Why Wii U is More Than Still Worth It - Part 2: 25 Fantastic Downloads

Last week I shared 25 retail titles that proved without a shadow of a doubt why the Wii U, despite its weak sales, very much deserves to be owned by any self-respecting gamer. This follow-up piece details 25 downloadable pieces of software off the Wii U eShop that further illustrates why Wii U owners certainly have a lot to play on their systems. From action-platformers to Metroidvanias, puzzle games to shooters, this list of 25 (and many more honorable mentions that couldn't fit in this article) has some very good titles.

Again, since this is article is image-intensive, please check it out after the break.

Lovely Planet (Wii U eShop) Review

It's time for a Sunday evening review for a game that has seen release on Steam as well as on Xbox One. However, this review is focused on the newly released Wii U eShop port. Here's SuperPhillip Central's review of the Wii U eShop version of Lovely Planet.

The planet may be lovely, but the game unfortunately isn't.

I wanted to love Lovely Planet so much. Really I did. It has a pleasant flat polygon art style, catchy, if not infectious tunes, and a nice premise to it. However, several frustrations all revolving around the "hard for the wrong reasons" difficulty made Lovely Planet decidedly less than lovely when all is said and done.

Lovely Planet has you playing through over 80 levels of first-person shooting action. The objective of each level is to defeat every enemy through shooting them while getting to the goal. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, this is made challenging through a host of things wanting nothing more than to kill you and means for making you fail.

Whether it's pink balls of goo that you innocently brush against, enemies that shoot slow-moving bullets at you, spikes, innocent blue creatures that if you shoot you immediately fail the level, and apples that launch from catapults that if you don't destroy them before they touch the ground, you lose. The latter isn't made totally clear, so it took me a little while to catch on to this nugget of information.

Don't shoot those blue characters, or you'll find yourself restarting this level.

Levels are relatively short affairs, taking less than thirty seconds to complete, but that's only on a perfect run. Otherwise, you essentially have to memorize levels for all the obstacles and death traps, making more and more progress through each attempt. (Though you can use hit the 2 button-- not the 1 button like the on-screen prompt says-- to check out a level ahead of time.) You can easily fail a level upwards of a hundred times, though this isn't so common in the early worlds. Thankfully, once you do get fail a level, you're instantly brought back to the beginning to try it again with no pauses. The problem here, though, with Lovely Planet is that you fail levels due to not having known what was coming ahead instead of being able to observe your surroundings and dodge obstacles that way. It's all rote memorization, and it's all frustrating, too much so that it will test the patience of most players almost immediately.

In addition to that, there's plenty of platforming to be done in this first-person shooter. Not knowing where your feet are when you have platforms that are quite thin, some even disappearing from out from under your feet before you even know what happened, it becomes very easy to fall into the abyss. The platforming here isn't tight, and what challenge there is comes from falling off levels accidentally because you couldn't grasp where the end of a platform was.

The visuals look delightful, stylish, and dare I say, lovely.

The fact that Lovely Planet completely lacks an aiming reticle for targeting makes going for any kind of accuracy an annoyance. Be prepared to die because you couldn't properly aim at a foe before it could shoot you into oblivion. While through repeated playing does give you a sixth sense on where to aim to take down faraway foes, it's something that is a learning curve and something that I found to be needless.

On Wii U, you can play Lovely Planet with the Wii U GamePad, using dual analog to aim, though this isn't preferred due to how clunky the controls feel, or you can use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination, which offers pointer controls and the ability to adjust the sensitivity of aiming and turning. This was my desired method of playing Lovely Planet, and while I never found the aiming perfect despite tinkering with the sensitivity a mighty amount, it ended up being fun to use regardless.

A lovely shot. (Have you noticed how much I'm really milking this "lovely" thing?)

For those who aren't turned away by the brutally hard difficulty, levels in Lovely Planet each have three stars to gain through various means. The first is always earned from defeating every enemy in a level. This is mandatory to pass levels anyway, so it's always earned. The second is through completing a level within a specific time. Finally, you need to not miss any shots to earn the third star, which as I noted before, is no easy task. Fortunately, you need not earn all three stars in a single run, so you can focus on one specific challenge each run.

Lovely Planet features a difficulty that feels artificial and worse, unfair. Levels often require rote memorization, perfect platforming when the game doesn't really offer that as a viable option due to the controls, and pinpoint accuracy to stay alive. Be prepared to restart a level a plethora of times. Most players won't have the patience for this. I certainly don't. However, if for some reason you do, then you'll find a ball-busting hard first-person shooter under the disguise of a cute game.

[SPC Says: D+] 

Word Puzzles by POWGI (Wii U eShop, 3DS eShop) Review

We continue this month with a new word game collection by the letter-loving folks at Lightwood Games. This time, we look at Word Puzzles by POWGI with this in-depth review.

Puzzle Power

I really enjoy flexing my mental muscles with some word games occasionally. My iPhone is home to games like Just Jumble, where you unscramble letters to create words, an anagram game where you try to form as many words out of a set of letters as possible, and the basic word search, which needs no introduction. Sure. these games don't always give me the same sense of accomplishment as an epic adventure, but they do help kill time now and then.

Word Puzzles by POWGI seems more well suited for mobile devices that you can turn on and off in an instant, and easily come back to between surfing the net and texting your friends instead of a device that is more towards more in-depth, dedicated gaming experiences. Still, this complementary title to Word Search by POWGI offers a vast array of word puzzles to sharpen your mind and pass the time, and it does a good job at both of those objectives.

There are six word puzzle types that the folks at Lightwood Games have created, and there are four that contain 60 puzzles while the latter two hold 120 different puzzles to solve. Regardless of the puzzle type, you can press the L and R shoulder buttons in tandem to reveal hints for the current puzzle you're on. For instance, asking for a hint in the first type of puzzle, the Word Maze, will reveal the list of words you need to seek out in the puzzle. Additionally, each puzzle has its own theme and topic, such as animal noises, types of cakes, and movie genres.

Speaking of Word Maze, this is the first puzzle type to choose from in Word Puzzles by POWGI. With Word Maze, the goal is to draw a continuous line starting from the last letter of the first word solved, and spell words that have to do with the topic of the puzzle so that each letter is used only once.

Meanwhile, Mixups has you with a scrambled and strewn amount of letters that need to be reordered into three different words that have to do with the theme of the puzzle. Sometimes it's as simple as shapes, states of the United States, or musical instruments, but things grow tougher with girls names, Greek letters, and opera composers.

One Word is a traditional seek and find / word search-type puzzle, but instead of a great variety words to find, you're instead going from puzzle to puzzle to find the titular "one word" within the puzzle. This gets mighty tricky when you're trying to find the word "ROAD" and the only letters in the puzzle are a multitude of R's, O's, A's, and D's. Each completed puzzle in One Word assists in spelling out a famous quote from a celebrity, author, political person, historic figure, etc. Personally, One Word drove me crazy when the larger puzzles came into play, making for some quite difficult adventures in seeking and finding!

Moving on, Flowers has you focused on a literal flower where two letters are in the center. You place a pair of two letters on each petal to spell out words. For instance, if the center of the flower has the letters "N" and "C", you then put the letter pair "OU" and "ES" on opposite petals to spell the word "OUNCES". You continue doing this for all of the petals to spell out multiple words. This is one of the two word puzzle types that sports 120 puzzles total.

Circles has three eponymous shapes crossing over one another. Each has a multitude of letters to unscramble, but each set of letters to unscramble is incomplete. A missing letter that needs to be figured out by your undoubtedly bright mind rests in the area where the three circles intersect. Further assisting in helping you figure out what letter goes in that position is the notion that each of three circles' words all relate to one another. For example, one puzzle has the letters F-A-M in one circle, A-S-H-O-M-P in another, and S-A-P in the last circle. Having the letter "O" be the one where the circles cross over makes sense, so each word can be unscrambled to "FOAM", "SHAMPOO", and "SOAP", items relating to showering or bathing. Circles is the other puzzle type with 120 puzzles total.

Finally, my favorite of the six puzzle types in Word Puzzles by POWGI is Crossovers. This game gives you a choice of four letters to place in a crossword-style puzzle to spell out two different words. If you have a blank space where the letters W_LL and B_ING intersect, and a choice between the letters "E", "A", "R", and "I", the answer would be the letter "E" to spell the words "WELL" and "BEING". You solve a series of these types of puzzles, where the blank letter is used to solve a riddle at the conclusion of all the smaller crossword puzzles by unscrambling the letters to form the answer to the riddle.

Word Puzzles by POWGI's UI is clean and attractive, sporting a simple look that neither impresses or detracts from the experience. Upon loading up the game, you are taken to a basic title screen with the puzzle types listed in a zigzag pattern with each puzzle name a different color in the 3DS version while offering off-TV play and a higher resolution with the Wii U version. Entering deeper into the menus reveals a whole set of puzzles that can be viewed, laid out in fours in the puzzle types with 60 puzzles each or in multiple rows and columns of paw prints for the puzzle types with 120 puzzles each. Meanwhile, the music is a bit grating for extended playing, so I opted to play the game with the volume turned down. Otherwise, it was too distracting for me, and frustratingly so.


The price of Word Puzzles by POWGI is a bit on the high side, costing approximately ten dollars. Compared to games of the same type on iOS or Android, this price seems a bit steep, However, if you're looking for a collection of 480 puzzles that will last you a good while, the price doesn't seem so bad. However, there are many other games on the eShop that aren't nearly as repetitive as Word Puzzles by POWGI to be found. Whether you should check out this capable pallet of word puzzles depends on your enjoyment of word games. For me, I can see myself playing Lightwood Games' and POWGI's latest for a good while. It's a perfect game for killing time while you wait for the bus, or while you sit in the doctor's office. Whether that's worth the entry price is up to you.

[SPC Says: C+]

Review copy provided by Lightwood Games.

Shutshimi (Wii U eShop) Review

This Tuesday morning sees a brand new Wii U eShop game getting the SuperPhillip Central review treatment. It's Shutshimi, a game that released in the fall of last year on the PlayStation 4 and the Vita. Now, the Wii U gets the game, and here's my review of this absolute blast.

Seriously sweet.

There's something in the water supply of the development team of Neon Deity, and whatever it is made them make this awesome and brilliantly insane game. I mean, what else can you call a shmup where fish have muscly humanoid arms; wield machine guns, mucus spewing weapons, and cannonballs; and don an assortment of fashionable hats? Well, Neon Deity calls it Shutshimi, and this ADHD sufferer's shoot 'em up is seriously awesome.

Shutshimi is no typical shmup. You don't play through long levels, blasting wave after wave after wave of enemies. Instead, each round last ten seconds exactly, and pits your fabulously fit fish against multiple enemy types-- sharks that shoot lasers from their tops and bottoms, kitties in little space ships, bears that somersault, squids that have their own flight patterns, and more kooky foes to blast to smithereens.

Kittens, and sharks, and bears, oh my!

In between each ten second round is an intermission of sorts, the same amount of time. Here, you have to quickly select between one of three power-ups to be used in the next round. It's a shame you're rushed if only because the item descriptions are so darned funny. Regardless, power-ups can give you positive bonuses like wearing a protective fishbowl shield, having an array of smaller fishies surround you and shoot a steady stream of bullets, or becoming equipped with one of many hats that have different abilities to them. Then, there are bonuses that may hinder the experience, such as slower movement, inverted controls, or no friction when moving, resulting in sliding around with every push of the d-pad.

Adding to the craziness are power-ups that turn the entire round into a rave party with flashing strobe lights and colorful spotlights moving all about. There's even a power-up that turns the whole round into a truce, having your fish bobble about in a bouncy castle, ricocheting off enemies as if they were pinball bumpers. Of course, not one to keep Shutshimi from being too uninteresting (I am being facetious here), there's also a power-up that turns the background and all enemies into moving butts of various sizes. I felt bad about shooting the poor defenseless butts while they were down on their luck and handicapped. After all, they already had cracks in them. (Insert Ed McMahon from his Tonight Show days' "Hi-ohhhhhh" voice clip here.)

A life lesson to behold: sometimes all you need for peace in this world is a bouncy castle.

Every five rounds you are pitted against one of six bosses. Well, technically it's just three with two versions each. Regardless, here the ten second rule is still in effect, so if you don't manage to take down the boss in one round, you'll have to survive around five rounds to continue where you left off. Once all six bosses have been defeated, you have essentially "beaten" what could be considered Shutshimi's campaign.

We all shoot at a yellow submarine. Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

To add to the replay value when high scores aren't enough, you can play Shutshimi with up to four friends. That's four times the fish with muscly arms! Additionally, there is a hat encyclopedia that makes a note of each and every hat you've worn in-game. These range from Viking helmets and cop hats to more spirited and creative hats like sparkling gold hair that makes your fish reminiscent of certain Dragon Ball Z race, a yellow flattop haircut and American flag tattoo that according to the hat's description "goes with everything", and even some indie all-stars like Commander Video and Shovel Knight. Alongside trying to collect every hat in the game, you can also shoot to complete Shutshimi's list of achievements, which are a lot of fun to go after. Some can even make you change the way you play the game.

When one fish with extremely large human arms isn't enough, call in for re-fin-forcements!

While Shutshimi's arcade shmup sensibilities won't have you playing dozens of hours with it, it is a blast for the several hours you'll be playing it. The ten second rounds are perfect bite-sized chunks to keep you feeling like you're making progress, and the power-ups are constantly changing how you're playing each round. The gameplay is as great as the humor, and seeing that I cracked a smile and even chuckled on multiple occasions (and that's no easy task), that is a high honor indeed.

[SPC Says: B+]

Review copy provided by Choice Provisions.

FAST Racing Neo (Wii U eShop) Review

Christmas is this Friday, and if you're looking for a gift for yourself (and you own a Wii U), why not treat yourself to the gift of gaming? In particular, how about a blazing fast racer with plenty of challenge to it? Then, you'll want to look into FAST Racing Neo for the Wii U eShop. Here's my review.

If speed is your thing, then go FAST.

If you're going to release a futuristic racer on a Nintendo system, then you probably already know that you're going to be compared to Nintendo's own F-Zero franchise. There is just no getting around that. While Shin'en Multimedia's FAST Racing Neo does have similarities to Nintendo's fantastic futuristic racing franchise, it does enough to distinguish itself from the competition, letting itself be favorably compared to F-Zero in the process.

FAST Racing Neo has multiple modes to keep players racing for a long time, far more than you'd expect for the $15 price tag. The main mode, Championship, pits players in four different cups consisting of four different circuits. When one cup has been completed, the next one unlocks. When all four cups are finished off, the next difficulty opens up, giving a major increase of speed in comparison. Completing cups not only unlocks new races, but it also unlocks one of ten vehicles with its own set of stats in acceleration and top speed, as well as weight type.

Papa's got a brand-new bag with this new, unlocked vehicle.

Alongside Championship Mode are time trials to beat the developer's times on all sixteen circuits in all three speed classes, as well as a Hero Mode that is more akin to F-Zero, where you have a set amount of health and crashing means failure. Local multiplayer for up to four players is available, as is online play for up to eight players, allowing friends to join one another's games or just play against randoms.

Outrace your friends and family members locally,
or hop online and race against the world.

If you're looking for a difficult game, you'll find one with FAST Racing Neo. Making a mistake while racing usually has you ending up crashing. However, unlike an F-Zero game, you don't lose a life. Instead, you're put back on the track with precious seconds lost. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because there are plenty of obstacles and methods to crash and burn, which would otherwise end a race. However, it's also a curse because you can race perfectly for the first two laps, only to crash at the final lap. This will most likely result in you coming in a low finishing place, something that can completely cost you a cup. Seeing as cups take around ten minutes to finish, losing the cup because of one unfortunate mistake can be a real pain. 

Two rivals jockey for position in this space station-themed track.

That said, practice makes perfect. Crashing is something that will happen a lot to racers on their first go-around on FAST Racing Neo's sixteen tracks. Whether it's because you fall off the track, crash into a wall, or slam into an obstacle like the rotating blade of a fan or smash into a hole spewing fire, you will watch your piloted vehicle burst into flames and get obliterated on multiple occasions. Thus, on higher speeds you'll need to learn the tracks themselves instead of just reacting to curves, turns, and obstacles when you see them. Initiating a turn long before you hit it is recommended in later speeds and difficulties.

Not to make things easy, the creator of this course
made these upcoming strips of track swing from side to side.

FAST Racing Neo separates itself further from F-Zero in its gameplay and how machines handle. Each vehicle has two phases to it, an orange and a blue. Through passing over stretches of colored panels on each track while the same phase, you get an increase in speed. For straightaways and sections without colored portions of track, you can collect shining orbs that add energy to your boost gauge. With a press of the R button you can then power through straightaways and break through certain environmental objects that would otherwise slow you down. 

If you're approaching an orange sliver of track, switch to
your orange phase with a press of a button to take advantage.

It is mind-blowing the technical prowess that the small team at Shin'en has with its games, and this is no better shown than with FAST Racing Neo. The game is simply gorgeous, offering a blisteringly fast package, highly detailed tracks, and glorious visual effects like water running down along the screen when you drive through a waterfall. My only real gripe with the presentation of FAST is how lacking the game's personality feels. There isn't much character to the game outside of some token track environments. The vehicles and track names don't do much to mitigate this. 

FAST Racing NEO is beautiful in still screenshots,
but it's absolutely stunning in motion.

A hole that was missing in the Wii U lineup has been filled with Shin'en's answer to F-Zero, FAST Racing Neo. While its game doesn't have the same amount of character or personality compared to Nintendo's hallmark futuristic racer, FAST Racing Neo does deliver plenty of skillful, turbo-charged, lightning fast, challenging, and magnificent racing action. For $15, FAST Racing Neo is more than worth it for anyone hankering for a deviously difficult but fair futuristic racer.

[SPC Says: A-]

Review copy provided by Shin'en Multimedia.

Typoman (Wii U eShop) Review

Time for the final review of November with just minutes to go! This time we're taking a look at an innovative Nindie release, Typoman for the Wii U eShop. Get out your thesaurus because we're goin' in hard on this game!

A competent gaem with soem unfortunate flaws

Although Nintendo's Wii U is not jumping off store shelves or selling admirable numbers, the indie community has found a bit of a niche on its hardware and online marketplace. Nintendo's own Nindie campaign has brought a lot of lesser known developers into creating innovative and well made games to the Wii U eShop. If the name Typoman rings a bell, then you might have heard or read of it during Nintendo's Nindie campaign. After all, it was one of the games that gives a discount if you played the Nindie demo of it over the summer. That said, now that the game is out, is Typoman worth investing time in?

Typoman begins with a truck dumping its haul of letters off a cliff side. In the pile of letters rolls out a letter "O" which the player quickly is able to take control of. Soon, after rolling some distance, a body is given to the letter, allowing it to hop around like a coil spring. Lastly, some legs enter into the fray, creating the titular character for the player to be able to jump, grab, and throw.

The world of Typoman is a bleak one, but somehow still there is breathtaking beauty to be discovered in the dark and dreary world of the game. There is an industrial feel to the look and feel of Typoman, and the developer certainly nailed the presentation out of the park with their effort.

The game itself is a 2D puzzle platformer, and the main mechanic of the game is using letters in the environment to form words to make progress in the game. For instance, pushing the letters "O" and "N" to spell the word "ON" activates a platform (labeled "PLATFORM" coincidentally enough) that Typoman can ride to reach a higher area and thus progress in the level.

This platform is a bit turned on....
No, I meant literally.

Typoman possesses a myriad of increasingly more complex puzzles, and if for some reason you find yourself stumped, you can opt to utilize the Wii U GamePad, touching the question mark icon to get a nebulous riddle which houses the word you need to create somewhere. The GamePad is also used for rearranging letters that you push together as Typoman on the TV screen. An example of such a feat occurs early on within the game, you have the letters "W", "N", "O" and "D", and you need to unscramble them to spell "DOWN" to bring a ladder downward for Typoman to climb.

Use your brain to get through Typoman...

While the puzzle part of Typoman is incredibly well done and clever in almost every regard, that is but half of the game's equation. The other half is mired with clunky controls, no momentum in moving Typoman around, making jumps much more difficult than they should be, and an overabundance of undesired cheap deaths. If only the platforming were as carefully crafted as the puzzles and level design, then something truly special would Typoman be. As it is, you have a puzzler that is punctuated by poor platforming and a lot of unwanted aggravation that's challenging for all the wrong reasons.

...and your finger-fu to get through the platforming parts.

Thankfully, Typoman's checkpoints distribution is in each player's favor. There are a grand amount of checkpoint locations happening after every section of a given level. While sometimes you'll have to redo some tedious letter shifting, pushing, and pulling when you return to life, most of the time things aren't so rough.

The game's total play time depends on your skill level, how often you get stuck on a particular puzzle or platforming challenge, and whether or not you decide to marvel at the visuals or not. That said, even if you struggle, Typoman is a short experience, as there are seemingly no extras to be found. It's also one that is only friendly to those who are keen on the English language in order to solve its many puzzles.

Therefore, Typoman is a bit hard to recommend with full enthusiasm. I love the premise and the central word-building mechanic of the game. However, the poor platforming and short play time, particularly for the price, makes Typoman a game that isn't the bets... er... best. Sorry. Typo.

[SPC Says: C-]

Review copy provided by Headup Games.

Word Party (Wii U eShop) Review

Thanksgiving is tomorrow in the United States, where SuperPhillip Central is headquartered. The next game to be reviewed seems like a perfect one for casual and core gamers and family members to sit around the TV after a big turkey dinner to enjoy together. It's Word Party, and here is SPC's review.

A party game that's true to its words

From the creators of Word Search by POWGI, Lightwood Games is back with another word-oriented wonder for the Wii U eShop. This time the studio's offering moves away from the single player experience of playing word searches and goes towards the mayhem that is known as local multiplayer with Word Party, sporting 28 unique mini-games for up to six players to enjoy. Does this party disappoint, or does it deliver beyond words?

Word Party sports a robust amount of mini-games, and as you can probably suspect, all of them relate to words in some form or another. All games utilize the Wii Remote as the main controller for inputs, and you use the IR functionality to point at the screen to choose from menus and make selections.

Take turns changing letters to spell new words. The pots with
more flowers in them will earn you more points.

The games have great variety to them. Some games task you with clicking on the right bee among a horde of them with different three letter combinations on them like "ill" or "uoy", making sure the one you click on forms a word that begins with the letter "B". Other games have you pointing at magnetic letters on a refrigerator door, creating words up to six letters; competing in a word search where the player that finds the most words is deemed the winner; and a multiple choice game where you click the word the definition in the center of the screen is describing.

In Spelling Bee, point and press the A button on the bees
that will spell out a word beginning with "B" to earn points.

Starting off, you have a selection of 14 mini-games that are randomly chosen from in the standard play mode. The play mode chooses a handful of mini-games in a random order for up to six players to play. Points are earned each round based on each player's position in a given mini-game. For example, 1st gets 10 points while 2nd gets a little less, and so forth. The winner of the multiplayer match is the one with the highest number of points at the end of all of the randomly chosen mini-games.

If you wish to just play mini-games from YOUR choosing rather than the game's own selection, you can play practice mode. This gives you the opportunity to replay mini-games however many times you want without waiting for them to pop up in the game's rotation in play mode. That notwithstanding, if you want to unlock mini-games, you'll have to go through the somewhat tedious process of playing multiplayer games in play mode over and over again. It's unfortunate because half of the mini-games in Word Party is locked up content that you have to satisfy conditions to open up for play.

This robot building game is one of the more challenging ones in Word Party.

Furthermore, each round in Word Party in play mode is rather short, lasting at most 30 seconds. Many times our multiplayer fun would be short lived because the round would be over before we knew it, making us want more. It would have been nice to see options allowing for beefing up or selecting the time limit for the mini-games, so our word party wouldn't be over so fast each round.

Word Party sports a charming art style and a pleasant user interface. The ability to use Miis for player icons make for an additionally nice touch. By no means is what is shown on screen during menus or mid-mini-games mind-blowing, but the art direction and cute style gets the job done, adding to the festive personality of the game. The music is suitably bouncy and upbeat, though it's nothing that you'll want to listen to outside of the game.

Each round sets aside points for each player based on
their position in the last mini-game played.

If you like word games like crossword puzzles, word searches, definition games, etc., don't mind the double digit price tag, and you have at least two players to share the experience with, then Word Party is an enjoyable game. It's decidedly not for everyone, but it's also a game that serves its niche well. If you like to party hearty with words, it only makes sense to look into Word Party.

[SPC Says: C]

Review copy provided by Lightwood Games.

Momonga Pinball Adventures (Wii U eShop) Review

SuperPhillip Central has a special review for this Friday of a game that recently released. Until then, though, let's keep our minds focused on the present (no matter how much Back to the Future Day would tell you differently) with a review of Momonga Pinball Adventures, a spirited take on the pinball game.

Take flight, little momonga!

Pinball has always been a bane to my existence. I was never good at keeping that marble ball from falling through those two flippers. While others were pinball wizards, I was more like a pinball novice in training. That said, there have been some video game versions of pinball that have kept my attention and have allowed me to enjoy them, such as Kirby's Pinball Land, Pokemon Pinball, and Zen Pinball, to name a few. Momonga Pinball Adventures from Paladin Studios is now a new title to add to that impressive list of games, although it's an experience that is marred by some sizable issues.

You play the role of Momo, a flying squirrel known as a momonga, whose village has been assaulted by a rampaging pack of sinister owls. All of his friends and family members were taken from the village, but luckily, Momo encountered a panda who rescued him from the owl onslaught. The panda soon prepares Momo for the journey ahead with a lesson in pinball.

Momonga Pinball Adventures features the prospect of enjoying a journey filled with pinball levels. However, you quickly realize the journey will be short-lived, as there are but twelve stages within the game, and a fourth of those are little mini-game levels. Thus, Momonga Pinball Adventures can be beaten within an hour's time. That said, what levels there are are generally well designed and feature plenty of interactive areas both obvious and hidden.

Hit this target to lower the bridge,
allowing Momo access to the next portion of this level.

To combat a short-lived experience, the developers at Paladin Studios have added challenges to each level of the game. There are five in each level, and these range from simple tasks like just clearing the level to more complicated tasks like clearing a level in a set amount of time, collecting all of the stars in a level, breaking a specific number of obstacles, and clearing a stage with a limited number of hits. These challenges are enjoyable, but you can't clear them except in a linear order. Plus, there is the fact that you must play the same level at least five times to clear all five objectives, as you can't complete more than one in the same run.

This early challenge requires the player to hit Momo into
all three targets with only four shots of the flippers.

Therefore, you have an issue here where players who just want to beat the game will not get their money's worth through the one hour of play time required, and players who want to complete all of the challenges might become too bored by the repetition required through playing the same stages over and over again. For me, I found that the levels were short enough that playing them multiple times was entertaining enough, and it made me slowly get better with practice. This required practice from replaying levels makes it so you can tackle the harder challenges within Momonga Pinball Adventures.

This level features plenty of hidden shortcuts and chambers
for the adventuring type in all of us.

The first goal of each level is to simply reach the end, and this is through hitting Momo with various pinball flippers to the top of each room. Many levels feature enemies and obstacles that wish nothing more than to stand in Momo's way and cause him trouble. Momo has three hearts to work with, and falling through the hole between the flippers crosses off one from his count. Lose them all, and you have to restart the level from the very beginning. The pinball physics are immensely precise and feel great. One of the little messages that plays during the loading screens says that one level in Momonga Pinball Adventures generally took the developers one month to make. You can tell, as the physics are practically perfect. You will always lose because you failed-- not the game's physics.

Sometimes your hands will be full with two characters to worry about.

Speaking of failures, though, Momonga Pinball Adventures does suffer from some technical issues. I've encountered three occasions in my two hour playtime where my Wii U locked up, requiring me to unplug my system. Also, there are some audio glitches as well to consider that rarely but do pop up occasionally. That said, it says something about this game that despite these issues, I couldn't wait to return to playing the game, even when it froze in the middle of one of my better runs.

Momonga Pinball Adventures is truly a fun game, but it depends upon if you can handle the repetition from replaying levels to complete the different objectives each level has. The online leaderboards and the game's achievements to complete also add to the longevity of this otherwise very brief game. If you're looking for an atypical pinball game with adventure elements to its credit, Momonga Pinball Adventures should be on your must-watch and maybe your must-play list, too.

[SPC Says: C]

Review copy provided by Paladin Studios.

Freedom Planet (Wii U eShop) Review

There's one more review to cap off the work week, but it's not the last review of the week in general. This is a game that has been trying to come to the Wii U eShop for a long while, but it's finally here. Bean gives us his take on Freedom Planet!

Let Freedom Ring

Indie platformers in recent years have done a fine job of paying homage to classics of yesteryear while carving out their own niche in the process. Shovel Knight was a fun Capcom-inspired title, Guacamelee! pushed the Metroid and Castlevania buttons, and Azure Striker Gunvolt hit the mark with its nods to Mega Man Zero and ZX. That said, there really hadn't been too many games that went and tried to recapture the magic of the Sega Genesis side of things. Leave it to GalaxyTrail to fit the bill with a title that I should've reviewed last year when it was on the PC but didn't. Well, at least we get a second chance with its debut on the Wii U.

Usually the term "dragon lady" is an insult.
To Lilac, it's a perfect description.

Freedom Planet takes place in the anthropomorphic world of Avalice. Three kingdoms on the planet had a few issues with each other to begin with, but when an alien spacecraft crash lands on the planet, takes out the leader of one of the nations and messes with the mind of said kingdom's son, things quickly turn south. Now the menacing mastermind from the stars named Brevon intends on pitting the world at war while he secretly makes off with the Kingdom Stone, a jewel with an immense amount of power that will strengthen his troops to continue on with his army's galactic conquest. Oh, and that jewel heist would kind of ruin Avalice forever as they wouldn't have a power source left. That doesn't sound good, so we're going to need a hero or two to step in and stop this scheme before it's too late. Good thing for the people of this planet that they have Lilac the purple water dragon and Carol the green wildcat on the case... eventually.

One of the only similarities between Lilac and Indiana Jones
is a need to be chased by rolling boulders.

The first thing players are going to think of when they see Freedom Planet in action is the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and for good reason. The game itself was originally conceived to be a Sonic fan title until it dropped the IP's baggage and went off in its own direction. Still, there are plenty of nods to the series left in the game as you'll see plenty of spring pads, loops, elemental shields, and of course, renegade robots to dispose of throughout your tour of Avalice. You have the choice of playing through the game in Adventure or Classic mode. If you go with the former, you'll get plenty of plot scenes between stages. Classic forgoes the story and just lets you play through the game's many stages in order. I'll get it out of the way now and say that the plot can be a little cheesy at times as well as suffering from severe mood swings at times, but all in all, I think I found it all right since the voice actors and actresses in the game all delivered in filling their "Saturday morning cartoon with a slight edge" roles quite well.

The gameplay has the aforementioned Sonic features, but you're not tasked to jump onto enemies. Instead, the game employs more of a melee combat system, and that melee combat differs between the two playable characters you start out with. You have three buttons that you can attack with. In Lilac's case, she'll use a quick melee hair whip with Y (that can also be used with Up or Down on the D-Pad), a spinning Cyclone attack that doubles as a double jump with B, and a Sonic Rush-style boost attack with the X button. That boost attack can also be used to bounce off of walls to get to out of reach places fast. On the other hand, Carol goes for a more ground and pound style with her attacks and is allowed to use her Wild Kick special attack more liberally than Lilac's boost. She can also find gas cans lying about the many stages to instantly summon a motorcycle to ride on. That's pretty cool, as is her ability to scale walls either by repeatedly wall jumping up them or just defying gravity by riding her bike up them. There's even a third character that joins the mix after you beat the game's second stage, but that one, Milla the dog that everyone and their mother thinks is a bunny because she resembles Cream the Rabbit, is only available for Classic mode at the present time.

Milla is a dog, and a second fact about her is that
she is only available for play in Classic mode.

It's a good thing you have a bunch of moves at your disposal because you're going to be needing the diversity because this title will throw a lot of foes at you at times. The clever thing about this is that they can't actually hurt you unless they're attacking themselves or have spiky bodies to work with. So many times in speed-based platformers, it feels like you have to guess what's coming next, too, but Freedom Planet also alleviates this by having some warning signs pop up when the big boys come out to play. You get a pretty decently-sized health bar that can be replenished by collecting petals, but you also have to keep in mind that if you rush in like a fool, you can easily get comboed by the many challenging bosses or well-placed enemies in your path. The hardest battles I found in the game came from the character vs. character battles that you'll be tasked to take down. Many of these enemies move faster than you do, so you need to play defensively to learn their attack pattern before countering appropriately instead of taking the lead. That's not to say there aren't many giant bots that give off Gunstar Heroes vibes either because they're in this, too, and it's once again, the wide range of battles that keep you on your toes all through this fun adventure.

Since this game has a Sega feel to it, should
we dare say these things are after burners?

Another thing worth mentioning is that the many areas on the planet of Avalice are just incredible to look at. The backgrounds themselves are beautiful enough, but the characters have so many expressions on their face whether they're attacking, walking, talking, anything. It's really a sight to behold, and when you couple that with the game's stellar soundtrack, you have an indie game that goes above and beyond the price of admission which is pretty darn affordable to begin with. I seriously think players will remember both the sights and songs present in Freedom Planet. While running through Avalice, there are plenty of things that players can find to enhance the experience. For instance, all of the non-final stages in the game have ten cards that unlock songs, art pieces, and voice clips along the way. There's also a training mode to get the hang of using a different character, an achievement system that encourages replaying the game as well as a Time Attack mode that does the same, and even a Mahjong minigame on top of that!

There is one complaint I have with Freedom Planet, and that's that some levels can be quite lengthy, especially those nearing the game's final few stages. It's not uncommon to spend 20-25 minutes in these latter areas if you're exploring around, and even if you're not, it can still take that long just because of the maze-like aspect some of these stages possess. The difficulty also ramps up accordingly, so those twenty-minute affairs can quickly turn into trying experiences if you aren't accustomed to platformers. At least you have the option of switching the game's difficulty on the fly if you're finding it difficult and even get plopped right back down where you fell if you do run out of lives, so there's that. Both of my playthroughs of Freedom Planet were on normal difficulty, and it gave even me a run for my money at times on some of the final levels, so don't feel ashamed if you have to tone it down a bit. It's nice to have the option in case you're struggling, and I've already seen many a player on Miiverse having those issues, but I find it to be a fair and frenetic challenge that will probably take most players three to five hours to clear for the first time. You just have to use your head is all.

Whoa! You enemies need to take some time and chill out!

In the end, Freedom Planet succeeds at being the Sega Genesis-stylized platformer that it sets out to be. You can feel the passion and quality of care put into making sure that this game recaptured that 90s magic while also carving out its own identity in the process. With the amazing amount of content and supposedly more to come, I have to recommend this one as it's up there with some of the finest indie platformers I've played in recent years. With the quality of those titles, that is some strong company to keep. Whether you go with the Wii U or PC version, the price of Freedom in this case is absolutely worth it. Yep.

[SPC Says: A-]

 Review copy provided by GalaxyTrail.

Extreme Exorcism (Wii U eShop) Review

We continue the month of October with a game that is perfect for this Halloween-containing month. It's a game about eliminating ghosts from a haunted house, Extreme Exorcism. Let's take a look at the game with this review.

How about some housekeeping of the supernatural kind?

Extreme Exorcism boasts a relatively simple but engaging concept. In this single screen action-platformer, you begin with an arena with a random spawning of weapons, and your goal is to eliminate the ghost wearing a crown. However, each round you do this, the ghost you need to defeat the next round will follow the same path you took in the last round, even using the same weapons. It's a devilishly clever concept that makes you not only need to be careful that you don't go crazy and fill the screen with bullets in one round, making the next round having the crowned ghost unleashing an onslaught of bullets, but remembering where you moved the last round can help you defeat the ghost the next round.

Thriller! Thriller night!

Arcade mode is the main mode of Extreme Exorcism. It has you and up to three friends locally going from room to room, defeating ghosts with the main goal of defeating the ghost wearing the crown. Each section of the haunted house Extreme Exorcism takes place in has five rooms of differently organized platforms and obstacles. Things may start off simple with only a modest selection of platforms to worry about while later levels introduce things like moving platforms, bouncy platforms, and spinning platforms.

To move onto the next area of Arcade mode, you need to earn enough points. What starts out with an easy point total of 50 soon increases as you reach each new room of the haunted house. You and any other player with you along for the ride have three hearts to work with. Get hit by an enemy and your character is respawned into the room... pending they have a heart left. If not, a player can still come back as long as the surviving player(s) can kill a specific amount of ghosts.

Obliterate any ghost that foolishly enters your circle
of doom with this one time use weapon.

Alongside earning the ability to move onto the next room of the haunted house by earning a specific number of points, you earn new weapons that spawn in Extreme Exorcism's rooms by reaching certain ghost kill counts. What starts off with a modest pistol will soon open up with new tools of destruction like a shotgun that shoots off a tower of five bullets at close range, a harpoon that can shoot through more than one enemy at a time, and a grenade launcher that brings the boom.

Bullets so big that even Super Mario's Banzai Bills would be jealous.

Arcade mode isn't the only mode available to you in Extreme Exorcism. In addition to Arcade, there are also Challenge and Deathmatch modes. Challenge mode is a one player affair where you're assigned tasks to accomplish, such as killing a number ghosts with only so many lives or bullets. Deathmatch is a mode for up to four players to take each other out in, where dead players will have their ghosts summoned, performing the same movements and actions they did when they were alive. A bummer for both Arcade and Deathmatch modes is that neither support online play. Perhaps wanting such would be asking too much of the small team at Golden Ruby Games, so in this viewpoint, it's something I can forgive.

Extreme Exorcism is an enjoyable romp through a haunted house, but it does get quite repetitive the more you play. However, Challenge mode changes things up enough if you get burned out with the traditional modes available. With Golden Ruby Games' effort on the Wii U eShop, Extreme Exorcism stands a ghost of a chance against the competition to stand out on the storefront.

[SPC Says: B-]

Review copy provided by Golden Ruby Games.

Gunman Clive HD Collection (Wii U eShop) Review

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs will be posted tomorrow because tonight I have a second review planned to round out this month. First, however, let's return to the world of Hörberg Productions' Gunman Clive with his makeover in HD for the Wii U eShop. Here's my review of Gunman Clive HD Collection.

Two great games given a second time to shine in a higher definition spotlight

Bertil Hörberg and his small studio of Hörberg Productions might not be a household name by any stretch of the imagination, but don't write him off just because of that. Bertil has proven himself to be a highly capable developer with two Nintendo 3DS eShop releases under his belt, Gunman Clive and Gunman Clive 2. Not only were the games well designed, but the entry prices were so low that the games sold above expectations, particularly the original. Now, the games are making the jump from the small screen to big screen with Gunman Clive HD Collection for the Wii U eShop. For a handful of dollars, you get some of the finest run 'n gun games in recent memory, made better with high-definition assets and graphics.

I said reach for the sky, pardner. Not shoot for the sky.

For those who don't own a system of the Nintendo 3DS family or haven't played either Gunman Clive game, the games have a similar type of gameplay to Mega Man titles in their run 'n gun glory. You travel from location to location through linear levels where exploration takes a backseat to the action. Each level is devised of several rooms taking anywhere between 40-80 seconds to complete.

Draw!

Clive has the ability to pick up special guns which enhance his range, enable homing shots that target enemies, and unleash large bullets that leave big explosions in their wake. Having these special guns equipped helps out a lot during the levels, but the caveat is that with one hit you will lose the bonus.

Both games are brief rides from beginning to end, with Gunman Clive 2 being about double the length of the original. It's still less than an hour to complete the game. However, alternate characters and the pure joy of playing both games increases the amount of time you'll spend with the games exponentially. There are multiple difficulties for players to ease into the game-- with the Easy difficulty giving you a larger health bar to work with, as well as falling into a bottomless pit or a bed of spikes not automatically meaning you fail the level. Although levels lack checkpoints, them being so quick in length means you won't be cursing the folks at Hörberg Productions for dying over and over, which is quite possible to do as both Gunman Clive games can be quite challenging.

Alternate playable characters make for a different experience
when running through a familiar duo of games.

It also helps that both games are excellent for speed-running not only because they're so short, but also because they have such a satisfying flow and brilliant pacing to them. The variety of level hazards, enemies, and interesting level mechanics means you're always experiencing something new, whether it's riding on the back of a raging triceratops as you duck and jump over hazards or going all Donkey Kong Country with a fast-paced mine cart ride. There are odes to other games, such as what I assume inspired part of the gameplay of both games, Mega Man-- especially with Gravity Man level-style walls of gravity and disappearing and reappearing blocks.

There are some major differences between the original Gunman Clive and its sequel. One of these is that the original Gunman Clive uses the same range of tan, orange, and beige colors in its art style for the entire game, while Gunman Clive 2 opens up the amount of colors considerably, making for more variation for the eyes. Additionally, Gunman Clive 2 features several levels that take Clive out of his running and gunning preferences and puts him in control of a ship and a horse in behind-the-back 3D segments. While these remain as fun as they were in the 3DS version of Gunman Clive 2, the lack of any type of 3D means you can't rely on depth perception to avoid obstacles and enemies. It's a small issue, but an issue nonetheless.

The lack of stereoscopic 3D can make these sections a bit tricky.
Not impossible, but tricky.

Gunman Clive HD Collection runs at a steady frame-rate, and the moving sketchbook-like art style looks absolutely fantastic in high-definition. The colors pop on an HD screen, especially Gunman Clive 2's extravagant range of colors when compared to the original. The music of both games is remarkably well done, offering catchy and hum-able melodies that never get grating to the ears. Off-TV play is available for both games, and selecting which of the two games to play is as simple as moving the d-pad from one game to the other on the main menu. You can easily back out from one game's title menu to the game selection menu.

Don't get hit by this T-Rex, Clive, or you'll end up dino-sore!

With an absolute certainty I recommend the Gunman Clive HD Collection, especially if you've never played either game before. The low cost of entry should seal the deal for most potential buyers. If you've played both games to death already, then there is not much to make them worth returning to, even for the $4 price tag and the upgraded visuals. Still, Gunman Clive 1 and 2 are excellent games that have a new opportunity to capture a new audience in Wii U owners.

[SPC Says: B+]

Review copy provided by Hörberg Productions.