Launch Station: 3DS Double Feature

It has been a long time since Launch Station has graced the pages of Silver Bit.  Formerly part of regular scheduled programming, Launch Station is Silver Bit's preview article where yours truly conveniently summarizes all the information on a selected new release or possibly multiple releases for your reading pleasure.  Speaking of multiple releases, Nintendo is looking to jumpstart the summer months with a slew of new games for the 3DS this Friday.  The games in question are Kirby: Triple Deluxe and Mario Golf: World Tour.  For 3DS owners looking for games to play after getting their fill from Bravely Default, Yoshi's New Island or Disney Magical World, there will definitely be something for them this Friday as these two games fall under two opposite ends of the gaming spectrum.  They will easily be great appetizers for the main course that comes later this month in Mario Kart 8.

Due to the series more casual audience, Kirby has always been a character that Nintendo can test out new ideas and concepts.  For a character all about transformations, Nintendo's pink puffball embraces new directions and experiments as Kirby has been turned into various types of balls from a pinball to a golf ball and even being made entirely out of yarn for the sake of new ideas and concepts.  Aside from new transformations and more powerful inhaling abilities, Kirby's platformers have stuck to the same formula since the original Dream Land series on Game Boy.  Kirby: Triple Deluxe looks to add a few new ideas to the Kirby platforming formula in order to take advantage of the 3DS's power and stereoscopic 3D.  Levels involve more than just movement from left to right.  Thanks to the Warp Star, Kirby can move between multiple layers of the level in a way much similar to moving between the foreground and background in Mutant Mudds.  With the multiple layers, Kirby now needs to worry about threats from the standard Waddle Dees to massive life-ending mallets that move between the layers to attack.  More so than past entires, Kirby's inhale move has been super powered with the help of the Miracle Fruit's Hypernova Kirby transformation.  As Hypernova Kirby, the pink puffball can inhale extreme amounts of items, enemies and large obstacles in order to solve puzzles.  Along with the new transformation, Kirby's copy abilities have seen a drastic overhaul as the developers have worked tirelessly on creating unique move sets for every single ability in the game.  As a bonus to the main game, Triple Deluxe includes two extra subgames in Kirby Fighters, a fighting game similar in gameplay to Super Smash Bros. where you pit Kirby's different copy abilities against one another to see which one is the best, and Dedede's Drum Dash, a rhythm game that has you controlling King Dedede as he bounces on large drums to the tune of classic Kirby songs.

It has been just under a decade since Mario and friends last hit the links.  Considering Nintendo's focus on motion controls during the later half of the 2000s, it is very surprising that Nintendo did not bring Mario out with new entries in his two most iconic sports roles, golf and tennis, to champion a new motion-controlled generation of gaming.  Well the wait for a brand new Mario Golf game is almost over.  With the portability of the 3DS, Mario Golf: World Tour's main focus is on multiplayer.  There is a large suite of multiplayer options for players to choose from with the first choice being whether to play locally or online.  Local play allows for quick and easy competition amongst friends and colleagues in the same vicinity.  Online play allows for a few more options as players can compete in regional or worldwide tournaments to see where they rank in Mario Golf.  Since you only have to post your scores for online tournaments, there is no need to have players log on at the exact same time.  You can post a score anytime during the tournaments scheduled start and end date.  Players can even set-up their own online tournaments and communities to compete with their friends and rivals in a more personal online setting.  While it may be the main focus of World Tour, multiplayer is not the only way to play this Mario Golf.  Castle Club is World Tour's single-player mode which allows players to learn the basics of the game through lessons from Toad, compete in club tournaments to increase stats and earn new gear for your golfer and explore the club grounds in order to meet familiar Mario characters and find special challenges.  The fun does not stop there as Mario Golf: World Tour offers players with a lot more downloadable content to buy.  You can either pick up the Season Pass for 15 dollars which includes all three packs for download upon release or buy the packs individually for 6 dollars each.

No matter what game you choose to pick up this Friday, there is no way you will end up disappointed.  Nintendo has put out two great 3DS titles to eat up gamer's time until the next large 3DS release or Mario Kart 8 later this month for Wii U owners.  Personally, I am picking up both titles for different reasons.  While I am not the Kirby fan in my family as that title belongs to my youngest brother, I have heard nothing but good things about Kirby: Triple Deluxe.  Even though Kirby's notorious easy difficulty, I am looking forward to playing Triple Deluxe.  On the other hand, I am a huge fan for Mario Golf.  Considering my father is a golf professional and I have been around the sport all my life, blending Mario with such a key part of my identity has always made me identify with the series more than your typical simulation golf game.  With the incredible online additions to Mario Golf, I am excited to play the online tournaments and compete on world Mario Golf stage to see where my skills stand.  With two great titles released on the same day, there is nothing that will not keep a Nintendo system owners smiling this Friday.

Launch Station: Mario Tennis Open

Out of all the Mario sports games that have been released over the years, my personal favourite has been Mario Tennis.  I found Mario Tennis to be a very competitive affair with friends and family while also having tournaments to conquer on your own.  To this point, most handheld Mario sports games have stuck with a more RPG single-player story mode than the tournaments found in their console brethren.  With Mario Tennis Open, Nintendo and Camelot look to bring the Mario sports console experience to the 3DS in style.  Mario Tennis Open releases this Sunday, May 20th alongside the new Midnight Purple 3DS.

Again Mario and friends pick their tennis racquets to compete on courts and tournaments across the Mushroom Kingdom.  Mario Tennis Open has 17 characters for you to choose from including your own Mii, which you can personalize with new clothes and equipment.  Mario Tennis Open includes your regular singles and doubles tennis matches along with some special games such as Super Mario Tennis, Ring Shot and Galaxy Rally to play.  Mario Tennis Open offers a few different ways to control the game. There are the standard button combinations and circle pad combination for Mario Tennis veterans.  For those gamers just picking up a Mario Tennis game for the first time, Camelot has added the touch screen controls to execute shots and gyro controls to make Mario Tennis Open more approachable to newcomers than any other game in the series.  The biggest addition to the Mario Tennis series in Mario Tennis Open is the inclusion of local and online multi-player over the Nintendo Network.  Mario Tennis Open also uses StreetPass to exchange Miis with other Mario Tennis Open players, which offers players a steady stream of opponents to face on the tennis court.

The more I write about Mario Tennis Open the more I just want to sit down and play a Mario Tennis game.  Mario Tennis Open should be a solid offering for 3DS owners that are done with Kid Icarus: Uprising.  Personally I am most excited about is the online multi-player.  As much as I enjoy playing a competitive match of Mario Tennis with my brothers, I am excited to challenge new people over the Nintendo Network.  Win or lose, it should be a ton of fun.  While I am not going to pick up Mario Tennis Open right away, I will definitely be buying it the near future.  When I do, I will see you all on the court.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Review

As the third entry in Camelot’s acclaimed RPG series and the first for the Nintendo DS, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn looks to continue the story from the first two entries in the series while also bringing in newcomers with it’s easy-to learn mechanics and generous difficulty level. As the last Nintendo release for the Nintendo DS, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn serves as worthwhile swan song for Nintendo’s dual screen behemoth and a very approachable RPG for those looking to get into this genre of games.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn picks up 30 years after the climactic Golden Sun event at the end of The Lost Age.  You control Matthew, Tyrell and Karis, the children of the Warriors of Vale (the heroes from the first two games).  After a brief introduction dungeon, Matthew and his friends are sent on a quest to retrieve the mystical Roc’s Feather in order to fix the Soarwing that Tyrell destroyed.  Things escalate from this one simple task as Matthew and company get sucked into an evil plot to cover the world of Weyard in darkness.  Matthew and his friends must travel to distant lands, meet up with new party members and activate the Alchemy machines in order to save the world from utter destruction.  As a whole, the story can be dismissed as your regular RPG story, though it does pick up in the latter stages of the game.  For those who have not played the first two Golden Sun games much like yours truly, there are some allusions to those games that might go over your heads, but Camelot does a great job of getting players up to speed with the important plot points.  This makes Dark Dawn a great jumping on point for those interested in giving this series a chance.

Over the years, there has been one aspect of the game that has made the Golden Sun series stand out from your average Japanese RPG.  That aspect is the puzzles.  As all the characters in your party are Adepts, people who can use Psynergy (Golden Sun’s equivalent to magic), they can interact with the game environment in different ways to reach unreachable areas and solve some head scratching puzzles.  These puzzles make the trudge through dungeons and towns that much more bearable as there are more things to outside of battling random enemies.  Also in your travels you will be collect djinn, elemental creatures that can boost a character’s stats and offer different uses in battle from reviving a party member to boosting each party member’s defense to unleashing devastating attacks.  Golden Sun: Dark Dawn’s battle system is very similar to battle systems found in other turn-based RPGs.  You select from a menu of attacks, psynergy abilities, djinn, summons and defense, target an enemy and repeat.  With Dark Dawn, Camelot has improved on a complaint about the battle system from the first two Golden Sun games.  Camelot has included smart combat, so if an enemy is killed before other party members can attack it, now they intelligently attack one of the remaining enemies instead of just switching to defense.  This improvement makes combat much more faster and fluid experience than its predecessors and make going back to that battle system a little harder on some.

For longtime RPG fans, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn will be a walk in the park.  The easier difficulty makes for a more approachable game to RPG newcomers, but Dark Dawn is easy to a fault.  Personally I only died once in the entire game and that was at the final boss, which had an insane difficulty spike.  Speaking of the final boss and the ending, they were both a bit lackluster to say the least.  It felt as you reached the halfway point of the game, the big twist that would lead into the final hours of the game and the true finale.  That does not happen and you are left feeling like Dark Dawn is the first part of a much bigger story.  Camelot does wrap up the majority of mysteries brought up during the course of the game, but there are some big plot points left open for the inevitable 3DS sequel.  Personally, I did not mind as much, but it will bum a lot of people that after 30 hours you will have to wait a few more years for the actual conclusion to this story.

At the end of the day, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is an entertaining RPG that any gamer no matter age or experience can pick up and play.  The lackluster final boss and ending and the difficulty will turn some people off, but those who stick with the game will be treated to a worthwhile RPG with a cool story, simple yet fun battle system and some excellent puzzles.