18th June 2013, 6:18 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Handheld rumble hasn't been completely abandoned. The most popular handheld in this generation has rumble all over the place. That handheld being smart phones. They all have "haptic feedback" which is the modern trendy way to say "rumble". The claim is "haptic feedback" is a good replacement for being able to feel where your fingers are by what they are touching. It isn't, because the feedback is delayed until after you actually send input, meaning it's a bit late to know what the heck you just pressed.Huh, phones have vibration feedback? I've never played a cellphone game before and don't own a cellphone, after all. That makes it even more disappointing that Nintendo and Sony haven't put it in, then. Rumble is fun!
At any rate, it's not that mobile gaming lacks rumble, it's that Nintendo specifically has abandoned it (Sony never saw the point to begin with, though their XPeria line of phones have rumble, if that counts). Nintendo seems more than ready to abandon their old innovations all the time though. Remember pressure sensitive shoulder buttons? Well, okay Sega innovated those, but Nintendo did well with the Gamecube's pressure sensitive buttons. Nintendo actually did put pressure sensitive buttons on the Classic Controller for the Wii, but in a very bold and rather annoying move, they actually removed an existing controller feature already on that controller from a revised model, because the Classic Controller Pro had no pressure sensitivity. Rather annoying. Though, I don't believe any Wii games up to that point had bothered using the pressure sensitivity, so not a huge loss of much other than potential. On the Wii U, they added buttons to the analog sticks like both Sony and Microsoft's controllers have (adding two extra buttons), but they didn't put in analog switches for two of the shoulder buttons as just about everyone expects of a controller these days. It's a very odd move, especially considering those Wii U pads are rather expensive to replace, so "updating" one isn't very economical. Nintendo themselves know just how useful pressure sensitive controls can be. While the new Luigi's Mansion does an admirable job working around that deficit on the 3DS, I suspect a HD port of the original Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine to Wii U would suffer for want of such fine control. It has been a while since I played Wind Waker, but did that game make use of the pressure sensitivity in any way? I don't recall that it did, so that game's HD port should go well enough at least.
Quote:Yes, I missed out on the previous Panel de Pon games. I just had no idea what I was missing out on. Nintendo picked some very strange ways to market the game in America that simply didn't appeal to me (and remember, I AM into pokemon, though not as much as I was back then). I'm sure I'd have picked up at least one before now had I realized there even was a series. As it was, I didn't even realize that Pokemon Puzzle League WAS Tetris Attack in a new skin.I'm sure my PPL and Tetris Attack reviews in my SNES and N64 reviews threads point out the series... with all the title changes though it is easy to miss if you're not paying attention.
Quote:As you say, Planet Puzzle League has an all too generic look and feel to it. It isn't as bad as Magnetica, in that the pieces music and background do change as the game goes on, but it does a rather sad impression of Lumines. Meteos is a good example of a game with a running theme, and it does a great job of having personality. Tetris and Dr. Mario also had solid personalities. (Everyone associates Tetris with russian folk music, even though for some stupid reason almost every release after the first ones has purposefully attempted to use weird techno tracks instead of what worked. Well, Tetris DS used classic Nintendo themes, and Tetris Axis does have some proper Russian music put into the mix, which is nice.)Yeah, it really was disappointing that Planet Puzzle League has no characters, story/arcade mode, etc. Why did they think that removing all of that was a good idea? It is still a great puzzle game, but it hurts the replay value, I think. There were a few new modes, but the game really does rely on "play for score" more so than previous versions of the game.
As for Tetris, it's good to know that Tetris Axis actually has Russian music in it. Whenever I get a 3DS, I'll definitely have to get the game; having actual Russian music does make Tetris games a bit more interesting. Tetris DS was pretty good anyway, though.
Quote: If you haven't played a Lumines game, I highly recommend it. That game puts the backgrounds, music, and alternate block colors and shapes to work in a way I've never seen before, and while other games attempted to duplicate the look, none ever really "got" it. The time and pacing of block falling and line clearing sync up with the music itself (matched blocks only disappear when a musical bar scrolls across them on the screen, so different tunes are going to "feel" very different in terms of gameplay). Lumines 2 is great, but the US version used a lot of... questionable music (Like "Hollaback Girl"), although the main theme is very addictive, at least I liked it. Lumines 1 is no slouch either though. The only problem is you'll need get a PSP to play it. I'm sure you can find an early model rather cheap these days, as well as a UMD of Lumines.I got a PSP back in fall 2011, you know. Its disc drive failed and I got a replacement early this year, but unlike my replacement DS, that one I haven't broken, and it's working great. That is fortunate, since it's green and looks awesome (since green is my favorite color, after all).
Anyway, I don't like Lumines very much... I have Lumines 2 for PSP, but don't like it enough to want to get any good at the game, or play it. Somehow I find it more frustrating than fun... I haven't played the game all that much, but playing it a little didn't make me want to continue. It's hard! Bust-A-Move is underwhelming on PSP as well; such huge areas of the screen have nothing in them! The DS BAM games are probably more fun.