for every situation. With that said, he's still a good character in terms of his role in the final case, and I really dig his character theme.
• The Big Bad in this game doesn't quite get enough build-up to make your confrontation with them nearly as satisfying as it was confronting the bad guys in the first and third games, respectively.
• The writers for this series don't seem to know what to do with Maya other than imperil her. It was bad enough that she got kidnapped in both the second and third games; now she gets kidnapped TWICE in the same game! She's becoming the Princess Peach of the Ace Attorney universe. Anyway, Maya is an awesome character, and I hate seeing her be reduced to a mere prop in these mysteries.

Overall, though, I couldn't recommend this game enough. It'll be interesting to see how the series evolves past this point, given how the way it ends shakes the status quo up in a pretty significant way. If we do end up getting a new set of games, the narrative focus will have to change. I wouldn't mind a game that fleshes out Athena Cykes, personally, but we'll see what happens. An easy 9/10. With just a few changes, it could have been the best game in the series. As it stands now, I'd place it just below Trials and Tribulations, making it my second favorite game in the series.

I also played all of the DLC cases. There are two jokey hour-long ones that are... cute, but utterly insubstantial. They come with 3DS themes, which is cool, but those themes are kind of boring. They both made me laugh enough to be worth the money I paid for them, though. The real meat of the DLC is another full case, Turnabout Time Traveler, which is kind of a throwback. Maya is your companion through the entire thing, a certain annoying character from the original trilogy makes his grand return, and you square off in court against Miles Edgeworth. This aspect is reasonably well-done, and great fanservice for long-time fans. With that said, the case itself, while decent, was one of the weakest in the game, and very predictable in some respects. Again, definitely worth the money, but not as good as the DLC case in Dual Destinies which was, surprisingly, the high point on that game. Overall, I'd give the DLC a 6/10.

@CanisWolfred It's a pity NSMBU came out when it did, and on the console it did. People were already kind of tired of the series anyway, and people just weren't super enthusiastic about Nintendo's new console, so it didn't get the reception it deserved. Hopefully that'll change with the Switch re-release. it's definitely one of the best side-scrolling games in the series.