Saturday, July 18, 2015

SDCC 2015: Nicole's Adventures: Day 2- Game Time with Skylanders, Mario, Yoshi & More


I love when even our photographers get in on these daily reports from giant-sized conventions. On the floor of San Diego Comic-Con, 100 people can have COMPLETELY different experiences. Nicole Marrokal loves to shoot all the cosplayers she can, as well as hunting up the newest Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon and My Little Pony products, but she's also into video games. At SDCC, she can get hands on time with an impressive list of soon to be released games from a number of excellent companies, and today she brings lends some of her impressions of ...well...arguably the cuter games found on the show floor!

Mario Maker:
You can play as a newer looking Mario or the old school version. The press rep on hand said there would be some pre-made levels, but you'll primarily be playing in levels you make or others online have made.
I jumped into a fast level were you have 10 or 20 seconds left on the clock to finish. You have to run-jump just right to get the star and you barely make it to the end. It took me 3 tries because missing the star means you will not win, so you've got to start all over!






My brother played a level called Vines. It began like all Mario games but after you get a mushroom, you start seeing giant turtles and Boos coming out of blocks. There is also a tube that takes you into a room where the tubes shoot out coins in a seemingly never ending stream. The levels make no sense, but it's fun because you never know what is going to happen. You can also edit levels and if you die it will show your jump pattern so you can put something there to land on.




Yoshi's Woolly World:
Yoshi's Woolly World was the cutest thing ever! The sets you play on they were colorful and creative. It reminded me of "Yoshi’s Island" for Supper Nintendo. Everything is made of yarn (even you).  You can use the Amiibo figures in the game, with the standard Amiibos and new Yoshi yarn pieces to choose from. The new Yoshi figures are soft and look like they are actually made of yarn. I used the new squid Amiibo from the fun game Splatoon and it made my Yoshi have the coloring of the character. Another person before me used Star Fox so Yoshi looked like a Yoshi Star Fox. Like the older Yoshi games, your tongue is a weapon, but here, you can use it to unravel your enemies and reveal secret places. Instead of eggs, you get yarn balls (mostly small ones, but sometimes you will get a huge one). When you shoot a yarn ball it will either unravel an enemy or build a part of the set you need.



You can also use the new yarn Yoshi Amiibos for a second Yoshi in the game, but it does get kind of confusing and hard to control them both at the same time. You can also eat the other Yoshi and he becomes a ball of yarn that you can use to throw at enemies or objects. I found this kind of funny and kept doing it. The other Yoshi will reform behind you after you throw him. Yoshi's Woolly World is easy to play, most definitely geared toward kids and perhaps girls, given the cute factor. My friend is 25 and I can see her wanting to play it. My brother wanted to try it until I started playing it and then he changed his mind. Being older and a girl, I enjoyed it more for the fact that it reminded me of something I used to play when I was a kid and enjoyed. If I had kids I can see myself having a blast playing this with them. They even have a cheat were you get little wings and you can basically fly through the whole level! I did not play with that turned on because I do like some challenge.








Skylanders Superchargers:
The first station where I played the game only had Skylanders figures as options. Among them were a shooting ninja female, a weird hover dragon snake and some other ninja-like character, but this one was male. I was a shooting ninja girl. I normally don't play Xbox (I’m a PlayStation person) but it handled easily and the graphics were really good. I am still horrible at the shooting characters, but once I got to change into a flying dragon-lizard-metal-creature that punched things, I was doing a lot better. I got to try out one of the cars so I raced around on the screen for a bit. There was one part of the game were you had to hit all the bells in the car, so I was flying through the air and going fast over bumps. A cool thing about the vehicles is that you can customize them. Tweak different parts to alter how fast you can go or how well the car grips the ground. This works like most games were if the tires grip the ground better, you loose speed or vice versa. I think you can alter your vehicle whenever you want.

The second station I hopped on, I got to be Bowser  and THAT WAS REALLY COOL! I did not know you could use other characters in this version of the game, so it was a nice surprise. As Bowser, I was running around smashing things with a big hammer. Bowser growls as you go. He didn't seem that fast to me, but I normally play women characters who are faster and jump higher, so that might be why he seemed sluggish. At one point, he changed into a flaming giant. He grows in size and has fire around his hands and it looks like it is coming off his head. His shell changes color as well, looking like lava rock. You don't use the hammer anymore but you can punch or shoot fire. He does not maneuver very well in this form, but nothing really hurts either. It only lasts a couple of seconds but you slam your hammer down and change right back into this giant fire monster form. I didn't see any vehicle I could use with Bowser, so I can't comment on that gameplay...I bet it would have looked cool! Best part of the game was the feeling I was Godzilla stomping around smashing everything in sight.

Final Fantasy Type-0:
I didn't really like this new Final Fantasy...it just didn't make sense, or maybe it makes more sense when you play from the beginning ...I don't know. I did not play for very long. What I gathered from the intro, Final Fantasy Type-0 is set within Orience, a land divided between four nations. Each nation has a crystal that I am guessing is their power source. You start the game as a group of students and the one you control has flying cards around him. There are giant hovering robots attacking the camp and you and your group has to stop them. I could not figure out what to do for half of it and the cards kept flying around my head but not doing much else. I started doing the button mashing approach to just figure out what did what. I kept doing an ice attack that did not seem to do much damage to the robots. Finally,  I figured out how to activate some kind of energy blast, but it did very little damage. I was very sad at the difficulty of gameplay. They really out did them self on the graphics and outfits, though! I did like walking around, or at one point, mostly running trying to get away from the robot. I died pretty fast and lost interest in the game so I walked off. I don’t know if this will be one I ever buy.

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