Wii U review: Fast Racing Neo

In an era where futuristic arcade racers like F-Zero and Hydro Thunder have largely disappeared, Fast Racing Neo seeks to reignite that spark of wonder and excitement these titles of yesteryear once offered. At first glance, Fast Racing Neo might look like a direct F-Zero successor under a different name and from a different developer. The game boasts a dozen hover racing vehicles, tracks vary from desert domains to space stations, slick ice-capped mountains, mining facilities connected by giant tubes, and jungle vistas with ninety degree inclines.

Each of these vehicles handles a bit different from the next. Some are quick on acceleration, but have lower top speeds, and vice versa. Some handle sharp turns on a dime, while others have longer and heavier frames that force a larger turn radius. But each vehicle is capable of blazing through gorgeous environments at incredible speeds, all without dropping the framerate below a perfect sixty frames per second. It’s a bit of a shame that the vehicles can not be given alternate color schemes, but their names and designs do well to pay homage to the era of gaming that inspired them.

Track layouts similarly feel the part of F-Zero GX’s offerings, and are, in some cases, even more challenging when attempted at the higher speed settings. Not unlike Mario Kart, the Subsonic, Supersonic, and Hypersonic ‘difficulties’ have less of an impact on the capabilities of the opponent racers’ A.I., but rather increase the speed at which everyone zips along the track. Fast Racing Neo avoids a ‘rubber-band’ catch-up system, so there are rarely rival racers that follow closely behind you for the four tracks within any single cup. This of course also means that you as a player still need to shoot for the front of the pack, as the overall rankings are less predictable than in other arcade racers.

Fast Racing Neo controls with buttery-smooth precision, though as mentioned, no two vehicles control in quite the same fashion, so it may take a few runs to get the feel for which vehicle is best suited to your personal play style. Similarly, each course dishes out something new as you progress, and the best way to beat the competition is learning a track’s ins and outs through a trial-by-fire approach. Fast Racing Neo, oddly enough, also gives a nod or two to Ikaruga and other shoot-‘em-up games, with the incorporation of a color-shift system. Certain boost and jump pads are blue, others orange, and you must shift between the two on the fly to make the most of these. Jewels scattered across the track, meanwhile, will fill up your boost gauge, which you can then utilize whenever you so choose.

In the event that you crash while attempting a jump, the game quickly respawns you at the section of the race track closest to where your machine exploded. You are granted a small amount of boost to try and catch back up with the competition. An unlockable Hero Mode ups the difficulty even further, as it demands players manage their boost meter as a shield meter as well (not unlike the F-Zero series), as well as finish in first place to further progress. It’s a bonus mode for the most determined of players, those who haved proved their skill by completing all of the previous difficult settings.

Fast Racing Neo does include online play, wherein players vote from a limited selection of courses. Their vote is then cast into a pool with the votes from each of the other players, and selected roulette-style, not unlike Mario Kart Wii’s online selection process. However, there is currently no way to vote for the difficulty/speed setting, and the game appears to default to the lower end of that. Despite rather bare-bones menus, the game makes up for this with vehicles and courses being covered in gorgeous, shiny visuals, making Fast Racing Neo one of the best looking titles on any console this generation yet. The techno soundtrack is a great, adrenaline-pumping match to the game’s sci-fi setting, and further cements Fast Racing Neo as a worthy successor to a genre that has largely fallen into obscurity.

My rating: 9 (out of 10)

Wii review: Sin and Punishment: Star Successor

Set many years after the original Sin and Punishment, the Wii sequel, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, sees two new heroes facing off against giant artificial creatures deep within the Earth and waves of grunt units beneath the waves of the ocean, in sandy deserts, and even in dreamscapes as they attempt to best their pursuers, the ever-persistent force known as Nebulox. Isa, son of Saki and Airan from the original Sin and Punishment, was previously allied with the Nebulox, but has since gone rogue in hopes of protecting his non-human friend Kachi from their intent to kill her as part of a supposed ‘will of the creators’. While perhaps not as immediately exciting a premise for opening up the world of Star Successor as the original Sin and Punishment’s cyberpunk rebellion presented, this long-awaited sequel is arguably more adventurous than its predecessor with a greater willingness to change up environment and enemy designs (thanks in no small part to the greater capabilities of the hardware it is running on being two console generations forward).

The controls are simple enough – the Wiimote is pointed at the screen to aim, while the nunchuck joystick is used to move the protagonists around the screen. They can fire single shots, or simply carry out a constant barrage of blasts, as well as release a charged bomb blast every time the shot meter resets. Isa and Kachi can dodge in any direction to avoid incoming fire or environmental hazards, and the two have unique abilities that offer subtle differences in their play styles – Isa is able to switch between manual aim and locking on to singular targets, while Kachi can automatically lock-on and fire at multiple enemies. While firing shots from a distance will be the primary means for dispatching enemies, any foes foolish enough to get in close quarters with the heroes can be struck by a fast and powerful blade.

None of the missions are particularly lengthy, though they certainly branch off into more open and brightly-colored areas than those in the original game. Star Successor’s soundtrack retains much of the original’s upbeat and exciting electronic style, while enemy designs range from techno-organic hybridizations more common to cyberpunk works to gigantic marine wildlife and exaggerated Japanese mythos. Boss fights are often multi-tiered, making them both mid-stage and end-stage highlights of the experience. The difficulty factor for Star Successor’s normal setting, on the other hand, has been toned down a decent amount from that of the first game, so players looking for a more grueling challenge may be somewhat disappointed.

Aside from cooperative play, there’s really not much to speak of in the way of extra gameplay features. Once a stage has been completed in story mode, players can revisit it at their leisure from the mission select menu. Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is a game that is primarily focused on doing a few things really well – and in an era when shoot-‘em-ups are few and far between (especially those heavy on the arcade-style gameplay of Sin and Punishment), it handles these fronts masterfully. While it would be nice to have received a greater number of stages, what Sin and Punishment: Star Successor does offer in its existing eight missions are highly-polished and creative enemy designs, exciting environments, intense and diverse boss fights, and finely-tuned controls that make for a final product which dares to break the mold of what is expected of games in the modern era.

My rating: 8 (out of 10)

3DS review: Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D

One of the earliest big-name releases for the 3DS, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D was effectively a means for Capcom to tide Resident Evil fans over until the release of the more bold and highly-anticipated Resident Evil: Revelations. The Mercenaries 3D has a very similar control scheme to its 3DS sister title, but plays quite differently. The major stages from the mercenaries bonus game modes of both Resident Evil 4 and 5 have been compiled in The Mercenaries 3D. The first handful of missions act as tutorials, asking for players to perform simple tasks like running past a dozen or so markers before the time runs out, or killing ten to fifteen enemies. As each mission is cleared, the parameters become a little more complex. While it is good of Capcom to throw these tutorial bits into the mix for those who may have missed out on the modern RE titles, it is also mildly annoying that there is no option to skip them, and seasoned veterans of the arcade-y mercenaries gameplay style may find the first twenty-five minutes boring and tedious.

That said, once the full mercenaries mode is made available, it proves quite enjoyable. The Mercenaries 3D lacks any sort of story mode, so anyone interested in this title should keep in mind that this a purchase that should be made entirely on how much he/she enjoyed the mercenaries mode from Resident Evil 4 and 5. Stages like the African caves and medieval castle remain largely unchanged, though a few of the larger ones have seen small portions cut from them. The limited spawn counter issue from Resident Evil 4 seems to have been rectified, as enemies will continue to descend onto the battlefield as long as you keep shooting them up. Overall, the game looks quite good – the textures are certainly not as impressive as on the home console releases, or even as impressive as in Revelations, but for as early a 3DS release as The Mercenaries 3D was, it’s none too shabby.

There are eight characters to select from, and while only a couple are available from the outset, the rest will be unlocked through a natural process of completing each ‘chapter’ worth of stages (each chapter usually consisting of approximately a dozen missions or so). There is also an in-game achievement list, and meeting certain criteria like beating a mission while using only one weapon or chaining a set number of combo kills will net rewards like abilities and alternative costumes for the eight characters. The costumes provide little more than an aesthetic alteration, which is a bit disappointing, since Resident Evil 5 saw different loadouts ascribed to each new costume. The aforementioned abilities can be added to a character’s loadout to grant them slight boosts to their healing, critical hit ratio, mobility, and so on, and can come in handy when tackling some of the more grueling late game missions.

The Mercenaries 3D supports both single player action and cooperative via online or local means. The standard loadouts of Chris, Jill, Claire, Hunk, Barry, Rebecca, Wesker, and Krauser are nicely varied, and though some characters share the same weapons like the grenade launcher, the play style from one character to another is prevented from becoming too similar by providing them different types of ammunition and distinctly different physical stats. Rebecca is more about speed and offense, Krauser is something of a one-trick pony focused on accuracy and critical hits, Chris and Jill act as the two comfortable balanced defaults, etc. There may not be a lot of content to Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, but then again, it isn’t trying to deliver a full-fledged RE experience like Revelations or any of the numbered entries in the series. The Mercenaries 3D is meant to satiate a hunger for pure, unbridled arcade-y gameplay, and it handles surprisingly well on a handheld, touch screen implementation for herb healing and all.

My rating: 7 (out of 10)

Wii Virtual Console review: Sin and Punishment

An arcade style scrolling shooter in the vein of Star Fox 64, Sin and Punishment is overflowing with 1990s Japanese style. The first level is set in a mega city where a small band of rebels strike out against the excessive numbers of soldiers that police the sector on foot, from VTOLs, and even with the aid of mechanized animals. Achi, Saki, and Airan are the game’s three main characters, the latter two being playable. Their character models move forward automatically, while you, the player, can move them side to side and aim the cursor to change the angle of fire from their guns. When it comes to close-quarters encounters, Saki and Airan can swing a beam blade out to deal a quick strike to a foe or to deflect an object at a moving target.

The theme of a small ragtag group seeking to undo a greater force that looms ever-present with superior numbers and firepower is consistent throughout, though topics like what it means to be a pureblood human vs. a human-ruffian hybrid and the potential to become a higher being also come into play – threads common to other video game and anime works from the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city is but the start of something much greater – the lead characters will infiltrate enemy ships, square off against giant mutant creatures, and fly about on mobile platforms as they attempt to neutralize an entire fleet of ships (and that’s just during the second mission).

Sin and Punishment is a title that was released very late in the N64’s life cycle, but even so it’s thoroughly impressive just how good this game looks and plays. Character models are highly detailed, and look five times better than the angular forms of the inhabitants of Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule or the pixelated versions of the Goldeneye Bond villains. While Sin and Punishment was a Japanese exclusive prior to the Virtual Console re-release, it incorporates English voice acting. Though perhaps not the greatest example of character voice acting on the N64, it is impressive how well the actors match their characters and how well the dialogue fits the era. The soundtrack is largely that of a classic synth-rock sound that perfectly complements the artistic direction of the game.

Similarly, the game controls incredibly smoothly, whether you are using the Wii Classic Controller or one from the Gamecube. Whereas Star Fox 64 had a (more or less) fixed camera centered behind the Arwing in the middle of the screen, Sin and Punishment’s frame sits at the ground level with the playable characters, tilting up, left, and right at scripted points within each mission to provide a better range of vision. The environments are even more highly-detailed than the characters, with excellent lighting effects and brightly displayed health and weapon icons placed at strategic points.

Sin and Punishment effectively drops you into the thick of battle without much in the way of a tutorial, though the controls can be referenced from the main menu prior to starting a new playthrough. Otherwise, the first few waves of enemies you face are relatively easy prey, granting you a few minutes to get used to the arcade shooter style of gameplay. Sin and Punishment is only a couple of hours long and does grant you a set number of retry attempts, but do not be fooled – this is a genuinely challenging game that rewards a trial-and-error approach. Its over-the-top action is cheesy in the most endearing way, while the presentation on the whole is top-notch.

My rating: 9 (out of 10)

Impressions of The Wonderful 101 demo

Less than a half-hour ago, I finished playing the demo for The Wonderful 101, Platinum Game’s first big exclusive title for the Wii U. While I’ve been really excited at the prospect of Platinum Games developing exclusive titles for Nintendo’s new system, The Wonderful 101 was a title I was very much on the fence about purchasing. It certainly looked interesting, but as a sort of odd combination of Pikmin-style squad command and top-down arcade play, I was concerned as to how the gameplay mechanics would ultimately be implemented. Now that I’ve finished the demo, I can honestly say that I’m no closer to making a decision on whether or not to purchase the full retail release.

To begin with the positive elements of The Wonderful 101, the game looks gorgeous. There’s a ton of detail put into school signs, billboards, business names, while houses and cars see a decent degree of variation. The chrome on your team’s friendly robot companion shines brilliantly, and the colors of the various hero characters as well as their weaponry pop against the backdrop of the city. The soundtrack is very much a throwback to action-packed Saturday morning cartoons and old anime works – equal parts cheesy and endearing.

The story portion of the demo only grants you full access to three main characters, though you can round up more temporary members like citizens and police officers to increase your team’s offensive and defensive strength. Wonderize Red is the character the demo will push you to use most frequently, as his giant fist is effectively the ‘vanilla’ basic weapon that doubles as a means to open doors and boxes. Wonderize Green is best used against slow enemies, as his firearms can deal a decent rate of damage from a safe distance. Wonderize Blue is the character I had the most fun with, as his wide and fast swings of his sword are most befitting an action game and prove very useful in taking out large groups of small foes that seek to surround your team.

Where the demo really fumbles is in its block mechanic. Holding the left trigger button collects your team together in the shape of a giant dessert gelatin, which can be used to deflect cannon fire and stun foes who might attempt to rush you with a heavy punch. The problem is that the block move only holds for about two seconds, meaning that putting it up too late will result in an enemy stomping through your ranks and scattering your teammates, and putting the gelatin shield up too late will result in the same outcome. While the other weapons rely on the power of batteries collected throughout each mission, the gelatin does not, and there is seemingly no way to extend the span of time it will hold for (at least in the demo – I would hope that the full game would allow for upgrades to abilities).

The enemy designs all seem to follow a similar school of design, which is good in the sense that they appear to have the same alien and robotic origins, but a bit of a downside in the sense that they all bear white, grey, and black bodies, with varying degrees of colored patterns or tubing. There are a few puzzle elements worked in, though nothing to the complexity of a Zelda title. Turning a series of wheels the right number of rotations so that the numbers their respective meters display is a brief but simple distraction, befitting of a game that is meant to appeal to both younger gamers and older veterans of the action genre.

And when it boils down to it, everything presented in the demo, from the story portion to the challenge mode, feels like an action game in the purest sense. Sure, you have many small characters under your command, but keeping track of all of them is a cinch. In the event that your team is scattered by attacking enemies, small yellow stars will appear over their heads to indicate that they are dizzy. When at full strength, the lead character will always be the one the camera follows, a glowing circle designating them as the current squad commander. Losing health is not much of a concern unless your team becomes scattered, and while I never came close to encountering a ‘game over’ screen during my playthrough of the demo’s two modes, I did find some of the more powerful enemies had a tendency to pile on one attack after another, leading my team to become scattered not seconds after I had regrouped them. It was incredibly frustrating at times, considering I was trying to follow the demo’s instructions and defend myself, but often there simply wasn’t enough time between one attack to the next for me regroup, shift my attention to the enemies, and time my block.

I really want the Wii U to succeed as a console, and as it currently stands, it certainly has a leg-up on the competition. Based on what I’ve seen of the PS4 and Xbox One promos, I still feel like the Wii U is the best console option for me (hence the reason that I purchased it and have zero intention of buying either of the other two eighth-generation home consoles). I also think Platinum has a lot of potential to be to the Wii U what Rare was to the N64, and I’d love to support more exclusive titles for the console (ZombiU was a grand slam, I felt). But I think that I really need to experience more of The Wonderful 101 hands-on, because the demo was actually a bit different than what I expected. That said, I do recognize that the demo presents but a snippet of what the full game has to offer, and for that reason I’d like to do some more digging into this before I make a final call on whether or not I want to add The Wonderful 101 to my video game library.

XBLA review: Sonic CD

Sonic CD has earned something of a cult following over the years. It has quite a reputation behind it from those who played it upon its initial release. But it is also one of the most difficult-to-find Sonic games, due to the fact that it has seen a very limited number of ports and re-releases since its 1993 debut. Now that it's available on Xbox Live, Sonic fans can experience it themselves for a reasonable 400 Microsoft points.

Sonic CD introduced a new mechanic to the series that was pretty groundbreaking for its time. Each level has different gates scattered throughout that will allow the blue hedgehog to travel backwards or forwards in time. Bonus levels also return, albeit considerably differently than their Sonic 2 incarnations. This time around, Sonic can roam around a 3D plane and destroy floating UFO-like machines. These two elements allow each player to tackle levels differently with each playthrough, and are the key components to creating a 'good future' wherein Robotnik is defeated and the world saved from his mechanical creations. It's a very interesting concept and works well, presenting an extra bit of challenge as players must find an area that will allow them to build up enough speed in order to successfully time travel.

The level designs are gorgeous for their day, with plenty of color breathing life into jungle cliffs and underwater mines. Most of the future levels reflect a 'science gone wrong' motif, with lights, wires, and metal in abundance. This XBLA re-release comes with the original Japanese music. The soundtrack sports some kickin' tunes, and is easily one of the best in the entire series.

Sonic CD does fall to one shortcoming, and that is the challenge factor. While each level is designed well and presents a consistent increase in difficulty, the same cannot be said for the boss fights. Each of Robotnik's machines is aesthetically creative, there's no doubt about that. But if you've played any of the old school Sonic titles, each of the encounters with Robotnik will be a cake walk. If you're only marginally familiar with the series, they will still prove rather easy. Conversely, the boss fight against Metal Sonic is not only the best in Sonic CD, but among the best in the entire Sonic series.

Outside of the main game is time trial mode, which allows players to visit all of the stages and any of the three acts that comprise each of these. It is a nice inclusion for old school fans who enjoy revisiting levels to beat their own high scores. And for a game from 1993, it's an acceptable bonus game mode. For fans of the older entries in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, this one is worth checking out.

My rating: 8.75 (out of 10)

XBLA review: Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition

As a genre, fighting games are relatively foreign territory to me. I played a ton of Super Smash Bros. when it first hit the N64, and the same story carried through to Melee and Brawl. The thing I appreciated most about those fighting games was the fact that they were so accessible. True, it would take anyone time and patience to master each and every character, but newcomers could still compete decent enough in a throw-down of Nintendo’s best. Besides that, I only had a few cracks at the arcade version of Mortal Kombat at a local roller skating rink during elementary school field trips. In my early years of gaming (as well as today) my forte was in adventure and platforming games. I was all-too aware of the fact that arcade-style fighting games were largely dependent on players memorizing a list of moves and combos, which differed from one character to the next. That factor probably played the largest influence over my lack of interest in the genre for years to come.

However, in recent years I have rediscovered the genre as something of a beacon for old-school gamers amidst the onslaught of mainstreamed and over-hyped titles (the majority of which happen to be first-person-shooters). These arcade fighters stick with a classic formula, and – while they may provide tutorials of sorts – are not going to hold your hand the entire time. They will dish out one beating after another, and it is up to each individual player to find his or her own unique style of play to combat this. And that is one of the aspects of this genre that I truly admire – the flexibility players are granted through the variety of characters.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition is a game from the golden era of fighting games. The characters are varied but still very well-balanced, a result of years of trial-and-error on the part of Capcom and other companies. There is a myriad of different subgroupings to each fighting style. While Elena and Ibuki both focus on fighting from a range, the former does so with kicks and acrobatics, while the latter relies on swift kicks and throwing Kunai. Though Ryu and Akuma might seem like polar opposites skinned over the same move set, it is apparent that Akuma’s energy blasts are not as potent as Ryu’s, while his kicks and supercombos trump those of the series’ posterboy. Despite the fact that there are some striking similarities that can be drawn between some of the characters, it is impossible to find any two that are direct copies of each other.

The arcade mode lasts through nine standard fights, with two minigames thrown in the mix, and a boss fight at the conclusion of all this. Before each fight, players are presented with two opponents to choose from. While these are characters that will have difficulty playing both offense and defense to the player-controlled character, the last couple of choices narrow down to a “lesser of two evils” scenario. Beating the ‘final boss’ Gill as each individual character will prompt a cutscene that explores their story in more specific context.


The combat itself is very fluid. Combos and supercombos are a bit easier to chain than in the likes of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, primarily due to the fact that Third Strike is a past-gen game ported over to a current-gen console with a very different controller than that of the Dreamcast. Players can tweak the difficulty setting at the main menu as they see fit, as well as access training modes to hone their skills both offensively and defensively. The CPU does an impressive job responding to players. Only on rare occasions will it feel a bit cheap. For example, opponents that use blast attacks (most notably Ryu, Akuma, and Urien) do have a tendency to spam these when low on health. Also, players should be aware of how much space they have to work with on any given level, as some of the more physical combat-oriented characters (Yun, Yang, Dudley) may corner them and proceed to mercilessly launch-kick and punch them until their health meter is depleted.

The graphics maintain the traditional look and feel of the side-view and character sprites, but the level of detail presented in each character model and level backdrop is simply gorgeous. This makes a perfect marriage to the soundtrack, which is a combination of hip-hop, techno, and ethnic music. Players can earn points by completing various challenges in game – defeating opponents with 20 supercombo finishes, beating Yang as Yun (and vice versa), etc. – as well as completing the arcade mode each time through. They can then spend these points however they see fit on soundtrack pieces, concept art, and short videos to revisit whenever they wish. There is also an option to upload fights to YouTube, though this seems more of an afterthought with the video quality of these replays set at a 240p default. It would have been a better idea to let players save a handful of their favorite fights to their system's hard drive, retaining the HD quality playback.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike is a great fighting game all around. The final fight against Gill is brutal, and frankly the most uneven aspect of the experience. But the fact that players can jump in and play online is a great addition, and the unlockables are nice for nostalgia’s sake. Players can adjust the difficulty setting as they see fit within a pretty specific skill range, accommodating for both veterans and newcomers to the franchise. The faces may not all be familiar to those who played the previous titles, but every playable character in Third Strike: Online Edition is balanced to perfection.

My rating: 9.25 (out of 10)

BlazBlue Continuum Shift II for 3DS and PSP

Arc Systems and Aksys' arcade-style fighting series BlazBlue will see a handheld release on both the 3DS and PSP on March 31st, 2011 (I imagine that is the Japanese street date, not North American). I've played some of BlazBlue Calamity Trigger on the PS3 and can honestly say that, while the console version is a lot of fun, a handheld release makes a lot of sense, given the nature of the games. If/when a North American release date is announced, I'll be sure to look into picking up BlazBlue Continuum Shift II. The trailer is below and highlights four of the new characters.