I went crazy and bought a 3DS XL this past week. In my defense, I haven't owned a Nintendo handheld since the original, backlight-less GBA Advance. I can play all the great DS games I missed too (so it was NOT a waste of money, shut up D
. I purchased the following games, and here's what I think of them:
Harvest Moon: A New Beginning: The only other Harvest Moon I've ever played was the first N64 one. In celebration of going crazy, I bought a new Harvest Moon hoping I still like that kind of game. Have not played through all of the annoyingly slow tutorial. No real impressions yet.
Super Mario 3D Land: Wow, this game is good. I really like the quick but vastly different level design philosophy (I haven't played Galaxy). The references to old Mario games are great; the ending to one level was the racoon tail cheat area you could reach by flying against the ceiling of the first fortress level of Super Mario 3. I especially enjoyed when they appropriately remixed a theme to sound like elevator music on a level that took place entirely on an elevator. Almost every level has been good; I really like the variety, it never sticks with an idea for too long, consistently throwing new and variations of other stuff at you. The levels where a dark Mario follows your exact path a few seconds back adds a nice bit of challenge as you can never stop moving and need to be conscious of retreading ground. In comparison to the other games with their annoying tutorials, this game just let's you out and explains nothing. I just came across a level where I'm pretty sure the only way to make the jump is to use the lunge jump, which is never explained--and you might not even know exists because its input is a bit weird: run > crouch briefly > jump. The 3D is even good and I've spent most of my time with it with the 3D on. I like the 3DS's 3D (well, just on this game) because it avoids the problems that make me dislike 3D so much: the 3DS does not make the image blurrier or darker. I have made my self cross eyed quite a few times by jostling the display though
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Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars: It's kind of like XCOM for 3DS, somewhat. You guide class-based soldiers on a grid and shoot at things tactically. The story and characters are, uh, forgettable. The graphics are okay sometimes, and fuzzy and jaggy the rest of the time. The game itself has me hopeful. So far, it's too easy and the AI can be prodigiously stupid. I'm playing every mission on Elite (hardest) too. The upgrades from leveling up are starting to get more interesting, my optical camouflage solider just got the knife ability, so she can stealth in and slit throats which is quite satisfying. The graphics, story, characters, animations and sound effects are poor, but the game has still I think been my second favorite out of the 4 surprisingly. The classes are cool: heavy gunner, engineer, optical camo lady, sniper. They all have their uses, good amount of variety even early in the game. If it continues to get more interesting as I unlock more abilities, I have hope for this game.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS Backwards compatibility: Not a waste of money!): I adored Super Mario RPG on SNES, but I never seem to like the Mario and Luigi RPGs nearly as much (I played SuperStar Saga on my brother's DS). They're funny, quirky and seem to have all the ingredients for a great, off-beat RPG but I can never play them for too long. It has a lot of small problems that build up. The puzzles feel like busy work: e.g. there are two paths, one is blocked and the other has a switch at the end, this is a puzzle, don't get too stressed out okay? There's also too much tutorial, but thankfully you can skip them all. Healing items are too good, especially considering the nature of the combat. I wish timings were more strict for both offense and defense to make combat harder. Only the bosses hit hard enough to be real threat, but the OP and abundant healing items remove any danger. I can't really explain it. Super Mario RPG's combat only grew tiresome towards the end of the game, but I couldn't finish SuperStar Saga and this one is already a little tiresome. It appears like a great game with even better combat than SSS, and a lot of neat ideas switching control back and forth between M&L and Bowser. I don't know why I don't enjoy it more. Still good, but hoping I'll figure out how to like it more.
So, so far: 3D Land >> Ghost Recon > M&L: Bowser's BM; and no idea about Harvest Moon yet. Super Mario 3D Land could actually contend for my GOTY, the fusion of nostalgia and just very good 3D platforming may be enough? It's also letting me play as Luigi now, which is another point in its favor.
