Memory Review 1: Paper Mario Sticker Star

A key part of the EyeMoustaches mission statement is "reviewing games that came out years ago", an admiral goal definitely not born out of reluctance to spend money on new games. However, as I've mentioned before, within weeks of starting this blog I ran into a serious problem: I could hardly remember some of the games I'd long since sold off, which would make writing a useful review quite challenging.

What's more, it's difficult to trust a reviewer with a small back catalogue. You might be thinking, "this Moustache thing is telling me how good Kid Icarus is, but I can't trust it. I need references, a track record, I need to know it can tell a good game from a bad game. That it didn't just like it because Palutena has a voice like melted cheese.... in a good way (this may not have been your exact wording)".

But where others might see a problem, I see the potential for a series of gimmick articles. I intend to write a number of weekly smaller reviews of these games, with the twist that they'll be arranged in the order of release, from the most recent onward. Each week, you the lucky reader will be taken on a thrilling journey into increasingly foggy memories! Watch with amazement as the flowery prose, coherent arguments and confident statements of facts become short descriptions, half forgotten opinions and hesitant statements of questionable accuracy! Truly exciting stuff!

In addition, to boost the readership, I had an intern/figment of my imagination get some contributions from Miiverse super star Miister X about the games on the list. It may appear as though not many of them relate to the game in question but hii's an artist, operating on another level, so perhaps the true meaning and relevance of his statements is hidden, waiting to be discovered by a greater mind than mine.

So without further adieu, I give the first review in the series: Paper Mario Sticker Star

Paper Mario Sticker Star

Super Paper Mario on the Wii was divisive because it mixed classic Mario with the RPG elements of the Paper Mario series. While I did miss the turn based combat of the previous games, the wit and style of the series lived on. The story, characters and companions carried me through the adjustment to the new combat scheme as well as some of the game's faults (for example: a dependence on backtracking, and the underused rotation mechanic). Sticker Star attempts a different mixture of those two game types and falls flat. It takes the story and minimal dialogue from traditional Mario games (Bowser, of all people, has kidnapped, who'd-have-guessed, Princess Peach) as well as the map structure of Super Mario Bros 3 and World and mixes these elements with the 3D environments, visual style and turn based combat of the Paper Mario series.
Removing the story and character elements takes with it the colourful dust jacket of Paper Mario, revealing the simplistic, functional hardback cover of exploration beneath. In this game your objectives are quite similar to those seen in previous games and as before you are accompanied by a companion who does the talking. However because of the reduced focus on writing these are the least interesting environments in the series. Whereas previous games were set backstage at wrestling matches, in abstract wastelands, nerd fortresses and toyboxs and tasked you with solving murder and stew pot mysteries in this game you explore the forests and rolling hills and forests that are standards of Mario games. Mario's companion, the floating-crown-person-lady, is another staple, specifically the straight-man/woman that Mario partners up with at the start of Paper Mario game who is quickly replaced with someone more interesting (dull companions were also a problem with Super Paper Mario, but as I recall in that game your alternate characters, particularly Bowser picked up the slack). In Sticker Star however, that initial companion accompanies you throughout the game. The crown gives Mario the power to peel off parts of the world and reposition them elsewhere but this ability is never used in an interesting way and does little but facilitate fetch quests.
All that being said, dialogue and setting isn't everything, and on first glance the game's combat appears to have gone back to the series' turn based roots. Closer inspection reveals, however, that slight changes have been made which, at the risk of sounding like everyone who has ever talked about games on the internet ever make everything worse. As mentioned earlier, Mario only has one companion throughout the whole game, so the extra layer of strategy provided by companions is gone, leaving the whole system resting on Mario's wafer then shoulders. In this game, all moves are tied to stickers bought and collected in the world. This change has its merits, different stickers take up more space in Mario's collection than others depending on their power, so some resource management is necessary. For instance, you need to stock up on hammers if you expect to encounter spiky enemies. The most powerful and visually interesting moves are sometimes used to solve puzzles in the environment such as blowing things away with a giant fan, which on paper (PAPER) is an interesting mechanic. In practice though, this means you rarely use these abilities in combat, out of fear that they will be needed to solve a puzzle later on in which case you would have to retreat and buy a new copy. To use the ever fertile toybox metaphor, it's like being given the keys to a toybox, but you can't tell which toys can actually be played with and which ones will be needed to knock over giant bowling pins later on.

As a result, most battles consist of using the staple moves on staple enemies in staple environments to further a staple Mario story filled with bland staple characters. Paper Mario Sticker Star is perhaps an odd game to start this memory review series with because it is not that I've forgotten details of the game over  time but that so little of it was interesting enough to stick(er) in my memory to begin with.

6

This game

And know the comment from Miister X

"As my client, Miister X made clear when he signed our deal with you, you may use his likeness for a fee, but he wants "nothing to do with your damn blog". He went on to say that he doesn't know what a sticker star is but that if you attempt to obtain another free opinion from him he will "shove a packet of match attack stickers so far down your throat that your intestines will look like a Man U fan's bedroom wall" Please don't call this number again unless you are in a position to make a cash offer. [Dictated but not read]"

Next review: Pilotwings Resort

Walken Into Darkness

Hey Hollywood
Word on the street is, you guys are in a bit of a bind. You're fast running out of novels and half novels to turn into whole films. What's more, those dastardly vidje-agames snagged Liam Neeson with a contract to make Clash of Clans Superbowl Ads 2, With a Vengeance, 4.0 and A Good Day to Clash Clans, he's minted, he doesn't need Taken anymore. You could say he's been taken *is electrocuted*
Anyhoo, I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to pitch you an original concept for a film. Now, it is currently just a trailer, but here's the thing. Trailers are what make people want to see a film. To succeed, all a film needs to do is include scenes that will impress people in trailer form. Sorry art.
What's more, this film will give some much needed love to one of America's favourite sons, Christopher Walken. Did you see Peter Pan Live. I didn't was it good? Doesn't matter, what's important is that Christopher Walken was the best bit about it. The people love walking Walken. Such love for Chris, which you can capitalise on.
It occurs to me that reading a trailer is probably not the best way to enjoy it, so to help with the atmosphere open Hans Zimmer's page on spotify, that ought to do it.

_________________________________________________________________

Walken Into Darkness Trailer

By Ivan Moustaches

INT. BANK - DAY

Two people fill out a form on a table, they block our view of the bank behind

MAN:

Hang on, I've written your name instead of mine again.

"WALKEN" VOICE OFFSCREEN (DISTANT):

Hey, how're you, doing. This is. A robbery

WOMAN:

Jeez Frank

MAN:

It's a common mistake.

"WALKEN" VOICE OFFSCREEN (DISTANT):

Give me. All the cash. In the bank.

WOMAN:

No it's not, Jeez, why'd I ever marry, hang on, that sounds like.... Christopher Walken?

The man and woman turn around, in doing so allowing us to see the rest of the bank. The balaclava wearing "WALKEN" is talking to a BANK WORKER, a crowd has begun to form, some are taking pictures

"WALKEN":

I said, all the cash. Now. I gotta fever, and the only prescription, is cash!

BANK WORKER:

Mr. Walken, we can't just give you any more money than what's in your account. However, if you take that mask off I myself will gladly pay you for a photograph.

"WALKEN":

Little man. If I, don't. Get the money. It's gonna get. Real crazy, in here.

BANK WORKER (still very calm):

How about I pay you for an answering machine message

"WALKEN":

Sure, here's my. Message

"Walken" takes out a gun and shoots the bank worker.

"WALKEN" addressing the other shocked bank workers:

Come on. Make with the cash, chop chop.

The image resolution becomes grainy, and we transition from looking at the scene in the bank to looking at the same scene on a news show.

NEWS ANCHOR:

Actor Christopher Walken was seen, well, heard, robbing a bank today, critically wounding a bank worker in the process. Authorities are unsure of what drove the star of Balls of Fury to commit such a vicious crime. We now go live to his home.

EXT. WALKEN'S HOME - EVENING

Walken is surrounded by a swarm of reporters.

REPORTER:

Mr, Walken! Chris! Chris! Why'd you do it? Acting not giving you the same kick?

WALKEN:

I'm telling you. That. Was not, me. It was, some one. Doing an impression. I gotta distinct voice. A lot of people. Do 'em,

REPORTER (Doing a Walken impression. Badly):

Yeah. They. Are. Great.

Fade to black.

VOICE-OVER:

Framed for a crime he didn't commit.

INT: A House - Night

WALKEN:

You gotta believe me.

VOICE-OVER:

Christopher Walken has one day to clear his name

EXT: A Los Angeles Street - Day

Walken runs through a crowd, wearing a hooded jumper, with the hood up. As he runs, he wipes off the clown make-up he's wearing with a tissue. He is pursued by the police

VOICE-OVER:

Or watch his life

INT: The house - Night

OTHER CHARACTER POSSIBLY PLAYED BY MERYL STREEP:

This is bad Chris

VOICE-OVER:

Crumble

EXT: Dessert - Night

Walken dives behind a wall, in the distance there is a large explosion

VOICE-OVER:

Before

EXT: The Hollywood sign - Day

Walken runs along the top of the Hollywood sign, persued by men in 18th century greatcoats, he looks over his shoulder to see one of the men aiming a gun at him, and jumps, managing to take cover by nestling in the V part of the letter W

VOICE-OVER:

His 

EXT: The Walk of Fame

GARY OLDMAN attacks Walken's star with a hatchet, cracking it, symbolising the damage done to Walken's reputation and legend by a crime he was innocent of.

VOICE-OVER:

Eyes

EXT: The roof of a building - Morning

Walken stands on the centre of the roof, turning in a circle with the camera. He looks very dishevelled. He's holding a pistol and has a beard. He yells at the sky, we see he's addressing a News helicopter.

WALKEN:

This is. Not what. It looks like. I've been set up. Someone's playing you guys. The guy at the bank. Wasn't me. He's not Walken. I'm Walken.

VOICE OF THE VILLAIN:

Oh, you're Walken alright. Walken right into my trap.

Gunshot.

Cut to black.

VOICE-OVER:

Walken Into Darkness

Starring Peter Pan Live's Christopher Walken

_________________________________________________________________

OK, I know the "trailer's all that matters" bit might have rubbed you up the wrong way and even those of you with no artistic inclination at all may have found the lack of basic details confusing, so I've put together some thoughts as to how we can flesh out the film, and maybe blag a few awards while we do it.
1. Difficult parental relationships
If Birdman's any indication, the academy want to see strained relationships between actors and their daughters, which I think could easily be worked in. Picture it, Walken's on the run, he isn't walking anymore, no where to turn when he realises there's only one person he can trust, who the press won't know about. His estranged daughter. Years ago, she grew ashamed of her father, despite Peter Pan Live and moved away, changed her name, and in a final slap in the face, changed her accent. I'm thinking she should have an English accent, but that's mostly because I feel I haven't seen Emily Blunt much in films lately. Edge of Whatnow?
2. The Villain
Kind of at a loss for who this should be, Walken being so loved that the idea of people hating him would surely shatter suspension of disbelief. I'm thinking maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sean Connery, jealous that ol' Chrissy Boy has stolen the title of guy people do impressions of a lot.
3. Your Mom
4. Time
Did you know Boyhood took twelve years to make? Mad. We gotta capitalise on this. If we start filming in May 2003 we should be ready to release in the next quarter. Might take a bit of script rewrite though
5. Secret Society
Point two got me thinking about a new direction for the film. How about our hero discovers he's the victim of a secret cabal of celebrity impressionists plotting world domination? To get to the bottom of the mystery, Walken must use his wiles and pitch perfect Streisand impression to infiltrate the group.
6. More Birdman?
Returning to Birdman for a moment, Mr. Birdman hated critics and was an actor and critics liked the film. Obviously they have issues of some sort. We can make the most of these by, I don't know, having Walken punch Mark Kermode or something. Hell, maybe the villain could be a critic, like Roger Ebert back from the dead, or something less dumb.
7. Birdmanhood
Combining points 1 and 4, how about we take the key trick of both films, the former's use of what resembles one continuous shot and the later's.... I've forgotten which one was the later one..... uh.... Boyhood's filmed over twelve years trick, and make a film in a single take over a twelve year period. It'll be a 105190 hour long masterpiece unlike any film before it. Oscar time!
8. Horses
At some point, Walken must ride a horse somewhere, at breakneck speed I might add, to deliver some kind of warning to someone. Or at least that's what I think it says on this napkin.
9. Just make Birdman




On an unrelated note, I'm ninety percent sure the woman in this is actually Kirsten Dunst. She's aged well. Best wishes, Ivan

Contact

At some point in the past I bemoaned that only playing good games made it difficult to write interesting reviews. The average Eye Moustaches review boils down to "dear Sporadic Reader, you may have heard it said that this game is very good. Well I'm here to tell you that those rumours are in fact completely true, and so reading this review hasn't told you anything professionals haven't already told you". Well having played Contact, I can tell you that I never want to play a bad game again, screw the review quality.
I had a number of ideas of how to approach this review. One was to punctuate every sentence with a different swear words, but the Irish over-reliance on the big F meant I ran out pretty quick. Another was just to upload a copy of the notes I made as I played it, a Gonzo approach that would have let the reader pick through the shattered remains of my psyche. I considered just typing "It's the the combat, stupid" and leaving it at that. One idea that I was particular fond of was to present the review as a network diagram, to illustrate my main point, that Contact's main problem is that none of its admittedly interesting ideas seem to have been considered in terms of they would fit in with the game's other mechanics.
You've probably heard of Contact because of the story. The idea is that you play as you, a person holding a DS who makes "contact" with the Professor, a balding space faring guy in a lab coat. Shortly after this, the Professor is shot down and one of his power cells land nears a child called Terry. The Professor retrieves the cell and instructs Terry to get in the ship, which he does, stranger danger not being a thing in this world. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ship is shot down and then again unsurprisingly, disguises itself as a pirate ship. Terry must retrieve the ship's cells so that he and the Professor can get home. The idea is that you control Terry, whilst communicating with the Professor without Terry's knowledge, while the Professor communicates with Terry over a radio. That's the initial premise, what follows is a confusing story full of vague world building and out of focus overarching plotlines.
The game clearly thinks it is quite clever. According to the website "it's not all high concept artsy stuff" You're right, it's barely even a little high concept. We're told that we play as ourselves, and that we control Terry. But Terry is so bland that that in effect we just control him. He doesn't have any personality or memories prior to his meeting the professor, he knows exactly as much about the situation as we do. The Professor sometimes addresses you personally, but only to comment on the fact that he's addressing you personally. Crucially, when we discover randomn documents that contain info about the Professor or the games antagonists, the CosmoNOTS, there's no indication if Terry already knows this. Other sections of the site seem to think that the idea of player surrogate is incredibly novel. The Professor's character is inconsistent varying from selfish sometimes to showing concern for Terry and compassion for the CosmoNOTS. The antagonists are in a band for some reason and want the crystals again for some reason. Terry kills (or at very least maims) people with weapons like knives, swords and a toy hammer and no-one seems to think this strange or gruesome. In fact, at one point after dispatching a troop of soldiers, there superiors response is to simply say "I'll be filling a report". Other bizzare moments include a CosmoNOT uttering the line "I'm not sure how we're going to stop you" to a small child. I only learned from the website that the second time the ship crashed it was on an unknown planet. There are other problems with the plot, including a number of plot threads that seemed to be left hanging. There's something about clones? A conspiracy on Aegis?
It's possible that these threads were resolved in side quests, I only learned after completing it that there's a number of romance side quests that I was completely unaware of. I'll get back to my problems with the side quests that I was aware of later on, but the most pressing one is that the game's design specifically the combat system, makes it a world that you don't want to explore.
When you make contact with an enemy, if you choose to fight them, you press B and Terry gets into his action stance. He starts to move (even) slower and when the mood strikes him flails at the enemy, or possibly the air. There's no real player control in this system, in theory there's some element of skill to dodging attacks while keeping close to hitting them but in practice a great many of the attacks are homing attacks that can't be dodged so staying away from enemies is ineffective. Combat therefore boils down to standing in front of the enemy while Terry slowly whittles away their health. That is, unless the enemies attack speed causes Terry to flinch constantly or those times where he doesn't seem to attack at all. The website describes menu based systems as tedious and calls its combat system speedy. It's most definitely not speedy, nor is watching Terry slowly knock blocks off an enemy's health bar with no way to affect the outcome in any way satisfying. Confusingly, the game does have menu based combat, special attacks which require xp to use, which happen as soon as you select a target and an attack (except for those times when the game laughs at your foolish notion of the player being in control of a game and cancels the attack somehow) and the use of these attacks to make an effective hit is the closest Contact's combat comes to being fun. What's most perplexing about Contact is that the war of attrition that is its combat system doesn't seem to have been designed with the game in mind, a clear example of this is the food system.
Terry can purchase food in shops and collect it from the remains of dead enemies which can either be eaten there and then or cooked up by Terry (but only when he's wearing his chef's outfit, because why should you enjoy a game right?). These cooking sections are fantastic example of the tedious menus decried by the games own website. What Terry can and cannot cook seems to depend on his cooking stats as well as what recipes he holds and figuring this out involves combining foods to see what you can combine at that particular time. As an extra bit of spit in the soup, cooking will often fail through no fault of yours, wasting your ingredients. Different foods restore health and provide different stat boosts. There's an interesting mechanic whereby Terry can only eat so much before he gets full, but with the massive loss of health necessitated by the combat system this means that the only viable option is to stock up on the dull-but-effective-without-being-filling-potions. In my experience, Terry fills up after two or three of the interesting dishes and death quickly follows.
Cooking is one of the skills Terry can use, but only when he's dressed appropriately. the only place he can change clothes is in the ship, which means that when you disembark you need to be wearing the correct one for anything you might encounter. A definite low point in a section on Aegis is a room with tiles which correspond to game stats. Only if you're high enough in the relevant stats can you activate the tiles and unlock the doors. This requires multiple trips back and forth from the ship to the room so that you can have the right costume on. Even the indispensable GameFAQs walkthrough which appears to have been written by someone with Stockholm syndromes describes this section sarcastically.
Another skill is the shadow thief costume which allows you to pick locks. Throughout the game you encounter locked chests and doors and about midway through it becomes possible to acquire the means to pick (more on that later) locks. Like the combat and the cooking, lock picking is not an interactive experience. You approach the chest or door, hold A and a meter appears on screen and starts to fill up. Sometimes Terry fails and must start again, sometimes he does not. The more locks he picks the more locks he can pick. At no point do you have control over this procedure. This is a recurring problem with Contact, you improve your skills throughout the game, but these improvements are always a case of Terry getting better at something, rather than you the player improving or becoming more experienced at playing the game.
The map to the island containing the thief's costume is hidden in a secret room, specifically, one of those rooms which can only be accessed by pressing up against the walls and hoping for a doorway concealed by the games camera. These kind of hidden rooms are acceptable for hidden secrets, but are a core part of how the levels are designed in this game.
Finding the thief's costume is an optional side quest and as I understand it, the game has a number of them. I say this because while I've nothing against side quests (even that side quest that used to beat me up as a kid and call me "Gay moustaches") the world of Contact is such a chore to navigate that doing anything other than the main quests would be too much of an ordeal. A combination of so many factors, such as Terry's arthritic walking speed, repetitive environments and the possibility that you might need to warp back to the ship to change costumes rob you of any desire to explore. In addition, many of the quests seem vague or involve buying certain (almost unanimously expensive) objects often from one particular store. Fun times for sure.

I'll finish with a point that I saw recently on the game's metacritic page, which I thought too good not to include: An RPG that dares to be different, plot-wise, but still starts you off fighting worms and skellingtons in cobwebby old dungeons ~ NGamer. Contact is far too smug, too sure of itself, so caught up in the cleverness of its not tremendously well thought out ideas for its own good.

One Year of Eyemoustaches

Today is the one year anniversary of Eyemoustaches, and I'm still undecided as to whether I should capitalise the "m".
What a year it's been for games! Big games were released, there were some duds as well as some surprising hits and many people who play games had to ask themselves whether the "gamer" identity was one they wanted to associate themselves with. Also, Kevin Spacey was in Call of Duty. What's that about? He has an Oscar! It's almost as if this is becoming a respected artistic medium¹. For our part, we here at Eyemoustaches covered none of that. Instead, we focused on the games that mattered, two or three years ago. Games like Super Mario 3D Land which would have faded into obscurity had Eyemoustaches not bravely championed it.
But that's not the only fond memory of the year. There's been laugh(s), failed attempt at insights, Miister X's Adventures in Redacted finally... stopped, inconsistent reviewing styles and an overabundance of self indulgent, narcissistic self criticism in place of anything that would mean anything to the reader.
And in return we've received so much recognition! Watchmen with Space Animals has an 81 upvote percentage on reddit and was read viewed a staggering 1155 times! And I suspect that only a third of those were me getting the url so I could post links to it. My only concern is that having achieved such success so early on, that the rest of my content, no matter how undoubtedly fantastic it is, will never live up it, in a similar way to how Orson Welles never quite escaped the shadow cast by Citizen Kane². Also, I've been eating a lot over Christmas, so the Orson Wellles comparison is even more relevant. In other news, a whole five of my tweets received some kind of recognition. Five! That's mental, my granny (who is naturally on the ball with social media) tells me that usually takes five years. I even got a response from such big wheels at the internet factory as the avast lady, although I can't seem to find it, so it may have been a dream.
Who knows what else the coming year will bring? Maybe Matthew McConaughey's people will get back to me about my Matthew McConaughPlays Let's Play series. Maybe I'll review a game that people don't already know is good, the sky's the limit.

Happy New Year
The other one

Footnotes:

1: Feels somehow wrong to say that whilst still talking about Call of Duty
2: Technically the Eyemoustaches Citizen Kane is 3 Games That Deserve Sequels but that ruins the analogy.

Pullblox Review

Pullblox manages to be both simple and confusing at the same time. As you stand at the top of the level, looking back on the intricate series of platforms you used to get there, one question comes to mind. The constantly changing, immensely complicated arrays of blocks makes you both fear for and fear the sort of deranged minds that could put them together in the first place. Sure, some of the (arguably better) stages clearly have some sort of concept or idea that can be conveyed with words but other stages are just pictures that some maniac has managed to hide a path to a lost child in. What's more, those words tend to be something like "build a tower so that you can jump to the other one and pull out that bit, but not in such a way that you can't climb the first tower again so that you can jump onto the block you pulled out" so even then it's hardly simple.

What the block?

In a way, Pullblox is a difficult game to describe or review, because, get ready for a bombshell, Pullblox is Pullblox. The game is one core concept well executed by people who obviously put a lot of thought and time into it, but whether or not you enjoy it is probably a personal preference. I can't think of a game it resembles so we'll have to do this the long way. You play as Mallow on a mission to save children. Children trapped in blocks due to Jurassic Park level ineptitude on the part of theme park owners. To rescue them, you must pull out that block and hop on top. These blocks have the same properties as the blocks which you traverse to reach the goal block. Block. They can be pulled out from the wall three times, either from the front or from the side. Later on, switches to extend blocks and tunnels are introduced. In addition, creative types can use these tools to create their own puzzles to share with others.

....
....
crap, that's only two paragraphs
....
*ahem*
In the interest of making this review seem bigger and more important I've come up with some complaints about the game. The introduction appears to have been made immediately after a harrowing testing period, the elderly tutorial character might as well scream "REMEMBER THIS" and "YOU CAN PULL BLOCKS COMPLETELY OUT IF YOU DRAG THEM FROM THE SIDE, DON'T FORGET THIS LIKE THE LAST GUY". At times it can be difficult to tell if Mallow can make a jump, especially when he's jumping into the screen, but this is rarely a serious problem thanks to rewind button. By holding the L button you can rewind back a surprising amount of time, so progress isn't lost if you miss a jump or move the wrong block. It's possible to stop the clock to pan around the level and give you time to think without cutting into rewind time by pressing R. This requires a little effort and is the worst thing I could think of in Pullblox.
When a game's biggest flaw is that if you choose to pause the game to preserve rewind then you must hold a button down, it gives you some idea of how well put together the rest of the game is. As is the case with puzzles, sometimes, try as you might, you get stuck, at which point the game offers you the chance to skip that stage and return to it later. For the small child compressed in a two dimensional square, seeing Mallow (if indeed someone in such an abstract environment would be able to "see") saunter off to the next puzzle means the nightmare is not yet over, but for the player it means there's always a fresh challenge to attempt and the good times can continue.

8

Fire Emblem Awakening Review

Before playing Fire Emblem Awakening, I had only played one Fire Emblem game, the Fire Emblem Awakening demo. Played on insane mode, that game so nearly had it all: challenge, the ecstasy of success, the agony of defeat, a sense of accomplishment and heart in mouth moments of pure tension. All it lacked was more than two levels and a save function and so eventually I had to buy the real deal. Let me tell you, if you liked the Fire Emblem Awakening demo, you'll love Fire Emblem Awakening!

After a confusing vision of a possible future the game begins in the Halidom (?) of Ylisse. A mysterious person called Al Pacino (or whatever you chose to call them) awakens in a field with no memories (by which I mean Al Pacino has no memories, as a rule you can assume a field has no memories) and is greeted by Prince Chrom, who almost immediately welcomes him into his army, the Shepherds, as their tactician, as Al Pacino shows quite the aptitude for strategy. They soon encounter enemies from the neighbouring country of Plegia as well as the Risen, a mysterious, zombie-like foe. Throughout the story they encounter a masked gentleman (no not that one) called Marth, who if the mask wasn't a giveaway, has some secrets.
Throughout the story, more members join your ranks, and these distinct characters provide the key difference between the Fire Emblem series and its sister series Advance Wars. These characters are the actual units you'll lead into battle, no forgettable mooks under your command here (except Kellam!¹)! Each character belongs to a different class (eg healer type roles, axe guy, mounted archer) and has a wide host of stats that are improved with experience. Once they reach a certain level, they can be upgraded to a different class with different weapons available, which keeps things varied. As you may be aware, on classic mode, if a character is defeated in battle, they can never be used in battle again, unless you restart (with the exceptions of Chrom and Al Pacino who when they die pack up their toys and leave you at the game over screen). However, some characters are necessary for plot reasons later on, so they simply retire forever rather than die, which kind of robs it of the impact, but then again, it may be asking too much of the game to have scenarios and cutscenes prepared for every combination of dead allies.
It's been four hundred words, so I should probably mention the game is a turn based strategy one in which you're presented with a grid on which your units can move and must defeat all the enemies or in some cases just their commanders. Weapons obtained from fallen enemies, special spots on the map, or purchased from merchants on the world map can be equipped to applicable units. The weapons follow a simple rock paper scissors formula: lances beat swords which beat axes which beat lances. A similar triangle exists for spells but in practice I found this one harder to make use of. In addition, certain weapons are effective against certain types of units for example the Beast Killer lance makes short work of enemies on horseback (as well as Kelsey Grammer and Nicholas Hoult) and wind spells are lethal against flying enemies. Units also have particular skills that are unlocked as they level up for example increased likelihood of double attacks. This level of complexity makes picking the right team to cut through the combination of enemies you face all the more satisfying, however this leads into one of my major complaints about the game. While it's easy to remember details about your allies, identifying what type of weapons your enemies wield gets trickier to do by sight as the game goes on. This means you must hover over every enemy in turn to find out who's got what.
The other major difference between this game and Advance Wars and as far as I know all previous Fire Emblem games is the ability of units to partner up during battles for stat boosts and the occasional double attack. Units that are paired up frequently develop stronger relationships and make a more effective team; this can be done either by partnering up units so that they occupy a single square or by placing units on adjoining squares. This second rule can sometimes allow the most well liked units to provide to support to multiple allies if you’re canny/desperate. The stronger relationships are also represented by support conversations, dialogues between units. Without wishing to spoil the surprise, the relationships between some units can become quite complex. The writing in this game is generally quite good and sometimes very entertaining. That said some of the support conversations can be dull and predictable, and most characters, most notably Chrom with his damn friendships speeches, are prone to grand monologues on what are intended to be serious topics that come across as unrealistic.

"I'm the Prince of the Halidom of Ylisse"

Another frustrating thing about the dialogue, that is most noticeable in the support conversations (which the game has no control over at what time you’ll get to see them, which means they have to be general enough to fit in anywhere) is the characters odd inability to focus on what are obviously the big issues of the plot. Al Pacino’s amnesia is barely mentioned and more gallingly, a new character introduced in chapter thirteen whose very existence poses questions to which even the most conservative answers are bombshells is hardly discussed. One of the reasons I liked the character of Marth in this game so much is that they seem to be the only one with their eyes on their big picture.

Staying with problems, another one is the lack of restart button. Playing on classic mode, most players will be eager to keep everyone alive, which means they have to restart anytime a character dies. To do this, you must start the game up again. This is frustrating and I suspect the lack of a quick restart is supposed to encourage you to play well or live with your mistakes, but damn it, that’s just not how I play games. Another issue is that in practice, the most effective strategy in most cases is to not attack on your turns, but wait for the enemy to come to you which doesn’t feel all that adventurous.

But in spite of these issues, Fire Emblem Awakening is still a fantastic addictive game for those who like turn based combat. I would definitely recommend that anyone who enjoyed the demo buy the real thing.

9/10

1: Good luck getting that joke people who are reading this review to see if they should buy the game.

Miister X's adventure in [redacted] part 3

A message from the editor

When Miister X sent me the copy for the second part of what we had promised the readers would be an epic tale of adventure in a foreign land, I had some concerns. There was only one day left in the story, and I was worried that having learnt the secret to enormous wealth (back breaking manual labour as it turned out, who'd have guessed) that it seemed unlikely that anything tense or exciting could happen during that time. I received the copy for the final part a few days ago and found my fears realised. I'll give you the abridged version of what happens: our now very wealthy hero buys some nice clothes, gives a speech and goes to a nightclub. That's it. I called him and attempted to explain how this might be an issue but this proved pointless. At one point, in an attempt to explain the problem I mentioned the notion of a three act structure, which he saw as a reason to segway into talking about when he used to perform three stand-up comedy gigs a night.

Timeless stuff.

 Several hours later I managed to steer the conversation back on track but when I tried to be tough and say that he'd have to rewrite the previous entries so that the finale could have some kind of climax, he giggled, then in a serious tone explained that he wasn't contracted to do re-writes of any kind. He also explained how he had long since lost interest in the project because the whole concept was as he put it "lame as hell".

On that it was hard to disagree.

So without further ado I give you the concluding part to the trilogy. When we last left our hero he was fabulously wealthy, despite what his attire might suggest.

For part 1, click here.

For part 2, click here.

As I awoke, I felt happier than I'd felt since I got here, knowing that my time in this town was almost up. It might also have had something to do with the bright summer colors of the room, they were just so positive! I made a mental note to have at least one room in my house decorated with this "carrot monster" theme when I got home.
I occurred to me that my one day of labor may well have made me the richest man in town, but that money would be of little use to me in the outside world. I had taken lots of money out of the town, and who knows if this bunch of idiots could deal with a sudden dependence on importing. Clearly, there was one decent, honorable thing to do....




SHOPPING SPREE

This spree didn't exactly last long, the town only has four places to buy things and I wound up buying an awful lot of horrible wallpapers, carpets and museum fixtures but I like to think I shared the wealth.

"Oh... someone to weed, right, see, thought you said some... although that might have explained a lot"

I knew the villagers didn't recognize me, and probably wouldn't be that enthusiastic if that unshaven, sweaty homeless guy who'd spent the previous day shaking down trees tried to open the lighthouse so I stopped by the beauty parlor to get cleaned up, and managed to perfectly describe, from memory, the dimensions and design of my favorite suit to a local tailor.

The result. You're welcome, ladies.

You can't please 'em all I suppose.

Two things caught me by surprise when I arrived to give my speech.

1: That a few people had actually shown up

2: That the lighthouse was there at all, because I swear to myself it was a construction site eight hours ago

I had taken the time to write my speech on a scrap of one of the carpets I bought earlier (no sense letting it go to waste). As I recall, it went something like this:

Citizens of [redacted]

When I arrived I was a success but your country ways made me feel like a failure. And yet here I am, the richest man in town, who unlike the rest of you, has the power to leave. My time here proves what I have always known, that winners always win because they're winners, and losers like you always lose. I cannot think of a better public work for this town than a lighthouse. A lighthouse stands tall giving the message, "you don't want to come here" a fitting description of this dump. NOW WHO WANTS TO PARTY IT UP WITH A WINNER?

Unsurprisingly only one (guy called Static) of these losers had the nerve to meet my challenge to party it up and to be honest, I'm not sure he heard me... you'll see.

I'm bald you idiot.

Like I said: a few pieces of fruit short of a stack. Sorry, local humor.

So I partied all night long. All night long. ALL NIGHT LONG, except for when I was asleep. I wasn't keen on taking the train with a hangover but in the morning, when he woke me up, the club owner explained how I'd been drinking fruit juice all night, and that my drunkeness may have been half placebo effect and half mental fatigue. 

As the train sped away from New Wangsburg, I reflected on my time there. What I learned from the experience was that a winner

Wait, I said all that in the speech. Just read that again, but this time picture me on a train as you do so. I think I was drinking a latte. That's it. This is the end of the story.

See what I mean. Bought loads of stuff, makeover, speech and party. That's all. What a waste of internets.