Bit by Bit: May 2014

May has been one interesting month.  As we inch ever so closer to the biggest video game trade show of the year, the focus of game developers, publishers and journalists has slowly shifted to E3 2014.  Every piece of information released or news story ran relates back to E3.  Considering all the questions leading into the event, E3 2014 should be either an exciting onslaught of brand new games or a disappointing slog of new information for already announced games.  Personally, I am hoping for the former because I want to see the games that will truly get people excited about spending over 500 dollars on the current generation of gaming.  As of right now, all this generation has given us is shinier graphics and a massive drought of games.  We will see what the future of gaming is next month, but before that let us take a look at the month that was May 2014.

Game of the Month
Kirby: Triple Deluxe and Mario Golf: World Tour both came out on the same Friday at the very beginning of May and these are the two games that captured most of my time this past month.  Out of these two game, there can only be one Game of the Month.  The game that earns that title is Mario Golf: World Tour.  It has been a long time since Mario Golf graced a Nintendo system and World Tour is a return to what gamers loved about Camelot's golf game now turned up to eleven.  Early on your time will be mostly dedicated to the single-player Castle Club as you play in tournaments to improve your Mii's handicap, earn new attire and equipment and prepare yourself for online.  After some time in Castle Club, you will be ready to hit the online links where the meat and potatoes of World Tour is.  The online in World Tour is great as you play rounds against players around the world or in your region at your own pace.  Once you complete a round, you can post your score to the tournament or play again and see if you can do better.  The online is incredibly smooth and hardly caused a problem for yours truly.  Scouring new tournaments each and every week easily will become routine for Mario Golf enthusiasts.  Mario Golf: World Tour would not be some fun to play if the core mechanics of golf were not so well made and finely tuned.  If there is one game to pick up this month, it is Mario Golf: World Tour.  It has given me hours of enjoyment and will give plenty more thanks to online.  Guess I will be seeing you on the golf course.

TV Show of the Month
I wanted to change some things up this month.  Considering my most anticipated game of the month comes out at the very end of May and I have a whole article already drafted up and ready to be published this coming Friday, there really is no need to regurgitate what I will wrote here in Bit by Bit.  So the TV Show of the Month is back for another go especially since May marks the month when most TV shows air their season finales.  It seems like every week this past month there has been a major finale of some sort be it Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Survivor.  Each person has their show they watch every week.  As of late, that show has been Person of Interest for yours truly.

I knew of the show, but never watched it until I caught my dad watching the show this past Fall.  Person of Interest has gripped me in a way that I have not experienced since Lost came to an end four years ago.  Currently, I have watched all of seasons one and two and a part of season three and can say the show has gotten better with every season.  Person of Interest is a show about the vigilante partnership between a computer genius Harold Finch and a burned CIA agent John Reese.  Finch and Reese receive numbers from an America-wide security system simply known as The Machine.  The number they receive indicates either a perpetrator or victim for a possible crime.  During the course of the episode, Finch and Reese have to determine whether their person of interest needs to be saved or stopped.  Interesting concept for a show that was initially a procedural.  Over these three seasons, Person of Interest has become much more serialized with overarching stories and reoccurring threats such as the corrupt police association HR and the rogue security corporation Decima.  In particular, Person of Interest perfectly walks the fine line between procedural and serial that makes it like nothing else on television today.  The season three finale happened just about two weeks ago now and I cannot get over how amazing it was.  The finale completely changed the course of the entire series going forward that I will not do a disservice in spoiling it here.  The finale has to be seen to be believed, it is that good.  With this finale, Person of Interest has sealed its place as must-watch television.  I highly recommend checking Person of Interest out as it is the best show I have seen since Chuck ended in 2012.

Video of the Month
What do you get when you mix the superb music from the Ace Attorney series with popular musician Brentalfloss?  Well, you get the newest "With Lyrics" video-- Phoenix Wright with Lyrics.  Taking the song Cornered from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and adding lyrics that parody the tropes of this series such as the well-endowed women characters and extreme juxtaposition between charming wackiness and brutal violence.  It is a fun song that fans of the series will thoroughly enjoy.

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.