Topic: The Three Musketeers - First Impressions

I may consider this game.

Will be picking this up after work, and hopefully I'll get a good few hours in tonight. I don't like to "give away" my verdict before the review is posted (I don't want the comments sections of my reviews getting lonely ) but I'm sure you'll hear from me whether or not I'm enjoying it.

Actually, for future reference, when you ask me for verdicts ahead of time, we'll use the following code:

"Wait for the review" = probably not so good
"Try it yourself" = probably worth getting

Played a bit during my lunch break. There are a handful of issues I'll probably address in my review (we'll see how I feel as the game progresses), but so far, I'm heavily leaning toward try it yourself.

What would your verdict clue have been for a game such as Incoming?

I bit the bullet on this and played through the first level, My first impressions are that it seems a bit too ambitious for the Wiiware platform. While the graphics look nice, the framerate is choppy as hell, almost to the point that it makes me nauseous to even look at. There are also annoying load times in between each area, even though many of the areas themselves are very small, sometimes not even taking up the entire screen. Finally, the waggle attack seems unresponsive, which is unfortunate because you need to use it a lot. There's a small chance that this occured because my battery charge was running low (the game kept pausing to tell me to recharge my batteries), so once I'm done recharging I'll give it another shot, but for now it's looking like you should save your Wii points for Icarian instead.

The biggest clue would probably just have been me smashing my head against the wall for fifteen solid minutes.

I have a feeling the motion controls are iffy. Am I right?

Edit: Hmm, looks like accc answered me already. Pity, I was really looking forward to this.

xD ...Amusing...

You're not wrong.

But...well, there's more to the story than that. I have a lot to say, and I don't want to get it all out of my system before I write the review. From now on I'll try to stay quiet.

I'll try to get it up by Wednesday night so you folks don't have to wait too long.

NP, I won't have any points for maybe two weeks or so. I won't be horribly disappointed if it turns out bad. I have plenty of stuff I still need to get anyway.

there is one thing, 75% of wiware titles suck! i am looking foward to super meat boy though

Too bad about some of the problems accc touched on. Hopefully the game gets better for him. Anyone else give it a go?

If 75% were an accurate and objective statistic (however that might be determined), I'd be quite happy. Every platform has tons of bad games, but WiiWare gets held to a higher standard because we look to it for new games every week unlike retail games where we just go by the release dates given in advance for games we want and ignore the trash in between those dates. It's Nintendo's own fault for not having a release schedule.

But back to this game, it looks neat and possibly challenging. My points are in your han-- wings, Brutus.

I found a couple of charged batteries lying around so I gave it another shot, I think I'm warming up to the motion controls a little bit, There's a certain rhtythm to using them, you have to really time your attacks rather than just waggling aimlessly. There still is a slight delay in using them, which makes facing a certain type of charging enemy a real pain in the ass.

I will say the game is pretty hardcore difficulty-wise. You only have two lives to start out and if you lose them both you have to start the level over. The levels themselves are pretty lengthy and so far are pretty basic in their design, there's an occasional branching path where you need to find a key but for the most part the game flow is basically enter room -> fight enemies -> collect treasure -> platforming obstacle -> enter next room.

I made it to level 3 and it looks like the level design is starting to open up a bit, with more block puzzles and branching paths. A couple of things bothered me about level 3, however. First of all, the entire level takes place in a tower of sorts, so the whole thing is vertical, but if you fall off the bottom of the screen it kills you instead of sending you down to the previous screen (unless you're on a ladder). Secondly, since it takes place in a tower the rooms are circular, but some rooms are divided into separate sections by walls. The only way to tell these walls apart from the background is that they stick out slightly farther, but they end up blending in with the background so they can be difficult to notice and as a result you may find yourself trying to jump to an area that you can't access until later, hitting a wall, falling off the screen and dying. Combined with the fact that you only have two lives, I can see this level getting quite frustrating.

I'm not sure if i like this or not. Everything in this title is exactly what i want in a platformer but the hit detection is sloppy and the combat feels even more so. Running,jumping is fine.It's quite a smooth game as far as that is concerned. The combat is an absolute dud though. However it's fun enough to play and some may get enjoyment from this. If i were to score it based on my personal feelings it would get a 6, mabey a 7 because it does have a bit of charm and the art style is good.

Thing with the load time is down to the compression method that Nintendo makes us guys apply. Where it's been shrunk from some 300mb down to their 40MB standard, there will be load times that are longer than the average due to the size of the levels, the audio quality etc.

Remember guys, it's our first WiiWare title...so be gentle!

I'm just shocked at how you got a game like this down to 40MB in the first place. Shocking really.

@vampire: I'll still probably end up getting it, though the one thing that's really holding me back now is the afore-mentioned framerate issue. If it's a difficult game, that's fine. If the motion controls are challenging to master, that's fine. I can take load times. But framerate issues? That's not fine - if it's constant.

I love your ideas though, and I hope to see more stuff from you guys.

@eripmav: It is pretty impressive that you managed to shrink down such a large game to fit with Wiiware's size restrictions, but I think Wiiware games work better when they're designed with the limitations in mind instead of trying to fit larger games in there and having to make concessions in the process. I am enjoying your game quite a bit, however. The game controls decently enough and I'm a sucker for 2D platformers

I'm really anxious for the review on this game. I'm tempted to get it but I'm still not sure if it is worth my points yet. I only have a limited amount of points that I can spare at the moment so I need to make them count.