Weekly Roundup 02/26/2012

I finished Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on Monday, and the final few hours didn’t add much to the experience; it was pretty much what you would expect. I wrote a lot about the game during the past two weeks, and feel like I’ve pretty much covered everything I have to say about it. If there’s anything I want to reiterate as a parting comment on Reckoning, it’s that I simply feel that the game is way too big for the ideas it presents. I liked a lot of things about it for the first 20 or so hours, but nothing was nearly deep enough to last the 50+ hours I played it, which brought the entire experience down. By the end I wanted nothing more than to be done with the game, which is about the worst feeling you can have while playing a video game. I can understand why Jeff was conflicted about it.

Whoa, you go big guy!

Anyway, I’m happy to be done with it, and moving on to better (but thankfully not bigger) things. I rolled right off of Reckoning onto Rhythm Heaven Fever, which is awesome. I really loved the DS Rhythm Heaven, and everything I liked about that game is present and accounted for in the Wii version. All the minigames are silly and over-the-top in the best ways possible, and exude tons of charm and personality. They’re also often hilarious. Ringside (where you interview a wrestler) has kind of become the poster minigame, and that one in particular had me laughing pretty good. In fact, there are probably only two or three minigames that I haven’t cared for so far, which is pretty impressive considering that there are over 50 minigames in Rhythm Heaven Fever (and I’ve done 45 of them as of this writing). There's a good amount of quality content here given the game's $30 price tag, so I’m pretty happy with the value I’ve gotten out of it. I haven’t even had a chance to try the cooperative minigames yet; I’m pretty curious about those.

Playing badminton while flying? Yes please!

Rhythm Heaven Fever also looks and sounds fantastic. The bright and colorful art style is incredibly lively in that classic Nintendo fashion, and the soundtrack is super catchy. That’s fortunate, as this is a rhythm game after all, and it’s also fortunate that the game plays so well too. All you do is literally press the A and/or B buttons along with the beat, and everything is super responsive and rewarding to pull off. I’ve often said it before, but I always love it when a game is able to get a ton of mileage out of incredibly simple mechanics, and that’s exactly what Rhythm Heaven Fever does. Each minigame changes things up just enough to keep it entertaining (it doesn’t hurt that each one is downright bonkers either), while never straying too far from the game’s core concepts. It’s rhythm gaming in its purest and simplest form, which is often where the genre is at its best. If I have one complaint with the game it’s the same one that I had with the DS version; I don’t understand why you have to wait for specific windows to attempt a perfect rating. I’ve nailed at least two games on my first try, and it’s annoying to not get credit for them just because the game didn’t explicitly prompt me to go for a perfect. That’s pretty annoying, and makes me not want to even bother trying for perfects (something I might try otherwise).

Anyway, that caveat aside, Rhythm Heaven Fever is a wonderful game, and one I’d easily recommend to any Wii owner out there. Last but not least, I played through To the Moon from start to finish in one sitting yesterday. I’m going to give that one a few days to sink in before I attempt to write anything about it, but I will say upfront that I really enjoyed it. I’ll likely coalesce my thoughts on it in a dedicated piece later this week. That’s all for now though, until next time!

Currently playing: Rhythm Heaven Fever