What's happening to the DS Wario franchise?

I'm not quite ready to give up on the series yet, but 1UP has a review of Wario: Master of Disguise saying roughly that the game is pretty piss poor. In all fairness, Metacritic has it rated a bit higher, but not quite high enough that I'll pick it up. I love the WarioWare for the Gamecube, but every Wario outing on the DS I've tried, I've hated with a passion (all 1 of them). It's beyond me why WarioWare: Touched got such good ratings. The minigames are nowhere near as good as its Gamecube counterpart, and the non-skippable story mode drove me batshit. Maybe it's just the DS Wario games that are a problem, because I've heard the Wii version is pretty good (good reviews too).

I really do hope they start making better DS Wario games, if only because it'll be another few months before I can afford to get a Wii.

XNA and Homebrew

I found this while Digging; a quick rundown of what's going on in the various homebrew scenes. I am actually quite surprised that XNA for the 360 doesn't have a bigger interest. In his article, he points out 'Microsofts XNA platform is at the moment the only "Homebrew" but paying to use XNA doesnt appeal to me.' Funny, because a few paragraphs later when talking about the DS he says "all you need to run homebrew on the Nintendo DS is the Console (obviously), and a Flash Cart Combo." The Flash Cart Combo costs more than XNA does! Well, at least for the first year. XNA is a subscription based service, but for the first year it clocks in at just under $100.

In fact, speaking from experience, the XNA development process is much cleaner than DS homebrew. With DS homebrew I've been using a combination of C libraries (libnds and palib) along with the modified version of the gcc arm7/arm9 cross compiler offered with devkitPro. This makes it possible to build C and C++ applications for the DS, but it certainly doesn't make it easy by any stretch of the imagination. You have to be an experienced C or C++ coder to really do anything with the system, and while it certainly has some documentation for the systems, you have to learn a vast library of esoteric function calls to do some basic things, and many of these functions are under documented. I've even had to resort to ARM assembly in order to implement a mutex for processor synchronization, which was completely lacking from either api.

XNA on the other hand, is very well documented, and offers a better development environment. Simply install Visual C# Express (which is free), download XNA (which is also free for the PC version), and start working. You don't have to pay the XNA subscription until you want to run the game on your 360. With some clever, platform independent programming you can write and test your homebrew on your own computer without having to run the game through an emulator. The XNA library is exceedingly well documented, and you have the entire C# library at your disposal when you go to write games. There is even an NES emulator already written for it (XNA has only been out for a few months).

There are, of course, things which are bad about XNA. Development is limited to the Windows platform, and forcing the users to use C# will drive away some of the hardcore C/C++ developers. I don't think that XNA is purposefully neutered, as Steve so eloquently puts it, but I doubt we will see a PS2 or Xbox emulator for XNA any time soon because of it. In order to prevent a lot of exploits which would lead to game piracy, you really need to limit pure C/C++ code from running on the platform...or at least turn on massive amounts of protections such as making the stack and heap non-executable.

I see XNA as a small step in the right direction, but I do wish they would further open up the 360...since I'm not sure I'm ready to risk breaking my 360 with a mod chip for C++ homebrew quite yet.

New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This is going to rock something fierce. Though I do wonder, with all of those target systems, if they are making multiple games or porting the same game to multiple systems (or a mix of the two). Despite rumors saying the opposite, I'm really hoping they have around 3 completely different games of which 1 is targeted for the hand held systems, 1 is for the next gen systems, and 1 is for the previous gen systems. I can't imagine a port to that many systems would be any good. Just look at what happened to Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. It was fantastic on the 360, bad on the original Xbox, and simply terrible on the PS2.

I really hope it does well on at least one system that I own...

Space + Vampires = Awesome !?

Lunar Knights is surprisingly good, given the track record for space vampires in other forms of media. I had never heard of the series until stumbling upon this one, and I am impressed enough that I think I'll go back and pick up the previous games in the series.

On the surface, the game is standard adventure fare with a high degree of polish. During the first dungeon, however, the game quickly adds more elements to the combat system and exploration, adding a few layers of complexity to the game which works out very well. The terrenial system allows you to change the element of your weapon at will at a cost of using energy with every attack. Time of day plays a big role in deciding which character you are using in combat, since one character can only recharge his energy with moonlight, the other with sunlight. Weather affects the environment, since you can only recharge your energy if the sun or moon is not behind the clouds, and being able to reterraform map locations to change the environment can change a level's layout as well. This all combines for a subtly deep playing experience which I find lacking in many other games of this genre.

The space battles were an interesting thing to add to the game, but I'm not entirely sure I like them. On one hand they are a great break from the standard action adventure in the game, and they don't come up very often. On the other hand, the action is a bit too simplistic (click on enemy to destroy it, change elements for some enemies, drag your ship to move), and aside from the bosses, nothing really poses that big of a danger to you...especially since the direction things attack you from are semi-predictable and not at all randomized. On the third hand, they did do a fantastic job making some of the battle sequences incredibly frenetic and chaotic. Those rare portions remind me of Ikaruga. As long as the space action continues in a similar fashion for the rest of the game, I think I'll be satisfied with it.

The game isn't without its flaws of course. Despite reviews to the contrary, I find the game to be a bit too forgiving. As long as you watch enemy patterns, time your defenses, and don't over extend yourself while attacking, you won't run into any problems with standard enemies. I'm not quite done with the game yet, but thus far I've only died in adventure mode once, and that's because a cannon shot me off of a platform...and I fell to my death. The continue system makes you pay a very small amount of money to start back from the same room you died in, and you may save at virtually any time during the game...so even if you have trouble with the combat there's really no way you can get completely stuck along the way.

Space combat has the same problem, except that you can only save before the beginning of the action. This is mildly irritating since nothing poses a challenge except the boss, so if you die at the boss you have to play through the entire sequence over again, which really doesn't involve any risk. I consider that a negative because I really only enjoy games which require you to concentrate and to do well, or suffer the consequences. I'll understand if anyone else has a different opinion on the matter.

Anywho. I completely missed the Supreme Commander release date because I bought Lunar Knights after a friend showed it to me. I'm just hoping it will have enough hours of gameplay to tide me over until the next pay day.