First Byte: Fan Expo 2015 Gauntlet

Early September, I went to Fan Expo Canada for a day. Aside from exploring the massive show floor and buying a few cool items on sale, I spent the majority of my time playing upcoming games. Actually, it was more like standing in line to play said games. Much like last year. there were well over 30 games at Fan Expo for all to play from big AAA titles such as Assassin's Creed: Syndicate to smaller titles like Cuphead. I always go in dreaming to play every game on the show floor, but I can only get in a quarter at best. This year, I played 10 games in total.

This time around I'm changing up the structure of the Fan Expo Gauntlet. Instead of taking two parts to outline every game I played, I'm going to highlight three titles. These are the titles that I got more time to play and can dissect for your pleasure. With how poorly some demos were managed by volunteers, I just couldn't extract enough from them to fill a paragraph. For example, I played Transformers: Devastation for only enough time to say the combat is exactly the same as Bayonetta just with some third-person gunplay thrown in the mix.

Yo-Kai Watch
To my surprise, Nintendo had a lot more games at their booth than the three games advertised (Splatoon, Super Mario Maker and Yoshi's Wooly World). One of the titles available to play on 3DS was the newest sensation out of Japan, Yo-Kai Watch. The demo I played gave me a good impression on the game's combat system, which is pretty different from most JRPGs on the market.

There are no random encounters in Yo-Kai Watch, you literally chase down wild yo-kai by keeping your cursor over them. Once the yo-kai are caught, you engage in combat. Combat consists of spinning a wheel on the touch screen to alternate between the six yo-kai on your team and activating special touch screen specific activities in order to unleash special attacks. Outside of lining up the correct elements to maximize damage and special attacks, normal attacks automatically occur at regular intervals.

For the 15 to 20 minute demo, I found the combat really fun and engaging alternative to the traditional RPG combat systems, but I can see it getting tedious over the course of a 40 hour playthrough if this is all Yo-Kai Watch offers.

Star Wars Battlefront
Ever since EA and DICE released the first slew of information on the new Star Wars Battlefront at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, people have been tirelessly debating over the game's content or lack thereof and its similarities to Battlefield. The gameplay footage revealed at E3 did quite a bit to fan the flames, but there were still some doubters. I will say this: you will have no doubts when you get your hands on the game. My friends and I walked away from the demo at Fan Expo astounded at how amazing it was.

The only mode available to play was Survival. It is Battlefront's version of Horde mode as you and a teammate are tasked with battling through waves upon waves of Imperial forces on Tatooine. The first few waves consist of just Stormtroopers, but as the waves go on, the difficulty goes up at a gradual yet challenging pace by throwing AT-ATs and shocktroopers your way. For somebody who can't hold their own in contemporary shooters, Battlefront made me feel like an all-star. The controls felt perfectly tuned to deal with everything that was being thrown my way. There were a couple waves where I was the last man standing and the tight controls were the only thing that allowed me to pull through.

Although the demo consisted of only one mode, the superb controls and the game's ability to accurately emulate the world of Star Wars has me highly anticipating playing Battlefront later this year.

Star Fox Zero
Most games I played at Fan Expo left me feeling optimistic about their final release. Sadly, I can't say the same for Star Fox Zero. While I will still buy this game early next year, I have a bad feeling that the game is going to alienate a lot of people because of its unique control scheme, much like Kid Icarus: Uprising before it.

Star Fox Zero has you using the analog sticks to control the Arwing and the motion controls in the Wii U gamepad to aim your weapons. This control set-up works during the on-rail segments. but completely falls apart when you enter all-range mode. The reason for this occurrence comes from the all-range mode's reliance on pinpoint accuracy to dispatch enemies. If you played Splatoon, you would already know that this control scheme is no where near accurate and Star Fox's focus on it feels counter-productive. Transforming into the walker did alleviate some of the targeting problems with particular enemies, but the walker's controls felt rough around the edges as will.

After playing Star Fox Zero, I am happy that Nintendo delayed the game until early 2016 because it gives Nintendo more time to refine the controls for the game. While Star Fox Zero has the potential to breathe new life into this struggling franchise, a polarizing control scheme might just ground the Star Fox team for good.

Bit by Bit: May 2015

May was an exciting month for everything except games.  My Avengers review made the Arts cover for Imprint's May issue.  My Tomorrowland review hit the Imprint website last week.  I witnessed two great wrestling shows live.  And I did quite a bit of catching up with friends.

Not to say that I didn't play any games this past month.  From starting new purchases to diving into the backlog, I just did a lot of jumping between titles.  Now that both Splatoon and Witcher III have been released, I am not bouncing around as much.  Despite my current gaming stability, I don't have enough to say on one thing this month to do Game/Show/Movie of the Month justice.

I promise everything will be back to normal for June's edition of Bit by Bit.  As I will get to in a moment, June is going to be a very busy month for Silver Bit.

Most Anticipated Event of the Month
You may be wondering: why is June such a busy month for Silver Bit?  Well my uneducated hypothetical audience, June plays host to E3, the biggest video game convention of the year, and I am covering the show from start to finish for the fourth time now.

Coverage of E3 2015 will begin this Sunday with the return of The Big Questions article.  The show ramps up on Monday as coverage of the press conferences begin.  My impressions on Bethesda, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft will be posted throughout Monday, followed by Sony, Nintendo and Square Enix on Tuesday.  Silver Bit's E3 coverage doesn't end once the show floor closes on June 18th.  The coverage will continue for the rest of June with a special edition of Bit by Bit to wrap up the show and the annual Top Games of E3 article(s).

While E3 may be one of the most exhausting weeks of my year, it is one of the most fulfilling.  I love sharing my opinions and insights on E3 with you guys and gals all week long.  Also it's tons of fun to gather a bunch of my friends together to watch the festivities with me.

Video of the Month
Microsoft is well-known for making a plethora of reliable products including the Xbox 360, Windows Vista and Zune.  So it's a no-brainer that they'd bring their patented reliability to the self-driving car market with a car powered by their excellent bing search engine.  Check out this promotional video by the great folks at Rooster Teeth to see the bing self-driving car in all its glory.  It just needs Internet Explorer and SmartGlass support, and it would be the greatest car on the planet!

Launch Station: Splatoon

The difference a year can make is astounding.  Just under a year ago at E3 2014, Splatoon made its debut to a lukewarm response.  The announcement of a brand new property for Nintendo was exciting, but showcasing the multiplayer mode of Splatoon made the game feel smaller than it actually was.  Many came out of E3 with the impression that Splatoon was a downloadable experiment instead of full retail experience.  In a similar vein to the hype surrounding Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon's stock has only gone up with every new detail, preview and trailer.  During all this time, Splatoon has slowly become one of the most anticipated Wii U games of 2015.

First and foremost, Splatoon is a team-based online multiplayer shooter.  Instead of racking up the most kills, players are tasked with covering their surroundings in ink.  The team that covers more of the arena in their team's ink wins.  Covering the arena in ink doesn't only satisfy the win-condition of matches, it offers players tactical advantages in battle.  Considering you play as a human-squid hybrid known as an inkling, you are able to use the ink to hide from enemies, climb walls and refill your ink tank.  While Turf War is the only multiplayer mode available to play at launch, Nintendo will be updating Splatoon over the course of the summer with new Ranked multiplayer modes such as Splat Zones and Tower Control.

Although multiplayer is Splatoon's main focus, it is not the only thing it offers.  Splatoon has a large suite of offline modes from the single player Octo Valley to local multiplayer Battle Dojo.

Octo Valley has a similar design to the Mario Galaxy games as your inkling must navigate a series of floating planetoid-like platforms in order to reach the Zapfish at the end of each level.  The levels contained in Octo Valley are split between the platforming levels described, arena fights with swarms of Octarians and boss battles.  The Splatoon series amiibos play a role in this mode as they open up sets of unique missions, which unlock special equipment and bonus NES-inspired mini games.

On the other end of the single player front, Battle Dojo is a one-on-one local multiplayer mode where players compete to pop the most balloons.  In this mode, one person plays on the Wii U Gamepad while the other plays on the television with a Pro Controller.

There are still loads of stuff contained within Splatoon's ink-covered package like customization, weapons, mini games and mechanics, but I don't have the space to cover it all here.  If you want a in-depth look at weapons and controls, check out the latest edition of First Byte where I analyze the Splatoon Global Testfire.

All-in-all, I have a feeling that Splatoon is going to surprise a lot of people with its unique take on the shooter genre.  While I am looking forward to spending some quality time with Splatoon, I hope Wii U owners give this game a chance and show Nintendo that it is time to create some brand new franchises to stand beside our established favourites.

First Byte: Splatoon

I can't seem to escape Nintendo's gravitational pull.  For the past month, they have released a handful of great content for me to dissect and discuss here on Silver Bit like the Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 DLC.  Now, Nintendo goes ahead and drops a public beta for Splatoon.  Considering my excitement for the game, I dived headfirst into the free Splatoon Global Testfire this past weekend.

Open to everyone who downloaded the free demo from the Nintendo eShop, the Splatoon Global Testfire gave Wii U owners three hour-long chances to play the game's multiplayer.  Each hour-long opportunity was the same experience: pick your inkling, play the tutorial, pick your weapon set and jump right into multiplayer.  The Splatoon Global Testfire offered four weapon sets to use, two maps to fight on and one mode to play.  In between matches, you could play a retro-stylized Doddle Jump clone called Squid Jump.

After spending close to three hours with Splatoon, I found Splatoon's take on the multiplayer shooter to be a very enjoyable experience.  Despite more developers focusing on team-based and asymmetrical skirmishes recently, the most popular entries in this genre try to make the player feel like a one-man army.  On the opposite side of the fence, Splatoon's multiplayer only consists of four vs. four team battles, which focus on covering the battlefield with ink instead of blood.  Focusing on teamwork and toned down violence makes Splatoon a more age-appropriate mutliplayer game than the military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield that kids find ways to play.  This focus also shows that multiplayer shooters don't need to be extremely violent in nature to be fun.

The first thing you will definitely notice upon loading up Splatoon are the controls.  The controls are very similar to other shooters with the left analog stick to move, the right analog stick to look left and right, and the triggers for weapons.  The difference comes with how you control looking up and down.  Instead of mapping it to the right analog stick like most shooters, you control looking up and down by tilting the Wii U Gamepad in either direction.  This control scheme can be jarring at first, but was easy to grasp after a few rounds.  While I did get use to these unique controls, they don't work for every weapon in the game.

The controls fell apart when using the Splat Charger, a weapon that works much like a sniper rifle.  Accuracy and precision are key when using this weapon, which makes aiming incredibly frustrating when the motion controls pick up every slight movement.  I found out from friends and other sources that you can customize the controls, but the option was never made clear during the beta or through Nintendo's vast amount of promotion material.

Aside from the inconvenience, Splatoon plays great.  The weapons have their unique strengths and weaknesses.  Sub-weapons and special moves offer tactical options for changing the tide of battle.  The instantaneous jump into the heat of battle activated by tapping the Gamepad eliminates the downtime of travelling.  Plus, transforming into a squid to hide from foes or escape from danger is exhilarating.

The Splatoon Global Testfire offered two maps to play: Walleye Warehouse and Saltspray Rig.  Both maps are symmetrical, but different in their design.  Walleye Warehouse is built for close-combat with tight alleyways and few open areas, while Saltspray Rig is an open arena with multiple elevations and central platforms to battle over.  Compared to other shooters, the maps are small and compact.  The smaller maps increases the tension as your opponents is always close by.  The tension is heightened by the lack of communication outside of a few preset phrases.  While it creates a tense atmosphere, the lack of voice chat between teammate is a missed opportunity on Nintendo's part.

Apart from a few failures to initially connect to a game or connection errors, I had little to no problems with the Splatoon Global Testfire.  The game's multiplayer looks to be shaping up nicely and I look forward to spending more time with it in the near future.  With this successful test into public betas, hopefully Nintendo will use this method of testing for future projects.  Maybe even give Wii U owners a few more chances to play Splatoon before launch.  Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Bit by Bit: March 2015

Let's address the elephant in the room.  I know I promised to have things back to normal by the end of March and it's now three weeks into April.  I am sorry for the delays, but school consumed my entire life until last Wednesday.  Between writing close to 20 pages for final essays and studying non-stop for exams that involved copious amounts of writing, I wasn't in much of a mood to write anything else at that point in time.

Although I originally wanted this edition of Bit by Bit to be the first post back from the hiatus, I am very happy that I got the Launch Station for Xenoblade Chronicles 3D up in time for its release this past Friday, especially considering my reverence for the Wii original.  Since school is winding down for the year (only one exam left!), I will be able to once again post to Silver Bit on a regular basis.  With all that being said, let us rewind the clock to last month and look back at the best and worst of March 2015.

Shame of the Month
Typically, I highlight the best game I played in the past month, but I think the game I am talking about today deserves an exception.  While I critique games, I don't usually review games I find middling or bad because I don't spend enough time with them to justify a review.  Personally, I like to experience everything the game has to offer before writing a review, including playing through the single-player portion and spending a good amount of time with the multiplayer.  It is a time-consuming commitment that I don't usually make for a game that I despise playing.  Now, I want to start playing a greater variety of games, in both genre and quality, to widen what I talk about on Silver Bit.  Although too much time has passed for me to give a full review justice, I will still honour this game as the very first Shame of the Month.

In the middle of all the craziness that was March, I decided to download a little free-to-play game that was popular among everybody I met through StreetPass—Pokemon Shuffle.  At the core of Pokemon Shuffle, there is an okay match-three puzzle game.  Sadly, that core is wrapped in frustrating gameplay mechanics that are only in the game to make players shell out their hard-earned cash.

Unless you have a gripping need to spend real money to play Shuffle for hours on end, it is best to play for the short amount of time offered through the five regenerating hearts.  You will see everything Pokemon Shuffle has to offer in the first 30 to 40 stages, leaving you over 100 stages of recycling the same challenges with increasing difficulty.  What makes the game even worse are the mechanics, such as the catchability meter and enemy disruptions, that are tweaked in such a way that it forces players to pay money in order to advance in the game.  Yes, there are ways around these frustrations by hording jewels until absolutely necessary, but the game continually tempts the player to use them for five more turns or 20 more seconds to catch their desired Pokemon.  These deceitful freemium practices just put a bad taste in your mouth.

Hopefully with Nintendo producing games for mobile platforms, these cash-sucking titles will be exclusive for those markets instead of infecting the 3DS and Wii U eShops.  Pokemon Shuffle is pretty much the exact same game as last year's Pokemon Battle Trozei with new Mega Evolution screen-clearing combos and tons of devious ways to steal your money.  Pokemon Shuffle may not be that fun, but it is perfect start to Silver Bit's Shame of the Month.

Most Anticipated Game of the Month
This past March, Nintendo pulled the curtain back on Splatoon and does it ever look good.  About midway through the month, Nintendo brought video game journalists from media outlets like IGN and Gamespot and Youtube personalities like ProJared and The Completionist to play the game at their American headquarters.  The onslaught of videos and articles that came from this event highlight Splatoon's various single and multiplayer modes.

Back when the game debuted at E3 2014, I initially thought Splatoon wasn't anything special as it looked like a neat little downloadable title.  I can say now that I was totally wrong and I am glad to be wrong in this case.  Splatoon looks to be a very comprehensive game with a Mario Galaxy style Octo Valley single-player campaign and fully-fledged suite of online multiplayer modes like Turf Wars and Ranked Battles.  I am especially looking forward to spending lots of time in Octo Valley launching from floating island to floating island, using ink in unique ways to battle enemies and finding interesting ways to traverse platforms with some cool ink-squid combinations.

If you would've asked me about Splatoon at the beginning of the year, I would've shrugged the game off as Nintendo giving the third-person shooter genre the good ol' college try.  Now, all I want to do is play it.  I know I overuse this saying, but I seriously can't wait until May 29th to play Splatoon.  I am that damn excited.

Video of the Month
In 1987, Hironobu Sakaguchi was a young video designer for Squaresoft that just wanted to finish the final game in his contract to pursue the greener pastures of hip hop.  Unbeknownst to Sakaguchi, his "final fantasy" spiraled into the long-running franchise many gamers know and love and a seemingly never-ending extension to his contract.  How did the success and popularity of Final Fantasy affect the legendary game designer?  Watch Mega64's totally real behind-the scenes look at the making of Final Fantasy to find out.

E3 2014: Nintendo Digital Event Impressions

Aside from Sony's offerings this year, E3 2014 can be summed up in one word-- safe.  For the second year in a row, Nintendo looks to usurp convention with their Nintendo Digital Event.  Details surrounding this event have been clouded in mystery since the Big N announced it.  A lot of people especially Nintendo fans were hoping to see Nintendo move out of the financial woes of the Wii U with this event.  Did Nintendo's Digital Event deliver?

As a whole, the Nintendo Digital Event delivered as a perfectly paced entertaining forty-five minute show.  It provided a great amount of new information on Nintendo properties people were most concerned about and wove it into a fun captivating presentation including smooth transitions, funny Robot Chicken skits and a steady pace.  With all that said, the presentation felt pretty safe and underwhelming in this writer's humble opinion.  Not to mean Nintendo's performance was bad, in fact it was better than last year's showing, however nothing truly surprised or caught this writer off-guard.  Also this writer would of ended the event with The Legend of Zelda reveal instead of the Palutena character reveal for Super Smash Bros.  Speaking of The Legend of Zelda reveal, the new game looks incredible with a cel-shaded anime art style and the futuristic technology mixed with medieval fantasy.  A more substantial Zelda trailer or gameplay would have been nice yet what we got was great nonetheless.

Super Smash Bros. saw Palutena and Mii Fighters revealed as new additions to the character roster.  Masahiro Sakurai took a bit of time to focus on the Mii Fighters as they look to be Smash's answer to create-a-fighters in other fighting games as you get to choose the Mii's style (brawler, sword-fighter and gunner), special moves and most likely appearance.  That news was coupled with an excellent one-on-one fight between Reggie and Iwata and the introduction of amiibos.  Despite the weird name, amiibos are Nintendo's answer to the collectable toy genre popularized by Disney Infinity and Skylanders and they allow you to store, transfer and unlock different data across multiple Nintendo games.  Currently confirmed to work with Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8 and Mario Party 10 among others, the amiibos showed off at the event looked really well crafted.  There were a lot more games covered in this event including Mario Maker, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker,  Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2 with the first Bayonetta included on disc, Xenoblade Chronicles X and Yoshi's Woolly World.  Sadly, most of them are coming out in 2015.  Not much incentive to buy a Wii U this coming Fall, which is a mistake on Nintendo's part, but in 2015 the Wii U will be releasing games at a considerable pace.

Before the Palutena reveal, Nintendo ended off with a brand new property for Wii U called Splatoon.  Splatoon is a third-person shooter where you play as a squid-human hybrid and the goal of each match is to cover the arena with the most ink.  Ink plays a greater role than being your ammo as you can use it travel far distances quickly in squid form and slow down opposing players that get caught in it.  While Splatoon looks more like a downloadable game rather than a system seller, it was nice to see Nintendo introduce a brand new property for the first time in what seems like years.  Splatoon is hopefully a sign of more good things to come from Nintendo.

Although this writer did find Nintendo's Digital Event thoroughly entertaining, it was not the home run the company needed.  Nintendo did a great job in developing a definitive lineup for the rest of 2014 with set release dates for all their titles except Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, giving fans confidence in the games further down the pipeline and wrapping it all in an entertaining package.  Despite all that great stuff, this writer wanted Nintendo to make a much bigger statement this year and they fell short.  The Wii U will definitely gain some much needed ground in 2014, just not enough to compete on the same level as Sony and Microsoft.

Grade:  B+